Hoo boy... 
Boat Race sinks to academic snobbery lows amid ‘slimy’ eligibility row
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2025/mar/21/boat-race-oxford-cambrdige-eligibility-rowing
#rowing #crew #Oxford #Cambridge
NASA and SpaceX have scrubbed Wednesday’s launch attempt of the agency’s #Crew-10 mission to the International Space Station due to a hydraulic system issue with a ground support clamp arm for the Falcon 9 rocket at Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida: https://www.nasa.gov/blogs/commercialcrew/2025/03/12/nasas-spacex-crew-10-scrubbed-due-to-ground-system-issue/ - the next available launch opportunity is no earlier than 7:26 p.m. EDT [23:26 UTC] Thursday, March 13, from Launch Complex 39A at NASA Kennedy pending review of the issue.
Hallo, liebe #Crew!
Könnt ihr uns einmal helfen?
Der eine Mensch hat zwei X-Chromosome, will aber nicht als "Menschin" oder "Frau" bezeichnet werden. Der andere Mensch hat ein X und ein Y Chromosom und ist männlich unterwegs.
Wie kann beide im Blog betiteln, dass es unkompliziert bleibt?
EDIT: Namen sollen ebenfalls nicht genutzt werden.
Fuck, Jonie is super upset about the crash in DCA. She's flown in there hundreds of times at this time of night and loved to look out the window while landing, if she has a second to look
She talked about picking up a trip there tomorrow night but I talked her out of flying before I leave Saturday
We lived in DC back in the 90s and this is tragic, like all crashes
Congress put rules in place ages ago to ensure that federal appointees and employees (including judges) don’t use their jobs to enrich themselves.
The "Office of Government Oversight" vets those officials for conflicts of interest and can compel them and their spouses and minor children to dispense with assets deemed likely to create a conflict.
For our purposes, all you need to know is that those rules don’t apply to the president, vice-president, or federal lawmakers
—which is stupid, but whatever.
️The Constitution, however, does place limits on elected federal officials.
The president is entitled to a predetemined salary and that’s all.
He is forbidden from taking anything further of value from the federal governments or any state government.
Furthermore, without the consent of Congress, no federal officeholder may accept “any present, #Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.”
This is not ambiguous. It means no foreign money, period.
Yet President Donald Trump’s affairs are awash in foreign money. (Domestic, too.)
Among other problems, foreign governments have rented units at Trump Tower,
booked rooms and events at his hotels and resorts,
and approved his company’s overseas deals and developments
—not to mention those of son-in-law Jared Kushner,
whose private equity fund got a $2 billion investmentfrom a Saudi sovereign wealth fund shortly after he left the White House,
and whose new partnership with the Trump Organization opens a very problematic new can of worms.
Trump “received significant payments and benefits from foreign governments” during his first term, says Noah Bookbinder,
the executive director since 2015 of Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington ( #CREW ), which two years later sued Trump in an emoluments case that focused on Trump’s DC hotel,
and served as outside counsel in a similar lawsuit filed by the attorneys general of Maryland and the District of Columbia.
The hotel, operating out of a federal building, became a mecca for both foreign governments and American companies and CEOs who hoped to curry favor with the administration.
“The research we’ve done, combined with what the House did, suggest that more than $13 million
—potentially much, much more
—came to his businesses from foreign governments,” Bookbinder told me.
These legal actions were upheld by federal appeals courts, but they dragged on
and the Supreme Court declared them moot on January 25, 2021,
as Trump was no longer in office.
“As a legal matter, it is as though [our cases] never existed.
And so even those favorable appeals decisions don’t have any precedential value,” Bookbinder says.
That was tough to stomach, and now Trump is back at the trough without any further guardrails
—or consequences paid.
He was in “clear violation of provisions intended to protect the public from corruption,” Bookbinder says,
“and it’s very, very hard, it turns out, to get courts to enforce them
—or get anybody to enforce them.
That’s deeply frustrating, and one more example of Trump finding ways to be lawless.”
CREW is now in a triage process to determine its priorities,
and which legal actions might stand a chance of success
—such as the lawsuit it and other groups filed earlier this week to challenge the actions of Trump’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency.
In any case, Bookbinder says, the public can expect more influence-peddling during Trump’s second term,
only now “there are factors that create the risk of emoluments at a much higher level.”
Prior to the election, CREW cited four primary areas of concern,
not merely for conflicts of interest
—that would be a very long list
—but where Trump is likely in violation of the Constitution’s emoluments clauses.
And now there are five areas,
because only days before he was sworn in, a Trump-controlled entity called
"World Liberty Financial" launched a pair of “meme” cryptocurrencies:
$TRUMP and $MELANIA.
Looking for a Christmas present for the Space Opera nerd in your life? The one who insists on you watching The Expanse and all of Star Trek with them although you really, truly don't care about SciFi?
How about giving them Herald Petrel for Christmas? It is 457 pages and so they will be occupied for a while.
It has a #mystery to be solved, quirky characters and is about #loss, #love, #humanity, #coping, and #hope in a hopeless situation.
