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I listened on Sept. 27 while Kavanaugh peppered two hours of Senate testimony with attacks against people and groups he associated with Democrats. Kavanaugh alleged (without factual basis) that he was the victim of a vast, secret, left-wing cabal, masterminded by senators such as Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and motivated by “revenge on behalf of the Clintons.” I was shocked to hear a Supreme Court nominee carry on like a crazed conspiracy theorist.

Turns out, there’s a rule against federal judges behaving like this. Congress passed the Judicial Conduct and Disability Act in 1980, and the rules under that act state that it’s misconduct for a federal judge to make “inappropriately partisan statements.” I may be retired, but I think I know an inappropriately partisan statement when I hear one.

The 10th Circuit Judicial Council finally announced its dismissal of the 83 complaints on Dec. 18, explaining its decision roughly as follows: (1) The 1980 act applies to circuit judges but not Supreme Court justices, (2) Kavanaugh was a D.C. Circuit Court judge during his confirmation hearings and when I filed my complaint, but (3) he’s a Supreme Court justice now. Evidently a circuit judge nominated to the Supreme Court can be held responsible for his partisan misconduct before the Senate, so long as the Senate fails to confirm the nominee. But if the nominee wins the approval of a partisan Senate, then his inappropriate partisanship is excused. This reasoning doesn’t make sense to me. It’s like saying we can prosecute a safecracker only if the safe proved to be empty.

Swiss voters approved a proposition Sunday banning facial coverings in public. Niqabs and burqas, worn by almost no one even among the country's Muslim population, will be banned outside of religious institutions. The new law doesn't apply to facial coverings for health reasons.

Switzerland will join several European countries that have implemented a ban on facial coverings, including France, Denmark, the Netherlands and Austria.

The new legislation was brought to the ballot through a people's initiative launched by the nation's right-wing Egerkingen Committee, the same group that led the charge to ban minarets over a decade ago

Tech giants Microsoft and Alphabet/Google have seized a large lead in shaping our potentially A.I.-dominated future. This is not good news. History has shown us that when the distribution of information is left in the hands of a few, the result is political and economic oppression. Without intervention, this history will repeat itself.

The fact that these companies are attempting to outpace each other, in the absence of externally imposed safeguards, should give the rest of us even more cause for concern, given the potential for A.I. to do great harm to jobs, privacy and cybersecurity. Arms races without restrictions generally do not end well.

We believe the A.I. revolution could even usher in the dark prophecies envisioned by Karl Marx over a century ago. The German philosopher was convinced that capitalism naturally led to monopoly ownership over the “means of production” and that oligarchs would use their economic clout to run the political system and keep workers poor.

profits have surged as a share of national income, while wages and other labor compensation are down. The pie isn’t growing the way it should — but capital is doing fine by grabbing an ever-larger slice, at labor’s expense.

Increasingly, profits have been rising at the expense of workers in general, including workers with the skills that were supposed to lead to success in today’s economy.

similar stories are playing out in many fields, including services like translation and legal research. What’s striking about their examples is that many of the jobs being displaced are high-skill and high-wage; the downside of technology isn’t limited to menial workers.

I don’t fault Silver for his caution. It’s honest. What it really says is he doesn’t know with much confidence what’s going to happen

That’s because there’s a lot of human caprice and whim in electoral behavior that can’t always be explained or predicted with scientific precision. Politics ain’t moneyball. Good-quality polls give an accurate sense of where a political race is at a point in time, but they don’t predict the future.

Predictive models, generally based on historical patterns, work until they don’t.

Social movement scholars have known for decades that most people, even if they agree with an idea, don’t take action to support it. For most people upset by a policy decision or a disturbing news event, the default is not to protest in the streets, but rather to watch others as they do. Getting to the point where someone acts as part of a group is a milestone in itself.

Decades of research show that people will be more willing to engage in activism that is easy, and less costly – emotionally, physically, or financially. For example, more than a million people used social media to “check in” at the Standing Rock Reservation, center of the Dakota Access Pipeline protests. Far fewer people – just a few thousand – have traveled to the North Dakota camps to brave the arriving winter weather and risk arrest.

Once people are primed to act, it’s important not to discourage them from taking that step, however small. Preliminary findings from my team’s current research suggest that people just beginning to explore activism can be disheartened by bring criticized for doing something wrong.

The Greeks allowed slaves who ran away from abusive masters and even some criminals to seek sanctuary in certain temples; ‘‘asylum’’ comes from their word for inviolable.

The right of asylum might seem as culturally embedded as the ruins of one of the old temples.

Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain invoked insects when he warned of a ‘‘swarm’’ of ‘‘illegal migrants.’

To have just a 50% chance of meeting the 1.5C means halving global emissions over the next decade and hitting “net zero” emissions by about 2050

That means every sector of every country in the world needs to be, on average, zero emissions. That’s electricity, transport, industry, farming, the lot.

there are some areas where zero emissions by 2050 is impossible. There will, for example, always be some emissions from the farming needed to feed more than 10 billion people this century

The more I asked my students about their thoughts on the Middle East, the more I realized that it was not simply a matter of disinterest (although that is certainly a factor among some), but rather that the subject only existed to them in an abstract manner.

My high-school experience was shaped by 9/11, and I enlisted in the Marine Corps shortly after the towers fell. It wasn’t until after I returned from deployment to Iraq and entering college that I began to think more about what this war meant and how it has fundamentally changed American society. But for my students, this was a war that had existed for almost their entire lives: In fact, from the moment many of them were born, the U.S. has been engaged in conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is not to mention the indelible mark that terrorism has left on Europe in recent years, or the very visible specter of ISIS operating within the Middle East and Africa today. How could there be no questions?

I wanted students to actively seek understanding of the region and the war that shaped a new generation of vets, including myself. I wanted to know that this history would not be lost, that a war costly in blood and treasure would not be forgotten; student detachment now would mean their detachment as they entered college and, ultimately, the “real world.” The consequences of a disinterested society are severe when considering the inevitability of future American military mobilization.

Of its total population of 1.3 billion, women account for about half.

women are being given more guarantees of enjoyment of equal rights and opportunities with men and the development of women is being given unprecedented opportunities.

The state has continuously intensified its efforts in the formulation, revision and enforcement of relevant laws and regulations to protect the legitimate rights and interests of women in earnest.

this North African resident became the latest victim of the ‘sixth great wave’ of mass extinction.

including the one that ended the dinosaurs’ reign 65 million years ago, and the one that we’re on the brink of today

scientists estimate that there’ll be between 269-350 further extinctions of birds and mammals by 2100.

President Biden announced Thursday that America would aim to cut its greenhouse gas emissions 50 percent to 52 percent below 2005 levels by 2030.

The later baseline makes the United States target look a bit better, because it omits a period when emissions were rising. An earlier baseline makes Europe look more ambitious, since it has been cutting for longer.

To avoid many of the most catastrophic risks of climate change, such the collapse of polar ice sheets or widespread crop failures, scientists have said that the world likely needs to zero out emissions from fossil fuels and deforestation by around mid-century. “