Tensions are running high as Democrats and Republicans argue about the Trump impeachment inquiry. The most salient accusation at present concerns the alleged efforts of Trump to extort the cooperation of the Ukrainian government in generating evidence of inappropriate use of connections by Mr. Biden’s son. By association, the goal was to reduce the effectiveness of Biden senior as a credible opponent to Trump in the 2020 election. Politicians do investigate their opponents for ways to accuse them of different things, what is different about this situation is the accusation that the President took advantage of his office to use aid promised to the Ukrainians to ward of Russian military action as a trade for evidence that could be used against Biden senior.
Key evidence in this controversy is a transcript released by the White House describing most of a conversation between Trump and Zelinsky (Ukrainian leader). Trump argues this transcript documents a “perfect call” and Democrats in the House argue it is an important part of the evidence showing the use of U.S. funds in an inappropriate way benefiting Trump as politician rather than Trump as leader of the U.S.. Lots of folks have weighed in on this controversy with the intent of influencing public opinion. It can be argued that it would just be better if the public just read the document for themselves rather than relying on folks who might be described as having ulterior motives.
Reading the document should be easy enough to do as nearly every news outlet has provided links to the document. I wonder how many folks have bothered. This situation is different from expecting citizens to review the Mueller report which was long and complex. This is a short read of a transcript of folks talking in simple language.
This situation reminds me of a potential use of technology I think I has great potential. What if folks made the effort to review and comment on something concrete offering a conversation starting point? This is the suggestion made in support of an open source service called hypothes.is. Hypothes.is is what I would describe as a “layering” tool. I have spent most of my time promoting the potential of various layering services for educational purposes. Hypothes.is originated as a tool for public conversation and morphed into a tool with potential for more specific applications. By layering, what I mean is that a freely available online document can be highlighted and annotated without actually changing the original document as provided on a server. The annotations and the original content are separate layers, but individuals who take advantage of a layering service can view the composite. This composite offers an opportunity for discussion and commenting to be shared.
I wondered about comments on the Ukrainian call transcript. For this to work, you need access to text within a web page and not a pdf. You can comment on a pdf, but layering works best if the public view is a static page. I finally found such a presentation of the call USA Today. You get some idea from the following image what my comments would look like on this document.
I offered these comments as “public” so anyone opening this page with Hypothes.is can see my comments, offer their own, etc. Hypothesis also offers a way for private annotation and annotations shared with a designated group. This group option is what I recommend for educational applications.
Hypothes.is is a free service supported by a wide variety of educational and news sources. It is an extension that can be added to most browsers, but I would suggest it is easiest to install as and use with Chrome.