Warning: It doesn't have a white guy as a captain who fixes everything. And there is A LOT that needs fixing.
You can get it in all your fav book stores: https://books2read.com/HeraldPetrel
@bookstodon
#ScienceFiction #SpaceOpera #SciFi #SpaceOdyssey #HeraldPetrel #crew #FoundFamily #ReadingCommunity #PTSD #grief
"In March 2016, #CREW discovered that the #Trump Foundation had broken the law by giving an illegal $25,000 contribution to a political group supporting #Florida Attorney General #PamBondi. Charitable foundations like the Trump Foundation are not allowed to engage in #politics. Even more problematic was the fact that the contribution was given as Bondi’s office was deciding whether to take legal action related to Trump University."
https://www.citizensforethics.org/reports-investigations/crew-investigations/the-trump-foundation-pam-bondi-scandal/
![Chart showing the steps of the investigation.
Sep 17, 2013
The Donald J. Trump Foundation makes a $25,000 contribution to And Justice for All, a political group backing Bondi. The donation, illegal for a 501(c)(3) private foundation to give, was personally solicited by Bondi from Trump.
Oct 15, 2013
According to documents turned over in response to a CREW public records request, OAG told reporters that “there was no consideration of whether to join [the New York lawsuit]. In light of the fact that the Attorney General’s Office received only one consumer complaint 2.5 years ago, there is no investigation at this time.”
Read more: https://www.scribd.com/lists/16969968/CREW-Trump-University-Florida (Opens in new tab)
Oct 17, 2013
The Tampa Bay Times reports that And Justice for All acknowledged receiving the contribution from the Trump Foundation.
Oct 18, 2013
Despite previously acknowledging the 22 complaints (sometimes 23 due to a duplicate record) to reporters, internal emails show that between October 17-18, 2013, OAG employees weeded out any complaint about Trump Institute and related entities to claim there was only one complaint against Trump University.
Jan 01, 2014
In its 2013 taxes, the Trump Foundation claims it made no donations to political entities and replaces And Justice for All with a different, similarly named group in Kansas to which they would legally be allowed to donate.
Mar 21, 2016
CREW files complaint against Trump Foundation](https://assets.newsie.social/media_attachments/files/113/528/514/435/476/447/original/d39a8c0f050bc9e2.png "Chart showing the steps of the investigation.
Sep 17, 2013
The Donald J. Trump Foundation makes a $25,000 contribution to And Justice for All, a political group backing Bondi. The donation, illegal for a 501(c)(3) private foundation to give, was personally solicited by Bondi from Trump.
Oct 15, 2013
According to documents turned over in response to a CREW public records request, OAG told reporters that “there was no consideration of whether to join [the New York lawsuit]. In light of the fact that the Attorney General’s Office received only one consumer complaint 2.5 years ago, there is no investigation at this time.”
Read more: https://www.scribd.com/lists/16969968/CREW-Trump-University-Florida (Opens in new tab)
Oct 17, 2013
The Tampa Bay Times reports that And Justice for All acknowledged receiving the contribution from the Trump Foundation.
Oct 18, 2013
Despite previously acknowledging the 22 complaints (sometimes 23 due to a duplicate record) to reporters, internal emails show that between October 17-18, 2013, OAG employees weeded out any complaint about Trump Institute and related entities to claim there was only one complaint against Trump University.
Jan 01, 2014
In its 2013 taxes, the Trump Foundation claims it made no donations to political entities and replaces And Justice for All with a different, similarly named group in Kansas to which they would legally be allowed to donate.
Mar 21, 2016
CREW files complaint against Trump Foundation")
#Charles #Koch, perhaps the most legendary Republican financier of recent decades,
has never backed Trump, either.
The political network affiliated with him and his late brother #David remained officially neutral in the Presidential races of 2016 and 2020,
and spent tens of millions of dollars trying to defeat Trump in this year’s Republican primaries,
-- much of it supporting Haley.
When she dropped out, the Koch network concentrated on down-ballot races.
But Kochworld, like the Republican Party more broadly, remains divided.
“There are a lot of donors in that network lobbying Charles from the perspective of,
I know you don’t like him,
but he’s better than the alternative,”
Marc Short, who worked for a Koch-affiliated group
and later served as Vice-President Mike Pence’s chief of staff, said.
Nevertheless, neither Koch nor Pence is supporting Trump this fall
—a remarkable rift, given the role that each of them has played in Republican politics.
At the same time, Trump has cultivated a new group of what might be called #maga #megadonors.
A study conducted for The New Yorker by the campaign-finance expert Robert Maguire,
of the nonprofit good-government group #crew,
found that, as of this summer,
more than forty of the G.O.P.’s biggest super-pac donors during Romney’s 2012 campaign had never given to a pro-Trump super pac,
including Oracle’s co-founder #Larry #Ellison,
the Dallas real-estate tycoon #Harlan #Crow,
and the hotel magnate J. W. #Marriott, Jr.
