StupidiNews!

• A 78-year old man connected with white supremacist groups is being held as a suspect in the shooting deaths of three people at two Kansas City area Jewish centers.
• Syrian President Bashar al-Assad says the country's three-year old civil war is turning in the government's favor.
• In Nigeria, suspected Islamist Boko Haram militants have killed at least 68 in a rampage across two villages near the Cameroon border.
• Swiss voters will go to the polls in May to vote on a referendum setting the country's minimum wage at 22 Swiss francs per hour, or about $25, the world's highest.
• Glow in the dark road markings have made their debut in the Netherlands on a 500 meter test stretch, which could save millions on streetlights.

Last Call For Deadlines In Ukraine

Meanwhile in Ukraine, things aren't going really well and we've reached the point where things may actually take a major turn into open conflict in a matter of hours.

Ukraine has given pro-Russian separatists a Monday morning deadline to disarm or face a "full-scale anti-terrorist operation" by its armed forces, raising the risk of a military confrontation with Moscow.

Angered by the death of a state security officer and the wounding of two comrades near the flashpoint eastern city of Slaviansk, acting president Oleksander Turchinov gave rebels occupying state buildings until 0600 GMT to lay down their weapons.

"The National Security and Defense Council has decided to launch a full-scale anti-terrorist operation involving the armed forces of Ukraine," Turchinov said in an address to the nation.

He blamed Russia, which annexed Ukraine's Crimea region when Moscow-backed former president Viktor Yanukovich fled after months of pro-Western protests, for being behind the rash of rebellions across Russian-speaking towns in eastern Ukraine.

"We will not allow Russia to repeat the Crimean scenario in the eastern regions of Ukraine," Turchinov said.

Of course the only ones left at this point who believe that Russia will somehow not be able to repeat the Crimean scenario in eastern Ukraine is the government in Kiev.  Turchinov seems to think Putin is bluffing with those tens of thousands of massed troops on the border.  If this turns into a shooting war and that bluff is called, a whole lot of people are going to die.

Meanwhile, the "spontaneous" pro-Russian protests in half a dozen eastern Ukrainian cities continue.  And of course, Russia will have to step in and "secure the interests of the Russian minority in the region".

A NATO source told the BBC the organisation believed that "Russian forces have been involved in the seizure of some of the buildings".

And the US ambassador to the UN said the attacks on police and other buildings in eastern Ukraine had "telltale signs of Moscow's involvement".

"It's professional, co-ordinated. Nothing grass-roots about it," ambassador Samantha Power told ABC News.

"The forces are doing in each of the six or seven cities they have been active in exactly the same thing."

A senior Ukrainian intelligence official said his country's special services had evidence proving Russia's direct involvement in the events in eastern Ukraine.

"We have not only evidence, we have 18 detainees, we have career officers of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Russian Armed Forces, we have arrested agents complete with instructions, arms and explosives," Security Service head Valentyn Nalyvaychenko said in a live TV discussion programme.

Our UN ambassador is saying that of course this is all Russia's doing in order to create a pretext for Russian invasion.  The problem is, Turchinov is playing directly into that.

Monday is going to be a bad day in Ukraine.

America's Conversation On Race Is Apparently Now Over

So declares Brit Hume and George F. Will of FOX, who are tired of black people being black and just want them to be American, because as white men they're sick of hearing about racism.  And by "black people", they mean liberals.

Fox News Senior Political Analyst Brit Hume asserted on Sunday that both Obama and Holder had “benefited politically enormously from the fact that they are African-American, and the first to hold the jobs that they hold.”

“To those two men, race has been both a shield and a sword that they have used effectively to defend themselves, and to attack others,” Hume said, adding that he found the behavior “depressing.”

A Fox News viewer on Twitter complained to the panel that the president and attorney general “race bait,” and wanted to know why it was acceptable to call white people “racists.”

“Look, liberalism has a kind of Tourette’s syndrome these days,” Will opined. “Just constantly saying the word ‘racism’ and ‘racist.’”

“Liberalism hasn’t had a new idea since the 1960s — except Obamacare — and the country doesn’t like it,” he continued. “Foreign policy is a shambles, from Russia to Iran to Syria to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And the recovery is unprecedentedly bad.”

“So, what do you do? You say, ‘Anyone who criticizes us is a racist.’”

