The Nightowl Newswrap

By @BG & @YD

• We fucking knew this would happen. They're trying the case in the press. The lead investigator into the killing of Trayvon Martin filed an affidavit the night of the shooting saying he wanted to arrest Zimmerman and charge him with manslaughter because he didn't believe Zimmerman's account of events, but the investigator was thwarted by prosecutors who didn't want to bring the case.

• Of course it happened on JetBlue. Proving once again that the crew is just as capable of freaking out spectacularly on an airplane as any passenger, the Captain of a JetBlue flight on Tuesday had to be subdued by passengers after he started screaming about a bomb and had to be ejected from the cockpit and locked out.

• General Clark calls out Romney for 'rehashing Cold War fears' Wesley Clark -- a former Democratic presidential candidate and one of the Generals who actually won the Cold War, accused Mittens of fearmongering about the Cold War in no uncertain terms on Tuesday after Rmoney actually said, out loud and on the record, that the former Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical threat the US faces today. We know. We were gobsmacked by the stupid, too.

• Rand Paul is the kind of guy who comes across as a total shithead even when you agree with him, doesn't he? On Tuesday Rand Paul blocked a sanctions bill against Iran by denying it unanimous concent and attaching an amendment that would prohibit any use of force against the Islamic Republic of Iran without the express consent of the Congress. You know -- that body tasked with declaring war, as set forth by the owners manual to our republic, right there in Article 1, Section 8?

• Of course, he comes off like a shithead 100% of the time, because he **is** a shithead. What else would you call someone who refuses to consider the position of the consumer getting screwed at the gas pumps. Those ingrates masquerading as consumers, you see, should be encouraging the oil companies and giving them perks, strokes and warm fuzzies to help them make more money, which they will totally pass on to their customers via lower gas prices. Or he's just a hopeless shithead.

• We beg to differ. Leon Panetta was feeling his Geritol this morning, apparently, when he said that "polls cannot dictate Afghan war withdrawal." He must have forgotten about the ones that are held in November of even-numbered years. Those polls sure as hell can, and he would do well to remember it.

• Someone needs a refresher course on what a small business actually is. Here's a hint -- an internet publishing company with 500 employees, a manufacturer of breakfast cereal with 1000 employees and a petroleum refinery -- ought not to qualify.

• Geraldo apologizes for trying to save the lives of brown teenagers. In what is a strong contender for the worst apology of all time, ever, Geraldo Rivera apologized to "anyone offended by what one prominent black conservative called my 'very practical and potentially life-saving campaign urging black and Hispanic parents not to let their children go around wearing hoodies.'"

• Meanwhile, at NRA headquarters, they're getting their gloat on and have rushed to market a brand new must-have item...a hoodie with a hidden pocket for your concealed firearm.

• No, dumbass. There's not an app for that. Senator Ron Johnson (Seriously, Wisconsin, what the fuck were you thinking when you installed this guy over Feingold???) has a solution for women who can't afford birth control. They should google it. No, we're not kidding.

• How many massacred citizens in a Syrian "peace plan"? "The Syrian government has agreed to accept the six-point plan by joint United Nations-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan on ending the violence in Syria, the former UN chief's spokesman has said. "The Syrian government has written to the joint special envoy Kofi Annan, accepting his six-point plan, endorsed by the United Nations Security Council," Ahmad Fawzi said in a statement on Tuesday."

• His PopeyRapeyness has no business lecturing anybody on "reform" or a "better society." "A top Cuban official has said there are no prospects for political change on the communist-run island despite Pope Benedict XVI's appeals for "renewal" and "a better society". Marino Murillo, Cuba's economic czar and a vice president on President Raul Castro's council of ministers, said on Tuesday that while the country is shaking up its economy, "in Cuba there will not be political reform". Murillo's comments to a room full of journalists covering the papal visit were a quick and categorical response to comments by Benedict earlier in the day, when he made a highly symbolic prayer visit to the shrine of the nation's patron saint."

• The situation in Mali is way more complicated than the news implies. "It's important to remember-- though the Western media doesn't ever report it-- that the Tuaregs who are now trying to carve out their own country there, only "gave up" widespread slavery a few years ago and only because of a catastrophic drought. To the Tuaregs this was a temporary imposition and they still hold tens of thousands of people in Mali, Niger, Mauritania and Burkina Faso in slavery. In Mali, the Bella are still slaves to the Tuareg in all but name. Keeping that in mind will help you understand why people are fleeing from the northern part of the country as the Tuaregs advance on cities like Kidal, Gao and Timbuktu. So the northern part of the country is engulfed in civil war with hundreds of thousands of people fleeing south to keep from falling into the clutches of the savage Tuaregs. And the government in Bamako has been incapable of any kind of effective response."

• Democracy fighters aren't giving up in Egypt. "Egyptian liberals and leftists wary of Islamist dominance of the assembly drafting a new constitution have said they will write their own, deepening a row overshadowing a major element of the transition from former president Hosni Mubarak. Liberals who quit the 100-member assembly in protest at its make-up were among those who signed a statement that pledged to write an alternative constitution to the one being drafted by the official body, which was formed at the weekend."

And finally...

• Cool Science News of the Week "The range of physical phenomena that scientists are trying to "cloak" objects from has a new entry - heat. French researchers have shown how to apply the ideas of "optical cloaking" - the endeavour to make a Harry Potter-style cloak - to the thermal world. The applications for the idea, outlined in Optics Express, stretch beyond hiding from thermal-imaging devices. It could also be used to direct and move heat around in temperature-sensitive electronics. There has been a tremendous amount of research into what is called transformation optics since it was first proposed as a means to an invisibility cloak in 2006. So far, all of the cloaking approaches have limitations that keep them well short of the invisibility promised in fiction. But more recently, similar ideas have been put to use to shield objects from magnetic fields or even from sound or seismic waves. All of these approaches aim to manipulate the peaks and troughs of waves to achieve their cloaking effects. But as Sebastien Guenneau of the Institut Fresnel in France explained, the transfer of heat is a subtly different business."

Add to del.icio.us

Digg this

Post to Furl

Add to reddit

Add to myYahoo!