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1. New ‘Super Bacteria’ Strain Has Caused Over 600 Deaths This Month

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1. New ‘Super Bacteria’ Strain Has Caused Over 600 Deaths This Month

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BOSTON, Massachusetts -
We've all heard before how over-washing or over sanitizing your hands can be bad, because it can cause bacteria and germs to mutate, and become harder to kill. Well, it turns out that wasn't just another old wive's tale.

Researchers at Harvard Medical College in Boston have discovered a new strain of "super bacteria" that has already claimed the lives of over 600 people, all because those people had a weakened immune system from over-washing and over sanitizing their hands.

"We tested 480 of the 600 people assumed to have died from this 'super microbial bacteria,'" said research head Dr. Charles Marvin. "All of the tested subjects proved positive for this new strain. With this much strong evidence, we can conclude that over 600 people have died from this new bug. At this time, we don't believe there would be a way to vaccinate from, or cure this disease."

Dr. Marvin is recommending that people stop washing their hands with soap or sanitizing when in public buildings and restrooms.

"Unless you've straight pooped on your hands, then don't worry about washing, it's really not that big of a deal," said Dr. Marvin. "And even then, consider maybe just wiping off the poop with a towel if that does happen, for some reason."

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New 'Super Bacteria' Strain Has Caused Over 600 Deaths This Month - You Need to STOP Washing Your Hands in Public Restrooms

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BOSTON, Massachusetts - We've all heard before how over-washing or over sanitizing your hands can be bad, because it can cause bacteria and germs to mutate, and become harder to kill. Well, it turns out that wasn't just another old wive's tale.

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2. Russian team barred from competing in Winter Olympics

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2. Russian team barred from competing in Winter Olympics

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— -- The International Olympic Committee has barred Russia from the Winter Olympics this February over systemic doping, but will allow some individual Russian athletes to take part under a neutral Olympic flag.

The IOC's executive committee announced in a statement that it was barring Russia's national Olympic committee from the Winter Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea. The punishment, which will mean that no Russian athletes will compete under the country's colors, is unprecedented in Olympic history and came amid intense pressure to punish the country for its alleged state-sponsored cover-up of doping by its athletes.

In a statement released after it met in Lausanne, Switzerland, the committee said it acted on the recommendations of an IOC commission headed by former Swiss President Samuel Schmid to investigate Russian doping. The statement said his report confirmed "the systemic manipulation of the anti-doping rules and system in Russia," including efforts to conceal doping at the Sochi Winter Olympics, which Russia hosted in 2014.

At a press conference Tuesday after the decision was announced, Schmid said his commission did not find any evidence that the Kremlin was aware of the doping cover-up, but the IOC banned Russia's former sports minister and its current head of the national soccer association, Vitaly Mutko, for life from the Olympics, along with his former deputy Yuri Nagornykh.

The anti-doping agencies of 17 countries, including the United States, demanded the IOC impose a blanket ban, issuing a collective statement in September that it was time for the body to stop "paying lip service" to the anti-doping fight.

The IOC stopped short of that, instead saying that some Russian athletes will be permitted to compete in Pyeongchang under a specially created status -- "Olympic athlete from Russia," according to the IOC statement. Those athletes will have to be cleared by an IOC panel that will confirm they have no doping violations on their records and that they have undergone sufficient testing. Athletes approved by the panel will compete in a uniform with "Olympic athlete from Russia" written on it and under an Olympic flag. The Olympic anthem will be played in place of Russia's national anthem at medal ceremonies.

Scott Blackmun, the CEO of the United States Olympic Committee, called the decision "strong and principled."

"There were no perfect options, but this decision will clearly make it less likely that this ever happens again. Now it is time to look ahead to Pyeongchang," he said in a statement.

The IOC report confirmed the findings of investigations commissioned by the World Anti-Doping Agency, which found evidence that Russia concealed doping by hundreds of its athletes for years, aided by the country's intelligence services, with the cover-up reaching a crescendo during the Sochi Olympics. An investigation, conducted by the Canadian lawyer Richard McLaren for the World Anti-Doping Agency last year, found that Russia's sports ministry had overseen the cover up and led to Russia being partly excluded from the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.

That year, facing similar calls to ban Russia from the Rio Olympics, the IOC pushed the decision onto individual sports' international federations, allowing them to choose which Russian athletes could compete. Although virtually all of Russia's track and field team was barred from the Rio Games, the country was able to field about 70 percent of its Olympic team.

The penalty enacted on Tuesday was more severe and dealt a humiliating blow to a country where international sports have become a central pillar of President Vladimir Putin's rule.

Russia has never accepted McLaren's conclusions that the cover-up was state-sponsored and the IOC's decision was met in Moscow with an eruption of angry denunciations from officials and members of parliament. Some Russian politicians immediately raised the possibility that the country would boycott the Winter Olympics, with the first deputy speaker of Russia's Parliament, Ivan Melnikov, saying it would be "incorrect" for Russia's team to travel to Pyeongchang under a neutral flag. Speaking to the news agency Interfax, however, he suggested that the Kremlin may decide otherwise, in which case he would support its decision.

The Kremlin did not immediately comment on the IOC's decision, but on Monday spokesman Dmitry Peskov said it was not considering a boycott, though Putin would make the final decision. Putin has previously denounced the doping allegations as designed to harm him politically and has suggested it would be unacceptable for Russian athletes to compete without their national symbols.

There were signs, however, that the IOC decision may be acceptable to Russia. Aleksander Zhukov, the head of Russia's Olympic Committee, who himself was suspended on Tuesday by the IOC, said that it had been a victory that the word "Russia" would be on the neutral uniforms to be worn by those Russian athletes allowed to compete.

"They'll be called Russian athletes and not some kind of neutrals ... that's very important," The Associated Press quoted Zhukov as saying in Lausanne. Zhukov said that a decision on whether Russian athletes should take part in Pyeongchang would be made at a meeting of his committee with members of Russia's Olympic squads.

Zhukov also noted that the IOC statement announcing the decision included a clause that made it more palatable. The statement said that if Russia complies with the decision then its suspension could be lifted for the closing ceremony in Pyeongchang. That could mean Russia's team, having competed as neutrals, would be effectively restored at the close, though it appeared any medals won by its athletes would not be recorded to the country.

Zhukov said that another "positive decision" was that the IOC's statement Tuesday suggested the sanctions closed the issue of Russian doping. The IOC statement quoted the body's president, Thomas Bach, that the sanctions should now "draw a line under this damaging episode."

At a news conference, Bach added he felt there was no reason for a Russian boycott now.

"An Olympic boycott has never achieved anything," he said. "Secondly, I don't see any reason for a boycott by the Russian athletes because we allow the clean athletes there to participate."

Russian athletes reacted cautiously to the decision, with some saying they were not ready to say yet whether they would compete under a neutral flag.

"There is already a possibility to perform at the Olympics and that is already good," Elena Soboleva, a former junior world champion skier in individual sprint and relay now on Russia's national team, told ABC News. "And what's next, whether we will perform or not is already a different question. I don't know anything."

