Washington Post, By Jeremy Borden, May 25

Woodbridge, VA - Before she was 2, her mother recalls, Lori Anne Madison was reading her first book — Dr. Seuss’s “Hop on Pop.” At age 3, she competed in her first spelling bee.

Now 6, Lori Anne is the youngest contestant on record to qualify for the Scripps National Spelling Bee. Her ticket to the competition that begins Tuesday was the word “vaquero,” meaning cowboy, which she spelled correctly to win the Prince William County bee.

It will get tougher onstage at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center when the home-schooled girl from Woodbridge faces 277 opponents, most of whom are at least twice her age. Last year, the winning word was “cymotrichous,” which means having wavy hair. The previous winner spelled “stromuhr,” which is a medical instrument.

But Speller 269, who will compete for $30,000, among other prizes, reports that she isn’t particularly nervous and isn’t cramming.

TomDispatch/TruthDig, By Chris Hellman & Mattea Kramer, May 22

Recent months have seen a flurry of headlines about cuts (often called “threats”) to the U.S. defense budget. Last week, lawmakers in the House of Representatives even passed a bill that was meant to spare national security spending from future cuts by reducing school-lunch funding and other social programs.

Here, then, is a simple question that, for some curious reason, no one bothers to ask, no less answer: How much are we spending on national security these days? With major wars winding down, has Washington already cut such spending so close to the bone that further reductions would be perilous to our safety?

In fact, with projected cuts added in, the national security budget in fiscal 2013 will be nearly $1 trillion—a staggering enough sum that it’s worth taking a walk through the maze of the national security budget to see just where that money’s lodged.

New York Times Editorial, May 19

Despite the persistent gender gap in opinion polls and mounting criticism of their hostility to women’s rights, Republicans are not backing off their assault on women’s equality and well-being. New laws in some states could mean a death sentence for a pregnant woman who suffers a life-threatening condition. But the attack goes well beyond abortion, into birth control, access to health care, equal pay and domestic violence.

Republicans seem immune to criticism. In an angry speech last month, John Boehner, the House speaker, said claims that his party was damaging the welfare of women were “entirely created” by Democrats. Earlier, the Republican National Committee chairman, Reince Priebus, sneered that any suggestion of a G.O.P. “war on women” was as big a fiction as a “war on caterpillars.”

ProPublica, By Abrahm Lustgarten, May 1

A new study has raised fresh concerns about the safety of gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale, concluding that fracking chemicals injected into the ground could migrate toward drinking water supplies far more quickly than experts have previously predicted.

More than 5,000 wells were drilled in the Marcellus between mid-2009 and mid-2010, according to the study, which was published in the journal Ground Water two weeks ago. Operators inject up to 4 million gallons of fluid, under more than 10,000 pounds of pressure, to drill and frack each well.

Carlos DeLuna was put to death in December 1989 for a murder in Corpus Christi. But he didn't commit the crime. Today, his case reminds us of the glaring flaws of capital punishment.

The Atlantic, By Andrew Cohen, May 14

Even for Justice Antonin Scalia, the crassest of the current United States Supreme Court justices, it was a particularly callous piece of writing. In 2006, in a case styled Kansas v. Marsh, the Court's five conservatives had just upheld a portion of Kansas' capital punishment law. The statute was interpreted to direct a sentence of death even if a jury found the "aggravating" and "mitigating" sentencing factors in equilibrium -- "equipoise," the Court lyrically called it. A tie, in other words, would mean death, not life.

For the majority, Justice Clarence Thomas had bent over backward to overturn a ruling by the Kansas Supreme Court that had declared the law unconstitutional. The High Court's four liberal justices had voted to uphold the Kansas ruling. Justice John Paul Stevens, the Ford appointee, chastised Thomas for reaching out so aggressively to overturn a state court on a matter of state law. And Justice David Souter, the Bush I appointee, wrote about how such "equipoise" necessarily precluded a death sentence.

BBC News, By Kate McGeown, May 14

Manila - When night falls in Manila, a wave of young people scurry into the skyscrapers which criss-cross the city.

They're call centre agents, and because most of their clients are on the other side of the world, the night shift is their busiest time.

Last year, with more than 600,000 call centre workers, the Philippines officially overtook India as the world's call centre capital.

