Monday Reads

Good Morning!

I have to begin this post with some sad breaking news. From NBC News:

Dr. Martin Salia, a surgeon who was diagnosed with Ebola in Sierra Leone and flown to Nebraska over the weekend for treatment, has died, hospital officials said Monday.

Salia, 44, became the second person to die of the disease in the United States. Thomas Eric Duncan, who contracted Ebola in Liberia and traveled to Dallas, died last month.

Salia landed Saturday in Omaha. He was the 10th patient to be treated on American soil and the third at Nebraska Medical Center. Hospital officials had said that he was perhaps sicker than any other patient flown to the United States from West Africa.

“It is with an extremely heavy heart that we share this news,” said Dr. Phil Smith, medical director of the hospital’s biocontainment unit. “Dr. Salia was extremely critical when he arrived here, and unfortunately, despite our best efforts, we weren’t able to save him.”

Salia was born in Sierra Leone, but was a legal resident of the U.S. He had returned to his native country to help people suffering with Ebola. His wife and two children live in Carrollton, Maryland, a suburb of Washington DC.

Dr. Martin Salia

A little more from The Boston Globe:

Salia arrived Saturday to be treated at the Omaha hospital, where two other Ebola patients have been successfully treated.

Salia had advanced symptoms when he arrived at the hospital Saturday, which included kidney and respiratory failure, the hospital said. He was placed on dialysis, a ventilator and given several medications to support his organ systems….

Salia’s wife, Isatu Salia, said Monday that she and her family were grateful for the efforts made by her husband’s medical team.

‘‘We are so appreciate of the opportunity for my husband to be treated here and believe he was in the best place possible,’’ Salia said….

Isatu Salia said in a telephone interview over the weekend that when she spoke to her husband early Friday his voice sounded weak and shaky. But he told her ‘‘I love you’’ in a steady voice, she said.

They prayed together, she said, calling her husband ‘‘my everything.’’

Heartbreaking. The health care workers trying to stem the tide of this terrible disease are true heroes.

Nebraska is also in the news because of the sudden Congressional efforts to approve the Keystone pipeline. The bill has already been passed by the House. Dakinikat posted a couple of stories about the pipeline fight in yesterday’s comment thread.

From the AP, via Talking Points Memo: Obscure Nebraska Panel May Determine Fate Of Keystone Pipeline.

Read more at the link.

We’re talking about the possibility of America’s breadbasket being horribly damaged by a tar sands oil spill. President Obama could still veto the bill if the Senate passes it, but if he doesn’t the government will will still have to deal with Native Americans whose land the pipeline would cross. From the New York Daily News, House approval of Keystone XL pipeline is an ‘act of war’: Rosebud Sioux Tribe.

The GOP-led House voted on Friday to approve the Alberta-to-Nebraska pipeline — but Cyril Scott, president of the Rosebud Sioux tribe in South Dakota vowed to block it.

Scott has threatened to close Rosebud’s borders if any attempt to build the pipeline is made.

“Act of war means that we’re going to have to take legal maneuvers now,” Scott told the Daily News over the phone. “We’re going to protect our land and our way of life.” [….]

The international pipeline would funnel tar sands oil through Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska – right through the Rosebud tribal lands.

Scott argued the pipeline violates the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie that gave the land known as the Black Hills to the Sioux Nation.

“When it comes to treaties, they forget about us. … People forget that we’re a sovereign nation,” Scott said. “Everybody else … they’re just guests here.”

The greatest concern is that a leak could affect the Ogallala Aquifer, which is already in jeopardy. From The Washington Post last September:

The sprawling Ogallala Aquifer in the Great Plains provides freshwater for roughly one-fifth of the wheat, corn, cattle and cotton in the United States. But key parts of the underwater aquifer are being depleted faster than they can be recharged by rain (see map)….How long before those areas in decline run out of groundwater for farming?

A recent study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences tried to come up with an answer for the crucial Kansas section of the aquifer. At current rates of use, farming in that area is likely to peak by 2040 or so due to water depletion.

With better conservation techniques, western Kansas could probably stretch things out so that farm production doesn’t peak until the 2070s. But avoiding any sort of peak altogether would require drastic measures — beyond anything contemplated today.

Do we really want to add more risk by allowing a pipeline carrying the dirtiest kind of oil known the humankind? As Rosebud Sioux president Cyril Scott said in the Daily News story linked above, “It’s not if it breaks, it’s when it breaks.”

Some Republicans claim that Harry Reid is allowing a vote on the pipeline to help Mary Landrieu in her campaign against Crazy-Eyes Cassidy (who sponsored the bill in the House) for the U.S. Senate seat from Louisiana. But if that’s true, then why did the DSCC cut off funds to Landrieu’s campaign? I wish the Democrats would get busy approving President Obama’s outstanding appointees instead of plotting to destroy America’s heartland.

Two more links on the Keystone pipeline story:

Politicus USA, Democratic Senator Completely Annihilates Fox News’ Keystone XL Pipeline Talking Points. Check out the story to read how Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse shut down both South Dakota Sen. John Thune and Fox host Chris Wallace in enemy territory.

