Welcome to the Overnight News Digest with a crew consisting of founder Magnifico, current leader Neon Vincent, regular editors side pocket, maggiejean, Chitown Kev, Doctor RJ, Magnifico, annetteboardman and Besame. Alumni editors include (but not limited to) Man Oh Man, wader, palantir, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse (RIP), ek hornbeck, ScottyUrb, Interceptor7, BentLiberal, Oke (RIP) and jlms qkw.
OND is a regular community feature on Daily Kos, consisting of news stories from around the world, sometimes coupled with a daily theme, original research or commentary. Editors of OND impart their own presentation styles and content choices, typically publishing each day near 12:00 AM Eastern Time.
Please feel free to share your articles and stories in the comments.
Chicago Sun-Times: Was the Speaker listening? Woman questions why Madigan took months to fire aide by Tina Sfondeles
A political consultant said she knew she’d be risking “everything” by coming forward with allegations of sexual harassment against a top aide to powerful state House Speaker Mike Madigan.
The consultant, Alaina Hampton, first told Ald. Marty Quinn that his brother was harassing her, calling the 2017 letter to her political mentor “the hardest thing I have ever done in my life.”
Unhappy with the alderman’s handling of the matter, Hampton said she wrote a letter to Madigan himself last November, sending it to the Democrat’s Southwest Side home to ensure he saw it.
Madigan announced the firing of Kevin Quinn on Monday, after his lawyer conducted an investigation that included interviews and a review of text messages Kevin Quinn sent to Hampton.
Madigan didn’t name Hampton as the accuser on Monday, but hailed her as a “courageous woman.”
Des Moines Register: Iowa Poll: Ernst's approval rating tops Grassley's for the first time by Jason Noble
U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley is not the highest-rated politician in Iowa.
The latest Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll shows 49 percent of Iowans approve of Grassley’s job performance, but 51 percent indicate approval for U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst.
The results mark the first time ever that Iowa’s other U.S. senator has rated higher in an Iowa Poll than Grassley, a seven-term Republican first elected in 1980. And it’s only the fourth time since Grassley took office that any statewide official has registered a higher approval rating.
Poll respondent Kay Proffitt, a semi-retired office manager from Bronson, said she appreciated Ernst’s “fresh perspective” and focus on rural issues. Grassley, she said, is “a little out of touch.”
“I think Grassley is just stuck in the past and isn’t looking toward the future of the state and the country,” Proffitt, a 68-year-old Republican, said. “I think Joni Ernst has more understanding and compassion for family struggles than he does.”
What’s really interesting about this new poll is that Ernst is more popular among Iowa Democrats and independents than Grassley.
Ernst’s edge over Grassley comes not from their shared Republican base but from independents and even Democrats. Fifty-four percent of independents approve of Ernst’s job performance, compared to 47 percent for Grassley. Twenty-two percent of Democrats approve of Ernst; 20 percent approve of Grassley.
Denver Post: A Colorado family expected to receive cremated remains of their loved one. Instead, they got concrete mix. by John Ingold
Colorado regulators have suspended the license of a Montrose funeral home that also hosts a connected business selling human body parts after state officials investigated an incident in which the funeral home was supposed to return cremated remains to a family but, instead of ashes, gave the family cement.
The suspension order for Sunset Mesa Funeral Directors says the funeral home and crematory didn’t keep required cremation records for at least five years and also didn’t keep records documenting the final disposition of human remains for at least seven years.
In that time, the funeral home has been hit with nine complaints, according to state officials. The case numbers listed in the suspension order, which was issued Monday, date to 2014.
In one complaint, a family said they had the supposed cremated remains of their loved one analyzed and they were told the cremains were, in fact, cement, the powder that makes concrete.
Baltimore Sun: Baltimore Police corruption trial reveals deep reach of city's drug economy by Jean Marbella
One target drove a Mercedes and lived in a waterfront condo on Boston Street; another was homeless, essentially living out of a storage unit where he kept his money balled up in a sock. One lived with his extended family in a house he bought with a lead poisoning settlement; yet another had a half-million-dollar home on two acres of land in Westminster.
The circumstances of the people who were targeted for robbery by the Baltimore Police Department’s Gun Trace Task Force ranged widely, according to witnesses in the federal trial of two of its former members. The sums allegedly taken went from three figures up to six.
But the unifying factor, as so often is the case in Baltimore, was drugs.
The focus of the sweeping racketeering case was corruption. Eight former members of the elite unit robbed citizens under protection of their badges and claimed massive amounts of overtime for unworked hours. Six pleaded guilty; a jury convicted the other two on Monday.
Washington Post: Michigan State faculty vote no confidence in board, in wake of Nassar scandal by Simon B. Schuster and Susan Svrluga
EAST LANSING, Mich. — Faculty at Michigan State University issued an emphatic vote of no confidence in the board of trustees Tuesday afternoon in the wake of a sex abuse scandal that rocked the school.
