Four Articles Worth Reading In The Nation

• Alex S. Vitale, A Short History of Cops Terrorizing Students
• Eric Alterman, Meet Paul Ryan, Media Darling. He's Sensible, Serious and Totally Made-Up.
• Zoë Carpenter, Even Hillary Clinton Thinks It's Time to Investigate Exxon
• Katha Pollitt, Gender Equality Is Not Possible Without Abortion

Thursday Thtuff You May Want To Read

• Trump, Carson Threaten To Boycott Next GOP Debate After 'Debacle' RNC Call
• ACLU Sues Ex-Psychologists Who Designed CIA Torture Program
• 15 Years On, Conservatives Are Still Trying to Kill the Abortion Pill
• Report: Boehner Will Push Through Debt Limit Hike Before Stepping Down
• Chaffetz Says He Set Up Viewing Room For Unedited Planned Parenthood Videos
• Cooper red-baited Bernie Sanders with deceptive Soviet honeymoon claim

And a happy day to you as well...

Articles On Boehner; Articles On Other Outrageous Matters

On Boehner:

• Congressional agenda thrown into disorder with Boehner’s departure

Wasn't it already that way when he was present?

• The 4 Worst Things John Boehner Did As Speaker

According to Igor Volsky at ThinkProgress,

1. Boehner shut down the government to protect the country from “the threat of Obamacare.”
2. Boehner killed bipartisan immigration reform because Healthcare.gov had technical difficulties.
3. Boehner turned the debt ceiling into a political football.
4. Boehner ran the least productive Congress in history.

See the article for Volsky's reasoning.

And on a miscellany of outrages:

• Maine Mayor Wants To Publish Names And Addresses Of Welfare Recipients Online

I'd heard that Republicans were really into stocks, but I didn't know it meant that kind of stocks...

• Voters Raise Concerns About Bernie Sanders’ Record On Guns
  

  OK, I never said Bernie was perfect. His explanation is just about right: city needs and country needs are different, and Vermont is a small state with mostly small‑to‑medium towns; I would expect most Vermonters not to understand what living in a crime‑ridden city is like, a place like Houston where the evening news lists the two to five major shootings of the day...

• Some Counties In Texas Actually Are Denying Birthright Citizenship

That was the sound of our nation's founders, as well as the framers of the 14th Amendment, turning in their graves. If birthright citizenship is to be denied, I propose we start with Donald Trump.

Monday Miscellany On (Oops! Sorry!) Wednesday

• Kidnapped Abroad And Solitary Confinement: This Is What Due Process Looks Like For A Palestinian In Israel
  

  (Richard Silverstein at Shadowproof)

• Workers To Face Biosurveillance From Employers
  

  (Dan Wright at Shadowproof)

• A Texas Conservative Openly Calls For Violence Against LGBT People
  

  (Kossacks for Marriage Equality)

• The GOP’s deeply flawed field
  

  (Katrina vanden Heuvel of The Nation at WaPo)

• There was that time JEB! forced single mothers to post their sexual history in the newspaper...
  

  (SemDem at Kos)

• Krugman: Why All The Republican Candidates Are Attacking Social Security
  

  (Dartagnan at Kos refers to...)

• Republicans Against Retirement
  

  (Krugman at NYT)

Miami Houston Heat — Peak Temp And Hot Miscellany

No, as far as I know, Miami's NBA team has not moved here, which is just as well; we already have the Rockets, thankyouverymuch. But the heat... not the Heat... has moved in on us and set up housekeeping. Yesterday's high was (gasps for breath) 106°F. I had stuff to do and I did it, but as I looked at various laborers in the street I was very glad that their jobs were not my job. At least we finally got some rain, for the first time in several weeks. And today is forecast to be a bit cooler. You know all that talk about climate change? I think maybe it has arrived...

Houstonians, here are a few items for you to read while you are stuck indoors, saving yourself from the heat from 1:00pm to 4:00pm, more or less:

• Akil Awan at Informed Comment writes on "Hiroshima and Nagasaki: the single greatest acts of terrorism in human history?"
  

  As I was born three years to the day after the bombing of Hiroshima, I cannot avoid a certain morbid fascination with the event. Terrorism or the saving of our nation? Dad and I used to debate the subject of whether any of our family would be living if the Bomb had not been used; to no one's surprise, I always took the "terrorism" position (without using the word).

• Tan Copsy of Risky Business, writing at Informed Comment offers the irony: "Deep South, biggest Climate Deniers, will be among worst hit by Global Warming"
  

  As the evidence emerges, it becomes clear that it is a good thing so many words have been spoken in vehement denial of climate change: the region is going to need to eat those words, or starve...

• Kevin Gosztola at Shadowproof ("the new FDL") offers us a "Podcast: Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter & Problem of Identity Politics"
  

  No one, not even Sen. Sanders, can please all the people all the time. Sensibly enough, his event organizers allowed the Black Lives Matter activists to take the mic for a period of time; after all, theirs is a compelling and legitimate issue, and though I am not Black, I too would be glad to hear Bernie address race issues more firmly... he isn't going to lose any votes already committed to him by doing so, and there's much to be gained if Sanders gains the reputation as "the fair one."

• Motoko Rich at NYT notes with grim smile and shake of the head: "Teacher Shortages Spur a Nationwide Hiring Scramble (Credentials Optional)"
  

  Never forget my two-parent two-schoolteacher household in my youth: that environment formed much of my political outlook, and I admit freely that it gladdens my heart when Republicans (and even some Democrats these days) try to cut corners on education costs and methods, blame teachers for the failure of a system pared to the bone and beyond in an attempt to pocket the tax money for their own purposes, and yet gaze drop‑jawed as teachers, counselors and even administrators flock to other occupations that pay better salaries for work involving a great deal less outright aggravation than schoolteaching. The ghosts of Bill and Irma are grinning at the sight!

Morning Misc.

• Charles Davis at The Intercept: UNDER THE BRIDGE: The Crime of Living Without a Home in Los Angeles
• Ian Reifowitz at Kos: STUNNER from Pope: Church Should Stop Being "Obsessed" with Abortion, Gay marriage and Contraception
• Leslie Salzillo at Kos: New Study Ranks 50 States By Gun Sense And Gun Deaths -- Gun Extremists Arrive in 5-4-3-2-1
• Violence Policy Center (VPC): State Firearm Death Rates, Ranked by Rate, 2011 [NOTE: no, Texas is not even in the top half among states. Put that in your pipe and... uh... dump it out of your pipe; please don't smoke it! - SB]

And one for fellow Texans...

• Texas Secretary of State: Important 2015 Election Dates

ADDENDUM: "We have to find a new balance," the Pope is quoted as saying. I am sorry to hear the Pope has lost one of his athletic shoes... <grin_duck_run />

Friday Catch-Up

Too much celebration of Stella's 64^th left me in no condition to blog for a couple of days. Here's a list of... uh... stuff... to clear the desktop of things that accumulated:

• Appeals Court OKs Throwing Out Strict North Dakota Anti-Abortion Law
• Alito: Gay Marriage Ruling Could Allow Judges To End Minimum Wage Laws
• Mitch McConnell: 'Gender Card' Not Enough To Get Hillary Clinton To White House
• Planned Parenthood: Secret Video Part Of Years-Long Harassment Campaign
• The Constitutional Roadblock to Efforts to Fix Federal Elections
• Republican House and Senate Introduce Bills Allowing Companies To Fire Single, Pregnant Women

Wednesday WanderingSCOTUS On Abortion And Gay Marriage — Breyer's Glossip Death Penalty Dissent — Piketty et al Write To Merkel — Nichols At The Nation Interviews Bernie Sanders

Here's what I have been reading on the Web (what I've been reading in a book is another matter altogether)...

