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November 15, 2011 | | BRIGHT SIDE If you count yourself among the 99 percent, don't be dispirited by early Tuesday's police raid on Zuccotti Park. It may look like the end of Occupy Wall Street, but it’s a development protesters should actually welcome, writes Matt Yglesias at Think Progress. “OWS was either going to end with the cops clearing the park, or else it was going to end with the protestors losing interest.” Without intervention, OWS was facing a demoralizing potential end when the winter hit. “The worst possible outcome is for the movement to just kind of fade away, and by trying to forcibly clear the park with the NYPD, Bloomberg has guaranteed that won’t happen.” PENN STATE The attorney for Penn State’s former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky said Tuesday morning that “showering with boys” does not mean his client is guilty of charges that he raped young boys. Sandusky, who was arrested last week on 40 counts of sexual assault of eight boys, admitted in an interview Monday that he was “showering, horsing around” with a young boy in 2002, but said “in retrospect, you know, I shouldn’t have showered with those kids.” Sandusky’s attorney, Joe Amendola, said Tuesday that they had possibly found the young boy at the center of the 2002 shower incident, and “he’s saying it never happened.” Amendola may be facing his own credibility problems—a report surfaced Monday that he impregnated an underage girl in 1996. OCCUPY WALL STREET Another two dozen people were arrested on Tuesday, just hours after an early-morning raid—and a judge's ruling that the protesters could stay. A New York judge ruled Tuesday morning that the Occupy Wall Street protesters could stay just hours after the raid, where an estimated 200 people were arrested. Justice Lucy Billings issued a temporary restraining order allowing the protesters to return Tuesday morning, saying the park’s owners, Brookfield Properties, would now be prohibited from “enforcing ‘rules’ published after the occupation began.” New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg gave a press conference Tuesday morning at which he said, “The First Amendment protects free speech. It does not allow people to use tents and sleeping bags to take over a public space.” Bloomberg said the park had been reopened briefly this morning, but then closed again while the city addresses the judge’s order. Protesters vowed to march in protest of the eviction. THE BORDER Fewer Mexicans are immigrating illegally across the border into the United States as fewer jobs, harsher border control, and threats against leaving from violent Mexican gangs have made the trek to the U.S. less and less appealing. At its peak in 2000, 1.6 million people were arrested attempting to cross the border illegally over an 11-month period. Over the 11-month period that ended in August 2011, that number dropped to 304,755. Mexico itself is feeling a change, as its interior secretary for migration matters noted that "our country is not experiencing the population loss due to migration that was seen nearly 50 years ago." DEJECTED As a veteran of the Clinton administration, the Christian Science Monitor’s Robert Reich speaks with some authority when he says America is witnessing “the worst politics in living memory.” But while voters are pissed, the sad truth is 2012 will likely produce an utterly “passionless presidential race,” where liberals reluctantly back the gutless President Obama and conservatives hold their nose and vote for cynical flip-flopper Mitt Romney. The progressive Reich speculates optimistically that Occupiers might use this time to strategize for the future, but “the nation’s problems may not wait.” | | 
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