At an emergency meeting, the Faculty Senate voted overwhelmingly — 61 to 4 — that it lacked confidence in the trustees, with results greeted by loud applause. The public university has been in turmoil since scores of young women accused an MSU sports medicine doctor of molesting them.
The faculty cannot force board members out. But with a vote of no confidence, the impact is immediate and deep, said Sean McKinniss, who is co-writing a book on academic governance: a loss of legitimacy for both the board and the interim president whose appointment triggered the faculty vote.
“Unless you take a moral stand, you give tacit agreement by your silence,” Robert LaDuca, a professor of chemistry who is a faculty leader, said before the meeting. “The board has been leading from behind, in my opinion, in this whole process.” He compared the university to a corporation that has had a catastrophic failure and needs new leaders to move the organization forward, “rather than the entrenched and, to be honest, myopic leadership that got us into this crisis and damaged untold numbers of lives.
Vox: 3 Trump properties posted 144 openings for seasonal jobs. Only one went to a US worker. by Alexa Fernandez Campbell
President Donald Trump's businesses don’t seem too concerned about “America First."
A Vox analysis of hiring records for seasonal workers at three Trump properties in New York and Florida revealed that only one out of 144 jobs went to a US worker from 2016 to the end of 2017. Foreign guest workers with H-2B visas got the rest.
The H-2B visa program allows seasonal, non-agricultural employers — like hotels and ski resorts — to hire foreign workers when they can’t find American ones. The Trump administration temporarily expanded this guest-worker program in 2017 while restricting other avenues of legal immigration, including the H-1B program for high-skilled workers.
The Trump Organization is exactly the kind of company that relies on the H-2B visa program for low-skilled workers.
Vox reviewed recruiting files submitted to the US Department of Labor for two Trump properties in Florida (including Mar-a-Lago) and one in New York from the start of 2016 through the end of 2017. In that period, hiring managers said they were able to find and hire only one qualified American worker — a cook — for 144 open positions for servers, cooks, housekeepers, and bartenders.
Mother Jones: Devin Nunes’ Fake News Site Suggests Male Privilege Doesn’t Exist by Bryan Schatz
It wasn’t around long, but in it’s short life, the Twitter feed for “The California Republican”—an alternative “news” site paid for by Devin Nunes Campaign Committee that lambasts the mainstream media and pushes GOP-friendly stories—blistered social media with some serious swings and misses. Presumably all in an effort to win over constituents in the beleaguered congressman’s home district, the Twitter feed employed the hashtag #LockHerUp, and railed against immigrants. It told the LGBT community that Republicans don’t care about them, and it retweeted the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones of InfoWars. It sent out a Tweet suggesting that male privilege does not exist, by cataloguing the many ways in which men ostensibly have it harder than women. And then this week, what was formerly known as @CaRepublicanCom went dark.
Before it did, we got some screenshots of a few of its worst takes:
CBC: Boushie family promised 'concrete changes' in meetings with Trudeau, ministers
Colten Boushie's family members say they believe the Liberal government will go the distance and change what they see as systemic problems with Canada's justice system in the simmering aftermath of his shooting death.
"This ain't going to stop until something changes for the better," Debbie Baptiste told reporters Tuesday, just days after Saskatchewan farmer Gerald Stanley was found not guilty in her son's shooting death.
Baptiste and other members of Boushie's family are in Ottawa this week for high-level meetings, including one with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau early in the afternoon.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is set to deliver a speech in the House of Commons after question period Wednesday on the recognition and implementation of Indigenous rights.
The family said that, so far, the meetings have been engaging and respectful.
DW: Survey: 2 million Italians molested as kids by Natalie Mueller
Around 1.6 million women and 400,000 men — or about 5 percent of the Italian population — were molested as minors, according to the results of a sexual harassment survey published Tuesday.
Official figures from Italy's statistics agency, Istat, said most of those targeted did not know their abuser. However, almost 15 percent of female victims, and 7.4 percent of males, said they were molested by a relative. In 4.2 percent of cases, boys said they were abused by a priest or nun.
The anonymous survey found that a significant proportion of those who were abused under the age of 18 didn't speak up — about 62 percent of male victims and 43 percent of female victims kept the ordeal to themselves.
In over 60 percent of cases the abuse only happened once, while a quarter of the victims said it was repeated up to five times.
The data is based on a nationwide sample of 50,350 individuals interviewed in 2015-2016.
BBC: Oxfam: Minnie Driver withdraws support over Haiti scandal
Actress Minnie Driver has stood down from her role as a celebrity ambassador for Oxfam.
This follows claims that staff for the charity in Haiti and other countries paid vulnerable people for sex.
