The Breakfast Club (Scratch Where It Itches)

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

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This Day in History

President Abraham Lincoln and naturalist Charles Darwin born; The U.S. Senate acquits President Bill Clinton in his impeachment trial; Founding of the NAACP; Cartoonist Charles Schulz dies.

Breakfast Tunes

Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac

I have a simple philosophy: Fill what’s empty. Empty what’s full. Scratch where it itches.

Alice Roosevelt Longworth

Breakfast News

U.S. and Russia Announce Plan for Humanitarian Aid and a Cease-Fire in Syria

Secretary of State John Kerry and his Russian counterpart, Sergey V. Lavrov, announced that they had agreed on the delivery over the next few days of desperately needed aid to besieged Syrian cities, to be followed by a “cessation of hostilities” within a week on the way to a more formal cease-fire.

“We have agreed to implement a nationwide cessation of hostilities in one week’s time,” Mr. Kerry said early Friday morning, after all-day meetings. “That is ambitious.”

“The real test is whether all the parties honor those commitments,” he said, sitting next to Mr. Lavrov, the two men doing their best to appear cooperative after weeks of trading accusations over the accelerated Russian air campaign that has given new support to the government of Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad.

Gravitational waves: breakthrough discovery after two centuries of expectation

Physicists have announced the discovery of gravitational waves, ripples in the fabric of spacetime that were first anticipated by Albert Einstein a century ago.

“We have detected gravitational waves. We did it,” said David Reitze, executive director of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (Ligo), at a press conference in Washington.

The announcement is the climax of a century of speculation, 50 years of trial and error, and 25 years perfecting a set of instruments so sensitive they could identify a distortion in spacetime a thousandth the diameter of one atomic nucleus across a 4km strip of laserbeam and mirror.

The phenomenon detected was the collision of two black holes. Using the world’s most sophisticated detector, the scientists listened for 20 thousandths of a second as the two giant black holes, one 35 times the mass of the sun, the other slightly smaller, circled around each other.

NYPD officer Peter Liang convicted of manslaughter in Akai Gurley shooting

The NYPD officer who shot and killed an unarmed man in a stairwell was convicted of manslaughter Thursday by a Kings County jury. The officer, 28-year-old Peter Liang, held his head in his hands as the foreman read back the charges. Liang was also found guilty of official misconduct in relation to the fatal shooting of Akai Gurley in November 2014.

The manslaughter charge carries up to 15 years in prison. Liang’s sentencing is set for 14 April. He was fired from the force after the ruling, an NYPD spokesman said.

Kings County district attorney Ken Thompson said the ruling demonstrated that “no matter where you live in Brooklyn, your live matters.”

Scott Rynecki, the attorney representing the Gurley family, said after the decision that “no one is here rejoicing at the fact that this officer was convicted… but the message was sent… that if a police officer does something wrong their actions will be held accountable and will be held accountable in a court of law.” Rynecki is representing the family in a civil suit that is ongoing.

Oregon militia standoff: final surrender met with shouts of ‘hallelujah’

The armed militia occupation of an Oregon wildlife refuge came to a dramatic and extraordinary end on Thursday when the final four holdouts abandoned their weapons and turned themselves in to the FBI, in a surrender that was broadcast live on YouTube.

The 41-day occupation of the federal complex in rural Harney County built to an intense crescendo when the last remaining protester, David Fry, a 27-year-old from Ohio, was persuaded to abandon talk of violence and suicide to emerge from the refuge and hand himself over amid shouts of “hallelujah”.

“I declare war against the federal government!” Fry shouted before he put down his gun and surrendered. “I’m taking a stand. A stand means you’re willing to risk your life.”

Around the same time, federal prosecutors filed a criminal complaint in neighboring Nevada against Cliven Bundy, the cattle rancher whose defiant standoff in 2014 inspired the occupation in Oregon. The indictment of 69-year-old Bundy, a spiritual grandfather for the ultra-conservative federal lands movement, signaled a determination to clamp down on the wider anti-government militia movement.

Democrats pitch Keep it in the Ground bill to prohibit new fossil fuel extraction

Legislation that would ban coal, oil and gas extraction on US public land has been introduced in Congress in a timely act of Democratic defiance to the legal threat looming over Barack Obama’s plan to slash greenhouse gas emissions.

The Keep it in the Ground Act would prohibit the digging or drilling for fossil fuels on federal land or waters. A Senate version of the act has the support of several senior Democrats, including presidential nominee Bernie Sanders.

The bill, which has 16 Democratic co-sponsors in total, states that global warming has already had a “significant impact” on the US economy and that to avoid a dangerous 2C (about 4F) increase in global temperatures, at least 80% of carbon from known fossil fuel reserves must be kept in the ground.

Introduction of the bill is a symbolic act as it has no chance of passing a Congress dominated by Republicans who have accused the US president of waging a “war on coal” that harms American jobs. But the bill is a signifier of Democratic intent to aggressively push forward climate change policy, beyond even that proposed by the Obama administration.

Breakfast Blogs

New York Police Have Used Stingrays Widely, New Documents Show Alex Emmons, The Intercept

Someone Reprogram Marco Rubio, His Tax Plan Does Not Compute Charles Pierce, Esquire Politics

The Night The Establishment Pundit Class Died Kevin Gosztola, ShadowProof

Biased Pluralism and the Defense of “Reality” in the Democratic Primary emptywheel aka Marcy Wheeler, emptywheel

Could We Have Illegitimate Nominees In Both Parties Steve M., No More Mister Nice Blog

One Year Later, ISP Claims That Title II Would Demolish Broadband Investment Found To Be Total, Indisputable Bullshit Karl Bode, Tecdirt