Midday open thread: Hate groups by geography, HTML as STD, submerged world cultural sites

• Today’s comic by Matt Bors is Crisis News:
  
  
  
  


• These Daily Kos community posts were the most shared on Facebook March 4:
  
  

  What Would Jesus Shoot? Kentucky Baptists giving away 25 guns to attract converts, by Lefty Coaster
  

  Apple Tells Limbaugh and His Ilk to Stick Their Money Where the Sun Don’t Shine, by ProgLegs

  
  

  MUST-SEE: Stephen Colbert debunks Obamacare horror stories with special guest, by BruinKid

  
  

  
  

• Hate groups thick in the South, but the largest numbers are in California:

Eleven Southern states are home to more than 500 groups that promote hate speech, according to a detailed breakdown by the Southern Poverty Law Center. But it’s California that is home to the largest number of organizations that preach hate, the center found.

The SPLC tracks 939 active groups that promote racial, ethnic or religious segregation or hate. The eight types of hate groups the center has identified include white nationalists, black separatists, neo-Confederates, Christian identity, skinheads, Ku Klux Klans and neo-Nazis, along with a handful of miscellaneous groups.

• What getting older will do to you:

At 42, I see movies differently than I did as a kid. Ferris Bueller is now the story of a hard-working principal just trying to do his job.
— @JElvisWeinstein

• Thank Warren Buffett for those exploding oil trains:

We’ve written a lot about the dangers of shipping extra-flammable oil in flimsy rail cars that are prone to puncture and explode. Turns out you can blame a fair bit of the problem on billionaire investor Warren Buffett. As the Sightline Institute’s blog reports, “Arguably, he is the single most important person in the world of oil-by-rail.”

It doesn’t take much scrutiny to see that oil trains get special treatment. After all, if a jet plane has a battery fire problem, regulators immediately pull it from service and will ground the entire fleet until the manufacturer makes modifications to reduce the risk of fire. If an auto regularly bursts into flame upon impact, the feds issue a recall and mandate retrofits for all the cars with the defect. Yet despite explosion after deadly explosion—and safety report after federal safety report—government regulators, at the urging of the industry groups that represent Buffett’s holdings, have allowed unsafe DOT-111s tank cars to haul crude oil and ethanol.

• 1 in 10 Americans think HTML is related to herpes:

A recent study found that many Americans are lost when it comes to tech-related terms, with 11% saying that they thought HTML — a language that is used to create websites — was a sexually transmitted disease. [...]

• 27% identified “gigabyte” as an insect commonly found in South America. A gigabyte is a measurement unit for the storage capacity of an electronic device. [...] • 23% thought an “MP3″ was a “Star Wars” robot. It is actually an audio file.
• 18% identified “Blu-ray” as a marine animal. It is a disc format typically used to store high-definition videos.

• Steve Stockman’s “uncampaign” ends in unelection:

The Stockman campaign defied convention, often spectacularly so. He made what the Dallas Morning News called a “rare public appearance” on January 14, and then he disappeared. He wasn’t seen for days, during which time he missed 17 consecutive votes and his House office refused to say where he was. Then his staff switched gears, revealing that he had been in Russia, Egypt, and Israel and chiding American reporters for not paying attention to a press conference he’d held overseas. He came back in time for the State of the Union, only to theatrically storm out midway through.

His campaign office was literally condemned. His staff, such as it was, refused to alert reporters to upcoming public events, which may have been because there weren’t any.

• Hundreds of world cultural sites headed for Davy Jones’s Locker:

According to a new analysis published in Environmental Research Letters, roughly 136 of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s 720 World Heritage Sites, including the Statue of Liberty, Independence Hall, the Tower of London, and much of Riga, Naples, Venice, and St. Petersburg, will be underwater within the next 2000 years. That’s assuming just a 3-degree Celsius temperature increase over that time period (a full list of the sites is available in the paper).

• $ 30 million worth of buried gold coins not a mint heist says agent for finders. Here is a comment from a mint representative saying the same. Here is a newspaper story about the robbery. Check out the date.

“We’ve got a crack team of lawyers, and trust me, if this was U.S. government property we’d be going after it.” Richard Kelly, who wrote a book on the San Francisco Mint, sees a further issue with the dates of the uncovered coins—they’re stamped 1847 to 1894, and he thinks ones taken from the mint would be dated nearer to 1901.

“We assume from the times and all the records that they were new coins [taken]. Back then, once coins were printed they flew out of the mint.”

• On today’s Kagro in the Morning show, it’s Joan McCarter day! Topics: Bachmann haz a sad about Jews; CIA watches their watchers; GunFAIL “Where Are They Now?”; AMA, minimum wage, immigration roundup; Reid vs Koch & Lindsey Graham’s Benghazi freakout.

Daily Kos

Midday open thread: Hate groups by geography, HTML as STD, submerged world cultural sites

Midday open thread: EPA rules on sulfur in gasoline, okaying guns in Indiana school parking lots

• Today’s comic by Tom Tomorrow is A job for IHOTFM-Man!
  
  
  
  


• Here is what you missed on Sunday:
  

  
  

  • Sociopathic stance on Obamacare would be fatal to GOP if successful, by Egberto Willies
  
  
  • The Oscars 2014, by Dr. RJ
  
  
  • Steampunk Planet, by DarkSyde
  
  
  • Books: McKibben’s ‘Oil and Honey’ and Benfield’s ‘People Habitat’, by Susan Gardner
  
  
  • Egads, it sure is terrible when SOMEONE ELSE starts wars with trumped-up excuses, by Kos
  
  
  • How Republicans will try to block new tests for fetal disorders, by Jon Perr
  
  
  • The Republican Party’s transparent agenda of class warfare, by Laurence Lewis
  
  
  • Economic conservatives take religious conservatives for suckers, by Ian Reifowitz
  
  
  • The surrender of the left? Activism and electoral politics, by Armando
  
  
  • Women’s History: Native Americans, by Denise Oliver Velez
  
  

  
  


• Sulfur reduction in gasoline another EPA rule for right-wingers to bellyache about:
  

  The Environmental Protection Agency on Monday released a rulemaking to lower the amount of sulfur in gasoline and significantly reduce air pollution from automobile emissions.
  

  According to EPA, the rule will slash atmospheric concentrations of smog and soot by requiring refiners to cut back on sulfur concentrations by more than 60 percent in gasoline blends. The standards also set limits on tailpipe emissions from automobiles.

  
  

  “These standards are a win for public health, a win for our environment, and a win for our pocketbooks,” EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy said in a statement. “We’re continuing to build on the Obama Administration’s broader clean fuels and vehicles efforts that cut carbon pollution, clean the air we breathe, and save families money at the pump.”

  
  

  
  


• 12 Years a Slave, the rest of the Oscars:
  

  “I’d like to thank this amazing story,” said Steve McQueen, the British-born filmmaker who grasped a prize that has eluded African-American directors and their movies since the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences gave its first Oscars in 1929.
  

  “Everyone deserves not just to survive, but to live,” said Mr. McQueen, who dedicated the film to those who had endured slavery, both in the past and in the present.

  
  

  
  


• A corrected tweet and the tweet seen ’round the world breaks Obama’s record.


• How low can you go? Two arrested for armed robbery of woman in labor.


• Indiana poised to allow guns in school parking lots:
  

  Supporters of the measure say it would protect parents who inadvertently commit a felony by bringing their guns while picking up their children. Opponents worry easier access to guns could promote school shootings.

  
  


• Europe’s floods could quadruple by 2050:
  

  The UK has been hit hard by major flooding over the last few months, weather one Met Office scientist called the “most exceptional period of rainfall in 248 years.” Now, new research says extreme floods could become more common in Europe by 2050, causing the financial losses from these weather events to quadruple.
  

  The study, published Sunday in Nature Climate Change, found that instances of very extreme floods now occur around once every 50 years in Europe but could shorten to every 30 years by 2050, and that instances of extreme weather-related damage that now occur every 16 years could occur every 10. That means that Europe’s financial losses related to flooding, which now total about 4.9 billion euros a year, could increase almost 380 percent to 23.5 billion euros by 2050.

  
  

  
  


• Green Trans-Pacific Partnership? Hahahahahahaha:
  

  So in a hearing on Jan 28, Rep Mark Pocan (D-WI) asked Michael Froman—the US Trade Rep running the TPP show—about the environmental standards in TPP. Froman listed four areas in TPP that were “absolutely non-negotiable from a US standpoint,” including “tough new environmental standards.”
  

