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. 

Fracking exposes citizens to a wild mix of highly toxic chemicals and carcinogens. So when patients show up at their doctors' offices, the doctors need to figure out which chemicals are the likely culprits.

The doctors of sick patients can, with great effort, access the names of many of the chemicals used in fracking and so try to figure out why their patients are suffering severe health problems but....it's tough to find out the "trade-secret" chemicals.  A new law permits doctors to find those out BUT only if they sign a confidentiality agreement and agree not to share that information. That's a move that makes doctors like Pare nervous.

"As I understand it, it's legally binding, so if 20 years from now I hiccup that someone was exposed to zippity doo dah, I'm legally liable for that," she says.

It's not even clear whether the doctor can share the trade-secret ingredient with the patient or the patient's neighbors, co-workers or primary care doctor.

What the frack?  You could be a doctor who sees ten people suffering skin lesions because of trade-secret chemical THAED, you can know that another dozen are going to another physician with these symptoms, and you better not tell the other physician or you violate the law.

Only in corporate America?

Myth: 1. Independent voters aren’t really independent.

Fact: About half are, swinging from party to party.

Myth: 2. Independent voters are less engaged.

Fact: They are well informed, attentive to the news, and about two-thirds of them say they are independent because “both parties care more about special interests than about average Americans."

Myth: 3. Independent voters want a third party.

Fact: : Some of them think we do need a third- or multi-party system and consistently vote for outsider and third-party candidates, while others accept that this is a two-party nation.

Myth: 4. Independents are centrists.

Fact: Most independents are socially liberal, fiscally responsible centrists, but some libertarians and far-left progressives also call themselves independents.

Myth: 5. Independent voters are disillusioned with President Obama.

Fact: In 2008, Barack Obama won 52 percent of independent voters.  Gallup polling has shown Obama and presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney in a virtual tie among independent voters.  Ninety percent of Democrats and Republicans say they plan to vote for their party’s candidate, while a third of independent voters say they are not sure how they will vote.

In The New York Times earlier this month, Nicholas D. Kristof called for a boycott of Anheuser-Busch because of how the company’s products are affecting residents of an Indian reservation that has been decimated by alcoholism. The reservation is dry, but the nearby town of Whiteclay, Neb., (with a population of about 10 people) “sells more than four million cans of beer and malt liquor annually” and “is the main channel through which alcohol illegally enters the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.”

How can tribes, states, the federal government and local communities deal with alcoholism on and around reservations? If the beer companies and liquor stores are following the law, do they have a further responsibility to their communities?

 

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.

 

What is it with cops and tasers? Why do so many of them seem compelled to use them in highly inappropriate ways? "Highly inappropriate" is about the only way to describe what happened to Malaika Brooks, who was seven months pregnant and driving her kid to school one day in 2004 when a routine traffic stop went terribly wrong.

The police say she was going 32 miles per hour in a school zone; the speed limit was 20. 

 

Ms. Brooks said she would accept a ticket but drew the line at signing it, which state law required at the time. Ms. Brooks thought, wrongly, that signing was an acknowledgment of guilt.

 

Refusing to sign was a crime, and the two officers on the scene summoned a sergeant, who instructed them to arrest Ms. Brooks. She would not get out of her car.

 

The situation plainly called for bold action, and Officer Juan M. Ornelas met the challenge by brandishing a Taser and asking Ms. Brooks if she knew what it was.

 

She did not, but she told Officer Ornelas what she did know. “I have to go to the bathroom,” she said. “I am pregnant. I’m less than 60 days from having my baby.”

The three men assessed the situation and conferred. “Well, don’t do it in her stomach,” one said. “Do it in her thigh."

 

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

 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.

"ABC News has obtained exclusive video of Trayvon Martin shooter George Zimmerman on the night he shot the Florida teenager, speaking to police. While there is no audio, the video is key evidence, particularly to a public without access to police records other than what has been revealed, because Zimmerman appears healthy and unscathed, when a police report surfacing (and his attorney) claimed Martin had injured Zimmerman’s nose and skull.

In the video, there are no readily visible signs of injuries to Zimmerman's head or blood on his clothes. However, he is wearing a red jacket, which could obscure blood stains. Also, at one point, an officer pauses to look at the back of Zimmerman's head, which he claims was injured by Martin.

Trayvon Martin was shot and killed by Mr. Zimmerman, a crime watch volunteer in a gated community in Sanford, Fla. The death of the unarmed black teenager and the decision of the local police not to bring charges against Mr. Zimmerman, who is white, and his father is a formal supreme court judge set off a national outcry, leading the Justice Department in March to open an investigation.

Trayvon, 17, was shot on Feb. 26 as he was walking to the home of his father's girlfriend from a convenience store in Sanford, just north of Orlando. Mr. Zimmerman, 28, told the police that he shot Trayvon in self-defense.

The announcement of the federal investigation came after protests that the Sanford Police Department had mishandled the case. The Sanford police chief, Bill Lee Jr., was heavily criticized, leading him to announce on March 22 that he would step down. Mr. Lee said the police were prohibited from making an arrest based on the facts they had at the time of the shooting. He said he continued to stand behind his department's investigation.

In March, after the local state prosecutor stepped aside after the pace of his investigation was criticized, Gov. Rick Scott appointed Angela B. Corey, the state attorney in the Jacksonville area, to investigate the killing.

