Barely two days after the capture of Boston bomber-suspect Dzhokar Tsarnaev, social-media supporters are claiming his innocence. Monitors of extremism worry the suspect may receive a cult following online.---

Top of the Alty World

“#FreeJahar Hashtag Rallies Emerging Cult of Boston Bomb Suspect”—Wired

An Al Qaeda group in Northern Africa recently fielded questions from western reporters via Twitter.—Foreign Policy

Lakota Sioux Elders recently marched on the United Nations building in New York City, arguing that “Going Extinct is Genocide.”—Truthout

A nonpartisan think tank has released a 577-page report based on more than three years of investigation exposing six major lies the government has made about the treatment of detainees held since 9/11—ProPublica

Top of Alty Utah

Oil-and-gas-auction saboteur Tim DeChristopher is released from prison, on Earth Day, no less—Utah Political Capitol

A Utah Valley University student says the school refused to display his “offensive” Palestinian flag in the school’s hall of flags.—Salt Lake City Weekly

Was the beefed-up security for the Salt Lake City Marathon good preparedness or paranoia?—Salt Lake City Weekly

Police have not recovered the AR-15 assault rifle stolen out of the vehicle of Utah’s top gun lobbyist, and, yes, it’s still a touchy subject to ask about.—Salt Lake Magazine

Rantosphere

Constitutional lawyer talks to Democracy Now! about why the government’s decision to use a special exception to question the Boston Marathon suspect without him having a lawyer present is a bad idea.

“Miranda rights and the issue of presentment are really designed to prevent coercive interrogations, to prevent people from being pressured and manipulated. You have the high-value team already standing outside the hospital room, if not already questioning him, people trained in highly aggressive interrogation tactics. That’s really the issue, is: Do we want the government to be able to question people, extract statements, extract confessions, make threats, in the dark without any lawyers present, without courts monitoring what is being done? And I think the answer ought to clearly be no, that whether it’s terrorism or any other crime, we ought to safeguard rights as well as public safety.”—Democracy Now!

The Long View

In honor of Earth Day, City Weekly rolls out its special Green Guide Clean Air Issue, exploring among other air-related issues how Salt Lake Valley’s abominable inversion sends some to the hospital and some packing out of state.

“War stories, it seems, extend to the inversion. Iraq veteran Andy Figorski, who works at the Veterans Administration, was having a hard time breathing this January. ‘I thought I was having a heart attack,’ he says. He went to the VA’s ER, and they ran some tests. ‘It turned out to be lung inflammation due to the inversion. Don’t you love this place?’ The inversion hit close to home for Rep. Joel Briscoe, D-Salt Lake City. His children were having a hard time breathing, and his wife, who has asthma, told him, ‘every time she took a breath, it was like a 10-pound weight as she pushed her chest wall out.’”—Salt Lake City Weekly