FEBRUARY 1, 2017


NEWS AND VIEWS


NO MATTER WHAT TRUMP IS DOING, HE HAS TO “BLAST THE MEDIA.” IF ANY PART OF TODAY'S NEWS AND VIEWS IS DUPLICATIVE, I APOLOGIZE. THERE IS TOO MUCH NEWS AFTER THE TRUMP INAUGURATION WHICH I DON'T WANT TO IGNORE.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-african-american-history-month-listening-session/

Trump blasts media at African-American "listening session"
By REENA FLORES CBS NEWS
February 1, 2017, 11:38 AM

Photograph -- U.S. President Donald Trump attends an African American History Month listening session, accompanied by the Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson (C) at the Roosevelt room of the White House in Washington, U.S., February 1, 2017. REUTERS


During an event billed by the White House as a “listening session” celebrating the start of African-American History Month, President Trump took aim at the “dishonest” media again early Wednesday.

“A lot of the media is the opposition party,” Mr. Trump said Wednesday, repeating a line his senior adviser Steve Bannon used in an interview last week. “They’re so biased.”

“They’re very dishonest people,” he added, and once again brought up the issue of a mistake a journalist made -- and later corrected -- about the removal of Martin Luther King Jr.’s bust from the Oval Office. (Time magazine’s Zeke Miller corrected his report shortly after to note that the sculpture of the civil rights icon remained in the executive suite.)

Mr. Trump stated that the statue was a “cherished” one in the office, deriding the initial media report as “fake news.”

“I think it was a disgrace,” he said. But that’s the way the press is. Very unfortunate.”

Flanked by Ben Carson, his pick to lead the Department of Housing and Urban Development, top aide Omarosa Manigault, and a number of other African American supporters from his campaign days, Mr. Trump also hailed African-American contributions to U.S. history.

In an opening statement, Mr. Trump praised some historical figures, including Rosa Parks and Harriet Tubman. He said of abolitionist Frederick Douglass that he was “someone who has done a terrific job that is being recognized by more and more people.”

The president also referenced some plans he had to improve African-American communities, including a push for better schools and better law enforcement in urban areas.

“We need more jobs, better wages... we’re going to work very hard in the inner city,” Mr. Trump said. “We need safer communities and we’re going to do that with law enforcement.”

“Right now it’s terrible,” he added, later singling out Chicago as a city that he would focus on.

One supporter, Cleveland pastor Darrell Scott, told Mr. Trump that Chicago gang members had been in touch with him about possibly working with the Trump administration to reduce violence. Scott, a loyal Trump surrogate during the presidential campaign, said he would soon meet with “top gang thugs” who respected the president in order to discuss “lowering that body count.”

“I think that’s a great idea because Chicago is totally out of control,” the president responded. Of the gangs, he said, “if they’re not going to solve the problem... then we’re going to solve the problem for them.”



This phrase “top gang thugs” doesn’t sound to me as if it came out of a black person’s mouth. I wonder where Flores got the information for this story. Of course, Scott is described as a “loyal Trump surrogate. I do hope there won’t be many people of color who are trump followers, because he certainly doesn’t deserve their support.



http://www.cbsnews.com/news/tooth-infection-leads-to-young-dads-death-family-claims/

Tooth infection leads to young dad's death, family says
CBS NEWS
February 1, 2017, 2:46 PM

Photograph -- Vadim Kondratyuk, a 26-year-old father of two, died after contracting a tooth infection, his family said. KONDRATYUK FAMILY VIA GOFUNDME


A tooth infection quickly turned deadly for a young California man last week, according to his family.

Vadim Anatoliyevich Kondratyuk of Sacramento was just 26 years old and the father of two young children.

A truck driver, he was en route to New York last week when he started to feel pain in his mouth. He stopped in Oklahoma to see a dentist who looked at his infection, cleaned it, and prescribed him antibiotics, his family said.

But when he got to New York, the pain came back and his mouth began to swell. Kondratyuk’s brother decided to drive him home. When his condition worsened, they stopped at a hospital in Utah where doctors said the infection from his tooth had progressed and spread throughout his body. Kondratyuk’s lungs had fluid in them, making it difficult to breathe on his own.

The antibiotics were not strong enough to fight the infection, his family said, and his heart gave out.

He died on Monday morning.

“They had him on medication, they tried everything they could,” Kondratyuk’s wife Nataliya told the Sacramento Bee. “We prayed for him that day, that night, hoping he was going to survive. But God has his plan, and we had a talk with the doctors and they told us how this all happened. … It was just not healing how it was supposed to. It was just getting worse.”

His family set up a GoFundMe page to raise money for the funeral and family living expenses.

“Vadim was a very humble and calm person,” they write. “A wonderful father, husband, brother, son, and friend. He would always put others before himself and was known to be the peacemaker. He had a very close and special relationship with his two daughters and he loved spending time with his family.”

As of Wednesday, the family received over $180,000 in donations.

“On behalf of Nataliya, her daughters and all of Vadim’s family, thank you sincerely for your support during this difficult time! We have been blown away by the love and kindness we have been shown by our friends, family, community and even kind strangers,” the family said. “May God Bless you for your generosity.”



http://www.cbsnews.com/news/nypd-implementing-body-camera-program-washington-metro-police-transparency-police-community/

Police body cameras on the rise, but how effective are they?
CBS NEWS
February 1, 2017, 7:06 AM

The New York Police Department is implementing the country’s largest body camera program. More than 20,000 officers will wear the cameras once the rollout is complete by 2019, reports CBS News correspondent Jeff Pegues.

Body camera recordings can be seen in up to half of the country’s roughly 18,000 law enforcement agencies. Washington Metro finished their body camera rollout in mid-December. Our CBS News team spent one afternoon with the department who says the cameras are a great tool. But others say the technology isn’t a cure-all when it comes to improving relationships between the police and the community.

Body-worn cameras offer an unfiltered look at interactions between police and the community. On Tuesday, the largest police department in the country joined thousands of others whose cameras are already rolling.

“All NYPD on patrol will be wearing body-worn cameras,” said New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio. “Five thousand will be deployed by July 2018.”

“You have people out there in our community that are asking for transparency,” said Peter Newsham, the interim police chief of Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department.

“How much of a role do these cameras play in that transparency?” Pegues asked.

“It’s a huge role,” Newsham said. “And that’s the thing I think folks have to keep in mind, is that the community really wants this.”

Nearly 3,000 of Newsham’s officers are outfitted with body cameras. Recently, Commander Ralph Ennis showed us how they work.

“From the time I hit the button, it’s recording video and audio,” Newsham explained.

ap-38468498763.jpg
FILE - This Jan. 15, 2014, file photo, a Los Angeles Police officer wears an on-body cameras during a demonstration for media in Los Angeles. AP PHOTO/DAMIAN DOVARGANES, FILE

Lindsay Miller Goodison is the deputy director of the Center for Applied Research and Management, a policing think tank. Goodison said the devices are only useful if officers are trained properly.

“It undermines the purpose of having the camera system if officers aren’t turning them on,” Goodison said.

The Metropolitan Police adjusted the department’s policy after an officer failed to turn on his body camera before the fatal police shooting of Terrence Sterling last year.

“So what is the protocol?” Pegues asked.

“Almost every time that one of our officers has an interaction with somebody in the public, they’re required to turn it on,” Newsham said. “When our officers get a call for service, the dispatch will actually ask them if they have turned their camera on and then the officer has to respond that they have.”

In the Metro Police Department’s first full month of deployment, they recorded 140,000 videos or 34,000 hours of footage -- that includes a spike for the presidential inauguration.

Body cameras are now an industry. Vendors like Taser International, the manufacturer working with Metro PD, not only sell the pricey cameras, but video storage space along with it. The company booked $180 million of business in the first three quarters of 2016 alone.