And thus the conversation about race in America is now over because if you're black, Hume and Will don't want to hear about it.  You need to be American instead and just get over it.  Besides, being black is a huge advantage, because look at all the black US Presidents and US Attorneys General we've had in America's history.

Should you still have a problem with this or the way President Obama or AG Holder have been treated, well, the statute of limitations is up and now "racist" and "racism" are meaningless terms because they don't exist.  How can they with a black president and black AG?

And with that, FOX has resolved the national conversation on race.  The rest of us who might feel the need to continue it (or apparently start it) need to shut the hell up apparently and are simply being dismissed because hey, a couple of white guys are sick of talking about it.

And on we go.

Bundy Ranch, Privilege, And Cattle

If you want to know what I mean by privilege, take a look at the Bundy Ranch incident in Nevada this weekend.

A Nevada cattle rancher appears to have won his week-long battle with the federal government over a controversial cattle roundup that had led to the arrest of several protesters.

Cliven Bundy went head to head with the Bureau of Land Management over the removal of hundreds of his cattle from federal land, where the government said they were grazing illegally.

Bundy claims his herd of roughly 900 cattle have grazed on the land along the riverbed near Bunkerville, 80 miles northeast of Las Vegas, since 1870 and threatened a "range war" against the BLM on the Bundy Ranch website after one of his sons was arrested while protesting the removal of the cattle.

"I have no contract with the United States government," Bundy said. "I was paying grazing fees for management and that's what BLM was supposed to be, land managers and they were managing my ranch out of business, so I refused to pay."

The federal government had countered that Bundy "owes the American people in excess of $1 million " in unpaid grazing fees and "refuses to abide by the law of land, despite many opportunities over the last 20 years to do so."

However, today the BLM said it would not enforce a court order to remove the cattle and was pulling out of the area.

"Based on information about conditions on the ground, and in consultation with law enforcement, we have made a decision to conclude the cattle gather because of our serious concern about the safety of employees and members of the public," BLM Director Neil Kornze said.

"We ask that all parties in the area remain peaceful and law-abiding as the Bureau of Land Management and National Park Service work to end the operation in an orderly manner," he said.

Guy grazes his herd on federal land for 20 years, doesn't pay a dime.  Feds show up to actually do something about the guy squatting on federal land for two decades, it triggers a showdown with dozens of armed militia types ready to put a few holes in some feds and start another Ruby Ridge.  Feds wisely figure this is exactly what these assholes want and leave for now.

Here's where the privilege comes in. 

Can you imagine what the reaction of America would be to a black cattle rancher grazing cattle on federal land, without paying the feds, for 20 years? Think about how that would be reported.  Cliven Bundy is considered a patriot and hero for resisting the awful mean ol' federal government, despite breaking the law for two decades plus.  If he was black, the calls from the same exact people now hailing him as a hero would be far, far different.

Furthermore,look who showed up to help Bundy.  What do you think FOX News's reaction of an armed group of black men showing up to defend that cattle rancher from the feds?  You'd be hearing about race wars and all kinds of crazy shit.  Worse, the white militia guys showing up now to defend Bundy would absolutely be on the scene hunting down the black ranchers.

It would be chaos.  And it sure wouldn't have ended peacefully, that's for damn sure.

ABC News calls Bundy a "defiant cattleman".  If he was black, he would be a "militant thug."

And then he'd be dead.

Rehabilitating An Awful President From Texas

A President from Texas who fumbled one of the bloodiest wars in US history, who got tens of thousands of US troops killed and hundreds of thousands of civilians slaughtered is now being furiously rehabilitated in order to help his party in 2016.

And no, I'm not talking about Dubya.  I'm talking about LBJ.  WaPo's Harold Meyerson:

Come August, we’ll have another semi-centennial moment, but it probably won’t be celebrated. Aug. 7 will mark the 50th anniversary of Congress passing the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which Johnson had requested to give him the authority to respond with military force to North Vietnamese attacks on U.S. ships (some of which, the U.S. government later concluded, hadn’t actually taken place). By 1965, Johnson was interpreting the resolution as carte blanche to send hundreds of thousands of American soldiers to Vietnam, 58,000 of whom died there. 

By Bushian standards, Johnson was pretty awful across the board.  Yes, he signed into law civil rights legislation, but the civil rights movement made him do it, kicking and screaming.  TNR's Michael Kazin has an even lower opinion of LBJ.

