This evening's music features blues musician and leader of the Memphis Jug Band Will "Son Brimmer" Shade.

Here are some stories from tonight's post:

As Video Exposes Walter Scott Police Killing, Why Is the Man Who Filmed Eric Garner’s Death in Jail?

Bystander Who Filmed Horrifying Footage: 'Officer Just Shot Him in the Back'

Speaking with news outlets for the first time, witness says victim did not have possession of Taser as officer initially claimed

As the footage itself sends shockwaves across a nation already engaged in an elevated debate about race and the scourge of endemic police violence, the man who shot the horrifying cell phone video of an unarmed man being gunned down by a police officer in South Carolina has come forward to explain what else he saw as the events unfolded before him last Saturday. ...

Though the video [warning: graphic] shows the fatal shots, Santana also told NBC what he witnessed before he turned his camera on.

"Before I started recording, they were down on the floor. I remember the police [officer] had control of the situation," Santana said. "He had control of Scott. And Scott was trying just to get away from the Taser. But like I said, he never used the Taser against the cop."

"As you can see in the video, the police officer just shot him in the back," Santana added. "I knew right away, I had something on my hands."

In fact, Santana said in a subsequent interview—this one on MSNBC's All In with Chris Hayes—that he was so afraid of what the repercussions for him might be that he considered "erasing the video" from his cell phone.

"I felt that my life, with this information, might be in danger. I thought about erasing the video and just getting out of the community, you know Charleston, and living some place else," Santana said. "I knew the cop didn't do the right thing."

Where do they find these clowns?

Tom Cotton says war against Iran would only take a few days

Senator Tom Cotton said in a radio interview Tuesday that eliminating Iran's nuclear facilities would only take “several days” of US airstrikes.

“Even if military action were required — and we certainly should have kept the credible threat of military force on the table throughout which always improves diplomacy — the president is trying to make you think it would be 150,000 heavy mechanized troops on the ground in the Middle East again as we saw in Iraq. That's simply not the case,” Cotton said on the Family Research Council's Washington Watch program. ...

He continued to say that making a deal would be “wishful thinking” and similar to “a child's wish for a pony,” while military action against Iran would not drag out like the Iraq War but would closer resemble 1998’s four day-long Operation Desert Fox.

What happens to leftists who try to raise the minimum wage “too much”?

The Democrats try to punish them, or discredit them and compromise away their proposals Naturellement. Two examples, first Seattle, Washington:

Mayor Ed Murray is expected to release his plan to raise Seattle’s minimum wage as soon as today. No matter what happens in the $15 wage debate, Seattle City Councilmember Kshama Sawant has already won.

If the Seattle City Council passes a $15 wage in the coming months (as appears likely), Sawant will appropriately get credit for coming out of nowhere to commandeer the city’s political agenda.

$15.00! Sawant got the workers “too much!” So what do the Democrats do? Run a candidate against Sawant, of course! Black Agenda Report:

Kshama Sawant helped lead a multi-year effort to raise the minimum wage in Seattle. The CEO of Seattle’s Urban League, [Pam Banks,] a longtime political insider with great fundraising connections wants to run for local office. Apparently there are no neoliberal pension-cutting Democrats for her to go after in Seattle, and no neolithic Republicans worth dethroning either.

The number one and only target of Banks’ campaign for office will be the socialist, because she knows things. Pam Banks knows that while you can never have too many Republicans or Democrats in office, even one socialist is way too many. CEO Banks knows that while you can never have too many corporate funded politicians, even one elected official that doesn’t take the corporate cash makes everybody else feel nervous and look bad. … Banks knows that any run against a socialist incumbent will be well funded by forces who already call the League, and her, their good friend. They just might not be friends of the people of Seattle.

Second example, Portland, Maine, where the Greens started an initiative for $15.00. Then this happened:

Under Portland mayor [Brennan’s] proposal, the minimum wage would initially increase from the current $7.50 to $9.50 an hour, with additional increases scheduled over the next few years.

Again, $15.00! Those darn Greens are trying to get the workers “too much!” Green state chair Asher Platts met with Brennan (sorry, Faceborg):

I saw the mayor of Portland today, he seemed really upset at the #?15now campaign for overshadowing his more moderate min wage proposal.

What was odd, was when I explained to him that we supported any work to raise the wage, and that our campaign does him a favor by making his proposal look more moderate, and explained how with negotiations you always ask for more than you expect and compromise your way back, he said, “maybe that’s how you negotiate Asher, but that’s not how I negotiate.”

Which I was confused about, because… the definition of negotiation….

I guess he’s right though, that’s not how Democrats like him negotiate– they start conceding everything to their opponent and work their way backwards from there.

Two Teenagers Are Suing the Oregon Government Over Climate Change

In Oregon, two teenagers, Kelsey Juliana and Olivia Chernaik, have taken the state to court, accusing it of failing to act to protect public resources for the future. A judge heard arguments in that case this week after an Oregon appeals court allowed the case to move forward last summer. The pair is backed backed by the environmental group Our Children's Trust, which has filed similar suits in five other states. ...

The bulk of the roughly 400-plus lawsuits related to climate change are filed by industry players challenging environmental regulations, according to the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University Law School. The Sabin Center's director, Michael Gerrard, told VICE News that the novel tack taken by Our Children's Trust — which argues that the atmosphere should be declared a public trust to be protected — faces some big hurdles in court.

"The most important obstacle is a question of separation of powers — whether it's the role of the courts to be setting the limitations on greenhouse gases, or whether that's a job for Congress, the EPA, and the state environmental agencies," Gerrard said. ...

Patrick Parenteau, a law professor at Vermont Law School told VICE News the Oregon case might have a better chance than earlier cases of producing a breakthrough, since the plaintiffs are demanding that state officials produce an accounting of what public resources are at risk.

"That in my mind would be a breakthrough. If the court actually orders the state to do something specific to address climate change, that would be a big step forward," he said.

Also of interest:

John Oliver, Edward Snowden, and Unconditional Basic Income