“Data storage is one of those logistical things that has become a huge policy issue because it does cost a lot,” Goodison said. “There’s questions about, how do you make sure that it’s not being altered? How do you make sure that the proper people are accessing it?”

Police chiefs will tell you that implementing the cameras remains a work in progress.

“Law enforcement is trying to do the right thing. For our department in particular, for them to embrace this body-worn camera program that we have says to me that my folks feel like they’re doing the right thing almost all the time and they want everybody to see it,” Newsham said.

Washington Metro sometimes uploads body-cam footage to a YouTube channel. The footage can be stored for at least 90 days, or longer, if an officer is involved in a potentially criminal encounter.



http://www.cbsnews.com/news/3-billion-year-old-lost-continent-lurking-under-african-island/

3 billion-year-old "lost continent" lurking under African island
By TIA GHOSE LIVESCIENCE.COM
February 1, 2017, 11:09 AM

Photograph -- A fleck of iridescent zircon that is embedded in a piece of trachyte. The zircon is up to 3 billion years old, while the trachyte is about 6 million years old. The traces of zircon reveal that a lost continent is lurking beneath Mauritius. WITS UNIVERSITY

It’s official: A 3-billion-year-old “lost continent” lurks beneath the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius, new research confirms.

Sparkly, iridescent flecks of rocks known as zircons from Mauritius date back billions of years, to one of the earliest periods in Earth’s history, the researchers found. Other rocks on the island, by contrast, are no more than 9 million years old.

“The fact that we have found zircons of this age proves that there are much older crustal materials under Mauritius that could only have originated from a continent,” Lewis Ashwal, lead author of the new study and a geologist at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg in South Africa, said in a statement.

Earth’s crust is made up of two parts: the planet’s continents, which rise high above the oceans because they are composed of lighter rocks such as granite; and the ocean basins, which sink lower because they are made up of denser rocks such as basalt, according to a video about the new study. Whereas the continental crust may be 4 billion years old, oceanic crust is much younger, and is continually being formed as molten rock spews through fissures in the ocean floor, called midocean ridges. [See Photos of the World’s Weirdest Geologic Formations]

The traditional thinking is that the island of Mauritius was formed by volcanic activity stemming from one of these midocean ridges, meaning older crust shouldn’t be there.

But the new study suggests that a tiny sliver of a primeval continent might have been left behind when the supercontinent Gondwana split up into Africa, India, Australia and Antarctica more than 200 million years ago. Then, the fiery birth of the island blanketed the primeval rock in layer after layer of cooling lava, building up the bulk of the island that is visible today, the researchers said.

“According to the new results, this breakup did not involve a simple splitting of the ancient supercontinent of Gondwana, but rather a complex splintering took place, with fragments of continental crust of variable sizes left adrift within the evolving Indian Ocean basin,” Ashwal said.

The new findings buttress results from a 2013 study that also found traces of ancient zircons in beach sand on the relatively young island. However, critics contended that this zircon could have traveled there in trade winds or been carried along on someone’s shoes. In the new study, however, the zircons were found embedded in 6-million-year-old rock known as trachyte, ruling out the notion of wind-blown transfer, Ashwal said.

The findings were published Tuesday Jan. 31 in the journal Nature Communications.

Originally published on Live Science.

