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
Jack Ruby fatally shoots Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas; Charles Darwin publishes theory of evolution; Hijacker known as D.B. Cooper parachutes out of plane with ransom money; Queen’s Freddie Mercury dies.
Breakfast Tunes
Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac
Even if one takes every reefer madness allegation of the prohibitionists at face value, marijuana prohibition has done far more harm to far more people than marijuana ever could.
Breakfast News
US issues global travel warning amid increased terror threats worldwide
Americans should be alert to possible travel risks, especially during the holidays, following increased terrorist threats around the world, the State Department warned on Monday.
A travel alert, which is to be in effect until 24 February, said current information suggests that militants with the Islamic State, al-Qaida, Boko Haram and other terrorist groups continue to plan attacks in multiple regions. US authorities said the likelihood of terror attacks will continue as members of Isis return from Syria and Iraq, and other individuals not affiliated with terror groups engage in violence on their own.
Yanis Varoufakis says closing borders to Muslim refugees only fuels terrorism
Europe must not close its borders to refugees in the wake of the Paris terrorist attacks, Greece’s former finance minister Yanis Varoufakis has cautioned, saying rising intolerance towards Muslim refugees would only fuel further violence.
Speaking on the Q&A program on Australia’s ABC, Varoufakis said he was proud of the Greek people’s response to the refugee crisis, despite the country being gripped by economic crises. [..]
“There’s no doubt that when you have a massive exodus of refugees that there may very well be a couple of insurgents that infiltrate [that population], but it’s neither here nor there. Both the terrorist attacks and the refugee influx are symptoms of the same problem. But one doesn’t cause the other.
“The vast majority of the people who exploded bombs, and blew themselves up, and took AK47s to mow people down, these were people who were born in France, in Belgium. Think of the bombings in London. Britain doesn’t have free movement [over its borders] it is not part of the Schengen treaty. So the notion that we’re going to overcome this problem by erecting fences, electrifying them, and shooting people who try to scale them … the only people who benefit from that are the traffickers, because their price goes up … and Isis. They are the only beneficiaries.”
Planned Parenthood sues Texas over blocked Medicaid funding
Planned Parenthood sued again on Monday over efforts by Republican governors to block Medicaid funding to the nation’s largest abortion provider, this time against Texas, where the organization says healthcare access to 13,500 women is on the line. [..]
The lawsuit filed in Austin begins another legal showdown between Texas and abortion providers. Earlier this month, the US supreme court announced it will hear arguments over a 2013 law that abortion rights groups say would leave about 10 abortion clinics open statewide.
Planned Parenthood is now trying to hang onto Medicaid reimbursements at its Texas clinics, including those that don’t perform abortions. State officials moved in October to block the dollars after accusing Planned Parenthood of scheduling abortions in a way that would best procure fetal tissue for medical research.
California public school textbooks mislead students on climate, study says
Textbooks in California public schools are misleading students on climate change, with material that expresses doubt over whether it is real and promotes the view that increasing temperatures may be beneficial, according to a Stanford University study. [..]
Researchers studied 2,770 words used in the books, which are given to students as their first introduction to climate science, and found that the widely accepted opinion that the climate is changing and that humans are the main cause wasn’t represented in the books.
Whereas California science textbooks on other subjects list facts, the books focused on climate change use conditional words like “could”, “might” or “may” throughout. Three of the textbooks are called Focus on Earth Science, published separately by Prentice Hall, Glencoe-McGraw-Hill and CPO Science. The fourth is called Earth Science, published by Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
‘Anti-malarial mosquitoes’ created using controversial genetic technology
Hundreds of genetically modified mosquitoes that are incapable of spreading the malaria parasite to humans have been created in a laboratory as part of a radical approach to combating the disease.
The move marks a major step towards the development of a powerful and controversial technology called a “gene drive” that aims to tackle the disease by forcing anti-malarial genes into swarms of wild mosquitoes.
The procedure can rapidly transform the genetic makeup of natural insect populations, making it a dramatic new tool in the fight against an infection that still claims over 400,000 lives a year. The same technology is being considered for other human diseases and infections that devastate crops.
Must Read Blog Posts
George W. Bush’s neo-imperial nightmare never ended: How the national security disasters of yesteryear came roaring back Heather Digby Parton, Salon
Dangerous Rhetoric Is No Longer Dangerous Charles Pierce, Esquire Politics
Why Are Republicans More Afraid Of The NRA Than Terrorist Attacks? John Amato, Crooks and Liars
How the TPP Will Create a Medical Privacy Hellscape Matthew Cunnningham-Cook, naked capitalism
Documents: The Domestic Email Collection Program The NSA ‘Killed’ In 2011 Was Actually Just Offshored Tim Cushing, Techdrt