| 3 Lies Anti-Choicers Tell About Planned Parenthood |
[10 Dec 2009|11:50am] |
Undercover anti-abortion activist Lila Rose has struck again, this time with a video supposedly exposing Planned Parenthood's malfeasance. What it actually exposes: the anti-choice movement's smear tactics.
The undercover video, organized by the group Live Action, of which Lila Rose is president, and posted on Michelle Malkin's blog, purports to catch Planned Parenthood employees in a variety of lies. Below, we break down some of Live Action's claims.
( Read more... )
Source.
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| Uganda to Drop Death Penalty, Life in Jail for Gays |
[10 Dec 2009|11:37am] |
Uganda will drop the death penalty and life imprisonment for gays in a refined version of an anti- gay bill expected to be ready for presentation to Parliament in two weeks, James Nsaba Buturo, the minister of ethics and integrity, said.
The draft bill, which is under consideration by a parliamentary committee, will drop the two punishments to attract the support of religious leaders who are opposed to these penalties, Buturo said today in a phone interview from the capital, Kampala.
Ugandan lawmaker David Bahati presented a private member’s bill on Oct. 14 which sought the death penalty and life imprisonment for gay people in the country. </b>The Ugandan government supports the bill because homosexuality and lesbianism are “repugnant to the Ugandan culture,” Buturo said.</b> Still, it favors a more refined set of punishments, he said.
In addition to formulating punishments for the gay people, the bill will also promote counseling to help “attract errant people to acceptable sexual orientation,” said Buturo.
The proposed legislation has attracted criticism from gay rights activists, both locally and internationally, who argue that the law would promote discrimination and hatred toward the gay community.
Source.
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| 'Horndog High' scandal heats up |
[10 Dec 2009|09:34am] |
Allison Musacchio joins nude teachers Mauro, Brito in hot water
There are more sexy shenanigans at Brooklyn's Horndog High.
The day after the Daily News reported that two James Madison High School language teachers were busted "undressed" in an empty classroom, sources said a third educator is being investigated for getting too personal with a student.
Social studies instructor Allison Musacchio is under investigation for having an inappropriate relationship with a male student, sources said.
It is the second scandal in as many days to rock the Midwood school where New York Sen. Chuck Schumer and Major League ballplayer Frank Torre once walked the halls.
...
Officials found more than 200 texts and calls between the teacher and the male pupil and yanked her from the classroom, sources said. They said the amount of contact was inappropriate.
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Parents, teachers and pupils were reeling Wednesday after The News revealed that a janitor allegedly caught French teacher Cindy Mauro, 33, and Spanish instructor Alini Brito, 29, disrobed in a classroom while students were attending an annual singing and dancing competition on Nov. 20.
more at source
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| Jim DeMint wants some new friends |
[10 Dec 2009|10:08am] |
Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) sees himself as something of a kingmaker in the Republican Party, and is actively supporting very conservative candidates running against the party-establishment picks.
"The problem here in the Republican Party is not that our base has gone to the right," he said. "The problem in the Republican Party is that the leadership has gone to the left and the tea parties and the Republicans out across the country are right there where American principles have always been and I'm trying to pull the party back to the mainstream of where America really is."
SOURCE has video proof of the wackiness
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| About par for the course with regards to the Nobel Peace Prize? |
[10 Dec 2009|08:40am] |
On eve of receiving Nobel, Obama's DOJ files amicus brief upending Nuremberg Protocols.
"John Yoo is being defended in court this month by the Administration. Not the Bush Administration. The Obama Administration. As with the lawsuits over electronic surveillance and torture, the Obama administration wants the lawsuit against Yoo dismissed and is defending the right of Justice Department officials to help establish a torture program — an established war crime. I will be discussing this issue tonight on MSNBC Countdown.
The Obama Administration has filed a brief that brushes over the war crimes aspects of Yoo’s work at the Justice Department. Instead, it insists that attorneys must be free to give advice — even if it is to establish a torture program.
In its filing before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the Justice Department insists that there is "the risk of deterring full and frank advice regarding the military’s detention and treatment of those determined to be enemies during an armed conflict." Instead it argues that the Justice Department has other means to punish lawyers like the Office of Professional Responsibility. Of course, the Bush Administration effectively blocked such investigations and Yoo is no longer with the Justice Department. The OPR has been dismissed as ineffectual, including in an ABA Journal, as the Justice Department’s "roach motel"—"the cases go in, but nothing ever comes out."
The Justice Department first defended Yoo as counsel and then paid for private counsel to represent him (here). His public-funded private counsel is Miguel Estrada, who was forced to withdraw his nomination by George Bush for the Court of Appeals after strong opposition from the Democrats.
Yoo is being sued by Jose Padilla, who was effectively blocked in contesting his abusive confinement and mistreatment as part of this criminal case and in a habeas action. The Bush Administration brought new charges to moot a case before the Supreme Court could rule. The Court previously sent his case back on a technicality.
It is important to note that the Administration did not have to file this brief since it had withdrawn as counsel and paid for Yoo’s private counsel. It has decided that it wants to establish the law claimed by the Bush Administration protecting Justice officials who support alleged war crimes. They are effectively doubling down by withdrawing as counsel and then reappearing as a non-party amicus.
