PROSECUTOR: No reasonable officer would have killed Castile.

Prosecutors say that when Philando Castile was pulled over in July, he calmly told the officer he had a gun and was licensed to carry it.

Moments later, the officer fired shots, and a bleeding Castile’s last words were: “I wasn’t reaching for it.”

On Wednesday, that officer was charged with second-degree manslaughter following an investigation by prosecutors, who concluded that Jeronimo Yanez was wrong to use his weapon in the traffic stop. Castile’s girlfriend streamed his final gruesome moments live on Facebook.

“No reasonable officer, knowing, seeing and hearing what officer Yanez did at the time, would’ve used deadly force under these circumstances,” Ramsey County Attorney John Choi said.

Prosecutors believe Castile never tried to pull his handgun from his pocket, and Yanez’s unreasonable fear did not justify the shooting, Choi said.

Has Yanez been declared to be a “white Hispanic” yet?

“I NEED WIDER POWERS!” New York DA vs Apple encryption: ‘We need new federal law to unlock 400 seized iPhones’

The DA argues that law-enforcement agencies do not want a backdoor to Apple and Google products, but rather a return to pre-September 2014, when Apple’s encryption didn’t prevent them from carrying out a search warrant on an iPhone.

In a speech at the launch, Vance said the report showed that requiring smartphone makers to retain the ability to extract data will not increase users’ risks of being hacked.

He said the report concluded that, “Doing nothing about this problem will perpetuate an untenable arms race between private industry and law enforcement, and that federal legislation is our only chance to lay these arms aside”.

“Lay these arms aside” sounds like a warning George III might have issued.

(Classical reference in the headline.)

BEGIN THE HEALING, KANYE-STYLE: Kanye West ‘would’ve voted for Trump’ at US elections.

Kanye West has said he would have voted for Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential elections. Speaking at a concert in San Jose, California, the rapper – who has in the past been a vocal supporter of the Democratic party – said he did not vote last week but if he had, his allegiance would have been with the Republican representative rather than Hillary Clinton.

West’s statement, which was met with boos from the audience in San Jose, was caught on camera by one Twitter user.

West elaborated throughout the show. He stated that while he admired Trump’s debating style – saying that it was “genius” because it “worked” – his true reason for backing the Republican was that his win would inspire racists to reveal themselves. “This is the beginning,” West said, according to one attendee, adding: “Neither candidate would fix racism in this country.”

According to reports from the show, West, who has said he will run for president in 2020, also stated that black people should “stop focusing on racism”. “We are in a racist country,” he said. “Period.”

This country has certainly kept Kanye down.

JAYVEE UPDATE: Iraqi troops expand foothold in Mosul as IS pledges more suicide attacks.

JEFF GOLDSTEIN:

I suggest a Twitter and media search today of "Sessions + 'deemed too racist.'" I bet it yields a trove of individual thoughts!

— Mulder's Shroom Ride (@proteinwisdom) November 18, 2016

This could be fun, and a game you can play for as long as it takes to staff Trump’s cabinet — and beyond!

PERSONNEL IS POLICY: Jeff Sessions Said to Be Trump’s Pick for Attorney General.

It wasn’t immediately clear if Trump has formally offered the job to Sessions, a lawyer who was an early and ardent Trump backer, but the people familiar said Trump wants Sessions in the role.

A Trump aide on Thursday night called Texas Senator Ted Cruz, a one-time Trump rival who was under serious consideration for the role, to tell him the job was instead going to Sessions, one of the people familiar said. The people asked not to be named because the decision has not yet been made public.

Earlier Thursday, Trump telegraphed his decision by praising Sessions’ work as Alabama Attorney General after meeting with Sessions, who also had been under consideration for defense secretary.

Cruz’s talents would be wasted as A.G. Put him up for the Supreme Court instead, and then get ready for the biggest nomination circus since Clarence Thomas.

The GOP Senate might even consider taking Harry Reid’s advice, and using the “nuclear option” to approve their nominees by a bare majority.

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: Obama’s Never-Ending Lecture Tour.

President Obama, who has done less for Europe than any American president since Calvin Coolidge, cannot stop telling Europeans what to do. As he sets out on his final European tour as president, with his political party back home in a state of near collapse, and with Putin inflicting yet another painful humiliation on the least successful American president in the history of the modern Middle East, nothing seems able to shake President Obama’s serene confidence that he knows more than other people, sees farther than they do, and that other people are eager to gather up his pearls of insight.
…
Not everything Obama is recommending to Europe is bad, but his words no longer have a significant impact from a continent battered first by his failures in foreign policy and now by the collapse of his legacy at home.

He’s the lamest of ducks and the world still keeps letting him down.

CHANGE: Donald Trump Offers Michael Flynn Role as National Security Adviser.

