Good morning.
Saturday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of seventy-six. Sunrise is 5:51 AM and sunset 8:09 PM, for 14h 18m 02s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 95.6% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}two hundred sixty-ninth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}
On this day in 1884, workers placed the cornerstone for the pedestal on which the Statue of Liberty now stands: ” ‘the rain was pouring down in torrents’ which effectively kept away hundreds of ceremony invitees. Yet according to the New York Times, 1500 water-logged people still jammed onto the small island to be part of the historic event. About a third of the attendees were French. The steamship Bay Ridge was festooned with French and American flags and chosen to shuttle people from Manhattan to Bedloe Island. Because of the driving rain “its capacity was not tested.” Once the ceremony began the David Island Government Band played “Marseillaise” and “Hail Columbia” respectively while men lowered the six ton granite stone onto the northeast corner of Fort Wood’s foundation.”
Recommended for reading in full —
Beth Schwartzapfel asks Guess Who’s Tracking Your Prescription Drugs? (your doctor, your pharmacist… and the police):
As drug overdose deaths continue their record climb, Missouri last month became the 50th state to launch a prescription drug monitoring program, or PDMP. These state-run databases, which track prescriptions of certain potentially addictive or dangerous medications, are widely regarded as an essential tool to stem the opioid epidemic. Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens last month announced he was creating one in what had been the lone holdout state; legislative efforts to establish a program there had repeatedly failed because of lawmakers’ concerns about privacy.
Their concerns were not unfounded.
Federal courts in Utah and Oregon recently ruled that the Drug Enforcement Administration, in its effort to investigate suspected drug abusers or pill mills, can access information in those states’ PDMPs without a warrant, even over the states’ objections. And last month in California, the state supreme court ruled that the state medical board could view hundreds of patients’ prescription drug records in the course of its investigation of a physician accused of misconduct. “Physicians and patients have no reasonable expectation of privacy in the highly regulated prescription drug industry,” District Judge David Nuffer wrote in the Utah case.
Rachel Harmon contends that Trump’s Remarks To Police Violate His Oath of Office:
Speaking in New York Friday [7.28.17], President Trump encouraged our nation’s police officers to rough up suspects in their custody. In the days since, many law enforcement leaders and groups have denounced Trump’s comments as damaging to police-community relations. Some have responded by publicly reaffirming their commitment to serve and protect the public, but what about the president’s own oath?
“When you see these thugs being thrown into the back of a paddy wagon. You see them thrown in rough. I said, ‘Please don’t be too nice’,” Trump told the audience of officers, referring to the practice of shielding suspects’ heads when placing them in police vehicles. “Like, don’t hit their head and they’ve just killed somebody. I said, ‘You can take the hand away, okay?'”
President Trump’s remarks encouraged officers to violate the Fourth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution, which grant individuals the right to be free from excessive force while in official custody. They also require police officers to protect those under arrest from unnecessary harm. As the Supreme Court once put it, “when the State takes a person into its custody and holds him there against his will, the Constitution imposes upon it a corresponding duty to assume some responsibility for his safety and general well-being.” And since federal law makes it a crime to willfully depriving a person of a constitutional right, he asked them to violate federal criminal law as well.
Yashar Ali reports that Fox News Host Sent Unsolicited Lewd Text Messages To Colleagues, Sources Say:
Eric Bolling, a longtime Fox News host, sent an unsolicited photo of male genitalia via text message to at least two colleagues at Fox Business and one colleague at Fox News, a dozen sources told HuffPost.
Recipients of the photo confirmed its contents to HuffPost, which is not revealing their identities. The women, who are Bolling’s current and former Fox colleagues, concluded the message was from him because they recognized his number from previous work-related and informal interactions. The messages were sent several years ago, on separate occasions.
The women did not solicit the messages, which they told colleagues were deeply upsetting and offensive. One of the recipients said that when she replied to Bolling via text, telling him never to send her such photos again, he did not respond. Four people, outside of the recipients, confirmed to HuffPost they’d seen the photo, and eight others said the recipients had spoken to them about it.
For this story, HuffPost spoke to 14 sources in and out of Fox News and Fox Business, all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity either because they currently work at the networks and aren’t allowed to speak to members of the press without prior authorization or because they have confidentiality agreements with Fox News and its parent company 21st Century Fox.
Shawn Boburg and Emily Rauhala report that Stephen Bannon once guided a global firm that made millions helping gamers cheat:
Stephen K. Bannon had already been successful in Hollywood and on Wall Street when he flew to Hong Kong in mid-2005 to learn more about a promising new opportunity.
A start-up called Internet Gaming Entertainment, or IGE, had found a novel way to make millions of dollars each month in the exploding online video game industry. Working from the 19th floor of a skyscraper in Hong Kong, the company sold virtual goods for real money — magical swords and capes and other accoutrements that granted video game players power and access in more than a dozen popular online role-playing games.
There was one problem, though: The companies that owned and operated these fantasy games prohibited what IGE was doing, and even considered it illegal. Several IGE executives told The Washington Post that they thought Bannon could help change that. Bannon agreed to become the company’s vice chairman.
It’s an Elephant v. Goose battle at the zoo: