Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Paul Krugman: In Hamilton's Debt (NY Times Column)
Of course the founding father should stay on the $10 bill. Today's policy makers could learn from his wisdom.
JON PARELES: Prince Is Dead at 57 (NY Times)
He had plenty of eccentricities: his fondness for the color purple, using "U" for "you" and a drawn eye for "I" long before textspeak, his vigilant policing of his music online, his penchant for releasing huge troves of music at once, his intensely private persona. Yet among musicians and listeners of multiple generations, he was admired well-nigh universally.
Sewell Chan: Chyna, Pro Wrestler Turned Reality TV Star, Is Dead at 46 (New York Times)
Watching a televised match, she said, she realized: "I could go out and be this big, huge female and entertain people. That'd be my niche." The World Wrestling Federation (now World Wrestling Entertainment) hired her. Five feet 10 inches tall and weighing 180 pounds, she could bench-press 350 pounds, and she occasionally took on male competitors.
Peter Bradshaw: "Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures review - justice is done to a brilliant photographer" (The Guardian)
Robert Mapplethorpe transformed the rhetoric of porn into stunning imagery and this flawed documentary does his work justice.
Peter Bradshaw: Miles Ahead review - magnificent mooch through the wilderness years (The Guardian)
Director and star Don Cheadle hits a career high with this passionate and audacious biopic of troubled jazz legend Miles Davis.
Hannah Verdier: Working Class Heroes and Poverty Porn review - life's too precarious to make art if you're poor (The Guardian)
Once, aspiring actors and musicians could get by without much money while they honed their careers. Today, sadly, only those backed by the bank of mum and dad can make it.
Michael Hann: "Cheap Trick: 'We got asked to play for the Republicans - we would have got swastika guitars made'" (The Guardian)
The powerpop legends are among the latest inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. They reveal all about their love of weird English radio, Gary Glitter records and the strained relationship with their 'jerk' of a drummer.
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Kanye
Kanye West Alive!
from Marc Perkel
Patriot Act
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
JESUS WON'T SAVE YOU FROM THIS GUY. DON'T VOTE FOR REPUBLICANS!
EMBARRASSING SECRETS.
THE BABE TICKET!
WHEN WILL WE PROSECUTE THE REAL CRIMINALS?
STOP THESE MOTHERLESS WHORES BEFORE THEY DESTROY OUR COUNTRY!
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO "LOVE THY NEIGHBOR"?
WELL, THE DOGS LOVE HIM
Visit JD's site - Kitty Litter Music
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Windy.
Republicans Want Leniency For Pedophile
Hastert
Former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Bugman), several other former congressmen and a onetime CIA chief were among 41 people who wrote letters asking for leniency for Dennis Hastert as the former U.S. House speaker heads to sentencing next week in his hush-money case.
The names of people who wrote to support Hastert, 74, were made public Friday in a defense filing in federal court in Chicago that included copies of the letters. Hastert will be sentenced Wednesday after pleading guilty last year to breaking banking laws as the Illinois Republican sought to pay $3.5 million to someone referred to in filings only as "Individual A" to ensure that person didn't divulge past misconduct by Hastert. Prosecutors say the core of the misconduct is sexual abuse by Hastert when he coached wrestling and taught at Yorkville High outside Chicago from 1965 until 1981.
In his letter asking the judge to show mercy, Delay, also a Republican, emphasized Hastert's faith. "He is a good man that loves the Lord," Delay wrote. "He doesn't deserve what he is going through."
Hastert abused at least four boys at Yorkville High, prosecutors said in an April 8 presentencing memo that detailed the allegations for the first time. Individual A says he was 14 when Hastert abused him in a motel room after telling the boy he wanted to check groin injury.
At least four other congressmen sent letters: former California Reps. John T. Doolittle and David Dreier; former Illinois Rep. Thomas Ewing; and former Connecticut Rep. Porter Goss, who also once headed the CIA. Others who wrote letters included former Illinois Attorney General Ty Fahner; former Illinois state Rep. Doris Karpiel; retired Kendall County Sheriff Richard Randall; and Leo Kocher, a wrestling coach at the University of Chicago.
Hastert
Sues Norway
Edward Snowden
Fugitive US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden has filed a lawsuit against the Norwegian government seeking a guarantee he will not be extradited if he visits to accept an award, a literary rights group said Thursday.