• Why Abortion Is Losing While Gay Marriage Is Winning

Lauren Rankin at TPM:

It’s been a wild couple of weeks at the Supreme Court, as a notoriously conservative court legalized same-sex marriage nationwide, upheld the Fair Housing Act, and preserved Obamacare subsidies for millions of Americans. Progressives were stunned and delighted at the Supreme Court’s seemingly leftward tilt, cheering Justice Anthony Kennedy for his decisive vote for marriage equality and commending Chief Justice John Roberts for strengthening Obamacare’s judicial footing.

On Monday, progressives had something else to cheer about, as Justice Kennedy once again joined Justices Breyer, Ginsburg, Kagan and Sotomayor—the liberal wing of the court—to allow 10 endangered Texas abortion clinics to remain open while the court decides whether to hear the full appeal. It was met with jubilation from abortion rights supporters who knew that, if this law had been allowed to go into effect, only nine abortion clinics would be left to service the more than five million Texas women of reproductive age. Allowing these clinics to stay open wasn’t just a progressive win; it was a life-saving order.

This move, coupled with their refusal to grant Mississippi’s request to allow them to close their clinic, all but ensures that the Supreme Court will take up abortion rights in their next term. They will likely grapple with whether TRAP laws—laws that single out abortion providers with onerous and unnecessary regulations in order to force them to close—are constitutional or if they do indeed pose an “undue burden” on women’s access to safe abortion care. Basically, the Supreme Court will likely rule on whether hostile states can close safe clinics or not. These implications are enormous.

...

• What Justice Breyer’s Dissent on Lethal Injection Showed About the Death Penalty’s Defenders

Liliana Segura at The // Intercept:

...

In its 5-4 decision Monday, the Court concluded that this drug, midazolam, despite being linked to a number of botched executions, did not violate prisoners’ Eighth Amendment rights, because there was insufficient proof its use would necessarily put them at risk of an agonizing death. (The drug, a benzodiazepine, was chosen to replace barbiturates previously used as an anesthetic during lethal injection — for more, see my earlier coverage of Glossip here.)

But in an unusual and impassioned dissent, Justice Stephen Breyer read Glenn Ford’s name from the bench to illustrate why, putting particular execution protocols aside, the time has come to reconsider the death penalty altogether. “Last year, in 2014, six death row inmates were exonerated based on actual innocence,” Breyer wrote. “All had been imprisoned for more than 30 years.” In Ford’s case, he said, citing a remarkable mea culpa published by the Shreveport Times, “the prosecutor admitted that even ‘[a]t the time this case was tried there was evidence that would have cleared Glenn Ford.” This same prosecutor, Breyer noted, admitted that “at the time of Ford’s conviction, he was ‘not as interested in justice as [he] was in winning.’”

...

• Austerity Has Failed: An Open Letter From Thomas Piketty to Angela Merkel

"Five leading economists warn the German chancellor, 'History will remember you for your actions this week.' ”

• Bernie Sanders Speaks

"In his most revealing interview, the socialist presidential candidate sets out his vision for America." - John Nichols [An exceptional interview! Please go see for yourself why I feel America needs this man as President. - SB]

SCOTUS Monday Miscellany — On Tuesday

How can a "house spouse" have so many things to do that s/he runs behind on his/her blogging? If you don't know the answer to that, you're probably not a house spouse, and you possibly don't want to know the answer...

First, a few Supreme Court goodies (or baddies), most of them at Kos:

‘OK... Women and Blacks, go to
the back of the bus, er, I mean,
the ends of the rows!’

• ABC 13 News, Houston: Supreme Court blocks Texas from enforcing some abortion-clinic restrictions
  

  It's about damned time they did this! Regrettably, it's temporary, until the Court can research and decide whether to hear the appeal in the fall.

• Zwoof at Kos: Speaking of the SCOTUS, 3 Strikes Law Struck Down. Private Prisons Haz a Sad
  

  "Three strikes" was a terrible idea from the beginning: juries and/or judges, not legislators, should determine sentences based on circumstances; otherwise, why bother with a trial?

• Laura Clawson at Kos: Supreme Court upholds Oklahoma's use of drug that led to bloody, botched execution
  

  No, no, no: the bloodthirstiness of citizens of some states should not override the Eighth Amendment; if best evidence suggests that a method of execution is excruciatingly painful, that method should be forbidden as "cruel."

