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"The power to declare war, including the power of judging the causes of war, is fully and exclusively vested in the legislature; the executive has no right, in any case, to decide the question, whether there is or is not cause for declaring war; that the right of convening and informing congress, whenever such a question seems to call for a decision, is all the right which the constitution has deemed requisite or proper. ...

In no part of the constitution is more wisdom to be found, than in the clause which confides the question of war or peace to the legislature, and not to the executive department. Beside the objection to such a mixture to heterogeneous powers, the trust and the temptation would be too great for any one man."

-- James Madison

News and Opinion

After 8 Years of Expanding Them, Obama Insists That Presidential War Powers Are Limited

Anticipating that Donald Trump might try to fulfill his promises to “bomb the shit” out of terror groups and do a “hell of a lot worse than waterboarding,” President Obama released a report on Monday summarizing his administration’s views of the legal barriers and policies limiting the president’s military power.

The 61-page report calls for trying terrorism suspects in civilian court and explains at length why no future president could legally torture detainees. It lays out the administration’s self-imposed limits on military operations — and declares that a 2001 resolution Congress passed in the wake of 9/11 is not a blank check to go to kill alleged terrorists wherever they are. ...

But in trying to defend Obama’s legacy, the report paints a picture of an administration far more restrained than it was in practice.

The report comes just weeks before Trump will inherit bombing campaigns in seven countries, a legally unaccountable drone program, and an open prison at Guantanamo Bay. ...

Monday’s report repackages many of the Obama administration’s favorite propaganda lines for the next president: The report refers to assassinations with the hazy phrase “targeted lethal force”; It adamantly maintains that the U.S. has a preference for capturing terrorists over killing them, while it has routinely demonstrated the opposite; and the report celebrates the clandestine killing program for its “transparency,” despite the fact that the president did not publicly discuss the program until 2013. In addition, most of the documents made public from the program were released due to leaks, Congressional pressure, and lawsuits.

Almost half of Americans see torture as acceptable, Red Cross survey finds

Nearly half of Americans believe it acceptable to torture enemy combatants, according to a new survey which suggests that 15 years of warfare have significantly recast American attitudes on torture.

The poll, conducted by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), found that 46% of Americans believe it acceptable to torture enemy combatants, with just 30% opposed to the practice and another 24% unsure or unwilling to answer.

Only Nigeria and Israel record higher rates of support for torturing captured enemy fighters, with 70% and 50% endorsements, respectively.

By contrast, in 1999 – the last time the ICRC conducted its “People on War” poll – 65% of Americans said the US could not torture captured enemy fighters, and 57% favored permitting an independent monitor to observe detention conditions.

The survey found a coarsening of attitudes towards obligations to civilians in wartime among people in the US, UK, Russia, China and France – the permanent members of the United Nations security council, which possess disproportionate power to set the global governance agenda.

Defendant in recovery doesn't halt 9/11 case at Guantanamo

A U.S. military judge turned down a request Monday to halt the latest round of Sept. 11 war crimes proceedings at Guantanamo Bay while one of five defendants recovers from a surgical procedure.

Army Col. James Pohl said defendant Mustafa al-Hawsawi may be excused from pretrial hearings in the case this week at the U.S. base in Cuba but that his apparently painful recovery is not an adequate justification to postpone the proceedings scheduled to run through Friday.

The prison doctor who oversees medical care in Camp 7, the maximum-security unit where al-Hawsawi is held with four other alleged members of the Sept. 11 conspiracy, testified that the Saudi underwent hemorrhoid surgery at the base Oct. 14 and has taken pain medication sporadically during his recovery. ...

The lawyer and others have long raised concerns about the health of the 48-year-old defendant. He had an undisclosed medical emergency while in CIA custody in 2003-2006 and was subjected to rectal exams with "excessive force," according to the Senate Intelligence Committee report on its investigation into the U.S. clandestine interrogation program.