In 1965, as Johnson was pushing Congress to enact the Voting Rights Act and Medicare, he was also initiating the bombing of North Vietnam and signing the orders which eventually sent over 500,000 U.S. troops to occupy and fight to “pacify” the Southern half of that country. At the time, liberal Democrats who opposed the war condemned the hypocrisy of a President who could help millions of Americans win their rights and a degree of medical security while he oversaw the destruction of what he called “a raggedy ass little third rate country.” Fifty years later, powerful Democrats in search of a usable past would just prefer to ignore the contradiction.

They would also, it seems, like to forget the profound damage which Johnson’s conduct of the war did to the fortunes of liberalism back home. As every politician and journalist once knew, mass discontent about the debacle in Vietnam split the Democratic Party in two and convinced LBJ not to run for re-election in 1968. The party’s nominee, that flaming liberal Hubert Humphrey, then won less than 43 percent of the popular vote. It would be another 40 years before another unabashed liberal (uh, “progressive”) was elected president.

Johnson's Medicare and civil rights laws were a great contribution to America.  But  the damage he did contributed directly to Nixon and Reagan, and then Bushes Senior and Junior, and he had more blood on his hands than Dubya ever did.

Just a history lesson.  You can't talk about Johnson's accomplishments without mentioning his bloody, awful, immoral failures as both a President and human being.

Listen To My Heartbleed

A lot has been in the news about the Heartbleed secure website vulnerability problem, which has affected tens of thousands of websites and possibly compromised millions of passwords (Mashable has a good list of what passwords you should change now) but the story has taken a much darker turn as Bloomberg News is reporting that the NSA supposedly knew about the vulnerability two years ago, didn't tell anyone, and exploited the bug to gain information from websites.

The U.S. National Security Agency knew for at least two years about a flaw in the way that many websites send sensitive information, now dubbed the Heartbleed bug, and regularly used it to gather critical intelligence, two people familiar with the matter said.

Now, if this is true the NSA has a lot to answer for, but "two people familiar with the matter"?  No names?  Pretty big bombshell for anonymous sources, yes?  And as far as I can tell, nobody has independently verified this story yet.

Putting the Heartbleed bug in its arsenal, the NSA was able to obtain passwords and other basic data that are the building blocks of the sophisticated hacking operations at the core of its mission, but at a cost. Millions of ordinary users were left vulnerable to attack from other nations’ intelligence arms and criminal hackers.

Again, this represents a huge ethical problem if true, but that's a huge if right now.  It's not stopping people I read and respect from assuming this is now gospel truth because of course any story these days claiming the NSA has done X has to be true because the NSA is evil and you can'[t trust them.

And once again, if this story is true and if the NSA did know about this (or as some people have also speculated created the bug in the first place in order to open a nearly universal back door to secure websites) then heads need to roll.

Ironically, if this story is true, shouldn't Edward Snowden's vast treasure trove of stolen documents have contained this information?  This is a pretty damning accusation. Something like this would be at the top of the list for his stated goal of exposing unethical, damaging, and illegal practices by the NSA, yes?

This is a bug that affected millions of ordinary people. Right now, there's as much "proof" that Snowden knew about Heartbleed and said nothing as there is that the NSA knew the same and did nothing, i.e. total speculation.

Might want to keep that in mind.

StupidiNews, Weekend Edition!

• The Department of Justice issued a scathing report on the Albuquerque Police Department, finding multiple incidents of police brutality against unarmed suspects and citizens.
• UNICEF officials are warning that the continued conflict between Sudan and South Sudan could kill as many as 50,000 children from malnutrition unless action is taken swiftly.
• The G20 finace ministers are warning the United States that failure to ratify overhaul measures for the International Monetary Fund by year's end will lead to "additional steps".
• President Obama and Michelle Obama paid 20.4% in taxes last year, according to released returns by the White House.
• New models by scientists postulate that the massive 23-mile wide asteroid that hit the Earth over 3 billion years ago most likely set off seismic events that moved entire continents.

Last Call For Voter Suppression

In what may have been his most important speech in some time, President Obama spoke on the issue of GOP voter suppression as the keynote speaker at a meeting of Rev. Al Sharpton's voter action group, the National Action Network.  He pulled no punches either, ripping into Republicans over making voting harder for no benefit other than to themselves.

“The real voter fraud is people who try to deny our rights by making bogus arguments about voter fraud,” Obama said, in a speech to Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network in New York — an organization that he said should serve as a national model for organizing people around voting, led by a man who deserved “a big round of applause.”

The voting rights argument is a key element of the White House’s strategy to have the president focus on boosting base turnout for the midterms, especially among core Obama voters.

“There are well-organized and well-funded efforts to undo [the] gains” of the civil rights movement, Obama told the largely African-American crowd. “Just as inequality feeds on justice, opportunity requires justice, and justice requires the right to vote.”

Democrats face a different landscape than they did in 2012, when they had the benefits of running against new voting laws that were being challenged in court without having to worry as much about their voters actually being blocked.

The laws are on the books. Obama isn’t on the ballot. And the party needs an issue that can rile up the base, raise money from the grassroots, rally volunteers and form a rhetorical entry point to a larger argument about how Republican policies are hurting the constituencies most threatened by voting restrictions.

“The right to vote — what kind of political platform is that? Why would you make that a part of your agenda, preventing people from voting? How can you defend that?” Obama said. “This recent effort to restrict the vote has not been led by both parties. It’s being led by the Republican Party.”

That last paragraph there is the best case yet anyone in this administration has put forth as to what the true nature of the GOP voter ID effort really is:  voter suppression in order to lower turnout of traditionally Democratic voting groups.  For President Obama to publicly acknowledge this and then publicly rebuke the GOP for doing it (he later recounted the whole birther nonsense and had a good laugh along with the audience) was not only necessary but vital to our voting system.

Long-time readers will know that I harp on voting and voting rights weekly in this space.  There's a reason for that.  It's literally the last gasp of the current Republican party, the last weapon they have in order to stay in power.  They talk of "outreach" and "reconciliation" with minority groups, particularly black and Latino voters, and then make it harder for all voters to vote in a way that falls most on the shoulders of voters of color.

So to hear the President call the GOP out on this is nothing short of historic.  We need to make sure that we exercise that vote, so the people trying to take that right away do not gain more political power.

Here's the video of the speech:

The Brutus To Orange Julius

The National Journal's Tim Alberta reports there's now a serious push by the hard right lunatics in the House to oust John Boehner as Speaker and put the House in full crazy mode for the last two years of President Obama's term.  Apparently backing Cantor as a replacement is no longer an option:

But there's a more audacious option on the table, according to conservatives involved in the deliberations. They say between 40 and 50 members have already committed verbally to electing a new speaker. If those numbers hold, organizers say, they could force Boehner to step aside as speaker in late November, when the incoming GOP conference meets for the first time, by showing him that he won't have the votes to be reelected in January.

The masterminds of this mutiny are trying to stay in the shadows for as long as possible to avoid putting a target on their backs. But one Republican said the "nucleus"of the rebellion can be found inside the House Liberty Caucus, of which he and his comrades are members. This is not surprising, considering that some of the key players in that group—Justin Amash of Michigan, Raul Labrador of Idaho, and Thomas Massie of Kentucky—were among the 12 Republicans who refused to back Boehner's reelection in January 2013.

Amash, chairman of the Liberty Caucus, warned at the time that there would be a "larger rebellion" down the road if Boehner's leadership team did not bring conservatives into the fold. Such an insurrection never materialized, however, as Boehner deftly navigated a series of challenges last year and wound up winning over some of the malcontents.

But conservatives, increasingly irritated with what they see as a cautious approach taken by their leadership, are now adamant that Boehner's tenure should expire with this Congress.

"There are no big ideas coming out of the conference. Our leadership expects to coast through this election by banking on everyone's hatred for Obamacare," said one Republican lawmaker who is organizing the rebellion. "There's nothing big being done. We're reshuffling chairs on the Titanic."

It's clear these nutjobs not only expect to have full control of Congress, but full control of the agenda as well.  A lurch to the insane right from the hard right now would be a political gift to President Obama for sure, but a disaster for the country.

And yeah, if Boehner is replaced with someone even crazier than Eric Cantor, you can bet it'll be 1999 all over again, impeachment proceedings and all.

Ryan Cooper over at The Week says the Tea Party folks have no chance to unseat Boehner, because who would want his job?

