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This evening's music features soul singer Betty Everett. Enjoy!

“When they call the roll in the Senate, the Senators do not know whether to answer 'Present' or 'Not Guilty'.”

-- Theodore Roosevelt

News and Opinion

Supreme Court Eliminates Political Corruption! (By Defining It Out of Existence)

By overturning the bribery conviction of Bob McDonnell, the former governor of Virginia, the Supreme Court this week just extended its incredible run of decisions driven by the concern that America has too many restrictions on money in politics. ...

In the McDonnell case, it was proven that Jonnie Williams, the CEO of a dietary supplement company, gave McDonnell an engraved Rolex watch, took McDonnell’s wife Maureen on a $20,000 shopping spree at Louis Vuitton and Oscar de le Renta in New York, loaned the couple over $100,000, and much more. In return, McDonnell set up meetings for Williams with Virginia officials that Williams used to push for the state to fund studies on the effectiveness of his supplements, pestered his staff about it, let Williams throw a product launch lunch at the governor’s mansion, and allowed Williams to add himself and associates to the guest list for a reception for state healthcare leaders. Williams himself testified that the gifts he gave the McDonnells were “a business transaction.”

But so what, wrote Chief Justice John Roberts: “Conscientious public officials arrange meetings for constituents, contact other officials on their behalf and include them in events all the time.” If McDonnell’s conviction stood, “officials might wonder whether they could respond to even the most commonplace requests for assistance, and citizens with legitimate concerns might shrink from participating in democratic discourse” – since presumably all citizens buy their governor’s wife a full length white leather coat and pay for him to go see the Final Four.

The Influence of Influence: On Worshipping Money in Washington, D.C.

Although it’s difficult to remember those days eight years ago when Democrats seemed to represent something idealistic and hopeful and brave, let’s take a moment and try to recall the stand Barack Obama once took against lobbyists. Those were the days when the nation was learning that George W. Bush’s Washington was, essentially, just a big playground for those lobbyists and that every government operation had been opened to the power of money. Righteous disgust filled the air. “Special interests” were much denounced. And a certain inspiring senator from Illinois promised that, should he be elected president, his administration would contain no lobbyists at all. The revolving door between government and K Street, he assured us, would turn no more.

Instead, the nation got a lesson in all the other ways that “special interests” can get what they want -- like simple class solidarity between the Ivy Leaguers who advise the president and the Ivy Leaguers who sell derivative securities to unsuspecting foreigners. As that inspiring young president filled his administration with Wall Street personnel, we learned that the revolving door still works, even if the people passing through it aren’t registered lobbyists.

But whatever became of lobbying itself, which once seemed to exemplify everything wrong with Washington, D.C.? Perhaps it won’t surprise you to learn that lobbying remains one of the nation’s persistently prosperous industries, and that, since 2011, it has been the focus of Influence, one of the daily email newsletters published by Politico, that great chronicler of the Obama years. Influence was to be, as its very first edition declared, “the must-read crib sheet for Washington’s influence class,” with news of developments on K Street done up in tones of sycophantic smugness. For my money, it is one of the quintessential journalistic artifacts of our time: the constantly unfolding tale of power-for-hire, told always with a discreet sympathy for the man on top.

It is true that Americans are more cynical about Washington than ever. To gripe that “the system is rigged” is to utter the catchphrase of the year. But to read Influence every afternoon is to understand how little difference such attitudes make here in the nation’s capital. With each installment, the reader encounters a cast of contented and well-groomed knowledge workers, the sort of people for whom there are never enough suburban mansions or craft cocktails. One imagines them living together in a happy community of favors-for-hire where everyone knows everyone else, the restaurant greeters smile, the senators lie down with the contractors, and the sun shines brilliantly every day. This community’s labors in the influence trade have made the economy of the Washington metro area the envy of the world.

Obama Insiders Angling to Buy For-Profit College Amid Crackdown

Three former Obama administration insiders are working behind the scenes to get the Education Department to approve a private buy of the controversial University of Phoenix college system—even as President Barack Obama pledges to rein in for-profit education.

Politico reports:

The investors include a private equity firm founded and run by longtime Obama friend Marty Nesbitt and former Deputy Education Secretary Tony Miller. The firm, Chicago-based Vistria Group, has mounted a charm offensive on Capitol Hill to talk up the proposed sale of the troubled for-profit education giant, which receives more than $2 billion a year in taxpayer money but is under investigation by three state attorneys general and the FTC.

