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
Bolshevik Revolution takes place; America’s 2000 presidential vote faces limbo; Nixon loses Calif. governor’s race; Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapses; Evangelist Billy Graham and singer Joni Mitchell born.
Breakfast Tunes
Breakfast News
Intelligence agencies spying on lawyers in sensitive security cases
The intelligence services have routinely been intercepting legally privileged communications between lawyers and their clients in sensitive security cases, according to internal MI5, MI6 and GCHQ documents.
The information obtained may even have been exploited unlawfully and used by the agencies in the fighting of court cases in which they themselves are involved, the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) has been told, resulting in miscarriages of justice.
Exchanges between lawyers and their clients enjoy a special protected status under the law.
The Conservative MP David Davis, a former shadow home secretary, said past practice was to delete such material immediately if it was ever picked up. Amnesty International said the government was gaining “an unfair advantage akin to playing poker in a hall of mirrors”.
Their comments come after 28 extracts of internal intelligence policies showing how legally privileged material is handled by security officials were released to lawyers pursuing a claim through the IPT. The tribunal considers complaints against MI5, MI6 and GCHQ.
Obama pens secret letter to Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei as nuclear deadline looms
A secret letter sent by Barack Obama to Iran’s religious and political leader suggested that diplomacy between the two adversaries over the nuclear issue might presage a broader rapprochement, despite the Obama administration’s denials.
The letter, penned in October and sent to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, reportedly referenced a shared interest between the US and Iran in combatting Islamic State (Isis) militants in Iraq and Syria.
White House officials did not dispute the authenticity of the letter, reported by the Wall Street Journal on Thursday, but would not discuss its contents.
Cementing an agreement with Iran to prevent it from building a nuclear weapon is the Obama administration’s highest diplomatic priority. It faces enormous opposition in Congress, where legislators of both parties consider the outreach to be a naive folly – opposition that may prove fatal now that both legislative chambers are controlled by the Republican party.
US appeals court upholds gay marriage bans in four states
A US appeals court upheld same-sex marriage bans in four states on Thursday, bringing to an end a streak of victories for activists fighting to extend gay rights across the country and setting up a likely supreme court battle on the issue.
The decision by the sixth circuit court of appeals in Cincinnati, known as a conservative court, means that same-sex marriage remains illegal in Ohio, Michigan, Kentucky and Tennessee.
“Of all the ways to resolve this question, one option is not available: a poll of the three judges on this panel, or for that matter all federal judges, about whether gay marriage is a good idea,” wrote judge Jeffrey Sutton, for a two-to-one majority.
Thursday’s decision makes it more likely that the US supreme court will take up the issue, due to conflicting rulings among appeals courts.
More Than 600 Reported Chemical Exposure in Iraq, Pentagon Acknowledges
More than 600 American service members since 2003 have reported to military medical staff members that they believe they were exposed to chemical warfare agents in Iraq, but the Pentagon failed to recognize the scope of the reported cases or offer adequate tracking and treatment to those who may have been injured, defense officials say.
The Pentagon’s disclosure abruptly changed the scale and potential costs of the United States’ encounters with abandoned chemical weapons during the occupation of Iraq, episodes the military had for more than a decade kept from view.
This previously untold chapter of the occupation became public after an investigation by The New York Times revealed last month that while troops did not find an active weapons of mass destruction program, they did encounter degraded chemical weapons from the 1980s that had been hidden in caches or used in makeshift bombs.
Luxembourg and Juncker under pressure over tax deals
French, German and Dutch finance ministers have rounded on Luxembourg for allowing multinational companies to create complicated structures to avoid billions of dollars of tax.
Pressure is also mounting on Jean-Claude Juncker, the new president of the European commission and former long-serving prime minister of Luxembourg, who oversaw the introduction of laws that helped turn the tiny European country into a magnet for multinationals who are seeking to reduce their tax bills.
The calls for Luxembourg to stop arranging special deals that help corporations avoid tax came after a vast cache of 28,000 leaked tax papers from the Grand Duchy revealed the country had been rubber-stamping tax avoidance on an industrial scale. Details of the documents were revealed by 80 journalists in 26 countries working with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), including the Guardian.
