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Here Are the Republicans Who Voted to Allow Debate on the Senate Gun Bill

by w0ujpysd Posted on April 11, 2013

Mother Jones

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As families of Newtown massacre victims watched from the gallery, the Senate voted 68 to 31 on Thursday morning to allow the Democratic gun package to proceed to a formal vote. Sixteen Republicans voted to move forward on the bill (see the full list below), easily warding off a filibuster threat from Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.) and 13 other Republicans. Two Democrats, Sens. Mark Begich (Alaska) and Mark Pryor (Ark.), voted against proceeding to formal debate on the bill.

Republican opposition centered on a bill to establish universal background checks that was introduced by Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.). On Wednesday, Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) announced a compromise amendment to exempt transfers between family, friends, and neighbors, and temporary transfers between hunters, from background checks. The compromise also took steps to assuage Republican fears about a national gun registry and Second Amendment infringement.

Now begins the real test: Republicans and Democrats will offer a series of amendments, after which Republicans can still filibuster a vote on the final bill. If the bill survives the Senate it will head to the GOP-led House, where conservative Republicans like Rep. Steve Stockman (Texas) are pressuring Speaker John Boehner (Ohio) to block it from reaching the floor. (Some Republicans are apparently siding with Democrats, however.)

After Thursday’s Senate vote, Reid said that the Manchin-Toomey amendment would be heard on Tuesday. Reid also reaffirmed his vow to allow votes on amendments to ban high-capacity magazines and assault weapons. “Some people love the assault weapons ban, some people hate it. But we’re going to have a vote on it,” he said on the Senate floor.

The National Rifle Association, which initially called the Manchin-Toomey compromise a “positive development” that took a step away from the universal background checks called for in Schumer’s bill, later penned a letter to senators calling the compromise “misguided” and warning them that the NRA would be keeping tabs on senators who voted for “anti-gun” amendments.

“The NRA will oppose any amendments offered to Schumer’s bill that restrict fundamental Second Amendment freedoms; including, but not limited to, proposals that would ban commonly and lawfully owned firearms and magazines or criminalize the private transfer of firearms through an expansion of background checks,” the letter read.

Here are the Republicans who voted to move forward on the gun bill:

Lamar Alexander (Tenn.)
Kelly Ayotte (N.H.)
Richard Burr (N.C.)
Saxby Chambliss (Ga.)
Tom Coburn (Okla.)
Susan Collins (Maine)
Bob Corker (Tenn.)
Jeff Flake (Ariz.)
Lindsey Graham (S.C.)
Dean Heller (Nev.)
John Hoeven (N.D.)
Johnny Isakson (Ga.)
Mark Kirk (Ill.)
John McCain (Ariz.)
Pat Toomey (Pa.)
Roger Wicker (Miss.)

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Here Are the Republicans Who Voted to Allow Debate on the Senate Gun Bill

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Here’s What’s in the Compromise Proposal on Background Checks for Gun Buyers

by w0ujpysd Posted on April 10, 2013

Mother Jones

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On Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) gave senators leading bipartisan talks on a compromise amendment for expanding background checks on gun buyers an ultimatum: Figure it out by 5 p.m. That’s when Reid planned to file a motion to move to debate of his broader package of gun control legislation, which includes measures to improve school safety and crack down on gun traffickers.

Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W. Va.) and Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) managed to strike a deal, and on Wednesday morning they held a press conference on Capitol Hill outlining their amendment, which Manchin said would be the first on the gun control bill when Reid introduces it for an initial vote on Thursday. (Sen. Chuck Schumer, the New York Democrat who introduced the background check provisions that cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee on a party-line vote, told reporters on Tuesday that although some details needed working out, he supported the Manchin-Toomey compromise.) The amendment would require background checks on all gun sales in person and over the internet with the exception of transfers between “friends and neighbors.” It’s unclear how broad that exception will be in practice, but the Washington Post reported that the background check requirement “would not cover private transactions between individuals, unless there was advertising or an online service involved.” Private dealers would be required to keep records of gun sales, as licensed dealers have already been doing since 1968. Gun sellers who allow prohibited people to buy firearms would face a felony charge.

