Dear Commons Community,

Two boaters were seen on a viral video (below)) dumping trash into the ocean off Florida and charges against them are imminent, said a state official on Thursday.

Attorneys for the men have advised them not to cooperate with investigators, said Maj. Dustin Bonds, a south region commander with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, or FWC.

The agency is working with prosecutors in Palm Beach County’s state attorney’s office to determine the appropriate charge, Bonds said.

Bonds said he was in disbelief as he watched the video because he has never seen anyone dump trash into the ocean.

“I was shocked that folks that are enjoying our waterways, just like the hundreds of boaters in Boca that day were doing, but this one boat decided that it was OK to dump two trash cans overboard,” he said.

Others seen on the boat have also been identified, the wildlife agency said.

But Bonds said he hopes witnesses on the boat step forward and speak to investigators. Bonds said that about 16 minors were on the boat and that only one of them has voluntarily spoken to investigators.

FWC Chair Rodney Barreto said on NBC’s “TODAY” show that the video “has become a worldwide story. I mean, the world is watching this.”

Officials did not publicly identify the people they said were involved.

The wildlife agency said it is working with the state attorney’s office to “identify appropriate charges” in the incident, which happened Sunday at the Boca Inlet.

The video, which content creator Wavy Boats posted on YouTube, shows two people each dumping a trash bin full of garbage into the sea.

The boaters in the video attended the annual Boca Bash, according to its organizers, who said they are working to identify them.

“We cannot be more angered and disturbed by these actions,” the Boca Bash said in a statement on its Facebook page. “Once the video was posted we quickly got to work with the community to discover who the owner of the boat was and who was on the vessel in this particular instance committing an egregious act. Several people that helped in identifying them had already contacted authorities to handle the situation.”

Organizers also said they would like to see the boaters involved face “repercussions”:

“We do not condone this behavior by any means and are appalled that the passengers even had the audacity to clap at the drone that was filming them dumping their garbage. We hope the repercussions handed down can be viewed publicly as a warning of how important our waters are to us native Floridians.”

Disgraceful!

Tony

Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs signs the repeal of the Civil War-era near-total abortion ban. Matt York/AP..

Dear Commons Community,

Democratic Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs signed a bill yesterday repealing a Civil War-era ban on most abortions.

Hobbs says the move is just the beginning of a fight to protect reproductive health care in Arizona. The repeal of the 1864 law that the state Supreme Court recently reinstated won’t take effect until 90 days after the legislative session ends, which typically happens in June or July.  As reported by The Associated Press.

Abortion rights advocates say they’re hopeful a court will step in to prevent what could be a confusing landscape of access for girls and women across Arizona as laws are introduced and then reversed.

The effort to repeal the long-dormant 1864 law, which bans all abortions except those done to save a patient’s life, won final legislative approval Wednesday in a 16-14 vote of the Senate, as two GOP lawmakers joined with Democrats.

Hobbs denounced “a ban that was passed by 27 men before Arizona was even a state, at a time when America was at war over the right to own slaves, a time before women could even vote.”

“This ban needs to be repealed, I said it in 2022 when Roe was overturned, and I said it again and again as governor,” Hobbs said during the bill signing.

In early April, Arizona’s Supreme Court voted to restore the 1864 law that provided no exceptions for rape or incest and allows abortions only if the mother’s life is in jeopardy. The majority opinion suggested doctors could be prosecuted and sentenced to up to five years in prison if convicted.

Congratulations Governor Hobbs and state legislators involved with the repeal!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The Chronicle of Higher Education had a featured article Wednesday entitled “The Ghost Writer in the Machine”  which was a critique of Dennis Yi Tenen’s new book Literary Theory for Robots: How Computers Learned to Write.  The article, written by Matthew Kirschenbaum, a distinguished university professor of English and digital studies at the University of Maryland at College Park, takes a measured critique of Tenen’s book from the point of view of a scholar.  Kirschenbaum comments that the book is marketed for “general readers.” Here are several excerpts.

“By looking at where we’ve been, he argues, we can gain some insight into where we might be headed.

The opening chapters of Literary Theory for Robots walk us through a range of historical figures and their associated writings, thought experiments, and sometimes actual devices. Some, like the philosopher Gottfried Leibniz or the mathematicians and inventors Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace, are familiar as recurring characters in popular histories of computing; others, like the medieval Tunisian scholar Ibn Khaldun, the German poet Quirinus Kuhlmann, and the 17th-century Jesuit polymath Athanasius Kircher, are likely less so.

