This is fairly preliminary data, but Rick Nevin reports that if current trends keep up, we'll end 2013 with the murder rate in America at its lowest rate in over a century. More MoJo coverage of the dangers of lead. Analytically speaking, murder is an especially interesting crime because we have pretty good homicide statistics going all the way back to 1900. Most other crimes have only been tracked since about 1960. And if you look at the murder rate in the chart below (the red line), you see that it follows an odd double-hump pattern: rising in the first third of the century, reaching a peak around 1930; then declining until about 1960; then rising again, reaching a second peak around 1990. It's been dr...

Tweet With its Jay-Z soundtrack, bizarre 3-D effects and commitment of Nick Carraway to a mental institution, Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby has seemed to some critics insufficiently deferential to a precious cultural totem. But long before it won silver in Modern Library’s list of the 100 best English-language novels, writers in The Nation offered drastically different assessments on both the book’s meaning and its legitimate place in the literary pantheon. Carl Van Vechten, a writer and photographer who later served as Gertrude Stein’s literary executor, reviewed The Great Gatsby for The Nation in the issue of May 20, 1925, just a month after the book’s publication: Mr. Fitzgerald is a born story-teller…[H]is work is imbued with that rare and ben...

Kolbe and Foley Former eleven-term Congressman Jim Kolbe (R-AZ) has been "living in sin" with his Panamanian lover, Hector Alfonso, for eight years. Today they will legally wed at the Cosmos Club in DC. (It's still illegal for same sex couples to marry in Arizona, although recent polling shows 55% of Arizonans support marriage equality.) Kolbe is the first gay congressman who voted for DOMA in 1996 to get married. Back then, Kolbe was a closeted mainstream conservative-- one of many in the House Republican caucus who, for one reason or another-- felt they had to vote against the interests of the LGBT community. The only "out" Republican-- and the only Republican-- to oppose DOMA was Steve Gunderson (R-MN), who had been publicly outed by raging homophobe "B-1 Bob" Dornan on the floor of the...

After watching him as a freshman senator, I never believed Obama would be a vehicle for Hope and Change. I voted for him in 2008 anyway. I couldn't force myself to do it again last November. Elizabeth Warren, on the other hand, is someone who I have actually bought into right from the start. I donated to her campaign and helped promote her cause. This week, her first proposed legislation has made me-- and thousands of others across the country who backed her-- proud. The Bank on Students Loan Fairness Act would lower student loan interest rates for one year from 3.4% to 0.75% -- the same rate the government loans money to the banks through the Federal Reserve discount window. As Senator Warren reminds us in the video above, student loan interest rates will double to 6.8% on July 1st withou...

By Agence France-PresseSaturday, May 18, 2013 11:55 EDT   Like Raw Story on FacebookTweetIt has been 150 years since Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson died, and visitors are still bringing flowers — and lemons — to shrines that honor the memory of the Confederate army general. Jackson was one of the most successful generals in the 1861-1865 US civil war, and according to legend he sucked on lemons as he entered battle. “Jackson is a hero to some, but strange enough to appeal to a lot of people,” said Beth Parnicza, pa...

By Paul Harris, The GuardianSaturday, May 18, 2013 12:05 EDT   Like Raw Story on FacebookTweetLouisiana governor uses speech to Virginia Republicans to say Barack Obama ‘bears responsibility’ as scandals continue The governor of Louisiana, Bobby Jindal, on Saturday called for any Inland Revenue Service officials who are found to have unfairly targeted conservative groups to be put in jail. In a speech to be delivered to Virginia Republicans, excerpts of which were released ahead of time, the likely 2016 preside...

By Agence France-PresseSaturday, May 18, 2013 12:12 EDT   Like Raw Story on FacebookTweetResidents of a New York City apartment building are up in arms over an exhibition of candid photographs one of their neighbors took of them, without their knowledge or permission. A gallery show — “The Neighbors” — of the pictures taken surreptitiously by American photographer Arne Svenson opened last week at the Julie Saul Gallery in lower Manhattan. The images were taken by Svenson through the windows of his apartment bui...