Noam Chomsky: Trump's Victory Recalls Memories of Hitler & Fascism's Spread Across Europe

Iraq Was Probably a “Mistake,” Said Gen. James Mattis, Trump’s Defense Pick

President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of defense called the 2003 invasion of Iraq a “mistake,” according to a recording obtained by The Intercept.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Mattis said, “we will probably look back on the invasion of Iraq as a mistake — as a strategic mistake.”

Mattis was one of the Iraq campaign’s most important ground commanders. He led the 1st Marine Division during the invasion and later oversaw the bloody retaking of Fallujah from insurgents in 2004.

As for the Pentagon’s view on the Iraq invasion at the time, Mattis said this: “I think people were pretty much aware that the U.S. military didn’t think it was a very wise idea. But we give a cheery ‘Aye aye, sir.’ Because when you elect someone commander in chief — we give our advice. We generally give it in private.” ...

Mattis was not among the six retired generals who went on the record in 2007 to criticize Donald Rumsfeld’s management of the war. ... Elsewhere, Mattis has called the Iraq and Afghanistan wars “poorly explained and inconclusive.” But if Mattis was among those who did not agree with President George W. Bush’s decision to invade, he did a good job of hiding his personal views. ... Mattis’s deference to the president’s constitutional war-making powers raises the question of whether Congress should make an exception to a law that prohibits retired officers who, like Mattis, have been out of uniform for fewer than seven years, from serving as secretary of defense, a civilian office. If Trump, like Bush, attempted to start an unprovoked war of aggression, would Secretary Mattis be a stabilizing voice? Or would he say “aye aye, sir”?

James Mattis’ 33-Year Grudge Against Iran

For many, and even for self-proclaimed progressives, Donald Trump’s pick to be secretary of defense, retired Marine Corps Gen. James Mattis, is a light in the darkness—a kind of oasis in the midst of a vast reactionary desert. And so it seems, all of us can now breathe a sigh of relief: After all these weeks, there’s finally an adult in the room. ...

But all the ink spilled on Mattis as a snubber of convention, gifted combat commander, sophisticated strategist, ardent bibliophile and reader of dead Romans misses the most important fact about him: Mattis is a Marine. The Marines aren’t just another service, like the Army, Air Force or Navy. They are a tightknit military tribe, with their own beliefs, myths and philosophies. They view themselves as elite, different from the other services. They’re the closest thing our military has to a cult.

The military officials I spoke with say that Mattis is the quintessential Marine; it defines everything he does and believes, from how he treats his soldiers and disciplines his commanders to how he views the world. Most critically, perhaps, for the United States and its future, Mattis has embraced the Marine Corps’ longstanding grievance against Iran, one that goes back to the 1980s.

[The 1983 attack on the Marine barracks in Beirut is the primary source of the grudge. - js]

In fact, Mattis’ anti-Iran animus is so intense that it led President Barack Obama to replace him as Centcom commander. ... Mattis’ Iran antagonism also concerns many of the Pentagon’s most senior officers, who disagree with his assessment and openly worry whether his Iran views are based on a sober analysis or whether he’s simply reflecting a 30-plus-year-old hatred of the Islamic Republic that is unique to his service. It’s a situation that could lead to disagreement within the Pentagon over the next four years—but also, senior Pentagon officials fear, to war.

Pentagon buries evidence of $125 billion in bureaucratic waste

The Pentagon has buried an internal study that exposed $125 billion in administrative waste in its business operations amid fears Congress would use the findings as an excuse to slash the defense budget, according to interviews and confidential memos obtained by The Washington Post.

Pentagon leaders had requested the study to help make their enormous back-office bureaucracy more efficient and reinvest any savings in combat power. But after the project documented far more wasteful spending than expected, senior defense officials moved swiftly to kill it by discrediting and suppressing the results.

The report, issued in January 2015, identified “a clear path” for the Defense Department to save $125 billion over five years. The plan would not have required layoffs of civil servants or reductions in military personnel. Instead, it would have streamlined the bureaucracy through attrition and early retirements, curtailed high-priced contractors and made better use of information technology. ...

Based on reams of personnel and cost data, their report revealed for the first time that the Pentagon was spending almost a quarter of its $580 billion budget on overhead and core business operations such as accounting, human resources, logistics and property management. The data showed that the Defense Department was paying a staggering number of people — 1,014,000 contractors, civilians and uniformed personnel — to fill back-office jobs far from the front lines. That workforce supports 1.3 million troops on active duty, the fewest since 1940.

Pentagon Officials Continue to Hype Russia as ‘Threat’ to US

The Reagan National Defense Forum this weekend was a great new chance for top Pentagon officials to prattle on about their favorite subject when trying to justify increases in US military spending: the “threat” posed by Russia and its much smaller military.

From Air Force Secretary Deborah James on down, officials were uniform in insisting Russia is the “number one threat to the United States,” and were all quick to mention Russia’s increase in arms spending as proof they are a growing threat. James went on to declare Russia an “existential threat” to the US. ...

Russia stands as a distant fourth place in global military spending, usually hovering somewhere around 10% of America’s own military budget, which is by far the largest. Russia only managed to get up to fourth after nations like Britain and France slowed their own spending increases in recent years.

‘The Coming War on China’ John Pilger on his newest film

US Officials: Al-Qaeda’s Loss in Aleppo Is Also America’s Loss

The increasingly public re-branding of America’s war in Syria as a proxy war against Russia has suited a lot of officials, particularly in the Pentagon, who see a new Cold War as a ticket to a bigger budget. With Russia’s fighting focusing on al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front, this Russo-centric view has seen the administration realigning US interests more directly with al-Qaeda.

Embarrassing as America’s realignment toward al-Qaeda is, officials see the defeat of the al-Qaeda-dominated rebels in Aleppo as an even bigger blow, presenting the loss of Aleppo as Russia’s victory and America’s loss, in addition to being al-Qaeda’s loss.

This “loss” is being presented by current officials as potentially hindering President-elect Donald Trump’s policy choices going forward, though since Trump was not in favor of backing al-Qaeda, or backing Syrian rebels in general, it probably makes his go-to plan of moving toward fighting ISIS even simpler to sell to the public.

Saudi Arabia Surrenders To U.S. Shale

The new OPEC deal to cut oil output – the cartel’s first since 2008 – amounts to nothing less than Saudi Arabia’s surrender to the power of American shale.

It has come about due to Riyadh’s belated, horrified understanding that it has utterly lost control over the energy market, running through its capital reserves in the process. Rather than young, feckless Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman using Saudi Arabia’s John D Rockefeller strategy to permanently drive U.S. shale out of the energy market, the exact opposite result has occurred. Unwittingly, the Saudis have made the Americans the new global energy swing producer, the permanent ceiling for the global price of oil.

This, in its way, is as momentous a shift in global power as the stunning recent Brexit and Donald Trump votes. Whereas Brexit showed Europe to be in absolute decline, while the election of Trump brings to an abrupt end 70 years of the U.S. as the global ordering power, the Saudi’s meek surrender brings to a close the long age of OPEC domination of the world’s energy market. This year truly has seen the death of one world order, along with the uncertain birth of another.

OPEC now accounts for less than half of all energy output in the world, it is a very weakened cartel, dependent on the kindness of strangers to survive. Externally, this means Russia. The new global energy reality has been forthrightly addressed in the accord, as the interim deal is contingent on securing a further 600,000 bpd in cuts from non-OPEC members, with Russia expected to contribute 300,000 bpd to this total. ... OPEC isn’t much of a cartel if it is utterly dependent on major (and generally unwilling) outside players such as Russia to make its internal agreements work. ...

