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"The sudden death of Justice Scalia creates an immediate vacancy on the most important court in the United States. ...

Article II Section 2 of the Constitution says the President of the United States nominates justices to the Supreme Court, with the advice and consent of the Senate. I can't find a clause that says "...except when there's a year left in the term of a Democratic President."

Senate Republicans took an oath just like Senate Democrats did. Abandoning the duties they swore to uphold would threaten both the Constitution and our democracy itself. It would also prove that all the Republican talk about loving the Constitution is just that — empty talk."

-- Senator Elizabeth Warren

News and Opinion

Scalia's Death Leaves Split Court to Decide Major Abortion, Labor, Voting Rights, Immigration Cases

Six All-Important Cases Now Pretty Much Decided After Scalia's Death

Antonin Scalia, unfortunately, has died smack in the middle of a blockbuster court term, with a host of hot-button cases argued, or about to be argued, and all to be decided by the end of June.

Because of the polarized nature of the court, Scalia's death makes it all but certain that in most of those cases, the votes will result in a 4-4 tie, which means that the decision of the lower courts will likely stand unless one of the justices goes off the reservation and votes with the opposite side. That means we can probably predict the outcome of several key cases without having to wait until June.

The results are a mixed bag. The Obama administration is likely to lose an important fight over immigration. Unions win. Reproductive rights for women could suffer. And challenges to redistricting are likely to founder. ...

Perhaps the biggest beneficiaries of Scalia's death are public sector unions. This case, which produced one of the more contentious oral arguments of the term, was headed towards a 5-4 decision in favor of Rebecca Friedrichs and the other plaintiffs who were challenging the California's teachers' union's right to charge public school employees fees to cover the costs of the collective bargaining it did on their behalf, even though they aren't members of the union. The case was teed up by conservative Justice Samuel Alito, and labor supporters feared a ruling against the union could devastate what's left of labor's power. The lawyers for Friedrichs asked the lower court to rule against them to hasten the case's arrival at the Supreme Court. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals complied, and now that decision is likely to stand if the liberal-conservative split on the court delivers a 4-4 vote. Labor wins.

[For details of the other 5 cases, click the link. - js]

Kimberlé Crenshaw: Scalia "Bludgeoned" the Constitution That Gave Us Desegregation, Women's Rights

Republicans and Democrats draw battle lines over supreme court nomination

Presidential candidates and congressional leaders wasted no time on Sunday in seeking to establish the contours of the coming battle over the replacement of the supreme court justice Antonin Scalia, who died on Saturday at the age of 79.

The contest over Scalia’s replacement to some extent eclipsed tributes to the conservative justice, who served on the court for 29 years, and the fallout from an acrimonious Republican debate in South Carolina on Saturday night.

The Senate judiciary committee’s top Democrat, Patrick Leahy of Vermont, was first out, to call for a rapid hearing and vote on President Obama’s as yet unnamed nominee. The Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, however, had already ruled out the approval of a replacement until after the presidential election.

A White House spokesman said later on Sunday Obama would wait to nominate a candidate until the Senate is back in session.
Scalia’s replacement stands to tip the balance of the court, which with his death is left divided between liberal and conservative justices. Republicans, seeing the danger of a new and comparatively young liberal being appointed, are seeking to stymie Obama and in the words of candidate and Texas senator Ted Cruz, make the presidential election a “referendum on the court”.

When is America actually at war?

During his final State of the Union address, President Barack Obama challenged members of Congress to “send a message to our troops and the world” by finally authorizing the use of military force against the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), then said that they weren’t really necessary when it came to doing so. “The American people should know that with or without congressional action, ISIL will learn the same lessons as the terrorists before them,” he said.

His statement’s brazenness was almost camouflaged by its simplicity. The president was saying that he didn’t need Congress to declare war in order for him to conduct war. Or, to be more accurate, he didn’t need Congress to continue conducting war.

The legal question of Congress’ ability to put a check on the executive’s use of military force raises a serious question, When is America actually at war? The fact that Obama has been able to deploy troops and conduct airstrikes without a formal declaration speaks to the practical meaninglessness of an authorization for use of military force (or AUMF).

