A furious mother is demanding answers from Facebook as to why they took down photographs she posted on the site of her son, who was born with a rare birth defect, and then later banned her from the site altogether. 

Grayson James Walker, from Memphis, Tennessee, was born on February 15, 2012 with Anencephaly, a rare neural tube birth defect in which a baby is born without parts of the brain and skull.

His parents Heather and Patrick Walker knew 16 weeks into the pregnancy their son would not live very long due to his birth defect.

They of course gave us the option to terminate,' said Heather. But they chose to carry their baby full term and turned to God for strength.

'My husband and I, we started prayer and we knew that God knew since the beginning of time that he had us for this,' she said.

So, with the help of non-profit organization Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep, they had a professional photographer to take photos of their newborn, just the same way as they did with their other two children and what most parents around the world do.

It’s been quite a couple of weeks for John Derbyshire. After writing a stunningly racist screed that got him fired from the right-wing National Review, Derbyshire suddenly found himself free to fully express the hard-core racism that the right keeps under wraps for fear of being called out on it.

Now, before anyone complains about how I’m “painting the right with a broad brush,” stop. Just stop. Welfare Queens. Southern Strategy. Barack the Magic Negro. Don’t ReNig in 2012. Birtherism. Skinny ghetto crackhead. Reparations. Trayvon Martin “deserved” it. Ted Nugent. Food stamp president. Obama is a Muslim. Every other word out of Pat Buchanan’s mouth.

I’m not even going to provide the links. Why? If you don’t know what all of these examples mean while claiming the right is not motivated by deep racism, you literally have no idea what you are talking about. Go educate yourself or stop living in denial and come back later.

Former Navy Chaplain Gordon Klingenschmitt, who founded lobbying group The Pray In Jesus Name Project, appeared on a progressive talk show this week to criticize President Barack Obama’s endorsement of same sex marriage … But somehow ended up promoting his theory that gay people unknowingly secrete invisible, evil creatures which find and possess certain animals, turning them gay as well.

Police officers were caught by a security camera apparently beating a black teen as he lay prone with his hands behind his head. Chad Holley, then fifteen, was running from police after committing burglary .

Despite the video and expert testimony that “Blomberg’s actions were ‘objectively unreasonable’ and were ‘contrary to any legitimate police action,’” an all-white, six member jury acquitted Blomberg on Wednesday. Blomberg was the first of four officers who were fired by the Houston police department over the incident to face trial trial for official oppression, which carries a penalty of up to one year in jail. 

Prosecuting women based on the outcomes of their pregnancies violates their constitutional rights and is cruel and unusual punishment. And yet, this is what is happening.

Last week, the Indiana Supreme Court declined to drop feticide and murder charges against a woman named Bei Bei Shuai, who has been in jail for 14 months and faces 45 years in prison because, after attempting suicide while pregnant. She was saved by friends and three days after an emergency c-section the newborn died.   Her situation is tragic. But, her case is also a very dangerous precedent, ensuring as it does that girls and women will lose their rights and can be put in jail for miscarriage, drug addiction, accidents, attempted suicides, and for “chemically endangering” their fetuses from the moment of conception. Circumstances like hers are sadly, too frequent. She needs public support. Another woman, Christine Taylor was arrested and imprisoned and charged with "attempted feticide" for falling down stairs under what her doctors thought were questionable circumstances.  

 Hundreds of women around the country* are currently imprisoned under the aegis of "best intentions" laws. What this means is that feticide and fetal murder laws can now be used to charge, imprison and penalize pregnant women at the discretion of legislators and law enforcement officials.

 

Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin may not be allowed to return to the United States after he renounced his citizenship to save millions in tax.

The 30-year-old, who has a $3.64billion stake in the social networking site, migrated to Singapore ahead of the company's massive stock market floatation tomorrow.

The timing of the move has raised eyebrows since Singapore does not have a capital gains tax, which could vastly reduce his bill on any payout.

According to an immigration law, he could be refused re-entry to the U.S. if he is judged to have relocated for the purposes of avoiding taxes.

Section 212 of the law, highlighted by Talking Points Memo, states: 'Any alien who is a former citizen of the United States who officially renounces United States citizenship and who is determined by the Attorney General to have renounced United States citizenship for the purpose of avoiding taxation by the United States is excludable.'

WASHINGTON -- A day before Congress weighs an amendment to end indefinite military detentions in the U.S., a federal judge Wednesday ruled the law that allows the practice unconstitutional.

Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses...I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" These words, from poet Emma Lazarus, were inscribed on the Statue of Liberty over 100 years ago. Today the golden door has a lock on it, paid for with record profits from the health care, education and financial industries.

1. We're Near the Bottom of the Developed World in Children's Health and Safety
According to a 2007 The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) report, the US ranked last among 21 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) nations in an assessment of child health and safety. The assessment measured infant mortality, immunization, and death from accidents and injuries.

 We Give Prison Sentences for Smoking Marijuana, but Not for Billion-Dollar Fraud

About half of our world-leading prison population is in jail for non-violent drug offenses. Americans have also been arrested for handing out free food in a park. Mothers in Ohio and Connecticut were jailed for enrolling their kids in out-of-district schools. As of 2003, in California there were 344 individuals serving sentences of 25 years or more for shoplifting as a third offense, in many cases after two non-violent offenses.

How does the market deal with this steady tide of petty crime? It strives for more. The new trend of private prisons is dependent on maintaining a sizable prison population to guarantee profits, with no incentive for rehabilitation.

As the number of inmates has surged, the people who devastated countless American lives "get out of jail free." The savings and loan fraud cost the nation between $300 billion and $500 billion, about 100 times more than the total cost of burglaries in 2010. The financial system bailout has already cost the country $3 trillion. Goldman Sachs packaged bad debt, sold it under a different name, persuaded ratings services to label it AAA and then bet against their own financial creation by selling it short. Other firms accused of fraud and insider trading were Morgan Stanley, Bear Stearns, Bank of America, Countrywide Financial, and Wells Fargo. The New York Times reported in 2008 that the Justice Department had postponed the bribery or fraud prosecutions of over 50 corporations, choosing instead to enter into agreements involving fines and "monitoring" periods.

Even for Justice Antonin Scalia, the crassest of the current United States Supreme Court justices, it was a particularly callous piece of writing. In 2006, in a case styled Kansas v. Marsh, the Court's five conservatives had just upheld a portion of Kansas' capital punishment law. The statute was interpreted to direct a sentence of death even if a jury found the "aggravating" and "mitigating" sentencing factors in equilibrium -- "equipoise," the Court lyrically called it. A tie, in other words, would mean death, not life.

"It should be noted at the outset that the dissent does not discuss a single case -- not one -- in which it is clear that a person was executed for a crime he did not commit. If such an event had occurred in recent years, we would not have to hunt for it; the innocent's name would be shouted from the rooftops by the abolition lobby.'

Capital cases are given especially close scrutiny at every level, which is why in most cases many years elapse before the sentence is executed. And of course capital cases receive special attention in the application of executive clemency. Indeed, one of the arguments made by abolitionists is that the process of finally completing all the appeals and reexaminations of capital sentences is so lengthy, and thus so expensive for the State, that the game is not worth the candle. 

