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052313
Obama Seeks to Narrow Terror Fight - NYTimes.com
Obama details drone policy in speech outlining counter-terrorism doctrine | World news | guardian.co.uk - Increased oversight designed to bring killing programme out of legal shadows as president defends use of strikes in the past
Guantánamo detainee release to be restarted as part of Obama plan | World news | guardian.co.uk - President outlines steps for transfer of detainees from controversial Cuban detention centre in national security speech
New light shed on US government's extraordinary rendition programme | World news | guardian.co.uk - Online project uncovers details of way in which CIA carried out kidnaps and secret detentions following September 11 attacks
Reprieve

Woolwich attack: MI5 knew of men suspected of killing Lee Rigby | UK news | The Guardian
Swedish riots rage for fourth night | World news | The Guardian - Police attacked and cars torched in Stockholm suburbs as unrest sparked by long-term youth unemployment and poverty spreads

Tom Cotton 'Corruption Of Blood' Bill Would Convict Family Members Of Iran Sanctions Violators - "An amendment is being offered literally to allow the sins of the uncles to descend on the nephews," Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) said. "The amendment that's being offered doesn't even indicate a requirement of knowing violation. … I really question the constitutionality of a provision that punishes nephews for the sins of the uncles." (Republicans destroying everything but the 2nd Amendment)
Al Jazeera deletes its own controversial Op-Ed, then refuses to comment | Glenn Greenwald | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk - The bizarre behavior by the media giant reflects brewing tensions as it seeks to enter the US television market
Abbas Alleges Link Between Zionists And Nazis - The Daily Beast

The Drone Letter - Esquire - I would like to congratulate the White House, and Attorney General Eric Holder, for doing all they can to turn me into one of those people who believe that the current president is no better than the previous one.

Noaa predicts wildly active hurricane season out of Atlantic and Caribbean | World news | guardian.co.uk - Scientists say three to six major hurricanes will hit US, some in areas far beyond those typically associated with extreme storms

Senator: West Point case shows military has 'sexual harassment problem' | World news | guardian.co.uk - Kirsten Gillibrand of New York criticises official response after charges sergeant photographed and filmed women

Experts: Fox News spying scandal a game-changer - Salon.com - Advocates see potential "sea change" now that government crackdown on leaks includes framing journalism as a crime (Obama's war on truth hits a snag)

Obama Counterterrorism Speech - The President's Tightrope Walk - Esquire - Implicit in the speech was the undeniable truth that the country and its politics and, yes, its people were complicit in the last decade of producing a reaction to the events of September 11, 2001 about which the country and its politics and, yes, its people are now in the middle of profound second thoughts.
Obama speech: Drones, Benghazi, and Gitmo responsibility lies with Congress.
WATCH: Full Video Of Protestor Heckling Obama | TPM LiveWire

Eric Holder Signed Off On Search Warrant For James Rosen Emails: NBC News
Eric Holder: Aaron Swartz Case 'A Good Use Of Prosecutorial Discretion'
Twitter / nomoremister: Missed the speech, but I see ... ("emoprogs")
Tea Party Senators jump the shark ("emocons")

What is the economic responsibility of corporate America? | Heidi Moore | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk - Even Fed chairman Ben Bernanke is calling out the private sector for not doing its part to help the frail economy

Iowa Medicaid Expansion Gets Boost As GOP Governor Drops Opposition: Report
Mississippi Could Soon Jail Women for Stillbirths, Miscarriages | Mother Jones - The state's manslaughter laws weren't supposed to apply to women who lose pregnancies. Prosecutors don't seem to care.
Homophobes Aren't, Like, Homophobic -- They're Just 'Pro-Straight' - Former National Organization for Marriage leader Maggie Gallagher has a genius solution

Rahm’s Priorities - Lawyers, Guns & Money - Rahm Emmaunel, having failed in his all-too-valiant effort to kill health care reform, has been even worse as mayor of Chicago than I would have thought, which is really saying something. This is particularly special:
Legal Experts Debate U.S. Retailers’ Risks of Signing Bangladesh Accord - NYTimes.com
Eschaton: Sadist>Wanker - Kinsley, hole, shovel.

Special Report: The profit motive behind virtual schools in Maine | The Portland Press Herald / Maine Sunday Telegram - Documents expose the flow of money and influence from corporations that stand to profit from state leaders' efforts to expand and deregulate digital education.
Nathan Heller: Is College Moving Online? : The New Yorker - Some Ph.D. students are being trained in MOOC production as “HarvardX fellows.”

Gay Parents In The U.S.: Salt Lake City Has Highest Population Of Same-Sex Couples Raising Kids

Rules for writing: block that metaphor! | Books | The Guardian - Figures of speech are to be applauded when used wisely, but start employing 'epicentres' and 'seismic shifts', and you're in danger

Did You Graduate in Four Years? Congratulations by Richard Vedder | Washington Monthly
How Teens Are Really Using Facebook: It's a 'Social Burden,' Pew Study Finds - The Facebook generation is fed up with Facebook.

052213
Twitter / mdimont: this could be one of the craziest ...

No Arrests on Wall Street, But Over 7,700 Americans Have Been Arrested Protesting Big Banks | The Contributor
The 1 Chart That Reveals Just How Grossly Unfair The U.S. Tax System Has Become
Deja Vu on the Hill: Wall Street Lobbyists Roll Back Finance Reform, Again | Matt Taibbi | Rolling Stone - In English, this just means that in addition to hedging, which we banks think is pretty much everything we do, we'd like to be eligible for bailouts when we engage in "non-structured finance swap activities and certain structured finance swap activities." (Obama and Dems completely owned by banksters)

Four American Citizens Killed In Drone Strikes Since 2009: Eric Holder
When the Cold War Almost Went Nuclear | Flashpoints

Eschaton: Dreaming Of The Glory Days: Keller: "The president should announce that he has told the Justice Department to appoint an independent investigator with bulldog instincts and bipartisan credibility. The list of candidates could start with Kenneth Starr, who chased down the scandals, real and imagined, of the Clinton presidency." - They learned nothing. (everything you need to know about the NYT in one paragraph)

You Just KNEW There Would Be 'Tornado Truthers,' Didn't You? (Obama made it up to hype "global warming" or he was testing out his "tornado gun" on OK)

Fox News Erupts Over James Rosen Scandal, Says His Parents' Records Were Seized (video)
Obama Administration's Media Surveillance Unleashes Wave Of Condemnation (Obama's team of idiots)
Another Chilling Leak Investigation - NYTimes.com - With the decision to label a Fox News television reporter a possible “co-conspirator” in a criminal investigation of a news leak, the Obama administration has moved beyond protecting government secrets to threatening fundamental freedoms of the press to gather news.
Dana Milbank: In AP, Rosen investigations, government makes criminals of reporters - The Washington Post
The Justice Department and Fox News's Phone Records : The New Yorker
'Reporter's Privilege' Under Fire From Obama Administration Amid Broader War On Leaks
DOJ Seized Fox News Phone Records: New Yorker
Sharyl Attkisson's Computer Not Compromised, DOJ Says

Conservatives Crawl out of the Woodwork to Claim IRS Persecution | Mother Jones - Libertarian Wayne Allyn Root claims to be the "face" of the Obama IRS scandal. His tax records suggest otherwise.
"True the Vote," the Victim? Voter Vigilante Group Says IRS Targeted Its "Verify the Recall" Effort in Wisconsin | PR Watch

Ibragim Todashev, Questioned In Connection With Marathon Bombings, Shot And Killed By Police: Reports - Taramiv also said that Todashev "felt inside he was going to get shot" by the FBI.

McCain, Collins Slam Republicans For Budget Hypocrisy | TPMDC

The Inside Story Of The Harvard Dissertation That Became Too Racist For Heritage | ThinkProgress

9CA Rejects Anti-Choice Junk Science - Lawyers, Guns & Money - A federal appellate panel struck down Arizona’s abortion law on Tuesday, saying it was unconstitutional “under a long line of invariant Supreme Court precedents” that guarantee a woman’s right to end a pregnancy any time before a fetus is deemed viable outside her womb — generally at 24 weeks.

Rahm Emanuel’s Zombie Pigs vs. Chicago’s Angry Birds | The Nation - It all starts with the person who seems committed to win the current spirited competition as the most loathsome person in American political life: Mayor Rahm Emanuel. The same Mayor overseeing the closing of fifty-four schools and six community mental health clinics under the justification of a “budgetary crisis” has announced that the city will be handing over more than $100 million to DePaul University for a new basketball arena ... These aren’t the actions of a mayor. They’re the actions of a mad king. (Depaul, Catholic U with a shitty basketball team)
Chicago School Closings Vote: Board Of Education Votes To Shutter 50 Public Schools
Edifice Complex - Esquire - Rahm Emanuel, political genius and mayor of Chicago, has stepped into it up to his eyeballs
With Rahm’s DePaul plan, we’ve entered a new arena of stupidity - Chicago Sun-Times
AC's Revel exits bankruptcy court - Just over a year after it opened, Atlantic City's newest casino has gone into bankruptcy and gotten out of it, ready to start again. (Christie's favorite money-hole)

Sexual Abuse Behind Bars: Inmates Who Are Mentally Ill Suffer High Rate Of Victimization, Report Finds
Michael Kinsley Speaks Up for the Misunderstood Homophobes

You Need Phosphorous to Live—and We're Running Out | Mother Jones - Industrial farming has played a part in sucking this critical element out of our soil. (so we'll get it from the Jihadis in Western Sahara!)

Virginia Parents Outraged After Walmart Security Allegedly Suspected Father Of Kidnapping Biracial Daughters

How Michelle Rhee Misled Education Reform | New Republic - A memoir illustrates what's wrong with her brand of school reform
People Getting Dumber? Human Intelligence Has Declined Since Victorian Era, Research Suggests (especially in America)(smarter women have fewer children)

Study: Benefits of sun exposure may outweigh risks | Dermatology Times

052113
Efrain Rios Montt Conviction Overturned: Guatemala Court Annuls Proceedings In Genocide Case
John Sifton: The Real Costs of CIA Cash - Instead of creating a slush-fund presidency, the U.S. could have helped Afghanistan transform into a more stable post-conflict country in which outside budgetary support for security forces, as for other offices, became part of a transparent system of revenue and expenditure overseen by elected officials.
U.S. Drone Strikes Ineffective Solution To Combat Militants In Pakistan's Tribal Areas, Report Says

Apple’s Web of Tax Shelters Saved It Billions, Panel Finds - NYTimes.com

Rape by American Soldiers in World War II France - NYTimes.com - In the port city of Le Havre, the mayor was bombarded with letters from angry residents complaining about drunkenness, jeep accidents, sexual assault — “a regime of terror,” as one put it, “imposed by bandits in uniform.”

Why are tornadoes so hard to predict?
Tornado Photos: Oklahoma, Kansas, Iowa Hit By Twisters (pictures)
Senator Jim Inhofe: Oklahoma Tornado Aid Will Be 'Totally Different' From Sandy Aid - Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe (R) said on Tuesday that federal aid to tornado-ravaged parts of his home state will be "totally different" than a Hurricane Sandy aid bill he voted against late last year
Oklahoma Senators Jim Inhofe, Tom Coburn, Face Difficult Options On Disaster Relief
Oklahoma GOP Sen. Tom Coburn Will Seek To Offset Tornado Aid | TPM LiveWire (New England must pay!)
Climate Change Denier Inhofe Says Monster Tornado 'Hard to Explain' | Video Cafe

Stop the Leaks - NYTimes.com
Republicans’ Hatred of Obama Blinds Them to Public Disinterest in Scandals - NationalJournal.com - Republicans are so focused on their bitter battles against Obama, they can’t see how little impact the “scandals” have had on public opinion.
The White House claim of ‘doctored emails...to smear the president’ - The Washington Post
True Statements By Democrats Causing Critical Pinocchio Shortage At WaPo’s ‘Fact Checker’
Sharyl Attkisson's computers compromised - politico.com

Obama Okay With Delaying Gay Immigration Provision: AP Sources (sells out again)
Tenn Rep. Stephen Fincher Pocketed $9 Million in Ag Subsidies, Says Jesus Hates Food Stamps

Racism and immigration policy: The Richwine affair | The Economist

Kirsten Anderson, Former Iowa Senate GOP Staffer: I Was Fired For Bringing Up Sexual Harassment - Kirsten Anderson served as communications director for the Iowa state Senate GOP caucus until Friday, when she was fired just hours after raising concerns about a pattern of sexual harassment in the workplace, she claimed in an interview with Iowa's WHO TV.

Why Suburban Poverty Is Less Visible and More Insidious - Emily Badger - The Atlantic Cities

Annals of the Security State, Gabriel Silverstein Division - James Fallows - The Atlantic - We all notice the parts of security-overreach that affect us.

Riders on the Storm - The Doors HD - YouTube

The Washington Monthly - The Magazine - Beauty Tips for the FDA - Did my wife’s cosmetics give her breast cancer?


052013
Two-mile-wide tornado slams Oklahoma City area, killing at least 37 - CNN.com
5/20/13 Moore, OK Devastating Tornado - YouTube
Oklahoma City Tornado 2013: Twister Makes Landfall Near Capital
A Week of Tornadoes - In Focus - The Atlantic
Oklahoma Senators Jim Inhofe, Tom Coburn, Face Difficult Options On Disaster Relief - Sens. Jim Inhofe and Tom Coburn, both Republicans, are fiscal hawks who have repeatedly voted against funding disaster aid for other parts of the country. They also have opposed increased funding for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which administers federal disaster relief.

Eschaton: The Suffering Of Other People - It's difficult to conclude that it's about anything other than sadism. Why are there so many sadists?
Macroeconomic Machismo - NYTimes.com - Atrios, weighing in on the Kinsley Kontroversy, suggests that the evident urge to make Someone Suffer — Someone Else, of course — reflects sadism (yes, Paul, it really is sadism)
Neocons:Munich :: Austerians:Stagflation - Lawyers, Guns & Money : Indeed, Kinsley was actually explicit about it (you must suffer for my sins)

New Documents Reveal How a 1980s Nuclear War Scare Became a Full-Blown Crisis | Danger Room | Wired.com - Able Archer to DEFCON 1, the highest level (even worse than you knew)
I Think I Speak For The Entire Class When I Say "Holy Crap!" - Esquire - It was a period of startlingly loose talk from Ronald Reagan and his people, and we know now— (Ronnie thought he was in a movie) Theory, Practice and Challenges: Airpower and Collateral Damage:

Vexed by Terrorism, Trials and Guantánamo, and Bearing Witness - NYTimes.com - Karen J. Greenberg
Five myths about Guantánamo Bay | World news | Guardian Weekly - As pressure mounts to close the US's detention camp in Cuba, what would be the implications for its policy on terrorism?

How the Obama Administration Talks to Black America - Ta-Nehisi Coates - The Atlantic - "Convenient race-talk" from a president who ought to know better

A Washington ‘whodunit’: who fed bogus Benghazi ‘emails’ to the media? **UPDATE: a ‘glaring omission…’** | The Reid Report Blog
Whack a mole » Balloon Juice - A convincing case can be made that Jonathan Karl is a GOP mole (ABC hired a political operative as a journo with predictable results)
Frank Rich: GOP Finds a New Watergate -- Daily Intelligencer
Dana Milbank: Conspiracy of the unproductive - The Washington Post
Karl Role - Esquire - It has not been a good couple of weeks for ABC's Jonathan Karl, the man who passed along barbered information from some disreputable sources, and then got found out. Yesterday, having been caught injecting disinformation e coli into the mainstream, Karl issued a statement that almost broke the blog's heretofore infallible weaselspeak-to-Engiish translation device.
The Latest Turn of the Screw | TPM Editors Blog - For the last several days we’ve been narrating the odd aftermath of ABC’s Jon Karl’s blockbuster but ultimately erroneous report about the White House Benghazi emails.
A Right-Wing Mole at ABC News — FAIR: Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting - Jonathan Karl and the success of the conservative media movement

A rare peek into a Justice Department leak probe - The Washington Post - They obtained a search warrant for the reporter’s personal e-mails (Obama's war on journalism/truth)
DOJ's Targeting Of Fox News Reporter James Rosen Met With Outrage - That goes above and beyond what the Justice Department did when it monitored the Associated Press. There, it looked at phone records, not the actual contents of emails - Case against Fox's Rosen, in which O admin is criminalizing reporting, makes all of the other "scandals" look like giant nothing burgers
The Connection Man
Four key Hillary Clinton staffers from 2008 unlikely to sign on for 2016 bid - The Washington Post - Howard Wolfson, the 2008 communications director for Hillary Rodham Clinton, has said he will not return for a 2016 presidential campaign. Neither, for that matter, will Neera Tanden, the campaign’s policy director. Ditto for Mark Penn, the chief strategist, and Patti Solis Doyle, the embattled campaign manager.
Mark Penn All But Out For Potential Hillary Clinton 2016 Run - Hillary Clinton's campaign finished paying off a $5.4 million debt owed to Mark Penn's political consulting firm only in January 2013 (maybe she's learned something)
Later Night Open Thread: Good News for Democrats in 2016 – GOP Edition » Balloon Juice
Romney Adviser: Everybody Loves Donald Trump! -- Daily Intelligencer
Poll: Michele Bachmann in for tight fight - POLITICO.com Print View - With Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann facing a widening campaign finance probe, her Democratic challenger is out with a new poll showing him in a close race with the conservative firebrand.

Jane Mayer: How Far Did PBS Go to Avoid Offending a Sponsor? : The New Yorker - Public television’s attempts to placate David Koch. (the rich don't tip)

Nucla, Colo. Passes Ordinance Making Gun Ownership Mandatory (infants will be issued a birth certificate and a gun permit)

Revisiting the ‘Crack Babies’ Epidemic That Was Not - NYTimes.com - : In the 1980s, many government officials, scientists and journalists warned that the country would be plagued by a generation of “crack babies.” They were wrong.

The MOOC Moment and the End of Reform – The New Inquiry

Apple set for showdown on Capitol Hill over corporate taxes - May. 20, 2013 (if Apple were a "person" the gov would confiscate its assets)

Yahoo Tumblr Deal Is Officially Announced: Marissa Mayer 'Promises Not To Screw It Up'


Hackers Who Breached Google in 2010 Accessed Company's Surveillance Database | Threat Level | Wired.com - The database contained years’ worth of information on law enforcement surveillance surveillance orders issued by judges around the country. The hackers were hoping to discover if law enforcement agents were investigating undercover Chinese intelligence operatives who were working out of the U.S.
Yahoo's Past Big Buys Tell a Tale of Mediocrity and Failure | Wired Business | Wired.com
How much can Google Ngrams really tell us about history? | War of Ideas

051913
Report: Obama Trims Afghan War Budget Request - The report says the president reduced his original request from $88.5 billion to $79.4 billion.

Climate Warnings, Growing Louder - NYTimes.com (Koch Bros stick their fingers in the media's ears)
Daily Kos: Climate change isn't AN issue, it's THE issue
Wings Over Scotland | It’s not just us, then? (BBC hits bottom)

Daily Kos: GunFAIL XVIII
Andrea Rebello Killed: Hofstra Student Shot By Police During 'Crime Of Opportunity' - A police officer aiming at the would-be robber opened fire, hitting the 21-year-old college junior as well as the ex-convict who had entered the house.

Obama Approval Rating Not Hurt By Scandals: CNN/ORC International Poll (can't get more polarized)
Jonathan Karl: I 'Regret' Inaccuracies In Benghazi Reporting - Guest David Shuster came down hard on Karl on Sunday, saying, "The story was wrong. The attribution was wrong. And he's still not characterizing the source as a Republican source, even though other news organizations are already doing that. So I just think the problems continue for ABC News in all of this." (won't burn his Republican sources)
Karl’s Folly » Balloon Juice - What happened is clear. Karl lied to us because he trusted his source. His source, however, burned him, and Karl’s lie was exposed. Instead of burning his source to show that he takes this matter seriously and won’t be lied to again, he is doubling down and protecting his source, because as we all know with our current media, access is more important to accuracy.
A Right-Wing Mole at ABC News — FAIR: Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting - Jonathan Karl and the success of the conservative media movement
Mitch McConnell Defends Obama Administration On AP Scandal
Judge rules tea party group a PAC, not a nonprofit - Houston Chronicle

Daily Kos: The hard lessons of the post-partisan unity schtick (Obama got zero for giving away half the Dem platform)
Obstruction will ruin GOP - Salon.com - Playing politics and abusing the system can excite the extremes, but it's a recipe for long-term political disaster

Open Thread: Buzzfeed Ben Smith’s Koch Habit » Balloon Juice
The Plural of “Noonan” Is Not “Data” » Balloon Juice - And then Nate Silver came along and said “Wow, this woman is insane, TO THE NATE CAVE” and then squished her. Then he probably had a tasty beverage.

Kennedy School students demand inquiry into immigration thesis - Metro - The Boston Globe - Thesis asserted Latino immigrants have lower IQs - urged the university to investigate how the thesis came to be approved and to ban future research on racial superiority.
Daily Kos: Richwine's Harvard PhD: The Committee and Dean Respond
The Dark Art of Racecraft - Ta-Nehisi Coates - The Atlantic - Jason Richwine's place in the long history of research on race and IQ
Why Did Harvard Give a PhD for a Discredited Approach to Race and IQ? | The Nation
IQ and the Nativist Movement | MetaFilter

Kaitlyn Hunt, Florida Teen, Faces Felony Charges Over Same-Sex Relationship

“Paleofantasy”: Stone Age delusions - Salon.com - An evolutionary biologist explains why everything you think you know about cavemen (and their diet) is wrong
Paleofantasy: When people act like cavemen because they misunderstand evolution » Blag Hag
Justicar/Integralmath: Wretched skeevy piece of internet offal » Pharyngula

Skepchick | The Silencing of Men
(11) Twitter / Search - #radfem2013
RadFem2013 vs the MRAs: what really happened and who’s the baddie? | Another angry woman
The Dangerous Tale Of The MREs And Their Allies | sisterhoodispowerful (MRAs, Male Rights Extemists & "malestream media & their trans/queer activist allies vs TERFs, Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists. )
UnCommon Sense: TERF13: At worst a distraction...
Nerd is my Gender: Reactions to My Gender
MRA LONDON.ORG - Rules for Radicals, by Saul D. Alinsky, was first published in 1972
TERF Quotes | Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminism
Get ready to shit your pants. I’m going to use the word “trans.” | Rage Against the Man-chine
FAAB and MAAB | Trans Feminisms
Decoding the FAAB/MAAB “Argument” | femonade
Sorry, Sex-Positive Transwomen: I’m Not Buying What You’re Selling. At All. | femonade
Trans women and Male Privilege | Femanon - Men have been raised to hate women
I’d rather have intercourse than suck dick. | Femanon
Feminists assaulted in Transgender Attack at Portland conference for Social Change: Women’s books destroyed and bodies defaced with permanent magic markers | GenderTrender

Google Is Prepping A Sneak Attack On Microsoft Office – ReadWrite
Reddit User Makes Beautiful, Explorable Graph Of Subreddit Community
Revenge, ego and the corruption of Wikipedia - Salon.com - The unmasking of a writer who took extraordinary advantage of online anonymity to pursue old vendettas
Anonymous revenge editing on Wikipedia – the case of Robert Clark Young aka Qworty | Wikipediocracy - Anonymous revenge editing on Wikipedia – the case of Robert Clark Young aka Qworty
Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents
Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment/Jagged 85/Cleanup
Wikipediocracy - View topic - Rev. Stuart Campbell
Quote by Dr. Seuss: Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, it...

051813
'US drone' kills four in strike on al-Qaida target in Yemen | World news | guardian.co.uk - Local officials say vehicle carrying suspected militants near Aden was struck in an attack by an unmanned aircraft ("suspected" = "dead")
Do Drones Work? - Congress hasn't debated whether the civilian and psychological costs that come with targeted killings are worthwhile in the long run. It should.
Gunmen kill anti-terror policeman and family as Iraq violence continues | World news | guardian.co.uk - Eight policemen abducted on highway to Jordan and Syria, following three days of violence that killed 130 people
Law Protecting Afghanistan Women Blocked By Conservatives - Conservative religious lawmakers in Afghanistan blocked legislation on Saturday aimed at strengthening provisions for women's freedoms, arguing that parts of it violate Islamic principles and encourage disobedience.
Memory in Latin America: Argentina: Videla is dead - Jorge Rafael Videla, former dictator and leader of the Argentine junta, has died in jail aged 87
Jorge Rafael Videla, Argentina Military Leader in ‘Dirty War,’ Dies at 87 - NYTimes.com
Pakistan's Industry of Violence - In the wake of election violence, one reporter explores the country's acceptance of its bloody everyday—and how different it is from the United States' reaction to bloodshed

Trading in oil: Libor in a barrel | The Economist - Oil markets fall under the suspicion of price-fixing on a global scale (no scandal here)
Zombie climate sceptic theories survive only in newspapers and on TV | Graham Readfearn | Environment | guardian.co.uk - Study finds overwhelming scientific consensus that humans have caused global warming, but media still hasn't caught up

What Republicans Already Knew About The White House Benghazi Emails | TPMDC
Why No Dem Freak-Out Over the Doctored Emails? | TPM Editors Blog - Obama has chosen not to push back hard against doctored Benghazi leaks that even the tame broadcast media objected to. So no Democrats in Washington is either. (the Wimp-in-Chief wimps out, again)

GOP Hopes IRS Scandal Will Snag Health Care Law

Food Stamps Get Licked by Cuts - Will go hungry for deficit reduction

Alleged 'PayPal 14' Hackers Seek Deal To Stay Out Of Prison After Nearly 2 Years In Limbo - "I saw something about PayPal shutting down payments to Wikileaks, and I clicked on some other site and joined a protest," she said. "And next thing I knew, my house was surrounded by guns." (Obama's anti-whistleblower war)

Connecticut commuter train crash leaves 72 injured and chaos at scene | World news | guardian.co.uk - Officials express amazement at lack of fatalities from collision as northeast corridor set for lengthy disruption

Mountain of Petroleum Coke From Oil Sands Rises in Detroit - NYTimes.com - The company is controlled by Charles and David Koch, wealthy industrialists who back a number of conservative and libertarian causes including activist groups that challenge the science behind climate change.
Corporations are manufacturing uncertainty about scientific findings. Now scientists are fighting back. | The Raw Story

Bayonne Medical Center Has Highest U.S. Billing Rates - NYTimes.com (profit!)

