COURT WINS FOR VOTING RIGHTS IN 4 STATES / CLINTON PULLS AHEAD IN POLLS .

Voting rights rulings favor Democrats

A flurry of remarkable court rulings over the past two weeks said North Carolina, Wisconsin, Kansas and Texas violated the 1965 Voting Rights Act and intentionally discriminated against African Americans and other classes of voters. The rulings reversed laws that could have given the Republicans significant advantages in close races this November, reports Andrew Gumbel. Voting rights activists have been campaigning against such laws for more than a decade.

A federal judge blocked North Dakota’s new voter ID law, deeming the legislation unfair to Native Americans. The ruling is the latest in a series of recent victories against state-imposed voting restrictions ahead of the November election. (Robert Barnes)

WASHINGTON POST

For the first time in half a century, the United States will elect a president without the full safeguards of the Voting Rights Act in place. The Supreme Court invited Congress to enact new legislation to address the impact of Shelby County. It is well past time for Congress to take up the invitation to restore the Voting Rights Act to its full strength.

In the meantime, we at the Justice Department will continue to use every tool at our disposal to protect eligible voters wherever and whenever we can. And as recent court decisions demonstrate, we continue to see results. Beyond North Carolina and Texas, in the past week alone, courts have pushed back on voting rules in Louisiana and, pressed by private plaintiffs, inKansas and Wisconsin , as well.

Voting transcends partisanship. It makes no difference to the Justice Department which candidate a voter elects or which party he or she supports. We work to protect the integrity of the electoral process so that every eligible voter can cast a ballot.

— Clinton emerged from the Philadelphia convention with a seven-point bounce over Trump, per a new CNN/ORC poll.The Democratic presidential nominee now leads Trump 52 to 43 percent, and 45 to 37 percent in a four-way contest with Gary Johnson and Jill Stein.

• More Americans say Clinton’s policies will “move the country in the right direction” – up from 43 to 48 percent – while Trump’s numbers stayed stagnant after Cleveland.
• Meanwhile, just 35 percent of voters said they saw the Republican Party more favorably after the GOP convention in Cleveland. 52 percent said they viewed it less favorably.
• –The former secretary of state now holds an eight-point lead over Trump (50 percent to 42 percent), according to an NBC/SurveyMonkey poll. She formerly led by just one point last week.
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• “I think people appreciate and even enjoy when he kicks the high and mighty in the butt, but I think they recoil when he is unkind to people who are vulnerable or when he is nasty to people who are thoroughly honorable,” said David Axelrod.

 Khan confrontation keys in on human decency — and that could haunt Trump, from the Washington Post’s Phillip Rucker

“Trump’s belittling of the Muslim American parents of a dead U.S. soldier may be different, according to political strategists in both parties, who say the ongoing episode could challenge the notion of Trump as a Teflon candidate. So far, they say, Trump’s repeated offenses haven’t doomed his candidacy because many voters see each Trump insult as a dagger at political correctness, every blemish a welcome reminder that the celebrity-mogul candidate is willing to take on the established order.”

• “Priorities USA, the leading pro-Clinton super PAC, has conducted extensive research to determine the most effective ways to attack Trump and found that video footage of Trump making wild arm and hand gestures to impersonate Kovaleski registers in focus groups as among the most damning. The footage has been featured in numerous anti-Trump ads.”

SO, WHEN WILL HE SELF-DESTRUCT? TRUMP’S LATEST FIRESTORM.

 

 

‘Morally deficient and incapable of empathy’

 

The father of an American Muslim killed in the US military in Iraq stunned the Democratic convention on Thursday night with a powerful challenge to Donald Trump, who he said had “sacrificed nothing and no one”.

 

Appearing on stage in Philadelphia alongside his wife, Ghazala, Khizr Khan paid tribute to his late son, Cpt Humayun Khan, describing his family as “patriotic American Muslims with undivided loyalty to our country”.

