Judge: No evidence of crimes in Planned Parenthood videos

SAN FRANCISCO -- Recordings secretly made by an anti-abortion group at meetings of abortion providers do not show criminal activity and could put the providers at risk, a federal judge said Friday, citing the recent shooting at a Colorado Planned Parenthood clinic.

U.S. District Judge William Orrick made the comments during a hearing over the National Abortion Federation's request for a preliminary injunction that would continue to block the release of the recordings. Orrick did not immediately issue a ruling. He previously issued a temporary restraining order blocking the recordings pending the outcome of the preliminary injunction hearing.

Hasty, Fearful Passage of Cybersecurity Bill Recalls Patriot Act

Jenna McLaughlin

Congress easily passed a thinly disguised surveillance provision—the final version of the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act, or CISA— on Friday, shoehorned into a must-pass budget bill to prevent a government shutdown before the holidays.

Born of a climate of fear combined with a sense of urgency, the bill claims to do one thing—help companies share information with the government to heed off cyber attacks—and does entirely another—increases the U.S. government’s spying powers while letting companies with poor cyber hygiene off the hook. It’s likely to spawn unintended consequences.

US agency rarely intervened in projects that could risk endangered species

Of 88,000 actions assessed by the Fish and Wildlife Service, only two triggered more significant action in past seven years, new study finds

Oliver Milman

The US government has not halted a single project out of the 88,000 actions and developments considered potentially harmful to the nation’s endangered species over the past seven years, a new study has found.br />
An analysis of assessments made by the US Fish and Wildlife Service, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that the agency very rarely used its powers to intervene in projects that could imperil any of the US’s endangered plants and animals, which currently number almost 1,600.

2016 Ballot Effort to Privatize California Public Employee Pensions Faces Rocky Start, New Poll Finds

Pension reduction is not a top issue for voters.

By Steven Rosenfeld

The conservative obsession to cut public employee pensions is facing an uphill climb in California, according to a newly released poll that found ambivalent support for a pair of 2016 ballot measures pushed by former San Jose and San Diego officials.

According to a Capital & Main-David Binder statewide poll of 500 likely voters, there’s roughly a 40-40 split, with the rest undecided, for both measures. The first would move newly hired state and local government employees from traditional pensions to 401(k)-style plans. The second would impose a cap on how much government could pay for retirement benefits for new hires, where the most paid would be 13 percent of wages.

In US, poverty dampens genetic influence on IQ

An analysis of data gathered from 14 independent studies indicates that the influence of genes on intelligence varies according to people's social class in the US, but not in Western Europe or Australia. The findings are published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

Research suggests that genes and environment both play a critical role in shaping a person's intelligence. A longstanding hypothesis in the field of behavioral genetics holds that our potential intelligence, as set by our genes, is more fully expressed in environments that are supportive and nurturing, but is suppressed in conditions of poverty and disadvantages. While some studies have provided evidence supporting this hypothesis, others have not.

Natural or manmade quakes? New technique can tell the difference

Stanford's School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences

A new study by Stanford researchers suggests that earthquakes triggered by human activity follow several indicative patterns that could help scientists distinguish them from naturally occurring temblors.

The findings were presented this week at the American Geophysical Union's fall meeting in San Francisco.

Justice Ginsburg’s Ominous Warning About Creeping Corporate Power

by Ian Millhiser

If you’re a business looking for new ways to squeeze money out of your consumers without having to worry about whether doing so is illegal, than you had a very good day in the Supreme Court on Monday. In its first divided decision of the current Supreme Court term, the Court held in DIRECTV v. Imburgia that the satellite television company DIRECTV could effectively immunize itself from many suits claiming that they charged illegal fees, despite the fact that this decision cuts against language in DIRECTV’s own contract. Only three justices, the conservative Clarence Thomas and the liberals Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor, dissented.

On the surface, not very much is at stake in DIRECTV. The company allegedly charged early termination fees that violate California law. If the plaintiffs win, they get their fees back. So this is hardly a case where some innocent’s life or livelihood is at stake.

Anti-corruption reforms should pay more attention to threats of violence

University of Gothenburg

In low-income countries, government officials who refuse to be bribed to turn a blind eye to crimes are often threatened with violence. Up until now, not enough attention has been paid to this problem when anti-corruption reforms have been developed. Moreover, systems with merit-based salaries can even increase corruption. This has been shown in a doctoral thesis from the University of Gothenburg.

It is difficult to find measures that will reduce small-scale corruption in, for instance, countries where the police often accept bribes in order to turn a blind eye to crimes. One explanation for this is the social expectations within these bureaucracies: few officials stand to gain anything personally by being the first person to refuse a bribe and therefore the most effective measure would be to change the whole system at once if possible. Another frequently used explanatory model states that corruption can best be counteracted by changing the incentives for the officials, i.e. more monitoring and heavier penalties for those who commit irregularities, and higher pay for those who stick to the rule book.

Here’s what you need to know about the new Paris climate agreement

By Ben Adler

PARIS, France — The Paris Agreement to address climate change, adopted on Saturday, will be remembered as a big step forward and at the same time a frustrating set of compromises and omissions.

The COP21 conference brought every country to the table, they all accepted the science of climate change, and they agreed to work together to do something about it. But some proved more ambitious than others, and the rich countries didn’t come up with enough money to get the best deal possible.

Paul Krugman: Hope From Paris

Did the Paris climate accord save civilization? Maybe. That may not sound like a ringing endorsement, but it’s actually the best climate news we’ve had in a very long time. This agreement could still follow the path of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which seemed like a big deal but ended up being completely ineffectual. But there have been important changes in the world since then, which may finally have created the preconditions for action on global warming before it’s too late.

Until very recently there were two huge roadblocks in the way of any kind of global deal on climate: China’s soaring consumption of coal, and the implacable opposition of America’s Republican Party. The first seemed to mean that global greenhouse emissions would rise inexorably no matter what wealthy countries did, while the second meant that the biggest of those wealthy countries was unable to make credible promises, and hence unable to lead.

David Dayen: The Real Roots of the Rising Right

Financial crises always result in a far-right political bump, a new study finds. But Democrats made this one worse.

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Rank-and-file Democrats have had a fairly bad run politically since the 2008 elections. They lost the House of Representatives in 2010 and the Senate in 2014. They’ve lost more than 900 state legislative seats, 30 state legislative chambers, and eleven governorships. Republicans enjoy their largest majority in the House since 1930, and the largest percentage of state legislatures ever.

Open up your pundit suggestion box and you can pull out a panoply of rationales for this unprecedented misery: Backlash against an historically anomalous president. Low turnout in midterm elections when left-leaning constituencies stay home in disproportionate numbers. Sophisticated GOP voter-suppression techniques supporting that low-turnout strategy. The post-Citizens United power of Big Money.

Joseph Stiglitz: Inequality is now killing middle America

Life expectancy is now declining for middle-aged white Americans, especially those with a high school education or less

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his week, Angus Deaton will receive the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics “for his analysis of consumption, poverty, and welfare.” Deservedly so. Indeed, soon after the award was announced in October, Deaton published some startling work with Ann Case in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences – research that is at least as newsworthy as the Nobel ceremony.

Analysing a vast amount of data about health and deaths among Americans, Case and Deaton showed declining life expectancy and health for middle-aged white Americans, especially those with a high school education or less. Among the causes were suicide, drugs, and alcoholism.