Texas Judge Forbids Lesbian Woman From Living With Her Partner | ThinkProgress - Judge John Roach, a Republican who presides over a state trial court in McKinney, Texas, placed a so-called “morality clause” in Compton’s divorce papers. This clause forbids Compton having a person that she is not related to “by blood or marriage” at her home past 9pm when her children are present.

You Want to Know What Competition in Education Will Do? Look at Chile. by Daniel Luzer | Washington Monthly - Sound familiar? Adjusted for income Chile now has the most expensive higher education system in the world. We have the second most expensive system. (privatization!)

Western leaders study 'gamechanging' report on global drugs trade | World news | The Observer - Review by Organisation of American States on illicit drugs 'could mark beginning of the end' of prohibition (Obama considering his options)
Federal Appeals Court: Drug Sentencing Disparity Is Intentional Racial 'Subjucation' | ThinkProgress
Illinois Passes Medical Marijuana Bill | ThinkProgress


Facebook’s stock has lost 31% of its value since it went public one year ago - The Next Web

051713
Bombs targeting Sunnis kill at least 76 in Iraq | World news | guardian.co.uk - Fears that country is again heading towards civil war as tensions intensify between Sunnis and Shias (who could have predicted?)
Russia reveals identity of CIA Moscow chief following Ryan Fogle's expulsion | World news | guardian.co.uk - Federal Security Service spokesman breaches protocol as he accuses US agency of crossing 'red line' in its recruitment efforts (but Obama threatened to drone the Guardian, so they don't reprint the name)
French Gay Marriage Law Ruled Constitutional - ABC News
Berlusconi 'Bunga Bunga' Parties Included Nun Stripper, Karima El Mahroug Says In Testimony - Silvio Berlusconi's private disco featured not only aspiring showgirls performing striptease acts as sexy nuns and nurses, but one woman dressed up as President Barack Obama and a prominent Milan prosecutor whom the billionaire media mogul has accused of persecuting him, according to the first public sworn testimony by the Moroccan woman at the center of the scandal.


Obama War Powers Under 2001 Law 'Astoundingly Disturbing,' Senators Say - "This is the most astounding and most astoundingly disturbing hearing that I've been to since I've been here. You guys have essentially rewritten the Constitution today," Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) told four senior U.S. military officials who testified about the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force and what it allows the White House to do.
Washington gets explicit: its 'war on terror' is permanent | Glenn Greenwald | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk - Senior Obama officials tell the US Senate: the 'war', in limitless form, will continue for 'at least' another decade - or two

John Paul Stevens: Bush v. Gore Decision Rationale Was 'Unacceptable'

A New 'Smart Rifle' Decides When To Shoot And Rarely Misses : All Tech Considered : NPR - You pull the trigger but the gun decides when to shoot. It fires only when the weapon has been pointed in exactly the right place, taking into account dozens of variables, including wind, shake and distance to the target.

It's Official: Those Bogus Email Leaks Came From Republicans | Mother Jones - But it was typical GOP overreach. To their surprise, the White House took Republicans up on their demand to make the entire email chain public, thus making it clear to the press that they had been burned. And now reporters are letting us all know who was behind it. (not really, names != Republicans)
Republicans Altered Benghazi Emails, CBS News Report Claims
The Stories That Never Get Told - Esquire - The right thing to do here is for ABC to reveal the source that fed it bogus information. This is what should happen for two reasons: 1) it should happen to demonstrate the consequences of feeding bogus information to ABC, and 2) it should happen to demonstrate that there is something of a campaign among Republican congressional staffers to wound an elected president with bogus information, because (as I think we would all agree) that's a helluva news story, too. (they will never name actual names)
Barack Obama’s scandals: Why the White House is suddenly beset by the controversies over Benghazi, the IRS, and the Associated Press. - Slate Magazine - Why Obama is suddenly under siege.
Yes, He Was, In Fact, A Crook - Esquire - (Smirking? The president deftly avoided the obvious answer, which was, "Are you on fking mushrooms, Junior?" as non-presidential.)
Outgoing IRS chief deflects Republican attempts to link scandal to White House | World news | guardian.co.uk - Steven Miller issues public apology at House hearing in which he blamed tax-targeting scandal on procedure, not politics
Harry Reid Focuses On July For The 'Nuclear Option' - “All executive branch and judicial nominations would be subject to majority votes. He would not do it on legislative items.”

In Unrelated News - Esquire - Investigators determined that the fire that led to the powerful explosion was caused either by a battery-powered golf cart that was kept in the fertilizer and seed building in which the fire started, the building's 120-volt electrical system or by an intentional criminal act

Guest Post From A U.S. Marine About Barack Obama’s Shocking And Disgusting Use Of An Umbrella - Shut your cockholster, you civilian sack of shit.

Ohio Republicans Push Law To Penalize Colleges For Helping Students Vote | TPMDC - “It’s a transparent effort at vote suppression — about the most blatant and shameful we’ve seen in this state, which is saying quite a lot.” (Republifucks at work)

Arkansas Abortion Law: Judge Grants Injunction Against 12-Week Ban
Did Michael Kinsley Invent the Concept of Same-Sex Marriage? - Lawyers, Guns & Money
Kinsley loves austerity because it is “spinach” - Salon.com - The liberal pundit supports a worthless international initiative

New York Times: Our Website Was Attacked

Cold War: Map shows areas prohibited to Soviet travelers in the United States (Indiana off-limits)

Study: Marijuana Buffers Pain of Social Exclusion - New research suggests one reason for the popularity of pot may be that it helps people cope with the pain of loneliness.

Star Trek movies and TV series: Which are the best? Why? - Slate Magazine
Handwriting: Broadside teaching the Spencer method of cursive - Spencerian handwriting was eventually displaced by the typewriter and the Palmer method, a more minimalist script developed in the 1910s in reaction to Spencer’s flowing, decorative lettering.

Google Fiber broadcast television impact analysis | BGR

051613

Pentagon Spec Ops Chief Sees '10 to 20' More Years of War Against al-Qaida | Danger Room | Wired.com (renewable in 20 years, forever)
The same motive for anti-US 'terrorism' is cited over and over | Glenn Greenwald | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk - Ignoring the role played by US actions is dangerously self-flattering and self-delusional (never look at causes)

Economist's View: 'About That Debt Crisis? Never Mind' - It's a good scam if your goal is to reduce the size and influence of government: implement spending cuts that slow the economy, never mind the unemployed, then call loudly for tax cuts and deregulation to spur economic growth. Repeat as needed.
Why we need a currency war with China (and Denmark and Singapore … )
The case for austerity isn’t dead yet (none of his commentors agree with him)
The Smith/Klein/Kalecki Theory of Austerity - NYTimes.com
Noahpinion: Why do people support austerity? A conjecture. (the Naomi Klein agrument not credited)
Paul Krugman's Misguided Moral Crusade Against Austerity | New Republic (his commentors aren't any happier than Perlstein's)
Brad DeLong : Seven Howlers from Michael Kinsley's Very Misguided War Against Paul Krugman (Delong squashes a bug tying to bite Krugman)
The worst piece of conventional wisdom you will read this year | Daniel W. Drezner - And then, as if Krugman planned it all along, along comes Michael Kinsley in the New Republic --
Michael Kinsley Needs To Shut Up - Esquire - Isn't it time for all of us to admit that the 1980s are over, and that Michael Kinsley is really a smug little douchenozzle and perhaps the most overrated political commentator of the past 30 years?
Despite Dramatic Deficit Reduction, Fox & Friends Promotes Harmful Austerity Measures | Blog | Media Matters for America

Climate research nearly unanimous on human causes, survey finds | Environment | guardian.co.uk - Of more than 4,000 academic papers published over 20 years, 97.1% agreed that climate change is anthropogenic
Tom Zeller Jr.: Scientists Agree (Again): Climate Change Is Happening
Climate change may be baring Mount Everest - latimes.com
Inhofe: God Says Global Warming Is A Hoax | ThinkProgress - In the interview, Inhofe did not mention he has received $1,352,523 in campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry, including $90,950 from Koch Industries. (false gods)

The Obama Administration Scandals - TIME
DOJ Tactics Against AP Raise Concerns For The New York Times (they are going to tap Douthat's phone)

New GOP debt-limit demands: Ban late-term abortion and approve Keystone pipeline? - The Washington Post

Turns out much-hyped settlement still allows banks to steal homes - Salon.com - New data reveals mega-banks still illegally foreclosing on thousands. Get this: The housing settlement allows it
Elizabeth Warren Wants Big Banks To Face The Same Prosecution And Jail As Citizens | Addicting Info

Despite Dramatic Deficit Reduction, Fox & Friends Promotes Harmful Austerity Measures | Blog | Media Matters for America

RNC Spokeswoman Admits Harry Reid Was Right About Romney’s Taxes All Along, Whoops - Oh, whoops, we do not think the spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee, and the Daily Caller (the spokespaper for the RNC), meant to confirm that Harry Reid was right about Mitt Romney paying a big gorgeous goose egg in taxes for 10 years. But they accidentally did! Oh our tangled webs and cetera

Christianity declining 50pc faster than thought – as one in 10 under-25s is a Muslim - Christianity could be facing a catastrophic collapse in Britain according to official figures suggesting it is declining 50 per cent faster than previously thought.

Human stem cells cloned for the first time | The Verge

051513
National Security Brief: Poll Finds Americans Aren't Buying GOP Benghazi Witch-Hunt | ThinkProgress - Forty-nine percent trust Clinton, versus 39 percent for Republicans. A whopping 41 percent of Republicans polled think the Obama administration’s handling of Benghazi is the greatest scandal in U.S. history. “One interesting thing about the voters who think Benghazi is the biggest political scandal in American history,” PPP adds, “is that 39% of them don’t actually know where it is. 10% think it’s in Egypt, 9% in Iran, 6% in Cuba, 5% in Syria, 4% in Iraq, and 1% each in North Korea and Liberia with 4% not willing to venture a guess.” (sounds about right)
Where Is Benghazi Poll - Greatest. Poll. Ever. - Esquire - Thirty-nine percent of people who think the Benghazi scandal is the biggest in American history don't actually know where it is. Here is a helpful map.
Conspiracy theorists flummoxed in face of actual scandals - Salon.com - The Benghazi/IRS/AP trifecta was the moment critics of Obama and the government had been waiting for. Or was it?

An Itty Bitty Pity Party for the Associated Press - Gary Pruitt, President and CEO of the Associated Press, rose up raging on Monday afternoon and threw a bag of live rats over the White House fence. To wit:
F.B.I. Violated Rules in Obtaining Phone Records, Report Says - NYTimes.com - Based on nothing more than e-mail messages or scribbled requests on Post-it notes, the phone employees turned over customer calling records, the report said. On some occasions, the phone employees allowed the F.B.I. to upload call records to government databases. On others, they allowed agents to view records on their computer screens, a practice that became known as “sneak peeks.” (Charlie Savage)
AP, Tea Party, Bloomberg Clients All Being Monitored Just Like You
Reporter Shield Law: Obama Asks Schumer For New Bill After Hampering Prior Efforts
James Cole Authorized AP Subpoenas, Eric Holder Confirms
The DOJ's Freedom of Speech Breach - The seizure of AP's phone records is legal, but that doesn't make it an acceptable course of action for the Justice Department to take.
Obama’s Justice Department: Holder’s Leak Investigations Are Outrageous and Unprecedented - Slate Magazine - His administration’s leak investigations are outrageous and unprecedented.
DOJ’s Dragnet on Leakers: The Apathy is Troubling, Especially Among Journalists | TIME.com
Wednesday Nice Time: Eric Holder Tells Darrell Issa to STFU
Eric Holder Slams Darrell Issa During House Judiciary Committee Hearing (video)

Elizabeth Warren to Obama Administration: Take the Banks to Court, Already! | Mother Jones
Recession in eurozone is now the currency bloc’s longest, surpassing even 2008-2009 crisis - The Washington Post
Rolling Stone Mobile - Politics - Politics: Everything Is Rigged, Continued: European Commission Raids Oil Companies in Price-Fixing Probe
Stimson Center: DoD Could Trim $1 Trillion Without Eroding Combat Power | Defense News | defensenews.com - the Defense Department could trim its planned spending by almost $1 trillion over the next 10 years by making a list of accounting, personnel and contracting changes.
Military Sexual Assault Scandal Causes Outrage Among Lawmakers

How the Case for Austerity Has Crumbled by Paul Krugman | The New York Review of Books

Deficit To Shrink Rapidly Through 2015 Due To Rising Revenues, CBO Reports (Boehner weeps)
Obama Student Loan Policy Reaping $51 Billion Profit - The Obama administration is forecast to turn a record $51 billion profit this year from student loan borrowers, a sum greater than the earnings of the nation's most profitable companies and roughly equal to the combined net income of the four largest U.S. banks by assets.
Credit Rating Agencies Loosening Standards Again, In Same Dynamic That Preceded Financial Crisis
The Greatest Apparel Company Villain–Gap - Lawyers, Guns & Money : Lawyers, Guns & Money - But the real villain in the international clothing industry is Gap. That company has done more than any other to push back against any meaningful reform, including in the aftermath of the Bangladesh disaster.

Eric Holder's Justice Department Hammered By Democrats Over AP Subpoenas - Members of President Barack Obama's own party slammed his Justice Department's secret gathering of reporters' phone records as inexcusable and sickening on Tuesday, suggesting that Congress may have to act to protect the freedom of the press.

Jarvan Jackson, 11-Year-Old Florida Boy, Fatally Shot By 4-Year-Old Relative (video) (arm the toddlers)

This Week in Poverty: Twelve Things You Can Do To Fight Poverty Now | The Nation

Answering a Question No One Asked: 13 Years of Williamsburg in the NYT

No Benefit Seen in Sharp Limits on Salt in Diet - NYTimes.com
Cannabis Induces a Clinical Respo... [Clin Gastroenterol Hepatol. 2013] - PubMed - NCBI

Once in Sixty Lifetimes | mc79hockey.com - If you watched the end of last night’s Meltdown in Beantown, you probably wondered a little bit about what the odds of such thing happening were

Dear Prudence: My husband has asked for an open marriage after discovering my affair. - Slate Magazine - In a live chat, Prudie counsels a woman whose husband caught her cheating and now wants an open marriage.

Amy's Baking Company Freaks Out Online After Epic Meltdown On Gordon Ramsay's 'Kitchen Nightmares'

Google Play Music All Access: Search Giant Launches Spotify Competitor
Now You Can Send Money Through Gmail, Google Announces
LinkedIn Clarifies Its Ban On Prostitutes, And Yes, There Are Prostitutes On LinkedIn

051413
Russia to expel US diplomat accused of spying for CIA | World news | guardian.co.uk - Ryan Fogle, accused of trying to recruit Russian agent for the CIA, had 'spy arsenal' of wigs and glasses, say officials (and a Groucho mustache)

Alaska: where politics and climate change go hand-in-hand | Environment | guardian.co.uk

Universal Basic Income - Business Insider
Thinking Utopian: How about a universal basic income?
Just Give People Money - Forbes
Bloomberg hit by new scandal as trading emails are shared online | Media | guardian.co.uk - Financial information giant scrambles to restore reputation as error follows revelation of reporters' access to terminals (Bloomfuck spies on everyone else, who wouldn't he spy on his customers?)
Elizabeth Warren Pushes Feds For Answer On Big Bank Enforcement (the answer: Obama)

Eric Holder On AP Phone Records Subpoena: Trust Us
AP To DOJ: Explanation For Secret Probe 'Does Not Adequately Address Our Concerns'
Condemnation Of DOJ's AP Probe Continues; Carl Bernstein Calls It 'Inexcusable' (VIDEO) - "I've been in this business for more than 30 years," she said on "Morning Joe." "Our First Amendment lawyers, and our lawyers inside the AP, and our CEO, who's also a well-known First Amendment lawyer, none of us have ever seen anything like this." Speaking on the same program, famed Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein was even more scathing, calling the operation "inexcusable."
Obama Administration Secretly Obtains Phone Records of AP Journalists | Threat Level | Wired.com
Why The Department Of Justice Is Going After The Associated Press' Records | ThinkProgress
On the AP Spying - Lawyers, Guns & Money
Justice Department's pursuit of AP's phone records is both extreme and dangerous | Glenn Greenwald | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk
AP, IRS, Benghazi: how can Americans trust President Obama now? | Crystal Wright | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk - The only 'political circus' is all the controversies in the Obama administration. Republicans and America want answers
The IRS and AP controversies spell trouble for Obama and Democrats | Harry J Enten | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk - Trust in government is a key factor in how people vote in midterm elections. All of that is heavily at stake now for 2014 (Obama loves screwing Dems)
Ringside Seat: Taxghazi -

The Coming Attempt to Impeach Obama - The Daily Beast - The idea of impeaching Obama is industrial-strength insane. Republicans will probably try anyway, predicts Michael Tomasky.

Boston College Enda Kenny Commencement Speaker - The Clan Of The Red Beanie Strikes Back - Esquire - The latest chapter has Cardinal Sean O'Malley, that darlin' man, boycotting the BC ceremony because, and this may the the funniest thing ever said, especially coming from an Archbishop of Boston: "It is my ardent hope that Boston College will work to redress the confusion, disappointment and harm caused by not adhering to the bishops' directives."
Cardinal O’Malley’s decision to boycott BC graduation has the ring of hypocrisy - Metro - The Boston Globe

RNC FL Hispanic Director is Now a Democrat | The Florida Nation - It doesn’t take much to see the culture of intolerance surrounding the Republican Party today. I have wondered before about the seemingly harsh undertones about immigrants and others. Look no further; a well-known organization recently confirms the intolerance of that which seems different or strange to them.

7NEWS - Aurora PD: Student suffers 'significant injury' in accidental shooting at Rangeview High parking lot - Local Story - a school employee who also works a second job as an armed security officer, according to police. The employee was trying to put his gun into the glove box of the car when the weapon fired, hitting the student in the leg.

Pentagon Said to Furlough Up to 650,000 Civilian Workers - Bloomberg (that means they employ a lot of "civilians")
cab drollery - That gender gape [sic] means that a full-time working woman will earn $443,360 less than her male counterpart over 40 years, according to a recent study by the National Women's Law Center.

Ag-Gag - Lawyers, Guns & Money - The real signal will come out of North Carolina’s insane wingnut legislature, which has a bill with much the same language, but which also expands it to investigations in any industry.

Wealthy Manhattan moms hire handicapped tour guides to bypass lines at Disney World - NYPOST.com

Ten things you may not know about stars | Space | EarthSky - 5) The Sun is a green star
Earth's center is out of sync
New forensic technique for estimating time of death by checking internal clock of the human brain - Science - News - The Independent - Depressed people live in parallel time zone, scientists find

Muslims Outraged After Boston Bomber Buried In Confederate Cemetery - “Through what we can only describe as a gross error of judgement, Tamerlan Tsarnaev has been buried among a group of traitors,” Mohamed Magid, president of the Islamic Society of North America, complained to reporters.

How to Tell if College Presidents Are Overpaid by Richard Vedder | Washington Monthly

America’s New Oligarchs—Fwd.us and Silicon Valley’s Shady 1 Percenters - The Daily Beast - When Steve Jobs died in October 2011, crowds of mourners gathered outside of Apple stores, leaving impromptu memorials to the fallen businessman. Many in Occupy Wall Street, then in full bloom, stopped to mourn the .001 percenter worth $7 billion, who didn’t believe in charity and whose company had more cash in hand than the U.S. Treasury while doing everything in its power to avoid paying taxes. (you've been zuckerfucked again)

Bringing it all together: 15 GB now shared between Drive, Gmail, and Google+ Photos

051313
Pakistani court declares US drone strikes in the country's tribal belt illegal - Asia - World - The Independent - Judges say the strikes must be declared a war crime as they kill innocent people (not according to the Pentagon)
Benghazi hospital blast kills 12 | World news | The Guardian - Women and children among dead at al-Jala hospital in eastern Libyan city after bomb goes off in car park
David Cameron arrives in US buoyed by Russian signals on Syria | Politics | guardian.co.uk - British prime minister will tell Barack Obama he believes Vladimir Putin is now more open to putting pressure on Assad regime
Bangladesh Garment Factories Shut Down Amid Worker Unrest, Minimum Wage Change

Benghazi Poll Finds More Disapprove Than Approve Of Obama's Handling Of Attack Aftermath

Gov't obtains wide AP phone records in probe
DOJ Secretly Obtains Months Of AP Phone Records; AP Condemns 'Unprecedented Intrusion' (they're lucky Obama didn't just drone them)
Government secretly obtains months of AP phone records - Salon.com - The government would not say why it sought lists of incoming and outgoing phone calls
Twitter reactions: And then they came for the AP - Salon.com - Journalists react to some of their own being the object of government surveillance

Minnesota Senate Passes Gay Marriage, Governor To Sign - becoming the 12th to allow same-sex couples to marry.

Contrary to popular belief, President Obama doesn't have a magic wand | Michael Cohen | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk - GOP opposition to everything Obama supports is the most important story of the last four years of American politics (Insane Clown Party destroying America)
The National Memo » LOL Of The Week: Destroying Hillary Clinton Is The GOP’s Only Hope For 2016
How the Republican Party could go extinct - Salon.com - The party has a golden chance to make inroads with Latinos and gays with one immigration move. And it's blowing it
BIll Keller Think Tanks Column - Somebody Hit Bill Keller's Knee With A Hammer - Esquire
History’s Greatest Martyr Speaks - Lawyers, Guns & Money : I actually enjoyed Byron York’s piece on Jason Richwine, the deposed Heritage Foundation hack who is dismayed that you can be called a white supremacist merely for arguing that people of color are intellectually inferior. Shockingly enough, his mentor was another giant in the field of racist junk science:

Henry Waxman will support Chained CPI in trade for "things we want" ("we" = "him" - Dems screwing you again)

The Dark Art of Racecraft - Ta-Nehisi Coates - The Atlantic - Jason Richwine's place in the long history of research on race and IQ
Riddled: I do not know why Jason Richwine has opted for the facial grooming of a date rapist; perhaps it is a condition of his parole *

Ohio kidnappings: what makes men take women and children prisoner? | World news | The Observer - The accusations against Ariel Castro have shocked the world – but experts fear many crimes of sexual slavery go undetected

Gun Nut Intimidation of Academics - Lawyers, Guns & Money : Kutztown University in Pennsylvania has decided to allow guns on its campus. This is a terrible move, but this isn’t the reason for the post. Rather, it’s the vitriol anyone even questioning the idea has received from gun nuts. This makes what happened to me seem reasonable by comparison.

REPORT: Diversity On Evening Cable News In 13 Charts | Research | Media Matters for America (white guys!)
Bloomberg editor in chief: reporters' access to client data 'inexcusable' | Media | guardian.co.uk - As scandal deepens, Matthew Winkler writes op-ed apologising for use of terminals to access data 'considered proprietary'
Howard Kurtz isn't the problem at The Daily Beast, it's Tina Brown | Michael Wolff | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk - The Daily Beast/Newsweek has floundered in the digital space. Some blame needs to be pointed at editor Tina Brown
New York Times v Washington Post – a tale of two strategies | Technology | guardian.co.uk - Both are great American newspapers, both suffer from the advertising slump and from the transition to digital. But the NYT's paywall strategy is making a huge difference
Good riddance, Barbara Walters - Salon.com - Veteran newswoman retires to spend more time with her craven obsession with power

Arbitrary and Capricious Emergency Contraception Restrictions Still Arbitrary and Capricious - Lawyers, Guns & Money : If a stay is granted, it will allow the bad-faith, politically motivated decision of Secretary Sebelius, who lacks any medical or scientific expertise, to prevail — thus justifiably undermining the public’s confidence in the drug approval process,” Judge Korman wrote.

It's time to out Lindsey Graham - And while it’s one thing to be gay and a closet case, it’s quite another to be a hypocrite, an anti-gay gay, someone who uses his power to harm others in the name of morality, all the while knowing secretly that he is one of the others.
The Largely Forgotten Story of Glenn Burke - Lawyers, Guns & Money : In a bit of irony that would seem farcical if it wasn’t so tragic, one of the Dodgers who tried to talk Burke into getting “married,” was his manager, Tommy Lasorda, whose son Tom Jr. died from AIDS complications in 1991. To this day, Lasorda Sr. refuses to acknowledge his son’s homosexuality.

Government Assault on the Chinatown Bus Industry Fueled By Bogus Federal Study - Reason.com - An influential report by the National Transportation Safety Board used the wrong data and committed "statistical malpractice."

ACEsTooHigh.com : CJR's Guide to Online News Startups - Reporting on the science, education, and policy surrounding childhood trauma
Researchers Identify 4 New Genetic Risk Factors For Testicular Cancer : Health & Medicine : Nature World News - The meta-analysis revealed that testicular germ cell tumor (TGCT) risk was significantly associated with markers at four loci—4q22, 7q22, 16q22.3, and 17q22, none of which have been identified in other cancers.
Cheech and Chong star claims cannabis helped cure prostate cancer | Film | guardian.co.uk - Comedian and stoner Tommy Chong says 'I kicked cancer's ass!' with a variety of treatments including diet and supplements (and a lot of weed)
Marijuana Linked To Lower Bladder Cancer Risk, Study Says - More frequent marijuana use -- smoking cannabis more than 500 times -- was associated with greater risk reduction than smoking only once or twice. However, the study was critized for not including any non-smokers.

Balloon Juice » Don’t Even Think About Being The Coolest Person On (Above) The Planet…

Twitter Hate Speech Map Pinpoints Racist, Homophobic Hotspots Across U.S. - A majority of hateful tweets are coming from smaller towns and more rural areas.
Hate Map

Eric Schneiderman Pressures Apple, Samsung To Combat Smartphone Thefts

051213
Former Guatemala Dictator Rios Montt Convicted of Genocide - NYTimes.com
Will Pakistan finally stand up against illegal US drone attacks? | Clive Stafford Smith | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk - The Peshawar high court has delivered a damning verdict on the strikes. Pakistan must now move towards protecting the security of its citizens
Syrian war death toll rises to 82,000 - opposition group | Reuters
potlatch: Britain's Brezhnev-style capitalism
‘Conservative’ study warns climate change may kill half of Earth’s plant life | The Raw Story - More than half of common species of plants and a third of animal species are likely to see their living space halved by 2080 on current trends of carbon emissions, a climate study said on Sunday.

The Death of Truth by Chris Hedges (Interview with Julian Assange) | Dandelion Salad

Political Animal - Will Conservatives Come to Grips with Climate Change? (no, sorry)

Recession is a good time to boost profits, says Cameron aide | Business | The Observer - Lord Young says low-wage conditions are a bonus for business, drawing a furious response from the TUC
Hullabaloo - I guess this means we're winning? - I wonder why the disparity? I don't suppose it might be because the Democrats have been consistently betraying their own values? No, of course not.
Who Says Fiscal Policy Is Hurting the Economy? (Almost) Everyone. - NationalJournal.com - Austerity is dragging down growth, many economists say.
Mass Poverty, Social Inequality and the Thirdworldization of America | Global Research (Reagonomics!)
The Biggest Price-Fixing Scandal Ever | Politics News | Rolling Stone - The Illuminati were amateurs. The second huge financial scandal of the year reveals the real international conspiracy: There's no price the big banks can't fix - London-based firm ICAP
Daily Kos: The job fatality rate isn't budging, and no wonder, with penalties this low - The AFL-CIO released its Death on the Job report this week, and the toll for the United States in 2011 was 4,693 workers killed on the job, an average of 13 every day. It's much harder to know how many died from occupational diseases, but the estimate is 50,000

A new GOP bill would prevent the government from collecting economic data (don't bother us with your steenking "facts")
Wall Street Bills Clear Hurdle With Democrats Backing Deregulation (go Dems!)
Bloomberg Terminal Spying Targeted Ben Bernanke, Tim Geithner: CNBC
Sallie Mae Profit Boosts College Endowments And Pension Funds As Students Pay More
Brad DeLong : Moby Ben, or, The Washington Super-Whale: Hedge Fundies, the Federal Reserve, and Bernanke-Hatred
Liberal Wonk Blogging Could Be Your Life | Next New Deal

Noahpinion: Libertarianism and the Tamerlane Principle - My problem with libertarianism is something I call the "Tamerlane Principle." Before I explain it, consider this account of the conquests of the 14th Century Central Asian warlord and conqueror Timur the Lame, commonly known as Tamerlane ... a "hurricane of annihilation"...
The Mongol Empire: Its Rise and Legacy - Michael Prawdin - Google Books
Timur - Scholars estimate that his military campaigns caused the deaths of 17 million people, amounting to about 5% of the world population
Ciudad Juarez is all our futures. This is the inevitable war of capitalism gone mad | Ed Vulliamy | Comment is free | The Guardian - Mexico's drug cartels are actually pioneers of the global economy in their business logic and modus operandi
Noahpinion: Science fiction novels for economists

Frack Corporate Personhood - In These Times - A Pennsylvania judge has drawn a hard line against so-called corporate ‘persons.’ - “It is axiomatic that corporations, companies and partnerships have no ‘spiritual nature,’ ‘feelings,’ ‘intellect,’ ‘beliefs,’ ‘thoughts,’ ‘emotions’ or ‘sensations,’ because they do not exist in the manner that humankind exists.”

Daily Kos: GunFAIL XVII

Notes on a Pseudo-Scandal - Things like Benghazi generate their own momentum, whether there was any actual wrongdoing or not.
Thomas Pickering: Benghazi Call Did Not Come From Hillary Clinton - decisions about the consulate were made well below the secretary's level. Pickering's defense of his panel's conclusions, however, was unlikely to quiet Republicans' calls for accountability for the attacks that left four Americans dead, including an ambassador.
John McCain Refuses To Back Impeaching Obama Over Benghazi (VIDEO)
Not Believing the Hype | TPM Editors Blog - Right wing forces are constantly yelling scandal and constantly going for over-hype. Why join them, and why not realize that they turn off most Americans who are not already Obama/Clinton haters?
Stop Hitting Yourself, And Other Advice For Benghazi-Obsessed Wingnuts
Tea Partyers boycott Fox News for being too “left” - Salon.com - A three-day boycott of the network protested a lack of coverage of the attacks on Benghazi, among other things

Hullabaloo - Ole Joe Biden, the good cop (no SS cuts, no XL death-funnel, oh wait)
Meet The New Paultard, Same As The Old Paultard | TBogg

How Jason Richwine Passed Immigration Reform -- Daily Intelligencer
The Heritage Foundation And The Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Super Racist Week

New SARS-like virus can probably pass person-to-person | Reuters
WHO | Press Statement Related to the Novel Coronavirus Situation

Hospital Prices No Longer Secret As New Data Reveals Bewildering System, Staggering Cost Differences - she faces an official price tag of $99,690. Less than 30 miles away in the Bronx, N.Y., the Lincoln Medical and Mental Health Center charges only $7,044 for the same treatment

‘Purity’ culture: bad for women, worse for survivors of sexual assault | The Raw Story - Virginity has no bearing on a person’s worth, yet ‘purity balls’ and shaming victims make our culture more medieval than modern
Female 'Purity' Is Bullshit
CNN's Sex-Crazed Amanda Knox Case Interview - Susan Milligan (usnews.com)
Today in Non-Phallic Historical Advertising Campaigns - Lawyers, Guns & Money

Psychiatrists under fire in mental health battle | Society | The Observer - British Psychological Society to launch attack on rival profession, casting doubt on biomedical model of mental illness - There is no scientific evidence that psychiatric diagnoses such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are valid or useful, according to the leading body representing Britain's clinical psychologists.
Scientists find mutations behind testicular cancer and heart disease | The Raw Story - “Most interestingly, the set of genes mutated in congenital heart disease unexpectedly overlapped with genes and pathways mutated in autism,” said Richard Lifton, a professor of genetics.
Antibiotics could cure 40% of chronic back pain patients | Society | guardian.co.uk - Scientists hail medical breakthrough by which half a million UK sufferers could avoid major surgery and take antibiotics instead - "This is vast. We are talking about probably half of all spinal surgery for back pain being replaced by taking antibiotics,"
How to spot a murderer's brain | Science | The Observer - Do your genes, rather than upbringing, determine whether you will become a criminal? Adrian Raine believed so – and breaking that taboo put him on collision course with the world of science
A Neuroscientist Uncovers A Dark Secret : NPR
Middle-age obesity 'will lead to a surge in dementia cases' | Society | The Observer - Study says hundreds of thousands more are at risk of Alzheimer's

One World Trade Center build shown in time-lapse – video | World news | guardian.co.uk

Windows Blue/8.1 on the Surface Pro | CRASHCTRL

051013
Global carbon dioxide in atmosphere passes milestone level | Environment | guardian.co.uk - Climate warming greenhouse gas reaches 400 parts per million for the first time in human history
Atmospheric CO2 Concentrations Surpass 400 PPM Milestone
The Coming GOP Civil War Over Climate Change - NationalJournal.com - Science, storms, and demographics are starting to change minds among the rank and file.
Wall Street Journal's Idiocracy: CO2 Is What Plants Crave | Research | Media Matters for America (there's your "civil war")

Bangladesh factory: woman found alive in rubble 17 days after collapse | World news | guardian.co.uk - Reshma Begum survived on biscuits and by breathing through a pipe amid wreckage of Rana Plaza in Dhaka

The Military Can't Handle the Truth - Years of sexual scandals followed by yet more military negligence show the consequences of letting the organization police its own.

Benghazi embassy attack: Why it didn't help Mitt Romney win.
White House Holds Secret Benghazi Briefing, Incensing Some Reporters
ABC News Benghazi Coverage - Benghazm - Esquire

On eve of Plan B ruling taking effect, NY judge refuses to delay access to morning-after pill - The Washington Post - “Indeed, in my view, the defendants’ appeal is frivolous and is taken for the purpose of delay,” Korman wrote. He called the government’s reasoning “largely an insult to the intelligence of women.”
Are Vouchers Dead? - The policy that was once the heart of the school choice movement is losing steam

The Facts Are In and Paul Ryan Is Wrong -- Daily Intelligencer
Political Animal - More From Political Scientists About Effects of Campaigns
Surprise Winner in Thomas Friedman Porn-Title Contest | Matt Taibbi | Rolling Stone

Immigration reform: Jason Richwine resigns from the Heritage Foundation.
Jason Richwine Resigns From Heritage Foundation After Dissertation Controversy - for arguing in his Harvard dissertation that Hispanic immigrants to the U.S. have substantially lower IQs than whites, resigned Friday.

Texas Explosion Criminal Investigation Launched By Law Enforcement Officials - federal agents said they found bomb-making materials belonging to a paramedic who helped evacuate residents the night of the explosion.
After Explosion, Texas Remains Wary of Regulation - NYTimes.com

Katherine Russell Not Involved In Boston Bombing, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev Allegedly Says
Boston Bombing Suspects Implicated In 2011 Triple Murder: Officials - The victims in the unsolved case had their "throats slashed" and "their bodies covered in seven pounds of marijuana," waiting on further DNA evidence before bringing an indictment against Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

Fungus network 'plays role in plant communication' - Plants can communicate the onset of an attack from aphids by making use of an underground network of fungi, researchers have found.

Will & Monifa Sims Do Karaoke On Leno's 'Pumpcast News' Bit And It's Amazing (video)

How to Tell Your Friends from the Japs - Lawyers, Guns & Money

How New Legislation Could Give Smartphone Owners Control Over Their Privacy | ThinkProgress

050913
Bangladesh factory fire kills 8; collapse toll tops 900 | Reuters
Latest Bangladesh factory fire kills owner, seven others - "Clearly the executives of the factory did not have their own exit strategy,"
Russia To Sell Anti-Aircraft Missile Batteries To Syria, Israel Warns U.S.

Greek Youth Unemployment Rises Above 60 Percent
This Video Of One Half-Second Of High Frequency Trading Is Insane, Terrifying - What you see is trading gone haywire, hopelessly beyond the control of any regulators that might want to make sure all of these trades are legitimate.
ATM Fraud Allows Thieves To Steal $45 Million In Hours
Hullabaloo - Who are these "people" you speak of? - 86% of voters believe Congress should make its top focus jobs creation, with 86% saying Congress should prioritize work on improving the economy.

Foreign-Born Infographic - U.S. Census Bureau

The real lesson of Benghazi - It’s that the party-aligned press works so well for Republicans that they’ve become too lazy to bother explaining their ideas, or doing the hard work of actual oversight. (Fox)
Benghazi Hearing Reveals Incompetence, But No Cover-Up
Merry Benghazi Day! - Lawyers, Guns & Money :
Rachel Maddow Relentlessly Mocks GOP For Benghazi Conspiracy Theory (video)
Jon Stewart Shreds Fox News, GOP Benghazi Theories: 'You Have No F*cking Idea!' (video)

The New Truth About the Cop Shot in Watertown: Friendly-Fire in a Getaway - Alexander Abad-Santos - The Atlantic Wire

Political Animal - Low Country Boils Over - Busch’s defeat shows once again that the old southern white Democratic formula of moving as far to the right as possible and hoping to win a personality contest just doesn’t much work anymore, which is why the ranks of the Blue Dog southern white Democrats in the House from the Deep South have dwindled to near nothingness

The Ongoing Failure of Cleveland Police to Take Violence Against Women Seriously - Lawyers, Guns & Money : Cleveland has had more rapes per capita than any major city in America over the past several years, and roughly 2/3 of them are never even prosecuted.
Cleveland Kidnapping Victims Endured Decade Of Isolation, Rape, Beatings
Ariel Castro Charges: Man Accused In Ohio Abductions Appears In Court On Kidnapping, Rape Charges
Ariel Castro's Alleged Suicide Note Includes Confession About Cleveland Kidnapping

Balloon Juice » The Reverse Midas Touch - Teahadist and now head honcho at Heritage, Jim DeMint, has had a fine week:
Conservative Immigration Scholar: Black and Hispanic Immigrants Are Dumber Than European Immigrants | Mother Jones - Jason Richwine, who coauthored a Heritage Foundation study on immigration, didn't just argue that certain minorities are dumber in his scholarship—he also said it at a public panel.

Undermining Pell | NewAmerica.net - How Colleges Compete for Wealthy Students and Leave the Low-Income Behind
Infographic: Is Your State's Highest-Paid Employee A Coach? (Probably) - Infographic: Is Your State's Highest-Paid Employee A Coach? (Probably)

Every Every Every Generation Has Been the Me Me Me Generation - Elspeth Reeve - The Atlantic Wire
It's Different for Girls with ADHD - Maria Yagoda - The Atlantic Wire - ADHD does not look the same in boys and girls. Women with the disorder tend to be less hyperactive and impulsive, more disorganized, scattered, forgetful, and introverted. “They’ve alternately been anxious or depressed for years,” Littman says. “It’s this sense of not being able to hold everything together.”

Politico to Test a Pay Wall With Some Readers of Its Site - NYTimes.com (oh, good)

Anatomy of a Cosplayer | Polygon


050813
Silvio Berlusconi's tax fraud conviction upheld on first appeal | World news | guardian.co.uk - Former prime minister has long denied tax fraud charges, and is expected to appeal to Italy's highest court

US officials blocked rescue efforts while Benghazi burned, Congress told | World news | guardian.co.uk - Diplomat Gregory Hicks accuses State Department of cover-up in evidence that may yet hurt Hillary Clinton's White House bid
GOP Star Witnesses Debunk Right-Wing Benghazi Conspiracy Theories | ThinkProgress
Dick Cheney Slams Obama On Benghazi - Dick Cheney Takes The Great Mulligan - Esquire
Fox News Invites Convicted Cover-Up Expert Oliver North To Comment On Alleged Benghazi Cover-Up | ThinkProgress

Daily Kos: How We Can Help President Obama Fulfill His Pledge to Close Guantanamo

Obama May Back F.B.I. Plan to Wiretap Web Users - NYTimes.com - a sweeping overhaul of surveillance laws that would make it easier to wiretap people who communicate using the Internet rather than by traditional phone services

US air force strips 17 officers of power to launch nuclear missiles | World news | guardian.co.uk - Nuclear missile unit's deputy commander says it is suffering from 'rot' within its ranks in leaked internal email

Echidne Of The Snakes: When Corpses Are Buried Or Unearthed

Charles Ramsey recounts heroic day - YouTube
Charles Ramsey: ‘Take that reward and give it to’ the kidnap victims | The Raw Story
Ariel Castro Charged With Kidnapping And Rape In Ohio Missing Girls Case

“An Intellectually Dishonest Argument” - Lawyers, Guns & Money : The Obama administration’s inexplicable decision to defend its arbitrary emergency contraception restrictions came up again before Edward Korman. This went about as well as it deserved to:
Plan B As Plan A
North Carolina May Force Teens To Get Notarized Parental Consent Before Getting STD Tests | ThinkProgress - In North Carolina specifically, half of all new reported cases of sexually transmitted infections occur among people between the ages of 15 and 24.

Tom Coburn Withdraws Gun Amendment On Water Bill (UPDATE)

The House Takes Mass Incarceration to Task - Will the Over-Criminalization Task Force be able to put a dent in our soaring rates of incarceration, or will it fall into the same rancor that defines every D.C. debate?

Heritage Study Author: 'Hispanic Immigrants Will Have Low-IQ Children' | ThinkProgress (terrible enough, worse with teaparty takeover +Charles Murray works at AEI)

Eschaton: It's Actually Kind of Impressive - Niall Ferguson types the wankiest thing to ever appear on this or any other Internet. (he invited Andrew Sullivan to his wedding so he can't be homophobic)

Daily Kos: Elizabeth Warren: Students should get the same loan rate as big banks
Hullabaloo: The Medicare crystal ball: It's a huge mistake to allow our politicians to fear-monger us on behalf of their wealthy benefactors to give up the meager benefits we know we will need many years hence. (wrong, wrong and wrong)
Dani Rodrik's weblog: What is wrong (and right) in economics?

Cheating Moms' Affair Habits Revealed In New Ashley Madison Survey - the site also revealed that they typically see the highest spike in female signups on the day after Mother's Day.

Bioteeth From Stemcells Will Regrow Complete Tooth, Superior to Implants : Health & Medicine : Science World Report

Jonathan Mayer And Cookies In Firefox - Business Insider

050713
Syria Internet Goes Down, Traffic Monitoring Sites Confirm
Bangladesh Building Collapse Death Toll Tops 700 As Protests Rage On
Pentagon accuses China of trying to hack US defence networks | World news | guardian.co.uk - China dismisses as 'hype' Pentagon's claim that China is using cybersnooping to acquire technology for its military modernisation

The Economic Recovery Is For Real -- Daily Intelligencer
France hails austerity rethink as Dijsselbloem issues bank stress-test warning - as it happened | Business | guardian.co.uk
Impact of Sequester: Weather Balloons May Get Cut Loose
Working Poor Face Long Odds: 'You Have To Just Wait Your Turn, But That Turn May Never Come'
Brad DeLong : I Confess Clive Crook Is Getting to Me: Bloomberg Has Some House-Cleaning to Do Weblogging

Military Sexual Assaults Spike Despite Efforts To Combat Epidemic - Sexual assaults occurred at an average of more than 70 per day in the United States military during fiscal year 2012 (support our rapists)

Tom Coburn Pushes Gun Amendments On Water Resources Bill - Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) is attempting to attach two pro-gun amendments to a water resources bill that the Senate is scheduled to take up on Tuesday. One measure would allow gun owners to carry their firearms to outdoor recreational areas that are currently off-limits, and the other would create a registry of the guns and ammunition owned by the federal government.
Kelly Ayotte Explains Position On Background Checks - Kelly Ayotte Explains It All To You - Esquire
Flake: 'I've Always Supported Background Checks' | TPM LiveWire

The Republican `Permission Structure' for Racial Resentment - Bloomberg
Frank Rich on Race and the Republicans -- New York Magazine - The party on the brink of destroying the Voting Rights Act reminds us that Republicans were really the great civil-rights leaders all along.
Louisiana Court Finds Bobby Jindal Education Reform Unconsititutional - The Court Brings The Big Hammer Down On Bobby Jindal - Esquire - You can't use public money to support religious schools. Period. It is the most preposterously obvious violation of the Establishment clause of the First Amendment this side of the outright attempt by the newly insane state of North Carolina to establish Christianity as an official religion
Delaware Senate Passes Gay Marriage Bill

J.C. Penney Spent $170 Million to Install Johnson Team - Bloomberg

Cleveland police criticised as city asks: why were women not found sooner? | World news | The Guardian - Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight leave hospital as neighbours insist they reported suspicious behaviour

US fast food chains 'failing' healthier menu test | Life and style | guardian.co.uk - Study finds major fast food chains have 'barely improved nutritional quality of menus in 14 years' despite their promises

Judge rips Obama’s right-wing Plan B stance - Salon.com - "You're disadvantaging young people, African-Americans, the poor... that's the policy of the Obama administration? (actually, yes)

NYT Still Making Williamsburg Hipster Jokes -- Daily Intelligencer

050613
Israeli Bombs and American Qualms: Assessing Syria | Center for a New American Security
U.N. has testimony that Syrian rebels used sarin gas: investigator | Reuters (McCain: "bomb, bomb, bomb, oh ... wait)
The unlikely winner in the war on drugs? Iran | FP Passport
The Irish Prime Minister has just been threatened with excommunication from the Catholic Church if he passes new abortion legislation in Ireland. His response:

German Finance Minister Who Helped Start Euro Now Calls For Its End

Red-State Democrats Buck Obama On Social Security Cuts - The majority of Senate Democrats running for reelection in 2014, including three running in red states, have broken with President Barack Obama and are opposing his effort to cut Social Security benefits, imperiling the austerity project known as the "grand bargain." (his favorite Republican pony)
The Chutzpah Caucus - NYTimes.com - At this point the economic case for austerity — for slashing government spending even in the face of a weak economy — has collapsed.
Austerity Has Cost The U.S. Economy 2.2 Million Jobs: Study (Obama won't let facts get in his way)
Why Simpson/Bowles Should Be DOA. - the bait-and-switch pulled by the Republicans after the Greenspan commission on Social Security and the 1993 Clinton budget deal, in which deficit reductions were used to finance hugely expansive Republican boondoggles like unnecessary, trillion-dollar wars and upper-class tax cuts.
America's Youth Unemployment Rate Is One Of The Worst Of Wealthy, Large Economies: Report
Larry Summers Says that Reinhart-Rogoff Type Mistakes Are "Distressingly Common" Then Goes on to Prove His Point | Beat the Press
The Real Rogoff-Reinhart Problem Was Not the Mistakes, It Was the Lack of Basic Transparency | FDL Action (economics is a special kind of "science" where you don't have to publish data or methodology)
The grad student who exposed Reinhart and Rogoff: They still can’t get their facts straight - Quartz

Newly Declassified Memo Shows CIA Shaped Zero Dark Thirty's Narrative
Lawfare › Oxford Union Debate on Drone Warfare
The Rise of the Missile Carriers | U.S. Naval Institute
Weekly Standard Accidentally Disproves Central Right-Wing Benghazi Claim | Blog | Media Matters for America

Jeffrey Krusinski, Air Force Officer In Charge Of Sexual Assault Prevention Program, Arrested For Alleged Sexual Assault

West Fertilizer Co.'s Insurance Policy Was Just $1 Million Before Deadly Plant Explosion - "It's rare for Texas to require insurance for any kind of hazardous activity," he said. "We have very little oversight of hazardous activities and even less regulation."Father was NRA president from 1959-1961, is part of the small, Birmingham, Ala., law firm of Porter, Porter & Hassinger. The firm’s website notes its expertise in defending gun manufacturers in lawsuits.”

Open Carry March In Washington Seeks To Put 'Government On Notice' With Loaded Rifles (10,000 well-regulated militia-men marching on the WH, so begins the "armed rebellion" what could go wrong?)
The gun toll we’re ignoring: suicide - Ideas - The Boston Globe - You wouldn’t know it from the national debate, but most American firearm deaths aren’t murder (50/day, especially in "Liberty States")
Vendor Pulls 'Obama' Target From Booth At NRA Convention | TPM LiveWire (preparing for their "armed rebellion" in three years)
NRA Meeting: Author Rob Olive’s Gun-Free Future | TPMDC
When Stories Collide | TPM Editors Blog - On March 10th, Middlefield, Ohio police made what appeared to be a routine traffic stop of a man who had run a stop sign. But then James Gilkerson emerged from his stopped car firing 37 rounds from an AK-47 rifle. Amazingly the two officers in the cruiser sustained only relatively minor injuries and fired off 54 rounds of their own, eventually killing Gilkerson. You can see the shocking and somewhat disturbing dash-cam video released by local police just this weekend here. Perhaps not surprisingly, in Gilkerson’s car police found eight 40-round magazines for the AK-47 and a bunch of militia and terrorist related literature
Background Checks Bill Would Get A 'Couple More Votes' Now: Harry Reid
FBI arrests Minnesota ‘militia type’ for plotting ‘localized terror attack’ | The Raw Story

TIME/CNN Poll Shows Increasing Number Of Americans Won't Give Up Civil Liberties To Fight Terrorism | Techdirt - from the the-government-can't-give-you-safety,-but-it-can-take-your-rights dept
Anonymous Hacker Targeted Bombing Suspect | TPMDC

Pro-Business Decisions Are Defining This Supreme Court - NYTimes.com - A study has found the current Supreme Court to be the most pro-business since World War II.
Brad DeLong : Did John Roberts and Nino Scalia Kill the Republican Party with Citizens United?
Rush Limbaugh vs. Cumulus Media | Blog | Media Matters for America - At this point, it doesn't really matter who you believe. The fact that Limbaugh's affiliates are consistently reporting losses and that Limbaugh is now attacking them is evidence of the one thing that has become undeniable: Rush Limbaugh is bad for business. Onward we go...
Rapists Will No Longer Have Custody Rights In Colorado If New Bill Passes (video) | Addicting Info - 31 states that allow a rapist to enjoy the same parental rights as any father,

Balloon Juice » I’m No Math Major - The conservative Heritage Foundation is claiming in a new report that bipartisan immigration legislation pending in the Senate would cost taxpayers $6.3 trillion. (just makin' shit up: $500,000/immigrant)
Wash. Post Highlights Contradiction That Undermines Heritage Immigration Study | Blog | Media Matters for America
When Your Boss Steals Your Wages: The Invisible Epidemic That’s Sweeping America | Alternet - Wage theft is fast becoming a top trend of the 21st-century labor market

Everything Turning Up Horse Poop for Michele Bachmann
Why did Komen for the Cure give Nancy Brinker a 64 percent raise? - Salon.com - Komen, already under fire for shrinking contributions for breast cancer research, paid its CEO $684,000 last year

ta1901 comments on What is something every girl should know about relationships?

New study finds no evidence for theory humans wiped out megafauna
Scientists Discover a Brain Region That Controls Aging - Businessweek - Turns out that the elusive Fountain of Youth may exist after all … in our heads.

Teacher 'powerless' to stop ex-girlfriend's cyberstalking - Canada - CBC News - Court order fails to prevent comments from being posted online
When Startups Need More Lawyers Than Employees, The Patent System Isn't Working | Techdirt
Google Aims To Patent Policy Violation Checker, Potentially Revolutionizing Email Snooping

050513
Syrian regime accuses Israel of declaring war after further air strikes | World news | The Guardian - Israel's night raid on 'missiles destined for Hezbollah' deepens fears of conflict spreading beyond Syrian border across region
Israeli Warplanes Strike Syria In Escalation: Official
Kenyan Mau Mau victims in talks with UK government over legal settlement | World news | The Guardian - Payments to thousands who were tortured during 1950s insurgency could open door for other victims of British colonial rule - discovery of a vast archive of colonial-era documents which the Foreign Office (FCO) had kept hidden for decades, and which shed new and stark light on the dying days of British rule, not only in Kenya but around the empire.
Royal Society scientists angered by Prince Andrew's election as fellow | Science | The Guardian - Some of the Royal Society's 1,450 fellows are unhappy at Duke of York's election and say 'royal fellows' should be phased out - asking the wider question of whether it is time for an institution based on science to end the practice of honouring people on the basis of heredity.

Krugman "legitimizes" MMT (but needs a copy editor) | Corrente
Robert Samuelson Tells the Middle Class and Poor that They Should Stop Expecting to Have Decent Lives Because His Rich Friends Want All the Money | Beat the Press

Uncle of Boston bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev visits funeral home | World news | guardian.co.uk - Pre-burial rituals carried out as FBI continues investigations at Tsarnaev family's Cambridge home
Friend Who Had "Fling" With Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on the 3 Additional Suspects: "They All Idolized Jahar" | Mother Jones - In an interview with Mother Jones, a woman who says she hooked up with Tsarnaev sheds light on him and his friends now in custody
Teenagers, social media, and terrorism: a threat level hard to assess - CSMonitor.com - Authorities are leaning more toward zero tolerance of teenagers who fling around online threats about acts of violence or terrorism. As a result, what might have once merited a slap on the wrist may today result in criminal charges.

Former FBI agent revealed that every phone conversation a US citizen engages in is recorded. "We certainly have ways in national security investigations to find out exactly what was said in that [phone] conversation. It's not necessarily something that the FBI is going to want to present in court" : technology
The NSA Is Building the Country's Biggest Spy Center (Watch What You Say) | Threat Level | Wired.com
NSA Data Center Brings Concerns Over Security and Privacy and Jobs - Slashdot

Daily Kos: GunFAIL XVI
Op-Ed Columnist - Joe Nocera's Blog - NYTimes.com - The Gun Report: May 3, 2013
Emotion and Reason in the Gun Debate - How influenced should we be by stories like the killing of 2-year-old Caroline Sparks?

Pigford II and the Eternal Problem of How to Prove Discrimination | Mother Jones

'Iron Man 3' Takes On Drone Strikes, Media Manipulation, And The War On Terror | ThinkProgress

Daily Beast's Ferguson Apologizes For Anti-Gay Comments | Blog | Media Matters for America
Political Animal - Today in what’s wrong with the economy: full-time writers at a hit TV show who make $500 a week and enjoy no benefits - Fashion Police. The program, which stars Joan Rivers, is one the E! network’s most popular shows. And yet its writers, who work virtually full-time (30 to 40 hours per week), are paid a measly $500 a week — with no benefits.

Solar panels could destroy U.S. utilities, according to U.S. utilities | Grist
How can we boost distributed solar and save utilities at the same time? | Grist

Letter Puts End to Persistent 'Mockingbird' Rumor : NPR - New evidence may end the decades-old speculation that Truman Capote — not Harper Lee — wrote the novel, To Kill a Mockingbird. Dr. Wayne Flynt, retired professor of history from Auburn University discusses the basis for the persistent rumor and explains why it is indeed false.

Suicides almost double among 50-somethings – The Chart - CNN.com Blogs
Schizophrenic. Killer. My Cousin. | Mother Jones - It's insanity to kill your father with a kitchen knife. It's also insanity to close hospitals, fire therapists, and leave families to face mental illness on their own.
MAP: Which States Have Cut Treatment For the Mentally Ill the Most? | Mother Jones
FerdThePenguinGuy comments on My coworker died in my arms today. Fuck retail, no one else knew CPR but me.

Tom Wheeler and the Coming War Over Net Neutrality : The New Yorker (Obambi's corporatism at work)
SendGrid Fires Employee After Firestorm Over Inappropriate Jokes - Slashdot

050413
Force-feeding at Guantánamo Bay puts pressure on Obama to close prison | World news | The Guardian - UN condemns force-feeding of inmates, while lawyer claims drone strikes being used as alternative to detaining suspects
Syria: massacres of Sunni families reported in Assad's heartland | World news | The Observer - President inaugurates 'martyrs' statue as fresh violence explodes in Alawite zone
Bangladesh factory collapse: rescuers find owner's gun as death toll hits 550 | World news | The Observer - Dhaka police are questioning Rana plaza owner Sohel Rana about gun licence, and have arrested structural engineer
Seven US soldiers killed in Afghanistan bomb blast | World news | guardian.co.uk - Renewed violence comes as President Hamid Karzai confirms CIA payments to Afghan government would continue
Palestine now recognised by greater power than US or Israel – Google | Technology | guardian.co.uk - Internet giant follows UN in recognising statehood, changing home page tagline from 'Palestinian territories' to 'Palestine'
Vatican 'orders Cardinal Keith O'Brien to leave Scotland' | World news | guardian.co.uk - Britain's most senior priest, who retired over inappropriate sexual conduct, has been advised against Dunbar move, report says (try Ireland)

The Rich Have Gained $5.6 Trillion in the 'Recovery,' While the Rest of Us Have Lost $669 Billion | Alternet
22 Facts That Prove That The Bottom 90 Percent Of America Is Systematically Getting Poorer - According to the Pew Research Center, the top 7 percent of all U.S. households own 63 percent of all the wealth in the country ... The six heirs of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton have as much wealth as the bottom one-third of all Americans combined.
The April jobs report, in 8 charts
Dow Jones Reaches 15,000 For First Time | TPM LiveWire
Harvard Professor Trashes Keynes For Homosexuality - Harvard Professor and author Niall Ferguson says John Maynard Keynes' economic philosophy was flawed and he didn't care about future generations because he was gay and didn't have children. This takes gay-bashing to new heights. It even perversely pins the full weight of the financial crisis on the gay community and the barren.
Political Animal - “There’s wrong, there’s very wrong and then there’s Niall Ferguson.”
Brad DeLong : Psychohistorical Origins of Niall Ferguson's Bizarre Remarks About John Maynard Keynes - Gertrude Himmelfarb (mother of demon spawn William Kristol)
Pankaj Mishra reviews ‘Civilisation’ by Niall Ferguson · LRB 3 November 2011

Are all telephone calls recorded and accessible to the US government? | Glenn Greenwald | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk - A former FBI counterterrorism agent claims on CNN that this is the case - "No, welcome to America. All of that stuff is being captured as we speak whether we know it or like it or not."

California Wildfire Grows To 43 Square Miles (photos, video)

NRA’s New President Wants To Lead The ‘Culture War’ Against ‘Fake President’ Obama - “With Jim Porter, they’ve gone full crazy.”
Stella Tremblay, New Hampshire Legislator, Says Jeff Bauman 'Was Not In Pain' After Bombing
Wayne LaPierre: 'How Many Bostonians Wish They Had A Gun Two Weeks Ago?'
Five-year-old shoots and kills toddler sister with birthday present rifle – video | World news | guardian.co.uk (idiots)
Guns and Political Suicide - NYTimes.com - Conservative politicians, Broockman and Skovron argue, overestimate the conservative leanings of constituents by the largest margins – by about 20 percentage points; liberals overestimate by about 10 points; and centrist Democrats like Heitkamp overestimate by about 15 points.
A march on Washington with loaded rifles - Salon.com - A gun activist is planning a massive march on D.C., with participants' rifles illegally slung over their shoulders (the "armed rebellion" they are all expecting)

House of Un-Representatives - NYTimes.com - the great gerrymander of the people’s House — part of a brilliant, $30 million Republican action plan at the state level — has now produced a clot of retrograde politicians who are comically out of step with a majority of Americans.
Eschaton: Permission - This "permission structure" business illuminates the centrist Democrats approach to revoking the New Deal. Bi-partisan commissions, historic presidencies, hostage-taking, tribalism are all tools for obtaining permission to violate core values that poll really, really well.
Hullabaloo - Did you know the White House invented marketing? the plan seems to revolve around getting a few Republicans that other Republicans trust to sign on and then let them sell the Grand Bargain to the troops. (like a Republican from Mars)
Why Obama’s Critics Completely Dropped The Ball On The ‘Permission Structure’ | TPMDC
So about that ‘permission structure’ …

US officials claim errors in case of death row prisoner Willie Manning | World news | guardian.co.uk - Justice Department suggests evidence used to help convict Manning was flawed as officials reportedly agree to further tests (hi-tech lynching, for real)

the mask of god: Joy Division (Slayer and Slain)

Against foodies: Alison Pearlman’s Smart Casual reviewed. - Slate Magazine - An academic book about the evolution of restaurants sheds new light on the moral bankruptcy of foodie-ism.
‘Mockingbird’ Author Sues to Regain Copyright - The 87-year-old author alleges Pinkus took advantage of her declining hearing and eyesight seven years ago to get her to assign the book’s copyright to him and a company he controlled.

UK.Gov passes Instagram Act: All your pics belong to everyone now • The Register - Everyone = Silicon Valley ad platforms tech companies

050313
Syrian National Coalition claims 50 killed in new massacre | World news | The Guardian - Syrian opposition group has condemned 'large-scale massacre in Bayda' and asked for protection for country's people
Bangladesh Building Collapse Death Toll Tops 500; Engineer Whistleblower Arrested - Bangladesh's finance minister downplayed the impact of last week's factory-building collapse on his country's garment industry, saying he didn't think it was "really serious" Friday, hours after the 500th body was pulled from the debris.
Chaudhry Zulfikar Dead: Lead Pakistan Prosecutor In Benazir Bhutto Murder Case Shot To Death, Police Say

Not Enough Inflation - NYTimes.com - Fundamentally, the right wants the Fed to obsess over inflation, when the truth is that we’d be better off if the Fed paid less attention to inflation and more attention to unemployment. Indeed, a bit more inflation would be a good thing, not a bad thing.
Keynesianism today: Start by stating the argument correctly.

Balloon Juice » Long Reads: President Obama Still Wants to Close Guantanamo (Republifuckers at work)
US drone strikes being used as alternative to Guantánamo, lawyer says | World news | guardian.co.uk - Lawyer who drafted White House drone policy says US would rather kill suspects than send them to Cuban detention centre
The pro-rule of law argument against a 'drone court' - The Hill's Congress Blog

Terror Database Grows: Number Of Names In TIDE Jumped From 540,000 To 875,000 In Just 5 Years
The bad joke called 'the FISA court' shows how a 'drone court' would work | Glenn Greenwald | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk - Newly released data show that the government submitted 1,789 eavesdropping requests last year, and none was rejected

New NRA President Jim Porter - The NRA Defies The Odds - Esquire - I would be glad simply if the NRA would look at Wayne LaPierre and decide that being represented by a velociraptor in a $400 suit is not consonant with this historical moment. Maybe it's time to put a moderate face on the organization, no? ... the organization selects as its new president a neo-Confederate yahoo who counseld armed sedition and whom, on the issue of race, you don't exactly need the Enigma Machine to decode. Visit us at Esquire.com
The New NRA President Fantasizes About "Whipping" Anti-Gun Opponents

Balloon Juice » Nation’s billionaires finally get a seat at the table - Recognizing that the problem with our country today is the enormous power wielded by hotel housekeepers and second grade teachers, President Obama has nominated a fierce advocate for billionaires to head Commerce:

Markey starts general with 4 point lead - Public Policy Polling
Ed Markey Massachusetts Senate Race - Ed Markey Hits The Trail - Esquire - For decades, Eddie Markey labored under the shadow of the Allegedly Smartest Man in Congress. Whatever Markey did, it was eclipsed by the cubic zirconia brilliance of Barney Frank. Frank was sharp, to be sure - even broken glass can catch the light and cut - and funny.

The Drought And Religion - Praying For Rain And For Common Sense - Esquire - The ongoing drought remains our most thoroughly ignored environmental story, and it is ignored even as an adjunct to the coverage of the Great Climate Change Hoax, but, boy howdy, religious fervor will get you in the newspapers.
National Day of Reason backlash: Penny Nance blames the Holocaust on reason on Fox news.

Fox's Andrea Tantaros On Plan B: "Is The Obama Daughter, Malia, Going To Go On Birth Control?" | Video | Media Matters for America

Howard Kurtz Had Larger Daily Download Role Than Other Advisory Board Members
Hollywood conservative unmasked as notorious Holocaust revisionist | World news | guardian.co.uk - Republican Party Animals operator David Stein says he is really David Cole, and that he still holds controversial views

Booman Tribune ~ A Progressive Community - 16 year old Kiera Wilmot, a Florida student who mixed toilet bowl cleaner and aluminum foil in a small plastic bottle on school grounds

What the F*ck is Katie Roiphe Talking About? | Corey Robin

Consumption of artificially and sugar-sweetened beverages and incident type 2 diabetes in the Etude Epidémiologique auprès des femmes de la Mutuelle Générale de l'Education Nationale–European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition cohort

The WHO - I Can See For Miles (1968) - YouTube
The Who - Wont Get Fooled Again - YouTube
Allman Brothers & Berry Oakley 1972 - YouTube

050213
Guantanamo Hunger Strike Lays Bare Detainees' Growing Desperation
Bangladesh Building Collapse Death Toll Rises To 430, Many Still Missing
Bangladesh’s Are Only the Latest in Textile Factory Disasters - NYTimes.com - In this way, for the last 200 years, garment manufacturing has flowed from ethnicity to ethnicity, as well as from region to region, from New England to the Middle Atlantic states, from North to South. Each group, when it begins to demand more accountability and a living wage, is discarded.
Balloon Juice » One Reason It’s Hard to Write About the Bangladesh Factory Disaster - A jury on Wednesday awarded a total of $240 million to 32 mentally disabled turkey processing plant workers in Iowa for what an expert witness described as years of “virtual enslavement” by the Texas company that oversaw their care, work and lodging

Reinhart, Rogoff Backing Furiously Away From Austerity Movement - They claim that their views on austerity have never changed, but the record tells a different story. They're still trying to have it both ways -- advocating for government belt-tightening while trying to avoid being seen as political.
The systemic plight of labor | Felix Salmon - total US wages as a proportion of total US GDP — a number which continues to hit all-time lows. Blodget also puts up the converse chart — corporate profits as a percentage of GDP. That line, you won’t be surprised to hear, is hitting new all-time highs.

Kentucky Rifles For Children - The Worst Quote Of The Day - Esquire - A five-year-old boy in the southern US state of Kentucky has accidentally shot dead his two-year-old sister at the family home. He had received the rifle, specially made for children, as a gift last year.

Medicaid Expansion: Oregon study shows benefits, mostly. | New Republic - A report indicates just how important it can be in improving poor people's lives
Scott Walker's Jobs Problem - Mad Times In Madison - Esquire - Those are the numbers provided by the U.S. Chamber Of Commerce, which is basically a trade organization for oligarchs. And they show that Walker has managed to place Wisconsin dead freaking last in short-term job growth and 44th out of 50 states in its overall ranking.
From a mental hospital in Las Vegas, he's dispatched by bus to Sacramento - Sacramento City News - The Sacramento Bee - Patient dumping – some call it "bus therapy" – has been an ongoing problem for shelters across the country. In recent years, Los Angeles city officials have successfully prosecuted several cases of hospitals "dumping" patients onto Skid Row, arguing that the acts violate laws against abuse of dependent adults and even false imprisonment. A relatively new federal law prohibits shipping sick patients from one location to another before confirming they have a place to live and get treatment.

U.S. to Defend Age Limits on Morning-After Pill Sales - NYTimes.com - The Justice Department’s decision to appeal is in line with the views of dozens of conservative, anti-abortion groups who do not want contraceptives made available to young girls. But the decision was criticized by advocates for women’s reproductive health and abortion rights who cite years of scientific research saying the drug is safe and effective for all ages. (still chasing his crazy Republican daddies)
Obama Administration Plan B Appeal Draws Criticism From Reproductive Rights Groups
Hey, FDA: Drop the Plan B Age Restriction | The Nation
Of Judges and Judging - NYTimes.com - If you read only one judicial opinion this year, you might consider skipping the Supreme Court entirely and going right to a decision issued early this month by Judge Edward R. Korman of Federal District Court in Brooklyn. The ruling ordered the Obama administration to lift age restrictions on the over-the-counter availability of emergency contraception
Obama’s half-dose of Plan B - Salon.com - Emergency contraception being made available for those 15 and up may sound like a victory. But here's why it's not

Talking Points Memo | Breaking News and Analysis | TPM (Tina fired his lying ass)
Balloon Juice » Don’t Let the Door Hit Ya - For those of you keeping score, that means that Tina Brown, magazine killer, has more integrity than CNN

How Cooper Union Gave Up by Daniel Luzer | Washington Monthly - the reason Cooper Union is charging tuition has to do with some very specific, and very bad financial decisions the school made in recent years.
The tragedy of Cooper Union | Felix Salmon

J.C. Penney Pricing Disaster Destroyed Employee Morale (clothes not iPhones)

Study links insecticide use to invertebrate die-offs | Environment | The Guardian - Dutch research reveals correlation between water polluted with imidacloprid and low numbers of aquatic insects
White House warned on imminent Arctic ice death spiral | Nafeez Ahmed | Environment | guardian.co.uk - National security officials worried by rapid loss of Arctic summer sea ice overlook threat of permanent global food shortages
How climate scientists are being framed | Graham Readfearn | Environment | guardian.co.uk - To turn the public off climate change, right-wing media is blaming scientists for hurting kids and being puppets of totalitarianism
Belief in biblical end-times stifling climate change action in U.S.: study | The Raw Story - the fact that such an overwhelming percentage of Republican citizens profess a belief in the Second Coming (76 percent in 2006, according to our sample) suggests that governmental attempts to curb greenhouse emissions would encounter stiff resistance even if every Democrat in the country wanted to curb them,” (every person in America with half a brain)

The 8 Most Wildly Irresponsible Vintage Toys | Cracked.com

Facebook profits rise despite drop in US users | Technology | guardian.co.uk - Number of unique visitors falls in US and remains static in UK, but social media site's profits show healthy growth
Microsoft Shipped 900,000 Surface Tablets in First Quarter, Says IDC - John Paczkowski - Mobile - AllThingsD

Microsoft said to be planning next-gen Surface announcement for June | The Verge
Intel’s high-performance, low-power secret: the Haswell SoC | Ars Technica
Intel’s “Iris” wants to change how you feel about integrated graphics | Ars Technica

050113
Bangladesh Building Collapse: Protesters Demand Worker Safety As Death Toll Tops 400
Happy Anniversary, Dumbass - Esquire - Most of the 300,000 deaths in that war occurred after he flew his plane and told his lies. Most of the billions of dollars wasted were wasted after he landed on the flight deck and got the pundits all moist. And this is what happened in Iraq today.
Iraq Violence Kills 460 In April

Banks Criticize Strict Controls for Foreign Bets - NYTimes.com (because Obama made them immune from laws)
Federal Reserve Sticks To Stimulus Plan, Warns 'Fiscal Policy Is Restraining Economic Growth'

GOP Census Bill Would Eliminate America's Economic Indicators (GOP Census Bill Would Eliminate America's Economic Indicators (no facts for you, baby)
Check Out Who's Hiding $32 Trillion in Offshore Accounts - Money Morning

Three additional people taken into custody in Boston Marathon bombings - Boston.com
Most want death penalty for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev if he is convicted of Boston bombing - The Washington Post - Most Americans, 74 percent, also back the decision to try Tsarnaev in the federal court system instead of a military tribunal. (who are these "American" pussies, anyway)
Katherine Russell, Boston Bombing Suspect's Widow, Wants Tamerlan Tsarnaev's Body Released

Kelly Ayotte Confronted Over Background Checks Vote By Erica Lafferty, Newtown Victim's Daughter
Gun Control Armed Revolution Poll - One Of Us Is Crazy And I Don't Think It's Me - Esquire - Eighteen percent of Democrats said an armed revolt "might be necessary," as compared to 27 percent of independents and 44 percent of Republicans. Support levels were similar among males and females but higher among less educated voters.

Permission Slips - Esquire - Perhaps the most important moment of the president's press conference today was his introduction of the term, "permission structure" to Our National Dialogue, and specifically in the context of trying to get Republican members of Congress to remember that they were not elected to be drive-time AM radio talk-show hosts ... To borrow a line from Jack Nicholson in The Last Detail, the Republican members of the House are the fking base, motherfker.
David Brooks and the Role of Opinion Journalism -- Daily Intelligencer - The latest offensive, or counter-offensive, in the passive-aggressive Cold War between David Brooks and Paul Krugman has taken the form of an entire Brooks column not very subtly lambasting Krugman as a tired partisan hack while justifying his own work as thoughtful, elevated, and intellectually independent.
Political Animal - The Bus Whose Passengers Don’t Mind Running Off the Road - Tea Folk dominate the rank-and-file Republican Party—representing about half its members and well over half of its activist energy (and probably primary voting)—but don’t much give a damn about the GOP as anything other than as an instrument for the advancement of their very conservative ideological views (on social as well as fiscal and economic policy). (and getting crazier)

FDA's Plan B on Plan B Is Still Not Good Enough - The Obama administration modified its Plan B policy yet again, making over-the-counter emergency contraceptives available for all women over age 15. But the age limit—even if lower—remains completely irrational. (Obama never gives up on stupid ideas)
DOJ Appealing Judge's Morning-After Pill Order On Age Limits (what, exactly, is the political point?)

Justice Denied - For Misdemeanor Cases, Trials Are Elusive - NYTimes.com - How 60 Days Turn Into 600 in a Misdemeanor Case (American "justice" and the 6th Amendment)
Chris Christie Comes Out For Good Samaritan Drug-Overdose Bill - Christie's decision to reverse his earlier opposition to the bill paved the way for a compromise measure to pass the state Senate and Assembly by overwhelming bipartisan margins on Monday. New Jersey will join 11 other states and the District of Columbia, which have similar laws, if he signs the bill as expected.