In a statement she said that she was "nothing short of horrified" by the allegations.
Oxfam said it was "grateful" for Ms Driver's commitment and that it was "more committed now than ever to learn from our mistakes".
The British charity is accused of concealing the findings of an inquiry into claims staff used prostitutes while delivering aid in Haiti in 2011.
The actress, best known for the movies Good Will Hunting, Grosse Point Blank and Hope Springs, said that although she could not continue her 20 years of involvement with Oxfam, she would work against "social and economic injustice".
She added: "I certainly will not let the abhorrent mistakes of a troubling organization stop me or anyone else from working with good people in this space to support a population of human beings around the world that needs our help."
AlJazeera: Ayelet Shaked: Israel must safeguard Jewish majority
Israel must safeguard a Jewish majority even at the expense of human rights, the country's justice minister has said in a speech defending a bill that would legally define Israel as the "national home of the Jewish people" for the first time.
Ayelet Shaked said on Monday that Israel must maintain both a Jewish majority and democracy, but stressed that keeping the state's Jewish character may come "at the price" of human rights violations.
"There is place to maintain a Jewish majority even at the price of violation of rights," Shaked told a conference in Tel Aviv on Monday, Israeli media reported.
In her speech, Shaked, a member of the far-right Jewish Home party, defended the so-called Jewish Nation-State Bill, which would constitutionally define Israel as the national home of the Jewish people for the first time.
"There are places where the character of the State of Israel as a Jewish state must be maintained, and this sometimes comes at the expense of equality," Shaked said, as reported by Israel's Haaretz newspaper.
Guardian: ANC in chaos after Jacob Zuma refuses order to step down by Jason Burke
South Africa has been pitched into an unprecedented political crisis after the ruling ANC party admitted that President Jacob Zuma had defied its orders to resign, and that it had little idea of when the 75-year-old head of state would respond to its demand to leave office.
The decision to tell Zuma, who faces multiple charges of corruption, to stand down was taken at anemergency session of the highest decision-making body of the African National Congress near Pretoria, the administrative capital, late on Monday evening, and conveyed to the president about midnight.
Ace Magashule, the ANC’s secretary general, confirmed on Tuesday that the party had decided to “recall” Zuma from his “deployment as president” but said that no deadline had been given and there had been no discussion of bringing a motion of no-confidence to oust him.
“When we recall our deployee we expect him to do what we tell him to do … We are expecting the president to respond tomorrow … there’s no deadline,” Magashule told a press conference in Johannesburg.
Washington Post: The very best of the very good dogs are at Westminster's most overlooked event by Karin Brulliard
NEW YORK — One dog will win best in show at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show on Tuesday night, snagging what is essentially America’s top canine beauty prize. Over the weekend, a border collie leaped and wove her way to dominance in the show’s agility championship, a feat of canine athletics.
But on Monday afternoon, past the cacophonous rows and rings of breed contenders, at the chilly end of a warehouse, a judge in a tuxedo awarded a third title to what could be considered the best of all of these very good dogs: the winner of the Masters Obedience Championship. It is Westminster’s newest and least-glitzy honor, but it is one that enthusiasts insist is central to the whole show dog world.
“It’s really the foundation of all performance events,” said this year’s judge, John Cox, a retired toy train collector and broker who has been judging obedience competitions for 40 years. “You’ve got these two species out there, and they’re communicating back and forth.”
The title in the obedience event, which is in its third year at Westminster, goes to the dog-handler team that best demonstrates the commands that many ordinary pet owners have aspired, and perhaps failed, to get their pooches to heed: sit, stay, heel, fetch. Yet it is far more complicated. Dogs must follow hand signals, dart away from their handlers, drop to the ground while running, soar over jumps to retrieve dumbbells and sit perfectly, perfectly straight. Westminster, unlike other obedience events, also features a six-minute “freestyle” routine; many are like skits and involve costumes. This year, in an odd coincidence, three of 23 teams chose a “Wizard of Oz” theme.
NPR: Shaun White Wins Gold In Halfpipe At The Winter Olympics by Bill Chappell
Shaun White pulled off a gold-medal comeback in the halfpipe, and Japan's Ayumu Hirano won silver on the strength of a phenomenal second run.
White missed out on a medal back in 2014, when he was hurt at the Sochi Games. He's now the only snowboarder ever to win three gold medals at the Olympics. And he did it by winning the 100th gold medal for the U.S.
Held one day after American Chloe Kim dominated the women's halfpipe, the men's final was a duel between White, Hirano, and Australia's Scotty James — who came out strong on his first run, scoring a 92.
White stepped up next with an incredible array of tricks, height and precision, soaring above the halfpipe and landing cleanly. The judges rewarded him with a 94.25 — and that was nearly his best score of the day, after a stumble marred his second and final run.
Everyone have a great evening!