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.
This Day in History
Alexander Graham Bell successfully tests telephone; James Earl Ray pleads guilty to killing Martin Luther King, Jr.; Russian Premier Konstantin U. Chernenko dies
Breakfast Tunes
Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac
Honest disagreement is often a good sign of progress.
Mahatma Gandhi
Breakfast News
War Zone Tactics Come Home as Pentagon Admits Domestic Spy Drone Use
An internal Pentagon report made public on Wednesday revealed that the U.S. Department of Defense has been using unarmed drones to conduct surveillance missions over American soil since 2006.
The Pentagon inspector general report, entitled “Evaluation of DoD Use of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) for Support to Civil Authorities,” obtained by USA Today through a Freedom of Information Act request, said that “less than 20” such missions occurred between 2006 and 2015, though they anticipate many more in the years to come.
“More than ten years of war in the combat zones of Iraq and Afghanistan have taught a generation of Airmen valuable lessons about the use of Remotely Piloted Airdfta (RPA) and other [Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR)] assets,” the analysis states.
Fla. Nuke Plant Leaking Radioactive Contamination into Biscayne Bay
Radioactive contamination linked to the Miami-area Turkey Point nuclear power plant is entering Biscayne Bay, a new study (pdf) shows.
The findings of the University of Miami study were released this week by Miami-Dade County, and showed increased salinity as well as “tritium levels up to 215 times higher than normal in ocean water,” the Miami Herald reports.
The problem is that the water used to cool the Florida Power & Light (FPL) plant is not being contained to the canal system it set up for that purpose.
The study “shows conclusively that the cooling canal water is polluting and contaminating Biscayne Bay,” Miami Waterkeeper Rachel Silverstein told local news NBC6.
Snowden: FBI’s claim it can’t unlock the San Bernardino iPhone is ‘bullshit’
Edward Snowden, the whistleblower whose NSA revelations sparked a debate on mass surveillance, has waded into the arguments over the FBI’s attempt to force Apple to help it unlock the iPhone 5C of one of the San Bernardino shooters.
The FBI says that only Apple can deactivate certain passcode protections on the iPhone, which will allow law enforcement to guess the passcode by using brute-force.
Talking via video link from Moscow to the Common Cause Blueprint for a Great Democracy conference, Snowden said: “The FBI says Apple has the ‘exclusive technical means’ to unlock the phone. Respectfully, that’s bullshit.”
Snowden then went on to tweet his support for an American Civil Liberties Union report saying that the FBI’s claims in the case are fraudulent.
Dangerous global warming will happen sooner than thought – study
The world is on track to reach dangerous levels of global warming much sooner than expected, according to new Australian research that highlights the alarming implications of rising energy demand.
University of Queensland and Griffith University researchers have developed a “global energy tracker” which predicts average world temperatures could climb 1.5C above pre-industrial levels by 2020.
That forecast, based on new modelling using long-term average projections on economic growth, population growth and energy use per person, points to a 2C rise by 2030.
The UN conference on climate change in Paris last year agreed to a 1.5C rise as the preferred limit to protect vulnerable island states, and a 2C rise as the absolute limit.
‘Catastrophic’: US Raises Alarm Over Perilous Mosul Dam
The U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations today left a “chilling” briefing about the danger posed by Iraq’s Mosul Dam and called on the international community to realize the “magnitude of the problem and the importance of readiness to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe of epic proportions.”
The briefing from geotechnical experts said the dam, already described nearly a decade ago as the “most dangerous dam in the world,” now faces a “serious and unprecedented risk of catastrophic failure with little warning.”
The Mosul Dam lies approximately 30 miles north of Iraq’s second-largest city of Mosul and has been a danger ever since it was constructed in the mid-1980s on unstable foundation. But officials fear that in recent years the problem has gotten much worse as the terror group ISIS was able to temporarily take control of the dam and may have interfered with the constant, massive grouting operation that is necessary to keep the dam functional — though an Iraqi official told ABC News in 2014 that the work continued, even under ISIS control.
Breakfast Blogs
Why Bernie Won Michigan Charles Pierce, Esquire Politics
Bernie Wins MI — Wait Whut? emptywheel aka Marcy Wheeler, emptywheel
Somebody’s dreaming digby aka Heather Digby Parton, Hulabaloo
Humanitarian Aid Delivered to 240,000 in Besieged Syrian Towns. Six Areas Not Yet Reached. Joanne Leone, ShadowProof
Don’t Assume That Trump Or The Supreme Court Blockade Will Win Back The Senate For The Democrats Steve M., No More Mister Nce Guy blog
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