SHOW AUDIO: Link is usually posted within about 72 hours of show broadcast. We take callers during this show at 713-526-5738.

TOPIC:  SUPPORT KPFT!  Where should Houston’s innovation district be, To Make Sense of US Politics, Immigrants Find Clues From Lands They Left, Trump In Hamburg, How many Americans does it take for Trump to become a strongman, Trump and Erdogan – Student and Teacher, Kris Kobach’s Commission and the great voting fraud myth, Trump voter fraud panel may spark partisan voting rights battle, Is Russia the Cylons and is the West the 12 Colonies and Battlestar Galactica?, More

GUEST: OPEN FORUM

Welcome to Thinkwing Radio with Mike Honig (@ThinkwingRadio), a listener call-in show  airing live every Monday night from 9-10 PM (CT) on KPFT-FM 90.1 (Houston). My engineer is Bob Gartner.

Listen live on the radio or on the internet from anywhere in the world! When the show is live, we take calls at 713-526-5738. (Long distance charges may apply.)

For the purposes of this show, I operate on two mottoes:

• You’re entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts;
  

  Houston Mayor Annise Parker [L] with Mike, just before the show. (Dec. 7, 2015)

• An educated electorate is a prerequisite for a democracy.

SIGNOFF QUOTE[s]:

“I’ve seen no evidence to that effect. I’ve made that very, very clear.”~ Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI),  in response to Trump’s claims that millions of individuals illegally voted. (“Ryan: ‘No evidence’ of mass voter fraud as Trump claimed” By Scott Wong – 01/24/17 11:17 AM EST)

 

