The Morning Dispatch: A Trip Down Memory Lane

Plus, the Supreme Court slaps down some uppity district courts. 

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Happy Tuesday! With all the recent developments, twists and turns, shifting loyalties, the impeachment saga can at times be tough to wrap your head around. We get it. For simplicity’s sake, allow Reason’s Peter Suderman to clear things up for you.

Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories

  • More than 80 people have now died from coronavirus during the current outbreak in China, and markets tumbled Monday amid growing concerns about China’s handling of the situation. Three thousand people have now contracted the virus, with more than 100 people being evaluated for the disease in the U.S. 

  • Former Whitewater prosecutor Ken Starr made his debut as a member of Trump’s impeachment team Monday, making the case that Congress had grown too quick to use impeachment powers in our current “age of impeachment.” 

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  1. Avatar photo
    Pat Riot

    Oh look, a bunch of "gotcha" statements from Linsey Graham about John Bolton. That's surely going to change his attitude toward Bolton now said the wishfully thinking.

    If they can reverse their reality on Jeff Sessions they can do so with Bolton. Nothing matters anymore besides fealty to Trump.

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      Wade Paulsen

      I wasn't paying attention to the Jeff Sessions "reversal of reality" because I was so convinced that Trump had given both Jeff Sessions and Rex Tillerson jobs that were too big for them to handle, and I wasn't at all surprised that Sessions (or Tillerson) wasn't up to it (or that Sessions needed longtime DOJ aides just to guide him through his daily responsibilities). But John Bolton was similar to William Barr: someone who understood the magnitude of the task confronting him and was comfortable with it. For that reason, the current attacks from Team Trump directed at Bolton feel very different that the attacks on Sessions did -- more like the desperate flailings of a trapped animal that any form of realistic criticism.

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        Pat Riot

        Sessions was a US Senator for decades and one of Trump's first supporters. Rex Tilerson ran Exxon.

        I agree something does feel a little different about Bolton, but I wonder if its the timing here and not the man. The bodies are piling up and there's almost nobody left alive, so to speak...

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    Paul Montagu

    Bolton gets my thanks for pissing all over Trump's proposal to host the Taliban at Camp David.

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    Michael Carpenter

    I'm not an epidemiologist but I am not sure what more China could do to prevent the spread of 2019-nCoV. Also, I suspect that the number of cases is much larger than reported based on a couple of papers up on bioRxiv that suggest that each infected individual may infect, on average, 3-5 other people. That is on par with SARS but 2019-nCoV also appears to be less lethal than SARS. I'm not terribly worried but we will see what happens in the next few weeks.

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      cheerio

      Infection numbers and cause of death-- I think both are under-reported. There is not much information on risk of death from this virus. For example, about 1300 have died from influenza this flu season as of 12/13. And we are still dealing with positive flu tests at my hospital among the patients and the staff.

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        Michael Carpenter

        I'm sure you are right. I don't exactly trust the Chinese government's honesty when it comes to reporting on these issues. At present, it sounds like it is *mostly* the elderly and infirm that are at high risk but there was at least one case where the individual was young and healthy but still didn't make it. Both MERS and SARS had much higher mortality rates so we'll have to wait and see what happens outside of China. Hopefully, this strain will be less lethal than MERS and SARS.

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    Dave IL

    I never thought I had a lot in common with John Bolton, but I am proud to be stubbornly anachronistic. Let Trump's supporters attack him for any trait to which that description applies.

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      Butch Earl

      Indeed. Far from being discouraged, I felt ennobled when Charles Hurt went on Fox News' Special Report last night and referred to Bolton as a globalist swamp-dweller.

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        Dave IL

        Sad. I watch SR on DVR so I can skip over Hurt's comments - partly because I find his logic incoherent and partly because I find his speech inco.... Never mind. That would be rude and not in the spirit of The Dispatch. :-)

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          Declan Garvey staff-badge Staff

          The Dispatch has the best comment section you can find on the internet!

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  5. Avatar photo
    Michael Carpenter

    The third bullet point in "Worth Your Time" links to the Glenn Beck "presented without comment" tweet, not the Medium piece about astroturfing.

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      Steve Hayes

      You're right. Thanks for the heads up. We're fixing on the web version.

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    Kevin Durant?

    “More than 80 people have now died from coronavirus during the current outbreak in China, and markets tumbled Monday amid growing concerns about China’s handling of the situation.”
    ——————————
    One of the hidden downsides of a deadly virus named after a beer is that my dad is going to make a ‘Corona virus’ joke every time he suspects me of being hungover from now into eternity
    😑😑😑

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