AUMFs have a precedent going back to 1798 and don’t always result in the use of force, but the AUMF that Congress gave the president on Sept. 14, 2001, was basically an open-ended abdication of congressional responsibility to rein in executive wartime privilege. Since then, the AUMF has been used as dubious legal cover for conducting attacks all around the world, including in countries with which we’re not at war and against American citizens.

Without even the pretense of legal cover for the conduct of war, are we now entering an age when the demarcation between wartime and peacetime is meaningless? What do we lose when that distinction is eroded?

Russia’s grip on Syria tightens as brittle ceasefire deal leaves US out in the cold

At the peace talks in Munich and on the ground in Aleppo, two things became clear last week: Moscow was running the show and Assad’s opponents felt abandoned by Washington

Russia’s economy may be stumbling as oil prices fall, but in a week of extraordinary military and diplomatic turmoil over the war in Syria, President Vladimir Putin has proved that his global influence and ambitions have only been sharpened by financial troubles.

For now he seems to be calling all the shots in Syria’s civil war. Russian jets allowed Syrian government troops to break out of a stalemate in Aleppo, cutting supply routes into a city that has been a rebel stronghold for years. ...

Russia wrung so many concessions out of others around the table that the deal seemed more an endorsement of its role in Syria than a challenge to it. Hostilities would not stop for about two weeks and, even when they did, bombing campaigns against “terrorists” could continue.

What unfolded in Munich looks set to have put the seal on something that has become increasingly apparent over the past months. Moscow is back as a big player in the Middle East, while Washington looks humbled, a shadow of the great power that once dominated events in the region. The cold war is back, as the Russian prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, said on Saturday – and for now Russia seems to be in the ascendancy.

Hillary Clinton and the Syrian Bloodbath

In the Milwaukee debate, Hillary Clinton took pride in her role in a recent UN Security Council resolution on a Syrian ceasefire:

But I would add this. You know, the Security Council finally got around to adopting a resolution. At the core of that resolution is an agreement I negotiated in June of 2012 in Geneva, which set forth a cease-fire and moving toward a political resolution, trying to bring the parties at stake in Syria together.

This is the kind of compulsive misrepresentation that makes Clinton unfit to be President. Clinton's role in Syria has been to help instigate and prolong the Syrian bloodbath, not to bring it to a close.

In 2012, Clinton was the obstacle, not the solution, to a ceasefire being negotiated by UN Special Envoy Kofi Annan. It was US intransigence - Clinton's intransigence - that led to the failure of Annan's peace efforts in the spring of 2012, a point well known among diplomats. Despite Clinton's insinuation in the Milwaukee debate, there was (of course) no 2012 ceasefire, only escalating carnage. Clinton bears heavy responsibility for that carnage, which has by now displaced more than 10 million Syrians and left more than 250,000 dead.

As every knowledgeable observer understands, the Syrian War is not mostly about Bashar al-Assad, or even about Syria itself. It is mostly a proxy war, about Iran. And the bloodbath is doubly tragic and misguided for that reason.

Turkey attacks Kurds on Syrian territory for 3rd day, says won’t let Azaz fall to YPG forces

Turkey Attacks North Syria, Targeting Military, Kurds

After months of railing against the gains by the Kurdish YPG in northern Syria, Turkish army forces began shelling YPG targets in earnest this weekend, and pretty quickly escalated their involvement to begin attacking the Syrian military in northern Aleppo Province as well.

Turkish officials insist they had set rules of engagement to defend the rebel-held border town of Azaz, and also demanded that the Kurds cede the Menagh Air Base back to the Levantine Front, an Islamist faction that took it from last week. ...

Turkish officials are talking up the possibility of escalating their involvement to include ground troops, and the Syrian government says it believes the first Turkish troops may already have arrived, as around 100 gunmen crossed the border at Azaz, and they believe some are Turkish military forces.

US Urges Turkey to Halt Syria Strikes

As Turkish forces pounded both Syrian military targets and the Kurdish YPG, the US State Department has issued a statement calling for Turkey to de-escalate the situation and halt all future attacks, along with warning the Kurds not to seize any more territory.

And it’s unlikely to change any minds, with Turkish PM Ahmet Davutoglu telling German Chancellor Angela Merkel that the attacks are going to continue unconditionally, and that the attacks are a “necessary response” to the Kurdish aggression.

Davutoglu went on to insist that Turkey is launching the attacks in Syria for Europe’s sake, and that if the Kurds weren’t stopped hundreds of thousands of more refugees are going to be fleeing from the territory the Kurds are taking from ISIS and other Islamist groups.

Saudi Arabia Confirms Deployment to Turkish Base

Saudi Arabian Brig. Gen. Ahmed Assiri has confirmed a new military deployment to Turkey, with a number of warplanes headed to an airbase in Turkey as what the general says ius just a “part” of deployments for involvement in the Syrian Civil War. ...

Turkish FM Mevlut Cavusoglu was quoted in the media as saying that Turkey and Saudi Arabia are working together on a possible joint ground invasion of Syria, saying the Saudis told him they were ready to add troops to the air base deployment.

Saudi Coalition Is Dropping US-Supplied Cluster Bombs on Civilians in Yemen, Rights Group Says

Saudi Arabia's coalition in Yemen is using internationally banned cluster munition explosives supplied by the United States, despite evidence of civilian casualties and the fact that the weapons fall short of US weaponry standards, according to Human Rights Watch. 

HRW says the weapons were recently transferred to the Saudi-led coalition, and "are being used in civilian areas contrary to US export requirements and also appear to be failing to meet the reliability standard required for US export of the weapons."

"Saudi Arabia and its coalition partners, as well as their US supplier, are blatantly disregarding the global standard that says cluster munitions should never be used under any circumstances," said Steve Goose, arms director at Human Rights Watch and chair of the international Cluster Munition Coalition. "The Saudi-led coalition should investigate evidence that civilians are being harmed in these attacks and immediately stop using them."

Libya government- Presidential council unveils new line-up for unity cabinet

Hopes for peace in Libya as make-up of new unity government announced

Libya’s presidential council has named a revised line-up for a unity government under a United Nations-backed plan aimed at ending the conflict in the North African state.

One of the council’s members, Fathi al-Majbari, said in a televised statement on Sunday that a list of 13 ministers and five ministers of state had been sent to Libya’s eastern parliament for approval. ...

UN Libya envoy Martin Kobler was quick to congratulate the Presidential Council on nominating a new cabinet. “The journey to peace and unity of the Libyan people has finally started,” he said in a post on Twitter.

The Empire Files: The Black Radical Tradition

Gentrifying Black History

Thanks to a long history of redlining, formerly black neighborhoods in cities around the country are continuously disappearing under the rapacious churn of financial real estate interests. But city blocks in prime locations aren’t the only things being lost. Gentrification is also happening in our classrooms and books, pushing out the past, erasing the lives and struggles of African Americans from our collective memory.

Take A Birthday Cake for George Washington, for example, a children’s book by Ramin Ganeshram published by Scholastic. In it, smiling, happy slaves wrap their arms around their master, the first U.S. president. In a Texas high school geography textbook published by McGraw-Hill, enslaved Africans are described as “workers,” rather than slaves, and placed in a section titled “Patterns of Immigration”—as if they came here looking for a better life.  In Jefferson County, Colorado, the School Board adopted a proposal to avoid the use of materials in its advanced placement high school history curriculum that “encourage or condone civil disorder, social strife or disregard for the law”—banning, of course, any discussion of the lunch counter sit-ins, freedom rides, and other actions causing “social strife” and which are foundational for the Civil Rights Movement.

The Bill of Rights Institute (BRI), which offers whitewashed classroom lesson plans for teachers across the country, is funded by the infamous Koch brothers, Charles and David, who together have more wealth than Bill Gates.  Educator Bill Bigelow describes how the Bill of Rights Institute “cherry-picks” events to hammer home a libertarian message about the sacredness of private property, and also how it offers “quiet cover” for Trayvon Martin’s killer, George Zimmerman:

One section on the website is “Teaching with Current Events,” and includes a lesson, “Stand Your Ground and Castle Doctrine Laws...” Here’s the lesson’s first discussion question: “Florida’s ‘Stand-Your-Ground’ law states ‘A person who is not engaged in an unlawful activity and who is attacked in any other place where he or she has a right to be has no duty to retreat and has the right to stand his or her ground and meet force with force, including deadly force.

While black history has long been redlined and ghettoized, the corporate wrecking ball is swinging with a renewed velocity, aiming at cornerstones of black history as part of a broader resurgence of racism in the United States. This gentrification of the contributions of black people to our society is sanitizing white supremacy.    

For First Time In Years, Labor Resistance Is on the Rise in America

Industrial unrest in the United States was more frequent and widespread last year, according to annual data released Wednesday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

There were twelve “major work stoppages” measured by BLS, up from eleven the year before. The disputes involved about 47,000 workers—a year-over-year increase of 13,000.

It was the first year since 2011 that saw the number of major work stoppages increased in the US, and the first year since 2012 to see the number of workers involved in industrial disputes go up.

The number of days lost to disagreements between management and unionized labor was also up by almost 400 percent. In 2015, 740,000 workdays were lost to strikes or lockouts–up from 200,000 in 2014.

Scott Walker Corruption Case Threatens to Implicate Wisconsin Supreme Court Justices

It's the campaign scandal that just won't die. For three years, prosecutors in Wisconsin tried to investigate what they believed was illegal campaign coordination between Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and conservative outside groups. The investigation has become a political flash point in the state: Walker and conservatives claim it is a witch hunt led by liberal prosecutors, while liberals believe it is about the power of dark money in Wisconsin politics.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court dismissed the case, but on Friday, the case moved to the national stage when prosecutors signaled their intention to take it to the US Supreme Court. And the focus is now set to shift from the actions of Walker and his allies to potential ethical violations by the Wisconsin Supreme Court justices themselves.

This summer, the Wisconsin Supreme Court took up the question of whether to stop the investigation into alleged coordination between Walker's 2012 recall campaign and conservative outside groups that receive unlimited donations from undisclosed donors. The problem was that the election campaigns of two justices on the state's top court had benefited significantly from spending by those same groups accused of illegal coordination with Walker. The special prosecutor overseeing the investigation, along with legal ethicists, asked the two justices with conflicts of interest to recuse themselves. But no justices stepped aside.

The court shut down the investigation by ruling that the type of coordination at issue was actually legal—that campaigns and outside dark-money groups can coordinate as long as they don't produce ads that explicitly say "vote for" or "vote against" a candidate.

I saw Moore's new film Where to Invade Next yesterday. It's everything that this review says it is. It is Moore's best work.

Michael Moore’s New Movie Tries to Restore the American Dream by Showing Us What We’ve Lost

The title, “Where to Invade Next,” is a subtle reminder of how America has practiced its diplomacy in recent years: through bombs and drone strikes on civilians. But there are only fleeting references to war in the movie. The actual story line is to send Michael Moore on a fact-finding mission (our “invader”) to European countries and bring back their best ideas to restore American democracy and the humane treatment of our citizens.

The movie is a powerful visual triumph that shakes us out of our denial of the statistics we’ve been reading for years: The decline in our educational standing in the world; the brutality of our police and prisons; the poverty level and food insecurity of more than 46 million Americans; the lack of affordable health care; the longest working hours in the industrialized world; and crippling college debt. Clearly, it doesn’t have to be this way and Moore shows us, in country after country, just how lagging America has become in the developed world. ...

The right wing, of course, was quick to deride the movie as an exaggerated love fest with socialism. In reality, it is a deeply intellectual dialogue that Moore has been engaging in with the American people through his documentary continuum that began in 1989 with “Roger and Me,” showing the devastation to the city of Flint, Michigan when General Motors closed its plants to tap into cheap labor in Mexico.

By ignoring the rights of human beings and, instead, bestowing ever greater rights on corporations (to ban workers from the nation’s courts, to reap profit windfalls from worker deaths, to effectively steal from workers’ 401(k) plans and create new slave labor in corporate prisons), America has unleashed a far worse tyranny than it ever experienced under King George III – for which the Declaration of Independence was drafted.