His arrival at the White House would follow a military career and post-military life marked by periods of controversy.

In statements and writings, Gen. Flynn has said the U.S. needs to appreciate the scope of the threat from radical Islamists who want to destroy the country. “We’re in a world war,” he wrote in a book published this summer. “But very few Americans recognize it, and fewer still have any idea how to win it.”

During his 33-year career in the U.S. armed forces, Gen. Flynn made his name as a widely respected Army officer known for his candor and unorthodox sensibilities about intelligence and military operations. The 57-year-old retired general served in top roles across the military, including as director of intelligence for the Joint Chiefs of Staff and intelligence adviser to Gen. Stanley McChrystal in Iraq and Afghanistan.

By the end of his military tenure, he had become a maverick within the ranks of the normally deferential and apolitical corps of “general officers,” the military’s top-ranking officials.

Flynn is going to rankle all the right people — in Washington and around the world.

CHANGE: How America decided, at the last moment, to elect Donald Trump.

Some of the polls were wrong to a degree, yes, but there was also something at work in the final days of the election: People who decided late broke strongly for Donald Trump in the states that mattered, according to exit polls. And without this apparent late surge, Hillary Clinton would be our president-elect — not Trump.

In fact, if you look at the four closest states where Clinton lost — or, in the case of Michigan, where she’s expected to lose — exit polls show late-deciding voters in each of them went strongly for Trump in the final days. In Florida and Pennsylvania, late-deciders favored Trump by 17 points. In Michigan, they went for Trump by 11 points. In Wisconsin, they broke for Trump by a whopping 29 points, 59-30.

There’s a simpler explanation. Voters found Trump’s “Make America Great Again” more inspiring and relatable than Clinton’s “It’s My Turn to Rule You Idiots.”

NIFTY: Qualcomm can charge your phone faster than you can read this story.

Quick Charge 4 will provide up to 5 hours of battery life on just a 5-minute charge, said Everett Roach, Qualcomm’s senior director of product management, at the Snapdragon Tech Summit on Wednesday.

“We put a lot of hard work and engineering into new products, and we’re gonna deliver what we hope is a much better charging experience from 2016,” Roach said.

The charging capabilities will also be integrated into Qualcomm’s next generation of mobile processors, including the Snapdragon 835.

I hope Qualcomm has any bugs ironed out of this. Leaning too hard on rapid-charging is believed by some to be the culprit behind Samsung’s “exploding” Galaxy Note 7.

BEGIN THE HEALING, DAILY SHOW-STYLE: ‘Daily Show’ Correspondent Sees Racist White House As ‘A Great Thing’

NOT COOL, EH! Canadian Brewery Cuts a Retiree Perk: Free Beer for Life.

AMBITION: SpaceX just asked permission to launch 4,425 satellites — more than currently orbit Earth.

After we took a look at SpaceX’s FCC application, though, it seems these won’t be your typical telecommunications satellites.

Each satellite in SpaceX’s planned constellation will weigh about 850 lbs (386 kg) and be roughly the size of a MINI Cooper car. They will orbit at altitudes ranging from 715 miles (1,150 km) to 790 miles (1,275 km).

From this lofty vantage point, SpaceX says each satellite could cover an ellipse about 1,300 miles (2,120 km) wide. That’s about the distance from Maine to the Florida panhandle.

“The system is designed to provide a wide range of broadband and communications services for residential, commercial, institutional, governmental and professional users worldwide,” SpaceX wrote in its application.

That isn’t just a whole lot of satellites; that’s likely to be a whole lot of short-lived satellites. I hope SpaceX has a plan for cleaning up their mess.

BEGIN THE HEALING, DAILY BEAST-STYLE: America’s Enemies Cheer Donald Trump’s Bigoted Transition Team.

STRATFOR: Deviating From the Plan in Iran.

Here’s the bullet point version:

•Though the United States is legally permitted to pull out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), it is unlikely to do so because of the other countries and considerations involved in the deal.

•Iran and the European signatories will hold fast to the deal as written and will exhort the incoming U.S. administration to keep it intact.

•Even if the U.S. Congress were to pass additional sanctions, they would not deter Iran from expanding its military or pursuing greater influence in the Middle East through proxy groups.

Letting Iran –the world’s foremost state sponsor of terror — out of its cage and turning it into a serious regional player will prove the most lasting (and dangerous) element of Barack Obama’s slender legacy.

CUE WORLD’S SMALLEST VIOLIN: Democrats know why they lost, but won’t fix their problems.

Anyone looking at the 2016 electoral map and exit polls knows there were two main forces that tipped the election to Trump: white working class inhabitants of the Rust Belt upset about a hollowed-out economy, and religious voters, both Catholic and Protestant, who reacted to attacks on their values by voting against the candidate of the cultural elite. There may be other reasons, but these two are highest on the list.

