Middleboro Review et al

“Pity the nation whose people are sheep, and whose shepherds mislead them. Pity the nation whose leaders are liars, whose sages are silenced, and whose bigots haunt the airwaves. Pity the nation that raises not its voice, except to praise conquerors and acclaim the bully as hero and aims to rule the world with force and by torture. Pity the nation that knows no other language but its own and no other culture but its own. Pity the nation whose breath is money and sleeps the sleep of the too well fed. Pity the nation — oh, pity the people who allow their rights to erode and their freedoms to be washed away. My country, tears of thee, sweet land of liberty.” ~ Lawrence Ferlinghetti

FACEBOOK COMMENT: Not mine, but... Awesome: The only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun - unless there happens to be an even worse guy with a gun who doesn't like the competition, or a slightly less bad bad guy who thinks he's a good guy, or an only moderately bad guy with a gun who wanted to stop the first guy, but was stopped by a fairly good guy with a gun having a bad day, or a total asshole with a gun who wants to stop everybody, or a sweetheart of a guy wit h a gun who just lost his job, or a reasonable guy who thought he was going to stop the bad guy but was fired upon by the even worse guy, or a deranged psychopath with a gun who doesn't care who he's stopping, or a super patriot who thinks the first guy is warring on Christmas, or an ignorant guy with a gun who thinks the third guy is a Muslim because the third guy dresses strangely and so the ignorant guy tries to kill him but misses and wounds the sweetheart of a guy - wh

17 February 18 AM It's Live on the HomePage Now:   Reader Supported News RSN V. WALL STREET - STABILITY V. GROWTH - We raise money, companies listed on Wall Street "make" money. The difference is profits, specifically profits defined by Wall Street investors. We raise money to achieve financial stability for our organization that provides services directly to the community we serve. Wall Street companies make money to distribute as "profits" to investors. The investors serve themselves. And they run the game. Simple enough? / Marc Ash - Founder, Reader Supported News Sure, I'll make a donation! James Risen | Is Donald Trump a Traitor?  James Risen, The Intercept   Risen writes: "I find it hard to write about Donald Trump. It is not that he is a complicated subject. Quite the opposite. It is that everything about him is so painfully obvious. He is a low-rent racist, a shameless misogynist, and an unbalanced narcissist."   READ MORE

17 February 18 It's Live on the HomePage Now:   Reader Supported News RIGHT NOW WE HAVE NO DONATIONS COMING AT ALL: As of this morning we have nothing coming in whatsoever. Unfortunately we are going to have to divert our attention away from reporting to chase down the few donations it takes to make this work. This is a great system with a little participation. / Marc Ash - Founder, Reader Supported News Sure, I'll make a donation! FOCUS: Charles Pierce | Mueller Has the Goods Now, and Trump Knows It  Charles Pierce, Esquire   Pierce writes: "Oh, they're smart fellers, they are. The indictments were rolled out perfectly. It is now absolutely impossible for the president* to fire either Rosenstein or Mueller without the worst possible political consequences."   READ MORE Contribute to RSN Become a Fan of RSN on  Facebook  and  Twitter Update My Monthly Donation

The truth behind the rhetoric What’s the immigration status of Melania Trump’s parents? Several readers asked us about the immigration status of Melania Trump’s parents after photos of them popped up in social media posts. Keep in mind the First Lady is an immigrant. And President Trump has favored bills that would severely restrict so-called chain migration, including the granting of immigration visas to the parents of U.S. citizens. With congressional debate beginning on overhauling immigration laws, is the president is being hypocritical? According to various news reports, the First Lady’s parents have been living in the United States at least a year and probably much longer — possibly since the mid-2000s. Knowing that, there are essentially four possibilities: legal permanent residence, an extended tourist visa, a visa through parole, and a student visa. The most logical possibility is that they have received legal permanent residence because they

Compelling, ambitious reads you can’t afford to miss. After a Florida school shooting left 17 people dead, Post reporters Kevin Sullivan, Samatha Schmidt, Mark Berman, Kyle Swenson, William Wan and others worked around the clock to gather as much detail as possible about what had happened. They sent David Fahrenthold, who'd been assigned to write a reconstruction of the rampage, interviews with survivors and the shooter's friends and neighbors, haunting text messages from inside the school, and transcripts from news conferences. Fahrenthold is best known to readers for his relentless reporting on Donald Trump's philanthropy, which won him a Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 2017. But he is also a master at anchoring gripping reconstructions  —  often referred to in newsrooms as ticktocks  — of everything from political showdowns to natural disasters. "It's all dependent on the material," said Fahrenthold, who began working at The Pos