Two Hospitalized After Crane Accident in Manhattan

Source: NY1

Police say a crane accident is closing down several streets in Manhattan.

Officials say it hapened at 261 Madison Avenue just before 11 a.m.

Officials say the accident involved a mobile crane, but it is still unclear if it was the crane or the cable that broke.

It happened approximately 30 stories up.

Read more: http://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/news/2015/05/31/crane-collapse-manhattan.html

“What I admire most about my brother was he kept us safe”

As Sunday’s midnight deadline for renewal of key provisions of the controversial Patriot Act approached, former Florida governor Jeb Bush said Senator Rand Paul was “wrong” in his efforts to end post-9/11 surveillance laws used against suspected spies and terrorists.

Paul said on Saturday that he would force the expiration of what he called an “illegal spy programme”.

Speaking at a Tennessee Republican Party fundraiser on Saturday, Bush – unlike Paul, who has declared his campaign for the White House, still only a presumed GOP presidential candidate in 2016 – called for the reauthorisation of the Patriot Act that was enacted under the presidency of his brother, George W Bush.

“What I admire most about my brother was he kept us safe,” said Bush, the son of President George HW Bush. “And I believe people will respect him for a long time because of that.”

more
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/may/31/jeb-bush-rand-paul-surveillance-nsa-deadline


Hey numbnutz- Tell that to the families of those who died on 9/11 and the families of those who died in your brother's illegal war of aggression in Iraq. And who drowned in Katrina. Somebody needs to throw a shoe at JEB.

PACs promote Sanders, whether he likes it or not

WASHINGTON — Sen. Bernie Sanders has long denounced super PACs and the unlimited sums they spend in support of candidates.

But that hasn't stopped independent political action committees from forming in support of his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination.

One such committee, "Bet on Bernie 2016," even arranged for Sanders' photo to flash — without his knowledge, according to the Vermont senator — on an electronic billboard last month in New York City's Times Square.

"I have not sanctioned any super PAC," Sanders, an independent, said in an interview. "A major problem of our campaign finance system is that anybody can start a super PAC on behalf of anybody and can say anything. And this is what makes our current campaign finance situation totally absurd."

more

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2015/05/30/pacs-promote-sanders/28159039/

What We Now Know About The Men Who Led The Impeachment Of Clinton

BY JUDD LEGUM

On December 19, 1998, the House of Representatives impeached Bill Clinton on two charges related to his extramarital affair with Monica Lewinsky. (The charges were for perjury and obstruction of justice.) The historic vote, and subsequent trial in the Senate, involved the work of three men who were elected Speaker of the House Of Representatives by the Republican majority, Newt Gingrich, Bob Livingston and Dennis Hastert.

Almost 17 years later, with the federal indictment of Hastert for illegally concealing up to $3.5 million in hush-money, we finally have a more complete understanding of the men who led this effort.

Newt Gingrich

Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) led the push for Bill Clinton’s impeachment. Following a disappointing election in November 1998, he announced he was stepping down as Speaker and resigning from Congress.

Gingrich later admitted that, while he was pushing for Clinton’s impeachment, he was engaged in an affair with a Congressional aide. “There were times when I was praying and when I felt I was doing things that were wrong. But I was still doing them,” Gingrich said in 2007. He later said the situation was “complex and, obviously, I wasn’t doing things to be proud of.”

more

http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2015/05/30/3664334/now-know-republican-speakers-helped-impeach-bill-clinton/

Selling Off Apache Holy Land

Tucson

ABOUT an hour east of Phoenix, near a mining town called Superior, men, women and children of the San Carlos Apache tribe have been camped out at a place called Oak Flat for more than three months, protesting the latest assault on their culture.

Three hundred people, mostly Apache, marched 44 miles from tribal headquarters to begin this occupation on Feb. 9. The campground lies at the core of an ancient Apache holy place, where coming-of-age ceremonies, especially for girls, have been performed for many generations, along with traditional acorn gathering. It belongs to the public, under the multiple-use mandate of the Forest Service, and has had special protections since 1955, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower decreed the area closed to mining — which, like cattle grazing, is otherwise common in national forests — because of its cultural and natural value. President Richard M. Nixon’s Interior Department in 1971 renewed this ban.

Despite these protections, in December 2014, Congress promised to hand the title for Oak Flat over to a private, Australian-British mining concern. A fine-print rider trading away the Indian holy land was added at the last minute to the must-pass military spending bill, the National Defense Authorization Act. By doing this, Congress has handed over a sacred Native American site to a foreign-owned company for what may be the first time in our nation’s history.

The Apache are occupying Oak Flat to protest this action — to them, a sacrilegious and craven sell-off of a place “where Apaches go to pray,” in the words of the San Carlos Apache tribal chairman, Terry Rambler. The site will doubtless be destroyed for any purpose other than mining; Resolution Copper Mining will hollow out a vast chamber that, when it caves in, will leave a two-mile-wide, 1,000-foot-deep pit. The company itself has likened the result of its planned mining at Oak Flat to that of a nearby meteor crater.

The land grab was sneakily anti-democratic even by congressional standards. For more than a decade, the parcel containing Oak Flat has been coveted by Rio Tinto, Resolution’s parent company — which already mines on its own private land in the surrounding area — for the high-value ores beneath it.

more
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/29/opinion/selling-off-apache-holy-land.html?&_r=4

Congress Can — and Should — Declassify the TPP

by Robert Naiman

One of the most controversial aspects of the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is the fact that the Obama administration has tried to impose a public blockade on the text of the draft agreement.

When Congress votes on whether to grant the president “fast-track authority” to negotiate the TPP — which would bar Congress from making any changes to the secret pact after it’s negotiated — it will effectively be a vote to pre-approve the TPP itself.

Although the other negotiating countries and “cleared” corporate advisers to the US Trade Representative have access to the draft TPP agreement, the American people haven’t been allowed to see it before Congress votes on fast track. Members of Congress can read the draft agreement under heavy restrictions, but they can’t publicly discuss or consult on what they have read.

Arguments against Secrecy

Alan Beattie, who is sort of the economic globalization bureau chief at the Financial Times, recently challenged what he saw as the main establishment arguments in favor of this secrecy.

more

http://billmoyers.com/2015/05/29/congress-can-declassify-tpp/

Doonesbury- Trickle Down Dick

Toon: Sure I was Warned

My kind of flower bed

St. Louis County towns continue to treat residents like ATMs

By Radley Balko

Now that the many, many municipalities in St. Louis County face the prospect of a state law imposing a lower limit on how much revenue they can generate from traffic offenses (along with a credible threat of actually enforcing that law), they seem to be turning instead to non-traffic-related offenses, which aren’t covered by the new policy.

From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: