Light News Dump

China's National Health Commission confirms 830 cases of new respiratory virus, 25 deaths.
https://www.newscenter1.tv/i/chinas-national-health-commission-confirms-830-cases-of-new-respiratory-virus-25-deaths/

Susan Collins was "stunned" by Jerry Nadler's late-night diatribe this week against what he factually described as a cover-up by Senate Republicans for Trump that she wrote a note to Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts to take action against Nadler. "Stunned" by the word "coverup" but barely "concerned" about Trump blackmailing countries to attack Americans.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/01/23/susan-collins-impeachment-note-john-roberts-102826

Nadler plays a clip of Lindsey Graham from 1999: "I think it's truth. I think that's what they meant by high crimes. Doesn't have to be a crime. It's just when you start using your office and you're acting in a way that hurts people, you committed a high crime."
https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1220419710581399552

Graham left the Senate floor minutes before Nadler started playing the video of him. Barrasso, who sits next to Graham, patted his empty chair as the video began to play
https://twitter.com/CatieEdmondson/status/1220419357161021440

The Brexit bill has become UK law. The UK is officially leaving the EU next week.
https://news.sky.com/story/brexit-deal-becomes-uk-law-paving-way-for-eu-departure-next-week-11915538

I am devastated to share news that my dear friend and cofounder of the @NEWSHOUR Jim Lehrer died today at home. Sending love to his Kate and their family.
https://twitter.com/JudyWoodruff/status/1220408488981037059
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/press-releases/from-judy-woodruff-longtime-pbs-newshour-anchor-and-co-founder-jim-lehrer-has-passed-away

With heavy hearts we report the death of PBS NewsHour co-founder Jim Lehrer at age 85. A giant in journalism, his tenacity and dedication to simply delivering the news remain the core of our work.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/remembering-jim-lehrer

‘This time I’m scared’: SARS virologist warns Wuhan virus far worse, as China locks down second city
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-this-time-im-scared-sars-virologist-warns-wuhan-virus-far-worse/

Three American specialist firefighters dead as water-bombing plane crashes in Australia
https://www.9news.com.au/national/firefighting-plane-may-have-crashed-in-nsw-south/dae5f69d-c400-46ce-83a3-940558a02892

Trump’s Doral Resort Spikes Its Room Rates Ahead Of His RNC Visit. The near doubling of rates may have increased taxpayer costs for housing Secret Service and other staff who traveled there ahead of the president's trip.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-doral-room-rates_n_5e285b24c5b6779e9c2b6521

'Biggest Loss of Clean Water Protection the Country Has Ever Seen': Trump Guts Safeguards for US Streams and Wetlands
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/01/23/biggest-loss-clean-water-protection-country-has-ever-seen-trump-guts-safeguards-us

National Debt Increased By $3 Trillion During Donald Trump's Three Years As President
https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-national-debt-increase-3-trillion-first-three-years-presidency-1483660

White House YouTube page streamed a sermon that claimed homosexuality was caused by demons. Mike Pence was there
https://www.salon.com/2020/01/23/white-house-broadcasts-blatantly-homophobic-sermon-attended-by-mike-pence/

Republican Senator Mike Braun Tweets Video of Himself Saying Trump Never Asked Ukraine to Investigate Biden, Despite His Video Showing Trump Doing It
https://www.newsweek.com/republican-senator-trump-didnt-ask-foreign-leaders-investigate-biden-1483721

CNN: We continue to cover, currently " Reasons You Know President Trump Put Himself First. "
MSNBC: We continue to cover, currently " Reasons You Know President Trump Put Himself First. "
FoxNews: Here is a Trump Tweet, and now to go on break

Food market at centre of deadly coronavirus outbreak admits selling live koalas, snakes, rats and wolves
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=12302979

Protesters who demanded Huawei CFO's release revealed to be paid actors
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/22/huawei-protests-cfo-canada-trial-actors

New research shows that sales of plant-based foods that directly replace animal products have grown 31% in the past two years
https://www.forbes.com/sites/douglasyu/2020/01/19/plant-based-foods-are-hot-now-they-just-got-hotter/#7d2daa31214c