Along with Europe as a great power, and America as the world’s ordering power, the myth of Saudi energy dominance is the third great dinosaur to be felled by the asteroid that is 2016.

The Empire Files: Inside the Hotbeds of Israeli Settler Terror

Israel votes to authorise illegal settler homes in Palestine

Israel’s parliament has voted to retroactively legalise thousands of illegitimate settler homes in outposts built on private Palestinian land, in a highly controversial move described by critics as a “land grab”. The measure, which passed in a stormy Knesset session late on Monday, has been met with international condemnation, and has already strained relations within Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing rightwing coalition.

It comes in sharp defiance of a call on Sunday by the US secretary of state, John Kerry, who urged Israel again to rein in the construction of settlements on West Bank land.

The bill passed its first reading by 60 votes to 49, and still has to pass a further three votes before becoming law. During the debate, the opposition leader, Isaac Herzog, fiercely denounced the law by equating its adoption to “national suicide”. While the bill seems likely to have support to pass its further readings, it appears inevitable that it will be challenged in court.

Israeli critics and Palestinians have described the legislation as a land grab that would further distance prospects for a two-state solution to end the long Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Some high-profile political supporters, echoing that view, celebrated the vote by saying it opened the way to annexation of the West Bank and the end of any prospect of a Palestinian state.

Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter, and YouTube Create Program to Silence ‘Terrorist Propaganda’ Online

According to a new statement by Facebook, they have joined with YouTube, Microsoft, and Twitter to create a shared database of “terrorist content” which they can all jointly use to identify further attempts to post such banned content.

The database will create hashes of videos and images that they’ve already decided are related to terrorism, and then will allow them to single out any further content matching those hashes. Facebook says this will allow them to more quickly remove such content.

The move is an attempt to react to US government demands to “do something” against terrorist propaganda, with the companies apparently hoping that the voluntary crackdown will be enough to stave off any formal government efforts to regulate them.

ACLU to Obama: Commute sentence for Chelsea Manning

The American Civil Liberties Union and gay-rights groups are lobbying President Barack Obama to commute the prison sentence of a transgender soldier who leaked classified government and military documents.

The ACLU said the letter Monday co-signed by more than a dozen civil rights groups considers Chelsea Manning's 35-year sentence unprecedented.

Attorneys on behalf of Manning, imprisoned at Kansas' Fort Leavenworth, made a similar pitch last month for commutation.

Edward Snowden points out that David Petraeus “shared information that was far more highly classified than I ever did”

Edward Snowden, the former contractor for the National Security Agency who leaked tens of thousands of documents revealing that the American government has spied on its own citizens, told Katie Couric on Yahoo News on Monday that retired Gen. David Petraeus, Donald Trump’s potential pick for secretary of state, disclosed far more classified information despite receiving a much lighter punishment.

“We have a two-tiered system of justice in the United States,” Snowden said to Couric, “where people who are either well-connected to government or they have access to an incredible amount of resources get very light punishments.”

Snowden went on to juxtapose how he was treated by the federal government with the punishments received by Petraeus, who shared classified information with his mistress and biographer, Paula Broadwell.

“Perhaps the best-known case in recent history here is Gen. Petraeus — who shared information that was far more highly classified than I ever did with journalists,” Snowden said. “And he shared this information not with the public for their benefit, but with his biographer and lover for personal benefit — conversations that had information, detailed information, about military special-access programs, that’s classified above top secret, conversations with the president and so on.”

Bernard Cazeneuve named French PM as Manuel Valls resigns

The French president, François Hollande, has named Bernard Cazeneuve to head the French government as prime minister until a presidential election next May.

Cazeneuve, who was interior minister, replaced Manuel Valls, who resigned on Tuesday morning after announcing his bid to become France’s next president.

Cazeneuve will name his government later, but is not expected to carry out a significant reshuffle for the remaining five months of the Socialist government’s term in office.

