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Javier E

New Measure of Climate's Toll: Disasters Are Now Common Across US - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...e-county-natural-disaster.html

climate change crisis effects US disaster insurance state county measure climate

shared by Javier E on 16 Nov 22 - No Cached
  • a report released on Wednesday uses a different measure: Which parts of the country have suffered the greatest number of federally declared disasters?
  • That designation is reserved for disasters so severe, they overwhelm the ability of state and local officials to respond. The report finds that disasters like these have become alarmingly common.
  • From 2011 to the end of last year, 90 percent of U.S. counties have experienced a flood, hurricane, wildfire or other calamity serious enough to receive a federal disaster declaration, according to the report, and more than 700 counties suffered five or more such disasters.
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • During that same period, 29 states had, on average, at least one federally declared disaster a year somewhere within their borders. Five states have experienced at least 20 disasters since 2011.
  • The numbers exclude disaster declarations related to the coronavirus pandemic.
  • “Climate change is here,”
  • “Every single taxpayer is paying for climate change.”
  • By focusing on federally declared disasters, the report is able to equalize those differences, offering something close to a true accounting of which places are most exposed to climate shocks they cannot cope with on their own.
  • At the top of that list are five counties that have each experienced, on average, more than a disaster a year since 2011. Those counties are concentrated in two areas: Southern Louisiana (where counties are called parishes) and eastern Kentucky.
  • Louisiana outpaces the rest of the United States in another regard. Over the past decade, the state has received more federal disaster money per capita — $1,736 for each resident — than anywhere else in the nation, the report found. Only New York State comes close, at $1,348.
  • Since 2011, California has received 25 federal disaster declarations, including for wildfires in 2017 and 2018 that resulted in $2.5 billion in federal money to rebuild public infrastructure. Mississippi and Oklahoma have each suffered 22 disasters. Iowa has had 21, mostly for severe storms and flooding
  • Not every type of disaster is associated with climate change. For example, it’s unclear whether there is a link between rising temperatures and earthquakes. But scientists have become increasingly convinced that a warming world is contributing to worsening floods, hurricanes, wildfires and other extreme weather events.
  • The data also shows the areas least exposed to unmanageable climate shocks, at least so far. States in the Midwest, including Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and Michigan, are among those with the smallest number of federal disaster declarations, with an average of roughly one disaster every two years.
  • At the bottom of the list is Nevada, which has had just three federal disaster declarations since 2011. Next door, Arizona has had just six. Yet, Nevada and Arizona ranked highest for heat-related deaths from 2018 to 2021, according to the report
  • “Heat has the highest mortality of all climate impacts, but their disaster declarations were so low,” Ms. Chester said. The reason: Federal disaster declarations focus on property damage more than direct human consequences like illness, injury or death.
  • “By better understanding risk,” she said, “we can more effectively take action together to accelerate resilience and adaptation in our nation’s most at-risk and disadvantaged communities.”
  • To pay for that new spending, Rebuild by Design proposes, states should impose a 2 percent surcharge on insurance premiums.
  • Using an insurance surtax to pay for disasters is a strategy that is already in use, in a sense. As the report notes, Florida levies surcharges on private insurance policies to make up for shortfalls in its state-run insurance program — something that’s likely to happen in the aftermath of Hurricane Ian.
  • Rebuild by Design suggests reversing the chronology. Rather than taxing insurance payments to pay for disaster recovery, a state would come up with additional funds before a storm, then use that money to better prepare communities before a disaster strikes, perhaps making it unnecessary for the federal government to declare a disaster at all.
Javier E

The Death of Aaron Swartz - Clive Crook - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...267224

legal system criminal justice abuse

shared by Javier E on 17 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • By and large, American prosecutors no longer fight their cases at trial. The new dispensation is justice by plea bargain. The more savage the penalties prosecutors can threaten, the more likely the defendant (guilty or innocent) is to speed things along by pleading guilty and accepting a light penalty.
  • In my conception of criminal justice, the prosecutor's role is to establish guilt, not pass sentence. Juries have already been substantially dispensed with in this country. (By substantially, I mean in 97 percent of cases.) If prosecutors are not only going to rule on guilt unilaterally but also, in effect, pass sentence as well, one wonders why we can't also dispense with judges.
  • In recent years, as the Wall Street Journal has documented in a disturbing series of articles, Congress has enabled prosecutorial intimidation by criminalizing ever more conduct, passing laws that provide for or require extreme sentences, and reducing the burden of proof (through expanded application of "strict liability", where lack of criminal intent is no defense).
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • "There is no one in the United States over the age of 18 who cannot be indicted for some federal crime," said John Baker, a retired Louisiana State University law professor... "That is not an exaggeration."
  • In this system, everything depends on the moderation and good sense of prosecutors. We see how well that worked in the Swartz case. Most no doubt strive to live up to those standards, but what about the ones that don't? Where's the accountability? What about crusaders for "justice" with half their minds on their next career in politics?
  • I'm surprised that Americans aren't more alarmed by the workings of their criminal justice system
Javier E

The Axis of Ennui - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...brooks-the-axis-of-ennui.html

economic growth innovation center energy gas

shared by Javier E on 12 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • By 2020, the United States will overtake Saudi Arabia as the world’s largest oil producer, according to the International Energy Agency. The U.S. has already overtaken Russia as the world’s leading gas producer. Fuel has become America’s largest export item. Within five years, according to a study by Citigroup, North America could be energy independent. “OPEC will find it challenging to survive another 60 years, let alone another decade,” Edward Morse, Citigroup’s researcher, told CNBC.
  • Joel Kotkin identified America’s epicenters of economic dynamism in a study for the Manhattan Institute. It is like a giant arc of unfashionableness. You start at the Dakotas where unemployment rates are at microscopic levels. You drop straight down through the energy belts of the Great Plains until you hit Texas. Occasionally, you turn to touch the spots where fertilizer output and other manufacturing plants are on the rebound, like the Third Coast areas in Louisiana, Mississippi and Northern Florida.
  • the revolution in oil and gas extraction has led to 1.7 million new jobs in the United States alone, a number that could rise to three million by 2020. The shale revolution added $62 billion to federal revenues in 2012. At the same time, carbon-dioxide emissions are down 13 percent since 2007, as gas is used instead of coal to generate electricity.
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  • Vanity Fair still ranks the tech and media moguls and calls it The New Establishment, but, as Kotkin notes, the big winners in the current economy are the “Material Boys” — the people who grow grain, drill for fuel and lay pipeline. The growing parts of the world, meanwhile, are often the commodity belts, resource-rich places with good rule of law like Canada, Norway and Australia.
  • Most of us have grown up in a world in which oil states in the Middle East could throw their weight around because of their grip on the economy’s life source. But the power of petro-states is on the wane. Yergin argues that the oil sanctions against Iran may not have been sustainable if not for the new alternate sources of supply.
  • What are the names of the people who are leading this shift? Who is the Steve Jobs of shale? Magazine covers don’t provide the answers. Whoever they are, they don’t seem hungry for celebrity or good with the splashy project launch
Javier E

Let's Give Up on the Constitution - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ve-up-on-the-constitution.html

constitution politics us authority

shared by Javier E on 31 Dec 12 - No Cached
  • observers are reaching the conclusion that the American system of government is broken. But almost no one blames the culprit: our insistence on obedience to the Constitution, with all its archaic, idiosyncratic and downright evil provisions.
  • As someone who has taught constitutional law for almost 40 years, I am ashamed it took me so long to see how bizarre all this is. Imagine that after careful study a government official — say, the president or one of the party leaders in Congress — reaches a considered judgment that a particular course of action is best for the country. Suddenly, someone bursts into the room with new information: a group of white propertied men who have been dead for two centuries, knew nothing of our present situation, acted illegally under existing law and thought it was fine to own slaves might have disagreed with this course of action. Is it even remotely rational that the official should change his or her mind because of this divination?
  • Constitutional disobedience may seem radical, but it is as old as the Republic. In fact, the Constitution itself was born of constitutional disobedience.
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  • No sooner was the Constitution in place than our leaders began ignoring it. John Adams supported the Alien and Sedition Acts, which violated the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of speech. Thomas Jefferson thought every constitution should expire after a single generation. He believed the most consequential act of his presidency — the purchase of the Louisiana Territory — exceeded his constitutional powers.
Javier E

Billionaires Going Rogue - NYTimes.com - 0 views

campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/...billionaires-going-rogue

political party democracy wealth elite influence

shared by Javier E on 29 Oct 12 - No Cached
  • The virtually unanimous view throughout the course of four decades of revised regulation was that the Republican Party and its candidates would be the major beneficiaries, and, so far, that has been true.
  • in 2010 — in the aftermath of deregulation — the balance skewed decisively to the right. In the current 2011-12 election cycle, it shifted overwhelmingly to the right:
  • The movement rightwards of almost half a billion dollars in this cycle alone — signified by the red bar on the graph representing Republican donations — is not, however, the pure gold that analysts on both sides expected.
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  • the Republican Party and the conservative establishment is institutionally stronger than the Democratic Party, with an infrastructure that served as a bulwark through the 1960s and 70s
  • The right wing of the Republican Party has more disruptive potential than the left wing of the Democratic Party because it is more willing to go to extremes:
  • While, the rapid growth of well-financed and autonomous competitors threatens all existing power structures, the bulk of the costs are likely to fall on the Republican Party.
  • Republicans, in contrast to Democrats, prefer hierarchical, well-ordered organizations, and are much more willing to cede authority to those in power.
  • The Republican establishment has a full arsenal of weapons at its disposal, including endorsements, favored speaking engagements at key party gatherings, leverage over top consultants and a signaling process to show who has been anointed from on high.
  • The most powerful weapon of all was always the oversight exercised by party leaders over the flow of money to candidates
  • Unleashed by Citizens United, a handful of renegade billionaires made life miserable for Mitt Romney, the establishment candidate. More importantly, it only took four men — Sheldon Adelson, the Las Vegas and Macao casino mogul; Harold Simmons, a Dallas-based leveraged buyout specialist; Foster Friess, a conservative Christian and a successful investor; and William Dore, a Louisiana energy company C.E.O. – to stun traditional party power brokers during the first four months of 2012.
  • turned the primary process into an open contest, giving full voice to the more extreme wings dominated by the Tea Party and the evangelical right.
  • The newly empowered billionaires are positioned to challenge the Republican Party at its point of greatest vulnerability, during the primaries.
  • These new players, along with their super PACs, undermine the influence of the parties in another crucial way. Before Citizens United, the three major Republican Party committees exerted power because their financial preeminence gave them the final word on the award of contracts to pollsters, direct mail, voter contact, and media consultants – very few of whom were willing to alienate a key source of cash.
  • The ascendance of super PACs creates a separate and totally independent source of contracts for the community of political professionals. Super PACs and other independent groups already raise more than any of the political party committees and almost as much as either the Republican or Democratic Party committees raise in toto.
  • “Who is the Republican Party in the Citizens United age? If you had to point to the ‘Republican Party’ would you be more likely to point to Reince Preibus (and implicitly the R.N.C.) or Karl Rove (and Crossroads G.P.S.)? I think candidates might consider Rove more important.”
  • the diminishment of the parties means that the institutions with the single-minded goal of winning a majority will be weakened. When parties are influential, they can help keep some candidates and office holders from going off the ideological deep end. The emergence of independently financed super PACs give voice to those with the most extreme views.
  • If the parties are eviscerated, the political system could adjust itself and regain vitality. But I doubt it. For all their flaws, strong political parties are important to a healthy political system. The displacement of the parties by super rich men determined to flex their financial muscles is another giant step away from democracy.
alexdeltufo

The Memphis Massacre of 1866 and Black Voter Suppression in the American South - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...481737

shared by alexdeltufo on 08 May 16 - No Cached
  • The unrest started with a rumor of black-on-white crime: Black soldiers stationed at Fort Pickering on the city’s south bluffs had allegedly killed white policemen attempting to arrest an African American soldier.
  • Although much has changed since the end of the Civil War, the fact remains that political violence undermines the democratic process even where civil-rights protections are supposedly in place.
  • Ulysses S. Grant would carry Memphis’s Shelby County in two presidential elections aided by African American men, to whom the state extended voting rights in 1867,
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  • But as in so many corners of the Confederacy, the camps where former slaves lived swelled with the hungry, the sick, and those seeking to find opportunity and family.
  • This set the stage for the violent days of May 1866. When the rumor of the black-on-white crime spread, Fort Pickering’s commander, General George Stoneman, confiscated black soldiers’ weapons and ordered them to their barracks.
  • Around the same time, a white mob assembled, including police and firemen, and attacked the camp of former slaves and African American neighborhoods.
  • Violence resumed late the next morning when “a posse of police and citizens again appeared in South Memphis and commenced an indiscriminate attack upon the Negroes,
  • he Massacre showed the failures of Reconstruction even as congressional Republicans seized control from President Andrew Johnson, a Tennessean and former military governor of the state.
  • Newly elected legislators in states like South Carolina showed up in their old Rebel uniforms. And though white civil-rights supporters lived in Memphis and other cities, they were targets of violence—including during the Memphis Massacre.
  • After all, there was political benefit in this kind of aggressive legislating: African Americans made up the largest bloc of Union-loyal Southerners during the war and were potential Republican voters.
  • The Enforcement Act of 1870 outlawed both state and private violence against African Americans, reenacting the 1866 Civil Rights Act under the auspices of the Fourteenth Amendment.
  • In 1871, the federal government placed nine South Carolina counties under martial law, and federal courts convicted more than 100 defendants charged under these acts.
  • he U.S. Supreme Court held in U.S. v. Cruikshank that the perpetrators of the 1873 Colfax Massacre in Louisiana could not be convicted for federal civil-rights violations because the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal-protection clause did not extend to individuals’ crimes,
  • It took 90 years for the state-built edifice of Jim Crow to be torn down by the Civil Rights Acts of 1957, 1960, and 1964,
  • A new retreat from Civil Rights is getting renewed momentum today in the wake of the 2013 decision Shelby County v. Holder. The U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority invalidated sections 4 and 5 of the Voting Rights Act.
Javier E

What We Are Hearing About Clinton and Trump - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...g-about-clinton-and-trump.html

news politics media election crisis culture 2016 campaign candidates perception

shared by Javier E on 20 Sep 16 - No Cached
  • we can assume he wants his statements and actions to be seen and heard, to attract attention. The evidence is clear that they are. The public may be getting no more than a superficial understanding of Mr. Trump’s positions on key issues or how he would implement them as laws if he is elected, but the public clearly is repeating back to us what he intends for it to hear.
  • By contrast, it’s clear that Mrs. Clinton and her campaign team have not wanted her handling of emails to dominate what Americans have been taking away from her campaign over the past two months
  • it may not matter exactly why Americans are so likely to recall reading about Mrs. Clinton’s email situation week after week. Its looming prominence in the public’s mind has become a reality, and it has the effect of superseding public awareness of her policy speeches and statements about issues.
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  • the public may be learning about the candidates’ temperament, character, personality and health issues, but from what they tell us, Americans aren’t getting much in the way of real substance.
  • The moderators of the coming series of debates will most likely focus directly on the candidates’ positions on issues. This may shift what Americans tell us they are learning about the candidates, and if so, it could signal a significant upgrade in the way the process is working. But that also means that a lot still depends on the candidates themselves and how they end up shaping the contours of the debates
  • What Americans recall hearing about Mrs. Clinton is significantly less varied. Specifically — and to an extraordinary degree — Americans have consistently told us that they are reading and hearing about her handling of emails
  • If Mr. Trump talks about Muslim parents and their son who was killed in action, that’s what the public remembers. If he goes to Mexico or Louisiana, that’s what they recall reading or hearing about him. If Mr. Trump calls President Obama the founder of the Islamic State, “ISIS” moves to the top of the list of what Americans tell us they are hearing about the Republican candidate.
  • Since July we have asked more than 30,000 Americans to say exactly what it was they read, saw or heard about the two major party candidates over the past several days. The type of information getting through to Americans varies significantly depending on whether the candidate in question is Mr. Trump or Mrs. Clinton
  • The continuing research, conducted by Gallup in conjunction with University of Michigan and Georgetown, found that since early July more than seven in 10 Americans read, saw or heard something about at least one of the presidential candidates in the days before the daily interviews. On some days that number rises to over 80 percent and has never, even on weekends, fallen below 60 percen
  • With a few exceptions, namely Mr. Trump’s views on immigration, Americans have little recall of reading, hearing or seeing information about the policies of the presidential candidates or their positions on issues. Our research shows instead that in the case of Mr. Trump, Americans monitor his statements, his accusations, his travel and his events, and in the case of Mrs. Clinton they report mainly hearing about her past behavior, her character and, most recently, her health.
lindsayweber1

Ben Carson's Impossible Vision for American Housing - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...513011

housing urban development ben carson white house usa

shared by lindsayweber1 on 15 Jan 17 - No Cached
  • How would an agency with a $47 billion budget fare under someone who thought government spending should be cut, and that efforts to end segregation—a core HUD mission—are akin to “failed socialist experiments”?
  • His Senate confirmation hearing did little to answer these questions, as Carson both pledged to cut spending, and to keep—or even expand—programs that are the hallmark of what HUD does.
  • he point being, if we can find a number on which we can agree and begin to cut back, we can start thinking about fiscal responsibility,” Carson said. “Bear in mind, we are approaching a $20 trillion national debt.”
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  • Yet when various senators asked Carson to weigh in on specific programs that helped their constituents, he consistently pledged to keep them going. That included a rental-assistance demonstration that provides assistance to 4.5 million households, a community-development block grant that will provide $1.6 billion to Americans, including thousands affected by floods in Louisiana, and a program to rid housing of lead hazards. In fact, he said, a program to end veteran homelessness “needs more enhancements.” He also promised to embark on a nationwide “listening tour” to hear more about what needs to be improved at the department.And, despite his own repeated statements to cut down on expenses, he pledged, to the Democrat senator Brian Schatz of Hawaii, that he would advocate for a budget for HUD
Javier E

The right has its own version of political correctness. It's just as stifling. - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...rrectness-its-just-as-stifling

patriotic correctness PC conservative

shared by Javier E on 08 Dec 16 - No Cached
  • Political correctness has become a major bugaboo of the right in the past decade, a rallying cry against all that has gone wrong with liberalism and America. Conservative writers fill volumes complaining how political correctness stifles free expression and promotes bunk social theories about “power structures” based on patriarchy, race and mass victimhood. Forbes charged that it “stifles freedom of speech.” The Daily Caller has gone so far as to claim that political correctness “kills Americans.”
  • But conservatives have their own, nationalist version of PC, their own set of rules regulating speech, behavior and acceptable opinions. I call it “patriotic correctness.” It’s a full-throated, un-nuanced, uncompromising defense of American nationalism, history and cherry-picked ideals. Central to its thesis is the belief that nothing in America can’t be fixed by more patriotism enforced by public shaming, boycotts and policies to cut out foreign and non-American influences.
  • Insufficient displays of patriotism among the patriotically correct can result in exclusion from public life and ruined careers. It also restricts honest criticism of failed public policies, diverting blame for things like the war in Iraq to those Americans who didn’t support the war effort enough.
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  • Complaining about political correctness is patriotically correct. The patriotically correct must use the non-word “illegals,” or “illegal immigrant” or “illegal alien” to describe foreigners who broke our immigration laws. Dissenters support “open borders” or “shamnesty” for 30 million illegal alien invaders. The punishment is deportation because “we’re a nation of laws” and they didn’t “get in line,” even though no such line actually exists. Just remember that they are never anti-immigration, only anti-illegal immigration, even when they want to cut legal immigration.
  • Black Lives Matter is racist because it implies that black lives are more important than other lives, but Blue Lives Matter doesn’t imply that cops’ lives are more important than the rest of ours. Banning Islam or Muslim immigration is a necessary security measure, but homosexuals should not be allowed to get married because it infringes on religious liberty. Transgender people could access women’s restrooms for perverted purposes, but Donald Trump walking in on nude underage girls in dressing rooms before a beauty pageant is just “media bias.”
  • Terrorism is an “existential threat,” even though the chance of being killed in a terrorist attack is about 1 in 3.2 million a year. Saying the words “radical Islam” when describing terrorism is an important incantation necessary to defeat that threat. When Chobani yogurt founder Hamdi Ulukaya decides to employ refugees in his factories, it’s because of his ties to “globalist corporate figures.” Waving a Mexican flag on U.S. soil means you hate America, but waving a Confederate flag just means you’re proud of your heritage.
  • Those who disagree with the patriotically correct are animated by anti-Americanism, are post-American, or deserve any other of a long list of clunky and vague labels that signal virtue to other members of the patriotic in-group.
  • Poor white Americans are the victims of economic dislocation and globalization beyond their control, while poor blacks and Hispanics are poor because of their failed cultures. The patriotically correct are triggered when they hear strangers speaking in a language other than English. Does that remind you of the PC duty to publicly shame those who use unacceptable language to describe race, gender or whatever other identity is the victim du jour?
  • The patriotically correct rightly ridicule PC “safe spaces” but promptly retreat to Breitbart or talk radio, where they can have mutually reinforcing homogeneous temper tantrums while complaining about the lack of intellectual diversity on the left.
  • There is no such thing as too much national security, but it’s liberals who want to coddle Americans with a “nanny state.”
  • Blaming the liberal or mainstream media and “media bias” is the patriotically correct version of blaming the corporations or capitalism. The patriotically correct notion that they “would rather be governed by the first 2,000 people in the Boston telephone directory than by the 2,000 people on the faculty of Harvard University” because the former have “common sense” and the “intellectual elites” don’t know anything, despite all the evidence to the contrary, can be sustained only in a total bubble.
  • Every group has implicit rules against certain opinions, actions and language as well as enforcement mechanisms — and the patriotically correct are no exception. But they are different because they are near-uniformly unaware of how they are hewing to a code of speech and conduct similar to the PC lefties they claim to oppose.
  • The modern form of political correctness on college campuses and the media is social tyranny with manners, while patriotic correctness is tyranny without the manners, and its adherents do not hesitate to use the law to advance their goals.
johnsonma23

Mississippi to join states' suit against Obama's transgender bathroom policy | MSNBC - 0 views

www.msnbc.com/...as-transgender-bathroom-policy

suit politics msnbc transgender culture

shared by johnsonma23 on 26 May 16 - No Cached
  • Mississippi to join states’ suit against Obama’s transgender bathroom policy
  • Mississippi plans to back the 11 other states that filed a lawsuit Wednesday to block the Obama administration’s transgender bathroom policy at public schools
  • Texas is leading the lawsuit, and governors from Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Maine, Oklahoma, Tennessee, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Utah are also on board.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • ordered all of the nation’s public schools to honor transgender students’ bathroom of choice.
  • “into laboratories for a massive social experiment.”
  • denying workers from using a bathroom based on their gender identity amounts to sex discrimination.
rachelramirez

The GOP Delegate Race After Tonight | The Weekly Standard - 0 views

www.weeklystandard.com/...2002130

gop politics US crisis

shared by rachelramirez on 27 Apr 16 - No Cached
  • The GOP Delegate Race After Tonight
  • But the real race to watch is Pennsylvania, where an additional 54 unbound delegates are up for grabs. These delegates are elected directly on the ballot, but the ballot does not say which presidential candidates they support
  • Some percentage of Trump voters will take the time to figure out which delegates publicly back Trump. But there's really no way to know right now whether Trump ends up with half the unbound delegates or close to all of them.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Almost all of the unbound delegates from North Dakota, Colorado, Wyoming, Oklahoma, Minnesota, and Louisiana seem unlikely to back Trump
  • But as Scott Rasmussen points out in this video, Indiana and California still appear to be the two most important states still left to vote in the GOP race.
Javier E

Magazine - Roberts's Rules - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...3

constitution law supreme court legal

shared by Javier E on 29 Jun 12 - No Cached
  • “I think judicial temperament is a willingness to step back from your own committed views of the correct jurisprudential approach and evaluate those views in terms of your role as a judge,” he said. “It’s the difference between being a judge and being a law professor.” In other words, Roberts said, judicial temperament involves a judge’s willingness to “factor in the Court’s institutional role,” to suppress his or her ideological agenda in the interest of achieving consensus and stability.
  • Two of the most ambitious constitutional philosophers in American history—Thomas Jefferson and Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.—achieved greatness in public life because of, not in spite of, their philosophical inconsistencies. Jefferson was a relatively successful president because he was willing to abandon his strict constructionist ideals and approve the Louisiana Purchase: he understood that America’s future depended on it. And Holmes is a liberal and libertarian hero today largely because toward the end of a career staked on judicial restraint, he belatedly embraced judicial activism in Supreme Court cases involving free speech.
Maria Delzi

BBC News - Royal Dutch Shell issues profit warning - 0 views

www.bbc.co.uk/...business-25773409

shared by Maria Delzi on 17 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • Oil giant Royal Dutch Shell has issued a profit warning after it made less money than expected in the final quarter of 2013.
  • "Fourth-quarter 2013 figures... are expected to be significantly lower than recent levels of profitability," the company said in a statement.
  • It now expects profits for the quarter to be about $2.2bn (£1.3bn) and profits for 2013 as a whole to be $16.8bn. Shell's shares fell more than 4% at the beginning of trading in London.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • , when it made $27.2bn.
  • "Our 2013 performance was not what I expect from Shell," Shell chief executive Ben van Beurden said in a statement.
  • Mr van Beurden became chief executive at the beginning of this year, taking over from Peter Voser.
  • Shell said its profits in the fourth quarter were hurt by a range of factors, including higher exploration costs, security problems in oil-rich Nigeria, and maintenance work that hit oil and gas production.
  • It has seen a string of disappointing quarterly results over the past 12 months.
  • In December, the Anglo-Dutch company also cancelled a $20bn project to build a gas processing plant in Louisiana.
Javier E

Students Recall Special Schools Run Like Jails - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-school-run-like-a-prison.html

discipline schools abuse

shared by Javier E on 24 Jul 13 - No Cached
  • there are no federal laws governing schools like those built on the World Wide model. A 2011 Congressional bill that would have banned physical abuse and the withholding of food at such schools died in committee after it was opposed by lawmakers reluctant to impose new federal standards on a matter often regulated by states.
  • Instead, states oversee the facilities variously as camps, boarding schools or residential treatment facilities, and state regulators often hesitate to step in because the programs exist in an ill-defined area of the law. For example, private boarding schools are not regularly inspected and are not required to be licensed or accredited, according to the federal Department of Education.
  • Daily life is highly structured, with limited free time. Students, who are required to wear uniforms, generally perform schoolwork at their own pace for about five hours a day, though many students and parents say the curriculum is far less rigorous than that of local public schools. While some of the programs have gyms, usually only those who have earned enough points for good behavior can use them. Former students say those points can be rescinded quickly after months of hard work. Violating rules often leads to being placed in isolation, or being “restrained” — held on the floor for as long as an hour by staff members, who students say twist their limbs in painful positions until they stop resisting. Other punishments at World Wide programs have included pepper spraying, handcuffing, being forced into dog cages and being made to sit or stand in uncomfortable positions for hours, according to former students and claims in lawsuits.
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  • World Wide once had behavior modification schools in at least 11 states, as well as countries including Costa Rica and Mexico. In recent years, hit by the recession and accusations of abuse, Mr. Lichfield has divested ownership of the schools, which he once likened to McDonald’s franchises. But the programs’ structure and the disciplinary philosophy he helped conceive continue to be the template at most if not all of the schools.
  • Mr. Lichfield, family members and business partners have financial interests in a layer of secondary companies through a web of limited liability companies, consulting arrangements and property ownership that Mr. Lichfield has acknowledged in depositions — while also saying he does not fully understand the links himself. These entities oversee the marketing, business and educational services for many of the schools, and have received up to one-third of the programs’ gross revenues, according to business records and court depositions.
  • According to business filings and Mr. Lichfield’s court testimony, the schools and programs that have ties to Mr. Lichfield and his associates are Horizon Academy, Cross Creek Programs and Old West Academy in Utah; Seneca Ranch in South Carolina; Midwest Academy in Iowa; Red River Academy in Louisiana; and Pillars of Hope in Costa Rica. Annual tuition ranges from about $36,000 to $60,000. Most of the schools denied an affiliation with World Wide.
  • World Wide schools in Samoa, Mexico and Costa Rica, in addition to the Czech Republic program, have closed after concerns were raised about mistreated children. World Wide says that while the school in Mexico was closed by the Mexican authorities, the other three programs were closed voluntarily. World Wide denies that any children in the Mexican program or the others were abused.
Javier E

Wealthier New Yorkers Aren't Fleeing the City for Tax Havens, a Study Says - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...r-tax-havens-a-study-says.html

rich nyc taxes resident

shared by Javier E on 21 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • 86 percent of the households making $500,000 or more that left the city moved to four states with reputations for high taxes. Only 45 percent of the less wealthy households relocated to those states.
  • only 2 percent of the wealthier households bolted for Florida (compared with 10 percent of households that made less than $500,000, many of them retirees). Just over 4 percent of the wealthier households headed for Texas (as did exactly the same percentage of less wealthy households).
  • States known for lower taxes, among them, South Dakota, Delaware, New Mexico, Utah, Tennessee, Louisiana, Colorado, Alabama and Wyoming, did not even register on the study’s list of destinations for wealthier New York City movers.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Bloomberg has acknowledged previously that high taxes have driven few of his fellow billionaires from New York. The study suggests that wealthier New York City residents, like other movers, weigh job opportunities, housing and family considerations when deciding whether to move.“I can only tell you, among my friends, I’ve never heard one person say, ‘I’m going to move out of the city because of the taxes,’ ” he said.
Javier E

High School Football Inc. - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...high-school-football-inc.html

