Link dump

[tangaroa]

• U.S. attorney J. Christian Adams has resigned in protest of orders to dismiss voter intimidation charges against the Black Panthers. See also a backgrounder from December.
• U.S. universities routinely abuse labour laws.
• Ian Welsh: "The Housing Bubble Was Based On Fraud"
• Robert Cruickshank describes California gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown as a pragmatic centrist who fixed the budget crisis in the 1970s and can do it again.
• Ohio Republican gubernatorial candidate John Kasich is mocking his Democratic opponent's blue-collar origins. This should by all that is right sink Kasich's campaign, but the Republican electorate has been resistant to shame in the past.
• Scientists have found heavy metal pollution in whales.
• Danish pop singer Andrea "Medina" Valbak was egged by Muslim protesters in Ishoj, near Copenhagen, for mixing her stage name with indecent behaviour.
• The rioters who burned two police cars in Toronto during the protests against the Group of 20 meeting may have been undercover policemen.
• Verizon corporation earned bad press by fining a soldier's widow $350 for canceling her telephone account. Emotions aside, she had presumably signed a contract allowing them to do this.

An anonymous online acquaintance of mine has this insight on the concept of a national dialogue or debate:

I appreciate that the Minneapolis Park Police are respecting the first amendment, and letting protesters wander through the Twin Cities Pride Festival. But when one person is saying that a class of people are "an abomination to God" I don't think it's really accurate to characterize the situation as "a healthy dialogue." It's more like an unhealthy, spiteful monologue.