Shortly after the appointment, Bruno Le Roux was named as Cazeneuve’s replacement at the interior ministry. Le Roux, 51, is president of the socialist group – including the EELV party (formerly the Greens) – in the Assemblée Nationale. It is his first government appointment.

Can Valls 'reconcile' the divided left?

New Zealand's prime minister resigns out of nowhere

New Zealand’s John Key on Monday became the second prime minister in the space of a news cycle to announce his plans to resign, not long after his Italian counterpart, Matteo Renzi, said he too was stepping down.

But unlike Renzi, who had already planned to quit if the Italian public voted “no” in Sunday’s referendum on constitutional reform, Key faced no such challenge to his leadership.

With no scandals engulfing his premiership, the announcement at his weekly press conference Monday landed as a bombshell. ...

He said the decision was motivated by a sense that the time was right to leave on his own terms. “A lot of leaders stay at the top too long,” he told reporters.

Brexit drags on

The UK is once again looking to try and make some sense of the Brexit mess. A full 163 days after the British people voted to leave the EU, the Supreme Court in London this week is hearing arguments from the government about why it should be allowed to get on with it. ...

Yes, there was a vote in June when the majority of voters said they wanted the UK to leave the EU, and yes there was a court case in November when three High Court judges ruled that the government needed parliament’s approval to trigger Article 50 and begin the process of leaving the EU.

But of course that was never going to be the end of it. The government immediately appealed that decision, and this week an 11-judge panel in the Supreme Court is being asked to overturn the High Court ruling.

Huge if true. #SupremeCourt pic.twitter.com/AHrHIIBn1e

— Lewis Nicholas (@ldnicho) December 5, 2016

Portland to vote on taxing companies if CEO earns 100 times more than staff

The city council of Portland in Oregon will vote on Wednesday whether to impose a tax on companies whose CEO’s pay exceeds the median salary of their workers by a ratio of more than 100-to-one.

The measure, which was proposed by Portland city commissioner and former environmental lawyer Steve Novick, will take advantage of the fact that new Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) rules will require companies to disclose their executive pay ratios for the first time beginning in 2017. ...

The disparity between workers’ and CEOs’ pay has been rising sharply since the 1960s, when the average ratio was around 20-1. It now stands at above 200-1.

Novick’s proposal would increase current corporate income taxes by 10% if a company CEO had a salary ratio of above 100-1, and by 25% for CEOs with a ratio of 250-1 or higher.

Transition official: Trump will not rip up NAFTA

Members of the Trump transition team are trying to tamp down concerns among corporate leaders that the incoming administration may spark trade wars with Mexico, Canada and other major trading partners over the next four years.

Anthony Scaramucci, a senior advisor on the Trump transition team, told a group of business leaders convened at a bipartisan meeting by the group No Labels that President-elect Donald Trump is a free-trader who is looking to make trade deals more fair, not scrap them.

Scaramucci said part of his role with Trump’s economic team has been to study the impact of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which Trump has called “the worst trade deal maybe ever signed anywhere.”

“I don’t think anybody in the administration from the top to the bottom is looking for protectionism. We understand the economic harm and the impact that would take,” he said. “I don’t think anybody in the administration is looking for quote-unquote tariffs, but I think they are a cudgel, if you will, to lay out there if we can’t get the trade deals to be right-sided to now benefit the American people.” ...

Scaramucci said the United States has in the past sought trade deals that made it easier for foreign partners to export goods to the U.S., rather than making it easier for U.S. manufacturers to penetrate foreign markets.

He added that the deals signed since World War II were designed to promote global peace and stability, but sometimes came at the expense of American workers.

Lawsuit alleges Missouri authorities jailed woman for being 'too poor to pay'

She got into a car accident that was not her fault, but Nicole Bolden ended up being arrested in front of her toddlers and jailed in foul conditions for two weeks because she could not afford to pay $1,758 in outstanding traffic fines, according to a civil rights lawsuit filed Monday.