If convicted of second-degree murder, Mr. Zimmerman, 28, could face life in prison. It is the toughest charge he could have faced. First-degree murder would have required a finding of premeditation and a grand jury review, which Ms. Corey decided against.

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.

 

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.

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.

Obama is twice over responsible for Occupy Wall Street's existence. On the one hand, the failures and disappointments of his administration have been well documented and have totally undercut his campaign promises of hope and change, leaving former supporters completely disillusioned.  On the other hand, his 2008 campaign trained young people in organizing and that skill has been used to give birth to the OWS movement.

A masseur at the posh Peninsula Hotel in Manhattan has claimed that John Travolta was blacklisted for three years from the hotel's spa for inappropriate behaviour.

Former Peninsula masseur Michael Caputo said that Travolta always asked for a man for his massage at the hotel's famous rooftop spa and was barred after several creepy-run ins.

Caputo, 55, said that male staffers complained that the 'Pulp Fiction' star would grind against the massage table, remove the towel and lift his butt in the air during his therapy.

'Travolta would always request a man for his massage, but after a while no one would take him because of his inappropriate behavior

 

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

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.

Eduardo Saverin, the billionaire co- founder of Facebook Inc. (FB), renounced his U.S. citizenship before an initial public offering that values the social network at as much as $96 billion, a move that may reduce his tax bill.

Facebook plans to raise as much as $11.8 billion through the IPO, the biggest in history for anInternet company. Saverin’s stake is about 4 percent, according to the website Who Owns Facebook. At the high end of the IPO valuation, that would be worth about $3.84 billion.

Saverin, 30, joins a growing number of people giving up U.S. citizenship, a move that can trim their tax liabilities in that country. The Brazilian-born resident of Singapore is one of several people who helped Mark Zuckerberg start Facebook in a Harvard University dorm and stand to reap billions of dollars after the world’s largest social network holds its IPO.

 

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.

 

On May 10, the Department of Justice filed a formal legal complaint against Sheriff Joe Arpaio and the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office (MCSO) alleging widespread constitutional violations and lawless mistreatment of Latinos. According to the complaint, Arpaio and his staff engaged in widespread, violent and demeaning mistreatment of Latino residents of Maricopa County, often targeting individuals solely because of their race:

1. Forcing Women To Sleep In Their Own Menstrual Blood: In Arpaio’s jails, “female Latino LEP prisoners have been denied basic sanitary items. In some instances, female Latino LEP prisoners have been forced to remain with sheets or pants soiled from menstruation because of MCSO’s failure to ensure that detention officers provide language assistance in such circumstances.”

2. Assaulting Pregnant Women: “[A]n MCSO officer stopped a Latina woman – a citizen of the United States and five months pregnant at the time – as she pulled into her driveway. After she exited her car, the officer then insisted that she sit on the hood of the car. When she refused, the officer grabbed her arms, pulled them behind her back, and slammed her, stomach first, into the vehicle three times. He then dragged her to the patrol car and shoved her into the backseat. He left her in the patrol car for approximately 30 minutes without air conditioning. The MCSO officer ultimately issued a citation for failure to provide identification.”

3. Stalking Latino Women: “In another instance, during a crime suppression operation, two MCSO officers followed a Latina woman, a citizen of the United States, for a quarter of a mile to her home. The officers did not turn on their emergency lights, but insisted that the woman remain in her car when she attempted to exit the car and enter her home. The officers’ stated reasons for approaching the woman was a non-functioning license plate light. When the woman attempted to enter her home, the officers used force to take her to the ground, kneed her in the back, and handcuffed her. The woman was then taken to an MCSO substation, cited for ‘disorderly conduct,’ and returned home. The disorderly conduct citation was subsequently dismissed.”

4. Criminalizing Being A Latino: “During raids, [Arpaio's Criminal Enforcement Squad] typically seizes all Latinos present, whether they are listed on the warrant or not. For example, in one raid CES had a search warrant for 67 people, yet 109 people were detained. Fifty-nine people were arrested and 50 held for several hours before they were released. Those detained, but not on the warrant, were seized because they were Latino and present at the time of the raid. No legal justification existed for their detention.”

5. Criminalizing Living Next To The Wrong People: “[D]uring a raid of a house suspected of containing human smugglers and their victims . . . officers went to an adjacent house, which was occupied by a Latino family. The officers entered the adjacent house and searched it, without a warrant and without the residents’ knowing consent. Although they found no evidence of criminal activity, after the search was over, the officers zip-tied the residents, a Latino man, a legal permanent resident of the United States, and his 12-year-old Latino son, a citizen of the United States, and required them to sit on the sidewalk for more than one hour, along with approximately 10 persons who had been seized from the target house, before being released”

That's half of them - Read more;

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.

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.

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.

 

A monthly newsletter published by the Greene County Republican Committee in Virginia is raising eyebrows for including a column in its March edition that calls for an "armed revolution" if President Barack Obama is elected to a second term in November.

