• U.S. Holocaust scholar: “No respectable politician” in U.K. should associate with Corbyn

    Acclaimed American academic Professor Deborah Lipstadt has slammed British Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn for presenting himself as a life-long anti-racist campaigner, despite his extensive associations with Holocaust deniers and other extremists. “No respectable politician would associate with anyone who used the ‘n’ word. The same should apply to Corbyn over antisemitism,” she said.

  • Germany to use ultrasound age tests for unaccompanied minor refugees

    Age considerations play an important role in considering an asylum-seeker’s application in Germany. German law, with few exeptions, prohibits the deportation of unaccompanied minors — under the age of 18 and without family. Calls for mandatory X-ray age tests on unaccompanied minor refugees were rejected last year by German doctors. As an alternative, the Health Ministry is now launching a €1-million study into using ultrasound age testing.

  • DNC becomes latest organization to disavow Women’s March amid anti-Semitism scandal

    In a major blow, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) has joined the long list of groups that have broken with the Women’s March over allegations of anti-Semitism. The move comes a day after Women’s March co-president Tamika Mallory refused to explicitly condemn Nation of Islam Leader Louis Farrakhan on the ABC show, The View, in a heated exchange with hosts Sunny Hostin and Meghan McCain, who grilled Mallory about the hate preacher’s anti-Semitic views.

  • Fascist Forge: A new forum for hate

    White supremacist online forum Fascist Forge advertises itself as a “Home for the 21st Century Fascist,” and attracts some of the movement’s most extreme adherents. The forum emphasizes violent tactics. Some users advocate the creation of small terrorist cells, while others share how-to guides on guerrilla warfare, including military field and operation manuals, and instructions for building homemade bombs. Others suggest targeting infrastructure or recommend attacking people they perceive to be enemies of the white race.

  • On what grounds can the FBI investigate the president as a counterintelligence threat?

    “Let’s stipulate for purposes of argument that Putin has compromising information on Trump, and that the FBI has Trump on tape unambiguously pledging fealty to Putin and promising to serve as his agent in carrying out a number of concrete orders from the Russian president to damage U.S. intelligence operations (for example, by exposing U.S. spies and U.S. intelligence operations),” Harvard Law School’s Jack Glodsmith writes. In this situation, could the FBI seek a FISA warrant premised on the claim that the president was an agent of a foreign power? “The answer based on [my analysis] may be ‘no,’ at least to this extent: the FBI cannot act in a way that is legally premised on second-guessing the president’s national security bona fides. On this view, the FBI can fully investigate Russia’s interference with the 2016 election, including matters involving the president, as it has been doing for a while now. But it cannot cross the line of taking investigative steps premised on the president’s threat to national security. The Constitution leaves crossing that line up to Congress and the American people.”

  • What we know about the effectiveness of universal gun background checks

    This Tuesday, newly dominant House Democrats revealed legislation that would require all gun buyers go through a background check, regardless of whether they buy a weapon from a licensed dealer, collector at a gun show, or stranger in a parking lot. Universal background checks are popular and enjoy political momentum. Poll after poll shows they win near universal approval. But it’s worth asking how effective universal background checks are at reducing gun violence. And the real-world evidence that they reduce crime is more complicated than the political momentum might suggest.

  • PayPal closes account of neo-Nazi group with ties to Assad, Hezbollah, and anti-Israel boycotts

    PayPal, the U.S.-headquartered digital payments company, has shut the account of The Third Way, a German neo-Nazi party with links to Iranian-backed Hezbollah, the Syrian regime, and the anti-Israel boycott movement. The group’s PayPal page, where the account is listed, also encourages support for Holocaust deniers.

  • Drinking water safety guidelines in the U.S. vary widely from state to state

    Analysis of existing state and federal guidelines shows discrepancies in recommended safe levels of toxic contaminants PFOA and PFOS in drinking water. The findings of a new study highlight the need for enforceable federal standards and more health protective limits on these contaminants in drinking water to safeguard the health of millions of people whose water supplies have been contaminated.

  • Many hate crimes never make it into the FBI’s database

    The FBI’s latest numbers showed a 17 percent increase in reported hate crimes in 2017. But what does this actually say about the actual number of hate crimes occurring in the U.S.? Not much. The Hate Crime Statistics Act of 1990 mandates that the FBI publish statistics specifically for crimes motivated by bias, and a broad network of state laws require that hate crimes are both tracked and prosecuted. Despite this, a variety of problems plague the implementation of these laws.

  • Charlotte’s Women’s March disassociates from national organization over anti-Semitism

    Organizers of the Charlotte’s Women’s March have changed their name and disassociated themselves from the national movement over expressions of anti-Semitism by the March’s leadership. In November, Teresa Shook, the founder of the Women’s March, called on the movement’s current co-chairs to resign over anti-Semitic rhetoric and bigotry, and in December, the Women’s March of Washington State disassociated itself from the national movement because of anti-Semitism.

  • A note on FISA “verification”

    Last week, former FBI Director James Comey testified before the House Judiciary and Oversight Committees in closed session. When, at Comey’s request, a transcript was released shortly thereafter, mainstream news outlets mostly yawned, but numerous pro-Trump outlets had a different reaction, seizing on Comey’s acknowledgement that the now-notorious “Steele Dossier” was still in the process of being vetted when Comey left in the Bureau. Julian Sanchez writes in Just Security that this provided those who want to protect Trump from the Muller investigation an opportunity to revive a complaint about purported improprieties in the application for a FISA order to intercept the communications of erstwhile Trump campaign advisor Carter Page: The information provided in FISA applications must be “verified” before it is submitted to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, and here we have (the objection runs) an apparent admission that the information was not verified! But if the objection to using the material in the Steel Dossier is procedural—an argument that the FBI violated its own requirements—then the complaint is simply wrong, and based on a basic confusion about what FISA “verification” means.

  • Women’s March in Washington state disbands citing Farrakhan ties to national leadership

    The Women’s March movement of Washington State has announced its dissolution over the ties leaders of the national organization have with anti-Semitic preacher Rev. Louis Farrakhan. In a statement, Angie Beem, who served as president of Women’s March Washington, wrote: “Because of the events happening at the national level and their refusal to acknowledge and apologize for their anti-Semitic stance, we have decided to dissolve our Women’s March on Washington State organization in order to separate” from the national organization.

  • Evidence supporting regulation of greenhouse gases stronger than ever: Scientists

    Sixteen prominent climate scientists argue that there is more reason than ever for the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate greenhouse gases, at the same time some politicians are pushing the EPA to reverse its 2009 decision to do so.

  • Complex systems help explain how democracies are destabilized

    Complex systems theory is usually used to study things like the immune system, global climate, ecosystems, transportation or communications systems. But with global politics becoming more unpredictable – highlighted by the U.K.’s vote for Brexit and the presidential elections of Donald Trump in the United States and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil – it is being used to examine the stability of democracies. “There is little work on the circumstances under which instability of democracy might happen. So, we lack the theory to show us how a democracy destabilizes to the point it is not describable as a democracy anymore,” says a researcher.

  • Virginia bill would let cities ban guns from protests

    The city of Charlottesville, Virginia, was powerless to prevent attendees from carrying guns at last year’s Unite the Right rally. But one of the state’s top officials, Attorney General Mark Herring, thinks he can prevent a similar situation from unfolding in the future.