The Ledes

Monday, June 30, 2025

It's summer in our hemisphere, and people across Guns America have nothing to do but shoot other people.

New York Times: “A gunman deliberately started a wildfire in a rugged mountain area of Idaho and then shot at the firefighters who responded, killing two and injuring another on Sunday afternoon in what the local sheriff described as a 'total ambush.' Law enforcement officers exchanged fire with the gunman while the wildfire burned, and officials later found the body of the male suspect on the mountain with a firearm nearby, Sheriff Robert Norris of Kootenai County said at a news conference on Sunday night. The authorities said they believed the suspect had acted alone but did not release any information about his identity or motives.” A KHQ-TV (Spokane) report is here.

New York Times: “The New York City police were investigating a shooting in Manhattan on Sunday night that left two people injured steps from the Stonewall Inn, an icon of the L.G.B.T.Q. rights movement. The shooting occurred outside a nearby building in Greenwich Village at 10:15 p.m., Sgt. Matthew Forsythe of the New York Police Department said. The New York City Pride March had been held in Manhattan earlier on Sunday, and Mayor Eric Adams said on social media that the shooting happened as Pride celebrations were ending. One victim who was shot in the head was in critical condition on Monday morning, a spokeswoman for the Police Department said. A second victim was in stable condition after being shot in the leg, she said. No suspect had been identified. The police said it was unclear if the shooting was connected to the Pride march.”

New York Times: “A dangerous heat wave is gripping large swaths of Europe, driving temperatures far above seasonal norms and prompting widespread health and fire alerts. The extreme heat is forecast to persist into next week, with minimal relief expected overnight. France, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece are among the nations experiencing the most severe conditions, as meteorologists warn that Europe can expect more and hotter heat waves in the future because of climate change.”

The Wires
powered by Surfing Waves
Help!

To keep the Conversation going, please help me by linking news articles, opinion pieces and other political content in today's Comments section.

Link Code:   <a href="URL">text</a>

OR here's a link generator. The one I had posted died, then Akhilleus found one, but it too bit the dust. He found yet another, which I've linked here, and as of September 23, 2024, it's working.

OR you can always just block, copy and paste to your comment the URL (Web address) of the page you want to link.

Note for Readers. It is not possible for commenters to "throw" their highlighted links to another window. But you can do that yourself. Right-click on the link and a drop-down box will give you choices as to where you want to open the link: in a new tab, new window or new private window.

Thank you to everyone who has been contributing links to articles & other content in the Comments section of each day's "Conversation." If you're missing the comments, you're missing some vital links.

Marie: Sorry, my countdown clock was unreliable; then it became completely unreliable. I can't keep up with it. Maybe I'll try another one later.

 

Commencement ceremonies are joyous occasions, and Steve Carell made sure that was true this past weekend (mid-June) at Northwestern's commencement:

~~~ Carell's entire commencement speech was hilarious. The audio and video here isn't great, but I laughed till I cried.

CNN did a live telecast Saturday night (June 7) of the Broadway play "Good Night, and Good Luck," written by George Clooney and Grant Heslov, about legendary newsman Edward R. Murrow's effort to hold to account Sen. Joe McCarthy, "the junior senator from Wisconsin." Clooney plays Murrow. Here's Murrow himself with his famous take on McCarthy & McCarthyism, brief remarks that especially resonate today: ~~~

     ~~~ This article lists ways you still can watch the play. 

New York Times: “The New York Times Company has agreed to license its editorial content to Amazon for use in the tech giant’s artificial intelligence platforms, the company said on Thursday. The multiyear agreement 'will bring Times editorial content to a variety of Amazon customer experiences,' the news organization said in a statement. Besides news articles, the agreement encompasses material from NYT Cooking, The Times’s food and recipe site, and The Athletic, which focuses on sports. This is The Times’s first licensing arrangement with a focus on generative A.I. technology. In 2023, The Times sued OpenAI and its partner, Microsoft, for copyright infringement, accusing the tech companies of using millions of articles published by The Times to train automated chatbots without any kind of compensation. OpenAI and Microsoft have rejected those accusations.” ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: I have no idea what this means for "the Amazon customer experience." Does it mean that if I don't have a NYT subscription but do have Amazon Prime I can read NYT content? And where, exactly, would I find that content? I don't know. I don't know.

Washington Post reporters asked three AI image generators what a beautiful woman looks like. "The Post found that they steer users toward a startlingly narrow vision of attractiveness. Prompted to show a 'beautiful woman,' all three tools generated thin women, without exception.... Her body looks like Barbie — slim hips, impossible waist, round breasts.... Just 2 percent of the images showed visible signs of aging. More than a third of the images had medium skin tones. But only nine percent had dark skin tones. Asked to show 'normal women,' the tools produced images that remained overwhelmingly thin.... However bias originates, The Post’s analysis found that popular image tools struggle to render realistic images of women outside the Western ideal." ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: The reporters seem to think they are calling out the AI programs for being unrealistic. But there's a lot about the "beautiful women" images they miss. I find these omissions remarkably sexist. For one thing, the reporters seem to think AI is a magical "thing" that self-generates. It isn't. It's programmed. It's programmed by boys, many of them incels who have little or no experience or insights beyond comic books and Internet porn of how to gauge female "beauty." As a result, the AI-generated women look like cartoons; that is, a lot like an air-brushed photo of Kristi Noem: globs of every kind of dark eye makeup, Scandinavian nose, Botox lips, slathered-on skin concealer/toner/etc. makeup, long dark hair and the aforementioned impossible Barbie body shape, including huge, round plastic breasts. 

New York Times: “George Clooney’s Broadway debut, 'Good Night, and Good Luck,' has been one of the sensations of the 2024-25 theater season, breaking box office records and drawing packed houses of audiences eager to see the popular movie star in a timely drama about the importance of an independent press. Now the play will become much more widely available: CNN is planning a live broadcast of the penultimate performance, on June 7 at 7 p.m. Eastern. The performance will be preceded and followed by coverage of, and discussion about, the show and the state of journalism.”

No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land. -- Magna Carta ~~~

~~~ New York Times: “Bought for $27.50 after World War II, the faint, water stained manuscript in the library of Harvard Law School had attracted relatively little attention since it arrived there in 1946. That is about to change. Two British academics, one of whom happened on the manuscript by chance, have discovered that it is an original 1300 version — not a copy, as long thought — of Magna Carta, the medieval document that helped establish some of the world’s most cherished liberties. It is one of just seven such documents from that date still in existence.... A 710-year-old version of Magna Carta was sold in 2007 for $21.3 million.... First issued in 1215, it put into writing a set of concessions won by rebellious barons from a recalcitrant King John of England — or Bad King John, as he became known in folklore. He later revoked the charter, but his son, Henry III, issued amended versions, the last one in 1225, and Henry’s son, Edward I, in turn confirmed the 1225 version in 1297 and again in 1300.”

NPR lists all of the 2025 Pulitzer Prize winners. Poynter lists the prizes awarded in journalism as well as the finalists in these categories.

 

Contact Marie

Email Marie at constantweader@gmail.com

Page Links
Saturday
Jul202013

The Commentariat -- July 21, 2013

** Rick Hertzberg of the New Yorker on what Alexander Hamilton would have thought of the filibuster. In this short post, Hertzberg dissects & discards every single speech & remark about the "wisdom of the Founders" in creating a Constitution in which a minority compromises majority rule....

... CW: Our government would be functioning in a much different -- and more liberal -- way if we had true representative government. (And before you say, "Oh, yeah; look at the House," let me remind you that more Americans voted for Democrats than Republicans in the last Congressional election AND the Constitution does not contemplate the "Hastert Rule," in which a majority of the majority party must favor a bill before the speaker will bring it to the floor for a vote, an invention which gives a small minority of the House veto power over majority preferences. So, ferinstance, the Senate's immigration bill would likely pass the House today, but Speaker Boehner is bowing to the Tea Party nativist racist bloc & refusing to move on it.)

The Half-Life of the Religious Right. Steve Benen: a new Brookings Institution study "document[s] an important trend: religious social conservatives represent about 28% of the population, but they're slowly being eclipsed by a younger, diverse group of religious progressives.... It's a similar demographic issue that's facing the Republican Party: among Americans 66 and older, 47% self-identify as religious conservatives and only 12% consider themselves religious progressives. Among Americans 33 and younger, religious conservatives not only trail religious progressives, the right also finds itself outnumbered by secularists."

Sharon LaFraniere of the New York Times has the backstory on the Obama administration's aggressive prosecution of whistleblowers & leakers.

CW: Driftglass has a fine post on the hypocrisy of Glenn Greenwald & the Outrage Caucus. "even the slightest, actual debate style-pushback against anything that flows from the keyboard of Mr. Greenwald is instantly shredded and dismissed by the Outrage Caucus as a 'vicious and vehement' attack by the obedient slaves of imperial power." Read the whole post. For some while, I thought I was alone in being sick of Glenn, but Greenwald's recent celebrity has brought attention to "his stampeding ego and petty grudges," which many liberals -- including those he attacked -- have ignored in the past. Thanks to James S. for the link. ...

     ... P.S. It should go without saying (but unfortunately I have to write special messages to Glennbots) that left-leaning critics of Greenwald's particular sociopathy still appreciate the useful facts & issues he brings to light.

The Corporate Person Prevails Again. Elise Viebeck of the Hill: "A key plaintiff against the Obama administration's birth control mandate won a temporary court injunction Friday allowing it not to provide birth control as part of its employee health plan. Hobby Lobby, a national, for-profit chain of arts and crafts stores, was granted the preliminary injunction by U.S. District Judge Joe Heaton." Via Steve Benen.

