The largest prison workers' strike in American history enters its second week. I'm no fan of free/cheap prison labor, either, and no, putting people in jail doesn't entitle us to do anything we want to them, because prisoners have specific sentences that detail their debt to society, and heaping more punishments upon them merely because they're incarcerated is cruel and uncivilized. Rageaholics waiting for the next "outrage" to be peddled to them by the "liberal" media will, of course, be unpersuaded by that argument, but they don't get all the say in America. I applaud the courage of the striking prisoners, who remain largely at the mercy of whatever retaliatory measures their captors can come up with, including but not limited to sudden charges of "terrorism."
North Dakota arrests Democracy Now! journalist Amy Goodman for "criminal trespassing," i.e., asking tough questions of Dakota pipeline security guards -- and the "liberal" media seems largely uninterested. You would think as journalists they would be aghast at this kind of treatment of one of their own -- but then, they probably don't consider Ms. Goodman "one of their own," because she doesn't hobnob with the powerful people they hobnob with. Here's a clue: if you're a journalist who cares about which rich and powerful person you're in with, you're doing journalism wrong.
The Guardian publishes some 1,500 pages detailing allegations of campaign finance law violations by Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. The evidence the article presents is pretty damning -- if you thought Bill Clinton's "that depends on your definition of the word 'is'" was damning, just imagine the hifalutin legal contortions Scott Walker will have to employ to explain how statements like "I got $1m from John Menard today" doesn't subvert the law. "That depends on your definition of the word 'got'," he'll say! Of course, Mr. Walker may never go to trial, since these papers were all supposed to be destroyed.
Reuters finds that, 15 years after our government declared antibiotic-resistant infections a "grave threat," those infections have become a much greater threat. Worse than that, even, is that our state and federal governments don't even count deaths from those infections -- you're more likely to see Scott Walker talking about campaign money he's "got" than you are to see the word "MRSA" on a death certificate. But, yeah, let's keep using up that antibiotic hand soap. And let's keep prescribing antibiotics just to shut patients up. And, most importantly, let's make sure factory farms still use antibiotics indiscriminately on feed animals.
Finally, more than one analyst has suggested that maybe Donald Trump has really jumped the shark this time, by making his big "birther" press conference into an "infomercial" for his new hotel in Washington. The theory goes like this: if you piss off the press (this time, by making them wait for your big announcement by promoting your hotel), you're finished. How I know it might be true this time? I remember how Scott Walker couldn't get traction last year after treating the media with open disdain. Also, Jake Tapper gets off not one but two zingers about it. (As an aside, Mr. Trump can't even admit his big birther mistake without blaming someone else for it; is that leadership? Hell, is that grown-up behavior?)
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