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This evening's music features boogie woogie piano player Albert Ammons. Enjoy!

"Negligence is the rust of the soul, that corrodes through all her best resolves."

-- Owen Feltham

News and Opinion

US Prosecutors Didn't Charge Police Officers in 96 Percent of Alleged Civil Rights Violations in the Past 20 Years

Federal prosecutors in the United States declined to bring charges against cops facing allegations of civil rights violations in 96 percent of cases between 1995 and 2015, according to an investigation by the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

The newspaper sifted through almost three million records from the US Department of Justice, and found that prosecutors did not pursue 12,703 potential civil rights violations out of 13,233 cases.

The same couldn't be said for other kinds of cases against non-police defendants. The investigation found that federal prosecutors declined to bring charges in only 23 percent of other types of criminal cases.

The stunning findings provide the hard, nationwide data to back up one of the fundamental claims driving the Black Lives Matter movement – that police officers are rarely held accountable when faced with allegations of brutality or misconduct, and whose victims, more often than not, are black and hispanic.

The most common reasons prosecutors offered for why they weren't pursuing a civil rights case was "weak or insufficient evidence," lack of criminal intent or direct orders from the Justice Department.

This is a good article, rich with detail, here's a snippet:

Hillary Clinton Has Long History of Collaboration with GOP on Foreign Policy

Several members of the Republican foreign policy elite recently announced they’ll refuse to vote for Donald Trump if he’s the Republican nominee – with some going so far as to say they’d rather vote for Hillary Clinton. ...

The GOP foreign policy elite see Hillary Clinton as preferable to either Trump or Paul. Her belligerence has never been in doubt. For her entire public life she’s been an enthusiastic exponent of a deeply bipartisan consensus on foreign policy, one that says the U.S. can and should run the world. This has been evident in her personal lobbying as first lady for the Kosovo war in 1999; her push as secretary of state for escalation in Afghanistan; her support for regime change in Libya; and her call now as a presidential candidate for the deployment of more U.S. special operations troops in Syria. But it’s perhaps clearest in her and Bill Clinton’s decades-long embrace of regime change in Iraq. ...

Is it fair to say Hillary Clinton agreed with her husband and the Republican Party on Iraq during the 1990s? Here’s what we know:

When asked in 2002 about the Iraq Liberation Act, Hillary declared, “I agreed with it in 1998. I agree with it [now].” In her 2003 book, Living History, she quotes her own remarks to the press “as bombs fell on Iraq” during Desert Fox: “I think the vast majority of Americans share my approval and pride in the job that the President’s been doing for our country.” ...

In October 2002, Clinton joined 28 other Democratic senators in voting for war with Iraq. In her speech explaining her decision, she reiterated her support for the Iraq Liberation Act four years before. ...

Almost three years into the war, Clinton was still telling unhappy New York voters that she did not “believe that we can or should pull out of Iraq immediately.” She did publicly oppose the Iraq “surge,” but Robert Gates, then-secretary of defense, claims he witnessed her say that this was all politics to please Democratic voters as she ran for president. (Gates, a longtime GOP functionary, also says he and Clinton developed “a very strong partnership” because they “agreed on almost every important issue.”) ...

On foreign policy the two parties are now like-minded enough that when the candidate for one strays from party orthodoxy, the candidate for the other may be a more than adequate substitute. As Max Boot, a prominent neoconservative writer, advisor to Marco Rubio, and (if necessary) Clinton voter, says: “What she basically espouses is a pretty mainstream view.” Even Dick Cheney has praised her competence and mused that “it would be interesting to speculate about how she might perform were she to be president.”

The five foreign policy questions every candidate should be asked

It’s amazing that with almost two presidential debates every week, many critical foreign policy questions have gone unasked and unanswered - even while the television networks spend entire hours discussing when and where the US should bomb next. ...

The New York Times wrote a huge two-part series on Clinton’s leading role in the intervention in Libya and its subsequent descent into chaos, yet there was barely a blip on the radar when it came to questions on the campaign trail or on television. Clinton has skated through the entire election cycle while only getting a handful of questions about the catastrophe, while continuing to call for more military intervention elsewhere. ...

We are currently engaged in an indefinite war with Isis spanning multiple countries which many legal experts across the political spectrum consider illegal – yet the presidential candidates are almost never asked about why congress has not authorized the military action like the constitution requires. ...

Given that we have flying robots killing people in multiple countries where we are not at war, and other countries are starting to build them too, you’d think this would be a critical issue to debate. Instead: crickets.

