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RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week
Sept. 16 toSept. 22

Featured Investigation

In response to fearsof Russian hackers and stolen votes following the 2016 election, Congress revived a dormant law to quickly send hundreds of millions of dollars to the states for voter security.

But, as Steve Miller reports for RealClearInvestigations, much of the money has been spent on items that will do little to thwart sophisticated cyber-threats. Miller writes:

The hacking threat has "created this feeding frenzy where money is thrown out there with no results needed," said Doug Jones, professor of computer science at the University of Iowa, who has studied voting technology for decades.

"People are finally taking the hacking threat seriously, but it's a weird seriousness," Jones said. "Throwing money at elections at random is not the way to do it, and that's what Congress is doing."

Records show that election divisions are struggling to spend all the money being tossed their way in the name of cybersecurity. And they're using their discretionary leeway to dispense the largesse in questionable ways.

Several states plan to use the cash to train their poll workers on voting technology, a task that is already addressed extensively as part of any contract to buy voting machinery. Minnesota will add three new jobs, two paying six figures, with annual raises through 2022 of more than 6 percent, twicethe average private sector raise of 3 percent. ...

In Florida, some of the $19 million the state will receive will pay for physical security at election sites, even though hackers do not need on-site access to monkey with the vote. The state also paid nearly $1 million for 1,750 iPad minis for poll workers to check in voters, not to shore up cybersecurity, since the tablets are easily hacked, experts say.

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The Trump Investigations: Top Articles

Rosenstein Suggested Recording Trump, Ouster in Mind, New York Times
Papadopoulos: Australian 'Spy' Downer Set Me Up, Australian Associated Press
FBI Memos: Obama Intel Dissent on Finding of Russia Meddling, The Hill
Email, Texts Show 'No Comment' Mueller Team Cozy With Press, Daily Caller
Lisa Page Testimony: FBI Couldn't Prove Collusion Pre-Mueller, TheHill
Trump Orders FISA Declassification, Release ofComeyTexts, Politico
FBI, DOJ Plan RedactionsDespiteTrump'sDocument Order, Bloomberg
New Origin Story for Russia Investigation, ABC News
'Deep State Unmasked':Pt. 1,Pt. 2,Pt. 3,ProjectVeritas
A New Look at the Russia Meddling Story, New York Times

The Kavanaugh Controversy: Top Articles

JudgeKavanaugh'sAccuser Comes Forward, Washington Post
KavanaughAccuser Reticent, Some GOP Attitudes Harden,WashingtonExaminer
Portrait ofKavanaughAccuser, Wall Street Journal
KavanaughHearing Disrupters Got Dem Donor Cash, DailyCaller
Mistaken ID Theory Emerges in Kavanaugh Case, Gateway Pundit
Rep. Ellison Accuser: Dems 'Smeared, Threatened, Isolated' Me,TheHill

Other Noteworthy Articles and Series

400 Murders a Day: Latin America's Crisis
Wall Street Journal
With just 8 percent of the world's population, Latin America accounts for roughly a third of global murders.Every day, more than 400 people are murdered there, a yearly tally of about 145,000 dead.In Acapulco, Mexico, a city of 800,000, 953 people were violently killed last year, more than in Italy,Spain, Switzerland, Portugal and the Netherlands put together.

Myanmar: UN Report Details Rohingya Rapes, Horrors
Guardian
Horrific accounts of murders, rapes, torture and indiscriminate shelling allegedly committed by the Burmese army against theRohingyapeople and other minority groups have been laid out by UN investigators in an extensive new report detailing evidence for their accusation of genocide.

Murder Con Turned Noted Golf Artist Cleared After Decades
Golf Digest
Six years ago, Golf Digest profiled ValentinoDixon,an inmate serving a long sentence for murderat New York's Attica Prisonwith a gift forfor"drawing meticulously detailed golf-scapes." Eventually, the magazine "noticed that his conviction seemed flimsy. So we investigated the case and raised the question of his innocence." Today, Dixon is a free man.