Other key players in the deal are also either one-time White House insiders or close to the president himself, such as Jonathan Samuels, "who was responsible for pushing Obama's agenda through Congress during his nearly six years working in legislative affairs at the White House," Politico's Michael Stratford and Kimberly Hefling report. The insiders are now asking the Education Department to allow the purchase of the University of Phoenix for $1.1 billion.

Miller himself "was part of the effort to more tightly regulate for-profit colleges at the very agency now charged with approving the ownership change," Stratford and Hefling write.

Mark Schneider, a former education official under then-President George W. Bush, told Politico, "There is at least a taste of unseemliness involved in this."

"They regulate it. They drive the price down.... They are buying it for pennies on the dollar," he said.

This is a pretty incredible thing for a Secretary of State to have to deny while touting the virtues of his administration's policies.

John Kerry: 'We Are Not Frozen in a Nightmare'

Amid tumult in world affairs, with a deadly attack on an airport in Istanbul, Turkey, EU countries grappling with Britain’s impending exit, and an ongoing war against ISIS, Secretary of State John Kerry sought to reassure an Aspen audience Tuesday that “the world is not witnessing global gridlock. We are not frozen in a nightmare. Where we are engaged with a clear strategy, using our power thoughtfully, we are making progress, most places.” There are “a lot of Cassandras around,” he said, but “I don't believe the world ahead is only defined by turmoil and strife.” ...

In short order, Kerry alluded to geopolitical challenges in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, and Nigeria, among other places. "The United States of America is more engaged in more places with greater impact today than at any time in American history,” he declared. “And that is simply documentable and undeniable."

In Aspen, that was an applause line. And it is in harmony with the foreign policy vision articulated by Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee, across many years. But it is hard to imagine a Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump crowd applauding a proponent of waging wars and other aggressive geopolitical interventions across Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, and beyond.

CIA Chief: ISIS Is Likely Plotting Strikes in US

Speaking today in the wake of the Istanbul airport attacks, which US officials have attempted to attribute to ISIS despite a lack of formal evidence, CIA chief John Brennan insisted it was to be expected that ISIS is plotting attacks inside the US and against US interest abroad, and that he would be “surprised” if they were not.

Though Brennan appeared not to want to offer any particular details, he said the Istanbul attacks showed a “determined enemy,” though again offered no evidence this was actually an ISIS attack, but saying that ISIS would likely want a similar attack in the US.

Brennan: Release of 28 Pages Requires “Discussions” with Congress

Echoing private comments made by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper in May, CIA Director John Brennan today said the release of 28 classified pages that describe links between Saudi Arabia and 9/11 would necessitate coordination between the White House and Congress.

Brennan’s remarks came in an appearance at the Council on Foreign Relations, and are the first public assertion by an administration official that an ongoing review of the 28 pages will not end at the White House. ...

Brennan did not elaborate on who would participate in those discussions or when they would take place. In May, White House press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters that “intelligence officials have indicated they expect to complete that process by the end of June.”

While @PressSec ridicules time spent on Benghazi, Obama has taken 2 years to review just 28 pages from 9/11 report https://t.co/WBIvSlCwSQ

— 28Pages.org (@28Pages) June 29, 2016

US Loans Iraq $2.7 Billion for War Equipment

The US Embassy to Iraq has announced that the US government has secured a $2.7 billion loan to the Iraqi government to pay for their ammunition and equipment maintenance during the ISIS war. The loan will have a term of eight and a half years at a 6.45% interest rate. ...

The State Department said it was keen to provide the loan guarantees to Iraq to ensure that their struggling economy, made all the more struggling by weak oil prices, doesn’t get in the way of their open-ended war against ISIS.

Report from Istanbul: Uptick in Bombings Comes as Turkey Drifts Toward Islamist, Authoritarian Rule

The violence in Turkey highlights the country’s many conflicts

The attacks in Istanbul on Tuesday night came as a shock to many around the world but for a country that once prided itself as the Middle East’s pro-western, outward-looking beacon of stability, conflict and bombings are starting to become the norm. ...

Turkey’s government and its president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the head of the ruling Justice and Development party (AKP), have invested heavily in the continuing conflict in Syria, devoting considerable resources to the toppling of the Bashar al-Assad regime even when in recent years the international community has opted for a political rather than military settlement to the conflict. Once Syria’s rebellion against the Assad regime became dominated by Islamic fundamentalists, these groups became central to Turkey’s foreign policy objectives. Ankara acquiesced to jihadi groups entering Syria across its borders and enabled them to establish a presence in Turkey to arm and fund their campaign.

