JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- It's a scheme to steal gas that you have to see to believe.
Crooks
rigged the pumps at three stations to get free gas for days. Gas prices
are hurting everyone at the pump. "It affects the budget, especially if
you have to go from one side of town to the other," said driver Lee
Bond.
But it's not just consumers feeling the pain at the
pump. According to a police report, gas station owners are too. Crooks
rigged a fuel pump at three different area Kangaroo gas stations. In
just three days at one station on St. Johns Bluff, nearly 100 people
stole gas. It totaled about $10,000. READ MORE
A collection of articles defining our times. The pages contain clickable links, don't let the titles fool you, some of the best articles have very non-descript titles and there are usually more articles on the matters in the days and week pages the links land on so it's a sort of treasure hunt through history, Enjoy!
Saturday, April 7, 2012
Video: Timeline of Trayvon Martin's Last Minutes Alive
Here's an even more detailed timeline written by lawyers following the case:
Minute-by-Minute Timeline of Trayvon Martin’s Death
I want to write a more in depth post on the killing of Trayvon Martin,
but when trying to figure out how strong Zimmerman’s claim of
self-defense might be, I got frustrated by the lack of any in-depth,
detailed time lines of the events leading up to and immediately
following Trayvon’s death. In order to get a better idea of what exactly
happened, I’ve laid out here a chronology of the shooting based on (1)
call logs of the calls to 911 and the police made that night; (2)
recordings of the calls themselves; and (3) the police report and
surveillance video that have been made available to the public. READ MORE
Friday, April 6, 2012
Eat to Beat Knee Osteoarthritis and Other Aching Joints
6 Natural Ways to Ease Symptoms of Arthritis
Published March 15, 2012
Medications provide proven arthritis pain relief. But natural
remedies are also as close and convenient as your supermarket. The
newest studies show the keys to beating knee osteoarthritis and other
painful joints may be through your stomach. From fatty fish to tart
cherries, here are the right foods and supplements to ease arthritis
pain...
Good news for those of us who have osteoarthritis and like to eat: The latest osteoarthritis studies suggest certain foods and vitamins, many found in Mediterranean diets, may ease knee osteoarthritis, keep the condition from worsening, or help stop it in the first place.
There’s a huge drive “to find natural approaches to treating medical conditions like osteoarthritis,” says Timothy McAlindon, M.D., chief of rheumatology at Tufts Medical Center in Cambridge, Mass.
In fact, this research is so cutting-edge, experts say, they’re still working on official guidelines.
“The real challenge is to have information that says how much people should take,” says John Hardin, M.D., chief scientific officer for the Arthritis Foundation.
Research is ongoing but here’s the latest on vitamins, like C and K, and super-foods such as fish and cherries that may provide arthritis pain relief: READ MORE
Good news for those of us who have osteoarthritis and like to eat: The latest osteoarthritis studies suggest certain foods and vitamins, many found in Mediterranean diets, may ease knee osteoarthritis, keep the condition from worsening, or help stop it in the first place.
There’s a huge drive “to find natural approaches to treating medical conditions like osteoarthritis,” says Timothy McAlindon, M.D., chief of rheumatology at Tufts Medical Center in Cambridge, Mass.
In fact, this research is so cutting-edge, experts say, they’re still working on official guidelines.
“The real challenge is to have information that says how much people should take,” says John Hardin, M.D., chief scientific officer for the Arthritis Foundation.
Research is ongoing but here’s the latest on vitamins, like C and K, and super-foods such as fish and cherries that may provide arthritis pain relief: READ MORE
Google shows off long-secret glasses project in demo video
By Stephen C. Webster
Thursday, April 5, 2012 8:42 EDT
In a brief proof-of-concept video published this week, Google lifted the curtain on their forthcoming digital-overlay glasses, demonstrating how they work and the various ways people might use them.
Rumored for a long time but never-before-seen outside of the search giant’s Google[x] lab,the glasses are believed to be coming out later this year at least in beta form. Google’s latest video shows people using them like a smartphone, but much more naturally.
Text messages, calendar reminders, video chatting, navigation and even social network sharing is included in the demonstration. It all seems to fit naturally with features in Google’s social network and other applications. READ MORE
Thursday, April 5, 2012 8:42 EDT
In a brief proof-of-concept video published this week, Google lifted the curtain on their forthcoming digital-overlay glasses, demonstrating how they work and the various ways people might use them.
Rumored for a long time but never-before-seen outside of the search giant’s Google[x] lab,the glasses are believed to be coming out later this year at least in beta form. Google’s latest video shows people using them like a smartphone, but much more naturally.
Text messages, calendar reminders, video chatting, navigation and even social network sharing is included in the demonstration. It all seems to fit naturally with features in Google’s social network and other applications. READ MORE
Maddow relays censored memo on CIA ‘war crimes’ during Bush Administration
By Eric W. Dolan
Thursday, April 5, 2012 0:05 EDT
MSNBC host Rachel Maddow on Wednesday night explained a legal memo that advised the Bush Administration that so-called enhanced interrogation techniques were torture and therefore illegal.
Wired reporter Spencer Ackerman obtained the memo, written by State Department counselor Philip Zelikow, through a Freedom on Information Act request.