Blacks Miss Out on Promising Cancer Drug Trials
ProPublica
African-Americans are underrepresented in clinical trials for cancer drugs, even when the type of cancer disproportionately affects them. AProPublicaanalysis of  data  recently made public by the FDA found that in trials for 24 of the 31 cancer drugs approved since 2015, fewer than 5 percent of the patients were black. African-Americans make up 13.4 percent of the U.S. population. Some of the reasons include "financial hurdles, logistical challenges and their lingering distrust of the medical community due to a history of being victimized by medical experimentation."

Groomed, Then Gone: Deaths at PetSmart
NJ.com
In at least 47 cases across 14 states since 2008, families have claimed that their dogs died during or shortly after a grooming visit to PetSmart, the nation's leading pet retailer,.Most cases — 32 in total — occurred after the start of 2015, the same year the company was bought outby a private equity firm. But those numbers are hardly a definitive accounting of deaths because very few groomers are required to publicly report them.

Texas: Blood-Spatter Expert Reverses in Joe Bryan Case
ProPublica
Joe Bryan claims he was at a principals' convention when his wife was shot to death in their Texas home in 1985. During two trials a police blood splatter expert helped explain away one of the biggest holes in the state's case: no blood was ever found in the interior of Bryan's Mercury, though the prosecution alleged that Bryan fled the messy crime scene in his car. Now that expert has recanted his testimony, raising new doubts about a case that was the subject of a  two-part investigation byProPublica  and  the New York Times Magazine.

California: Who's to Blame for the $15 Billion Fires?
Los Angeles Times
The so-called Tubbs fire that began last October was the most destructive in California state history, killing 22 people and destroying more than 5,000 homes.For nearly a year, investigators have been trying to answer one question: What caused it? The answer will have huge implications for Pacific Gas & Electric. Wall Street estimates the utility giant faces up to $15 billion in liabilities from this and other fires that devastated California's wine country last year. In more than a dozen fires, investigators found that PG&E equipment either started the fires or contributed to their spread after the equipment came into contact with trees or brush. In three fires, investigators found that PG&E violated public resources codes regarding vegetation clearance around their equipment. But the origin of the Tubbs fire remains a mystery.

Soon-Yi Previn, 47, Speaks, Says Mia Farrow Abused Her
New York
She's kept silent in the decades since she had an affair with and later married Woody Allen, ex-boyfriend of her adoptive mother, Mia Farrow. Here's her story in a single paragraph:

"I know this is no justification," she goes on, sitting across from me, her back ramrod straight. ("Posture," she says quietly to Allen whenever he begins to slump. "I married her for her posture," he quips.) "But Mia was never kind to me, never civil. And here was a chance for someone showing me affection and being nice to me, so of course I was thrilled and ran for it. I'd be a moron and an idiot, retarded" — she pauses here, mindful that this is one of her mother's words for her — "if I'd stayed with Mia." She adds, as if to set the record straight, "I wasn't the one who went after Woody — where would I get the nerve? Hepursued me. That's why the relationship has worked: I felt valued. It's quite flattering for me. He's usually a meek person, and he took a big leap."

Popular University Program Used to Radicalize Freshmen
City Journal
Freshman Year Experience courses taught at about 90 percent of American colleges and universitieshavebecome vehicles of progressive indoctrination, John Tierney reports. They often begin with a single book all incoming freshmen are required to read. "Seventy percent of the common reads are nonfiction, much of it mediocre. If the theme is gender, students will read Roxane Gay's"Bad Feminist,"or Janet Mock's transgender memoir,"Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love & So Much More"… The book's message and other progressive themes must[then]be amplified in "cocurricularprogramming" that fosters "peer-to-peer dialogue" and "civic engagement" through a "social-justice-based learning experience." 

Family Lost in Siberia 40 Years, Unaware of World War II
Smithsonian
Things hadn't been good for Old Believers - a fundamentalist Russian Orthodox sect -since the days of Peter the Great. They became worse under the atheist Bolsheviks. And so, in 1936, the four members of the Karp family - father, mother, son and daughter - sought sanctuary in a remote section of the Siberia. Two more children were born in the wild—Dmitry in 1940 andAgafiain 1943—and neither of the youngestLykovchildren had ever seen a human being who was not a member of their family when they were finally discovered in 1936. This article recounts their life and their rapid decline once they reestablished contact with the outside world.