The Norwegian branch of the PEN Club has invited Snowden, who has been living in exile in Russia since 2013 after revealing widespread US foreign surveillance, to collect the Ossietzky prize for freedom of expression in November.
PEN said a law firm had filed a petition with Oslo City Court "in order to allow Snowden to travel to Norway without fear of extradition to the US, where he faces decades of imprisonment under the Espionage Act".
"We will do our utmost to ensure that Snowden may receive the prize in person," it said in a statement.
Edward Snowden
Dig At Boyhood Home
Malcolm X
An archaeological dig at the boyhood home of Malcolm X in Boston has turned up some surprising findings, but they're unrelated to the early life of the slain civil rights activist.
City archaeologist Joseph Bagley said this week that researchers digging outside the 2 ½-story home have found kitchenware, ceramics and other evidence of a settlement dating to the 1700s that they hadn't expected to find.
"We've come onto a whole layer, roughly 2 feet down and across the whole site, that's absolutely filled with stuff from the period," he said. "So we have this whole new research question, which is: What the heck was going on here in the 18th century?"
The two-week dig, which began March 29, was meant to shine a light on Malcolm X's formative years in Boston, as well as the home's previous owners, an Irish immigrant family who lived there through the Great Depression. But it was halted last week because of bad weather. It will resume May 16.
Researchers also have found a small stone piece that may date to Native American tribes that once inhabited the city. But it's too early to tell how old the fragment is and whether it is Native American in origin. A closer examination will be undertaken later.
Malcolm X
500 Years Of Beer Purity
Germany
To some it's the real deal, to others it's a bland brew, but thanks to a 500-year-old rule everybody can be sure what's in German beer.
Chancellor Angela Merkel was among those toasting the anniversary Friday of a law that allowed only water, hops and malt as ingredients - yeast was added to the list later.
Praising the law at a ceremony in Ingolstadt, southern Germany, Merkel half-jokingly quoted religious reformer and bon vivant Martin Luther, who said that "he who has no beer, has nothing to drink."
Records have that in 1516 Duke William IV of Bavaria signed a beer purity law in the city that was eventually adopted throughout Germany. It's still on the books, albeit with some exceptions, today.
The law originally stipulated that only barley should be used for beer. Other grains, such as wheat, were considered too valuable as food to be turned into beverages, according to Nina Anika Klotz, editor of beer magazine Hopfenhelden.
Germany
Judge Won't Dismiss Lawsuit
Torture
A federal judge on Friday said he won't dismiss a lawsuit against two Washington state psychologists who helped design the CIA's harsh interrogation techniques in the war on terror. The decision means a continuation of the closely-watched case that will likely include secret information.
The American Civil Liberties Union sued James E. Mitchell and John "Bruce" Jessen last October on behalf of three former CIA prisoners. The suit said that the psychologists, despite having no expertise on al-Qaida, devised an interrogation program for the CIA that drew from 1960s experiments involving dogs and a theory called "learned helplessness."
Mitchell and Jessen designed the torture methods and performed illegal human experiments on CIA prisoners to test the program and took part in torture sessions, the ACLU has said.
Torture methods they devised included slamming prisoners into walls, stuffing them inside coffin-like boxes, exposing them to extreme temperatures and ear-splitting levels of music, starving them, inflicting various kinds of water torture, depriving them of sleep for days, and chaining them in stress positions designed for pain, the ACLU has said.
The two psychologists in 2005 founded a Spokane-based company - Mitchell, Jessen & Associates - that won a contract with the CIA. According to the Senate report, the government paid the company $81 million over several years
Torture
Immigration Terminology
Library of Congress
Congress may not be able to reform the immigration system, fix the broken tax code or even pass a budget. But it's telling the Library of Congress how to label immigrants living in the country illegally.
That's how conservative Republicans are responding to a move by the library to drop the term "illegal alien" in favor of "noncitizens" or "unauthorized immigration" for cataloging and search purposes. The move came in response to a petition from the American Library Association to change immigration-related search terms to make them less judgmental.
The library's move, announced in a three-page statement last month, was met with outrage from conservatives, who asked that a provision to block it be added to legislation that funds the legislative branch and its agencies, which include the Library of Congress.
"This needless policy change by the Library of Congress embodies so much of what taxpayers find enraging about Washington," said Rep. Diane Black, R-Tenn., in a statement introducing similar legislation. "By trading common-sense language for sanitized political-speak, they are caving to the whims of left-wing special interests and attempting to mask the grave threat that illegal immigration poses to our economy, our national security, and our sovereignty."
