Dear Commons Community,

Archeologists have uncovered a cluster of lost cities in the Amazon rainforest that was home to at least 10,000 farmers around 2,000 years ago.

A series of earthen mounds and buried roads in Ecuador was first noticed more than two decades ago by archaeologist Stéphen Rostain. But at the time, “I wasn’t sure how it all fit together,” said Rostain, one of the researchers who reported on the finding yesterday in the journal Science.

Recent mapping by laser-sensor technology revealed those sites to be part of a dense network of settlements and connecting roadways, tucked into the forested foothills of the Andes, that lasted about 1,000 years.

“It was a lost valley of cities,” said Rostain, who directs investigations at France’s National Center for Scientific Research. “It’s incredible.”

The settlements were occupied by the Upano people between around 500 B.C. and 300 to 600 A.D. — a period roughly contemporaneous with the Roman Empire in Europe, the researchers found.

Residential and ceremonial buildings erected on more than 6,000 earthen mounds were surrounded by agricultural fields with drainage canals. The largest roads were 33 feet (10 meters) wide and stretched for 6 to 12 miles (10 to 20 kilometers).

While it’s difficult to estimate populations, the site was home to at least 10,000 inhabitants — and perhaps as many as 15,000 or 30,000 at its peak, said archaeologist Antoine Dorison, a study co-author at the same French institute. That’s comparable to the estimated population of Roman-era London, then Britain’s largest city.

“This shows a very dense occupation and an extremely complicated society,” said University of Florida archeologist Michael Heckenberger, who was not involved in the study. “For the region, it’s really in a class of its own in terms of how early it is.”

José Iriarte, a University of Exeter archaeologist, said it would have required an elaborate system of organized labor to build the roads and thousands of earthen mounds.

“The Incas and Mayans built with stone, but people in Amazonia didn’t usually have stone available to build — they built with mud. It’s still an immense amount of labor,” said Iriarte, who had no role in the research.

The Amazon is often thought of as a “pristine wilderness with only small groups of people. But recent discoveries have shown us how much more complex the past really is,” he said.

Scientists have recently also found evidence of intricate rainforest societies that predated European contact elsewhere in the Amazon, including in Bolivia and in Brazil.

“There’s always been an incredible diversity of people and settlements in the Amazon, not only one way to live,” said Rostain. “We’re just learning more about them.”

Congratulations to these archaeologists. 

There is so much we do not know about our past!

Tony

Shutterstock

Dear Commons Community,

The Escambia County School District in Florida pulled multiple dictionaries and reference books off its library shelves for including descriptions of “sexual conduct.”

The School District removed five different dictionaries, eight encyclopedias and the “The Guinness Book of World Records” from its collection after determining the titles could run afoul of Florida’s HB 1069 bill, which restricts sexual content from being taught in schools.

The books were among the 1,600 titles the public school district took out of circulation last summer, according to a statement from free speech advocacy group PEN America.

Decommissioned titles also include biographies of Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, Oprah Winfrey, Nicki Minaj and Thurgood Marshall.

Though the books were originally pulled during the district’s 2023 summer break, the Escambia County School District is now being forced to defend its decision in a federal lawsuit.

PEN America joined students, parents, book publishers and authors in the suit, which argues the district violated their rights to free speech and equal protection under the law with its decision.

In a press release ahead of the case’s opening arguments on Wednesday, PEN America’s Florida director Katie Blankenship said, “School libraries are not state propaganda centers.”

“We will not stand by as these critical spaces are undermined by political agendas and censorship,” the statement went on.

In a statement to The Messenger, a representative for the Escambia County School District said calling the book removals a “ban” is inaccurate.

“The 1,000+ books they reference have not been banned or removed from the school district,” the spokesperson said. “Rather, they have simply been pulled for further review to ensure compliance with the new legislation. To suggest otherwise is disingenuous and counterproductive.”

