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https://apnews.com/fe8eee387b53888c478a24021fc101aa A federal judge on Thursday sharply rebuked Attorney General William Barr’s handling of the special counsel’s Russia report, saying Barr had made “misleading public statements” to spin the investigation’s findings in favor of President Donald Trum...

I assume this is related to the new person Trump put in charge of federal employees to ensure that everyone is personally loyal to him. https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/486121-new-white-house-survey-questions-potential-employees-about-trumps The White House is using a new survey to questi...

Not that this will come as a big surprise, but still. https://thehill.com/policy/defense/485589-white-house-withdraws-nomination-for-pentagon-budget-chief-who-questioned The White House has withdrawn its nomination for Pentagon budget chief after the nominee questioned President Trump’s hold on Ukra...

Well, so much for Pence's move in the right direction with his appointment of Dr. Birx to head the COVID-19 response. It looks like she'll be controlled by Pence. And we all know Pence is controlled by Trump, who's a moron. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/27/us/politics/us-coronavirus-pence.html The...

[EDIT] I deleted this post because: 1. I'm not sure we're even using the same terminology. For instance, you mentioned that "The contact required seems to be more than casual." Well, "not transmitted by casual contact" has a specific meaning. It pretty much says you can't get the...

OK, credit where credit is due. Trump passed the COVID-19 responsibility to Pence and, so far, Pence (who did a very poor job with AIDS in Illinois) seems to be on the right track. https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/484938-pence-taps-career-health-official-to-coordinate-white-house-coronavirus Pe...

If you can capture asymptomatic cases, for example by testing everyone in contact with a sick person, regardless of symptoms, your denominator will rise and the death rate fall. On the other hand if the illness is prolonged, then the death rate may rise once earlier cases had time to progress. Ther...

Frelga, in my experience the death rate is almost always overestimated in the early stages of an outbreak, simply because you pick up the obvious and most serious cases first and the mild or asymptomatic ones go undetected. The best analogy is an iceberg. What you see first is on top of the water, b...

Just FYI. The headline is clickbait and almost certainly nonsense (my guess is that more men had other illnesses that made them vulnerable, compared to the women) but the stats they quote are useful: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/18/coronavirus-is-more-fatal-in-men-than-women-major-study-suggests.htm...

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/483917-trump-lashed-out-at-acting-dni-maguire-over-alleged-staff-disloyalty President Trump erupted at acting Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Joseph Maguire in a meeting last week over concerns about Maguire's staff's loyalty,... ...after learning...

What the hell?? Has Trump elected himself Emperor of all the US now? https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/483754-trump-order-redirects-california-water-supply-after-reversal-from President Trump on Wednesday signed an order in California to reengineer the state’s water plans, completing a c...

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/02/trump-cases-stemming-mueller-probe-thrown-200218144209538.html US President Donald Trump on Tuesday called for all cases stemming from Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election to be "thrown out" an...

https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/483310-massachusetts-democrats-question-deployment-of-border-patrol-teams-to Massachusetts Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D) and Ed Markey (D) expressed “grave concerns” in a letter Sunday about reported plans to deploy Customs and Border Protection (CBP) SWAT teams int...

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/483063-trump-says-his-life-wouldve-been-a-lot-easier-if-he-picked-barr-over Geraldo Rivera asked Trump on his podcast “Roadkill” what his life would have been like if he chose Barr first. “My life would’ve been a lot easier, but I might have been less pop...

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/482999-trump-floats-halt-to-officials-listening-in-on-calls-with-foreign President Trump said Thursday he may end the practice of having national security and foreign service staff listen in on his calls with foreign leaders after a July call with the pre...

An interesting pair of articles, when taken together. The first one was published a few days ago: https://www.forbes.com/sites/rogerpielke/2020/02/09/a-climate-blacklist-that-works-it-should-make-her-unhirable-in-academia/#1881352a6368 How Academic ‘Blacklists’ Impede Serious Work On Climate Science...

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-russia-stone-idUSKBN2052E5 In a dramatic reversal that could benefit a long-time adviser to President Donald Trump, the Justice Department will seek a shorter prison sentence for veteran Republican operative Roger Stone,... The department overrode the se...

As far as I can tell, this does not seem to be widely reported in the US: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/02/civil-rights-groups-sue-state-israel-boycott-law-200210180553709.html United States civil rights groups announced on Monday that they filed a lawsuit against a public university in the US...

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/482438-justice-dept-whistleblower-complaint-suggests-anti-trafficking-grants A Justice Department fund for providing grants to organizations that fight human trafficking has reportedly become the subject of a whistleblower complaint. Two charities that pr...

I didn't see it but it sounds like it was pretty tasteless. These days, the Super Bowl halftime show seems to be a competition to get people talking about you, and I guess that's one way to do it. What's even stranger to me is that companies spend millions on making new ads specifically for the Supe...