Scalia continues "The proof of the pudding, of course, is that as far as anyone can determine (and many are looking), none of cases included in the .027% error rate for American verdicts involved a capital defendant erroneously executed."

There are two obvious and basic explanations for Justice Scalia's strident concurrence. Either he truly believed that capital cases are "given especially close scrutiny at every level," in which case he hadn't been paying attention to his work all those years. Or he did not truly believe that "capital cases receive special attention in the application of executive clemency," in which case his concurrence was just a thoughtless, reflexive reaction

 Either way, he was wrong. Terribly wrong.

The Republican governor of Kansas has signed a law allowing pharmacists to refuse to fill prescriptions for drugs they believe may induce abortions, a move opponents said could hinder some women's access to birth control.

Governor Sam Brownback's office said on Tuesday that the bill "gives more legal protection to Kansas health care providers who refuse to participate in abortions" based on their conscience.

Opponents of the bill, the latest salvo in the long-running national battle over abortion, said the law may let pharmacists interfere with a woman's health care by denying conventional birth control pills or so-called morning-after pills.

The law also allows doctors to refuse to refer patients to pharmacists who will provide such drugs. A pharmacist cannot be fired for refusing to fill such prescriptions.

Burkhart said the law could create a hardship for women in small towns with a sole pharmacist who may refuse to fill certain prescriptions. In larger cities, women will have to make sure they go to a cooperative pharmacist

First impressions are said to play a big part in how we are perceived by romantic interests and potential employers.

But people can tell more about you than what can be gathered from a firm handshake and a warm smile, according to new research.

People have an inbuilt 'gaydar', which enables them to judge in the blink of an eye whether someone is gay or straight, a study at the University of Washington has found.

And it is easier to judge a woman's sexuality than a man's - just from glancing at them.

The study asked students to guess someone's sexuality from looking at pictures of their faces for less than a second.

 

Jabran was ten years old when I gave him the first racial profiling speech. We were engaged in the obligatory back-to-school shopping. He wanted a sweater that had some hip hop insignia. I looked at him and said, “Honey, if I buy you this sweater, NYPD is going to pick you up.” I was a public defender in Manhattan at the time so I knew of which I spoke.

Last year Jabran had his first devastating racial profiling incident by a white man in the neighborhood. Jabran, in a way that would put many adults to shame, handled this act of violence with impressive aplomb. But, when we were finally home together, my child unleashed a flood of tears and fears that almost caused my undoing.

Jabran’s life, and mine, changed forever that day. We both knew the shift occurred. Many people would no longer see him the way we see him -- a smart, funny honor student who, at age 12, and of his own volition, decided to take a First Aid class so he could help my sister with my niece who has cerebral palsy. But, what if he wasn’t even any of those things? What if he was a struggling black child, subjected to one trauma after another, just trying to survive? Does that child deserve any less protection? All of our children matter but many people only see black boys (and later, men) as threatening figures whose sole purpose is to, at best, feed the coffers of the prison industrial complex, or, at worst, not exist at all.

 

 As I've written before, Bayer's neonicotinoid pesticides, which now coat upwards of 90 percent of US corn seeds and seeds of increasing portions of other major crops like soy, have emerged as a likely trigger for colony collapse disorder

 One of my biggest complaints about the agrichemical industry it its market dominance. As I say above, more than 90 percent of corn seeds planted today are treated with Bayer's pesticide. What if a farmer wants to opt out, to plant seeds free of neonicotinoids? Good luck. According to a Pesticide Action Network press release I received today, farmers in the midwest are complaining that it's virtually impossible to buy untreated seeds. In other words, farmers there have two choices: either pay up for Bayer's poison, or exit the corn-growing business.

The Young Turks host Ana Kasparian explained Tuesday how Louisiana sheriffs had an incentive to keep the inmate population high.

“None violent drug offenders end up in these prisons for very, very long sentences just because these sheriff’s departments profit from it,” she said.

Louisiana’s incarceration rate is the highest in the country, thanks in part to the large presence of prisons owned by private companies, which are often run by rural sheriffs.

The incarceration rate in Louisiana is triple the rate in Iran, seven times greater than in China, and 10 times more than Germany’s.

“Of course there is a racial angle to this as well,” Kasparian said, “because when it comes to blacks in New Orleans alone, 1 in 14 are behind bars and 1 in 7 are either in prison, on parole or on probation.”

 

 

Former President George W. Bush jumped back into presidential politics this week, endorsing presumptive 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney. He also, according to the New York Times, plans to release a book in two months that will lay out his advice on boosting economic growth.

Pat Buchanan was fired from MSNBC recently after publishing a book critics called homophobic, anti-Semitic, and racist – and after a long history of homophobic, anti-Semitic and racist comments. But you’d never know that from watching his appearance on America Live yesterday. In fact, host Megyn Kelly deliberately led her viewers to think he’s a mainstream traditionalist she called upon to weigh in on gay marriage.

One uses a Taser stun gun.

Thomas cries out for help and, toward the end of the beating, starts calling for his father: "Dad! Help me. Help me. Help me, dad."

His voice gets softer and trails off. By the end of the video, he is lying in a pool of blood as the officers wonder out loud what to do next.

One can be heard saying: "We ran out of options so I got to the end of my Taser and I ... smashed his face to hell."

Thomas died five days after the incident. The FBI is investigating civil rights violations in the case, as well.

For the second time in a year, a motorist has been ticketed in South Carolina for displaying a replica of testicles on a vehicle.

A Spartanburg County sheriff's deputy stopped a truck Sunday evening after noticing the "anatomically correct" display on the rear bumper. The incident report says the driver removed the display after being stopped but he was arrested for driving without a license. He was also given a warning ticket for having an obscene display.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) may soon charge George Zimmerman with a hate crime over the killing of Florida teen Trayvon Martin, according to news reports.

WFTV recently learned that the FBI is considering charging the former neighborhood watchmen with a hate crime, which could be punished with the death penalty if murder is involved.

The report said that the FBI was in the process of questioning witnesses from the Retreat at Twin Lakes gated community where the February shooting occurred.

 

As the boycott costs Rush Limbaugh’s empire millions, the host claimed that the Sandra Fluke controversy was contrived by Obama to make women miserable.

Louisiana is the world's prison capital. The state imprisons more of its people, per head, than any of its U.S. counterparts. First among Americans means first in the world. Louisiana's incarceration rate is nearly triple Iran's, seven times China's and 10 times Germany's.

Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh was inducted into the Hall of Famous Missourians on Monday in the state Capitol.

The Associated Press described the induction as a “secretive ceremony.” The event was closed to the public and only certain guests, including more than 100 Republican lawmakers, were allowed to attend. Police stood guard outdoors to prevent uninvited guests from entering.

The Speaker’s office and the people in his office have been under assault for wanting to do this,” Limbaugh said. “He hung in, he was tough, he did not give them any quarter, laughed at them when they called his office — which is what you have to do, because they are deranged. They literally are deranged. Our so-called friends on the other side of the aisle are deranged.”

