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
Patrick Henry’s ‘Give me liberty or give me death’ speech; Nazi Germany’s Adolf Hitler gains dictatorial power; President Ronald Reagan’s ‘Star Wars’ initiative; ‘Titanic’ scores big at the Oscars.
Breakfast Tunes
Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac
Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!
Breakfast News
Ebola deaths in Guinea prompt Liberia to close border
Liberia has closed its border with neighbouring Guinea where there have been at least four recent deaths from Ebola.
The deaths have occurred since 29 February. Liberia was declared free of new transmissions of the virus in January.
“We have ordered the border with Guinea closed with immediate effect. The border will remain closed until the situation in Guinea improves,” said Lenn Eugene Nagbe, the Liberian information minister.
“We are not taking any chance at all.”
A team of medics with protective gear had been sent to the border to improve surveillance, Liberian authorities said.
Massive US airstrike in Yemen kills ‘dozens’ of people, Pentagon says
A massive US airstrike in Yemen has killed what the Pentagon estimates is “dozens” of people, the second such mass-casualty strike the US military has undertaken this month.
The two strikes, killing more than 200 people at what the Pentagon described as terrorist training camps, diverged so sharply from the previous years’ worth of relatively low-casualty strikes that observers speculated US policy might have quietly changed.
Peter Cook, the Pentagon spokesman, announced late Tuesday that the US had bombed a mountain redoubt in Yemen used by al-Qaida’s local affiliate, al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). He said it was a “training camp” used by “more than 70 AQAP terrorists”.
Obama appeals for economic revolution in Cuba with call to embrace free market
Barack Obama urged Cuba to embrace the free market in a landmark speech in Havana that championed economic liberty rather than political reform as the key to unleashing the potential of its people.
Ignoring calls to echo Ronald Reagan’s famous “tear down this wall” speech in Berlin, Obama drew another leaf from the cold war playbook and focused instead on the role of capitalism in transforming society from within.
“Many suggested that I came here to Cuba to tear something down, but I am appealing to the young people to lift something up,” Obama told a handpicked audience of 1,000 in the Havana theatre that hosted the last US president to speak in the country, 88 years ago.
Government keeping its method to crack San Bernardino iPhone ‘classified’
A new method to crack open locked iPhones is so promising that US government officials have classified it, the Guardian has learned.
The Justice Department made headlines on Monday when it postponed a federal court hearing in California. It had been due to confront Apple over an order that would have forced it to write software that would make it easier for investigators to guess the passcode for an iPhone used by San Bernardino gunman Syed Farook.
The government now says it may have figured out a way to get into the phone without Apple’s help. But it wants that discovery to remain secret, in an effort to prevent criminals, security researchers and even Apple itself from reengineering smartphones so that the tactic would no longer work.
Climate guru James Hansen warns of much worse than expected sea level rise
The current rate of global warming could raise sea levels by “several meters” over the coming century, rendering most of the world’s coastal cities uninhabitable and helping unleash devastating storms, according to a paper published by James Hansen, the former Nasa scientist who is considered the father of modern climate change awareness.
The research, published in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, references past climatic conditions, recent observations and future models to warn the melting of the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets will contribute to a far worse sea level increase than previously thought.
Breakfast Blogs
DOJ’s Pre-Ass-Handing Capitulation emptywheel aka Marcy Wheeler, emptywheel
Donald Trump’s Meeting with The Washington Post Was Either Funny or Depressing; Can’t Decide Charles Pierce, Esquire Politics
“Families Were Blown Up” — Scenes From a Saudi-Led Bombing in Yemen Mohammed Ali Kalfood, The Intercept
Trumpification and terrorism digby aka Heather Digby Parton, Hullabaloo
Rep.Jason Chaffetz Proposes Bill To Gut The BLM To Support The Bundys John Amato, Crooks and Liars
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