Howard Kurtz Indignantly Accuses Jason Collins Of Not Disclosing Thing He Actually Totally Disclosed (this hurts)

Ground Turkey Study Finds More Than Half Of Samples Contaminated With Fecal Bacteria

Environmental Racism? Toxic Gowanus Sludge Is Heading For Red Hook: Gothamist (the rich ship their shit to poor neighborhoods)

Anne Frank's Diary Too 'Pornographic' For 7th-Grade Students, Claims Michigan Parent - , Gail Horalek filed a formal complaint with the district (way to make yourself famous on the internets for your stupdity, Gail)

The tragedy of Cooper Union | Felix Salmon

Skeleton of teenage girl confirms cannibalism at Jamestown colony - The Washington Post

Physicists Attempt to Measure Gravitational Mass of Antihydrogen | Physics | Sci-News.com - the first direct measurement of gravity’s effect on antimatter, specifically antihydrogen in free fall.

Are Gay Guys Checking You Out in the Locker Room? - NBA player Jason Collins’s decision to come out has homophobes in a panic. Here’s why straight dudes need to chill out

What is the most mysterious/paranormal thing you've witnessed? : AskReddit
The Matrix Revisited - 2001 - YouTube

FCC chairman nominee: Tom Wheeler expected to get nod | BGR (typical Obama move)
reddit's privacy policy has been rewritten from the ground up - come check it out : blog

043013
President says 'I don't want these individuals to die' as medical team arrives in Cuba to keep striking protesters alive
Israel assassinates Palestinian 'bomb-maker' as Jewish settler knifed to death | World news | guardian.co.uk - First targeted killing by Israel this year and death of hardline settler likely to frustrate US efforts at restarting peace talks
Hezbollah is helping Assad fight Syria uprising, says Hassan Nasrallah | World news | guardian.co.uk - Leader of Lebanese group hints that Russia and Iran would intervene militarily, declaring that Syria has 'real friends' in region

The Beatings Must Continue - NYTimes.com - Sometimes economists in official positions give bad advice; sometimes they give very, very bad advice; and sometimes they work at the OECD - it also demanded that the US start raising interest rates rapidly, so as to head off the threat of inflation — even though its own models showed no such threat. (suffering for suffering's sake)
Cyprus parliament votes to accept controversial €10bn EU-IMF bailout | World news | guardian.co.uk - Officials greet result with relief as deal drafted amid calls for island to exit eurozone is passed by majority of just two votes


President Obama's budget puts House Democrats in bind - politico.com

Mayor Bloomberg Equates Civil Rights Group Fighting Stop-And-Frisk With Gun Lobby 'Extremists' | ThinkProgress
Governor Explains Away Poor Jobs Numbers: Most Unemployed People Are On Drugs | ThinkProgress - Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett (R) is facing an uphill fight for re-election (my state is full of methhead moochers)
How James O’Keefe Seeks to Rally the Troops -- New York Magazine - The Breitbart protégé is hunting for some like-minded compatriots.

Radioactive Water Imperils Fukushima Plant - NYTimes.com
Ex-Regulator Says Nuclear Reactors in United States Are Flawed - NYTimes.com - All 104 nuclear power reactors now in operation in the United States have a safety problem that cannot be fixed and they should be replaced with newer technology (but it can't happen here)

Congress tries to reset science grants, wants every one to be “groundbreaking” | Ars Technica - If lawmakers get their way, research like recent Higgs findings could disappear.
China is plundering the planet’s seas—and it’s doing it 12.5 times more than it’s telling anybody - Quartz
Researchers find high-fructose corn syrup may be tied to worldwide collapse of bee colonies
Obama: Science funding shouldn't be 'subject to politics' - Science
Don't Let Patents Kill 3D Printing | Techdirt

U-T San Diego's Alleged Pro-GOP Campaign Ad Pricing Scheme Sparks State Review | Blog | Media Matters for America

Conservative US shoppers turned off by eco-friendly lightbulbs, study finds | Environment | guardian.co.uk - Consumer research finds conservative shoppers avoid purchasing an item associated with protecting the environment (they WANT the world to go to hell)
Climate change inaction the fault of environmental groups, report says | Environment | guardian.co.uk - Environmental groups overlooked growing opposition to environmental protections among conservatives voters and, underestimated the rising force of the Tea Party, believing – wrongly, as it turned out – they could still somehow win over Republican members of Congress through "insider grand bargaining". (sounds a little familiar; see, the "environmentalists" are to blame because they underestimated the insanity of Republicans)

finpap.htm - Online Stings: High Tech Entrapment or Innovative Law Enforcement?
FBI Arrests Anyone Who Even Clicks On Child Porn. Fair? / Queerty
FBI Child Porn Sting and Entrapment Concerns - Goldtalk Forum - FBI Child Porn Sting and Entrapment Concerns

Facebook Rejects Ad Highlighting Zuckerberg Group's Support For Keystone XL | ThinkProgress

042913
CIA and MI6 ghost money may fuel Afghan corruption, say diplomats | World news | The Guardian - Failure of peace initiatives raises questions over whether British eagerness for political settlement may have been exploited (US largest source of corruption in Afganistan)
CIA Bribes Karzai: Millions In 'Ghost Money' Paid To Afghanistan President's Office, New York Times Reports
Booman Tribune ~ A Progressive Community - What? Afghanistan doesn't have direct deposit? A bank account in Cyprus won't do?
How the CIA's Bags of Cash Undermined the Afghanistan War | Danger Room | Wired.com

Libya faces growing Islamist threat | World news | The Guardian - Diplomats warn that militants squeezed out of Mali by western intervention are hitting targets in Tripoli
Gun runner No. 1 | War of Ideas (Usa! USA!)
Lawfare › A Crash Course on Chechnya and Kyrgyzstan
Information Dissemination: Strength in Numbers: The Remarkable Potential of (really) Small Combatants - Strength in Numbers: The Remarkable Potential of (really) Small Combatants

The era of austerity is over (for now) - Iqaluit 2010 as the moment of the pivot toward austerity; some future book may well pinpoint Washington, 2013—that is, the IMF and World Bank spring meetings that ended a week ago—as a similar turning point in global economics
Democrats ask: What debt crisis? - Ben White and Tarini Parti - Politico.com - This group got a huge boost this month with the very public demolition of a sacred text of the austerity movement, the 2010 paper by a pair of Harvard professors arguing that once debt exceeds 90 percent of a country’s gross domestic product, it crushes economic growth.

Guantánamo Bay hunger strike prompts arrival of medical back-up | World news | guardian.co.uk - US military confirms presence of 40-strong team as 21 of 100 detainees refusing food are approved for force-feeding

Report: Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's repeated requests for a lawyer were ignored | Glenn Greenwald | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk - There is zero legal or ethical justification for denying a suspect in custody this fundamental right
Michael McCaul: Boston Bombings Device 'Leads Me To Believe' There Was A Trainer Involved (dimbulb Republican never heard of "the internets")
Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, Mother Of Bomb Suspect, Insists Sons Are Innocent - But Zubeidat Tsarnaeva is drawing increased attention after federal officials say Russian authorities intercepted her phone calls, including one in which she vaguely discussed jihad with her elder son.
FBI Locates Misha Tsarnaev - Something You Should Read Because Nobody Else Will - Esquire - Apparently, the FBIM has located "Misha," the mysterious red-headed Armenian who, according to the surviving Tsarnaevs, whom many people suddenly believe on this subject and this subject alone, was the man who radicalized Tamerlan Tsarnaev and lit the fire in what we can loosely be called his brain that sent him and his brother off to blow up the finish line at the Boston Marathon.
Guy Confronts Boston Conspiracy Theorists - YouTube

Sandra Day O'Connor Doubts Decision To Take Bush V. Gore (rot in hell, evil bitch)
After Casting Key Fifth Vote For Bush, Justice O'Connor Now Regrets Bush v. Gore | ThinkProgress
A Day Late, Several Trillion Dollars Short - Lawyers, Guns & Money (not to mention all those dead people)

House Republicans Eyeing New Hostage Opportunity -- Daily Intelligencer - “The debt limit might be raised for only a few months, with the promise of another increase when tax reform legislation passes the Senate.” ("reform" = cuts for the rich)

Political Animal - The Optimist’s Case For Obamacare Implementation
Scalia’s understanding of the Voting Rights Act is shortsighted - The Washington Post - The act protects all voters, especially in the states and districts covered by Section 5, from any obstacles that might be put in their way. That was true in 1966 and remains true today as efforts to suppress the minority vote continue. Scalia needs to do his homework before the court determines the act’s future.
Supreme Court Rejects Alabama Immigration Law Appeal - Justice Antonin Scalia voted to hear the state's appeal.

Fired LAPD officers seek reviews of their cases in wake of Dorner rampage | World news | guardian.co.uk - The requests have put the department's disciplinary procedures under scrutiny. Many officers feel that there are genuine problems of institutional racism and capriciousness in the force.

Lamar Smith, GOP Push Politicization Of Scientific Research (only Republican "facts" allowed)
The First Casualty of the National Science Foundation Funding Cut for Political Science | Robert Kelly — Asian Security Blog - 2. Find a way to communicate with conservatives. This will be very hard, but it should be pretty obvious to everyone now that American conservatives have really come to dislike academia.

Preschool Funding Reached 'State Of Emergency' In 2012: NIEER Report - Between the 2010-2011 and 2011-2012 school years, pre-K spending on state programs dropped by more than $548 million overall, and $442 per student (to $3,841) when adjusted for inflation, according to the report. (make the little moochers get jobs)
Meals On Wheels Sequestration Cuts Taking Effect (let them eat rocks)

If It Smells Like a Skunk… | EduShyster - According to the Detroit News, a secret work group that includes top aides to Michigan Governor Rick Snyder has been working to come up with a model for so-called “value schools

Enlisting a Virtual Pack, to Study Canine Minds - NYTimes.com ("dognition")

Coding Horror: Revisiting the Black Sunday Hack

042813
Factory Collapse in Bangladesh Exposes Cracks in the System - Working In These Times - the body count at Rana Plaza is about 300 and rising, with hundreds more workers still unaccounted for, and the 72-hour emergency window for recovering trapped people alive almost gone

The Economy Is Heading the Wrong Way - NYTimes.com - The budget fights have endured even as the intellectual arguments for near-term deficit reduction have collapsed. They have endured even as the economies that have enforced budget cuts most strenuously have contracted, notably in Britain and in much of the rest of Europe. And they endure even as the United States remains impaired by fiscal wounds that are, unfortunately and undeniably, self-inflicted. (if you count "Republicans" as your self)

Political Animal - QOTD: Henry Farrell (channeling John Holbo) on the Reinhart-Rogoff Two-Step
Would it not be easier for Matt Yglesias to dissolve the Bangladeshi people and elect another? — Crooked Timber
      Et tu, Mr. Destructo?: Destructo Salon: Does Matthew Yglesias Enjoy Murder?
Crimethink - Matt Yglesias' glib reaction to factory collapse is neoliberal self-parody

The Great Degrader - NYTimes.com - Bush brought an unprecedented level of systematic dishonesty to American political life, and we may never recover ... we thought we could trust them not to lie about fundamental matters. That time is now behind us — and it was Bush who did it.
Political Animal - What was the single worst thing about George W. Bush’s presidency? - the Bush regime’s most reprehensible acts were probably the torture and the other grotesque abuses of civil liberties and human rights they perpetrated — all in the name of national security.
Jon Stewart on George W. Bush library | TPMDC - ‘The Hard Rock Cafe Of Catastrophic Policy Decisions

Daily Kos: GunFAIL XV

Russia Caught Tamerlan Tsarnaev On Wiretap

President Obama at the 2014 White House Correspondents Dinner | Video Cafe
FishbowlDC Writes Eight Million Word Hit Piece About Party They Got Thrown Out Of, For Journalism
‘Red Alert’ for Eddie Scarry, FishbowlDC Butt Snapper | Observer - D.C. blogger photographs rear ends and tweets about 'date rape' and 'whore' female reporter

Ricin Letters Might Have Been Clumsy Frame-Up, Script Treatment For Coen Brothers Movie


Political Animal - Dartmouth College equates rape threats with anti-rape protests; threatens to discipline the anti-rape protesters - Dartmouth is threatening to discipline both the anti-rape protesters and the students who have made rape and death threats against those protesters. Nice!

Who's covering local climates? : Columbia Journalism Review - A new, interactive map from the Earth Journalism Network has details
New Interactive Map Tracks Climate Change News in the US | Internews
Sea surface temperatures reach highest level in 150 years - Sea surface temperatures in the Northeast Shelf Large Marine Ecosystem during 2012 were the highest recorded in 150 years

Swans Commentary: Student Debt or Freedom?, by Manuel García, Jr. - mgarci64

Sundays With The Christianists: A Biology Textbook For A Very Young Earth (America: free to be stupid)

042613
Obama: proof of Syrian chemical weapons would be 'game-changer' | World news | guardian.co.uk - President says US allies 'could not permit the use of chemical weapons' but stops short of saying red line had been crossed
Moscow hospital fire turns spotlight on Russia's terrible safety record | World news | The Guardian - Russia's health minister denies reports patients had been tied to their beds after fire sweeps through Pyschiatric Hospital No 14
Hundreds of thousands of Bangladesh’s garment workers walk out in protest over factory deaths | The Raw Story
Major Retailers Rejected Bangladesh Factory Safety Plan
International factory safety. (we call them "plantations")

The 1 Percent’s Solution - NYTimes.com - At this point, the austerian position has imploded; not only have its predictions about the real world failed completely, but the academic research invoked to support that position has turned out to be riddled with errors, omissions and dubious statistics. To the extent that we have policy of the 1 percent, by the 1 percent, for the 1 percent, won’t we just see new justifications for the same old policies? (lies, lies, and more lies)
Reinhart and Rogoff Are Not Being Straight | Beat the Press - Carmen Reinhart and Ken Rogoff, used their second NYT column in a week, to complain about how they are being treated. Their complaint deserves tears from crocodiles everywhere.
Rogoff and Reinhart should show some remorse and reconsider austerity | Heidi Moore | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk - It's disingenuous to claim their error is just an 'academic kerfuffle'. Reinhart and Rogoff sold debt-cutting to governments hard
Page1.pdf - Democracy and the Policy Preferences of Wealthy Americans (they don't give a shit about deficits, just want to destroy the country)
Academic Non-Obscurity - NYTimes.com - Robert Samuelson tries to minimize the significance of the Reinhart-Rogoff affair; and that, I realized, offers an interesting window into why, in fact, the affair matters so much.
How influential was the Rogoff-Reinhart study warning that high debt kills growth? – Quartz - “Absolutely,” Rogoff said. “Not acting moves the risk closer,” he explained, because every year of not acting adds another year of debt accumulation. “You have very few levers at this point,” he warned us .
Ken Langone Paul Krugman Rant - Business Insider (teh stupid is burning)

US economic growth quickens but misses forecasts as cuts kick in | Business | guardian.co.uk - GDP grew at 2.5% in first quarter as consumer spending increased, but government cuts continue to hold back recovery (austerity always works)

What Went Wrong in West, Texas — and Where Were the Regulators? - ProPublica

Senators Quietly Seek a New Path on Gun Control - NYTimes.com
Pat Toomey Approval Rises After Gun Control Stand: Poll
US schools weigh bulletproof uniforms: 'It's no different than a seatbelt in a car' | World news | The Guardian - As gun control legislation grinds to halt in Washington, parents and teachers are taking matters into their own hands

Even The FBI Not Immune To Swirl Of Bad Info In Tsarnaev Case | TPMMuckraker
Finally, a Clearer Picture of the Chaotic Shootout in Watertown Emerges - Adam Clark Estes - The Atlantic Wire
Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, Bombing Suspect's Mom, Also On Terror List (for terrorizing L&T)
Tsarnaev's Parents and Their Conspiracy Campaign Have Gone into Hiding - Alexander Abad-Santos - The Atlantic Wire
Boston Magazine's Heart-Shaped Shoes: The Story Behind the Beautiful Cover - Esther Zuckerman - The Atlantic Wire
Jon Stewart Takes Fox News to Warp Speed on Boston Bombing Trial - Esther Zuckerman - The Atlantic Wire

Putin Says Russia’s Boston Bombing Tip Didn’t Have ‘Operative Significance | TPMDC - Putin also declared that Americans who want to see the surviving suspect branded a “prisoner of war” have “completely lost their marbles.” (zing)
FAA Furloughs: Senate Reaches Deal To Avoid Air Traffic Delays
How To Lose The Sequestration Fight | TPM Editors Blog - Last night, the Senate proved it can fix big problems for real Americans — so long as they’re rich, or relatively rich, or fly for business or what have you.
12 Programs Congress Refuses To Save From Automatic Spending Cuts | ThinkProgress (you know, the ones rich people don't need)
Senate Democrats Save Air Travelers and GOP from the Sequester | New Republic
Democrats ‘Lost’ Sequestration Two Years Ago -- Daily Intelligencer (when Obama let them take him hostage)
Cantor Celebrates GOP Victory In Sequestration Fight | TPMDC
News from The Associated Press
New Effort To Curb Too Big To Fail Creates Strange Bedfellows | TPMDC - “It’s clear there’s too much Wall Street in this administration,” he told me during a Thursday interview in his Capitol Hill office.
Elite conventional wisdom is losing on Social Security - Salon.com - The crowd calling for cutting benefits is being overtaken by another movement: A proposal to expand the program

50 Reasons You Despised George W. Bush's Presidency
George Bush Library Opening - The George Bush Manure Locker Is Now Open - Esquire - the Creation Museum is more honest in its crackpot interpretation of history than another manure locker that happens to be opening today. And the courtier media is preparing once again to disgrace itself in the kind of epic fashion it has not displayed since rolling over for C-Plus Augustus and the Avignon Presidency in 2002.
Bush family furiously selling itself to Americans once again - Salon.com - George W. Bush's mess of a presidency is whitewashed as Jeb airs out some unpleasant past business of his own
Balloon Juice » Too soon? Yep. Too soon. - In a post entitled “George W. Bush is smarter than you,” someone named Keith Hennessey, the former director of the George W. Bush National Economics Council (which is like being the Emeritus Chair of the Sarah Palin Center for Teen Pregnancy Prevention
Peggy Noonan George W Bush Library - Today The Bottle Let Peggy Noonan Down - Esquire - Today's delusional episode concerns the opening of the Great Manure Locker down in Dallas yesterday, and la Noonan apparently feels beset again by the current's president's education, his use of multisyllabic words, and his disinclination to give her his foot to fondle. This has set the bats aloft in her overly populated belfry again. (+Barry Friedman)
How George P Bush becomes president – once he learns how to make a speech and answer questions | Trail Blazers Blog

Poor parenting -- including overprotection -- increases bullying risk
Baby dies from whooping cough in Orange Co. | www.wftv.com - Officials said the family chose not to vaccinate their child. Some parents are choosing not to fully vaccinate their children because they worry there is a link between the vaccinations and autism.
Roundup, An Herbicide, Could Be Linked To Parkinson's, Cancer And Other Health Issues, Study Shows

New York Times paywall growth slows : Columbia Journalism Review - But it remains to be seen whether that’s a one-quarter blip or the new normal

'Catastrophic Threat': UK Government Calls Antibiotic Resistance a 'Ticking Time Bomb' | Wired Science | Wired.com

New wave of 'superbugs' poses dire threat, says chief medical officer | Society | The Guardian = Warning over rising death toll as antibiotics fail to tackle rising incidence of 'gram negative' bacterial diseases
Antibiotics and drug resistance: how do we compare? | News | guardian.co.uk (Greeks eat them for breakfast)
The Gonorrhea Doomsday Is Nigh - Alexander Abad-Santos - The Atlantic Wire - British doctors who devote their careers to studying The Clap are warning that the disease could be completely untreatable sooner than the U.S. elects a new president.
Balloon Juice » Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid - t Vancomycin, a pretty damn nasty drug, originally discovered in 1953 but largely shelved until it became a drug-of-choice as a last line of defense against largely intractable MRSA
Vancomycin: A 50-Year Reassessment - 50 years after its discovery, vancomycin remains an interesting and even somewhat controversial agent.

'Sirius' Documentary Reveals DNA Test Results On Ata, The '6-Inch Alien'

George Jones - He Stopped Loving Her Today - YouTube
George Jones - If Drinkin' Don't Kill Me - YouTube

The Washington Monthly - Ten Miles Square - How Twitter Impacts Voting
Hullabaloo - Mark Zuckerberg moves his empire to Galt's Gulch - In other words, Mark Zuckerberg is a Republican as are, apparently, all his tech pals who are putting their cash to work for conservative causes. Just like all the other greedhead billionaire assholes.
CISPA Is Dead, Long Live CISPA - Adam Clark Estes - The Atlantic Wire - After stirring up trouble for months, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) died a quiet death in the Senate on Thursday (zombie bill will rise again)
LivingSocial Hacked, Cyber Attack Affects Millions Of Customers' Information - LivingSocial, the second-largest daily deal company behind Groupon Inc, said on Friday that it was hit by a cyber attack that may have affected more than 50 million customers.
So I saw this thing today. : pics (Peacemaker Bus)

042513
Bangladesh building collapse: 40 people found alive in rubble | World news | guardian.co.uk - Police in Dhaka say factories were told to evacuate building 24 hours before collapse due to cracks appearing in walls
China's Leadership is Really, Really Rich - Matt Schiavenza - The Atlantic - One need not wonder why official corruption is such a concern there. (this can't work out well)

Spain Unemployment Hits Record High On Recession Fears (oh, who could have predicted austerity would cause a recession?)

Boston suspects planned attack on New York City, Mayor Bloomberg says | World news | guardian.co.uk - Dzhokhar Tsarnaev said to have told FBI investigators of plan to drive to New York and detonate explosives in Times Square
Today Along Mount Auburn Street - Esquire -
Texas Fertilizer Plant Explosions - The Other Explosions - Esquire -
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev Unarmed - Today With The Brothers Tsarnaev - Esquire -
NRA and Boston Marathon Bombing: Will Wayne LaPierre Defend Bombs? | New Republic - Will Wayne LaPierre defend every American's right to build a pressure-cooker bomb?

Why do people hate deficits? (they're stupid)

Why Big Cities Make Media Liberal—and Why the Koch Brothers Can't Do Anything About It - Garance Franke-Ruta - The Atlantic - Newspapers are the ultimate product of urban space.
Balloon Juice » Seriousness sells, but who’s buying? - .it’s amazing how many more followers NYT columnists have than WaPo columnists do.
Harold Meyerson: What would the Koch brothers do to the Los Angeles Times? - The Washington Post

Drug Control Strategy A Bust, GAO Report Says (our profoundly Repubican Pres)

Many Men and Many Women: How a Sect Redefined Marriage 165 Years Ago - Noah Berlatsky - The Atlantic - America has a long history of experimenting with the ancient institution - Oneida community

042413
Matalan supplier among manufacturers in Bangladesh building collapse | World news | guardian.co.uk - Manufacturer housed in building that collapsed – killing at least 76 – previously supplied discount fashion chain - At least 76 garment workers have been confirmed dead
Suspect in alleged Canadian terror plot claims charges 'based on appearances' | World news | guardian.co.uk - Chiheb Esseghaier and Raed Jaser accused of conspiring to derail passenger train and receiving guidance from al-Qaida
New bird flu strain 'more easily caught by humans' than 2003 outbreak | World news | guardian.co.uk - WHO official says H7N9, which has infected more than 100 people in China, is one of most lethal flu viruses
Easter Rising Anniversary Ireland - Happy Anniversary, Ireland - Esquire - Anyway, the Easter Rising was 97 years ago today. An Poblacht Abú, y'all.

The Washington Monthly - Ten Miles Square - Climate Change Is Not an Environmental Issue

Holding Corporations Responsible for Workplace Deaths - Lawyers, Guns & Money : We don’t hear too many stories anymore like last week’s fertilizer plant explosion in West, Texas, where the death toll has now risen to 15. This is because we have outsourced our industrial risk to Asia and Latin America.