Much of the focus in the international media has been on jihadis leaving Europe for Syria via Turkey, and vice versa. But for several years, Islamic State has established deep roots in Turkish society, with the city of Gaziantep functioning as a key hub for explosives and an important launchpad for jihadi groups.

As the Turkey expert Aaron Stein notes, Isis and its supporters “have grafted on to older, well-established al-Qaida-linked networks in Turkey” and have functioned with little interference from the government. ...

Turkey may yet refuse to provide its full and active support to a political settlement in Syria. As a result, it may struggle to contain the jihadi cells that have flourished for so long, the individuals and groups that cause immense destruction in Turkey but which still constitute the forces equipped and dedicated to toppling the Assad regime.

Iran covertly recruits Afghan soldiers to fight in Syria

Iran is covertly recruiting hundreds of Afghan Shias in Afghanistan to fight for Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, drawing them out of their own conflict-ridden country and into another war in which Afghanistan plays no official part.

The Afghan fighters are often impoverished, religiously devout or ostracised from society, looking for money, social acceptance and a sense of purpose that they are unable to find at home. ...

Central in this recruitment are men such as Jawad. A police officer by day and self-declared “travel agent” when off-duty, Jawad said he acted for a year as middleman for Iran’s Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) when in 2014 it formed an Afghan Shia militia, the Fatemiyoun Division, to fight alongside Syrian government forces. ...

In return for fighting, Afghans are offered a residence permit in Iran and about $500 monthly salary. “Most go to Syria for the money,” said Jawad, wearing stonewashed jeans and replica Ray-Bans. “Others go to defend the shrine.”

Syria is home to several holy Shia sites, above all the Sayyidah Zaynab mosque in Damascus, which honours the Prophet Muhammad’s granddaughter, and which has been a rallying point for Shias who want to defend it from Sunni militants such as Islamic State. ...

With no available official figures, estimates of how many Afghans are fighting in Syria vary wildly. Iranian state media, while not acknowledging direct Iranian involvement, say 20,000 Afghans are fighting in Syria.

Brazil is rethinking its promise to accept 100,000 Syrian refugees

"Even in moments of difficulty and crisis, like we're going through now, we have to welcome refugees with open arms," President Rousseff had declared last September. "I want to reiterate the willingness of the government to receive those who, expelled from their homelands, want to come here and live, work, and contribute to the prosperity and peace of Brazil."

By early this year Brazil had begun negotiations with Germany and the EU in which the South American country offered to ease the pressure from Syrian refugees on Europe. Brazil offered to accept up to 100,000 Syrian refugees over the next five years, in exchange for assistance with the costs of bringing them across the Atlantic.

In recent weeks, however, Brazilian media outlets have begun reporting that Alexandre de Moraes, the current justice minister, has suspended the talks. The reports have continued, citing sources directly involved in the negotiations, despite government denials that it is rolling things back.

The move is widely blamed on cost-cutting exercises put in place by the new right-leaning government headed by President Michel Temer that appears to have no desire to break Brazil's traditionally restrictive attitude to asylum.

Rodrigo Duterte sworn in as Philippines president

Rodrigo Duterte, the anti-establishment president of the Philippines, left his often sexist and profanity-laced rhetoric behind in an inauguration speech on Thursday that appeared aimed at reassuring a panicked political elite.

During the campaign and since his election, Duterte has repeatedly attracted controversy by calling for police to kill criminals, blaming assassinated journalists for their own deaths and threatening to abolish congress in favour of a revolutionary government.

But speaking to a room of some of the country’s most powerful figures on Thursday, the outsider sought to settle the shockwaves that have gripped the country. He read a speech more reminiscent of style of the political class he beat in the polls than his own, normally unscripted and jokey addresses. ...

Duterte has promised to end the domination of what he calls “Imperial Manila” and push power from the suit-filled clean streets of the capital to the 81 provinces through a federal system, hoping it will reduce poverty and placate insurgent factions.

The states will gain more autonomy and be allowed to keep more of their income, rather than sending it to the central government.

The 71-year-old led his campaign as a counterpoint to other politicians, all from the traditional elite. He takes over from Benigno Aquino, whose time in office saw significant economic growth but failed to significantly reduce inequality, leading to a greater distrust of the political class.

