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"Diplomacy is the art of saying 'Nice doggie' until you can find a rock."

-- Will Rogers

News and Opinion

US and Russia Agree to a 'Cessation of Hostilities' and More Humanitarian Aid in Syria

Major powers agreed on Friday to implement a cessation of hostilities in Syria and to expand delivery of humanitarian aid to people caught up in the conflict, officials said.

US Secretary of State John Kerry, speaking to reporters after a meeting in Munich that included Russia and more than a dozen other countries, said the timeframe for the implementation of the cessation of fighting was hoped to be a week. He said all participants had agreed that Syrian peace negotiations should resume in Geneva as soon as possible.

"We believe we have made progres on both the humanitarian front and the cessation of hostilities front," Kerry said. "This progress has the potential — fully implemented, fully followed-through on — to be able to change the daily lives of the Syrian people."

He stressed that the cessation would not apply to Islamic State (IS) and other militant groups fighting in Syria.

British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said ending fighting could only succeed if Russia stopped air strikes supporting Syrian government forces' advance against the opposition.

Syria Ceasefire Plan Won't Include ISIS or Nusra Front

US and Russian officials are reporting that an agreement was reached today in Munich on an “ambitious” ceasefire plan for the Syrian Civil War, with a goal of ending all armed hostilities in the country within a week, excluding ISIS and Nusra Front territory. ...

Gains by the Syrian military in Aleppo, added to the push among Western nations to save the rebels by stopping the fighting. Ironically they’d long resisted pushes to end the fighting when they thought the rebels were winning. ...

The exclusion of Nusra territory from the deal is likely to make for some future disputes, as Russian airstrikes against Nusra’s coalition have repeatedly been presented by the US as targeting proper rebels, and Idlib Province, where materially all of Nusra’s territory is, remains a key focus of the Syrian offensives.

Syria war: President Bashar al-Assad vows to retake whole country

Saudi Arabia confirms plans to send troops to Syria

Saudi Arabia has confirmed it is planning to deploy ground troops to Syria to fight Isis.

The announcement, reported by the Saudi owned news organisation al-Arabiya, comes after several weeks of rumours the Gulf state would lead troops in Syria. 

A ground operation will likely anger President Bashar al-Assad, as well as the governments of Russia and Iran - who will see the intervention as an attempt to slow the progress of the Syrian government against rebels, according to Conflict News.

Syrian peace talks: stark warning from Russia as US backs role for Saudi troops

Dimitry Medvedev, Russia’s prime minister, was quoted telling Germany’s Handelsblatt daily: “The Americans and our Arab partners must think hard about this – do they want a permanent war? All sides must be forced to the negotiating table instead of sparking a new world war.”

Medvedev was apparently responding to suggestions that Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states might join the US-led campaign against Islamic State in Syria.

However, the US accused Russia of worsening the brutal conflict with its military action in support of President Bashar al-Assad.

Saudi Arabia Orders Humanitarian Aid Groups Out of Northern Yemen

Saudi Arabia has sent letters to a number of aid groups, along with the United Nations’ aid organization, warning them all to withdraw all employees from northern Yemen to “protect their employees” amid ongoing Saudi attacks against the cities and towns in the area. ...

The UN, for its part, says it has no intention of withdrawing any aid workers from northern Yemen, and publicly “reminded” Saudi Arabia that international law obliges them to allow humanitarian aid groups access to war zones. Saudi officials, however, insist the warning is perfectly legal.

A recent UN report concluded that Saudi Arabia has been systematically targeting civilians with airstrikes throughout the war, warning they amount to crimes against humanity. Saudi Arabia has US backing in the war, however, meaning no UN Security Council measures will be taken against them.

CIA Director: ISIS Has Used Chemical Weapons, Can Make More

Speaking to CBS News, CIA Director John Brennan has confirmed that ISIS has repeatedly used chemical weapons on the battlefield in Syria and Iraq, and has the capacity to make more such arms in the future. ...

This is a significant shift for the US, which historically has blamed the Syrian government for all chemical attacks in Syria, even though many of those attacks were conducted concurrent with ISIS offensives against the targets. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has affirmed that Syria has given up its entire chemical arsenal.

Bipartisan Bill Would End US Draft Registration

A bipartisan group of four Congressmen have introduced a new bill aiming to preempt efforts to expand the Selective Service program by ending it outright, on the grounds that it is an outdated waste of money.

Selective Service requires all US men, at age 18, to register for the military draft, even though no actual draft has occurred since 1973. A rival bill from Reps. Duncan Hunter (R – CA) and Ryan Zinke (R – MT) aims to extend the registration to include women in the name of “fairness.”

Rep. Mike Coffman (R – CO) has been leading the call to end the program for a long time now, insisting that not only has there been no draft in over 40 years, but that the Pentagon has never even considered a shift away from the all-volunteer military back toward the use of conscripts.

Ted Cruz’s Definition of Torture Is So Extreme, His Father’s Torture Might Not Even Qualify

Ted Cruz, who has long been an outspoken opponent of torture, reversed himself during Saturday’s Republican presidential debate when he endorsed an extreme and discredited definition of torture: that anything that inflicts less pain than losing an organ doesn’t count.

That definition, which Cruz said was “generally recognized,” is anything but. It comes from a 2003 Justice Department memo that the department later rescinded, acknowledging that it was full of slipshod legal arguments, clouded by ideology, and written under pressure from CIA officials who had already begun to torture terror suspects.

It’s such an extreme definition that it calls into question whether the treatment Cruz’s father endured in a Cuban prison — which the Texas senator has previously pointed to as his motivation to oppose torture — would qualify. ...

During Saturday’s debate, Cruz went on to say that he would bring waterboarding back, but not “in any sort of widespread use.”

Lawsuit Demands Information on Shadowy “Countering Violent Extremism” Programs in U.S.

Last February, the White House held a three-day summit on the topic of “Countering Violent Extremism.” ... One year later, it’s still unclear what that entails, exactly. The government has provided few details on how it actually intends to “counter extremism” in the U.S., despite calling CVE an “administration priority” in the 2017 fiscal budget and allocating tens of millions of dollars in spending. ...

Hoping to shed light on the situation, the American Civil Liberties Union yesterday filed a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act against the Department of Justice, Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, the Department of Education, and other federal agencies demanding the release of information about their CVE initiatives. ...

In a briefing paper released with their lawsuit, the ACLU said that CVE programs often target “people for monitoring based on their beliefs or ideologies,” thus potentially criminalizing speech protected under the First Amendment. It also highlighted past abuses of CVE programs, including instances in which young people who refused to take part were characterized as radicals and where community leaders were told they would have to identity and discuss cases of specific youths with law enforcement.

In the U.S., some of the most controversial CVE initiatives are those that focus on children. Leaked documents from the National Counterterrorism Center, published by The Intercept last year, showed that the government had developed a questionnaire to evaluate young people for their risk of future extremism, evidently for use by social workers, healthcare practitioners and teachers, among others.

Why Is RE/MAX Selling Properties in Illegal Israeli Settlements?

Israel's colonization of Palestinian territory in the occupied West Bank is widely recognized as a moral, legal, and political disaster for the peoples of the Middle East. Despite this, becoming a colonist in an Israeli settlement is relatively easy. In fact, it’s as easy as logging on to the website of the country’s local RE/MAX franchise and checking out the abundant housing listings in illegal colonies like Ariel, Ma’aleh Adumim, and Givat Ze’ev.

Last month, Human Rights Watch released a report on corporations profiting from the military occupation of the West Bank. The sole American corporation identified in the report was RE/MAX, the Colorado-based real estate company whose name is synonymous with home buying in the United States. As noted in the report, titled “Occupation, Inc.,” as of November 2015 RE/MAX offered 80 properties for sale in 18 different settlements, with a combined value approaching $36,250,000. ...