 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;

According to recent statistics from the Center for Disease Control (CDC), ‘More than 3 million women are, or have been wives or girlfriends of men who secretly have sex with other men.” The Family Pride Coalition has recently estimated through their studies that at least 20 percent of all gay men in America are in heterosexual marriages. These are pretty alarming statistics and are indicative of the many hypotheses that have been formulated on men “on the down low.” That is, men that engage in same-sex infidelity, while being in a heterosexual relationship- whether it’s marriage or courtship.

As reported in these research studies, many women who are in relationships with these “down-low” men typically are unaware that their partner is engaging in “brokeback” activity. And, sometimes, these respective women are the last to know and are harsh on themselves for not seeing the warning signs. In fairness, I think that it can be somewhat difficult to pick up on these signs, especially when you love and trust these men.

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.

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."

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.

- 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.

 

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.

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.

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.

On May 1st, a group of about 50 people gathered in Fargo, North Dakota. Their intent? To try and "shut down" the only clinic in the state that provides pregnancy terminations, in the hopes to make it an "abortion-free" state.

Leading the charge was Operation Save America, under the leadership of Rev. Flip Benham. Best known for his belief in "justifiable homicide" and his "Wanted" posters styled to make doctors who provide safe abortion care and those who employ them look like Old West villains (and with the "Dead or Alive" implied),Benham has been arrrested multiple times for stalking.

But although they are leading the States of Refuge movement, they are by no means the only group involved. And for some of those groups, their calls to action are just as intimidating.

Next, the group will be in Wyoming, where they will "target" the state's sole publicly known abortion provider, Dr. Brent Blue. "Spiritually, [stopping Blue] would punch a hole in the sky, and begin to liberate America from blood guilt one state at a time," said Operation Save America

 

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

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. 

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.

 

On March 17 there were numerous reported cases of police intentionally grabbing women’s breasts, and in later nightly evictions from Union Square, the practice became so systematic that at least one woman told me her breasts were grabbed by five different police officers on a single night (in one case, while another one was blowing kisses.) The tactic appeared so abruptly, is so obviously a violation of any sort of police protocol or standard of legality, that it is hard to imagine it is anything but an intentional policy.

For obvious reasons, most of the women who have been victims of such assaults have been hesitant to come forward. Suing the city is a miserable and time-consuming task and if a woman brings any charge involving sexual misconduct, they can expect to have their own history and reputations—no matter how obviously irrelevant—raked over the coals, usually causing immense damage to their personal and professional life. The threat of doing so operates as a very effective form of intimidation. One exception is Cecily McMillan, who was not only groped but suffered a broken rib and seizures during her arrest on March 17, and held incommunicado, denied constant requests to see her lawyer, for over 24 hours thereafter. Shortly after release from the hospital she appeared on Democracy Now! And showed part of a handprint, replete with scratch-marks, that police had left directly over her right breast. (She is currently pursuing civil charges against the police department).

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.

Here are a few of the shady recruiting habits Obama highlighted in his speech:

"They'll say you don't have to pay a dime for your degree, but once you register, they'll suddenly make you sign up for a high-interest student loan."
"They'll say that if you transfer schools, you can transfer credits. But when you try to actually do that, you suddenly find out that you can't."
"They'll say they've got a job placement program when, in fact, they don't."

Obama's speech also highlighted a particularly egregious case: "One of the worst examples of this is a college recruiter who had the nerve to visit a barracks at Camp Lejeune and enroll Marines with brain injuries -- just for the money. These Marines had injuries so severe some of them couldn't recall what courses the recruiter had signed them up for."

Every election cycle, our self-identified left dutifully lines up like sheep to vote for the corporate wolves who control the Democratic Party and who warn us that the corporate technocrat Mitt Romney is, in fact, an extremist.

The extremists are already in power and have been for years. They write our legislation, pick candidates, fund campaigns; dominate the courts, gut regulations and environmental controls, suck down billions in government subsidies, and  pay no taxes. They determine our energy policy, loot the U.S. treasury, and rigidly control public debate and information. They wage useless and costly imperial wars for profit. They are behind the stripping away of our most cherished civil liberties. They are implementing government programs to gouge out any money left in the carcass of America. And they know that Romney or Barack Obama, along with the Democratic and the Republican parties, will not stop them. These extremists control both parties and simply represent theDuopoly.

Yesterday, J.T. Ready, a neo-Nazi and member of the anti-immigrant Minutemen Civil Defense Corps, reportedly strapped on body armor, grabbed several firearms, and then killed four people in Gilbert, Arizona.

An Albuquerque man’s life was turned upside down recently after a sloppy police investigation led to him being charged and nearly indicted for a burglary he didn’t commit.

“I lost my job … just because of this,” said Justin Guzman. “I’m a thief in everybody’s eyes. No one wants a thief around working for them.”

 

The Obama administration announced Wednesday that it has charged 107 individuals for nearly $500 million in false Medicare billings as a result of recent efforts against fraud. 

Officials praised the haul as the largest single "takedown" in the history of Medicare's anti-fraud force, which bridges the Justice Department and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). 

"Our ongoing fight against healthcare fraud has never been more coordinated and effective," Attorney General Eric Holder said.

"We are determined to bring to justice those who violate our laws and defraud the Medicare program for personal gain." 

 

What a difference between these so called former seals and what they are saying about having knowledge of how those currently serving in the Navy Seals feel about their Commander in Chief, and those that are like former Navy Seal Ryan Zinke who is now a Republican State Senator trying to make a name for himself in national politics.

