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Following Obama’s speech on drones.

President Obama’s speech on drone reform Thursday ushered in a new era of restraint for the Central Intelligence Agency, one that Director John O. Brennan has the challenge of implementing. The change is a throwback of sorts—returning the CIA to its roots as a sophisticated spy service, rather than a targeted killing machine. While large clandestine operations—built over the past decade in Kabul and Baghdad—will help smooth the transition, U.S. officials worry that the shift in focus will take years. The CIA, although still in the “business of killing,” will have a diminished role in deciding who, exactly, can be killed.

Read it at The New York Times

Nine-year-old Antonia Candelaria was one of the seven children who died in Moore’s Plaza Towers Elementary Schools. Why didn’t the school have a shelter? Michael Daly reports.

A thunderstorm was sweeping through the Oklahoma City area, and the mourners had to travel through driving rain, hailstones, and flooded roads. They were going to the first funeral for the victims of the latest killer tornado.

Country music with a Christian theme was playing inside the South Colonial Chapel, where an easel held an enlarged photo of a smiling little girl in a pink-fringed bonnet. Nine year-old Antonia Lee Candelaria was known as “Tonie” or “Ladybug,” loved to paint and draw, and had just auditioned as a singer for an upcoming talent show.

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Will the Scouts reverse their ban on gay members? A vote today will decide whether loyal Scouts like Pascal Tessier will stay or quit the organization. Winston Ross reports.

Since he was 7 years old, Pascal Tessier has been a Scout. Before he hit middle school. Before he realized he was gay.

He figured that out in the sixth or seventh grade, and he came out in the eighth, to his family and friends at school. He had no idea at the time that the Boy Scouts of America had a policy banning him from the organization he’d already spent six years in. By then he’d graduated from Cub Scout to Boy Scout, with an eye on Eagle. On Wednesday he finds out whether he’ll earn that rank or be forced to quit the most important extracurricular activity in his life, as some 1,400 local leaders vote on a proposal to reverse its 103-year-old policy banning openly gay boys at a national annual meeting at the Gaylord Texan Hotel in Grapevine, Texas. Banning Pascal Tessier.

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Mike Daisey is not apologizing: the whole fabrication scandal is the industry’s fault, or something. The fabulist seems to want only to rant in his new monologue. Winston Ross asks, Can anyone stop this man?

Mike Daisey confessed at the outset that he had little idea what he was going to say for the next two hours, in a first-ever monologue titled “Journalism” at the Tiffany Center on Tuesday night in downtown Portland. The question was whether anyone could believe him.

This, after all, was the guy who took on the Cult of Apple and in dramatic monologues across America appeared to expose its shoddy treatment of its underaged and overworked and malformed and poisoned workers, only to find himself the subject of exposure, for the embellishments and outright fabrications he repeated on This American Life, eventually forcing the radio program to issue an unprecedented retraction of an entire show.

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Says job posting from PA ad agency.

Need a job? Hurry, hipster yourself. An ad agency in Pennsylvania called Pavone is getting up close and personal with its job posting: it wants hipsters. “We’re outside New York and DC so we don’t have Hipsters,” the company confesses. “All we have is an office with major clients, real opportunities and easy commutes.” While the job description neglects to include what the actual work entails, it makes sure to again clarify that the current employees are not “actual Hipsters” (yeah, we got it). The company is at least smart enough to admit that finding hipsters will be tough, considering that “Hipsters never admit they're Hipsters.” Ready, set, Catch-22.

Read it at New York

Cites “morality clause” in divorce papers.

A north Texas judge has forbid a lesbian couple from living together, citing a “morality clause” in one of the women’s divorce papers. The clause—ubiquitous in divorce cases—is intended to stop a divorced parent from having a different love interest sleep over while children are in the home. If the lesbian couple was heterosexual instead, they could simply get married to make the clause null. But in Texas, where same-sex marriage isn’t recognized, they’re stuck. As a result of a judge’s ruling Tuesday, Carolyn Compton’s partner, Page Price, will be forced to move out of the home where they currently live with Compton’s two daughters.

Read it at The Washington Post

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Greuel concedes.

The epic two-year Los Angeles mayor’s race is finally over—even though in the end, the voters didn’t really seem to care. Wendy Greuel has conceded the race to Eric Garcetti, sources told the Los Angeles Times on Wednesday, making Garcetti the next mayor of America’s second-largest city. Garcetti will replace incumbent Antonio Villaraigosa, the city’s first Latino mayor. Despite the historic potential of both this year’s candidates—Garcetti will be the first Jewish mayor and Greuel would have been the first woman—officials estimate that three out of four L.A. residents did not vote.

Read it at Los Angeles Times

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For mayor of New York.

Looks like that post-scandal playbook paid off. Ending months of anticipation, New York politician Anthony Weiner made his candidacy for mayor official Tuesday. Despite being burned by his online activities before, Weiner posted a two-minute YouTube video Wednesday morning and updated AnthonyWeiner.com to proclaim “Weiner for Mayor.” In his video announcement, Weiner admits wrongdoing, but says he's “learned some tough lessons.” His campaign, which boasts $5 million in funds, will center on convincing the public that the guy who sent a crotch shot to a young female fan on Twitter is not the man he is today. If the latest poll showing a 49 percent disapproval rating is any indication, he's got a long way to go.

Read it at The New York Times