3 Stories You Should Read 4/2/2019: William Barr, Impossible Burger, Facebook

May 2, 2019 Confluence

Reading Time: 3 minutes

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In the category of: Above the law?

What’s next in the battle of Barr v. Congress

Attorney General William Barr’s Senate testimony on Wednesday was a master class in obfuscation, backtracking and blame-shifting. This performance would’ve been pathetic coming from an ordinary witness — never mind from the chief law enforcement officer of the United States.

Throughout the day, Barr’s explanations for his most consequential decisions ranged from flatly unpersuasive to downright bizarre. When asked about his determination that not one of the “potentially obstructive actions” detailed by special counsel Robert Mueller constituted obstruction of justice, Barr offered the weak rejoinder that there was no proven underlying crime (debunked below).

Indeed, Barr offered next to nothing to justify his dramatic conclusion that Trump never obstructed justice. When pressed on one of the most flagrant examples of obstruction — Trump’s instruction to then-White House Counsel Don McGahn to have Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein fire Mueller — Barr resorted to a perplexing claim that Trump merely wanted McGahn to discuss Mueller’s conflict of interests. Yet Mueller himself finds in the report that Trump, through McGahn, made “efforts to remove” Mueller, and told McGahn that Mueller “must be removed.” Again: this is the top prosecutor in the United States, not a sneaky defense lawyer out of “Better Call Saul.”

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In the category of: Beyond meatless Monday’s

A truly tasty plant-based burger might just save the world’s forests

That is why moderating beef consumption is so important. Those who say reducing beef and other dietary choices don’t do much to tackle climate change compared to changing energy sources don’t typically consider the greenhouse gas consequences of land use. When land use is factored in, we have calculatedthat what Americans eat generates almost as many emissions as the energy they consume. And beef generates almost half the emissions from the American diet although it provides just 3% of the calories.

In fact, even if global projections turn out to be wrong and the world does reduce its farmland, every acre that isn’t needed to produce beef would still mean an additional acre that could return to forest, provide habitat and take carbon out of the air.

Which takes us back to the Impossible Whopper. In just a few years of effort, small companies have made products that we can testify from personal experience should fully fool the taste buds of most Americans. The Impossible Burger should soon be in our grocery stores looking just like hamburger meat. While these products cost a little more today, within a few years, the far fewer resources they require should make them cheaper than beef, which will enable them to spread around the world.

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In the category of: Censorship or Common sense

Facebook bans Alex Jones, Infowars, Louis Farrakhan, and others it deems “dangerous”

Jones, Farrakhan, and several others just got kicked off Facebook and Instagram.

Months after he was kicked off of Twitter, conspiracy theorist Alex Jones is off of Facebook and Instagram, too. So are a host of other right-wing extremists and Louis Farrakhan, a Nation of Islam leader who has espoused anti-Semitic views.

Facebook on Thursday announced that it was banning Jones, Farrakhan, Paul Nehlen, Milo Yiannopoulos, Paul Joseph Watson, Laura Loomer, and Infowars, which Jones runs, from both its platform and Instagram, which it owns. The company says the decision has been made under its policies against dangerous individuals and organizations.

This is a big move for Facebook, which (like many social media companies) has been criticized for lax oversight of individuals and groups that spread hateful messages and vitriol its platforms, but has thus far attempted to toe an awkward line on the matter. While civil rights groups and some Democratic lawmakers have been pushing them to clean up their platform, conservatives have been eager to pounce on the Menlo Park, California-based company with claims of bias each time they do so.

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