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After Mother Jones Report, University of Arkansas Pulls Diary Critical of the Clintons

by k8qxuani Posted on March 20, 2015

Mother Jones

On Tuesday, I reported on the newly public diary of retired Sen. Dale Bumpers (D-Ark.), the longtime Clinton ally, which is included in the 89-year-old’s personal papers at the University of Arkansas. In entries penned during the 1980s, Bumpers was highly critical of the Clintons, dishing on the future First Couple’s “obsessive” qualities and alleged “dirty tricks” by Bill Clinton’s gubernatorial campaign. Bumpers, who gave the closing argument for the defense in President Clinton’s impeachment trial, became a close friend and confidante of the president later in his career. But the previously unreported entries revealed a more tense relationship in the early going, as Clinton vied for political elbow room with the Democratic icon.

In response to the Mother Jones piece, the University of Arkansas library has pulled the diary from its collection at the request of Bumpers’ son, Brent. Per the Arkansas Democrat–Gazette:

Brent Bumpers of Little Rock, son of the former senator, said he was “shocked” by the diary. He has questioned its origin and authenticity, saying nobody in the family had ever heard anything about Dale Bumpers keeping a dairy.

Brent Bumpers said his father, who is 89 years old, doesn’t remember keeping a diary. He said Dale Bumpers always admired the Clintons and wouldn’t have written the things the diary contains.

Brent Bumpers said he wants to review the diary, but he won’t have the opportunity for several days.

Although Dale Bumpers hasn’t personally requested that the diary be pulled, Laura Jacobs, UA associate vice chancellor for university relations, said Brent Bumpers is speaking and acting on behalf of his father regarding the Dale Bumpers Papers.

But the Bumpers diary could not have been written by anyone but Dale Bumpers. When not commenting on the various politicians he interacted with, it is filled with personal musings on his wife, Betty, and three kids; the strains of the job; can’t-miss events such as the annual Bradley County Pink Tomato Festival; and the trials of a first-time candidate at an Iowa presidential cattle call—all interspersed with the thoughtful reflections of a lawmaker who was generally regarded as such.

This is the second time in the last year that the University of Arkansas has made news by restricting access to a political archive in its special collections. Last year, the university’s library blocked the Washington Free Beacon, a conservative news outlet, from accessing its collections because of a dispute over publishing rights. (The library ultimately backed down.)

With Hillary Clinton and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush both running for president, reporters (and opposition researchers) will have more access to archival records than perhaps ever before. The two candidates have nearly a century of public life between them; that’s a heck of a paper trail. This may not be the last time a little-noticed archive makes news.

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After Mother Jones Report, University of Arkansas Pulls Diary Critical of the Clintons

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Report: Florida Banned State Workers From Saying “Climate Change”

by JessRTFdyxsu Posted on March 9, 2015

Mother Jones

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is republished here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Officials with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), the agency in charge of setting conservation policy and enforcing environmental laws in the state, issued directives in 2011 barring thousands of employees from using the phrases “climate change” and “global warming,” according to a bombshell report by the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting (FCIR).

The report ties the alleged policy, which is described as “unwritten,” to the election of Republican governor Rick Scott and his appointment of a new department director that year. Scott, who was re-elected last November, has declined to say whether he believes in climate change caused by human activity.

“I’m not a scientist,” he said in one appearance last May.

Scott’s office did not comment on Sunday, when contacted by the Guardian. A spokesperson for the governor told the FCIR team: “There’s no policy on this.”

The FCIR report was based on statements by multiple named former employees who worked in different DEP offices around Florida. The instruction not to refer to “climate change” came from agency supervisors as well as lawyers, according to the report.

“We were told not to use the terms ‘climate change’, ‘global warming’ or ‘sustainability,'” the report quotes Christopher Byrd, who was an attorney with the DEP’s Office of General Counsel in Tallahassee from 2008 to 2013, as saying. “That message was communicated to me and my colleagues by our superiors in the Office of General Counsel.”

