Obama bans solitary confinement for juveniles in federal prisons →

President Obama on Monday announced a ban on solitary confinement for juvenile offenders in the federal prison system, saying the practice is overused and has the potential for devastating psychological consequences.
In an op-ed that appears in Tuesday editions of The Washington Post, the president outlines a series of executive actions that also prohibit federal corrections officials from punishing prisoners who commit “low-level infractions” with solitary confinement.
The new rules also dictate that the longest a prisoner can be punished with solitary confinement for a first offense is 60 days, rather than the current maximum of 365 days.
The president’s reforms apply broadly to the roughly 10,000 federal inmates serving time in solitary confinement, though there are only a handful of juvenile offenders placed in restrictive housing each year. Between September 2014 and September 2015, federal authorities were notified of just 13 juveniles who were put in solitary in its prisons, officials said. However, federal officials sent adults inmates to solitary for nonviolent offenses 3,800 times in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, 2014, suggesting that policy change will have more sweeping ramifications.

Russian airstrikes are working in Syria — enough to put peace talks in doubt →

The gains are small-scale, hard-won and in terms of territory overall don’t add up to much, in keeping with the incremental nature of war.
But after 3½ months of relentless airstrikes that have mostly targeted the Western-backed opposition to Assad’s rule, they have proved sufficient to push beyond doubt any likelihood that Assad will be removed from power by the nearly five-year-old revolt against his rule. The gains on the ground are also calling into question whether there can be meaningful negotiations to end a conflict Assad and his allies now seem convinced they can win.

All Hollowed Out: The lonely poverty of America’s white working class →

Great article. One of the few I might label a Must Read. It walks through a number of the main reasons for the shrinking of the (especially white) middle class. If you read it, I suggest thinking about the ways politics have decided how each of the factors have played out, and how things might have been different otherwise. We can't reverse time on some, but there's no reason we have to ignore current trends. Inaction itself is a political decision.

Who Turned My Blue State Red? Why poor areas vote for politicians who want to slash the safety net. →

In eastern Kentucky and other former Democratic bastions that have swung Republican in the past several decades, the people who most rely on the safety-net programs secured by Democrats are, by and large, not voting against their own interests by electing Republicans. Rather, they are not voting, period. They have, as voting data, surveys and my own reporting suggest, become profoundly disconnected from the political process.
The people in these communities who are voting Republican in larger proportions are those who are a notch or two up the economic ladder — the sheriff’s deputy, the teacher, the highway worker, the motel clerk, the gas station owner and the coal miner. And their growing allegiance to the Republicans is, in part, a reaction against what they perceive, among those below them on the economic ladder, as a growing dependency on the safety net, the most visible manifestation of downward mobility in their declining towns.

The Supreme Court Case That Could Gut Public Sector Unions →

On Monday, January 11, the Supreme Court will begin hearing oral arguments in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, a case that began working its way through California courts in the spring of 2013. Ostensibly concerned with protecting the free speech rights of public sector workers, Friedrichs’s outcome will in reality decide the viability of public sector unions in the future.

It challenges a key piece of funding unions:

At the core of the case are “agency fees,” sometimes called “fair share fees.” Agency fees work like this: Public sector unions are required to cover all employees in a given bargaining unit, whether the employees opt into union membership or not. Public sector employees (which include EMTs, firefighters, public school teachers, social workers, and more) thus pay agency fees to their respective unions even if they are not union members, because public sector unions work on behalf of everyone in their bargaining unit, not just union members. 
Agency fees do not fund unions’ political activities, but rather strictly the costs of union grievance-handling, organizing, and collective bargaining. In the 1977 caseAbood v. Detroit Board of Education, the Supreme Court upheld the right of public sector unions to extract agency fees from public sector workers, and found that agency fees do not violate employees’ freedom of speech, so long as they do not fund unions’ political activities.
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In other words, though Friedrichs has been brought on behalf of teachers in the cause of free speech, its implications involve all public sector workers, and the matter at hand is really the weakening of public sector unions. If the court rules against unions’ right to collect agency fees, unions would still be obligated to bargain on behalf of and represent entirely non-paying employees. At that point, it would be reasonable for union members to leave their unions and keep their dues and representation, which would collapse unions under the weight of so many free riders. In essence, this case threatens to bleed unions’ financial resources while giving workers the option of contributing nothing to them.

Gov activates National Guard to aid Flint water crisis →

Gov. Rick Snyder has activated the Michigan National Guard to aid water distribution efforts in Flint and is requesting support from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Late Tuesday, the governor issued an executive order to activate the National Guard, the state's latest step in an effort to provide relief to Flint residents exposed to contaminated drinking water.
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The decision comes after about 45 Michigan State Police troopers and other state workers began Tuesday distributing water and filters to residents without them because of the lead poisoning crisis that has put Flint in the national spotlight and even drawn comments from the White House.
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Flint, operating under a state-appointed emergency manager at the time, began using the Flint River for drinking water in April 2014 after disconnecting from the Detroit water system’s Lake Huron. Residents immediately complained about the taste, odor and discoloration.
Independent scientists eventually discovered high levels of lead in the water, and the state health department confirmed the findings Oct. 1. Flint was reconnected to the Detroit water system in mid-October, but state officials said this week the city’s drinking water still is not considered safe.

The Internet of Things that Talk About You Behind Your Back →

More evidence that the law can't keep up with technology, and that "privacy" is something we need to actively protect, if we care about it any longer.

SilverPush is an Indian startup that's trying to figure out all the different computing devices you own. Itembeds inaudible sounds into the webpages you read and the television commercials you watch. Software secretly embedded in your computers, tablets, and smartphones picks up the signals, and then uses cookies to transmit that information back to SilverPush. The result is that the company can track you across your different devices. It can correlate the television commercials you watch with the web searches you make. It can link the things you do on your tablet with the things you do on your work computer.
Your computerized things are talking about you behind your back, and for the most part you can't stop them­ -- or even learn what they're saying.
This isn't new, but it's getting worse...

Brussels launches unprecedented EU inquiry into rule of law in Poland →

The European commission has launched an unprecedented inquiry in response to controversial Polish legislation that puts more power into the hands of the country’s staunchly conservative government.
The decision marks the first time EU authorities have launched a formal investigation into the rule of law in a member state.
Announcing the inquiry, Frans Timmermans, vice-president of the commission, the EU’s executive body, said officials in Brussels had an obligation to ensure the rule of law was upheld across the EU, and that they were concerned about the functioning of Poland’s highest court.