The other men involved in this attack are pathetic small minded men who are little more than partisan Republican operatives that were used shamelessly by draft dodgers like Karl Rove and Dick Cheney to destroy a fellow Vietnam veteran in the election of 2004.

I wonder how can any politician, former seal or not describe the feelings of the team members who actually participated in the operation that resulted in the death of Osama Bin laden.

As a veteran I personally would have thought that these men in particular would have felt a tremendous sense of pride and honor to have been among those selected to participate in this mission, which was to avenge the deaths of 3000 of our fellow American citizens.

This is the mission that after 9 whole years would insure that the one man and his organization most responsible for the actual deaths of our citizens on 9/11/2001, would be captured at worst and killed at best and that he would die at the hands of American soldiers.

I think these men probably felt like they were the actual tip of the spear of the entire American military and represented not only themselves and their own unit but also the anger and frustrations that of all our soldiers, sailors and airmen world wide had felt since that fateful day.

In fact I believe that the goals of this one mission is partly what had prompted so many of our best and bravest young men and women to enlist and endure the intensity and tremendous rigors of their training.

All of us know or at least should know that this operation was not just a Navy operation but involved the combined resources of all of our military services as well as our entire worldwide intelligence apparatus especially the NSA and the CIA.

And like wise we all know or should know that the plan for it and the sense of urgency behind this mission had to originate at the very highest level of our government which is quite simply the office of the President of the United States of America.

All of our top Military Brass from the Pentagon including the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Secretary of Defense,  the National Security Advisor, even the Secretary of State had roles to play and play them they all did.

Which led us to the unit, the actual Commander and his men that actually carried out the mission. Many of these men had trained for many years and had done a lot of waiting, hoping and perhaps even praying that they would be among the men selected for a mission just like this one, and that they would be among those to get the call and the specific orders that would if possible send Osama Bin Laden to his death and give him the opportunity to meet Allah.

These men many of whoms names will remain unknown for many years to come, but whose actions have already begun to be part of our military lore and of our civilian history for generations to come, and no matter what their unit is called, they will forever be known as the unit that done what many Americans especially those in the Republican Party, had actually given up hope or even believed would ever happen, when they made that fateful night time raid into Pakistan and killed Osama Bin laden.

After four days of secret negotiations, U.S. diplomats on Wednesday initially touted then later scrambled to defend their role in forging an agreement that they said contained extraordinary Chinese promises.  Chinese officials, by contrast, broke their official silence on Chen by firing a broadside complaining about U.S. interference in China's internal affairs. The Foreign Ministry demanded an apology, which State Department officials declined to give.

Friends of Chen criticized U.S. officials for leaving him unaccompanied at the Chinese hospital, where he was treated for a foot injury. 

Fuming over the United States' acknowledgment that it had sheltered Chen, Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Weimin said, "The U.S. method was interference in Chinese domestic affairs, and this is totally unacceptable to China."According to the state-run news agency Xinhua, Liu added: "China demands that the United States apologize over this, thoroughly investigate this incident, punish those who are responsible and give assurances that such incidents will not happen again.

Councilor Dai Bingguo asserted China's right to determine how best to run its society.  "I wish to point out in particular that a fundamental way to manage state to state relations is . . . to respect each other's sovereignty . . . and choice of social system," Dai said. "No one should expect the Chinese to leave their own path."

Activists' fears over Chen's fate mounted, and they expressed increasing alarm — fueled by a series of Twitter updates — that what seemed like a human rights victory was spiraling quickly into a worst-case scenario.

Chen was no longer under U.S. protection, they noted, and it was not clear whether he had left of his own free will or under coercion. While U.S. officials said they had been promised access to Chen in the hospital, Britain's Channel 4 news quoted a conversation with him in which he seemed confused and upset that no American diplomats were around. 

"Nobody from the [U.S.] embassy is here. I don't understand why. They promised to be here," Channel 4 quoted Chen as saying.

A Facebook campaign calling for a boycott of Spirit Airlines has taken off with jet-like propulsion since the carrier's denial of a refund to a dying former Marine made headlines. 

The “Boycott Spirit Airlines” Facebook page has seen its number of "likes" soar in recent days, rising tenfold to nearly 7,000. The social network support has come as Jerry Meekins, a 76-year-old Vietnam veteran with terminal esophageal cancer, raised a fuss when the Fort Lauderdale-based airline nixed his request for a $197 refund. Meekins was going to fly to New Jersey for his daughter's surgery, but his doctor told him not to fly, citing his deteriorating health. The Facebook page blasting the much-complained-about airline already existed, but Meekins' plight has sent furious fellow veterans and concerned citizens flocking to it. 

From their brunette hair to their dress sense, twin sisters Vicki and Valerie Darger have a number of things in common.

But the 42-year-olds share more than just their looks - they are both married to the same man.

The sisters are in a polygamous marriage with Joe, 43, who is also wed to a third woman - their cousin Alina.

The Dargers, who are fundamentalist Mormons from Salt Lake City, Utah, live together in a large family home and have 24 children between them.

Vicki, currently a stay-at-home mother, has been married to Joe, who runs a construction company, for 22 years. 

Valerie joined the family as his third wife in 2000.