By The GuardianSaturday, May 18, 2013 12:24 EDT   Like Raw Story on FacebookTweetRaha Moharrak, who was among a party of 64 climbers, becomes first female from the country to scale the mountain A Saudi Arabian woman has become the first woman from her country to climb Mount Everest. Raha Moharrak was one of 64 climbers who scaled Mount Everest from Nepal’s side of the mountain on Saturday. Tilak Padney of Nepal’s mountaineering department says 35 foreigners accompanied by 29 Nepalese sherpa guides reached the 2...

By Agence France-PresseSaturday, May 18, 2013 12:44 EDT   Like Raw Story on FacebookTweetAusterity or growth? Europe’s struggling economies have faced the question without fully answering it in recent years, but the United States is on track to do both. Projections unveiled this week by the Congressional Budget Office indicate the US deficit will shrink more than 40 percent during fiscal 2013, returning to its lowest level in five years. The figures would likely be viewed with envy in European capitals as they ...

Everyone is allowed to have pet peeves, and here is one of mine: When people talk about generations. There is nothing more annoying and dilettantish than when a faux-intellectual tries to explain the mindset or behaviors of a particular generation. “The thing about… Original linkOriginal author: Pando Daily

San Francisco bacon restaurant forced to close over smell | The Raw Story By GlobalPostSaturday, May 18, 2013 13:02 EDT   Li...

By David FergusonSaturday, May 18, 2013 13:09 EDT   Like Raw Story on FacebookTweet On Friday night’s edition of “The Rachel Maddow Show,” host Rachel Maddow discussed how DC has worked itself into “scandal mode,” but over the wrong scandals. In the show’s opening segment, she questioned why no one who printed and quoted a doctored set of White House emails regarding the Benghazi attack has revealed the source of the misinformation. “In Washington today,” she said, “It’s still ‘Scandal o’Clock,’ all day.” Wi...

South Korea may launch world’s most ambitious cap and trade market | The Raw Story By CleanTechnicaSaturday, May 18, 2013 13:25 EDT   ...

Corporations are manufacturing uncertainty about scientific findings. Now scientists are fighting back. | The Raw Story By Moyers & CompanySaturday, May 18, 2013 14:08 EDT ...

Missouri Rep. Sue Allen (R) The Missouri legislature has allowed an anti-bullying bill (HB 134) to die, and its Republican sponsor is blaming her gay colleagues for killing it. For all of the effective anti-bullying measures Rep. Sue Allen’s bill included, it specifically banned the creation of enumerated lists of identities to protect, such as sexual orientation and gender identity. Enumerating protections has helped guarantee that anti-LGBT bullying does not go unreported, but according to Allen, they’re too “partisan”: I typically try to keep partisanship out of my message, but this is an issue for the Democrats who wish for certain students (GLBT –gay, lesbian, bisexual, & transgender) to be “enumerated” within school policies. [...] What “they” don’t seem to understand is that any...

Carolyn Compton is in a three year-old relationship with a woman. According to Compton’s partner Page Price, Compton’s ex-husband rarely sees their two children and was also once charged with stalking Compton, a felony, although he eventually plead to a misdemeanor charge of criminal trespassing. And yet, thanks to a Texas judge, Compton could lose custody of her children because she has the audacity to live with the woman she loves. According to Price, Judge John Roach, a Republican who presides over a state trial court in McKinney, Texas, placed a so-called “morality clause” in Compton’s divorce papers. This clause forbids Compton having a person that she is not related to “by blood or marriage” at her home past 9pm when her children are present. Since Texas will not allow Compton to mar...

