WHO

America’s Warlords in Afghanistan
It was a grand plan. U.S. forces would leave and turn over Afghanistan’s security to the Afghanis. Well, not only did the U.S. decide to keep a force of 10,000, but the remaining contingent might be even larger than first planned. And The American Conservative examines the nature of the “handover,” which seems to rely on brutal warlords and frightening militias. In fact, a new Human Rights Watch report indicates that local populations are being terrorized by warlords and militias. The only difference between the Taliban and them? Support from the U.S.

The CIA Just Declassified the Document That Supposedly Justified the Iraq Invasion
Journalists and researchers have long sought access to an unredacted or, at least, a far-less redacted version of the infamous National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) used by Team Bush to justify the invasion of Iraq. In January, their wish came true. The CIA gave The Black Vault a newly-declassified version of the document. Guess what? It shows a wide gulf between Team Bush’s wild claims and the document’s much less hysterical reality … on supposed links between Saddam and al-Qaeda, on Saddam’s supposed biological weapons program and, according to then-President Bush, his “reconstituted” nuclear program … which the NIE said lacked “sufficient material” to be viable.

U.S. Borrowers Cross Atlantic to Sell Record Amount of Junk Debt
America doesn’t make anything anymore. It’s one of the reasons America perennially runs such a crippling trade deficit. But that’s all changing … because America does make something that Japan and China cannot compete with … junk debt. That’s right, no one makes junk debt like the U.S. Now, American traders are exporting that debt to yield-hungry, quantitative easing-fed European investors who are desperately seeking returns in a market hampered by sub-zero interest rates.

WHAT

CISA Security Bill: An F for Security But an A+ for Spying
Wired looks at the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act, which the Senate Intelligence Committee passed by a vote of 14 to 1. The Senate just released the full, updated text of the CISA legislation passed last week and experts say it does the opposite of what it was intended to do. It was supposed to reassure Americans’ fears about the sharing of private data. Instead, legal analysts determined that it widens backdoors leading from private firms to intelligence agencies. Go figure.

WHY

40 Years of Death Row: 1,359 Executed; 890 Convictions Overturned
A death sentence doesn’t have to be … a death sentence. In fact, of all the death sentences rendered over the last 40 years, only 16% of them resulted in an execution. That’s according to new research by the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill looking at the 8,466 people sentenced to death from 1973 to 2013. The data—3,194 sentences overturned on appeal, 890 convictions thrown out, but only 1,781 cases where the death sentence was overturned while guilt was sustained—highlights the uneven and often specious application of the death penalty.

Wrongly Convicted Ohio Man to Get $1 Million
Speaking of specious justice … Ricky Jackson, who spent 39 years in jail before being cleared of a murder he did not commit, was awarded over $1 million from the state for his wrongful imprisonment. He was convicted based on the testimony of a 12-year-old boy who eventually admitted he didn’t witness the crime. That testimony was the prosecution’s only evidence against Jackson.

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