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.
This Day in History
Breakfast Tunes
Breakfast News
Arizona killer Joseph Wood dies almost two hours after execution begins
The controversy engulfing the death penalty in the United States escalated on Wednesday when the state of Arizona took almost two hours to kill a prisoner using an experimental concoction of drugs whose provenance it had insisted on keeping secret.
Joseph Wood took an hour and 58 minutes to die after he was injected with a relatively untested combination of the sedative midazolam and painkiller hydromorphone. For more than an hour, he was seen to be “gasping and snorting”, according to an emergency motion to halt the execution, filed by his lawyers.
The procedure had begun at 1.52pm, with sedation of the prisoner confirmed five minutes later The office of the Arizona attorney general, Tom Horne, announced at 3.49pm local time that Wood was dead.
Colorado gay marriage ban ruled unconstitutional
A federal judge declared Colorado’s gay marriage ban unconstitutional on Wednesday, but issued a temporary stay of the ruling until an appeals court hearing next month.
Sitting in Denver, US district judge Raymond P Moore granted an injunction that declares the state’s voter-approved ban on same-sex marriages unconstitutional.
It is the third ruling in the past week to declare a state’s same-sex marriage ban unconstitutional, following similar decisions in Florida and Oklahoma. The cases are part of a wave of more than 20 rulings made in favour of same-sex marriage since the US supreme court handed down two landmark decisions in June last year.
US subjects the world to the most spam of any country
The US sends more spam than any other country in the world by a considerable margin, with France and China a distant second and third.
A report by security company Sophos, which tracks the locations of computers that send spam emails filling inboxes globally, reveals that the UK does not rank in the top 12 “spam-relaying” countries in the world.
“The vast majority of spam is sent unsuspectingly from computers infected with malware, so that if you aren’t careful, you may end up being part of the problem,” said Paul Ducklin, security expert for Sophos, in a blog post.
The US sent 24.2% of the world’s spam in the past three months, with France sending just 6.7%, China 6.2% and Italy 5.2%, according to the company’s data.
Maine residents to work for food stamps, governor says
Maine’s Republican governor on Wednesday launched a push to make more “able-bodied” people work for their food stamps.
“People who are in need deserve a hand up, but we should not be giving able-bodied individuals a handout,” said Gov. Paul R. LePage.
LePage will reportedly stop seeking a federal waiver – issued at the height of the Great Recession – allowing some food stamp recipients to bypass requirements that they work or volunteer, according to local news channel WCSH.
About 12,000 of the state’s residents receiving $15 million annually in food stamps are considered to be able-bodied by Maine’s Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), which administers the aid. That means that they are between the ages of 18 and 49, have no dependents and are not pregnant or disabled.
In the next three months, those who are deemed able-bodied must work or volunteer with a community organization for 20 hours a week or lose their aid.
Senator’s Thesis Turns Out to Be Remix of Others’ Works, Uncited
Democrats were thrilled when John Walsh of Montana was appointed to the United States Senate in February. A decorated veteran of the Iraq war and former adjutant general of his state’s National Guard, Mr. Walsh offered the Democratic Party something it frequently lacks: a seasoned military man.
On the campaign trail this year, Mr. Walsh, 53, has made his military service a main selling point. Still wearing his hair close-cropped, he notes he was targeted for killing by Iraqi militants and says his time in uniform informs his views on a range of issues.
But one of the highest-profile credentials of Mr. Walsh’s 33-year military career appears to have been improperly attained. An examination of the final paper required for Mr. Walsh’s master’s degree from the United States Army War College indicates the senator appropriated at least a quarter of his thesis on American Middle East policy from other authors’ works, with no attribution.
Acetaminophen No Better Than Placebo for Back Pain]
About two-thirds of adults have lower back pain at some point in their lives, and most are told to take acetaminophen, sold under brand names like Tylenol, Anacin and Panadol. Medical guidelines around the world recommend acetaminophen as a first-line treatment.
But there has never been much research to support the recommendation, and now a large, rigorous trial has found that acetaminophen works no better than a placebo.
“Our result illustrates the problems in relying on that indirect evidence when setting guidelines,” said Christopher M. Williams, a researcher at the George Institute for Global Health in Sydney and lead author of the new study, published Wednesday in The Lancet.
Afghanistan’s Election Result Hinges on a Squabble-Prone Audit
Seemingly endless squabbles are interrupted by full-scale shouting matches. Campaign aides mutter suspiciously about what foreign visitors might be up to. And ballot boxes are piling up, waiting to be cracked open and examined for signs of fraud.
In two spartan, stifling warehouses on the edge of Kabul, hundreds of Afghans, Americans and Europeans are engaged in a last-ditch attempt to salvage an acceptably democratic result from an election dispute that has been tumbling toward a street fight, or worse.
They are auditing all of the roughly eight million ballots cast in last month’s presidential runoff, trying to separate fraud from fact. But a week into the process, the audit has engendered little confidence, and is already desperately behind schedule.
Must Read Blog Posts
Privacy Oversight Board Turns Its Sights On The Real Problem: Executive Order 12333 by Mike Masnick, Techdirt
Your Terrorism Industrial Complex Tax Dollars at Work by ek hornbeck, Docudharma
Freedom, Money & Control by joe shikspack, The Stars Hollow Gazette
As Debunking Continues, Congress Pushes for US Contractors to Profit Off Iron Dome by Jim White, emptywheel
Leaked Rulebook Reveals Loophole-Ridden Criteria for Placing Individuals on Terrorist Watchlists by Kevin Gosztola, The Dissenter @FDL
Justice Department Investigation Uncovers Routine Conduct Which Suggests Newark Police Are Racist Thieves by Kevin Gosztola, The Dissenter @FDL
UK Watchdog Warns Country’s Terrorism Laws Could Be Used to Criminalize Newspapers as Terrorists by Kevin Gosztola, The Dissenter @FDL
Centrists’ hot new obsession: How they’re hoping to strip party bases of power by Heather Digby Parton, Salon
CDC: It’s time to start treating antibiotic resistance like the big, dangerous deal it is by Lindsay Abrams, Salon
h/t ek hornbeck
The Daily Wiki
Plausible Deniability is a term coined by the CIA in the early 1960s to describe the withholding of information from senior officials in order to protect them from repercussions in the event that illegal or unpopular activities by the CIA became public knowledge.
Its roots go back to Truman’s national security council paper 10/2 June 18/1948, which defined “covert operations” as “…all activities conducted pursuant to this directive which are so planned and executed that any U.S. Government responsibility for them is not evident to unauthorized persons and that if uncovered the U.S. Government can plausibly disclaim any responsibility for them.” [NSC 5412 was de-classifed in 1977, and is located at the National Archives, RG 273.]
The term most often refers to the capacity of senior officials in a formal or informal chain of command to deny knowledge of and/or responsibility for any damnable actions committed by the lower ranks because of a lack of evidence that can confirm their participation, even if they were personally involved or at least willfully ignorant of said actions. In the case that illegal or otherwise disreputable and unpopular activities become public, high-ranking officials may deny any awareness of such act in order to insulate themselves and shift blame on the agents who carried out the acts, confident that their doubters will be unable to prove otherwise. The lack of evidence to the contrary ostensibly makes the denial plausible, that is, credible. The term typically implies forethought, such as intentionally setting up the conditions to plausibly avoid responsibility for one’s (future) actions or knowledge. In some organizations, legal doctrines such as command responsibility exist to hold major parties responsible for the actions of subordinates involved in heinous acts and nullify any legal protection that their denial of involvement would carry.
In politics and espionage, deniability refers to the ability of a powerful player or intelligence agency to pass the buck and avoid blowback by secretly arranging for an action to be taken on their behalf by a third party ostensibly unconnected with the major player. In political campaigns, plausible deniability enables candidates to stay clean and denounce third-party advertisements that use unethical approaches or potentially libellous innuendo.
More generally, plausible deniability can also apply to any act that leaves little or no physical evidence of wrongdoing or abuse. Examples of this are the use of electric shock, waterboarding or pain-compliance holds as a means of non-invasive torture or punishment, leaving few or no tangible signs that the abuse ever took place.
Plausible deniability is also a legal concept. It refers to lack of evidence proving an allegation. Standards of proof vary in civil and criminal cases. In civil cases, the standard of proof is “preponderance of the evidence” whereas in a criminal matter, the standard is “beyond a reasonable doubt.” If an opponent lacks incontrovertible proof (evidence) of their allegation, one can plausibly deny the allegation even though it may be true.
Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac
The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.
Cross posted at The Stars Hollow Gazette and Voices on the Square
