Good morning!
On this date 57 years ago, North Carolina Sen. Strom Thurmond began an unsuccessful attempt to filibuster the Civil Rights Act of 1957. He spoke for 24 hours and 18 minutes, setting a record for the longest filibuster by a single senator.
Today also marks the 46th anniversary of the infamous police riot that broke out during the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Police brutalized thousands of anti-war protesters on nationwide television as the demonstrators chanted, “The whole world is watching.”
Hacked? –> Bloomberg’s Michael Riley and Jordan Robertson report that the FBI believes Russian hackers “attacked the U.S. financial system in mid-August, infiltrating and stealing data from JPMorgan Chase & Co. and at least one other bank” in retaliation for sanctions imposed on Russia by the US. We should note that this potentially explosive story relies solely on unnamed sources.
Warplan –> Josh Rogin reports for The Daily Beast that the Obama administration is poised to expand its air war against the Islamic State into Syria, “but nobody knows yet how we can do it… or what will happen next.”
They need a raise –> LA Mayor Eric Garcetti is expected to call for a hike in the city’s minimum wage to $13.25 per hour over the next three years, according to the LAT. AND: The UC Berkeley Labor Center released an analysis of the impact of a proposed $15 per hour minimum wage in San Francisco. It concludes that 23 percent of the city’s workforce would see a boost in their incomes, with only “a modest impact on business operating costs and consumer prices” and “no measurable effect on employment.”
How the Supreme Court protects bad cops –> Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Irvine School of Law, writes in the NYT that SCOTUS “has made it very difficult, and often impossible, to hold police officers and the governments that employ them accountable for civil rights violations.” AND: At The Atlantic, Garrett Epps looks at the “extreme partisanship” of the court under Chief Justice John Roberts.
Call it what it is –> Max Fisher at Vox: “Let’s be clear about this: Russia is invading Ukraine right now.”
“It’s not rocket science; it’s money and politics” –> At Rolling Stone, Tim Dickinson calls corporate inversions the biggest tax scam ever. He writes that Democrats’ proposed reforms “would reward the crooked accounting of US-based multinationals,” while Republican-backed legislation “would only make the crisis worse.”
How to start a riot –> Several local officials tell MoJo’s Mark Follman that in the aftermath of the Michael Brown shooting, police in Ferguson ran over a makeshift memorial on the street, and in another instance an officer allowed his dog to relieve itself on it.
Women “barely receptive” to GOP –> Two Republican groups considered to be aligned with the party’s “establishment” released a detailed report on women voters which found that they perceive the GOP as “intolerant,” “lacking in compassion” and “stuck in the past.” Jake Sherman and Anna Palmer report for Politico. ALSO: Mitt Romney finally won one, as he blew away all of the potential 2016 candidates in a a USA Today/Suffolk University poll of likely Republican caucus voters in Iowa.
“Go back to believing whatever you believed” –> On Thursday, Vox reported that “Sopranos” creator David Chase had confirmed that Tony Soprano did not die in the hit series’ finale, but Chase released a statement saying the report was inaccurate and that the question of Tony Sopramo’s fate is a “spiritual” one, with no right or wrong answer. Via: Time.
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