The Snicker Factor - NYTimes.com
The Colbert Report 04/23/13 Stephen Colbert interviews Thomas Herndon - YouTube
Brad DeLong : Marking My Beliefs About Which Economists Mark Their Beliefs to Market to Market - whitelist of economists whom one should presume are to be taken seriously--because they have a coherent framework for looking at the world, and have broadly been correct in their forecasts since the world changed in 2007. It consists of:

Fox News Attacks Muslims Relentlessly In Wake Of Boston Bombing (and Tom Brokaw joins in)
'Cape Fear,' and Our Fear | The Nation - Instead, the nation has surrendered to an inherently right-wing idea, one that I’ve written of here in the context of the gun control debate: the notion that the world is easily parsed into god guys and bad guys,
Read Him His Rights - The capture of bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev presents an opportunity to show that fighting terrorism doesn't require abandoning the Constitution.
Whiskey Fire: This One Is on the House, This One Is Better Than Ever - A debate about civil rights, the law, & terrorism is occuring. Everyone wants to hear from John Yoo!
The 11 Most Mystifying Things the Tsarnaev Brothers Did | Mother Jones
More Information Out On Tsarnaev Brothers Partying - The Stupid (And The Deadly) Was Strong In These Ones - Esquire - Give points to Uncle Ruslan — And are we sure yet that he's really their uncle? Did anyone, you know, check? — because he called it early. The Brothers Tsarnaev were a pair of losers.
The Boston Attack Has Nothing to Do With Immigration Reform - Bloomberg
Tsarnaev Brothers Welfare - Enemies With Benefits - Esquire - Up here, the city's plucky little tabloid, and one of the blog's several alma maters, is having itself a fit of genuine shit because Tamerlan Tsarnaev, and various other Tsarnaevs, collected some government benefits

Gun Background Check Bill Lost, But Backlash Has Only Just Begun | New Republic - Senator Kelly Ayotte’s vote against legislation to expand background checks for gun purchases.
Kelly Ayotte's Approval Rating Plunges After Vote Against Gun Background Checks - Sunday’s Portsmouth Herald headlined its editorial: "If you want gun control, vote Ayotte out of office."

Illinois River floodwaters top 70-year record: 'That's our nightmare' | World news | guardian.co.uk - Rivers across midwestern states cresting at record-high levels as firefighters fear fuel leaks will cause secondary disaster

Rhode Island Gay Marriage Bill Passes Senate, Governor Says He Will Sign

This Photo Shows How Much Politicians Care About The Long-Term Unemployment Crisis - Business Insider - Even as the economy improves, a huge block of workers is becoming shut out of the work force, damaging society and its long-term potential. It's a much bigger deal than the debt, or any other economic issue. (Obama and his corporate bosses could give a shit)
Immigration Reform Is All About Families - Obama will achieve the dubious milestone of 2 million deportations by next year -- much sooner than President George W. Bush, who took eight years to reach the 2 million mark (Obama hates immigrants, and for what purpose?)
Eric Schneiderman Challenges Obama Administration Over Mortgage Investigations - r not aggressively investigating dodgy mortgage deals that helped trigger the financial crisis, according to senators and congressional aides who met with him this month.
Harry Reid: 'Republicans Like The Pain' Of Sequestration Budget Cuts

The Great Mulligan - Esquire - There has been some low hilarity, and one high crime against history and memory, attending the sudden reappearence on the scene of C-Plus Augustus, the previous president of these United States.
Adam Savader, Former Mitt Romney Campaign Intern, Arrested In Alleged Sexual Extortion Scheme - 21-year-old Adam Savader was arrested in Great Neck, N.Y. on Tuesday by the FBI. He was charged with cyberstalking and blackmailing women online, according to authorities.

Newt Gingrich on CNN Crossfire - Things In Politico That Make Me Want To Guzzle Antifreeze, Part The Infinity - Esquire - Dear lord, the stench of decay is stronger around CNN these days than it is around the average whale that beaches itself on the Cape in August ... Is there no end to Gingrich's ability to grift himself some coin from the mainstream media suckers he otherwise derides?
CNN hires failed gimmick king - Salon.com - After years of awful ratings, the network is handing its reins to Jeff Zucker -- the man who destroyed NBC (Nov 2012)

Turbulence at The Times - POLITICO.com Print View - The executive editor of The New York Times was upset about the paper’s recent news coverage — she felt it wasn’t “buzzy” enough, a source there said — and placed blame on Baquet, her managing editor. A debate ensued, which gave way to an argument.
Jill Abramson: 'Very Unpopular' Or Just Doing Her Job?

Politico on Jill Abramson Rendered as Memes - Garance Franke-Ruta - The Atlantic
Politico: NYT Boss Lady Too Bossy (with tweets) · womensmediacntr · Storify
2013 Pulitzers: Bret Stephens Wins Despite Calling Hagel Anti-Semitic | New Republic - Bret Stephens played the anti-Semitism card against Chuck Hagel—and is rewarded for it
Worst Job In America Is ... - Careers Articles - 1. Newspaper Reporter -- Average income: $36,000.

Transgender rights: the next big political movement | Rodrigo Lehtinen | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk - Akin to the marriage equality effort, there is a coalition forming to end discrimination and misunderstanding of the trans community

Admissions Officers Still Aren’t That Impressed By Your Essays by Daniel Luzer | Washington Monthly

Apple sees profits fall for first time in a decade but cash pile rises to $145bn | Technology | The Guardian - Tech firm beats analysts' expectations for quarter as chief executive Tim Cook pins company's hopes to rising iPad sales
Windows tablets make big share gains

042313
Israeli general: Syrian 'regime has used and is using chemical weapons' | World news | The Guardian - Military intelligence chief says Bashar al-Assad's regime has used lethal chemicals – probably sarin – against opponents
Libya bomb attack hits French embassy in Tripoli | World news | guardian.co.uk - Two guards injured in first such attack in Libyan capital since the 2011 war
France Legalizes Gay Marriage After Harsh Debate, Violent Protests

Eschaton: Gibberish - Translation: a policy which increased prosperity and caused much less economic suffering would be wrong, but have more support.

AP Twitter Account Hacked, Incorrectly Says Obama Injured At White House | TPM LiveWire

West Fertilizer Plant's Hazards Eluded Regulators For Nearly 30 Years
Recaps of West, Texas - Lawyers, Guns & Money : Lawyers, Guns & Money - In 2011, 4,609 Americans were killed in workplace accidents while only 17 Americans died at the hands of terrorists — about the same number as were crushed to death by their televisions or furniture.

Boston Bombing Suspects Motivated By Afghanistan, Iraq Wars: Report
Boston bombing: FBI backlash 'risks turning US into surveillance state' | World news | guardian.co.uk - FBI insist they scrutinised Tamerlan Tsarnaev as intelligence veterans say increased surveillance would erode civil liberties
Miranda Warning Withheld From Bombing Suspect For More Than Two Days - The Daily Beast - The “public safety” exception—invoked by authorities who withheld reading Miranda rights to the alleged marathon bomber—started out narrow, but has grown into a warped version of itself
NBC: Boston Bombing Suspect Says Brothers Weren't In Touch With Overseas Terrorist Groups - he and his brother discovered instructions for bomb-making on the Internet.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev, Influenced By Mysterious Muslim Radical, Turned Towards Fundamentalism - Tamerlan took an interest in Infowars, a conspiracy theory website.
Alex Jones Downplays Connection To "Boston Bomber"
Lindsey Graham: Boston Suspect's 'Ties To Radical Islamic Thought' Justifies 'Enemy Combatant' Status (thought-crime +why is the media addicted to this drama-queen asshole?)

Why the Senate Vote May Signal 2016 Problems for the Gun Lobby - NationalJournal.com - support for expanding background checks and possibly further steps has again become a political norm in almost all of the blue-leaning states that underpin the recent Democratic advantage in the race for the White House.

Paul Kevin Curtis, Ricin Suspect, Released From Jail
Ricin Letter Found At Bolling Air Force Base, Harry Reid Says - A third ricin letter has been discovered by authorities in the nation's capital Tuesday, the same day the initial suspect in the mailing of earlier letters was released, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) told reporters.
Former GOP Candidate Reacts After Man He Allegedly Framed For Ricin Poisioning Is Released | TPMDC

Pierce on the Enemy Combatant Circus - John And Lindsey Are Charged Up - Esquire - Dear god, can nobody stop these two from diving into the spotlight?
Max Baucus Retiring: Montana Democrat Won't Seek Another Term In U.S. Senate (corporate Blue-Dem pawn has ruined America, his job is done)
Max Baucus Retiring - My Early Christmas Wish - Esquire - It seems that Max Baucus, the pestilential trout-mask replica from Montana, will be hanging them up at the end of this term, guaranteeing that any future Democratic majority on the Senate Finance Committee will be considerably more, well, Democratic.

Comments Closed on Keystone Pipeline - Coming Down The Pipeline - Esquire - 800,000 comments weighing in on the elongated death-funnel designed to transport the world's dirtiest fossil-fuel from the ecological moonscape they've created in Alberta to refineries on the Gulf coast in Texas, and thence to the world, or what's left of it after we burn a good piece of it down. (but Obama loves it)

Meet the revisionist George W. Bush -- pretty much the same as the old George W. Bush | Daniel W. Drezner - 1) The moment you trot out someone as partisan as Victor Davis Hanson to claim that Bush's legacy will outshine Obama's, you've abandoned the argument that Bush is merely the victim of partisan historians.

Deported While Unconscious: American Hospitals Quietly Deport Hundreds Of Undocumented Patients
San Francisco probes report Nevada dumped psychiatric patients - Yahoo! News - a Nevada mental hospital was illegally busing hundreds of newly discharged psychiatric patients to California and other states
Daniel T. Blumstein: A Teachable Moment About Plastic Bag Bans - quantifies the effect of plastic bag bans on emergency room visits for infectious intestinal diseases.
The Volokh Conspiracy » Are Plastic Grocery Bag Bans Bad for Public Health?

Organic, Fair Trade Porn: On the Hunt for Ethical Smut - The Daily Beast - Just what exactly is feminist porn?

One-third of the Guardian’s readers are American, with US traffic up 37% last year — paidContent


042213
Syrian regime accused of new massacre | World news | The Guardian - Anti-Assad groups report 350 people killed in Damascus countryside, but Russia and Iran express support for regime
'Major Terrorism Attack' Thwarted By Canadian, American Authorities: Report
Reaching an Arctic Accord - NYTimes.com - The waters of the central Arctic, an area the size of the Mediterranean, hold the last untouched fishing stocks on this planet.

Austerity may help growth during good times. But man, does it hurt during bad times. - To sum up: There’s basically no evidence that fast austerity programs, or ones undertaken during economic downturns, are even good at reducing the debt burden. It’s very clear they’re bad for growth.

New Torture Reports Blames Obama and the Media for Not Confronting the Truth | Dan Froomkin's Temporary Tumblr Depository
CNN's Jaw-Droppingly Awful Hour Of Boston Bombing Coverage
US torture 'indisputable', CNN's humiliation, and Iran sanctions | Glenn Greenwald | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk
Why is Boston 'terrorism' but not Aurora, Sandy Hook, Tucson and Columbine | Glenn Greenwald | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk - Can an act of violence be called 'terrorism' if the motive is unknown?
Boston Suspects' Carjacking Victim: Tsarnaev Brothers Spared Me Because I Was 'Not American'
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev Will Not Be Treated As Enemy Combatant: White House
Not Off To A Good Start - Esquire - Noted torture advocate Alan Dershowitz was just on CNN ... The complaint is barely unsealed, and already the commentary on this case has completely gone to the zoo.

Popularity Of Expanding Background Checks Confuses Even Seasoned Pundits | Blog | Media Matters for America - NBC's Tom Brokaw is apparently one of those pundits.
WSJ Columnist Taranto Uses Gabby Giffords' Injuries To Silence Her On Gun Violence | Blog | Media Matters for America - Taranto Doubts Giffords Could "Produce 900 Publishable Words" In Five Hours (asshole)

Obama Is a Supporting Character - On domestic policy, "Why couldn't the president pass [blank]?" is the wrong question to ask.
Lead abatement, alcohol taxes and 10 other ways to reduce the crime rate without annoying the NRA
Ten Years of Krauthammer Days — Crooked Timber - It’s now been exactly a decade since Charles Krauthammer told us that (he has no credibility and neither does Fred Hiatt)

Sequester Furloughs Kick In, Flight Delays Appear - Commercial airline flights started backing up and delayed some travelers Monday, a day after air traffic controllers started going on furlough because of government spending cuts. (Republicans have their own helicopters)

Where Americans Can Travel Without Visas - Business Insider

Great Lakes oil proposals threaten repeat of Kalamazoo spill, environmentalists say | Detroit Free Press | freep.com

Why aren’t younger Americans driving anymore?

Bill for compulsory science fiction in West Virginia schools | Books | guardian.co.uk - Republican state delegate Ray Canterbury says move would inspire pupils to use practical knowledge and imagination in the real world

'Game of Thrones' recap: And Now His Watch Is Ended | Season 3 Episode 04 | EW.com

Somewhere Everywhere, Big Brother Is Smiling: Congress Sells Your Privacy For A Cool $84 Million | Techdirt
Thirtydegrees comments on How close were we to finding the Boston Bombers?
Ex-Beauvoir teacher Eric Toth, wanted on child pornography charges, is found abroad - The Washington Post - Eric Justin Toth, the former D.C. elementary school teacher and accused child pornographer who replaced Osama bin Laden on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list, has been found in Nicaragua, according to people familiar with the case.

042113
Syria crisis: US steps up aid to rebels at talks in Turkey - More than 60,000 have died in the two-year uprising against Bashar al-Assad.
Rich Political Novice the Favorite to Win Paraguayan Presidency - NYTimes.com - he vows to reform his party, which was tainted by corruption during its 60-year reign through 2008.
Earthquake in Sichuan: Charity Organization Has China Seeing Red - China Real Time Report - WSJ

China confirms 102 H7N9 cases, 20 deaths - Xinhua | English.news.cn

Bruegel - The Brussels-based think tank | blog > Detail

Perils of placing faith in a thin theory - FT.com - Reinhart and Rogoff told policy makers what they wanted to hear (you mean, what Peterson and Koch Bros told them to say)
How much of Reinhart/Rogoff has survived? | Gavyn Davies
IMF steps up call for Osborne to slow down austerity plans as row escalates (being horrifically wrong is no reason to change)


New details on wild shootout with bomb suspects in Watertown; chief believes older brother was killed by younger brother’s desperate getaway - Boston.com
Doctor: Dead bomb suspect had wounds 'head to toe' - News - Boston.com
US ‘slow’ to tackle homegrown jihadism - FT.com
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev Remains In Serious Condition, May Have Suffered Throat Injury - an official told CNN that Tsarnaev suffered a throat injury and may not be able to talk at all.
Boston Marathon Inquiry Shifts to Suspect’s Russia Trip - NYTimes.com
Rep. Mike Rogers: Tamerlan Tsarnaev May Have Traveled To Russia Under An Alias
Boston Manhunt: Watertown Police Chief Details How Suspect Was Captured (VIDEO) - . The younger brother managed to escape custody, but not before running over his brother.
Police, citizens and technology factor into Boston bombing probe - The Washington Post
Lindsey Graham: FBI 'Dropped The Ball' With Boston Bombing Suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev - , after the Russian government had raised concerns to U.S. authorities that Tsarnaev was a follower of radical Islam. (profile and wiretap all Muslims)
Media Criticizes New York Post, CNN For Boston Marathon Bombings Coverage
CNN Reporter states "Reddit not a reliable news source" : news
VIDEO: Final Moments Of Boston Bombing Suspect's Capture | TPM LiveWire
Boston police chief: facial recognition tech didn’t help find bombing suspects | Ars Technica - Amid a huge volume of digital evidence, one agent watched same video 400 times.
The Roots of Chechen Rage - By Oliver Bullough | Foreign Policy

Hillary Was Right: Obama’s Inexperience Sank Gun Deal - The Daily Beast - She told us so? The debacle on background checks fully exposed the president’s flawed leadership, which his Democratic rival warned voters about back in 2008. (well, she wasn't so hot either)
Andy Parrish, Former Michele Bachmann Chief Of Staff, Will Testify In Ethics Case - d to confirm allegations that Bachmann's campaign made improper payments to Iowa State Sen. Kent Sorenson (R).

Koch Brothers Making Play for Tribune’s Newspapers - NYTimes.com - Tribune’s newspapers, including The Chicago Tribune, have caught the interest of a number of suitors.

Rail Traffic Continues To Trend Lower - Business Insider

In Texas, Mourning First Responders Who Paid With Their Lives - NYTimes.com
Scope of threat in West a surprise to feds - Houston Chronicle - West Fertilizer Co. stored 270 tons of ammonium nitrate - 1,300 times the threshold that triggers federal oversight.
Fertilizer sold, stored across Central Texas, but no need for panic | www.statesman.com (oh sure)
The other form of violence - Now the horrific events in a small town in Texas provide a reminder of another danger, which for most of the population is actually a more significant threat: industrial accidents ... The truth is that corporations often show a brazen disregard for the safety of their employees -- and nearby residents
West Fertilizer Violated Federal Anti-Terror Regulations - Lawyers, Guns & Money

Bats Left/Throws Right: Glad I Can Help You Kids Out With This New Googling Technology

Meet The Horrifying Demon That Has Crept Into Our School System - Sir Ken Robinson brilliantly describes the death of creativity in the name of education with perhaps the driest British wit in existence.

Gene wars: the last-ditch battle over who owns the rights to our DNA | Science | The Observer - A US biotech company is fighting to protect the patents it took out on a test for a cancer-causing gene. Scientists say a win for the firm would set back a growing ability to detect diseases
Interactive map plots locations of more than 100 million species | Ars Technica - It's the most comprehensive map of US biodiversity ever made.
Biodiversity Information Serving Our Nation (BISON)
Poor, cute bunnies likely to get eaten when the snow melts early | Ars Technica - Hares change coat color for winter based on the calendar, not the conditions.

San Diego cop smashes phone & beats up suspect: "Phones can be converted to a weapon. Look it up online." - Boing Boing
Family of “BadNews” malware in Google Play downloaded up to 9 million times | Ars Technica - Apps steal sensitive data, push SMS app that racks up charges to pricey service.
Obama threatens CISPA veto, sponsor calls opponents basement-dwelling 14-year-olds | Ars Technica - White House says the revised "cybersecurity" bill doesn't protect private information.
Estonia calls BSA’s IP enforcement report a “modern protection racket” | Ars Technica - Some copyrighted material simply isn't available legally in Estonia.

041013
US prepares $130m military aid package for Syrian rebels | World news | guardian.co.uk - Secretary of state John Kerry expected to announce plans as opposition forces and international allies meet in Istanbul
Earthquake in China has claimed 160 lives, with more than 5,700 injured (video, photos) — RT News
Muslim gang-rapes across Europe under-reported in press

Torture Report - A new report confirms what we already know: The U.S. engaged in torture in the wake of 9/11. Will those who perpetrated these abuses ever be brought to justice?

WATCH: Watertown Police Chief’s Epic Minute-By-Minute Account Of Deadly Manhunt | TPMDC
Boat where Dzhokhar Tsarnaev hid 'looked like Swiss cheese' after shootout | World news | guardian.co.uk - Tsarnaev was found when Watertown man looked underneath tarpaulin and found the Boston bombing suspect inside
We gave Tsarnaevs the attention they wanted - Salon.com - The suspects were nobodies who wanted to spread fear. A citywide lockdown and media hysteria helped them do that
Night in Watertown Cemetery - Guns Along The River: A Late Night In Watertown - Esquire
FBI wait to quiz Dzhokhar Tsarnaev amid relief over suspect's capture | World news | guardian.co.uk - Suspect in Boston bombing remains in a serious condition in hospital following capture on Friday after intense manhunt
Obama’s Miranda Exemption May Lead To Legal Challenge | TPMDC
When the law gets bent out of shape for him, it’s easier to bend out of shape for the rest of us.
Why Tsarnaev Should Be Read His Miranda Rights - Lawyers, Guns & Money
David Remnick: The Brothers Tsarnaev : The New Yorker
Details of Tsarnaev Brothers’ Lives Emerge - NYTimes.com
Two brothers, two paths - Metro - The Boston Globe
Russia Warned FBI About Tamerlan Tsarnaev Before Bombing
Boston Is One of the Best Prepared U.S. Cities to Handle a Crisis - Henry Grabar - The Atlantic Cities
A History of Terrorism on U.S. Soil

Boston Marathon bombing suspects were from Chechnya | New Republic - The best background info on the Boston suspects
Prisoners of the Caucasus | Foreign Affairs - Russia's Invisible Civil War
Chechen Terrorism (Russia, Chechnya, Separatist) - Council on Foreign Relations
The Chechen Connection - The Boston bombers have put the region and U.S.-Russia relations in the spotlight
What We've Learned In The 14 Years Since The Columbine Shooting | ThinkProgress

Daily Kos: GunFAIL XIV - Another special note: The Chief of Police of Medina, OH, who briefed the press there following that town's "Gun Appreciation Day" accidental shooting at the local gun show (one of three that day, if you recall) has... accidentally shot himself.

Texas fertilizer company didn't heed disclosure rules before blast | Reuters - The fertilizer plant that exploded on Wednesday, obliterating part of a small Texas town and killing at least 14 people, had last year been storing 1,350 times the amount of ammonium nitrate that would normally trigger safety oversight by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
Balloon Juice » States Rights! - Unfortunately, the asshole that these people elected to the Senate, Texas’ answer to Joe McCarthy, Canadian-born Ted Cruz, voted against Sandy relief 3 times. If you live in the state with the most FEMA-declared natural disasters since 2009, maybe you’d want to rethink your choice of Senator next time you visit the polls.


Other Austerity Bloopers - NYTimes.com
What the Reinhart & Rogoff Debacle Really Shows: Verifying Empirical Results Needs to be Routine — The Monkey Cage
Pete Peterson's Fingerprints All Over That Bogus Economic Study | Crooks and Liars - She is married to economist and author Vincent Reinhart, who does similar work for the American Enterprise Institute, also funded by the Peterson Foundation. Who else funds AEI? Oh, I know! David and Charles Koch! (bought and paid for by billionaire austerians; does Krugman know this?)
Bitcoin: the perfect bubble — Crooked Timber - Bitcoin is a more perfect example of a bubble, and therefore a more perfect refutation of the Efficient Markets Hypothesis, than anything seen previously
Commentary: The Bitcoin Bubble and a Bad Hypothesis | The National Interest
Absurd pitches (pull out the Hayek and Polanyi lesson)

Balloon Juice » A-B-C Always-Be-Closing - the Boy Scouts’ next effort to try to appease their religious backers while not appearing to be the most retrograde bigots in the room

Guilty of Rape? Write a Book Report, Says School - When you consider appropriate punishments for rape, jail might come to mind, or perhaps castration if you're old-fashioned. But if you ask Occidental College, allegedly, they'll recommend a super-reparative book report.

Daily Kos: U.S. is second-worst of 35 developed nations when it comes to child poverty (and if you just count the South ...)

New five-planet system contains two that are in the ‘habitable zone’ - MIT News Office - Potentially habitable planets are slightly larger than Earth.
Thoughts on Furpeople

The Fat Angel by Donovan on 1966 Mono Epic LP. - YouTube (fly Trans-Love Airways, getcha there on time)

Legislation Preventing Employers From Asking for Facebook Passwords Defeated - US News and World Report - Several high profile cases of employers asking for social media passwords led to proposal

041913
Fitch downgrades UK credit rating - as it happened | Business | guardian.co.uk

Boston Marathon Bombing Manhunt: Residents Told To Stay Inside During Police Investigation
Police comb streets of Watertown for Marathon bombing suspect - Boston.com
Why Boston's Hospitals Were Ready : The New Yorker
Bombing suspects were local, ‘normal’ US immigrants - Boston.com
Aunt says US suspect recently became devout Muslim - News - Boston.com

Thank you, JpDeathBlade, cedargrove, and NeonRedSharpie : news
Live Boston Update Thread [Part 9] : news
Live Boston Update Thread [Part 8] : news
Live Boston Update Thread [Part 7] : news
Live Boston Update Thread [Part 6] : news
Live Boston Update Thread [Part 5] : news

Boston Marathon Bombing Manhunt: Residents Told To Stay Inside During Police Investigation
Balloon Juice » » Soy Un Perdedor
Boston bombing suspects' mother: My sons are innocent, this is a set up - YouTube (says FBI knew before)
Father: Boston bombing suspect 'a true angel' - Associated Press - politico.com
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Tamerlan Tsarnaev: Family, Acquaintances Describe Boston Bombing Suspects
Did Boston Bombing Suspect Post Al Qaeda Prophecy on YouTube? | Mother Jones
Wrestling Photo, Stunned Reactions From Former Classmates of Bombing Suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev | Mother Jones

The entire city of Boston has shut down. How much will this cost? - a shutdown could cost Boston between $250 million and $333 million per day, though that’s “a very rough guess.”
The Morning Plum: Foes of immigration reform pounce on Boston bombing
The Washington Monthly - Ten Miles Square - This Is Important: Not All Muslims in the Post-Soviet Region are Radical Islamists or Chechen Nationalists
The School - C.J. Chivers - Investigation of 2004 Shooting at Russian School - Esquire - On the first day of school in 2004, a Chechen terrorist group struck the Russian town of Beslan. Targeting children, they took more than eleven hundred hostages.

Balloon Juice » West Texas Cascading Safety Failure - Texas Explosion Seen as Sign of Weak U.S. Oversight

The Washington Monthly - Ten Miles Square - The Filibuster Did Save Us From Some Republican Stuff…

After my report on soy company's anti-birth control agenda, its CEO calls to talk Obama, abortion and contraception
How A Right-Wing CEO's Big Mouth Could Kill His Attack On Birth Control | ThinkProgress

Blackmun bust bill riles abortion foes | Capitol View | Minnesota Public Radio

The Only Positive Effect Of The Cuban Embargo? Weight Loss | Labcoat Life | Learn Science at Scitable - scientists have now identified the only benefit of the embargo: it lead to a population-wide weight loss, and with this a decrease in cases of diabetes and heart diseases.