…

Tenen develops two converging themes. The first is that the quest for a universal symbolic language was also accompanied by a quest for a universal machine, what ultimately became the modern computer. The second is the idea that “intelligence” is always an artificial construct, which is to say a function of external conditioning and tools as much as it is innate ability or aptitude.”

Kirschenbaum’s conclusion:

“We may think we know how robots learned to write; at the very least, as Tenen shows, it makes for a great story. But is it the history that will matter in the end? And who — or what — will get to write it?”

I have just ordered Tenet’s book on Amazon.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Yesterday, United Methodist delegates repealed their church’s longstanding ban on LGBTQ clergy with no debate, removing a rule forbidding “self-avowed practicing homosexuals” from being ordained or appointed as ministers.  As reported by The Associated Press.

Delegates voted 692-51 at their General Conference — the first such legislative gathering in five years. That overwhelming margin contrasts sharply with the decades of controversy around the issue. Past General Conferences of the United Methodist Church had steadily reinforced the ban and related penalties amid debate and protests, but many of the conservatives who had previously upheld the ban have left the denomination in recent years, and this General Conference has moved in a solidly progressive direction.

Applause broke out in parts of the convention hall after the vote. A group of observers from LGBTQ advocacy groups embraced, some in tears. “Thanks be to God,” said one.

The change doesn’t mandate or even explicitly affirm LGBTQ clergy, but it means the church no longer forbids them. It’s possible that the change will mainly apply to U.S. churches, since United Methodist bodies in other countries, such as in Africa, have the right to impose the rules for their own regions. The measure takes effect immediately upon the conclusion of General Conference, scheduled for tomorrow.

The consensus was so overwhelmingly that it was rolled into a “consent calendar,” a package of normally non-controversial measures that are bundled into a single vote to save time.

Also approved was a measure that forbids district superintendents — a regional administrator — from penalizing clergy for either performing a same-sex wedding or for refraining from performing one. It also forbids superintendents from forbidding or requiring a church from hosting a same-sex wedding.

That measure further removes scaffolding around the various LGBTQ bans that have been embedded various parts of official church law and policy. On Tuesday, delegates had begun taking steps to dismantle such policies.

Delegates are also expected to vote as soon as today on whether to replace their existing official Social Principles with a new document that no longer calls the “practice of homosexuality … incompatible with Christian teaching” and that now defines marriage as between “two people of faith” rather than between a man and a woman.

The changes are historic in a denomination that has debated LGBTQ issues for more than half a century at its General Conferences, which typically meet every four years. On Tuesday, delegates voted to remove mandatory penalties for conducting same-sex marriages and to remove their denomination’s bans on considering LGBTQ candidates for ministry and on funding for gay-friendly ministries.

About 100 LGBTQ people and allies gathered outside the Charlotte Convention Center after the vote — many with rainbow-colored scarves and umbrellas — to celebrate, pray and sing praise songs accompanied by a drum.

Bishop Karen Oliveto, the first openly lesbian bishop in the United Methodist Church, was among those celebrating.

“It seemed like such a simple vote, but it carried so much weight and power, as 50 years of restricting the Holy Spirit’s call on people’s lives has been lifted,” said Oliveto, of the Mountain Sky Episcopal Area, which includes Colorado, Montana, Utah and Wyoming. “People can live fully into their call without fear. The church we’ve loved has found a home for us.”

Angie Cox, an observer at the meeting from Ohio, said she has gone before her conference’s board of ordained ministry six times but was “told no just because of the prohibition on LGBTQ clergy.” She said Wednesday’s vote “means I might be able finally to live fully into my calling.”

Tracy Merrick, a delegate from Pittsburgh who has advocated for LGBTQ inclusion at several previous conferences, said with emotion that there were “many times when I thought we would never see this day.”

The vote, he said, enables the church to become “the denomination that many of us had envisioned for years.”

At the same time, the vote comes following the departure of one-quarter of the U.S. churches within the UMC. And it could also prompt departures of some international churches, particularly in Africa, where more conservative sexual values prevail and where same-sex activity is criminalized in some countries.

Last week, the conference endorsed a regionalization plan that essentially would allow the churches of the United States the same autonomy as other regions of the global church. That change — which still requires local ratification — could create a scenario where LGBTQ clergy and same-sex marriage are allowed in the United States but not in other regions.

More than 7,600 mostly conservative congregations in the United States disaffiliated between 2019 and 2023 reflecting dismay over the denomination not enforcing its bans on same-sex marriage and LGBTQ ordination.

The conference last week also approved the departure of a small group of conservative churches in the former Soviet Union.

