While Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder remains comfortably ensconced in the governor’s mansion, Mich. Attorney General Bill Schuette charged two more state health officials for misconduct related to the poisoning of Flint, Mich.'s watere supply, adding to the list of lower-level officials who've been held accountable for their actions while top decision makers go free.
Shortly after the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against Trump's "revised" travel ban in a largely moot decision as the White House already had appealed to the Supreme Court, moments ago 17 Attorneys General led by NY AG Eric Schneiderman, announced they are filing an amicus brief with the Supreme Court in opposition to Trump's "Muslim Ban." Attorneys General also filed suit against President Trump’s first and second immigration bans.
Both the New York Times and Washington Post confirm that the U.S. used white phosphorous in densely populated Iraq and Syria.
Why does this matter?
The use of white phosphorus is a war crime under international treaties and domestic U.S. laws. For example, the Battle Book, published by the U.S. Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, contains the following sentence:
It is against the law of land warfare to employ WP [i.e. white phosphorous] against personnel targets.
In perhaps the least-surprising news of the day, a second federal appeals court on Monday ruled against President Trump’s revised travel ban. The decision, from the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, followed a string of recent rulings rejecting the administration’s efforts to limit travel from several predominantly Muslim countries.
A Pakistani counter-terrorism court just handed down the first death penalty for blaspheming on social media on Sunday, according to Reuters. The ruling is the latest step in an intensifying crackdown on dissent on social media by the government of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.