Barrett Brown’s latest letter from prison

I have written before about journalist Barrett Brown who is currently in federal prison (see here, here, and here). The Intercept has been periodically publishing his letters from prison and they make for fascinating reading about life inside. He casts a sardonic eye on his surroundings and manages to wring humor out of his experience though I suspect that it is a lot more grim than he makes out. He has just been transferred to a different medium security prison at the Federal Correctional Institution Three Rivers after a series of run-ins with the authorities at the previous prison in Fort Worth that resulted in him being sent repeatedly to the ‘hole’, the name prisoners give to solitary confinement.
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Watch shameless Ted Cruz lie again

The ability of people who are seeking to run for the US presidency to lie so brazenly never ceases to amaze me. At the risk of beating a dead horse, here is another example of how some Republican presidential candidates simply make stuff up and are not at all embarrassed at being called on it. In fact, they have turned the response to being caught lying into an art form.
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The US Senate inches slowly towards accepting climate change reality

The US Senate which boasts, despite all the evidence, that it is the world’s greatest deliberative body, voted 50-49 for cloture on an amendment that stated that “climate change is real and that human activity significantly contributes to it”. Since the cloture rules require 60 votes, the amendment did not pass. All the Democrats voted in favor of it except minority leader Harry Reid, probably for tactical reasons. Five Republicans voted in favor of Schatz’s amendment.
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The problem of bullying in the internet age

The desire to wield power over other people and to get enjoyment from doing so are unpleasant traits. While the structure of complex modern society requires hierarchies that have people in positions in authority over others, the exercise of power often extends well beyond the demands of one’s job and some people seem to actually enjoy having others be submissive to them and belittling and humiliating them.
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Here’s a tough question: Who is worse, Trump or Cruz?

We are at the stage where the two leading Republicans are Donald Trump and Ted Cruz who lead the polls but also have high negatives. If these two are the only ones left standing after the early primaries, then party members, especially those in the establishment, will be forced to choose between two candidates they detest. The New York Times, as befits a paper that serves as the mouthpiece for the establishment, has editorially slammed both of them and endorsed John Kasich (and Hillary Clinton on the Democratic side), not that the Republican party base will care what the paper thinks and will actually see it as an endorsement of Trump and Cruz.
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How the views of Sanders and Trump have evolved over time

As we have seen, Donald Trump’s views on a whole host of issues have changed over time, shifting from more liberal to hardline conservative, especially since he entered the race. The efforts of his rivals to bring this up have been surprisingly lackluster with the ad below being the most pointed but it appeared a little late in the game and may be too late to derail Trump.
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A stinging indictment of Wall Street and the Justice Department

I have written repeatedly about how the Obama administration has treated with kid gloves the top executives of the big financial institutions even though they were responsible for the financial crisis of 2008 that ruined the lives of so many people. Now the office of US senator Elizabeth Warren has issued a short (8-pages plus three pages of endnotes) but biting report titled Rigged Justice: 2016 How Weak Enforcement Lets Corporate Offenders Off Easy that hits hard at the fact of wrongdoing by several major corporate entities, the major banks and investment houses among them, and that the Justice Department has not taken meaningful action against any of them.
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