Trump’s victory did not happen overnight, either. The last eight years of the Obama presidency have been disastrous for Democrats. On their way to minority status, Democrats since 2009 have lost a net of 13 US Senate seats, 69 House seats, 12 governorships, and 30 state legislatures. The entire party is a smoldering ruin.

This is what happens when you invite unfair foreign competition for American jobs via bad trade practices and massive illegal immigration, and when you go to war with nuns over birth control.

Still, some Democrats believe the presidential election was unfairly denied them.

The “party of the people” rarely shows any trust in decisions made by actual people.

21ST CENTURY HEADLINES: Woman Gives Birth to ‘Twins’ Who Were Actually Conceived 10 Days Apart.

THE DEATH OF KEMALIST TURKEY: Turkey’s Erdogan could govern until 2029 under plans to change constitution.

Erdogan and his supporters argue Turkey needs the strong leadership of an executive presidency, akin to the system in the United States or France, to avoid the fragile coalition governments that hampered its development in the past.

Opponents see the proposed change as a vehicle for Erdogan’s ambition, and fear it will bring increasing authoritarianism to a country already under fire from Western allies over its deteriorating record on rights and freedoms, especially after widespread purges in the wake of a failed military coup in July.

The AKP, founded by Erdogan a decade and a half ago, is aiming to hold a referendum on the issue next spring and is seeking support from the nationalist MHP opposition order to win parliamentary approval for such a vote.

Having arrested, detained, or jailed tens of thousands of opposition members since last summer, MHP and others would be brave indeed to obstruct Erdogan’s apparent goal becoming Turkey’s President-for-Life.

PHASERS ON FULL, VIPERS PREPARE TO LAUNCH: How Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica Can Teach the U.S. Navy to Defeat China.

BEGIN THE HEALING, NICOLAS KRISTOF-STYLE: A 12-Step Program for Responding to President-Elect Trump..

TONI MORRISON: Mourning for Whiteness.

So scary are the consequences of a collapse of white privilege that many Americans have flocked to a political platform that supports and translates violence against the defenseless as strength. These people are not so much angry as terrified, with the kind of terror that makes knees tremble.

On Election Day, how eagerly so many white voters—both the poorly educated and the well educated—embraced the shame and fear sowed by Donald Trump. The candidate whose company has been sued by the Justice Department for not renting apartments to black people. The candidate who questioned whether Barack Obama was born in the United States, and who seemed to condone the beating of a Black Lives Matter protester at a campaign rally. The candidate who kept black workers off the floors of his casinos. The candidate who is beloved by David Duke and endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan.

Let the pining begin for America’s just-lost Golden Age of Harmony and Tolerance.

PROCUREMENT: The Army’s More Lethal M1A2 SEP v4 Abrams Tank Variant Will Start Testing in the 2020s.

This ECP 1 effort also initiates the integration of upgraded ammunition data links and electronic warfare devices such as the Counter Remote Controlled Improvised Explosive Device – Electronic Warfare – CREW. An increased AMPs alternator is also part of this upgrade, along with Ethernet cables designed to better network vehicle sensors together.

The Abrams is also expected to get an advanced force-tracking system which uses GPS technology to rapidly update digital moving map displays with icons showing friendly and enemy force positions.

The system, called Joint Battle Command Platform, uses an extremely fast Blue Force Tracker 2 Satcom network able to reduce latency and massively shorten refresh time. Having rapid force-position updates in a fast-moving combat circumstance, quite naturally, could bring decisive advantages in both mechanized and counterinsurgency warfare.

The M1 Abrams may well be the most lethal, survivable, and adaptable land weapons platform ever devised. Increasing its networking capabilities — the key to modern weaponry and warfare — ought to be a no-brainer.

ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS… Pluto’s Wandering Heart Hints at Subsurface Ocean.

NARRATIVE CONTROL: China Really Doesn’t Want Anyone to Call Kim Jong-Un a ‘Fatty’

Chinese websites are censoring a phrase that translates as “Kim Fatty the Third,” a nickname referring to the leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-Un.

As reported by the Guardian, the Chinese phrase “Jin San Pang”, which translates into the comment on Kim’s weight, is widely used across the country’s search engines and social media site Weibo. Searches for the phrase on Chinese search engine Baidu, as well as Weibo, returned no results earlier this week. Reports in the Hong Kong press suggested that the censorship of the phrase followed a complaint lodged by North Korean officials to the Chinese government about the derogatory nickname.

However, according to the Guardian, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman said Wednesday that reports of the prohibition of the phrase did not “comply with facts.”

Uh-huh.

WELL, GOOD: Tom Hanks Breaks from Hollywood Pack and Says He Hopes Trump Does Well.