Today’s comic by Ruben Bolling is Nate the Right Pundit, in 'Skeptic Shock':
• Obama administration pressures states to reduce use of solitary confinement:
The Obama administration is pressing individual states to join its mission to cut back on the use of solitary confinement in US prisons, in the hope of reining in a practice that is still widespread despite having been denounced as potentially amounting to torture.
The drive from the White House and Department of Justice is tacit recognition that without the cooperation of state corrections departments and legislatures – many of them Republican-controlled – the goal of reducing solitary confinement will remain a pipe dream.
• Army Ranger Capt. Kristen Griest will become the Army’s first female infantry officer today:
More women are expected to follow in her footsteps; the Army earlier this month announced that it had approved requests from 22 female cadets to enter as second lieutenants in the infantry and armor branches. Thirteen of the new officers will enter into the armor branch, the other nine will go infantry. After commissioning, the new officers must successfully complete branch-specific training before they will qualify as infantry and armor officers.
• House panel votes to require women to sign up for the draft: But the measure—approved 32-30—isn’t supported by its own author. Republican Rep. Duncan Hunter, a Marine veteran who served three combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, opposes drafting women for combat and is against letting women serve in the infantry and special operations positions. Hunter supported the bill as a way to to get a discussion going on the Pentagon's decision in December to rescind gender restrictions on military service without considering whether to lift the exclusion of women from the draft. That decision, he said, should be up to Congress not the executive branch. Hunter tried to convince colleagues on the House Armed Services Committee that drafting women would mean they’d actually be involved in combat, which he depicted as something they shouldn’t do, because, you know, bloody: "A draft is there to put bodies on the front lines to take the hill," Hunter said. "The draft is there to get more people to rip the enemies' throats out and kill them."
• Those eggs certified as “humane”? Maybe they aren’t.
• 1st Quarter GDP comes in at 0.5%: Reduced consumer spending and lowered business investment put growth in inflation-adjusted (real) gross domestic product for the first three months of 2016 at 0.5 percent, the Commerce Department announced Thursday. It was the lowest level in two years. Real GDP growth in the third and fourth quarters of 2015 was 2 percent and 1.4 percent respectively. Although analysts expect GDP to improve in the second quarter, there are clear signs that it won’t come anywhere near the 3.9 percent growth in the second quarter of 2015. It appears we’re headed for yet another year of steady but weak 2 percent growth in the economic recovery that began in mid-2009. Real GDP grew 2.4 percent last year. The report Thursday is the first of three assessments of GDP growth for the first quarter. Revisions in May and June will give a better picture of the situation based on additional data.
• Chancellor on paid leave over paying consultants to scrub UC Davis’ on-line image:
The chancellor of the University of California's Davis campus was put on paid leave amid an uproar over her service on corporate boards and the school's hiring of consultants to improve its image online, following the widely criticized pepper-spraying of protesters by campus police, the university's president announced.
UC President Janet Napolitano plans to appoint an independent investigator to examine the "serious and troubling" questions raised by the actions of Chancellor Linda Katehi and to determine if they violated any university policies, Napolitano's office announced in a statement Wednesday.
• Eight years ago, Michigan technician sought to manipulate lead test results:
A newly resurfaced email demonstrates that in 2008 an official from the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) tried to game lead tests by suggesting that technicians collect extra water samples to make the average lead count for a community appear artificially low.
The email was sent in response to a test result that showed one home’s lead levels were ten times the federal action level of 15 parts per billion, and urged the lead test technician to take an additional set of water samples to “bump out” the high result so that the MDEQ wouldn’t be required to notify the community of the high levels of lead in its water.
• On today’s Kagro in the Morning show: Greg Dworkin helped round up the day’s news. John Boehner is enjoying retirement! Trump read something from a teleprompter. Near-nightmare on campus, featuring GunFAIL. Does a bat s**t in the woods? It does if the woods are in Oklahoma.
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