I feel sorry for the children in Escambia!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Last night, Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley participated in a Republican Party presidential candidate debate on CNN designed to give their views in anticipation of the Iowa caucuses that are scheduled for next week.  I watched it but found the performances of both candidates a bit dull and not capturing my attention. The moderators tried to get them to talk more about Trump but neither of them really went after him.  It may be I am suffering from debate fatigue.

You can find a recap and highlights here courtesy of the Huffington Post.

Tony

Stable Diffusion Open Art.

Dear Commons Community,

The National Review published an editorial yesterday in which it begged conservatives to find someone besides former President Donald Trump to be the party’s nominee.

The crux of the editorial attacks the common conceit among Trump supporters that the only thing he’s done wrong has been to write “mean tweets,” and the editors argue that his actions leading up to and during the January 6th Capitol riots are the main argument against his candidacy.

“Because he couldn’t bear to admit that he’d lost to Joe Biden in 2020 (after trailing him in every national poll), Trump insisted he’d won and did everything he could to overturn the result, including trying to bully his vice president into violating his oath and preventing and delaying the counting of the electoral vote,” the editors contend. “When a mob, fervently believing Trump’s lies, fought its way into the U.S. Capitol to try to end the count, Trump did little or nothing to try to stop it.”

Nothing can justify his acts, and it’s wrong to simply pretend that they didn’t happen. It’s impossible to imagine Ron DeSantis or Nikki Haley, whatever their other flaws, engaging in such grotesquely selfish behavior injurious to our republic. On this basis alone, both are vastly preferable to Trump.

The entire editorial is below.

Tony

National Review

Republican Voters Can — and Should — Rethink Nominating Trump

By The Editors

January 10, 2024 6:30 AM

To say Donald Trump is the front-runner for the Republican nomination is an understatement. He is above 60 percent in national polling averages and leads by roughly 30 points in Iowa. His lead is much narrower in New Hampshire, although the state, where Democrats and independents can vote in the GOP primary, is not necessarily predictive.

Trump feels inevitable, but nothing is settled until Republicans actually caucus and vote. They would be well advised to opt for one of the alternatives who are far and away better on the merits, more likely to win in November, and, if elected, more likely to deliver — free from the wild drama of a second Trump term — conservative results.

Trump’s defenders tend to dismiss the conservative criticisms of him as concerns about his “mean tweets,” or now, to be more accurate, his mean Truth Social posts. It’s true that his fulminations on social media are crude and ridiculous, but this isn’t the fundamental problem. Because he couldn’t bear to admit that he’d lost to Joe Biden in 2020 (after trailing him in every national poll), Trump insisted he’d won and did everything he could to overturn the result, including trying to bully his vice president into violating his oath and preventing and delaying the counting of the electoral vote. When a mob, fervently believing Trump’s lies, fought its way into the U.S. Capitol to try to end the count, Trump did little or nothing to try to stop it.

These were infamous presidential acts and represented serious offenses against our constitutional order. Nothing can justify them, and it’s wrong to simply pretend that they didn’t happen. It’s impossible to imagine Ron DeSantis or Nikki Haley, whatever their other flaws, engaging in such grotesquely selfish behavior injurious to our republic. On this basis alone, both are vastly preferable to Trump.

One reason no one has gotten much traction against Trump, besides the backlash against the indictments, is that the electability argument has been rendered null and void by his strong polling in a hypothetical matchup with President Biden. The Democrat is so weak he could lose to Trump, but the former president is still a risky bet compared with another Republican candidate without his baggage. As Biden demonstrated in his Valley Forge speech last week, Democrats plan to make the race all about Trump if he wins the nomination, in a repeat of their winning formula from 2020 and 2022. Nominating someone else would instantly deny the Democrats their most powerful weapon in the cause of winning an otherwise unthinkable Biden second term — Trump’s radioactive persona.

