Kalamazoo Killings, British Exit
Monday, February 22, 2016
Vol. 5, No. 53
Nation: A Kalamazoo Uber driver is in custody after a random shooting spree that left six people dead Saturday night. Jason Dalton, 45, is accused of killing the six people, including a father and his teenage son at a car dealership, in shooting that occurred in an area over several miles.
Authorities didn’t give a motive for the shootings, but hinted that something was awry in Dalton’s life.
According to customers Dalton drove Uber passengers just hours before the shootings and agreed to take a passenger after the shootings were done.
TempoTruce: The US and Russia are on the verge of a “provisional” and possibly only partial truce in Syria, Secy. of State John Kerry announced in Israel. Russian President Vladimir Putin and President Obama are supposed to talk on the phone to work out the last details.
This is the second truce agreement Kerry has announced. The first was supposed to go into effect Friday, and didn’t.
It’s still a hot war. Yesterday suicide attacks carried out by the Islamic State killed about 140 people in the city of Homs.
It’s Political: With Jeb! Bush out of the race, Republican contenders will be looking to divide up his vote in Nevada tomorrow. South Carolina’s number-two finisher Marco Rubio said, “We feel like a lot of people that were on Jeb’s team are people we’re going welcome onto our team, people we’ve known for a long time.”
The Bush votes won’t all go to Rubio and some will certainly go to Donald Trump. With Republican leaders chewing their nails to the quick at the prospect of a Trump nomination, toppling him will require several other candidates getting out. Brian Stelter writes for CNN, “It feels like Trump skeptics are working through the five stages of grief — with some now approaching acceptance.”
Brexit: In a blow to Prime Minister David Cameron, London’s colorful Mayor Boris Johnson joined the chorus of Brits called for the country to get out of the European Union. The movement to get out is nicknamed “Brexit.”
A growing number of British citizens and politicians believe that membership in the European Union is depriving them of control over the island country’s borders, immigration, and its sense of nationhood. A national vote is scheduled for June 23rd. Dissenters say the country will be stronger on its own, but Cameron has argued that when you’re on the outside of the EU, “You have an illusion of sovereignty, but you don’t have power, you don’t have control, you can’t get things done.”
Wheels: The 58th Daytona 500 came down to a bumper length, the closest finish every. Driver Denny Hamlin won the race in a photo finish by .01 of a second.
The Originalist: As the country waits for President Obama to name a replacement, the argument continues, as it did during his life, about the legacy of Justice Antonin Scalia. Known as a strict reader of the Constitution in what he believed to be its original intent, Scalia stuck to the word, except, many analysts say, when it conflicted with his social and political beliefs. His opinion on homosexuality described it as a “life style” as though were a set of furniture someone might choose.
Scalia was a champion of the rights of the criminally accused whose opinions, among other things, required police to serve a warrant for a search. But he also sided with corporations in the infamous “Citizens United” case, arguing that the Constitution granted corporations the right to make unlimited political campaign contributions, even though corporations barely existed at the time the Constitution was written.
Jeffrey Toobin writes in The New Yorker that Scalia “devoted his professional life to making the United States a less fair, less tolerant, and less admirable democracy. Fortunately, he mostly failed. Belligerent with his colleagues, dismissive of his critics, nostalgic for a world where outsiders knew their place and stayed there, Scalia represents a perfect model for everything that President Obama should avoid in a successor.”
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