Morning Reads

Good morning — and happy Friday! 

Fourteen years ago today, the United States Supreme Court declared George W. Bush the winner of the 2000 presidential election. A consortium of news organizations later went back and examined 175,000 ballots. They concluded that if the limited recount ordered by the Florida Supreme Court had been completed, Bush would have won. But if all of Florida’s votes had been counted properly — according to the standards in place at the time — Al Gore would have eked out a narrow victory

Cromnibus lives –> That huge spending bill — aka “Cromnibus” — passed the House last night, despite opposition from a majority of Democrats and a handful of tea party Republicans. Now the measure moves to the Senate, where The Hill warns that “a similar debate may break out between liberal Democrats and the White House.” AND: WaPo’s Roberto A. Ferdman reports that the hard-right sees the bill as “a betrayal” because it didn’t repeal Obamacare or magically make Obama’s executive order on immigration go away. RELATED: TAP’s Paul Waldman writes that Republicans who believe “they’re going to manage anything other than a frustrating and humiliating defeat when they try to undo Obama’s executive actions” next year are going to be in for a rude awakening.

Illumination –> We have no idea how many people are killed by police officers in the US. The FBI collects the statistics that police departments voluntarily report, but only a fraction of all agencies send in data. Now, Kevin Johnson reports for USA Today that the new White House panel on policing “will consider establishing a national repository that tracks all manner of civilian deaths at the hands of law enforcement officers.” AND: MoJo reports that dozens of Congressional staffers walked out of Congress on Thursday to protest the grand jury rulings in the police killings of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. “The result was an incredible display of solidarity, with staffers raising their hands in the air to invoke Brown’s ‘hands up, don’t shoot’ image,” writes Inae Oh.

Defining torture down –> CIA chief John Brennan held a strange press conference at CIA headquarters on Thursday. He defended the agency, acknowledged that CIA officers used “unauthorized techniques,” which he called “abhorrent” but refused to characterize as torture, and said that it may or may not have been effective — who knows? Jennifer Epstein and Josh Gerstein have the details at Politico. COUNTERPOINT: At The Atlantic, Peter Beinart cuts to the chase in an article headlined, “Torture is who we are. A country, like a person, is what it does.”

At least he hopes it isn’t –> Rick Perry tells MSNBC, “Running for the presidency’s not an IQ test.” AND: Joshua Green writes at Bloomberg that Jeb Bush has a “Mitt Romney problem,” with lots of sketchy business deals “for the press to untangle.” BUT: Mitt Romney’s not sure he’d have a Mitt Romney problem if he chose to take another bite at the apple in 2016. Ben White and Maggie Haberman report for Politico that Romney’s not impressed with the Republican field and is warming to the idea.

Pineapple express –> The West Coast is getting pounded by one of the biggest storms in memory. It left tens of thousands without power in the north, and is now headed south. The so-called “pineapple express” is bringing much-needed relief to the drought-stricken state, but experts say it’s not enough to bring the epic dry spell to an end.

Garbage –> The most comprehensive study to date reveals that “more than five trillion pieces of plastic, collectively weighing nearly 269,000 tonnes, are floating in the world’s oceans, causing damage throughout the food chain,” Oliver Millman reports at The Guardian.

Gitmo –> According to AP, “President Barack Obama is driving a new push to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center despite congressional opposition.” With 12 prisoners transferred to Uruguay last week, Gitmo’s detainee population now stands at 136.

Embarrassing –> AP and The Guardian report that USAID “infiltrated [the] Cuban hip-hop scene to spark youth unrest.” They call it the latest chapter “in the US government’s hapless attempts to unseat Cuba’s communist government.”

Dinosaurs live among us –> At LiveScience, Tanya Lewis reports that “more than 200 scientists at 80 institutions spent more than four years sequencing the genomes of bird species,” and found that 95 percent of the world’s bird population proliferated from a small group of dinosaurs that survived the cataclysmic event that left most of their brethren extinct.

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