  When the meeting ended, Pocan asked “So does that mean that if we give you fast track, you won’t send us a deal that doesn’t have that stuff in it?’ At which point, we learned that the US Trade Rep uses a highly specialized meaning for the phrase “absolutely non-negotiable,” meaning “totally up for grabs,” because he immediately said, “I didn’t say that.”

  
  

  
  


• On today’s Kagro in the Morning show, Greg Dworkin rounds up Ukraine stories, Forbes discovers corporate citizenship. “When May I Shoot a Student?” Douthat’s “surrender.” Was Christie supposed to “save” Ft. Lee? Bunnygirl60′s Obamacare small biz goldmine.
  

Daily Kos

Midday open thread: EPA rules on sulfur in gasoline, okaying guns in Indiana school parking lots

Midday open thread: Feds lackadaisical about oil-field safety, oldest Holocaust survivor dead at 110

• Today’s comic by Tom Tomorrow is The gun:
  
  
  
  


• What you missed on Sunday Kos …
  
  

  
  

  • Goldilocks Old Party: Making the laws just right, by Mark Sumner
  
  
  • Should it be unfettered capitalism for the masses or real free enterprise?, by Egberto Willies
  
  
  • Hillary Clinton and a left flank: How a Clinton presidency could redefine progressive governance, by Armando
  
  
  • Black History is American history: Books you should read, by Denise Oliver Velez
  
  
  • Race and murder in America from the time of Jefferson Davis to Jordan Davis, by Ian Reifowitz
  
  

  
  


• The disrespectful silence of Clarence Thomas: Not one question in eight years:
  

  As for Thomas, he is physically transformed from his infamous confirmation hearings, in 1991—a great deal grayer and heavier today, at the age of sixty-five. He also projects a different kind of silence than he did earlier in his tenure. In his first years on the Court, Thomas would rock forward, whisper comments about the lawyers to his neighbors Breyer and Kennedy, and generally look like he was acknowledging where he was. These days, Thomas only reclines; his leather chair is pitched so that he can stare at the ceiling, which he does at length. He strokes his chin. His eyelids look heavy. Every schoolteacher knows this look. It’s called “not paying attention.”

  
  


• Eric Cantor: cheerleader for perpetual war:
  

  House Majority Leader Eric Cantor gave a speech last week at the Virginia Military Institute that left little doubt about his foreign-policy agenda: more wars of choice.
  

  Rob Golan-Villela of The National Interest is right: “Cantor’s FP speech is basically a mashup of every hawkish cliche and bit of threat inflation you’ve ever heard.” Cantor gives no hint of having learned anything from the mistakes of the aughts, and taking his advice would come at great cost in American blood and treasure.

  
  

  
  


• Oldest known Holocaust survivor dies at 100: Alice Herz-Sommer, thought to be the oldest survivor of the Holocaust, died in London on Sunday morning at the age of 110. A book of her memories, A Century of Wisdom, by Caroline Stoessinger, with a foreward by Vaclav Havel, was published in 2012. She was born in 1903 in Prague to a family of intellectuals and musicians. As a child, she spent weekends and holidays in the company of Franz Kafka, whom she knew as “Uncle Franz.” Gustav Mahler, Sigmund Freud and Rainer Maria Rilke were friends of her mother. In 1943, she and her family were transported to the concentration camp at Theresienstadt where her mother, husband and friends were murdered by the Nazis. After the war, she moved with her son to Israel. Golda Meir attended her house concerts, as did Arthur Rubinstein, Leonard Bernstein and Isaac Stern. As recently as two years ago, in her London home, she still practiced piano for hours every day.


• Wisconsin supreme court justices will decide on criminal probe of their own campaign donors:
  

  A criminal probe in Wisconsin targets several major spenders on state supreme court races. Yet the justices who benefited from that spending will likely get to decide whether this probe moves forward.
  

  Wisconsin prosecutors have been conducting a 2011-2012 campaign finance investigation targeting Republican candidates in the 2011 and 2012 recall elections and interest groups that spent money to support them. Though some targets of the investigation have not been publicly named, two business groups and a former aide to Gov. Scott Walker (R) have been named as targets.

