Morning Reads: Frackers Pollute CA's Water; Anonymous Hacks the Klan

Good morning!

Forty-one years ago today, Richard Nixon claimed at a televised gathering of journalists that he welcomed an investigation into the Watergate burglaries. “People have got to know whether or not their president is a crook,” he said. Then, after a pause, he uttered one of the most famous phrases in our political history: “Well, I am not a crook — I earned everything I got.”

Stat of the day: 32 percent — what Americans believe the current unemployment rate is, according to a recent poll. The real number is 5.8 percent.

Gruesome –> Islamic State militants released a video over the weekend depicting the beheading of an American aid worker — the third US citizen to die in such a gruesome fashion — as well as 18 Syrian prisoners, according to the BBC. AND: At The Washington Post, terrorism analyst Rita Katz writes that the war in Syria and Iraq is taking its toll on some Westerners who went over to the Middle East to join the Islamic State: many of the weary foreigners are not sure they can ever return home.

But not a drop to drink… –> NBC reports that California officials “allowed oil and gas companies to pump nearly three billion gallons of waste water” from fracking “into underground aquifers that could have been used for drinking water or irrigation.”

KKK’s bad weekend –> Last week, the racist terror group distributed flyers warning they’d respond to protests in Ferguson, Missouri, with “lethal force.” In response, the hacktivist group Anonymous outed a number of St. Louis-area Klan members and took over the group’s Twitter account, according to Tom Boggioni at Raw Story.

Details, details –> Want the low-down on Obama’s much-anticipated executive order giving about half of the undocumented immigrant population relief from deportation? Over at MoJo, Ian Gordon has a quick summary of the specifics. ALSO: While conservatives claim that using prosecutorial discretion in this way is evidence of White House tyranny, the AP reports that “two of the last three Republican presidents – Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush – did the same thing” to shield immigrants from deportation, but “there was no political explosion then comparable to the one Republicans are threatening now.”

Panic pays –> Buzzfeed’s Alex Campbell and Andrew Kaczynski tell the story of a con artist who won a New York City contract by convincing city officials that he was uniquely qualified to clean up Ebola contamination.

Partisan games can be dangerous –> Kristina Wong reports for The Hill that “the GOP Congress could doom” the nuclear deal President Obama has been negotiating with Iran.

“Clearly, this report was buried” –> Dan Gearino reports for The Columbus Dispatch that a state-funded study into Ohio’s green job market that found the state had gained more jobs from renewable energy than previously estimated was kept under wraps during debate over a bill that will cut support for Ohio’s green economy.

Method to his madness –> Carol J. Williams reports for the LAT that Vladimir Putin’s belligerent stance toward NATO makes a lot of sense in light of today’s domestic political landscape in Russia.

Nightmares are a type of dream –> Tara Culp-Ressler at ThinkProgress: “Scott Walker: Denying Health Care To Low-Income People Helps Them ‘Live The American Dream.’”