Today's Liberal News

Sunday Night Owls: A year after Iranian general was assassinated, U.S. policy needs a big rethink

Night Owls, a themed open thread, appears at Daily Kos seven days a week

17 DAYS UNTIL JOE BIDEN AND KAMALA HARRIS TAKE THE OATH OF OFFICE

Paul R. Pillar at Responsible Statecraft writes—A year ago the U.S. assassinated a national leader:

Sunday marks the first anniversary of the assassination of Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani by the United States, using an armed drone at the Baghdad International Airport.

Washington Post releases full tape of Trump pressing Georgia state officials to commit fraud

The Washington Post has just released the full one-hour audio recording of Donald Trump’s call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger. Also on the call on Trump’s behalf were chief of staff Mark Meadows and prominent conservative lawyer Cleta Mitchell.

Over the course of the rambling call, Trump appears to threaten or extort Raffensberger and state legal counsel Ryan Germany.

All living former defense secretaries condemn GOP attempts to overturn election, involve military

In The Washington Post, all ten of this nation’s living former secretaries of defense have written an opinion column uniformly opposing any military involvement in Republicans’ ongoing attempts to overthrow the results of November’s presidential elections. Among the signers are Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Leon Panetta, Robert Gates, Mark Esper, and James Mattis.

“Efforts to involve the U.S.

Trump Crosses a Bright-Red Line

In a bombshell conversation with Georgia’s secretary of state yesterday, President Donald Trump made monkeys of every Republican official and every conservative talking head who professed to believe Trump’s allegations of voter fraud. The president himself made clear that he had only one end in view: overturning the 2020 election.You knew this already, of course. Anyone connected to reality knew it. Even most of Trump’s political allies probably knew it.

Denver Riggleman Has Seen the Future of the Republican Party

Updated 11:56 a.m. on January 3, 2020.Denver Riggleman had a rough December. For one thing, he’s about to lose his job: Over the summer, members of the Virginia GOP voted to kick the freshman Republican out of Congress, largely because he publicly officiated a same-sex wedding. Riggleman’s cousin died of COVID-19 the week before Christmas, and his grandmother had to be hospitalized with the virus.

The 1996 Law That Ruined the Internet

In the United States, you are free to speak, but you are not free of responsibility for what you say. If your speech is defamatory, you can be sued. If you are a publisher, you can be sued for the speech you pass along. But online services such as Facebook and Twitter can pass along almost anything, with almost no legal accountability, thanks to a law known as Section 230.

A Warning From a Democrat in a Red State

A demonstration in Berea, Kentucky. (Meg Wilson)As a novelist, I often travel the country to talk about my books. During those events, almost invariably someone will ask me why my home state of Kentucky is so conservative. Many of these people ask why we’ve kept Mitch McConnell in office for almost 36 years. They take their anger at him out on me.

The Dark Reality of Betting Against QAnon

QAnon—the conspiracy theory that elite Democrats, government officials, and celebrities are part of a cannibalistic, child-sex-trafficking cult, and Donald Trump is the hero destined to stop them—has allegedly inspired kidnappings, car chases, and a murder. It has also made 28-year-old Patrick Cage a lot of money.In 2018, Cage, a Californian who works in international environmental policy, discovered a gambling platform called PredictIt.