1. Another death, another cop cleared
A woman holds a banner as she takes part during a protest in support of Eric Garner at Union Square on December 3, 2014 in New York City. (Kena Betancur/Getty Images)
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A Staten Island grand jury opted to not indict NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo for choking Eric Garner, an unarmed 43-year-old man, to death.
[Vox / German Lopez]
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Put differently: "In America’s largest city, the judicial branch declined to pursue charges against a security officer who was videotaped in broad daylight choking a man to death."
[Slate / Joshua Keating]
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"We know he didn’t attack the officer. We know he didn't charge him or reach for his gun."
[Demos / Donovan Ramsey]
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Garner's death was caught on video — and it didn't make a difference.
[Vox / Jenée Desmond-Harris]
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"So weird to have Mike Brown's case — the greatest argument for body cameras — be immediately followed by Garner's, its greatest rebuttal."
[LA Times / Matt Pearce]
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Then again, Pantaleo himself didn't have a camera, and a South Carolina cop was recently indicted based on dashboard cam footage.
[CBS News]
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The outcome in the Garner case is the rule, not the exception: cops are very rarely prosecuted.
[Vox / Amanda Taub]
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64 percent of New Yorkers wanted to indict Pantaleo, but only 41 percent of Staten Islanders did.
[FiveThirtyEight / Harry Enten]
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This statement by police chief Bill Bratton on handling protests is unbelievably callous: "We have the ability to have a level of tolerance—breathing room, if you will."
[New Yorker / Jonathan Blitzer]
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Mayor Bill de Blasio: "I couldn't help but immediately think of what it would mean to me to lose [his son] Dante."
[NYC Mayor's Office]
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Conservatives are outraged about the decision.
[Vox / Tim Lee]
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Chokeholds have been banned within the NYPD since 1993. Theoretically.
[Vox / Matt Yglesias]
2. The Sony hack
Annie, starring Cameron Diaz, Quvenzhene Wallis and Jamie Foxx, is among the leaked files. (Rich Polk/Getty Images for Columbia Pictures)
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Sony Pictures has been hacked, exposing as much as 100 terabytes (100,000 gigabytes) of data.
[Vox / Todd VanDerWerff]
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The hack itself, which immobilized many of the studio's computers, ocurred last week.
[LA Times / Ryan Faughnder, Paresh Dave, and Saba Hamedy]
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But the files, including copies of the yet-to-be released Annie remake and the war movie Fury, are only starting to be released now.
[The Hollywood Reporter]
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BuzzFeed obtained almost 40 GB of the files, which also include vast amounts of personal information about employees, including thousands of Social Security numbers.
[BuzzFeed / Tom Gara and Charlie Wurzel]
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"One of the files leaked this weekend was a Word document titled 'Passwords' that contained an executive’s computer, LotusNotes, and American Express usernames and passwords."
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One of the apparent hackers, a group that calls itself Guardians of Peace, claims the group physically entered Sony's offices to pull off the hack.
[The Verge / Jason Kastrenakes and Russell Brandom]
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North Korea is widely suspected in the attack, due to its anger over Sony's film The Interview with Seth Rogen and James Franco, which is about an assassination attempt against leader Kim Jong Un.
[Vox / Max Fisher]
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A North Korean spokesman when asked if they did it: "Wait and see."
[BBC]
3. Panetti execution stayed
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A federal court stayed the execution of Scott Panetti, an extremely mentally ill man on death row in Texas.
[Vox / German Lopez]
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The three-judge panel was unanimous and included conservative Priscilla Owen, who George W. Bush considered for the Supreme Court.
[5th Circuit Court of Appeals]
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Panetti, who is schizophrenic, has said that a figure named "Sarge" controlled him when he murdered his wife's parents, and "demons had been laughing at him" after the murders.
[Slate / Dahlia Lithwick and Boer Deng]
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Attorney General Greg Abbott (soon to be governor) has argued that Panetti is exaggerating his symptoms.
[NYT / David Montgomery]
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Americans oppose the death penalty for the mentally ill, 58 percent to 28.
[Public Policy Polling]
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A wide array of conservative leaders have urged Texas Gov. Rick Perry to commute Panetti's sentence to life in prison.
[Brent Bozell et al]
4. Misc.
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Police body cam vendor after Ferguson: "We are feeling phenomenal right now."
[Washington Post / Drew Harwell]
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Should Congress cap the number of male Representatives and Senators?
[The Atlantic / Emily von Hoffmann]
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The economy's improving. Here's why the Fed shouldn't let up.
[NYT / Binyamin Appelbaum interviewing Charles Evans]
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A critic of disease-specific philanthropy explains why he thinks Ebola is an exception.
[Science / Kai Kupferschmidt ]
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What happens to your heart rate when you propose to somebody.
[Washington Post / Ana Swanson]
5. Verbatim
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"The Golden Quarter ran from approximately 1945 to 1971. Just about everything that defines the modern world either came about, or had its seeds sown, during this time."
[Aeon / Michael Hanlon]
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"Some traditional approaches to drug interdiction would be obsolete in a drug market dominated by synthetic drugs."
[Washington Post / Keith Humphreys]
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"War between China and the United States is more likely to occur by blunder than from rational premeditation."
[RAND / David Gompert, Hans Binnendijk and Bonny Lin]
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"The six witnesses set to testify against alleged [CIA] leaker Jeffrey Sterling took secret documents home themselves without authorization."
[Politico / Josh Gerstein]
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"Good macroeconomic policy matters a hell of a lot more than good foreign policy — even good foreign economic policy – in maintaining high levels of U.S. economic growth."
[Washington Post / Dan Drezner]
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"High school graduates who work in retail firms with 1,000 or more employees earn 15 percent more than those in shops with fewer than 10 workers."
[NBER / Laurent Belsie]
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