In his first term, Trump notched some important conservative wins and even forged some creative victories (think the Abraham Accords). He’d be an enormous improvement over Joe Biden on many policy questions. But much energy would be wasted on his personal vendettas and fighting back against the Left’s sure-to-be-unhinged reaction to his return to the White House. He’d have trouble attracting talent to serve him. His bad instincts on trade and NATO, tendency to personalize everything including foreign relations, contempt for rules that get in his way, and erratic nature would risk real harm to the country. He’d be an easily distracted 78-year-old one-termer sure to get wiped out in the midterms, once again.

Again, whatever their downsides, both DeSantis and Haley would avoid almost all these pitfalls. DeSantis, in particular, is an accomplished governor of a major state, with an impressive agenda of conservative reform under his belt. He is a serious-minded policy maven who wouldn’t fail as president for lack of discipline or knowledge.

None of this is to deny the outrageous lengths to which the Left has gone to target Trump, most recently by denying him access to the ballot in two states, with perhaps more to come. Much of the GOP has rallied to Trump and considers the fire he draws from his enemies a sign of his strength and efficacy. The enemy of my enemy is my friend is one of the most ingrained dynamics of collective life. But Republicans have better friends available to them, who haven’t disgraced themselves by trying to deny the results of an election, who would be quite likely to vanquish Biden, and who would be capable presidents.

It’s not too late to choose one of them, and forge a better path for the party and for the country.

Dear Commons Community,

Chris Christie suspended his 2024 presidential campaign last night in yet another sign that Republican resistance to front-runner Donald Trump is melting away as the former president barrels toward his party’s nomination for a second term in the White House.

“It’s clear to me tonight that there isn’t a path for me to win the nomination,” he told supporters at a campaign event in New Hampshire, dropping out before voting starts in the Iowa caucuses next week.

“I am going to make sure that in no way do I enable Donald Trump to ever be president of the U.S. again, and that is more important than my own personal ambition,” he added.

The former New Jersey governor had been a long-shot candidate in the Republican primary, struggling to break above single digits in polls of the contest while attempting to undermine Trump’s stronghold on the GOP. He faced pressure to end his campaign and endorse former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley in a bid to boost her chances of winning the Jan. 23 primary in New Hampshire, where Trump leads in polls.

But Christie doesn’t seem to be providing an endorsement to anyone right now. He was captured discussing the campaign on a hot mic yesterday, making a less-than-glowing reference to Haley.

“She’s going to get smoked. And you and I both know it. She’s not up to this,” Christie said to an unidentified man in Windham, New Hampshire, before making his exit from the race official.

Christie formally launched his bid in June 2023, calling Trump “a bitter, angry man” who should be disqualified from the presidency. He issued dire warnings to his party about a second Trump presidency. The former president, Christie said, is a “dictator” and a “bully.” He spread his message on the debate stage and at conservative, Trump-friendly enclaves ― and was booed for it.

The former governor didn’t spare his fellow 2024 rivals from criticism, either. He called them bootlickers and questioned their unwillingness to criticize Trump.

“There’s only one candidate trying to stop Trump,” a Christie campaign ad said in December. “Chris Christie is the only one who can beat Trump, because he’s the only one trying to beat Trump.”

At one GOP primary debate, Christie called Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis “afraid” for not answering whether he believed Trump was mentally fit to be president. “Is he fit or isn’t he?” Christie asked as DeSantis evaded the question.

He also didn’t hold back against Haley when she failed to mention slavery as a cause of the Civil War, accusing her of being “unwilling to offend anyone by telling the truth” and auditioning for being selected as Trump’s vice presidential nominee.

“What’s going to happen when she has to stand up against forces in our own party who want to drag this country deeper and deeper into anger and division and exhaustion?” Christie asked recently.

Christie’s transformation from Trump’s longtime friend to a thorn in his side is somewhat head-spinning. The former governor was one of the first big-name Republicans to endorse Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016, giving him valuable legitimacy. He went on to serve as Trump’s transition chairman and even defended him when he became president.

Not long after the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, however, Christie shifted course, sharpening his criticism of Trump and his lies about winning the 2020 presidential election.