War in Syria: UN mediator de Mistura says talks are 'moment of truth'

UN's Syria envoy warns of attempts to derail peace talks

The UN special envoy opening the potentially historic Syrian peace talks in Geneva has warned spoilers and provocative public rhetoric will be unleashed to derail his efforts to create a roadmap to end the five-year civil war.

Staffan de Mistura also said the only alternative to the Geneva peace process was a return to even more fighting. “This is the moment of truth,” he said as he reminded all sides of the 1,000 children killed in the civil war in the past year. ...

His first task will be to get the two sides to engage with a political transition process that does not have to settle the issue of the future role of the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, at this stage.

Before the talks there had been anger on the American side that the Syrian government had ruled out any discussions on the future of Assad. The opposition high negotiations committee (HNC) had on Sunday reiterated that any transitional body must be imbued with all executive powers. ...

De Mistura acknowledged this was the gap he had to bridge: “It is up to the Syrian people to vote, elect and decide. At the end of the day it will be up to them to decide how to run their country,” he said.

The Syrian opposition’s bargaining hand has been weakened on the battlefield, largely owing to the strong military support given to Assad by Russia, but also owing to attacks by the al-Nusra Front, an Islamist group not party to the peace talks.

Russia and the US now have the power to impose peace in Syria

It was scheduled to start over a week ago. Then last Wednesday. Now tomorrow . When round three of the Geneva peace talks on Syria begins, it could be Groundhog Day for Syrians. If the actors read from the script they used at the previous UN-sponsored negotiations – Geneva I in 2012 and Geneva II in 2014 – the last act will be the same: a failure.

The conference, like the current ceasefire, which began on 27 February, is taking place because the United States and Russia want it to. At last they seem to agree that the stumbling block to the last two sessions – the fate of the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad – is not important enough to prolong the war.

Both sides know that this US v Russia proxy war is out of control: Europe has been hit with a tide of refugees that threatens the EU’s fragile unity; and the conflict has spread to Iraq, and threatens to erupt in Lebanon and Jordan. ...

Before the second Geneva conference in 2014, Assad’s minister for national reconciliation, Ali Haider, declared: “Neither Geneva II, nor Geneva III nor Geneva X will solve the Syrian crisis. The solution has begun and will continue through the military triumph of the state.” Haider was wrong: the regime may be winning militarily now, but it cannot wage war for ever. Just as America’s proxy rebels failed to defeat the regime, the regime failed to defeat them. The only way out is compromise.

Syrian al-Qaeda Seizes US-Made Missiles in Fight

Al-Qaeda’s Syrian wing, Jabhat al-Nusra, has turned on one of their traditional allies in Idlib Province, the US-backed Free Syrian Army wing called Division 13, accusing the group of planning to attack its own bases.

Nusra followed this up with attacks on the Division 13 bases, seizing both bases and a number of US-made anti-tank missiles from the group. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported a number of FSA fighters were detained.

Germany regional elections: Merkel to maintain refugee policy course despite losses

German Anti-Immigrant Far-Right Party Makes Gains in Regional Elections

Germany's far-right nationalist and anti-immigrant group AfD, or "Alternative for Germany" won seats in three states holding regional elections, exit polls indicated on Sunday.

Meanwhile, Angela Merkel's party, the Christian Democrats (CDU), suffered losses in all three states, but held onto its status as the largest party in Saxony-Anhalt. However, even Merkel's victory in Saxony-Anhalt was undercut by the creeping popularity of the AfD, who slid neatly into second place with 23 percent of the vote – six percent more than pre-election polls had indicated. 

The elections were expected to be a moment of truth for public perception of Merkel and her pro-immigration stance. The results suggest that AfD has, to some extent, been successful in courting voters who are disillusioned with Merkel and worried about Germany's new refugee population. ...

All eyes were on the results of Sunday's regional elections, because Merkel will be up for national re-election next year. How her party fared in regional elections may have some bearing on her chances of remaining the German leader. That she lost support even in the southwestern state of Baden-Württemberg – traditionally a CDU stronghold – isn't a particularly good sign. There, support for the CDU dropped by about ten points to 29 percent, with many of its traditional voters defecting to the Green party. The AfD, meanwhile, took 12.5 percent of the vote.

Israeli Chief Rabbi to Troops: Ignore Courts, Commander, Just Kill Armed Palestinians

Amid ongoing condemnation of Israeli Army Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot, who last month publicly declared “I don’t want a soldier to empty a magazine on a girl with scissors,” Israel’s chief Sepherdic Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef urged soldiers to ignore the Army Chief’s orders, as well as court rulings, and just kill any “armed Palestinians” they find.

