Good morning — and Happy World Statistics Day! It’s probably celebrated by .000012 of the population.
The “Saturday Night Massacre” took place on this date in 1973. Then-Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus resigned in protest of Richard Nixon’s decision to fire special Watergate prosecutor Archibald Cox.
Stat of the day: 84.8 percent — the share of Russia’s wealth held by the top 10 percent of households, giving the country the largest wealth gap in the world, according to Credit Suisse’s Global Wealth Report. The US ranked seventh, with 74.6 percent of its wealth held by the top 10 percent.
Modern poll-tax –> You’ve probably heard by now that the Supreme Court ruled early Saturday morning that Texas could enforce its voter ID law despite a previous judicial finding that it was “enacted with a racially discriminatory purpose.” HuffPo’s Braden Goyette looks at Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s blistering dissent.
Related –> Sheryl Gay Stolberg reports for the NYT that Democrats are desperately trying to get African-American voters to turn out for the midterms. They think that control of the Senate depends on it but “the one politician guaranteed to generate enthusiasm among African-Americans is the same man many Democratic candidates want to avoid: Mr. Obama.”
Potential good news –> Public Health Agency of Canada scientists donated an experimental Ebola vaccine to the World Health Organization, which will begin clinical trials with the drug later this month. Hannah Thibedeau has the story for CBC News. AND: The University of Chicago’s Harold Pollack writes in Politico that despite some early missteps, the US public health system is working pretty well. BUT: The NYT’s Kevin Sack, Jack Healey and Frances Robles look at the “21 days of fear and loathing” those suspected of having Ebola face in quarantine. ALSO: pediatrician Russell Saunders writes at The Daily Beast that groundless Ebola panic has taken over his small clinic.
Big case –> At Salon, Heather “Digby” Parton looks at the ramifications of a key case that the Supreme Court will hear this term: Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. The Inclusive Communities Project could effectively gut the Fair Housing Act’s already limited powers. AND: At The New Yorker, Jeffrey Toobin speaks with Barack Obama about his judicial legacy.
White-on-white violence –> Melanie Plenda reports for The Daily Beast that rioters in New Hampshire clashed with police on Saturday night and Sunday morning as “parties celebrating the annual Keene Pumpkin Festival turned into violent chaos.” On Twitter, activists used the incident to highlight issues with the media’s coverage of protests in Ferguson, Missouri.
Very, very strange –> Oakley, Michigan, is a tiny town of 290 people with a 100-strong “reserve police force” that’s partly funded by anonymous donors. For 10 years, the village council has ignored FOIA requests to release the names of the officers, and when they finally voted to comply, “a high profile Detroit lawyer” sent the council letters warning that doing so would risk bringing attacks on the officers by the Islamic State. Jason Ditz has the details of the story — first reported by the Saginaw News — for AntiWar.com.
“The game is rigged!” –> During her first stop in a three-state tour to get out the vote for her fellow Dems, Elizabeth Warren delivered what WaPo’s Paul Kane described as “a speech that was a mix of professorial lecture and progressive call to arms.”
“Fiercest fighting in days” –> Took place in the besieged Syrian town of Kobani over the weekend, according to The Irish Times, as IS militants re-entered the city despite stepped up US airstrikes. AND: The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that 10 civilians were killed in airstrikes on Saturday. Via: Reuters. AND: At The American Interest, Henri Barkey writes that what has become an epic defense by outgunned Kurdish forces may become “a defining moment of nationhood and identity” for Kurds living in Syria, Turkey and elsewhere.
Sixty-four years and counting –> Troops from North and South Korea exchanged gunfire across their border for 10 minutes over the weekend, according to the BBC. It was the latest in a series of skirmishes over the past month, but “it is not clear if the increasingly frequent clashes are the actions of local soldiers in a tense situation, or part of a wider provocation by either side.”
“A mobilization of Swedish ships, troops and helicopters unseen since the Cold War” –> Tensions between Moscow and the EU over the former’s intervention in Ukraine continue to rise, and the Swedish military “hunted suspected Soviet submarines along its coast with depth charges” over the weekend. Niklas Pollard has the story at Ha’aretz.
“Their struggles” –> Jezebel’s Nell Scovell compares the memoirs of 17-year-old Malala Yousafzai, the Nobel Peace Prize recipient who was shot by the Taliban for advocating that girls attend school — and Bristol Palin.
You can get our Morning Reads delivered to your inbox every weekday! Just enter your email address below…
