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When copyright law and the First Amendment come into conflict, the First Amendment must win. The fair use doctrine—the idea that there are certain ways that you can use a piece of copyrighted work regardless of whether you have the rightsholder’s permission—was written into copyright law to help ensure that copyright holders’ wishes are never elevated above free speech. As such, it’s been an essential tool for defending a free press: without fair use protections, people and companies in the public eye could use copyright law to ban coverage that’s critical of them.

It’s alarming, then, to see an association that represents news companies asking Congress to change the law and weaken fair use. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/12/fair-use-essential-free-press

One of the real quandaries of Trump-era politics has been how to describe the school of thought (or action) its central figure leads. The more it has become apparent that the 45th president and his adulatory followers do not represent just a temporary phenomenon or a minor variation on an old conservative theme, the more tempting it has become to compare Trumpism to right-wing authoritarian movements outside of and antagonistic to democracy, which generally go by the term fascism. This temptation has been felt by Never Trump conservatives anxious to save their own tradition from contamination by the great orange demagogue, and by progressives who wish to powerfully distinguish the threat posed by MAGA folks from the conservatives of the past they’ve deplored. By and large, all of us Trump-despising opinion-spinners have avoided the f-word as a general descriptor. But that may now be changing.

Beginning in the wee hours of November 4, 2020, when Donald Trump began his defiant effort to overturn his reelection defeat by hook or by crook, the MAGA movement has become more and more explicitly anti-democratic and insurrectionist. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/07/is-it-finally-time-to-begin-calling-trumpism-fascism.html

Now We Know the Truth About Trump and Russia. And It’s Even Worse Than We Thought.

Over the last couple of years, something strange and remarkable’s been happening. On the one side have been those who argue, seeing the grim reality of a coup, destabilization, authoritarianism, that Trump was Russia’s man — a puppet President, installed by Putin. And on the other have been those who argued back — often abusively and derisively — that such a thing was absurd, that Russia had nothing to do with the Trump, and believing that was just a fantastical, foolish conspiracy theory. Who was right?

Recently, a Kremlin insider did something unprecedented — he or she leaked the documents which appear to prove that Trump was indeed Putin’s man, a Russian plant and puppet. The documents lay out not just the Kremlin’s plan to install Trump, but its reasoning, goals, ambitions, and even methods. Yes, really.

Let me put that in an even more striking way.

Trump appears to really be and have been America’s first Manchurian Candidate — a President put in the White House by a foreign, hostile nation, for the explicit purpose of collapsing America from within.

I know that sounds mind-bending, the stuff of a Hollywood movie. Yet it’s even more fantastical that American papers didn’t break and aren’t really covering this story — London’s Guardian is. So don’t take my word for it — I hesitate writing in this tone, but I have to. Just read the facts for yourself, because they’re not just damning, they’re utterly surreal.

The documents say the following — take a deep breath, because…well… https://eand.co/russia-made-trump-president-and-its-the-worst-scandal-in-american-history-f6e144431070

Supply chains, every salesman and woman of every kind told me, were backed up from here to infinity. When could I get the outdoor sofa? The exercise bike? The blinds? Well, if I was lucky, it would probably be months. And needless to say, that rendered any possibility of negotiating prices impossible, too.

Now, don’t cry for me. I’ll get by fine without all this stuff. But it’s a tiny example of a larger trend, which is already affecting us all. We might not know it yet, but the Age of Cheap Stuff is drawing to a close. https://eand.co/the-age-of-cheap-stuff-is-over-36d2ae9101c8

We’re halfway through 2021 and already extreme weather has dominated the headlines. Fires, floods, droughts, and record-shattering heatwaves have swept over both the U.S. and the world.

The United States has already spent $29 billion fighting extreme weather events in the first six months of the year. That number is expected to only go up. 

But both climate scientists and disaster researchers say the influx in climate-related disasters shouldn’t shock anybody. And there’s still a lot we can do to prepare and adapt… if we’re willing to actually do any of it.  https://the1a.org/segments/extreme-weather-is-pummeling-the-world-can-we-adapt

It is the year 2021. But Republicans and the right-wing movement are trying to pull the American people back to the past.

Their ultimate destination? It could be Jim Crow white supremacist America of the 1950s. It could be the end of Reconstruction in 1876 – or even a time before that.

In that sense, the Republican Party and its allies and followers are time-breakers, not content with harmless nostalgia and happy-pill lies about the past. Their goal? To radically remake society in their own grotesque vision where white, right-wing “Christians” — men, by definition — rule America unopposed and for all time.

Such a world would be a utopia for them and a dystopia for everyone else.

On Monday, philosopher Jason Stanley described America on the precipice of such as horrible moment in a Twitter post: 

I find it chilling this odd moment of calm while Dems are in power and state after state is introducing bills that, if passed, will ensure permanent minority party rule and the end of US democracy. We have so little time. Watching history unfold.

Because they cannot win a war of ideas and their policies are wildly unpopular with the American people, Republicans and their allies are attempting to restrict the right to vote all over the country.

Zachary Roth of the Brennan Center for Justice describes this racialized “legislative anti-democracy” and what it entails:

It’s upon us: a wave of legislation, in states across the country, aimed at making voting harder. The Brennan Center has tallied over 250 bills in 43 states this year that would restrict access to the ballot. Many would reverse the expansion of vote by mail, which helped lead to the soaring turnout of 2020, or would tighten ID requirements.