• Meteor Blades at Kos: Supreme Court rejects EPA's regulation of power plants' emissions of mercury and other toxins
  

Because obviously the toxicity of an emission simply must depend inversely on the cost of the process to remove it. [/irony] Damn it, serious decisions impacting the environment cannot be made in this way without endangering the lives and health of the Americaq public.

Next, a few items of (ahem) varying seriousness:

• Caitlin MacNeal at TPM: Texas AG: Clerks Can Refuse To Give Marriage Licenses To Gay Couples
  

  Perhaps this should have been listed with the SCOTUS posts above; then again, Texas seems never to have overcome its self‑image as a separate sovereign nation. Thank the good Dog it's not!
  
  I am happy to say that the Harris County Clerk's office, though run by a Republican, resolved the matter neatly by assigning deputy clerks who have religious objections to gay marriages to tasks other than, uh, paperwork for gay marriages. Harris County Clerk Stan Stanart has let it be known that there are only three (3) such religious recalcitrants among his clerks, so it's not a very big problem. In any case, Harris County's very large gay population are marrying each other at a steady clip, with few hitches, uh, glitches.

• Natasha Geiling at Think Progress: High Carbon Levels Can Make It Harder For Plants To Grow
  

  [/Sigh!] Another frequent conservative canard debunked, as is so often the case, by the actual science involved. No, global climate change, with its associated increase in atmospheric CO₂ levels, will NOT result in a surge in agricultural productivity. Don't you just love such damned fools? [/irony]

And last and probably least... 

• akadjian at Kos: CNN mistakes dildo flag at London pride parade for flag of ISIS
  

  What silliness! One might almost think CNN was set up by some clever London activist...

Monday Medley

• Why Conservatives Still Won't Admit That Charleston Was A Racist Crime
  

  Aurin Squire at TPM lists several prominent GOPers (e.g., Jeb Bush, Rudy Giuliani, Gov. Nikki Haley, a WSJ columnist [anonymous and invisible if you don't have a subscription], etc.) who use words like "I don't know [why it happened]," "unimaginable," "we don't know the motivation," "senseless tragedy," etc., and responds to these protestations of incomprehension:
  

  Given the history of the South, along the rise of both active shooters and gun access, we can't call what happened Wednesday night a “senseless tragedy.” In fact, the Charleston church shooting is full of savage sense. Thanks to complicity at best, and outright racist at worst, the “inconceivable” is still feasible. The fear tactics that were once localized in the dark backwoods of our political landscape now reach every phone and laptop. ...

  We DO know the motivation, the act is NOT inconceivable, we CAN imagine, and Repub's will find there's no use in pretending we don't or can't.
  
  
• Sixth greatest extinction event in the history of our planet is underway
  

  (Be sure to click through to the underlying paper and at least read the abstract, in which the authors justify this statement: "These estimates reveal an exceptionally rapid loss of biodiversity over the last few centuries, indicating that a sixth mass extinction is already under way.")

  Yes, it IS happening, as demonstrated under fairly strict criteria. Yes, humans ARE causing it. Will H. sapiens survive it? The abstract doesn't explicitly say, but you may live to find out!
  
  
• Supreme Courts rejects appeal of decision overturning NC's mandatory ultrasound abortion law
  

  (At last, some good news, however limited: because the Supreme Court rejected an appeal of this lower court's decision, women who reside in North Carolina cannot be forced by state law to obtain an ultrasound (an unnecessary, expensive and possibly inaccessible procedure) as a precondition for obtaining an abortion.)

  Now if they can only find a clinic that has not closed and get transportation to it...
  

And now two that hardly require any explanation, considering the nature of many of today's police forces:

• Florida police murder black computer engineer as he listens to music; attempted cover-up exposed
  
  
• Police crush, kill man begging for his life, screaming he was suffocating until his ears turned blue
  
  

"Monday, Monday..."

