Today’s edition of quick hits:
* Pittsburgh: “The Pittsburgh synagogue shooting suspect could face more than 500 years in prison based on new charges. A federal grand jury on Wednesday indicted Robert Bowers on a slew of hate crime charges in connection with the massacre at a Pittsburgh synagogue during services Saturday morning, which killed 11 people.”
* Soon, our troop deployment at the border will be greater than our troop deployment in Afghanistan: “President Trump said that he is considering a significant increase to the number of military personnel along the border, two days after he unveiled plans to send 5,200 troops there.”
* Climate crisis: “The world’s oceans may be heating up faster than previously thought — meaning the planet could have even less time to avoid catastrophic global warming than predicted just weeks ago by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. According to a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature, ocean temperatures have been warming 60% more than outlined by the IPCC.”
* What an unsuccessful policy toward Iran looks like: “President Trump called on world leaders in September to slash their purchases of Iran’s oil before the imposition on Nov. 5 of major sanctions, the last major pieces of the administration’s blockade of the Iranian economy…. But less than a week before the crucial deadline this Monday, the campaign against Iran is facing severe challenges.”
* The long-sought “roadmap” is now available: “U.S. archivists on Wednesday revealed one of the last great secrets of the Watergate investigation — the backbone of a long sealed report used by prosecutor Leon Jaworski to send Congress the evidence that led to the impeachment of President Richard M. Nixon.”
* Kansas: “Lawyers representing one of the men who plotted to bomb a mosque in Kansas in 2016 have argued that their client should receive a more lenient sentence because President Trump’s rhetoric during the 2016 election set a ‘backdrop’ that inflamed fears of Muslims among the president’s supporters.”
* This much borrowing when the economy is good is tough to defend: “The federal government is projected to borrow a total of $1.3 trillion this year, more than double the amount borrowed last year and the largest annual borrowing figure since 2010, according to new estimates released by the Treasury Department.”
* Rick Hasen’s new Slate piece recommending that Democrats “go nuclear on voting rights” should be filed away for future reference.
* Just when I thought the year couldn’t get weirder, I read this sentence: “If Tennessee electrocutes Edmund Zagorski on Thursday, it will be in an electric chair built by a self-taught execution expert who is no longer welcome in the prison system and who worries that his device will malfunction.”
Anything to add? Consider this an open thread.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."