Immediate reactions from gun control groups working with lawmakers on the Hill were mixed. “We like the compromise very much,” Mark Glaze, director of Michael Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Illegal Guns, told Mother Jones. Ladd Everitt, a spokesman for the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, struck a more cautious tone. “We’re still waiting to hear the language of the bill,” he said, explaining that his group wanted more details on how record-keeping would work, and if gun transactions by, for example, people standing just outside gun shows would require checks. But Everitt commended Manchin and Toomey for standing their ground against pushback from staunch proponents of gun rights.

At the press conference, Manchin and Toomey, who both own guns, touted their support for the Second Amendment. “I don’t consider criminal background checks to be gun control. It’s common sense.” Toomey said. “The mentally ill should not have guns. I don’t know anyone who disagrees with that premise.”

When asked if he worried that his support for expanded background checks would cost him his A rating with the NRA, Toomey replied, “What matters to me is doing the right thing.” (Mayors Against Illegal Guns is releasing scorecards of its own to grade lawmakers on guns.)

The National Rifle Association, with which Manchin said he and Toomey have been in contact, stepped away from its opposition to expanded background checks, calling the compromise “a positive development.” However, the NRA said, “no background check would have prevented the tragedies in Newtown, Aurora, or Tucson.”

Manchin also said he and Toomey “agreed that we need a commission on mass violence” with experts on mental illness, school safety, and “video violence.”

If expanded background checks are able to dodge a Senate filibuster with the help of Republicans who want to see a vote, the next challenge will be in the House, where Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has the power to block the bill from getting a vote. Toomey said there are a “substantial number of House Republicans who are supportive of this general compromise approach.” (Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-N.Y.), one of the House’s leading gun-control advocates, told Mother Jones last week that the gun violence task force she sits on has been in talks with Republicans, but declined to name names.)

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Here’s What’s in the Compromise Proposal on Background Checks for Gun Buyers

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Your Guide To Al Pacino Screaming, From "Dog Day Afternoon" to David Mamet’s New HBO Film "Phil Spector"

by w0ujpysd Posted on March 23, 2013

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Phil Spector
HBO Films
91 minutes

Al Pacino yells a lot in this movie. Granted, that could be said of any number of Al Pacino movies.

Phil Spector, which premieres Sunday, March 24 at 9 p.m. ET, is the second time in three years that Pacino has starred in a Barry Levinson -produced HBO movie in which he plays a highly controversial real-life figure who ends up going to jail. (The other being 2010’s You Don’t Know Jack, for which he won an Emmy for his portrayal of physician-assisted suicide proponent Dr. Jack Kevorkian.) This time around Pacino is the eponymous record producer, the unhinged musical genius behind the “Wall of Sound” studio production technique—a thickly layered sound heard on classics like The Ronettes’ “Be My Baby” and The Beatles’ “The Long and Winding Road.” Spector had long enjoyed a reputation for being a lunatic; his eccentricities were often eclipsed by allegations of a pattern of violence against women. Less appalling tales involve him doing things like holding The Ramones at gunpoint during a recording session in 1979.

All his wild and vicious behavior culminated in the shooting death of actress/model Lana Clarkson at his California mansion in 2003. For this, Spector was convicted of second-degree murder in 2009, and sentenced to 19 years to life.

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Your Guide To Al Pacino Screaming, From "Dog Day Afternoon" to David Mamet’s New HBO Film "Phil Spector"

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Here are a couple of weather experts who actually believe in climate change

by w0ujpysd Posted on March 21, 2013

Here are a couple of weather experts who actually believe in climate change

By Susie Cagle

Things are weird at the Weather Company, you guys. While a lot of other TV meteorologists are really screwing up the climate change conversation, the Weather Company folks, who run the Weather Channel and Weather Underground, “insert climate into every weather story,” says CEO David Kenny. “We’re scientific journalists. We start with science and try to tell scientifically based stories. It’s not a political point of view,” Kenny told Fast Co.Exist.

Whaaaat?

More from Fast Co.Exist:

Plenty of people get their weather reports from the Weather Company’s TV shows, apps, and websites. But what about everyone else? TV meterologists have become infamous in recent years for their reticence to discuss climate change — and in some cases, for their lack of belief in climate change at all. One TV storm tracker in San Diego (who also happens to be a co-founder of the Weather Channel) went so far recently as to say that global warming is a “fictional, manufactured crisis.”

