there are glimpses of the seemingly reasonable guy beloved by Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), who one day says he’ll “take all the heat” on immigration, who wants to sign a “bill of love.” Do not be fooled. He is a chimera. Two days later he will have vanished, leaving you feeling slimed and gaslighted. Graham was right the first time: Trump is a “kook” who is “unfit for office.”
.. The biggest lie ever told by a candidate to the American people came from Trump, repeatedly, during the campaign: “At the right time, I will be so presidential, you will be so bored.” Now we know: He is characterologically incapable of fulfilling this vow.
..It is little comfort to conclude that our best hope lies in the rationality of North Korean leader Kim Jung Un and the steadying influence of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis... The longer-term and greater danger is that Trump
- does not believe in American ideals and institutions. He
- does not believe in a free press or free speech;
- unconstrained, he would crack down on both.
- He does not believe in the rule of law, a Justice Department free of political interference,
- the separation of powers or an independent judiciary. He
- does not believe in the United States as a beacon and example to the world.
Former ‘Post’ Executive Editor Ben Bradlee On Publishing The Pentagon Papers
Bradlee served as executive editor of The Washington Post from 1968 to 1991. In 1995, he told Fresh Air about his decision to publish the top secret documents related to U.S. policy making in Vietnam.
- To have held back, when the New York Times published, would be to have
- ceded the right to publish and
- make the Washington Post an ally of the Whitehouse and
- confined the Post to a low status
- Built up the Prestige of the Post
Jailed for a Text: China’s Censors Are Spying on Mobile Chat Groups
Authorities scour private chats on messaging apps for blacklisted words, sensitive images
One night this September, construction supervisor Chen Shouli fired off a joke in a chat group.
“Haha,” he typed on his black iPhone 7, followed by an off-color wisecrack about a rumored love triangle involving a celebrity and one of China’s most senior government officials.
Four days later, he says, the police telephoned, ordering him in for questioning.
“I thought, I haven’t done anything wrong, have I? I’m law-abiding,” recalls Mr. Chen, a wiry 41-year-old. “So I went in. Once I arrived, they wouldn’t let me leave.”
Mr. Chen was locked in a cell for five days, he says. According to the police report, his comment on the WeChat messaging app was deemed “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” a broad offense that encompasses gang fighting and destruction of public property and is punishable by detention without trial.
.. Zhu Shengwu was an intellectual-property lawyer in cases involving technology firms such as search engine BaiduInc. before taking on a free-speech case this year. He says that monitoring closed chats is akin to eavesdropping in someone’s home.
.. After he called President Xi Jinping a “baozi”—a steamed dumpling—in one WeChat post, and Chairman Mao a “bandit” in another, Mr. Wang was arrested, court records say. A local court in April sentenced him to two years in prison, a term that was reduced to 22 months after a retrial last month.
.. Mr. Guo says he wants to expose what he calls China’s “kleptocrats” and bring rule of law to the country.
America’s Best University President
Several years ago Robert Zimmer was asked by an audience in China why the University of Chicago was associated with so many winners of the Nobel Prize — 90 in all, counting this month’s win by the behavioral economist Richard Thaler. Zimmer, the university’s president since 2006, answered that the key was a campus culture committed to “discourse, argument and lack of deference.”
.. “Concerns about civility and mutual respect,” the committee wrote, “can never be used as a justification for closing off discussion of ideas, however offensive or disagreeable those ideas may be to some members of our community.”
.. If you can’t speak freely, you’ll quickly lose the ability to think clearly. Your ideas will be built on a pile of assumptions you’ve never examined for yourself and may thus be unable to defend from radical challenges. You will be unable to test an original thought for fear that it might be labeled an offensive one.