“I think everything that he was saying from election night forward incited people to that level of anger,” Christie told CNN about the Capitol riot, making it clear he held Trump directly responsible.

Trump, meanwhile, responded to Christie’s criticisms by hurling ugly attacks about his weight.

Christie seemed resistant to the idea of dropping out and endorsing Haley at a campaign event just a day earlier in New Hampshire.

“I would be happy to get out of the way for someone who is actually running against Donald Trump,” Christie said, according to The Associated Press.

“Let’s say I dropped out of the race right now and I supported Nikki Haley,” he added. “And then three months from now, four months from now, when you’re ready to go to the convention, she comes out as his vice president. What will I look like? What will all the people who supported her at my behest look like?”

Still, even if he doesn’t endorse Haley, it seems likely that Christie’s exit from the race could help her — particularly in New Hampshire, where some polls have shown the race heating up between Haley and Trump.

My sense is that the Republican nomination will come down to Trump and Haley!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

A federal appeals panel expressed skepticism yesterday toward Donald Trump’s argument that he can’t be prosecuted for trying to overturn the 2020 election, raising the potentially extreme implications of absolute presidential immunity.

Trump’s lawyers argued that his federal election subversion indictment should be dismissed because he is immune from prosecution. But the three judges on the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit panel questioned whether this immunity theory championed by Trump’s lawyers would allow presidents to sell pardons or even assassinate political opponents.

Special counsel Jack Smith’s team argued that a president is not above the law, warning that allowing presidential immunity from prosecution would open a “floodgate” and saying that it would be “awfully scary” if there were no criminal mechanism to stop future president’s from usurping the vote and remaining in power.

Still, the judges also wondered if they even have jurisdiction to decide the question of presidential immunity at this point in the case. Trump is scheduled to go on trial in March for his role in trying to overturn the 2020 election. He has pleaded not guilty.

Trump chose to attend the hearing – a reminder of the role that his four criminal indictments are playing in his presidential campaign.

The appeals court ruling is likely to set up a showdown over presidential immunity at the Supreme Court. The judges have not set a deadline but given the circumstances it’s unlikely they will take too much time.

Here are key takeaways from the oral arguments as provided by CNN.

Judges worry about scope and impact of Trump’s immunity argument

The Circuit Court judges asked pointed questions of Trump attorney John Sauer over his claims that Trump has immunity because his actions after losing the 2020 election were part of his presidential duties. The judges also challenged him on his claim that Trump could only face criminal prosecution if he was first impeached and convicted by Congress for the same conduct.

DC Circuit Court Judge Karen Henderson, an appointee of President George H.W. Bush, appeared dubious that Trump was acting within his official duties.

“I think it is paradoxical to say that his constitutional duty to take care of the laws be faithfully executed allows him to violate criminal law,” Henderson said.

Some of the judges pushed back on Trump’s immunity claims by highlighting the potentially dangerous path that it could lead to, with future presidents being able to brazenly break the law without consequences.

This signaled their overall skepticism of Trump’s view, suggesting they are closer to where District Judge Tanya Chutkan landed – which was a strong rejection of Trump’s absolute immunity theory.

Judge Florence Pan, a President Joe Biden nominee, posed some striking hypothetical questions to Sauer, to flesh out the bounds of his immunity argument. His legal theory claims former presidents are shielded from prosecution for official actions if there isn’t an impeachment and conviction by Congress first.

“Could a president order SEAL Team Six to assassinate a political rival? That is an official act, an order to SEAL Team Six?” Pan asked.

“He would have to be, and would speedily be impeached and convicted before the criminal prosecution,” Sauer said.

“I asked you a yes or no question,” Pan said.

“If he were impeached and convicted first,” Sauer replied, later insisting that the “political process” of impeachment “would have to occur” before any prosecution could be initiated.

Pan also peppered Sauer with hypotheticals about whether his immunity theory would also apply to a president selling pardons to criminals or selling military secrets to an enemy state.

