RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week
Dec. 23 to Dec. 29 Featured Investigation When former Attorney General Jeff Sessions tapped John Huber a year ago to investigate why the FBI spied on Donald Trump's aides and whether the bureau protected Hillary Clinton and her foundation over alleged misdeeds, many Americans hoped that he would be as dogged and relentless as Special Counsel Robert Mueller has proven to be. That has not been the case. As Paul Sperry reports for RealClearInvestigations, Huber's investigation appears to be so ineffective that some potential witnesses, their lawyers and others close to it now describe it as a "sham." Sperry reports: - Huber has not impaneled a federal grand jury to subpoena witnesses or hear evidence.
- Huber has failed to interview key witnesses - such as disgraced FBI officials and Trump advisers targeted by them. They could shed light on whether officials abused their power when they obtained spy warrants to monitor Trump adviser Carter Page, who also has not been contacted by Huber's office.
- Two Clinton Foundation whistleblowers reached out numerous times to Huber's office, starting in April, and offered to turn over 6,000 pages of evidence, only to get the silent treatment for several months. They only heardbackafter Republican leaders supporting the expert witnesses made a stink about the snub on Fox News.
Sperry reports that while some witnesses and their attorneys complain that Huber ought to do his job, other critics now suspect he was never meant to. They say Huber's appointment was always political and the Justice Department had no interest in exposing its own corruption. This longtime department official was appointed only to mollify Republicans, they say."At the time, people wanted a special counsel, but Jeff Sessions announced he brought in Huber and people said, ‘OK, we got Huber on it,' " former Justice Department prosecutor Victoria Toensing said. "But it was a head fake." Read Full Article The Trump Investigations: Top Articles How Russian Money Helped Save Trump's Business, Foreign Policy
Did Queens Podiatrist Help Trump Dodge Vietnam?, New York Times
Cell PingsNearPrague in 2016 Tied to Cohen, McClatchy
Russians' Suit: Mueller Team Found Mystery 'Nude Selfies', Daily Beast Other Noteworthy Articles and Series Assad Regime Rapidly Killing Political Prisoners
Washington Post
As Syria's government consolidates control after years of civil war, President Bashar al-Assad's army is doubling down on executions of political prisoners, with military judges accelerating the pace at which they issue death sentences, according to survivors of the country's most notorious prison. Even before they reach the gallows, many prisoners die of malnutrition, medical neglect or physical abuse, often after a psychological breakdown, the former detainees said. One former prisoner said guards had forced a metal pipe down the throat of a cellmate.Another described how prisoners in his own cell had been forced to kick a man to death. On LA Streets, the False Document Industry Is Thriving
New York Times
Business is booming in Los Angeles for those who sell documents to undocumented residents at surprisingly cheap rates: a set of documents — a Social Security card and a green card — can be obtained for $80 to $200, depending on the customer's bargaining power and the quality of the forgery. About eight million undocumented immigrants participate in the United States labor force. A 50-year low in the unemployment rate means there are plenty of jobs for newcomers — and employers willing to hire them. Asked if he crosschecks documents presented by new hires, Norm Langer of Langer's Delicatessen, across from MacArthur Park, said, "I'm not here to do the government's detective work." Credit-Card Purchases Integral to Mass Shootings
New York Times
Mass shootings routinely set off a national debate onguns, but little attention is paid to how credit cards are often an instrumental, if unwitting, enabler of carnage. There have been 13 shootings that killed 10 or more people in the last decade, and in at least eight of them, the killers financed their attacks using credit cards. Some used credit to acquire firearms they could not otherwise have afforded. Those eight shootings killed 217 people. In a National Review opinion column, David French argues that this Times story is aimed at pressuring credit card companies to flag millions of legal gun purchases in the name ofidentifying a few bad actors. Emergency-Room Lessons From $238 Eye Drops and $60 Ibuprofen
Vox
This article examines 1,182 emergency room bills sent by readers in response to a reporter's request during the past 15 months. Initially, the reporter focused on the facilities fee - what it costs just to walk through an emergency room's doors, which was as low as $533 and well over $3,000, depending on which hospital a patient visited and how severe her case was. The bills suggest this fee has skyrocketed in recent years. Among other things, the analysis found that there is little transparency in the prices for other items - from drugs to treatments - which also tend to be expensive. Psychiatric Hospitals With Safety Violations Still Accredited
Wall Street Journal
More than 100 psychiatric hospitals have remained fully accredited by the nation's major hospital watchdog despite serious safety violations, including lapses linked to the deaths, abuse or rapes of patients. The Joint Commission, an Oakbrook Terrace, Ill., nonprofit that evaluates most of the nation's hospitals, revoked or denied full accreditation tofewerthan 1 percent of psychiatric hospitals it oversaw in fiscal 2014 and 2015. State inspectors found about 16 percent of those hospitals, or about 140 institutions total, each year operated with such severe safety violations they could put federal funding at risk. Psychiatric hospitals kept their accreditation despite reported violations ranging from patients being forced to sleep in chairs due to crowding to rapes or assaults of patients and patient suicides. Alcohol Deaths Climb; Men Most Vulnerable by Far
Washington Examiner
Alcohol misuse accounted for 35,823 deaths in 2017, an increase of nearly 46 percent over almost two decades, according to a Washington Examiner analysis of mortality data. Deaths from misusing alcohol did not decline in a single year since 1999 - when the total was 19,469 deaths - and they included not only alcohol poisonings but also deaths from alcoholic liver disease and cirrhosis. They do not include deaths from accidents people have while they are drinking, because in these instances, the cause of death would be drowning, a car accident, or a fall. How Much of the Internet Is Fake? Most, Maybe
New York
Studies generally suggest that, year after year, less than 60 percent of web traffic is human; some years, according to some researchers, a healthy majority of it is bot. This article explores some of the implications of this fact - fromphilosophicalquestions about whom or what we are interacting with online, tobasic economic questions about how to count the page views upon which companies base advertising rates. You can, for example, buy 5,000 YouTube views — 30 seconds of a video counts as a view — for as low as $15; oftentimes, customers are led to believe that the views they purchase come from real people. More likely, they come from bots. Click farms -- hundreds of individual smartphones, arranged in rows on shelves or racks in professional-looking offices - have arisen to watch the same video or download the same app. Texas: Residents Must Choose to Help Border Patrol or Border Crossers
Los Angeles Times
In Roma, a major thoroughfare for illegal immigration on the Texas-Mexico border, encountering Border Patrol agents and the immigrants desperate to evade them is an inescapable part of life. Residentsrepeatedly face legal and ethical questions: Do you help, and, if so, whom?The immigrants or the Border Patrol? Beauticians and Their Beasts of Debt
New York Times
Here's another unintended consequence of big government: In most states you can't just be a cosmetologist; you have to earn a license showing your proficiency in cutting hair, giving manicures, facials and providing other beauty services. This usually requires 1,000 to 2,000 hours of training, which is usually offered by for-profit schools that charges tens of thousands of dollars. Indebted graduates are often hard-pressed to repay their loans because they are not entering a high-paying field. |