Sanders’ previously unreported comparison between Vermont workers and that of enslaved people evoke a different element of his campaign—assertions by critics that he tends to dismiss systemic racism as economic disenfranchisement
https://www.thedailybeast.com/bernie-sanders-once-compared-vermont-workers-to-black-slaves

Bernie Sanders spoke in 1996 about the future need for “adjustments” to Social Security, a term that Sanders campaign/allied Social Security group had called a “euphemism” for cuts when it was used by Biden.
https://twitter.com/jeneps/status/1220107221272535041?s=21

Treating this like a fucking joke - it's disgusting. This is an insult to all of us. I have done jury duty and this is unconscionable behavior showing how little they respect our system, our Constitution, our country, its citizens and the plain old truth. We need to vote everyone of these traitors out.
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/479595-gop-senator-provides-fidget-spinners-to-senate-colleagues-at-lunch

SCHIFF: "If POTUS was fighting corruption, why would he hide it from us? ... why wouldn't he be proud to tell Congress, 'I'm holding up aid & I'm holding it up because I'm fighting corruption.' Why wouldn't he? Because of course it wasn't true. There's no evidence of that." Video: https://twitter.com/i/status/1220072604280807424
https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1220072604280807424

Just a reminder that republicans could have subpoenaed Joe and Hunter Biden anytime from 2015 when the "scandal" became public to today and they have never done it. They don't need a deal for witnesses. They have the majority. Their outrage is fake. They don't want them to testify because they know it's nothing and it will just make them look bad. They are far more useful as a fear mongering tactic for their base.

Schiff: "...and here’s new evidence that you wouldn’t allow us to add public ally to the record, here it is up on the screen, and here’s me reading it to you...."

The removal of an elected official from office does not result in the appointment of the person they ran against to office. If President Trump is removed, the next President will be Vice President Mike Pence, not Hilary Clinton, and if he is removed for some reason, The Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, becomes President, not Hilary Clinton.

Calling out all the Republican Senators who asked for Shokin to be removed - who are now claiming that he was removed by Ukraine and/or Obama to protect Joe Biden.

That Dershowitz clip from 1998 probably has him fuming. That was a solid move by Nadler. The key defense attorney for Trump spent a good time yesterday arguing that if there is no crime then impeachment can't happen yet the clip of him in 98' clearly had him saying the opposite.

Schiff is destroying every single defense they have. This man will go down in history. 200 years from now kids will learn about him just like how we learn about Hamilton today.

“Thus far, we have presented the core factual narrative. None of that record can be seriously disputed, and none of it will be disputed. We can predict what the President’s lawyers will say in the next few days. I urge you senators to listen to it, carefully. You will hear accusations and name calling. You will hear complaints about the process in the house, and the motives of the managers. You will hear that this all comes down to a phone call that was ‘perfect’ - as if you had not just seen evidence of a months long government-wide effort to extort a foreign government. But you will not hear a refutation of the evidence. You will not hear testimony to refute the testimony you have seen. Indeed, if the President had any exculpatory witnesses, even a single one, he would be demanding their appearance here, instead of urging you not to permit additional witnesses to testify.”
- Rep. Jerrold Nadler, telling it like it is

Honestly I hate when people say "THERE'S NO EXPLANATION FOR THE CONSTITUTION", there is, its called the Federalist Papers, and if it's not in there, its in Hamilton's writings. Seriously, there's even an argument against strict constitutionalism in there. Its almost like everything the conservatives believe, is against the views of the framers of the constitution.

If Republicans don't lose fucking massively in 2020 our country is too stupid to exist. This fucking garbage they believe is just so insultingly contrary to basic common sense that if our country doesn't reject it, we are functionally dead as a democracy. The 45% of people who don't care enough to even vote are almost as much of an embarrassment as Republicans.

Trump is on Twitter saying Democrats are trying to destroy social security while Trump himself stated he will gut it. . .

