onfocus

“That's the primal response,” he said. “The adrenaline starts to pump, the temperature in the room is rising, and you want to go one step higher. But what we need to know as professionals is that there are times, if we go one step higher, we are forcing them to go one step higher.”

Tear gas, pepper spray, and rubber bullets should be a last resort not the first tools police use.

"As tens of billions of taxpayer dollars from the $2.2 trillion relief bill begin flowing out the door, Ramamurti remains the lone member appointed to the panel. With no colleagues, no staff, and no office, he’s had to rely on one of the few avenues he has to communicate with the public: his unverified Twitter feed."

Sounds normal. Probably nothing corrupt happening here.

"Without proper training or equipment, some of the exposed staff members moved freely around and off the bases, with at least one person staying in a nearby hotel and leaving California on a commercial flight. Many were unaware of the need to test their temperatures three times a day."

Unbelievable. This seems worse than incompetence.

welp.

If you watch nothing else from the impeachment trial, please watch Schiff’s argument that truth should matter. See also: Is the Oath a Joke?

This is also a good time to mention impeachment.fyi. Daniel is watching every minute and then summarizing events so you don’t have to watch every minute. He’s doing a great service that’s worth pitching in for.

Eric Schlosser of Fast Food Nation fame makes an important point here about the Mississippi immigration raids and immigration patterns in general. They have been driven by the business need for cheaper, less organized labor.

Matt Levine has a good summary of the fine Facebook negotiated over the Cambridge Analytica scandal. But his analysis of why legislation doesn’t happen in the wake of scandals feels right on to me:

"...Americans are biased toward thinking of bad things as being already illegal, always illegal, illegal by definition and by nature and in themselves. If the thing that Facebook did was so bad, then it must have been illegal, so there is no need for a new law against it."

Our laws are not equipped for our current media age and we’re biased against thinking laws could be out of date.