The Daily Beast, The Pipeline From Hell: There’s No Good Reason to Build Keystone XL (“No lasting jobs, no cheaper gas, and a chance to kill off one-fourth of U.S. farmland and maybe the planet. Why are both parties going all out to get such a crappy deal?”)

The problem of rape on college campuses is also in the news. From The Boston Globe, Harvard’s view on consent at issue in sexual assault policy.

In the fierce debate about campus sexual assault, Harvard University’s policy has come under particular scrutiny, assailed by some professors as a product of political correctness that stacks the deck against the accused. But a range of specialists who help colleges handle misconduct allegations say Harvard’s policy is decidedly mainstream.

Really? Then why is it that colleges and universities rarely punish accused rapists?

In recent years, many colleges have adopted an “affirmative consent” standard, which states that sex is considered consensual only if both partners explicitly communicate their willingness to engage in sexual activity.

Harvard’s policy, meanwhile, simply forbids “unwelcome conduct,” which it defines as “unrequested or uninvited” behavior — but does not require explicit consent.

Harvard says its standard is consistent with federal civil rights law, but critics say the policy does not go far enough and is out of step with other colleges.

“I definitely see Harvard as an outlier,” said Djuna Perkins, a Boston-area lawyer who conducts sexual misconduct investigations and training for colleges. “Most definitions now require affirmative consent.”

The clash about college misconduct policies is the latest flashpoint in a broader debate about how to curb sexual assaults on campus and what standards should be used in determining guilt. The issue is playing out at colleges around the country and comes as 86 schools — including Harvard and nine others in Massachusetts — are facing federal inquiries into their handling of sexual-assault cases.

There is also a long op-ed in The New York Times in which Yale professor of criminal law Jed Rubenfeld discusses both sides of this simmering controversy, Mishandling Rape.

Bill Cosby and Hannibal Buress

And speaking of rape accusations, the talk about Bill Cosby’s alleged history of sexual assault has been in the news again, after it died down eight years ago. From The Washington Post, 

Those accusations date to 2006, when Cosby made public denials, settled a civil lawsuit out of court and maintained his stature as a dad-sweatered pop-culture icon.

It seemed the scandal had been put to rest. But as the past few weeks have shown, it’s become more difficult to bury a story for good — especially a story like this one, which has many of the components for going viral: a famous name, a shareable video, lurid personal accounts. The resurgence of interest in this old news story didn’t happen at random. It’s the result of what we, in the age of information overload, are inclined to click on.

This news cycle started with a stand-up routine, in which the allegations were reintroduced by comedian Hannibal Buress, who was performing in Cosby’s home town of Philadelphia. The performance video was first published a month ago on PhillyMag.com….

Buress urged his audience to help the story resurface.

“I’ve done this bit onstage, and people think I’m making it up,” he said in the video. “When you leave here, Google ‘Bill Cosby rape.’ That s— has more results than ‘Hannibal Buress.’ ”

Now another accuser has spoken publicly, according the The Hollywood Reporter.

In an essay on Hollywood Elsewhere, Joan Tarshis wrote that the comedian drugged and raped her on two occasions in the fall of 1969 when she was 19 years old.

Tarshis, a former actress, music industry publicist and journalist, wrote that she met Cosby through mutual friends, and he often invited her to his room on the Universal lot, where he was shootingThe Bill Cosby Show. He would ply her with food and drinks, often pouring beer into her Bloody Mary’s, even though he himself never drank.

One night, Cosby invited her to help him work on material for the show, where he made her one of his Bloody Mary-and-beer concoctions. She claims she was in the middle of discussing a scene with him when she lost consciousness.

“The next thing I remember was coming to on his couch while being undressed,” she wrote. “Through the haze, I thought I was being clever when I told him I had an infection, and he would catch it, and his wife would know he had sex with someone. But he just found another orifice to use. I was sickened by what was happening to me and shocked that this man I had idolized was now raping me.”

Read the rest at the link. Cosby cancelled a scheduled appearance on the Late Show in the wake of the new accusations and public discussion.

Republicans never seem to stop pushing the legal envelope to get their candidates elected. From CNN, How the GOP used Twitter to stretch election laws.

Washington (CNN) — Republicans and outside groups used anonymous Twitter accounts to share internal polling data ahead of the midterm elections, CNN has learned, a practice that raises questions about whether they violated campaign finance laws that prohibit coordination.

The Twitter accounts were hidden in plain sight. The profiles were publicly available but meaningless without knowledge of how to find them and decode the information, according to a source with knowledge of the activities.

The practice is the latest effort in the quest by political operatives to exploit the murky world of campaign finance laws at a time when limits on spending in politics are eroding and regulators are being defanged.

The law says that outside groups, such as super PACs and non-profits, can spend freely on political causes as long as they don’t coordinate their plans with campaigns. Sharing costly internal polls in private, for instance, could signal to the campaign committees where to focus precious time and resources.

Read more at the link.

I’ve run out of space, but I want to include a couple of Ferguson updates:

Christian Science Monitor, Ferguson braces for prospect of no indictment in Michael Brown shooting case.

V[]cative, The Pre-Verdict Chatter Among Ferguson Cops and Their Supporters.

What else is happening? Please share links to stories that interest you in the comment thread. I hope to see you there!