Editor’s Recommendations
Photo Timeline: How the Earth Formed
Stunning Scenes: From the Himalayas to the Taklamakan Desert
In Photos: Ocean Hidden Beneath Earth’s Surface



OLD, BUT IMPORTANT

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/russian-propaganda-effort-helped-spread-fake-news-during-election-experts-say/2016/11/24/793903b6-8a40-4ca9-b712-716af66098fe_story.html?utm_term=.5e8a9d89e877

Russian propaganda effort helped spread ‘fake news’ during election, experts say
By Craig Timberg
November 24, 2016

[Could better Internet security have prevented Trump’s win?]
How to spot fake news
Play Video2:04
How do fake news sites make money?
Play Video0:44


Editor’s Note: The Washington Post on Nov. 24 published a story on the work of four sets of researchers who have examined what they say are Russian propaganda efforts to undermine American democracy and interests. One of them was PropOrNot, a group that insists on public anonymity, which issued a report identifying more than 200 websites that, in its view, wittingly or unwittingly published or echoed Russian propaganda. A number of those sites have objected to being included on PropOrNot’s list, and some of the sites, as well as others not on the list, have publicly challenged the group’s methodology and conclusions. The Post, which did not name any of the sites, does not itself vouch for the validity of PropOrNot’s findings regarding any individual media outlet, nor did the article purport to do so. Since publication of The Post’s story, PropOrNot has removed some sites from its list.

The flood of “fake news” this election season got support from a sophisticated Russian propaganda campaign that created and spread misleading articles online with the goal of punishing Democrat Hillary Clinton, helping Republican Donald Trump and undermining faith in American democracy, say independent researchers who tracked the operation.

Russia’s increasingly sophisticated propaganda machinery — including thousands of botnets, teams of paid human “trolls,” and networks of websites and social-media accounts — echoed and amplified right-wing sites across the Internet as they portrayed Clinton as a criminal hiding potentially fatal health problems and preparing to hand control of the nation to a shadowy cabal of global financiers. The effort also sought to heighten the appearance of international tensions and promote fear of looming hostilities with nuclear-armed Russia.

Two teams of independent researchers found that the Russians exploited American-made technology platforms to attack U.S. democracy at a particularly vulnerable moment, as an insurgent candidate harnessed a wide range of grievances to claim the White House. The sophistication of the Russian tactics may complicate efforts by Facebook and Google to crack down on “fake news,” as they have vowed to do after widespread complaints about the problem.

There is no way to know whether the Russian campaign proved decisive in electing Trump, but researchers portray it as part of a broadly effective strategy of sowing distrust in U.S. democracy and its leaders. The tactics included penetrating the computers of election officials in several states and releasing troves of hacked emails that embarrassed Clinton in the final months of her campaign.

During a Facebook live discussion, reporter Caitlin Dewey explained how fake news sites use Facebook as a vehicle to function and make money. (The Washington Post)

“They want to essentially erode faith in the U.S. government or U.S. government interests,” said Clint Watts, a fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute who along with two other researchers has tracked Russian propaganda since 2014. “This was their standard mode during the Cold War. The problem is that this was hard to do before social media.”

Watts’s report on this work, with colleagues Andrew Weisburd and J.M. Berger, appeared on the national security online magazine War on the Rocks this month under the headline “Trolling for Trump: How Russia Is Trying to Destroy Our Democracy.” Another group, called PropOrNot, a nonpartisan collection of researchers with foreign policy, military and technology backgrounds, planned to release its own findings Friday showing the startling reach and effectiveness of Russian propaganda campaigns. (Update: The report came out on Saturday).

The researchers used Internet analytics tools to trace the origins of particular tweets and mapped the connections among social-media accounts that consistently delivered synchronized messages. Identifying website codes sometimes revealed common ownership. In other cases, exact phrases or sentences were echoed by sites and social-media accounts in rapid succession, signaling membership in connected networks controlled by a single entity.

PropOrNot’s monitoring report, which was provided to The Washington Post in advance of its public release, identifies more than 200 websites as routine peddlers of Russian propaganda during the election season, with combined audiences of at least 15 million Americans. On Facebook, PropOrNot estimates that stories planted or promoted by the disinformation campaign were viewed more than 213 million times.

Consider these points before sharing a news article on Facebook. It could be fake. (Monica Akhtar/The Washington Post)

Some players in this online echo chamber were knowingly part of the propaganda campaign, the researchers concluded, while others were “useful idiots” — a term born of the Cold War to describe people or institutions that unknowingly assisted Soviet Union propaganda efforts.

The Russian campaign during this election season, researchers from both groups say, worked by harnessing the online world’s fascination with “buzzy” content that is surprising and emotionally potent, and tracks with popular conspiracy theories about how secret forces dictate world events.

Some of these stories originated with RT and Sputnik, state-funded Russian information services that mimic the style and tone of independent news organizations yet sometimes include false and misleading stories in their reports, the researchers say. On other occasions, RT, Sputnik and other Russian sites used social-media accounts to amplify misleading stories already circulating online, causing news algorithms to identify them as “trending” topics that sometimes prompted coverage from mainstream American news organizations.

The speed and coordination of these efforts allowed Russian-backed phony news to outcompete traditional news organizations for audience. Some of the first and most alarming tweets after Clinton fell ill at a Sept. 11 memorial event in New York, for example, came from Russian botnets and trolls, researchers found. (She was treated for pneumonia and returned to the campaign trail a few days later.)

This followed a spate of other misleading stories in August about Clinton’s supposedly troubled health. The Daily Beast debunked a particularly widely read piece in an article that reached 1,700 Facebook accounts and was read online more than 30,000 times. But the PropOrNot researchers found that the version supported by Russian propaganda reached 90,000 Facebook accounts and was read more than 8 million times. The researchers said the true Daily Beast story was like “shouting into a hurricane” of false stories supported by the Russians.

This propaganda machinery also helped push the phony story that an anti-Trump protester was paid thousands of dollars to participate in demonstrations, an allegation initially made by a self-described satirist and later repeated publicly by the Trump campaign. Researchers from both groups traced a variety of other false stories — fake reports of a coup launched at Incirlik Air Base in Turkey and stories about how the United States was going to conduct a military attack and blame it on Russia — to Russian propaganda efforts.

[Facebook fake-news writer: ‘I think Donald Trump is in the White House because of me’]

The final weeks of the campaign featured a heavy dose of stories about supposed election irregularities, allegations of vote-rigging and the potential for Election Day violence should Clinton win, researchers said.

“The way that this propaganda apparatus supported Trump was equivalent to some massive amount of a media buy,” said the executive director of PropOrNot, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid being targeted by Russia’s legions of skilled hackers. “It was like Russia was running a super PAC for Trump’s campaign. . . . It worked.”

He and other researchers expressed concern that the U.S. government has few tools for detecting or combating foreign propaganda. They expressed hope that their research detailing the power of Russian propaganda would spur official action.

A former U.S. ambassador to Russia, Michael A. McFaul, said he was struck by the overt support that Sputnik expressed for Trump during the campaign, even using the #CrookedHillary hashtag pushed by the candidate.

McFaul said Russian propaganda typically is aimed at weakening opponents and critics. Trump’s victory, though reportedly celebrated by Putin and his allies in Moscow, may have been an unexpected benefit of an operation that already had fueled division in the United States. “They don’t try to win the argument,” said McFaul, now director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. “It’s to make everything seem relative. It’s kind of an appeal to cynicism.”

The Kremlin has repeatedly denied interfering in the U.S. election or hacking the accounts of election officials. “This is some sort of nonsense,” Dmitry Peskov, press secretary for Putin, said last month when U.S. officials accused Russia of penetrating the computers of the Democratic National Committee and other political organizations.

RT disputed the findings of the researchers in an e-mail on Friday, saying it played no role in producing or amplifying any fake news stories related to the U.S. election. “It is the height of irony that an article about “fake news” is built on false, unsubstantiated claims. RT adamantly rejects any and all claims and insuations [sic] that the network has originated even a single “fake story” related to the US election,” wrote Anna Belkina, head of communications.

The findings about the mechanics of Russian propaganda operations largely track previous research by the Rand Corp. and George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs.

“They use our technologies and values against us to sow doubt,” said Robert Orttung, a GWU professor who studies Russia. “It’s starting to undermine our democratic system.”