Meanwhile, nearly sixty pro-Trump donors in the study,
including #Lutnick, #Mellon, #Perlmutter, and the Wisconsin shipping magnates #Richard and #Elizabeth #Uihlein, had given nothing to the pro-Romney super pac.
Others have significantly increased their giving.
The #Adelsons, for example, donated $53 million to the pro-Romney super pac in 2012 and $90 million to support Trump in 2020,
when they were the largest individual donors of the cycle.
By the end of September, Miriam Adelson had given $100 million to back Trump in 2024.
With such sums at stake, Trump has pursued what the former Bush Pioneer called a “high touch” approach to the Republican billionaire class.
The ex-President has all but invited donors to view their contributions as business investments,
telling oil-and-gas executives who went to see him in April at Mar-a-Lago, for example, that, because he would allow unrestricted drilling, 
they should raise $1 billion for his campaign
—a statement redolent of Sondland’s “quid pro quo” that soon leaked to the Washington Post.
The campaign’s strategy, another longtime fund-raiser told me,
was essentially to let Trump be Trump:
“He talks the same book to everybody.”
Oliver, the former Bush finance director, observed that the difference between the model of the Bush campaigns and Trump’s is the difference between having a large pool of “institutional investors” which had been built up in the course of years, and a series of ad-hoc “transactional” dealings with a relatively small group of the ultra-rich.
Sean Wilentz, a historian at Princeton University, offered another key distinction. Trump’s billionaires—many of whom have made their fortunes as hedge-fund managers, activist investors, and corporate raiders—tend to be highly motivated ideologues and individual operators. “It’s transactional, but their end of the bargain is a lot different than just having access to the President of the United States,” Wilentz told me. “They see Trump as their instrument. This is an investment for them to take power.” Wilentz noted that, unlike the “traditional corporate conservative élite” dating back to the Gilded Age, this new “class of the super-rich” appears both more numerous and less civic-minded. “The other guys might have been robber barons,” Wilentz said. “These guys are oligarchs.”
Watchdog group CREW says Judge Aileen Cannon should be kicked off the Trump documents case
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington filed an amicus brief alleging Cannon has a pro-Trump "bias"
https://www.salon.com/2024/09/04/watchdog-group-crew-says-aileen-cannon-should-be-kicked-off-the-documents-case
* At every possible opportunity Judge Cannon demonstrated bias in favor of Trump
Judge Aileen M. #Cannon has shown #bias in handling criminal charges against former President Donald Trump and 
should be reversed and removed from the case
to “preserve the appearance of justice,”
a public interest group argued in a legal filing on Tuesday.
The brief filed by "Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics"
( #CREW ) in Washington
and joined by a retired federal judge
and two constitutional lawyers is a direct #legal #assault on Cannon’s decision to throw out special counsel Jack Smith’s prosecution of Trump for alleged mishandling of classified documents.
CREW is a nonpartisan open-government advocacy group that has been at the vanguard of fighting Trump in various legal battles.
The brief argues that Cannon’s decision
“hinged on ignoring the plain text of four federal statutes,” dismissing “a landmark Supreme Court opinion confirming the Attorney General’s power to appoint a Special Counsel.”
CREW writes that “a reasonable member of the public could conclude, as many have, that the dismissal was the culmination of Judge Cannon’s many efforts to undermine and derail the prosecution of this case.”
In a stunning July 15 ruling, Cannon wrote that Attorney General Merrick Garland exceeded his authority by appointing Smith as special counsel without congressional approval and violated the Constitution’s separation of powers.
“The Special Counsel’s position effectively usurps that important legislative authority,” she said.
Critics say that decision was incorrect and disregarded years of legal precedent, including a landmark Supreme Court ruling.
Via #CitizensForEthics @ 6:29pm EDT on Sept 03, 2024
We just filed an #AmicusBrief saying Judge #Cannon should be reassigned from the #Trump #ClassifiedDocuments case.
Her apparent bias in favor of Trump and disregard of existing precedent make clear that she should not remain on the case.
Via #CitizensForEthics @ 1:00pm EDT on Sept 01, 2024
#Congress must pass legislation protecting government experts and civil servants while they have the chance.
NASA makes a very tough decision in setting final Crew-9 assignments - Enlarge / Nick Hague, left, and Zena Cardman train inside a Crew Dragon... - https://arstechnica.com/?p=2046482 #crewdragon #science #crew-9 #space #nasa
@heidilifeldman @mutter01 @tawtovo
How about CREW? Can they donate to CREW?
Via #CREW 01-July-24
Accountability cannot wait. #Congress must..enact legislation 2 prevent any #president who engaged in #insurrection against #Constitution...from holding office again. The [Supreme]Court itself must acknowledge its ongoing #ethics crisis & ensure any justice who hears a case despite having a conflict of interest, as Justices #Alito & #Thomas appear 2 have done in this instance, faces consequences for violating the Court’s #CodeOfConduct and the #law”
Remember when the #SecretService spent more than $16,000 on #JaredKushner’s #UAE and #Qatar trip, and then both countries invested in his firm?
It's a good thing the firm is finally being examined seriously.
CET 