Assistant special counsel James Pearce later picked up on the judges’ line of thinking.

“It would be awfully scary if there weren’t some sort of mechanism” to indict future ex-presidents if they similarly tried to stay in power despite losing an election, Pearce said.

Key debate over whether Trump’s impeachment prevents prosecution

Trump’s attorney Sauer argued that a president can only be criminally charged and tried following a conviction for the alleged actions in the Senate. He had been acquitted by the Senate in February 2021.

Pan questioned Sauer over his contention that impeachment and conviction by Congress was required for any criminal prosecution – while also pressing him to acknowledge that he was conceding that there is a path for presidents to face prosecution.

“Once you concede that presidents can be prosecuted under some circumstances, your separation of powers argument falls away, and the issues before us are narrowed to are you correct in your interpretation of the impeachment judgment clause?” Pan said.

The judge noted that many senators relied on the idea that it would be up to the Justice Department to handle an investigation into Trump’s actions following the 2020 election when they were considering whether to convict Trump following his impeachment.

Sauer repeated at the end of yesterday’s hearing that a former president could be prosecuted for “official acts” if they were first convicted by the Senate during impeachment proceedings.

“Say the president was impeached and convicted on a charge of incitement of insurrection,” Pan asked, “then the government could bring a prosecution for the same or related conduct?”

“Correct,” Sauer said.

Trump lawyer says immunity keeps shut ‘Pandora’s box’ for indicting presidents

Sauer painted a picture of what he called a dangerous “Pandora’s box” of indicting former presidents for actions they took while in office. He argued that special counsel Jack Smith’s decision to bring charges against Trump could lead to similar prosecutions.

He warned that this case could theoretically lead to charges against Biden, Barack Obama or George W. Bush.

“To authorize the prosecution of a president for his official acts would open up Pandora’s box from which this nation may never recover,” Sauer said.

If the judges rule against absolute presidential immunity, Sauer said, “It would authorize, for example, the indictment of President Biden in the Western District of Texas after he leaves office for mismanaging the border, allegedly.”

Taking the hypotheticals even farther, Sauer looked back to history, and raised the possibility of past presidents being charged for some of their most controversial official actions.

“Could George W. Bush be prosecuted for obstruction of an official proceeding for allegedly giving false information to Congress, to induce the nation to go to war in Iraq under false pretenses? … Could President Obama be potentially charged for murder for allegedly authorizing drone strikes targeting US citizens located abroad?”

Questions over jurisdiction – can this court even rule on the issue now?

Before the judges got to the meat of Trump’s arguments, they pressed his attorney on whether they should even be reviewing his immunity claims before his trial concludes.

“Before you get started, can I just get a couple of things on the record? Our jurisdiction was challenged by an amicus. But from your reply brief you are not questioning (our decision to review the immunity claims),” Henderson asked Sauer, referring to a friend-of-the-court brief filed by the watchdog group American Oversight.

The group argued the appellate court doesn’t have the authority to take up Trump’s immunity appeal before trial. The group says that unless there is an explicit constitutional or statutory guarantee cited that would stop a trial from occurring, the issue should be left for appeal after the trial.

The argument offers a potential offramp for the appeals court to sidestep the immunity issue for now. The fact that the judges brought up the issue suggests they could have an interest in going that route. But if they did and Trump was convicted, the issue would likely be back before them in due time.

Not only does Trump’s attorney think the appeals court has the authority to hear the immunity dispute right now, the special counsel’s team also believes the intermediate court can review the matter before Trump’s trial concludes.

“It is our view that the court has and should entertain both claims before it,” Pearce told the judges yesterday before launching into his arguments against Trump’s immunity claims.

The special counsel’s office had already tried to skip the appeals court and ask the Supreme Court to take up the issue, but the justices rejected that proposal.

Trump is seen but not heard in court

Trump attended the hearing, though he was not seen as he entered and exited the Washington, DC, courtroom, where cameras were barred but audio of the proceeding was broadcast.

Trump was seated at the defense table roughly 20 feet away from Smith, who also attended the  hearing. While the special counsel’s argument was ongoing, Trump was taking notes and passing them to Sauer.

The judges here will render a decision in quick time!

Tony

Copyright – Financial Times

Dear Commons Community,

A number of lawsuits in a New York federal court will test the future of ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence products to access the huge troves of copyrighted human works.

The question will come down to whether  AI chatbots — such as those developed by  OpenAI and its business partner Microsoft — are breaking copyright and fair competition laws?  As reported by The Associated Press and Financial Times.

“I would like to be optimistic on behalf of the authors, but I’m not. I just think they have an uphill battle here,” said copyright attorney Ashima Aggarwal, who used to work for academic publishing giant John Wiley & Sons.

One lawsuit comes from The New York Times. Another from a group of well-known novelists such as John Grisham, Jodi Picoult and George R.R. Martin. A third from bestselling nonfiction writers, including an author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography on which the hit movie “Oppenheimer” was based.

THE LAWSUITS

Each of the lawsuits makes different allegations, but they all center on the San Francisco-based company OpenAI “building this product on the back of other peoples’ intellectual property,” said attorney Justin Nelson, who is representing the nonfiction writers and whose law firm is also representing The Times.

“What OpenAI is saying is that they have a free ride to take anybody else’s intellectual property really since the dawn of time, as long as it’s been on the internet,” Nelson said.

The Times sued in December, arguing that ChatGPT and Microsoft’s Copilot are competing with the same outlets they are trained on and diverting web traffic away from the newspaper and other copyright holders who depend on advertising revenue generated from their sites to keep producing their journalism. It also provided evidence of the chatbots spitting out Times articles word-for-word. At other times the chatbots falsely attributed misinformation to the paper in a way it said damaged its reputation.

One senior federal judge is so far presiding over all three cases, as well as a fourth from two more nonfiction authors who filed another lawsuit last week. U.S. District Judge Sidney H. Stein has been at the Manhattan-based court since 1995 when he was nominated by then-President Bill Clinton.

THE RESPONSE

OpenAI and Microsoft haven’t yet filed formal counter-arguments on the New York cases, but OpenAI made a public statement this week describing The Times lawsuit as “without merit” and saying that the chatbot’s ability to regurgitate some articles verbatim was a “rare bug.” 

The examples put forward by the Times are from old articles that have been published on a number of third-party sites, according to OpenAI. “It seems [the Times] intentionally manipulated prompts, often including lengthy excerpts of articles, in order to get our model to regurgitate.” “Our models don’t typically behave the way The New York Times insinuates, which suggests they either instructed the model to regurgitate or cherry-picked their examples from many attempts,” OpenAI wrote. “The blog concedes that OpenAI used The Times’s work, along with the work of many others, to build ChatGPT,” said Ian Crosby, a partner at Susman Godfrey, which is representing The New York Times. OpenAI had sought “to free-ride on The Times’s massive investment in its journalism by using it to build substitutive products without permission or payment,” according to the company’s lawsuit. “That’s not fair use by any measure,” Crosby added. OpenAI and other AI companies have argued that processing reams of publicly available data from the internet constitutes protected “fair use” under US copyright law.

WHO’S GOING TO WIN?

Much of the AI industry’s argument rests on the “fair use” doctrine of U.S. copyright law that allows for limited uses of copyrighted materials such as for teaching, research or transforming the copyrighted work into something different.

In response, the legal team representing The Times wrote Tuesday that what OpenAI and Microsoft are doing is “not fair use by any measure” because they’re taking from the newspaper’s investment in its journalism “to build substitutive products without permission or payment.”