Wolfgang Schäuble, Germany’s finance minister, said the revelations about Luxembourg’s secret tax deals showed that the Grand Duchy had “a lot to do” to meet global standards.
Experimental Ebola drugs should not be withheld, WHO says
Scientists involved in trials of experimental drug treatments for the Ebola epidemic in west Africa should not be compelled to withhold them from some patients, says the World Health Organisation, despite objections from the US that it is the only way to be sure they work.
The Food and Drug Administration, which licences medicines in the US, believes the Ebola drug trials should be set up in west Africa on the “gold standard” model designed to provide a conclusive answer as to whether they have an effect. The FDA says the trials should be randomised and controlled – which means giving experimental drugs to one group of patients, selected at random, but not to others, so death rates and other outcomes in the two groups can be compared.
China to build Ebola hospital in Liberia
China plans to build a 100-bed medical centre in Liberia to combat Ebola, officials announced on Thursday, after criticism that the country is not doing enough to fight the disease.
China will send 1,000 aid workers to Ebola-affected areas “in the months to come”, and has already sent 252 people to the three hardest-hit countries – Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone – since the deadly virus broke out in March, the official newswire Xinhua reported on Wednesday.
Foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei elaborated on the announcement at a regular press conference on Thursday afternoon. “In Liberia, we will build a 100-bed medical centre,” he said. “On 9 November, 160 medical workers will set off for Liberia.” He added that 320 additional workers would arrive at the centre at a later date.
“All the construction materials, construction workers and medical workers are in place,” he said. The centre is scheduled to open in 30 days.
Air pollution may be giving your child attention deficit disorder
New York City’s air is far from clean-generally it hangs in a sort of opaque grey haze just above the city. But is it bad for anything other than aesthetics? A new study from Columbia University scientists indicates that such intense pollution actually may be increasing the incidence of attention deficit disorder in children, with those who were exposed to high levels of pollution in the womb at a five times higher risk of developing attention problems by age 9.
Environmental Health News’ Lindsey Konkel reports:
For the new study, the researchers followed the children of 233 African-American and Dominican women in New York City. They measured the amount of benzo[a]pyrene bound to DNA – a biological marker for PAHs – in the mothers’ blood at the time of birth. Forty-two percent had detectable levels in their blood.
When the children were about 9 years old, parents filled out a questionnaire commonly used to screen for ADHD behavior problems. The researchers found that children whose mothers had the highest amounts of the PAH at the time of birth were five times more likely to show more behaviors associated with inattention than children whose mothers had the lowest levels. They were three times more likely to exhibit more total behaviors (inattention, hyperactivity and impulsivity) associated with ADHD.
Must Read Blog Posts
[A 2014 Midterm Election Post-Mortem: The Democratic Party Will Not Solve Our Problems A 2014 Midterm Election Post-Mortem: The Democratic Party Will Not Solve Our Problems] Kevin Gosztola, FDL The Dissenter
Why the D.C. Mayor’s Plan to Delay Marijuana Legalization Is a Bad Idea Jon Walker, FDL
AT&T Still Proudly Makes Unlocking Phones Under Contract Annoying and Impossible Karl Bode, Techdirt
Documents Obtained By The ACLU Show NSA’s Inability To Prevent Collection Of US Persons’ Data And Communications Tim Cushing, Techdirt
Less than 15 Hours After Winning Senate Majority GOP Started Laying Plans to Grow the Deficit Marcy Wheeler, emptywheel
The Treacherous & Terrible Legacy of AG Eric Holder libbyliberal, Corrente
Mitch McConnell opens his kimono riverdaughter (aka goldberry), The Confluence
If You Really Think It Matters Which Party Controls the Senate, Answer These Questions Charles Hugh Smith, Washington’s Blog
What to Do After an Election Goes Wrong Hecate, Hecatesemeter
Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac
There Are Polls
I’m not too optimistic that Earth logic will prevail instead of Bizarro logic, but the great mystery is why Dems can’t bring themselves to get behind policies which are a) clearly popular and b) they’re associated with anyway. In many places, at least, it apparently pays to be the “legalize weed and increase your paycheck” candidate. So, you know, be that.