  
  

  
  


• Houston Chronicle uncovers scandalous government inattention in oil-field safety:
  

  The boom that has brought prosperity to Texas has left a trail of death and devastation for many of the more than 100,000 workers in oil and gas exploration-related jobs. The death toll peaked at 65 in 2012—a 10-year high and 50 percent more than in 2011. Nationwide, 663 workers in oil field-related industries were reported killed in the drilling and fracking boom from 2007 to 2012, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. About 40 percent died in Texas.[...]
  

  The federal government has failed for 22 years to implement safety standards and procedures for onshore oil and gas drilling, even as offshore accidents such as the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico prompted officials to improve already stringent regulations governing offshore drilling.

  
  

  
  

  Of those accidents the Occupational Safety and Health Adminstration did investigate, 78 percent were found to involve safety violations.



• Oldest French outpost in North America was in what is now Georgia, not Florida?
  

  In an announcement that could rewrite the book on early colonization of the New World, two researchers today said they have proposed a location for the oldest fortified settlement ever found in North America. Speaking at an international conference on France at Florida State University, the pair announced that they have proposed a new location for Fort Caroline, a long-sought fort built by the French in 1564.
  

  “This is the oldest fortified settlement in the present United States,” said Florida State University alumnus and historian Fletcher Crowe. “This fort is older than St. Augustine, considered to be the oldest continuously inhabited city in America. It’s older than the Lost Colony of Virginia by 21 years; older than the 1607 fort of Jamestown by 45 years; and predates the landing of the Pilgrims in Massachusetts in 1620 by 56 years.”

  
  

  
  

  Not everybody agrees. Especially the people, including other scholars, who say the fort was established at present-day Jacksonville, Florida.



• On today’s Kagro in the Morning show, Greg Dworkin rounds up the weekend’s world events, health care pricing, the minimum wage fight, and different social media platforms affect news story reactions. Changes at Heritage. How procedure can drive politics.
  

Daily Kos

Midday open thread: Feds lackadaisical about oil-field safety, oldest Holocaust survivor dead at 110

Midday open thread: Bill tweet-teases Dubya, U.S. ivory sales banned

• Today’s comic by Jen Sorensen is The dignity of work:
  
  
  
  


• These Daily Kos community posts were the most shared on Facebook Feb. 17:
  
  

  1 in 4 Americans don’t think Earth revolves around the Sun, by BruinKid
  

  A Common Thread Among Young-Earth Creationists, Gun Enthusiasts, Marriage Exclusivists, and the 1%, by GrafZeppelin127

  
  

  Winners of Prestigious Journalism Award Afraid to Travel to U.S. to Accept It, by David Harris Gershon

  
  

  
  

• The deadline to submit a proposal for a panel, training or Screening Series session for Netroots Nation 2014 is Wednesday (Feb. 19). The full guidelines and submission form are at www.netrootsnation.org/proposals. The conference is July 17-20 in Detroit.


• Big Dog gently needles Dubya: Late on Presidents Day, former President Bill Clinton teased his successor, George W. Bush, for not being on Twitter.

Happy #PresidentsDay – to #44 (@BarackObama), #43 (#HowAreYouNotOnTwitter?), #41 (@GeorgeHWBush), & #39. #PresidentialTweeters
— @billclinton

Among the thousands of retweeters was President Barack Obama.

• Disgraced former Congressman Mel Reynolds busted in Zimbabwe for pornography:

He brought several Zimbabwean models and other women to his hotel room where he took photographs and videos, the newspaper reported. [...]

Reynolds complained that he was not expecting such treatment when he had brought investors to the country, according to the newspaper. He said he had been to Zimbabwe 17 times and had called for U.S. sanctions to be dropped against President Robert Mugabe and his top associates.

This is the latest of several legal problems for Reynolds, an Illinois Democrat, who once was a Rhodes scholar. Reynolds resigned from his congressional seat in 1995 after he was convicted of 12 counts of statutory rape, obstruction of justice and solicitation of child pornography. While in prison he was also convicted of bank and campaign fraud. He was in jail until his sentence was commuted by President Bill Clinton in Jan. 2001.