Limbaugh’s bust will be displayed at the Capitol alongside other members of the Hall of Famous Missourians, including President Harry Truman and author Mark Twain.

 

Fox News hit a new low today by openly hoping for more pain for the American people in the form of gas prices reaching $5 a gallon before the presidential election.

Pastor Charles O'Neal of the Beaverton Grace Bible Church claims reviews on a blog started by former church member Julie Anne Smith amount to defamation. Smith, who says "the story of spiritual abuse needs to be told," described O'Neal and his church outside Portland as "creepy" and "cult-like." She described him calling for church elders to search closets of female congregants for clothes that are too revealing, among other lessons from the pulpit.

Between 1929 and 1974, North Carolina sterilized more than 7,500 of its residents. Most were operated on without their consent, having been deemed "feebleminded" and unfit to reproduce by the state Eugenics Board. Eighty-five percent were women; about 40 percent were black or Native American. As many as 2,000 victims are thought to still be alive.

Nationwide, 32 other states had eugenics programs during the 20th century, resulting in the sterilization of more than 60,000 Americans

 

Having the desire to donate a kidney to save someone’s life may not be enough – it might also require shedding a few pounds.

Researchers at the North Shore-LIJ Health System Transplant Center in New York and Feinstein Institute for Medical Research conducted a retrospective analysis which found that morbid obesity can prevent people from potentially donating their kidneys.

In a single-center study, researchers have found that almost a quarter of willing donors were initially excluded because they were obese,

 

The computer-generated drawing was provided to The Associated Press by an official of a country tracking Iran's nuclear program who said it proves the structure exists, despite Tehran's refusal to acknowledge it.

That official said the image is based on information from a person who had seen the chamber at the Parchin military site, adding that going into detail would endanger the life of that informant. The official comes from an IAEA member country that is severely critical of Iran's assertions that its nuclear activities are peaceful and asserts they are a springboard for making atomic arms.

While the needs of children suffering or at risk of child abuse have been in the public eye this month, one immediate and long-term cause of child abuse has been overlooked: abortion.

. And a woman's life is forever changed.

We like to think her change is for the better, considering the cost. Sadly, all too often it's not, and the psychological change may put future children at risk.

Priscilla Coleman and David Reardon published a review of multiple previous studies in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry which shows a rate of up to 30 percent of women experiencing serious mental health problems following abortion. Many of these problems - depression, anxiety and substance abuse in mothers - are strong risk factors for subsequent child abuse.

So there you have it: a bogus claim about abortion causing mental health issues is now being used as a corollary to prove that since mental health problems and substance abuse can lead to child abuse, abortion must therefore cause child abuse.

 A judge dismissed all charges Thursday against an LDS bishop accused of telling a teenage girl not to seek a protective order and failing to report the girl's disclosure that she had been sexually abused by a teenage relative.

On Thursday, Judge Lyle Anderson dismissed those charges in the middle of a hearing at the request of Duchesne County Attorney Stephen Foote. The prosecutor's request came after Moon testified under oath that he should have handled his interview with the girl differently and should have contacted a legal hotline operated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

"In 20 years of practicing law, I've never seen it operate like this," defense attorney David Leavitt said after court.

During her interview with a sheriff's investigator, the girl said she told the bishop she wanted to obtain a protective order against her abuser and his mother so she wouldn't be "terrorized,

And then he said that I need to think about what (the boy) is going through, and I don't need to start telling the cops or anything because he's already going to have to go through a bunch of repentance and all that stuff," the girl told the investigator.

There's a new low in the highly charged Trayvon Martin case. According to a report from Florida TV news station WKMG, an unidentified entrepreneur aimed to profit by selling paper gun targets depicting the unarmed teenager slain in February. The targets, which were advertised for sale online until Friday, feature a hoodie with crosshairs over the chest—the place where George Zimmerman shot Martin at point-blank range. While there's plain black in lieu of Martin's face, tucked into the hoodie's arm are a bag of Skittles and can of iced tea like the kind Martin was carrying on that fateful night.

An advertisement for the targets had been posted on a popular firearms auction website, according to WKMG, in which the sellers stated that they "support Zimmerman and believe he is innocent and that he shot a thug

The accused leaders of a white supremacist group who authorities say were preparing for a race war were given low bails, while eight other accused members faced $500,000 apiece.

Marcus Faella, named as the head of the American Front, posted $50,000 bail while his wife Patricia paid just $5,000 last weekend to leave the Osceola County Jail after their arrests by the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force, court records show.

Exactly right," Limbaugh said of Baier's remarks. "What do you want to look at, Shep? You want to look at the polls? Or do you want to look at the votes." Even though Obama endorsed same-sex marriage, Limbaugh pressed, nothing has changed. "It's still up to the hicks and the hay seeds in the state," he said.

A person selling gun range targets modeled after slain Florida teen Trayvon Martin says that their “main motivation was to make money off the controversy.” WKMG’s Mike DeForest reported on Friday that the unidentified seller told him that the targets “sold out in 2 days.”

Web wanderers are more likely to get a computer virus by visiting a religious website than by peering at porn, according to a study released on Tuesday.

"Drive-by attacks" in which hackers booby-trap legitimate websites with malicious code continue to be a bane,

Websites with religious or ideological themes were found to have triple the average number of "threats" that those featuring adult content, according to Symantec.

"It is interesting to note that websites hosting adult/pornographic content are not in the top five, but ranked tenth,"

 

 

Four years ago, Pauline Latu was being held in Contra Costa County Jail. She was pregnant. She asked if it was legal for her guards to shackle her around her waist and ankles even if she was pregnant, but each time she went to court, the guards placed shackles around her ankles and wrapped a chain around her belly. When she was close to delivery, Pauline developed pre-eclampsia, a dangerous condition of pregnancy, and she had to be hospitalized. She was in the hospital for a week, shackled to her bed. To go to the bathroom, she had to get a guard to unlock her from her bed. She would then drag her chain to a portable toilet because it was not long enough to allow her to go to the bathroom. She was traumatized. Her charge? Embezzlement. She was hardly a danger to her community.

Although Friedman was neither a victim of rape nor a personal witness to it during his CCA stint, he believes that private prisons are among those least attentive to the sexual victimization of inmates by guards and other inmates. For instance, in a 2007 survey of local jails by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, a CCA facility in Torrance County, New Mexico, clocked in with the highest rate of sexual victimization (13.4 percent), more than four times the national average. It also had the highest rate of staff-on-inmate sexual victimization—7 percent, as compared with a national average of around 2 percent.

CCA can certainly afford to address the issue. The longtime industry leader in prisons and immigrant detention, it owns or operates 67 facilities (see table of its customers below) and boasts about $1.7 billion in annual revenues—more than 40 percent of which come from the federal government and most of the rest from the states and localities. The company reportedly employs 35 lobbyists on Capitol Hill, with hundreds more working in 33 states over the past eight years.

 

Thing One: Fail Whale: Jamie Dimon, scourge of financial regulators, overnight become God's gift to financial regulators.

The JPMorgan CEO has been theswaggering Alpha banker in the industry's fight against post-crisis regulatory efforts, complaining and vaguely threatening about the dire consequences of regulation on an almost daily basis. Last night? Not so much! Instead he was spending most of his breath explaining to investors and reporters how a supposedly benign trading desk in London, run by a man known to other traders as "the London Whale," had taken a $2 billion loss on credit derivates in six weeks. It's a hit to JPMorgan's reputation and profit. Funny thing: Some of the constraints of the very Dodd-Frank financial reform act Dimon hates could have prevented it.

"It is a high irony that the too-big-to-fail bank at the forefront of a relentless effort to stop Dodd-Frank is JPMorgan itself," University of Maryland law professor Michael Greenberger wrote in an email to 7.5 Things last night.

 

Over seven years, the man known by the name Bobby C. Thompson raised $100 million from donors believing they were supporting American Navy veterans and their families. Then he disappeared.

Sybrina Fulton, mother of Trayvon Martin, released a public service announcement on Friday timed for Mother’s Day this weekend, asking viewers to “call the governor of your state” and encourage them to reconsider “Stand Your Ground” laws like the one cited by the man who killed her son.

Broun argued that the provision unfairly targeted several states and had become "antiquated."

"As Americans, we pride ourselves in our electoral system. But the integrity of our elections is called into question when this outdated law bars states from ensuring that those who come to the polls to vote are eligible to do so," he said.

Broun's remarks were rebuked by a number of other representatives. Even those, like Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.), who thought the amendment could be worth discussing, said a late-night appropriations debate was not the appropriate time to do so.

Lewis, who marched with Martin Luther King Jr., took to the floor to denounce Broun's amendment.

On Sunday, April 29, the Rev. Sean Harris, pastor of Berean Baptist Church in Fayetteville, North Carolina, preached a sermon that sanctioned physical violence toward children who show “effeminate” or “butch” behavior.

One week later, families at Judson Baptist Church in New York City will be using the Sunday School hour to create "Cards Of Hope" which they intend to send to the children who attend Sunday School at Berean Baptist Church.

"The idea for this Sunday will be to talk about discrimination, acceptance, and how we believe God loves all of us, no matter our differences," 

Mitt Romney said Thursday that same-sex couples should be allowed to adopt children, but they should not be married because children should be raised by a mother and a father.

More domestic drilling does not make America less susceptible to global supply disruptions or protect consumers from gasoline price volatility, according to a new analysis from the Congressional Budget Office.

The Justice Department filed suit Thursday against Maricopa County, Ariz. Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his office for unlawfully discriminating against Latinos, and in turn, disregarding basic constitutional rights.

Arpaio said Wednesday that he'll fight the charges in court. "And then we'll find out the real story. They're telling me how to run my organization," he said. "I'd like to get this resolved, but I'm not going to give up my authority to the federal government. It's as simple as that."

Here are some of the disturbing allegations from the 32-page lawsuit about the conduct of Arpaio and his office.

 

 In his new book, former Secretary of State Colin Powell provides what may be the most authoritative confirmation yet that there was never a considered debate in the George W. Bush White House about whether going to war in Iraq was really a good idea.

In a chapter discussing what he calls his “infamous” February 2003 speech to the United Nations where he authoritatively presented what was later exposed as gross misinformation about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, Powell notes that by that time, war “was approaching.”

“By then, the President did not think war could be avoided,” Powell writes. “He had crossed the line in his own mind, even though the NSC [National Security Council] had never met -- and never would meet -- to discuss the decision.” Read more;

Afghanistan is Vietnam redux. Again the U.S. has never lost a battle and again that is irrelevant. As in Vietnam, the puppet government is incompetent, corrupt and illegitimate.

 Little surprise that as in Vietnam only American soldiers are willing to fight and die for such an illegitimate travesty. After 11 years, the Afghan National Army has maybe 100,000 men present for duty (the rest exist only on paper). More than 40 percent of the entire force evaporates every year fromdesertions and non-reenlistment, 75 percent is on drugs, and enough are Taliban infiltrators to sabotage the advisory effort. The Afghan army has no logistics, no air force apart from a few old Soviet helicopters, and still not one battalion can fight on its own. The South Vietnamese Army had over one million men, capable logistics and a large, modern air force. In a country one-fourth the size of Afghanistan, it collapsed in three weeks of fighting.

It is a myth that the war was lost by invading Iraq. It was lost in the C.I.A. stage production called the “Bonn Process,” where a non-entity named Hamid Karzai was foisted on astonished Afghan leaders. When 75 percent of the delegates at the Loya Jirga petitioned to make the king the interim head of state, C.I.A. shenanigans and millions of dollars in bribes killed the indigenous process. Forgetting the lesson of postwar Japan, American “advisers” then insisted on eliminating a ceremonial monarchy, which would have provided a symbol of national unity (like the Japanese emperor) and lent traditional legitimacy to an alien system called democracy.

 Tucked behind a liquor store, opposite a flooring company, Majestic Body Shop was an unremarkable sight amid a blur of commercial properties just east of the city limits. But the police cars that always seemed to be parked at the repair shop caught the eyes of passing drivers. The F.B.I. noticed as well — agents were videotaping Majestic and tapping its phone

What the investigation revealed was startling: a bribery racket suspected to involve kickbacks to dozens of Baltimore police officers.

The scheme to divert cars damaged in traffic accidents to the body shop in return for payoffs resulted in one of the widest police corruption scandals in Baltimore history.

 

A group of 10 white supremacists allegedly trained for a “race war” near Disney World in Orlando before being arrested by authorities this week, according to published reports.

The arrests came after a confidential informant told authorities that the American Front, a skinhead group, was planning “to kill Jews, immigrants and other minorities,” according to an arrest warrant obtained by The Associated Press.

The group’s training facilities were just 11 miles from Disney World, the document added.

 President Obama on Wednesday ended nearly two years of “evolving” on the issue of same-sex marriage by publicly endorsing it in a television interview, taking a definitive stand on one of the most contentious and politically charged social issues of the day.

“At a certain point, I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married,” Mr. Obama told ABC News in an interview that came after the president faced mounting pressure to clarify his position.

In an election that is all but certain to turn on the slowly recovering economy and its persistently high jobless rate, Mr. Obama’s stand nonetheless injects a volatile social issue into the campaign debate and puts him at even sharper odds with his presumptive Republican rival, Mitt Romney, who opposes same-sex marriage and favors an amendment to the United States Constitution to forbid it.

Public support for same-sex marriage is growing at a pace that surprises even professional pollsters as older generations of voters who tend to be strongly opposed are supplanted by younger ones who are just as strongly in favor. Same-sex couples are featured in some of the most popular shows on television, without controversy.

Yet time after time, when the issue is put to voters in states, they have chosen to ban unions between people of the same gender or to defeat measures that would legalize same-sex unions. Just Tuesday, North Carolinians voted overwhelmingly to add a ban to their state constitution, and Republican leaders in the Colorado House blocked a vote on legislation to allow civil unions; North Carolina and Colorado are considered swing states in presidential politics. Read more;

Ever wonder what goes on inside the small minds of fundamentalist men? Want to know how they justify their blatant anti-woman policies and practices? Are they for real? Do they even know how hateful and intolerably ignorant they sound?