There are basic human programs – like free higher education and universal health care and retirement security and food security — that differentiate a compassionate country from one under corporate dictatorship. That’s not socialism. These are basic human rights. The only reason these rights do not currently co-exist alongside America’s brand of capitalism is that the brand has evolved into an orgy of greed, political corruption and rule by the one percent.

Sanders Surge Eyes Nevada and South Carolina as Clinton Firewalls Show Cracks

Speaking to an estimated 18,000 enthusiastic supporters who packed the Colorado Convention Center in downtown Denver on Saturday night, Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders proved that the momentum behind his campaign shows no signs of waning less than a week after shocking the nation's political and media establishment by walloping rival Hillary Clinton by 22 points in the New Hampshire primary. ...

Meanwhile, an increasing number of people with their ears to the ground in South Carolina and Nevada are reporting that the assumed advantage for Hillary Clinton in those states are cracking and that support for Sanders continues to grow as more and more people are exposed to his message. A body of evidence—some based on polling and some anecdotal—is emerging that the national energy behind his campaign is creating a growing appetite for the 'political revolution' it espouses.

On Sunday, a new CBS poll shows that Sanders has cut into Clinton's lead in South Carolina, now trailing by just 19 points with less than two weeks to go. Though still a substantial lead for the frontrunner, that is a far cry from the more than 50-point lead she once enjoyed. The poll shows Clinton leading 59 percent to 40 percent, with a margin of error of +/-8.7 percent. The latest poll showed a significant block for Sanders may still be name recognition as only 44 percent of those surveyed could say they know him "very well," compared to 70 percent who could say that of Clinton.

At the same time, new national poll by Reuters, released Friday, is the latest showing that Sanders and Clinton are running essentially neck-and-neck across the country.

Congressional Black Caucus PAC Puts Up a Firewall for Clinton

Warning signs for Hillary Clinton in South Carolina

Even before Sen. Bernie Sanders began surging in early state and national polls, the Hillary Clinton campaign viewed South Carolina as her firewall, mainly due to her much higher standing and name recognition with black voters. But there are signs that the Clinton team may be falling behind the Sanders campaign, both in terms of organizing on the ground and exciting black voters, even as former Secretary Clinton maintains a large lead in the polls and prognosticators like FiveThirtyEight.com give her overwhelming odds of winning the state’s primary in two weeks. ...

The Clinton campaign is betting that her vocal support for Obama and the backing of institutional players like the Congressional Black Caucus, whose political action committee endorsed her on Thursday, along with influential local black elected officials like State Sen. Marlon Kimson and church leaders will translate into turnout.

But conversations with elected officials and Democratic strategists in the state reveal little excitement over Clinton’s candidacy and a growing concern that not only are black voters not enthused, her campaign is being out-hustled by Team Sanders.

“They took [black voters] for granted and underestimated Bernie’s support,” said State Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter, who led the fight on the House side of the state legislature to remove the Confederate flag from the capitol grounds. “They’ve now discovered there are black folks ‘feeling the Bern.’”

Cobb-Hunter added that Sanders doesn’t even need to win the black vote outright to contest South Carolina.

“All he needs to do is carve off a piece of it,” she said, “because he’s got the working-class whites who don’t like Trump, he’s got the women, he’s got the young people.”

Sanders jumped from roughly 2 percent with black voters in South Carolina to around 20 percent in the polls between last summer and last month (there are no more recent statewide polls of Democrats in the state). Some veteran black politicians in the state think he could do better than that, Cobb-Hunter, who doesn’t endorse candidates as a rule, included.

'Not just a protest candidate': Sanders draws thousands to Las Vegas rally

Several thousand Democrats stood in a line wrapped around a high school football stadium on Sunday, in hopes of seeing Bernie Sanders speak in west Las Vegas.

The venue, Bonanza high school gymnasium, was filled to capacity. Nevada holds its Democratic caucus on Saturday 20 February, and those who queued up included campaign volunteers from California, military veterans, nurses, and workers from the Vegas Strip. ...

A recent poll showed Sanders tied with Clinton in Nevada, a striking comeback for the Vermont senator, who trailed by 23% in a late December poll. ...

