The Breakfast Club (Dream a Little Dream)

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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This Day in History

Nazi police arrest Anne Frank and family; Britain declares war on Germany in World War I; Three civil rights workers found slain in Mississippi; The Bordens axed to death; Jazz great Louis Armstrong born.

Breakfast Tunes

Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac

How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.

Anne Frank

Breakfast News

Special Report: State Department watered down human trafficking report

In the weeks leading up to a critical annual U.S. report on human trafficking that publicly shames the world’s worst offenders, human rights experts at the State Department concluded that trafficking conditions hadn’t improved in Malaysia and Cuba. And in China, they found, things had grown worse.

The State Department’s senior political staff saw it differently – and they prevailed.

A Reuters examination, based on interviews with more than a dozen sources in Washington and foreign capitals, shows that the government office set up to independently grade global efforts to fight human trafficking was repeatedly overruled by senior American diplomats and pressured into inflating assessments of 14 strategically important countries in this year’s Trafficking in Persons report.

Cybersecurity bill could ‘sweep away’ internet users’ privacy, agency warns

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on Monday said a controversial new surveillance bill could sweep away “important privacy protections”, a move that bodes ill for the measure’s return to the floor of the Senate this week.

The latest in a series of failed attempts to reform cybersecurity, the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (Cisa) grants broad latitude to tech companies, data brokers and anyone with a web-based data collection to mine user information and then share it with “appropriate Federal entities”, which themselves then have permission to share it throughout the government.

Puerto Rico defaults on debt repayment in first for a US commonwealth

Puerto Rico missed its first debt repayment on Monday, the first time the troubled US commonwealth has failed to pay its bills.

The island paid just $628,000 toward a $58m debt due to creditors of its Public Finance Corporation. While the default was expected, it is likely to worsen the financial situation for the island as it struggles with debts estimated at $72bn.

Judge overturns Idaho’s ‘ag gag’ law in victory for animal rights campaigners

A federal judge has lifted a controversial ban on undercover surveillance inside Idaho’s factory farms, delivering a significant victory to animal rights’ activists.

Judge B Lynn Winmill ruled on Monday that the state’s so-called “ag gag” law violated the constitutional right to free speech.

“An agricultural facility’s operations that affect food and worker safety are not exclusively a private matter,” said the judge. “Food and worker safety are matters of public concern.”

Republicans’ Planned Parenthood defunding push fails in the Senate

Republican efforts to push abortion back to the top of the US political agenda have fallen short of the necessary votes to move forward in the Senate.

The bill to withhold taxpayer funding from Planned Parenthood, which offers a range of women’s health services as well as abortions but has been attacked for providing fetal tissue for medical research, was voted down 53 to 46 on Monday.

Under Senate rules, the procedural vote needed the support of 60 senators for the legislation to proceed any further.

Delta And American Airlines Ban Exotic Animal Trophy Shipments After Cecil The Lion (UPDATED)

Delta is taking a stand against the slaughter of rare animals in Africa.

The airline announced on Monday that it would ban the shipment of all lion, leopard, elephant, rhinoceros and buffalo trophies worldwide as freight.

The move comes weeks after Cecil, a popular male lion beloved by tourists and locals in Zimbabwe, was lured from a national park and killed by Walter Palmer, a Minnesota dentist and hunter. Last week, police received the big cat’s decapitated head — kept in the home of Theo Bronkhorst, one of the hunt’s organizers — before it could be shipped to Minnesota. [..]

UPDATE: On Monday evening, American Airlines also announced the company will stop transporting exotic animal trophies.

But did they need to show Customs their passports?

Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon – then claimed $33.31 in travel expenses

Buzz Aldrin’s 1969 trip to the moon was just like any other business trip, expenses forms and all.

The former astronaut posted his “travel voucher” for his trip to space on Twitter which shows that Aldrin claimed $33.31 for a journey from Houston, Texas, to the moon and back. [..]

Another tweet from Aldrin showed that all the astronauts on Apollo 11 had to sign a customs form upon their return to Earth from the moon.

Arriving in Honolulu, Hawaii, on 24 July 1969, Aldrin, Neil Armstrong and Michael Collins declared they had brought back “moon rock and moon dust samples”.

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Must Read Blog Posts

NYPD Chief Bill Bratton: ‘Minority Report’ Is Modern Fact, Not Fiction Kevin Gosztola, Shadowproof

Can Websites Track You Using Your Phone’s Battery Life? Kit O’Connell, Shadowproof

The Things Our Allies Tell Us – Or Don’t emptywheel aka Marcy Wheeler, emptywheel

Sunday Train: The New Gulf Wind, NOLA to Orlando BruceMcF, The Stars Hollow Gazette

Koch Political Machine Focuses on “Freedom” to Pollute and Pay Less Taxes Lee Fang, The Intercept

Appeals Court Says Netflix Doesn’t Violate Privacy By Displaying Viewing History To Anyone Using That Account Tim Cushing, Techdirt

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