“We were instructed by our regional administrator that we were no longer allowed to use the terms ‘global warming’ or ‘climate change’ or even ‘sea-level rise,'” said a second former DEP employee, Kristina Trotta. “Sea-level rise was to be referred to as ‘nuisance flooding.'”

According to the employees’ accounts, the ban left damaging holes in everything from educational material published by the agency to training programs to annual reports on the environment that could be used to set energy and business policy.

The 2014 national climate assessment for the US found an “imminent threat of increased inland flooding” in Florida due to climate change and called the state “uniquely vulnerable to sea level rise.”

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Report: Florida Banned State Workers From Saying “Climate Change”

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“It’s Easier to Get Laid at CPAC Than on Spring Break”

by KerrieMcNaughta Posted on February 28, 2015

Mother Jones

While the annual Conservative Political Action Conference attracts right-wingers all stripes, there was one thing virtually all attendees could agree on: this year’s conference was young. Especially young. College and high school-aged conservatives packed the halls of CPAC, decked out in all manner of paraphernalia: retro Reagan-Bush ’84 campaign shirts, American flag shorts, buttons that declared “I Love Capitalism” and “Kill the Death Tax.” I spotted at least one “Barry Goldwater for President” button on a millennial’s lapel.

What were these fired-up young conservatives—many of whom traveled long distances to attend—here to see? Which would-be GOP candidate did they intend to support? Their responses were diverse, but if the Millennial Primary were held today, it would be a dead heat between Gov. Scott Walker (R-Wisc.) and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), with Ben Carson running close behind.

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“It’s Easier to Get Laid at CPAC Than on Spring Break”

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Black Man Lawfully Carrying Gun Gets Pummeled by White Vigilante at Walmart

by AdelineI91 Posted on January 23, 2015

Mother Jones

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There is no shortage of debate about whether allowing citizens to carry concealed guns makes society safer. You may be shocked to learn that the answer could depend in part on the color of a citizen’s skin.

Exhibit A this week, from Florida: A surveillance video from a Walmart located near Tampa shows 62-year-old Clarence Daniels trying to enter the store to purchase some coffee creamer for his wife this past Tuesday. He barely steps through the automatic doors before he is pummeled by shopper Michael Foster, a 43-year-old white man.

“He’s got a gun!” Foster shouts, to which Daniels replies, “I have a permit!”

According to local news reports, Foster originally spotted Daniels in the store’s parking lot placing his legally owned handgun underneath his coat. In keeping with Florida’s well-known vigilante spirit, Foster decided to take matters into his own hands by following Daniels into the Walmart. Without warning, he tackled Daniels and placed him in a chokehold.

Police soon arrived and confirmed Daniels indeed had a permit for the handgun.

“Unfortunately, he tackled a guy that was a law-abiding citizen,” said Larry McKinnon, a police spokesperson. “We understand it’s alarming for people to see other people with guns, but Florida has a large population of concealed weapons permit holders.”

Foster is now facing battery charges.

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Black Man Lawfully Carrying Gun Gets Pummeled by White Vigilante at Walmart

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Mitt Romney Has a Koch Problem

by ZitaBazley Posted on January 22, 2015

Mother Jones

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This weekend, a select group of Republican presidential hopefuls will arrive in southern California to attend one of Charles and David Koch’s biannual donor retreats, a coveted invite for GOP politicians seeking the backing of the billionaire brothers and their elite club of conservative and libertarian mega-donors. Featured guests at the conclave will include Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), Rand Paul (R-Ky.), and Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush was also invited to the confab but is unlikely to attend.

Notably absent from the guest list for the Koch winter seminar: Mitt Romney.

Romney recently barged his way back into the political fray, suggesting he might launch a third presidential bid. He told a group of donors earlier this month, “Everybody in here can go tell your friends that I’m considering a run.” In a presentation over the weekend at a resort near Palm Springs, California—as it happens, the same venue that has played host to previous Koch seminars—Romney delivered what sounded an awful lot like a presidential stump speech, talking about poverty (“I believe that the principles of conservatism are the best to help people get out of poverty”), education (“We have great teachers. I’d pay them more”), and even climate change.

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Mitt Romney Has a Koch Problem

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5 Flaws in Obama’s New Cybersecurity Plan

by NicolasRoller Posted on January 14, 2015

Mother Jones

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Following a string of high-profile corporate hacks at companies such as Target, Home Depot, and Sony, President Obama is now urging Congress to improve how companies respond to data breaches. He wants to require them to disclose consumer data breaches within 30 days of discovering them, make it easier for companies to share information about hacking threats with one another and the federal government, and criminalize the sale of botnets, programs used to coordinate attacks.

But while those may sound like good ideas, they’re not winning universal support from top digital rights groups. “President Obama’s cybersecurity legislative proposal recycles some old ideas that should remain where they’ve been since May 2011: on the shelf,” writes the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

Here are the top five concerns with Obama’s proposals:

1. They may allow companies to share your personal data with the NSA: Companies would receive legal immunity in connection with sharing information about threats with a cybersecurity center headed by the Department of Homeland Security, which could immediately pass it along to the National Security Agency and other federal agencies. The proposed disclosure law, which would trump other state or federal data-privacy laws, would require companies to take unspecified “reasonable” steps to strip information that could identify a specific person before sharing it, but only for individuals “reasonably believed to be unrelated to the cyber threat.”

2. Private companies and the government already share information about security threats: The sharing happens through the nonprofit Information Sharing and Analysis Centers and Homeland’s Enhanced Cybersecurity Services. “The question is what gap this bill is trying to fill when we already have a robust information sharing machine,” says EFF legislative analyst Mark Jaycox.

3. The reforms would increase penalties under the draconian Computer Fraud and Abuse Act: The notoriously broad and stringent CFAA is best known as the tool used by the feds to prosecute digital rights activist Aaron Swartz, who killed himself in 2013 while facing 35 years in jail and $1 million in fines in connection with downloading copyrighted scientific articles. “We’ve repeatedly seen government prosecutions that use the CFAA’s tough penalties to bully people,” says Jaycox. In a press release, the White House says it wants to ensure the act isn’t used to target “insignificant conduct.” But a close reading of its proposed reforms appears to tell a different story: One provision increases the penalty for stealing data from any “protected computer” from one year to three, even if it wasn’t done for commercial gain.

4. They supersede state laws: The White House’s consumer data breach law would supersede at least 38 state data-breach laws, some of which are more stringent than the proposed federal standard. The law proposed by the White House would apply only to businesses that store information on more than 10,000 individuals, but California, Florida and some other states have disclosure laws that apply to any company that experiences a data breach affecting more than 500 people. “Any such proposal should not become a back door for weakening transparency or state power,” the EFF said in a statement, “including the power of state attorneys general and other nonfederal authorities to enforce breach notification laws.”

5. They could limit online civil disobedience: There are plenty of legitimate reasons to curtail the sale of botnets, but they’ve also been used by activists to carry out distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks against repressive governments and corporate ne’er-do-wells. Last year, the hactivist collective Anonymous posted a petition on Whitehouse.gov asking that DDOS attacks be recognized as a legal form of protest similar to the Occupy protests. Under the CFAA, carrying out a DDOS attack can already land you in jail for many years, but now the White House wants to further clamp down on the practice by specifically allowing the Attorney General to go after botnets that help enable them.

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5 Flaws in Obama’s New Cybersecurity Plan

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Guess Who’s Getting Rich(er) off the College Football Playoff? (Hint: It’s Not the Players)

by RowenaBaader Posted on January 12, 2015

Mother Jones

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The first-ever College Football Playoff, culminating in tonight’s national championship game between Oregon and Ohio State, has been years in the making: Fans, coaches, and players had long complained about the lack of a tournament, à la college basketball’s March Madness, to determine a national champ. The four-team tourney has proved a smashing success: The semifinal games on New Year’s Day each brought ESPN more than 28 million viewers, breaking the cable TV ratings record set in 2011 by the title game between Oregon and Auburn. Thanks to NCAA rules, though, the players will make bupkis. So who is cashing in, then? Here’s a partial breakdown.

