Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Mark Morford: "Prince: The Serenity Prayer" (SF Gate)
God grant me an enormous, glittering syringe of Prince-grade creative fearlessness and/or fearless creativity, slammed straight into my quivering soul like Travolta slamming adrenaline into Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction. Twice.
Anonymous, Evan V. Symon: 5 Post-Apocalyptic Realities Of Working For A Dying Retailer (Cracked)
When a big corporation like Blockbuster dies, it's easy to laugh at corporate hubris. They thought they could compete with human laziness, haha! But these companies had employees who counted on them for paychecks, and to them, showing up for work every day was like watching grandma slowly lose her mind. We spoke to former Blockbuster Video assistant manager Corey, and former Kmart employees Dylan and Ashley, for a look inside iconic stores in the days before they were sent to that nice capitalist farm upstate.
William Saletan: Polls Say Bernie Is More Electable Than Hillary. Don't Believe Them. (Slate)
What they really show is a candidate who hasn't been attacked.
Matthew Dessem: Turner Classic Movies and the Criterion Collection Will Form a Streaming Media Supergroup (Slate)
Turner Classic Movies and the Criterion Collection are partnering on a new streaming film service, Criterion president Peter Becker announced on their website today. It's hard to imagine a better partnership-both Turner Classic Movies and Criterion have done exemplary jobs of selecting a good mix of already-beloved films, films ripe for rediscovery, rarities and oddities. The new service will be called FilmStruck, and will launch in November "on desktop and mobile devices, and internet-connected television platforms," although specific devices (and prices) haven't yet been announced.
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Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
from Marc Perkel
Patriot Act
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
BASIAGO FOR PRESIDENT!
DON'T DRINK THE PEPSI POISON!
WHO AGREES WITH BERNIE?
WELCOME HOME HOOVER!
"SOMETHINGS' HAPPENING HERE…"
"THE DAY OF JUBILEE IS A WONDER INDEED."
AGAIN!
Visit JD's site - Kitty Litter Music
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Windy and cooler than seasonal.
Admits Sex Abuse
Hastert
Former US House speaker Dennis Hastert was sentenced to 15 months in prison Wednesday for paying hush money related to the sexual abuse of a teen boy he coached in high school.
Shortly before the sentence was handed down, the 74-year-old admitted for the first time he sexually abused boys when he taught wrestling at Yorkville High School in Illinois from the 1960s to the early 1980s.
US District Judge Thomas M. Durkin was reported as telling Hastert: "Nothing is more stunning than having the words serial child molester and speaker of the House in the same sentence."
Prosecutors have provided details of abuse of at least five boys as young as 14, in cases dating back decades for which the Republican politician can no longer be tried.
Judge Durkin also ordered Hastert to pay a $250,000 fine to a crime victims' fund and set two years of supervised release on the condition he participate in a treatment program for sex offenders.
Hastert
Eyes More Time To Compose
Esa-Pekka Salonen
As one of the leading lights in contemporary classical music, Esa-Pekka Salonen is in an enviable position where he can pick and choose at will.
The 57-year-old Finn is in New York conducting the Metropolitan Opera's triumphant production of "Elektra," the challenging Strauss work that Salonen said had figured on a list he jotted down in his 20s of operas he hoped to perform.
But Salonen, who led the Los Angeles Philharmonic for 17 years, during which he was hailed for putting the orchestra on the cutting edge, said he hoped to devote more time to composing.
Salonen has tried to split each year evenly between composing and conducting, but said he was "not quite sure where I should be yet."
"I'm thinking of further reducing my conducting schedule to some degree just to strike the right balance," he told AFP at the Metropolitan Opera.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
Native American
Kennewick Man
The ancient skeleton known as Kennewick Man is related to modern Native American tribes, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said Wednesday, opening the process for returning to a tribe for burial one of the oldest and most complete set of bones ever found in North America.
The Northwestern Division of the corps said its decision was based on a review of new information, particularly recently published DNA and skeletal analyses.
The corps, which owns the remains, said the skeleton is now covered by the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.
