Recommended Reading
from Bruce
AURIN SQUIRE: The Case Of The Disappearing Dubya (TPM)
George W. Bush will not be giving speeches on behalf of his brother anytime soon. In fact, if the Republican establishment has its way, Dubya won't be anywhere near a camera for the 2016 election.
Andrew Tobias: Success! And Virtual Success!!
Some charter schools are scams or flops that should be defunded; many are well-intentioned but nothing to write home about; but some - like the Success Academy schools that friends of mine have donated millions of dollars to launch and grow - should be replicated as far and wide and as fast as possible.
Lindy West: "Trigger warnings don't hinder freedom of expression: they expand it" (The Guardian)
People hate trigger warnings because they bring up something most don't like to remember: that the world is not currently a safe or just place, and people you love are almost certainly harbouring secrets that would break your heart.
Dave Simpson: 'We'll retire at 106. What else can we do?' The rockers who won't call it a day (The Guardian)
From Suzi Quatro to Saxon's Biff Byford, rock's pioneers have been making music for more than 40 years. Here they talk about leather jumpsuits, performing when you're in your 60s - and the enduring appeal of a nice biscuit.
Andrew Dickson: "How Banksy's policeman got his legs back: tales from art's emergency ward" (The Guardian)
It's hard enough repairing artworks that are just paint on canvas. But what if they're made out of soap, card or dirty knickers? Meet the experts who can fix almost anything.
Anonymous, Amanda Mannen, M. Asher Cantrell, Evan V. Symon: "Third-World America: 5 Insane Realities Of Appalachia" (Cracked)
What do you picture when you think of Eastern Kentucky (as you so often do)? Likely hillbillies, moonshine, and crippling poverty. It's exactly like Justified, only with substantially fewer sexy lawmen. How accurate is that impression, though? We spoke with a few Eastern Kentucky residents about what life is really like in the poorest part of Appalachia.
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From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
Team Coco
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Patriot Act
Selected Readings
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In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunny and seasonal.
Americans Back Federal Funds
Planned Parenthood
Americans broadly support providing federal funding for free women's health exams, screenings and contraception services, a Reuters/Ipsos poll has found, suggesting risks for Republicans criticizing Planned Parenthood as part of the 2016 campaigns.
Support for federal funding of Planned Parenthood itself to provide those services was even stronger, according to the Reuters/Ipsos released on Wednesday.
The non-profit's image has taken a hit, the poll found, after an anti-abortion group earlier this year began releasing videos purporting to show Planned Parenthood officials negotiating prices for aborted fetal tissue.
Still, the strong support for federal funds to help Planned Parenthood provide pregnancy tests and other services indicates Republican presidential candidates should tread carefully.
Planned Parenthood
Guilty Of Expired Toothpaste
Chelsea Manning
Convicted national security leaker Chelsea Manning was found guilty Tuesday of violating prison rules and will receive three weeks of recreational restrictions at the Kansas military prison where she's serving her 35-year sentence, her attorney said.
The transgender Army private was accused of having a copy of Vanity Fair with Caitlyn Jenner on the cover and an expired tube of toothpaste, among other things. Her attorney, Chase Strangio of the American Civil Liberties Union, said in a news release that Manning was convicted of all charges after a closed four-hour disciplinary board hearing in which she had no counsel.
Manning received 21 days of recreational restrictions limiting access to the gym, library and outdoors. The maximum punishment she could have faced was indefinite solitary confinement.
The prison infractions include possession of prohibited property in the form of books and magazines while under administrative segregation; medicine misuse over the toothpaste; disorderly conduct for sweeping food onto the floor; and disrespect. All relate to alleged misconduct on July 2 and 9.
Chelsea Manning
Recycling Shuttle Tanks
Endeavour
The space shuttle Endeavour is retired and on display at the California Science Center, but it's still contributing to the space program.
NASA engineers are working this week to remove four tanks from the shuttle for use as potable water storage on the International Space Station.
The tanks, which measure about 3 feet by 1 foot and weigh 40 pounds empty, are from deep inside the orbiter, so museum patrons won't notice they're gone, Science Center president Jeff Rudolph said Wednesday.
Rudolph said museum officials didn't expect NASA might someday request parts when the shuttle went on display in Los Angeles three years ago.
"It wasn't part of the deal, but we're always happy to work with NASA," he said. "The concept of taking something from an old shuttle and making it available for use in space is something that we think is great."
Endeavour
'Imitation' Skim Milk?
Ocheesee Creamery
The Ocheesee Creamery in the Florida Panhandle produces all-natural skim milk from grass-fed cows with absolutely nothing added, yet the state says they have to call it "imitation."
And while they argue about it, the dairy is dumping hundreds of gallons of skim milk down the drain each week.
Creamery owners Paul and Mary Lou Wesselhoeft were in federal court Wednesday as part of their nearly three-year-old battle with the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, which argues that skim milk can't be sold as skim milk unless vitamins are added to it.
Webster's dictionary defines skim milk as simply "milk from which cream has been removed," with no mention of added vitamins. But Department lawyer Ashley Davis told a judge consumers expect whole milk and skim milk to have the same nutritional value and that the Wesselhoefts' skim milk is nutritionally inferior because vitamins are removed when the milk fat is removed.
"Ocheessee's product is imitating - literally imitating - skim milk," Davis said.
Ocheesee Creamery
U.S. Regulations 'Flawed'
Glyphosate
U.S. regulators have relied on flawed and outdated research to allow expanded use of an herbicide linked to cancer, and new assessments should be urgently conducted, according to a column published in the New England Journal of Medicine on Wednesday.
There are two key factors that necessitate regulatory action to protect human health, according to the column: a sharp increase in herbicide applied to widely planted genetically modified (GMO) crops used in food, and a recent World Health Organization (WHO) determination that the most commonly used herbicide, known as glyphosate, is probably a human carcinogen.
The opinion piece was written by Dr. Philip Landrigan, a Harvard-educated pediatrician and epidemiologist who is Dean for Global Health at the Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York, and Chuck Benbrook, an adjunct professor at Washington State University's crops and soil science department.
The authors also argue that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has erred in recently approving a new herbicide that uses glyphosate because it relied on outdated studies commissioned by the manufacturers and gave little consideration to potential health effects in children.
Glyphosate is best known as the key ingredient in Roundup developed by Monsanto Co, one of the world's most widely used herbicides, but it is used in more than 700 products.
Glyphosate
Ask Judge To Dismiss Petition
Robin Williams
In the latest court filing in the ongoing battle over Robin Williams' estate, the late actor's children say his wife is trying to increase her share of his estate at their expense.
Zachary, Zelda and Cody Williams are asking a judge to dismiss a petition filed by Susan Williams.
The December 2014 petition asked the court to exclude the contents of the Tiburon home that she shared with Williams from the jewelry, memorabilia and other items Williams said the children should have.
The children in their Aug. 14 filing say the estate's trustees have determined the division of all of Williams' personal property, and those decisions are final. They accuse Susan Williams of holding on to property that is theirs.
They also say the trustees have arrived at a figure for a reserve fund for Susan Williams to cover the costs of the Tiburon home, but she wants a guaranteed income stream that she is not entitled to.
Robin Williams
Central Valley Sinking
California
Vast areas of California's Central Valley are sinking faster than in the past as massive amounts of groundwater are pumped during the historic drought, state officials said Wednesday, citing new research by NASA scientists.
The data shows the ground is sinking nearly two inches each month in some places, putting roads, bridges and vital canals that deliver water throughout the state at growing risk of damage.
Sinking land has occurred for decades in California because of excessive groundwater pumping during dry years, but the new data shows it is happening faster as the state endures its fourth year of drought.
The NASA data showed land near the city of Corcoran sank 13 inches in eight months, and part of the California Aqueduct dropped eight inches in four months last year. The aqueduct spans hundreds of miles and provides water to million people and about vast areas of farmland.
California
Family Donors
Jebbie
Jeb Bush's fundraising network is two generations in the making, and it shows.
About half of the roughly $120 million raised to help him win the Republican presidential nomination comes from donors who previously gave to his brother or father, both former presidents, according to a new analysis of Federal Election Commission records by Crowdpac.com, a nonpartisan political research company.
The finding puts a numerical exclamation point on the advantage Bush's presidential family gives him when it comes to fundraising.
In Crowdpac's review of named contributors to three political committees helping Bush, $59.2 million came from first-time Bush donors, while $60.3 million came from returning donors to the earlier campaigns of President George W. Bush, resident George H.W. Bush or both.