HS Principal Threatens to Destroy Student for Speaking Out Against School's Abstinence-Only Policies, Fails Miserably

Boy Scouts proposal: let in gay youth, keep out gay adults | Reuters


Reddit suffered a "malicious DDoS attack" early today : technology
What the Internet looked like in 1995 - here’s a PBS segment from 1995 about all the cool stuff you could do on this crazy new thing called the Internet.

041813
Fergus Shanahan, Sun Executive Editor, Charged With Conspiracy In News Corp. Bribery Scandal

Government And Violence - The Violence We Live With - Esquire - Earlier this week, the report of a nonpartisan commission was released detailing the fact that, in contravention of international treaties freely signed, and in contravention of over 200 years of formal and informal precedent, the United States enthusiastically constructed and ran a regime of torture in the wake of the attacks of Septenber 11, 2001.

Obama Gun Policy Agenda Comes To Maddening End
Gun Background Checks Votes - The Manchin-Toomey Amendment: How They Voted - Esquire

Filibuster Reform Debate Reignited By Senate Gun Vote (and will be blocked by Reid, again)
Federal Gun Registry Is The New Death Panels
Giffords is a fighter, and NRA will be sorry - Salon.com - The post-Newtown gun-control movement must undo a decade of Democratic inaction on guns. And it will
Gun Amendment Voting - No Credit For Courage - Esquire - Take it away, Heidi Heitkamp.
Internet Gun Sites Ease Illegal Sales - NYTimes.com
Begich Explains Background Check 'No' Vote: We Shouldn't Legislate With Our Emotions | TPM LiveWire - Sen. Mark Begich (D-AK), who voted against a proposal to expand background checks for gun buyers

Only in Texas.. This is what no zoning regulations looks like : WTF
Cold Rain Doesn't Hamper Search And Rescue Efforts - victims of a fertilizer plant explosion that killed between 5 and 15 people and injured more than 100 more
The West, Texas Disaster - Lawyers, Guns & Money : Yes, that’s right, a fertilizer plant was placed in a neighborhood. Or a neighborhood grew up around a fertilizer plant. In any case, there are already lessons we can draw from this developing story. First, non-union states often have terrible working conditions that can lead to horrible accidents. (no zoning, because Freeeeeedom)
The Texas fertilizer plant explosion is horrific. But how common is this? - there are 44 production plants around the country. And 30 of those are nitrogen plants

Photos Of The Boston Marathon Bombings Suspects | TPM LiveWire
Obama Boston Marathon Bombing Speech - There Were Reasons To Vote For This Guy - Esquire - Sometimes, honest to blog, speeches really can be enough.
The Post's 'Person of Interest' Is a Local High-School Track Runner
Authorities have clear video images of two suspects in Boston Marathon bombings, official says - Boston.com

Antonin Scalia: Voting Rights Act Is An 'Embedded' Form Of 'Racial Preferment'
George W. Bush Poll Finds Americans Still See President In Unfavorable Light

Attorney: Miss. man denies mailing ricin to Obama - Business - Boston.com

PLOS ONE: Increasing Maternal Age Is Associated with Taller Stature and Reduced Abdominal Fat in Their Children

Adding Insult to Plagiary? - Percolator - The Chronicle of Higher Education
Plagiarism spat over scientific poster prep advice escalates to legal threats | Retraction Watch
Bring Me The Head Of That Threatening Lawyer! | Popehat
Scientist writes funny, helpful guide for making science posters. A big company steals it. Then the company sues him. : science

CISPA Vote: House Passes Cybersecurity Bill To Let Companies Break Privacy Contracts

041713
New Zealand's Parliament votes to legalize same-sex marriage - CNN.com - If the laws in New Zealand and Uruguay are enacted, the count of nations allowing same-sex marriage would rise to 13.

Eschaton: Fortunately There's A Policy For That - Unemployment jumped by 70,000 in the three months to the end of February and pay rises registered the lowest increase since 2001, adding to the mounting pressure on George Osborne to adopt a more aggressive growth strategy. - He doesn't have any growth strategy. He has a destroy the economy and lives strategy.

We Are The Commonwealth Of Massachsetts - Esquire
Boston Marathon Bombings - A Firefighter's Story - Esquire
Confusion reigns in reporting of Boston ‘arrest’ | Poynter. - The coverage is a reminder of the challenges of reporting breaking news story quickly and accurately. Here is how the information has played out so far.
The Trouble with Scoops - When an event like the bombing in Boston happens, news organizations should forget about getting information before their competitors.
Hullabaloo - Your latest media debacle
The Saudi Marathon Man : The New Yorker - He wasn’t alone; a hundred and seventy-six people were injured and three were killed. But he was the only one who, while in the hospital being treated for his wounds, had his apartment searched in “a startling show of force,”
Balloon Juice » Something Else to Talk About -

Gun Bill Background Check Amendment Fails, Other Key Provisions To Follow
Daily Politics Blog - Charles P. Pierce - Political Blogging - Esquire - The famous watered-down Manchin-Toomey "bipartisan compromise" on this country's preposterous infatuation with its firearms has gone down to an ignominious defeat in the United States Senate. So much for Newtown.
Obama condemns Senate for 'shameful' failure to pass gun control reform | World news | The Guardian - Dismayed president delivers rebuke to those who blocked amendment and accuses senators of caving in to the gun lobby - "wilfully lied"

Obama Ricin Letter: Poison-Tainted Mailer To President Intercepted At Screening Facility

Chinese banks top Forbes Global 2000 list of world's biggest companies | Media | guardian.co.uk - ICBC and China Construction Bank are Nos 1 and 2, ahead of JP Morgan, General Electric and Exxon, last year's biggest firm
Political Animal - Data In the Hands of Ideologues - the Reinhardt-Rogoff fiasco, and its implications for the deficit hawks and austerity fans who relied on this now-tainted study
The Washington Monthly - Ten Miles Square - The Austerians Taking Some Gut Punches - Recent developments have shaken two of the pillars of the austerity consensus
12 Rules of Goldbuggery | The Big Picture

Daily Kos: The NRCC cuts Mark Sanford off; Jenny Sanford & sons steamed at mistress's presence at victory party - Whoa! Absolutely nuclear!

The real Gosnell conspiracy - Salon.com - I take it back, there is one: How credulous media played into the right's strategy to ban all abortion

Pretending To Be A 'Good Nurse,' Serial Killer Targeted Patients : NPR - Charlie Cullen

Vermont House Approves Marijuana Decriminalization | Valley News

041613

U.S. Tortured Detainees And Top Officials Are Responsible: Report - A two-year independent investigation by the Constitution Project released Tuesday said that U.S. forces engaged in torture and senior officials bear responsibility for it ... , Obama has advocated "a belief that we need to look forward as opposed to looking backward." (which is why is has learned nothing)
U.S. Practiced Torture After 9/11, Nonpartisan Review Concludes - NYTimes.com - President Obama decided in 2009 not to support a national commission to investigate the post-9/11 counterterrorism programs, as proposed by Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, and others. Mr. Obama said then that he wanted to “look forward, not backward.”
Post 9/11 Torture Report - The Other Face Of Political Violence - Esquire - the release of a magisterial, non-partisan report concerning the decade of political violence organized and executed by the American government, and concerning the subsequent shameful abandonment by the current administration of its affirmative moral obligation to let the American people know fully what had been done in their name, and too often with their tacit and overt consent, and the degree to which we are all complicit in outright extrajudicial barbarism.

Guantanamo Bay Hunger Strike: 'The Situation Is An Emergency' (VIDEO) - "I would say it's probably a lot worse than what's in the op-ed," Brandon Neely, an army veteran who served as a prison guard at Guantanamo Bay

Report: Saudi man questioned in Boston Marathon bombing is a witness not a suspect  - NY Daily News - Cops had scoured Abdulrahman Ali Alharbi's apartment after attack. Roommate and friends say he's shy and quiet. (he was just in "the wrong place" for someone from Saudi Arabia)
Bomb Details Emerge in Boston Case - NYTimes.com
Feinstein: Saudi National 'Not A Suspect' In Boston Bombings | TPM LiveWire
War and Terror: What Shocks Me Most About the Bloody Marathon Bombing Pictures (GRAPHIC) — BagNews - What takes me aback are how graphic the news photos are (#8 especially) as compared to the almost total visual censorship of American war casualties over the past twelve years. (out of sight, out of mind, which is how Obama likes it)
Circuit Board Trigger For Boston Marathon Bombs Reportedly Found
Laura Ingraham Uses Boston Bombing To Stoke Fears About Immigration Reform | Video | Media Matters for America

Lady Thatcher's coffin comes to the Commons: Politics live blog | Politics | guardian.co.uk - The IMF has suggested that George Osborne should relax his austerity plans in the light of Britain's poor growth. (austerity a failure, but screw everyone anyway)
Eschaton: The Beatings Will Continue - As is the case with every other issue, the "stupid or evil" question will never be answered. Do austerians believe in austerity? Or is it just an excuse to kick the poors and olds, which is what they wanted to do anyway.

Eschaton: Bygones - Sorry our clerical error helped to destroy the world. We'll know better next tim
Reinhart-Rogoff coding error: Austerity policies founded on bad coding. - So this is huge. Or, rather, it won't matter even a tiny little bit but it ought to be a big deal anyway (austerity-justifiers can't add or were lying, you decide)
How much unemployment did Reinhart and Rogoff's arithmetic mistake cause? | Dean Baker | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk - All because two famous economists whose work is used the world over to justify austerity cuts just got their sums wrong
Researchers Finally Replicated Reinhart-Rogoff, and There Are Serious Problems. | Next New Deal - Countries with debt-to-GDP ratios above 90 percent have a slightly negative average growth rate (they claimed)
Reinhart Rogoff Coding Problems - Math Is Hard - Esquire - I'm still not entirely sure what's really going on, but there is nothing here to disabuse me of my long-held notion that most economists reach their conclusions by cutting up a sheep on a rock and reading the entrails.

Yep, The Immigration Bill’s Path To Citizenship Is The Real Deal | TPMDC

Your Daily North Korea - Esquire - He's right about one thing. The Democrats — unless David Plouffe is hiding something in his basement — have approximately as many missiles capable of reaching Austin as North Korea does.
Envelope tests positive for ricin at Washington mail facility - CNN.com - the letter was addressed to the office of Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Mississippi

MLK Jr. Letter From Birmingham Jail Anniversary - Fifty Years On - Esquire - today is the 50th anniversary of the publication of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s Letter From Birmingham Jail

The Hell of American Day Care | New Republic - An investigation into the barely regulated, unsafe business of looking after our children By Jonathan Cohn

Circumcision Changes Penis Bacteria Ecosystem, May Explain Lower HIV Risk - Circumcision changes the bacteria ecosystem of the penis, perhaps explaining why the foreskin-snipping procedure reduces the risk of HIV infection, a new study finds.

Pitting Viruses Against Bacteria Yields New Antibiotic for MRSA, Anthrax - Rockefeller University researchers may have found a new way to kill bacteria and prevent antibiotic resistanc
Researchers May Have Finally Detected a Dark Matter Particle

New York Times closes another loophole in its digital paywall — paidContent - The latest casualty is NYClean

041513
Explosions rock Boston Marathon finish line; dozens injured - Pictures - The Boston Globe
Tragedy at the Boston Marathon: One Photographer’s Eyewitness Account - LightBox
Boston Marathon Bombings Update From Boston - "You Are Not Safe Here" - Esquire
Explosion In Boston - HuffPost Live (Obama: "don't jump to conclusions")

Boston Explosion Coverage: Networks Go Wall-To-Wall With Marathon Horror; Reporter Calls It 'Worst Thing I Ever Saw'
Live blog: Explosions in Copley Square
Two explosions near the finish line at the Boston Marathon caused dozens of injuries.
Balloon Juice » Boston Bombing Liveblog Link
Multiple explosions at Boston Marathon finish line - YouTube
Boston.com viral video page - Boston.com
Aerial video shows Boston Marathon finish line aftermath - video | World news | guardian.co.uk
Photos of the Boston Marathon Bombing - In Focus - The Atlantic
Boston Marathon Explosions - Live Update Thread #3 : news

George W. Bush: I'm 'Comfortable' With My Legacy On Iraq War

Summer Ice Melt In Antarctica Is At The Highest Point In 1,000 Years, Researchers Say

Hunger Striking at Guantánamo Bay - NYTimes.com

Mitch McConnell Should Be Slammed For 'Despicable' Content Of Secret Tapes: Kentucky Newspaper
Roy Blunt Raises Specter Of Federal Gun Registry, Despite Explicit Ban

Optimistic Economists Have Incredibly Low Expectations | Beat the Press
Calculated Risk: Builder Confidence declines in April due to higher costs

On the “pity-charity liberalism” critique - Lawyers, Guns & Money : Lawyers, Guns & Money

Stacking the Deck: The Phony 'Fix the Debt' Campaign | The Nation - Peterson has poured an estimated half-billion dollars into schemes so unpopular, so economically unsound and so obviously self-serving that even conservative politicians run from them, as the implosion of the Simpson-Bowles commission illustrates.

How to steal a billion in taxes — MSNBC - “Delaware is the biggest state provider of offshore corporate secrecy, but Nevada and Wyoming are the most opaque,”

Vaccine and autism: UK measles outbreaks and Andrew Wakefield - Right now, in the UK, the outbreak of measles has reached epidemic proportions. Nearly 700 people have come down with the highly contagious disease in south Wales

One Year Later, Ted Nugent's Presidential Threat Is Still Bullshit

Christina Huffington: Addiction Recovery: Getting Clean At 22

Actor suing IMDb for revealing her age loses landmark lawsuit | Film | guardian.co.uk - Junie Hoang wanted more than $1m from IMDb Pro website, claiming its revelation of her true age branded her 'over the hill' (way to spread the word)

The entire Carreon affair became a long and bizarre story that only got weirder as it lurched along. By the end of it:

041413
North Korea dismisses offer of talks as John Kerry urges dialogue | World news | guardian.co.uk - Communist state says it will not talk unless South Korea abandons confrontational posture
News from The Associated Press
Syria: Jordan to spearhead Saudi Arabian arms drive | World news | The Guardian - Fears over rising power of al-Qaida-linked groups drives move to channel weapons to moderate rebel fighters through Jordan
Somalia supreme court attack kills at least 16 | World news | The Guardian - Militants fire guns and set off explosions during suspected Al-Shabaab assault on main court buildings in Mogadishu
South African police accused of routinely torturing crime suspects | Law | guardian.co.uk - Arrested men say how they experienced police brutality from beatings to suffocation used to extract confessions
Convention votes 79% in favour of referendum on civil marriage for same-sex couples » Inside Ireland
Millions face starvation as world warms, say scientists | Global development | The Observer - World is unprepared for changes that will see parts of Africa turned into disaster areas, say food experts

From heart attacks to maternal care: the human cost of austerity in Greece - Austerity has caused more than just tear gas usage to rise - heart attacks have spiked in the republic.

Guantánamo Bay's last UK detainee: 'people are dying here' in hunger strike | World news | guardian.co.uk - Shaker Aamer's lawyer describes conditions at US prison where one detainee is said to have lost a quarter of his weight

Don't be fooled by the Senate vote to debate gun control | Ana Marie Cox | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk - Despite this simulacrum of adult bipartisan politics, NRA-fearful senators lived to run away another day from meaningful gun laws

The Terrifying Reality of Long-Term Unemployment - Matthew O'Brien - The Atlantic - It's an awful catch-22: employers won't hire you if you've been out of work for more than six months (Obama's "solution" - cut Social Security!)

Daily Kos: Political nihilism - When the best that can be said about the president's proposal is that it has no chance of being enacted, the truth about it is that it is an astonishing failure.
Daily Kos: Remembering the Medicare Catastrophic Coverage debacle: What happens when you piss off seniors - But the number politicians really need to consider: 66 percent. That's the group that will be more inclined to vote against a senator or representative who voted for any kind of deal including chained CPI. (so, naturally Barry proposes chained CPI)

With Tougher Standardized Tests, a Reminder to Breathe - NYTimes.com - As Shael Polakow-Suransky, the city’s chief academic officer, told parents on Staten Island: “Everyone is in the same boat (except for all the rich kids with tutors)


Bitcoin Is No Longer a Currency - Matthew O'Brien - The Atlantic - It's the ultimate dotcom stock.


041313
Salaam Fayyad Resigns: Prime Minister Of Palestine Steps Down
Republicans Mangle Facts To Attack Obama's Missile Defense Budget | ThinkProgress
When Historians Provide Bad Policy Ideas - Lawyers, Guns & Money - University of Texas historian Jeremi Suri, who calls for the United States to bomb North Korea. Hard to see what could go wrong in that scenario!! (your NYT at work)

Barbara Boxer, AIPAC seek to codify Israel's right to discriminate against Americans | Glenn Greenwald | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk
Peru Bans Monsanto and GMOs | Food Renegade
Panel IV - Augmenting Our Influence: Alliance Revitalization and Partner Development - YouTube

Balloon Juice » Gitmo “Dogged by Controversy”v (designed for corruption and failure)
Political Animal - Robert Johnson of Business Insider wrote the worst article on Guantanamo Bay that you will ever read
Obama administration divides over whistleblowers - Josh Gerstein - Politico.com (shoot them or hang them)

Daily Kos: GunFAIL XIII
With Police in Schools, More Children in Court - NYTimes.com
Background Checks Beat Apple Pie, Baseball, Kittens In Americans' Hearts: Poll

Oklahoma governor urged to sign revised Sharia law measure | News OK
Arkansas GOP Votes To Ax Sex Ed In State With Highest Teen Pregnancy Rate | Addicting Info

Rhee Con - Lawyers, Guns & Money - Rhee was completely unqualified to run a school system but certainly accomplished in getting people to lavish her with praise (up to and including the current occupant of the White House), and the consequences were pretty much inevitable:

Balloon Juice » Serious Conor and the Dead Babies - Bring it on, because this discussion cuts both ways, and it’s about time we discussed why it’s so fucking hard for women to have a legal medical procedure performed in this country.

National Disgrace – The New Inquiry - The nearly 700,000 marijuana possession arrests a year in the U.S. are the same kind of scandal. They have gone on for years and harmed millions of people, but big city police departments and prominent politicians, including many liberals, keep making the arrests. And until recently they have been remarkably successful at keeping the arrests out of the public eye.

Google Alert for the Soul – The New Inquiry - Rationalized identity construction and the postauthentic data self
Study Finds New Way to Clear Cholesterol from Blood | Medicine | Sci-News.com - inhibited the action of a gene responsible for transporting a protein that interferes with the ability of the liver to remove cholesterol from the blood in mice.
Ancient creature mixed human, apelike traits - The creature is called Australopithecus sediba, which means "southern ape, wellspring."
Dazzling Northern Lights Anticipated Tonight - AccuWeather.com

So You Want to Be a #Longreads Superstar – The New Inquiry - Turning essays into #longreads isn’t just about the future viability of the form; it’s changing the reasons we read and write
When Dickens met Dostoevsky | TLS - ‘Only two people?’ I asked.” (the inventor of literary polyphony +hoax and detective story with a great ending)
The Fort Bragg murders: is Jeffrey MacDonald innocent? | Film | The Observer

Teens Abandoning Social Networks, Study Says - A dramatic generational shift. Profiles are out, ephemera is in.
Texting, social networking and other media use linked to poor academic performance
Virginia Mall Shooter Apparently Announced Crime in Advance on 4chan | Threat Level | Wired.com

041213
Carville: I Think Obama Likes Angering Liberals (video) | TPM LiveWire (they are his mother as opposed to his Republican daddies)
Obama Meeting With Wall Street Executives - Meeting With All The Wrong People - Esquire - The same week in which he announced his intention to renege partially on eight decades of Democratic social policy, and to do so in the face of ongoing economic neurasthenia brought on by a whopping huge economic collapse, he goes out of his way to meet with the men whose recklessness and marginal criminality brought on the whopping huge economic collapse in the first place, so they will help him sell measures that will hurt the people who already are suffering from the effects of the whopping big recession these guys caused. (re-election unleased his inner asshole)

Paul Ryan On Abortion: 'We Want A Country Where It Isn't Even Considered'
Barry Smitherman, Texas Railroad Commission Chairman, Retweets Noose With GOP Senators' Names
Paul LePage Bullying Maine State Workers - The Reign In Maine - Esquire - Of all the lemons visited upon democracy by the paranoid episode that masqueraded as the 2010 midterm elections, Governor Paul LePage of Maine has to be one of the biggest and roundest and juiciest of them all.

Elizabeth Warren’s Foreclosure Settlement Bombshell: Banks Determined the Number of Victims of Their Own Foreclosure Frauds

This Skill Is Important To Learn. It’s What Separates Us From The Animals. Except the Weasel. - Lawyers, Guns & Money : Lawyers, Guns & Money - Shockingly, there is further good reason to believe that implausible immediate gains on test scores made by local schools facing powerful positive and negative incentives to produce them under con artist Michelle Rhee were generated by cheating:
Michelle Rhee Cheating Scandal - Michelle Rhee's Terrible Awful Day - Esquire - Who do you think I am? Superman?
You May Want to Sit Down. And Then Get Your Kid an Application to Bob Jones University. - Lawyers, Guns & Money : Lawyers, Guns & Money - Tom Scocca draws our attention to some absolutely shocking revelations that a study commissioned by a winger academic group uncovered when investigating the Maoists at Bowdoin College. Among the terrifying findings about the state of the liberal arts college today:

Organic Eden Foods’ quiet right-wing agenda - Salon.com - A crunchy, natural food company marketed to liberals discreetly sues to stop covering employees' contraception

Study: Listening to Certain Sounds Seems to Improve Sleep - Lindsay Abrams - The Atlantic - Participants played "pink noise" that was synchronized to their brain rhythms slept more deeply and had increased memory retention.
People in the South are not so fat after all -- and they lie less | al.com

Yes, Let’s Talk About Kermit Gosnell | Religion Dispatches - Third-trimester fetuses delivered alive whose spines were then severed by the doctor. This was the Women’s Medical Society in West Philadelphia. This is what illegal abortion looks like.

Baseball Believes Alex Rodriguez Bought Clinic Documents - NYTimes.com
This is why 14 year olds shouldn't have babies. Sadly, this was on my newsfeed. : WTF Study: Listening to Certain So!
041113
Obama urges North Korea to end aggression as US upgrades nuclear threat | World news | guardian.co.uk - Pentagon concludes that North Korea does have nuclear technology but president maintains 'strategic patience' approach
Mysteriously unjailed international terrorist A.Q. Khan is back, and Fox News, for reasons that passeth understanding, seems to have his home phone number while he's under what I am sure is very rigorous house arrest in Pakistan.
Mubarak forces 'had official approval' to fire live rounds at Suez protesters | World news | guardian.co.uk - Latest leak shows high-level sanction for violence in which 24 protesters died – and raises hopes of jailing perpetrators
Egyptian doctors 'ordered to operate on protesters without anaesthetic' | World news | guardian.co.uk - Leaked presidential report recommends an investigation into the highest echelons of the army leadership
French chief rabbi quits over plagiarism | World news | guardian.co.uk - Gilles Bernheim was accused of plagiarism in two books

Cyprus forced to find extra €6bn for bailout, leaked analysis shows | World news | The Guardian - Less than a month after deal was agreed bailout bill has risen to €23bn – larger than entire year's output from country's economy

Gitmo Defense Lawyers Say Somebody Has Been Accessing Their Emails - ProPublica (army is hopelessly corrupt, or just a glitch in the systems?)
How Raymond Davis Helped Turn Pakistan Against the United States - NYTimes.com

Obama Vowed Never To Cut Social Security Cost-Of-Living Before Chained CPI Move (no looking backwards allowed)
Bob Cesca: The President's Social Security Plan Is a Really, Really Bad Idea
Rachel Maddow: Obama losing touch with left in reaching out to GOP? (he's always "compromising" with his inner Republican +Axelrod is full of shit)
Daily Kos: House GOP campaign chief doubles down on attack against Obama budget's Social Security cut (see Alexfuck)
Rachel Maddow Shreds David Axlerod - Very Depressing Television - Esquire - David Axelrod got up to explain why the dung sandwich served up in the president's budget yesterday actually was delicious tuna fish, and the kindly Doc pretty much shredded his whole case on him.
Hullabaloo - Anyway, the key question of why they believe that old people should starve while they hoard every last penny they get their hands on remains obscure. But the fact that they do believe it is indisputable.
Passing 'Grand Bargain' Voters Don't Care About Is Critical To Confidence In Government, Apparently

Rachel Maddow To Rand Paul: Yes, You Did Question The Civil Rights Act | TPM LiveWire - "It's one thing to have a sketchy record on racial discrimination and basic civil rights law that you don't want to defend," Maddow said of his speech at the historic black college. "It's another thing to be condescending enough to think you can get away with flat out lying about it."
Mitch McConnell Video - The Sun Shines Bright For Mitch McConnell - Esquire
Jacob Conway, Kentucky Democrat: Others Knew Of McConnell Tape | TPMMuckraker
Sheldon Whitehouse Interest Group Politics - Sheldon Whitehouse Steps Up - Esquire - And, lo and behold, just as we discovered in the area of giant bank fraud, we discover yet another entire infrastructure of federal laws that are impossible to enforce because justice is too damn harrrrrrd. What were the odds there?
Rove Group Tells FEC To Buzz Off | TPMMuckraker
Michele Presnell, N.C. Lawmaker, Opposes Islamic Prayer | TPM LiveWire
Balloon Juice » That Didn’t Take Too Long - A wise person the other day noted that screwing with Jay-Z and Beyonce might not be the best idea for Republicans. Then this happened:
Jay Z Speaks and the White House Gets Questioned. Obviously. - This Week in Blackness | This Week in Blackness

The pacific garbage patch is an area of trash in the Pacific Ocean that's estimated to be twice the size of Texas.