Now she is suing the authorities in Missouri, accusing them of jailing her illegally, “solely because she was too poor to pay”, in a system she alleges amounts to running an unconstitutional, modern-day version of a debtors’ prison.

Bolden, 34, was only able to get out of the St Charles County jail, near St Louis, when her mother borrowed against her life insurance policy to pay her bond. ...

Bolden is suing the city of Foristell, and St Charles County.

The federal lawsuit also accuses Foristell of extorting money out of Bolden and other African American residents, in particular, with fines and fees that boost the city’s coffers in a system that “maximizes revenues, not justice”. ...

Her lawyer, Michael-John Voss of ArchCity Defenders, said local courts across the region regularly failed to assess a person’s ability to pay, as required under the constitution, and instead arrested and jailed those struggling financially, rather than working out a payment plan or a stint of community service to resolve minor violations.

Jailing people over their poverty amounts to operating illegal debtors’ prisons, Voss said.

California police use fake news release in gang plot that experts say erodes trust

A California police department’s use of a fake news release in an anti-gang operation has drawn warnings that the tactic undermines police and threatens trust with the public.

Santa Maria police chief Ralph Martin defended the tactic last week, saying it was necessary to protect the lives of two men from a gang that wanted to kill them.

The fictional news release was found in court documents last week by the Santa Maria Times, nearly 10 months after the local paper and television stations had reported the story as fact. Police had said officers had detained two cousins, 22-year-old Jose Santos Melendez and 23-year-old Jose Marino Melendez, on charges of identity theft and had given the men to immigration authorities.

The police had lied. For weeks, the department had been running a surveillance operation on a gang called MS-13, with active wiretaps. Listening to MS-13 conversations, the police learned that the Melendez cousins, members of a rival gang, were targeted for murders. Detectives took the cousins into protective custody, removing them from their home where the men and their family might have been targeted by the hitmen.

As a cover, the police wrote a fake news release to deceive the MS-13 assassins. When the would-be killers returned to look for the cousins, police eavesdropped on a phone conversation and heard the hitmen talking about local news reports of the arrests.

Martin said that the investigation, called Operation Matador, was able to continue thanks to the ruse, and that police eventually arrested 17 gang members on charges related to 10 murders. The police chief told the Associated Press he would not rule out fabricating another story to protect lives and investigations.

A single juror may have prevented a conviction for the cop who killed Walter Scott

A South Carolina judge declared a mistrial Monday in the Walter Scott case after jurors were unable to agree on whether Michael Slager, a white ex–police officer, should be convicted of murder or manslaughter in connection with the April 2015 shooting death of Scott, a 50-year-old unarmed black man.

Tensions in the case have been mounting since Friday, when the jury reported a deadlock that reportedly revolved around a juror who submitted a note saying he could not “with good conscience” convict Slager. Earlier Monday, the Charleston Post and Courier reported that the jury had shifted from a deadlock — suggesting the members had firm but conflicting views on what Slager’s fate should be — to indecision, meaning they were less sure of their convictions. ...

A mistrial means that the state prosecution team can retry Slager, and Ninth Circuit Solicitor Scarlett Wilson released a statement expressing her intention to do just that. “I cannot overstate our disappointment that this case was not resolved,” Wilson said. “We will try Michael Slager again.”

The former North Charleston police officer is also facing federal civil rights charges; that trial is slated for next year. He will face weapons charges for commission of a civil rights offense along with obstruction of justice charges.

Private Prisons Are Really Bad, but Good Enough for Immigrants, Concludes Homeland Security Report

A report [about private immigration detention facilities], produced by a panel of law enforcement, national security, and military experts, was commissioned by the Department of Homeland Security on the heels of a similar review by the Department of Justice in August. In that report, the DOJ found that private prisons “simply do not provide the same level of correctional services, programs, and resources,” “do not save substantially on costs,” and “do not maintain the same level of safety and security” as facilities operated by the Bureau of Prisons. ...