Danil Akimov, a senior coach from the women's ski team, said he felt the decision should be left to the athletes to decide whether to go or not.

"Athletes ought to decide for themselves," he told ABC News by phone. "If it's acceptable for an athlete then they'll go under a neutral flag. If he will say no, then that means no. My personal point of view would all the same be that Russia should perform under the Russian flag."

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Russia barred from competing in Winter Olympics

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The International Olympic Committee has barred Russia from the Winter Olympics this February over systemic doping, but will allow some individual Russian athletes to take part under a neutral Olympic flag. The IOC's executive committee announced in a statement that it was barring Russia's national Olympic committee from the Winter Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea.

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3. Biotechnology: Gene therapy restores hearing

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3. Biotechnology: Gene therapy restores hearing

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Delivering a functional gene to the ears of mice with a genetic hearing disorder allows them to detect sound.

People with Usher syndrome type I have genetic mutations that cause deafness in childhood, progressive blindness and balance disorders. Gwenaëlle Géléoc at Boston Children's Hospital in Massachusetts and her colleagues studied newborn mice with a form of Usher syndrome type I. They injected a synthetic virus that carried a healthy version of the gene for a protein called harmonin into the animals' ears. The protein resides in sound-sensitive 'hair' cells of the inner ear and helps to transmit auditory signals to the brain. The team found that mice given the gene responded to sounds as quiet as whispers, similarly to normal mice. The treated mice also performed as well in balance tests as normal mice.

In another study, Luk Vandenberghe at the Schepens Eye Research Institute of Massachusetts Eye and Ear in Boston and his colleagues found that the same virus delivered genes to a large number of the target hair cells in the mouse ear.

About this article

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Delivering a functional gene to the ears of mice with a genetic hearing disorder allows them to detect sound. People with Usher syndrome type I have genetic mutations that cause deafness in childhood, progressive blindness and balance disorders. Gwenaëlle Géléoc at Boston Children's Hospital in Massachusetts and her colleagues studied newborn mice with a form of Usher syndrome type I.

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4. Climate Crisis: North Pole Temp is 50 F Above Normal & Arctic Sea Ice Volume is Collapsing

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4. Climate Crisis: North Pole Temp is 50 F Above Normal & Arctic Sea Ice Volume is Collapsing

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Temperatures are 50 degrees F above normal (dark brown region) near the north pole today at midnight GMT February 11, 2017. Strong southerly winds and record warmth are devastating Arctic sea ice already at record low levels for the date.

Polar weather has been far warmer this winter than any winter on record, shocking scientists who are watching sea ice volume decline to record lows for the date. Winds have driven large amounts of the oldest ice out of the Arctic while the weather has been far too warm for months for the ice to thicken like it normally does by February. And now the north pole is fifty degrees F above normal. Again.

The polar vortex has been wobbling like a lopsided football all winter sending warm air towards the pole from the Atlantic, then the Pacific, and back again, while the cold air has escaped to the west Pacific by way of Siberia and to western Atlantic by way of Canada. Surges of warm winds and storm waves have driven back the sea ice edges repeatedly on both the Atlantic and Pacific sides of the Arctic. The ice is extraordinarily thin across most of the Arctic ocean. neven1.typepad.com/...

Water temperatures many degrees above normal on the Atlantic side of the Arctic are fueling storm after storm repeatedly sending heat towards the pole and into higher levels of the atmosphere blocking the normal jet stream path across northern Europe. The effects of the excessive heat have sent atmospheric waves breaking into the stratosphere, disrupting the polar vortex, pushing it towards Siberia. Or in layman's terms the waters and the weather are insanely warm.

Estimates of "Freezing degree days" of each winter since 1979 have been made by participants in the Arctic sea ice blog. "FDD" is an estimate of the cooling power of winter temperatures from 80 degrees north to the pole for generating sea ice. The graph of Freezing degree days shows how there's been less cold this winter around the pole than any winter on record. It's stunning.

The warm GFS model based temperatures in the top figure have been verified by actual measurements from a buoy at 87 N at 18 hours GMT of a temperature of -0.5 C or 31 degrees F.
www.infoclimat.fr/...
We are in uncharted waters now. Arctic warming is now happening at rates far higher than IPCC experts predicted just a few years ago.

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Climate Crisis: North Pole Temp is 50 F Above Normal & Arctic Sea Ice Volume is Collapsing

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Polar weather has been far warmer this winter than any winter on record, shocking scientists who are watching sea ice volume decline to record lows for the date. Winds have driven large amounts of the oldest ice out of the Arctic while the weather has...

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NSIDC has launched an upgraded and streamlined Ice Sheets Today website. The new site replaces the site previously known as Greenland Today and Antarctica Today. Ice Sheets Today offers easy access to melt statistics and scientific analysis of ice sheet conditions.

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NSIDC has launched an upgraded and streamlined Ice Sheets Today website. The new site replaces the site previously known as Greenland Today and Antarctica Today. Ice Sheets Today offers easy access to melt statistics and scientific analysis of ice sheet conditions.

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6. Religious liberty or right to discriminate? High court to hear arguments in wedding cake case.

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6. Religious liberty or right to discriminate? High court to hear arguments in wedding cake case.

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In July 2012, Charlie Craig and David Mullins walked into a cake shop in Lakewood, Colo. Across the counter was Jack Phillips, owner of the bakery he had opened 24 years earlier.

The two men told him they wanted a cake for their wedding reception. They even had a binder of possible ideas. Before they could open it, Mr. Phillips told them that while he would be happy to make them other products, he did not sell baked goods for same-sex weddings because of his Christian beliefs.

Mr. Craig and Mr. Mullins left embarrassed and, they say, distraught. After the Colorado Civil Rights Commission found in 2014 that Phillips had violated the state's anti-discrimination law and ordered him to make cakes for same-sex weddings or not design wedding cakes at all, Phillips says he felt forced to choose between his faith and his life's work.

Five years after the couple left the Masterpiece Cakeshop, the case challenging a state law prohibiting discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people will be heard by the US Supreme Court. As evidenced by the people who began camping outside the high court Friday for a seat at Tuesday's oral arguments, it seems destined to be a historic ruling in a landmark term. Heavyweight legal organizations on both sides have warned that defeat could bring potentially seismic consequences, more than 100 amicus briefs have been filed - some forming unlikely partnerships - and observers are predicting the justices will split along ideological lines. The views of Justice Anthony Kennedy - often the court's swing vote, but also its leading proponent of gay rights - will be of even more interest than usual to court watchers.

This is "the first time we have this question of whether or not someone's religious beliefs in not serving [people] something should be stronger than the state's interest in making sure that people are not improperly excluded from participating in the public marketplace," says Robert Tuttle, a professor of law and religion and George Washington University Law School in Washington.

The case brought to the Colorado Civil Rights Commission is significantly different from the case now before the Supreme Court. Back then, the case mirrored religious freedom-based challenges to advancements in LGBT rights. Phillips also had made an argument on free speech grounds, however, and the validity of that argument is likely to decide the case. The Roberts court has been willing to shift legal precedents on a variety of issues, from union fees to campaign finance, in the interest of protecting free speech. This case could continue that trend, experts say.

'Compelled speech' with 'startling' implications

Boiling it down, Phillips argues the First Amendment protects his right to create and sell wedding cakes in a way that is consistent with his religious identity. He also refuses to make cakes that celebrate Halloween, divorce, or "promote atheism, racism, or indecency." What the lower courts in Colorado are doing, he claims, is forcing him to speak in favor of something he objects to.

Under the "compelled speech" doctrine, the Supreme Court has held that in some circumstances the First Amendment protects an individual from being required to express a thought with which they disagree. Students cannot be forced to salute the flag, for example, and a newspaper cannot be required to publish an advertisement. (Other forms of compelled speech, such as warnings on alcohol and tobacco products and filing a tax return, are not protected.)

The thought and care Phillips puts into designing and decorating his wedding cakes, he argues "necessarily express ideas about marriage and the couple, and as a result ... are entitled to full constitutional protection."

A key precedent he cites is a 1993 high court ruling that the state of Massachusetts could not force the organizers of a private St. Patrick's Day parade to allow an Irish-American LGBT group to march with them. That ruling means "a cake artist who serves all people, like Phillips does, cannot be forced to create wedding cakes that celebrate marriage at odds with his faith," his petition says.

He also claims that Colorado's nondiscrimination law violates his Free Exercise rights because it specifically targets religious objectors to same-sex marriage, pointing to three Colorado bakeries who were not punished for refusing to make cakes with anti-gay inscriptions on them in 2014.

His case has attracted a diverse range of supporters, including the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington, which supported the court legalizing same-sex marriage in Obergefell v. Hodges two years ago.

"We also support private freedoms here," says Ilya Shapiro, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute.

In its amicus brief, Cato warns of the "startling results" upholding the lower court decisions in favor of the state would mean. A graphic designer who thinks Scientology is fraudulent, for example, would not be allowed to refuse to design flyers for Scientologist meetings, and an actor "would violate the [Colorado] law if he refused to perform in a commercial for a religious organization he dislikes."

A 'straightforward' case with 'limitless' consequences

However, some experts say a victory for Phillips would have equally significant consequences.

Phillips's argument "is no different conceptually than if an artist or painter offered to paint people at a gallery for a fee but refused to paint black people," says Floyd Abrams, a leading First Amendment scholar, in a conference call with reporters organized by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

Ria Tabacco Mar, a staff attorney for the ACLU who is representing Craig and Mullins, says "the consequences really are limitless" should the Supreme Court rule broadly against her clients.

The Department of Justice argues against that. In a brief supporting Phillips, it says the justices should be able to write an opinion exempting artists like Phillips from serving same-sex weddings without throwing other forms of discrimination into legal limbo. Racial bias in particular, the government notes, is something the justices found last year to be a "unique historical, constitutional and institutional concern" that gives the state a "compelling" interest to eradicate. "The same cannot be said for opposition to same-sex marriage," the government claims.

The free speech portion of the case has become more prominent largely because Supreme Court precedent makes the free exercise of religion portion practically unwinnable for Phillips, experts say. The court set that precedent in 1990, when Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in Employment Division v. Smith that exempting individuals from certain laws on religious grounds "would open the prospect of constitutionally required exemptions from civic obligations of almost every conceivable kind," including military service, payment of taxes, and child-neglect laws.

"There haven't been any judge-mandated exceptions to public accommodations law, for individual religiously motivated corporate actors, whether in the federal judiciary or in states," says Professor Tuttle, who signed onto an amicus brief supporting the couple. "Opening the door to those is just utterly unpredictable in its consequences."

Some experts argue that the free speech complaint is also unfounded because, unlike the parade in Boston, Phillips's store is not a private event but a public accommodation.

"When [an artist] opens a shop, then invites the public in and offers their works of art for sale, they can't do it in a way that violates the antidiscrimination laws," says Mr. Abrams, a lawyer who has argued numerous high-profile free speech cases, including defending The New York Times against the Nixon administration's attempts to stop them publishing the Pentagon Papers. "This seems a fairly straightforward decision where there was overt discrimination."

Specifically, the couple point to a 1968 high court ruling that government can regulate speech under certain circumstances, including if "the incidental restriction on First Amendment freedoms is not greater" than a "substantial government interest."

Furthermore, some experts say it would be easier for Phillips to convince the justices that he was compelled to say something he disagreed with if there was an actual message on the cake. Since the 2012 conversation never got that far, and Phillips is arguing that the cake by itself speaks to his support for same-sex marriage, there are fewer concrete facts for the justices to point to.

That also makes it harder for the court to write a narrow opinion in favor of Phillips, says Geoffrey Stone, a First Amendment expert and a professor at the University of Chicago Law School. If providing a plain wedding cake for a same-sex wedding is an endorsement of gay marriage, he adds, is providing funeral services for an LGBT person, or an African-American person, an endorsement that they are "people who deserve dignity"?

"It's hard to see what the limiting principle is if there's no specific message involved," he continues. "That extends so far beyond anything the Supreme Court ever imagined."

A right to dignity has been at the heart of American civil rights law, and it is a consistent theme in the Craig and Mullins brief.

"This case is about us getting turned away and humiliated by a business that's open to public," says Mullins in a conference call with reporters. "We never want another couple to go through that pain we've gone through."

'A hard call' for Kennedy

Justice Kennedy's majority opinion in Obergefell affirmed that LGBT people have a constitutional right to "equal dignity," but it also made clear that those "who adhere to religious doctrines may continue to advocate with utmost, sincere conviction that, by divine precepts, same-sex marriage should not be condoned."

On top of being a leading proponent of free speech on the court, Kennedy has also authored the majority opinion in every Supreme Court decision favoring LGBT rights since 1996's Romer v. Evans, which held that Colorado couldn't bar people from legal discrimination protections on the basis of sexual orientation. That doesn't mean Kennedy sees no limits on gay rights, however. As Adam Liptak, the Supreme Court reporter for The New York Times, told Slate's Dahlia Lithwick last month, Kennedy subscribes to the philosophy that "losers get to complain."

"He supports at least certain aspects of gay rights, [but] how far he feels it's necessary to go in nondiscrimination laws" isn't clear, says Steven Green, director of the Center for Religion, Law and Democracy at Willamette University in Salem, Ore., who signed onto the same amicus brief as Tuttle.

"What he'll probably be balancing is the dignity interests of the couple versus the free speech interests of the baker to not express something that goes against his religious beliefs," adds Steven Schwinn, a professor at the John Marshall School of Law in Chicago. "That's going to be a hard call."

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Religious liberty or right to discriminate? High court to hear arguments in wedding cake case.

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As evidenced by the people who began camping outside the high court for a seat at Tuesday's oral arguments, the Masterpiece Cakeshop case seems destined to be a historic ruling - with both sides warning that defeat could bring potentially seismic consequences.

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7. What The Oakland Raiders Did To White QB Who Stood For Anthem 

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7. What The Oakland Raiders Did To White QB Who Stood For Anthem 

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Latest political news from the USA and around the world. Read the breaking news on news portal USA Politics Today!

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9. Help Save the Endangered Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus

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9. Help Save the Endangered Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus

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Help Save The ENDANGERED

From EXTINCTION!

The Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus

Rare photo of the elusive tree octopus
(Enhanced from cropped telephoto)

The Pacific Northwest tree octopus ( Octopus paxarbolis) can be found in the temperate rainforests of the Olympic Peninsula on the west coast of North America. Their habitat lies on the Eastern side of the Olympic mountain range, adjacent to Hood Canal. These solitary cephalopods reach an average size (measured from arm-tip to mantle-tip,) of 30-33 cm. Unlike most other cephalopods, tree octopuses are amphibious, spending only their early life and the period of their mating season in their ancestral aquatic environment. Because of the moistness of the rainforests and specialized skin adaptations, they are able to keep from becoming desiccated for prolonged periods of time, but given the chance they would prefer resting in pooled water.

An intelligent and inquisitive being (it has the largest brain-to-body ratio for any mollusk), the tree octopus explores its arboreal world by both touch and sight. Adaptations its ancestors originally evolved in the three dimensional environment of the sea have been put to good use in the spatially complex maze of the coniferous Olympic rainforests. The challenges and richness of this environment (and the intimate way in which it interacts with it,) may account for the tree octopus's advanced behavioral development. (Some evolutionary theorists suppose that "arboreal adaptation" is what laid the groundwork in primates for the evolution of the human mind.)

Reaching out with one of her eight arms, each covered in sensitive suckers, a tree octopus might grab a branch to pull herself along in a form of locomotion called tentaculation; or she might be preparing to strike at an insect or small vertebrate, such as a frog or rodent, or steal an egg from a bird's nest; or she might even be examining some object that caught her fancy, instinctively desiring to manipulate it with her dexterous limbs (really deserving the title "sensory organs" more than mere "limbs",) in order to better know it.

Map of estimated tree octopus maximum range, including spawning waters

Tree octopuses have eyesight comparable to humans. Besides allowing them to see their prey and environment, it helps them in inter-octopus relations. Although they are not social animals like us, they display to one-another their emotions through their ability to change the color of their skin: red indicates anger, white fear, while they normally maintain a mottled brown tone to blend in with the background.

The reproductive cycle of the tree octopus is still linked to its roots in the waters of the Puget Sound from where it is thought to have originated. Every year, in Spring, tree octopuses leave their homes in the Olympic National Forest and migrate towards the shore and, eventually, their spawning grounds in Hood Canal. There, they congregate (the only real social time in their lives,) and find mates. After the male has deposited his sperm, he returns to the forests, leaving the female to find an aquatic lair in which to attach her strands of egg-clusters. The female will guard and care for her eggs until they hatch, refusing even to eat, and usually dying from her selflessness. The young will spend the first month or so floating through Hood Canal, Admiralty Inlet, and as far as North Puget Sound before eventually moving out of the water and beginning their adult lives.

Why It's Endangered

Route 101, separating the rainforests of the Olympic Peninsula from Hood Canal

Although the tree octopus is not officially listed on the Endangered Species List, we feel that it should be added since its numbers are at a critically low level for its breeding needs. The reasons for this dire situation include: decimation of habitat by logging and suburban encroachment; building of roads that cut off access to the water which it needs for spawning; predation by foreign species such as house cats; and booming populations of its natural predators, including the bald eagle and sasquatch. What few that make it to the Canal are further hampered in their reproduction by the growing problem of pollution from farming and residential run-off. Unless immediate action is taken to protect this species and its habitat, the Pacific Northwest tree octopus will be but a memory.

The possibility of Pacific Northwest tree octopus extinction is not an unwarranted fear. Other tree octopus species-including the Douglas octopus and the red-ringed madrona sucker-were once abundant throughout the Cascadia region, but have since gone extinct because of threats similar to those faced by paxarbolis, as well as overharvesting by the now-illegal tree octopus trade.

Tree Octopus hat from 1923

The history of the tree octopus trade is a sad one. Their voracious appetite for bird plumes having exhausted all the worthy species of that family, the fashionistas moved on to cephalopodic accoutrements during the early 20th Century. Tree octopuses became prized by the fashion industry as ornamental decorations for hats, leading greedy trappers to wipe out whole populations to feed the vanity of the fashionable rich. While fortunately this practice has been outlawed, its effects still reverberate today as these millinery deprivations brought tree octopus numbers below the critical point where even minor environmental change could cause disaster.

While efforts were made in the past to preserve remaining tree octopus habitat, these were met with resistance by the timber industry, which has traditionally viewed the tree octopus as a nuisance, both because the octopuses favor the valuable, moss-shrouded trees of old growth forests-pitting conservation needs against lucrative sources of lumber-and because octopuses hiding among felled trees often gummed up sawmills and stained pulp vats with their ink.

Traveling sideshow exhibits, such as this one by Glen "Bones" Hartzell from 1942, demonized tree octopuses to the ignorant masses
(Click to enlarge)

These nuisances led many loggers to regard tree octopuses as bad luck, resulting in the pointless killing of octopuses on sight at logging camps in a misguided attempt at eradicating the troublesome species. Anti-octopus sentiment was so strong among loggers that some even began to fear that the octopuses were prone to attacking humans.

These fears were fueled in no small part by gratuitous stories involving tree octopuses harassing lumberjacks and distressing damsels in Northwestern-themed pulp magazines of the 1930-40s and variously "nipping", "entangling", or "suckering the flesh" of the heroes of men's action magazines of the 1950-60s. (The magazine publishers depended on cheap paper made from wood pulp and were glad to contribute to the anti-octopus propaganda campaign of the timber industry.)

To this day, misunderstanding and fear of these gentle creatures can still be found among many old timers, although education campaigns-and special octopus-separators installed at sawmills-have largely halted the practice of tree octopus eradication.

How You Can Help

More Tree Octopus Information

Posters motivate the citizenry to action! Post them!

Tree Octopus FAQs - Frequently asked questions, now with answers.

Tree Octopus Sightings - Includes photos of and behavioral research on the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus and other tree octopus species.

Tree Octopus In The Media - appearances of tree octopuses, both real and fictional, in the media and popular culture.

Research On Other Tree Octopus Species:

The author of this article and its subsections is Lyle Zapato.
This site is not associated with any school or educational organization,
other than the Kelvinic University branch of the Wild Haggis Conservation Society.
Not to be confused with the Pacific Northwest Octopus Tree.

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Information about the endangered Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus and what you can do to save it.

