Comment on McChrystal takes blame for Rolling Stone article

Judge William M. Conley watched as the Cardinal-Hickory Creek Transmission Line inched toward the Upper Mississippi River National Wildlife Refuge—a 240,000-acre bird sanctuary through which the fully funded power project lacked the permits to pass. By January 2022, he’d seen enough. It “amounts to little more than an orchestrated trainwreck,” Conley, an Obama-appointed federal judge from the Western District of Wisconsin, wrote in a scathing 23-page opinion that delayed construction. More than two years have passed since Conley blasted the consortium of utilities and government entities behind the massive clean energy project for “playing a shell game,” accused them of behaving “cavalierly,” and derided their legal arguments as “thin porridge indeed.” Since then, the legal battle has continued ricocheting through the courts, shedding light on one of the most intractable debates in the struggle to decarbonize the US economy.

At the last maternity and neonatal hospital in Rafah, the devastation has already arrived. “There is no safe place in Gaza from a healthcare perspective—and beyond,” Bridget Rochios, a certified nurse-midwife from California volunteering at Al-Helal Al-Emirati Maternity Hospital, told me. As Israel prepares a ground invasion of Rafah, Rochios—who is working with the Canadian healthcare organization Gila and talked to me by told me by phone on Thursday afternoon—says the hospital has seen a massive influx of patients.

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Donald Trump dangled a brazen “deal” in front of some of the top US oil bosses last month, proposing that they give him $1 billion for his White House re-election campaign and vowing that once back in office he would instantly tear up Joe Biden’s environmental regulations and prevent any new ones, according to a bombshell new report. According to the Washington Post, the former US president made his jaw-dropping pitch, which the paper described as “remarkably blunt and transactional,” at a dinner at his Mar-a-Lago home and club. In front of more than 20 executives, including from Chevron, Exxon, and Occidental Petroleum, he promised to increase oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, remove hurdles to drilling in the Alaskan Arctic, and reverse new rules designed to cut car pollution.

“Pay Dirt,” by Sara Paretsky (Wiliam Morrow) “Pay Dirt,” by Sara Paretsky (Wiliam Morrow) V. I. Warshawski is in a bad place. Depressed because of a death (one that occurred in a previous mystery) and a separation from her boyfriend, she agrees to attend a ball game in Lawrence, Kan., with a goddaughter and her friends.

Editor’s note: The opinions of the smart, well-read women in my Denver book club mean a lot, and often determine what the rest of us choose to pile onto our bedside tables. So we asked them, and all Denver Post readers, to share these mini-reviews with you. Have any to offer?