Of his son, killed in 2004 by a car bomb after protecting his soldiers by ordering them to drop to the ground while he took 10 steps forward, Khan said: “If it was up to Donald Trump, he never would have been in America.

“Donald Trump consistently smears the character of Muslims. He disrespects other minorities, women, judges, even his own party leadership. He vows to build walls and ban us from this country.”

Addressing Trump directly, Khan, a Harvard educated lawyer,  told him: “Donald Trump, you are asking Americans to trust you with our future. Let me ask you: Have you even read the United States constitution? I will gladly lend you my copy.”

Producing a pocket edition of the US constitution to huge cheers from the crowd, he added: “In this document, look for the words ‘liberty’ and ‘equal protection of law’.”

Trump’s first response was in an interview with the New York Times opinion writer Maureen Dowd. His only comment was: “I’d like to hear his wife say something.”

The Republican nominee subsequently gave an interview with ABC, in which he suggested that Hillary Clinton’s speechwriters scripted Khan’s speech, which Khan has said he wrote with his wife, Ghazala Khan.

“If you look at his wife, she was standing there,” Trump said. “She had nothing to say. She probably, maybe she wasn’t allowed to have anything to say. You tell me.”

In a statement released later on Saturday, Trump then praised Mr Khan’s son, who was killed serving in Iraq.“Captain Humayun Khan was a hero to our country and we should honor all who have made the ultimate sacrifice to keep our country safe,” the statement said. But Trump’s statement was too little and too late. Both Democrats and Republicans came forward with blistering criticism.

Has Donald Trump’s criticism of the parents of a Muslim American soldier killed in Iraq  caused a seismic disruption in the presidential race? Trump’s attack on ABC News — and series of confounding clarifications — is far from Trump’s first foray into seemingly unredeemable rhetoric (even involving veterans). About a year ago, the then-candidate questioned and mocked Senator John McCain’s heroism and capture in the Vietnam War. But McCain has since come to endorse Trump, and attacking Gold Star parents isn’t exactly going to translate into support from the military or anyone who may already have doubts about the temperament of the Republican nominee. It is a well-worn sentiment that Trump can survive controversies that would destroy most normal politicians, but this does not seem like a “normal” controversy. How damaging could the Khan flaps be for Trump’s campaign? Is his loose language and off-the-cuff approach to politics finally catching up with him? For his part, McCain has joined the growing list of prominent Republicans repudiating Trump’s comment. although not all of them are renouncing Trump himself, what implications will their reactions have on November and the party going forward?

Overshadowing Trump’s comments about the Khan family were his remarks about his relationship to Russian President Vladimir Putin and Crimea. Add to that Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort’s history with Ukraine, and the flap has many reexamining Trump’s possible Russia ties and already   questionable foreign policy chops. Trump tried to clean up his comments, but how big of a problem is Russia going to be for Trump?

Then there is the matter of the Republican nominee’s position on the fall debate schedule. Team Trump is now pushing to reschedule at least two of the debates that are slated to air on the same nights as NFL games. During that same ABC interview, Trump said that the NFL  sent him a letter complaining about the scheduling conflict. The league later denied Trump’s claim, and the non-partisan Commission on Presidential Debates is standing firm on its plans. So what game is Trump trying to play here? Is there a chance, he may not participate in all the debates?

CATCHING UP

 

Japan knife attack: stabbing at care centre leaves 19 dead

A man who claimed he wanted to kill disabled people left at least 19 dead and 26 others injured after a knife attack at a care facility in Japan. The suspect, named Satoshi Uematsu, told police in Sagamihara, outside Tokyo, “it is better that disabled people disappear”. Emergency workers said at least 20 of the wounded had sustained serious injuries, according to the Kyodo news agency.

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Hostage among three dead in Normandy church siege, say French police

 A priest and two hostage-takers are dead after a siege that began when two men armed with knives took hostages in a church in Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray, near Rouen. French media reported that five hostages had been held, including a priest, two nuns and two worshippers, and that a sixth escaped and raised the alarm. President Francois Hollande said the incident was a terrorist attack, carried out by “two terrorists who claimed to be from Isis”.