A week after a bipartisan group of lawmakers on the House Financial Services Committee overwhelmingly approved a rollback of certain financial reforms contained in the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act, one of the Senate’s biggest consumer advocates is pushing back. Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D) came out swinging against the repeal of new rules meant to regulate derivatives, the complex financial instruments that were at “the center of the storm” that caused the financial crisis. The rules shouldn’t be weakened or repealed just because big banks want to see them eliminated, Warren argued Thursday, The Hill reports: “The big banks won some battles and lost some battles during the financial regulatory debate in 2009 and 2010, but their tune never changed and their lobbying never le...

(Credit: Pacific Standard Magazine)This week, news broke that a Michigan school district is barring two teens from displaying their pregnant bellies in their school yearbook. The school district’s superintendent explained that depicting images of teen pregnancy in the yearbook goes against the school’s mission of “promoting abstinence.” One of the pregnant teens said she “went to the bathroom and cried” upon hearing the news. Aside from the ironic fact that teens who receive abstinence-only education are actually more likely to become pregnant than the students who receive accurate sexual health information about prevention methods, the situation in Michigan also illustrates the pervasive negativity that Americans associate with teenage pregnancies. That attitude ultimately creates a envir...

By Anh Phan, Guest Blogger and Mari Hernandez, Guest Blogger on May 17, 2013 at 1:56 pm Since last November’s Presidential election, immigration reform with a road map to citizenship for the 11 million unauthorized immigrants living in the country has been gaining momentum. On April 16 the bipartisan Senate “Gang of 8″ introduced their immigration bill, and diverse groups such as organized labor, evangelical Christians, and business leaders have lent their support for reform. Just last month, the board of the Sierra Club, the oldest environmental organization in the United States voted to add their voice to the movement, officially supporting immigration reform, including a pathway to citizenship. In doing so they joined other well-known environmental leaders like Bill McKibben and Van ...

Opine away! Original linkOriginal author: Joe Romm

Since Congress recognized the gaping racial disparity between mandatory minimum sentences for crack offenses and cocaine offenses and reduced the ratio from 100-to-1 to 18-to-1, courts have grappled with when and how to apply the statute to already-decided cases. Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the reductions in the Fair Sentencing Act applied to at least those cases decided before the law was passed, but not yet sentenced. But questions remain about whether the statute applies retroactively to tens of thousands of other inmates who might seek reduced sentences. On Friday, a federal appeals court panel issued a sweeping decision that held the reduced sentencing ratio should apply retroactively to all cases, not just because that was the intent of the 2010 Fair Sentencing Act, ...

The story seems simple enough. First, on Wednesday a study came out that found 97% consensus on human-caused global warming in the peer-reviewed scientific literature. It was by our friends at Skeptical Science, John Cook and Dana Nuccitelli. Then on Thursday, President Obama tweeted the study to his 31,000,000 (!) followers: So how does the ever-shrinking Washington Post report the story? With the headline, “Obama tweet gets Australian researcher 31.5 million followers on Twitter.” #FAIL And just to be clear that the WashPost is in fact as confused and innumerate as their headline suggests, the story asserts: That tweet, according to the Sydney Morning Herald, led 31,541,507 people to decide to follow Australian climate change researcher John Cook on Twitter. The Herald didn’t, however, ...

After years of mismanagement, the Tribune Company newspapers -- including the Chicago Tribune and L.A. Times -- are up for sale.  And one of the potential buyers? The Koch brothers.  And wow are people outraged! Yes, it's those Koch brothers:the billionaire businessmen who run Koch Industries, a sprawling multinational corporation involved in everything from oil to fertilizer to paper towels.  But you probably know the Koch brothers for how they spend their considerable wealth: bankrolling right-wing political causes like the Tea Party movement, and funneling millions of dollars to front groups and politicians devoted to their anti-regulatory, anti-labor, and pro-corporate ideology.  The Kochs have spent millions propping up climate-change deniers, and have been instrumental in fund...