There are more than 1,800 men and women who have given to all three Bushes over the years, Crowdpac found. These loyalists are spread across the country, with a heavy concentration in Texas, where the two presidents began their political careers, and in Florida, where Jeb Bush served as governor.
Jebbie
Hits Record Low
Vistula River
Warsaw is having a treasure hunt - exploiting the record low level of the Vistula River to find pieces of historic bridges and boats amid the discarded tires and broken glass littering its banks.
After a wave of unusually high summer temperatures, the Vistula, which flows 1,047 kilometers (651 miles) from the Beskidy Mountains to the Baltic Sea, is at its lowest level since measurements started in late 18th century. Only last year, and especially in 2005, the whimsical river had threatened to overflow its banks in Poland's capital after heavy rains.
Now in Warsaw, Poland's main river has dropped to about 50 centimeters (20 inches) at some places from its usual average depth of 200 centimeters (6 ½ feet), stalling flat-bottomed barges and tiny tour boats, exposing both treasures and eyesores.
About 300,000 zlotys ($79,000) is being spent on removing waste and retrieving elements of the city's 18th- century wooden Poninski Bridge, which was destroyed in 1806, and some shattered stone benches from the early 20th-century Poniatowski Bridge, which Germany's Nazis blew up in 1944.
Vistula River
Shifting North
Lobster Population
The lobster population has crashed to the lowest levels on record in southern New England while climbing to heights never before seen in the cold waters off Maine and other northern reaches - a geographic shift that scientists attribute in large part to the warming of the ocean.
The trend is driving lobstermen in Connecticut and Rhode Island out of business, ending a centuries-old way of life.
In 2013, the number of adult lobsters in New England south of Cape Cod slid to about 10 million, just one-fifth the total in the late 1990s, according to a report issued this month by regulators. The lobster catch in the region sank to about 3.3 million pounds in 2013, from a peak of about 22 million in 1997.
The declines are "largely in response to adverse environmental conditions, including increasing water temperatures over the last 15 years," along with continued fishing, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission said in a summary of the report.
Lobster Population
Jail Cleaning Yard of the Inquisition Court
Portugal
Portuguese researchers suspect that a dozen skeletons found in an ancient garbage dump were Jewish victims of the Inquisition more than 400 years ago.
The excavation team found the remains at what was called the Jail Cleaning Yard of the Inquisition Court in Evora, 135 kilometers (84 miles) east of the Portuguese capital, Lisbon. The dump was in use roughly between 1568 and 1634.
The three male and nine female bodies "were discarded into the dump like household garbage," with no funeral structures nor grave goods, and the skeletons were lying skewed on the ground, the researchers said in the September edition of the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, provided to The Associated Press on Wednesday.
The Portuguese Inquisition was established in 1536. Its most common accusation was maintaining outlawed Jewish practices in secret. Hundreds of Jews were burned at the stake, and living conditions in Inquisition jails often caused prisoners' deaths. A proper burial was denied to Jews.
Portugal
Nazi Treasure Train
Poland
Two people in Poland say they have found a Nazi German train cloaked in mystery since it was rumored to have gone missing near the end of World War Two while carrying away gems and guns ahead of advancing Soviet Red Army forces.
Local authorities in Poland's southwestern district of Walbrzych said they had been contacted by a law firm representing a Pole and a German who said they had located the train and were seeking 10 percent of the value of the findings.
Local news reports said the train in question went missing in 1945, packed with loot from the-then eastern German city of Breslau, now called Wroclaw and part of Poland, as the Red Army closed in at the end of World War Two.
Radio Wroclaw cited local folklore as saying the train entered a tunnel near Ksiaz Castle in the mountainous Lower Silesian region and never emerged. According to that theory, the tunnel was later closed and its location long forgotten.
Poland
House For Sale
'Silence of the Lambs'
A Pennsylvania house that portrayed the lair of a serial killer who raises insects and makes a suit out of human skin in the thriller "The Silence of the Lambs" just hit the market.
The house featured in the Academy Award-winning film as the residence of a psychopathic criminal known as Buffalo Bill is located in a Pittsburgh suburb and listed for $300,000.
In the film, the three-story Victorian is spooky and moth-ridden with a dungeon where Buffalo Bill, played by Ted Levine, keeps the young women he abducts. He harvests the moths to place in the throats of his dead victims.
In real life, the house is bright and cheery with flowery wallpaper and a swimming pool, but it lacks a dungeon.
'Silence of the Lambs'
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