Yosef argued that it was a religious imperative for all Jews to kill armed enemies and to be unconcerned with the rulings of the High Court or other officials, urging that the killings would serve as a deterrent.

UN Calls for Kim Jong-un to Be Prosecuted for Crimes Against Humanity

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and senior officials should be prosecuted for crimes against humanity, the United Nations human rights investigator for the Asian nation said on Monday, criticizing the fact that huge amounts of money was being spent on developing nuclear weapons while many citizens lacked sufficient food or worked in "slave-like conditions."

Political prison camps, torture, "slave-like labor" and religious persecution remain features of the state apparatus, two years after a landmark UN investigation into crimes against humanity, Marzuki Darusman told the UN Human Rights Council.

"The denial of human rights to its citizens internally and this aggressive behavior externally are basically two sides of the same coin. The country is pouring a large amount of resources into developing weapons of mass destruction, while large parts of its population continue to suffer from food insecurity," Darusman said.

Brazil anti-Rousseff protests: More than 3 million took to the streets

More than a million Brazilians protest against 'horror' government

More than a million Brazilians have joined anti-government rallies across the country, ramping up the pressure on embattled president Dilma Rousseff.

Already struggling with an impeachment challenge, the worst recession in a century and the biggest corruption scandal in Brazil’s history, the Workers party leader was given another reason to doubt she will complete her four-year term. ...

According to police sources cited by Globo, 3.5 million people took part nationwide in 326 cites, including 100,000 in Brasilia and 70,000 in Curitiba. The exact figures are contested, but undeniably huge.

In Rio de Janeiro, dense crowds stretched along the beachfront from Copacabana to Leme, and organisers estimated there were as many as a million participants. Police had yet to provide figures, but it looked likely to exceed 100,000.

New and Old Strategies for Ending the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela

Quietly, symbolically, US control of the internet was just ended

Thursday 10 March 2016 was a bright shining day on the internet. Internet Independence Day, no less.

But why did we even need a carefully brokered deal to make managing the internet the world’s business, and not America’s prerogative?

When Icann was founded in 1998, the plan was to keep its anchoring contract with the US National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) for a year or two, and for Icann to become independent in 2000. But in the meantime, the internet became just too important for the US to let go of the reins.

Shielded by the US, Icann resisted attempts by the United Nations’ International Telecommunication Union to take over its job. Iana (the Internet Assigned Names Authority, the part of Icann that deals with country codes, internet numbers and protocols) went on being part of Icann, even as other countries felt sure the US must be abusing its power behind the scenes. And Icann’s “multi-stakeholder model” evolved; a hodge-podge of different interests, meeting by conference call, email list and in different cities around the world to manage the domain name system. ...

And then Snowden happened.

In September 2013, just months after the first Snowden revelations confirmed long-suspected global internet surveillance by the US, the internet’s elders rebelled. Technical organisations around the world issued the “Montevideo Statement”. No one was more surprised than themselves when the sleeping giants of technical organisations woke up and growled that the “recent revelations of pervasive monitoring and surveillance” had undermined the trust of internet users around the world. It was time, they said, to hurry up and “globalise the Iana”. ...

It has taken almost two years, one contract extension, 32,000 emails and 600 meetings to put the plan for the future of the internet together. It comes in two parts; one to transition Iana out of US control (Iana transition proposal) but keep it part of Icann, and the other for a much-needed beefing up of Icann’s anaemic accountability mechanisms. ...

Will the internet work any differently? All being well: no. Domain names will go on resolving. Internet protocol numbers will be distributed (IPv6 ones, anyway) And internet protocol parameters will … do whatever it is they do.

Obama puts down his encrypted phone long enough to tell us: Knock it off with the encryption

Amid the row between Apple and the FBI over the unlocking of a mass murderer's iPhone, President Barack Obama has told the tech world to suck it up and do what the Feds want.

Speaking today at hipster-circle-jerk SXSW in Austin, Texas, the United States' Commander in Chief said phones and computers cannot be unbreakable "black boxes," and that an "absolutist" view on encryption won't fly with the laws and courts of the land.

Of course, the President and his staff, his military, his government agencies and his intelligence services all rely on tough and non-compromised encryption – but that's not for you. You're too busy "fetishizing" your smartphone, the leader of the free world said.

Obama Wants A Magic Pony, Warns Against “Fetishizing Our Phones”

President Barack Obama says he wants strong encryption, but not so strong that the government can’t get in.