Brazilian Artists Speak Out Against "Coup" Government

Rights court mulls claims CIA secretly held suspects in E. Europe

The European Court of Human Rights on Wednesday opened hearings into the cases of two former Guantanamo Bay inmates, who claim to have been held by the CIA in secret prisons in Romania and Lithuania before being transferred to the notorious US prison in Cuba.

The pair remain incarcerated at Guantanamo Bay, among the last 79 prisoners still held there.

Amnesty International called the hearings "an important step" in determining Romania and Lithuania's role in the so-called US rendition process.

The two countries "have never been held accountable for their direct involvement in CIA rendition and secret detention," Julia Hall, the rights group's expert on counter-terrorism and human rights in Europe, said in a statement.

"Today’s hearing is a chance for the victims’ lawyers to set the facts out before the European Court in the hope that it will help break the conspiracy of silence," she added.

‘NYT’ reporter who gave us Saddam’s aluminum tubes summers at neoconservative thinktank

Another shameful reflection on the New York Times. Yesterday the neoconservative Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, which vigorously opposed the Iran deal, welcomed as a “writer-in-residence” for the summer a national security correspondent for the Times who provided a channel for neoconservative arguments against the Iran deal a year ago and also co-authored the notoriously-bogus “aluminum tubes” story that helped give American the Iraq war.

Michael R. Gordon will be a Writer-in-Residence with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, the organization announced today.

Gordon, a National Security Correspondent for The New York Times, is completing a book on the American-led campaign to defeat the Islamic State…

“Michael is one of the most accomplished journalists in the country, and we are thrilled to assist him as he completes his book,” said FDD Executive Director Mark Dubowitz. “Michael will have access to FDD’s resources and expertise as he delves into the rise and expansion of this most dangerous radical jihadist group.”

Gordon is to return to the Times in September, FDD said.

Brexit vote shows politicians have shirked economic duties for too long

While we watch the reactions to Brexit ripple their way through financial markets and speculate about the magnitude of the economic fallout, there’s only one certainty: central banks can’t do much to help and politicians are in the driving seat. ...

Michael Hartnett, chief investment strategist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, calculated that the world’s central banks have flooded markets with $12.3tn of new money, cut interest rates 654 times and ensured that there are $10tn worth of bonds worldwide that now trade with negative interest rates since the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008. The result? Astonishingly lackluster economic growth – and a blockbuster stock market.

That combination has been a toxic one, and it has fed the political discontent that produced the Brexit result and contributed to the protest candidacies of both Bernie Sanders (on the left) and Donald Trump (on the right). The two US presidential candidates shared one important appeal to voters: their argument that the current economic system is broken, and that it’s up to politicians to step in and fix it.

UN Officially Declares that UK's Austerity Policies Violate Human Rights

The UK government's austerity policies violate international human rights, and growing inequality in the nation is cause for "serious concerns," a damning new report by the United Nations has found.

The UN Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights found that six years after the Conservative party took power and extended the previous Coalition's stringent economic practices, UK residents have faced an increased reliance on food banks, rising unemployment rates, a housing crisis, and growing racism and discrimination, among other impacts.

Women, minorities, young people, and people with disabilities were disproportionately affected, the authors said.

The UK government is failing "to meet their obligation to mobilize the maximum available resources for the implementation of economic, social and cultural rights," the report states in the UN's first review of the Conservative party's impact since it came to power in 2009. ...

Simon Duffy, director of the Centre on Welfare Reform, who contributed to the report, said of the findings: "The past six years of austerity have seen the UK government intentionally diminish the rights of its own citizens.... There is no good reason for these ongoing attacks; instead it seems likely that these groups have been targeted simply because they are convenient scapegoats for problems they did not cause."

Boris Johnson won’t run for top job

Boris Johnson calls it quits in UK prime minister race

Former London mayor Boris Johnson has abruptly pulled out of the race to become Britain's next prime minister, in a shock move that upturned a political order shaken by last week's vote to leave the European Union. ...

Johnson, whose support for the campaign to leave the EU was widely considered one of the decisive factors in the campaign, had been bookmakers' runaway favorite to succeed David Cameron, who quit last week after failing to persuade British voters to stay in the bloc.

Johnson's departure from the race came swiftly after another leading ally in the pro-Brexit campaign, Justice Secretary Michael Gove, put himself forward as a candidate, saying he had withdrawn support for Johnson.
Gove will face off against Theresa May, the interior minister, who campaigned to remain in the EU, as well as other candidates for the ruling party's leadership.

UK leadership battle: divisions deepen in Labour Party

Scottish leader's plea to stay in Europe rebuffed in Brussels

Scottish leader Nicola Sturgeon got a "sympathetic" hearing in Brussels on Wednesday as she pleaded her case for Scots to stay in the EU, showing how Britain's vote to leave the bloc could splinter the United Kingdom.

But she drew a rebuff from Spain and a mixed response from European officials.

EU leaders met for the first time without Britain. Outgoing Prime Minister David Cameron flew home after briefing his 27 peers on Tuesday evening on last week's referendum defeat.

Pro-independence leader Sturgeon has said that Scotland, where voters backed staying in the EU by a near 2-1 majority, must not be dragged out of the EU against its will.

She wants to negotiate directly with Brussels to protect the membership rights of Scots - and is open to a new independence referendum if that is the only way to keep Scotland in the bloc.

But Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, struggling to prevent the autonomous region of Catalonia from breaking away, said Madrid would oppose any EU negotiation with Scotland.

It's pretty funny watching liberal journalists using their broadest brush on Americans that think Brexit is probably a good idea. It's almost as amusing as the liberals that argue that 52% of the British voting public are racists, bigots and people who don't have any understanding of their own or their country's interests.

Trump supporters look to Brexit and see only one thing: freedom

Donald Trump has made his support for Brexit a standard stump line in the past week, but his voters have been left with a less than clear idea of the implications of the UK’s vote to leave the European Union.

Trump, who was one of the few international political figures to actively support those seeking to leave the European Union, touted the referendum decision as a “great victory” in a press conference in Scotland the morning after the result. He has since bragged that “Crooked Hillary Clinton got Brexit wrong” and praised the vote as a decision by British voters to “take back control of their economy, politics and borders” in a major speech on trade policy Tuesday afternoon. He has even insisted he “stood with the people on the referendum while his Democratic rival “as always stood with the elites”. [Trump apparently has no sense of irony in calling out Hillary for being one of the elite. -js] Trump has gone on to tie the vote to his own presidential campaign, saying: “Now it’s time for the American people to take back their future.”

Many of his supporters at a rally in a college gymnasium in Ohio shared Trump’s support for Brexit, seeing the vote as a step towards Great Britain being liberated from Europe.

Cathy Brown, a Trump voter who drove seven hours from outside Richmond, Virginia, though British voters “made a good choice to become free”. She celebrated the fact that the vote “means that people can make their own choices they can decide on a lot of things that were decided for them”. In her opinion, British voters will now “have say” on issues like “trade and open borders”.

Backers of Sanders Mobilize to Overthrow DNC Platform's Pro-TPP Stance

'Opposition to the job-killing TPP should not be controversial within the Democratic Party,' declares progressive advocacy group. So why is it?

Before the Democratic Party's platform is finalized at a meeting late next week, Bernie Sanders and his progressive allies are mobilizing to ensure that opposition to the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP)—described by its critics as a global corporate power grab—is made the party's official stance.

Though President Obama continues to lobby hard on behalf of the controversial deal, and despite a proposal to include such language being voted down during a drafting session last weekend in St. Louis, Sanders and his supporters are making their case into a rallying cry about the future of the Democratic Party.

On Wednesday, both the Sanders campaign and Democracy for America, a progressive advocacy group, launched petitions calling on the platform committee to include the anti-TPP language in the final version.

"The Democratic Platform includes a number of very important initiatives that we have been fighting to achieve during this campaign," reads the petition from the Sanders campaign. "But one big item is missing: preventing the disastrous Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal from ever coming up for a vote in Congress."

In addition to citing the publicly stated opposition of both Sanders and Clinton, the Sanders petition points out how the TPP is also opposed by key Democratic voting blocs—including "virtually every labor union, environmental group, and even major religious groups." The party as a whole, the petition argues, should now "go on record in opposition to holding a vote on the TPP during the lame duck session of Congress and beyond."

The Conflict is Between Wall Street and Main Street within the Democratic Party

If Trump is "Tanking," Why Is He Tied with Clinton in National Poll?

The latest survey (pdf) published Wednesday finds the contest between two frontrunners "too close to call," with Clinton securing 42 percent of votes to Trumps' 40 percent. An NBC News/ Survey Monkey tracking poll released Tuesday showed Clinton with a slightly wider 8-point lead. ...

Despite many indications that Trump's campaign is "failing"—with its struggle to win establishment GOP support, fundraising woes, and staff shake-ups—his message continues to resonate, at least according to these numbers, with with large numbers of potential voters.