Not only does RE/MAX’s Israeli franchise list properties for purchase in the settlements, effectively using the power of the market to help entrench the occupation, it also operates an office in the larger settlement of Ma’aleh Adumim.

As per Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, it is illegal for an occupying power to transfer its citizens into territory under occupation. The United Nations has repeatedly made clear that Israel’s ongoing settlement program violates international law, and the Obama administration has gone on record to call the settlements themselves illegitimate. Despite such international opprobrium, however, the settlements continue to grow. In the week immediately following the HRW report, the Israeli government announced the construction of an additional 150 housing units in the colony of Ariel.

New York Police Have Used Stingrays Widely, New Documents Show

The NYPD has used cell-site simulators, commonly known as Stingrays, more than 1,000 times since 2008, according to documents turned over to the New York Civil Liberties Union. The documents represent the first time the department has acknowledged using the devices.

The NYPD also disclosed that it does not get a warrant before using a Stingray, which sweeps up massive amounts of data. Instead, the police obtain a “pen register order” from a court, more typically used to collect call data for a specific phone. Those orders do not require the police to establish probable cause. Additionally, the NYPD has no written policy guidelines on the use of Stingrays.

Stingrays work by imitating cellphone towers. They force all nearby phones to connect to them, revealing the owners’ locations. That means they collect data on potentially hundreds of people.

NYPD officer Peter Liang convicted of manslaughter in Akai Gurley shooting

The NYPD officer who shot and killed an unarmed man in a stairwell was convicted of manslaughter Thursday by a Kings County jury. The officer, 28-year-old Peter Liang, held his head in his hands as the foreman read back the charges. Liang was also found guilty of official misconduct in relation to the fatal shooting of Akai Gurley in November 2014.

The manslaughter charge carries up to 15 years in prison. Liang’s sentencing is set for 14 April. He was fired from the force after the ruling, an NYPD spokesman said.

Kings County district attorney Ken Thompson said the ruling demonstrated that “no matter where you live in Brooklyn, your life matters”.

Scott Rynecki, the attorney representing the Gurley family, said after the decision that “no one is here rejoicing at the fact that this officer was convicted ... but the message was sent ... that if a police officer does something wrong their actions will be held accountable and will be held accountable in a court of law”. Rynecki is representing the family in a civil suit.

In a statement Pat Lynch, the president of the Police Benevolent Association, said: “This bad verdict will have a chilling effect on police officers across the city because it criminalizes a tragic accident.”

Families of Americans killed by Mexican cartels sue HSBC for laundering billions

Four families of Americans killed by Mexican drug cartels are suing British banking giant HSBC for allegedly contributing to their deaths by allowing the gangs to launder billions of dollars.

It is a fresh setback for the bank, whose operations in Mexico have been under scrutiny by US authorities for years. The bank processed at least $881m in cash for Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel, regarded as the most powerful drug gang in the world, according to US authorities.

The suit claims that HSBC “knowingly provided continuous and systematic material support to the cartels and their acts of terrorism by laundering billions of dollars for them. As a proximate result of HSBC’s material support to the Mexican drug cartels, numerous lives, including those of the Plaintiffs, have been destroyed”.

It was filed on Tuesday in a federal court in the Texas border city of Brownsville. Rob Sherman, an HSBC spokesman, said in a statement that the bank intends to “vigorously” defend itself against the claims and is “committed to combating financial crime and [has] taken strict steps to help keep bad actors out of the global financial system”.

In 2012 a US Senate report described the bank as having a “pervasively polluted” culture that saw it allow drug kingpins, rogue nations and terrorists to move hundreds of millions of dollars around the financial system. US prosecutors said that deposits at Mexican branches were so frequent that drug traffickers used boxes that were designed to fit perfectly through the teller windows. HSBC apologised, pledged to reform its procedures and paid a $1.9bn settlement to US authorities.

Suing families of slain black youths is racial capitalism at its most grotesque

Apparently, it wasn’t enough for a Cleveland police officer to shoot 12-year-old Tamir Rice less than two seconds after arriving on-scene in 2014 and handcuff his sister when she tried to help him, nor for his mother to be left homeless in 2015 as she waited months for an investigation. It wasn’t enough for Cleveland to actually blame the little boy for his own death, or to present multiple reports which found his killing to be “reasonable”.

On Wednesday, in a letter submitted by the city’s Director of Law Barbara Langhenry, the City of Cleveland actually sued Tamir’s family for $500, which it claims is “past due – owing for emergency medical services rendered as the decedent’s last dying expense”, according to Cleveland Scene. ...

But make no mistake: viewing Tamir as a debtor to a society which killed him is racial capitalism at its worst, which Nancy Leong calls “the process of deriving social or economic value from the racial identity of another person”.

It is the second such grotesque lawsuit against a dead black boy in less than a week by a party charged with his death. Just a few days ago, Chicago Police Officer Robert Rialmo sued the estate of 19-year-old Quintonio LeGrier for $10m. According to CNN, the lawsuit alleges that “LeGrier’s actions had forced Officer Rialmo to end LeGrier’s life, and to accidentally take the innocent life of [bystander] Bettie Jones,” which “has caused, and will continue to cause, Officer Rialmo to suffer extreme emotional trauma”.

This again is vulgar racial capitalism: an attempt to extract as much value as possible from black lives, even by those which abuse or terminate them.

Eric Garner: federal grand jury hears evidence to determine civil rights violation

Federal prosecutors presented evidence to a Brooklyn grand jury on Wednesday, to determine whether a civil rights violation occurred in the death of Eric Garner, the unarmed black man who died in July 2014 after being placed in a chokehold by an NYPD officer, reports said.

In December 2014, a Staten Island grand jury declined to indict the police officer, Daniel Pantaleo, sparking protests across New York City.

The same night, then-US attorney general Eric Holder announced a federal investigation into “potential civil rights violations” around Garner’s death. The creation of the Brooklyn grand jury was first reported by the New York Daily News.

Greek Farmers Take on Riot Police With Tomatoes, Shepherd's Crooks, and Rocks

Greek riot police fired tear gas at farmers protesting against pension reform plans who hurled stones, fruit, and vegetables at the agriculture ministry in central Athens on Friday ahead of a major demonstration outside parliament scheduled for later in the day.

Under the planned reform of the pension system demanded by Greece's international lenders, farmers face a tripling of their social security contributions and higher income tax. They have been blockading motorways across Greece for over three weeks.

Greece's left-leaning government says the step is necessary to ensure future pensions for the group, whose benefits have so far been almost completely subsidized by the state. ...

Tsipras, who was elected last year promising to end austerity but was then forced to accept a third bailout in July, is feeling the pressure as he struggles to conclude a bailout review with lenders and also convince angry Greeks that their sacrifices will pay off. He has a tiny parliamentary majority.

Another major screw-up by Rick Snyder:

Inside Michigan's faulty unemployment system that hit thousands with fraud charges

In the weeks before Christmas 2014, Kevin Grifka received a letter from the state of Michigan, claiming he fraudulently collected $12,000 in unemployment benefits. ...

But Grifka hadn’t actually committed insurance fraud. He was one of thousands of people, many out of work, wrongly charged by an automated unemployment insurance fraud detection system that began in 2013 under Michigan governor Rick Snyder.

Officials have at least partially conceded the program had problems: last month, the state revealed in a court filing that it quietly scaled back the $47m program, in the wake of intense media scrutiny. Now, all determinations are reviewed and issued by employees, a spokesperson told the Guardian.

The system, known as Michigan Data Automated System (Midas), caused an immediate spike in claims of fraud. In August, following increased media attention of problems surrounding Midas, the UIA pulled back roughly 8,500 fraud cases from the court system that hears unemployment claims to review the charges. A spokesperson for the agency told a local TV station last fall that, upon review of a majority of the cases, only 8% were affirmed to be fraudulent.

The state generated a significant increase of revenue from unemployment benefit fraud due to Midas, but critics say it came at the expense of many applicants for unemployment benefits who were improperly charged.