ESPN: In 2012, the sports network inked a 12-year, $7.3 billion deal for the rights to air seven postseason college games—the four big bowl games plus two national semifinals and the championship game. That’s a ton of money, even when you consider that media buyers told Advertising Age that 30-second spots during this year’s title game are selling for $1 million a pop. But even if ESPN barely covers its expenses, securing the long-term rights to the playoffs has further cemented its dominance as the go-to channel for sports fans. And that, in the end, should prove immensely profitable.

The NCAA: College sports’ governing body loves to prattle on about amateurism while pulling in nearly $1.4 billion annually in TV royalties for the football playoffs ($608 million) and March Madness ($771 million). Still, Mark Emmert, the NCAA’s embattled president, made $1.7 million in total compensation in 2012, 46 percent more than his predecessor, Myles Brand, earned in his last full year as prez.

Nike: There have been plenty of swooshes on your screen this playoff season: All four playoff semifinalists—Alabama, Florida State, Ohio State, and Oregon—wear Nike gear due to $15 million in contracts for the 2014-15 academic year. (Nike founder Phil Knight is a well-known Oregon alumnus and superbooster.) Related: Have you picked up your special-edition Oregon title game jersey yet? How about your custom CFP Zoom Hypercross TRs?

The Big 5 Conferences: The biggest recipients of the TV largesse will be the so-called Big 5 conferences—the Atlantic Coast, the Big Ten, the Big 12, the Pac-12, and the Southeastern—which will each receive $50 million a year, according to the CFP’s revenue distribution plan. The ACC, Big 10, Pac-12, and SEC also all got a $6 million bonus because their teams made the semifinals, plus millions more for travel expenses. (As you might imagine, these conferences already have hefty TV deals that are distributed among the schools.)

Coaches Mark Helfrich and Urban Meyer: Meyer—who won national titles at Florida in 2006 and 2008 and is earning nearly $4.5 million in base compensation this season at Ohio State—will take home $250,000 just for making it to the championship game. OSU athletic director Gene Smith told USA Today in December that those numbers are right on the mark: “He’s the CEO of a large corporation. We’re fortunate we have him at Ohio State.” Helfrich, the second-year Oregon coach, will pocket $2 million in salary this year (the lowest among semifinalist head coaches), plus $250,000 more should the Ducks win Monday night. (His assistant coaches already have snatched an additional six months’ worth of base salary this postseason, and could earn even more.)

Gene Smith: The Ohio State athletic director came under fire last year when it was reported that he earned a bonus of more than $18,000 after a wrestler won an individual national title in March. He’s on track to make another two weeks’ worth of base pay, roughly $36,000, if the Buckeyes bring home the trophy Monday night.

On Tuesday, the CFP announced that the NCAA would let it help cover the expenses of parents who wanted to come watch their kids play in the title game, allotting up to $1,250 per parent/guardian (maximum: two) for travel, meals, and accommodations. So that’s nice. But what of the kids whose hard work makes this all possible? Don’t they deserve something?

As it turns out, the NCAA allows players up to $550 each in goods from gift suites set up by individual bowl games. According to SportsBusiness Daily, the Rose Bowl (the Florida State-Oregon semifinal) handed out Fossil watches, Oakley Works backpacks, and New Era 59Fifty caps, while the Sugar Bowl (the Alabama-Ohio State semifinal) also gave away Fossil watches and New Era hats. It’s not the custom-made Fathead wall decals handed out by the Quick Lane Bowl, but hey, these kids are amateurs.

