Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Paul Krugman: Charlatans, Cranks and Kansas (NY Times)
The state's economy is in terrible shape after huge income-tax cuts - another case of big money selling bad ideas.
Robert Evans, Talia Jane: 7 Things I Learned as an Accomplice to Mass Murder (Cracked)
We all operate under a general moral code: don't kill, don't steal, don't crash into that car just because they didn't signal before merging, blah blah blah. When someone breaks that code in an exciting way, we flock to our preferred news sources like moths to a flame to learn all the gory details, before some other crime catches our attention.
Kasabian or Spinal Tap - can Billy Bragg tell them apart? (Guardian)
The musician was the first to spot the similarities between the two bands, so we put him to the test to see if he could correctly identify their quotes.
Phoebe-Jane Boyd: Yes, I'm fat, but spare us the cruelty this summer (Guardian)
Staying cool in the summer is tough enough already for us, without having to put up with ridicule from strangers.
Michael Hogan: "Harry Shearer interview: 'I told them I don't dance - now I prove it nightly'" (Guardian)
The Simpsons veteran on his West End debut with Maureen Lipman, playing Glastonbury, and how all men turn into Mr Burns.
Arianna Rebolini: 27 Tip Jars That Are Too Clever To Resist (BuzzFeed)
We Knead the Dough. - from a pizzeria
Sarah Boxer: Why Are All the Cartoon Mothers Dead? (Atlantic)
The dead-mother plot is a classic of children's fiction, but animated movies have supplied a new twist: the fun father has taken her place.
David Bruce's Amazon Author Page
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David Bruce has approximately 50 Kindle books on Amazon.com.
"Doug's Most Shared Facebook Post" Today
wrote:
took the day off.
has retired.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
from Marc Perkel
BartCop
Hello Bartcop fans,
As you all know the untimely passing of Terry was unexpected, even by
him. We all knew he had cancer but we all thought he had some years
left. So some of us who have worked closely with him over the years are
scrambling around trying to figure out what to do. My job, among other
things, is to establish communications with the Bartcop community and
provide email lists and groups for those who might put something
together. Those who want to play an active roll in something coming from
this, or if you are one of Bart's pillars, should send an email to
active@bartcop.com.
The most active open discussion is on Bart's Facebook page.
( www.facebook.com/bartcop )
You can listen to Bart's theme song here
or here.
( www.bartcop.com/blizing-saddles.mp3 )
( youtu.be/MySGAaB0A9k )
We have opened up the radio show archives which are now free. Listen to
all you want.
( bartcop.com/members )
Bart's final wish was to pay off the house mortgage for Mrs. Bart who is
overwhelmed and so very grateful for the support she has received.
Anyone wanting to make a donation can click on this the yellow donate
button on bartcop.com
But - I need you all to help keep this going. This note
isn't going to directly reach all of Bart's fans. So if you can repost
it on blogs and discussion boards so people can sign up then when we
figure out what's next we can let more people know. This list is just
over 600 but like to get it up to at least 10,000 pretty quick. So
here's the signup link for this email list.
( mailman.bartcop.com/listinfo/bartnews )
Marc Perkel
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunny and unpleasantly humid.
Doing His Job
John Oliver
It is a rare television show that rouses its audience to do something. Stephen Colbert did it a few times on his Colbert Report, most notably in his farcical 2008 bid for the presidency, which raised tens of thousands of dollars for underserved classrooms via Donors Choose, and via the creation of his super Pac, which not only raised more than a million dollars but also raised awareness of campaign finance reform. It is not surprising, then, that the latest show to carry the call-to-action mantle is that of fellow Daily Show alum John Oliver.
Oliver, a correspondent on The Daily Show for seven and a half years who filled in as host for Jon Stewart last summer, launched his own program, Last Week Tonight With John Oliver, on April 27 on HBO. He has spent the nine weeks since tackling topics that the mainstream media has mostly ignored, such as the recent Indian general elections (the biggest election in human history) and net neutrality, which he claimed is discussed in such boring terms that people don't pay attention to the insidiousness of paying Internet service providers to create fast and slow lanes on the Internet.
That latter 13-minute-long segment has become famous because it ended with Oliver's rousing call to "Internet trolls" (translation: everyone watching) to leave comments on the site of the Federal Communications Commission during its 120-day commenting period. So many people took him up on his request that the FCC's Twitter account announced that the site was experiencing "technical difficulties" due to overwhelming traffic. Oliver took little credit for crashing the site, telling Terry Gross on Fresh Air that if the FCC's website is designed to be commented on but is crashing when people are commenting, then "there is a much bigger problem than our [show's] involvement."