This, of course, is Boehner's ace in the hole. Anyone credible and ambitious enough to become speaker also realizes that taking the job would be a horrible mistake. Why? Because House ultraconservatives are constantly making completely unreasonable demands, then blaming the leadership when they don't get the impossible.

We'll see, but I'm learning towards Cooper rather than Alberta on this.

Another Milepost On The Road To Oblivion

RNC chair and GOP head Reince Priebus:

Our Party is a champion of civil rights. Founded by abolitionists & today leading the fight for educational access. #CivilRightsSummit
— Reince Priebus (@Reince) April 10, 2014

Yes, the champion of civil rights.

Mississippi State Sen. Chris McDaniel (R-MS), the tea party favored candidate to challenge incumbent Republican Sen. Thad Cochran who seems to be in the habit of associating with white nationalists and neo-Confederates, vowed not to pay taxes if they go up because of reparations over slavery and mocked complaints of racism over an ad depicting a white woman holding down a black woman.

McDaniel, while riffing on a shock jock radio program in late 2006 or early 2007, compared rapper Vanilla Ice to a minstrel show performer and pondering when it's appropriate to refer to a woman as "Mamacita." The Wall Street Journal was able to obtain a clip of McDaniel making the remarks.

Yes, the party of abolitionists.

Well the reason that the slaves were eventually freed was the Constitution, it was like the conscience of the American people. Unfortunately there were some court decisions like Dred Scott and others that defined some people as property, but the Constitution kept calling us back to ‘all men are created equal and we have inalienable rights’ in the minds of God. But a lot of the move to free the slaves came from the people, it did not come from the federal government. It came from a growing movement among the people, particularly people of faith, that this was wrong. People like Wilberforce who persisted for years because of his faith and because of his love for people. So no liberal is going to win a debate that big government freed the slaves. In fact, it was Abraham Lincoln, the very first Republican, who took this on as a cause and a lot of it was based on a love in his heart that comes from God.

And the party of voting rights, too.

Earlier this year, the Miami-Dade County Elections Department quietly implemented a policy to close the bathrooms at all polling facilities, according to disability rights lawyer Marc Dubin. Dubin said the policy change was in “direct response” to an inquiry to the Elections Department about whether they had assessed accessibility of polling place bathrooms to those with disabilities.

“I was expecting them to say either yes we have or yes we will,” Dubin said.

Instead, he received a written response announcing that the county would close all restrooms at polling places “to ensure that individuals with disabilities are not treated unfairly,” a January email stated. “[T]he Department’s policy is not to permit access to restrooms at polling sites on election days,” Assistant County Attorney Shanika Graves said in a Feb. 14 email. Elections Department officials did not immediately respond to ThinkProgress inquiries.

They're the party of civil rights, alright.  Curtailing them at every opportunity to preserve the dwindling power of white voters as the majority in this country.

StupidiNews!

• Ten people, including five students, died late Thursday when a FedEx truck crossed a median in Northern California and slammed head on into a bus carrying students on a college visit.
• A son of wanted Mexican drug cartel kingpin Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada Garcia has plead guilty to trafficking charges and is cooperating with US officials.
• A woman hurled a shoe at Hillary Clinton during a speech in Las Vegas yesterday, but the former secretary of state and First Lady dodged is and continued her remarks.
• The continuing Ebola outbreak in West Africa is wreaking havoc with tourism in the region as World Health Organization officials say the epidemic will continue into June or July.
• Analysis finds every single senator involved in oversight of the Comcast-Time Warner Cable merger took at least some money from Comcast's political arm, including opponent Al Franken.

Last Call For Secretary Sebelius

Now that the enrollment period for Obamacare is over, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is resigning her cabinet post to be replaced by Office of Management and Budget Director Sylvia Burwell.

Officials said Ms. Sebelius, 65, made the decision to resign and was not forced out. But the frustration at the White House over her performance had become increasingly clear, as administration aides worried that the crippling problems at HealthCare.gov, the website set up to enroll Americans in insurance exchanges, would result in lasting damage to the president’s legacy.

Even last week, as Mr. Obama triumphantly announced that enrollments in the exchanges had exceeded seven million, she did not appear next to him for the news conference in the Rose Garden.

The president is hoping that Ms. Burwell, 48, a Harvard- and Oxford-educated West Virginia native with a background in economic policy, will bring an intense focus and management acumen to the department. The budget office, which she has overseen since April of last year, is deeply involved in developing and carrying out health care policy.