1. Where should Houston’s innovation district be? EaDo? Montrose? The jockeying has begun. By Lydia DePillis [chron.com] July 10, 2017
   1. Two city task forces, one put together by city government, the other by the business community, recommended that the city designate a tech district, which could increase property values in the chosen neighborhood and boost the standing of politicians who help secure that designation.
   2. Council member Robert Gallegos is already advocating for EaDo — which he represents — to be the district’s new home.
   3. In some ways, EaDo [East Downtown] makes sense: It’s got lots old industrial buildings that startups tend to like. It’s close to downtown, but far enough away not to feel too corporate. It seems to be sprouting a new bar or coffee shop every week. In fact, it feels a lot like San Francisco’s SoMa [South of Market] neighborhood, which has long been a startup favorite.
   4. But Ed Egan, who leads the McNair Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Rice University’s Baker Institute, says EaDo should be a non-starter. While the neighborhood is viewed as up-and-coming, the innovation district needs to be in a place that’s already arrived.
   5. “We can’t afford big jumps,” Egan says. “What we need on the ground is the highest possible level of development that we can already have.”
   6. That means a lot of appealing housing, a mix of different office space, and a wealth of recreational options across about a five-block area, he says. The kind of qualities that characterize Montrose, for example, or Rice Village — not EaDo, just yet.
   7. … the startup ecosystem in EaDo took a big step backwards earlier this month when the co-working space START Houston, which had hosted freelancers and small businesses at its small warehouse-like space in the neighborhood for five years, abruptly shut down.
   8. Co-founder Apurva Sanghavi says it wasn’t a problem with attracting startups to lease space. He just got an offer for the building that he couldn’t refuse, and hasn’t yet been able to find another space to re-launch. Besides, other co-working options have cropped up in recent years: Most former START members have moved to Station Houston, a tech incubator that is housed in a downtown office tower and on the hunt for a new building to occupy when its lease runs out next year.
   9. Sanghavi, an investor in Station, says that wherever the incubator lands, the innovation district will likely follow. “Station will be one of the key influencers in that conversation,” Sanghavi says.
2. To Make Sense of American Politics, Immigrants Find Clues From Lands They Left, By MANNY FERNANDEZ and DAVID MONTGOMERY [NYTimes] JUNE 24, 2017
   1. Raji Alatassi watched a video clip of that recent cabinet meeting in Washington, in which the top officials in President Trump’s administration took turns heaping worshipful praise upon their leader. He felt he had seen it before.
   2. “I was like, ‘Oh my God,’” said Mr. Alatassi, 37, who was born and grew up in Syria and came to the United States nearly 20 years ago. “Just replace the English words with Arabic words, and you have a Syrian cabinet meeting. I left the Middle East for a reason.”
   3. For some Houstonians whose origins are in countries far away, what they see in American politics baffles and disturbs them, as elements of the world they left behind seem to echo back to them in the news from Washington, as Mr. Alatassi discovered watching the cabinet meeting. And yet others reacted optimistically and emphasized their belief that the current political turmoil in this country did not compare to the failures and problems of the countries they fled.
   4. Steve Le was born in South Vietnam and was 7 years old when he boarded a ship the day before the fall of Saigon in 1975 with his family and other refugees. … Mr. Le became a family physician and the third consecutive Vietnamese-American to represent District F on the Houston City Council. Mr. Le, a Republican … said he has never seen America more deeply divided, but added that nothing happening now compares to the world his parents knew in Vietnam.
   5. The president’s cabinet meeting bothered Yohannes Tesfagibir, too. Mr. Tesfagibir, 36, came to the United States eight years ago from his native country of Eritrea, an East African nation. Isaias Afwerki, Eritrea’s only president since it won independence in the 1990s, rules a country known as the North Korea of Africa, where national elections have never been held and young people are forced to work for extended periods in a national service program. Last year, a United Nations commission of inquiry said the national service program amounted to a form of slavery and accused the leaders of Eritrea of other crimes against humanity in a report denounced by government officials.
   6. The scene in Washington reminded him of a scene in Eritrea. “It’s reminiscent of the one-man show, everyone working for the president instead of working for the country,” Mr. Tesfagibir said of the Trump cabinet session. “It was very suspicious.”
   7. Still, although Mr. Tesfagibir said he was worried about the direction of the country and called Mr. Trump “a bully,” he said he never loses perspective.
   8. “The reason I’m talking to you now is because I’m free,” he said.
   9. Mr. Alatassi, the Syrian whose immigration status was caught up in a temporary limbo after Mr. Trump’s travel ban, said elements of the Trump presidency remind him of a Middle Eastern authoritarian regime: paternal leaders whose families dominate the power structure; policies and rhetoric harking back to a glorified and oversimplified past.
   10. “The whole talk from Trump about, ‘I’m going to solve their problems, somebody else is the cause of the problems, and if you’re not with me, then you’re not patriotic’ — that’s the Middle East,” Mr. Alatassi said.
   11. … M. J. Khan, a Pakistani-American businessman, Republican and former councilman who became the first Muslim-American to win a seat on the city council in 2003, said there was no comparison politically or culturally between Trump-era America and the Middle East. Having the simple freedom to speak your mind and to pray, shop and live as you wish made any comparison moot.
