Adolfo de Jesús Constanzo, a Cuban-American drug lord, was found after his death in a shoot-out to have ritually sacrificed at least eleven men, women and children to Santa Muerte at the altar at his ranch in Tamaulipas. Among them was a University of Texas student, Mark Kilroy, kidnapped while in Mexico for spring break.

Specifically, the special counsel’s report addressed conspiracy and obstruction of justice but did not discuss related counterintelligence issues. Schmidt reveals that we can blame that on Rod Rosenstein, then deputy attorney general.

According to Schmidt, in the hand-off of the FBI investigation to Mueller, in the aftermath of the firing of Comey, Rosenstein deliberately narrowed the special counsel’s remit. The deputy attorney general directed Mueller to concentrate on criminality. Whether Trump was a Russian agent was not on the special counsel’s plate.

According to Schmidt, Rosenstein “had foreclosed any deeper inquiry before investigation even began”.

Distinctive Features of the Contemporary Model for Russian Propaganda

High-volume and multichannel

Rapid, continuous, and repetitive

Lacks commitment to objective reality

Lacks commitment to consistency.

The impulsiveness and grandiosity, the bullying and vulgarity, were obvious from the beginning; if anything, they accounted for Adolf Hitler’s anti-establishment appeal. For Germany’s unpopular conservative elites, Hitler’s energy and theatrics made him an enticing partner when they appointed him chancellor on Jan. 30, 1933.

But anyone who thought the Nazis would be content with their share — that Hitler would rise to the occasion or be hemmed in by it, becoming a dignified statesman who sought compromise — was summarily purged from the system that conservatives assumed they controlled. An utter impossibility had become the indomitable reality. The Weimar Republic had become the Third Reich. It would take another world war, a genocide and millions of dead before the dictatorship finally collapsed in 1945, a full 12 years after Hitler was invited into power.

In the second and final volume of his biography of Hitler, Volker Ullrich argues that the very qualities that accounted for the dictator’s astonishing rise were also what brought about his ultimate ruin. “Hitler: Downfall, 1939-1945” arrives in English four years after the publication of “Hitler: Ascent, 1889-1939.” It’s a biographical project that consumed eight years of Ullrich’s life and “took a definite psychological toll,” he writes in his introduction to the second volume. Like the British historian Ian Kershaw, who divided his own two-volume biography of Hitler into “Hubris” and “Nemesis,” Ullrich suggests that the Hitlerian regime was capable of only two registers: euphoria and despair. Hitler was shrewd about seizing power, but he was too restless and reckless to govern. A Third Reich that cultivated peaceful stability was simply unfathomable.

At first, Hitler’s standard approach — lying, blaming others and launching surprise attacks — made for a successful wartime strategy.

The military commanders who voiced no objections to the Polish invasion balked when Hitler decided to go to war with the West, reassuring one another that they were determined to “put the brakes” on any disaster that was unfolding. But they were all intention and no action.

To read “Downfall” is to see up close how Hitler lashed out — compulsively, destructively — whenever he felt boxed in. He had the instinct of a crude social-Darwinist who also liked to gamble, experiencing the world only in terms of winning and losing.

Hitler was a scattershot, undisciplined leader, prone to tardiness and meandering monologues, but the one unwavering constant was his virulent, fanatical anti-Semitism.

He doubled down on his own pitilessness, even toward his own people, saying that if they didn’t fight “they deserve to die out.”

Following Hitler’s lead, Goebbels treated the Germans like chumps to be duped. “There are so many lies that truth and swindle can scarcely be distinguished,” he noted

In August 1990, Rolling murdered five students (one student from Santa Fe College and four from the University of Florida) during a burglary and robbery spree in Gainesville, Florida. He mutilated his victims' bodies, decapitating one. He then posed them, sometimes using mirrors.

In the early morning hours of Friday, August 24, Rolling broke into the apartment shared by 17-year-old university freshmen Sonja Larson and Christina Powell. Finding Powell asleep on the downstairs couch, he stood over her briefly but did not wake her up, choosing instead to explore the upstairs bedroom where Larson was also asleep. Rolling murdered Larson, first taping her mouth shut to stifle her screams and then stabbing her to death. She died while trying to fend him off.[3]

Rolling then went back downstairs, taped Powell's mouth shut, bound her wrists together behind her back and threatened her with a knife as he cut her clothes off of her. He then raped her and forced her face-down onto the floor, where he stabbed her five times in the back. Rolling posed the bodies in sexually provocative positions. He took a shower before leaving the apartment.[3]

A day later, on Saturday, August 25, Rolling broke into the apartment of 18-year-old Christa Hoyt, prying open a sliding glass door with a KA-BAR knife and a screwdriver. Finding she was not home, he waited in the living room for her to return. At 11 a.m., Hoyt entered the apartment and Rolling surprised her from behind, placing her in a chokehold. After she had been subdued, he taped her mouth shut, bound her wrists together and led her into the bedroom, where he cut the clothes from her body and raped her. As in the Powell murder, he forced her face-down and stabbed her in the back, rupturing her heart. He then decapitated the body and posed her head on a shelf facing the corpse, adding to the shock of whoever discovered her.[3]

By now the murders had attracted widespread media attention and many students were taking extra precautions, such as changing their daily routines and sleeping together in groups. Because the spree was happening so early in the fall semester, some students withdrew their enrollment or transferred to other schools. Tracy Paules, who was 23 years old, was living with Manny Taboada, also 23, her roommate. On Monday, August 27, Rolling broke into the apartment by prying open the sliding glass door with the same tools he had used previously. Rolling found Taboada asleep in one of the bedrooms and, after a struggle with the young man, eventually killed him.[3]

Hearing the commotion, Paules went down the hall to Taboada's bedroom and saw Rolling. She attempted to barricade herself in her bedroom, but Rolling broke through the door. Rolling taped her mouth and wrists, cut off her clothing and raped her, before turning her over and stabbing her three times in the back. Rolling posed Paules' body but left Taboada's in the same position in which he had died.[3]

With the exception of Taboada, all of the victims were petite Caucasian brunettes with brown eyes. Although law enforcement initially had very few leads, police did identify two suspects; one a University of Florida student (Edward Humphrey) who had a history of mental illness and bore numerous scars on his face from a car accident, making him an ideal image when discussing news about the investigation. His photo was shown repeatedly by media outlets. Authorities publicly cleared him of all charges after Rolling's arrest. The other suspect was also later cleared.