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Guess Who’s Getting Rich(er) off the College Football Playoff? (Hint: It’s Not the Players)

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Republicans Are Facing a Mighty Big Headwind in 2016

by AnnmariK86 Posted on January 7, 2015

Mother Jones

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Democrats do better in elections when the minority population grows. Everyone knows that. And the minority population is, in fact, growing. Everyone knows that, too. So does that mean Democrats are sure winners in future presidential contests?

Hardly. But it does put Republicans in a bind, since it means they need to increase their voting share among minorities. This is going to be tough, since they’ve done nothing much to appeal to non-white voters over the past decade or so. Still, in 2016 at least Barack Obama won’t be on the ballot. So maybe, just maybe, Republicans have a chance to recover the level of minority support they enjoyed in 2004, back when two white guys were running against each other.

But it turns out that even here the news is bad. Patrick Oakford of the Center for American Progress ran the numbers to see how Republicans would do if their minority support in 2016 rose back to 2004 levels. Here are the results in two big swing states:

Republicans would still win Florida—barely—but would lose Ohio badly. This is a state that Bush won handily in 2004, and one that Republicans can’t do without. By 2016, however, voters of color will make up such a large share of the Ohio electorate that even 2004 levels of support won’t win the state for Republicans. They’ll have to do even better than that, and the same is true in several other key swing states. Here’s Oakford:

This analysis shows—through a variety of election simulations—that as people of color become a larger share of states’ electorates, it will be crucial for both Republicans and Democrats to secure the support of this vital voter cohort….For Republicans, simply repeating the history of 2004—obtaining significant support among voters of color—will not necessarily mean a win in many swing states, including Ohio and Nevada.

The GOP has a tough presidential row to hoe in 2016. They aren’t sure losers by any stretch, but to win they’re going to have to do a lot better among minority voters than they’ve done anytime recently. It’s not clear what their plan is to do that.

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Republicans Are Facing a Mighty Big Headwind in 2016

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Executions Just Hit a 20-Year Low

by MargariLaurens Posted on December 18, 2014

Mother Jones

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There’s some encouraging news this week in the usually gloomy realm of criminal justice. According to a new report from the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC), there were fewer executions this year than in any year since 1994—and fewer new death sentences imposed than any year since 1974. That may be of little comfort to the family of Robert Wayne Holsey, a low-functioning man whose severely alcoholic court-appointed lawyer sealed his ultimate fate—Georgia executed him earlier this month—but the numbers are certainly dwindling. In 2012, states put 43 people to death. In 2013, the number was 39. This year, it’s down to 35.

Perhaps more encouraging for foes of capital punishment: Only 72 new death sentences were imposed this year (a measure the DPIC considers a more accurate indicator of the trend). That’s a 77 percent decline since 1996, as more and more states have offered juries the option of imposing a sentence of life without the possibility of parole.

Death Penalty Information Center

In addition, an increasingly smaller group of states accounts for the majority of executions. Seven states put prisoners to death this year (down from 20 just 15 years ago)‚ but just three of them—Florida, Missouri, and Texas—accounted for 80 percent of all the executions. The number of states that sanction the death penalty may be waning, too. In 2014, the governors of Colorado, Oregon, and Washington all imposed moratoria. And for what it’s worth, 2014 was the first year since 1997 that Texas didn’t lead the country in executions. (It tied with Missouri, at 10 apiece.)

Death Penalty Information Center

Aside from the continued decline in public support for capital punishment—just over half of Americans were for it in 2014, as opposed to nearly two-thirds in 2011—some new factors may have contributed to this year’s numbers. Botched executions in Ohio, Arizona, and Oklahoma shed light on the untested drug cocktails states are now using for lethal injections, after European drugmakers cut off their supplies. Following widespread press coverage of these gruesome execution attempts—some of which appeared to violate the Eighth Amendment’s protection from cruel and unusual punishment—Oklahoma and Ohio halted executions for the rest of the year. (In response to the mishaps, the Justice Department is expected to release a major report next year.)

