Good morning — happy Friday, happy Helen Keller Day and a happy 99th birthday to Grace Lee Boggs — an inspiration to Bill and many, many others!
Huge –> The Canadian Supreme Court issued a historic ruling on Thursday granting an aboriginal title to a chunk of land to the Tsilhqot’in Nation, and acknowledged that other native people could make similar claims to lands they’ve traditionally used for hunting or foraging. The ramifications are far-reaching. Sean Fine writes for the Globe and Mail that the Canadian “government still has a right to intrude but only if it can reconcile aboriginal interests with wider public purposes – which can include mining and logging projects and, though the court didn’t say so specifically, the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline.” Native people may now have a say in how resources are extracted across a broad swath of Canada.
Rewriting the map –> The Times of India: “A disintegrating Iraq would redraw Middle East’s map and geopolitical alignments.”
Freedom to be horrible –> Digby considers the proper response to the Supreme Court’s ruling that harassment-free “buffer zones” around abortion clinics violate the First Amendment.
“A practical constitutional solution” –> At SCOTUSBlog, Lyle Denniston looks at the nuts and bolts of the court’s decision to limit presidents’ power to make recess appointments.
Does that mean they can ignore the 4th Amendment? –> Radley Balko reports for WaPo that Massachusetts SWAT teams — “cops who carry guns, wear badges, collect paychecks provided by taxpayers and have the power to detain, arrest, injure and kill” — are claiming that they’re part of a private corporation that’s immune to open records laws.
He’s now trolling them –> Edward Isaac-Dovere and Andrew Restuccia report for Politico that Barack Obama is now mocking those who deny the scientific evidence of human-made global warming. RELATED: At The Republic Report, Lee Fang catches CNBC looking for a skeptic to write an op-ed about how “climate change is a hoax” — and mistakenly sending the pitch to a fiercely pro-science blog.
Labor battles without unions –> TAP’s Harold Meyerson looks at “the victories that striking Chinese workers have won over the past four years” — and one pro-democracy activist who’s been in the thick of the fight.
Getting into the weeds –> Pew released a new study of American polarization that breaks the polity into subgroups that reveal more nuanced contours than the usual red/blue divide. Dan Balz has the details at WaPo.
Pitchforks –> Nick Hanauer, the mogul who backed Seattle’s $15 per hour minimum wage ordinance, writes an open letter in Politico to his “fellow zillionaires,” warning them that if they don’t share some of the prosperity, they might wake up one day soon to find themselves at the wrong end of a popular uprising.
“A corporate feeding-frenzy” –> At Truthdig, Sonali Kohatkar offers five reasons why she won’t watch the World Cup, even though she loves soccer.
“DC’s top neocon finds his inner hippie” –> That’s how Eleanor Clift of The Daily Beast characterizes a new initiative by the president of AEI — the corporate-funded, right-wing think tank — to investigate “human flourishing and what makes people happy.”