It also spent $47m to build the Midas system, has processed tens of thousands of appeals, and battled a PR war over those wrongly denied benefits.

David Blanchard, a lawyer filing a class action lawsuit on behalf of claimants, said the discontinuation of Midas to unilaterally determine fraud represents a “colossal waste of money of the state”.

“At every turn in this administration’s kind of revamping or rebooting of the administrative system, it failed and wasted so much money,” Blanchard said. But the costs went well beyond the implementation period, he said. ...

The fraud charges took a significant toll on applicants already out of work. The University of Michigan’s unemployment insurance clinic recently added the number for a suicide hotline to a referral resource page on the program’s website, Steve Gray, director of the University of Michigan law school’s unemployment insurance clinic said.

Elizabeth Warren Catches Investment Advisers Fibbing

Companies that provide investment advice have been vigorously fighting a proposed Department of Labor rule that would formally require investment advisers for retirement plans to operate in the best interest of their clients — instead of ripping them off with products that earn the companies bigger profits.

Investment advisers have claimed this would be disastrous for their businesses and would leave retail investors with no assistance in navigating the financial markets.

But in earnings calls behind the scenes, these same companies are downplaying the impact of the rule, reassuring their shareholders that they could easily handle the changes.

This contradiction was revealed in a letter from Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Elijah Cummings made public Thursday. The letter highlights four companies with investment advisory units, contrasting their public and private statements, and implicitly raising the question: Are they lying to the Department of Labor, or to their shareholders?

Elizabeth Warren asks CDC to consider legal marijuana as alternative painkiller

Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren has asked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to consider the role legal marijuana could play in the prescription opioid epidemic.

Warren asked for more research into medical marijuana and painkiller addiction in a letter to the CDC director, Thomas Friedan. ...

Medical cannabis laws were tied with lower state-level opioid overdose death rates, according to a study published in the December 2014 issue of Journal of the American Medical Association. And hundreds of people in Massachusetts who are addicted to opioids are being treated with medical marijuana.

War on Wall Street or Wall Street’s Wars? Clinton and Sanders Debate in Wisconsin

Sanders Tells Clinton: 'Destructive' Henry Kissinger 'No Friend of Mine'

President Richard Nixon's notoriously ruthless secretary of state Henry Kissinger—who, among other things, has been accused of being war criminal for his leading role in the covert bombing of Laos and Cambodia during the Vietnam War and the overthrow of the democratically elected government of Chile in 1973—became a heated subject of contrast in Thursday night's Democratic debate between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton.

The former secretary of state has worn Kissinger's approval of her as a badge of honor while arguing she is unrivaled among the candidates in terms of her foreign policy experience and repeatedly showcased the support of many former military and State Department officials as evidence of her bona fides. Sanders, however, pointed out that many people, himself included, have a very dim view of Kissinger's historical role in world affairs. ...

Hillary Clinton defending Henry Kissinger has got to be one of the lowest points in Democratic Party history. #DemDebate

— Dan Froomkin (@froomkin) February 12, 2016

Meanwhile, it was an article posted early this week at Gawker by columnist Alex Pareene which articulated why the "issue of Kissinger" is actually crucial for people trying to distinguish between how Sanders and Clinton view history and the role of U.S. power. According to Pareene, even though Kissinger "is a bad man, who waged a terrible and illegal war in Cambodia, supported a horrific right-wing strongman in Chile, and generally ran America’s foreign policy apparatus in the most amoral way possible," the real problem is how "the bubble of elite American society, the bipartisan consensus, shared by politicians and members of the media alike, is that he’s simply a respected elder statesman."

With that in mind, the real issue, he goes on to explain, is that:

Hillary Clinton exists in a world where “Henry Kissinger is a war criminal” is a silly opinion held by unserious people. Her problem? Lots of those silly and unserious people want to wrest control of the Democratic Party away from its current leadership, which is exemplified by people like Hillary Clinton. 

