RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week May 26 to June 1 Featured Investigation: Claire McCaskill and a #MeToo Double Standard? Caught in a tight (and ultimately unsuccessful) re-election campaign at the height of the #MeToo movement, the last thing Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO.) needed was two women coming forward claiming they'd been sexually harassed by her husband, Joe Shepard. That's exactly what happened last year - yet the women's charges were attended by the sound of crickets: The St. Louis TV station where they took their stories decided their claims didn't meet "our standards for reporting." And therein lies an apparent media double standard. As Mark Hemingway reports for RealClearPolitics, all alleged sexual misbehavior does not make the center ring of the media political circus. The McCaskill embarrassment stayed in the wings around the same time news organizations were amplifying outlandish charges, from accusers far less credible, against conservative Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. "Yet, the media spotlighted them unreservedly," Hemingway writes, "without anything resembling due diligence." Heminway points to other instances where major news outlets decided not to report allegations against Democratic politicians - including the Washington Post's decision not to report sexual assault charges against Virginia Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax. Given the lack of physical evidence and he said/she said nature of such cases, there is often as good an argument to report them as not. But, Hemingway notes, the decision often comes to down to the political stripe of the accused. Read Full Article The Trump Investigations: Top Articles Mueller Delivered a Message. DC Couldn't Agree What It Was. New York Times Congress Has Evidence Brits Warned U.S. on Steele's Credibility, The Hill Brennan's Likely 'Intelligence Bombshell': Steele Dossier, National Review Source: Steele Will Not Cooperate With Barr's Prosecutor, Reuters Biden Reportedly Was Involved Early in 2016 Russia Probe, Breitbart Russia, FBI Omissions in Intel Brief of Team Trump, Fox News Other Noteworthy Articles and Series Carbon Credits to Save Forests Appear Worse Than Nothing ProPublica Carbon offsets - in which companies and individuals purchase carbon-sucking trees abroad to counteract their carbon footprints at home - have long been cast as an environmental free lunch. This article reports that these carbon credit plans appears to have blinded many of their advocates to the mounting pile of evidence that they haven't — and won't — deliver the climate benefit they promise. Decades of academic research and satellite imagery suggest that carbon credits hadn't offset the amount of pollution they were supposed to, or they had brought gains that were quickly reversed, or that couldn't be accurately measured to begin with. Ultimately, the polluters got a guilt-free pass to keep emitting CO₂, but the forest preservation that was supposed to balance the ledger either never came about or didn't last. Stolen NSA Tool Wreaks Havoc in Baltimore New York Times Cybercriminals are paralyzing computer systems in many American cities using sophisticated hacking tools stolen from the National Security Agency in 2017. Most recently, Baltimore has struggled with a cyberattack by digital extortionists that has frozen thousands of computers, shut down email and disrupted real estate sales, water bills, health alerts and many other services. The cyberweapon was dumped online in April 2017 by a still-unidentified group calling itself the Shadow Brokers. Investigation has been hampered by NSA's refusal to discuss or even acknowledge the loss of its cyberweapon. The Troubling Legacy of Martin Luther King Standpoint Newly released documents reveal the full extent of the FBI's surveillance of the civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King in the mid-1960s. They expose in graphic detail the FBI's intense focus on King's extensive extramarital sexual relationships with dozens of women, and also his presence in a Washington hotel room when a friend, a Baptist minister, allegedly raped one of his "parishioners," while King "looked on, laughed and offered advice." The FBI's tape recording of that criminal assault still exists today, under court seal in a National Archives vault. The article, written by historian David J. Garrow, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his 1986 biography of King, concludes: "King's far-from monogamous lifestyle, like his binge-drinking, may fit albeit uncomfortably within his existing life story, but the suggestion—actually more than one—that he either actively tolerated or personally employed violence against any woman, even while drunk, poses so fundamental a challenge to his historical stature as to require the most complete and extensive historical review possible." Other historians are questioning the FBI's claims. Greed, Crime and Riches in Madagascar's Vanilla Boom 1843 Since 2014 the price of vanilla has risen from less than $40 per kilogram to more than $600 per kilogram. The soaring prices have been a godsend to impoverished people of Madagascar, but it has also prompted an opportunistic crime wave: Raiders rip out whole vines to transplant them elsewhere, and armed robbers hold up warehouses. Estimates vary, but upwards of 15% of the crop is stolen each year. This article describes the crime wave in this politically unstable country as well as how much work it takes to produce vanilla. Deadly Fisher-Price Baby Sleeper 'Wasn't Tested for Safety'Washington Post In 2009, Fisher-Price's Rock ‘n Play Sleeper promised a revolution for baby bedtime. Cribs and bassinets make infants lie flat, but this sleeper held babies on their backs at a 30-degree angle, like a recliner. Over the next decade, Fisher-Price would sell 4.7 million units at $50 to $80 each. But the compnay developed the product on faulty beliefs about infant sleep, with no clinical research into whether it was safe. Last month, the Rock ‘n Play was recalled after a series of infant deaths. Suicide Epidemic Has Swept Across American West Rolling Stone The Centers for Disease Control recorded 47,173 suicides in 2017, and there were an estimated 1.4 million total attempts. Many of society's plagues strike heavier at women and minorities, but suicide in America is dominated by white men, who account for 70 percent of all cases. Middle-aged men - especially those in the West - are particularly likely to kill themselves. The reporter of this article tried to find out why, by taking "a 2,000-mile drive through the American West, a place of endless mythology and one unalterable fact: The region has become a self-immolation center for middle-aged American men. The image of the Western man and his bootstraps ethos is still there, but the cliché has a dark turn — when they can no longer help themselves, they end themselves." 'American Soil' Is Increasingly Foreign Owned NPR American soil is not so American. When the stock market tanked during the past recession, foreign investors began buying up big swaths of U.S. farmland. Now they own nearly 30 million acres - double the number from two decades ago. And since many aging American farmers are facing retirement with no prospect of family members willing to take over, fears are rising that the heartland will be lost to Americans forever. The biggest foreign owners are from Canada and Germany. On the other hand, American farmers and corporations also invest in overseas agriculture, and own billions of dollars of farmland from Australia to Brazil. 'Rap Unit': Undercover NYPD Cops Surveil Hip-Hop Concerts New York Post The New York Police Department has a special "Rap Unit" set up to spy on - er, surveil - local concerts. Officers assigned to the unit draw up weekly entertainment reports about scheduled hip-hop shows at city clubs, and designate each as posing a low, medium or high risk for violence or other crimes. That information is passed on to local precinct commanders and intelligence officers in the field, with local cops in turn flagging shootings and other incidents associated with clubs in their precincts. This article also reports that a special branch of the department's Intelligence Division secretly kept tabs on rapper Remy Ma — who had served six years in prison for a 2007 shooting — and a member of her entourage, Jahmeek "Jah" Elliot. Seems Jahmeek had a falling out with a former associate, known as Mac Ballas, and police fear that "Jahmeek's new crew association has caused tension with the ‘Mac Ballas,' and there may be possible retaliation against [him]." |