In the eyes of their Fundamentalist Mormon religion, all three women are equally married to Joe. 

They each have their own bedroom, and Joe alternates between the three rooms each evening.

TPM:

The wife of a sponsor of North Carolina’s Amendment One, a proposed change to the state’s constitution that would ensure legal recognition only for marriage between a man and a woman, reportedly offered an eyebrow-raising explanation for her husband’s support of the measure.

Jodie Brunstetter, the wife of state Sen. Peter Brunstetter (R), has found herself embroiled in controversy after suggesting that her husband’s role in writing the bill — which passed the Republican-controlled general assembly last fall — was racially motivated.

According to the alternative Yes! Weekly, which picked up the remarks from freelance journalist and activist Chad Nance, Jodie Brunstetter told a poll worker in Winston-Salem, N.C. Monday that the reason her husband “wrote Amendment 1 was because the Caucasian race is diminishing and we need to uh, reproduce.”...........

On June 28, 2005, a 4-man SEAL patrol was on a mission in the Kunar Province, Afghanistan to kill or capture a high ranking Taliban leader, thought to be close to Osama Bin Landen.

The SEAL's quarry was believed to be holed up in a village near Asadabad, close to the border with Pakistan, protected by over a hundred fanatical Taliban fighters. The SEALs planned to establish a observation post (OP) high up on the slopes of a mountain that overlooked the village. They would confirm the presence of their target, gather intelligence on the Taliban forces in and around the village. If they had the opportunity they would take out their target with a sniper shot.

The U.S. Marshal Service announced Tuesday that it had captured one of America’s Most Wanted fugitives who is accused of creating a fake charity for Navy veterans that funneled some of the $100 million collected to Republican candidates.

In late April, Carter decided upon an ultra-secret mission to rescue the hostages. The operation, dubbed "Eagle Claw," seemed hastily thrown together by some, doomed to failure by others. Teheran was surrounded by 700 miles of desert on all sides; the city itself was crammed with four million people, and the embassy was huge and well guarded. It was to have been a two-night process requiring a minimum of six helicopters and a handful of C-130 cargo aircraft. To be on the safe side, eight copters were prepared for the mission.

Once inside Iranian borders and advancing under cloak of night to a predetermined staging area 50 miles outside Teheran in the Great Salt Desert, one "helo" had to turn back with operating problems. Another helo and then another succumbed to a swirling dust storm, known in that area as a "haboob." The mission was aborted.

Mr Romney was one of approximately 150 conservative students who counter-picketed the sit-in.

Carey Coulter was one of the demonstrators alongside Mr Romney that day. He told BuzzFeed.com: 'We were there to get an education and these people holding the administration hostage was antithetical to that.

'Mitt walked up to me and said that he had some experience with the press, and that he would handle the press for me if I wanted him to. I said fine, because I was busy running the demonstration.

'I don't recall ever seeing him again.'

I think that the very easiest thing to say  is that  " Mitt Romney would have done the same thing as President Obama", but I think to try and answer that question is like saying Mitt Romney would have did the same thing as men that went to Vietnam and served in combat like John McCain, John Kerry, Chuck Hagle and so many others.

When you say he has the right stuff or would do the same thing as President Obama, I think of the 58,000, Americans who went to Vietnam and never came home or that came home in pieces or in body bags.

The honest simple truth is that we can not, nor will we ever know what Mitt Romney might have done if he had been in President Obamas  position that night, we honestly don't know if he would have gave the same order that President Obama gave when he gave the go ahead for the mission he ordered to attempt to capture or kill Osama Bin Laden.  

We won't know, because that is and would be the same as guessing how Mitt Romney would have performed on the battlefield in Vietnam, and the truth is we will never know because Mitt Romney didn't go.

What we do know is that Mitt Romney is a talker, he talks and talks about "what he would do" but when it came to and actual shooting war he personally refused to put any skin in the game.

What he did do was go to France and talk to people about becoming Mormons.

As far as I am concerned he is your man and you can keep him, Mitt Romney is a man I would not want at my back in a fight. 

As the Pentagon makes its way out of Afghanistan, the biggest threat to U.S. forces departing the country won't come from Taliban or al Qaeda, but will come from the Afghan government itself, according to a high-ranking member of the U.S. military.

Maj. Gen. John Toolan, head of the Marine Corps 2nd Division, argued corruption within Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s administration has now surpassed the insurgency as the main threat to the U.S. mission.

"The threat that's probably most challenging is the corruption and the threat of corruption that can occur in Afghanistan,

Toolan put the rampant corruption he saw during this time into two categories.

One is "parasitic corruption" where Afghan officials associated with the country's thriving narcotics trade leeched authority from the central government to protect their illicit activities.

"It's much like any parasite," Toolan said "It needs a weak host to survive and unless that government of Afghanistan continues to strengthen, these parasites [will] continue to negatively influence its progress.

The second is "predatory corruption" where members of the Afghan security forces use their authority to extort local Afghans in areas outside of Kabul's control. 

 

 

 

Osama bin Laden was distraught by the fracturing ranks and the lack of lower-level leadership in al Qaeda, and even considered changing the group’s well-known name.

The revelations come from a selection of documents the Obama administration is planning to release this week. The cache was seized from bin Laden’s compound last year after a special-operations force killed the former al Qaeda leader. They will be published online by West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center.