Bush told NBC’s Matt Lauer in 2010 that he authorized the use of enhanced interrogation techniques like waterboarding because his “lawyer said it was legal, said it did not fall within the Anti-Torture Act.” But Zelikow’s memo warned the Bush Administration in 2006 that the interrogation techniques used on terror suspects by the CIA were “a felony war crime.”
“As a top lawyer at the Bush State Department, Philip Zelikow circulated the memo within the Administration that said, essentially, that the Administration was kidding itself in trying to say that there was some way around the law,” Maddow explained. “They were trying to give a legal green light to CIA interrogator to torture people, but that green light, he said, was a sham.”
In 2009, Zelikow said that the Bush Administration attempted to collect and destroy all copies of the memo.
“If the Republican Party were the still the party of John McCain, this would open up a whole new can of political worms,” Maddow said, “because the Obama Administration, remember, looked into Bush Administration ordered torture and they decided not to prosecute any of it.” READ MORE
Thursday, April 5, 2012 0:05 EDT
MSNBC host Rachel Maddow on Wednesday night explained a legal memo that advised the Bush Administration that so-called enhanced interrogation techniques were torture and therefore illegal.
Wired reporter Spencer Ackerman obtained the memo, written by State Department counselor Philip Zelikow, through a Freedom on Information Act request.
Bush told NBC’s Matt Lauer in 2010 that he authorized the use of enhanced interrogation techniques like waterboarding because his “lawyer said it was legal, said it did not fall within the Anti-Torture Act.” But Zelikow’s memo warned the Bush Administration in 2006 that the interrogation techniques used on terror suspects by the CIA were “a felony war crime.”
“As a top lawyer at the Bush State Department, Philip Zelikow circulated the memo within the Administration that said, essentially, that the Administration was kidding itself in trying to say that there was some way around the law,” Maddow explained. “They were trying to give a legal green light to CIA interrogator to torture people, but that green light, he said, was a sham.”
In 2009, Zelikow said that the Bush Administration attempted to collect and destroy all copies of the memo.
“If the Republican Party were the still the party of John McCain, this would open up a whole new can of political worms,” Maddow said, “because the Obama Administration, remember, looked into Bush Administration ordered torture and they decided not to prosecute any of it.” READ MORE
Dutch company hopes to change the world with first commercial ‘flying car’
A Dutch company said this weekend that it had conducted its first
successful test of their “flying car” prototype that they hope to make
available for consumers by sometime in 2014.
The Personal Air and Land Vehicle — PAL-V, for short — is not a new concept: its European creators have been working on the vehicle for years now, and even suffered a thumping by reporters in 2009 when they showed off a mini-copter design that looked nothing like the device featured in their artists’ renditions.
That early demonstration, however, appears to have been merely a proof-of-technology display to showcase their helicopter’s new gyro-sensing capabilities. Finally demonstrated again last weekend, it now seems that PAL-V Europe‘s design and engineering concepts have come together nicely, with the near end result looking remarkably like their initial drawings and flying like a champ. READ MORE
The Personal Air and Land Vehicle — PAL-V, for short — is not a new concept: its European creators have been working on the vehicle for years now, and even suffered a thumping by reporters in 2009 when they showed off a mini-copter design that looked nothing like the device featured in their artists’ renditions.
That early demonstration, however, appears to have been merely a proof-of-technology display to showcase their helicopter’s new gyro-sensing capabilities. Finally demonstrated again last weekend, it now seems that PAL-V Europe‘s design and engineering concepts have come together nicely, with the near end result looking remarkably like their initial drawings and flying like a champ. READ MORE
My 14 Year Old Son Has Brain Cancer -- Without Obamacare, We May Have Been Dropped By Our Insurance Company
This originally appeared on Janine Urbaniak's Open Salon blog. It was written in a response to a call for essays about people's personal experiences with the Affordable Care Act. Have an Obamacare story of your own? Blog about it on Open Salon.
Mason is my 14-year-old son, who is adorable and funny, and happens to have a very stubborn and large brain tumor. We discovered the tumor four years ago, and we have been monitoring and treating it with the help of some of the finest doctors around. Mason has lived a somewhat “normal” life, despite frequent MRIs and even chemotherapy. He did his homework and hung out with friends until the fall of 2010 when his headaches became debilitating. Scans revealed that Mason’s tumor had grown for the first time since we had discovered it. Then days before we were scheduled to meet with the neurosurgeon to discuss a surgery we had tried to avoid, Mason had a massive cerebral hemorrhage. READ MORE
Why Do We Pay Energy Giants to Wreck Earth?
To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.com here.
Along
with “fivedollaragallongas,” the energy watchword for the next few
months is: “subsidies.” Last week, for instance, New Jersey Senator
Robert Menendez proposed ending
some of the billions of dollars in handouts enjoyed by the fossil-fuel
industry with a “Repeal Big Oil Tax Subsidies Act.” It was, in truth,
nothing to write home about -- a curiously skimpy bill that only
targeted oil companies, and just the five richest of them at that. Left
out were coal and natural gas, and you won’t be surprised to learn that
even then it didn’t pass. READ MORE
Wall Street Attack: Big Banks Shower Congress With Money to Water Down Reform
Here we go again. Another round of the game we call Congressional Creep. After months of haggling and debate, Congress finally passes reform legislation to fix a serious rupture in the body politic, and the president signs it into law. But the fight’s just begun, because the special interests immediately set out to win back what they lost when the reform became law.
They
spread money like manure on the campaign trails of key members of
Congress. They unleash hordes of lobbyists on Capitol Hill, cozy up to
columnists and editorial writers, spend millions on lawyers who
relentlessly pick at the law, trying to rewrite or water down the
regulations required for enforcement. Before you know it, what once was
an attempt at genuine reform creeps back toward business as usual. READ MORE
Corporate Cash Streams Into Ohio to Unseat Senator Sherrod Brown
 |
| Photo Credit: AFP |
Everybody expects Ohio to be a
battleground come November, with political attack ads on every channel
and phones ringing off the hook with election-related robocalls. Even
though it's only spring, corporate cash is already flooding into the
state as big money looks to unseat one of the most progressive members
of the Senate, Sherrod Brown.
“They
see this race as important to getting a majority in the US Senate
regardless of what happens in the presidential race,” Brian Rothenberg
of ProgressOhio told AlterNet. “Ohio is a swing state in a couple of
ways; one is the presidency but the other is the Senate.”
And Greg Sargent at the Washington Post
noted recently, “In what may come as a surprise to many Democrats, the
Ohio Senate race appears to be the target of more spending by
GOP-aligned outside groups than the [Elizabeth] Warren contest or any
other Senate race in the country.” READ MORE
'Bully' Documentary Exposes the Criminal Negligence Threatening Kids' Lives
For the past few years, Americans
have become hyper-aware of the issue of school bullying, a cause celebre
among stars like Lady Gaga and relationship columnist Dan Savage. But
even with the prevalence of It Gets Better PSAs—not to mention copious
tragic tales of young children driven to suicide constantly in the
news—we might not feel the immediacy of how bullying actually feels in
the day-to-day. With the perspective of time, even those of us who were
brutally bullied as children might not remember the visceral pain of it
once we become adults.
10 Unbelievably Sh**ty Things America Does to Homeless People
For decades, cities all over the
country have worked to essentially criminalize homelessness,
instituting measures that outlaw holding a sign, sleeping, sitting,
lying (or weirdly, telling a lie in Orlando) if you live on the street.
Where
the law does not mandate outright harassment, police come up with
clever work-arounds, like destroying or confiscating tents, blankets and
other property in raids of camps. A veteran I talked to, his eye bloody
from when some teenagers beat him up to steal 60 cents, said police
routinely extracted the poles from his tent and kept them so he couldn't
rebuild it. (Where are all the pissed-off libertarians and
conservatives at such flagrant disrespect for private property?)
In
the heady '80s, Reagan slashed federal housing subsidies even as a
tough economy threw more and more people out on the street. Instead of
resolving itself through the magic of the markets, the homelessness
problem increasingly fell to local governments. READ MORE
Chomsky: How the Young Are Indoctrinated to Obey
Public education is under attack
around the world, and in response, student protests have recently been
held in Britain, Canada, Chile, Taiwan and elsewhere.
California
is also a battleground. The Los Angeles Times reports on another
chapter in the campaign to destroy what had been the greatest public
higher education system in the world: "California State University
officials announced plans to freeze enrollment next spring at most
campuses and to wait-list all applicants the following fall pending the
outcome of a proposed tax initiative on the November ballot."
Similar
defunding is under way nationwide. "In most states," The New York Times
reports, "it is now tuition payments, not state appropriations, that
cover most of the budget," so that "the era of affordable four-year
public universities, heavily subsidized by the state, may be over."
Community colleges increasingly face similar prospects – and the shortfalls extend to grades K-12.
"There
has been a shift from the belief that we as a nation benefit from
higher education, to a belief that it's the people receiving the
education who primarily benefit and so they should foot the bill,"
concludes Ronald G. Ehrenberg, a trustee of the State University system
of New York and director of the Cornell Higher Education Research
Institute.
3 Corporate Myths that Threaten the Wealth of the Nation
 |
| Photo Credit: shutterstock |
Corporations are not working for the 99%. But this wasn’t always the case. In a special 5-part AlterNet
series, William Lazonick, professor at UMass, president of the
Academic-Industry Research Network, and one of the leading expert on the
American corporation, along with journalist Ken Jacobson and AlterNet’s
Lynn Parramore, will examine the foundations, history, and purpose of
the corporation to answer this vital question: How can the public take
control of the business corporation and make it work for the real
economy?
The wealth of the American nation depends on the productive power of our major business corporations. In 2008 there were 981 companies in
the United States with 10,000 or more employees. Although they were
less than two percent of all U.S. firms, they employed 27 percent of the
labor force and accounted for 31 percent of all payrolls. Literally
millions of smaller businesses depend, directly or indirectly, on the
productivity of these big businesses and the disposable incomes of their
employees.
When the executives
who control big-business investment decisions place a high priority on
innovation and job creation, then we all have a chance for a prosperous
tomorrow. Unfortunately, over the past few decades, the top executives
of our major corporations have turned the productive power of the people
into massive and concentrated financial wealth for themselves. Indeed
the very emergence of “the 1%” is largely the result of this usurpation
of corporate power. And executives’ use of this power to benefit
themselves often undermines investment in innovation and job creation. READ MORE
Enough with the GOP's Faith-Based Economics
 |
| Photo Credit: Bête à Bon-Dieu |
"I will do all I can to help you," Montague answered. "And you must be very severe with me," Lucy continued, "and not let me spend too much money, or make any blunders. That was the way [former business advisor] Mr. Holmes used to do, and since he is dead, I have positively been afraid to trust myself about."
