In the News

Here is some stuff in the news today...

Senator Elizabeth Warren says (again) she's not running for president in 2016: "I'm not running for president. You can ask it lots of different ways." Ha ha. I love her.

RIP Rubin 'Hurricane' Carter.

[Content Note: Disaster; death] Sixty-four deaths have been confirmed and 238 are still missing, most of them high schoolers on a class trip, in the capsized ferry disaster in South Korea last week. Seven arrests have been made so far, including the captain and six crew members. President Park Geun-hye said their actions, which included telling passengers to remain in their cabins and abandoning the ship, were "tantamount to murder." Said Park: "Above all, the conduct of the captain and some crew members is unfathomable from the viewpoint of common sense, and it was like an act of murder that cannot and should not be tolerated."

[CN: Worker exploitation] Temporary work is becoming the norm for many US workers, which of course has great benefits for exploitative employers and frequently terrible consequences for workers: "With full-time work hard to find, these workers have built temping into a de facto career, minus vacation, sick days or insurance. The assignments might be temporary—a few months here, a year there—but labor economists warn that companies' growing hunger for a workforce they can switch on and off could do permanent damage to these workers' career trajectories and retirement plans." Like the companies who exploit people give a shit about their career trajectories or retirement plans. Or whether they even have enough to eat right now. This isn't going to get changed by good will. Clearly. We need laws to prevent this type of worker exploitation.

The Supreme Court will rule on lying liars in political campaigns and whether the right of free speech trumps the right to say whatever the fuck you want about candidates, even if it's not remotely true.

Speaking of SCOTUS: "During an event at the University of Tennessee's law school on Tuesday, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia suggested to the capacity crowd that perhaps they should revolt against the U.S government if their taxes ever get too high." He seems nice.

[CN: Survival of grave danger] A 16-year-old boy survived a flight from California to Hawaii, while stowed away in the plane's wheel well. Holy shit! FBI spokesman Tom Simon in Honolulu said "security footage from the San Jose airport verified that the boy from Santa Clara, Calif., hopped a fence to get to Hawaiian Airlines Flight 45 on Sunday morning. The child had run away from his family after an argument, Simon said. Simon said when the flight landed in Maui, the boy hopped down from the wheel well and started wandering around the airport grounds."

And finally: The French Parliament has voted to "change the 1804 law that considered pets only 'movable goods,' which is their current status in the US. ...For hundreds of years, dogs, cats, and horses in France had the same legal status as furniture, but they now have had their rights upgraded." In addition to enabling better protections from animal cruelty: "This will also help determine who gets to keep the pets in a divorce, as well as allow people to leave inheritances to their furkids."