Take a moment to read this heartbreaking piece from Northwestern associate law professor Sheila A. Bedi in TPM Cafe today:
The little girl could not have been more than 5 years old. She was wearing a purple polka-dot dress and her hair was pulled tight into ponytails tied with purple ribbons. On her feet were sparkly shoes. Someone had taken great care to dress her and on this grey fall morning in October 2013 she was all sunshine and light.
She skipped towards the large, fortress-like building. She turned towards me and gave me a joyful smile, and said āIām going to see my daddy today.ā
And then together we walked through the doors of the Stateville Correctional Center in Crest Hill, Illinois.
I wanted to bring you all up to date on where we are on pushing our new commenting engine online. Details and schedules after the jump.
I mentioned over the weekend how comically bad it is that Chris Christie says the phrase “Occupied Territories”, a standard if not the only way of referring to the West Bank of the Jordan, and not only gets knocked on it but actually has to apologize to territorial maximalist poobah Sheldon Adelson. But there’s another part of the story that goes beyond Christie’s dignity loss and the increasingly explicit and binding alliance between the Israeli right and the Republican party.
There seems to be very little chance of this actually happening, but one of the leading Democrats in New Jersey says she wants Chris Christie to testify under oath about the bridge scandal.
Perhaps one of the biggest legacy’s of the Occupy movement was coining or at least popularizing the phraseology of the 1% and the 99%. But a new look at the actual numbers shows that at least half the 1% are basically just holding their own in terms of share of national wealth. The explosion of gains is actually with the .01%. Read the piece but especially the second chart.
What does it mean that 9.5 million people who didn’t have health care coverage now have it because of Obamacare? We’re discussing that in this thread at The Hive. (sub req.)
New York’s pro-gun rallies are getting too extreme for one NRA national board member, who says he’ll no longer attend them because he doesn’t “want to be a party to anything that may happen.”
I came in this morning a little bummed that there may not be many more CNN whackadoodle missing plane coverage jokes left. But I think we’re good. Last week we found out that CNN failed in its efforts to rent a 777 to fake crash into the Indian Ocean. But just a few moments ago I saw that CNN is up with new reports from their flight simulator up in Canada doing a simulated search for plane debris over what the host helpfully referred to as “simulated water.” I was convinced by the simulation. It’s pretty hard to find small parts of a plane flying over vast tracks of ocean. (Actually, when I first saw it I thought they were flying off the coast of British Columbia or something pretending to look for plane chunks.) We’ll have the breaking video shortly.
Update: And here’s the video!
New poll shows big gains in public support for Obamacare.
After all these months of yacking and whining, the AP is reporting tonight that Obamacare signups will likely hit the 7 million goal after all.