The Rand report — which dubbed Russian propaganda efforts a “firehose of falsehood” because of their speed, power and relentlessness — traced the country’s current generation of online propaganda work to the 2008 incursion into neighboring Georgia, when Russia sought to blunt international criticism of its aggression by pushing alternative explanations online.

The same tactics, researchers said, helped Russia shape international opinions about its 2014 annexation of Crimea and its military intervention in Syria, which started last year. Russian propaganda operations also worked to promote the “Brexit” departure of Britain from the European Union.

Another crucial moment, several researchers say, came in 2011 when the party of Russian President Vladimir Putin was accused of rigging elections, sparking protests that Putin blamed the Obama administration — and then-Secretary of State Clinton — for instigating.

Putin, a former KGB officer, announced his desire to “break the Anglo-Saxon monopoly on the global information streams” during a 2013 visit to the broadcast center for RT, formerly known as Russia Today.

“For them, it’s actually a real war, an ideological war, this clash between two systems,” said Sufian Zhemukhov, a former Russian journalist conducting research at GWU. “In their minds, they’re just trying to do what the West does to Russia.”

RT broadcasts news reports worldwide in several languages, but the most effective way it reaches U.S. audiences is online.

Its English-language flagship YouTube channel, launched in 2007, has 1.85 million subscribers and has had a total of 1.8 billion views, making it more widely viewed than CNN’s YouTube channel, according to a George Washington University report this month.

Though widely seen as a propaganda organ, the Russian site has gained credibility with some American conservatives. Trump sat for an interview with RT in September. His nominee for national security adviser, retired Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, traveled to Russia last year for a gala sponsored by the network. He later compared it to CNN.

The content from Russian sites has offered ready fodder for U.S.-based websites pushing far-right conservative messages. A former contractor for one, the Next News Network, said he was instructed by the site’s founder, Gary S. Franchi Jr., to weave together reports from traditional sources such as the Associated Press and the Los Angeles Times with ones from RT, Sputnik and others that provided articles that often spread explosively online.

“The readers are more likely to share the fake stories, and they’re more profitable,” said Dyan Bermeo, who said he helped assemble scripts and book guests for Next News Network before leaving because of a pay dispute and concerns that “fake news” was crowding out real news.

In just the past 90 days — a period that has included the closing weeks of the campaign, Election Day and its aftermath — the YouTube audience of Next News Network has jumped from a few hundred thousand views a day to a few million, according to analytics firm Tubular Labs. In October alone, videos from Next News Network were viewed more than 56 million times.

Franchi said in an e-mail statement that Next News Network seeks “a global perspective” while providing commentary aimed at U.S. audiences, especially with regard to Russian military activity. “Understanding the threat of global war is the first step to preventing it,” he said, “and we feel our coverage assisted in preventing a possible World War 3 scenario.”

Correction: A previously published version of this story incorrectly stated that Russian information service RT had used the “#CrookedHillary” hastag pushed by then-Republican candidate Donald Trump. In fact, while another Russian information service Sputnik did use this hashtag, RT did not.

Craig Timberg is a national technology reporter for The Post.  Follow @craigtimberg



IT’S REALLY TOO BAD THAT THIS HIGHLY RELEVANT STORY DIDN’T DO ANY GOOD.

http://lawnewz.com/high-profile/new-report-claims-at-least-50-trump-voter-in-electoral-college-were-illegally-seated/

New Report Claims At Least 50 Trump Voters in Electoral College Were Illegally Seated
by Alberto Luperon and Ronn Blitzer | 11:31 am, January 6th, 2017

A report apparently submitted to Congress says that at least 50 Electoral College voters for President-elect Donald Trump were illegally seated either because they didn’t live in the relevant Congressional District, or because they already held office. Now anti-Trump groups are pushing for those electors and their votes to be disqualified.

“The number could be over a hundred,” the brief reads. “There were also a lesser number of Democratic electoral votes that there not regularly given or lawfully certified. We urged you, our representatives, to prepare written objections for January 6th.” The argument is that if there are enough objections to the electoral votes, Trump might not have the necessary 270 votes required to become President.

Activists, usually liberals, have been trying to keep President-elect Donald Trump from taking office on January 20 because they argue he’s simply unqualified for the job. This brief is getting backed by the anti-Trump group, Americans Take Action. According to the Hamilton Electors group, which has also been promoting the challenge of electors, the report was written by a group of attorneys, but a representative from the organization told LawNewz.com that the attorneys are not affiliated with them. One of the attorneys, Arlaine Rockey, said in an interview conducted by the Hamilton Electors, that 16 Republican electors should not have been eligible because they did not live in the congressional districts that they are representing.

“The other main objection,” Rockey said, “had to do with a person holding a dual office.” Many state constitutions say that if a person is elected to one office, they cannot hold another office. Because electors are elected to their position during the general election, Rockey said, anyone who already holds an office cannot be an elector.

Trump supporter and Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi was a presidential elector despite already holding office. LawNewz.com reached out to her office for a response. Rockey also mentioned that a Florida State Senator was listed as an elector.

Most electors tend to be party loyalists because of the way they’re chosen. They are required by state law to follow their state’s popular vote results. Only two GOPers (Texans, incidentally) refused to vote Trump, while eight electors in other states actually tried to choose people besides Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

In a conversation with LawNewz.com, Rockey said that she has been on the phone with Senators trying to convince them to object to the electors that she and her colleagues believe are ineligible. But, she admits, “I don’t know for sure if it’s going to happen.” Rockey said, “We knew it it was going to be a long shot,” but she hopes that Congress takes this opportunity to stop Trump. If Trump falls short of 270 electoral votes, the House would get to choose the President from the top three electoral vote-getters, who are Trump, Clinton, and Colin Powell, who received three votes despite not even running. Rockey says it’s up to Congress as to whether they want to listen to the report and raise the objections to the electors, allowing for someone other than Trump to take office. “Do they want to continue with Trump, or form a coalition [with Democrats] … and vote for General Powell?” She believes that enough Republicans and Democrats could agree on Powell as an alternative to Trump or Clinton.

The Republican-dominated Congress is scheduled to meet Friday afternoon in a joint session to count and certify the final electoral votes.

Note: This article has been updated to included comments from attorney Arlaine Rockey given to LawNewz.com.

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BEING PROACTIVE HERE – LAWNEWZ IS NOT A FAKE NEWS SITE

http://mediagazer.com/160119/p12#a160119p12

http://money.cnn.com/2016/01/19/media/dan-abrams-lawnewz/
Dan Abrams launches LawNewz website
by Tom Kludt @tomkludt
January 19, 2016: 2:50 PM ET

No matter the story, Dan Abrams says there is "always a legal angle." That's why Abrams, the chief legal analyst for ABC News and founder of Mediaite, is launching a new site: LawNewz.com.
The site, which debuted Tuesday, bills itself as the only destination on the web to offer real-time legal analysis on all the top stories.
"This is a site a long time in the making," Abrams said in a video. "After all, my entire professional career has been focused on covering high-profile cases."
Law Newz is arriving at an auspicious time, with the "true crime" genre seeing a resurgence in popular culture. The site's front page is filled with stories about "Making A Murderer," the popular Netflix series.
Visually, Law Newz resembles Mediaite, the media-centric site launched by Abrams in 2009.
Law Newz will live stream major court cases, and Abrams said the site's team of lawyers and journalists will provide legal analysis on each day's "crucial stories."