Wednesday Wandering — Soft Drinks, Austerity, Bernie On Jeb, DDF Mailers, King v. Burwell, Housing Discrimination

(I just spent an hour and a half constructing this list, then pressed Undo to retract a small copy-paste, and the Blogger editor "disappeared" (v.t.) the whole damned thing. So here is the reconstruction. I don't know that there's a moral of this story; to the best of my knowledge, Blogger editor doesn't provide any backup facility, but there's always Select All|Copy just before any Undo...)

• Jeff Ritterman, M.D., Truthout: Four Decades of the Wrong Dietary Advice Has Paved the Way for the Diabetes Epidemic: Time to Change Course

When the food manufacturers started removing the fat from our food, the taste went with the fat. The answer: Add sugar and lots of it.

• Laura Gottesdiener and Eduardo García, TomDispatch, via Truthout: US Austerity Politics: One State's Attempt to Destroy Democracy and the Environment

Something is rotten in the state of Michigan. ...

• Tool at Kos: Bernie Tells Jeb Bush to Pound Sand

Today Senator and Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders told Jeb Bush to go pound sand on social security. In no uncertain terms Sanders reiterated his stance that "NO we will not cut Social Security." This has been Sanders stance that payments from Social Security should be increased by raising the FICA cap. ...

• Andrew Satter at Center for American Progress: 8 Important Facts About the King v. Burwell Decision

... If the U.S. Supreme Court rules against the Affordable Care Act in the King v. Burwell case later this June, more than 6.4 million Americans who receive health insurance through the federal exchange could lose their coverage.

Here are 8 important facts about what such a ruling would mean for many Americans. ...

• Michele L. Jawando & Julia Gordon at Center for American Progress: The Supreme Court Could Strike Down a Key Provision of Housing Discrimination Law

In a ruling later this month, the U.S. Supreme Court could rule against a vital, long-standing tool for fighting housing discrimination against people with disabilities, families and women with children, people of color, and same-sex couples. ...

While you're out and about the web, please take a look at the daily news digests from the Defending Dissent Foundation; here are the issues of June 8 and June 9. This is a useful resource for anyone serious about civil liberties. The "Subscribe" link is at the bottom of each daily digest, or you can just visit the first link in this graf to view the current news.

Cops And Guns, Rights And Frights

One miscellany and another...

Cops do stops (some permanent); Islamophobia:

• Shaun King at Kos: The shocking truth about the two Chicago Police officers posing in this horrendous photo
• Jen Hayden at Kos: Woman calls police seeking help for boyfriend who threatened suicide, police arrive and shoot him
• Shaun King at Kos: Police wanted to charge 12-year-old Tamir Rice with 'aggravated menacing' and 'inducing panic'
• Scout Finch at Kos: Minnesota woman pulls gun on Muslim couple who were picking their son up from a friend's house

Civil liberties or their absence; PATRIOT Act sunset:

• NYT Editorial Board: Let Patriot Act Provisions Expire
• Seattle Times editorial board: Congress should sunset part of Patriot Act to prevent domestic spying
• Jennifer Granick, Director of Civil Liberties at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society, writing at Forbes: A Sunset Is A Beautiful Thing
• emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler): DOJ IG Issues Yet Another Classified Report that Should Be Public Before Congress Votes on PATRIOT Act
• Glenn Greenwald at The Intercept: On Patriot Act Renewal and USA Freedom Act: Glenn Greenwald Talks With ACLU’s Jameel Jaffer

Fans of the PATRIOT Act are applying enough pressure to burst a bicycle tire; I wish I could say with certainty that the Act, or at least its most egregiously anticonstitutional provisions like Section 215, would expire tomorrow, but certainty won't join me in saying that...

Monday Miscellany — On Wednesday

Things got a bit out of hand (and they still are), so here are some things I would have published earlier...