football high school sports

shared by Javier E on 18 Sep 15 - No Cached
  • Their assuredness is as bold as the company behind the school: IMG, the global sports management conglomerate that has helped propel the competitive leap that high school football has made beyond the traditional community team.
  • convention is being challenged by a more professional model at the highest levels as top players urgently pursue college scholarships, training becomes more specialized, big business opens its wallet, school choice expands, and schools seek to market themselves through sports, some for financial survival.
  • Increasingly, prep football talent is being consolidated on powerful public, private, parochial, charter and magnet school teams. And recruiting to those schools is widespread in one guise or another.
  • ...22 more annotations...
  • IMG is at the forefront. It is trying to enhance its academy brand with football, perhaps the most visible sport. And it is applying a business model to the gridiron that has long been profitable for tennis and has expanded to golf, soccer, baseball, basketball, lacrosse, and track and field. The academy has nearly 1,000 students from more than 80 countries enrolled in prekindergarten through 12th grade and postgraduation. About half the students are international.
  • Although it is private, IMG Academy has received more than $7 million from the Florida state budget over the past two years, according to news accounts. An additional $2 million was pledged by lawmakers in June but was then vetoed by Gov. Rick Scott.
  • The full cost of tuition and boarding for a year of football at IMG Academy is $70,800, although need-based financial assistance is available. School officials would not provide specific figures, but they said that payments by families could range from tens of thousands of dollars to a competition fee (between $3,750 and $4,500) to nothing.
  • IMG bought the academy in 1987, and it now covers more than 500 acres. Football began in 2013 as part of a $197 million campus expansion. Games are played in a 5,000-seat stadium outfitted with suites and a jumbo video screen. Digital screens depict each player’s name and face on his locker. Some N.F.L. players train there in the off-season, as do college players preparing for the pro draft.
  • The school, 45 miles south of Tampa, recruits football players from around the country, offering high-performance training, college preparatory courses, coaches with N.F.L. playing experience, facilities that resemble a small college more than a high school, and a chance to play a national schedule and on national television on ESPN against some of the country’s highest-rated teams.
  • Mickey McCarty, who has coached three state championship teams at Neville High School in Monroe, La., and who lost a senior receiver to IMG Academy days before fall practice began, said the academy seemed less a traditional football team than a showcase for individual talent.
  • Many high school football coaches and officials are closely following IMG Academy, wondering whether it portends the growth of similar academies or superleagues featuring top teams.
  • “I’m 50-50 split,” said John Wilkinson, the coach at Cocoa High School, who faced IMG Academy last week and said he would do it again. “They’re high school kids, just like us. We’re playing a football game. The other 50 percent thinks the competitive advantage they have is kind of alarming, if they’re allowed to recruit. But it is what it is.”
  • Other officials express fear that football might follow the path of high school basketball, which many feel has been corrupted by so-called diploma mills and the heavy influence of club teams and recruiting middlemen.
  • “We run a business,” said Chip McCarthy, a co-managing director of IMG Academy. “We call it sales and marketing. Some people call it recruiting. We’re promoting our program. If you look at any private school that emphasizes sports, they’re typically doing it to promote their school. A lot are trying to survive. You’re not going to curtail that.”
  • “It sounds to me like they’re playing for self, to be promoted and recruited, which takes away everything we stand for,” McCarty said.
  • Academy officials said that 186 athletes from IMG’s 2015 graduating class were playing various college sports, including six at Ivy League universities and four at service academies. Academics and athletics are intended to simulate the college experience with dormitory living, alternate-day classes, block scheduling and a focus on time management.
  • “I came here assuming it was going to be easy, it’s just going to be a football school, but I learned within the first week I was completely wrong,” said Kjetil Cline, 17, a senior receiver from Minnesota who plans to play football at the United States Military Academy. “That really opened my eyes about what college would be like, and I think it’s really prepared me for going to West Point and being able to handle that.”
  • “Academy teams, while they may be good teams and give great educations, it’s not something that we really believe in or would promote or espouse in any way. We think the high school experience is best served by the student-athlete who lives at home with his family and is part of his school, family and community.”
  • The players at IMG and their families consider that approach to be antiquated. For Patterson, a quarterback who won state championships the previous two seasons at a high school in Louisiana, IMG Academy is serving as a finishing school.
  • Patterson said he transferred to IMG in June to work on his speed, strength and conditioning. He plans to graduate in December, enroll for the spring semester at the University of Mississippi and challenge for the starting quarterback position there next fall as a freshman.“It’s definitely a professional decision,” he said.
  • teve Walsh, IMG Academy’s director of football, and Rich Bartel, the offensive coordinator, both played quarterback in the N.F.L. There are also sports psychologists, strength coaches and speed coaches to assist Patterson. He has at his disposal a 10,000-square-foot weight room; a sports science center to aid with hydration and nutrition; a biomechanics center; a vision lab, or “mind gym,” to enhance perceptual and cognitive skills; and a hospital for special surgery and sports rehabilitation should he be injured.
  • When IMG Academy played in Texas this month, it trained at Texas Christian University, and Wright, the Ascenders’ coach, said, “We’re thinking, ‘Hey, our practice fields are maybe a little bit better.’ ”
  • At the top levels of high school football, some teams routinely travel to play teams in other states. Games are frequently broadcast on regional or national cable channels. Some players are offered college scholarships as early as eighth grade.
  • “It’s all driven by money, and you can’t beat money,” said John Bachman Sr., who coached Patterson to state titles the past two seasons at Calvary Baptist Academy in Shreveport, La. As a freshman, Patterson played at a high school in Texas.
  • Even so, he added, “I don’t think anything’s ever going to take the place of the local public high school or private school that pours itself into the kid, and it’s a family atmosphere and it’s about the team and sacrifice and so on.”
  • Sean Patterson Sr., Shea’s father, said, “If your son’s a great musician, you want to send him to Juilliard,” adding that for Shea, IMG Academy “is the spot” for polishing his football skills for college.
Javier E

Republicans Don't Understand the Lessons of the Iraq War - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...399344

