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
Funeral of Pope John Paul II; Pablo Picasso dies at 91; Teen aids patient Ryan White dies at 18; Hank Aaron hits 715th home run; Kurt Cobain found dead in home from self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Breakfast Tunes
Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac
It takes a long time to become young.
Breakfast News
Pakistan court says former CIA station chief will face charges over drone strike
The former head of the CIA in Pakistan should be tried for murder and waging war against the country, a high court judge ruled on Tuesday.
Criminal charges against Jonathan Banks, the former CIA station chief in Islamabad, were ordered in relation to a December 2009 attack by a US drone which reportedly killed at least three people.
Justice Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui of the Islamabad high court also ruled charges should be brought against John A Rizzo, formerly the top CIA lawyer who gave the legal green light for drone strikes.
California Cities Band Together To Preserve Their Right To Treat Homeless People As Criminals
A group of California towns is fighting for their right to criminalize homelessness as state lawmakers weigh new protections for the destitute on Tuesday.
The League of California Cities (LCC) is opposing a new statewide “Right to Rest” bill protecting homeless people’s right to sleep and eat in public. The bill would pre-empt local ordinances that impose fines and jail terms for homeless people over their use of public spaces for non-criminal activity. Such local efforts to make homelessness illegal have cropped up all around the country in recent years, even as homelessness advocates have piled up evidence that it is far cheaper to provide permanent housing to the homeless than it is to lock them up.
The “Right to Rest” law, which gets its first hearing before a Senate committee on Tuesday afternoon, is inspired by a rapid uptick in law enforcement targeting of the unsheltered and a new understanding of how many California towns have laws that criminalize homeless people’s day-to-day activities. Law students from Berkeley found more than 500 separate anti-homeless laws in a review of just 58 cities’ codes, and concluded that California cities are twice as likely as other American towns to ban homeless people from sleeping in their cars.
Everything The Police Said About Walter Scott’s Death Before A Video Showed What Really Happened
On Tuesday, South Carolina police officer Michael Thomas Slager was charged with first-degree murder for the shooting death of Walter Scott. Charges against South Carolina police offers for shooting someone are extremely rare. But what was particularly remarkable in this case was, for at least two days, Slager was apparently unaware that video of the entire incident existed.
This provides a unique opportunity to observe how one police officer sought to avoid accountability for his actions.
Between the time when he shot and killed Scott early Saturday morning and when charges were filed, Slager – using the both the police department and his attorney – was able to provide his “version” of the events. He appeared well on his way to avoiding charges and pinning the blame on Scott.
Two black candidates elected to Ferguson city council
Two black candidates are among three people elected to the Ferguson city council, substantially increasing African-American representation in the St Louis suburb at the center of a national debate about how police interact with minority residents.
Unofficial results on Tuesday showed that Wesley Bell, a black man, won in the 3rd Ward, and Ella Jones, a black woman, won in the 1st Ward. Brian Fletcher, a former mayor who is white, won a 2nd Ward race against another white candidate.
Until Tuesday, the mayor and five of six city council members were white. Mayor James Knowles III and three council members, including Dwayne James, who is black, were not up for election this year.
Kevin Spacey, Apple buy up .sucks
What do Kevin Spacey, Apple products, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Justin’s nut butter, and Yahoo all have in common? They are all newly registered “.sucks” domains.
The newly created “.sucks” domains are currently open to trademark owners, but will become available to the general public on June 1, according to Vox Populi Registry, which manages the generic top-level domain. Domain Incite, a news blog focused on the domain name market, reported Friday that Academy Award-winning actor Kevin Spacey was one of the first “.sucks” buyers, according to Vox Populi’s running ticker of recent registrations.
Other recent registrations on Monday morning’s list included “yahoo.sucks,” “soulcycle.sucks,” “internetexplorer.sucks,” and bofa.sucks.” Domains for Apple’s iPod, Apple Watch, and iMac also scrolled across the ticker.
Must Read Blog Posts
Oh God, not another one digby, Hullabaloo
March Madness and the NCAA purity lie: How the billion-dollar basketball-industrial complex blinds us to our biggest flaws Shawn Hamilton, Salon
Nestlé’s despicable water-crisis profiteering: How it’s making a killing – while California is dying of thirst David Dayen,Salon
Once Again, Political Speech Is Silenced By Copyright/ContentID Mike Masnick, Techdirt