5: Will President Obama Set Chelsea Manning Free?
Six years after Chelsea Manning was convicted in the largest leak of classified military data in American history, the whistleblower and transgender woman has pled for President Obama to commute her 35-year sentence to time served. A government petition garnered more than 100,000 signatures last Friday evening, meaning the White House will be required to formally respond within 60 days, according to the federal website where the petition was hosted.
Manning’s plea comes after a harrowing year fighting for access to health care with hunger strikes, and two suicide attempts behind bars. The sentence that Manning is serving is extreme: Other convicted whistleblowers have been given a range of sentences but they are generally low, in the range of one to three-and-a-half years in prison. Meanwhile, Manning is serving nearly four decades.
Vice News
4: Trump Homeland Security Adviser Helped Contractors Profit Off Harsh Deportation Policies
BEHIND THE CORINTHIAN COLUMNS of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the country’s premiere corporate advocacy association, talk of a crackdown on immigrants takes a clinical tone, far different from the bombastic rhetoric found on talk radio or at a Donald Trump campaign rally.
Lora Ries, speaking at a Chamber conference in 2011 on national security and immigration, spoke calmly about the need for a vast expansion of immigration enforcement. And rather than simply securing the borders, the government should “focus on interior enforcement so that there are those routine consequences,” she said. The government should integrate databases and step up the criminal penalties for those in the country without documentation. After all, she noted, we must “remove the hay to expose the needles.”
The Intercept
3: Civilians killed on spot as battle for Aleppo nears end
Pro-government forces have reportedly executed scores of civilians in Aleppo, including women and children, according to the UN, as the battle for Syria’s largest city nears its end.
Forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad have in some cases entered homes and killed those inside, and in others “caught and killed on the spot” fleeing civilians, Rupert Colville, UN rights office spokesman, said on Tuesday.
He called the situation “a complete meltdown of humanity”.
Colville said government forces on Monday killed 82 civilians – including 13 children and 11 women – in the neighbourhoods of Bustan al-Qasr, al-Kalleseh, al-Firdous and al-Salheen – taken over that day by government forces.
Aljazeera
2: Earth woefully unprepared for surprise comet or asteroid, Nasa scientist warns
Humans are woefully unprepared for a surprise asteroid or comet, a Nasa scientist warned on Monday, at a presentation with nuclear scientists into how humans might deflect cosmic dangers hurtling toward Earth.
“The biggest problem, basically, is there’s not a hell of a lot we can do about it at the moment,” said Dr Joseph Nuth, a researcher with Nasa’s Goddard Space Flight Center.
Speaking at the annual meeting of American Geophysical Union, Nuth noted that large and potentially dangerous asteroids and comets are extremely rare, compared to the small objects that occasionally explode in Earth’s sky or strike its surface. “But on the other hand they are the extinction-level events, things like dinosaur killers, they’re 50 to 60 million years apart, essentially. You could say, of course, we’re due, but it’s a random course at that point.”
The Guardian
In less than one week, on December 19, members of the Electoral College will meet in their respective state capitals to cast ballots to determine who will be the next president. In recent history, the vote of the Electoral College has largely been a formality. But this year electors in states won by Donald Trump are facing mounting pressure to reject his presidency. On Monday, nine Democratic and one Republican member of the Electoral College asked Director of National Intelligence James Clapper for a briefing before next week on whether Russia interfered with the election to help Trump win. The CIA has concluded Russia intervened to help Trump win, but the agency has not released its findings. Meanwhile, Reuters is reporting the Office of the Director of National Intelligence has yet to endorse the CIA’s assessment because of a lack of conclusive evidence that Moscow intended to boost Trump over Hillary Clinton. We speak to Christine Pelosi, a Democratic California elector. She’s the lead author of the letter to Clapper.
Democracy Now