   12. “We used to get something called a ration card,” Mr. Khan said of growing up in Pakistan. “Food was rationed off, so every family would get a ration card based on how many people you have in the family, and you can only get that much food. There’s no freedom of any kind. You cannot go and talk against any person in authority at all. Over here, I can go to the city council next Tuesday and blast out the mayor.”
   13. Mr. Khan, 67, the president of the Islamic Society of Greater Houston, said he is as outraged as anyone else on Capitol Hill over Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
   14. “It makes me angry as an American,” Mr. Khan said. “The beauty of America was, and still is, fair and impartial elections. I’ve lived in a society where that was not the case. In spite of all the challenges we have, this is still by far the best system, the best society, the best country, you name it. Maybe because we have had it so good we are spoiled and we expect better.”
   15. [Sophia Grinblat,] the executive director of Houston’s Russian Cultural Center [said She was appalled at the unrestrained hostility toward Mr. Trump on display in popular culture and in the news media.
   16. … Grinblat, … came to the United States from Soviet-era Ukraine in 1990, said two incidents — Kathy Griffin holding what looked like the decapitated head of Mr. Trump and the assassination of a Trump look-alike in a production of “Julius Caesar” in Central Park — opened the door to the real-life violence that unfolded last week at the Republican congressional baseball practice in Alexandria.
   17. “I spent 27 years here and I never hear anything in the media so anti-presidential, never, ever in my life,” Ms. Grinblat said. “If this is O.K. to make a play in a New York park how they killed the president and everybody laughed and think this is funny, and if this is O.K. to publish information like that, some crazy people take it as a recipe to act.”
   18. Ms. Grinblat, who serves as the editor in chief of a Russian-language newspaper called “Our Texas”, said the media coverage was unbalanced in both Russia and the United States, largely pro-Putin there, anti-Trump here. “The situation is going more and more similar to Russia,” she said.
   19. Leopold Kazadi, 39, a community college student from the Democratic Republic of Congo, also spoke of the media portrayals of Mr. Trump. He said he watched late-night comics poke fun at the president with a kind of deep patriotism. He said he had friends in Congo who went to prison for demonstrating against President Joseph Kabila.
   20. “Here I see a lot of comedians make a joke about the president,” said Mr. Kazadi, whose relatives still live in Congo. “People can speak out. In Congo, I can say it’s like ‘esclave.’ I say ‘esclave’ in French. People are like slaves.” He added, “My mom tells me all the time, ‘I’m so glad you’re over there.’”
3. Trump voter fraud panel may spark partisan voting rights battle – President Trump’s quest to reign in the millions of supposed illegal voters has hit a snag. Nathan Rousseau Smith (@fantasticmrnate) reports. Buzz60, By Heidi M Przybyla, [USA TODAY] Published 3:08 p.m. ET July 10, 2017 | Updated 3:31 p.m. ET July 10, 2017
   1. A private document snapped by an alert Associated Press photographer offers clues about where President Trump’s new voter fraud panel may be headed — and it risks a hyper partisan battle over voting rights. The paperwork held by Kris Kobach, the Kansas secretary of state who heads Trump’s panel, was captured after a November interview at then president-elect Trump’s Bedminster golf course. It appears to propose changes to the U.S. National Voter Registration Act, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.
   2. The document may soon become public after Kobach was fined two weeks ago by a federal magistrate for “patently misleading representations” about its contents and was ordered to hand it over to the ACLU. The ACLU filed a lawsuit on Monday alleging the committee is failing to adhere to federal transparency rules, part of a flurry of recent legal challenges.
   3. The document, Kobach’s record of furthering strict voting rules in Kansas — and the fact that the publicly available voter data the commission is using precludes a reliable study — has several U.S. elections scholars interviewed by USA TODAY worried. …The scattered voter registration information available to Trump’s panel is likely to create a misleading report that fuels debates over voter restrictions bubbling in at least 31 states if GOP-led state legislatures and Republican leaders in Congress rely on its work, according to experts.
   4. If policy changes are recommended based on bad data, it could inflame partisan tensions far more than allegations by Democrats that Trump created the commission simply to produce evidence supporting his claim that millions voted illegally for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election. At least 99 bills to “restrict access to registration and voting” have been introduced, and 35 of them are progressing, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. Most are laws requiring photo I.D. but they extend to shortened early voting periods, among other changes.
   5. “I fully expect wildly exaggerated claims of wrongdoing that feed directly into policy recommendations Secretary Kobach and others have been dying to make for a long time,” said Levitt. “Count me as least surprised when they say ‘hey, we ought to have an amendment to the National Voter Registration Act,” he said.
   6. Refusals to submit data – Secretaries of state in at least 14 states are outright refusing to provide the more comprehensive data the commission is requesting, including partial voter Social Security numbers, out of privacy and federal government abuse concerns. Mississippi’s Republican secretary of state said his response will be to tell Kobach to “Jump in the Gulf of Mexico.” The deadline for submissions is July 14.
   7. Without such granular detail, the panel is left with practically meaningless data that inflates the number of “false positives,” or individuals who may be double registered, among other voter roll errors, the experts say.