Washington Post In The Loop Blog, By Emily Heil, May 14

Seems no one is immune from the tender mercies of the TSA pat-down. First, we learned that Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, was subjected to a handsy search. And now we learn of the latest high-profile search-ee: former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

Yeah, the guy who was once an advisor to presidents, the one who helped negotiate the end to the Vietnam War...and, oh yeah, he’s got a Nobel Peace Prize.

But not, apparently, in his pocket.

CNN, By Fareed Zakaria, May 6

Whatever you thought of President Obama's recent speech on Afghanistan, it is now increasingly clear that the United States is winding down its massive military commitments to the two wars of the last decade.

IBT, By Yifei Zhang, May 7

China will soon start drilling from an advanced new oil platform designed to tap into deep-sea petroleum resources in the South China Sea, according to reports in the country's official media on Monday.

The development is major technological progress for China, which claims to have developed the new platform indigenously through its state-owned corporation, China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) [NYSE: CEO, Hong Kong: 0883]. It also occurs in an area where China has clashed recently with neighbors including the Philippines.

BBC Newsnight, By Peter Taylor, May 9

Secret CIA video tapes of the waterboarding of Osama Bin Laden's suspected jihadist travel arranger Abu Zubaydah show him vomiting and screaming, the BBC has learned.

The tapes were destroyed by the head of the CIA's Counterterrorism Center, Jose Rodriguez.

In an exclusive interview for Newsnight, Rodriguez has defended the destruction of the tapes and denied waterboarding and other interrogation techniques amount to torture.

The CIA tapes are likely to become central to the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of 9/11, at Guantanamo Bay.

The formerly-gagged FBI translator-turned-whistleblower's new memoir is 'a masterpiece revealing corruption and unaccountability in Washington, D.C.' and 'a rotten barrel of toxic waste that will sooner or later infect us all'...

The Brad Blog, By David Swanson, May 2

Sibel Edmonds' new book, Classified Woman, is like an FBI file on the FBI, only without the incompetence.

The experiences she recounts resemble K.'s trip to the castle, as told by Franz Kafka, only without the pleasantness and humanity.

I've read a million reviews of nonfiction books about our government that referred to them as "page-turners" and "gripping dramas," but I had never read a book that actually fit that description until now...

Reuters, By Chris Michaud, May 1

New York - Nearly 15 percent of people worldwide believe the world will end during their lifetime and 10 percent think the Mayan calendar could signify it will happen in 2012, according to a new poll.

The end of the Mayan calendar, which spans about 5,125 years, on December 21, 2012 has sparked interpretations and suggestions that it marks the end of the world.

"Whether they think it will come to an end through the hands of God, or a natural disaster or a political event, whatever the reason, one in seven thinks the end of the world is coming," said Keren Gottfried, research manager at Ipsos Global Public Affairs which conducted the poll for Reuters.

New York Times, By Adam Davidson, May 1

Ever since the financial crisis started, we’ve heard plenty from the 1 percent. We’ve heard them giving defensive testimony in Congressional hearings or issuing anodyne statements flanked by lawyers and image consultants. They typically repeat platitudes about investment, risk-taking and job creation with the veiled contempt that the nation doesn’t understand their contribution. You get the sense that they’re afraid to say what they really believe. What do the superrich say when the cameras aren’t there?

With that in mind, I recently met Edward Conard on 57th Street and Madison Avenue, just outside his office at Bain Capital, the private-equity firm he helped build into a multibillion-dollar business by buying, fixing up and selling off companies at a profit. Conard, who retired a few years ago at 51, is not merely a member of the 1 percent. He’s a member of the 0.1 percent. His wealth is most likely in the hundreds of millions; he lives in an Upper East Side town house just off Fifth Avenue; and he is one of the largest donors to his old boss and friend, Mitt Romney.

ENE News, May 1

To: UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon

An Urgent Request on UN Intervention to Stabilize the Fukushima Unit 4 Spent Nuclear Fuel

Recently, former diplomats and experts both in Japan and abroad stressed the extremely risky condition of the Fukushima Daiichi Unit 4 spent nuclear fuel pool and this is being widely reported by world media. Robert Alvarez, Senior Scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), who is one of the best-known experts on spent nuclear fuel, stated that in Unit 4 there is spent nuclear fuel which contains Cesium-137 (Cs-137) that is equivalent to 10 times the amount that was released at the time of the Chernobyl nuclear accident. Thus, if an earthquake or other event were to cause this pool to drain, this could result in a catastrophic radiological fire involving nearly 10 times the amount of Cs-137 released by the Chernobyl accident.

