They were wild on the streets in Portland in 1912.

Now a number of these private water companies are cutting deals to supply water for fracking, putting the public’s drinking water in danger of contamination. Smart move, huh?

Much more here.

Don’t mess with Raymond Chandler’s split infinitives.

The Nation’s Katha Pollitt gets right to the heart of the manufactured controversy about whether Democrats don’t give stay-at-home moms enough respect:

When performed by married women in their own homes, domestic labor is work—difficult, sacred, noble work…. When performed for pay, however, this supremely important, difficult job becomes low-wage labor that almost anyone can do—teenagers, elderly women, even despised illegal immigrants. But here’s the real magic: when performed by low-income single mothers in their own homes, those same exact tasks—changing diapers, going to the playground and the store, making dinner, washing the dishes, giving a bath—are not only not work; they are idleness itself. Just ask Mitt Romney. In a neat catch that in a sane world would have put the Rosen gaffe to rest forever, Nation editor at large Chris Hayes aired a video clip on his weekend-morning MSNBC show displaying Romney this past January calling for parents on welfare to get jobs: “While I was governor, 85 percent of the people on a form of welfare assistance in my state had no work requirement. And I wanted to increase the work requirement. I said, for instance, that even if you have a child 2 years of age, you need to go to work. And people said, ‘Well that’s heartless,’ and I said, ‘No, no, I’m willing to spend more giving daycare to allow those parents to go back to work. It’ll cost the state more providing that daycare, but I want the individuals to have the dignity of work.’” (Don’t be fooled by the gender-neutral language—he’s talking about mothers.)

Like the old adage says, the rich are different from the rest of us. In every way you can think of, it appears.

The rest of Pollitt’s column is here.

If the propect of a Romney presidency wasn’t already scary enough, check out this development: The Mittster has made Robert Bork the head of his judicial/consitutional law team. The same Bork who many Republicans thought was too much of a right-wing ideologue to support his nomination to the US Supreme Court back in the 1980s. (The fight waged against his nomination was so intense that it even spawned a verb: borked.)

[Bork (l) and Ronald Reagan, 1987. Photographer unknown.]

If you’re not familiar with Bork, let’s just say that he makes Antonin Scalia seem like a reasonable sort of guy. People for the American Way has put together a report on Bork’s political/legal views and background. Check it out here.

The next president will almost certainly get to fill at least one vacancy on the Supreme Court. Any guess as to who Romney’s nominee might be?

The flight deck of the Space Shuttle Endeavour. Is this cool or what?

[Image: Ben Cooper]

You can read more about it here.

It doesn’t work.

Yes, I am that same Magpie who’s been missing in action for a few years. If you want to see this blog’s earlier incarnation, it’s here (sans graphics).

Four decades after Tricky Dick’s Operation Intercept (aimed at stopping the flow of marijuana into the US from Mexico) started the US off on its longest-running “endless war,” there are signs that international anti-drug efforts are running out of steam. At the recent Summit of the Americas, several Western Hemisphere leaders suggested that the War on Drugs is a burden that’s too heavy for their countries to continue to bear—and that it’s time to consider decriminalizing at least some illegal drugs. An excellent article by the UK Guardian’s Douglas Haddow has more:

The problem with the drug war, and the reason why it has taken so long for reformers to gain any traction, is that it has remained a niche issue due to its deeply classist nature. In a global context, developing nations endure the violence while the developed subsidise it, through both consumer demand and law enforcement funding. Within the developed countries a similar formula is reproduced; with poor neighbourhoods and demographics taking the place of their nation-state equivalents.

The corrosive results of this arrangement are obvious to anyone who has been paying attention. Public funds are diverted away from more worthy projects into the criminal justice system. Police are made to spend their days toiling as bagmen and bullies while other, more morally reprehensible crimes go unnoticed. Entire postal codes lose faith in their governments and many become completely alienated from those same police who are meant to protect them. Throughout the western hemisphere and Europe, the public’s view of government has been subject to a lingering decay. The American public’s trust in their government has never been lower, the same goes for Mexico, and last year’s riots in England demonstrated exactly what happens when a nation operates on a shredded social contract.

On the other hand, the prison-industrial complex makes tons of money by keeping drugs illegal. And the gun manufacturers make a pretty penny by selling arms to police, drug dealers, and the various drug cartels.

You can read all of Haddow’s piece here.