The church’s 1972 General Conference approved a statement in its non-binding Social Principles that homosexuality is “incompatible with Christian teaching” — a phrase omitted in a revision to the Social Principles that is also headed for a conference vote this week.

The denomination had until recently been the third largest in the United States, present in almost every county. But its 5.4 million U.S. membership in 2022 is expected to drop once the 2023 departures are factored in.

The denomination also counts 4.6 million members in other countries, mainly in Africa, though earlier estimates have been higher.

Amen!

Tony

Click on to enlarge.

Dear Commons Community,

The New York Times has a featured article this morning reviewing the state of campus protests and encampments. Police have been called into a number of colleges and universities and arrests have been made (see map above). Here are excerpts from the article.

Police officers at the University of California, Los Angeles, on Wednesday ordered pro-Palestinian protesters to leave their encampment or face arrest after a night of chaos at the campus that saw violent clashes with counterprotesters.

A stream of students left the encampment after the warning, but hundreds remained inside, putting on helmets, masks and goggles. Dozens of police officers were stationed nearby, and lines of police cars are parked around the encampment, which had been the scene of wild clashes overnight when the counterprotesters attempted to breach it.

The university’s chancellor, Gene Block, had described the counterprotesters as “instigators” who attacked the pro-Palestinian encampment. Mayor Karen Bass of Los Angeles called for a “full investigation” into the “absolutely detestable” violence at the U.C.L.A. campus.

Elsewhere, police officers in riot gear arrested pro-Palestinian demonstrators at Fordham University’s Manhattan campus on Wednesday evening, the third university in New York City to face mass arrests in the past 24 hours as a surge of protests have put American universities on edge.

Police officers remained a jarring sight on the lawns and sidewalks of several American universities on Wednesday evening, including at Tulane in New Orleans, the University of Wisconsin, Madison and elsewhere.

Students at many other universities remained in protest encampments, indicating no intention of backing down, even as demonstrations spread to more campuses. The wave of student activism opposing the war in Gaza has posed a challenge for administrators who want to protect free speech rights while minimizing campus disruption.

More than 1,300 protesters have been taken into custody on U.S. campuses since  April 18, according to a tally by The New York Times.

Here’s what else to know:

• Columbia’s campus remained closed to everyone but students who live there and employees who provide essential services, after officers in riot gear on Tuesday cleared a building that had been occupied for nearly a day. The school’s embattled president asked the police to remain on campus past graduation to prevent more conflict.
• Pro-Palestinian demonstrators also were arrested at City College of New York in Harlem on Tuesday night after some of them tried to take over an administrative building.
• At Tulane, 14 people were arrested, administrators said, as state and local forces helped campus police disperse protesters. At the University of Arizona, campus police sprayed chemicals as they broke up a demonstration. And at least 17 people were arrested when officers cleared an encampment at the University of Texas at Dallas.
• There were signs of de-escalation on some campuses. In Rhode Island, students at Brown University dismantled their encampment on Tuesday. On the West Coast, the police ended the eight-day occupation of an administration building at California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt.

Tony

Hunter Biden.

Dear Commons Community,

Fox News says it has taken down a docuseries on its streaming service focusing on Hunter Biden, the president’s son, after he threatened to sue the outlet for using images he said were private.  As reported by The Hill.

“This program was produced in and has been available since 2022,” the network said in a statement Tuesday. “We are reviewing the concerns that have just been raised and — out of an abundance of caution in the interim — have taken it down.”

In a letter sent by Biden’s attorneys to Fox News this week and obtained by several news outlets, the younger Biden accused the network of conducting unlawful publication of “hacked” images and demanded the outlet retract and remove them from its platforms.

Earlier Tuesday, Fox pushed back on the assertions made in the letter.

“Hunter Biden’s lawyers have belatedly chosen to publicly attack Fox News’ constitutionally protected coverage regarding their client,” the network wrote.

“Mr. Biden is a public figure who has been the subject of investigations by both the Department of Justice and Congress, has been indicted by two different US Attorney’s Offices in California and Delaware, and has admitted to multiple incidents of wrongdoing,” the outlet continued. “Consistent with the First Amendment, Fox News has accurately covered these highly publicized events as well as the subsequent indictment of an FBI informant who was the source of certain claims made about Mr. Biden.”

Biden’s attorneys are arguing the docuseries was produced for its streaming service “just for entertainment value,” lacked news value and used explicit images the president’s son to paint him in a negative light.

Republicans and leading pundits on Fox and elsewhere in conservative media have aggressively attacked Biden for years over his foreign business deals, history of drug use and tax issues.

Fox News has blinked!

Tony

Courtesy of The Huffington Post.

