Trump doesn’t just lie, he now boasts about it

That Donald Trump lies incessantly is now an unquestioned fact. But we are now witnessing lying taken to the next level where he proudly boasts that he lies. In private remarks, Trump told a group of people at a fundraising dinner that at a meeting with Canada’s prime minister he had knowingly lied to him about the trade deficit. The only lying level left is the dreaded Lying Singularity where the lies feed upon themselves so much that they collapse into a black hole.
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Stephen Hawking

I have not written anything about the death of iconic physicist Stephen Hawking because there did not seem much that I could add to the massive coverage it received. But throughout his life, there has been one thing that troubled me about the way he was covered and that was how the media dealt with his motor neurone disease. I could not quite put my finger on what bothered me but Ellis Palmer, who also identifies himself as disabled and is a wheelchair user, explains his own unease with how people like him are seen and portrayed.
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Invoking the Nuremberg defense for torture enthusiasts

The so-called Nuremberg defense, that one’s war crimes can be excused if one were following orders, was advanced during the trial of Nazis after World War II and was rejected. But as Jon Schwarz writes, the US is now advancing that same argument in defense of the people in the government who not only authorized and presided over ghastly torture practices that are undoubtedly war crimes, they showed every indication of having enjoyed doing so.
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Bombings in Texas

There has been a news story out of Austin, Texas that has received remarkably little mainstream news coverage. Parcel bombs have exploded at various residences killing two people.

Sean Philips had just woken up and was sitting on his couch when he heard the blast that would take his neighbor’s life.

The explosion, police now say, came from a package that Anthony Stephan House encountered on his front porch in north Austin on the morning of March 2.

Police say it was the first of three mysterious package bombings in 10 days in Texas’ capital — explosions that have killed two people, including House, injured two others and left city residents on edge and highly suspicious of packages delivered to their homes.
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This package, and two more that exploded at other Austin residences 10 days later, were placed in front of houses, Austin Police Chief Brian Manley said. All were average-sized delivery boxes, and they weren’t delivered by the US Postal Service or delivery services such as UPS or FedEx, police said.

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Comedic round up of the news

This has been a manic week in US politics even by Trump standards, and the comedy shows were hard pressed to cram in all that happened. Both Seth Meyers and Samantha Bee paid close attention to the student walkouts all across the nation is support for real gun control. This clearly has the NRA and Republicans worried because political views are often shaped by one’s experiences as a young adult so they fear losing this generation. Being total reactionaries on women’s, minorities, and LGBT rights was bad enough but did not cause this kind of mass protests.
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Facebook implicated in Sri Lankan religious clashes

The Sri Lankan government has accused Facebook of not acting swiftly enough to take down and counter posts that the government says have inflamed passions among Buddhist hardliners in the country who have been instigating mobs to attack Muslims and destroy their homes and businesses. The government has now moved to block many social media platforms.
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What a surprise! Ben Carson is a liar too

Lost in the news about the Tillerson firing and that Democrats seem to have won the seat long held by Republicans in the special election in Pennsylvania is that the latest to be exposed as a lying grifter in this administration is the oh-so-pious Ben Carson. Carson had said that he was shocked to learn that an expensive dining set had been ordered for his office at a time when his department was cutting funding for projects aimed at alleviating the conditions of the homeless. He said that this had been done without his knowledge and that once he learned of it, he had requested that it be cancelled.
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Trump seems scared of firing people

Normally the way that someone gets fired is their boss calling them in to their office and telling them directly. Depending on the boss, the words used may be gentle or they may be callous but they are usually done in person, especially if the person being fired is high-ranking in the organization. To fire someone by text or email would be highly unusual and by Twitter would unthinkable.
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