Random News: April 26, 2024

DISCLAIMER: Zak's Random News is very random and doesn't cover many things, and not everything may be accurate, because I'm just some guy. Go find a real news source.

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Good morning. It’s April 26, 2024, and if you can believe it, it’s a Friday once again! I’m glad this week is drawing to a close. I mean, I’m sure you are too. This has just been a bit of a grind with work stuff and crazy news things and whatnot. Speaking of which…

• Yesterday was the historic Supreme Court hearing to determine whether a president has total immunity regarding crimes they commit while in office.
• The good news: the Court appeared ready to reject Dump’s claims of sweeping immunity and the broad protections he has sought to shut down his federal election subversion case.
• The less good news: they also seemed reluctant to give special counsel Jack Smith carte blanche to pursue those charges.
• The court’s radical conservatives aggressively questioned the lawyer representing the special counsel, seemingly embracing Dump’s central theme that without at least some form of immunity, future presidents would over time be subjected to politically motivated prosecutions.
• Much of the hearing focused on whether there should be a distinction between official acts by a president pursuant to presidential duties versus his private conduct.
• Their decision could determine not only Dump’s legal fate, but also will set the rules of criminal exposure for future presidents.
• One hopeful note: Dump’s attorney John Sauer acknowledged that some of the alleged conduct supporting the criminal charges against the former president were private.
• That would mean he committed those acts as a private citizen, which would get no special protection in his role as president.
• This is against Dumpy’s claim that the entire prosecution should be thrown out.
• Interestingly, conservative justice Amy Coney Barrett was the first to pin Sauer down on the distinction between official and personal acts alleged in the charges.
• Sauer agreed that particular acts that Dump is being tried for — spreading bogus election fraud claims, filing false court filings, putting forward fraudulent sets of electors — were not acts he did as president, and conceded those private acts would not be covered by presidential immunity.
• In a back and forth with justice Elena Kagan, Sauer also said that Dump’s phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger —  the one where he infamously requested Raffensperger “find” enough votes to flip the results — was not an official act.
• However, Sauer did try to claim that Dump was acting in an official capacity in his conversation with the Republican National Committee about assembling slates of so-called “fake electors” and his call for the Arizona lawmakers to hold a hearing on election fraud.
• When will we get their ruling? Well, everything thus far has played into Dump’s tactic to keep delaying judgements until after the election this fall.
• The Supreme Court has moved quite quickly in similar high-profile matters in the past. In 1974, for instance, when a unanimous court ordered President Richard Nixon to turn over the tapes of surreptitious recordings he made in the White House, it did so after roughly two weeks after arguments.
• In another often-cited example, the court decided the Bush v. Gore election dispute in 2000 a day after it heard arguments.
• But this time? I seriously doubt any drastic speed will be applied.
• Guess we’ll see. I predict that the Supreme Court’s decisions will be thrown at us sometime in June, by which time it will be difficult to get Dump’s other criminal trials to be enacted previous to the election.
• Little side note: when an accused person is innocent, they want their trial as soon as possible, and that’s why there’s a constitutional right to a speedy trial. Guilty criminals almost always seek to delay their trials as long as possible, as Dump is doing now.
• Let’s move on with some excellent news on a totally different topic.
• Yesterday, the US government banned internet service providers (ISPs) from meddling in the speeds their customers receive when browsing the web and downloading files, restoring tough Obama-era rules that were rescinded during the Dump administration.
• You may have heard of this “net neutrality” regulation. The new rules adopted by the FCC prohibit providers such as AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon from selectively speeding up, slowing down or blocking users’ internet traffic.
• The order will go into effect in about 60 days. However, if Dump wins reelection, a GOP-led FCC would likely repeal the rules.
• The telecom industry is also expected to file a legal challenge. There will also be pushback from top Republicans on Capitol Hill.
• But it’s a good step. I was pretty vocal about net neutrality when it was taken down in 2017.
• Moving on.
• Let’s talk about the continuing flareup of student social action at an expanding list of colleges across the country.
• Yesterday’s series of arrests at pro-Palestinian protests brought the total number of people detained in a week of demonstrations to more than 500. College officials have struggled to quell the unrest with attempts to clear encampments and close buildings.
• Perhaps the biggest story of the moment is from here in Los Angeles, where the University of Southern California was compelled to cancel the school’s main commencement ceremony that had been slated for May 10.
• Over the past couple of weeks, police have detained demonstrators at schools including Emerson College in Boston, New York University, the University of Texas at Austin, and Ohio State University, in addition to ongoing actions at renowned schools like Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, and many others.
• What do these student protestors want? It actually varies somewhat from place to place.
• The most common theme is a demand that their institutions cut ties with corporations doing business with Israel due to the students’ perception that the country is engaged in genocidal action against Palestine — and it’s difficult to argue against their point.
• Other common threads include demanding universities disclose their investments, sever academic ties with Israeli universities, and support a ceasefire in Gaza.
• And then, of course, after the schools started trying to gain back control of their campuses, the protests began against the reactions. Many are now also calling for school officials to protect free speech and spare students from being punished for participating in the protests.
• But on the central call to action, universities have largely refused to budge on the demand for divestment.
• It’s also easy to see why some of these actions can be perceived as creating a hostile and threatening environment for Jewish students and staff, many of whom possibly agreeing with the cause but still getting blamed for world events they have nothing to do with.
• Turning Jews into scapegoats is a centuries-old tradition, unfortunately.
• Let’s move on to a more modern kind of horror.
• A Maryland high school teacher was arrested after he allegedly used artificial intelligence to create a fake audio recording, planting racist and antisemitic words into the voice of his boss.
• Dazhon Darien, a PE teacher and the athletic director at Pikesville High School, was accused of falsifying the voice of principal Eric Eiswert.
• He was charged with disrupting school activities and other counts, and was arrested yesterday Thursday morning at Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport.
• We’re entering an age where your voice and image can be used by anyone to seem to say or do anything, ranging from racist behavior to porn.
• It’s going to be a huge challenge in coming years to discern the difference between reality and AI-generated content that gets more and more accurate all the time.
• And the biggest problem is that very soon, nearly anyone will have access to the tools to use AI in these nefarious ways, without any kind of special training or expertise.
• I promise you now… this will be bigger and bigger before you can imagine.
• In our continuing coverage of the people who attempted a cup against the USA on January 6, 2021, we have a bit of a different kind of tale to tell this time.
• John Sullivan was convicted in November on numerous charges, including felony obstruction of an official proceeding and civil disorder, and is scheduled for sentencing this afternoon.
• But Sullivan isn’t a MAGA or a Dump supporter of any kind. Prosecutors describe him as an antiestablishment activist who wanted to “burn it all down.” His brother James Sullivan is a right-wing activist with ties to the Proud Boys.
• In footage played at his trial Sullivan said, ”I brought my megaphone to instigate shit,” and bragged that he'd sought to "make those Trump supporters fuck shit up."
• The government is asking for a lengthy sentence of more than seven years in federal prison.
• Shrug. Over 1,387 Capitol attack defendants have been charged, and prosecutors have secured more than 984 convictions.
• One quick item of news about the former Criminal-in-Chief.
• Yesterday, a federal judge rejected Dump's bid for a new trial in a defamation case brought by writer E. Jean Carroll. The ruling upheld the jury's $83.3 million damage award.
• Ha ha, fucker.
• "Contrary to the defendant's arguments, Ms. Carroll's compensatory damages were not awarded solely for her emotional distress; they were not for garden variety harms; and they were not excessive," Judge Lewis Kaplan wrote.
• ”Mr. Trump's malicious and unceasing attacks on Ms. Carroll were disseminated to more than 100 million people," he added. "They included public threats and personal attacks, and they endangered Ms. Carroll's health and safety."
• Correct.
• Here’s something that seems kinda unsettling.
• Federal regulators found bird flu virus fragments in roughly one in five retail milk samples tested in a nationally representative study, per the FDA yesterday.
• Samples from parts of the country that are known to have cows infected with the virus were more likely to test positive, which makes sense.
• Regulators said that there is no evidence that this milk poses a danger to consumers or that live virus is present in the milk on store shelves.
• But finding traces of the virus in such a high share of samples from around the country shows without a doubt that the bird flu outbreak in dairy cows is more extensive than we were previously aware.