In fact, the Weather Company provides weather data to many TV meteorologists. These days, the company is also trying to provide climate change facts. “Most meteorologists, if you actually give them the science, they come around,” says Kenny. “Most now believe it, but are afraid to talk about it.”

The Weather Company won’t have any dearth of material in the coming years, according to new National Weather Service Director Louis Uccellini. Uccellini says the country’s in for a new normal of extreme weather, and it’s “likely” climate change is contributing to the problem. (You’re no David Kenny, sir, but I’ll take it.)

USA Today reports:

Global warming is “making it more likely that the storms are more intense and produce heavier precipitation,” he said, but Uccellini cautioned that he doesn’t think there are enough cases of extreme weather yet to prove the hypothesis. “I think the evidence is leaning that way,” he said, adding that we’ve loaded the dice to produce more extreme weather such as Sandy. Uccellini said that Sandy’s damage was due in part to sea level rise from global warming.

The National Weather Service’s spring outlook, by the way? “Above-normal temperatures” for the vast majority of the country.

Susie Cagle writes and draws news for Grist. She also writes and draws tweets for

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Los Angeles to ditch coal by 2025

by w0ujpysd Posted on March 20, 2013

Los Angeles to ditch coal by 2025

By Susie Cagle

Coal currently powers almost 40 percent of sprawling and thirsty Los Angeles, Calif. But the “era of coal” is sunsetting.

By 2025, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power will phase out all coal-fired power, putting it slightly ahead of the 2027 deadline imposed by the state. The LADWP is the country’s biggest municipal utility.

“By divesting from coal and investing in renewable energy and energy efficiency, we reduce our carbon footprint and set a precedent for the national power market,” L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa (D) said in a press release.

The mayor’s office said the switch will reduce Los Angeles’ greenhouse gas emissions to 60 percent of 1990 levels. The fashion’s back, but the epic smog might be gone forever. Dumping coal: Even hotter than flannel.

The Los Angeles Times reports:

On Tuesday, commissioners at the Department of Water and Power moved forward with plans to dump the utility’s interest in a coal-burning plant in Arizona and convert another one in Utah to natural gas. …

Villaraigosa declared victory Tuesday, calling the coal divestment plan “game-changing” even though it won’t meet the timeline he set. “I believe the only way to get the goal is to set aggressive timetables,” he said. “Climbing mountains that have never been climbed before [isn’t] easy.” …

The DWP is in negotiations to sell its 21% share of the Navajo Generating Station in Page, Ariz., which will allow the utility to stop receiving power from the plant by 2015, four years before its current contract is up. Getting free of coal at the Intermountain Power Project in Delta, Utah, is more complicated because the DWP does not own the plant and is bound by contract to buy its power through 2027.

On Tuesday the Board of Water and Power Commissioners approved an amendment to its contract with Intermountain Power to allow the plant to transform its power supply to cleaner natural gas. …

A report released by the utility last year estimated that ending coal-power consumption at the Utah plant four years ahead of schedule would cost nearly $1 billion over four years in higher replacement fuel costs and other expenditures.

The whole plan “envisions clean energy and efficiency first, with natural gas fitting in as needed,” according to Take Part.

The move puts Los Angeles on track with Washington state, which is also set to end coal power by 2025, though both are a little behind Oregon, which aims to dump coal by 2020.

It’s not the whole U.S. by any means, but all that soon-to-be-ditched coal power is way more than Finland will get rid of when it dumps the dirtiest fossil fuel by 2025 too.

Susie Cagle writes and draws news for Grist. She also writes and draws tweets for

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Los Angeles to ditch coal by 2025

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Avoiding Confusion About Drone Assassinations in One Easy Step

by w0ujpysd Posted on March 11, 2013

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The New York Times has a long piece this weekend about Anwar al-Awlaki, the New Mexico native who joined al-Qaeda and was killed in 2011 by a drone attack. Part of the piece is about the legal justification for killing an American citizen without due process, which was laid out first in a short memorandum written by David Barron and Martin Lederman and then again in a longer memorandum:

Due to return to academia in the fall of 2010, the two lawyers finished their second Awlaki memorandum, whose reasoning was widely approved by other administration lawyers, that summer. It had ballooned to about 63 pages but remained narrowly tailored to Mr. Awlaki’s circumstances, blessing lethal force against him without addressing whether it would also be permissible to kill citizens, like low-ranking members of Al Qaeda, in other situations.

