Morning Reads: Holder Calls for Halt to Executions; "Astonishing" NSA Spying

Good morning! It’s Ash Wednesday — the first day of Lent for Roman Catholics and most Protestants. And on this date in 1970, the Chicago Seven — including Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin and Tom Hayden — were found not guilty of inciting riots during the 1968 Democratic National Convention.

Stat of the day: 62 percent — The share of jailed inmates who could be released at any given time if they had enough money to make bail, according to a new report by the Vera Institute of Justice (MoJo has a write-up of the report’s key findings).

“Astonishing” NSA spying –> The NSA developed cutting-edge malware that a Russian security firm claims has been used “to infect thousands of computer systems and steal data in more than 30 countries around the world,” reports Ryan Gallagher at The Intercept.

“There is no ability to correct a mistake” –> The Supreme Court will hear an appeal challenging the death penalty from death row inmates in Oklahoma. On Tuesday, US Attorney General Eric Holder called for a halt to all executions in the US until the Court issues its decision later this year. Lydia Wheeler has that story for The Hill.

Columnist-in-chief –> Barack Obama has an op-ed in the LAT laying out his administration’s strategy for fighting back against extremist groups. AND: State Department spokesperson Marie Harf has been taking fire from critics on the right after telling Chris Matthews that “We cannot kill our way out of this war,” and that, over the long term, will need to address the root causes for the rise of ISIS. This is the view of most anti-terror experts, and Harf is standing her ground, saying her statement was perhaps “too nuanced” for detractors. Mediaite has more. MEANWHILE: The BBC reports that a police official in the Iraqi town of al-Baghdadi claimed that Islamic State fighters burned 45 people to death, but “the fighting and poor communications in the area make it difficult to confirm such reports.” AND: Julian Barnes and Adam Entous report for the WSJ that “the US has decided to provide pickup trucks equipped with machine guns and radios for calling in US airstrikes to some moderate Syrian rebels.”

Counter-offer –> We’ve mentioned that Republicans have signaled they’ll aggressively pursue “entitlement reform” in the new Congress. Dylan Scott reports for TPM that Democrats are coalescing around the argument that the way to improve Social Security and Medicare’s long-term balance sheets is to scrap the payroll tax-cap and make high earners pay the same rate as everyone else.

Grifters gonna grift–> There have been a number of reports of major tea party and other conservative groups raising bundles of money from gullible small donors but using it to line organizers’ pockets rather than elect like-minded candidates. Travis Gettys reports for Raw Story that conservatives have largely dismissed previous stories about this trend because they were published by the “liberal media.” But now a new study of 17 groups conducted by RightWing News comes to the same conclusion, and it’s causing widespread outrage on the right.

“Trains hauling crude oil across North America just keep exploding” –> That’s the headline on James West’s report for MoJo on Monday’s “bomb-train” derailment in West Virginia, which “sparked massive explosions that prompted the evacuation of two nearby towns, and an oil spill that threatened the water supply of thousands of local residents.” Also reporting on the story for Grist magazine is our friend and colleague John Light.

“A lavish lifestyle buttressed by the… potentially illegal use of taxpayer funds” –> The US media have largely focused on the political intrigue surrounding Benjamin Netanyahu’s upcoming speech before Congress, but just weeks before Israelis head to the polls, the country’s comptroller, Yosef Shapira, released a long-anticipated investigation into the prime minister’s use of taxpayer money to finance the Netanyahu family’s plush lifestyle. Luke Brinker has more at Salon.

The Stoned Age –> Researchers have found a fungus similar to ergot, which is the source of the psychedelic drug LSD, on some of the oldest specimens of grasses ever discovered — grasses found inside a 100 million-year-old piece of amber. According to a new study published in the journal Paleodiversity, there’s little doubt that herbivorous dinosaurs consumed large amounts of grass containing the fungus, but we will probably never know precisely what effect it had on the animals. Phillip Smith reports for AlterNet.

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