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 10. Cowboys Player Going To Prison For Life After Who He Just Stabbed To DEATH Overnight

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 10. Cowboys Player Going To Prison For Life After Who He Just Stabbed To DEATH Overnight

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11. Conway Calls To Prohibit Golden State From Winning The Championship Unless They Come Celebrate In The White House “Like The Law Says”

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11. Conway Calls To Prohibit Golden State From Winning The Championship Unless They Come Celebrate In The White House “Like The Law Says”

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12. Islamic Army Caught Hiding in the US

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12. Islamic Army Caught Hiding in the US

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13. Big Change is Coming To The NFL After Budweiser Spoke About Anthem Protests

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13. Big Change is Coming To The NFL After Budweiser Spoke About Anthem Protests

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14. Black Lives Matter Protesters Block Pride Parade

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14. Black Lives Matter Protesters Block Pride Parade

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15. NFL Player says he will Stop Playing If He Is Forced To Stand for the National Anthem

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15. NFL Player says he will Stop Playing If He Is Forced To Stand for the National Anthem

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HugeDomains.com - Shop for over 300,000 Premium Domains

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17. RUSSIAN SCIENTISTS DISCOVER CURE TO HOMOSEXUALITY

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17. RUSSIAN SCIENTISTS DISCOVER CURE TO HOMOSEXUALITY

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Novosibirsk | Dr. Dimitri Yusrokov Slamini of the Russian Institute for Medical Science in Novosibirsk and his team of researchers have discovered what they claim to be a new vaccine which could prevent early symptoms and even cure humans of homosexuality if treated at a young age.

Russian scientists developed the so-called "antidote" based on a 1959 scientific research published under the title "Organizing action of prenatally administered testosterone propionate on the tissues mediating mating behavior in the female guinea pig" by Charles H. Phoenix, an American researcher.

The study concluded that "INAH [part of the hypothalamus] is dimorphic with sexual orientation, at least in men, and suggests that sexual orientation has a biological substrate".

Iran, China and Saudi Arabia have been the first countries to show interest in the new discovery.

"Xenoestrogen are a type of estrogen mimickers found in synthetic or natural chemical compounds. Synthetic xenoestrogens such as PCB's, BPA and phthalates have been also been found to have estrogenic effects on living organisms and to disrupt the endocrine system" explains Dr. Yuri Krutchev, who took part in the experiment. "Injecting specific quantities of testosterone helps to

"Injecting specific quantities of testosterone helps to upset this artificial biological unbalance which occurs mostly in part because of environmental pollution and an excess of estrogen mimickers in our modern environment" he adds.

The new discovery has attracted much criticism from lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) organizations around the Globe, yet a few country leaders have outspokenly shown support and interest for the research. Iran, China, and Saudi Arabia have been the first countries to show interest in the new discovery.

American and European researchers have expressed much skepticism upon receiving the news.

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Russian Scientists Discover Cure to Homosexuality

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Novosibirsk | Dr. Dimitri Yusrokov Slamini of the Russian Institute for Medical Science in Novosibirsk and his team of researchers have discovered what they claim to be a new vaccine which could prevent early symptoms and even cure humans of homosexuality if treated at a young age. Russian scientis

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18. Syrian Refugees Spreading Flesh-Eating Disease, Polio, Measles, Tuberculosis, Hepatitis

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18. Syrian Refugees Spreading Flesh-Eating Disease, Polio, Measles, Tuberculosis, Hepatitis

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Photo: Associated Press

TEL AVIV - The Syrian refugee crisis has precipitated a "catastrophic outbreak" of a flesh-eating disease that is spreading across the Middle East and North Africa, according to research published on Thursday in the scientific journal PLOS.
Largely missing from news media coverage is that the same news-making scientific report warned the ongoing violence in Syria has "created a setting in which we have seen the re-emergence of polio and measles, as well as tuberculosis, hepatitis A, and other infections in Syria and among displaced Syrian refugees."

Indeed, in 2013 the World Health Organization documented new cases of vaccine-preventable diseases such as measles, reporting that year alone the number of confirmed measles cases in Syria reached 139, as compared to no documented cases in 2010 and 2011.

The WHO reported that 2013 saw Syria's first outbreak of polio since 1999. According to an April 2015 WHO report, 35 children were subsequently paralysed by polio before the start of a new vaccine campaign.

In November, 2014 PLOS documented the spread of measles from among the Syrian refugee population:

Measles has swept through Syria, including Aleppo and the northern regions, with over 7,000 confirmed cases. This epidemic has not spared refugees in neighboring countries, even among highly vaccinated populations. In Jordan, 24 cases of measles were reported in 2012, while over 200 cases were reported in 2013. In Lebanon, nine reported cases of measles in 2012 increased to 1,760 cases in 2013, only 13.2% of which were among Syrian refugees.

Regarding the flesh-eating disease, leishmaniasis, PLOP warned in its latest report, "We may be witnessing an epidemic of historic and unprecedented proportions, but it has largely been hidden due to lack of specific information."

The PLOP journal reported leishmaniasis is now affecting hundreds of thousands of refugees and has spread to Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan, Libya and Yemen. In Yemen alone, 10,000 new cases have been reported annually, the journal reported.

"Additionally, the number of cases of CL (cutaneous leishmaniasis) has most likely been severely underreported" due in part to constraints on collecting data from violence-torn regions, PLOP warned.

"Few countries have mandated reporting of CL and the resultant weak reporting system promotes a lack of disease awareness and public policies for treatment and prevention," the report added.

"Due to the violence, Syrians have been forced to flee from their homes and seek refuge across the Middle East, North Africa, and, more recently, Europe," the journal documented.
Volcano-like ulcers
Leishmaniasis, meanwhile, is a disease caused by protozoan parasites. It is spread almost entirely by sandflies, including those present in the U.S.

There are three main types of the disease: cutaneous, mucocutaneous, and visceral leishmaniasis.

Cutaneous is the most common form among Syrians. It manifests in skin sores that typically develop within a few weeks or months from a sand fly bite. The sores can initially appear as bumps or nodules and may evolve into volcano-like ulcers.

Mucocutaneous leishmaniasis causes skin ulcers like the cutaneous form, as well as mucosal ulcers that usually damage the nose and mouth.

Visceral leishmaniasis, which has also been found among Syrian refugees, is the most serious form and can be fatal. It damages internal organs, usually the spleen and liver, and also affects bone marrow.
Threat to U.S.?

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Syrian Refugees Spreading Flesh-Eating Disease, Polio, Measles, Tuberculosis, Hepatitis

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TEL AVIV - The Syrian refugee crisis has precipitated a "catastrophic outbreak" of a flesh-eating disease that is spreading across the Middle East and North Africa, according to research published on Thursday in the scientific journal PLOS. | Israel / Middle East

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19. 11,000 scientists declare global climate emergency and warn of’untold human suffering

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19. 11,000 scientists declare global climate emergency and warn of’untold human suffering

