‘White people have called the police on black people in multiple incidents recently, despite no crimes being committed. Professor Khalil Muhammad thinks it’s a problem with a complex history….’

Via NPR

New Laurence Tribe Book Offers Cautions:

‘A new book from Laurence Tribe and Joshua Matz argues that removing a president, even when justified, can be an unwise move….’

Tribe and his former student argue that impeachment talk, which has been faced by every president since 1992, is often stirred not by the president’s opponents but by his supporters, as a way to sustain political engagement between elections, since we are in an age of permanent campaigning and permanent partisanship. And for many Trump supporters, the authors observe, 

Trump’s appeal is less what he will accomplish programmatically than whom he will attack personally. Were Trump removed from office by political elites in Washington, DC—even based on clear evidence that he had grossly abused power—some of his supporters would surely view the decision as an illegitimate coup. Indeed, some right-wing leaders have already denounced the campaign to remove Trump as a prelude to civil war.

One central piece of advice from Tribe and Matz is that impeachment is not a legal, but a political question. It is a mistake to think that solving the problem of whether to impeach depends on whether the President’s actions meet some standard of “high crimes and misdemeanors.” Grand visions of putting the President on trial, they say, devalue other political ways of defending democracy.

The book is, according to the review by David Frum, 

a hopeful summons to defend an imperiled democracy with a renewed and enlarged commitment to democratic action.

Via The Atlantic

Fifteen Unanswered Criminal Law Questions Surrounding the Enfant Terrible

In a companion piece, Frum catalogues the open questions about potential criminal acts by the Buffoon-in-Chief, his campaign, his company, and his family. However, he cautions that all he has to do to avoid repercussions is tell lies his contemptibly credulous base believes:

 

‘As Laurence Tribe and Joshua Matz show in their new book about impeachment, an agitated and committed minority can suffice to protect a president from facing justice for even the most strongly proven criminality….’

 

Via The Atlantic

‘Things look pretty bleak for the northern white rhinoceros. Since the death of Sudan, the last male, the entirety of the subspecies has dwindled to only two females. But a group of scientists is churning away on a high-tech save involving carefully cryopreserved cells and tissue cultures from long-dead northern white rhinos. And a new study on the genetics of these precious samples suggests that they are diverse enough to successfully seed a recovered population in the future….’

Via Earther