“The question we now have to ask technologically is if it is possible to make an impenetrable device or system where the encryption is so strong that there is no key, there is no door at all?” he asked, speaking at the South by Southwest (SXSW) festival in Austin on Friday. ...

Obama at #SXSW on crypto: opens w/child kidnapping & terror, closes w/child porn & terror, vague talk of balance. So disappointing.

— Kevin Bankston (@KevinBankston) March 11, 2016

It was Obama’s first extended disquisition on the contentious issue of encryption. There have been many reports about a rift in his administration between those who recognize that unbreakable encryption is inevitable, and those who think there must be an alternative. But Obama appears to be hearing only one side.

Obama insisted that there is a middle ground. “My conclusion so far is that you cannot take an absolutist view on this,” he said. “If your argument is strong encryption no matter what, and we can and should create black boxes, that, I think, does not strike the kind of balance we have lived with for 200, 300 years, and it’s fetishizing our phones above every other value. And that can’t be the right answer.” ...

Trying to come up with some solution that satisfies the desire for easy, ubiquitous law enforcement access while simultaneously upholding device security is what scientists call a “magic pony.” Any hole for the government is a hole that criminals and foreign adversaries could exploit, too.

Facebook, Google and WhatsApp plan to increase encryption of user data

Silicon Valley’s leading companies – including Facebook, Google and Snapchat – are working on their own increased privacy technology as Apple fights the US government over encryption, the Guardian has learned.

The projects could antagonize authorities just as much as Apple’s more secure iPhones, which are currently at the center of the San Bernardino shooting investigation. They also indicate the industry may be willing to back up their public support for Apple with concrete action.

Within weeks, Facebook’s messaging service WhatsApp plans to expand its secure messaging service so that voice calls are also encrypted, in addition to its existing privacy features. The service has some one billion monthly users. Facebook is also considering beefing up security of its own Messenger tool.

Snapchat, the popular ephemeral messaging service, is also working on a secure messaging system and Google is exploring extra uses for the technology behind a long-in-the-works encrypted email project.

Engineers at major technology firms, including Twitter, have explored encrypted messaging products before only to see them never be released because the products can be hard to use – or the companies prioritized more consumer-friendly projects. But they now hope the increased emphasis on encryption means that technology executives view strong privacy tools as a business advantage – not just a marketing pitch.

'Our Worst Fears Were Right': Amid Privacy Fight, DOJ Targets WhatsApp

Government is demanding the messaging service build code to decrypt secure communications in criminal investigation

The U.S. government has a new target in its war against privacy: WhatsApp.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) has obtained a wiretap order to acquire communications sent in real time through the Facebook-owned messaging service, which began implementing end-to-end encryption in 2014, the digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) said on Sunday in response to reporting from the New York Times.

It's the latest development in a growing fight over privacy rights and national security as the government continues its attempt to force Apple to decrypt the iPhone contents of suspected San Bernardino shooter Syed Farook. Apple has resisted the order on the grounds that it would violate users' privacy rights and set a dangerous precedent for government power.

As EFF staff attorney Nate Cardozo wrote in a blog post on Sunday, the move against WhatsApp "proves that our worst fears were right."

Thus far, the wiretap—which the DOJ obtained for an ongoing criminal investigation—is demanding that WhatsApp hand over encrypted information, which the company does not have the software to access. That means the DOJ has not yet decided whether to pursue an additional court order to force WhatsApp to build decryption code, Cardozo said.

There's Only One Buyer Keeping S&P 500's Bull Market Alive

Demand for U.S. shares among companies and individuals is diverging at a rate that may be without precedent, another sign of how crucial buybacks are in propping up the bull market as it enters its eighth year.

Standard & Poor’s 500 Index constituents are poised to repurchase as much as $165 billion of stock this quarter, approaching a record reached in 2007. The buying contrasts with rampant selling by clients of mutual and exchange-traded funds, who after pulling $40 billion since January are on pace for one of the biggest quarterly withdrawals ever.

While past deviations haven’t spelled doom for equities, the impact has rarely been as stark as in the last two months, when American shares lurched to the worst start to a year on record as companies stepped away from the market while reporting earnings. Those results raise another question about the sustainability of repurchases, as profits declined for a third straight quarter, the longest streak in six years.

“Anytime when you’re relying solely on one thing to happen to keep the market going is a dangerous situation,” said Andrew Hopkins, director of equity research at Wilmington Trust Co., which oversees about $70 billion. “Over time, you come to the realization, ‘Look, these companies can’t grow. Borrowing money to buy back stocks is going to come to an end.”’

Robert Rubin Was Targeted for DOJ Investigation by Financial Crisis Commission

In late 2010, in the waning months of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, the panel responsible for determining who and what caused the financial meltdown that lead to the worst recession in decades voted to refer Robert Rubin to the Department of Justice for investigation. The panel stated it believed Rubin, a former U.S. Treasury Secretary who has held top roles at Goldman Sachs and later Citigroup, “may have violated the laws of the United States in relation to the financial crisis.” Rubin, the commission alleged, along with some other members of Citi’s top management, may have been “culpable” for misleading Citi’s investors and the market by hiding the extent of the bank’s subprime exposure, stating at one point that it was 76% lower than what it actually was.

No government action was ever brought against Rubin. And there is no evidence that Department of Justice acted on the crisis commission’s recommendations. A source close to Rubin says the former Wall Street executive was never contacted by the Justice Department in relation to the commission’s allegations. Nonetheless, the fact that Rubin was among a relatively small group of top bankers who the crisis commission referred to the Justice Department for potential wrong-doing sheds new light on the financial crisis, and the government’s effort to pursue those who may have broken the law.

Seven years after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, the fact that no major Wall Street figure was ever prosecuted for crimes related to the financial crisis remains an sticking point for many. ...

On Friday, the National Archives released a trove of previously unreleased documents from the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, including minutes of meetings and transcripts of interviews with a number of key figures in the financial crisis as well as journalists and Warren Buffett. According to the minutes, the commission voted on September 29, 2010, on whether to refer persons related to an item titled “Potential Fraud and False Certifications: Citigroup” to the office of the Attorney General of the United States. The staff notes that describe the item names Rubin, along with then Citi CEO Charles Prince, as having potentially violated the law. At the meeting, the commission’s general counsel Gary Cohen said that what the commissioners were voting on was just a referral and “not a recommendation for prosecution.” The vote was unanimous to refer the Rubin matter among the commission members present at the meeting, 6-to-0. ...

Phil Angelides, the former chairman of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, who recently called on the Department of Justice to finally act on his commission’s recommendations said, “It’s been a disappointment to me and others that the Justice Department has not pursued the potential wrongdoing by individuals identified in the matters we referred to them. At the very least, they owe the American people the reassurance that they conducted a thorough investigation of individuals who engaged in misconduct.”

The evidence so far is that they haven’t.

An excellent article worth a full read, here's a taste to get you started:

How Liberals Tried to Kill the Dream of Single-Payer

Around the time that the insurgent campaign of Bernie Sanders hit its stride, a chorus of liberal pundits and economists began to coalesce around a decidedly grim message for the 60 million people in America who remain either uninsured or underinsured: Give up on your pipe dream.

Single-payer, Paul Krugman wrote in one of a series of posts in January, “isn’t a political possibility,” and is in fact “just a distraction from the real issues.” Last week in the American Prospect, sociologist Paul Starr went further in describing single-payer as a “hopeless crusade for a proposal that will go down to defeat again, as it has every time it has come up before.”
And in an earlier article, he argued that even if single-payer was possible, other priorities should take precedence. Hillary Clinton
is on the record agreeing with such sentiments: As she put it, single-payer “will never, ever come to pass.” ...

Their essential arguments are twofold: Single-payer reform is politically impossible on the one hand, and economically infeasible on the other. However, they are very wrong on both counts. The first argument rests on a severely impoverished political vision, the second on inexcusably flawed economic and policy assumptions. ...

Let’s first admit the obvious: The political terrain for transformational health care reform is currently quite adverse. A single-payer bill would encounter colossal resistance from, for instance, the health insurance lobby, which is understandably in no great rush to be legislated off the face of the planet (nor does the pharmaceutical industry look forward to long-avoided price negotiations with the government). It’s also true that a Democratic sweep of both houses of Congress is unlikely in the coming election. And Democrats are, in any event, divided on the issue, as this primary election demonstrates.

To proceed, however, from an admission of these facts to an acceptance that the cause should be abandoned is to concede the contest before the first shot has been fired. This is something the Democratic Party has excelled at—with disastrous consequences—for decades.

Clinton Healthcare Hit Backfires as Evidence Shows Sanders 'Literally' Right Behind Her

"Where was he when I was trying to get health care in ’93 and ’94?"