-Upton Sinclair, "The Moneychangers"
From
Ron Paul to Mitt Romney, politicians consistently employ their own
framing of why the economy is performing poorly, and thus, promote a
consistent remedy for how to improve it. Government doesn't need to do
more, they contend, it needs to do less - less regulating, less
spending, less taxing. They believe in these solutions, I argue, not
necessarily because of some secret allegiance to the rich, but because
of their longstanding blind faith in the ability of the so-called "free
market" to correct economic problems on its own.
During
a recent appearance on The Daily Show, the libertarian Sen. Rand Paul
(R-Kentucky) championed the need for free-floating interest rates by
analogizing interest rate movements to the human body's production of
insulin.[1] That
such a complex economic process could be equated with an automatic
physiological process was not at all accidental. Just as though it were a
natural science, free-marketers firmly believe in capitalism's ability
to self-correct. Government, they argue, will only mess up (or, as they
like to say, "distort") this process. This is precisely what Ronald
Reagan was intimating when he famously declared, "Government is not the
solution to our problems, government is the problem."
The Myth of Self-Correction
The Root of the Conservative War on Contraception Comes From a Deep-seated Anxiety
 |
| Photo Credit: Shutterstock/imahe |
Liberals have documented the
existence of a bitter Republican campaign against women’s health and
freedom, but I don’t think we’ve identified its cause or its full
intent. It may be hurting Republicans almost as much as it’s hurting
women: New Gallup poll data released
Monday found that Obama leads Romney 51 percent to 42 percent among
registered voters in 12 swing states. Last month he trailed the
Republican by 2 points. The change is due to a sharp shift among women:
Obama now leads Romney among women under the age of 50 by 30 points;
that lead was 5 points in February.
Some
panicked Republicans insist crafty Democrats are the ones playing the
culture wars, but we’ve debunked that: Democrats didn’t make the GOP
presidential field back “personhood” laws that would criminalize some
forms of birth control. They didn’t force the newly elected House GOP to
make defunding Planned Parenthood their first legislative goal. And
they didn’t propose the Blunt Amendment that would have allowed
employers to withhold health insurance coverage not only for
contraception, but for any treatment they disapproved of — or make every
Republican senator vote for it, except the outgoing Olympia Snowe. READ MORE
Spanish General Strike Takes Aim at Austerity
 |
| Protesters from Spain's M15 movement march for economic policy change. Photo Credit: Peter Scholz / Shutterstock.com |
Last Thursday, people across Spain
made a show of force in a general strike, at a scale ranging from the
government estimate of 800,000 to the 4 million claimed by the unions.
It was timed to challenge new reforms that are expected to make it
easier for employers to fire workers, dealing a blow to organized labor.
The
15M movement, which began with occupations in the central squares of
cities around the country last year, played an important role in the
strike’s success. Despite ongoing conflicts between the largest unions
and 15M, several weeks ago the movement’s key organizations — including
neighborhood assemblies, Democracia Real Ya, Yo No Pago and the Platform of People Affected by the Mortgage (PAH) — announced their support for the general strike and started working to make it a success. READ MORE
Meet Bahrain’s Best Friend in Congress
April 4, 2012
Last year, as the government of Bahrain violently suppressed an
Arab Spring protest movement, an unlikely champion of the small Gulf
nation emerged on Capitol Hill in Washington: Democratic Rep. Eni
Faleomavaega, the delegate from American Samoa.
Faleomavaega, who has been a non-voting delegate in Congress since 1989 and is now the third-ranking Democrat on the Foreign Affairs Committee, typically focuses on more local matters: the tuna industry, Pacific Islands affairs and securing federal funding for American Samoa.
But this week he is taking a trip to Bahrain, his second in the
past year, both paid by the Bahraini government. It's part of a
year-long friendship the congressman has developed with the Gulf nation.
Reality Check: Effective U.S. Corporate Tax Rate Much Lower Than Most Other Developed Nations
“This isn’t an April Fool’s Day joke;
as of April 1, the United States of America will have reached the
inauspicious position of having the highest corporate tax rate in the
developed world,” said Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) in a statement “I want
America to be number one in many things, but having the highest
corporate tax rate is definitely not one of them.”
This is constant refrain from Republicans,
who then blame the supposedly high U.S. corporate tax rate for
discouraging job creation. But as we’ve noted time and time again, while
the U.S. has a high statutory corporate tax rate (meaning the rate on
paper), U.S. corporations actually pay incredibly low taxes due to the
ever-proliferating loopholes, credits, and deductions in the tax code
and the use of overseas tax havens.
U.S. corporate taxes that were actually paid (the effective rate) fell to a 40 year low of 12.1 percent in
fiscal year 2011, despite corporate profits rebounding to their
pre-Great Recession heights. The U.S. both taxes its corporations less
and raises less in revenue from corporate taxes than its foreign
competitors:
A World Without UNRWA?