Though his acerbic, xenophobic rhetoric has increasingly alienated large swaths of the electorate, Trump's quote-unquote populist stances against corporate trade agreements and political cronyism—which he says that Clinton embodies—has won him solid backing. ...

Observers say that this is the same recipe that fueled the unexpected win for the Leave campaign in Britain.

In a New York Times op-ed published late Tuesday, Clinton's rival Bernie Sanders warned that unless the Democratic Party can "make clear that we stand with those who are struggling and who have been left behind" —by denouncing the TPP, ending corporate tax breaks, and fighting "for an economy that protects the interests of working people, not just Wall Street, the drug companies and other powerful special interests"—the United States may suffer the same fate as the U.K.

Hillary Clinton has 81% chance of defeating Trump, Nate Silver predicts

Hillary Clinton has an 81% chance of winning the election to Donald Trump’s 19%, polling analyst Nate Silver said on Wednesday in his first model of the 2016 presidential election.

Silver’s calculations are based on a model that processes polling data exclusively. A second model produced by Silver’s FiveThirtyEight web site, taking in economics statistics and historical data, portrayed a slightly tighter race, at 74%-26% for Clinton.

Silver gained international fame for his perfect, 50-for-50 performance at predicting state outcomes in advance of the 2012 presidential election. Where many pundits saw a tight race between Republican nominee Mitt Romney and incumbent president Barack Obama, Silver correctly foresaw a 332-206 electoral college blowout.

Silver’s performance was almost as good in 2008, when he correctly predicted outcomes in 49 of 50 states, and predicted the popular vote margin to within a percentage point.

Since becoming a smash success in 2012, however, Silver and his FiveThirtyEight colleagues have suffered some high-profile misses that could lead some observers to discount their predictions this year. Their most high-profile miss of all: Donald Trump.

Nation's Top Science Groups Demand Bold Climate Action From Congress

The nation's top scientific organizations have an important reminder for members of Congress: human caused climate change is real, its impacts are already being felt in the U.S., and only a significant slashing of greenhouse gas emissions will stave off the worst risks.

The 31 groups including the American Meteorological Society, the American Society of Plant Biologists, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)—organizations representing "millions of scientists," according to the Associated Press—issued their statement in a letter (pdf ) to the lawmakers dated Tuesday.

Impacts in the U.S. include "extreme weather events, sea level rise, and increased risk of regional water scarcity, heat waves, wildfires, and the disturbance of biological systems," the letter states. "The severity of climate change impacts is increasing and is expected to increase substantially in the coming decades," it states.

The letter adds that "adaptation is necessary to address unavoidable consequences for human health and safety, food security, water availability, and national security, among others," and concludes by offering to collaborate with the lawmakers as they "seek to address the challenges of our changing climate."

The urgent statement, which comes in what may end up being the hottest year ever, reiterates the messages from a similar letter (pdf) sent back in 2009 by 18 leading scientific organizations to members of Congress—who continue to fail to take any substantive action on climate change.

Tim DeChristopher Arrested Again in the "Age of Anticipatory Mass Graves" for Climate Victims

On Wednesday, 23 people were arrested protesting Spectra Energy’s fracked gas pipeline in West Roxbury, Massachusetts. Longtime climate activist Tim DeChristopher was one of about 30 people who ventured onto the Spectra pipeline construction site in an attempt to nonviolently stop work. ... During the action, DeChristopher and 11 others climbed inside the pipeline trench and refused to budge for almost two hours before being forcibly removed by firefighters. DeChristopher drew a comparison between the trenches of the gas pipeline and the mass graves recently dug in Pakistan in anticipation of a climate-fueled heat wave.

Also of Interest

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

As quietly as possible, the government is renewing its assault on your privacy

America's deadliest prosecutors: five lawyers, 440 death sentences

Bill Black: The Terrible Cost to Democrats and Our Nation of Ignoring Tom Frank’s Warnings

What is Bernie Up To?

The Pitfalls of the ‘Financialization’ of American Business

Despite Anti-Trade Rhetoric, Donald Trump’s Campaign Team Includes Pro-Trade Lobbyists

A Little Night Music

Betty Everett - My Love

Betty Everett - You're No Good

Betty Everett - I can't hear you no more

Betty Everett - I Got To Tell Somebody

Betty Everett - Someday Soon

Betty Everett - Until You Were Gone

Betty Everett - Too Hot To Hold

Betty Everett - Been A Long Time

Betty Everett - Who Will Your Next Fool Be

Betty Everett - Bye, Bye Baby