Another questionable salvo aimed at detracting support from rival Bernie Sanders may have come back to wound Hillary Clinton on Saturday after comments about his stance on healthcare reform efforts in the 1990's was countered by a flood of evidence which revealed exactly "where he was" on the issue.

secretary clinton and bernie are sitting next to each other in this photo. what does it all mean, @jmpalmieri?! pic.twitter.com/XUQpF1uEjk

— mike casca (@cascamike) March 12, 2016

"As Clinton has discovered recently," wrote Peter Wade at Esquire on Saturday, "the Internet age means instant fact checking.

Sanders Accepts Challenge to Kill TPP If Elected... Nothing from Clinton So Far

Talking trade policy in Ohio, Sanders also picks up key endorsement from Congresswomen Marcy Kaptur

Accepting a challenge and passing it on ahead of primary voting in Ohio and elsewhere on Tuesday, Sen. Bernie Sanders vowed that if elected president he would refuse to present the contoversial TransPacific Partnership (TPP) agreement to Congress and asked his rival Hillary Clinton to join him in that pledge.

Invoking the fight over NAFTA, Sanders told the crowd: "They said it was going to create all kinds of jobs in America. I didn’t believe that for one second. In 1995 I was on the picket lines opposition to that. You don’t need a PhD to understand that a trade agreement written by corporate America was to force American workers to compete against desperately poor people all over the world. American workers should not have to compete against people making pennies an hour."

Sanders continued by saying that "communities here in the Midwest – in Ohio, Michigan, Illinois – have been decimated" by companies offshoring jobs in the wake of NAFTA's passage. Trying to replicate his surprise win in Michigan in the industrial Rust Belt states of Ohio, Illinois, and Missouri—all of which hold primaries on Tuesday—Sanders also released a new ad airing across the region touting his opposition to the kind of trade deals he says his rival Clinton has long embraced:

Sanders also received the endorsement on Friday of Rep. Marcy Kaptur, the longest-serving woman in the U.S. House of Representatives. Kaptur indicated that a key reason for her support was the senator's position on the economy, specifically his career-long opposition to so-called "free trade" deals like NAFTA, pushed through in the 1990's under President Bill Clinton, and his recent leadership in opposing TPP and similar corporate-friendly deals.

Finnish News Team Reports On U.S. Elections

Ahead of Illinois Primary, Sanders Thanks Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel... for Not Endorsing Him

Ahead of the Illinois Democratic primary that is now just days away, Bernie Sanders has taken a quick moment to thank the mayor of that state's largest city for not endorsing his presidential campaign.

Under fire from large swaths of Chicago's residents for his regressive handling of city affairs—including unrelenting attacks against the city's public schools and its teachers as well how he's handled cases of police violence—Mayor Rahm Emanuel was offered gratitude by Sanders for endorsing his rival Hillary Clinton's campaign and not his own.

I want to thank Rahm Emanuel for not endorsing me. I don’t want the endorsement of a mayor shutting down schools and firing teachers.

— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) March 12, 2016

In an interview with the Chicago Sun Times published late Friday evening, Sanders called Emanuel a "terrible mayor" and pointed to his close ties to Clinton and the mutual support they have shown one another, including Emanuel's endorsement of her and how she has used that endorsement to vouchesafe the support she's garnered among U.S. mayors.

Sanders Thanks Rahm Emanuel for Not Endorsing Him, as Chicago Mayor Faces Increasing Calls to Resign

Sanders holds singalong at Chicago rally

While violence marked a canceled Donald Trump rally in Chicago, Bernie Sanders was singing along with his supporters elsewhere in the state.

Sanders, a Democratic presidential candidate, led his supporters in a singing of “This Land is Your Land” as his rally in Summit, Ill., wrapped up Friday night

This land is your land this land is my land closes @BernieSanders rally -juxtaposition to Trump rally very obvious pic.twitter.com/rOH5qvtXGi

— Kylie Atwood (@kylieatwood) March 12, 2016

The Vermont senator slammed Trump for taking advantage of people's anger, blaming him for the violence that has been springing up at rallies.

'Shame!' Clinton Defends Death Penalty to Man Who Wrongly Served 39 Years on Death Row

Presidential contender Hillary Clinton was forced to defend her stance on the death penalty at Sunday night's Democratic town hall in Ohio, after being confronted on the issue by a man wrongfully imprisoned for 39 years.

The man was Ricky Jackson, who, upon being freed in 2014, had served more time in prison than any other inmate in the U.S. who has been exonerated.

"I spent some of those years on death row," he told Clinton Sunday night, choking back emotion. "I came perilously close to my own execution."

