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Ranking the Top 10 Republican Presidential Candidates

May 30, 2023

From a Washington Post analysis by Aaron Blake headlined “The top 10 Republican presidential candidate for 2024, ranked”:

Say what you will about Donald Trump and his continued domination of the Republican Party; his candidacy apparently isn’t scaring away ambitious Republicans.

The past week built toward a GOP primary field that might be 10 or so candidates deep. Sen. Tim Scott (S.C.) and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis officially entered the race. Former vice president Mike Pence and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum signaled that they are preparing campaigns. And, last week, New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu placed the odds of his running at a weirdly specific number: 61 percent.

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Shocks, Beatings, Mock Executions by Russians: Inside Kherson’s Detention Centers

May 30, 2023

From a New York Times story by Carlotta Gall headlined “Shocks, Beatings, Mock Executions: Inside Kherson’s Detention Centers”:

They beat prisoners relentlessly and tortured them with electric shocks, waterboarding and mock executions. Three people died in their custody. Yet such was their sense of impunity, the Russians who seized control of a detention center in southern Ukraine last year and filled it with 200 detainees were careless about concealing their identities.

Last week, Ukrainian prosecutors announced war crimes charges against four members of the Russian National Guard — the commander who ran the detention facility and three of his subordinates. They were accused in absentia for cruel treatment of civilians and violating the laws of war.

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How Michael Phelps Learned to Make the Right Calls

May 29, 2023

From a Washington Post column by Sally Jenkins headlined “How Michael Phelps learned to make the right calls”:

For 20 years, Michael Phelps swam for five miles a day, six and seven days a week, trawling through resistant liquid, staring at a black line on the pool bottom. Phelps swam on Sundays and his birthdays. “Nobody else did that,” his coach Bob Bowman said. When Phelps’s chest began to bloom with gold medals, outside observers attributed it to a genetic gift. But that missed the most important fact about Phelps, one with significance for all of us. “The thing that made him great was the work,” Bowman observed.

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Russia Issues Arrest Warrant for Senator Graham

May 29, 2023

From an AP story headlined “Russia issues arrest warrant for Lindsay Graham over Ukraine comments”:

Russia’s Interior Ministry on Monday issued an arrest warrant for U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham following his comments related to the fighting in Ukraine.

In an edited video of his meeting on Friday with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy that was released by Zelenskyy’s office, Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, noted that “the Russians are dying” and described the U.S. military assistance to the country as “the best money we’ve ever spent.”

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Who Should We Honor on Memorial Day?

May 29, 2023

From a New York Times guest essay by Kayla M. Williams titled “Who Should We Honor on Memorial Day?”:

In 1866, four women placing spring flowers on the graves of Confederate soldiers at Friendship Cemetery in Columbus, Miss., noticed that the nearby graves of Union soldiers were barren. They took it upon themselves to decorate those, too.

Lately I have been thinking about those women as Memorial Day approaches. Their decision to expand the notion of whom they chose to remember lies at the heart of what Memorial Day should be about. For those women in Mississippi, the Union soldiers, enemies in a war that divided not only a nation but also families and left some 750,000 dead, also deserved respect and flowers.

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An Army Command Like No Other Seeks to Master the Future of War

May 29, 2023

From a Washington Post column by Max Boot headlined “An Army command like no other seeks to master the future of war”:

Every Memorial Day, we honor the valor and sacrifice of American troops. But many of them lost their lives unnecessarily because the military was poorly prepared for the wars it had to wage. From the First Battle of Bull Run (1861) to Kasserine Pass (1943) to Task Force Smith in South Korea (1950) to the insurgency in Iraq (2003), U.S. armed forces have often lost the early battles of their wars. In the years to come, such failures could have even more catastrophic consequences than in the past. The job of the Army Futures Command (AFC) is to ensure that doesn’t happen.

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This 101-Year-Old Is the Last Living Survivor of Pearl Harbor’s USS Arizona

May 29, 2023

From a Wall Street Journal story by Joseph Pisani headlined “This 101-Year-Old Is the Last Survivor of Pearl Harbor’s USS Arizona”:

Lou Conter was 20 years old when the warship he was on—the USS Arizona—was bombed by Japanese forces at Pearl Harbor in 1941.

Now, at 101, he’s the last known survivor of the USS Arizona. He escaped the burning wreckage and helped crewmates to safety. Just don’t call him a hero.

“I consider the heroes the ones that gave their lives, that never came home to their families,” he said. “They’re the real heroes.”

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Ian Hacking: Eminent Philosopher of Science and Lively and Provocative Writer

May 28, 2023

From a New York Times obit by Alex Williams headlined “Ian Hacking, Eminent Philosopher of Science and Much Else, Dies at 87”:

Ian Hacking, a Canadian philosopher widely hailed as a giant of modern thought for game-changing contributions to the philosophies of science, probability and mathematics, as well as his widely circulated insights on issues like race and mental health, died in Toronto.

In an academic career that included more than two decades as a professor in the philosophy department of the University of Toronto, following appointments at Cambridge and Stanford, Professor Hacking’s intellectual scope seemed to know no bounds. Because of his ability to span multiple academic fields, he was often described as a bridge builder.

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Prison Camp Awaits Theranos Founder Elizabeth Holmes

May 28, 2023

From a Wall Street Journal story by Christopher Weaver and Meghan Bobrowsky headlined “Inmates Await Theranos Founder Elizabeth Holmes: ‘I Want to Be Her Friend'”:

Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes could find some bad blood awaiting her at the Bryan, Texas, prison camp where she is expected to begin her roughly 11-year sentence on Tuesday..

A copy of the bestselling book “Bad Blood,” which documents Theranos’s rise and fall, was spotted in Federal Prison Camp Bryan’s library, an inmate who was released in March recalled.

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