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A Supreme Dereliction of Duty

Punishment that causes durable impairments of the punished person’s brain surely violates the Constitution’s Eight Amendment proscription of “cruel and unusual punishments.” So, the Supreme Court’s three “liberal” justices rightly dissented against the six “conservative” justices’ decision not to hear a case concerning the all-too-common prison practice of protracted solitary confinement. Michael Johnson, imprisoned in Illinois’ Pontiac Correctional Center for home invasion and assault, was a mental wreck before prison policy made him more so. The state’s ...

A Solution to Debt? Cut Spending

Congress just passed — and President Biden just signed — the latest short-term government funding bill to keep the government running. The bill, which essentially kicks the can down the road, ensures that taxpayers will continue to pay for a bloated government until January, Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Patty Murray, D-Wash., said: “... avoiding a (government) shutdown is so very far from mission accomplished. We have a lot of work to do after the dust settles and before the next shutdown deadline comes up.” In the past, this fake scenario of a government shutdown ...

Will New York Politicians Tax Wall Street Out of Existence?

Let’s face it. Anyone who works in, or just visits, the Wall Street area of Manhattan can’t deny the aura of power and money isn’t what it was 20, 30 or 50 years ago. The vibrancy, the financial dominance, the gusto seems to have gone missing — so have many of the Gordon Gekko high rollers. Today, Wall Street is less crowded. It’s sleepier. There aren’t exactly tumbleweeds blowing down Broad Street past the New York Stock Exchange, but it’s not the bustling place where the financial titans and the world’s money changers hang out anymore. To borrow a line from ...

‘Super Pigs’ In Canada Are Threatening To Invade U.S.

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — An exploding population of hard-to-eradicate “super pigs” in Canada is threatening to spill south of the border, and northern states like Minnesota, North Dakota and Montana are taking steps to stop the invasion. In Canada, the wild pigs roaming Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba pose a new threat. They are often crossbreeds that combine the survival skills of wild Eurasian boar with the size and high fertility of domestic swine to create a “super pig” that’s spreading out of control. Ryan Brook, a professor at the University of Saskatchewan and one of ...

Maui Wildfire Survivors Want Mayor To Convert Vacation Rentals Into Housing

LAHAINA, Hawaii (AP) — A group of Lahaina wildfire survivors is vowing to camp on a popular resort beach until the mayor uses his emergency powers to shut down unpermitted vacation rentals and make the properties available for residents in desperate need of housing. Organizers with the group Lahaina Strong are focusing on 2,500 vacation rental properties they’ve identified in West Maui that don’t have the usual county permits to be rented out for less than 30 days at a time. For years their owners have legally rented the units to travelers anyway because the county granted them ...

S. Korea Says North Fired Ballistic Missile Toward Sea

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korea said North Korea fired a ballistic missile toward the sea but the launch likely failed Wednesday night, hours after Seoul said it would resume front-line aerial surveillance in response to the North’s spy satellite launch. South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a brief statement early Thursday it detected the missile launch from the North’s capital region. It said the missile was fired toward the North’s eastern waters but that the launch was believed to have ended in failure. It gave no further details such as what type of missile ...