“So damaged is al Qaeda’s image that bin Laden even considered changing its name,” said Brennan.  

“One of the reasons? As bin Laden said himself, U.S. officials ‘have largely stopped using the phrase "the war on terror" in the context of not wanting to provoke Muslims.’ ” 

“Simply calling them ‘al Qaeda’, bin Laden said, ‘reduces the feeling of Muslims that we belong to them.’  To which I would add, that is because al Qaeda does not belong to Muslims. Al Qaeda is the antithesis of the peace, tolerance and humanity that is at the heart of Islam.”

Brennan said that, based on the recovered documents, bin Laden was worried that there were not enough experienced fighters in al Qaeda’s ranks and mistakes would be made as a result.

 

 

A US Senate report that analyzed millions of pages of intelligence records will show that enhanced interrogation techniques used by the CIA were not effective in helping find terror suspects, top lawmakers said Monday.

Senate Intelligence Committee chairwoman Dianne Feinstein and Senate Armed Services Committee chairman Carl Levin also said they were “deeply troubled” by a senior CIA operative’s claims that the harsh techniques used after 9/11 — and deemed torture by President Barack Obama’s administration — led to war-on-terror successes.

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, whose staff reviewed more than six million pages of documents, will “soon” complete a 5,000-page report providing “a detailed, factual description of how interrogation techniques were used, the conditions under which detainees were held, and the intelligence that was — or wasn’t — gained from the program,

Their comments appear to be prompted by the publication Monday of an in-depth account of CIA interrogation operations in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks in which author Jose Rodriguez, the former CIA deputy director for operations, defended waterboarding, a technique that simulates drowning.

The United Methodist Task Force on Immigration held a rally in Tampa over the weekend to protest against the growing private prison system in the United States.

“Is this an immigration rally or is this a prison rally? It is a justice rally

Private prisons are associated with heightened levels of violence toward prisoners and have limited incentives to reduce future crime, 

In February, the private prison company Corrections Corporation of America offered buy state-operated prisons in 48 states. States that accept the deal would have pay CCA to operate the prisons for at least 20 years and keep the prisons at least 90 percent full.

The Republican presidential contender says he learned about expanding employment during his time heading a private equity firm. But under his leadership, Bain Capital often maximized profits in part by firing workers.

This week, Karl Rove took to the pages of the Wall Street Journal in the feeble attempt to undermine of one of President Obama's signature achievements, the killing of Osama Bin Laden. "Mr. Obama did," Rove sniffed, "what virtually any commander in chief would have done in the same situation." Well, not quite every commander-in-chief. As it turns out, back in 2008 both President Bush and would-be President Romney ridiculed then candidate Obama's pledge that "that if Pakistan cannot or will not act, we will take out high-level terrorist targets like bin Laden if we have them in our sights."

In the last Congressional Election the Republicans managed to get 14% of the women who voted Democratic in 2008 to vote Republican in 2010.

This in my opinion was the biggest mistake of American women in their short voting history.

I think that these women proved that they were gullible when they fell for the lies the Republicans were telling about President Obama and went for the empty promises of the Republicans who had said if given the chance that they were going to have a laser like focus on "Job Creation".

I personally believe that American women of every stripe were totally lied to by the Republicans in 2010, and the proof of that fact is the rash of anti women legislation put forth by the Republicans.

During the course of the last 2 years at both the state and federal levels Republicans have made and all out assault on women via legislation that primarily affects females.

And it is my opinion that Americas women have already and will continue to pay a horrible price, as their rights to abortion, contraceptives, and especially breast and cancer screenings are being systematically eliminated. 

The Republicans won in 2010 by telling Americans that they knew how to create jobs, reduce spending and lower the deficits( this despite their most recent history).

But the truth is that over the course of the last 2 years that the Republicans still basically haven't created any jobs, as all of their legislation has been focused in these 5 principal areas.

1. Lower taxes for corporations and the rich (The Bush Agenda)

2. Anti Gay and Homosexual Legislation (especially opposition to same sex marriage)

3.  De-funding Abortion at both the state and federal level. (the Republican person hood amendments).

4. Limiting Contraceptives and womens access to contraceptive and health services.

5. A blanket promise to repeal health care reform, this effort that they are so proud of has already, and will continue to hurt women and children the most).

The truth is when it came to legislation that would have created or helped to create jobs for American workers the Republicans opposed the President and the Democrats every step of the way.

If the Republicans had had there way there would not have been any unemployment extensions

If the Republicans had had there way there would not have been in continuation of the Payroll Tax Cut

If the Republicans had had there way there would be no Chrysler Corporation building Automobiles any where in America

If the Republicans had had there way there certainly would not be a General Motors Corporation

And If the Republicans had had there way all of the small American companies and their employees that truly depended upon the American auto industry would have been lost. 

I can understand that women especially those that had families and that were out of work wanted to believe that the Republicans would do right if they gave them one more chance.

But it should have been obvious to those same women that the Republicans never meant to do right they just lied to get the power to sabotage and obstruct the agenda of the Democrats and President Obama.

And it is Americas women and their children that have payed and will continue to pay a very heavy price because of what the Republican Party and it's politicians and allies did with the political power that they were given by the 14% of women who changed their votes in 2010.