• And now, The Weather: “old friend” by flypaper
• From the Sports Desk… I’ve actually watched the first round of the NFL draft for a few years, and it’s more fun than it would seem on the surface. I watched the first round picks last night.
• I won’t list the entire fucking draft… you can find it everywhere. But the interesting thing was that the first 14 picks (!) were all offensive players.
• In order: QB, QB, QB, WR, OT, WR, OT, QB, WR, QB, OT, QB, TE, OT. Wow.
• And yes… six quarterbacks in the first 12 picks. That seems insane tome. Statistically, there can’t possibly be that many top-tier NFL-ready quarterbacks that high in any draft class.
• Today in history… The Virginia Company colonists make landfall at Cape Henry (1607). Sybil Ludington, aged 16, rode 40 miles to alert American colonial forces to the approach of the British regular forces (1777). Thousands of meteor fragments fall from the skies of L'Aigle, France; the event convinces European scientists that meteors exist (1803). Union cavalry troopers corner and shoot dead John Wilkes Booth, assassin of President Abraham Lincoln, in Virginia (1865). Ice hockey makes its Olympic debut at the Antwerp Games (1920). The Gestapo, the official secret police force of Nazi Germany, is established by Hermann Göring (1933). Guernica, Spain, is bombed by German Luftwaffe (1937). The first clinical trials of Jonas Salk's polio vaccine begin in Fairfax County, VA (1954). NASA's Ranger 4 spacecraft crashes into the Moon (1962). The Convention Establishing the World Intellectual Property Organization enters into force (1970). The Chernobyl disaster occurs in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (1986). The Space Shuttle Columbia is launched on mission STS-55 to conduct experiments aboard the Spacelab module (1993). South Africa begins its first multiracial election, which is won by Nelson Mandela's African National Congress (1994). American comedian Bill Cosby is convicted of sexual assault (2018). Marvel Studios' blockbuster film ‘Avengers: Endgame’ is released, becoming at the time the highest-grossing film of all time (2019). 
• April 26 is the birthday of Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius (121), French queen Marie de' Medici (1575), French queen Maria Amalia (1782), ornithologist John James Audubon (1785), politician Charles Goodyear (1804), physicist Owen Willans Richardson (1879), singer-songwriter Ma Rainey (1886), philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889), seismologist Charles Francis Richter (1900), architect I. M. Pei (1917), actress Carol Burnett (1933), music producer Giorgio Moroder (1940), singer-songwriter/keyboardist Gary Wright (1943), drummer Roger Taylor (1960), martial artist/actor Jet Li (1963), first lady Melania Trump (1970), singer-songwriter Tionne "T-Boz" Watkins (1970), drummer Joey Jordison (1975), actor Channing Tatum (1980), and MLB player Aaron Judge (1992).

As is almost always the case, there’s more news, but not more time, and I have to get off my ass and go work out before the work day gets rolling in earnest. But I will say that even with all the craziness of the world, I’m feeling a strong sense of optimism about how I believe things will turn out, and I mean that on many fronts. Enjoy your day.