Motley Moose – Archive

Since 2008 – Progress Through Politics

Archive for February 2013

Two Freshman Senators and a Contrast of Choices

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“There are district attorneys and United States attorneys out there every day squeezing ordinary citizens on sometimes very thin grounds and taking them to trial in order to make an example, as they put it. I’m really concerned that ‘too big to fail’ has become ‘too big for trial,'” Warren said.

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“We do not know, for example, if he received compensation for giving paid speeches at extreme or radical groups. It is at a minimum relevant to know if that $200,000 that he deposited in his bank account came directly from Saudi Arabia, came directly from North Korea.

The only reasonable inference was there was something in there that they did not want to make public.”

It’s clear that Cruz has business of his own to conduct, the cynical single minded business of making a name for himself while smearing the honorable reputation of a wounded and decorated war veteran and fellow Republican with a speculative, McCarthyesque smear that raised a more than a few eyebrows. Even John McCain, who these days rarely sees the forest through his bitter trees, felt compelled to draw the line and rebuke Cruz.  

Random Japan

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THIS JUST IN…

The NPA says 33 people around the country were arrested for voting improprieties in December’s general election-the lowest figure since current election laws were enacted in 1950.

An online survey by research group Macromill found that 75 percent of 20-year-olds “expect little from the country’s politics.”

In a breakthrough that could help endangered species, Japanese scientists have “artificially reproduce[ed] a kind of fish using surrogate parents from another related species.”

The Council for Cultural Affairs recommended two additions to Japan’s roster of important cultural assets: traditional hunting equipment from Akita and a tug-of-war event in Saga known as “Yobuko.”

All The News Fit to Share: Weekend Edition

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Welcome to your nearly-nightly news diary that we leave open throughout the weekend! JanF and I are combining forces for an open news thread we hope will please all of you.  

Please comment on any of the stories in the diary or comments, or share any news stories you like from anywhere!  I tend to share lesser-known stories, and especially look for stories from original journalists w/ byline credits.  And I frequently highlight my home state of Utah.  

News stories may be added throughout the day and night, so please stop back if you are inclined.  

This will serve as the open news thread until Monday.    

Honoring Terun Sabre Weed

As some requested, there is an online service for Terun Weed (GreenMountainBoy02), the spouse of Bill Harris (commonmass). The cathedral service at 3:00 is being paralleled here at the GOS. You are welcome to leave comments here or there, but I don’t think I can tend both at once.

Murdoch Throws his Journalists Under a Bus: the Unintended Consequence of the Phone Hacking Scandal

I tend to avoid cross posting material from my work at the Daily Beast, but this is an important unintended consequence of Murdoch’s reaction to the Phone Hacking scandal which has sent a chilling effect through Fleet Street



News Corp. chief Rupert Murdoch holds up a copy of the newly launched The Sun on Sunday newspaper last February in London. (Carl Court/AFP/Getty)

Murdoch Journalists Thrown Under the Bus in Phone-Hacking Scandal

“What Rupert Murdoch has done is unprecedented in the free world,” says the veteran journalist Nick Cohen, author of a recent award-winning book about censorship, You Can’t Read This Book. “Managers have been tasked to go over every expense claim and emails for signs of wrongdoing,” he told The Daily Beast. In the process, Murdoch has “basically given up his journalists and their sources.”

Over a hundred people have been arrested since the phone hacking scandal engulfed Murdoch’s UK paper in the summer of 2011. Fifty five of them journalists. And the reason is not as simple as you would think:

During the height of the phone-hacking crisis that hit Murdoch’s London subsidiary in 2011, parent company News Corp. faced an even greater threat-an investigation in by the U.S. Department of Justice into alleged breaches of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which bans payments to foreign officials. To reduce the potential hefty corporate fines and indictments of senior executives in New York, Murdoch created a beefed-up Management and Standards Committee (MSC), with access to a recovered database of more than 300 million emails from its London newspapers and a remit to cooperate with the police.

Since the phone-hacking scandal that shuttered the News of the World broke, there have been more than 100 related arrests. Fifty-five of these have been of journalists, and the majority not for suspicion of phone hacking, as in the six new arrests Wednesday, but on suspicion of corrupt payments to public officials, most of it on evidence provided by the MSC.

“Seriously,” Cohen points out, “more journalists have been arrested in Britain this year than in Iran.”

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WEEKLY RUMINATIONS

Friday is here again!  We all made it through Valentine’s Day unscathed, I assume.  The line at the grocery store was more fun than usual yesterday will all the older gentlemen with their roses.  Why not do this on other days of the year?  I am personally not much of a fancy flower person – while I think they are pretty, I would much rather have a plant that would last.  Or a gift certificate for yarn which was discussed yesterday.  

Well, lemme have it.  What are you all ruminating on this week?

What’s in a name?



Today my local newspaper’s sports section shared the words of Washington Redskins General Manager Bruce Allen who says the team will not consider any name change:

“There’s nothing that we feel is offensive,” Allen said.

As “proof”, the team has posted on their web site “interviews with officials from the 70 high schools they say still called themselves ‘Redskins.'”.

Time For a Talk About Near Earth Objects: 1,200+ Hurt in Russian Meteor Strike [Updates – 2]

In the first significant incident of injury and damage involving a major meteor, six cities in the Ural region of Russia were hit this morning by the concussion and fragments from a large strike.

Al Jazeera has this:

This incident will no doubt cause international attention to the issue of Near Earth Objects (NEOs. While there is no more immediate concern than there ever has been in human history, the threat is one which we can not take idly.

David Frum is compiling videos of the event on the Daily Beast.

The Daily F Bomb, Friday 2/15/13

Good morning, all. Happy Friday, and happy 3 day weekend to those who get Monday off.

Interrogatories

At this moment, how long have you been in front of your computer without getting up? How many hours a day do you average on your computer? If you knew your next meal would be your last, what would you choose to eat and drink? Star Trek or Star Wars? Coke or Pepsi? How is your memory doing these days? What did I just ask? What is your worst habit?

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