We’ve also seen increased scrutiny this year of states’ willingness to execute the mentally ill or intellectually disabled. Earlier in the year, the Supreme Court ruled in Hall v. Florida that Florida’s fit-for-execution standard—merely having an IQ exceeding 70 was enough—violated standards of decency. And the case of Scott Panetti, a schizophrenic man that Texas is determined to execute, put that state’s low standards on international display. (A federal court has temporarily stayed Panetti’s execution, a move even prominent conservatives have supported.)

Major battles lie ahead for death penalty opponents. More than 3,000 people are still on death row and 30 executions have been scheduled for 2015. Fourteen states, including some the ones that botched their executions, have pursued legislation that would shroud many aspects of the execution process in secrecy—particularly the details about what’s in their lethal cocktails.

But momentum against the death penalty is strong. “Overall, the decline in the use of the death penalty has been going on for 15 years, and is likely to continue,” explains Richard Dieter, the executive director of the DPIC and an author of the new report. “For the public, the death penalty has already receded as a significant part of the criminal justice process.”

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Executions Just Hit a 20-Year Low

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NASA is headed for Mars. What, is there something wrong with Earth?

by AlfredoLovett Posted on December 3, 2014

NASA is headed for Mars. What, is there something wrong with Earth?

By on 3 Dec 2014commentsShare

Maybe you’re skeptical of whether or not the U.N. Climate Summit in Lima will actually do anything. That’s OK! In terms of humans actually moving to turn around carbon emissions and take a last stab at saving the planet, things look a bit dicey. From The New York Times, earlier this week:

While a breach of the 3.6 degree threshold appears inevitable, scientists say that United Nations negotiators should not give up on their efforts to cut emissions. At stake now, they say, is the difference between a newly unpleasant world and an uninhabitable one.

“Newly unpleasant world” sure does sound rough, not least for its ominous vagueness. What form will that unpleasantness take, exactly? Will herds of small shih-tzus bite your ankles every time you leave your house, until you slowly hemorrhage to death in the street? Will all sandwich options be reduced to watercress and cucumber? Will every new radio single just be Pitbull yelling “DALE” on repeat for three and a half minutes, over a background track of screaming infants?

Ha! No — it will likely take the form of unprecedented natural disasters, sweltering heat, and food shortages. (I mean, those other things could happen too — who’s to say!) One could say, if one were particularly forward-thinking in the most pessimistic way and also were named Christopher Jonathan James Nolan, that we might be in the market for another planet.

Which is why we can all delight in the fact that NASA is taking the next step in sending humans to Mars! Tomorrow morning*, if all goes as planned, NASA will send its new capsule, Orion, into an orbit that extends 3,600 miles from the Earth’s surface. At the conclusion of that orbit, Orion will plop peacefully into the Pacific Ocean and then get trucked back to Florida for testing — a grisly fate, indeed. The journey, which will test Orion’s safety features in deep-space conditions, should take four and a half hours and cost about $375 million.

Does that seem like a very, very brief trip for that amount of money? Screw you — space is spendy! Furthermore, there are two more trips planned (albeit for still more money): Another unmanned test in 2018, and one with real live astronauts in 2021. No word yet on when the actual Mars mission begins.

Meanwhile, Elon Musk, professional one-upper and CEO of SpaceX, has been designing his own Mars-exploration capsule — which he claims costs less than Orion to develop. Again from The New York Times:

After the first unmanned Dragon test flight in 2010, Mr. Musk said he hoped NASA would at least consider the possibility. “Dragon has arguably more capability than Orion,” he said then. “Basically, anything Orion can do, Dragon can do.”

You tell ‘em, Elon! But more importantly: Which one would Matthew McConaughey pilot? I will only go to space in an aircraft that Matthew McConaughey is flying. But I will also probably be dead before this whole “newly unpleasant world” thing comes about, so who cares what I think!

*UPDATE: The Orion test launch has been rescheduled for Friday morning.

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NASA Sees Capsule Test as a Step Toward Mars

, The New York Times.

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NASA is headed for Mars. What, is there something wrong with Earth?

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