The DHS advisory committee report, released last week, raised similar criticisms of the billion-dollar private prison industry, but was more fatalistic in its conclusions. ...

“Fiscal considerations, combined with the need for realistic capacity to handle sudden increases in detention, indicate that DHS’s use of private for-profit detention will continue,” the report concluded. Only one of the six members of the Homeland Security Advisory Council subcommittee that drafted the report, Marshall Fitz, dissented, recommending instead “a measured but deliberate shift away from the private prison model.”

But when the report — and its conclusion that private prisons were an inevitable evil — was brought to the broader HSAC committee for a vote, it sparked a contentious discussion. The committee ultimately voted 17-5 to make Fitz’s dissent the report’s recommendation to DHS. ...

Unfortunately, since HSAC serves in an advisory function only, the symbolically powerful vote is unlikely to have much effect.

First Republican 'faithless elector' announces intent to vote against Trump

A Republican presidential elector has become the first to announce that he intends to defect from Donald Trump when he casts his vote as part of the electoral college, vowing to try and block the president-elect from reaching the White House.

Writing in the New York Times, Christopher Suprun has declared that he will break ranks with his fellow Republican electors in Texas and cast his vote for a GOP candidate whom he deems to be more fit for highest office. He argues that under the electoral college system he has the constitutional duty to vote according to his conscience, not just according to party loyalty – and his conscience tells him that Trump is unfit for the presidency.

Citing the Federalist Papers, the historic documents that laid out the principles behind the electoral college system, Surprun, who as a firefighter was one of the first responders to the Pentagon on 9/11, says that each elector must decide whether “candidates are qualified, not engaged in demagogy, and independent from foreign influence … Mr Trump urged violence against protesters at his rallies during the campaign. He speaks of retribution against his critics.”

He adds: “I owe no debt to a party. I owe a debt to my children to leave them a nation they can trust.”

Suprun’s declared defection from Trump marks the first time that a Republican has broken ranks in this election cycle to become what is known as a “faithless elector”.

US elections: broken machines could throw Michigan recount into chaos

Broken polling machines may have put vote counts in question in more than half of Detroit’s precincts and nearly one-third of surrounding Wayne County, possibly throwing the Michigan recount into chaos.

If the discrepancies can’t be solved by recounting every paper ballot in question by hand, a recount in those precincts simply won’t happen.

Donald Trump’s slim margin over Hillary Clinton means any chance of the state flipping on a recount likely hinges on Wayne County, where the Democrat won by a landslide. Clinton lost by 10,704 votes in Michigan; Wayne’s population of 1,759,335 makes it the likeliest candidate to contain errors bigger than that margin.

Eighty-seven of Wayne County’s decade-old voting machines broke on election day, according to Detroit’s elections director, Daniel Baxter. He told the Detroit News, which first reported the story, that ballot scanners often jammed when polling place workers were trying to operate them. Every time a jammed ballot was removed and reinserted, he suspects the machine may have re-counted it.

Preliminary investigation by election officials in Wayne County found that 610 of the area’s 1,680 precincts could not reconcile the number of votes cast according to the machines with the number of ballots issued according to the electoral rolls. Detroit contains 662 of Wayne’s precincts; in 392 of those, the number of votes didn’t match up.

Standing Rock protesters asked to 'go home' by Sioux leader

The chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe has asked the thousands of “water protectors” gathered in encampments along the Missouri river to “go home” after the US Army Corps of Engineers denied a permit for the Dakota Access pipeline to drill under the river.

In a video statement Dave Archambault thanked the thousands of Native American and environmental activists who travelled to North Dakota to help the tribe fight back against the pipeline, which they feared would contaminate their water source and destroy sacred sites.

But after the “huge victory” of the Army Corps decision, Archambault said: “There’s no need for the water protectors or for anyone to be putting ourselves in unsafe environments.