NHL Announces Support For Gay Rights, Pledges To Fight Homophobia With New Initiative

Balloon Juice » Mothers against drunk testing - the pushback to the school reform industry:
The Troubling Dean-to-Professor Ratio - Businessweek - . “I have no idea what these people do,” From 1993 to 2009, U.S. universities added bureaucrats 10 times faster than they added tenured faculty.

AMAZING Aerial Footage of Arkansas Exxon Oil Spill! - YouTube
Marlins Attendance Problem Is Even Worse Than They Are Willing To Admit - Business Insider (no one goes to taxpayer-funded baseball stadium)

Why Chemotherapy That Costs $70,000 in the U.S. Costs $2,500 in India - Thomas Bollyky - The Atlantic - By rejecting patent applications, developing countries have kept down the costs of much-needed medications. Can they continue to do so without harming efforts to develop new drugs?
Twist in dark matter tale hints at shadow Milky Way - space - 11 April 2013 - New Scientist - Could the universe have a dark side, complete with its own force, a zoo of particles and even a shadow version of the Milky Way?
The Archaeology News Network: Authenticity of the gospel of Judas verified

Bitcoin Bursts: Hacker Currency Gets Wild Ride
Bing Delivers Five Times as Many Malicious Websites as Google

041013

Remembering a once Iron Lady, long rusted - Lawyers, Guns & Money
Four Lessons of the Falklands War | Flashpoints
“These are Our Rocks” - Lawyers, Guns & Money

Senate New Gun Deal - The New Gun Deal And The Poison Of Bipartisanship - Esquire

The Bad Politics of Obama’s Grand Bargain Fetish - Lawyers, Guns & Money
Daily Kos: GOP campaign chairman calls chained CPI 'trying to balance the budget on the backs of seniors' (where Obama has led us) Grover Norquist: Chained CPI Violates Taxpayer Protection Pledge (Grover will save us from Obama, the irony)
They just might save Social Security.
Daily Kos: 'We won't have the White House forever, folks!'
And what kind of a four-toed idiot gives this quote to a reporter, even anonymously?
Let's Spend Some Money and Find Out Once and for All Whether Chained CPI Cheats the Elderly | Mother Jones
» The end of Obama’s illusions

Grassley Proposes Eliminating 3 Seats On Powerful Court To Keep Obama From Filling Them | ThinkProgress
The worst Democratic senator is almost certainly Joe Manchin. And the most disappointing in regard to where their politics vis-a-vis the political leanings of their state is Dianne Feinstein. But the most annoying and most damaging Democratic senator is Max Baucus.
The Right to Privacy and the Rule of Law - Lawyers, Guns & Money

Bill O'Reilly On The 1950s: "White America Was Kind Of Unified" And That "Made It Easier For Society To Function" | Video | Media Matters for America (before the blacks got uppity and the browns invaded and the Asians ate our lunch)

Rising nearly 32 feet high, it has a diameter of about 230 feet. To put that in perspective, the outer stone circle of Stonehenge has a diameter just half that with its tallest stones not reaching that height.

Mr. Mailer, when you dip your balls in ink, what color ink is it? | Corey Robin - No one—not Gore Vidal, not William Styron, not anyone—ever took down Norman Mailer the way Cynthia Ozick did at Town Hall in 1971.


040713
Desperately Seeking "Serious" Approval - NYTimes.com -- So what’s this about? The answer, I fear, is that Obama is still trying to win over the Serious People, by showing that he’s willing to do what they consider Serious — which just about always means sticking it to the poor and the middle class. (still chasing his rejecting daddy, while rejecting his mother - everyone who voted for him)
Destroying the Economy and the Democrats -- Amid disappointing jobs numbers, the president's budget proposal gives away his party's crown jewels: their defense of Social Security and Medicare.
Obama: I’ll Still Cut Retirement Programs -- Daily Intelligencer Obama: I’ll
Hullabaloo Mark this day. For the first time in history, a Democratic president has officially proposed to cut the Democratic Party's signature New Deal program, Social Security:
Obama Climate Change - The Worst Thing Obama Could Say On Climate Change - Esquire Obama Climate Change - The Worst Thing Obama Could Say On Climate Change - Esquire (yeah, he's going to that too ...)
Report: Schilling’s 38 Studios was running out of cash before its move to RI - Boston Business Journal Report (oh, the hypocrisy)
040513
Jim Inhofe On North Korea - Your Daily North Korea - Esquire I know what you all were thinking. You were thinking, "You know, exactly what this very weird international kabuki crisis on the Korean Peninsula needs right about now is the calm, reasoned voice of Senator Jim Inhofe."
Jim DeMint And Cuts To Social Programs - Moochers Incorporated - Esquire Jim DeMint is hopping mad at all you lazy poors out there. DeMint left the Senate, where they kept voting to keep the lazy poors alive, and moved on to head the Heritage Foundation, where they eat the lazy poors for Sunday brunch. (What they do with the blood depends on how many Cheneys happen to be in town.)

Social Programs Face Cutback in Obama Budget - NYTimes.com President Obama next week will take the political risk of formally proposing cuts to Social Security and Medicare in his annual budget in an effort to demonstrate his willingness to compromise with Republicans and revive prospects for a long-term deficit-reduction deal, administration officials say. (he lied when he said he wouldn't; it was always his plan)
Obama Budget: Administration Explains 'Compromise Proposal'

The Republican plan for replacing Obamacare doesn’t replace Obamacare This isn’t a plan to “replace Obamacare.” It’s a plan to do the opposite of replacing Obamacare. It’s as if I said I had a plan to fix the house by replacing the leaky roof, and you said you had a plan to fix the house by getting rid of the roof.

Wonkbook: Gay marriage hasn’t won, but its opponents have lost.
In 2011, only 15 senators backed same-sex marriage. Now 49 do. UPDATE: Now 51!
Heidi Heitkamp, Joe Donnelly Back Gay Marriage Only four remaining Democratic senators have not publicly backed gay marriage: Mark Pryor (D-Ark.), Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), Mary Landrieu (D-La.) and Tim Johnson (D-S.D.).

Scott Brown New Hampshire Run - Delusions Of Granite State - Esquire Former freakishly elected senator Scott Brown has been listening to those consultants again, and is spoiling to get his leather-shorted ass kicked by another woman in another New England state.

REPORT: Partisanship And Diversity On The Sunday Shows In 9 Charts | Research | Media Matters for America

Charles Krauthammer Stuns Fox News Panel Into Silence With Obama Comments (VIDEO) when he said President Obama just wants "cash" instead of new gun control laws.

Morning-After Pill Ordered To Be Available For All Ages Over The Counter By Judge

Jon Stewart Scoffs At 'Fox News' Response To Fired Rutgers Coach (video)


040413
North Korea moves missile with 'considerable range' to coast, says Seoul | World news | guardian.co.uk South Korea's defence minister confirms move, but says North is showing no other signs of preparing for full-scale conflict
US defends military deployments in response to North Korea threats | World news | guardian.co.uk State Department says US has no choice but to respond robustly to North's 'bellicose statements' as John Kerry visits Asia
PLA Navy amphibious task force reaches Malaysia 'to defend South China sea' | South China Morning Post A Chinese amphibious task force sparks jitters around the region by reaching the southernmost waters of its claimed domain
Jon Stewart Risks Jail in Egypt by Satirizing President Morsi, Provokes Diplomatic Incident | Informed Comment
George Osborne parks in a disabled bay: Arrogant Conservative Chancellor sparks outrage at M4 service station near Newport - Mirror Online He was branded selfish and arrogant after allowing his chauffeur to park his £50,000 Land Rover in a space reserved for the disabled (assholes will be assholes)

Secret Files Expose Offshore's Global Impact

IMF sets terms of Cyprus bailout | Business | The Guardian International Monetary Fund managing director Christine Lagarde said Cyprus must press ahead with measures to bring the island's budget into surplus by 2018

SNAFU: Pentagon Waste Run Amok | The Progressive Realist The U.S. Army recently discovered $900 million worth of spare Stryker parts, many of which are obsolete or unnecessary, collecting dust in a warehouse. None of the parts appear on the Army’s property books, a $900 million accounting error. (one tiny corner of Pentagon folly and waste)

Aryan Brotherhood Texas Investigation - Terrorism At Home - Esquire
Congress Obsessed with American Muslims, Neglects real threat of White Supremacists | Informed Comment

Obama Tells Donors of Tough Politics of Environment - NYTimes.com Mr. Obama appears to be leaning toward approval of the pipeline,

Sam Harris, the New Atheists, and anti-Muslim animus | Glenn Greenwald | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk A long overdue debate breaks out about whether rational atheism is being used as a cover for Islamophobia and US militarism - Sam Harris: "We should profile Muslims, or anyone who looks like he or she could conceivably be Muslim"
Scientific racism, militarism, and the new atheists - Opinion - Al Jazeera English Leading figures in the new atheist movement are heirs to the disreputable scientific racists of the past, argues author.
Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens: New Atheists flirt with Islamophobia - Salon.com A Twitter rant by Richard Dawkins re-exposes a disturbing Islamophobic streak among the New Atheists (+ Chomsky has said that Harris, Dawkins and Hitchens are “religious fanatics”)
Email with Sam Harris
Sam Harris: Bombing Our Illusions
Tennessee May Deliberately Exclude Muslim Schools From New Voucher Program | ThinkProgress

Five Kinds of Crooks in Local Politics - Esquire

Pot Legalization Draws Majority Support Nationwide 52 percent to 45 percent, with 72 percent who say that the cost of federal law enforcement efforts are not worth it.

Unmarried Couples Living Together Is New U.S. Norm - Bloomberg Three of four women in the U.S. have lived with a partner without being married by the age of 30, an increasing trend that suggests cohabitation is now a regular part of family life in the U.S., researchers said. (someone tell the Catholic Church)

US unemployment benefits claims hit four-month high | Business | guardian.co.uk Numbers come as private employers added fewest jobs in five months in March, implying weakening job growth (Obama's lowest priority)

Trojan Horse - NYTimes.com - Beware of conservatives bearing gifts. (gay marriage, this time)
It's a Nice Day for a Gay Wedding Breaking down the odds on possible outcomes for the Prop 8 case
Bill Nelson Backs Gay Marriage Sens. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.), Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.), Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.), Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), Mary Landrieu (D-La.) and Tim Johnson (D-S.D.) all do not support gay marriage.

Hillary Clinton And The Political Class - The Clinton Show, Starring Hillary - Esquire Last night, after taking a little time off to recover from both a concussion and being Secretary Of State, Hillary Clinton gave a speech at the Kennedy Center in DC that pretty plainly was a preliminary exercise in preliminary ecdysiastics in the general direction of New Hampshire and Iowa in 2016.
Summarizing the 2008 Primaries - Lawyers, Guns & Money : Lawyers, Guns & Money Clinton’s primary campaign was run by idiots and, consequently, full of mistakes. And the poor hires she made capped a career of bad decision making, from mishandling the politics of healthcare reform in 1993 to cozying up to The Family, from generally idiotic hawkery (capped, but by no means limited to, the Iraq War vote) to the idiotic, ex post facto special pleading that extended the 2008 primary campaign far longer than it should have gone (thanks, JosephW, for reminding us what this sounded like upthread).
Republicans' New Welfare Queens | New Republic The Republicans' rapidly expanding definition of welfare

Georgia Teens Fight for Racially Integrated Prom Because It's 2013, for Chrissakes "We're embarrassed, it's embarrassing, yeah it's kind of embarrassing," (because, according to Alito, Thomas, Scalia and Roberts, the South has totally gotten beyond its racism)

China and many countries are greatly underreporting how much they take from Earth’s oceans | Georgia Straight Chinese fishing vessels are catching 12 times more than they are reporting annually

Zuckerberg eyes Android takeover with 'best version of Facebook there is' | Technology | guardian.co.uk Facebook boss announces software system – Facebook Home – designed to push updates directly to users' home screens

Roger Ebert: 1942 - 2013
A Leave of Presence - Roger Ebert's Journal April 2, 2013 (last column)

Inside Apple's Plans for Its Futuristic, $5 Billion Headquarters - Businessweek Few architects will publicly question the judgment of Jobs and Foster, but many privately snicker at the doughnut-shaped design.

040313
North Korea nuclear threats prompt US missile battery deployment to Guam | World news | The Guardian Hagel says Pyongyang poses 'real and clear danger' to US allies as Pentagon deploys missile defence battery to Pacific island
Anonymous: North Korea targeted by hacking group | BGR
N. Korea vows actual military actions | YONHAP NEWS North Korea's military announced Thursday that it would take a series of military actions against the United States.
What you need to know about the mounting bird flu toll in China – Quartz - H7N9, a strain of avian flu that has never infected humans before and for which there is no vaccine + 16,000 carcasses of mysteriously killed pigs and 1,000 ducks floating in waterways near Shanghai and Sichuan province.

Eschaton: You and them fight The Tories have been masterful at turning the middle class against the poor. Take away or ruin the goodies middle class people get from the gov and then point to all the free stuff the poor get (mostly housing benefit). Gonna be a changed country.


The case for expanding Social Security, not cutting it But a big new report (pdf) from the New America Foundation suggests that the conventional wisdom is exactly backward. Congress should be looking at ways to expand Social Security, not shrink it — particularly at a time when traditional corporate pensions are disappearing, and 401(k)s have proved fairly risky
Eschaton: Busting Out Everywhere the big point is that expanding Social Security is necessary. The 401K system has failed. We can argue about precisely what to do about it, but we need to do something. And chained CPI isn't it. (Obama's pet rock)

One thing we don’t know about Hillary - Salon.com will a Clinton 2016 campaign pass the Mark Penn Test? The Mark Penn Test, which I just invented, determines whether or not a person should be trusted with the presidency, based solely on one criterion: Whether or not they pay Mark Penn to do anything for their campaign. Paying Mark Penn means you’ve failed the Mark Penn Test. (let alone Dick Fucking Morris)

Obama's EU Trade Deal Would Include New Political Powers For Corporations
Balanced budgets are overrated. (GOP run by rubes)

Overtime Laws Could Be Loosened Under GOP Comp-Time Proposal (you don't need no steenking overtime, or vacation either)
Felony Charges Dropped Against Colin Small, Republican Accused Of Destroying Voter Registration Forms (one of two cases of "voter fraud")
Carolyn Maloney, New York Democrat, Says She Received Death Threats Over Gun Control Support Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) says she received death threats at her Manhattan office Tuesday over a piece of proposed gun control legislation.
Political Animal - Appalachian Trail to Comeback Trail? So one of the most thoroughly disgraced and humiliated pols of our era (at least among those who have not worn the orange jumpsuit), Mark Sanford, has won the Republican nomination to return to his old gig representing South Carolina’s 1st district in Congress.
North Carolina May Declare Official State Religion Under New Bill
State Religion - Lawyers, Guns & Money : Lawyers, Guns & Money North Carolina Republicans have filed a bill establishing a state religion of North Carolina that combines ignoring the 1st Amendment with nullification:
Richard Cebull, Federal Judge Who Sent Racist Obama Email, Retires
Oklahoma Agenda 21 Bill Leads To Tea Party Threat Against State Senator An Oklahoma tea party leader has threatened to turn a Republican state senator into a "laughing stock" and "dig into" his family members and associates unless he backs a bill blocking the United Nations' sustainability agenda. (you know, the World Government plot to take away your golf courses)
Indiana Abortion Pill Bill Passed By House, Aimed At Limiting Use
Brad DeLong : Donald Luskin Is No Longer the Stupidest Man Alive: Steven Landsburg Is--and the University of Rochester Has a Big Problem… (photons the same as penises)

Q2 Slowdown: A Spring Swoon - Business Insider

Study Details Injuries to Pedestrians and Cyclists in New York City - NYTimes.com One harrowing take-away from the report is that no area, it seems, can be entirely safe. Six percent of pedestrians were injured while on a sidewalk. Of those injured on the street, 44 percent used a crosswalk, with the signal, compared with 23 percent who crossed midblock and 9 percent who crossed against the signal.

More Diagnoses of A.D.H.D. Causing Concern - NYTimes.com
CDC - ADHD, Prevalence - NCBDDD - By State (yes, the South is sick)

What Makes Rain Smell So Good? | Surprising Science petrichor to help explain the phenomenon, combining a pair of Greek roots: petra (stone) and ichor (the blood of gods in ancient myth)

Iain M. Banks Cancer: Author Announces He Has Only Months To Live Scottish writer Iain Banks said Wednesday he has been diagnosed with late-stage gall bladder cancer and has just months to live.
Iain [M] Banks - A Personal Statement

Bitcoin’s largest market crashes after wild price swing - Quartz
It appears that MtGox is down, I've got nothing on any of the live feeds or API : Bitcoin

040213
'6,000 killed' in bloodiest month for Syria crisis – live updates | World news | guardian.co.uk Upsurge in deaths thought due to heavier shelling
UN approves first global arms treaty | World news | guardian.co.uk Resolution regulating multibillion-dollar international arms trade wins overwhelming backing from members
North Korea announces plans to restart nuclear complex | World news | guardian.co.uk UN secretary general says country has 'gone too far' as it reveals plans to revive Yongbyon reactor

Cyprus finance minister Michael Sarris resigns as blame game begins | World news | guardian.co.uk Formal investigation begins into events leading to €10bn bailout, under which savers are taking financial hit in first for eurozone
Unemployment in Euro Zone Reaches a Record High - NYTimes.com Unemployment in the euro zone rose to yet another record high in the first two months of the year, official data showed Tuesday, providing confirmation that the economy remains in a deep freeze. (so, more austerity!)

Poll: Top Conspiracy Theories, Revealed -- Oswald, Roswell, WMDs - Washington Wire - WSJ On global warming, PPP found 37% of registered voters surveyed believe global warming is a hoax, while 51% don’t — sharply split down party lines ... But almost no one – just 4% of respondents — believes shape-shifting lizard people control the world.


Sequestration Effects: Cuts Sting Communities Nationwide The grips of sequestration are just now beginning to be felt and the effects are already quite dramatic. (Rethugs killing America)

NRA unveils plan for armed guards in schools it says 'will save lives' | World news | guardian.co.uk Gun control advocates denounce organisation's controversial 225-page review of school safety standards after Sandy Hook (the solution: sell guns to schools)
How the NRA's proposal to put guns in schools became credible | Ana Marie Cox | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk After Sandy Hook, a plan for armed guards in schools seemed absurd. But the NRA's moral universe has proved seductive
NRA Armed Schools Plan - What Could Possibly Go Wrong With The NRA's New Plan? - Esquire Well, the NRA has managed to come up with its "Guns For Everybody School Safety Plan" and it contains pretty much what you'd expect it to contain, including whole new markets and increased profits for the guns-and-ammo manufacturers that represent the NRA's primary constituency.
Nelson, Georgia Family Protection Ordinance Approved, Would Make Gun Ownership Mandatory For Some (because, Freedom!)

Another ACA Plan Delayed - The Clumsy And Ill-Fitting Shackles Of Tyranny - Esquire And the problem with the deal that finally got done was that it insisted on keeping health-insurance companies in charge of health-care coverage in this country.

Novartis cancer drug patent bid rejected by Indian court in landmark ruling | World news | guardian.co.uk Healthcare activists welcome landmark ruling they say will give poor patients continued access to cheap medicines

More on Academic Publishing and Blogging - Lawyers, Guns & Money ("publishing" makes sure you don't get "published")
Blogging political science has gotten complicated, man | Daniel W. Drezner
Blogging > Peer Review Publishing?

Secret e-mail searches on Harvard cheating scandal broader than initially described - Boston.com Harvard administrators disclosed at a faculty meeting this afternoon that their secret e-mail search last fall was broader than they initially described it in a statement on March 11

E-mail gets a cold shoulder - Business - Boston.com

040113
South Korea warns it will retaliate if North attacks | World news | guardian.co.uk South Korean president Park Geun-hye promises robust response to 'sudden and unexpected provocations' by North
Iraq rocked by deadly blast in Tikrit | World news | guardian.co.uk Nine killed including seven police officers as insurgents blow up oil tanker packed with explosives inside government compound

Joe. My. God.: IRELAND: Bishops Threaten To Stop Performing Straight Marriages If Gay Marriages Are Legalized (step in the right direction)

So how’s the Senate map shaping up? Not great for Dems.
Supreme Court Weighs In On Race With Affirmative Action, Voting Rights Cases
Todd Akin, Allen West Lavished Government Money On Staff After Losing Reelection

Lessons From a Comeback - NYTimes.com Modern movement conservatism, which transformed the G.O.P. from the moderate party of Dwight Eisenhower into the radical right-wing organization we see today, was largely born in California
284,000 College Graduates Had Minimum-Wage Jobs Last Year

Sen. Casey supports same-sex marriage
Sue Everhart, Georgia GOP Chairwoman, Warns Of 'Free Ride' Gay Marriage Fraud straight people might enter into fraudulent gay marriages to obtain benefits (straight people will gay-marriage!)

Like a business | An und für sich
Helicopter money: Federal Reserve should print money and give it directly to households. - Slate Magazine Fight unemployment by giving money directly to American families.
Health Law Provision for Small Business Is Delayed - NYTimes.com

Daily Kos: Ohio's GOP attorney general fearlessly defends business owners' rights to prevent unfertilized eggs (because, Freedom!)

Wastewater Disposal Wells Proliferate Along with Fracking - NYTimes.com (the end of water in America)
Keystone XL Oil Spill Risk Troubles Nebraskans, Others Who Point To Previous Spills Like Mayflower
Exxon Pipeline Spill - The Keystone XL Pipeline's Bad Week - Esquire t's been a pretty bad week for our old friend, the Keystone XL pipeline, the proposed planetary death-funnel that would bring the world's dirtiest fossil-fuel from an artificially created environmental wasteland in western Canada, across the edges of the most agriculturally important aquifer on the continent, and down to some refineries in Texas, which doesn't care what it does to the planet, and thence to China, which really doesn't care what it does to the Earth. I

Daily Kos: Tennessee Republicans pushing to cut welfare benefits if kids' report cards don't measure up
Atlanta School Reform Scam - Yet Another Education Reform Scam - Esquire We really should all agree now that the American corporate class essentially is made up these days, high and low, entirely of grifting pieces of dickweed who don't have the moral sense possessed by spirochete, and that anything they touch will inevitably become in some way a thieves paradise, and that any education "reform" proposed, developed, and/or modeled for the nation by the members of its corporate class invariably will take on the ethical norms, not of the old American classroom, but of the new American boardroom.

This tipping-point for paywalls does not fix newspapers' larger crisis | Michael Wolff | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk Not even the smartest metered model can make up for paltry digital ad revenues and a failure to recruit younger readers
Timothy Noah: Chris Hughes 'might be a young man with more money than sense' - POLITICO.com “Another time, after I wrote a piece about Jim DeMint's departure from the Senate headlined 'Requiem For A Wingnut,' he emailed me to say ... wait, I've got it here: ‘I have little esteem for Jim DeMint, but I also want us to make a rule of not name-calling in headlines. (fired for calling DeMint a "wingnut" - too shrill for Chris Hughes, billionaire)

Political Animal - Sheryl Sandberg, take two one of Sandberg’s PR people sent Losse a startling private tweet that read, “There’s a special place in hell for you.” ... Facebook started out as a site to rate women’s hotness and its bro culture is notorious
Feminism’s Tipping Point: Who Wins from Leaning in? | Dissent Magazine (Facebook, of course)
Can Women Have It All on the Times Obit Page? -- Daily Intelligencer

Will Ware be stuck with the bill? - Salon.com his injury in service to the NCAA’s multimillion-dollar machine could spell the end of his financial aid and massive healthcare bills to boot.

The Political Scientist as Blogger - Lawyers, Guns & Money

My 13 favourite talks from TED 2013 | Sue Gardner's Blog
Reading minds with a brain scanner: Mary Lou Jepsen at TED2013 | TED Blog For a while she took a combination typical of a male in his early 20s, and “I was angry all the time, I thought about sex constantly, and I thought I was the smartest person in the world.” That gave new appreciation of men and what they might go through.