Dear Commons Community,

The pro-Palestinian demonstration that paralyzed Columbia University ended in dramatic fashion, with police carrying riot shields bursting into a building that protesters took over the previous night and making dozens of arrests. On the other side of the country, clashes broke out early Wednesday between dueling groups at the University of California, Los Angeles.

New York City officers entered Columbia’s campus late Tuesday after the university requested help, according to a statement released by a spokesperson. A tent encampment on the school’s grounds was cleared, along with Hamilton Hall where a stream of officers used a ladder to climb through a second-floor window.

Protesters calling on the Ivy League university to stop doing business with Israel or companies that support the war in Gaza seized the hall about 20 hours earlier.

“After the University learned overnight that Hamilton Hall had been occupied, vandalized, and blockaded, we were left with no choice,” the school said. “The decision to reach out to the NYPD was in response to the actions of the protesters, not the cause they are championing. We have made it clear that the life of campus cannot be endlessly interrupted by protesters who violate the rules and the law.”

Police spokesman Carlos Nieves said he had no immediate reports of any injuries. The arrests occurred after protesters shrugged off an earlier ultimatum to abandon the encampment Monday or be suspended and unfolded as other universities stepped up efforts to end demonstrations that were inspired by Columbia.

Thank God that no one was hurt. 

It will also be interesting to see if any of the arrested individuals have little or no connection to Columbia.

Tony

Loran Livingston.  Courtesy of YouTube/Central Church.

Dear Commons Community,

Pastor Loran Livingston ripped Trump’s $59.99 Bible during a sermon at the Central Church of North Carolina in Charlotte  as “disgusting,” “blasphemous,” and a “cheap ploy”

Livingston also made anti-LGBTQ+ comments, described abortion as “murder” and the “premeditated termination of innocent human life” and slammed people who “get politics mixed up with church” in the lead-up to his attack on the Trump-endorsed holy book.

Then he said, “When you don’t read and pray. You say, ‘Wow, there’s a Bible out now that includes the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, isn’t that wonderful?’ No, no. It’s disgusting. It’s blasphemous. It’s a ploy.”

“Are you kidding me? Some of you are so encouraged by that. Let me tell you something. The gospel is not an American gospel. It is the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ,” Livingston added. He didn’t name the Trump Bible explicitly, but his references were apparent.

The Trump-promoted Bible combines the text of the King James Bible with the Pledge of Allegiance, the Bill of Rights, the U.S. Constitution, the Declaration of Independence and handwritten lyrics to Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA.”

Trump, who is the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, began hawking the book back in March, garnering widespread mockery and brutal reminders of his less-than-religious lifestyle.

Evangelicals proved pivotal to Trump for his 2016 election victory over Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. Leading figures in the movement have since claimed, however, to have cut ties with the four-times-indicted ex-POTUS.

More evangelicals have to come out and speak the truth about Trump hawking a bible.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

“RFK Jr. is a Democrat ‘Plant,’ a Radical Left Liberal who’s been put in place in order to help Crooked Joe Biden, get Re-Elected,” Trump wrote on Truth Social last week.

“A Vote for Junior’ would essentially be a WASTED PROTEST VOTE, that could swing either way, but would only swing against the Democrats if Republicans knew the true story about him,” Trump added.

“When frightened men take to social media they risk descending into vitriol, which makes them sound unhinged,” Kennedy fired back at Trump on Saturday in a post on the social platform X. “President Trump’s rant against me is a barely coherent barrage of wild and inaccurate claims that should best be resolved in the American tradition of presidential debate.”  As reported by The Hill.

The conventional wisdom for months has been that while Kennedy’s third-party bid could be a spoiler for both Trump and Biden, it bore more risks to the Democrat given Kennedy’s family name.

But Decision Desk HQ’s aggregate of polling over the last few weeks paints a much more complicated picture. While Trump at times sees his lead over Biden grow with Kennedy is also included in polls, the gap was narrowing last week, and at one point Biden and Trump were in a dead heat in a three-way race with Kennedy.

Some Trump allies who know the former president’s operating style downplayed last week’s attacks, saying they were off-the-cuff and not part of a coordinated strategy against Kennedy.

“He’s pretty much predictable and tribal in his response to anybody and everybody,” a former Trump campaign adviser in a battleground state told The Hill. “I don’t know that we can put a measure on that.”

Still, other Republicans say it’s clear that concerns are growing in Trumpland about Kennedy.

“You don’t attack somebody you’re not at all worried about,” GOP strategist Alex Conant said.

“If you look at the sort of media RFK does, you look at his very populist message, his history of embracing conspiracy theories — there’s a lot there to make Trump World nervous.”

