Nitrogen gas manufacturers try to block use for executions

Many states in the US that still have the death penalty are finding it hard to find ways to execute people. Apart from the recorded cases of being unable to find veins into which the lethal drugs are delivered, the manufacturers of those drugs, not wishing to be associated with this death industry, are refusing to supply the drugs. But those states that are determined to retain the death penalty are now seeking other ways, even suggesting that we bring back hanging or the electric chair or the firing squad.

One method that is gaining vogue is to use nitrogen gas to essentially asphyxiate people. Given that nitrogen is so plentiful and makes up about 80% of the air around us, it would seem that getting access to it would be easy. But apparently it has to be bought from medical suppliers and three top suppliers that provide medical nitrogen are balking at having their product be used by the death industry.
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Trump gets good and bad legal news

The good news for serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT) is that a panel of New York state appeals court judges has agreed to a reduction in the bond that he has to pay in his appeal of the civil fraud judgment obtained by state attorney general Letitia James to $175 million, and given him ten days to come up with the money. The original amount of $454 million plus interest was due today and SSAT’s lawyers had said that he could not pay it. This allows the appeal to go ahead once he pays this reduced amount but he will still have to pay the full amount if his appeal fails. The appeals process could take several months.

The bad news for him is that the judge overseeing the criminal case involving his hush money payments to Stormy Daniels has rejected his appeal for further delays and has scheduled the trial to begin on April 15th with jury selection. The original trial date was set to begin earlier this month and Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg had already agreed to a one month delay due to new documents surfacing.
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The UFO cult

I do not believe that we have been visited by extra-terrestrials. However, I do think it is quite possible, even likely, that intelligent life has emerged in many places in the universe. The universe is an immensely large place with an estimated 1022 stars within the visible part and since we know that the probability of intelligent life, let alone any kind of life, emerging is not zero (since it has happened here), it is not hard to imagine that it also emerged elsewhere.

What I do not believe is that they visited here, simply because of the vast distances that they would have had to travel, even if they originated on a planet of the nearest star to the Sun. To be able to traverse such distances would require some spectacularly new science and technology that is unlike anything that we know, that is also able to circumvent the limits of the speed of light and the lifetimes of organisms that seem to be so firmly based.

Furthermore, the idea that they have arrived and are playing coy by giving us just hints of their visits, and that the government is covering up those visits, adds another layer of implausibility. Why go to all the trouble of interstellar travel just to take a peek and go away? To arrive here would require incredibly sophisticated technology. To think that they were able to do that only to have their craft crash in the desert in the US, not just once but several times, just compounds the unbelievability.
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The student loan problem

John Oliver explains why so many students in the US acquire such large college debts and have a hard time paying off their loans. It is a familiar story. A government program meant to serve a good end is handed over to the supposedly efficient private sector to manage, which then turns out to be both inefficient and corrupt and results is people making loan payments for decades while making hardly a dent in the principal.

Oliver says that Joe Biden, over the objections of Republicans and obstacles placed by the US Supreme Court, has actually managed to eliminate or reduce student debt for a considerable number of people.

The Havana syndrome is still a mystery

The strange symptoms reported by US diplomatic personnel at various locations around the globe got the name ‘Havana Syndrome’ because it first surfaced in Havana in 2016. They complained of headaches, dizziness, nausea, hearing sounds, and difficulties with thinking and sleep;.

But repeated efforts to try and identify any kind of systematic pattern that might lead to a diagnosis of the cause have come up short, with various alternative theories being postulated ranging from the benign (that the sounds were caused by crickets) to sinister (that the diplomats were being targeted as part of some kind of technological warfare). But none of the theories covered all the cases.
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Revolting evidence of people’s capacity for brutality

I am old enough and have read enough history to know that people can act in incredibly cruel ways towards other people. The current conflicts in Gaza, Haiti, Yemen, Sudan, and other places provide enough testimony as to how people can be so lacking in empathy that they can subject their fellow human beings to such awful treatment. And yet, I still feel disgusted and shocked when I read news stories that take place outside of conflict zones that describe awful behavior.

Take the case of how six white police officers in the town of Rankin, Mississippi treated two black men in their own home.

The group of six burst into a Rankin County home without a warrant and assaulted Jenkins and Parker with stun guns, a sex toy and other objects. Elward admitted to shoving a gun into Jenkins’ mouth and firing in a “mock execution” that went awry.

Once inside, they handcuffed Jenkins and his friend Parker and poured milk, alcohol and chocolate syrup over their faces. They forced them to strip naked and shower together to conceal the mess. They mocked the victims with racial slurs and shocked them with stun guns.

After Elward shot Jenkins in the mouth, they devised a coverup that included planting drugs and a gun. False charges stood against Jenkins and Parker for months.
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“I am hurt. I am broken,” Jenkins wrote in his statement. “They tried to take my manhood from me. They did some unimaginable things to me, and the effects will linger for the rest of my life.”

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Judicial body calls a halt to judge shopping

Big legal news occurred recently that did not receive the widespread coverage that I thought it deserved. One of the quirks of the legal system in the US is that it is possible for a federal judge in one local jurisdiction to make rulings that apply nationwide. Furthermore, in some instances, a case can be filed in a any jurisdiction. This has resulted in what has come to be known as ‘judge shopping’, where people look around to see if they can find a judge who will be sympathetic to their case and file their case in that jurisdiction.

One safeguard against abuse of the system is that there are 94 federal districts in the country with multiple judges in each and when a case is filed in them, it is assigned randomly to a judge in that district, so you are not guaranteed to get the judge you want. But in the case of Texas (of course!), each district is split up into smaller divisions and in some divisions there is only one judge, so that any case filed in that division will be sure to be heard by that judge.

Enter Matthew Kacsmaryk. He is is the only federal trial judge in Amarillo, Texas. Any case filed in Amarillo automatically goes before him. He is a Trump appointee who is an advocate of the Christian right and makes no bones about ruling in the most extreme way in favor of his ideology. He has been the go-to judge for anti-abortion advocates and other rightwing zealots.
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John Oliver takes on Boeing

His show Last Week Tonight looked at the decline in quality of aircraft produced by the company after the merger with McDonnell Douglas, when the focus shifted from producing high quality planes to worshipping at the shrine of the holy capitalist trinity of increased profits, share prices, and executive compensation.

Much of the factual information he presented had been covered in more depth in the 2022 documentary Downfall that I reviewed two months ago, but this was shorter, is more accessible to the general public, and Oliver adds his usual humorous touch.