But, as Oliver said on Fresh Air, the best part of his HBO endeavor isn't being able to eschew broadcast standards. It's that, without commercials funding his show, Oliver is also able to mock, criticize, and demand change from big multinational corporations, such as General Motors, without being afraid of losing ad dollars from a sponsor.
John Oliver
35-Page Dissent
Justice Ginsburg
On Monday, the Supreme Court sided with Hobby Lobby on the company's challenge to the Affordable Care Act's contraceptive mandate, ruling that the mandate, as applied to "closely held" businesses, violates the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act. But the divided court's 5-4 decision included a dramatic dissent from Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who called the majority opinion "a decision of startling breadth." Ginsburg read a portion of her decision from the bench on Monday.
Addressing the majority of her colleagues - including all but one of the six men sitting on the Supreme Court - Ginsburg wrote:
In the Court's view, RFRA demands accommodation of a for-profit corporation's religious beliefs no matter the impact that accommodation may have on third parties who do not share the corporation owners' religious faith-in these cases, thousands of women employed by Hobby Lobby and Conestoga or dependents of persons those corporations employ. Persuaded that Congress enacted RFRA to serve a far less radical purpose, and mindful of the havoc the Court's judgment can introduce, I dissent.
The justice goes on to criticize the opinion's interpretation of the religious freedom law, writing that "until today, religious exemptions had never been extended to any entity operating in 'the commercial, profit-making world.'"
The full Ginsburg dissent.
Justice Ginsburg
Blasts Decision
Hillary
Hillary Clinton blasted the Supreme Court's 5-4 ruling, announced Monday, that craft chain Hobby Lobby and other "closely held" for-profit companies do not have to provide contraceptives to their employees if doing so violates their religious beliefs.
"I disagree with the reasoning as well as the conclusion," Clinton said during a Facebook Live interview at the Aspen Ideas Festival in Colorado. "I find it deeply disturbing we are going in that direction."
"It's troubling a sales clerk at Hobby Lobby who needs contraception - which is pretty expensive - is not going to get that service through her employer's health care plan because her employer doesn't think she should be using contraception," Clinton said.
The former secretary of state predicted that as a result of the decision, "many more companies will claim religious beliefs. Some may be sincere, some may not."
"This is a really bad, slippery slope," she said.
Hillary
Plans 50th Anniversary Tour
The Who
Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey are taking The Who on the road for a series of shows in the U.K. celebrating the band's 50th anniversary.
Daltrey referred to the tour as the start of the Who's "long goodbye" during a news conference Monday at Ronnie Scott's jazz bar in London.
"Well, it just has to be really," the 70-year-old Daltrey said. "We can't go on touring forever, but we don't know how long we will go on touring. It's an open-ended kind of thing. But it will have a finality to it. We'll stop touring, I'm sure, before we stop playing as a band. It's just like Eric Clapton's just said: It's the grind of the road, it's incredibly tough on the body this age. The singing is free; you pay us for the bloody traveling. "
The Who Hits 50 tour will be a retrospective of the band's career, including best-known hits such as "Who Are You," ''Pinball Wizard," and "Baba O'Riley." It is set to begin Nov. 30 in Glasgow, Scotland, and wind up in London on Dec. 17. Tickets go on sale Friday in the U.K.
The Who
Not The Good Guys
Blackwater
A State Department investigator warned that contractors for Blackwater Worldwide saw themselves as above the law and that the contractors, rather than department officials, were in command, according to a memo disclosed Monday.
The warning to State Department officials came two weeks before shootings in Nisoor Square in Baghdad that killed 14 people and wounded 18 others on Sept. 16, 2007. A trial in the shootings is under way for four former Blackwater security guards.
The memo and other State Department documents make clear that the department was alerted to serious problems involving Blackwater before the Nisoor Square shooting.
In the memo to State Department officials, the investigator, Jean Richter, also said he had been threatened by a Blackwater manager regarding the investigation. The manager, according to the memo, said that he could kill the investigator and that "no one could or would do anything about it as we were in Iraq."
Blackwater
UK TV Personality Guilty
Rolf Harris
Television entertainer Rolf Harris, known to generations of children in Britain and Australia for his friendly screen presence, was found guilty Monday of a string of indecent assaults on young girls that took place from the '60s to the '80s.
The conviction marked a stunning reversal for Harris, 84, whose popularity on children's TV in Britain rivaled that of "Captain Kangaroo" in the United States. The judge said Harris should expect prison time when he is sentenced Friday.
The man who appeared in hundreds of TV shows and even painted an official portrait of Queen Elizabeth II will likely now be remembered chiefly as a sexual predator.