Bernie Sanders’ critique of Clinton is not that she’s cartoonishly corrupt in the Tammany Hall style, capable of being fully bought with a couple well-compensated speeches, but that she’s a creature of a fundamentally corrupt system, who comfortably operates within that system and accepts it as legitimate. Clinton has had trouble countering that critique because, well, it’s true. It’s not that she’s been bought, it’s that she bought in.

Clinton refined her message in Milwaukee last night

Ms. Nina Turner of Ohio, a state legislator and onetime candidate for Secretary of State, and probably the MVP of any spin room into which she steps, seemed a bit perturbed at Hillary Rodham Clinton's sudden transformation into Soul Sister No. 1.

"As [Bernie Sanders] said, there was only one person on that stage who ran against then-senator Barack Obama, and it certainly was not Senator Sanders. And it just boggles my mind in the same way I get fed up with the Republicans running against President Obama, I'm sick and tired of people trying to cloak themselves with the African-American president. That is exactly what is happening but, in 2008, that cloak wasn't there. Somebody said that his policy experience was a fairytale. Somebody said he wasn't ready for primetime. Now, all of a sudden, they got themselves cloaked with the president.

"I'm sick of it, and I hope the African-American community doesn't fall for it. Just saying President Obama's name doesn't make you right. For [someone] to pit the president against Senator Sanders is insulting, and it's pretty much a dogwhistle as far as I'm concerned, to the black community, to try and get the black community to not open up and listen to what Senator Sanders has to say."

It is true that, in a long arc of history, which is to say over the last seven years, the transformation of HRC from antagonist to curator of the Obama legacy can look a trifle convenient. And in an even longer arc of history, which is to say over the last 24 years, the transformation of one Clinton campaign from Sister Souljah and Ricky Ray Rector to another Clinton campaign that name-checks the victims of police violence, and that cries out righteously (and repeatedly) against the "systemic racism" of American society, can look like a long train of political expedience.

Hillary Clinton has a major honesty problem after New Hampshire

Hillary Clinton has an honesty problem.

That point is driven home hard in the exit poll following Clinton's 22-point drubbing at the hands of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. More than one in three (34 percent) of all New Hampshire Democratic primary voters said that honesty was the most important trait in their decision on which candidate to support. Of that bloc, Sanders won 92 percent of their votes as compared to just 6 percent for Clinton.

Ninety-two to six. That is absolutely unbelievable — even given the size of Sanders's overall victory in the state. And it should be deeply concerning to a Clinton campaign that has been resistant to acknowledging the idea that the ongoing controversy over Clinton's private email server while at the State Department is a problem for her.

Clinton's standard response on questions about her honesty — or about her long-running polling problems on questions of whether she is honest and trustworthy — is that it has zero to do with her and how she has acted in and out of office but rather is the result of sustained decades of attack on her by Republicans.

As New Hampshire made clear, there is a strain of concern/distrust within the Democratic base when it comes to Hillary Clinton. She needs to first acknowledge that it's a real feeling as opposed to simply a Republican talking point.

Who Endorsed Hillary Clinton? The Congressional Black Caucus or Its PAC Filled with Lobbyists?

Hillary Clinton Plans To Raise Money From Industries With Interests Before The Next President

In conceding defeat in Tuesday’s New Hampshire Democratic primary, Hillary Clinton cast herself as an opponent of money’s influence in politics, a future president who would challenge corporate power.

“You're not going to find anybody more committed to aggressive campaign finance reform than me,” Clinton said, promising to “crack down on corporations that game the system.”

Only days later, Clinton’s campaign is launching a fundraising blitz that includes events with representatives of industries that have significant business interests before the federal government. An International Business Times review of fundraising invitations found that the Clinton campaign’s nationwide tour includes events with corporate officials from the food, investment and energy sectors — all of which have vested financial interests in the policies that the next presidential administration will decide.

[Click the link for a listing of events and corporate sponsors. - js]

Hillary Clinton’s Pay-for-Play Reality

It was supposed to be a feel-good moment. The Chairman and CEO of the world’s most powerful financial institution dropped by CNBC’s Squawk Box to crow a bit about his recovery from cancer. But it didn’t quite go the way Lloyd Blankfein — or Hillary Clinton — might’ve wanted. ...