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Eleven thousand scientists in 153 countries have declared a climate emergency and warned that "untold human suffering" is unavoidable without huge shifts in the way we live. The letter is based on climate science that was first established in 1979 at the first World Climate Conference held in Geneva. For decades multiple global bodies have agreed urgent action is needed but greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise. "Despite 40 years of major global negotiations, we have continued to conduct business as usual and have failed to address this crisis," said William Ripple, professor of ecology at Oregon State University, who spearheaded the letter. "Climate change has arrived and is accelerating faster than many scientists expected," according to the letter published in BioScience. Researchers say they have a moral obligation to "clearly warn humanity of any catastrophic threat" and "tell it like it is". "Clearly and unequivocally planet Earth is facing a climate emergency," they state. Although there are some positive indicators - such as declining birth rates and a rise in renewable energy use - most indicators suggest humans are rapidly heading in the wrong direction, they say. Backward steps include rising meat consumption, more air travel, chopping down forests faster than ever and increase in global carbon dioxide emissions. Scientists say they want the public to "understand the magnitude of this crisis, track progress, and realign priorities for alleviating climate change". To do so will require major transformations in the ways our global society functions and interacts with natural ecosystems, they say. The letter focuses on six key objectives: replacing fossil fuels; cutting pollutants like methane and soot; restoring and protecting ecosystems; eating less meat; converting the economy to one that is carbon-free and stabilising population growth. "Global surface temperature, ocean heat content, extreme weather and its costs, sea level, ocean acidity and land area are all rising," Professor Ripple said. "Ice is rapidly disappearing as shown by declining trends in minimum summer Arctic sea ice, Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, and glacier thickness. All of these rapid changes highlight the urgent need for action." Lead author, Dr Thomas Newsome from the University of Sydney, said measuring global surface temperatures remained important but that a broader set of indicators should be monitored. This includes "human population growth, meat consumption, tree-cover loss, energy consumption, fossil-fuel subsidies and annual economic losses to extreme weather events", he said. "While things are bad, all is not hopeless. We can take steps to address the climate emergency," he said. The authors say that despite the gloomy outlook there is room for optimism. "We are encouraged by a recent surge of concern. Governmental bodies are making climate emergency declarations," they write. "Schoolchildren are striking. Ecocide lawsuits are proceeding in the courts. Grassroots citizen movements are demanding change, and many countries, states and provinces, cities, and businesses are responding. "Such swift action is our best hope to sustain life on planet Earth, our only home." Reports Independent

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11,000 scientists declare global climate emergency and warn of'untold human suffering

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Eleven thousand scientists in 153 countries have declared a climate emergency and warned that "untold human suffering" is unavoidable without huge shifts in the way we live. The letter is based on climate science that was first established in 1979 at the first World Climate Conference held in Geneva.

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20. Junk Science Jumps the Shark! UN Secretary General Says Global Warming Has Claimed 7 Million Lives …Where?

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20. Junk Science Jumps the Shark! UN Secretary General Says Global Warming Has Claimed 7 Million Lives …Where?

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And then when they toss out these absurd numbers they wonder why nobody with a brain trusts them!
UN General Secretary General Antonio Guterres, the former Socialist president of Portugal, kicked off the international Climate Summit that begins on Monday and lasts until December 13th.

In his speech Guterres hurled out several threats to his audience including the line that "the point of no return is not on the horizon but rather it is being thrown at us."

And then the US Secretary General through this out: "Pollution associated with climate change has alreaday claimed seven million lives."
What a disgusting lie!
He has NOTHING to back up that number.
It-is-a-complete-lie!
ABC.es reported: (translated)

Guterres listed the natural disasters that are already occurring. He recalled that "these last five years have been the hottest in history, the sea level is reaching record levels, the oceans are acidifying, polar caps are melting, land and marine diversity is threatened, natural disasters are increasingly frequent and destructive, drought is increasing at an alarming rate and pollution associated with climate change has claimed seven million lives ... cymatic change is a serious threat to humanity. " The human species has been at war with nature and now counterattacks, " he said.

The post Junk Science Jumps the Shark! UN Secretary General Says Global Warming Has Claimed 7 Million Lives ...Where? appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

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Junk Science Jumps the Shark! UN Secretary General Says Global Warming Has Claimed 7 Million Lives ...Where? ⋆ Dc Gazette

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And then when they toss out these absurd numbers they wonder why nobody with a brain trusts them! UN General Secretary General Antonio Guterres, the former Socialist president of Portugal, kicked off the international Climate Summit that begins on Monday and lasts until December 13th.

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21. Pope Francis: ‘Sad People Aren’t Christians’

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21. Pope Francis: ‘Sad People Aren’t Christians’

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The original Christians did not moan and complain, Pope Francis declared on Saturday, because "sad people are not Christians."
"We think of the first Christians, who had everyone against them, who were persecuted and yet they didn't complain about the world," the pope told participants in an international conference on evangelization.

"Reading the New Testament, we see that they were not concerned with defending themselves against an empire that put them to death, but with announcing Jesus, even at the cost of their lives," he said.

Breitbart.com reports: The pontiff also had strong words against defeatism and pessimism, urging his hearers to be joyful in witnessing to Christ.

"So let us not be saddened by the things that are not going well, by fatigues, by misunderstandings, by gossip, no. These are little things in the face of 'the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord,'" he said, quoting Saint Paul's Letter to the Philippians.

"Let us not be infected by the defeatism that sees everything as going badly," he continued. "This is not the thought of God. Sad people are not Christians."

"The Christian suffers many times, but does not fall into a profound sadness of the soul. Sadness is not a Christian virtue. Sorrow is," he proposed.

The pope told his hearers to turn to God in prayer in order to keep their spirits up when they are tempted by discouragement.

"In order not to let ourselves be robbed of the enthusiasm of the Gospel, let us invoke the author, the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of joy who keeps the missionary ardor alive, who makes life into a love story with God, who invites us to attract the world only with love, and to discover that we only have life by giving it away," he said.

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Pope Francis: 'Sad People Aren't Christians'

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The original Christians did not moan and complain, Pope Francis declared on Saturday, because "sad people are not Christians." "We think of the first Christians, who had everyone against them, who were persecuted and yet they didn't complain about the world," the pope told participants in an international conference on evangelization.

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Herein is revealed the never-before-exposed TRUTH about the origins, traits, and purposes of Black Helicopters!

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23. Netanyahu threatens to start another war on gaza

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23. Netanyahu threatens to start another war on gaza

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has threatened another war in the besieged Gaza Strip just says before snap elections are to be held in the occupied territories.
"We will probably be forced - there'll be no choice - to enter into a campaign, a war, in Gaza," Netanyahu said during an interview with Israel's Kan public radio

His comments were made two days after he was ridiculed when sirens warning of rocket fire from the enclave forced him off the stage at a campaign rally in southern Israel.

Another conflict with Gaza "could happen at any moment, including four days before the elections," Netanyahu said on Friday, adding that the date of the elections did not factor into a decision to go to war.

Press TV reports: During a campaign event in the port city of Ashdod on Tuesday, Netanyahu was forced to flee and seek shelter as rockets fired from Gaza threatened the area.

The siren went off just as Netanyahu began his speech and addressed hundreds of supporters of the right-wing Likud-National Liberal Movement, which he chairs.

In an extraordinary scene captured on video from the event, the Israeli prime minister can be seen being whisked away from the stage by a gaggle of security guards.

The scenes of Netanyahu being forced to take shelter a few days before the snap elections provided a counterpoint to the image he had tried to cultivate as "Mr. Security," Israeli media reported.