A jury found the Australian-born broadcaster guilty of 12 counts of indecent assault on four victims aged 19 or younger.
Harris was well-loved in Britain, where he performed for the queen's Diamond Jubilee concert in 2012. He was also known for musical hits including the novelty song "Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport" and had performed once with the Beatles.
Rolf Harris
Judge Dismisses Defamation Lawsuit
Zippy
A Florida judge on Monday dismissed the defamation lawsuit filed by George Zimmerman against NBC and three reporters, saying the former neighborhood watch leader failed to show the network acted with malice.
Judge Debra Nelson said the malice standard was appropriate because Zimmerman became a public figure after he shot 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Sanford in February 2012, generating a national conversation about race and self-defense laws.
Zimmerman was acquitted last year for Martin's shooting murder. He said he shot Martin in self-defense when the teenager attacked him. Martin was black. Zimmerman identifies himself as Hispanic.
Zimmerman "voluntarily injected his views into the public controversy surrounding race relations and public safety in Sanford and pursued a course of conduct that ultimately led to the death of Martin and the specific controversy surrounding it," said Nelson, who presided over Zimmerman's criminal trial last summer.
Zippy
California Law Upheld
Conversion Therapy
The U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way Monday for enforcement of a first-of-its-kind California law that bars psychological counseling aimed at turning gay minors straight.
The justices turned aside a legal challenge brought by supporters of so-called conversion or reparative therapy. Without comment, they let stand an August 2013 appeals court ruling that said the ban covered professional activities that are within the state's authority to regulate and doesn't violate the free speech rights of licensed counselors and patients seeking treatment.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last year that California lawmakers properly showed that therapies designed to change sexual orientation for those under the age of 18 were outside the scientific mainstream and have been disavowed by most major medical groups as unproven and potentially dangerous.
"The Supreme Court has cement shut any possible opening to allow further psychological child abuse in California," state Sen. Ted Lieu, the law's sponsor, said Monday. "The Court's refusal to accept the appeal of extreme ideological therapists who practice the quackery of gay conversion therapy is a victory for child welfare, science and basic humane principles."
The law says professional therapists and counselors who use treatments designed to eliminate or reduce same-sex attractions in their patients would be engaging in unprofessional conduct and subject to discipline by state licensing boards. It does not cover the actions of pastors and lay counselors who are unlicensed but provide such therapy through church programs.
Conversion Therapy
Wells Leak
Fracking
In Pennsylvania's gas drilling boom, newer and unconventional wells leak far more often than older and traditional ones, according to a study of state inspection reports for 41,000 wells.
The results suggest that leaks of methane could be a problem for drilling across the nation, said study lead author Cornell University engineering professor Anthony Ingraffea, who heads an environmental activist group that helped pay for the study.
The study was published Monday by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
A team of four scientists analyzed more than 75,000 state inspections of gas wells done in Pennsylvania since 2000.
The researchers don't know where the leaky methane goes - into the water or the air, where it could be a problem worsening man-made global warming.
Fracking
Moving South
Firearms Makers
The first gun manufacturer to leave Connecticut after it enacted tough new gun control laws last year in the wake of the Newtown school shootings presented a commemorative rifle on Monday to the governor of South Carolina, its new home.
PTR Industries Inc is among a wave of firearms makers moving or expanding away from the industry's traditional base in the U.S. Northeast to the more gun-friendly South.
Gun sales in the United States have grown steadily over the past 30 years and spiked last year after the Newtown shootings because of fear of coming restrictions, analysts said.
"Everybody who is looking to expand in new factory space is looking outside the Northeast. The reasons are taxes, labor and laws," said Brian Ruttenbur, an analyst with CRT Capital Group.
Firearms Makers
July List
Order of Canada
Rick Mercer - a Canadian known for his capacity to chat, rant and laugh - said he was dumbstruck when he learned he was to receive one of the country's top honours.
The comedian is among the latest admissions and promotions in the Order of Canada, a list that includes renowned filmmaker David Cronenberg and retired astronaut Chris Hadfield.
Cronenberg is being promoted to companion, the highest level within the order. Hadfield becomes an officer, the second-highest level.
Shirley Marie Tilghman of Toronto and Princeton, N.J., has been made an officer in recognition of her contributions to molecular biology and for her efforts to champion women in science and engineering.
Among the other new members are Quebec poet Denise Desautels, Alberta social justice advocate Irene Fraser, Haida artist and fashion designer Dorothy Grant, Toronto speculative fiction author Guy Gavriel Kay, Quebec wine writer Michel Phaneuf and Quebec singer-director Rene Simard.
Order of Canada
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