The remarkably unreflective Blankfein said the anti-Wall Street sentiment fueling Sen. Bernie Sanders’s insurgent campaign represented a “dangerous moment” for Wall Street and, by extension, for America. ...

But perhaps the most interesting part of Lloyd’s warning centered on his concerns about the post-election political landscape and his sense that the real danger is not people with pitchforks taking to the street. Rather, Lloyd is worried that Washington’s political machine could stall if all that public anger hampers politicians by turning a demonstrated willingness to “compromise” into a political liability. And when Wall Streeters talk about “compromise,” they are referring to their seemingly innate ability to manufacture bipartisan consent in spite of the often-bemoaned acrimony that locks up Republicans and Democrats.

For example, the two big post-Crash bailouts were built on exactly this type of compromise. And yes, there were two bailouts. There was the highly-visible, widely-reported $700+ billion Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP). But there was also a host of “other,” often-secret bailouts and programs that may cost somewhere around $4 trillion to $7.7 trillion or, according to one accounting, as high as $16.8 trillion. Most Americans are unfamiliar with those side-deals built on Washington’s reliable willingness to compromise with Wall Street. ...

Bernie’s unprecedented pull of small donations empowers him to eschew this type of compromise and even go so far as to propose breaking up “too big to fail” banks like Goldman Sachs. On the other hand, mounting evidence shows that Hillary Clinton was all-too willing to compromise on the way to her multi-million-dollar career as a well-paid progressive who, as she likes to say repeatedly, “gets things done.”

Perhaps that’s why the two-time presidential hopeful was a consistent favorite of Lloyd and the Goldman gang — as evidenced by the oodles of cash they’ve lavished on her simply for the not-too-rare honor of listening to the dulcet tones of her Kissinger-inspired reflections on the state of the world.

Most of Hillary Clinton's Emails Will Now Be Released Before the South Carolina Primary

In a major victory for transparency, a federal judge on Thursday ordered the State Department to release former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's emails prior to the Democratic primary and caucus remaining this month.

The order was issued by US District Court Judge Rudolph Contreras in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request by VICE News, which forced the release of all 52,455 pages of the Democratic presidential candidate's electronic communications. ...

At a court hearing in the case Tuesday, Contreras took the State Department to task for missing its January 29 production deadline, saying he agreed that there is a compelling public interest in Clinton's emails. He ordered the State Department to provide "a detailed explanation of why this problem arose, what caused it and why it wasn't noticed until recently" and to also come up with a new production schedule for releasing some of Clinton's emails before the completion of the Democratic primaries. A government attorney representing the State Department had said it would be impossible to complete the task before February 29. ...

The final batch of emails are expected to contain some of the most important details about Clinton's work during the waning days of her tenure as the nation's top diplomat.

SoCalGas fixes gas leak that gushed methane into Los Angeles for 16 weeks

A blowout at a natural gas well that gushed uncontrollably for 16 weeks and drove thousands of residents from their Los Angeles homes was plugged on Thursday, a utility said.

The leak is expected to cost Southern California Gas Co, a division of Sempra Energy, at least $250m, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

While the well still needs to be permanently sealed with cement and inspected by state regulators, the announcement marked the first time the leak has been under control since it was reported 23 October.

“We have temporarily controlled the natural gas flow from the leaking well and begun the process of sealing the well and permanently stopping the leak,” Jimmie Cho, a SoCalGas senior vice president, said in a statement. ...

The leak at the largest underground gas storage reservoir in the western US was declared an emergency by Governor Jerry Brown. At its peak, the leak was estimated to contribute about a quarter of the state’s climate-altering methane emissions, leading some to call it the worst environmental disaster since the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Democrats pitch Keep it in the Ground bill to prohibit new fossil fuel extraction

Legislation that would ban coal, oil and gas extraction on US public land has been introduced in Congress in a timely act of Democratic defiance to the legal threat looming over Barack Obama’s plan to slash greenhouse gas emissions.

The Keep it in the Ground Act would prohibit the digging or drilling for fossil fuels on federal land or waters. A Senate version of the act has the support of several senior Democrats, including presidential nominee Bernie Sanders.

The bill, which has 16 Democratic co-sponsors in total, states that global warming has already had a “significant impact” on the US economy and that to avoid a dangerous 2C (about 4F) increase in global temperatures, at least 80% of carbon from known fossil fuel reserves must be kept in the ground.

Introduction of the bill is a symbolic act as it has no chance of passing a Congress dominated by Republicans who have accused the US president of waging a “war on coal” that harms American jobs. But the bill is a signifier of Democratic intent to aggressively push forward climate change policy, beyond even that proposed by the Obama administration.

Guilt Abounds: Democrats and Republicans Struggle to Clean Up Their Image Over Flint's Dirty Water

GLEN FORD: ... Rick Snyder, this week--back to this week, is refusing to attend or testify before a Democratic Congressional panel. They want him to answer for his failures in Flint, including switching Flint over, his emergency financial manager switching Flint over, to the polluted waters of the Flint River. That was Snyder's deal. His emergency financial manager regime is a pillar of his administration.

But the Democrats can't get away from the manager regime themselves, because a previous governor, Jennifer Granholm, also used those emergency financial managers. She used them to disenfranchise black folks in their relationship to the public schools. And the national Democratic administration is just as guilty as the Republicans are when it comes to taking takeovers of the public school systems. Emergency financial managers are not just a Republican domain. They're also part of the Democratic initiative as well.

The Federal Environmental Protection Agency under President Obama failed utterly to protect the citizens of Flint, Michigan, and their water. And it's true that the regional director of the EPA resigned, but it hasn't gone further than that. And the federal investigation is underway. The Republicans are trying to get ahead of this very damaging issue. A special counsel to the Michigan attorney general said that it's possible that manslaughter charges could be brought if anybody dies as a result of gross negligence in Flint, Michigan. The reason they have a special counsel looking into that is because the Michigan state attorney general is busy defending the Republican governor Rick Snyder against lawsuits that had been brought against him by residents of Flint, Michigan.

So the Republicans are in a very bad light, and the Democrats are trying to find an advantage. However, the Democrats are going to have a problem showing that they are the party that is most capable of defending black and poor people from the depredations of disaster capitalism. After Katrina, back in 2005, the Democrats themselves held no hearings. The Republicans held hearings, but the Democrats didn't allow their members to participate in those hearings. They were afraid that if they did the Democratic party would look too black, and the Democrats were looking to take over the House in 2006, so they wanted to abstain from Katrina.

What's different today is that there is an emerging grassroots movement on the ground, and that compels the Democrats to behave as if black lives really do matter after all. And that's the difference between the Flint River catastrophe and Katrina.

Emails Indicate Flint Lead Tests Withheld from Public at Snyder's Command

Adding to controversy over what top officials knew and when regarding Flint's water crisis and resulting health epidemic, emails obtained by the Flint Journal suggest that Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder told state officials to suppress lead testing results, both from local health officials and the community, while they figured out how to present the information to the public.

The emails, which are from October and November 2015 and were obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, include correspondence by Jim Henry, Genesee County's environmental health supervisor, to county Health Officer Mark Valacak, and correspondence between Henry and Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) Laboratory Director George Krisztian.

They "show growing frustration on the county's part as it attempted to obtain information from the DEQ," the Journal reports. ...

The governor's office responded to the reporting by stating that it "unequivocally denies [the] allegations" that it withheld information.

The statement adds: "On Friday, Oct. 2, the day after learning about elevated lead levels in in the city, Snyder responded aggressively with an action plan that included testing the water in the schools and distributing filters."

However, redacted emails released last month by the governor indicate that his administration was informed of problems with Flint's water many months before, as early as Feb. 2015, while those distributed filters may not be effective enough to bring down lead levels to the safety threshold for some homes.

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