* Just developing: Colorado Springs police respond to active shooter at Planned Parenthood. I lived in Colorado Springs for almost two years and have often said that, if I picked where I wanted to live based on weather and natural beauty alone, I’d still be there. But it is also home to more fundamentalist Christian organizations and military installations than just about any other place in the country. That’s why it is so concerning that the location of the shooting is reported to be Planned Parenthood. Until we know more, here’s hoping for everyone’s safety there!
* Apparently the Koch brothers are investing something like $9 million in what I’d call the very definition of astro-turphing.
The approach — a free Thanksgiving turkey in exchange for some personal information — captures the mission of Libre, a multimillion-dollar effort financed by the conservative billionaire Kochs and devoted to winning over Hispanics, with the message that economic freedom and smaller-government principles will yield opportunity and prosperity.
As I learned to say in the South…”Bless their hearts.” The idea of wooing Hispanic voters to a party where the candidates are all trying to out-Trump “the Donald” on his immigrant fear-mongering is a GREAT way for the Koch’s to waste their money.
* In the era of police dash and body cams, we now have two examples of shootings where the issue has been getting law enforcement to actually release the videos (Jamar Clark in Minneapolis and Laquan McDonald in Chicago). Robinson Meyer makes the case that simply getting the cameras in place is not enough.
The crimes that the city of Chicago committed in the case of Laquan McDonald appear to go much further than its handling of open-records law. But this is not the last time that the city or its civic servants will commit those crimes. Strengthening the legal strictures around body cams now might make justice arrive a little faster next time.
* As a former therapist, I am aware of the ethical problems associated with diagnosing someone absent a face-to-face examination. But it is apparently the gravity of the situation that convinced several psychiatrists to go on record with Henry Alford about Donald Trump.
For mental-health professionals, Donald Trump is at once easily diagnosed but slightly confounding. “Remarkably narcissistic,” said developmental psychologist Howard Gardner, a professor at Harvard Graduate School of Education. “Textbook narcissistic personality disorder,” echoed clinical psychologist Ben Michaelis. “He’s so classic that I’m archiving video clips of him to use in workshops because there’s no better example of his characteristics,” said clinical psychologist George Simon, who conducts lectures and seminars on manipulative behavior.
But the kicker is that this is about WAY more than Trump’s disorder.
Mr. Gardner said, “For me, the compelling question is the psychological state of his supporters. They are unable or unwilling to make a connection between the challenges faced by any president and the knowledge and behavior of Donald Trump. In a democracy, that is disastrous.”
* Julian Hattem reports that, as part of the recently-passed USA Freedom Act, the FISA court has appointed 5 new advisors who are meant to balance the scale in a court that has not traditionally incorporated the adversarial process.
The five new “friends of the court” are former acting head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel Jonathan Cedarbaum; criminal defense attorney John Cline; Georgetown University law professor Laura Donohue; former aide to Attorney General Eric Holder Amy Jeffress; and information security lawyer Marc Zwillinger.
The selections earned some early praise from privacy advocates.
That’s it for Friday. D.R. Tucker will be in over the weekend to keep you up to date.
As I head out, I’ll leave you with this video that is sure to get you moving after the turkey leftovers settle in. I love it because, as us old fogies know, the work “funk” is merely a recent way to describe what happens when we humans feel the heat of the beat.