"In light of what I just shared with you and in light of the fact that there are documented cases of innocent people who have been executed in our country, I would like to know how you can still take your stance on the death penalty," Jackson asked.

Hillary telling a black man who was falsely convicted & spent 39 yrs in prison that she's still for the death penalty. Invokes 9/11. Shame!

— Michael Moore (@MMFlint) March 14, 2016

Hillary Clinton Lauds Reagans on AIDS. A Backlash Erupts.

In the days since her death on Sunday, Nancy Reagan has been praised for her work on a range of causes, from preventing drug abuse to supporting research into Alzheimer’s.

But on Friday, Hillary Clinton praised Mrs. Reagan as a force in confronting another disease: H.I.V./AIDS, which was killing alarming numbers of gay men and others during Ronald Reagan’s two terms.

“It may be hard for your viewers to remember how difficult it was for people to talk about H.I.V./AIDS back in the 1980s,” Mrs. Clinton, who was attending Mrs. Reagan’s funeral in Simi Valley, Calif., told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell. “And because of both President and Mrs. Reagan – in particular, Mrs. Reagan – we started a national conversation, when before nobody would talk about it. Nobody wanted anything to do with it.”

The problem with Mrs. Clinton’s compliment: It was the Reagans who wanted nothing to do with the disease at the time.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention first identified the disease in 1981, but Mr. Reagan, despite desperate calls for action and thousands of deaths, did not mention H.I.V. or AIDS publicly until 1985 and did not give a speech about the disease until 1987, when an estimated 40,000 people had already died of the disease and roughly 36,000 more had been given a diagnosis.

Indeed, the activist-author Larry Kramer, who chronicled the early years of the epidemic in his play “The Normal Heart,” called Mr. Reagan “Adolf Reagan” and wrote that he “murdered more gay people than anyone in the entire history of the world.”

Clinton's comments on the Reagans and Aids demand more than apology

Aids historians, LGBT activists and anyone who cares about little things like the truth were immediately enraged at Clinton’s false claims. Ronald and Nancy Reagan were no more leaders discussing Aids in the 1980s than Republicans are at championing abortion access today. ...

But for those of us who care about Aids and LGBT people, it is much harder and important to criticize the frontrunner of the Democratic party, who takes the support of gay voters for granted. Why, in 2016, did the Democratic frontrunner engage so blithely in the erasure of the people who actually did start the “national conversation” about Aids? Was it because they were gay men of the in-your-face variety of activism – many of whom died of the virus? ...

Clinton later apologized, saying she “misspoke” about the Reagans on HIV/Aids. But what was she trying to gain by praising the Reagans in this way in the first place? I fear that she was engaging in a kind of dog-whistling, using the moment of Nancy Reagan’s death to appeal to voters who nostalgically loved the Reagans and dream of morning in America again. I fear by invoking a false Aids history, she was appealing to those who want a simpler time before gays got uppity. Perhaps she wants to peel off some of the white men voting for Sanders in the primary. Perhaps she is trolling for Reagan Democrats who might consider her over Trump in making America great again.

Will gay voters and political groups, especially the Human Rights Campaign (which endorsed the other HRC months ago) demand that Clinton do more than say sorry, but demand that she audibly start a national conversation on Aids in America in 2016 – a time when it is still hard to talk about HIV? Will they question her praising Reagan’s Aids policies as a harbinger of deadly incremental things to come, given her claims to pragmatically work across the aisle in a way she says Bernie Sanders “never, ever” could? Will they hold their own, in this time, to as high a standard as they do the deceased leader of their opposition party – especially given her own pathetic past opposition on gay rights? This would be the only sincere way to begin to undo the damage Clinton has done to the men and women who fought, and still fight, Aids in the vacuum of political leadership.

February breaks global temperature records by 'shocking' amount

Warnings of climate emergency after surface temperatures 1.35C warmer than average temperature for the month

February smashed a century of global temperature records by “stunning” margin, according to data released by Nasa.

The unprecedented leap led scientists, usually wary of highlighting a single month’s temperature, to label the new record a “shocker” and warn of a “climate emergency”.

The Nasa data shows the average global surface temperature in February was 1.35C warmer than the average temperature for the month between 1951-1980, a far bigger margin than ever seen before. The previous record, set just one month earlier in January, was 1.15C above the long-term average for that month.

“Nasa dropped a bombshell of a climate report,” said Jeff Masters and Bob Henson, who analysed the data on the Weather Underground website. “February dispensed with the one-month-old record by a full 0.21C - an extraordinary margin to beat a monthly world temperature record by.”