Democrats and Republicans are both “in a race to define Kennedy,” because in a tight race, his supporters could be crucial, Conant said.

GOP strategist Brian Seitchik, a former Trump campaign staffer, said “the real barometer” will be whether Trump escalates his criticisms.

“More than just tweets and Truth Socials and things like that, is there going to be a concerted effort to spend against him in key states and try to push the share of the vote down?” Seitchik said.

Democrats have been the party more preoccupied by Kennedy, with the environmental lawyer’s own family sounding alarms that he could siphon votes from Biden. More than a dozen members of the Kennedy clan earlier this month backed the president in a high-profile rebuke of their relative.

But a new NBC News poll showed Kennedy could actually dent Trump more than Biden.

While the Republican was 2 points up in a head-to-head match-up, Biden jumped to a 2-point advantage with third-party candidates in the mix.

Jim Messina, who led former President Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign, said in a recent MSNBC interview that the latest polling around Kennedy is a promising sign for Democrats.

“They say he hurts Biden. I think I’m not sure that that’s true. I think he probably hurts [us] both,” Trump said in a radio appearance with conservative John Fredericks last week. “But he might hurt Biden a little bit more, you don’t know.”

Republicans, including Trump himself, have at times offered positive views of Kennedy.

Not anymore. Earlier this month, the pro-Trump PAC Make America Great Again Inc. launched a website mocking “Radical F***ing Kennedy” and pitching the independent as a “friend of left-wing extremists.”

Reached by The Hill for comment Monday, Kennedy campaign spokesperson Stefanie Spear pointed to the candidate’s remarks about Trump on X.

Republicans are generally cautious about speculating how Kennedy’s bid could play out.

“Depending on what poll you look at, Kennedy poses problems for either one of them,” Republican strategist Doug Heye said of Biden and Trump.

“This is one of the reasons that trying to really try to accurately forecast 2024 is going to be very difficult, because it is going to come down to a handful of states, and that means a handful of voters. And what RFK means to either candidate in any of those states, I just don’t think we know yet,” Heye said.

Democrats are worried about how Kennedy could hurt Biden in various swing states.

Party officials and organizers have been working alongside political operatives to get the word out about what they see as his candidacy’s problems, including how he could help Trump win back the White House.

Democrats have referenced the 2016 presidential race, when Green Party candidate Jill Stein won enough voters in swing states that arguably helped Trump defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton.

“When it comes to Mr. Kennedy in particular, you think about the positions he’s taken and the things he’d advocated for and quite frankly the things he’s advocated against, it should scare the hell out of every person who is thinking about participating in this election,” said Antjuan Seawright, a Democratic strategist based in South Carolina.

Democrats have been critical about his views questioning vaccine science and have increasingly drawn attention toward his wavering sentiments around abortion and in vitro fertilization, in which he has offered mixed stances. He has also issued what many Democrats considered a lukewarm rebuke of the rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Some in the party have also sought to showcase that he is aligned with Trump’s donors after it became known that GOP financier Timothy Mellon has supported his super PAC.

I don’t think anyone knows how Kennedy will affect the election.

Tony

(Courtesy of Sefa Karacan/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

Dear Commons Community,

 U.S. intelligence has determined that Russian President Vladimir Putin likely didn’t order the death of imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny in February, according to an official familiar with the determination.

While U.S. officials believe Putin was ultimately responsible for the death of Navalny, who endured brutal conditions during his confinement, the intelligence community has found “no smoking gun” that Putin was aware of the timing of Navalny’s death — which came soon before the Russian president’s reelection — or directly ordered it, according to the official. AS reported by The Associated Press and The Wall Street Journal.

The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter.

Soon after Navalny’s death, U.S. President Joe Biden said Putin was ultimately responsible but did not accuse the Russian president of directly ordering it.

At the time, Biden said the U.S. did not know exactly what had happened to Navalny but that “there is no doubt” that his death “was the consequence of something that Putin and his thugs did.”

Navalny, 47, Russia’s best-known opposition politician and Putin’s most persistent foe, died Feb. 16 in a remote penal colony above the Arctic Circle while serving a 19-year sentence on extremism charges that he rejected as politically motivated.

He had been behind bars since January 2021 after returning to Russia from Germany, where he had been recovering from nerve-agent poisoning that he blamed on the Kremlin.

Russian officials have said only that Navalny died of natural causes and have vehemently denied involvement both in the poisoning and in his death.

In March, a month after Navalny’s death, Putin won a landslide reelection for a fifth term, an outcome that was never in doubt.

Tony