Nearly three years later, a version of the legal analysis portions would become public in the “white paper,” which stripped out all references to Mr. Awlaki while retaining echoes, like its discussion of a generic “senior operational leader.” Divorced from its original context and misunderstood as a general statement about the scope and limits of the government’s authority to kill citizens, the free-floating reasoning would lead to widespread confusion.

I would just like to say that there’s an easy way to restore the memorandum’s original context and eliminate any possible misunderstanding about the scope and limits of the government’s authority to kill citizens. Right?

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Avoiding Confusion About Drone Assassinations in One Easy Step

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Pink-slime maker’s lawsuit against ABC grows slimier

by w0ujpysd Posted on March 7, 2013

Pink-slime maker’s lawsuit against ABC grows slimier

By Susie Cagle

Cobalt123

I would probably be bitter, too, if I were Beef Products, Inc. Those are the folks behind uber-gross “lean finely textured beef,” aka “pink slime,” the ammonia-soaked cow trimmings added as filler to ground beef. During pink slime’s heyday, it ended up in more than two-thirds of American hamburgers, at a ratio of up to 15 percent slime to 85 percent burger. That slime was cheap, and so chemical-packed that it sterilized the rest of the meat. Mmm, food!

Fast-forward to today: The origins and grossness of “pink slime” are well-known, fast food restaurants have given up the stuff, and BPI is as pissed as a parent whose kid was unknowingly served pink slime in her USDA-approved school lunches.

According to Time, only about 5 percent of ground beef contains the “lean finely textured” stuff now. Following an 11-part ABC News series that ran last March and April, BPI says its revenues have dropped from more than $650 million a year to $130 million. The company filed a lawsuit last September against ABC, anchor Diane Sawyer, and other named defendants seeking $1.2 billion in damages. ABC didn’t coin “pink slime” — a USDA scientist named Gerald Zirnstein did, in 2002 — but ABC and its parent company Disney sure do have deep pockets.

BPI has hired “a high-powered Chicago trial lawyer,” according to Reuters, which reports the case “is shaping up to be one of the most high-stakes defamation court battles in U.S. history.” The company’s founders say they plan to fight ’til the bitter, slimy end, regardless of the cost. “We have to do this,” one told Reuters. “We have no other choice.”

The case hinges on state “product-disparagement” statutes that protect farmers and their products in 13 states, including South Dakota, where BPI is based. From Reuters:

Under the South Dakota version of the law, plaintiffs must show that defendants publicly spread information they knew to be false and stated or implied “that an agricultural food product is not safe for consumption by the public.” …

For BPI to prove the defamation piece of its case, it would need to show that the network negligently reported a false statement of fact that injured its reputation. If BPI is deemed by the court to be a public rather than a private figure in the legal sense, it would have a higher bar to cross: The company would need to prove ABC knew the facts it was reporting were false or it recklessly disregarded the truth.

While the case is in the early stages, the network appears to have a legal leg-up on both counts: ABC never said BPI’s product is dangerous, and courts have repeatedly offered broad protections for journalists in the course of their work.

But by calling a food product “slime” 137 times over the span of nearly four weeks on its newscasts, its website and on Twitter, according to BPI’s tally, did ABC make the public think [lean finely textured beef] was unsafe? If, as BPI alleges, ABC shrugged off information that refuted parts of its reporting, did it act recklessly and could it therefore be held liable for defamation?

From Time:

The case will be one of the first challenging First Amendment protections for news outlets in the social media era. One notable piece of evidence cited in BPI’s lawsuit is a single Tweet by reporter Jim Avila, who wrote: “It’s just not what it purports to be. Meat.” One of BPI’s arguments is that ABC News intentionally portrayed its product as something other than beef. (The USDA considers [lean finely textured beef] to be beef.)

If BPI wins, the precedent would be chilling for reporting on industrial food. If ABC wins, we probably still won’t see a lot of investigative reporting on industrial food, honestly. And either way, we’ll still have the slime: After a steep dropoff last year, manufacturers are slowly reintroducing the stuff.

Susie Cagle writes and draws news for Grist. She also writes and draws tweets for

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Pink-slime maker’s lawsuit against ABC grows slimier

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