The Breakfast Club (Ponce De Leon)

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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Breakfast Tune: Ponce De Leon/ Banjo/ Mary Z Cox

Today in History

Highlights of Today in History: Pope John Paul II Dies at 84; President Woodrow Wilson asks Congress to declare war on Germany; Juan Ponce de Leon lands in Florida; Falkland Islands seized from Britain; Hans Christian Andersen Born. (April 2)

Breakfast News & Blogs Below

Graphic anti-drone video ad to run on television near US air force bases

Amanda Holpuch, The Guardian

A group of US military veterans is hoping to put a stop to the use of drone strikes with a graphic TV ad campaign which will run near drone operating bases across the US this month.

The 15-second television spots – thought to be the first anti-drone ads to run on US television – will air during the daytime throughout April in the Sacramento region, near Beale air force base, and asks drone pilots to “please refuse to fly”.

“We feel that it really comes down to the people who are doing the actual killing to put a stop to this,” said Nick Mottern, the coordinator of activist site KnowDrones.com and a navy veteran himself. …

The growing trend of transgender ‘bathroom bully’ bills

Marisa Taylor, Al Jazeera

When Eli Erlick was 8 years old, she would sometimes pretend to be sick, just so she could leave school and go home to use the bathroom. She had asked to use the girls’ bathroom at her school in Mendocino County, California, but she wasn’t allowed to.

“I had no idea why I couldn’t do this,” Erlick said. “I didn’t even know the word ‘transgender.’ I just knew that I was a girl,” she said, and so it didn’t feel right to use the boys’ bathroom. This continued until she was 13, when she began her gender transition.

Erlick, now 19, is a second-year student at Pitzer College near Los Angeles and director of Trans Student Education Resources (TSER), a student-led advocacy group. When she was a senior in high school, she worked to help craft California’s School Success and Opportunity Act, a 2013 law – the first of its kind in the nation – that requires the state’s public schools to allow trans students to use the bathrooms and play on the sports teams that correspond with their gender identities. …

Chorus of Outrage as Obama Administration Approves Arctic Drilling for Shell Oil

Nadia Prupis, Common Dreams

Environmental activists expressed shock and outrage on Tuesday after the U.S. Department of the Interior upheld a 2008 lease sale on the Arctic’s Chuchki Sea, opening the door for continued oil exploration in a region long eyed for drilling by Shell Corporation and increasingly strained under the effects of climate change.

The decision opens up 30 million acres in the Chuchki Sea to fossil fuel exploration and drilling, a move which state and national green groups called “unconscionable.”

“Our Arctic ocean is flat out the worst place on Earth to drill for oil,” said Niel Lawrence, Alaska director of the Natural Resources Defense Council. “The world’s last pristine sea, it is both too fragile to survive a spill and too harsh and remote for effective cleanup.” …

From Original 15 to More Than 80, Student Loan Strike Numbers Grow

Jon Queally, Common Dreams

… As their numbers are growing, members of the Debt Collective, which is organizing the campaign, have been in Washington, DC this week to meet with lawmakers, members of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), the Department of Education. The group expressed desire to get an audince with Education Secretary Arne Duncans to press their case and advocate on behalf of others, but that meeting seems unlikely.

“It’s in the [DOE’s] interest to discuss this,” Luke Herrine, a Debt Collective organizer, told the Washington Post. “I don’t think they want more than 100 students refusing to pay their loans publicly. I don’t think that’s a good thing for them.”

Earlier this month, Hollie Chaffee and other members of the original Corinthian 15, came together in this video to explain why they’re striking their loans and why the movement to change how we finance higher education in America is such a vital issue-not only for them personally-but for students worried about the rising costs of college and the worrisom amounts of debt that have become the norm. …

Treasure hunter’s platinum-seeking efforts off Cape Cod sunk by judge

Associated Press in Portland, Maine

A treasure hunter’s effort to salvage what he calls $3bn in platinum from a shipwreck off Cape Cod during the second world war has been ended by a federal judge.

…

The judge also denied an attempt by a group of investors to win recovery rights, claims to what’s on the ship if anything is found. The judge wrote that evidence suggests there’s nothing valuable to salvage.

The record, the judge wrote, suggests that all that remains is “70-year-old truck tires, fenders and miscellaneous other parts and military supplies”. …