President Obama is holding a public forum on Ferguson protests.

Black Friday sales fizzled, will Cyber Monday be better?

This is an open thread, all topics welcome.

Charles Lester of Brookings has a new paper on the Islamic State (ISIS) and a "Who's Who" chart of its leadership.

ISIS struck the al Waleed border crossing near Rutbah in the Anbar province of Iraq early today, killing 16 Iraqi border guards and capturing 4. They also seized weapons -- and the border trucks, which they drove into Syria. [More...]

Homeland Security has issued a threat notice urging current and former law enforcement, and military members to scrub their social media accounts of information that would identify them as such.

While the notice says no specific threats have been received, it says one is possible -- better safe than sorry.

The notice is here. [More...]

Ferguson officer Wilson has resigned from the police force and according to the Mayor, will not receive severance pay or other benefits.

Wilson, 28, won’t receive any further pay or benefits, and he and the city have severed their ties, Mayor James Knowles told reporters a day after Wilson tendered his resignation, which was effective immediately.

His lawyer said he resigned due to threats against the department. He doesn't have a new job lined up as yet:

“In terms of what it (the resignation) means, it means at this point he doesn’t have a paycheck,” Bruntrager said. “He has no income so he’ll have to make some decisions pretty quickly.”

I'll be back to blogging soon, just not quite yet. Our last open thread is full. Here's a new one, all topics welcome.

Who's going shopping today?

I'm taking the day off, which means I won't be on line much.

I hope all Talkleft visitors had a wonderful holiday. I looked at so many store ads my eyes are blurry. At least I forgot about ISIS for a few days.

This is an open thread, all topics welcome

TalkLeft wishes you all a Happy Thanksgiving. Don't forget to check in with your local radio station to find out what time they will play Alice's Restaurant. It was November 28, 1965 that Arlo was convicted of littering in Stockbridge, MA. You can read the backstory here.

I will be busy setting up my new Desktop computer. I spent 8 hours Sunday reading up on every feature of every Dell and HP, I ended up with a great deal on a very powerful Dell. Of course, now comes the agony of transferring stuff over and hoping it works. I used a program last time and it caused a lot of problems, so this year I will do it by hand. My 2 GB hard drive is filled on the old one, and windows installer hasn't worked in year and a half --which means I haven't been able to add or remove any programs. Black Friday is definitely the day to do swap it out.

It's also that time of year to ask those of you who appreciate TalkLeft to send us a little thanks, via paypal or snailmail

I'll be back to normal schedule next week, my last day of an 8 day court run was today.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving, everyone. This is an open thread, all topics welcome. (Alice's Restaurant is below.)[More...]

MO Governor Jay Nixon has ordered 2,200 more national guardsman to Ferguson.

More than 2,200 additional National Guard troops will take to the streets in the St. Louis area at night, Gov. Jay Nixon announced. They will join 700 Guardsmen already on the scene and hundreds of local police officers.

The Washington Post notes some contradictions in Wilson's testimony and "unorthodox police procedures." The New York Times says much of the evidence was conflicting.

The prosecutor's office has released the grand jury testimony in the investigation of the Michael Brown shooting. The grand jury declined to indict Officer Wilson. The local CBS affiliate has this recap, with links to some of the testimony. Officer Wilson's testimony is here. Dorian Johnson's testimony is here.

Evidence photos are here and here.

As expected, violence erupted following the announcement. More on that here. The St. Louis Post Dispatch has a running feed of incidents. The police chief says the violence is worse than the worst night in August.

Showtime's Homeland is back in its element. After a shaky start this season, it slowly got back on track, and the last two episodes were Homeland at it's best.

Separated at birth: One of the two guys above is Saddam Jamal, a terrorist in real life, now with ISIS, and the other, Numan Acar, plays one on Homeland. I think they look a lot alike. If you haven't been watching Homeland, which one do you think is the real terrorist?

In the news department, the court administrator of the St. Louis Circuit County Court has issued a statement contradicting news reports that the Judge has agreed to consider releasing the Wilson/Brown grand jury records if no Indictment is returned. She hasn't even considered it. The letter is here.

This is an open thread, all topics welcome.

Rudy Giuliani is justly taking a heap of justly deserved criticism for his comments on Meet the Press about race and crime today. In a discussion about Ferguson and the disproportionate number of white cops in neighborhoods with a large minority population, he complained that too much attention was being paid to the Michael Brown shooting. He rattled off statistics about black on black crime. When another guest on the show objected, he said:

“White police officers wouldn’t be there,” Giuliani said, “if you weren’t killing each other.”

You can watch the segment here.