gop foreign policy mideast iraq neoconservatism policy politics

shared by Javier E on 09 Aug 15 - No Cached
  • As George W. Bush’s administration drew to an end, the brand of ambitious, expensive, Manichaean, militaristic foreign policy commonly dubbed “neoconservative” seemed on the verge of collapse.
  • Today, hawkishness is the hottest thing on the American right. With the exception of Rand Paul, the GOP presidential contenders are vying to take the most aggressive stance against Iran and the Islamic State, or ISIS. The most celebrated freshman Republican senator is Tom Cotton, who gained fame with a letter to Iran’s leaders warning that the United States might not abide by a nuclear deal. According to recent polls, GOP voters now see national security as more important than either cultural issues or the economy. More than three-quarters of Republicans want American ground troops to fight ISIS in Iraq, and a plurality says that stopping Iran’s nuclear program requires an immediate military strike.
  • What explains the change? Above all, it’s the legend of the surge. The legend goes something like this: By sending more troops to Iraq in 2007, George W. Bush finally won the Iraq War. Then Barack Obama, by withdrawing U.S. troops, lost it. Because of Obama’s troop withdrawal, and his general refusal to exercise American power, Iraq collapsed, ISIS rose, and the Middle East fell apart. “We had it won, thanks to the surge,” Senator John McCain declared last September. “The problems we face in Iraq today,” Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal argued in May, “I don’t think were because of President Bush’s strength, but rather have come about because of President Obama’s weakness.”
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  • But although the violence went down, the reconciliation never occurred. According to the legend of the surge, Iraq’s collapse stems from Obama’s decision to withdraw all U.S. troops at the end of 2011. “If we’d had a residual force of 10,000 to 12,000,” Senator Lindsey Graham said last year, “I am totally convinced there would not have been a rise of al-Qaeda.” In reality, the prime minister of Iraq, Nouri al-Maliki, began persecuting the Sunnis—thus laying the groundwork for their embrace of ISIS—long before American troops departed the country. As early as 2007, writes Emma Sky, who advised both Petraeus and his successor, General Ray Odierno, “the U.S. military was frustrated by what they viewed as the schemes of Maliki and his inner circle to actively sabotage our efforts to draw Sunnis out of the insurgency.”
  • In the late 1970s, the legend of the congressional cutoff—and it was a legend; Congress reduced but never cut off South Vietnam’s aid—spurred the hawkish revival that helped elect Ronald Reagan. As we approach 2016, the legend of the surge is playing a similar role. Which is why it’s so important to understand that the legend is wrong.
  • The surge was not intended merely to reduce violence. Reducing violence was a means to a larger goal: political reconciliation. Only when Iraq’s Sunni and Shia Arabs and its Kurds all felt represented by the government would the country be safe from civil war. As a senior administration official told journalists the day Bush announced the surge, “The purpose of all this is to get the violence in Baghdad down, get control of the situation and the sectarian violence, because now, without it, the reconciliation that everybody knows in the long term is the key to getting security in the country—the reconciliation will not happen.”
  • The legend of the surge has become this era’s equivalent of the legend that America was winning in Vietnam until, in the words of Richard Nixon’s former defense secretary Melvin Laird, “Congress snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by cutting off funding for our ally in 1975.”
  • One day, Republicans will resume the painful work they began in 2006—the work of reconciling conservative attitudes with the limits of American power. Let’s hope they don’t do too much damage before that day comes.
  • These errors came well before Obama’s decision to remove American troops at the end of 2011. The fact is, the U.S. failed to stop Maliki’s slide into sectarian tyranny even when it still had 100,000 troops patrolling Iraqi soil. That’s because America had already lost much of its leverage. Once the surge succeeded in reducing violence, Maliki no longer needed American troops to keep him in power
  • The problem with the legend of the surge is that it reproduces the very hubris that led America into Iraq in the first place. In 2003, the Bush administration believed it could shatter the Iraqi state and then quickly and cheaply construct a new one that was stable, liberal, democratic, and loyal to the United States. By 2006, many conservatives had realized that was a fantasy
  • in 2007 and 2008, through a series of bold innovations, the United States military bribed, cajoled, and bludgeoned Iraqis into multiple cease-fires. The Iraqi state was still broken; its new ruling elite showed little of the political magnanimity necessary to reconstruct it in an inclusive fashion. And the Band-Aids that Petraeus and his troops had courageously affixed began peeling off almost immediately. Nonetheless, Republicans today say the Iraq War was won, and would have remained won, had the U.S. left 10,000 troops in the country after 2011.
  • the same wild overestimation of American power that fueled the war in Iraq now fuels the right’s opposition to the nuclear deal with Iran. To hear hawks tell it, the United States can scuttle the current deal, intensify sanctions, threaten war, and—presto—Tehran will capitulate. But Iranians have been living under the threat of attacks from America or Israel for more than a decade now. And British and German diplomats have warned that if the U.S. Congress torpedoes the agreement, sanctions pressure on Iran will go not up but down, as countries that have lost billions by limiting their trade with Tehran stop doing so.
  • The tragedy of post-surge Iraq has its roots in America’s failure to make the Iraqi government more inclusive—a failure that began under Bush and deepened under Obama
  • Senator Gordon Smith of Oregon called the president’s Iraq policy “absurd” if not “criminal.” George Will, the dean of conservative columnists, deemed neoconservatism a “spectacularly misnamed radicalism” that true conservatives should disdain.
Javier E

Building the First Slavery Museum in America - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...t-slave-museum-in-america.html

slavery museum Louisiana history memory

shared by Javier E on 27 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • As a descendant of Irish laborers, he has no direct ties to slaveholders; still, in a departure from the views held by many Southern whites, Cummings considered the issue a personal one. “If ‘guilt’ is the best word to use, then yes, I feel guilt,” he said. “I mean, you start understanding that the wealth of this part of the world — wealth that has benefited me — was created by some half a million black people who just passed us by. How is it that we don’t acknowledge this?”
  • the German Coast Uprising, an event rarely mentioned in American history books. In January 1811, at least 125 slaves walked off their plantations and, dressed in makeshift military garb, began marching in revolt along River Road toward New Orleans. (The area was then called the German Coast for the high number of German immigrants, like the Haydels.) The slaves were suppressed by militias after two days, with about 95 killed, some during fighting and some after the show trials that followed. As a warning to other slaves, dozens were decapitated, their heads placed on spikes along River Road and in what is now Jackson Square in the French Quarter.
  • just in case you’re worried about people getting distracted by the pretty house over there, the last thing you’ll see before leaving here will be 60 beheaded slaves.”
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  • “It is disturbing,” Cummings said as he pulled out past Whitney’s gate. “But you know what else? It happened. It happened right here on this road.”
  • “If the Germans built a museum dedicated to American slavery before one about their own Holocaust, you’d think they were trying to hide something. As Americans, we haven’t yet figured out how to come to terms with slavery. To some, it’s ancient history. To others, it’s history that isn’t quite history.”
  • Next year, the National Museum of African American History and Culture is scheduled to be dedicated in Washington as part of the Smithsonian Institution, a project supported by $250 million in federal funding; exhibits on slavery will stand alongside those containing a trumpet played by Louis Armstrong and boxing gloves worn by Muhammad Ali.
  • “It has to be said that the end note in most of these museums is that civil rights triumphs and America is wonderful,” says Paul Finkelman, a historian who focuses on slavery and the law. “We are a nation that has always readily embraced the good of the past and discarded the bad. This does not always lead to the most productive of dialogues on matters that deserve and require them.”
  • What makes slavery so difficult to think about, from the vantage point of history, is that it was both at odds with America’s founding values — freedom, liberty, democracy — and critical to how they flourished.
  • created equal” was drafted by men who were afforded the time to debate its language because the land that enriched many of them was tended to by slaves. The White House and the Capitol were built, in part, by slaves. The economy of early America, responsible for the nation’s swift rise and sustained power, would not have been possible without slavery.
  • “Slavery gets understood as a kind of prehistory to freedom rather than what it really is: the foundation for a country where white supremacy was predicated upon African-American exploitation,” says Walter Johnson, a Harvard professor. “This is still, in many respects, the America of 2015.”
  • “If one word comes to mind to summarize what is in John’s head in doing this,” Seck said, “that word would be ‘reparations.’ Real reparations. He feels there is something to be done in this country to make changes.”
  • People have tried to do a museum like this for years, and I’m still stunned that this guy made it happen,” he said afterward. “There I was, coming down to talk about how in trying to tell the story, it’s often one step forward and two steps back, and boom, here’s the Whitney.” Holloway was particularly taken by the museum’s subversive approach. “Having been on a number of tours where the entire focus is on the Big House, the way they’ve turned the script inside out is a brilliant slipping of the skirt,” he said. “The mad genius of the whole thing is really resonant. Is it an art gallery? A plantation tour? A museum? It’s almost this astonishing piece of performance art, and as great art does, it makes you stop and wonder.”
katyshannon

