“My Holiday horror story is that every year I am reminded that my family doesn’t want me and I don’t have any friends. I wish the world wouldn’t stop for eight weeks every year and I could just be in peace.” Oh and there’s more. [City Room/NYT]
Drone leaker Daniel Hale sentenced to almost four years
Hale, who choked up at times as he delivered a 17-minute statement to the court, expressed no remorse about his disclosures but deep regret about having played a part in lethal U.S.-run drone operations in Afghanistan …
Judge Liam O’Grady’s comments imposing the sentence amounted to something of a rebuttal to Hale’s claim. The judge said he was persuaded that Hale was motivated in part by genuine outrage over civilian casualties of U.S. drone operations, but the judge said Hale could have joined that debate without leaking classified information to The Intercept, an online news outlet.
“You’re not facing prison for speaking out about the drone program injuring and killing innocent persons. … A majority of Americans would have commended you for coming forward,” said O’Grady, an appointee of President George W. Bush. “You could have been a whistleblower and garnered all this attention without leaking any of these documents, frankly.”
Mike Enzi, the former senator from Wyoming, has died following a bicycle accident
Former senator Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.), the onetime chairman of two Senate panels crucial to domestic policy, died Monday after suffering serious injuries in a bicycle accident. He was 77.
Enzi was riding his bicycle near his home in Gillette, Wyo., when he was injured Friday and flown to UCHealth Medical Center of the Rockies in Loveland, Colo.
Enzi “passed away peacefully today surrounded by his family,” a statement posted to his Twitter account late Monday said. His family said they plan to share details about a “celebration of a life well-lived” at a later time.
The genial, low-key conservative was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1996 after serving as mayor of Gillette and a member of the Wyoming legislature. He decided not to seek a fifth term in 2020.
Final missing Surfside victim identified
The identification of a 98th victim in the collapse of Champlain Towers South in Surfside, Florida, brought the painstaking process of searching for missing people to a close Monday. The remains of Estelle Hedaya, 54, were at last identified, her brother, Ikey Hedaya, told The Associated Press. Hedaya was the only victim left unrecovered when firefighters concluded their search for bodies Friday as, nearly a month after the collapse, the stories-high debris pile was cleared so that the building’s entire foundation was exposed.
Joe Manchin may stick around longer than expected
Joe Manchin strongly signaled in 2018 that his brutal reelection campaign that year was his last. Now, as he marshals the entire Senate in his centrist direction, he’s not so sure he’ll call it quits.
The West Virginia Democrat is steadily padding his campaign coffers, raising $1.6 million in the first six months this year and sitting on nearly $4 million for a potential race that wouldn’t occur for three years. His colleagues say he’s not acting like a senator in his last term, despite his famous assertion during his last campaign that Washington “sucks.”
And as the 50th Democratic vote, Manchin is charting a bipartisan course for the Senate alongside a like-minded band of moderates in both parties, not to mention serving alongside a president who shares his back-slapping and horse-trading DNA. Instead of sucking, Manchin now says Washington has “accomplished more than we have for the 10 years I’ve been here.”
“You never know. You don’t know. There’s always a chance, absolutely,” Manchin said in an interview. When it comes to a potential reelection campaign alongside a presidential race in 2024, Manchin said: “You better be prepared, that’s all I can say. And I’m being prepared.”
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