CNNMoney (New York)
First published January 19, 2016: 1:55 PM ET



SATURDAY NIGHT MASSACRE

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-fires-acting-attorney-general-sally-yates/

CBS/AP January 30, 2017, 9:31 PM
Trump fires acting Attorney General Sally Yates

Last Updated Jan 30, 2017 11:02 PM EST

WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump fired acting Attorney General Sally Yates after she ordered Justice Dept. lawyers to stop defending Mr. Trump’s executive order banning new arrivals to the U.S. from seven Muslim-majority countries.

Dana Boente replaces Sally Yates as acting attorney general
Play VIDEO
Dana Boente replaces Sally Yates as acting attorney general

“The acting Attorney General, Sally Yates, has betrayed the Department of Justice by refusing to enforce a legal order designed to protect the citizens of the United States,” the White House said in a statement on Monday night. “This order was approved as to form and legality by the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel.”

The White House said President Trump “relieved Ms. Yates of her duties” and named Dana Boente, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, to serve as acting attorney general. The White House said he would serve “until Senator Jeff Sessions is finally confirmed by the Senate, where he is being wrongly held up by Democrat senators for strictly political reasons.”

“I am honored to serve President Trump in this role until Senator Sessions is confirmed,” Boente said in the statement. “I will defend and enforce the laws of our country to ensure that our people and our nation are protected.”

Boente was sworn in around 9 p.m. Monday, White House spokesman Michael Short said. Reporters and news photographers were not invited to witness the ceremony.

The announcement came shortly after Yates, a career official and Obama appointee, said she was “not convinced” Mr. Trump’s immigration order is “lawful” and that the Justice Department would not defend it in court “until I become convinced that it is appropriate to do so.”

The executive order banning new arrivals and refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries had already been challenged in court a number of times, and has sparked widespread protests in major cities. On Saturday, however, the Justice Department defended the order before a court in Brooklyn. Yates’ decision on Monday signified a major about-face by the department.

Before the White House released the statement on Yates, Mr. Trump lashed out on social media.

“The Democrats are delaying my cabinet picks for purely political reasons,” he tweeted on Monday night. “They have nothing going but to obstruct. Now have an Obama A.G.”

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Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump
The Democrats are delaying my cabinet picks for purely political reasons. They have nothing going but to obstruct. Now have an Obama A.G.
7:45 PM - 30 Jan 2017
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The Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to meet on Tuesday morning to vote on the nomination of Sessions for attorney general. The vote was delayed by one week during last Tuesday’s committee meeting when Senate Democrats asked for more time to consider the nomination, which is allowed by committee rules, CBS News’ John Nolen reports.

Following a vote by the committee the nomination goes to the full Senate for consideration. Although Senate Democrats don’t have the votes to block the nomination, they can use procedural maneuvers to draw the process out. The final vote by the full Senate on the Sessions nomination could come at the end of this week or the beginning of next week, depending on when Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell schedules the vote and how long Democrats try to drag the process out.

Trump faces swift backlash over immigration ban
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Trump faces swift backlash over immigration ban

The Yates decision came as Trump pressed into his second week in office defending his sweeping immigration ban. Protests persisted at major airports, and concern mounted from U.S. diplomats and members of his own party.

Trump denied that his order was to blame for weekend chaos at the nation’s airports, instead pointing to computer glitches, demonstrations and even the “fake tears” of Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer.

The president publicly shifted his focus, signing an executive action aimed at cutting regulations for small businesses and teasing his plans to unveil his Supreme Court pick Tuesday night. But the immigration ban remained at the forefront of his first fortnight in the White House -- and officials were pondering more actions moving forward.

According to a draft document obtained by The Associated Press, Trump is considering an executive order that would target some immigrants for deportation if they become dependent on government assistance.

The draft order calls for the identification and removal “as expeditiously as possible” of any foreigner who takes certain kinds of public welfare benefits. Such immigrants have been barred from the U.S. for the better part of a century and they can already be deported. The proposed order appears to signal a Trump administration effort to crack down on such welfare cases.

Another draft order under consideration would make changes to several of the government’s foreign worker visa programs. The White House did not immediately respond to requests for comments on the draft orders.

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