Pansynthesis

[In case it needs to be said: I don't agree with every word of everything I link to. --L.]

Caught On Tape — The Guardsmen Were Ordered to Shoot

Here's an excerpt from Nixonland on Kent State, which offers some important perspective as we think about what this all means…

Golf Stories: A Tale Of Two Drinkers (Hullabaloo – Digby)

Golf is such serious business that the police don't take any chances. Drunks on the course must be dealt with by using the full force of the law, including 50,000 volts and a charge of "resisting arrest without violence" (which is a new one on me.)

Must-Read on Miranda

Our Justin Elliott works the terrorism beat here at TPM. And he noticed that the Obama DOJ seemed to be using the already existing "public safety exception" to the Miranda rule in a greatly expanded and qualitatively novel way.

Beneath all the partisan back and forth about reading terror suspects their Miranda rights, this is the real story about what's going on. Really a must-read.

OFFS

The rightwing homobigot brigade is already going totes apeshit about the possibility? rumors? fact?—I don't claim to know, and frankly it's none of my business—that SCOTUS nominee Elena Kagan is a lesbian.

Obama Taps Elena Kagan for Supreme Court

Kagan, who clerked for Abner Mikva and Thurgood Marshall, has an appallingly thin public record for someone who will ascend to the nation’s highest court. Apparently the exception to the “publish or perish” rule in the academic world, Kagan has managed to get through a goodly portion of her life without so much as an opinion on most of the issues in the law. Perhaps she has been preparing for a Supreme Court nomination hearing, and the advantage of vagueness in that hearing, all her life.

…I think the problem many liberals have is that they’re heading largely into the unknown with Kagan at a time when, with 59 Senators and a tradition of following the President’s lead on matters of the Supreme Court, a more definitive choice could have been made. We know that Republicans will paint Kagan as a radical activist seeking to impart her views upon the law. We know, in fact, that the President knows that.

Europe Inks Late-Night Economic Rescue Agreement

After dithering for several hours, European leaders held a late-night press conference to announce a large deal that they hope will stabilize the economies of the euro zone. Bloomberg has the details and the numbers are eye-popping…

The New York Times relates it to the US bailout of the financial sector. Their whole story is worth reading for a good overview of the situation.

Joining Offshore Drilling Disaster, Potential Nuclear Power Disaster In New Jersey

We know now that the containment dome in the Gulf has failed, meaning that the underwater gusher spurting 200,000 gallons into the water will persist for weeks if not months. Tar balls have hit the shore in Alabama, and the toll on marine life will be great. With months left to play out in this story, the support for offshore drilling as a solution to our energy needs will continue to dissipate.

But if this [other] story gets bigger, don’t expect that energy conversation to shift to nuclear power anytime soon…

There’s no “imminent threat” to drinking water at the moment, but of course when the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded on April 20 there was no sign of an underwater leak. Much like that persistent leak, amounts of tritium could spread into the groundwater and eventually hit wells or aquifers. This could be many years off – 14 to 15 years according to the EPA – but with tritium a known cause of cancer, and with the uncertainty surrounding the source of the leak or whether it could accelerate, it’s certainly worth keeping an eye on.

…I’m not sure the impact of these paragraphs would change much if you replaced “mountaintop mining” with “nuclear power,” or so on. We keep looking for silver bullets in solving our energy issues that carry major risks to our environment and public health. Meanwhile renewable technologies that offer great promise don’t get the same level of attention or interest. Perhaps these persistent reports clearly identifying the risks to energy processes – including nuclear – will wake up the nation.

Mary Kay Henry Takes the Helm of SEIU

Henry’s first day as president of SEIU included the video you see up top to the SEIU membership, and she is soliciting feedback from union members through the union’s website. Alec MacGillis at the Washington Post has an article worth reading about Henry’s election.

Joshua Claus: The Rape Threat and the Dead Detainees

Jim White cataloged some of the hesitancy among the traditional media (and, frankly, the blogosphere) to highlight the precise piece of news that DOD banned four reporters from Gitmo over: the name of the witness dubbed Interrogator #1 who testified at the Omar Khadr hearing the other day, Joshua Claus. Kudos to HuffPo and CNN for refusing to accept DOD’s censorship by printing Claus’ name.

Joshua Claus, Joshua Claus, Joshua Claus.

Froomkin aptly describes DOD’s ridiculous demand that reporters not report on a name that is in the public domain as a demand for amnesia…

If we take DOD at its word that the big problem with naming Joshua Claus as Interrogator #1 even after he has been named as Khadr’s primary interrogator at Bagram in the past, then the big problem must be connecting the content of Claus’ testimony at this week’s hearing–that he threatened Khadr with rape–with the general climate of abusiveness which led to the deaths of two detainees.

Remember, DOD is arguing that Khadr’s admissions after he heard this story implicitly threatening rape and possibly death were untainted by abuse. That’s the whole point of this hearing. That claim is much harder to sustain if we also know that the same guy who threatened rape went on to contribute to another detainee’s death.

Feature or Bug? Weak Employer Mandate Invites Companies to Drop Health Coverage

Documents provided to Congress by several large companies show that they are seriously considering dropping their employer-provided health insurance coverage because the new health care law contains a very weak employer mandate. Companies are doing the math and realizing that paying a per-employee penalty to the government for not providing coverage is substantially less than paying per employee for health insurance. It is the right economic move based on the design of the new law, and was always the long-term plan of those who helped create it.

The Link(s): Mon, May 10th, 11am by Lee Salazar, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Terms and conditions beyond the scope of this license may be available at leesalazar.com.