Supreme Court Rules Juveniles Can Challenge Life Sentences - NBC News - 0 views

www.nbcnews.com/...allenge-life-sentences-n503836

supreme court rules challenge life sentences juveniles nbc news politics history US

shared by katyshannon on 26 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • More than a thousand inmates in the nation's prisons who were sentenced as juveniles to life without the possibility of parole can now challenge those punishments, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday.
  • As a general matter, rulings do not apply retroactively. The courts have long held that society has an interest in the finality of convictions. advertisement But by a vote of 6-3, the Supreme Court said its 2012 ruling fit in a special category of exceptions applying to decisions that ban certain forms of punishment for a class of offenders because of their status.
  • Monday's case involved Henry Montgomery, a Louisiana man who at age 17 killed a deputy sheriff in East Baton Rouge. The court in his trial was barred by law from considering arguments that his age should matter, "including evidence that as a scared youth, Mr. Montgomery shot in panic as the officer confronted him playing hooky," his lawyers said.
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  • The decision extended a 2012 ruling, which invalidated future life-without- parole sentence for juvenile murderers, to all such offenders who were given life sentences in the past.
  • Monday's opinion was written by Justice Anthony Kennedy and joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and the court's four liberals, Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan.
  • A total of 2,341 people are now serving mandatory sentences of life without parole for juvenile offenses. Roughly 1,000 of them would be affected by a decision in this case, according to a study by The Phillips Black Project, a non-profit law group that represents prisoners facing severe sentences. The remainder, the study concluded, were imprisoned in states that have already applied the ruling retroactively.
  • Monday's decision said the states do not have to hold new sentencing hearings if they allow juvenile homicide offenders the opportunity to be released on parole. Such a step "ensures that juveniles whose crimes reflected only transient immaturity -- and who have since matured -- will not be forced to serve a disproportionate sentence" in violation of the Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
jongardner04

Ted Cruz Keeps Up Pressure on Donald Trump; Bernie Sanders Takes 2 on 'Super Saturday' - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...primary-elections.html

US politics

shared by jongardner04 on 07 Mar 16 - No Cached
  • Senator Ted Cruz scored decisive wins in the Kansas and Maine caucuses on Saturday, demonstrating his enduring appeal among conservatives as he tried to reel in Donald J. Trump’s significant lead in the Republican presidential race.
  • In Democratic contests, Hillary Clinton scored a commanding victory in Louisiana, the state with the most delegates in play on Saturday, while Senator Bernie Sanders won the Nebraska and Kansas caucuses, according to The Associated Press. The results did not alter the contours of a race in which Mrs. Clinton maintains a significant delegate lead.
  • The biggest stakes were on the Republican side, and the voters sensed it; turnout in Kansas, for example, was more than double that of 2012. Mr. Cruz won 48 percent of the vote there, while Mr. Trump received 23 percent, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida won 17 percent and Gov. John Kasich of Ohio won 11 percent. The results were tighter in Maine, but Mr. Cruz still easily defeated Mr. Trump there by 13 percentage points. With Mr. Trump’s victories coming by smaller margins, Mr. Cruz had the biggest delegate haul of the day, appearing to net at least 15 more than the front-runner.
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  • “I think what it represents is Republicans coalescing, saying it would be a disaster for Donald Trump to be our nominee and we’re going to stand behind the strongest conservative in the race,” Mr. Cruz told reporters in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, one of four states with Republican contests on Tuesday.
  • Mr. Trump’s losses underlined his continued vulnerability in states that hold time-intensive caucuses: He has lost five of seven such contests. He has performed far better in states holding primaries, which require less organization, and some of which also allow Democrats and independents to vote in Republican races.
  • The results suggested that a substantial number of Republicans were still uneasy about Mr. Trump: He finished above 40 percent in just one state. It was an indication that the growing campaign to deny Mr. Trump the nomination may not be a pointless exercise. The Stop Trump campaign was joined last week by Mitt Romney, who delivered a blistering attack on the Republican front-runner, portraying him as a threat to the party and the nation. And Mr. Trump reinforced questions about his candidacy at a debate on Thursday by making a barely veiled reference to his penis.
  • Whether he has incurred significant damage will be better known on Tuesday, if Mr. Kasich and Mr. Cruz can compete in Michigan and Mr. Cruz can threaten him in Mississippi.
  • Mr. Trump’s comments about building a wall along the border with Mexico and about illegal immigrants causing crime have drawn demonstrations almost everywhere he goes, and that was true in Wichita, too. Trump supporters in the caucus line engaged in shouting with several dozen protesters, many of them Hispanics, who make up 20 percent of the city’s population. Trucks with Mexican flags hanging out the windows and Latin music blaring from the speakers cruised slowly past the line.
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