Emboldened by the scenes, his rivals are reportedly attacking Netanyahu for his cabinet's failure to counter the Palestinian resistance group Hamas.

Since the Tuesday humiliation, the Israeli military has launched a number of airstrikes and artillery attacks against the Gaza Strip.

The Israeli military frequently bombs Gaza, with civilians being the main target of such attacks.

Gaza has been under an Israeli siege since June 2007. The blockade has caused a decline in the standards of living as well as unprecedented levels of unemployment and unrelenting poverty.

The Israeli regime denies about 1.8 million people in Gaza their basic rights, such as freedom of movement, jobs with proper wages as well as adequate healthcare and education.

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Netanyahu Threatens To Start Another War On Gaza

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has threatened another war in the besieged Gaza Strip just says before snap elections are to be held in the occupied territories.

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24. Trump Administration Wants to Deny Health Care to LGBTQ People

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24. Trump Administration Wants to Deny Health Care to LGBTQ People

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The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced last month that it is close to finalizing a conscience protection rule that would allow people to discriminate in health-care settings under cover of law.

The final rule is at the Office of Management and Budget for review and not available to the public. But under the draft rule, which has been made public, health-care providers would be able to refuse to provide treatment, referrals, or assistance with procedures if these activities would violate their stated religious or moral convictions. The deliberately vague language could apply to everyone from receptionists refusing to book appointments to scrub nurses refusing to assist with emergency surgery.

This could be devastating for many marginalized people in the country seeking health care. But it could be especially dangerous for LGBTQ people, who have fought hard to establish legal protections that would guard them against exactly these kinds of denials. When your very body and existence are considered objectionable, seeking health care at the best of times can be dangerous.

"Trans and gender nonconforming people already face really severe discrimination in health-care settings," said Bridget Schaaff, If/When/How's reproductive justice federal policy fellow at the National LGBTQ Task Force. Rules like these "are going to make this even harder."

HHS already finalized two rules that would allow businesses and other entities, like churches, to refuse to pay for insurance coverage that includes birth control or abortion services if it violates their religious or moral convictions. Enforcement of these rules is currently on hold due to legal decisions, with judges in Pennsylvania and California ruling in favor of challengers. The agency also recently proposed another rule that would create a significant administrative burden for insurance companies that include abortion in their policies, effectively incentivizing them to drop this coverage.

Now, this latest regulation would "ensure that persons or entities are not subjected to certain practices or policies that violate conscience, coerce, or discriminate." These updates to existing precedent spread across 25 laws and regulations would substantially extend the reach of "conscience protections." A doctor might, for example, refuse to give a pregnant patient information about an obstetrician if they suspect the patient might request an "objectionable" treatment like abortion from that obstetrician. The HHS Office of Civil Rights would be responsible for enforcing what critics call a " right to discriminate."

The draft rule draws on laws like the Religious Freedom Restoration Act to argue that health-care providers and other entities should not be compelled to participate in activities like performing abortions or sterilizations, providing birth control, participating in physician-assisted suicide, or being "morally complicit" in other health care that violates religious beliefs. This includes activities like requiring crisis pregnancy centers to post signage with comprehensive information about full-spectrum reproductive health services. The extension of conscience protections to moral attitudes as well as religious ones offers even more ammunition for those who want to refuse health care.

The Family Research Council, Americans United for Life, and United States Conference of Catholic Bishops have all identified regulations like the draft rule as a priority. Lobbying from groups like these led HHS to develop an entire division on " conscience and religious freedom" that focuses explicitly on the concerns of a vocal minority of conservative Christians. A 2017 National Women's Law Center survey found that 61 percent of voters oppose religious exemptions like these.

Reproductive rights and justice communities are concerned about the clear implications of a rule that could exacerbate an already-documented problem: health-care refusal for people seeking reproductive health services, including abortion and birth control. This issue is particularly extreme at Catholic hospitals, which are experiencing explosive growtharound the United States. Abortion in particular has been repeatedly targeted for "conscientious objection," for example by nurses who refuse to assist in abortion and sometimes even miscarriage care.

And for members of the LGBTQ community, especially trans people, the stakes of this rule are high. One in four respondents to the 2015 Trans Survey had experienced insurance denials associated with their gender, while one in three encountered "negative experiences" like being refused treatment. In a 2017 Center for American Progress survey, 8 percent of LGBQ people were denied care because of their perceived sexual orientation.

The "conscience protections" outlined in the draft rule could include things like a pharmacist refusing to fill a prescription for hormones or a surgeon declining to perform a transition-related procedure. But they could technically apply even more widely, and the lines may only become clear in court. As long as a provider could come up with a "moral" reason to decline care, it might be hard for someone to push back, whether it's a tooth cleaning or breast cancer treatment. A pediatrician could refuse to care for the child of lesbian parents. The rule as drafted did not contain guidance about emergency situations, raising concerns that a lethal refusal of care - such as an ambulance crew leaving a trans woman to die - could be justified.

Discrimination already discourages LGBTQ people from seeking health care, which exacerbates their health disparities; LGBTQ people are more likely to experience HIV infection, mental health conditions, and complications related to deferred preventive care. Disability is also more prevalent in the trans community than the cis population, including disabilities that may require complex, lifelong care, like mental illnesses.

Thanks to systemic prejudice, LGBTQ people are also much more likely to live in poverty, especially trans women of color; the majority of Black trans people in Washington, DC, earn less than $10,000 annually. Poverty is a known driver of health-care disparities. Trans people are also un- or under-insured at much higher rates than the general population - one reason Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act, which bars discrimination on the basis of race, sex, disability, age, or national origin, was so important. The Obama administration interpreted Section 1557 to mean that insurers could not deny coverage to transgender people on the basis of their gender identity.

Section 1557, said Schaaff, is directly at risk from rulemaking like this. "It's a back door to discriminate," they say, noting that the Obama administration very deliberately did not include religious exemptions in its rulemaking on discrimination in health-care settings, while it did explicitly include gender identity.

Within months of Donald Trump's inauguration, the HHS had removed the "gender identity" language from its website and indicated an intent to stop enforcing gender identity discrimination complaints. By tasking its civil rights office with enforcement of this rule, HHS effectively says enshrining the right to refuse care is a civil rights matter - for the person denying the care, not the vulnerable patient.

Even if the rule didn't allow objectors to deprive patients of access to information about health-care providers who will treat them, people limited by geography, insurance coverage, the inability to pay out of pocket, and emergency situations may be unable to find anyone else. This could be particularly dangerous for those with urgent needs, like people seeking abortions in states with narrow legal windows to do so, trans people in mental health crisis, or patients experiencing emergent complications from chronic illnesses or disabilities.

"By giving legal cover for discrimination, the Trump-Pence administration is encouraging providers to deny people health care based on their own homophobia or misogyny, while worsening health care access and forcing some to forgo care altogether," Dr. Leana Wen, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, told Rewire.News in a statement.

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Trump Administration Wants to Deny Health Care to LGBTQ People

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The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced last month that it is close to finalizing a conscience protection rule that would allow people to discriminate in health-care settings under cover of law. The final rule is at the Office of Management and Budget for review and not available to the public.

