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
Martin Luther King, Junior accepts Nobel Peace Prize; Women get the right to vote in Wyoming Territory; America’s first domestic passenger jet flight takes off; Soul singer Otis Redding, General Augusto Pinochet die.
Breakfast Tunes
Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac
A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.
Breakfast News
Supreme Court seems divided over University of Texas race-conscious admissions
The Supreme Court on Wednesday once again displayed its deep divide over when race can be considered in college admission decisions, in a contentious hour and a half of oral arguments about a limited race-conscious plan used by the University of Texas at Austin.
There seemed little doubt that the decision would come down to Justice Anthony M. Kennedy. He has never voted to uphold an affirmative action program but seemed less convinced than the court’s other conservatives that he had all the information needed to pass judgment on UT’s program.
As Beijing Shuts Down Over Smog Alert, Worse-Off Neighbors Carry On
The Chinese capital endured another day under an air quality “red alert” on Wednesday, with schools still closed, half of all cars kept off the roads and factories shut. But in other cities across northern China, tens of millions of people went about their daily routines in toxic air that was far worse than Beijing’s.
In Anyang, Henan Province, the air quality index read 999 at 3 p.m., three times worse than in Beijing and at the top of the scale. Handan, in Hebei Province, was not much better, at 822. And in the same province, the city of Shijiazhuang, a bit closer to Beijing, registered 460.
By United States standards, anything above 300 is “hazardous,” meaning people should stay indoors.
So while Beijing officials issued their first code-red alert, cities that are even more polluted enacted milder emergency plans, or none at all. There was no wholesale shutdown of coal-burning factories. Children continued to attend schools without air purifiers.
Price-hiking drug companies put ‘lives in the balance’, US lawmakers hear
Specialty pharmaceutical companies that acquire certain drugs then spike the prices “egregiously” were compared to loan sharks and warned they were putting patients’ “lives in the balance” at a congressional hearing on Wednesday.
Drug companies such as Turing and Valeant, which have been under fire for months because of the soaring prices of lifesaving medications they made, were accused of being driven simply by greed, by congressional leaders in Washington on Wednesday afternoon.
Turing founder and chief executive Martin Shkreli was singled out by name for his cocky public defiance over recent price hikes – and briefly mocked after it emerged earlier in the day that he had paid a reported $2m to buy a one-off Wu-Tang Clan rap album.
US police killings are a public health concern, say Harvard researchers
Killings by police are a public health concern and should be reported to government health authorities, Harvard researchers have said.
In an essay drawing on Guardian data that was published on Tuesday in PLOS Medicine journal, researchers from Harvard’s School of Public Health said local health departments should record instances of law enforcement related deaths through the same mechanism used to track infectious diseases.
“Police killings and police deaths are public health data and should be counted as such,” the essay’s lead author Dr Nancy Krieger said. “Public health brings in a perspective about prevention and that’s very different from a legal perspective.”
Mexico approves first vaccine against dengue virus
Mexican health authorities have approved the first vaccine to gain official acceptance for use against the dengue virus, which infects about 100 million people every year, mostly in Asia, Africa and Latin America.
Mexico’s federal medical safety agency said Wednesday the vaccine has undergone testing on over 40,000 patients worldwide. It said Wednesday the vaccine’s manufacturer had proved its safety and effectiveness, but did not name the drug.
In a separate statement, the Lyon, France-based Sanofi Pasteur identified the vaccine as Dengvaxia.
Mexico said the vaccine is aimed at people aged nine to 45, and will be used in areas where the disease is endemic.
Shoppers panic as hoverboard explodes at Washington mall kiosk
Instead of running to store shelves to snap up one of the most-hyped Christmas gifts of the year, shoppers were sent running at a Washington mall when a hoverboard exploded.
No one was harmed in the Tuesday morning incident, which sent shoppers scrambling away from a kiosk selling hoverboards, the self-balancing scooters that incidentally do not actually lift off the ground.
Hoverboards are one of the most-hyped gadgets of the year, but they are wreaking havoc across the United States.
Settlement Reached in ‘Happy Birthday’ Copyright Case
A settlement has been reached in a lawsuit over whether “Happy Birthday to You” — one of the best-known and beloved songs in the world — is owned by a music publisher who earned millions by enforcing its copyright.
U.S. District Judge George H. King ruled in September that Warner/Chappell Music Inc. didn’t own the lyrics to the song, only some musical arrangements — and thus the company had no right to charge for its use.
A trial set to begin next week in Los Angeles could have finally decreed whether the lyrics sung to generations of birthday boys and girls around the globe really is in the public domain.
Also to be decided at trial was whether Warner/Chappell would have to return any of the licensing fees — estimated at up to $2 million a year — that were collected for use of the song in movies, television shows and other commercial ventures.
But on Tuesday, King vacated the trial, saying all parties in the case had agreed to settle.
Breakfast Blogs
I Respect Student Protesters, But Even I Can’t Defend Them on This One Charles Pierce, Esquire Politics
Dianne Feinstein’s Encrypted Playstation Nightmare emptywheel aka Marcy Wheeler, emptywheel
Comey Calls on Tech Companies Offering End-to-End Encryption to Reconsider “Their Business Model” Dan Froomkin and Jenna McLaughlin, The Intercept
Germany Calls Out Saudi Arabia for Fostering Extremism Joanne Leon, ShadowProof
This is what good government looks like: Why Elizabeth Warren is the senator America needs David Dayen, Salon
James Comey, Dianne Feinstein Team Up To Mislead About Encryption; Promise Legislation To Undermine National Security Mike Masnick, Techdirt