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
Ferdinand Magellan reaches the Pacific Ocean; British prime minister Margaret Thatcher resigns; Serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer is beaten to death; The Grand Ole Opry makes its radio debut; Comedian Jon Stewart born.
Breakfast Tunes
Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac
Happy Birthday, Jon
The Internet is just a world passing around notes in a classroom.
Breakfast News
Three dead after gunman storms Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado
Three people have been killed after a gunman armed with a rifle stormed a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs and opened fire before an hours-long standoff with police ended when he surrendered.
Two civilians and one police officer died, Colorado Springs police chief Peter Carey told reporters about an hour after the suspect had been arrested.
Another nine people were injured – five police officers and four civilians – but Carey said they were good condition at area hospitals.
Colorado Springs mayor John Suthers confirmed the arrest of the gunman and commended police for their work in drawing to a close what he called a “terrible tragedy”.
A Reuters photographer at the scene saw a man in a white T-shirt, with his hands cuffed behind his back, being placed in an unmarked squad car. Authorities said they did not know the suspect’s identity but believed he acted alone.
Anger Over Killing by Police Halts Shopping in Chicago
Hundreds of demonstrators on Friday marched down the middle of North Michigan Avenue, the city’s premier downtown shopping district, forcing the police to close the six-lane thoroughfare to vehicles and prompting some businesses to lock their doors for at least part of one of the busiest shopping days of the year.
A mix of ages and races, the protesters marched up and down the avenue, known here as the Magnificent Mile, for several hours, calling for justice in the shooting death of a black teenager by a white Chicago police officer. [..]
Groups demonstrated Friday in other cities, including Seattle, Minneapolis and New York, linking their protests over police conduct and the treatment of black people to a day when the nation’s focus is usually on the Black Friday shopping frenzy.
Tighter Lid on Records Threatens to Weaken Government Watchdogs
Justice Department watchdogs ran into an unexpected roadblock last year when they began examining the role of federal drug agents in the fatal shootings of unarmed civilians during raids in Honduras.
The Drug Enforcement Administration balked at turning over emails from senior officials tied to the raids, according to the department’s inspector general. It took nearly a year of wrangling before the D.E.A. was willing to turn over all its records in a case that the inspector general said raised “serious questions” about agents’ use of deadly force. [..]
The impasse has hampered investigations into an array of programs and abuse reports — from allegations of sexual assaults in the Peace Corps to the F.B.I.’s terrorism powers, officials said. And it has threatened to roll back more than three decades of policy giving the watchdogs unfettered access to “all records” in their investigations.
“The bottom line is that we’re no longer independent,” Michael E. Horowitz, the Justice Department inspector general, said in an interview.
The restrictions reflect a broader effort by the Obama administration to prevent unauthorized disclosures of sensitive information — at the expense, some watchdogs insist, of government oversight.
A decade in, DHS program to detect bio-threats may not be able to detect bio-threats, auditors say
More than a decade after the Department of Homeland Security began a program to fight biological terrorism, “considerable uncertainty” remains over whether the system can reliably detect biological threats, a new federal audit says.
The report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office is the latest blow to DHS’s BioWatch system, the agency’s marquee post-Sept. 11, 2001, effort to detect pathogens that could signal a devastating biological attack. After scientific studies and media reports raised concern about BioWatch’s effectiveness, DHS last year canceled the system’s planned next generation of sensors.
Now, GAO says the government still lacks reliable information about the current generation, first deployed in 2005, to determine if it is capable of detecting a biological attack. DHS’s testing of the current system — known as Generation-2, or Gen-2 — has been flawed, leaving the department unable to properly determine how to improve it, GAO found.
Turkey putting Syrian refugees ‘at serious risk of human rights abuse’
Dozens of Syrian refugees have been deported to Syria by the Turkish authorities, putting them at risk of serious human rights abuses, Amnesty International has said.
The human rights group said about 80 Syrian refugees who were previously held at a detention centre in the Turkish city of Erzurum had been expelled in violation of the non-refoulement principle of international law, which bans countries from returning refugees to conflict zones where their lives are in danger.
It said another 50 more Syrian refugees were being held at the EU-financed detention centre following their participation in peaceful protests against being banned from entering Greece in September, and all of them faced deportation.
Amazon deforestation report is major setback for Brazil ahead of climate talks
Trees covering an area more than seven times the territory of New York City have been cleared in the Brazilian Amazon over the past year, in a major setback for government efforts to combat deforestation.
The grim statistics from Brazil’s environment ministry, which were released on Thursday, underscore the growing climate threat posed by deforestation ahead of a United Nations conference in Paris that aims to reduce global carbon emissions.
Satellite data revealed that 5,831 square kilometers of land was cut down or burned in the Brazilian Amazon in year to 1 August: a 16% increase on the destruction of the previous 12 months.
Breakfast Bog posts
The Government Wants You To Forget It Will Still Collect Your Phone Records in Bulk emptywheel aka Marcy Wheeler, emptywheel
Black Friday: Walmart Spies On Workers As Fight For 15 Continues Dan Wright, ShadowProof
California Activists Target Nestlé, The ‘Grinch’ That Stole Water Kit O’Connell, ShadowProof
Why the FBI is on the scene of the Planned Parenthood shooting digby, Hullabaloo
Turkey’s Shootdown of Russian Jet Was a War Crime Washington’s Blog