The 8,500-year-old remains were discovered in 1996 in southeastern Washington near the Columbia River in Kennewick, triggering a lengthy legal fight between tribes and scientists over whether the bones should be buried immediately or studied.
The bones will remain at the Burke Museum in Seattle until the corps determines which tribe will receive them.
Kennewick Man
Gay Vultures Adopt Egg
Isis and Nordhorn
A pair of gay vultures in a German zoo have adopted an egg abandoned by its mother and started to incubate it in a nest they built.
Animal keepers had collected the egg in the muddy ground under a tree where it had been dropped by a griffon vulture called Lisa, said national news agency DPA.
"Lisa had made no attempt to build a nest," the report quoted Nordhorn zoo spokeswoman Ina Deiting as saying.
The egg was temporarily placed in an incubator before being entrusted to the male couple, Isis and Nordhorn, who "promptly sat on it," said Deiting.
The biological parentage of the egg is unclear, and zoo keepers also don't know yet whether it is fertilised.
Isis and Nordhorn
Winds Down
Friends of Abe
Brentwood is ground zero for much of the political activity in the showbiz community - presidents and political candidates raise money at mogul's mansions, liberal activists gather friends and family for spirited salons. But one of the highest-profile events in the Los Angeles neighborhood so far this cycle has belonged not to the Hollywood left, but to the right.
It was a speech Donald Trump gave last July to the conservative showbiz group Friends of Abe, just weeks into his insurgent campaign but late enough for the candidate to have become a lightning rod of controversy. Outside, protesters chanted and waved Trump effigies as the LAPD controlled the crowd. Inside, more than 300 well-heeled supporters packed a meeting room at the Luxe Hotel to listen to Trump's showmanship - and respond to him with wild applause.
For more than a decade, Friends of Abe, which numbers about 2,300, according to Boreing, has been an outlet for Hollywood conservatives, both above and below the line - a fellowship of the right and center-right in a business that leans left. It has drawn to its gatherings a list of speakers that represents a veritable who's who of Republican and conservative politics, including Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Carly Fiorina, Karl Rove, John Boehner and Paul Ryan. Its membership, and those who have attended meetings, include Kelsey Grammer, Jon Voight, Patricia Heaton and Clint Eastwood. Gary Sinise was a chief founder before stepping away from the group several years ago.
Now, Friends of Abe is at a crossroads. Last week it announced that it would "wind down" the hard-fought IRS non-profit organization. It said it would stop collecting member dues and do away with costly infrastructure, including its website. Instead, its leadership says, it will become a less centralized group that will still hold events, although cost logistics have to be worked out.
Friends of Abe
Ex-Professor Sues Over Firing
Sandy Hook
A former Florida college professor who was fired after he suggested the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre was a hoax has sued the school for violation of his right to free speech, his attorney said on Tuesday.
James Tracy was dismissed in January by Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, where he had taught since 2002. His website, MemoryHoleBlog.com, gained notice in 2013 after he claimed the December 2012 massacre by a gunman at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, was staged. The attack killed 26 people, including 20 children.
The civil lawsuit, filed in federal court on Monday, claims that the firing violated his rights, including free speech protections under the U.S. Constitution. Tracy seeks to be reinstated and compensated for economic and other damages, according to a copy of the lawsuit provided by his attorney.
Tracy also said the 2015 San Bernardino attack, in which a militant Muslim couple killed 14 people, was a hoax and raised conspiracy theories about other mass killings nationally.
Tracy, whose work included a course entitled "Culture of Conspiracy," sent a letter in December to the parents of 6-year-old Sandy Hook victim Noah Pozner demanding proof they were his parents.
Sandy Hook
Suit Seeks Records
Dwight Eisenhower
A gay rights group sued the Justice Department on Wednesday for failing to produce hundreds of pages of documents related to a 1953 order signed by President Dwight Eisenhower that empowered federal agencies to investigate and fire employees thought to be gay.
The suit in U.S. District Court accuses the government of conducting an inadequate search for the material and of groundlessly withholding some records on the basis of national security.