A witness to the attack has described how the two men forced the 86-year-old priest, Father Jacques Hamel, to his knees, slit his throat and filmed themselves appearing to preach in Arabic at the altar.

— France’s Willie Horton? 

Authorities identified one of the ISIS-linked attackers in the Normandy church slaying as a 19-year-old local who was already known to anti-terrorist investigators. Adel Kermiche had been arrested twice previously for trying to travel to Syria. He was being held under judicial supervision and was required to wear an electronic bracelet and check in with police regularly.Officials said the church attack began at 9:24 a.m. Tuesday, during Kermiche’s unsupervised leave, when his electronic bracelet was apparently deactivated,
The Islamic State’s war on Europe seems to have entered a dangerous new phase, evolving from highly coordinated operations on the grand boulevards of Paris and Brussels to amateur assaults in the hinterlands that have suddenly turned anyone, anywhere into a target. The rapid-fire nature of the attacks in Europe over the past two weeks is confounding European intelligence agencies, at times turning terrorism response into a ground war fought by already stretched local police. … The randomness of the attacks, experts say, is making it even more difficult for security services to do their jobs because the potential targets are virtually limitless, as are the means and the profiles of perpetrators.”

 

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John Hinckley

 — A federal judge ruled that John W. Hinckley, Jr. will be released from a government psychiatric hospital more than 35 years after he attempted to assassinate President Ronald Reagan and shot three others outside the Washington Hilton. 

From Spencer S. Hsu: “Hinckley, 61, no longer poses a danger to himself or others and will be freed to live full-time with his mother in Williamsburg, Va., effective as soon as Aug. 5 (and) subject to dozens of temporary treatment and monitoring conditions, U.S. District Judge Paul L Friedman of Washington wrote. If Hinckley adheres to all restrictions, they could begin to be phased out after 12 to 18 months, removing him from court control for the first time since he was confined to St. Elizabeth’s hospital after the shooting … If Hinckley relapses or violates the terms of his ‘convalescent leave,’ he could be returned to St. Elizabeth’s, the judge ordered.

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Democrats have spent the past few days tying Donald Trump to Russian President Vladimir Putin. The aim here is to suggest the Republican presidential nominee is buddying up to one of America’s most antagonistic world powers — and clueless about the harm it would do to American interests. Trump — and Russia — have denied that they are in cahoots, which would be an unprecedented relationship in American political history. The evidence of any such relationship is inconclusive at best.

But Trump didn’t help his cause when, in a wild press conference Tuesday, he appeared to encourage Russia to spy on Hillary Clinton:

 

In a tweet later, Trump seemed to indicate he only meant for Russia to turn over to the FBI any emails from Clinton’s private sever that she deleted but Russian hackers may have found — there’s no evidence they have any, but FBI Director James B. Comey recently said it’s possible foreign agents got into Clinton’s private server at some point while she was using it.

— Several Democrats called for Trump to stop getting classified briefings from the intelligence community. Harry Reid suggested Trump should be given fake information. “How would the CIA and the other intelligence agencies brief this guy? How could they do that?” the Minority Reid asked. “I would suggest to the intelligence agencies, if you’re forced to brief this guy, don’t tell him anything, just fake it, because this man is dangerous.”

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Baltimore prosecutors dropped all remaining charges against three officers who had been awaiting trial in the death of Freddie Gray, 

the 25-year-old Maryland man who died from injuries sustained in police custody last year. (Derek Hawkins, Lynh Bui and Peter Hermann), closing the book on one of the most closely watched police prosecutions in the nation without a single conviction — and few answers about precisely how the young man died. The outcome also left the city deeply divided over whether its top prosecutor, Marilyn J. Mosby, 36, had overreached in her initial charges.

Marilyn J. Mosby