Tea With The Mad Hatter

(Reuters) - At least nine people, including a young girl, were shot on Sunday when gunfire erupted at a Mother's Day parade in New Orleans, police said.

Gunfire rang out at 1:45 p.m. local time as the second line of the parade passed the 1400 block of Frenchmen Street in the city, New Orleans Police Department spokesman Garry Flot said.

Nine people were struck by bullets, including a girl aged about 10, who was grazed on her side, Flot said. The condition of the other shooting victims was not immediately clear.

Emergency medical responders took nine people to University Hospital, eight of whom had gunshot wounds, while another person was injured in a fall while escaping the shooting....

By Brett Arends (Marketwatch)

Anyone who feels cynical about the U.S. media has been having a good few weeks.

There have been the high profile goofs — by CNN, in its coverage of the Boston bombings, and by Howard Kurtz, the famous media “critic,” in a blog post about gay athlete Jason Collins. The Tribune Company faces a potential takeover by the, er, colorful Koch brothers.

And it all comes, with perfect timing, on the tenth anniversary of the exposure of Jayson Blair, the serial fabulist, at the New York Times.

It’s become a cliché these days to say you don’t trust the media. But you know what? You’re right not to do so.

The problems aren’t as bad as they appear. They are much, much worse.

And, as usual, almost everyone is focused on exactly the wrong things.

The problem isn’t that the occasional journalist makes a mistake on deadline. We’re human, folks. The problem isn’t big business, or corporate control. It isn’t even the Koch brothers. If you’re a liberal, you should probably want them to blow $600 million on a loss-making newspaper company.

Here are the real problems. And I don’t see any solutions....

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-news-media-is-even-worse-than-you-think-2013-05-10?siteid=YAHOOB

Glenn Beck conspiracy theory: A Saudi national was involved in the Boston Marathon attack, Glenn Beck alleges. US officials reject the notion and dismiss the 'evidence' as so much bureaucratic paperwork.

by Tina Dupuy

I was raised as a creationist. I’d come home from school with a brain full of evolution and an enthusiasm for T-Rex and my mother saw it as her mission to put an end to it. To counter my indoctrination she’d say, “Dinosaurs and people were alive at the same time.” The world, she explained, was created in six days. All the animals were there at once. “Why were there no dinosaurs anymore,” I asked? Her answer: “They were too big to get on the boat.” (Noah’s ark.)

Other times she would just go for the shorthand: “Your teacher lies to you.”

For most of my elementary school attendance that was the line: What they’re telling you in school is wrong. When I asked why we had to go to school since they didn’t tell us the truth, she said because that was the law.

The cruelest lie from my teacher was about Santa Claus who was billed as giving toys to all kids who were good. All kids except for poor kids … which were us.

Evolution before the high school years meant very little to me. I was much more incensed about not being able to believe in Santa Claus. Every philosophical debate with my mother started with my adamant pro-Santa position backed by hours of holiday films and ended with a theological stalemate where I doubted my mother’s credibility.....

by D.R. TUCKER

Since he won’t mark it himself, I just wanted to wish Newt Gingrich a Happy Anniversary!

It was five years ago this week that Al Gore’s Alliance for Climate Protection released a commercial featuring Gingrich and then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi urging Americans to set aside their partisan differences in order to address climate change.

I will never forget the venom spewed at Gingrich on conservative websites such as Hot Air and Free Republic for doing the commercial. The remarks were among the most vituperative I have ever seen directed at a Republican; it seemed as though the conservative base of the Republican Party had decided that Gingrich no longer belonged in the GOP.

No one's as good at covering Congressional Republicans as Robert Costa, so if he says Ted Cruz is seriously considering a run for president, it must be true -- which is not to say that it makes sense, or that he would win.

Why is Cruz a longshot? He's a first-term senator (yes, yes, exceptions and rules, etc.). He's probably too conservative even to win a GOP primary, but particularly to win a general election: Even his backers portray him as a latter-day Barry Goldwater, only somehow able to win. In just a few short months, he has managed to consistently alienate even his Republican colleagues -- which, whatever you think of the merits of Senate courtesy, won't help in a primary campaign (although he's also vice chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee). David Frum paints a damned-if-he-can-raise-money, damned-if-he-can't scenario. Cruz even ran behind Mitt Romney in Texas last year, when both won handily. It's too early to see how the immigration bill that Cruz opposes will pan out; some Republicans fear that if it fails, the party will do even worse with Latinos, though Cruz's surname might dull the blow.

But what won't prevent Cruz from becoming president is his place of birth. Cruz was born in Calgary, Canada, while his parents were living there. His father is now an American citizen, but was not at the time; his mother, however, was born in the United States.

Helpfully, the Congressional Research Service gathered all of the information relevant to Cruz's case a few years ago, at the height (nadir?) of Obama birtherism. In short, the Constitution says that the president must be a natural-born citizen. "The weight of scholarly legal and historical opinion appears to support the notion that 'natural born Citizen' means one who is entitled under the Constitution or laws of the United States to U.S. citizenship 'at birth' or 'by birth,' including any child born 'in' the United States, the children of United States citizens born abroad, and those born abroad of one citizen parents who has met U.S. residency requirements," the CRS's Jack Maskell wrote. So in short: Cruz is a citizen; Cruz is not naturalized; therefore Cruz is a natural-born citizen, and in any case his mother is a citizen. You can read the CRS memo at bottom; here's a much longer and more detailed 2011 version.

It’s harder for us to see politicians, with the exception of Nelson Mandela and Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, as courageous these days. Perhaps we have seen too much, grown too cynical about the inevitable compromises of power. There are no Gandhis, no Lincolns anymore. One man’s hero (Hugo Chávez, Fidel Castro) is another’s villain. We no longer easily agree on what it means to be good, or principled, or brave. When political leaders do take courageous steps — as France’s Nicolas Sarkozy, then president, did in Libya by intervening militarily to support the uprising against Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi — there are as many who doubt as approve. Political courage, nowadays, is almost always ambiguous.

Even more strangely, we have become suspicious of those who take a stand against the abuses of power or dogma....

In some places, it’s harder to purchase Sudafed than a semi-automatic rifle; it's even harder to adopt a puppy than to adopt a weapon...