Sanders’s speech hit the usual chords. His most passionate moments were condemnations of income inequality and the Super Pac-dominated campaign finance system. There were also calls to halt deportations of undocumented immigrants, invest in solar power, provide free access to college and “invest in jobs and education, not jails and incarceration”, in extensive remarks about criminal justice reform.

Clinton’s campaign has tried to temper expectations that it would dominate the Nevada caucus, a shocking turnabout in a state it once considered a potential firewall against Sanders’ momentum. Iowa and New Hampshire are both more than 90% white, which has allowed Clinton to argue that Nevada – and its 25% minority population – offers a more accurate reflection of the voting bloc Democrats need to win the general election.

John Lewis walks back his scurrilous charges about Sanders:

John Lewis: I did not mean to 'disparage' Bernie Sanders' civil rights activism

John Lewis, the influential congressman who this week appeared to dismiss Bernie Sanders’ credentials on civil rights issues, has sought to soften the ensuing controversy over his remarks.

On Saturday, he said he had not meant to express doubt “that Senator Sanders participated in the civil rights movement, neither was I attempting to disparage his activism”.

Civil Rights Icon John Lewis Knows on Which Side His Biscuit is Buttered

Henry Kissinger’s War Crimes Are Central to the Divide Between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders

The sparring during Thursday’s Democratic presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders over whether Henry Kissinger is an elder statesman or a pariah has laid bare a major foreign policy divide within the Democratic Party.

Clinton and Sanders stand on opposite sides of that divide. One represents the hawkish Washington foreign policy establishment, which reveres and in some cases actually works for Kissinger. The other represents the marginalized non-interventionists, who can’t possibly forgive someone with the blood of millions of brown people on his hands. ...

Some may only dimly recall that Kissinger won a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to end the Vietnam War (comedian Tom Lehrer famously said the award made political satire obsolete), and that he played a central role in President Nixon’s opening of relations with China.

But Kissinger is reviled by many left-leaning observers of foreign policy. They consider him an amoral egotist who enabled dictators, extended the Vietnam War, laid the path to the Khmer Rouge killing fields, stage-managed a genocide in East Timor, overthrew the democratically elected left-wing government in Chile, and encouraged Nixon to wiretap his political adversaries. ...

The difference between the two views of Kissinger is not simply of academic or historical interest. How a presidential candidate feels about him is a clear sign of her or his worldview and indicates the kind of decisions she or he will make in office – and, perhaps even more importantly, suggests the kind of staffers she or he will appoint to key positions of authority in areas of diplomacy, defense, national security, and intelligence.

The Democratic Primary Is A Fight Over Wall Street And Obama's Legacy

If Obama is remembered as a consummate progressive, it will be because he delivered corporate America's final conquest over the Democratic Party, and in doing so, enabled future historians to erase the party's anti-corporate wing from the narrative.

Obama began his presidency by essentially telling movement progressives to shut up and quit making trouble for his corporate-friendly agenda. Former Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs derided and insulted "the professional left" in press conferences. When liberal organizations advocated for a public option during Obamacare talks, former White House Chief Of Staff Rahm Emanuel pressured them to stop by threatening their funding sources. Obama economic adviser Christina Romer was sidelined after demonstrating that the economic stimulus package needed to be much larger than what National Economic Council Chair Larry Summers would accept. Obama has deported more people than any other president -- nearly 25 percent more than even President George W. Bush. He supported Medicare and Social Security cuts for years.

While it's true that he faced scorched-earth opposition from Republicans, it was Obama who pressed for an entitlement-slashing "Grand Bargain" during the nearly catastrophic debt ceiling talks of 2011. This maneuvering on critical support for the elderly is what prompted Sanders in 2011 to advocate for a primary challenger to Obama -- a comment Clinton is now wielding against him as evidence of supposed liberal apostasy.

"I think there are millions of Americans who are deeply disappointed in the president, who believe that, with regard to Social Security and a number of other issues, he said one thing as a candidate and is doing something very much else as a president," Sanders said in 2011.