 "It is not in them to handle power in the right way," he continues, "they don't know what to do with it.

"Women are now degraded. Women have no shame

 "It's unfortunate that women are allow.., that men are so weak, they've been so intimidated that they allow these women to just run wild and screw up everything - including their souls, and their children."

And if you speak up about it, Satan got [sic] it set up - through the women - that you're gonna be punished in some kind of way."

"I think that one of the greatest mistakes America made was to allow women the opportunity to vote. We should've never turned this over to women," Peterson complains. "And these women are voting in the wrong people. They're voting in people who are evil who agrees [sic] with them who're gonna take us down this pathway of destruction. And this probably was the reason they didn't allow women to vote when men were men. Because men in the good old days understood the nature of the woman. They were not afraid to deal with it. And they understood that, you let them take over, this is what would happen."

"Wherever women are taking over, evil reigns."

WASHINGTON (CN) - Republicans and Democrats took frequent shots at each other for nearly six hours during a House Judiciary Committee markup meeting to amend the Violence Against Women Act Reauthorization.

 

President Barack Obama endorsed the right of same-sex couples to marry on Wednesday, a landmark pronouncement made in light of mounting pressure from gay right advocates.

Obama became the first U.S. president to back the right of gay and lesbian couples to marry, a reversal from views expressed during the 2008 campaign, when he said he opposed same-sex marriage but favored civil unions as an alternative.

The Obama administration saw its first monthly budget surplus in April, with the federal government recording $58 billion, according to figures released by the Congressional Budget Office.

MarketWatch reports:

The surplus -- the first of Barack Obama’s presidency -- was the result of both increased tax collection and lower government spending.

Romney can chip away at Obama’s formidable Hispanic following by focusing on jobs. He can remind voters that instead of drilling down on programs to boost employment early in his term, the president ensnared himself – and the country—in the messy and divisive fight over health care, wasting precious time and gumming up the recovery.

Faella — who sees himself and his compatriots as "protectors of the white race" — was convinced [race war] was "inevitable" and planned to kill Jews, immigrants and minorities...As they trained in firearm and hand-to-hand combat, members ... discussed acts of violence and disruption with targets including Orlando's City Hall, authorities allege.

They also discussed manufacturing ricin, the affidavit says, a deadly poison "which is categorized as a Weapon of Mass Destruction."

Mitt Romney says that he opposed the government bailout of Detroit because the private market would have provided loans so GM and Chrysler could go through managed bankruptcy, but it turns out the firm Romney once led, Bain Capital, turned down the chance to do so. The government's auto task force asked Bain Capitol if it would like to invest in GM's European operations, The New York Times' Jeremy W. Peters reports, but Bain said no thanks. Detroit executives and Obama administration officials say that Romney is wrong: government money was necessary because at the worst of the financial crisis, private companies would not have lent the $80 billion the automakers needed. Based on The Times report, we now know that the government's argument was true in the case of at least one company: the one Romney helped found and shape.

This isn't the first reported connection between Romney's former businesses and the Detroit bailout. In Jaunary, CNBC reported a Bain & Company employee advised the auto task force on closing some dealerships in November 2009. (The company initially denied the report, before admitting it was true.) That is an uncomfortable fact for Romney,

“Texas has repeatedly ignored or violated directives and orders of this Court that were designed to expedite discovery, and Texas has failed to produce in a timely manner key documents that Defendants need to prepare their defense,” the three judge panel wrote in an order yesterday.

“Most troubling is Texas’ conduct with respect to producing its key state databases, which are central to Defendants’ claim that S.B. 14 has a disparate and retrogressive impact on racial and/or language minority groups,” the panel wrote.

He was really awkward,” Otterbein University student Carissa Reed said of her experience sitting on stage with the former Massachusetts governor two weeks ago. “You could tell he was out of his element. … I was just, like, 'Should I clap?’ None of us knew what to do.”

Reed was witness to what may have been Romney’s most awkward speech of the year, with the least crowd response. During much of the 40-minute Otterbein address, students from various universities, who were on stage with the candidate, openly yawned, looked at their watches, sent texts or e-mails and in at least one case, appeared to fall asleep.

A dog owner was arrested after he broke his puppy's front two legs with a sledgehammer.

Friends of the man brought the dog to a veterinarian when he refused to help the animal after the sustained beating.  

Morkunas had reportedly bragged about using a 16-pound hammer to break up a fight between the puppy and an older dog in Mesa, Arizona.

The Labor Department's establishment survey of employers — the jobs count that it bases its payroll figures on — shows that the government has been steadily shedding workers since the crisis struck, with 586,000 fewer jobs than in December 2008. ... But the survey of households that the unemployment rate is based on suggests the government job cuts have been much, much worse.

In April the household survey showed that that there were 442,000 fewer people working in government than in March. The household survey has a much smaller sample size than the establishment survey, and so is prone to volatility, but the magnitude of the drop is striking: It marks the largest decline on both an absolute and a percentage basis on record going back to 1948. Moreover, the household survey has consistently showed bigger drops in government employment than the establishment survey has.

The unemployment rate would be far lower if it hadn't been for those cuts: If there were as many people working in government as there were in December 2008, the unemployment rate in April would have been 7.1%, not 8.1%.

Ceteris is rarely paribus, of course: If there were more government jobs now, for example, it's likely that not as many people would have left the labor force, and so the actual unemployment rate would be north of 7.1%. ...

South Dakota's Black Hills, home to the granite faces carved into Mt. Rushmore, should be restored as Native American tribal lands,

Anaya said land restoration would help bring about reconciliation. He named the Black Hills as an example. He said restoring to indigenous people what they have a legitimate claim to can be done in a way that is not divisive "so that the Black Hills, for example, isn't just a reminder of the subordination and domination of indigenous peoples in that country."

The Black Hills, home to Mount Rushmore, are public land but are considered sacred by the Sioux tribes. The Sioux have refused to accept money awarded in a 1980 U.S. Supreme Court decision and have sought return of the land. The Black Hills and other lands were set aside for the Sioux in an 1868 treaty. But Congress passed a law in 1877 taking the land.

Maggie Gallagher, former Chairman of NOM, the National Organization For Marriage, says that if gay marriage becomes the law of the land it will make any anti-gay person seem “like a racist.” So, it also seems Gallagher has just redefined NOM’s mission, admitting her overriding motivation is not so much “to protect marriage,” but to protect the reputations of people in “the faith communities that sustain it.”

Taking another jab at his favorite punching bag, President Obama on Tuesday offered Congress a "to-do" list for the year, drawing attention and gently mocking lawmakers in the unpopular and gridlocked Congress.

"It's about the size of a Post-it Note. So every member of Congress should have time to read it -- and they can glance at it every so often," Obama said of his list of five measures. He added that lawmakers could check off the list as they pass legislation, "just like when Michelle gives me a list, check it off."

Unlikely.

The president's list includes items he has previously announced and Congress has failed to embrace. That includes a proposal to allow more homeowners to refinance their mortgages and a plan to give tax credits to companies that relocate in the United States. Obama also wants expand a tax credit for clean energy manufacturers and give a 10% income tax credit to employers who hire. The president also called for the creation a job corps for veterans.