But the latest assault on voting shouldn’t be seen in isolation. Some of the same Republican state lawmakers behind these measures are also taking steps to suppress any form of democracy that threatens them — afraid, it seems, that the more say voters have in any form, the worse their side will fare. …

It’s hard to ignore that this explosion of what we might call “legislative anti-democracy” is coming from some of the same people who helped stoke an even more troubling effort to overturn the will of the people. At least 14 Republican state lawmakers attended the January 6 “Stop the Steal” rally that led to the Capitol insurrection, and they continue to serve. At least one, State Sen. Doug Mastriano of Pennsylvania, has been a leader in his state’s effort to pass restrictive voting laws.    

https://www.salon.com/2021/03/17/gop-dreams-of-a-return-to-jim-crow–and-not-just-through-racist-voting-laws/

You would think Republicans would shy away from reminding Americans that their party locked arms and pushed an alleged attempted rapist onto the Supreme Court. Instead, they’re proud to defend a man who wears his contempt for others on his face. Kavanaugh is the closest thing they have to a martyr: He’s a white man who was almost held accountable for his actions.

In contrast, the Democrats seem determined to memory-hole the Kavanaugh saga. In 2018, Nancy Pelosi promised there would be an investigation of Kavanaugh should Democrats take back the House in 2018. But while Democrats did take back that body, no investigation has happened, no hearings have taken place, and no impeachment charges have been submitted. Democrats have treated Kavanaugh as an immutable fact of life. Until now, that is.

Late last week, Sheldon Whitehouse, Democratic senator from Rhode Island and, apparently, one of the only senators willing to remember what Republicans did while they were in power, wrote a letter calling on newly confirmed Attorney General Merrick Garland to look into the FBI’s handling of the attempted-rape allegations against Kavanaugh. Specifically, he asked Garland to determine whether the FBI conducted a “fake investigation rather than a sincere, thorough and professional one.” As evidence for the failures of the investigation, Whitehouse points out holes in the FBI’s process that are well known to those of us who have refused to let Kavanaugh get away with it: people and law firms who tried in vain to bring information about Kavanaugh to the bureau but couldn’t find an agent willing to listen; a “tips line” that the FBI never seemed to respond to or follow up on; and repeated “stonewalling” by FBI Director Chris Wray in front of congressional oversight committees about the investigation. Also, the agency failed to follow up on other allegations against Kavanaugh that, in Whitehouse’s words, “required their own investigation.”

Whitehouse called on Garland directly not because of Garland’s own contentious history with Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee, but because Garland is now Wray’s boss. Yes, the Department of Justice was run by Jeff Sessions (and toilet bowl salesman Matthew Whittaker) during the critical time that Kavanaugh should have been investigated. But the deeper problem was that the investigation was run by Wray who—as I pointed out back during his confirmation hearing—was a classmate of Kavanaugh’s at Yale Law School and, being a fellow conservative, ran in the same extracurricular circles, including membership in the Federalist Society. There is simply no reason to think that Wray conducted a thorough investigation of his old classmate—especially since Wray himself admitted, in open testimony, that Donald Trump’s White House limited the investigation into Kavanaugh.

Politically, Republicans treat the fact that Kavanaugh hasn’t been prosecuted for any of the charges against him as meaning he was “exonerated” of those charges, which is not how this works. They’ve turned Kavanaugh into a victim, which is easier to do because no one has adequately investigated his alleged crimes. Meanwhile, outside the ranks of Republicans, Kavanaugh is: an alleged gambler, an alleged perjurer, and an alleged attempted rapist. He is all of those things because he and his political party and his law school friends have all refused to allow a real investigation into the various allegations against him. An independent investigation, perhaps one not conducted by his law school buddy, could be a chance to clear his name. https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/kavanaugh-whitehouse-fbi/

By Kanishka Singh

(Reuters) – White supremacist propaganda in the United States including racist, anti-Semitic and anti-LGBTQ messages nearly doubled last year to a record level, according to the Anti-Defamation League.

The New York-based advocacy group’s data showed 5,125 cases reported in 2020, compared to 2,724 in 2019, even though incidents on college campuses dropped by more than half, possibly due to COVID-19 restrictions. https://www.rawstory.com/white-supremacist-propaganda-in-u-s-hit-record-in-2020-group-says/

Russian President Vladimir Putin once again attacked the United States, this time during the 2020 election cycle, in order to help President Donald Trump win re-election, according to a just released declassified report from the U.S. National Intelligence Council, which is part of the broader United States Intelligence Community (IC).

“President Putin authorized, and a range of Russian government organizations conducted, influence operations aimed at denigrating President Biden’s candidacy and the Democratic Party, supporting former President Trump, undermining public confidence in the electoral process, and exacerbating sociopolitical divisions in the U.S.,” one of the report’s key judgments reveals. https://www.rawstory.com/putin-attacked-us-2020-election-to-help-trump-says-just-released-us-intel-community-report/

Donald Trump isn’t happy the Republican Party won’t purge members who haven’t been totally loyal to him. And of late, he’s doing more about it than he did when he’d channel his anger by posting mean tweets.

Days ago, lawyers representing Trump took the extraordinary step of demanding the Republican National Committee (RNC) and other prominent GOP groups cease and desist using Trump’s name and likeness. The RNC denied the request, citing Trump’s status as a public figure, and Trump responded Monday night with a tweet-like statement asking supporters to give to him instead of to the party.

The Trump PAC is a type of political committee formed by current or former elected officials that has relatively few restrictions on what it can do with donations. And, as a result, Trump may have more than just political revenge on his mind in asking supporters to give to him instead of to the Republican Party.

“If you’re going to direct a lot of money from a political committee to yourself, this is the way to do it,” Jordan Libowitz, communications director for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), told me in an interview. “This is essentially the story of the scorpion and the frog, except it’s the grifter and the political party.” “So I think it was a little naive to ever believe he’d become a team player when there were tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars on the table.” https://www.vox.com/22321215/trump-rnc-cease-and-desist-fundraising-feud-purge