Doesn’t anybody vet the people in the Trump administration?

That the Donald Trump administration is corrupt is old news. What is incredible is how far down the corruption extends and how even low-level grifters seem to have been able to find a home in its various niches. Ben Carson has already been in trouble because of his willingness to cut programs that benefit those who lack adequate housing while spending money on expensive furniture for himself. Now comes reports that one of his advisors Naved Jafry has resigned under a cloud.
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What lesson did this teach students?

Last week saw students in schools around the nation stage a walkout to protest the lack of action by the government to the easy availability of high-powered guns that have been used in so many mass killings. In general, school authorities and local communities have been supportive of these actions, or at least tolerated it and did not punish students for the walkouts. Some universities have even said that a suspension for such an action would not adversely affect a student’s application for college admission.
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Antifa is making the neo-Nazi movement not fun anymore

Some time ago I wrote that the neo-Nazis, anti-Semites, white supremacists and the various assorted fascistic-minded types were using ‘lulz’ i.e., mocking humor and irony, to draw in new recruits, forgoing the old skinhead, tattooed, tough look for the clean cut boy next door image. And it seemed to be working. But then they encountered the antifa movement and Natasha Lennard writes that now some are discovering that there is a tangible cost to spreading messages of hate .
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The need for cognitive empathy to avoid war

Robert Wright writes that the lack of cognitive empathy is one of the major drivers that leads Americans to support one disastrous war after another. He distinguishes cognitive empathy from the more familiar emotional empathy and says that some so-called ‘think tanks’ in the US and major media like the New York Times are undermining whatever minimal cognitive empathetic impulses people might have and are thus making wars more likely
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The moon continues to create a sense of wonder

Galileo used the newly invented telescope to persuade people that the moon was not a perfectly smooth sphere, as all celestial objects were believed to be at that time, but had mountains and valleys and craters that made it seem just like the Earth. This caused considerable consternation at that time with some denying what they saw, saying that it was the telescope that was creating those blemishes.
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Remembering the My Lai massacre

I have written many times before about one of the greatest atrocities of the Vietnam war, a war that was itself a monstrous atrocity at every level. The My Lai massacre was notable because the appalling facts eventually came out (although more than a year after the event) and were undeniable and yet president Nixon excused the actions of the murderous soldiers and the officers who ordered the attack in which the people in a hamlet were ordered into a ditch and then were ruthlessly gunned down.
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Trump doesn’t just lie, he now boasts about it

That Donald Trump lies incessantly is now an unquestioned fact. But we are now witnessing lying taken to the next level where he proudly boasts that he lies. In private remarks, Trump told a group of people at a fundraising dinner that at a meeting with Canada’s prime minister he had knowingly lied to him about the trade deficit. The only lying level left is the dreaded Lying Singularity where the lies feed upon themselves so much that they collapse into a black hole.
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Stephen Hawking

I have not written anything about the death of iconic physicist Stephen Hawking because there did not seem much that I could add to the massive coverage it received. But throughout his life, there has been one thing that troubled me about the way he was covered and that was how the media dealt with his motor neurone disease. I could not quite put my finger on what bothered me but Ellis Palmer, who also identifies himself as disabled and is a wheelchair user, explains his own unease with how people like him are seen and portrayed.
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Invoking the Nuremberg defense for torture enthusiasts

The so-called Nuremberg defense, that one’s war crimes can be excused if one were following orders, was advanced during the trial of Nazis after World War II and was rejected. But as Jon Schwarz writes, the US is now advancing that same argument in defense of the people in the government who not only authorized and presided over ghastly torture practices that are undoubtedly war crimes, they showed every indication of having enjoyed doing so.
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