Trump defender Republican House Represenative Matt Gaetz praised Democrats' impeachment presentation and skewered Trump's defense as looking like 'an 8th grade book report' (
https://www.businessinsider.com/matt-gaetz-trump-impeachment-defense-8th-grade-book-report-2020-1

Within days of Trump backing down from his plan to direct a multi-million dollar contract to himself to hold the G7 conference at Doral, the RNC decided to hold its winter meeting there. It is putting some $500,000 into Trump's cash registers.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-golf-resort-doral-rnc_n_5e29ec56c5b67d8874ae887e

My only complaint is that all of this is just the same information over and over again. Democrats really should have made this more about how this is a pattern of behavior, and that his conduct is only going to get worse - and that's alarming when it's already impeachable. Yeah, make them have to subpoena more witnesses, but once we're delving into rehash territory, we need to move onto fresh topics. The problem with going over all this again and again is that Republicans already normalized it. They spent the last three months going through the process of "it didn't happen, okay it happened but others did worse, they didn't but it's fine" and the rest of their crap. They need to be drudged through their entire memory hole to be reminded that this level of what they think is fine is the bottom of a very long set of very large slopes they've slid down. And they need to be reminded that they're going to have to think it's fine when the next president does it, even if that president isn't on their team.

The spokesman for Harry Dunn's family says U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has turned down an extradition request for Anne Sacoolas who was charged with causing the death of the 19-year-old
https://twitter.com/SkyNewsBreak/status/1220475415581642752

Can someone please file a judicial misconduct complaint against Justice Roberts for not doing his f’ing job? The full jury must stay in the proceedings, and not be allowed to disappear. Instructions for filing:
https://www.uscfc.uscourts.gov/judicial-misconduct-when-to-file

White people (especially dudes) love Bernie because he tells them their low economic prospects count towards their minority status. Thus, instead of having to acknowledge your privilege you can just blame it all on capitalism and call it a day. This is why Bernie often deflects specific questions about the unique struggles of women and minorities to talk about wealth inequality as a whole. More than that he rationalized racism as a product of capitalism in his NYT editorial board interview. I'm not saying capitalism doesn't facilitate racism in many ways but people don't stop being racist when they have better economic prospects. Bernie tells his white (mostly male but some female) followers they're just as oppressed because they're poor and they use that to silence minorities. Example: Woman/POC: This is my experience with racism/sexism. Bernie Sanders and his supporters: That issue is just the result of capitalism. I have never benefitted from privilege or contributed to systemic racism/sexism because I'm poor. Now be quiet and vote for Bernie. He'll fix everything.

Attorneys general in 20 states and the District of Columbia filed a lawsuit Thursday challenging a federal regulation that could allow blueprints for making guns on 3D printers to be posted on the internet. New York Attorney General Tish James, who helped lead the coalition of state attorneys general, argued that posting the blueprints would allow anyone to go online and use the downloadable files to create unregistered and untraceable assault-style weapons that could be difficult to detect. The lawsuit, joined by California, Washington and 17 other states, was filed in U.S. District Court in Seattle. It is likely to reignite a fierce debate over the use of 3D-printed firearms and is the latest in a series of attempts by state law enforcement officials to block the Trump administration from easing the accessibility of the blueprints.
https://apnews.com/0a34a17d6ee5f9f77af6b51a3280f310

The billionaire sentenced today to 66 months in prison is one of several successful opioid fraud cases related to Insys. An exec who rapped in a pill bottle costume & a stripper who oversaw a third of the company’s sales force are also heading to prison. | Insys Therapeutics Inc. founder John Kapoor -- the first top executive of an opioid maker convicted of crimes tied to the painkillers -- was sentenced to 5 1/2 years in prison for leading a conspiracy that helped spawn a U.S. crisis over the highly addictive medicines.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-23/insys-founder-gets-66-months-in-prison-for-leading-opioid-fraud

New Jersey this week became the ninth state to ban the so-called gay and transgender panic defenses, joining Hawaii, California, Nevada, Illinois, New York, Connecticut, Maine and Rhode Island in barring the controversial legal strategy.
https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/n-j-bans-gay-transgender-panic-defenses-n1120416?cid=sm_npd_nn_tw_np

This shameful policy will give polluters free rein to dump pesticides, fertilizers and chemicals directly into waters, threatening the drinking water of 117 million Americans and setting us back decades in our work to clean and protect our nation’s vital water systems.
https://www.speaker.gov/newsroom/12320-0