Lauren French of Politico: "For J. Russell George, Thursday was about damage control. Testifying before the deeply divided House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, the Treasury inspector general responsible for penning the report that fueled the IRS scandal went to great lengths to defend his findings -- and his credibility." ...

... One great way for George to regain credibility is to investigate whether or not Tea Partier Christine I-Am-Not-a-Witch O'Donnell was the victim of an IRS campaign of "political intimidation."

Maureen Dowd is covering the Whitey Bulger trial.

Adam Gopnik of the New Yorker on the history of "stand your ground" a/k/a "no duty to retreat," a peculiarly-American, pro-violence cultural tradition. ...

... President Polyanna Experiences a Moment of Clarity. Charles Pierce on the President's "breaking the redemptive covenant." CW: Pierce hits the right notes here, & he writes them into a riff that explains pretty much every Obama failure. ...

... Biographer David Maraniss of the Washington Post on Barry Obama & his experiences as a young black man. ...

... Scott Keyes of Think Progress: "Conservatives didn't even wait for President Obama to finish his deeply personal remarks on Trayvon Martin's killing and the role of race in America to go ballistic, accusing the president of being a 'Racist in Chief' who is 'trying to tear our country apart.'"

Missed this one. Spencer Hsu of the Washington Post (July 17): "An unprecedented federal review of old criminal cases has uncovered as many as 27 death penalty convictions in which FBI forensic experts may have mistakenly linked defendants to crimes with exaggerated scientific testimony, U.S. officials said. The review led to an 11th-hour stay of execution in Mississippi in May. It is not known how many of the cases involve errors, how many led to wrongful convictions or how many mistakes may now jeopardize valid convictions."

Gubernatorial Race

Katie Glueck of Politico: "Virginia's gubernatorial hopefuls bashed each other for 90 minutes Saturday over jobs, the ethics scandal that has consumed Gov. Bob McDonnell and social issues as they faced off in their first debate of the most closely-watched election of 2013. Republican state Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli depicted Terry McAuliffe, the former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, as a Washington insider with a business record that's much less impressive than the Democrat has claimed. McAuliffe painted Cuccinelli as an ideologue on social issues who should not be believed when he says his priority is jobs. ...

... Robert McCartney of the Washington Post writes that McAuliffe -- who's never held elective office -- managed to look "mostly gubernatorial" in the debate.

Presidential Race

Jonathan Bernstein argues in Salon that Ted Cruz could beat Hillary Clinton. CW: Bernstein doesn't say so, but I think the major reason Cruz would be a viable candidate is that -- unlike Michele Bachmann & Herman Cain, fer instance (both of whom Bernstein compares unfavorably with Cruz), Cruz is not stupid. So far he hasn't seen any reason to pretend to be a mainstream politician, but I'll bet he knows how.

News Ledes

AP: "Searchers rummaging through vacant houses in a neighborhood where three female bodies were found wrapped in plastic bags should be prepared to find one or two more victims, a police chief said Sunday.... A 35-year-old registered sex offender in custody is a suspect in the deaths...."

Guardian: "Two American fighter jets dropped four unarmed bombs into Australia's Great Barrier Reef Marine Park last week, when a training exercise went wrong, the US Navy said, angering environmentalists."

New York Times: "Chris Froome, the lanky Kenya-born Briton who has dominated professional stage-race cycling all year, rode to victory in the 100th Tour de France on Sunday, cheered by thousands who gathered near the Arc de Triomphe in the race's first-ever twilight finish."

New York Times: "Japanese voters appeared to hand a decisive victory on Sunday to the governing Liberal Democratic Party in upper house elections, restoring the once-discredited party to a virtual monopoly on political power for the first time in six years."

Guardian: "King Philippe I has become Belgium's seventh monarch after the abdication of his father, Albert II, amid uncertainty about the power of the monarchy to heal the fractured country."

Comments Off

Reader Comments (3)

Interesting piece in Roll Call re Dems flexing muscles I thought had atrophied.

http://blogs.rollcall.com/wgdb/democrats-try-hardball-on-the-vanilla-issues-of-legislating/

July 20, 2013 | Unregistered CommenterJames Singer

And then there's Driftglass on Greenwald:

http://driftglass.blogspot.com/2013/07/near-top-of-greenwaldians-long-list-of.html

July 20, 2013 | Unregistered CommenterJames Singer

The death of Helen Thomas really shines a light on the politics of reporting unpopular positions. I'm sure David Brooks and Tom Friedman both prefer their entre into the halls of power, as opposed to the "we don't care what you did the last 50 years" ostracism when Thomas was kicked to the curb.
Helen Thomas' demise is why to support alternative journalism. Even if you don't agree with everything they say, at least someone is saying it.

July 21, 2013 | Unregistered Commentercitizen625
Comments for this entry have been disabled. Additional comments may not be added to this entry at this time.