• John Feffer at TomDispatch: Why the World Is Becoming the Un-Sweden
• Nadia Prupis, staff writer from CommonDreams, appearing at Informed Comment: Snowden’s Revenge: USA “Freedom” [Surveillance] Act Fails in Senate (brackets original - SB)
• From The Tree, appearing at Informed Comment: The End of Dirty Coal? Britain CO2 Falls 10% on Coal Plant Closings
• occupystephanie at Kos: Artist Stops Oil Pipeline Cold: "by covering [his 800 acre property] with artwork and copyrighting the top six inches of his land as an artwork."
• "Elizabeth Warren on the difference between a recreational drug user and a banker"

Friday Flotsam

... a miscellany of items that washed up in the course of the week.

First, a couple from TPM:

• Study: Lawmakers Assume Voters Are Way More Conservative Than They Are — is newswriter Brendan James saying they're not?
• Rick Perry On Texas Takeover: If I Were President, Attitudes Would Change — mine among them, and not for the better.

Next, several from Firedoglake:

• For 7 Years, FBI Defied Law for Seeking a Person’s Records Under Patriot Act — it seems the FIBbers, ah, FBIers, haven't changed since J. Edgar's day.
• Podcast: CIA Whistleblower Jeffrey Sterling & the Government’s Campaign to Silence Him — count our President among those who do NOT believe that leaks by government officials to reporters are a valuable part of the mechanism by which American citizens are informed of their government's doings... Prez O. would rather use the Espionage Act to throw such officials in jail.
• Chicago Public Schools’ Ban of ‘Persepolis’ Continues to Face Challenge from Anti-Censorship Alliance — censorship is virtually never appropriate in a democracy, and even school board influence on selection of "age-appropriate" reading matter must be handled with extreme care. OOPS, this article is over two years old...
• Feinstein, McCain Want US Troops Deployed in Yemen — gawd a'mighty, don't we have enough wars on our hands already? Maybe what we have is a couple of senators who are past retirement age... OOPS again, this article was published in January; I fear FDL is having some problems with their recently republished site.

If something else of interest turns up today on one of those sites, I may append it here.

Clearing The Desktop

In fact, in Ubuntu Linux 12.04 with the Gnome 3 shell, the default desktop is completely clear, and many of us keep it that way in the interest of sanity. So I'm speaking only metaphorically...

• Tesla Announces New Product To ‘Fundamentally Change The Way The World Uses Energy’ (H/T ellroon. The new product is a battery.)
  
  
• Judge Halts Work On Maryland Pipeline Due To Environmental Concerns (Don't get your hopes up; the ruling is by a Baltimore County Circuit Court Judge, and I don't doubt the pipeline company has an appeals court judge securely in its pocket somewhere up the line.)
  
  
• Hawaii Will Soon Get All Of Its Electricity From Renewable Sources (Give me a few minutes to pack my bags, and a few more to earn another $1m or so to live on in Hawaii for a couple of years...)
  
  
• NSA Phone Data Collection Program Revealed By Edward Snowden Ruled Illegal (What a surprise! [/irony])
  
  
• French Lawmakers Approve Sweeping Expansion Of Spying Programs (Following in America's footsteps, despite all typical wisdom of the French...)
  
  
• Can Bernie Sanders Break Through the Status Quo?
  He may have already done it, with his unapologetic defense of social democracy and assaults on the “billionaire class.”
  
  

Miscellany: Police Behavior, Riots, Race, Nutjob GOPers And Their Guns

This post may not be particularly coherent, but I need to clean the accumulation of tabs in the browser...

• Bryan at Why Now? points us to CBC for a less ruthlessly "edited" view of police behavior in the news: Baltimore shows police killings America's real state of emergency
• Jon Sopel at BBC News explores What a riot does achieve
• Paul J. Weber at AP via TPM notes that TX Gov Orders State Guard to Monitor Possible Military Takeover of Texas, and similarly, Rand [Paul]: I'll Look Into Whether The Military Is Planning To Takeover The Southwest; together, these tend to prove that the Texas GOP is full-blown batshit fucking nuts
• Josh Marshall at TPM thinks we're crossing that Bridgegate exactly when we come to it
• Aniza Garcia at TPM reports that a Child Finds A Loaded Gun In John Boehner's Capitol Bathroom
• antifa at Kos poses and firmly answers ignorant white Americans' too-frequent question, "Why do they burn down their own neighborhood?"

Maybe next time I'll have something original to write. (Maybe not...)

Mom! Look! I'm Cleaning My Plate!

Here are some significant items from the past few days (if this thunderstorm doesn't take my system down)...

• Paul Krugman: A Victory Against The Shadows
  

  "GE Capital was a quintessential example of the rise of shadow banking. In most important respects it acted like a bank; it created systemic risks very much like a bank; but it was effectively unregulated," - PK

• Peterr at FDL: 150 Years After Appomattox, the GOP Revises Their Views
  

  "Consider, for example, the remarks of a rather well known Republican leader, speaking in 1865 on the eve of the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox" - Peterr

• Katha Pollitt at The Nation: There Are No Abortion Cakes
  

  "If CEOs are worried that their LGBT employees won’t be treated as equals in Indiana, they should show as much concern for their pregnant and potentially pregnant employees." - KP

• Joan McCarter at Kos: Dick Cheney: Obama is the 'worst president we've ever had'
  

  [For Dick, an irony lesson... obviously unlearned - SB]

• NYT Editorial Board: A New Phase in Anti-Obama Attacks
  

  "It is a peculiar, but unmistakable, phenomenon: As Barack Obama’s presidency heads into its twilight, the rage of the Republican establishment toward him is growing louder, angrier and more destructive." - NYT [NFK - SB]

• Joan McCarter at Kos: Rand Paul: America's hungry seniors should turn to charity
  

  [And this man would be President? - SB]

• BlankBeat at Kos: You won't see Hillary Clinton in the same light ever again
  

  [As any reasonable hope of Elizabeth Warren as the 2016 Democratic presidential candidate fades, I find myself looking for legitimate justifications for voting for Hillary, which in fact I will do in preference to pitching my vote into a third-party sinkhole. This article expresses a decent and substantive reason for such a vote. - SB]

Reading For Wednesday

Left over from earlier in the week, but not to be forgotten:

• Judge Denies DOJ Request To Remove Hold On Immigration Executive Actions
  

  First, debatable president George W. Bush attempted to control everything directly by executive order and appointments in his eight stolen years in office. Now that those years are over, his political heirs control everything through his judicial appointments. Unitary executive, then unitary judiciary... either way, the Rethuglicans rule. Got it? You think maybe the same conditions should apply to Obama's executive orders as to Baby Bush's? One of Junior's judges will inform you otherwise. Yes, it's being appealed

• Poverty may affect the growth of children’s brains
  

  With time and various studies, this phenomenon looks more and more likely: poverty denies kids their literal intellectual birthright.

• A 'different' Rand Paul will launch his 2016 bid today
  

  I can't imagine Child Paul making a credible presidential run, but I've been fooled before about what Repub's would or wouldn't do.

• American tragedy: At least 50% of police shooting victims struggled with mental illness
  

  And remember, this article was published before the cop in SC shot an unarmed man in the back. Eight times. Killing him. On video, all set for the national news.

• American police killed more people in March (111) than the entire UK police have killed since 1900
  

  I never thought I'd live to see a day that I fervently pray each time I leave my home that I do not encounter a cop... even though I'm white. This cannot be allowed to continue.

Feel free to post some good news in comments. (Sorry; salvation doesn't count.)

Miscellany

Each worth reading, even if together they don't make up a coherent list post...

Laura Flanders, Truthout: The Fight Against High-Stakes Testing: A Civil Rights Movement Dean Baker, Truthout: Don't Worry About the Robots; the Fed Might Take Your Job David Roberts, Grist: Congress is trying to squash one of the few examples of American leadership on climate George Takei (Star Trek's "Sulu"; gay activist) via Gwenned, Daily Kos: The Awesome Response to Indiana's Religious Freedom Restoration Act

Flanders Baker Roberts Takei

I'm A Little Busy Here...

... with household duties, medical matters, feeding cats, herding cats, etc., all things that cannot be put off but are nonetheless not paid work. Have patience,please; I haven't forgotten the blog.