Kai Kupferschmidt: Peter Sandman, a longtime expert and consultant on risk communication based in Brooklyn, New York, wasn’t especially shocked when he first heard about the patient’s case. “My first reaction was: Well, it had to be somewhere. Better Dallas than Mumbai,” he says. But Sandman says the past week has been a missed opportunity. […]
Open thread for night owls: ’60 Minutes’ does a puff piece on the FBI
Forester explains tree-planting techniques to Civilian Conservation Corps workers c. 1934. Just a month and a day after taking the oath of office in March 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt signed legislation establishing the Civilian Conservation Corps, the first federal jobs program of the New Deal. Within four months, 250,000 18- to 25-year-olds had enrolled. Later […]
Cheers and Jeers: Rum and Coke FRIDAY!
From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE… Olly Olly Oxenfree!!! Tomorrow is the 26th National Coming Out Day, an annual event celebrated since 1988 “to promote a safe world for LGBT individuals to live truthfully and openly.” Overall it’s much easier and safer than it was when my closet door finally swung open—that was 1991 when […]
U.S. Supreme Court greenlights marriage equality in Idaho
Idaho marriage plaintiffs Lori and Sharene Watsen The U.S. Supreme Court has turned down Idaho’s request for an appeal of the 9th Circuit’s ruling that the state’s marriage ban is unconstitutional. The order allows a federal appeals court decision issued Tuesday to take effect in Idaho, just as it did in Nevada. Three other states […]
Colorado AG candidate latest Republican to demand states ‘take back’ federal lands
If Republicans would like to nominate anyone—anyone at all—who is not a loon, we would all be down with that. I mean, c’mon. In previously unreported comments that were captured on video, Colorado Republican attorney general candidate Cynthia Coffman can be seen telling supporters that she intends to lead a legal fight against the U.S. […]
Daily Kos Elections ad roundup: Looking for a really ugly campaign? Welcome to Illinois
Leading Off: • IL-Gov: If the gubernatorial race in Illinois isn’t the nation’s nastiest campaign, it’s at least very close. Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn features a news clip in which a reporter describes how Republican Bruce Rauner threatened an executive, declaring, “I will bury her …. I will bankrupt her with legal fees. I don’t […]
Perdue whined about his CEO pay while 7,600 lost their jobs
Georgia Republican David Perdue isn’t just an outsourcer and a pay discriminator, he’s also supremely selfish. The New York Times points out that, in the same deposition in which Perdue so lovingly detailed his outsourcing experience, he also went into quite a bit of detail about his efforts to squeeze every possible dime in pay […]
The worst secretary of state in the nation gets skewered for suppressing the vote in Kansas
More bad news for Kris Kobach—the worst secretary of state in the nation. The Wichita Eagle is out with a blistering op-ed from Michael A. Smith, associate professor of political science at Emporia State University, noting Kris Kobach’s voting laws aren’t preventing fraud, they are preventing votes: There is real voter fraud going on in […]
Midday open thread: West says ISIS using tactics of Daily Kos, Media Matters. Racist email in AR
Today’s comic by Mark Fiore is Shell’s deadliest crude: • Here’s what is coming up in Sunday Kos: The great Republican tax cut scam of 2015, by Jon Perr Book review: ‘Latino America’ by Matt Barreto and Gary M. Segura, by Susan Grigsby Sane approaches to health epidemics. Medical anthropologists address ebola fearmongering, by Denise […]
Why does the St. Louis PD keep changing their story about the killing of VonDerrit Myers?
This image was voluntarily released by the owner of the Shaw Market in South St. Louis. VonDerrit Myers is on the left in the black t-shirt. The time stamp says 7:03 PM. Myers and his friends left at 7:05pm. Shot and killed by an off-duty St. Louis police officer on the night of Wednesday, October […]