Warren violates arcane rule, sparking dustup

Warren violates arcane rule, sparking dustup

WASHINGTON

Sen. Elizabeth Warren has earned a rare rebuke by the Senate for quoting Coretta Scott King on the Senate floor.

The Massachusetts Democrat ran afoul of the chamber’s arcane rules by reading a three-decade-old letter from Dr. Martin Luther King’s widow that dated to Sen. Jeff Sessions’ failed judicial nomination three decades ago.

The chamber was debating the Alabama Republican’s nomination for attorney general, with Democrats dropping senatorial niceties to oppose Sessions and Republicans sticking up for him.

Allies condemn settlement law as lawsuits loom

JERUSALEM

A new Israeli law legalizing dozens of unlawfully built West Bank settlement outposts came under heavy criticism Tuesday from some of Israel’s closest allies, as local rights groups prepared to ask the Supreme Court to overturn the measure.

Amid the uproar, the Trump administration remained quiet about the law – paving the way for further possible action by emboldened Israeli hard-liners ahead of a trip to the White House by Israel’s prime minister next week.

The law was “a first step in a series of measures that we must take in order to make our presence in Judea and Samaria present for years, for decades, for ages,” Israeli Cabinet Minister Yariv Levin said, using the biblical name for the West Bank. “I do believe that our right over our fatherland is something that cannot be denied.”

The law, passed late Monday, sets out to legalize dozens of West Bank settler outposts built on privately owned Palestinian land.

Twitter broadens its campaign against hate, abuse

NEW YORK

Twitter announced Tuesday that it is expanding efforts to protect its users from abuse and harassment, the latest milestone in a broader, growing corporate campaign to crack down on online hate.

The social media giant said it has begun identifying people who have been banned for abusive behavior and it will stop them from creating new accounts. The company said its changes, which also include a new “safe search” feature, will be implemented in the coming weeks.

In July, Twitter banned conservative provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, an editor of the right-wing news site Breitbart News, for “participating in or inciting targeted abuse of individuals.” Twitter subsequently suspended the accounts of other prominent figureheads of the “alt-right” fringe movement, an amorphous mix of racism, white nationalism, xenophobia and anti-feminism.

Gorsuch paid $3.28 million by former firm under deal

WASHINGTON

Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch gave up a $1 million-a-year paycheck when he left his private law practice a decade ago for less financially rewarding work as a government lawyer and then a judge.

But he managed to do quite nicely for his first four years on the federal bench even so, earning $3.28 million in deferred payments through 2009. That was on top of the judge’s annual salary, around $200,000 at the time.

The payments resulted from an agreement Gorsuch signed when he joined the Bush administration in 2005.

Associated Press