Obama signs FOIA reform bill →

The bill, called the FOIA Improvement Act, codifies a presumption of disclosure that Obama re-instituted at the outset of his presidency, but which requesters say has done little to make recalcitrant agencies fork over information. That presumption is now in law and may give requesters a stronger hand in court, although it's unclear how much stronger since similar court-authored precedents are already on the books.
The bill also makes it harder for government to withhold certain kinds of information that's more than 25 years old, although the impact of that provision was narrowed as the legislation pinged back and forth between the House and Senate.
Obama acknowledged Thursday that while battles continue over what should and shouldn't be released, federal agencies are struggling to keep up with the requests that are streaming in. The bill contains some measures designed to speed the process, but it also will make FOIA requests even easier to file, which could bog the system down more. Another challenge: the legislation, which emerged as a consensus measure after years of debate in Congress, does not contain any additional funding.

Pope Francis Denounces Armenian Genocide →

To avoid angering Turkey, some are loathe to describe the killing of 1.5 million Armenians as genocide. Pope Francis, who's in Yerevan for the 100-year commemorations, is not shy about using the term...

Trump May Become The First Republican In 60 Years To Lose White College Graduates →

Interesting bit of historical data.

That’s really unusual for a Republican, and it means that among white voters overall, he’s probably not holding a winning hand.
If you look at seven live interview polls taken since Trump wrapped up the nomination in May, he has trailed among whites with a college degree by an average of 6 percentage points. The same polls have him losing among the overall electorate by an average of 5 percentage points. (That’s about where the race stands now.)

How Many Republicans Marry Democrats? →

First, 30 percent of married households contain a mismatched partisan pair. A third of those are Democrats married to Republicans. The others are partisans married to independents. Perhaps unsurprisingly, there are twice as many Democratic-Republican pairs in which the male partner, rather than the female partner, is the Republican...

An open letter to Jared Kushner about the Donald Trump I see →

The more one looks at your father-in-law, the more examples one finds of him articulating the belief that apologizing for or distancing himself from racist comments is a sign of weakness. So even if it is unfair that Trump’s critics tar and feather him with the most vile rhetoric emanating from some of his supporters, his refusal to dissociate himself from such rhetoric, his refusal to reprimand supporters who do say such vile things, is the opposite of political leadership. It’s almost as if your father-in-law is afraid of losing the ardent support of his most racist followers.
This is the position in which Americans not related to Trump find ourselves: We can either take the word of a close relative that he is not a racist or an anti-Semite, or we can look and listen at what he says and does. And because most Americans are not in a trusting mood at the moment, we’re probably going to adopt the latter strategy. And based on what Trump has said and done during his campaign, it’s really, really hard to ignore his apparent bigotry.

The lobbying reform that enriched Congress →

Congress was in no rush to reform itself in the early 2000s, even as more and more of its members decamped for the lobbying world and started collecting fat paychecks. But the 2005 arrest of “super lobbyist” Jack Abramoff shamed Congress into action. Abramoff bared the worst excesses of the capital’s influence industry, brazenly feting lawmakers with golf trips to Scotland, sushi dinners and campaign contributions, opening the door for lobbyists to write legislation themselves. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) resigned, and Ohio Rep. Bob Ney went to prison. Democrats seized on the chaos to retake both chambers, promising voters they’d change what they called a “culture of corruption.”
Their attempt to make good on that promise, the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007, was embraced by both parties as a historic breakthrough. “This legislation will slow the revolving door that shuffles lawmakers and top staff between federal jobs and the private sector,” Harry Reid, newly the Senate majority leader, said of the lobbying reform law. Sen. Susan Collins, the Maine Republican, added, “This bill, then, is a critical part of restoring the people’s trust by reforming ethics and lobbying rules.” 
Instead, it made things worse. 
Nine years later, the result of the law is very nearly the opposite of what the American public was told it was getting at the time. Not only did the lobbying reform bill fail to slow the revolving door, it created an entire class of professional influencers who operate in the shadows, out of the public eye and unaccountable. Of the 352 people who left Congress alive since the law took effect in January 2008, POLITICO found that almost half (47 percent) have joined the influence industry: 84 as registered lobbyists and 80 others as policy advisers, strategic consultants, trade association chiefs, corporate government relations executives, affiliates of agenda-driven research institutes and leaders of political action committees or pressure groups. Taken as a whole, more former lawmakers are influencing policy and public opinion now than before the reform was enacted: in a six-year period before the law, watchdog group Public Citizen found 43 percent of former lawmakers became lobbyists.

Chilcot report: Tony Blair's Iraq War case not justified →

There is a lot in the report (2.6 million words over 12 volumes) that's mentioned here.

Chairman Sir John Chilcot said the 2003 invasion was not the "last resort" action presented to MPs and the public.
There was no "imminent threat" from Saddam - and the intelligence case was "not justified", he said.
The report, which has taken seven years, is on the Iraq Inquiry website.
...
Previously classified documents, including 31 personal memos from Tony Blair to then US president George W Bush, have been published alongside the Chilcot Report.
...
The memos reveal that Mr Blair and Mr Bush were openly discussing toppling Saddam Hussein as early as December 2001, when the UK and US had just launched military action in Afghanistan.
"How we finish in Afghanistan is important to phase 2. If we leave it a better country, having supplied humanitarian aid and having given new hope to the people, we will not just have won militarily but morally; and the coalition will back us to do more elsewhere," says Mr Blair in the memo.
"We shall give regime change a good name which will help in our arguments over Iraq."
In January 2002, President Bush named Iraq as part of what he described as an "axis of evil" in what he said was a "war on terror" against al-Qaeda and other groups.

After Attacks on Muslims, Many Ask: Where Is the Outpouring? →

In recent days, jihadists killed 41 people at Istanbul’s bustling, shiny airport; 22 at a cafe in Bangladesh; and at least 250 celebrating the final days of Ramadan in Baghdad. Then the Islamic State attacked, again, with bombings in three cities in Saudi Arabia.
By Tuesday, Michel Kilo, a Syrian dissident, was leaning wearily over his coffee at a Left Bank cafe, wondering: Where was the global outrage? Where was the outpouring that came after the same terrorist groups unleashed horror in Brussels and here in Paris? In a supposedly globalized world, do nonwhites, non-Christians and non-Westerners count as fully human?
“All this crazy violence has a goal,” Mr. Kilo, who is Christian, said: to create a backlash against Muslims, divide societies and “make Sunnis feel that no matter what happens, they don’t have any other option.”