At the time, Sanders didn't come out and say Obama should be replaced -- only that the prospect of another candidate could hold his feet to the fire. ...

When Clinton challenges Sanders on the Obama legacy, she is, of course, making an identity politics play for black voters. But she's also making an implicit argument about the centrality of corporate elites and corporate favors to the very idea of progressive politics. Sanders' entire campaign is built on the rejection of that idea.

In Fact, Argue Experts, Sanders' Medicare-for-All Numbers "Do Add Up"

During Thursday night's Democratic presidential debate, Hillary Clinton criticized Bernie Sanders' proposal for a "Medicare for All" healthcare program, stating, "the numbers just don't add up."

"A respected health economist said that these plans would cost a trillion dollars more a year," Clinton said, likely referring to a recent analysis by Emory University professor Kenneth Thorpe, who helped craft a single-payer healthcare system in Sanders' home state of Vermont, which said Sanders' proposal was off by an extra $1.1 trillion annually. ...

But according to other healthcare experts, both Clinton and Thorpe are working with false calculations.

Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, a professor in public health at City University of New York at Hunter College and co-founder of the advocacy group Physicians for a National Health Program, said Friday that the "numbers on single-payer do, in fact, add up."

"It's indisputable that single-payer systems in other countries cover everyone for virtually everything, and at much lower cost than our health care system," Woolhandler said. "Experience in countries with single-payer systems, such as Canada, Scotland, and Taiwan, proves that we can have more, better and cheaper care."

For example, "if the U.S. moved to a single-payer system as efficient as Canada's, we'd save $430 billion on useless paperwork and insurance companies' outrageous profits, more than enough to cover the 31 million Americans who remain uninsured, and to eliminate co-payments and deductibles for everyone," she said.

In January, Woolhandler and her colleague Dr. David Himmelstein authored a response to Thorpe's analysis that found it to be based on "several incorrect, and occasionally outlandish, assumptions," including "administrative savings of only 4.7 percent of expenditures" and "huge increases in the utilization of care, increases far beyond those that were seen when national health insurance was implemented in Canada, and much larger than is possible given the supply of doctors and hospital beds."

"Moreover, it is at odds with analyses of the costs of single-payer programs that he produced in the past, which projected large savings from such reform," the professors wrote.

Does anybody else sense a turn in the all-important comedy-news coverage of the primaries in Sanders' favor?

Hillary For President Cold Open - SNL

Trump Goes Code Pink on George W. Bush

It was weird that an angry Code Pink-style protester interrupted last night’s Republican presidential debate with a barrage of familiar Democratic talking points about George W. Bush—that he lied the country into a disastrous war in Iraq, failed to prevent the September 11 attacks, and even whiffed on an opportunity to kill Osama bin Laden. It was especially weird that the protestor was one Donald J. Trump, who happens to be the front-runner for the Republican nomination.

Trump didn’t just call the Iraq war a mistake. He called it “a big fat mistake.” And he didn't call it an inadvertent mistake because of faulty intelligence. “They lied!” he thundered. “They said there were weapons of mass destruction … and they knew there were none.” Trump even groused that the war cost $5 trillion that could have helped rebuild America’s crumbling infrastructure, a common Democratic attack line that sounded like a canine talking point at a feline convention, especially in military-heavy South Carolina.

"The War in Iraq was a Big, Fat Mistake": Trump & Bush Spar over War & 9/11

4 Billion People at Risk as 'Water Table Dropping All Over the World'

Global scarcity of key life source far worse than thought, new study finds

A new analysis reveals that global water scarcity is a far greater problem than previously thought, affecting 4 billion people—two-thirds of the world's population—and will be "one of the most difficult and important challenges of this century."

Previous analyses looked at water scarcity at an annual scale, and had found that water scarcity affected between 1.7 and 3.1 billion people. The new study, published Friday in the journal Science Advances, assessed water scarcity on a monthly basis, more fully capturing the specific times of year when it could be an issue.

"Water scarcity has become a global problem affecting us all," stated study co-author Arjen Hoekstra, a professor of water management at the University of Twente in the Netherlands.