- Former Bob Jones University student Chris Peterman expected to graduate on May 4. But on April 24, nine days before he was set to receive his diploma, the 23-year-old poli-sci major was suspended from school.

 He claims to have been forced out of school in retaliation for his activism against Chuck Phelps, a former BJU Board of Trustees member who was accused of covering up a sex-abuse scandal at the church where he served as pastor.

Dear Editor:

As far as Mitt piece in yesterday’s Detroit News it was truly reckless, detached from reality, and dishonest. I also think it’s very bad politics, especially in Michigan.

It was Bush that stepped in with the “Bailout” of GM & Chrysler in the fall of ’08, not Obama. So that is just dishonest and W just said it at NADA; “he would do it again.” That circumstance trumped philosophy and he prevented a depression and 20% unemployment.

Secondly, Mitt’s assertion that private financing “DIP” was available in fall of ’08 into ’09 is fantasy. Everyone knows we were in the midst of the greatest financial meltdown since the 1930’s.

Finally, Obama’s Auto Taskforce did do a good job killing all the sacred cows. There was dramatic pain for all.

What more can I say, it is very disappointing.

Mike Jackson

Activists with the Occupy Wall Street movement are claiming that police in Minneapolis gave them illegal drugs and other items for participating in a study on impairment.

In a 35-minute documentary produced by Twin Cities Indimedia, Rogue Media, Communities United Against Police Brutality and Occupy Minneapolis, multiple activists describe being offered illicit drugs.

The report alleges that police gave out drugs, cigarettes and fast food as part of the Minnesota State Patrol’s Drug Recognition Evaluator program, which trains officers in detecting drug impairment. Police reportedly picked up suspects near Peavey Plaza and drove them to a facility in Richfield where they were tested.

 

 A U.S. official told CNN the plot was disrupted "well before it was ever a threat to the United States.”

The official added that al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula was the group responsible for the plot.

"We believe AQAP produced the device, and we believe it was intended to be used by a suicide bomber on an aircraft," the official said. "The device and the plot are consistent with what we know about AQAP’s plans, intentions, and capabilities. They remain committed to striking targets in Yemen, Saudi Arabia, the Homeland, and Europe. And AQAP is probably feeling pressure to conduct a successful attack to, from their perspective, avenge the deaths of Bin Laden and (Anwar al-Awlaki).”

Terrorist's death signals U.S-Yemen cooperation

The official added, as others have, that the device has the hallmarks of their previous bombs including the failed assassination attempt on Saudi security official Mohammed Bin Nayif as well as the failed 2009 Christmas Day bombing.

 

Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson, a Fox News contributor, tea party activist and personal friend of Sean Hannity’s said in a sermon recently published to YouTube that America’s greatest mistake was allowing women the right to vote, adding that back in “the good old days, men knew that women are crazy and they knew how to deal with them.”

In the video, published to YouTube in March, Peterson explains that he believes women simply can’t handle “anything,” and that in his experience, “You walk up to them with a issue, they freak out right away. They go nuts. They get mad. They get upset, just like that. They have no patience because it’s not in their nature. They don’t have love. They don’t have love.”

 

A study released by the Aflac insurance company showed the real reason that Americans hate the healthcare mandate. It also shows the real reason behind Republicanism. It seems that with exceptions for terrorism, Iran, the Bird Flu and the rapture (which, I guess is a good thing), bad things only happen to other people.

Nobody at the campaign wanted to lose Grenell. In fact, he was repeatedly urged to stay. The campaign only wanted a discreet interval for the fuss to blow over.

The trouble was that Grenell got the job in the first place because he is a fighter. When the campaign wouldn't fight for him, he decided he wouldn't fight for it. He resigned. The hiring of Grenell interested only political insiders. His departure detonated one of Romney's worst news weeks.

Sehar Hekmati (pictured, center), a Republican activist from Georgia who came to the United States from Afghanistan as a child, filed a lawsuit last week (PDF) against several county level Republican officials, accusing them of slandering her as a “terrorist” and a “felon” in a recorded conversation, emails circulated to other Republicans and posts on Facebook.

"The delays have our imprint. We should not blame foreigners for them," she said. "We have finally found out that you have to pay back what you have borrowed."

A top political appointee at the state Department of Natural Resources chose not to send a complaint against an Oconomowoc waste hauler to the Department of Justice for prosecution despite findings by agency staff that the company was treating fields with so much human waste from septic tanks it risked poisoning nearby wells, DNR records show.

There is a party in the pants of “Exodus International,” and nobody wants to come! And that is why the group has canceled its upcoming “Love Won Out” convention, in which ex-gay ladies show off their human male husbands, and ex-gay men show off Michele Bachmann

To bring down the high rate of chlamydia among teenagers in Tennessee, an anti-choice pregnancy center in Athens, Tenn., has proposed spending federal tax dollars on a life-sized version of the Game of Life.

Attorney In hijab Defends Call For Other Women At 9/11 Hearing To Wear 'Appropriate' Clothing

The defense attorney who wore a traditional Islamic outfit during the rowdy arraignment of the accused Sept. 11 terrorists is defending her courtroom appeal that other women in the room wear more "appropriate" clothing to the proceedings -- out of respect for her client's Muslim beliefs.

Cheryl Bormann, counsel for defendant Walid bin Attash, attended the arraignment Saturday dressed in a hijab, apparently because her client insisted on it

 She further requested that the court order other women to follow that example so that the defendants do not have to avert their eyes "for fear of committing a sin under their faith."

WASHINGTON: "For the past decade, there has been a conservative crusade to:
a) deny Bill Clinton's policies any credit for the historic prosperity the nation enjoyed during his presidency, or
b) deny that those good old Clinton days were really that good at all.

First, when Clinton won the White House, the federal budget deficit was at a historic high of $290 billion, 10 million Americans were out of work and the nation's economic growth rate under the outgoing Republican administration was the lowest in more than half a century. Clinton introduced his controversial economic plan that raised the income taxes of the richest 1.4 percent of Americans. We immediately heard from the Gloom and Doom congressional Republicans, every one of whom voted against the Clinton plan. Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas, announced, "This tax bill is a one-way ticket to a recession." House Republican Whip Newt Gingrich predicted, "This is the Democrat machine's recession, and each one of them will be held personally accountable."
What followed is unarguable: creation of more than 22 million new jobs; the nation's lowest unemployment rate in 30 years; the lowest unemployment rate among women in 40 years; and the lowest Hispanic and African-American unemployment rate in history. The nation went from the largest budget deficits in history to the largest budget surpluses in history, while the average family's income went up more than $5,000.
Faced with a recession that never appeared, Republicans went from assigning blame to denying the improving economic situation.

Executive Summary – There are now 10 states in the USA that are insolvent and expected to file for bankruptcy in the fairly immediate future (2010).

Which 10 States – California, Arizona, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island and Wisconsin. These 10 states account for over one third of the USA population and this is significant. Think of it is more then 33% of the USA going bankrupt.

Other States on the Endangered Species List - Colorado, Georgia, Kentucky, New York and Hawaii. These states are in bad shape and can easily get pushed over into bankruptcy.