So far, courts have largely sided with tech companies in interpreting how copyright laws should treat AI systems. In a defeat for visual artists, a federal judge in San Francisco last year dismissed much of the first big lawsuit against AI image-generators. Another California judge shot down comedian Sarah Silverman’s arguments that Facebook parent Meta infringed on the text of her memoir to build its AI model.

The most recent lawsuits have brought more detailed evidence of alleged harms, but Aggarwal said when it comes to using copyrighted content to train AI systems that deliver a “small portion of that to users, the courts just don’t seem inclined to find that to be copyright infringement.”

Tech companies cite as precedent Google’s success in beating back legal challenges to its online book library. The U.S. Supreme Court in 2016 let stand lower court rulings that rejected authors’ claim that Google’s digitizing of millions of books and showing snippets of them to the public amounted to copyright infringement.

But judges interpret fair use arguments on a case-by-case basis and it is “actually very fact-dependent,” depending on economic impact and other factors, said Cathy Wolfe, an executive at the Dutch firm Wolters Kluwer who also sits on the board of the Copyright Clearance Center, which helps negotiate print and digital media licenses in the U.S.

“Just because something is free on the internet, on a website, doesn’t mean you can copy it and email it, let alone use it to conduct commercial business,” Wolfe said. “Who’s going to win, I don’t know, but I’m certainly a proponent for protecting copyright for all of us. It drives innovation.”

BEYOND THE COURTS

Some media outlets and other content creators are looking beyond the courts and calling for lawmakers or the U.S. Copyright Office to strengthen copyright protections for the AI era. A panel of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee will hear testimony Wednesday from media executives and advocates in a hearing dedicated to AI’s effect on journalism.

Roger Lynch, chief executive of the Conde Nast magazine chain, plans to tell senators that generative AI companies “are using our stolen intellectual property to build tools of replacement.”

“We believe that a legislative fix can be simple — clarifying that the use of copyrighted content in conjunction with commercial Gen AI is not fair use and requires a license,” says a copy of Lynch’s prepared remarks.

This lawsuit will be followed closely in the AI and publishing worlds.  It will likely lead to lengthy deliberations.

Tony

‘Utter Disgrace’: Trump Slammed After Admitting He Hopes Economy Crashes This Year.  Ed Mazza- The Huffington Post.

Dear Commons Community,

I have tried to avoid the vile, disgraceful comments of Trump during this presidential campaign season mainly because he says things simply to garner attention.  However, yesterday he is quoted as saying that he hoped that the US economy would crash in 2024 with absolutely no concern for the millions of Americans who would be adversely affected.

Trump claimed that the economy is “fragile” and running on “fumes” as he warned of a crash even though stocks are surging, unemployment is near historic lows and the nation appears to have avoided a predicted recession.

“And when there’s a crash, I hope it’s gonna be during this next 12 months, because I don’t wanna be Herbert Hoover,” Trump told Lindell TV host Lou Dobbs. “The one president, I just don’t want to be, Herbert Hoover.”

Hoover was president during the 1929 stock market crash, which plunged the nation into the Great Depression.

Speaking on MSNBC, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Trump may need “an intervention” from his family.

“It’s just another manifestation of the insensitivity and the grotesqueness of this person,” she told Jen Psaki as she slammed the effect an economic crash would have on people.

Also on MSNBC, former Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele called Trump’s hope “the dumbest thing in the world to say.”

“Think about it: The man says ‘I want to be a dictator’ and ‘I want the stock market to crash.’ OK, so you’re 0-for-2 in my book, Skippy,” he said, adding that Trump’s hope means the former president wants people to lose their life savings.

“Why? Because it benefits him,” Steele said.

Wake up Republicans!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Former Vice President Mike Pence, who said his life was threatened during the violent U.S. Capitol attack three years ago, is refuting the unsubstantiated claims of former President Donald Trump and encouraging Republicans to choose another candidate in 2024.

Pence, once fiercely loyal to his old boss, dismantled Trump’s recent description in Iowa that Jan. 6, 2021, was “peaceful” and the work of “patriots.” Trump also describes more than 1,000 people, who were convicted in connection with crimes on Jan. 6, as political “hostages.” And the former president has made unsubstantiated claims that the Jan. 6 attack was the work of the FBI.  As reported by USA Today and CNN/

“The truth is that this was a riot that should never have happened,” Pence said Sunday morning during an interview on CNN’s State of the Union. (See video below for full interview. Comments about January 6th are in the second half.)

He also emphasized what he has said before − Trump’s words were reckless on Jan. 6 and Pence did his duty in certifying the will of voters who elected President Joe Biden in 2020. Pence, who was at the Capitol on Jan. 6, said he saw people breaking windows, ransacking the Capitol.

“It just infuriated me,” Pence said. “I remember thinking, you know, ‘Not this, not here, not at the United States Capitol.'”

He thanked the FBI for bringing criminals to justice and countered Trump’s false claims. “I’ve heard the many repeated assurances from the FBI that they were not involved and I take them at their word,” Pence said.

Though Pence said voters are more likely to make decisions in 2024 based on the last year, and not three years ago, he hopes Republican voters get behind a different candidate than Trump.

Pence said the upcoming Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary are a chance for “good Republican voters” to “give our party a fresh start and give us new leadership to lead our party forward in the election and beyond.”

He stopped short of endorsing one of Trump’s challengers, saying he thinks “very highly” of Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis − and he said Chris Christie has been a friend for many years.

Pence bowed out of the race in late October, a contest in which he challenged Trump because he believes “different times call for different leadership.”

“We need new leadership in the Republican Party. We certainly need new leaders in the White House to move us forward,” he said.

If at some point his endorsement could have an impact on achieving that, “I’ll certainly do it.”

If Pence had exposed Trump during his four years as vice president, we might not be here now.

Better late than never!

Tony

Joe Biden took the gloves off in a speech in Pennsylvania, on 5 January 2024. Photograph: Shawn Thew/EPA

Dear Commons Community,

Maureen Dow had a column yesterday urging Joe Biden to pick up his attacks on Donald Trump otherwise our country might have to live with the hell that is Trump. She also cautioned Biden that he cannot simply depend upon the press to shore up his candidacy. Here is an excerpt:

“With the disreputable Donald Trump challenging the disfavored President Biden, the 2024 race has become the embodiment of Oscar Wilde’s witticism about fox hunting: “the unspeakable in pursuit of the inedible.”

Bleeding young and nonwhite voters, the president finally heeded Democrats urging him to “get out there,” as Nancy Pelosi put it, and throw some haymakers at Trump.

Biden flew to Pennsylvania on Friday to visit Valley Forge and make a pugnacious speech invoking an earlier moment when we were fighting against despotism and clinging to a dream of a democracy.

In a discontented winter during the American Revolution, George Washington tried to inspire his downtrodden troops at Valley Forge by having Thomas Paine’s “The American Crisis” read to them.

“These are the times that try men’s souls,” Paine wrote, adding, “Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered.”

As the voting to determine the next president gets underway, it is clear that the tyrannical Trump won’t be easily conquered. And that is our hell.

“You can’t love your country only when you win,” Biden said in his speech, making a forceful case that America, which dumped the mad King George, should not embrace the mad King Donald.

If we bow down to a wannabe dictator who loves dictators, who echoes the language of Nazi Germany, who egged on the mob on Jan. 6 and then rewrote the facts to “steal history” just as he tried to steal the election — what does that say about who we are, Biden wondered? Her conclusion:

Still, the Biden-Harris campaign… gives the impression that it expects the media to prop up Biden.

Biden has to press his own case and not rely on the media or Trump’s fatuousness to win the election for him.

People don’t want to vote against somebody; they want to vote for somebody.

The president must continue to be aggressive in convincing people he’s the best alternative; that, at 81, he’s not too old for the job; that he has solutions to stop the chaos on the border and relentless death in Gaza….

Do your job Mr. President!

Good advice!

Tony