The study found that almost half of the 4 billion affected by severe water scarcity for a month or more are in India and China. Millions of others affected live in Bangladesh, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Mexico.

The United States is far from immune to the problem, with 130 million people affected by water scarcity for at least one month a year, mostly in the states of Texas, California, and Florida. And among the rivers the study notes that are fully or nearly depleted before reaching their end is the Colorado River in the West.

There are also half a billion people who face severe water scarcity year round, the analysis found.

Flint Water Crisis - with Rep. Brenda L. Lawrence, D-MI

'Just More Hot Air'? Utility Co. says Methane-Spewing Porter Ranch Well Plugged

Southern California Gas Co. announced Thursday that it had "temporarily controlled" the massive Porter Ranch gas leak, but the mood for many is nowhere near celebratory. ...

As many residents and environmental organizations see it, the dangers wont stop even when the seal is verified, as the dangers reach beyond this one well's failure.

Alexandra Nagy, southern California organizer with Food and Water Watch, called the utility's announcement "just more hot air."

"The Gas Company consistently underplays the risks and overplays their progress. Of course the community wants the leak stopped, but that doesn’t go far enough. This facility needs to be shut down permanently because it’s too dangerous and we can't trust this company to operate in good faith," she stated.

"Now comes the critical process of making sure this doesn’t happen again and holding the company accountable," said Tim O’Connor, California Oil & Gas Director at EDF.

And this one leak is merely a symptom of a larger problem, he said.

"This disaster is what happens when aging infrastructure meets lax oversight, and it’s just one example of a problem that is plaguing the oil and gas industry across the country. We need comprehensive national action to hold industry accountable for reducing these emissions and keeping disasters like this from happening again in the future."

Climate Science Education in the US is Pretty Crappy, Survey Finds

The results of the first nationally representative survey on climate education in U.S. schools are in, and reveal, according to one noted scientist, that "we are failing students."

The survey of 1,500 middle and high school science teachers in 50 states was conducted by the Penn State Survey Research Center (SRC) and the National Center for Science Education (NCSE), and the paper on the findings was published in the Feb. 12 issue of the journal Science.

It shows that little time was devoted to teaching climate science; while nearly three-quarters of the teachers devoted one or more lessons to recent global warming, the median amount of time they devoted to that was just an hour and a half, an amount, the authors write, that is "inconsistent with guidance from leading science and education bodies."

The messages being taught are problematic as well.

"At least one in three teachers bring climate change denial into the classroom, claiming that many scientists believe climate change is not caused by humans," stated NCSE programs and policy director Josh Rosenau. ... Specifically, the survey found that 31% of teachers said they emphasized "both sides"—both the scientific consensus that human activity has driven global warming and the false belief that climate change is due to natural causes. Twelve percent said they didn't emphasize human causes at all.

Why? The authors write that just 4.4% of teachers said they felt pressure from outside actors including parents and administrators to teach "both sides," and said the problem could be because of lack of knowledge of specific evidence. They also found that only 30% of middle school and 45% of high school teachers were aware of the extent of the scientific consensus on climate change.

Also of Interest

Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.

John Kasich and the Clintons Collaborated on Law That Helped Double Extreme Poverty

At least 1,666 Clinton emails contain classified material

Face It: Trump Is Right About Iraq – and That Should Sink Clinton

Henry Kissinger’s “mad and illegal” bombing: What you need to know about his real history — and why the Sanders/Clinton exchange matters

It's the Political and Economic Establishment, Stupid

Resisting the Triangulation of the Democratic Party

War in Syria: This agreement between the US and Russia is a vital step to ending the conflict

Deconstructing America’s ‘Deep State’

New GOP Plans for Torture

Has the Crash of the Global Financial Markets Begun?

Stocks Dive as Confidence in Fed Fades

A Little Night Music

Wynonie Harris - Quiet Whiskey

Wynonie Harris - Don't Roll Those Bloodshot Eyes At Me

Wynonie Harris - Lovin' Machine

Wynonie Harris - Keep On Churnin' (Til The Butter Come)

Wynonie Harris - All She Wants To Do Is Rock

Wynonie Harris - Wasn't That Good

Wynonie Harris - Rock Mr. Blues