Morning Reads: Wal-Mart to Face Biggest Black Friday Protests Ever

Good morning — and a very happy 52nd birthday to Jon Stewart!

Still full from last night? We hope you saved a little room for some Morning Reads…

Black Friday –> MoJo’s Josh Harkinson writes: “This year’s Black Friday protests will be the widest-reaching ever, organizers say, with pickets and strikes planned at 1,600 [Wal-Mart] stores in 49 states.” AND: At Jacobin Mag, Guy Rundle offers a history of Black Friday — it isn’t really when retailers start to see a profit for the year — and describes the annual frenzy of consumption as “a release from the duty of giving thanks, into a day of infantilized desire.” ALSO: Ferguson protesters spent part of their Thanksgiving going from store to store calling for a Black Friday boycott. AND: You can find out what Black Friday events are happening near you at blackfridayprotests.org.

Blurred lines –> Last week, US and Syrian jets struck the same rebel targets in separate raids. Anne Barnard reports for the NYT that it only reinforced the common perception among Syrians “that the Obama administration is siding with [Syrian President Bashar] Assad, [and] that by training United States firepower solely on the Islamic State it is aiding a president whose ouster is still, at least officially, an American goal.”

“Misled” –> At Vox, German Lopez reports on a review of the Ferguson grand jury documents by MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell, who found that just before Darren Wilson testified, “prosecutors gave grand jurors an outdated statute that said police officers can shoot a suspect that’s simply fleeing.” The Supreme Court ruled in 1985 that the law in question was unconstitutional but the jurors were led to believe the statute was in effect for more than two months of the proceedings.

Related –> San Francisco’s CBS affiliate reports that Demetrius Shelton, a former administrative law judge, “has spent the past four years teaching young kids how to avoid disaster when dealing with police today. Basically, Shelton teaches them how not to get shot.”

Two lemon wedges and 300 grand –> WaPo’s Rosalind S. Helderman and Philip Rucker got their hands on some internal communications earlier this year between Hillary Clinton’s representatives and UCLA. A campus lecture by the all-but-announced 2016 candidate was negotiated at the “special university rate” of $300,000. Her agents “exerted considerable control over her appearance and managed even the smallest details — from requesting lemon wedges and water on stage to a computer, scanner, and a spread of hummus and crudité in the green room backstage.”

Literary giants –> The publishers of a leatherbound special edition of Rand Paul’s 2012 boilerplate rant about the evils of big government, Government Bullies, claims that it’s a classic of political philosophy, right up there with the works of Adam Smith, Thomas Paine and John Locke. At The Daily Beast, Olivia Nuzzi notes that the volume contains “three entire pages [that] were proved to have been plagiarized from think tanks.”

“Every single turkey is guilty” –> John Oliver is on hiatus, but he took a few moments to share his thoughts on the annual ritual of the presidential turkey pardon.