April 5, 2012
With the world media focusing on
the crisis in Syria, it has been forgotten that Syria is home to some
400,000 Palestinian refugees. This includes 14,000 Palestinians who
inhabit a refugee camp in the bombarded city of Homs, and who rely on
UNRWA, the UN Agency tasked with assisting Palestinian refugees, for
their daily needs.
Hamas’s
recent condemnation of the Assad regime is unlikely to endear it to the
Syrian government, but in fact over the years Syria has treated the
Palestinians relatively well, if one compares the way Lebanon, Jordan,
and Egypt have treated their Palestinian refugee communities. Moreover,
unlike Israel, Syria has never threatened the UN Agency or plotted its
demise, a move that could precipitate a humanitarian crisis of epic
proportions.
The most recent Israeli threats against UNRWA include an attack by
Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister, Danny Ayalon, that blamed the Agency
for perpetuating the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. In conjunction with a
PR firm and the right-wing, US-based StandWithUs organization, Ayalon
has created a series of videos on YouTube that attempt to promote
Israel’s image and spin the history of the conflict. His most recent
video is on Palestinian refugees. Ayalon proposes that UNRWA be
dismantled and blames it for prolonging the refugee issue and the
conflict. Instead, he proposes that Palestinian refugees be placed
under the UNHCR’s mandate. In fact, however, the primary reason why
UNRWA still exists is due to Israel’s consistent rejection of UN General
Assembly resolution 194 (III) calling for the right of refugees to
return and compensation.
Here Is Germany: World War 2 Propaganda Documentary Film
This maybe a propaganda film but there are plenty of "takeaways" for Americans who are familiar with how we were misled into war etc., ponder those informative takeaways about unquestioned authority. allowing the same people who ruined things to remain in control among other tings. Watch it and think.
Wednesday, April 4, 2012
The 99 Percent Spring: The People Are Not Powerless
 |
| The 99 percent spring will energize the Occupy movement. (photo: 99 Percent Spring) |
03 April 12
n
the coming weeks, millions of Americans will take to the streets as
part of the "99 percent spring," echoing last year's "Arab Spring.".
At the root of this discontent are the extreme
inequalities of income, wealth, and opportunity that have emerged over
the last four decades.
The richest 1 percent now owns over 36 percent of all
the wealth in the United States. That's more than the net worth of the
bottom 95 percent combined. This 1 percent has pocketed almost all of
the wealth gains of the last decade.
In 2010, the 1 percent earned 21 percent of all
income, up from only 8 percent in mid-1970s. The 400 wealthiest
individuals on the Forbes 400 list have more wealth than the bottom 150
million Americans.
These trends among the 1 percent are bad for the rest
of us. Concentrated wealth translates into political clout - the power
to use campaign contributions to rent politicians and tilt the rules of
the economy in their favor. READ MORE
James Murdoch Steps Down As BSkyB Chairman
 |
| James Murdoch has resigned as chief executive and chairman at BSkyB. (photo: Miguel Villagran/Getty Images) |
03 April 12
Rupert Murdoch's son quits as chairman of UK pay-tv giant to avoid becoming a 'lightning rod' for the phone-hacking scandal.
ames
Murdoch, once thought of as corporate heir apparent to his father
Rupert, is stepping down as chairman of BSkyB after concluding it would
be too damaging to stay on and risk a critical verdict from a British
parliamentary inquiry into phone hacking.
The 39-year-old, who has been chief executive and then
chairman since 2003, said he was leaving the company "as attention
continues to be paid to past events at News International", News
Corporation's scandal-hit UK newspaper division.
By stepping down, it will mean that no Murdoch occupies a top position at the satellite broadcaster for the first time in years.
Murdoch's decision to quit at this point has surprised
friends, given that only a few weeks earlier he resolved to stay on at
Sky, despite relocating to New York and having given up his job as
executive chairman of News International.
In a statement, the board of BSkyB, which is
controlled by News Corporation through a 39.1% stake, said James Murdoch
would continue as a non-executive director. He will be succeeded by
Nicholas Ferguson. READ MORE
GOP Five Like Stripping Americans
 |
| The Supreme Court has authorized the police to conduct strip searches after any arrest. (photo: Ken Light) |
03 April 12
ast
week, the five Republican partisans who control the U.S. Supreme Court
were all about protecting American "liberties" against the threat of
compulsory broccoli purchases. This week, they are defending the rights
of prison guards to strip search a nun arrested in an anti-war protest
or a black guy who got nabbed by mistake for not paying a fine that he
had actually paid.
But the Court's strip-search ruling on Monday was more
about the future than the past. One could almost see the GOP Five
rubbing their hands together at the prospect of mass strip searches of
young men and women arrested for challenging corporate greed in Occupy
protests. Perhaps the justices would like to take a page from Rush
Limbaugh's playbook and suggest the videos be posted online so they
could watch.
"Every detainee who will be admitted to the general
population may be required to undergo a close visual inspection while
undressed," wrote Justice Anthony Kennedy for the Republican majority.
Of course, the justices don't expect that they and
their powerful friends would ever be subjected to such humiliation.
That's more for the lesser beings - or those with lesser money -
especially those who find themselves disproportionately tossed into
America's massive prison system: the poor, the minorities and the
protesters. READ MORE
Rachel Maddow: How America's Security-Industrial Complex Went Insane
The following is an excerpt from Rachel Maddow's new book, "Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power," published by Crown Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc.
In
the little town where I live in Hampshire County, Massachusetts, we now
have a “Public Safety Complex” around the corner from what used to be
our hokey Andy Griffith–esque fire station. In the cascade of post-9/11
Homeland Security money in the first term of the George W. Bush
administration, our town’s share of the loot bought us a new fire
truck—one that turned out to be a few feet longer than the garage where
the town kept our old fire truck. So then we got some more Homeland
money to build something big enough to house the new truck. In homage to
the origin of the funding, the local auto detailer airbrushed on the
side of the new truck a patriotic tableau of a billowing flaglike
banner, a really big bald eagle, and the burning World Trade Center
towers.
New Document Shows Romney Backed Cap-And-Trade Back In 2003
April 04, 2012 06:00 AM
By Susie Madrak
Here's Mittens, back in 2007.
From Grist, further evidence that Mitt "Etch-A-Sketch" Romney is/was the the moderate, Northeastern Republican that haunts the dreams of the party's extreme fringe — otherwise known as the Republican leadership. Now, while I'm always happy to catch a Republican with his ideological pants down, in this case, it may not work to the Democrats' advantage. Because the more moderate Mittens appears in the eyes of the true believers, the more pressure there will be to pair him with an extremist personality like Paul Ryan or Eric Cantor to excite their base and get them to turn out:
A new document has surfaced [PDF] showing Mitt Romney’s strong support for regulating carbon dioxide in 2003, when he called cap-and-trade “an effective approach” to combating global warming.
The comments were made in a letter from Romney to New York Gov. George Pataki (R) about a regional cooperative system for regulating greenhouse gases. In the letter, Romney agreed with Pataki on the need to “reduce the power plant pollution that is harming our climate.”But today, in trying to align himself with conservative political backlash against climate science, Romney says “we don’t know” whether humans are warming the planet, and that doing something about the problem “is not the right course for us.”
Here’s the full letter [PDF] from Romney to Pataki:
By Susie Madrak
Here's Mittens, back in 2007.
From Grist, further evidence that Mitt "Etch-A-Sketch" Romney is/was the the moderate, Northeastern Republican that haunts the dreams of the party's extreme fringe — otherwise known as the Republican leadership. Now, while I'm always happy to catch a Republican with his ideological pants down, in this case, it may not work to the Democrats' advantage. Because the more moderate Mittens appears in the eyes of the true believers, the more pressure there will be to pair him with an extremist personality like Paul Ryan or Eric Cantor to excite their base and get them to turn out:
A new document has surfaced [PDF] showing Mitt Romney’s strong support for regulating carbon dioxide in 2003, when he called cap-and-trade “an effective approach” to combating global warming.
The comments were made in a letter from Romney to New York Gov. George Pataki (R) about a regional cooperative system for regulating greenhouse gases. In the letter, Romney agreed with Pataki on the need to “reduce the power plant pollution that is harming our climate.”But today, in trying to align himself with conservative political backlash against climate science, Romney says “we don’t know” whether humans are warming the planet, and that doing something about the problem “is not the right course for us.”
Here’s the full letter [PDF] from Romney to Pataki:
The Feds Are Circling Around White-Supremacist Godfather Tom Metzger
Posted: 04 Apr 2012 07:00 AM PDT
You may remember those arrests back in 2009 of three leading white supremacists — Robert Joos, and Dennis and Daniel Mahon— for the 2004 bombing of the racial-diversity office of Scottsdale, Arizona, that seriously injured the office's director and inflicted wounds on two other people. Even though the trail had seemingly gone cold, dogged investigators finally ran these domestic terrorists to ground.
Now it appears that the investigators' relentlessness is about to bring down one of the nation's most prominent white supremacists, according to the SPLC's Bill Morlin: READ MORE
You may remember those arrests back in 2009 of three leading white supremacists — Robert Joos, and Dennis and Daniel Mahon— for the 2004 bombing of the racial-diversity office of Scottsdale, Arizona, that seriously injured the office's director and inflicted wounds on two other people. Even though the trail had seemingly gone cold, dogged investigators finally ran these domestic terrorists to ground.
Now it appears that the investigators' relentlessness is about to bring down one of the nation's most prominent white supremacists, according to the SPLC's Bill Morlin: READ MORE
2.4 million human trafficking victims around the world at any given time: U.N.
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| A woman sits outside the South African Parliament on September 21, 2011 in Cape Town, demonstrating against human trafficking and calling for the adoption of the South African Prevention and Combating in Trafficking in Persons (TIP) bill. |
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Wednesday, April 4, 2012, 12:01 AM
The U.N. crime-fighting office said Tuesday that 2.4 million people across the globe are victims of human trafficking at any one time, and 80 percent of them are being exploited as sexual slaves.
Yuri Fedotov, the head of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, told a daylong General Assembly meeting on trafficking that 17 percent are trafficked to perform forced labor, including in homes and sweat shops.
He said $32 billion is being earned every year by unscrupulous criminals running human trafficking networks, and two out of every three victims are women.
Fighting these criminals "is a challenge of extraordinary proportions," Fedotov said.
"At any one time, 2.4 million people suffer the misery of this humiliating and degrading crime," he said.
According to Fedotov's Vienna-based office, only one out of 100 victims of trafficking is ever rescued.