Which States are Financially Solvent – Only two. Montana and North Dakota, which actually has a $1.3 billion dollar surplus.

Why They Are So Bad Off Financially – High Foreclosure rates, high unemployment, budget deficits, political and legal blocks to having a balanced budget, poor money management.

Six anti-tank grenades designed to be fired from a launcher were discovered on Wednesday at the scene of a horrific Arizona mass murder-suicide, which authorities said was carried out by well known white supremacist JT Ready.

Ready was a longtime neo-Nazi and border vigilante who authorities said walked into a house in a suburb east of Phoenix on Wednesday and killed four people, including his girlfriend and a 15-month-old baby, before turning the gun on himself.

“Dump Starbucks,” a boycott of the coffee retailing giant by NOM, the National Organization For Marriage, is a tremendous failure. After 50 days in action, by their own measurement, NOM has managed to attack only 35,709 “pledges.” That’s a little more than 700 anti-gay people a day — around the world, including some countries where being gay is a crime punishable by death.

To have intense aversion for, or extreme hostility toward, a group or person is uniquely human and undoubtedly the impetus for myriad atrocities on the human race. Since the election of Barack Obama as the first African American President, the level of hate inherent in a specific segment of the population has elevated to such a high degree that one begins to question what kind of country America is becoming that blatant enmity supersedes civility as a matter of course. 

Since posting the first part of this trilogy, I’ve received many comments; the most prevalent has been “This was written by a straight guy?!” My favorite has been that the “shellfish gambit” is old and worn out. First, I would like to assure you, dear reader, that, yes, I am straight. I just spent a lot of time learning the ins and outs (hur hur hur) of homosexual life. It’s a useful thing to know if you spend a significant amount of time with a significant amount of homosexuals. And second, I can repeat, ad nauseam, that the sky is blue for one hundred years and the sky will not be any less blue and bigots hiding behind religion will not be any less insincere in their “beliefs.”

If you're a state hellbent on turning corrections over to the for-profit prison industry, what do you do when an annual survey shows that private jails are often more expensive than the old fashioned public variety? Especially if, by law, the state may contract for private prisons only if they prove to be less expensive? Simple, just eliminate that pesky study.

31-year-old Marissa Alexander was cornered by her abusive husband when she fired a warning shot into the ceiling of their home, using a gun she was licensed to carry. The August, 2010 incident led to the Jacksonville, Florida resident’s conviction of three counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.

Alexander claims she was acting in self-defense, that her husband, Rico Gray, attacked her when he found messages to her ex-husband on her cell phone. Gray has said in testimony that he had previously warned Alexander that he would kill her if he ever found out that she had been unfaithful. In her panic, she ran to the garage, hoping to escape. Once there, she found that she did not have her keys and that the garage door was broken.

As nineteen year old Shanell Madison of Pearl, Mississippi tells it, she and her twin brother Terrell were sitting peacefully on the balcony of their apartment on Tuesday when they heard shots from a police shootout below. Then Terrell began recording the scene with his cellphone, and that brought the police bursting into the apartment to arrest both of them.

“The police came up here after they took his phone,” Shanell told WLBT News. “They slammed him down and arrested him, and I’m like ‘Why are y’all arresting him’, and then they grabbed me and slammed me also and arrested me.”

The twins were let out of jail several hours later, but the police kept the SIM card from Terrell’s phone and Madison was told they had been charged with disorderly contact

Dear reader, in the course of going about your day today did you somehow manage to forget that we are inching ever closer towards some sort Handmaid’s Tale style dystopian nightmare run by sexist racist morons? First, let us congratulate you, and then shake you out of your reverie by telling you about the latest horrible thing that has happened in (duh) Florida.

Conservatives are taking ideological purity to a whole new level: ideologically segregated email accounts.  Really, I’m not kidding.

In the last 31 years we have had exactly two Presidents that actually placed the welfare of the people and this country ahead of their political party and partisan politics.

Both of these men had very humble beginnings and both were raised by single women.

They both possess tremendous intellect and each of them are gifted and talented as well. Each of them could have made it in the private sector and been successful in the world of corporate America.

Both of them married strong successful women who not only worked outside the home and had careers of their own, but they were and are women who managed to be good wives, great mothers and to raise children that they could be proud of.

The Republicans can spend all of the time they want trying to tear down and low rate these two men and their accomplishments, and they can and do tell tell very ugly and mean spirited jokes about their wives and children and even the men themselves.

But in the minds of the vast majority of the American people and the world, these two men will have been two of the most respected and beloved and successful Presidents in the history of the American Republic.

And In case you are wondering I am speaking of...,

President William Jefferson Clinton who was the POTUS from 1992 to 2000.

President Barack Hussein Obama who has been the POTUS since 2008-

The Republicans like to ridicule and make fun of these two men but they have a record of economic accomplishment for the American people that I suspect that no Republican President will ever match.

Not

Richard Nixon

Gerald Ford

Ronald Reagan

George H.W. Bush

George W. Bush

The Republicans especially like to talk about Ronald Reagan as though he had been a GOD, but the plain truth is, his Presidency started amid lies and fabrications which undermined a sitting President in the area of Foreign Policy and a scandal that involved the trading of military weapons for American hostages.

Maybe to the Republicans they saw Reagan as a great man, the leader of the so called "Republican Revolution" and their brand of conservative politics.

But I look back to the days of President Reagan and see the beginning of a path of decreased American economic prosperity and prestige world wide, and the rise of at first Japan and now China and the rest of the Pacific Rim nations, as the worlds true economic power houses.

President Reagan is the man most responsible for the massive build up in defense spending which proved totally worthless on 9/11/ 2001, the day when we were attacked not by another country but by 19 men who were led by a man who rode a donkey and sent his men to take over 3 of our own jets and used them against us as airborne suicide bombers.

The Republicans super selfish economic and tax policies that have totally favored the interest of the rich at the expense of the poor and lower classes, and likewise their almost religious and Biblical based foreign policy has placed us on a path that I really believe ultimately led to the the terrorist attack of 9/11/2001 and from there to the greatest economic recession that the world has ever seen.

In my opinion "Terrorism"being brought to our shores arose from two factors..,

The first being our nation being seen as supporting the wealthy and the rich Arab Kings against the poor people in those countries and also the multinational oil corporations in the suppression of the poor in both the oil producing regions of the Middle East and Africa.

The second being our propping up and upholding of the country of Israel even when it was obvious that they were physically stealing land, land which in fact had already been set aside for the Palestinian people.

And perhaps worst of all this constant turning of a blind eye to the ruthless and almost systematic slaughter of the Palestinian people by the Israeli military.

Whether it is by our government or by the adherents to the Christian faith who help set it, foreign policy based upon notions of the superiority of one religion over another is a dangerous foreign policy.

I believe that people have a right to protest and their grievances need to be heard and addressed fairly if there is ever to be peace in the middle east. And the images of rock and bottle throwing Palestinians fighting the Israeli Army is not a good one for the nation of Israel.

