- Obama DOJ’s War on Free Speech and Activism | MyFDL
- A few days ago, rallies were held in cities all over the United States in support of veteran Chicano activist Carlos Montes, who had his home raided by the FBI on May 17. The rallies coincided with Montes’ arraignment hearing for felony charges, which were filed against him by the LA County Sheriffs and FBI after the raid.
The target of an ever-expanding government investigation into antiwar and international solidarity activists… Montes asked to see the search warrant and police report on the raid of his home. The District Attorney initially refused the request but then agreed to release heavily edited versions of the documents. Montes was also told he would not be allowed to show the documents to the press.
- Political Animal – The worst of the bad default arguments
- The senator argued that the catastrophe would be better than nothing, because the nothing might someday become something.
And to add insult to injury, even if Democrats agree and prioritize debt reduction, McCain still isn’t happy — unless Dems agree to debt reduction on GOP terms, he’ll take the catastrophe.
- New Study: Going Meat-Free One Day a Week Saves More Greenhouse Gas Emissions Than A 100% Local Diet | Food | AlterNet
- …cutting out red meat (not even chicken or fish) for less than a day has the same net impact on emissions as eating a local diet 100 percent of the time.
- The Harvard Classics: A Free, Digital Collection | Open Culture • by Dan Colman
- During his days as Harvard’s influential president, Charles W. Eliot made a frequent assertion: If you were to spend just 15 minutes a day reading the right books, a quantity that could fit on a five foot shelf, you could give yourself a proper liberal education. The publisher P. F. Collier and Son loved the idea and asked Eliot to assemble the right collection of works. The result was a 51-volume series published in 1909 called Dr. Eliot’s Five Foot Shelf. Later it would simply be called The Harvard Classics.
- “Profoundly uneconomic” | Hullabaloo – digby
- It isn’t just the dirty hippies blathering on anymore. Here’s Ryan Avent in The Economist pointing out that even the most deficit hawkish of all the original economic advisors who’ve left the White House are arguing against fetishizing the deficit — and expressing a lot of worry that the president has inexplicably boxed himself into a corner in which further stimulus is nearly impossible. …
- If you build it, they will use it | Hullabaloo – digby
- “A Miami photographer was escorted off a US Airways plane and deemed a “security risk” after she snapped a photo of an employee’s nametag at Philadelphia International Airport Friday.
“Sandy DeWitt said the employee, whose name was Tonialla G., was being rude to several passengers …
“So DeWitt snapped a photo of her nametag with her iPhone because she planned to complain about her in a letter …”
…there’s nothing illegal about taking pictures. And yet all over the country people in uniforms are behaving as if there is and treating people like criminals if they do it. This is perhaps the most obvious example of a police state mentality being accepted by the citizenry.
- Analysis: How We Got Here and Why We Must Raise the Debt Ceiling
- A government deficit can be thought of as consisting of two elements, structural and cyclical.
At the lowest point in the business cycle, there is a high level of unemployment. This means that tax revenues are low and expenditure (e.g. on social security) high. Conversely, at the peak of the cycle, unemployment is low, …
- 18 Funny Women You Should Be Following On Twitter
- First of all, you should know we’re going to revisit this topic frequently. There are so many great female comedy writers on Twitter now, you can’t fit all of them in one slideshow. For this collection, we assumed you were already following the likes of @sarahksilverman, @lizzwinstead, @sandrabernhard and so on. If you’re not, go take care of that right away and come back. …
- Monkey steals camera to snap himself – Telegraph
- A macaque monkey in Indonesia took a camera from a wildlife photographer before snapping himself in a variety of poses.
…”He must have taken hundreds of pictures by the time I got my camera back, but not very many were in focus. He obviously hadn’t worked that out yet.
“I wish I could have stayed longer as he probably would have taken a full family album.”
- EXCLUSIVE: Google To Retire Blogger
- Blogger and Picasa aren’t going away, of course — they’re two of Google’s most popular products. Instead, according to two sources familiar with the matter, Google intends to rename Picasa “Google Photos” and Blogger will become “Google Blogs.” Several other Google brands are likely to be affected, though our sources made it clear that YouTube would not be rebranded. The technology giant shut down Google Video, its failed web video service, in May.
- Discrimination in Baseball: MLB Umpires, Racial Bias and Calling Strikes
- In the June issue of American Economic Review, four scholars unpack the theory that MLB umpires express racial bias when calling strikes. In turn, pitchers throw balls that allow for less subjective judgment.
“…The results suggest how discrimination alters discriminated groups’ behavior generally. They imply that biases in measured productivity must be accounted for in generating measures of wage discrimination.”
[My bookmarks live at delicious.com/camryl. In case it needs to be said: I don't agree with every word of everything I link to. Also, signal boosts are awesome! --L.]
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