Nearly all of the 10,893 spent fuel assemblies at the Fukushima Daiichi plant sit in pools vulnerable to future earthquakes, with roughly 85 times more long-lived radioactivity than released at Chernobyl.

New York Times, By Patricia Leigh Brown, May 1

HamTramck, MI — The prom countdown was nearly complete, the do-it-yourself Greek columns, pink and white tulle bows and plastic flutes with the “Once Upon a Dream” logo awaiting the evening of evenings.

But as she looked at her reflection in the mirror, her one-shoulder lavender gown matching the elaborate hijab that framed her face in a cascade of flowers — a style learned on YouTube — Tharima Ahmed knew that what lay ahead was more than simply a prom.

As organizer of Hamtramck High School’s first all-girl prom, which conforms to religious beliefs forbidding dating, dancing with boys or appearing without a head scarf in front of males, Tharima, 17, was forging a new rite of passage for every teenage Muslim girl who had ever spent prom night at home, wistfully watching the limousines roll by.

Rolling Stone, By Rick Perlstein, April 25

Once upon a time, in early 2004, I attended one of hundreds of "Parties for the President" organized nationwide for grassroots volunteers who wanted to help reelected George W. Bush, at a modest middle class home in Portland, Oregon. At one point, a nice old lady politely pressed into my hand a grubby little self-published pamphlet she had come upon, purporting to prove that Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry had faked the heroics that had won him three purple hearts in Vietnam. I added it to my mental store of the night's absurdities that I expected to hear rattling across the wingnutosphere the entire fall: "I still believe there are weapons of mass destruction"; "There is an agenda—to get rid of God in this country"; "John Kerry attended a party in which there was bad language!" What I didn't expect was to see Kerry's war-hero cred earnestly debated night after night on CNN. Then came August and "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" — and that little old lady's fever dream began dominating the media discussion of the campaign, and the rest, as they say, is history.

60 Minutes, By Leslie Stahl, April 29

Jose Rodriguez has no regrets about the CIA using "enhanced interrogation techniques" -- methods that some consider torture - on suspected al Qaeda members detained and questioned after 9/11. Lesley Stahl interviews the former head of the CIA's Clandestine Service about waterboarding and other methods he says were essential to getting information from suspected terrorists, and he denies claims that these harsh measures caused detainees to provide false or unreliable information that misled the CIA. In fact, Rodriguez says that high-level detainees Khalid Sheik Mohammed and Abu Zubaydah provided their best information only after harsh treatment, a claim that the CIA's own investigator general has challenged.

Video and transcript at the link.

The New York Times, By Stanley Fish, April 23

Early on in his new book, “College: What It Was, Is, and Should Be,” Andrew Delbanco of Columbia University quotes the economist Richard Vedder and the former university president William Brody to the effect that little has changed in higher education despite enormous changes in technology, demographics, funding models, and student habits and attitudes. Vedder notes that “with the possible exception of prostitution, teaching is the only profession that has had absolutely no productivity advance in the 2,400 years since Socrates.” Brody is less wry, but the point is the same: “If you went to a [college] class circa 1900, and you went today, it would look exactly the same.”

In many of the books on higher education now flooding the market, statements like those would be preliminary either to a denial of the point (everything is not the same; here are the new things we’re doing), or to an affirmation of it followed by detailed recommendations (here’s what we should do to catch up). Delbanco, however, not only accepts the fact that little has changed in the classroom — “most of what we see in the past looks a lot like the present” — he celebrates it in the course of answering his title’s question. College, he tells us, “is a hedge against utilitarian values” that “slakes the human craving for contacts with works of art that somehow register one’s longings and yet exceed what one has been able to articulate by and for oneself.”