   8. “Ironically, the states resisting is actually going to empower the commission to make even wilder claims about fraud and double voting in the system,” said Michael McDonald, a professor who runs the U.S. Elections Project at the University of Florida. “An explosive report will be put out to give cover to Republicans in Congress to move forward. That’s where this is going,” he said.
   9. “We’re moving election administration into a polarizing mode,” said Charles Stewart, an elections systems scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who is part of a voting technology project.
   10. To be sure, matching voter data can be useful in maintaining voter rolls, but only if it’s done through an exhaustive and highly technical process. Yet the panel made its data request to the states before consulting such outside experts.
   11. The commission is simply seeking publicly available data to weed out potentially fraudulent registrations while also looking at voter suppression and cyber security, with the ultimate goal being to “recommend best practices to states,” said White House spokesman Marc Lotter.
   12. “This commission does not have the power to remove anyone from a voter roll,” said Lotter. He also said it will produce a report regardless of whether states comply, without ruling out changes to the NVRA. “They’re going to go where the data leads them,” he said, referring questions about the file to Kobach’s personal office.
   13. Hans von Spakovsky, a scholar at the Heritage Foundation and one of the panel members, said the goal is to clean up U.S. voting rolls, including removing dead people; to delete non-U.S. citizens who may be registered; and to find people who may be double registered in different states. He also said the panel may recommend changes to the voter registration act.
   14. “I just don’t see why this is a big deal. I’ve been recommending changes to the NVRA for more than a decade to fix some of the problems in it,” said von Spakovsky. He also agreed the panel can’t be effective without more precise data, including at least partial Social Security numbers to positively I.D. voters. “It’s hard to work without the kind of data the commission is asking for,” he said.
   15. The U.S. Justice Department could ultimately force states to provide the data, said von Spakovsky, a move civil rights groups worry will have a chilling effect on registration. The Justice Department has said it is reviewing voter registration list maintenance procedures in each state covered by the NVRA and asking states how they plan to remove voters from the rolls.
   16. Kobach a polarizing figure – According to Brennan, Kobach, who is running for governor next year, is “a key architect behind many of the nation’s anti-voter and anti-immigration policies,” including strict photo ID requirements requiring a birth certificate or passport to register. Since then, one of every seven Kansans who’ve tried to register has been blocked, according to the ACLU.
   17. The U.S. Appeals Court Judge Jerome Holmes found Kobach had engaged in “mass denial of a fundamental right” by blocking 18,000 motor voter applicants from registering to vote in Kansas.
   18. Motor voter is the process by which anyone who interacts with the Department of Motor Vehicles has a chance to register. According to Dale Ho, director of the ACLU’s voting rights project, changes Kobach may seek would “be devastating” to voting rights, including making voter registration drives nearly impossible since many Americans don’t carry birth certificates or passports on them.
   19. Panel flags – Experts raise a number of initial concerns, starting with flawed data. “If they proceed down this path, I know what the results of the data analysis are going to be. They’re going to be worthless,” said David Becker, who heads the Center for Election for Election Innovation and Research and has been working with voter files for a decade.
   20. “There are literally hundreds of thousands of Sean O’Hara’s born in the same year. And many even with the same birth date,” said Becker, who helped found ERIC, a resource used by many states to maintain accurate registration records. “You’re going to have hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of false positives,” he said. The results could also find more double entries for Democrats since they tend to be younger, lower income and hence more transient, said McDonald.
   21. Concerns extend to a lack of transparency and the panel’s request for voter party affiliation. Finally, many states are already conducting on their own ID’ing efforts, while the real threat to the United States is coming from attempted Russian infiltration of U.S. voting systems.
   22. There have been numerous reports, including by Ohio’s Republican administration and during the former George W. Bush administration, showing the incidence of voter fraud is statistically insignificant.
   23. Lotter pointed to the case of a Virginia university student who recently pled guilty to submitting the names of deceased individuals as part of his job with an outside Democratic organization to register as many voters as possible.
   24. Other flags – The panel is requesting a number of data points from states, including party affiliation. Voter data experts said there is no reason Trump officials would need that information to conduct a simple identity match on voters. “I cannot think of a legitimate use for that information,” said Levitt. “There’s no need for the federal government to know people’s party affiliations,” said Stewart, at MIT.
   25. Yet, according to McDonald, the most troubling thing may be that Kobach made his request knowing many states couldn’t comply with it. “Even Kobach knew he wouldn’t be able to comply with his own data request. He was well aware states would balk” about handing voters’ private information to the federal government, he said. At least 10 states would have to pass new laws to share the data with the federal government, McDonald said.
   26. Yet “It allowed him to say, ‘we’re not going to be able to get to the bottom of this because they’re protecting this fraud’ and the next day Trump tweets the same thing,” said McDonald. The effect is simply to undermine voter confidence in the U.S. election system, he said.

       Numerous states are refusing to give information to the very distinguished VOTER FRAUD PANEL. What are they trying to hide?

       — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 1, 2017

4. How many Americans does it take for Trump to become a strongman?
   1. As Trump wages war on the media, the echoes of Erdogan grow louder, By Ishaan Tharoor By Ishaan Tharoor [WASHINGTON POST] July 3, 2017 at 1:00 AM
   2. … President Trump’s relentless war on America’s mainstream media. The … cheesy hashtags and nicknames for his perceived adversaries: There’s “psycho” Joe Scarborough and “low I.Q. crazy” Mika Brzezinski of MSNBC, the “failing” New York Times and The Washington Post (for the record, we’re both doing pretty well in the age of Trump), and Trump’s favorite target, “fake” or “fraud” CNN.
   3. On Sunday, Trump, … tweeted a childish clip of him wrestling down a person representing CNN.
   4. At a time when a GOP politician has actually body-slammed a journalist, it wasn’t funny. Brian Stelter, CNN’s media reporter, tweeted a CNN statement saying it was “a sad day when the President of the United States encourages violence against reporters.”
   5. But for Trump, the relentless drumbeat of anger against the press is a clear political tactic, designed to stoke his base and build up a narrative of victimization. The president has complained virtually nonstop …about the supposedly unfair coverage surrounding the White House, casting journalists as the opposition. He has also …fanned the flames of right-wing extremism … and shamelessly spouted numerous falsehoods on both trivial and consequential matters. …
   6. In the wake of Trump’s Sunday tweet, Richard Haass, the president of the indisputably bipartisan Council on Foreign Relations, likened Trump’s rhetoric to that of a more practiced strongman president. [Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan]
   7. … Erdogan withstood a violent coup attempt a year ago, which prompted his government to embark on a vast purge of state institutions and civil society. More than 100 journalists have been thrown into prison or forced into exile. Dozens of media outlets have been closed or taken over by state authorities. Newspapers that were once titans of the establishment have seen their editors criminalized and offices raided.
   8. .But there are some important similarities to bear in mind. Both Erdogan and Trump channel a kind of majoritarian nationalism anchored in grievance at cosmopolitan elites. And both paint their critics as threats to the nation. Over the weekend, Erdogan labeled a peaceful opposition protest march from Ankara to Istanbul as the work of “terrorist” sympathizers.
   9. The echoes of Erdogan in Trump’s political style offer an uncomfortable new reality for Americans, suggested Financial Times columnist Gideon Rachman.
   10. “It is that, given enough time, any democratic system is vulnerable to assaults from a determined, dictatorial leader,” wrote Rachman earlier this year. “Mr. Erdogan became prime minister in 2003 and, over time, utterly changed his country. As one Turkish intellectual put it to me … ‘Things that I would once have thought impossible are now happening on a daily basis.’”
   11. “Trump is not yet going nearly as far as Erdogan, who jails journalists, but the preliminary logic is the same — an attempt to undermine the credibility of those who hold power to account,” wrote Brian Klaas, a fellow at the London School of Economics and author of a recent book on the erosion of democracies, in January.The German newsweekly Der Spiegel put it most starkly in a February editorial: “Erdogan and Trump are positioning themselves as the only ones capable of truly understanding the people and speaking for them. It’s their view that freedom of the press does not protect democracy and that the press isn’t reverent enough to them and is therefore useless. They believe that the words that come from their mouths as powerful leaders are the truth and that the media, when it strays from them, is telling lies. That’s autocratic thinking — and it is how you sustain a dictatorship.”
   12. Tellingly, the two leaders have defended the other from their critics. In the wake of Erdogan’s purge, Trump said the United States didn’t have much right to criticize the Turkish president’s crackdown; in the wake of Trump’s inauguration, Erdogan described protests against the new president as “disrespectful” and applauded Trump’s singling out CNN as “fake news” during a testy exchange at a news conference.
   13. That day, Erdogan congratulated Trump for putting the CNN reporter “in his place.” It’s the same sentiment many Trump supporters probably feel with every new hashtag and barbed insult hurled at journalists.

       The dishonest media will NEVER keep us from accomplishing our objectives on behalf of our GREAT AMERICAN PEOPLE! #AmericaFirst🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/jSciqzAs6G

       — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 2, 2017

TOPICS FROM PREVIOUS WEEKS:

1. Is It Time for the U.S. to Rein in the Presidency? Two historians consider whether it’s time to raise the possibility of decentralization amid frustrations with the federal government. By Julian E. Zelizer and Morton Keller [Theatlantic.Com] Jun 9, 2017
2. Exclusive: In latest job, Jim DeMint wants to give Tea Party ‘ a new mission’,by Fredreka Schouten , [USA TODAY] Published 6:02 a.m. ET June 12, 2017
   1. Former South Carolina senator Jim DeMint, ousted last month as head of the Heritage Foundation think tank, is joining a fast-growing, conservative movement that is pushing states to seek a constitutional convention to rein in federal spending and power.
   2. DeMint, a prominent figure among the Tea Party activists who helped Republicans seize control of the U.S. House of Representatives in 2010, will serve as a senior adviser to the Convention of the States Project, providing a jolt to its efforts to marshal grassroots support for a state-led movement to amend the U.S. Constitution.
   3. Under Article V of the Constitution, there are two avenues to propose amendments: Two-thirds of each house of Congress can vote to do so or two-thirds of the states – 34 in total – can request the convention.
   4. In either case, three-fourths of the states – or 38 states – must ratify any amendment proposed by convention delegates.
   5. The movement DeMint is joining asks for a convention covering three sweeping topics: imposing “fiscal restraint” on Washington, reducing the federal government’s authority over states and imposing term limits on federal officials.
   6. The group said the convention that results from the state applications could also propose a range of amendments from one requiring the federal government to balance the budget or to one ending lifetime appointments for federal judges, including Supreme Court justices.
   7. At the center of the effort: Mark Meckler, a co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots, and his nonprofit, Citizens for Self-Governance. Meckler has teamed up with other conservative groups, including American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), to advance the plan at the state level.
   8. Later this summer, he will travel to Denver to address conservative state legislators at ALEC’s annual gathering. ALEC, whose members include Republican lawmakers and business interests, writes model legislation, allowing conservative lawmakers to quickly replicate bills across the country. It has adopted the Article V language advanced by Meckler’s group.
   9. Legal questions abound: Would the convention be open to the public? Is it fair to allow tiny states like Maine to have the same power as populous states like California at a convention? And how would states prevent a “runaway convention” that could make wholesale changes to the Constitution on everything from religion and gun rights?
   10. Proponent[s] say their application limits of the scope of a convention to amendments that deal with federal term limits, fiscal restraints on the federal government and limits on Washington’s power.
   11. Bu[t] some legal experts question whether organizers can limit the topics at all. “When there’s a constitutional convention, in a sense, all bets are off,” said Michael Gerhardt, an expert on the Constitution and a law professor at the University of North Carolina. “I would think almost anything would be fair game.”
   12. As the under-the-radar movement gains steam, some liberal groups and Democratic legislators are scrambling to block proponents from reaching the two-thirds threshold. This year, New Mexico, Maryland and Nevada all rescinded their applications for a convention, some of them on the books for decades. Delaware did so last year.
   13. Opponents say the topics described by the convention advocates are broad enough to bring sweeping change. “This idea of opening up our Constitution, which gives everyone in the country our basic protections, is a bad idea, particularly in this hyper-partisan environment,” said Viki Harrison, the executive director of Common Cause New Mexico. She helped lead the successful effort to yank New Mexico’s convention applications — one of which dated to 1951.
3. ALEC’s Application for a Convention of the States under Article V of the Constitution of the United States
4. Article V, U.S. Constitution (The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration)
   1. The Congress, whenever two thirds of both houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose amendments to this Constitution, or, on the application of the legislatures of two thirds of the several states, shall call a convention for proposing amendments, which, in either case, shall be valid to all intents and purposes, as part of this Constitution, when ratified by the legislatures of three fourths of the several states, or by conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other mode of ratification may be proposed by the Congress; provided that no amendment which may be made prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any manner affect the first and fourth clauses in the ninth section of the first article; and that no state, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate.
5. FREE SPEECH: What’s constitutionally guaranteed and what’s culturally expected
   1. 1^st Amendment:  First Amendment | Constitution | US Law | LII / Legal Information Institute: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
   2. The Amendment protects us against Government interference in speech, press and religion.
   3. NON-government interference – private businesses, publishers. Etc. – is more culturally entrenched but usually not illegal.
      1. The Amendment protects us against Government interference in speech, press and religion.
      2. NON-government interference – private businesses, publishers. Etc. – is more culturally entrenched but usually not illegal.
6. A Civics discussion:
   1. Our founders did not design our government to be “efficient”. They designed it to be “safe”.
   2. People who say that they want government to run like a business miss the point: Government is NOT a business.
   3. People who say that they want government to run like a household miss the point: Government is NOT a household.
   4. Government is a Sovereign, which is an entirely different and unique thing, totally unlike a business or a household.
   5. No one branch of government is meant to be ‘supreme’. The 3 branches of government – executive, legislative and judicial – were designed to be co-equal.
   6. The tug-of-war that goes on among them – this inefficient, tug-of-war that goes on among them – is designed to slow things down, and make them “safe” but “inefficient’.
   7. In today’s terminology, the inefficiency designed into our government is not a “bug”. It’s a “feature”.
   8. I’ve said for many years that people who have run big businesses should not be politicians, and certainly should not be president. If there was ever an example of why I believe that, it’s Trump.
   9. We are now experiencing the wisdom of that “feature”, as the Trump regime attempts to establish its Supremacy over the other branches.
7. Leaked NSA Report Suggests Russian Hacking Could Have Affected Election Day Itself, By Ed Kilgore  [NYMAG.COM/DAILY/INTELLIGENCER] June 5, 2017 6:52 pm
   1. So “Comey Week” in Washington has taken a new turn with the disclosure by The Intercept of a National Security Agency report documenting a sophisticated Russian military intelligence operation before the 2016 election aimed at compromising state and local election infrastructure systems. The document has been subsequently verified as a legitimate by CBS News.
   2. There’s more smoke than fire in the report, which mainly establishes that the Russians were making an effort to gain access to voter registration database information—though that’s a big deal given the impact of voter registration information on access to the ballot. But it also opened up the possibility the hackers got access to vote-counting machinery as well, particularly in states with electronic voting machines (which happen to include Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, two of the three states that decided the presidential election).
   3. More importantly, the report could change the scope of the various investigations by Congress, the FBI, and special prosecutor Bob Mueller of alleged Russian interference in the 2016 elections and possible Trump campaign collusion with that interference. Up until now we’ve mostly been focused on Russian (or Trump/Russian) efforts to change the external political dynamics of the election, such as WikiLeaks’ slow-drip release of Pedesta emails, and social media promotion of pro-Trump and anti-Clinton memes. Now we’re talking about direct interference with the integrity of the election that made Trump president. And if that is even close to being established, then the possibility of Trump campaign collusion in such interference takes on a whole new dimension of horrific malfeasance, and potentially “high crimes and misdemeanors.”
   4. Contractor charged in NSA document leak case, Washington Post  – ‎1 hour ago‎
      1. A 25-year-old government contractor has been charged with mishandling classified information after authorities say she gave a top-secret National Security Agency document to a news organization.
8. America successfully tests ICBM defense system in the Pacific, By Associated Press [NY POST] May 30, 2017 | 4:47pm
   1. WASHINGTON — The Pentagon said it successfully used a “kill vehicle” to knock down an intercontinental ballistic missile over the Pacific Ocean on Tuesday as North Korea ramps up its belligerent behavior, according to several reports.
   2. The test involved the Pentagon Missile Defense Agency launching an ICBM from a base in the Republic of the Marshall Islands and firing a ground-based rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California 4,200 miles away to intercept it.The intercept rocket released a 5-foot-long “kill vehicle” that collided with the mock warhead over the Pacific and destroyed it through the sheer force of the impact, an endeavor likened to shooting a bullet with a bullet.
9. NATO – Topic: Collective defence – Article 5
   1. Highlights
      1.  Collective defence means that an attack against one Ally is considered as an attack against all Allies.
      2. The principle of collective defence is enshrined in Article 5 of the Washington Treaty.
      3. NATO invoked Article 5 for the first time in its history after the 9/11 terrorist attacks against the United States.
      4. NATO has taken collective defence measures on several occasions, for instance in response to the situation in Syria and in the wake of the Russia-Ukraine crisis.
      5. NATO has standing forces on active duty that contribute to the Alliance’s collective defence efforts on a permanent basis.
   2. TEXT: NATO  Article 5
      1. “The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognized by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.
      2. ii) Any such armed attack and all measures taken as a result thereof shall immediately be reported to the Security Council. Such measures shall be terminated when the Security Council has taken the measures necessary to restore and maintain international peace and security.” “The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognized by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.
      3. Any such armed attack and all measures taken as a result thereof shall immediately be reported to the Security Council. Such measures shall be terminated when the Security Council has taken the measures necessary to restore and maintain international peace and security.”