My question is will women make the same mistake in 2012.

This year women really are shipwrecked on Gilligans Island and they are going to have to make a choice to either vote for Thurston Howell III (Mitt Romney or the Professor (Barack Obama)

On Monday, April 23, an 18-year-old Ogden resident on a community panel spoke about the dangers of bullying. Alex Smith told the packed room about the bullying his boyfriend, Jack, experienced at school.

What no one in the room yet knew, including Alex, was that Jack had already taken his own life.

The death of Jack Reese is the latest known suicide of a gay teen in Northern Utah.

One official told Ogden OUTreach director Marian Edmonds, off the record: “It happens here about once a week, but officially, you know, it doesn’t happen here.”

OUTreach is hosting a community panel and discussion, A Community Stands up – Northern Utah Addresses LGBT Bullying and Suicide on May 1, 6:30 p.m., at the Ogden Amphitheater, 343 E. 25th St., Ogden. The purpose of the event is for the community to stand in solidarity with queer youth, to speak out and express grief and outrage at yet another loss of life in Northern Utah, and to witness for the need for immediate change in schools, churches and society.

Until all youth are loved and accepted in their homes, able to attend school without fear of bullying, and know that their lives are worth living, this community will continue to demand change,

 

As The Maddow Blog points out today, RNC press secretary Alexandra Franceschi recently shared that, as she sees it, the 2012 agenda for the party is not distinct from those under Bush/Cheney, simply a new version. “I think it’s that program,” she said in an interview, “just updated.”

Forgery. Perjury. Investor fraud. Bribery. Money laundering.  Nothing speaks louder about the banks’ guilt than this evidence - nothing, that is, except the billions they’ve paid to settle the charges.

Whether it’s JPMorgan Chase settling bribery charges in Alabama, Wells Fargo settling charges of laundering drug-cartel money in Mexico, or the nation’s five largest banks buying their way out of widespread foreclosure fraud and tax evasion, never in history has so much evidence led to so little action. Investigators pinpointed the fraudulent activity of individual accountants in GE Capital’s settlement with the SEC, only to be dumbfounded to discover that no criminal indictments were handed down.

So it was nothing short of astonishing to hear the Secretary of the Treasury assert yesterday that no crimes were committed by America’s banks, saying that “most financial crises are caused by a mix of stupidity and greed and recklessness and risk-taking and hope” and adding “you can't legislate away stupidity and risk-taking and greed and recklessness.”

Geithner was doubling down on an assertion his boss made last December, when President told 60 Minutes that ““Some of the most damaging behavior on Wall Street — in some cases some of the least ethical behavior on Wall Street — wasn’t illegal.”

Deliberately or not, that sent a message to bankers that they could stop worrying about indictments - that is, if they ever had worried. Why would they? There’s been no investigation, no grilling, and no subpoenaing of bank executives’ emails or phone records.

Now the President’s really cracking down on Wall Street, we were told. He appointed New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who had been pursuing banks and resisting previous deals, to his previously lethargic mortgage fraud group.

“The mortgage fraud task force I announced in my State of the Union address retains its full authority to aggressively investigate the packaging and selling of risky mortgages that led to this crisis,” the President said on February 9. “Working closely with state attorneys general, we're going to keep at it until we hold those who broke the law fully accountable."

But then there were stories that the task force’s proposed staff hadn’t even been hired.

The Administration responded swiftly. Unnamed Justice Department employees joined Schneiderman’s press secretary in telling The Nation’s George Zolnick that the task force’s five co-chairs are in “constant communication” and “meet regularly.” Fifty attorneys and other employees were already working on the project, Zornick was told. (It was not made clear whether they were assigned to the task force full-time.)

Yesterday Zornick published a piece saying quoting former Democratic Rep. Brad Miller, an outspoken advocate for bank investigations, who made the explosive suggestion that, in Zornick’s words, “the working group was afraid of Wall Street.”

The real problem is this: As long as bankers know they won’t be prosecuted for committing crimes they’ll commit them again. Officials in the Justice Department and elsewhere privately express fears that it will be difficult to obtain convictions after so much time has passed, or in cases where intent is difficult to prove.

Comments like Mr. Geithner’s only add to the perception that bankers have a free pass to commit crimes without fear of prosecution. That’s not just an injustice. It’s also a threat to our economic security.

Former Wall Street executive, and, briefly, President Obama's "Car Czar", Steven Rattner, goes even further, writing "New statistics show an ever more startling divergence between the fortunes of the wealthy and everybody else, and the desperate need to address this problem."

"Desperate" is not a term that pops up in most writing about the economy.

"Still more astonishing," he adds, "was the extent to which the super rich got rich faster than the merely rich... The bottom 99 per cent received a microscopic $80 increase in pay per person in 2010 after adjusting for inflation. The top 1 per cent whose average income is $1,018,089 has an 11.6 per cent increase in income."

It is a deplorable situation, agrees Shamus Rahman Khan of Columbia University who says, "We're at levels of inequality that we haven't seen since the end of the gilded age. We're about as unequal as we have ever been."

 

he United States will have spent a total of $3.7 trillion on wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, costing 225,000 lives and creating 7.8 million refugees, by the time the conflicts end, according to a report released on Wednesday by Brown University.