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25. Adam Schiff Releases Democrats’ Intelligence Committee Impeachment Report

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25. Adam Schiff Releases Democrats’ Intelligence Committee Impeachment Report

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JIM WATSON/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

House Intelligence Committee chairman Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) released the Democrats' report Tuesday on the impeachment inquiry, concluding that President Donald Trump "solicit[ed] foreign interference on his behalf in the 2020 election."

The report presents itself as the core fact-finding effort, though that function has traditionally been handled by the House Judiciary Committee, which will begin its own hearings on Wednesday.

The full report was initially unavailable on the House Intelligence Committee website, which was overloaded. However, the executive summary laid out the broad outlines of the Democrats' case.

One part focuses on the substance of the allegations against the president; the other claims that he obstructed the committee's investigation.

There is no mention of "bribery," nor any crime except witness intimidation (see below). The report never spells out any precise grounds for impeachment, though it appears to argue that Trump abused his power. (As former Obama administration official Cass Sunstein wrote in 2017, "abuse of power" is an insufficient basis for impeachment, because it would apply to every president, all of whom arguably overstepped the bounds of their authority.)

In the first part of the report, Schiff and his committee use the term "political favor" to desribe President Trump's request to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that he investigate possible interference in the 2016 election, as well as possible corruption by former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, who was appointed to the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian company suspected of corrupt practices. The report appears to ignore the fact that Democrats' own witnesses acknowledged that Ukraine "bet on the wrong horse" in 2016, and that the Obama administration itself had been concerned about Joe Biden's self-evident conflict of interest.

The report claims that the first step in the president's "scheme" involved removing U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, whom it describes as an "anti-corruption champion." The report does not acknowledge that she had already lost the confidence of President Zelensky, or that she testified that she had done nothing to investigate Burisma's alleged corruption, even though it was the only private company she had been briefed about in advance of her confirmation hearings.

The report goes on to describe the president's "hand-picked agents" in sinister terms, even though most of these - particularly Secretary of Energy Rick Perry and Special Representative Kurt Volker - were described in positive terms by the witnesses. The report implies that there was something wrong with the president conducting foreign policy through an "irregular channel," though there is nothing in the Constitution preventing him from doing so, and some witnesses said it was not unusual or objectionable.

The Democrats' report states, falsely, that President Trump halted "vital military assistance" to Ukraine. As several witnesses testified, the aid that was held did not include Javelin anti-tank missiles, which Ukraine considered most vital to its defense. And as nearly every witness also testified, President Trump provided lethal military aid - unlike President Barack Obama, who denied it.

The report claims that the president made a White House meeting conditional on the investigations he requested, even though several witnesses claimed otherwise, and the only witness to claim that "quid pro quo," Ambassador to the E.U. Gordon Sondland, admitted that he never heard the president make that condition, and merely presumed it.

In one section, the report declares ominously, "The President's Agents Pursued a 'Drug Deal'." That term was used by former National Security Adviser John Bolton - though as key Democrat witness Dr. Fiona Hill testified, Bolton had been using the term as "an ironic and sarcastic statement," not a serious description of an actual negotiation.

The report goes on to declare that Trump "pressed" Zelensky to "do a political favor," though Zelensky has repeatedly said that there was no pressure and no "quid pro quo" in his dealings with the Trump administration.

The Democrats also place great evidentiary weight on vague testimony that the Ukrainian embassy in Washington was aware of the hold on the aid, ignoring clear testimony from a variety of witnesses that the Ukrainians were not aware of the hold on U.S. aid until Politico reported it on August 28. And even then, according to several witnesses and the Ukrainian government, there was never any link between the hold on the aid and the investigations.

The report goes on to quote White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney - who did not testify - as having said in October that aid was conditioned on investigations. In fact, Mulvaney later clarified: "Let me be clear, there was absolutely no quid pro quo between Ukrainian military aid and any investigation into the 2016 election."

In the second part of the report, Democrats accuse Trump of obstructing the impeachment inquiry, without noting that it began without congressional authorization, was largely handled in closed-door sessions, and departed from well-established precedent by denying the White House legal representation.

Schiff's report claims that the White House tried to stop witnesses from testifying, though there were several members of the administration who did so, and who testified that no one had told them not to. The report also accuses Trump of witness intimidation through public criticism of several witnesses, as well as tweets criticizing some of those who testified against him, including claims that they were "Never Trumpers."

Further, Schiff investigated Nunes as part of his impeachment inquiry, the committee report states. "The revelation that Schiff had obtained telephone records related to Nunes was the only new revelation in the report, which otherwise re-hashed Democrats' arguments in favor of impeaching Trump for allegedly asking Ukraine to interfere in the 2020 election," Breitbart News reported.

Republicans released their own dissenting report Monday. They were allowed to see the committee majority's report on Monday evening - with a Democrat "minder," behind closed door, in the Sensitive Compartmentalized Information Facility (SCIF) in the basement of the U.S. capitol.

Following a vote in the committee, which will be along party lines, the Democrats will present their report to the House Judiciary Committee, which is to consider articles of impeachment against the president.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He earned an A.B. in Social Studies and Environmental Science and Public Policy from Harvard College, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of This article has been updated to include details from the full report. How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.

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Adam Schiff Releases Democrats' Intelligence Committee Impeachment Report

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House Intelligence Committee chairman Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) released the Democrats' report Tuesday on the impeachment inquiry, concluding that President Donald Trump "solicit[ed] foreign interference on his behalf in the 2020 election." The report presents itself as the core fact-finding effort, though that function has traditionally been handled by the House Judiciary Committee, which will begin its own hearings on Wednesday.

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Antonio Brown Proves He’s Changed Man By Breaking Into Robert Kraft’s House In Middle Of Night To Apologize

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CHESTNUT HILL, MA-Hoping to secure a second chance with the Patriots by taking accountability for his actions, wide receiver Antonio Brown attempted to prove he was a changed man Monday by breaking into Robert Kraft's house in the middle of the night to apologize. "Look, I know I screwed up, and I just wanted to do something proactive and tell you to your face that I've changed," said Brown, waving the knife he used to disable Kraft's home security system and wrapping duct tape over the team owner's mouth to make sure he could recite his full apology. "I stabbed your security your guard and outran your dogs just to show you how much I want to be on the Patriots. Would someone who wasn't committed to football smash open your kitchen window at 2 a.m. like that? Didn't think so. Clearly, I'm in playing shape if I could do all this without waking you up. Shit, I could be back on the practice field tomorrow." At press time, Brown had thrown Kraft in the trunk of his car and was headed to Tom Brady's house so Brown could show off all the tape he'd been studying.

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Antonio Brown Proves He's Changed Man By Breaking Into Robert Kraft's House In Middle Of Night To Apologize

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CHESTNUT HILL, MA-Hoping to secure a second chance with the Patriots by taking accountability for his actions, wide receiver Antonio Brown attempted to prove he was a changed man Monday by breaking into Robert Kraft's house in the middle of the night to apologize.