The Nation, By Katha Politt, April 18

Has Ann Romney ever worked a day in her life? CNN pundit Hilary Rosen, not a Democratic strategist, said no way, prompting torrents of outrage from Fox, Republicans and New York Times columnist Frank Bruni, who loves his mother very much. Bertrand Russell, in his witty essay “In Praise of Idleness,” wrote, “What is work? Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth’s surface relatively to other such matter; second, telling other people to do so.” Clearly, between the houses and grounds, the five kids, the Cadillacs, the husband, the business socializing, the campaigning and, let’s not forget, that dog, Ann Romney has altered the position of much matter. Since it is not possible to run smoothly a multimillion-dollar multi-mansioned domestic establishment for seven people without at least some paid help, I’m guessing she probably instructed others in the proper positioning of matter as well. By Russell’s definition, Ann Romney has probably done a lot more work than I have. I sit at my desk and hours go by in which I seem to have hardly altered the position of anything, including myself.

An unprecedented look at the disastrous handling of the accident at TEPCO's nuclear power station explains why Japan still doesn't trust nukes.

By Bill Powell and Hideko Takayama, April 20

FORTUNE -- More than a year has passed since a massive earthquake and a series of tsunamis triggered the worst accident at a nuclear power plant since Chernobyl in 1986, but the epic debacle at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station remains front and center in Japan, at the very core of a historic debate over the future of nuclear energy—one that comes down to a fundamental question: Should nuclear power, which prior to the accident last year generated 30% of the electricity for the world's third-largest economy, have any future at all in Japan?

The Public Record, By Andy Worthington, April 14

On Monday, the Center for Policy and Research at Seton Hall University School of Law in New Jersey released a new report, “National Security Deserves Better: ‘Odd’ Recidivism Numbers Undermine the Guantánamo Policy Debate” (PDF), which analyzes the fundamental problems with the claims made by the Pentagon and the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) regarding the numbers of alleged “recidivists” freed from Guantánamo — in other words, those who, in the words of the DNI, have been involved in “planning terrorist operations, conducting a terrorist or insurgent attack against Coalition or host-nation forces or civilians, conducting a suicide bombing, financing terrorist operations, recruiting others for terrorist operations, and arranging for movement of individuals involved in terrorist operations.”

As I have been explaining since May 2009, when the New York Times published a misleading front-page story claiming that 1 in 7 released prisoners had engaged in recidivism, there have been two main problems with the recidivism claims: firstly, that, over the last three years, little effort has been made to distinguish between “confirmed” and “suspected” cases of recidivism; and secondly that, as the claims became more outrageous in 2010 and 2011, with completely unsubstantiated allegations that 1 in 5 of the released prisoners were recidivists, and then 1 in 4, the mainstream media unquestioningly repeated these claims, even though they were not backed up with even a shred of evidence.

Daily Mail, By Richard Shears, March 29

Hundreds of orangutans are believed to have died in fires deliberately lit by palm oil companies.

Conservationists say the rare Sumatran orangutan could be wiped out within weeks.

‘It is no longer several years away, but just a few months or even weeks before this iconic creature disappears,’ said Briton Ian Singleton, of the Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Programme.

Reuters, By David Cay Johnston, April 12

Across the United States more than 2,700 companies are collecting state income taxes from hundreds of thousands of workers – and are keeping the money with the states’ approval, says an eye-opening report published on Thursday.

The report from Good Jobs First, a nonprofit taxpayer watchdog organization funded by Ford, Surdna and other major foundations, identifies 16 states that let companies divert some or all of the state income taxes deducted from workers’ paychecks. None of the states requires notifying the workers, whose withholdings are treated as taxes they paid.

General Electric, Goldman Sachs, Procter & Gamble, Chrysler, Ford, General Motors and AMC Theatres enjoy deals to keep state taxes deducted from their workers’ paychecks, the report shows. Foreign companies also enjoy such arrangements, including Electrolux, Nissan, Toyota and a host of Canadian, Japanese and European banks, Good Jobs First says.

New York Times Motherlode Blog, By Karen Le Billon, April 13

Consider this: Our children are three times more likely to be overweight than French children. In fact, we lead the world in producing overweight children, but the French have one of the lowest rates of overweight children in the developed world.

The causes of obesity are complex (lifestyle, physical activity, poverty, food insecurity, genetics and obesogenic chemicals all play a role). But what we eat is undoubtedly a factor. Because of poor eating habits, the current generation of American children will suffer far more health problems — and perhaps have a shorter life expectancy — than their parents. We may be teaching our kids to eat themselves into an early grave.