Library of Congress
Rupert Runs Ad Denying Armenian Genocide
Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal is being strongly criticized on social media after running a full-page ad Wednesday for a website that denies the Armenian genocide, a mass killing that began in April 1915 and left 1.5 million people dead.
It features a hand with the Turkish flag making a peace sign, while two hands crossing their fingers have the Russian and Armenian flags on them. Readers are furious that the WSJ placed an ad directing people to FactCheckArmenia.com
Once you're on the site it reads: "False: The events of 1915 constitute a clear-cut genocide against the Armenian people."
The site continues to say there "is no legal consensus to support the Armenians' attempts to portray these actions as a willful, deliberate attempt to commit genocide of the Armenian people - a specific crime defined by international law."
Wall Street Journal
Arctic Ice Melts
Polar Bears
Scientists are concerned about the discovery that many polar bears in the Canadian Arctic are making marathon swims of several days in search of stable ice as the Beaufort Sea melts with climate change.
Between 2007 and 2012, Canadian researchers tracked 58 adult female polar bears and 18 young bears of both genders in the Beaufort Sea and 59 adult females in the Hudson Bay region. (Adult males weren't tracked because they often remove their collars and their necks are typically too wide to keep their collars on.)
They found the Hudson Bay bears rarely made long-distance swims.
But in the Beaufort Sea, when there was less sea ice, most bears made at least one swim of 50 kilometres or more (a marathon is 42.2 kilometres) - 69 per cent did so in 2012, when sea ice coverage hit a record low.
In fact, the researchers identified 115 long-distance swims in total during the study, 100 of them in the Beaufort Sea, with a median length of 92 kilometres or 3.4 days. On average, polar bears can swim at about two km/h.
Polar Bears
Top 20
Global Concert Tours
The Top 20 Global Concert Tours ranks artists by average box office gross per city and includes the average ticket price for shows Worldwide. The list is based on data provided to the trade publication Pollstar by concert promoters and venue managers.
1. Madonna; $3,928,805; $212.39.
2. David Gilmour; $3,113,475; $108.97.
3. Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band; $2,289,068; $129.36.
4. Maroon 5; $2,198,012; $58.39.
5. Justin Bieber; $1,538,582; $101.36.
6. Ricky Martin; $1,255,474; $75.76.
7. Iron Maiden; $1,205,080; $57.64.
8. Muse; $1,096,393; $60.64.
9. The Who; $1,034,024; $91.94.
10. Kevin Hart; $997,235; $75.56.
11. "The Illusionists"; $928,993; $79.14.
12. Carrie Underwood; $759,203; $67.29.
13. Ellie Goulding; $515,608; $46.70.
14. Jerry Seinfeld; $513,076; $100.44.
15. Jason Aldean; $502,552; $56.42.
16. Fall Out Boy; $417,813; $52.32.
17. "Riverdance"; $408,203; $58.24.
18. Bryan Adams; $387,849; $57.86.
19. Brad Paisley; $386,542; $50.30.
20. Jeff Dunham; $366,192; $49.61.
Global Concert Tours
In Memory
Michelle McNamara
Michelle McNamara, a crime writer and wife of comedian and actor Patton Oswalt, has died at her home in Los Angeles, according to Oswalt's publicist. McNamara was 46.
Kevin McLaughlin of Main Stage Public Relations said Friday that McNamara died in her sleep Thursday. No cause was given but McLaughlin said her passing "was a complete shock to her family and friends, who loved her dearly."
McNamara graduated from the University of Notre Dame and received a master's degree in creative writing from the University of Minnesota. She founded the website True Crime Diary, which covers both breaking stories and cold cases.
In a 2007 online interview, McNamara said she started the blog almost as a lark. "I wanted to get more involved in the cases that were fueling my own curiosity," she said.
She didn't focus on the big celebrity murder case but ones that were smaller and out of the public eye. She wrote about the Golden State Killer and the 1976 murder of nurse Melanie Howell.
"It's the ones that really don't get that much attention that interest me because I think what's interesting about them is there's more stuff to be unearthed that hasn't been in the public yet and you can do it."
Oswalt is a comedian whose TV credits include "Veep," ''Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." and "The King of Queens" and films including "Magnolia," ''Starsky & Hutch" and "Ratatouille." McNamara and Oswalt married in 2005.
Besides her husband, McNamara is survived by a 7-year-old daughter, Alice.
Michelle McNamara
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