One of California’s great mysteries is the state’s governor, Jerry Brown. In a time when America’s politicians strive to be everywoman and everyman, Brown goes his own way. While a nation frantically chases youth, the 75-year-old governor who glories in his age and experience, is at the top of his game. In his new and informative biography of Brown, “Trailblazer,” journalist Chuck McFadden offers an explanation. He describes the governor as a “contrasting amalgam of religious questing, down-and-dirty politics, and consistent, fervent ambition.” (Full disclosure: As the book’s acknowledgements indicate, I saw the manuscript before it was published and made suggestions.) This examination of the qualities behind Brown’s longevity—he was previously governor from 1975 to 1983—is valuable...

The Pentagon will ask Congress to approve about $79.5 billion for combat operations, the least since 2005, as U.S. troops withdraw from Afghanistan, according to administration officials. The proposal for war operations, which aren’t included in the main Pentagon budget, may be submitted as soon as today, said the officials, who asked not to be identified discussing the funding request before it’s presented. War spending soared in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, peaking at $187 billion in fiscal 2008, when the U.S. had 166,300 troops in Iraq during the “surge” under President George W. Bush. The new request, the smallest since $75.6 billion in fiscal 2005, reflects President Barack Obama’s decision to draw down U.S. forces in Afghanistan, with the goal of remo...

Fox's Crowley: Obama Administration Has "Ideology Of Control" Like Communist, Socialist, Fascist Societies | Video | Media Matters for America Blog Video Research Issues DONATE © 2013 Media Matters for America. All rights reserved. Original link

"It's really no surprise that a number of these cases blew up on the IRS," said Marcus Owens, who ran the Exempt Organizations division from 1990 to 2000. "They had eliminated the trip wires of 25 years." Of course, any number of structural fixes wouldn't stop rogue employees with a partisan ax to grind. No one, including the IRS and the inspector general, has presented evidence that political bias was a factor, although congressional and FBI investigators are taking another look. But what is already clear is that the IRS once had a system in place to review how applications were being handled and to flag potentially problematic ones. The IRS also used to show its hand publicly, by publishing educational articles for agents, issuing many more rulings, and openly flagging which kind of no...

One of the oddest aspects of the IRS scandal was the way the story first came to light last Friday, when Lois Lerner, head of the IRS' tax-exempt organizations division, apologized for inappropriate targeting of conservative groups. The apology, a major admission, was delivered in a decidedly low-profile place: in response to a question from an attendee at a panel during the American Bar Association tax section's annual meeting in Washington D.C. It was such an unusual place for Lerner to drop such a bombshell, many people in the room thought the question had been prearranged. Turns out, it was. "It was a prepared Q & A," outgoing acting IRS chief Steven Miller told Congress on Friday, in response to a question from Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA). Nunes asked Miller if the question itse...

The twists in the Robert Menendez saga just keep coming. The Washington Post reported on Friday that federal investigators are looking at whether someone set out to smear the Democratic senator last year, while he was running for reelection in New Jersey. That question recently prompted FBI agents to visit the Florida offices of the brothers Alfonso "Alfy" and Jose "Pepe" Fanjul, to interview two of the world's "wealthiest sugar barons," whose holdings include Domino Sugar, according to the Post. Major political donors in the U.S., the Fanjul brothers are also the largest landowners and employers in the Dominican Republic. Last year, Alfy Fanjul reportedly called Menendez to express displeasure about the Senator's vote to end the Agriculture Department's long-running subsidy prog...

I'm not a tax accountable and I'm not an election attorney. But I do run a PAC and we have an accountant and an attorney on retainer to keep us from running afoul of the FEC's and IRS' myriad arcane rules and regulations. A few years ago, a notorious GOP shill complained that we were coordinating our campaign efforts with Nancy Pelosi. We sent in so much paperwork showing that we were working at cross-purposes to Pelosi by spending hundreds of thousands of dollars against Blue Dog Democrats she was helping to defend that the "case" was immediately thrown out. This was while Bush was president but the FEC staffer told me that the complaint came from someone does that all the time. There was also an instance of an FEC staffer who is a conservative and who was constantly harassing Blue Americ...