Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call/Newscom
Has California Democratic Sen. Kamala Harris settled on a presidential run and picked a date to announce her candidacy? A variety of media outlets have reported as much, citing San Francisco talk radio station KCBS as the source. On Wednesday, KCBS reported that Harris would announce her candidacy on or around Martin Luther King Day (January 21), "probably at a campaign rally in Oakland." Their intel allegedly came from anonymous sources close to Harris.
But today, Politico's Christopher Cadelago reports that "a formal announcement date is not settled," per "a person close to her."
Take all that for what you will. The bottom line is likely the same: Brace yourself for the Harris 2020 campaign to officially launch sometime soon.
If you need a refresher on Harris' horrible history, here's C.J. Ciaramella reviewing her newly released book.
In The Truths We Hold, Harris touts her record as a "progressive prosecutor," but the book glosses over numerous instances where her office defended prosecutorial misconduct. Harris recounts her career as a line prosecutor in San Francisco, up through her tenure as California Attorney General and her election to the U.S. Senate. The book is a rather clear attempt by Harris to preemptively defend her record on criminal justice, which has emerged as an important issue, especially on the left flank of the Democratic Party…. What her book doesn't address, however, is the many times her own office contributed to that dark history.
And a bit more of Reason's Harris coverage:
FREE MARKETS
Malcolm Gladwell is full of crap about marijuana and the dangers of its decriminalization. Yesterday, Reason's Jacob Sullum tackled a fearmongering anti-pot piece from The New York Times. But there are a lot of bad takes like it these days, including a recent New Yorker story by Malcolmn Gladwell. For some fun, see this Twitter thread from journalist Dave Levitan, which takes on the bad stats and misrepresentations point by point. A sample:
Gladwell: studies of twins suggest a gateway effect! Me, in an actual book with citations and shit: you didn't look at the OTHER twin study that found something else, dick. pic.twitter.com/oi8h3btEGC — Dave Levitan (@davelevitan) January 8, 2019
FREE MINDS
Good news for Google and free speech. From Fast Company:
For years, Google has been fighting an order from a French regulator, which tried to force the company to follow the law beyond European borders. The legal framework demands that internet companies purge search results about people's personal information. France argued that allowing results to remain in other locations made the law ineffective. Google and other technology advocates rebutted that allowing the law's scope to expand globally would allow repressive regimes to essentially erase all dissenting online content about them around the world.
Now, Google has a legal adviser to the European Union's top court on its side. More here.
QUICK HITS
Story to watch: Texas landowners with land near wall necessary for Trump wall "are digging in, vowing to reject buyout offers and preparing to fight the administration in court." https://t.co/041cIVdzOW — Tim Mak (@timkmak) January 10, 2019
• Former Sens. Claire McCaskill (D–Mo.) and Jeff Flake (R–Ariz.) were the least popular members of Congress last year, according to Morning Consult.
• It's a public domain bonanza!
• Hoaxes upon hoaxes:
"A study that claimed to explain why falsehoods go viral has turned out to itself be false." And yes, it went viral. https://t.co/DtQg1CXdgb — Jesse Walker (@notjessewalker) January 10, 2019
• Glory days…
This tweet is correct about Chomsky's long-held, absolutist free speech views. But it's not just Chomsky. From Berkeley to ACLU, free speech absolutism has long been a central, defining belief of the left, which never used to trust institutions of authority with censorship power: https://t.co/BD7kxm95sl — Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) January 10, 2019
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