“This result is a true shocker, and yet another reminder of the incessant long-term rise in global temperature resulting from human-produced greenhouse gases,” said Masters and Henson. “We are now hurtling at a frightening pace toward the globally agreed maximum of 2C warming over pre-industrial levels.”

Grand Canyon threatened despite win against developers, conservationists say

Plans for a huge commercial development that would transform a tiny town near the edge of the Grand Canyon have been thrown out by federal officials in a surprise victory for conservation and indigenous interests – but campaigners warn that the world famous natural wonder remains in peril.

Tusayan, in northern Arizona, has a few low-key hotels and a population of just 560.

A mile from the entrance to Grand Canyon national park, it is the last settlement tourists pass through, if they even notice it, before entering the park to gawp into the spectacular sandstone abyss.

But an Italian developer has spent more than two decades hovering over this speck on the map with dreams of turning it into a bustling resort area with three million square feet of commercial facilities, including a tourist lodge, spa, cultural center, upscale shops, restaurants, holiday ranch, hotels and a few thousand new homes.

But a milestone decision has sent proponents of the development project reeling.

Heather Provencio, the new supervisor of a nearby chunk of national forest who needs to approve better road access across the federal land for the private development to go ahead, announced the plan was not in the public interest.

Provencio, a former district ranger, wrote to the mayor of Tusayan a week ago, tossing out the plan with the devastating bureaucratic understatement that it “did not meet minimum requirements for initial screening”. That meant it was not even worthy of being given an environmental impact assessment.

Provencio took up her new post as supervisor of the Kaibab national forest near Tusayan last October. She immediately began meeting all parties and considering the more than 200,000 public responses that had come in since the town authorities, in effect working in partnership with Stilo, had applied for improved road access in 2014.

GAO Report: Federal Agencies Failing Bees

'For far too long, the EPA has turned a blind eye to the impacts of pesticide mixtures'

Echoing charges made by conservation organizations, a new report from the Government Accountability Office finds that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) need to step up their actions in order to protect bees.

The report, released to the public on Friday, was based on assessments from October 2014 to February 2016.

The report found that the USDA, "which co-chairs the White House Pollinator Health Task Force with EPA, has not worked with its partners on the task force to coordinate a native bee monitoring plan," and that its efforts to promote bee habitat conservation may be thwarted by gaps in research and evaluation.

The EPA, meanwhile, has suffered from challenges in data collection and reporting on bee kill incidents that may be linked to pesticides, while its risk assessment guidance "does not call for EPA to assess the risks that pesticide mixtures may pose to bees."

Among the report's recommendations are "that USDA coordinate with other agencies to develop a plan to monitor wild, native bees, and evaluate gaps in staff expertise in conservation practices, and that EPA identify the most common mixtures of pesticides used on crops."

"Ultimately this report reiterates what we’ve known for a long time," stated Lori Ann Burd, Environmental Health director at the Center for Biological Diversity, "that the USDA and EPA are failing to do what it takes to protect our rapidly declining bee populations."

Also of Interest

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

Was the First Obama Election Fixed? New Book Raises Suspicions

Democratic forum in Columbus, Ohio – Highlights

Bill Clinton’s odious presidency: Thomas Frank on the real history of the ’90s

Trump Concerned His Rallies Are Not Violent Enough

Torture Is Illegal, but There's the Issue of Appendix M

Neocons Red-Faced Over ‘Red Line’

Two Corrupt Establishments

The Rise of Trump Shows the Danger and Sham of Compelled Journalistic “Neutrality”

The U.S. sends billions to foreign militaries each year. What do we have to show for it?

Drugs, Dams, and Power: The Murder of Honduran Activist Berta Cáceres

Former Citi Vice Chairman Robert Rubin, Target of DoJ Investigation, is Too Big to Jail

Donald Trump’s Get-Rich-Quick Advice Makes a Mockery of His Campaign Rhetoric

Boris Johnson attacks Obama 'hypocrisy' over Brexit warning

A Republican Meltdown Won’t Make the Democrats Better

A Little Night Music

Albert Ammons - Early Mornin' Blues

Albert Ammons - Boogie Woogie Blues

Albert Ammons - Chicago In Mind

Sister Rosetta Tharpe & Albert Ammons - That's All

Albert Ammons - Boogie Woogie Stomp

Albert Ammons - The Boogie Rocks

Albert Ammons & His Rhythm Kings - The Breaks

Albert Ammons - Swanee River Boogie