Why Hundreds of Puffins Washed Up Dead on an Alaskan Beach
American Soil Is Increasingly Foreign-Owned ; Meet the Jelqers ; and More Picks
Deceased GOP Strategist’s Hard Drives Reveal New Details on the Census Citizenship Question (Russ)
From the New York Times: “Files on [Thomas B. Hofeller’s] drives showed that he wrote a study in 2015 concluding that adding a citizenship question to the census would allow Republicans to draft even more extreme gerrymandered maps to stymie Democrats. And months after urging President Trump’s transition team to tack the question onto the census, he wrote the key portion of a draft Justice Department letter claiming the question was needed to enforce the 1965 Voting Rights Act — the rationale the administration later used to justify its decision.”
Businessman Pleads Guilty in Houston Court in PDVSA Bribery Case (Reader Steve)
The author writes, “[Jose Manuel Gonzalez Testino] pleaded guilty in a federal court in Houston on Wednesday for his role in a foreign bribery scheme involving Venezuelan state-owned oil company PDSVA and its Houston-based subsidiary Citgo Petroleum, the U.S. Department of Justice announced Wednesday afternoon.”
American Soil Is Increasingly Foreign-Owned (Gerry)
The author writes, “today nearly 30 million acres of U.S. farmland are held by foreign investors. That number has doubled in the past two decades, which is raising alarm bells in farming communities. When the stock market tanked during the past recession, foreign investors began buying up big swaths of U.S. farmland. And because there are no federal restrictions on the amount of land that can be foreign owned, it’s been left up to individual states to decide on any limitations.”
The Impossible Task of Covering the NYPD (Chris)
From Columbia Journalism Review: “The NYPD is one of the most stubbornly opaque public organizations you’ll find, and it’s been that way for as long as anyone can remember.”
How Incels Are ‘Jelqing’ for a Bigger Penis (Chris)
The author writes, “Does ‘milking’ your semi-erect organ every day work? Some young angry white men hope so.”
