Hold the Presses on West, Texas

The fertilizer warehouse that burned and exploded in West, Texas, on April 17, killing 15 people, was not equipped with fire sprinklers, said Dan Keeney, a spokesman for West Fertilizer Co. and its parent, Adair Grain Inc.

“We can confirm that there were no sprinklers in the building,” Keeney said Friday in response to a question from The Dallas Morning News. “There were fire extinguishers in the building.”

The fire detonated tons of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, but investigators have not announced how they believe the fire started. Officials have not publicly tied the fire to the arrest Friday morning of West paramedic Bryce Reed, 31, on a charge of possessing a destructive device. Bryce was taken into federal custody.

  Dallas News

Bryce Reed, 31, previously told The Dallas Morning News that he assumed radio command of the April 17 incident after the explosion killed his superiors and colleagues. He is now accused of giving a pipe bomb to an unnamed person in nearby Abbott on April 26, the day after he played a prominent role in the memorial service for 12 emergency responders killed in the blast.

[...]

The U.S. attorney’s office, which is prosecuting Reed on the federal bomb charge, said in a prepared statement that “authorities will not speculate” whether the pipe bomb Reed allegedly had is tied to the plant explosion.

[...]

[T]he sister of the firefighter that Reed eulogized at a public memorial last month said she had to ask police to guard her deceased brother’s apartment because she feared Reed had been stealing from it since the explosion.

[...]

According to the ATF’s criminal complaint affidavit against Reed, someone who lives in Abbott called the McLennan County Sheriff’s Department on Tuesday about a “possible destructive device” that they had “unwittingly taken possession of” from the man.

  Dallas News

Unwittingly? Dim-wittedly, maybe.

One neighbor, who asked that his name be withheld to protect his family’s safety, said Bryce Reed told him his wife had left him. The man said Bryce Reed also told him that the ATF was investigating him for fraud and that his attorneys had advised him to “get the hell out of Dodge.”

The neighbor said that Bryce Reed told him that he had a pipe bomb that had belonged to Cyrus Reed, but that he had given it to a friend to store.

Cyrus Reed is not related to Bryce Reed, but is one of the responders to the fertilizer plant fire and was killed in the blast. (If I’ve got all the pieces of this weird puzzle straight.)

From the beginning, the state fire marshal’s office has said it is still working to determine — or rule out — whether the event was a criminal act or an industrial accident. The fire marshal’s office does not expect to determine the cause of the fire that preceded the deadly explosion until later this month. The blast itself is believed to have been fueled largely by ammonium nitrate kept at the plant.

Criminal act? Not terrorism? No, “Reed” doesn’t sound Islamic.

This is Why We Don't Get to See More of Glenn Greenwald

He's smart, he's rational, and he knows what he's talking about.



...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Status Quo

President Obama has picked a former telecommunications lobbyist and campaign fund-raiser [Tom Wheeler] to serve as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, raising serious questions about his 2007 pledge that corporate lobbyists would not finance his campaign or run his administration.

  NYT

Raising questions? I thought we’d pretty much shown that pledge to be a crock of shit already:

 

 

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Boycott of Israel's Palestinian Policies

Professor Stephen Hawking is backing the academic boycott of Israel by pulling out of a conference hosted by Israeli president Shimon Peres in Jerusalem as a protest at Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.

Hawking, 71, the world-renowned theoretical physicist and Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, had accepted an invitation to headline the fifth annual president’s conference, Facing Tomorrow, in June, which features major international personalities, attracts thousands of participants and this year will celebrate Peres’s 90th birthday.

  Raw

Freedom of Choice

The government is getting very good at crafting policies for working people that make [...] a playing field that has tilted so far toward the company in the past 30 years that it's practically standing pure vertical at this point.

Take the notion, proposed by Congress, to apply to the private sector the choice available to public sector workers of choosing between overtime pay and comp time.

Judith Lichtman, senior adviser to the National Partnership for Women and Families, contends the measure would open the door for employers to pressure workers into taking compensatory time off instead of overtime pay. The program was created in the public sector in 1985 to save federal, state and local governments money, not to give workers greater flexibility, Lichtman said.

[...]

The more you look at it, the more this appears to be another way not to pay people what they're worth.

  Charlie Pierce

As a matter of fact, those of us who are “exempt” employees where I work are given no choice at all. We are only permitted comp time.

  ...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

National Gun Registry Just Became a Moot Point

Also, universal background checks.

A Computer-aided design (CAD) file that would allow others with 3-D printers to create their own handguns was made available for free on Monday.

“I recognize that this tool might be used to harm people,” Wilson told Forbes. “That’s what it is — it’s a gun. But I don’t think that’s a reason to not put it out there. I think that liberty in the end is a better interest.”

  Raw Story

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

This Morning's al Jazeera Headlines

But it doesn't take a genius to follow that with "but he didn't say anything about Syria air space or drones."

Today in Our Shining History

 

Kent State Massacre

Thar She Blows - Again

The Pegasus Pipeline has ruptured again, this time along the Arkansas-Missouri state line.

ExxonMobil and Missouri officials are cleaning up an oil spill first reported Tuesday in Ripley County, Missouri. That's 200 miles north of Mayflower, Ark., where the same pipeline burst, spilling thousands of barrels worth of oil into the North Woods subdivision.

  KATV Arkansas

This happened because the pipeline was old and nobody gave a fk until very recently whether it might have the essential structural integrity of the average soda straw. This, studies have shown, is the case with a great number of pipelines all over this great land of ours, so when people tell you that the Keystone XL pipeline is nothing to be concerned about because "we already have thousands of pipelines criss-crossing this country," you can feel free to suggest that they explain it all to Arkansas and Missouri, both of which have enough oil on them at the moment to qualify as salads.

  Charlie Pierce

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

WTF‽

Two foreign nationals — who are believed to be associates of the alleged Boston Marathon bombers — were arrested Saturday on immigration violations, authorities said.

[...]

The vanity plate on the front of the vehicle shared by the two men arrested reads "Terrorista #1,' and an expletive-filled bumper sticker was posted on the car's rear.

[...]

The men, identified by neighbors as 19-year-olds from Kazakhstan, drove around in a black BMW with the mock license plate, “TERRORISTA #1.”

[...]

“These individuals were arrested on administrative immigration violations,” spokesman Ross Feinstein said in a terse statement.

  Daily News

 

We don't get to know what the expletive is, but the Daily News felt it necessary to publish a picture of the plate with the number pixelled out.

Merecedes. BMW. My impression of them hasn’t changed, but where do these kids get these vehicles? And, besides, I've never lived in a state that would allow you to just put anything on a license plate, so I'm wondering if this particular car is even licensed.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.