The report, written by more than 20 economists, political scientists, lawyers, anthropologists and humanitarian personnel for Brown's Watson Institute for International Studies, gives staggering estimates for the cost of military action in those three countries. Nearly ten years since U.S. troops first entered Afghanistan, the report estimates the final cost of all three conflicts will be between $3.7 trillion and $4.4 trillion -- far higher than the $1 trillion price tag referenced by President Barack Obama earlier this year. The report estimates the U.S. government has already spent between $2.3 trillion to $2.7 trillion and will spend at least a trillion more over the next fifty years.

This week, the three military contractors that do the most business with the Pentagon announced their quarterly profits for 2012. Their profits continue to grow while they push Washington, D.C. to protect their budgets at the expense of the rest of us

Here’s the breakdown so far for this year: 

 

• Lockheed Martin: $668 million
• Northrop Grumman: $506 million
• Boeing: $923 million

This week’s announcement raises a fundamental question: Should people and companies be allowed to make huge profits from war?

“I don’t want to see a single war millionaire created in the United States as a result of this world disaster.” President Franklin D. Roosevelt, May 22, 1940.

“Worse than traitors in arms are the men who pretend loyalty to the flag, feast and fatten on the misfortunes of the Nation while patriotic blood is crimsoning the plains of the South and their countrymen mouldering the dust.”  –President Abraham Lincoln. 

This last quote is particularly relevant to this week’s profit announcements. Lincoln referred to war profiteers making money by cheating the Union Army. 

 

Can the government provide healthcare more efficiently than the private market? There's no simple answer to that, but a couple of recent data points suggest the answer is yes.

First there's Medicare. It's true that long-term Medicare costs remain our most critical budget problem, thanks to aging baby boomers and ever-expanding treatments for chronic illnesses and end-of-life care. But per-capita Medicare spending has been on a long downward trend, and that trend has been so steady and predictable that a recent study suggested that spending growth per beneficiary over the next decade would be close to zero.

 

And there's more. On Wednesday, Austin Frakt and Aaron Carroll reported on a new study of Medicaid spending by states. Despite years of horror stories about Medicaid bankrupting state budgets, the study found that most of the increase over the past decade has simply been due to inflation and population growth, not the rising cost of medical care. Adjusted 
for inflation and population, it turns out Medicaid spending rose by less than 4% between 2002 and 2011. 

 

It’s a big agenda that Occupy has identified, nothing less than maximizing values that are important for life AND so a complete renewal of U.S. society and the U.S. role in the world. Chomsky sees not only the radical agenda but also the radical practice of the Occupiers. “Part of what functioning, free communities like the Occupy communities can be working for and spreading to others is just a different way of living, which is not based on maximizing consumer goods, but on, maximizing values that are important for life” he concludes. 

Chomsky is both optimistic about the energy of Occupy and realistic about the challenges it faces. He appreciates the “just do it” ethos and embraces its radical approach to participatory democracy. But he reminds his audiences that all social movements reach further than they can grasp. The influence of money on U.S. politics, the huge weight of the military-industrial complex, the rapaciousness of financial speculation: these are forces not easily dislodged by people gathering together in public spaces and voicing their opinions.

And yet, as Chomsky points out, the mostly non-violent, non-funded, and non-partisan set of actions radiating out from Zuccotti Park in Manhattan managed to change the national discussion about economic inequality. 

This inequality, he argues, is the result of a 30-year-long class war that has hollowed out the middle class and put great pressure on the poor in the United States. The neoliberal push for privatization and lower trade barriers has carried that war to every corner of the globe. The Occupy movement is pushing back against the actors, the actions, and most importantly the consequences of this class warfare. Not surprisingly, given the vested interests being challenged, the pushback of the 99 percent has generated pushback in turn from the 1 percent.

One of the justifications that anti-choice activists are using to try to "de-fund" Planned Parenthood is talking point that any dollar that goes to the group is promoting abortions.  Money is fungible, they argue, so by giving the group federal funds to promote sex sex, provide contraception or health screenings, it frees up other money that can then go to abortions, indirectly supporting "taxpayer funded abortions."

It doesn't matter that many of the clinics getting funding don't even provide abortions. It doesn't matter that those who do keep entirely separate accounts and open their records to the government to prove that the federal funds are spent exactly on what they were allocated to cover. If one cent goes to Planned Parenthood, that's a taxpayer going against his or her moral conscience and funding an abortion.

So why is money not "fungible" when it comes to crisis pregnancy centers?

The American Independent reports on the vast amount of state and federal taxpayer dollars being spent on crisis pregnancy centers across the country.  Not only are the centers actively promoting religion by thrusting a "relationship with Jesus" onto the women who enter -- many of whom believe they are entering a local reproductive health clinic located in the same or an adjacent space as the center -- but the centers themselves are practicing religious discrimination during their professional and volunteer hiring process, too.

 

Sidestepping a politically dangerous fight,Senate Republicans made temporary peace with Democratsto approve the reauthorization of a popular law designed to help prevent and respond to domestic and sexual abuse.

Passage of the Violence Against Women Act on a 68-31 vote gives momentum to the legislation, which would reauthorize more than $650 million in programs. Fifteen Republicans joined Democrats in passage. But the bill still faces hurdles in the House, where Republican leaders plan to offer an alternative proposal.