Fedotov called for coordinated local, regional and international responses that balance "progressive and proactive law enforcement" with actions that combat "the market forces driving human trafficking in many destination countries." READ MORE
Monday, April 2, 2012
George Zimmerman’s Gun: A Popular Choice for Concealed Carry
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| Wikimedia Commons A Kel-Tec PF-9 9mm pistol, the same model used by George Zimmerman in the shooting of Florida teen Trayvon Martin. |
Little is known about the short time between
Trayvon Martin's initial confrontation with George Zimmerman and his
death. But the weapon Zimmerman was carrying is typical for the type of
self defense he has claimed.
As the controversy surrounding the shooting death of Trayvon Martin continues, relatively little has come out about the weapon in question. Even less is known about how it was used and at what point George Zimmerman decided to fire it.
According to a Orlando Sentinel report on Monday, police said a single shot was fired as Martin pounded on Zimmerman while the two were fighting, and the bullet hit Martin in the chest. According to a police report, Zimmerman said he had shot Martin and was still armed. An officer found his weapon, a black Kel-Tec PF-9 9mm semi-automatic pistol, in a holster placed on his waistband. As Zimmerman was taken for questioning, the gun was taken from him and placed in police evidence. Demonstrators have demanded that Zimmerman’s gun license be revoked, but state statutes prohibit revealing the status of his permit.
Sunday, April 1, 2012
Trayvon Martin case 911 call: Screams not George Zimmerman's, 2 experts say
By msnbc.com staff
Updated at 2 p.m. ET: The voice heard crying for help on a 911 call just before Trayvon Martin was shot to death was not that of George Zimmerman, according to two forensic voice identification experts, one of whom told MSNBC on Sunday that he believes the evidence is strong enough to use in court.
"The tests concluded that it's not the voice of Mr. Zimmerman," Tom Owen, of Owen Forensic Services LLC and chair emeritus for the American Board of Recorded Evidence, told MSNBC.
Asked if he thought such tests would be admissible in court, Owen said "yes" and noted he had recently used similar testing in testimony at a Connecticut murder case that involved 911 call. READ MORE
Updated at 2 p.m. ET: The voice heard crying for help on a 911 call just before Trayvon Martin was shot to death was not that of George Zimmerman, according to two forensic voice identification experts, one of whom told MSNBC on Sunday that he believes the evidence is strong enough to use in court.
"The tests concluded that it's not the voice of Mr. Zimmerman," Tom Owen, of Owen Forensic Services LLC and chair emeritus for the American Board of Recorded Evidence, told MSNBC.
Asked if he thought such tests would be admissible in court, Owen said "yes" and noted he had recently used similar testing in testimony at a Connecticut murder case that involved 911 call. READ MORE
Neighbors Spying on You? New Program Spreading Across the US Takes Neighborhood Watch to Scary New Level
Crime in Los Angeles is a gritty
enterprise, and donning an LAPD badge has historically involved getting
your hands dirty. Long before the New York Police Department was spying
on Muslim students, the LAPD was running a
large-scale domestic spy operation in the 1970s and ’80s, snooping on
and infiltrating more than 200 political, labor and civic organizations
including the office of then Mayor Tom Bradley. Today, the LAPD isn’t
quite so aggressive, but it still employs a directive titled Special
Order 1, which permits police officers to deem what is “suspicious” and
then act on it.
SO 1 enables
LAPD officers to file Suspicious Activity Reports on observed behaviors
or activities. Where things get murky, however, is how SAR guidelines
categorize constitutionally protected, non-criminal and commonplace
activities such as using binoculars, snapping photographs and taking
notes as indicators of terrorism-related activity. The SARs are coupled
with the LAPD’s iWatch program, a campaign the
police pioneered to encourage regular citizens to report “suspicious”
activity, including “a person wearing clothes that are too big or too
hot for the weather,” or things that just plain old don’t “look right.”
Far
from being merely a local phenomenon, the standardized program that the
LAPD developed in 2008 served as the lead model for a National
Suspicious Activity Reporting Initiative. “Success” stories from the
LAPD’s program are used in national training material, and the LAPD touts it as “the first program in the U.S. to create a national standard” for terrorism-related procedures.
It's Not Just Trayvon: 9 Other Cases That Prove People of Color Can't Safely Walk the Streets of America
The death of Trayvon Martin has lit
up the media for much of the past month. While there's a certain degree
of added tragedy due to Martin's age, people of all ages have
good reason to fear vigilantism and police brutality in the United
States. It's worth noting that despite nearly 200 attempts, a
federal anti-lynching law was never passed in the United States.
Further, Florida's controversial "stand your ground" law, and others
like it, have led to what is essentially legalized murder in several
areas of the country.
Lynchings
and racist murders didn't end with the passage of the Civil
Rights Act. Even in the 21st century, people of color can't walk in
safety in many parts of the country. Here are several cases that
illustrate this sad truth.
1. Bernard Goetz READ MORE
Should People and Governments Shun the Totalitarian Catholic Church?
When a totalitarian regime aids and
abets the rape of tens of thousands of children one would expect it to
be shunned by governments and citizens alike. And any statements it
might issue on matters of morality accorded no respect.
Why should we make an exception when the regime is the Catholic Church?