Executive Order 10450 allowed broad categories of federal workers, including those with criminal records, drug addiction and "sexual perversion," to be singled out for scrutiny and termination as threats to national security. Suspicions of homosexuality led to between 7,000 and 10,000 workers losing their jobs in the 1950s alone, according to one estimate cited in a 2014 report from the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board.
"We want to know, and history needs to know, how this thing was administered and how it was enforced, and what was the dynamic inside the Justice Department and the FBI driving" it, said Charles Francis, president of the Mattachine Society. The gay rights research and education organization has sought to obtain the records since 2013.
"This is an issue of public importance - how your government treats people who work for it, how your government has historically targeted people based on their LGBT status and destroyed their lives," said Paul Thompson, a partner at McDermott Will and Emery LLP, the law firm that filed the Freedom of Information Act suit. "People are paying attention to this right now."
Dwight Eisenhower
Feds Won't Designate Critical Habitat
Northern Long-Eared Bat
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has decided against designating any caves, mines or forests as critical habitat for the northern long-eared bat, the agency said Monday.
The service designated the bat as threatened last year because it's been hard hit by white-nose syndrome, a fungal disease that's deadly to cave-dwelling bats. The service is required under the Endangered Species Act to consider whether certain areas need to be protected to help a species recover, and to designate them as critical habitat unless it determines doing so is "not prudent," which the service has now done.
In a statement, the service said designating winter hibernation sites as critical habitat would increase the risk of vandalism and disturbances at those caves and mines, while the forests that the bats use in summer don't need special protection.
"While critical habitat has a fundamental role to play in recovering many of our nation's most imperiled species, in the case of the northern long-eared bat, whose habitat is not a limiting factor in its survival, designating it could do more harm than good," said Tom Melius, the service's Midwest regional director.
Since the discovery of white-nose syndrome in New York state during the winter of 2006-07, the disease or the fungus that causes it has spread to 32 states and five Canadian provinces, killing more than 5.7 million bats that hibernated in caves or mines.
Northern Long-Eared Bat
Sunny States Sabotaging
Solar Energy
A report released Tuesday by the environmental group the Center for Biological Diversity identified the 10 states with the worst records for enabling households to generate electricity from the sun, even though those states' potential for rooftop solar is among the highest in the country.
According to the report, Throwing Shade: 10 Sunny States Blocking Distributed Solar Development, the states are Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Michigan, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and Wisconsin.
"All of these states have significant barriers in place to distributed solar development and have earned an overall policy grade of 'F,' " the report said.
The 10 states account for more than 35 percent of the total rooftop solar potential in the contiguous United States but have just 6 percent of rooftop capacity, the report said, citing data from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
"All 10 of these states are bad actors in the distributed solar policy game, but two in particular stand out as the worst: Florida and Texas," the report said. Florida has the third-highest potential for rooftop solar, and Texas is ranked No. 2, after California.
Solar Energy
In Memory
Willie Williams
Willie L. Williams, who was the first black police chief in Philadelphia and in Los Angeles, where he took over in the wake of the Rodney King riots, has died. He was 72.
His daughter-in-law Valerie Williams told The Associated Press that he died Tuesday evening at his home in Fayetteville, Georgia. She said he had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.
In Los Angeles, Williams was selected in April 1992 to succeed police Chief Daryl Gates (R-Racist), whose lengthy tenure had been shaken when four white officers were accused of beating King, a black motorist. Gates was still in charge when the officers were acquitted, resulting in a riot that left parts of the city in ashes.
An outsider chosen over a field of insiders, Williams was given a mandate to restore public confidence and department morale. Critically, the following month voters amended the city charter to remove civil service protection for the chief's job and limit the position to a five-year term, renewable once by the Police Commission, the department's board of civilian overseers.
Williams started his career as a cop in Philadelphia in 1962. He moved up the ranks over the following two decades before then-Mayor W. Wilson Goode Sr. appointed him commissioner in 1988. He ran the Philadelphia Police Department until 1992.
In 2002, Williams was appointed federal security director at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, the world's busiest airport.
Willie Williams
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