Terror returns to New York City, but this time in a rented pickup truck. The driver brought terror to Lower Manhattan, ramming his pickup into a bike lane, killing eight and wounding 11, in what was almost immediately identified as a terrorist attack. It was the most deadly attack in New York since 9/11. Via The New York Times.
Trucks have become the weapon of choice for terrorists because all they need, besides a willingness to kill, is a car, truck or van and a crowd of people. Via Vox.
Sayfullo Saipov: From Uzbek immigrant to truck driver to Uber driver to suspect in a terror attack. Via The New York Times.
The terrorist attacker rented the wrong kind of truck, didn’t have a real gun when he left the truck, and did his killing in one of the most heavily policed areas in New York City, writes Graeme Wood in The Atlantic. But we can expect with the ISIS defeats in Iraq and Syria that more competent terrorists will soon come home.
Five of those killed in the New York terror attack were tourists from Argentina who had been high school pals and were celebrating 30 years of friendship. Via The New York Daily News.
For someone described as a low-level volunteer, George Papadopoulos was in regular contact with a list of high-level Trump campaign aides. Via The Washington Post.
From The National Review, Rich Lowry offers this advice for Trump: Don’t fire, don’t pardon. If the president is guilty of something, they’re going to find out eventually anyway. If he’s not guilty, firing Robert Mueller would only make it look like he was.
Owen Jones: How dare you, Kevin Spacey? Spacey comes out as being gay to deflect from an accusation that he sexually assaulted actor Anthony Rapp when he was 14 years old. In doing so, Spacey gives credence to the lie that gay and bisexual men pose a special threat to children. Via The Guardian.
How does the latest pseudo-scandal involving Hillary Clinton, uranium and Russia become mainstream news? We’ve seen it all before, of course, but Brian Beutler walks us through the right-wing-media food chain to show how it works. Via Crooked.
Must-read long read: The amazing Dan Barry tells the story of the amazing Catherine Corless, who uncovered the story of the lost children of Tuam, who lived, and often died, at the Catholic Church-run Mother and Baby Home of Tuam, Ireland. Thousands of unwed mothers would have their babies there, and hundreds of the children would die and be buried anonymously in a mass grave in the septic system. Via The New York Times.
Another long read: Politico’s Tim Alberta spends long days with an unchained John Boehner, who, it turns out, may not be as bad you thought he was. Which, somehow, only makes everything happening today even worse.
Photo by Stiller Beobachter, via Flickr: Creative Commons
