By RP Staff, on Fri Sep 30, 2011 at 5:00 PM ET We have an exciting week in store for you come Monday.
We will start it off with an exclusive expose of a generally taboo subject — sex behind bars. You will never guess who is writing it.
OK, you already know, it’s contributing RP Jeff Smith, who spent a year in a federal prison in southern Kentucky. So you also know it will be entertaining, hilarious and informative, while offering some big-picture lessons about politics and society.
And, as previously mentioned, next week is Resolutions Week here at The Recovering Politician, so send in your own New Year’s Resolutions by Saturday at 10 PM to Staff@TheRecoveringPolitician.com. We want to hear your stories.
Have a great weekend, and see you Monday morning!
By Grant Smith, RP Staff, on Fri Sep 30, 2011 at 3:00 PM ET
The Federal Reserve wants to be your Facebook friend. Creepy, right? [CNBC]
Bank of America’s new $5 debit card fee. Is Dodd-Frank to blame? [Forbes]
Which major new product announcement is more important: Amazon’s new tablet, or Amazon’s new browser? [Fortune]
Who generates more revenue: Apple or Microsoft? [CNN Money]
China launches the first experimental module for a future space station. [Washington Post]
By Chris Schulz, RP Staff, on Fri Sep 30, 2011 at 1:30 PM ET The Politics of the Planet An interesting graphic about water use and water shortages. [npr.org]
Killer cantaloupes are on the loose. Luckily they are being traced to a single source. [nytimes.com]
In Nigeria, A Nobel Peace Prize winner dies. Her work focused on the relationship between the protection of the environment and quality of life. [latimes.com]
By RP Staff, on Fri Sep 30, 2011 at 12:00 PM ET As Jews around the world celebrate Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, we will be devoting next week to New Year’s resolutions.
All of next week at The Recovering Politician, our contributors will be sharing their own New Year’s resolutions. And whether you are Jewish, Jew-ish, Gentile, or with no religious beliefs at all, we encourage you to do the same.
Just send us your New Year’s Resolutions to staff@TheRecoveringPolitician.com by Saturday at 10 PM. They can be a sentence or two; or if you prefer, send us a 1500 word essay. Or anything in between.
Thanks, and we look forward to reading your resolutions in next week’s The Recovering Politician.
By RP Staff, on Fri Sep 30, 2011 at 10:00 AM ET The Politics of Immigration Is there a generational bias on the federal courts regarding marriage equality? It’s a fair question following the recent dismissal of a lawsuit brought by a married binational couple who were denied a marriage-based green card by immigration officials. In the decision, U.S. district judge Stephen Wilson, a 1985 Reagan appointee, said that the court was bound by a 1982 case—a case in which officials at the time wrote that the gay couple’s attorney “had failed to establish that a bona fide marital relationship can exist between two faggots.” Should decisions involving civil rights issues be based on precedents set thirty years ago? The AdvocateThe current recession touches many lives, but, as is so often the case, it is innocent children that feel the pain of poverty without any understanding of the forces affecting their lives. Right now, it is Latino children that are statistically the poorest group in the United States. Learn more from the Pew Research Center.
By Zack Adams, RP Staff, on Fri Sep 30, 2011 at 9:15 AM ET The sports world has a pretty good grasp of steroids testing at this point. However, testing for Human Growth Hormone (HGH) is still lacking. Congress is now taking an interest.
“In letters obtained by The Associated Press on Thursday, leaders of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee invited NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, NFLPA executive director DeMaurice Smith and the chief executive of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency to a meeting on Capitol Hill.” [ESPN]
By John Johnson, on Fri Sep 30, 2011 at 8:30 AM ET  Dear Tito,
I wake up this morning and can only imagine the shock. September 1—everything seemed great and cruising to a world series title. September 30- epic collapse and out of the playoffs. Sports pundits everywhere likening this to every bad Red Sox memory…Aaron Boone, Mookie Wilson, Bucky Dent. The bad part about history and having such a devoted fan base is they hang on everything—good and bad. Its easy to recall all the bad things when bad things happen, just like its easy to remember all the good things when good things happen. The truth is probably somewhere in between, but insane expectations, like the fans of Boston have, can be a career killer.
I can only imagine how bad you feel. Real loss, especially when you think you have done your best, hurts. And it also is much worse when you care so much. I hate failure too…and yet I find I fail far more often than I ever want to. Sometimes the harder I try, the worse I fail. It seems like the Red Sox suffered from that a lot this month.
 Terry Francona There are all sorts of calls for your head—fire the manager. Blame you. But cooler heads usually prevail. Boston will remember the glory of 2004 and 2007. Boston will remember the way you comported yourself in the good times. Boston will give you the benefit of the doubt for the classy way you have managed the team. Or maybe they’ll just forgive you because we all are human, and even epic mistakes can be treated with compassion.
Take solace in the fact that you have fans, that a big loss hopefully will lead to a better team next year. A chance to fix things that maybe seemed ok but weren’t, a chance to rebuild, and rebirth. I always hate the flowery poetry of baseball—“leaving you when the seasons turn darkest, and returning in the Spring” but the good news is there will be another chance. I really hope it is in Boston, but if somehow you do get fired, I’ll be a fan wherever you go.
It hurts now. But try to learn a lesson from all this. And keep your head up. Can’t wait for Spring training and next year.
A devoted and sympathetic fan,
John
By Zack Adams, RP Staff, on Thu Sep 29, 2011 at 3:00 PM ET
“The Fraying of a Nation’s Decency” An interesting article about Amazon.com. [NY Times]
The White House has been petitioning on a number of issues. However, the petition to “Direct the Patent Office to Cease Issuing Software Patents” has been a hit. [Technology Review India]
Diebold voting machines can be hacked by remote control? What?! Unbelievable. [Salon]
Since Spotify has been released in Sweden music piracy has dropped by 25%. [TorrentFreak]
Three Senators: Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Al Franken (D-MN), and Chris Coons (D-DE) have condemned OnStar for tracking its customers. Schumer called it “one of the most brazen invasions of privacy in recent memory.” [ars technica]
By Grant Smith, RP Staff, on Thu Sep 29, 2011 at 1:30 PM ET
Herman Cain’s Florida straw poll victory has many political junkies re-assessing his chances. [The Fix]
“Big Brother” is….Facebooking you? Just how much data-mining is going on at the world’s most popular social media site? [Forbes]
A Libertarian-In-Chief? Texas Congressman Ron Paul beats President Obama in a recent poll. [Yahoo Finance]
A famous reality T.V. star from Alaska laments that politics has begun to resemble her world. [The Atlantic]
As scorn for voting grows, protests are surging around the world. [The New York Times]
By Patrick Derocher, on Thu Sep 29, 2011 at 9:15 AM ET Pictured here at Davos in 2009, Coca-Cola CEO Muhtar Kent has been highly critical of the American business climate and political in-fighting. At the Clinton Global Initiative conference in New York, Coca-Cola CEO and Chairman Muhtar Kent remarked that China is becoming more hospitable to business than the United States. “You have a one-stop shop in terms of the Chinese foreign investment agency and local governments are fighting for investment with each other,” he said, noting that an arcane tax structure and political in-fighting were hurting the US’s business climate. [Atlanta Journal-Constitution]
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