Archambault’s directive was rejected by many long-term water protectors, however, as the camps hunkered down amid a fierce blizzard.

“The chairman does not tell us what to do. The chairman is not in charge of the camp,” said Ladonna Bravebull Allard. “We stand. We don’t move. We don’t go nowhere.”

Allard, a member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, founded the first of several “spiritual camps”, known as Sacred Stone, in April.

“We came to fight a black snake,” she said, referring to the pipeline. “Until it’s dead, we stand. That doesn’t mean put it five miles up the river. That means kill it dead.”

Standing Rock activists stay in place, fearing pipeline victory was a 'trick'

Native American activists at the Standing Rock “water protector” camps vowed to remain in place the morning after the US Army Corps of Engineers denied a key permit for the Dakota Access pipeline, with many expressing concerns that the incoming Trump administration and potential legal action from the pipeline company could reverse their victory. ...

The companies behind the pipeline, who have the backing of the incoming Trump administration, have insisted the project would still go ahead. “Nothing indicates for us to pack up and go home,” said Tom Goldtooth, executive director of the Indigenous Environmental Network. “Our native people have reason to be distrustful.”

Tara Houska, a member of the Couchiching First Nation, was similarly circumspect.

“I celebrate with caution,” the national campaigns director for Honor the Earth said. “We know that Trump is coming and with that, we know our fight will continue.”

Energy Transfer Partners and Sunoco Logistics, the companies behind the project, called the ruling a “purely political action”, accused the Obama administration of abandoning the rule of law “in favor of currying favor with a narrow and extreme political constituency”, and said the pipeline project would go ahead.

“As stated all along, ETP and SXL are fully committed to ensuring that this vital project is brought to completion and fully expect to complete construction of the pipeline without any additional rerouting in and around Lake Oahe,” the companies said in a statement. “Nothing this administration has done today changes that in any way.”

US could see extreme rains increase of 400% by end of century

When the skies open up and deluge an area, the results can be catastrophic, with roads washed out and homes destroyed by the resulting flash floods. Such extreme downpours are already occurring more often across the US, but a new study finds that as global temperatures rise, storms could dump considerably more rain and skyrocket in frequency.

The study, in the journal Nature Climate Change, suggests that storms that now occur about once a season could happen five times a season by the century’s end, a 400% increase.

And when such storms do occur, they could produce up to 70% more rain. That means that an intense thunderstorm that would today drop about 5cm (2 inches) of rain would drop 9cm in the future.

Such massive amounts of rain occurring more often could put significant strain on infrastructure that already struggles to deal with heavy rainfall, as seen across the country this year in places from Louisiana to West Virginia.

Heavy downpours have already increased across the entire continental US, according to the 2014 National Climate Assessment, mostly notably in the north-east, where they have risen by 71%.

Also of Interest

Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.

Elizabeth Warren’s Shameful Exploitation of Standing Rock Victory

Trump’s looming showdown with the ‘secret government’

The Soviet Union collapsed overnight. Don’t assume western democracy will last forever

Castro Was Right About US Policy in Latin America

The Coming War on China

Post-Fact Politics: Reviewing the History of Fake News and Propaganda

Native Leaders Formally Forgive Veterans in Emotional Ceremony

Why the Dakota Access Pipeline fight isn't over

Turkey alleges US charter schools are a front for man accused in failed coup

Bill Black: Jobs, Jobs, Jobs – Not Austerity

Is Wall Street Trying to Rig Trump’s Business Advisory Panel?

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A Little Night Music

John Lee Henley - Knockin' on Lula Mae's Door

Toussaint McCall - The Toussaint Shuffle

Toussaint McCall - Let's Do It Over

Toussaint McCall - Nothing Takes The Place Of You

Toussaint McCall - I'm Gonna Make Me A Woman

Toussaint McCall - The Title Escapes Me

Toussaint McCall - I'll Laugh Till I Cry

Toussaint McCall - My Love Is A Guarantee