• An untoppable obit for Bill Eves:

After his retirement he pursued some of his many hobbies including cooking, carpentry, gardening and sending daily joke emails to family and friends. Perhaps most important to Bill was educating people on the dangers of holding in your farts. Sadly, he was unable to attain his life-long goal of catching his beloved wife Judy “cutting the cheese” or “playing the bum trumpet”—which he likened to a mythical rarity like spotting Bigfoot or a unicorn. He also mastered the art of swearing while being splattered by grease cooking his famous wings. In fact, he wove tapestry of obscenities that still hangs over the Greater Kingston Area

• Can creationist junk bonds keep Ken Ham’s Noah’s Ark theme park afloat?


• Having been told FDR died Monday, people offer condolences on TV:

Jimmy Kimmel sent a crew to get reactions to the “news” that Franklin Delano Roosevelt died yesterday. Big surprise: plenty of people wanted to be on teevee despite having no idea what they were talking about.

• Obama administration will prohibit most ivory sales. The ban, which is part of a new National Strategy for Combating Wildlife Trafficking, is not as complete as at least one Congressman would like it to be, but it is a good deal stricter than before. The U.S. is the world’s second largest market for ivory:

This unprecedented action is in response to the escalating and highly organized wildlife trafficking crime that threatens the survival of the African elephant, rhinoceros and a host of other species around the world.

“We are seeing record high demand for wildlife products that is having a devastating impact, with species like elephants and rhinos facing the risk of significant decline or even extinction.” said [Secretary of Interior] Sally Jewell. “A commercial ban is a critical element in the President’s strategy to stop illegal wildlife trafficking and to shut down criminal markets that encourage poaching.”

• Arkansas open carry advocates feel sure a new law endorses their position, but law enforcement disagrees, which is clearly tyranny. Armando on Hillary Clinton and 2016; Obama attacked over expansion of executive power.
  

Daily Kos

Midday open thread: Bill tweet-teases Dubya, U.S. ivory sales banned

Midday open thread: the House on Iran, "a little convenient massacre," "Cured" HIV patients relapse

• Today’s comic by Jen Sorensen is Comic: Nation of moochers:
  
  
  
  


• Rep. Sean Maloney will marry his long-time partner:
  

  With their marriage, Maloney will become the second member of Congress to legally wed his same-sex partner while in office. Former Rep. Barney Frank, D-Massachusetts, became the first to do so in 2012.
  

  Maloney and [Randy] Florke, who have three adopted children and live in Cold Spring, New York, got engaged on Christmas Day.

  
  

  Their youngest daughter, Essie, wrote a letter to Santa earlier that week, asking if he can “try making my wonderful fathers get married.”

  
  

  
  


• Markos abandons politics for a few moments to write about cyclist “Fast Freddie” Rodriguez.


• Jerkwad NY Post columnist calls Newtown “a little convenient massacre”:
  

  
  

  

  
  

  Fredric Dicker, widely regarded as one of the most influential media voices in New York state politics, made the comment on his radio show Monday. He was speaking about gun control legislation passed by the state’s governor, Andrew Cuomo.
  

  “That was his anti-gun legislation, which he had promised not to do, but then he had a little convenient massacre that went on in Newtown, Conn., and all of a sudden there was an opportunity for him,” Dicker said.

  
  

  
  

  When the backlash struck, Dicker did not apologize or back down. The rival NY Daily News featured Dicker on its front page Tuesday.



• Men supposedly cured of HIV by bone marrow transplant relapse:
  

  These two men were both HIV positive and had lymphoma, a type of cancer. They both received bone marrow transplants. Post-transplant they continued on their antiretroviral medicine (used to combat HIV) while the donor bone marrow cells engrafted. Researchers found that all traces of HIV in the patients vanished.
  

  They were followed and, in time, both patients stopped their antiretrovirals. They remained HIV free—or so everyone thought, since their viral loads were undetectable and no trace of HIV was found in peripheral blood cells.

  
  

  Unfortunately, over time, both relapsed and tests showed HIV was again (still) present.

  
  

  
  


• DEA let tech-savvy drug cartel do what it pleased:
  

  Catapults. “Jalapeños.” Dune buggies. $ 1 million subs. Sophisticated drug tunnels. Firetruck-sized industrial pipeline drills. These are just a few of the ingenious ways that Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel, arguably the world’s largest, most powerful and technologically advanced organized crime syndicate, has tried to perfect the fine art of smuggling drugs into America. And to think, the US’s premier drug enforcement arm gave the Sinaloa a pass to do so largely unhindered during the bloodiest stretch of Mexico’s drug war.
  

  That’s the thrust of a landmark investigation by El Universal, which found that authorities with the US Drug Enforcement Administration and the broader Department of Justice struck a deal with the Sinaloa, in exchange for intelligence about rival cartels. Citing court documents and extensive interviews with both Mexican and US officials familiar with the matter, El Universal reports that the US-Sinaloa arrangement lasted from 2000 to 2012.

  
  

  
  


• These Daily Kos community posts were the most shared on Facebook Jan. 13:
  
  

  WV: Freedom Industries Has Ties to Koch Brothers, by dharmafarmer
  

  “Like a Book Burning” The Canadian government is closing scientific libraries and destroying docs, by Pakalolo

  
  

  Inhofe Admits He Only Denies Climate Science Because He Doesn’t Like the Solutions, by TheGreenMiles

  
  

  
  


• Picking up seashells down by the seashore is an environmental problem:
  

  It’s a normal part of summer vacation: head to the beach, pick up a few seashells and take them home as keepsakes. But multiply this innocent activity by millions of tourists and we might have a big problem, researchers warn in PLOS ONE. Skyrocketing numbers of beachcombers are pocketing seashells, and the environmental effects could range from increased erosion to fewer building materials for bird nests.

  
  


• House Republicans could rescue Iran diplomacy: In the Senate, a majority supports adding economic sanctions to those already imposed on Iran, something the Obama administration and the Iranian foreign minister say could wreck efforts to come to agreement on international controls on Iran’s nuclear program. Sixteen Democrats, led by Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey have signed onto the sanctions bill introduced in December. Forty-two Senate Republicans have joined. But
  

  Enter House Republicans. The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that House GOP leaders are considering bringing the Senate bill to the House floor, a move that could inject a heavy dose of partisanship into what had been a bipartisan affair. If House Republicans take control of the legislation, Democrats may become more anxious about supporting it and less likely to buck the White House.
  

  “I’m hearing Cantor wants to take up the Menendez language,” confirmed one senior House Democratic aide. “Since the House has already passed a sanctions bill, it’s quite clear that this has turned into a completely political matter.”

  
  

  
  


• 
  
  
  

  On today’s Kagro in the Morning show, the Chris Christie and WV stories aren’t dead yet. Greg Dworkin brought us a round-up of the headlines on Christie and the latest on Obamacare, which is still a thing! Plus: new gun outrage out of FL. A retired police captain shoots a fellow movie-goer for texting during the previews. We return to the WV story for more on just what this spilled chemical is, how dangerous we should consider it to be, and whether or not Koch Industries really is connected to the situation. And just how did a relatively small spill end up contaminating the drinking water of nine counties? The answer, at least in part is privatization.

Daily Kos

Midday open thread: the House on Iran, "a little convenient massacre," "Cured" HIV patients relapse

Midday open thread: the House on Iran, "a little convenient massacre," "Cured" HIV patients relapse

• Today’s comic by Jen Sorensen is Comic: Nation of moochers:
  
  
  
  


• Rep. Sean Maloney will marry his long-time partner:
  

  With their marriage, Maloney will become the second member of Congress to legally wed his same-sex partner while in office. Former Rep. Barney Frank, D-Massachusetts, became the first to do so in 2012.
  

  Maloney and [Randy] Florke, who have three adopted children and live in Cold Spring, New York, got engaged on Christmas Day.

  
  

  Their youngest daughter, Essie, wrote a letter to Santa earlier that week, asking if he can “try making my wonderful fathers get married.”

  
  

  
  


• Markos abandons politics for a few moments to write about cyclist “Fast Freddie” Rodriguez.


• Jerkwad NY Post columnist calls Newtown “a little convenient massacre”:
  

  
  

  

  
  

  Fredric Dicker, widely regarded as one of the most influential media voices in New York state politics, made the comment on his radio show Monday. He was speaking about gun control legislation passed by the state’s governor, Andrew Cuomo.
  

  “That was his anti-gun legislation, which he had promised not to do, but then he had a little convenient massacre that went on in Newtown, Conn., and all of a sudden there was an opportunity for him,” Dicker said.

  
  

  
  

  When the backlash struck, Dicker did not apologize or back down. The rival NY Daily News featured Dicker on its front page Tuesday.



• Men supposedly cured of HIV by bone marrow transplant relapse:
  

  These two men were both HIV positive and had lymphoma, a type of cancer. They both received bone marrow transplants. Post-transplant they continued on their antiretroviral medicine (used to combat HIV) while the donor bone marrow cells engrafted. Researchers found that all traces of HIV in the patients vanished.
  

  They were followed and, in time, both patients stopped their antiretrovirals. They remained HIV free—or so everyone thought, since their viral loads were undetectable and no trace of HIV was found in peripheral blood cells.

  
  

  Unfortunately, over time, both relapsed and tests showed HIV was again (still) present.

  
  

  
  


• DEA let tech-savvy drug cartel do what it pleased:
  

  Catapults. “Jalapeños.” Dune buggies. $ 1 million subs. Sophisticated drug tunnels. Firetruck-sized industrial pipeline drills. These are just a few of the ingenious ways that Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel, arguably the world’s largest, most powerful and technologically advanced organized crime syndicate, has tried to perfect the fine art of smuggling drugs into America. And to think, the US’s premier drug enforcement arm gave the Sinaloa a pass to do so largely unhindered during the bloodiest stretch of Mexico’s drug war.
  

  That’s the thrust of a landmark investigation by El Universal, which found that authorities with the US Drug Enforcement Administration and the broader Department of Justice struck a deal with the Sinaloa, in exchange for intelligence about rival cartels. Citing court documents and extensive interviews with both Mexican and US officials familiar with the matter, El Universal reports that the US-Sinaloa arrangement lasted from 2000 to 2012.

  
  

  
  


• These Daily Kos community posts were the most shared on Facebook Jan. 13:
  
  

  WV: Freedom Industries Has Ties to Koch Brothers, by dharmafarmer
  

  “Like a Book Burning” The Canadian government is closing scientific libraries and destroying docs, by Pakalolo

  
  

  Inhofe Admits He Only Denies Climate Science Because He Doesn’t Like the Solutions, by TheGreenMiles

  
  

  
  


• Picking up seashells down by the seashore is an environmental problem:
  

  It’s a normal part of summer vacation: head to the beach, pick up a few seashells and take them home as keepsakes. But multiply this innocent activity by millions of tourists and we might have a big problem, researchers warn in PLOS ONE. Skyrocketing numbers of beachcombers are pocketing seashells, and the environmental effects could range from increased erosion to fewer building materials for bird nests.

  
  


• House Republicans could rescue Iran diplomacy: In the Senate, a majority supports adding economic sanctions to those already imposed on Iran, something the Obama administration and the Iranian foreign minister say could wreck efforts to come to agreement on international controls on Iran’s nuclear program. Sixteen Democrats, led by Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey have signed onto the sanctions bill introduced in December. Forty-two Senate Republicans have joined. But
  

  Enter House Republicans. The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that House GOP leaders are considering bringing the Senate bill to the House floor, a move that could inject a heavy dose of partisanship into what had been a bipartisan affair. If House Republicans take control of the legislation, Democrats may become more anxious about supporting it and less likely to buck the White House.
  

  “I’m hearing Cantor wants to take up the Menendez language,” confirmed one senior House Democratic aide. “Since the House has already passed a sanctions bill, it’s quite clear that this has turned into a completely political matter.”

  
  

  
  


• 
  
  
  

  On today’s Kagro in the Morning show, the Chris Christie and WV stories aren’t dead yet. Greg Dworkin brought us a round-up of the headlines on Christie and the latest on Obamacare, which is still a thing! Plus: new gun outrage out of FL. A retired police captain shoots a fellow movie-goer for texting during the previews. We return to the WV story for more on just what this spilled chemical is, how dangerous we should consider it to be, and whether or not Koch Industries really is connected to the situation. And just how did a relatively small spill end up contaminating the drinking water of nine counties? The answer, at least in part is privatization.

Daily Kos

Midday open thread: the House on Iran, "a little convenient massacre," "Cured" HIV patients relapse