LINKS:

• Emoluments Clause of the Constitution (From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia):
  1. The Ineligibility Clause, one of the two clauses often called the Emoluments Clause,^[1][2] and sometimes also referred to as the Incompatibility Clause^[3] or the Sinecure Clause,^[4] is found in Article 1, Section 6, Clause 2 of the United States Constitution. It places limitations upon the employment of members of Congress and prohibits employees of the Executive Branch from serving in Congress during their terms in office. The name “Ineligibility Clause” is only used by a minority of writers, as compared to the name “Emoluments Clause”.^[1][2][5]
  2. The clause states: “No Senator or Representative shall, during the Time for which he was elected, be appointed to any civil Office under the Authority of the United States, which shall have been created, or the Emoluments whereof shall have been increased during such time; and no Person holding any Office under the United States, shall be a Member of either House during his Continuance in Office.”
• Twenty-fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution (From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

The Twenty-fifth Amendment (Amendment XXV) to the United States Constitution deals with succession to the Presidency and establishes procedures both for filling a vacancy in the office of the Vice President, as well as responding to Presidential disabilities. It supersedes the ambiguous wording of Article II, Section 1, Clause 6 of the Constitution, which does not expressly state whether the Vice President becomes the President or Acting President if the President dies, resigns, is removed from office or is otherwise unable to discharge the powers of the presidency.^[1] The Twenty-fifth Amendment was adopted on February 10, 1967.^[2]

