Today’s comic by Mark Fiore is Hiding, Secret and Shell:
What’s coming up on Sunday Kos …
- The “next Einstein” could come from Africa, by Sher Watts Spooner
- How to elect more and better Democrats? Run them, by Mark E Andersen
- This week shows, again, just how different the two parties are—even on economic issues, by Ian Reifowitz
- The reality of rape: “I will find you,” by Susan Grigsby
- Casting and color. Hamilton and Broadway history, by Denise Oliver Velez
- Will the Democratic primary implode like the Republican primary, by Egberto Willies
- What Trump said about punishing women who seek abortions was just part of the GOP’s actual agenda, by Laurence Lewis
- The GOP’s other convention battle: The 14th Amendment, by Jon Perr
• Gray whale makes its way into Seattle’s Ballard Locks: On-lookers have gotten a lot of snapshots of the whale, which is said to have been hanging around in Puget Sound for several weeks and got into the locks once before. Gray whales are migrating north at this time of year, and one source suggests that perhaps this one is having a hard time making that tough thousands-of-miles trip. Volunteers with SnoKing Marine Mammal Response have been visiting to the locks to check on the whale and give bystanders some informal education about whales.
• There are many gaps in Americans’ knowledge of the Zika virus and what’s being done about it.
• “Amoris Laetitia,” the pope’s 256-page apostolic exhortation on family life, says maybe to divorce, no to marriage equality:
The reformist pope often appeared to strike a pragmatic balance and offered no changes in church laws — either to the status of gay people or those who divorce and remarry outside the church.
But his words on whether select divorced and remarried Catholics could take Holy Communion immediately set off division and debate over whether and how much he had expanded the freedom of Catholics and their priests to make that call. Though observers had hoped for clarity, the pontiff’s ambiguity on access to the sacrament could sow tensions as a divided church hierarchy parses his words like so many tea leaves.
• Lady Gaga and Vice President Joe Biden greet each other on stage as part of “It’s On Us” initiative: The recording artist had a quiet word on stage with the vice president after she performed for students as part of the national It's On Us Week of Action at the Cox Pavilion in Las Vegas. The It's On Us initiative was launched by the White House in 2014 to raise awareness about the importance of preventing sexual assaults on college campuses and supporting survivors of sexual assault.
Things you can do to participate:
Take the pledge. Commit to ending sexual violence on your college campus by signing the pledge here.
Take action on campus. Sign up to receive information from the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network to start a conversation on your campus.
Share the National Sexual Assault Hotline with a friend or loved one. Call 800.656.HOPE.
Spread your ideas on the subject using the hashtag #ItsOnUS.
Intervene. One of the most effective ways to prevent rape is to mobilize men and women on campus to join together in stopping perpetrators before they can commit a crime. If you see a friend in a situation that doesn’t feel right, find a non-confrontational way to step in.
• Goldwater Institute attacks Indian Child Welfare Act that Goldwater himself supported: The law, passed in 1978, was an attempt to end more than a century of racist “kill the Indian, save the child” practices that Shannon Smith, executive director of the ICWA Law Center in Minneapolis, says were designed to “educate the Indian out of a child.” Those practices separated thousands of American Indian children from their parents, their culture, their language and their religion. The ICWA gives tribes exclusive jurisdiction over child custody for most American Indian children living on reservations, mandates that placement of these children be with extended family, other members of the child’s tribe, or other Indian families when possible, and requires “active efforts” be taken to remedy a situation be made before an Indian child is placed in foster care or parental rights are terminated. But the right-wing Barry Goldwater Institute for Public Policy Research, which normally deals with issues of private property and government regulations, views the ICWA as providing “separate, unequal, and substandard treatment” to Indian children and is an attempt to keep tribal numbers high.
• Virgin Islands AG subpoenas Competitive Enterprise Institute in a widening of the investigations into Exxon and other companies on denier climate change propaganda:
The Competitive Enterprise Institute, a conservative Washington, D.C., think tank and one of the fossil fuel industry's most steadfast allies, disclosed on Thursday that the attorney general of the U.S. Virgin Islands is demanding to see records of the group's donors and activities involving climate policy.
The subpoena represents a broadening of a multifaceted legal inquiry into whether fossil fuel companies broke any laws as they sought for decades to undermine the scientific consensus and head off forceful action to address the climate crisis.
• On today’s Kagro in the Morning show: an in-depth look at the process of locking down delegates, the role money plays in this inside baseball. Can delegates be bought outright? Sure! Is that terrible? Maybe! Can we explain why that answer isn’t just “yes”? Yes!
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