Month: August 2014

The Washington Post reports an
exclusive via anonymous sources: Murdered journalist James Foley
and at least three others were waterboarded by the Islamic State
(ISIL) in Syria.
From the Post:

James Foley was among the four who were waterboarded several
times by Islamic State militants who appeared to model the
technique on the CIA’s use of waterboarding to interrogate
suspected terrorists after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. …

“They knew exactly how it was done,” said a person with direct
knowledge of what happened to the hostages. The person, who would
only discuss the hostages’ experience on condition of anonymity,
said the captives, including Foley, were held in Raqqah, a city in
the north-central region of Syria.

A French journalist who was imprisoned with Foley said he also
endured “mock executions,” something the CIA also reportedly did to
prisoners at black sites overseas during the Iraq war.

Read more
here.

After nearly a year of suspension, a
high-school cooking teacher who let several students eat cinnamon
has been cleared to return to the classroom. Let’s just get this
out of the way up front: These events took place at New Dorp High
School. NEW DORP HIGH SCHOOL. Okay. At New Dorp High School, in the
New Dorp area of Staten Island, teacher Matthew Hayes has been
collecting a paycheck all year while the New York City Department
of Education investigates his cinnamon-related crimes. 

The issue stems from a culinary-arts class lesson on using
spices in cooking. As part of it, Hayes’ students were invited to
taste several spices, including cinnamon and cocoa powder. One
student asked if they could do a “cinnamon
challenge“—a popular teen meme in 2013, in which people film
themselves attempting to swallow a whole teaspoon of ground
cinnamon, with no liquid, in under 60 seconds—but Hayes said no,
according to an Education Department report
obtained by the Staten Island Advance. 

He told investigators that he was aware of the YouTube
challenge, but that the lesson was “not at that level.” He said one
student asked whether they could do the “cinnamon challenge” and he
advised the student it was a “bad idea because cinnamon absorbs
moisture, and that it had the “consistency of baby powder.”

Eventually, Hayes permitted three students to each try
swallowing a half-teaspoon of the spice. He provided the students
with water, and no one timed the “challenge” or captured it on
video. And everyone ended up just fine. “Two of the students
swallowed the spice after letting it melt in their mouth,”
according to the Advance, “while a third spit out the
cinnamon into a trash can in the room.” 

It sounds like Hayes probably helped dissuade his students from
trying the cinnamon challenge on their own. He showed them in a
safe, controlled idea environment that swallowing a bunch of
cinnamon at once is really gross—a valuable life and culinary
lesson! But for this, an anonymous snitch reported Hayes to school
authorities. He was placed on leave in November 2013, when the city
Education Department’s Office of Special Investigations began
looking into the incident. Investigators ultimately reprimanded
Hayes but cleared him to the classroom when school opens on
September 4 this year.

The U.S. fracking boom has
reduced the country’s carbon dioxide emissions as cleaner
burning natural gas replaces coal in generating electricity.
Fracking not only boosts natural gas supplies, but also petroleum
production. The result of increased U.S. oil production has been
less volatile oil prices according to a report
issued by the Energy Information Administration. From the EIA:

Record-setting
liquid fuels production growth in the United States has more
than offset the rise in unplanned
global supply disruptions over the past few years, although
differences in quality and location suggest that the substitution
may not be exactly 1-for-1. U.S. liquid fuels production, which
includes crude oil, hydrocarbon gas liquids, biofuels, and refinery
processing gain, grew by more than 4.0 million barrels per day
(bbl/d) from January 2011 to July 2014, of which 3.0 million bbl/d
was crude oil production growth. During that same period, global
unplanned supply disruptions grew by 2.8 million bbl/d.

U.S. production growth, the main factor counterbalancing the
supply disruptions on the global oil market, has contributed to a
decrease in crude oil price volatility since 2011. Over the past 13
months, the monthly average Brent price has moved within a narrow $5
per barrel range, between $107 per barrel and $112 per barrel.
In contrast, the range of monthly average Brent prices over the
prior 13-month period (June 2012-June 2013) was $21 per barrel.

Global unplanned supply disruptions averaged 3.2 million bbl/d
during the first seven months of 2014 and peaked at 3.5 million
bb/d in May 2014. The current level of supply disruptions is the
highest since the Iraq-Kuwait War (1990-91), when supply
disruptions peaked at 4.3 million bbl/d, based on data from the
International Energy Agency.

Fracking is good for the planet and pocketbooks.

The
police—and even Department of Homeland Security officers—descended
upon a Hardin County, Tennessee, school after a teacher found
an object that looked like a hand grenade in a student’s
backpack.

The object was actually a toy hand grenade. While it did
resemble the real thing, it was harmless. Still, authorities
quickly arrived and evacuated not just Hardin County High School,
but every school in the district. Cops dispatched
drug-sniffing dogs to search the entire building. Even Homeland
Security showed up.

The student who brought the toy to school has not been named,
and it isn’t yet clear whether it was an accident or on purpose.
But
according to WBBJTV, the student told his teacher about it,
which is what prompted her to make the discovery. It’s possible
that he brought the toy to school to scare people; but it seems
much more likely—and is often the case in these types of
incidents—that the presence of the lookalike grenade on school
property was an accident and he informed his teacher about it in
order to avoid a panic.

The student will face a disciplinary board meeting on Friday, at
which time more details hopefully will be made public. But
regardless of the students’ intentions, the result will likely be
the same: Lengthy suspension or outright expulsion. From
WBBJTV:

Sheriff Davidson said the student has no history of trouble with
the district or with law enforcement. He said they have questioned
the student and his parents.

“No history, and whether the intent is there or not, that’ll be
one of the things we’ll look into,” he said.

Davis said the student will have to attend a disciplinary
hearing Friday to determine what his punishment will be. He is
suspended until that hearing.

He also said the school district has a zero-tolerance policy for
such items on school property, and the offense could result in
expulsion from school for one year.

“Zero tolerance” means ignoring intention and treating even
trivial or accidental infractions of school weapon policies as
serious crimes.

Writing at The New York Times, Erwin Chemerinsky of the
University of California, Irvine, School of Law,
takes aim at the U.S. Supreme Court for its key role for making
it “very difficult, and often impossible, to hold police officers
and the governments that employ them accountable for civil rights
violations. This undermines the ability to deter illegal police
behavior,” he added, “and leaves victims without compensation.”

As evidence of this sorry state of affairs, Chemerinsky points
to the Supreme Court’s unanimous 2014 opinion in Plumhoff v.
Rickard, in which the justices
granted qualified immunity to several police officers who used
lethal force to stop a high-speed car chase. That chase began with
a routine traffic stop for a busted headlight and ended roughly 10
minutes later with the officers firing 15 rounds into the vehicle,
killing both the driver and his passenger, neither of whom were
armed. According to the Court’s decision, this deadly use of force
was fully permissible. “If police officers are justified in firing
at a suspect in order to end a severe threat to public safety,” the
Court held, “the officers need not stop shooting until the threat
has ended.”

Chemerinsky describes this ruling as “deeply disturbing”:

The Supreme Court now has said that whenever there is a
high-speed chase that could injure others — and that would seem to
be true of virtually all high-speed chases — the police can shoot
at the vehicle and keep shooting until the chase ends. Obvious
alternatives could include shooting out the car’s tires, or even
taking the license plate number and tracking the driver down
later.

He’s right. The justices revealed little interest in calling
aggressive police tactics into question in that case.

To my surprise, however, Chemerinsky failed to mention one of
the starkest recent examples of bad cops enjoying a legal victory:
the Supreme Court’s 2006 ruling in
Hudson v. Michigan. In that case, a divided Court
ruled that evidence obtained by the police after “a concededly
illegal” no-knock raid was still admissible in court. “Resort to
the massive remedy of suppressing evidence of guilt is
unjustified,” declared the majority opinion of Justice Antonin
Scalia. Furthermore, Scalia added, the “increasing professionalism
of police forces” around the country is itself a strong internal
check on law enforcement that “deters civil-rights violations.”

To say the least, Scalia’s words have not aged well. As my
former Reason colleague Radley Balko has observed,
“a scan of recent headlines suggests that when it comes to holding
police accountable for botched raids, excessive force, and
misconduct, Scalia’s ‘new professionalism’ is nowhere to be
found.”

Apparently, the Elyria, Ohio
school district made a darn good cookie. So good, these
pink-frosted confections were declared Cleveland’s “Best Cafeteria
Cookie” a few years ago. This back-to-school season, though,
federal food police decided to put an end to the award-winning
treat. Now, the plan to keep people away from their sweets seems to
have backfired: People from around the U.S. (and even Canada!) are
demanding the cookie.

The
bad news, which The Chronicle-Telegram broke last
week:

[A federal] edict calling for school districts to provide more
fruits and vegetables, lean proteins and whole grains to students
along with fewer calories, fat and cholesterol has resulted in the
loss of the pink cookie.

“We can’t have them in the cafeteria for sale, period,” said
Scott Teaman, food services director with Sodexo Inc., the
district’s contracted food provider. “The guidelines for snacks are
very strict, and there is no wiggle room.”

It’s not surprising the pink cookie does not meet the revamped
food guidelines. Much about it hasn’t changed in nearly four
decades — that’s how long the pink cookie was on the menu.

A local ABC affiliate
explains that “the cookie, which contains real butter, exceeded
the number of calories allowed per a la carte item, according to
the National School Lunch Program.”

The bakers refused to change the recipe, and even Elyria’s mayor

stood by them:

You can’t change the recipe of the pink cookie. It’s like eating
diet potato chips. It’s not right. … I grew up eating them. They
are a comfort food. It’s one of those things that’s special to our
community.

If the feds thought that by banning the pink cookie in school
they’d prevent people from gobbling them down, they were wrong. The
bakers are still permitted to take special orders, and the chorus
of dismay at demise of
“the perfect cookie” has grown from local “cult followers” to
nationwide curious sweet-tooths, and demand has skyrocketed.

“The [school] district has received at least 100 calls and
emails from Illinois, Hawaii, Minnesota, New York, Montana and
Canada from people who want to taste or have something to say
about” the cookie,
according to yesterday’s Telegram.

The district is now trying to figure out the logistics of
shipping the cookies around the country, but won’t begin baking
until after Labor Day. They’re also thinking about making the
cookie smaller, so that it contains less calories, and can be
reintroduced at the school.

In case you want to make your own cookies in defiance of federal
nannying, or you just want to know if it lives up to the hype,

here’s the recipe.