That
the Roman Catholic Church is totalitarian is undeniable. Church law
itself makes this clear. Canon 331 declares the Pope “the head of the
college of bishops, the Vicar of Christ, and the pastor of the universal
Church on earth. By virtue of his office he possesses supreme, full,
immediate, and universal ordinary power in the Church, which he is
always able to exercise freely.”
Canon
333 emphasizes the remarkable power this institution endows in one man,
“No appeal or recourse is permitted against a sentence or decree of
the Roman Pontiff.”
And whenever
the Pope chooses he can issue decrees related to faith and morals that
not only have the power of law but must be considered irrefutable, at
least since 1870 when the Church declared the Pope “possessed of that
infallibility with which the Divine Redeemer wished His Church to be
endowed.”
The entire hierarchy
of the Catholic Church is at the mercy of the Pope. He appoints bishops
and can impose his directives on the lowliest priests and nun.
24 States Enacted 92 Abortion Restrictions In 2011
January 8, 2012
Here is a sampling of 2011 in abortion law: READ MORE
Lawmakers across the nation pursued a record number of reproductive health and rights-related provisions in 2011, a new report
from the Guttmacher Institute finds, enacting 135 measures in 36
states — “an increase from the 89 enacted in 2010 and the 77 enacted in
2009.” Sixty-eight percent of the provisions — 92 in 24 states —
restricted access to abortion services:
Here is a sampling of 2011 in abortion law: READ MORE
Craig Sonner, George Zimmerman's Lawyer, Reportedly Flees Lawrence O'Donnell Interview (VIDEO)
The Huffington Post
By Peter Finocchiaro
Posted: 03/27/2012 2:08 am
Updated: 03/27/2012 11:25 am
In a bizarre turn of events, MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell interviewed an empty chair on his program Monday night, after scheduled guest Craig Sonner reportedly fled from an MSNBC studio in Orlando just moments before the show began.
Sonner represents George Zimmerman, the former neighborhood watchman who shot and killed 17-year-old Florida resident Trayvon Martin in February. His appearance on O'Donnell's program would have been just the latest in a string of high-profile media interviews over the past several days, as he's attempted to shift the narrative surrounding the case. In previous conversations, Sonner has continually insisted that the shooting was motivated not by race, but was instead a matter of self-defense -- though the attorney has declined to answer several questions about the specifics of his client's defense.
READ MORE
===================MY OPINION==================>
Several very big problems here. Lawyer says "grass stains on Zimmerman's shirt", but Z is wearing a jacket at the time.
Now I just learn that Zimmerman was wearing his gun fully visible in a holster at his waist.
Okay, show of hands, how many of you would attack an armed stranger?
Isn't it more likely that you'd attempt to disarm him IF you attacked at all?
Wouldn't that attempt result in a wrestling match for control of the gun? So where is the testimony about Martin trying to disarm Zimmerman? He just walks up, punches a 340 lb armed stranger, breaking his nose, then, without the slightest concern for the firearm, he starts smashing the 340lb armed strangers head on the concrete. YEAH! RIGHT!
You couldn't sell that script to N.C.I.S. or C.S.I.!
The open display of a firearm has the expected effect of intimidating people. It's most effective when the person being confronted, has no martial arts training at all, and even then it bodes caution. Was Trayvon a Navy Seal? How did we miss that? Watch the video and learn that bit about the holstered gun!
I'm sure we'll find even more unexpected errata spread over a wide range of missives as this case goes on.
By Peter Finocchiaro
Posted: 03/27/2012 2:08 am
Updated: 03/27/2012 11:25 am
In a bizarre turn of events, MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell interviewed an empty chair on his program Monday night, after scheduled guest Craig Sonner reportedly fled from an MSNBC studio in Orlando just moments before the show began.
Sonner represents George Zimmerman, the former neighborhood watchman who shot and killed 17-year-old Florida resident Trayvon Martin in February. His appearance on O'Donnell's program would have been just the latest in a string of high-profile media interviews over the past several days, as he's attempted to shift the narrative surrounding the case. In previous conversations, Sonner has continually insisted that the shooting was motivated not by race, but was instead a matter of self-defense -- though the attorney has declined to answer several questions about the specifics of his client's defense.
READ MORE
===================MY OPINION==================>
Several very big problems here. Lawyer says "grass stains on Zimmerman's shirt", but Z is wearing a jacket at the time.
Now I just learn that Zimmerman was wearing his gun fully visible in a holster at his waist.
Okay, show of hands, how many of you would attack an armed stranger?
Isn't it more likely that you'd attempt to disarm him IF you attacked at all?
Wouldn't that attempt result in a wrestling match for control of the gun? So where is the testimony about Martin trying to disarm Zimmerman? He just walks up, punches a 340 lb armed stranger, breaking his nose, then, without the slightest concern for the firearm, he starts smashing the 340lb armed strangers head on the concrete. YEAH! RIGHT!
You couldn't sell that script to N.C.I.S. or C.S.I.!
The open display of a firearm has the expected effect of intimidating people. It's most effective when the person being confronted, has no martial arts training at all, and even then it bodes caution. Was Trayvon a Navy Seal? How did we miss that? Watch the video and learn that bit about the holstered gun!
I'm sure we'll find even more unexpected errata spread over a wide range of missives as this case goes on.