• 1. Section 1. In case of the removal of the President from office or of his death or resignation, the Vice President shall become President.
  2. Section 2. Whenever there is a vacancy in the office of the Vice President, the President shall nominate a Vice President who shall take office upon confirmation by a majority vote of both Houses of Congress.
  3. Section 3. Whenever the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that he is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, and until he transmits to them a written declaration to the contrary, such powers and duties shall be discharged by the Vice President as Acting President.
  4. Section 4. Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.
  5. Thereafter, when the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his office unless the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive department or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit within four days to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. Thereupon Congress shall decide the issue, assembling within forty-eight hours for that purpose if not in session. If the Congress, within twenty-one days after receipt of the latter written declaration, or, if Congress is not in session, within twenty-one days after Congress is required to assemble, determines by two-thirds vote of both Houses that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall continue to discharge the same as Acting President; otherwise, the President shall resume the powers and duties of his office.^[3]
• Group will sue Trump over business’ foreign profits, By Cyra Master 2 hrs ago (The Hill) 1/22/2017 via MSN
  1. The Title of Nobility Clause [Also known as the Emoluments Clause] is a provision in Article I, Section 9, Clause 8 of the United States Constitution, that prohibits the federal government from granting titles of nobility, and restricts members of the government from receiving gifts, emoluments, offices or titles from foreign states without the consent of the United States Congress. Also known as the Emoluments Clause, it was designed to shield the republican character of the United States against so–called “corrupting foreign influences”. This shield is reinforced by the corresponding prohibition on state titles of nobility in Article I, Section 10, and more generally by the Republican Guarantee Clause in Article IV, Section^[2] ~ Title of Nobility Clause – Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title_of_Nobility_Clause
  2. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) announced Sunday night it is bringing a suit “to stop President Trump from violating the Constitution (the Constitution’s foreign emoluments clause ) by illegally receiving payments from foreign governments.”
  3. At issue is Trump’s refusal to divest from his business or place his assets into a blind trust, which would separate him entirely from his business empire. He has said his adult sons will run his business while he is in office, that they will not conduct any foreign deals and will subject any domestic deals to an ethics review.

 SOURCES WHICH MAY BE RELEVANT TO OTHER DISCUSSION:

======================================================

1. Trial Balloon for a Coup? Analyzing the news of the past 24 hours, by Yonatan Zunger
2. Four Freedoms, From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: The Four Freedoms were goals articulated by United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt on January 6, 1941. In an address known as the Four Freedoms speech (technically the 1941 State of the Union address), he proposed four fundamental freedoms that people “everywhere in the world” ought to enjoy:
   1. Freedom of speech
   2. Freedom of worship
   3. Freedom from want
   4. Freedom from fear
   5. Roosevelt delivered his speech 11 months before the United States declared war on Japan, December 8, 1941. The State of the Union speech before Congress was largely about the national security of the United States and the threat to other democracies from world war that was being waged across the continents in the eastern hemisphere. In the speech, he made a break with the tradition of United States non-interventionism that had long been held in the United States. He outlined the U.S. role in helping allies already engaged in warfare.

• Differences between Liberals, Conservatives, Libertarians and neo-Conservatives
  • Left–right politics, From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
    • History of the terms: The terms “left” and “right” appeared during the French Revolution of 1789 when members of the National Assembly divided into supporters of the king to the president’s right and supporters of the revolution to his left. One deputy, the Baron de Gauville, explained, “We began to recognize each other: those who were loyal to religion and the king took up positions to the right of the chair so as to avoid the shouts, oaths, and indecencies that enjoyed free rein in the opposing camp.” However the Right opposed the seating arrangement because they believed that deputies should support private or general interests but should not form factions or political parties. The contemporary press occasionally used the terms “left” and “right” to refer to the opposing sides.^[9]
  • Greens and Libertarians: The yin and yang of our political future, by Dan Sullivan (originally appearing in Green Revolution, Volume 49, No. 2, summer, 1992)
    • … Libertarians tend to be logical and analytical. They are confident that their principles will create an ideal society, even though they have no consensus of what that society would be like. Greens, on the other hand, tend to be more intuitive and imaginative. They have clear images of what kind of society they want, but are fuzzy about the principles on which that society would be based.
    • Ironically, Libertarians tend to be more utopian and uncompromising about their political positions, and are often unable to focus on politically winnable proposals to make the system more consistent with their overall goals. Greens on the other hand, embrace immediate proposals with ease, but are often unable to show how those proposals fit in to their ultimate goals.
    • The most difficult differences to reconcile, however, stem from baggage that members of each party have brought with them from their former political affiliations. Most Libertarians are overly hostile to government and cling to the fiction that virtually all private fortunes are legitimately earned. Most Greens are overly hostile to free enterprise and cling to the fiction that harmony and balance can be achieved through increased government intervention.
    • Amongst published researchers, there is agreement that the Left includes anarchists, communists, socialists, progressives, anti-capitalists, anti-imperialists, anti-racists, democratic socialists, greens, left-libertarians, social democrats, and social liberals.^[5][6][7]
    • Researchers have also said that the Right includes capitalists, conservatives, monarchists, nationalists, neoconservatives, neoliberals, reactionaries, imperialists, right-libertarians, social authoritarians, religious fundamentalists, and traditionalists.^[8]

__________________________________________________________________