“The president wants to make sure we have a proven manager and relentless implementer in the job over there, which is why he is going to nominate Sylvia,” said Denis R. McDonough, the White House chief of staff.\

Last month, Ms. Sebelius approached Mr. Obama and began a series of conversations about her future, Mr. McDonough said. The secretary told the president that the March 31 deadline for sign-ups under the health care law — and rising enrollment numbers — provided an opportunity for change, and that he would be best served by someone who was not the target of so much political ire, Mr. McDonough said.

Nobody should be surprised by this.  Somebody had to pay for the problems with the website in October and November, and it was clear with Sebelius being completely out of the loop in the last several weeks that the President wasn't going to force her out, but those conversations had to have included the suggestion that she consider stepping down, and of course the time to line up a replacement.  Also, I can't imagine Sebelius wanting to stick around, considering how much she's been savaged by the left as well as the right.

That now leaves a confirmation battle for Burwell, and it still means that with the new Senate rules, there needs to be 51 votes.  That may or may not actually happen given the post of Surgeon General still has yet to be filled, so it won't be a slam dunk in an election year either.

The reaction of course is exactly what you'd expect.

#sebelius finally resigned. Why not her boss? Doesn't "the buck stop here"? http://t.co/YXD1Luy5dx
— Roger Simon (@rogerlsimon) April 11, 2014

Because 10 million fewer uninsured is something the President should resign over.

Angus The King Maker

Me, on Charlie Cook's call for a GOP Senate wipeout of Dems back on March 6:

In other words, Cook is predicting the GOP getting 58 seats if everything breaks their way.  That would put them in range of 60, especially if such a crushing margin caused Maine Independent Angus King to flip from caucusing with the Dems.  That would be 59.

The Hill's Alexander Bolton, this morning:

Sen. Angus King (I-Maine), who caucuses with the Democrats, will decide after the midterm elections whether to switch sides and join the Republicans.

He is leaving open the possibility of aligning himself with the GOP if control of the upper chamber changes hands.“I’ll make my decision at the time based on what I think is best for Maine,” King told The Hill Wednesday after voting with Republicans to block the Paycheck Fairness Act, a measure at the center for the 2014 Democratic campaign agenda.

King’s remarks are a clear indication that congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle will have to woo the 70-year-old senator in order to recruit him to their side.

So Angus King is even more of an opportunist than I originally thought.  He will caucus with whichever party controls the Senate, so if the GOP does pick up six seats, he'll bolt to join them.

Then again, he did give that game away in 2012.

King said after the 2012 elections that being in the majority was important to him, when he announced his decision to caucus with Senate Democrats, giving them control of 55 seats.

“The outcome of last week’s election in some ways makes this decision relatively easy. In the situation where one party has a clear majority and effectiveness is an important criteria, affiliating with the majority makes the most sense,” King said at the time.

That will remain in play, apparently.  New tag: Angus "Flipper" King.

Another Milepost On The Road To Oblivion

Meanwhile, Pat Robertson wants God to take out Barack Obama.

Pat Robertson just wants this "crypto-Muslim" Obama nightmare to end, and he's hoping a little divine intervention will do the trick.

On Wednesday, the right-wing televangelist asked God to "deliver us" from Barack Obama's presidency.

"We need to do something to pray to be delivered from this president," he said on the 700 Club. "He is a disaster, an absolute disaster. I mean I don't know, Democrat, Republican or whatever, this country is into serious decline unless something dramatic is done about it."

Yeah, advocating for someone to somehow stop the Obama presidency isn't dangerous at all, folks.  "Won't someone rid me of this troublesome black president?"

StupidiNews!

• A sixteen-year old high school student faces multiple charges of aggravated assault and attempted murder after a stabbing rampage at a school in Pennsylvania.
• Former President Bill Clinton warned a Texas crowd that new voter ID laws "restrict the franchise" of voting and threaten to roll back 50 years of civil rights gains.
• Bank of America has made another settlement with federal regulators Wednesday, agreeing to pay $727 million in fines and restitution for deceptive credit card practices.
• Electric car company Tesla is coming to China this month with the first of the automaker's luxury sedans to be delivered by founder Elon Musk himself.
• A day after being named the Worst Company in America by Consumerist, Comcast's executive VP David Cohen admitted to Congress that the company is "deeply disappointed" with its service.