Basically we can all lie to ourselves and continue to believe that if the rich here in America get richer that that somehow that benefits the rest of us or we can come to grips with the reality that wealth disparity and crippling poverty is what cripples and destroys the fabrics of nations.

Our nation is no exception, and the ties that have bound us together as a nation are already beginning to fray.

And the root cause of this weakness in our nation can be traced directly to the misguided foreign policy of President George Bush in particular and in general the conservative economic principles of the Republican Party here at home.

In the last decade in my opinion those are the two greatest things that have and is calling into question the political and economic stability of the United States not only as a world power but even as a nation.

President Obama has had a full plate from the very beginning of his Presidency with the Iraq War, the War in Afghanistan, the World Wide War Against Terrorism and a crippling recession here at home.

The fact that he has kept the nation together and focused on regaining our rightful place in the world is a testament to his character, leadership and policies.

The fact he has accomplished as much as he has, while fighting racial bias and bigotry among so many in the Republican Party especially of Mitch McConnell, Jim DeMint, Eric Cantor, Tim Johnson and so many others who tried to masquerade and hide their racism under the cover of partisan politics is truly amazing.

We haven't even made it to the finding and the authorizing of the killing of Osama Bin Laden or how the Republicans begrudgingly and reluctantly give him credit for this and his many other accomplishments as President. 

Defense Department officials have decided to resume the prosecution of accused 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other men for their alleged role in the most deadly terror attack in US history.

Charges accusing the five men of involvement in the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks were formally referred to prosecutors on Wednesday for trial before a military commission at a special high-security judicial complex at the US Naval Base, Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

The military prosecutors have a month to arraign the defendants. All five potentially face a death sentence.

The action was expected, but it marks a sharp reversal by the Obama administration, which in 2009 dismissed military charges against these same men and announced that they would instead be tried in a civilian federal court in New York City.

They don’t call him the Motor City Madman for nothing. Ted Nugent sat down with talk radio host Mike Broomhead today to explain his… unique interview on CBS this morning where he basically tore into his interviewer, Jeff Glor, for telling him he is not a moderate. 

I wandered into the Fox news world today, I don't know how, I guess I was lost or something. ...... No, actually I get email alerts from "The Blaze" a Glen Beck publication (that has a logo strangely resembling the logo for the Arabic news publication, Al Jazeera, ... go figure.)

The reason I keep tabs on Right Wing web sites and publications like the Blaze and The Fox News Network, is I like to know what the other side is saying, and what they're up to. Well, the other day Fox News Show Host and Commentator, Sean Hannity, lured unsuspecting OWS Co-Organizer, Harrison Shultz, into a Fox News studio for an interview. What transpired next completely changed my attitude and respect for the OWS movement, because if this Shultz guy is an actual Co-Organizer of, and represents the actual values, of the OWS movement, all the criticism and ridicule leveled at OWS is well deserved, ..... and then some.

When I hear a guy say things like, "the NYPD sent rapist and alcoholics to Zuccotti Park to rape women, have open sex in the Park and deficate on cars in order to make the movement look bad" (yeah, he said that), and then refers to a NY Times article as "evidence" to support the claim, I begin to have doubts about the credibility of the OWS movement. 

When that same person says, quite emphatically, that all people should have a free education, free medical and dental care, free housing and free transportation, I have further doubts. But then, when asked by Hannity "Who is going to pay for all this?", and Shultz responds with a resounding "NOBODY!" ....... my doubts are confirmed.

If this unemployed "Business Intelligence Analyst for a Paper Clip Marketing Company" (his description), living on student loans, who is "starting to look for a job", is a "leader" in the OWS movement ..... then there  is no OWS movement.

But, don't take my word for it. Watch the entire entertaining and incredible exchange on this video (second one down). If you are an OWS supporter now, and still support the movement after watching the video, you are a Radical Left Wing Extremist. And that comment comes from a Leftist.

The legal team for George Zimmerman said on Friday their client received “warm support” during the first day back of taking donations for his defense in the killing of unarmed Florida teenager Trayvon Martin.

While the team didn’t disclose how much was donated to Zimmerman from late Thursday until Friday afternoon, a posting on their website said he received donations ranging from $1 to $500, with the average donation being about $20

 

To bring down the high rate of chlamydia among teenagers in Tennessee, an anti-choice pregnancy center in Athens, Tenn., has proposed spending federal tax dollars on a life-sized version of the Game of Life.

The “Teen Life Maze” is just one of the ideas put forth by a cluster of crisis pregnancy centers that are receiving government grants to conduct abstinence education as part of President Obama’s health-care reform law.

Records obtained by The American Independent show that the government is paying for abstinence programs run by centers that promote dubious medical information. For example, crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) receiving funding through the program claim that “reliable studies” have shown a link between abortion and breast cancer.

One of the centers says it seeks to help students understand “the lack of effectiveness of condoms/birth control in STD protection and pregnancy.”

TAI previously reported that a South Dakota anti-abortion CPC that requires its volunteers to be Christians received funding under a program created by Obama’s stimulus bill.

Between 1996 and 2009, taxpayers spent more than $1.5 billion on abstinence-only education, paid for by federal grants and state matching funds, according to the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS). In 2004, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) released a report that found that these programs often contained false or distorted information about sex and reproductive health, such as claiming that condoms have a high failure rate at preventing HIV and pregnancy, women who have abortions have a high risk of becoming sterile, and HIV can be transmitted through sweat and tears.

 

A mother has been arrested after admitting to police she burned her 15-month-old son's genitals with a hair straightening iron.

Jodi Rock, 19, from Tahlequah, Oklahoma, remains in jail on $200,000 bail after she was charged with felony injury to a minor child.

Her son has been taken into state custody.

while she was straightening her hair, she touched her hand to the iron then she took and closed the iron’s clamps on the toddler’s genitals.

The affidavit also stated that medical examiners found a number of other injuries on the boy.

Georgia Bar owner Patrick Lanzo says he isn't a racist, he just chooses to use incredibly racist terms in road signs to make a political point.

A full three months before what police said was his fatal rampage this week, Arizona white supremacist JT Ready spilled his guts to TPM.

Wow. Rarely are we privileged to witness such a moronic convergence of right wing bigotry, as Lou Engle of The Call says the religious right should model themselves after the Confederacy to fight “the homosexual agenda.”

The House Republican version of the new Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) would dramatically rollback confidentiality protections for abused immigrant women, make it more difficult for undocumented witnesses to work with law enforcement officials, and eliminate a pathway to citizenship for witnesses who cooperate with police on criminal cases.

The provisions are tucked into a bill that reauthorizes the act, and have received scant media attention. But the legislation is picking up steam in the House. The bill, officially sponsored by freshman Rep. Sandy Adams (R-Fla.), has the backing of the full House leadership, and is headed for a vote in the Judiciary Committee on Tuesday.

This article contains the month by month job creation number for both President Bush and President Obama are contained in this article.

It is a real eye opener and refutes all of the Mitt Romney and Republican Party lies about what their policies have done in comparison to the Policies of President Obama and the Democratic party.

Ted Nugent recently said presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s campaign “expressed support” after the musician made comments that caused the U.S. Secret Service to wonder if he had threatened the life of President Barack Obama.