Jeffrey Toobin, "The Surrender," The New Yorker, July 6 & 13, 2020.
"The President has tweeted about Mueller more than three hundred times [as of early August]. Attorney General William Barr and Senator Lindsey Graham agree that the Mueller investigation was 'illegitimate in conception, and excessive in execution' -- in Barr's words, 'a grave injustice' that was 'unprecedented in American history.' "
"Mueller had an abundance of legitimate targets to investigate, and his failures emerged from an excess of caution, not of zeal." "Comey declined to publicly clear Trump of wrongdoing or to close the investigation of Flynn, and the President resolved to fire him. Trump's lawyers said that "The President answered the questions despite the additional hardship cased by confusing and substantial deficiencies of form articulated to you in our transmittal letters. And he did so in spite of the fact that as of eighteen months into the JCO's investigation, let alone any theory of liability, as to which the President's provision of direct information regarding his various 'Russia-related matters' was sufficiently important and necessary to justify the immense burden the process imposed on the President and his Office. You still have not done so."
"The [Mueller] report goes on to say that 'while the investigation identified numerous links between individuals with ties to the Russia government and individuals associated with the Trump Campaign,' the evidence was not sufficient to support criminal charges." Mueller's deputy said: "I just wanted to let you know that we are not going to reach a prosecutorial decision on obstruction. We're not going to decide crime or no crime."
"The report stated: 'A prosecutor's judgment that crimes were committed, but that no charges will be brought, affords no such adversarial opportunity for public name clearing before an impartial adjudicator.' " "The O.L.C.'s opinion prohibited Mueller from bringing a case, but Mueller gave Trump an unnecessary gift: He did not ever say whether the evidence supported a prosecution. Mueller's compromising language had another ill effect, because it was so difficult to parse, it opened the door for the report to be misrepresented by countless partisans acting in bad faith, including the Attorney General of the United States."
"Barr's 10,000+ word letter of June 8, 2018 -- 'even the subject line, "Mueller's 'Obstruction Theory' " -- dripped with contempt.' "I am writing as a former official concerned with the institutions of the Presidency and the Department of Justice," it began. "I realize that I am in the dark about many facts but I hope my views may be useful." "The gist was that much of Mueller's investigation was illegitimate." Barr said that Trump's decision to fire Comey was within his power as President.
"Mueller's approach to the inquiry," Barr wrote, "would have grave consequences far beyond the immediate confines of this case, and would do lasting damage to the Presidency and to the Administration of law within the Executive Branch. And the only reason that Trump took 'no act' to interfere with the investigation was that his subordinates, including Don McGahn and Corey Lewendowski, refused to follow his directives to do so." "But Barr was able to dismantle the Mueller report only because the special counsel and his staff had made it easy for him to do so. Robert Mueller forfeited the opportunity to speak clearly and directly about Trump's crimes, and Barr filled the silence with his high-volume exoneration. Mueller's investigation was no witch hunt; his report was, ultimately, a surrender."
Raffi Khatchodowrian, "The Trash Nebula," The New Yorker, October 12, 2020.
"In the fourteen billion years between the Big Bang and the autumn of 1957, space was pristine. Since 1957, humanity has placed nearly ten thousand satellites into the sky. All but twenty-seven hundred are now [not functional] or destroyed.
"The military tracks about twenty-six thousand artifacts orbiting earth, but its catalogue recognizes only objects larger than ten centimeters; the total number is much greater."
"About four hundred miles above the Earth, the exosphere begins. The atmosphere there is so thin that molecules can circle the planet." "The United Nations had issued a guideline that satellite operators must remove their spacecraft from orbit after twenty-five years." "Companies are competing to develop technology that can either dispose of derelict machines or repurpose or service them -- by one estimate, at the current rate, there will be fifty thousand new satellites orbiting the Earth in ten years."
#Molly Ball, "Patient zero," TIME, October 10, 2020.
"In recent weeks, he [Trump] has bullied the Congress, his political opponents, and the very machinery of democracy itself, all the while mocking health precautions, practically daring the virus to infect him. He would sacrifice those around him, the country, and even his own health -- anything it took not to appear weak. To acknowledge or accommodate the virus was a weakness that invited ridicule." "Trump grimaced when he saw his own aides wearing masks; he would say he couldn't hear or understand masked officials when they spoke."
"He [Trump] is our national superspreader of disinformation, of fear, and division, of pure exhaustion."
ADDENDUMS:
*" 'Truth isn't truth,' the president's lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, has said, and facts are 'in the eye of the beholder.' " We are told, without any sense of Orwellian irony, to deny the very existence of our external reality.
*Alice Park, "Treating outrage," TIME, October 10, 2020. "Dexamethasone has potential side effects, including neurological changes, which is why most doctors are judicious about using it."
*Estimate of cost of new nuclear missiles to replace the Minuteman 3 arsenal increases to $95.8 billion. The new fleet of land-based nuclear missiles over the next few decades is $1.2 trillion.
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