The Breakfast Club (Freedom)

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when ~~we’re not too hungover~~ ~~we’ve been bailed out~~ ~~we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED)~~ the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

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This Day in History

Breakfast Tunes

Breakfast News

US bid for secret Guantánamo force-feeding hearings prompts cover-up fears

The Obama administration has asked a federal judge to hold a highly anticipated court hearing on its painful force-feedings of Guantánamo Bay detainees almost entirely in secret, prompting suspicions of a cover-up.

Justice Department attorneys argued to district judge Gladys Kessler that allowing the hearings to be open to the public would jeopardize national security through the disclosure of classified information. Should Kessler agree, the first major legal battle over forced feeding in a federal court would be less transparent than the military commissions at Guantánamo Bay.

Attorneys for Abu Wa’el Dhiab, a Syrian detainee on hunger strike whose court challenge is slated to begin next week, said the government was using national security as an excuse to prevent the public from learning the extent of a practice that the judge in the case has considered brutal.

But the case “includes inextricably intertwined classified, protected and unclassified information,” argued Joyce Branda, an acting assistant attorney general, in a motion filed Friday.

Blow to Detroit’s poorest as judge rules water shutoffs can continue

The judge overseeing Detroit’s bankruptcy ruled Monday that the city can continue to shut off water if people can’t pay their bill.

Judge Steven Rhodes said there was no “enforceable right” to water and the Detroit water department would face a significant risk of higher defaults if a moratorium was issued. “The last thing it needs is this hit to its revenues,” he said.

Detroit’s Water and Sewerage Department (DWSD) began shutting off water to customers who were behind on payments this spring, cutting off around 22,000 people between March and August.

Supreme Court Blocks Order to Restore 7 Days of Voting in Ohio

The Supreme Court on Monday blocked an appeals court ruling that would have restored seven days of early voting in Ohio.

The Supreme Court’s order was three sentences long and contained no reasoning. But it disclosed an ideological split, with the court’s four more liberal members noting that they would have denied the request for a stay of the lower court’s order extending early voting. Dale Ho, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, said the court’s action “will deprive many Ohioans of the opportunity to vote in the upcoming election as this case continues to make its way through the courts.”

The ruling, which reflected a partisan breakdown in many court decisions nationwide on voting issues, saw the five Republican-appointed justices uphold the voting restrictions enacted by the state’s Republican-controlled Legislature in February. The new limits removed the first week of Ohio’s 35-day early voting period, in the process eliminating the only week that permitted same-day registration, a feature most often used by minorities.

Tens of thousands join Hong Kong protests, roiling financial markets

Spurred by the decision Sunday to use tear gas and pepper spray on pro-democracy protesters, tens of thousands of people joined sit-ins across Hong Kong on Monday in an outpouring of discontent that’s likely to disrupt this former British colony for days, if not longer, and force a confrontation with Beijing over how it will be ruled.

There was no official estimate of how many people were on the street, but some protest groups estimated the crowd had reached 200,000 and possibly more. Whatever the size, the protests – and the international attention they received – rattled the world’s financial markets. Hong Kong’s stock market, the world’s seventh largest, dropped 2 percent Monday, and some analysts said that contributed to a drop in the U.S. stock market.

Many of the tens of thousands of people on the street Monday night wore goggles, masks and plastic wrap to guard against more gassing and pepper spraying. Protesters cordoned off or blocked wide boulevards usually filled with buses, taxis and other cars, turning vast thoroughfares into crowded pedestrian malls.

Obama: U.S. underestimated the rise of Islamic State

President Barack Obama said the United States underestimated the rise of the Islamic State and overestimated the Iraqi military’s ability to fight off the terrorist group in an interview Sunday night on 60 Minutes.

Obama said it was “absolutely true” that the U.S. has made a mistake when it judged both the Islamic State, also called ISIS or ISI, and the Iraqi military. Obama may have underestimated the problem, but it wasn’t because he didn’t get a full briefing. McClatchy reported in July that in congressional testimony as far back as November, U.S. diplomats and intelligence officials made clear that the United States had been closely tracking the al Qaida spinoff since 2012, when it enlarged its operations from Iraq to civil war-torn Syria, seized an oil-rich province there and signed up thousands of foreign fighters who’d infiltrated Syria through NATO ally Turkey.

Federal drug informant scores victory over DEA

A fabled Florida drug informant once known as “the Princess” has now crowned her career with a bittersweet legal victory

Capping a lawsuit filed in 1997, a federal judge has awarded the woman $1.14 million to cover care for the multiple sclerosis she attributes to a traumatic kidnapping. The judge reasoned the disease could be traced to the Drug Enforcement Administration’s failing its duty.

“DEA not only failed to protect (the Princess), but acted with reckless disregard for her safety in light of its intelligence indicating how at risk she was,” U.S. Court of Federal Claims Judge Mary Ellen Coster Williams wrote.

In the decision issued under seal Aug. 30, and published in a slightly redacted form last Friday, Williams further concluded “the Princess’ abduction was a substantial causal factor in the onset of her multiple sclerosis.” Severe stress, doctors testified, can trigger the crippling disease.

Companies settle charges over bogus weight-loss claims for caffeine-infused underwear

Two companies that sell women’s underwear infused with caffeine have agreed to refund $1.5 million to consumers to settle charges that they falsely advertised their products would reduce cellulite and zap fat, the Federal Trade Commission announced on Monday.

In addition to the refunds, the settlements bar Norm Thompson Outfitters, Inc., a catalog retailer based in Oregon, and Wacoal America, Inc., a lingerie company in New Jersey, from making any further unsubstantiated claims about their caffeinated “shapewear.”

There’s no scientific evidence that the shapewear_infused with microencapsulated caffeine, retinol, vitamin E and aloe vera, among other ingredients_can reshape womens’ bodies or eliminate cellulite as advertised, said the FTC, which filed complaints against both companies.