Leid Stories – 12.01.15

Prosecuting Egregious Police Crimes: When the Law Is Out of Order
(Part 2: The Laquan McDonald Case)
Indicted last week on first-degree murder charges more than a year after he fired 16 bullets into Laquan McDonald, 17, Chicago Policer Jason Van Dyke sprang himself from a Cook County jail yesterday after posting bail.
Following yesterday’s discussion of the legal complexities of the Freddie Gray case currently being litigated in Baltimore, “Attorney at War” Alton H. Maddox Jr. looks at major legal challenges in prosecuting the police killing of McDonald.

Robert Reich – The Morality of a $15 Minimum

Have you noticed how often conservatives who disagree with a policy proposal call it a “job killer?” They’re especially incensed about proposals to raise the federal minimum wage. They claim it will force employers to lay off workers worth hiring at the current federal minimum of $7.25 an hour but not at a higher minimum. But as Princeton University economist …

Three companies say “No” to GMO Arctic apples

Wendy’s, one of the nation’s top restaurant chains, has confirmed the company does not plan to sell or use the Arctic apple. In the wake of widespread criticism of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) recent approval of the first genetically engineered apple, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently deemed the Arctic apple, owned by synthetic biology company …

Christina Sarich – GMOs Making You Sick? You Can File a Complaint with the FDA

Are you sick of unlabeled GMOs in our food? Let the FDA know. You can file a formal complaint. Let’s send them so many that their servers bust! FDA scientists once said that genetically modified ingredients were possibly unsafe. The agency ignored their own experts, and have since been acting like a dog on a chain, bowing to the whims of the …

Nadia Prupis – Initiatives to help addicts highlight links between legally prescribed pain medication and opioid addiction

Faced with a growing nationwide opioid addiction, health and consumer advocates say it’s time to identify and sever ties with the culprits behind the scourge—pain medication manufacturers and the companies who promote their products. In Massachusetts, which recently saw a spike in deaths related to heroin overdoses, police and community organizations in Gloucester implemented a new program this year—known as …

Harvard Finds Pesticide in 70% of Honey Samples Tested

The Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) issue you keep hearing about (the phenomenon that is killing our bees and butterflies), well it just got real again with a study from Harvard. The study shows that 70% of honey samples collected in Massachusetts contain at least one neonicotinoid, the pesticide class that biotech companies say have nothing to do with the bee die offs we …

Food is community

More Americans than ever before are supporting their local food markets, and it’s not just because they believe the food is fresher and tastes better. According to a new University of Iowa study, people are shopping farmers markets and joining food coops at record numbers because they enjoy knowing who grows their food. These so-called “locavores” are also driven to …

Chinese cave ‘graffiti’ tells a 500-year story of climate change and impact on society

An international team of researchers, including scientists from the University of Cambridge, has discovered unique ‘graffiti’ on the walls of a cave in central China, which describes the effects drought had on the local population over the past 500 years. The information contained in the inscriptions, combined with detailed chemical analysis of stalagmites in the cave, together paint an intriguing …

At Wall Street Journal, Government-Enforced Monopolies = ‘Free Market’ By Dean Baker

Those folks at the Wall Street Journal are really turning reality on its head. Today it ran a column by Robert Ingram, a former CEO of Glaxo Wellcome, complaining about efforts to pass “transparency” legislation in Massachusetts, New York and a number of other states. This legislation would require drug companies to report their profits on certain expensive drugs, as well as government funding …

New SWAT Documents Detail the Brutal Reality of U.S. Police Militarization – Carey Wedler

Massachusetts SWAT teams made headlines last year when they refused to grant a public information request to the ACLU, claiming they were “private companies” and, therefore, exempt from such inquiry. The ACLU subsequently sued, and last month, it received access to the documents it requested. The documents confirm that broad overreach, unnecessary and overblown tactics, and an eagerness to attack are increasingly present …