Looking for a job with a little adventure to it? Florida conservation officials are recruiting "crocodile response agents" to help corral the wayward reptiles. No experience required.

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission is planning to hire two to four more part-time agents — there is currently just one — to respond to calls when crocodiles stray onto human turf in the Florida Keys, the string of wetland islands at the southern tip of the state.

Crocodile response agents "assist in handling human-American Crocodile conflicts," wrote Carli Segelson, spokesperson for the Florida commission’s south region, in an email response to msnbc.com questions. "Their duties include, site visits, captures, translocations, carcass recoveries, other duties as needed."
http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/06/12/12170703-wanted-crocodile-handlers-no-experience-required

A disturbing lawsuit has been filed against the Baltimore County Police Department by Linda Johnson over the death of her husband, Architect Carl D. Johnson on May 27, 2010. Johnson was pepper sprayed, tasered, and beaten before his death on the way home from Bible study class.

Linda Johnson is suing the Maryland State Police, Baltimore County Police, individual commanders and six officers. Her lawsuit claims that her husband suffered a diabetic attack after calling a friend and crashing on I-795. First to the scene was State Trooper Davon Parker who pepper sprayed Johnson after he lowered his window of his car, which had crashed into the median. When Johnson got out of the car, Parker clubbed him on the knee and then allegedly another officer (Loss) clubbed him. When Baltimore County Police Officer Nicholas Wolferman arrived, he also allegedly beat Johnson. Three more officers arrived and one, Baltimore County Officer Andrew O’Neill tasered Johnson twice. Officer Loss then allegedly punched him in the face. Eight more officers then arrived — leaving one wondering if there were any officers left at headquarters. The complaint states that “there were approximately 52 individuals that responded to the scene.”

http://jonathanturley.org/2012/06/07/lawsuit-architect-in-diabetic-shock-beaten-by-multiple-officers-pepper-sprayed-and-repeatedly-tasered-before-dying/

are our regulators attempting to rein in the excesses of those they regulate, or are they auditioning for a lucrative future job? Are economists who publish papers praising financial deregulation giving us an honest assessment of the facts and trends, or courting extremely lucrative consulting fees from banks?

In her book Shadow Elite, about the new global ruling class, Janine Wedel recalls visiting Eastern Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall and finding the elites she met there—those at the center of building the new capitalist societies—toting an array of business cards that represented their various roles: one for their job as a member of parliament, another for the start-up business they were running (which was making its money off government contracts), and yet another for the NGO on the board of which they sat. Wedel writes that those “who adapted to the new environment with the most agility and creativity, who tried out novel ways of operating and got away with them, and sometimes were the most ethically challenged, were most rewarded with influence.”

This has an eerie resonance with our predicament. We can never be sure just which other business cards are in the pocket of the pundit, politician or professor. We can’t be sure, in short, just who our elites are working for.
-- Christopher Hayes

http://www.thenation.com/article/168265/why-elites-fail

The political revolution we're witnessing now in America, which has been growing since the 1970s and 80s, is built on a new and even more dangerous form of corporate collusion. Just as robber barons figured out that they could form a trust to pursue their common interests, today's wealthiest corporations and individuals invented new ways to pursue their interests collectively. Essentially, the corporations and their wealthiest owners have found out that they could form a national union to represent their interests and entrench their power.

The representatives of this union are the lobbyists on K-Street and the members of the Republican Party. Its organizational structure is ever evolving and gaining strength: the American Legislative Exchange Council and Grover Norquist controlling Congress with Frank Luntz and Fox News spreading propaganda on the ground. In 2010, the Supreme Court unleashed the full power of the union thugs for the first time. The results have been catastrophic: the 2010 Republican takeover, the Wisconsin recall, and soon the loss of the presidency and Senate in 2012. After the fingers formed into a clenched fist, Anthony Kennedy provided them with brass knuckles and spikes.

Their new brand of collusion is every bit as damaging as price fixing, and it should be every bit as illegal. The Republican corporate unionization undermines capitalism at every step. There is no need to make higher profits by increasing your revenues. Simply pay your way to a regulatory code that will reduce your costs by putting your employees and customers at risk. Buy subsidies and loopholes that help you only stamp out your competitors. Write yourself a tax code that will increase the percentage of your investment returns. Own a few judges whose role is to limit your liability for damages you cause. The reality is that these so-called capitalists aren't skilled enough to rely on free market forces to increase their profits. But they do have enough wealth that they can buy the whole market and rewrite the rules in their own favor.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/06/10/1098843/-Why-we-re-losing-The-corporations-have-unionized

One could be forgiven for thinking there's anything honorable or honest about Colin Powell. For more than two decades now the Washington media has portrayed the former Secretary of State as something of a real life action hero, a reluctant warrior whose greatest fault – should they deign to mention any – was just being too darn loyal to a guy named George and his buddy Dick. What you might have missed is that Powell is a war criminal in his own right, one who in more than four decades of "public service" helped kill people from Vietnam to Panama to Iraq who never posed a threat to America. But don't just take some anti-war activists' word for it: Powell will proudly tell you as much, so long as he can make a buck from doing it in a book.

Powell's latest $27.99 account of his legendary life is billed as a "powerful portrait of a leader who is reflective, self-effacing, and grateful for the contributions of everyone he works with." But the title, It Worked for Me: In Life and Leadership, could very well refer to Powell's own careerist ambitions: saying and doing whatever served the interests of power – as a young officer in Vietnam, as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the illegal invasion of Panama, as Secretary of State under George W. Bush – has worked out tremendously well for the man, if not so much for those unfortunate enough to be on the receiving end of his public service.
http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/9698-colin-powell-another-war-criminal-cashes-in

Thousands of college graduates from (the state of Washington) are about to enter the job market during what some are calling the bleakest economic downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Among them are 5,000 University of Washington students who received their diplomas Saturday at a commencement ceremony at CenturyLink Field.
http://www.seattlepi.com/local/komo/article/5-000-students-graduate-from-UW-amid-bleak-job-3622397.php

TULLE, France — President Francois Hollande said Saturday France will begin its Afghanistan pullout next month and complete it by year-end ...

Allies have downplayed the impact of their early departure, saying Afghan troops are ready to take over.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jHWD-KiuXLY_nrAAke6MRXQy4hfA?docId=CNG.77d52b238aae4509a56c20582e5ad5b5.721

Judge Thomas Raffaele of Queens told the New York Times and the New York Law Journal that the incident occurred just after midnight on June 1. The 69-year-old judge had been cleaning out his parents’ house after their move to Houston, and he was walking down the street with a friend who had helped him move two tables. A crowd had gathered around New York City police officers making an arrest, and Raffaele called 911, thinking the officers needed backup.

One officer was ramming his knee into the back of a screaming handcuffed man, while the crowd jeered, Raffaele said. One woman, a nurse, called out to the officer to stop. Raffaele described what happened next in an interview with the New York Law Journal.

"As people kept criticizing, the officer got angrier and angrier and started to curse at people in the crowd and jumped up and ran toward the crowd and started hitting people," Raffaele said. "I was the first person he hit. It was a full-force, open-hand blow to the front of my throat. If I hadn't moved my head back when I was being hit, I think I would have been killed on the spot. That's how hard I was hit, and I am saying that from the perspective of someone who was trained in the Army on hand-to-hand combat."
http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/new_york_judge_says_cop_punched_him_after_apparently_mistaking_him_for_a_he/?utm_source=maestro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=weekly_email