The Obama Administration has gutted the hard-fought victories in Nuremberg where lawyers and judges were often guilty of war crimes in their legal advice and opinions. The third of the twelve trials for war crimes involved 16 German jurists and lawyers. Nine had been officials of the Reich Ministry of Justice, the others were prosecutors and judges of the Special Courts and People’s Courts of Nazi Germany. It would have been a larger group but two lawyers committed suicide before trial: Adolf Georg Thierack, former minister of justice, and Carl Westphal, a ministerial counsellor.MORE</blockquote>
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| Nobel Peace Prize LIVE! |
[10 Dec 2009|06:36am] |
Cspan is covering it live cspan 2.
http://www.c-span.org/Watch/C-SPAN2.aspx
http://nobelprize.org/
PRES. OBAMA TO ACCEPT NOBEL PEACE PRIZE
Today
President Obama is accepting the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway. The Nobel committee said that they chose the President of the United States because of his “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples."
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| Pinkstinks |
[10 Dec 2009|01:28pm] |
PC minister backs Pinkstinks campaign telling parents not to buy girls pink gifts
A campaign backed by a Government minister which urges parents not to buy girls pink Christmas gifts was branded "pointless" yesterday.
( Read more... )
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| That cretin is writing for The Guardian now... joy. |
[10 Dec 2009|12:15pm] |
Boycott Copenhagen
Any deal at the Copenhagen climate summit will be more about politics than science. President Obama should stay away
by Sarah Palin (no, really)
With the publication of damaging emails from a climate research center in Britain, the radical environmental movement appears to face a tipping point. The revelation of appalling actions by so-called climate change experts allows the American public to finally understand the concerns so many of us have articulated on this issue.
"Climate-gate," as the emails and other documents from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia have become known, exposes a highly politicised scientific circle – the same circle whose work underlies efforts at the Copenhagen climate change conference. The agenda-driven policies being pushed in Copenhagen won't change the weather, but they would change our economy for the worse.
The emails reveal that leading climate "experts" deliberately destroyed records, manipulated data to "hide the decline" in global temperatures, and tried to silence their critics by preventing them from publishing in peer-reviewed journals. What's more, the documents show that there was no real consensus even within the CRU crowd. Some scientists had strong doubts about the accuracy of estimates of temperatures from centuries ago, estimates used to back claims that more recent temperatures are rising at an alarming rate.
This scandal obviously calls into question the proposals being pushed in Copenhagen. I've always believed that policy should be based on sound science, not politics. As governor of Alaska, I took a stand against politicised science when I sued the federal government over its decision to list the polar bear as an endangered species despite the fact that the polar bear population had more than doubled. I got clobbered for my actions by radical environmentalists nationwide, but I stood by my view that adding a healthy species to the endangered list under the guise of "climate change impacts" was an abuse of the US Endangered Species Act. This would have irreversibly hurt both Alaska's economy and the nation's, while also reducing opportunities for responsible development.
Our representatives in Copenhagen should remember that good environmental policymaking is about weighing real-world costs and benefits – not pursuing a political agenda. That's not to say I deny the reality of some changes in climate – far from it. I saw the impact of changing weather patterns firsthand while serving as governor of our only Arctic state. I was one of the first governors to create a subcabinet to deal specifically with the issue and to recommend common-sense policies to respond to the coastal erosion, thawing permafrost and retreating sea ice that affect Alaska's communities and infrastructure.
But while we recognize the occurrence of these natural, cyclical environmental trends, we can't say with assurance that man's activities cause weather changes. We can say, however, that any potential benefits of proposed emissions reduction policies are far outweighed by their economic costs. And those costs are real. Unlike the proposals China and India offered prior to Copenhagen – which actually allow them to increase their emissions – President Obama's proposal calls for serious cuts in our own long-term carbon emissions. Meeting such targets would require Congress to pass its cap-and-tax plans, which will result in job losses and higher energy costs (as Obama admitted during the campaign). That's not exactly what most Americans are hoping for these days. And as public opposition continues to stall Congress's cap-and-tax legislation, Environmental Protection Agency bureaucrats plan to regulate carbon emissions themselves, doing an end run around the American people.
In fact, we're not the only nation whose people are questioning climate change schemes. In the European Union, energy prices skyrocketed after it began a cap-and-tax programme. Meanwhile, Australia's parliament recently defeated a cap-and-tax bill. Surely other nations will follow suit, particularly as the climate email scandal continues to unfold.
In his inaugural address, President Obama declared his intention to "restore science to its rightful place." But instead of staying home from Copenhagen and sending a message that the US will not be a party to fraudulent scientific practices, the president has upped the ante. He plans to fly in at the climax of the conference in hopes of sealing a "deal." Whatever deal he gets, it will be no deal for the American people. What Obama really hopes to bring home from Copenhagen is more pressure to pass the Democrats' cap-and-tax proposal. This is a political move. The last thing America needs is misguided legislation that will raise taxes and cost jobs – particularly when the push for such legislation rests on agenda-driven science.
Without trustworthy science and with so much at stake, Americans should be wary about what comes out of this politicised conference. The president should boycott Copenhagen.
Source: an otherwise not-batshit newspaper
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| John Milbank: "Feminism Undermines The Family. We Need A New Feminism Which Respects Men." *Groan* |
[10 Dec 2009|11:53am] |
I've been keeping up with what happens at the theology department at my old university and today John Milbank the creator of Radical Orthodoxy (a form of post-modernism that says that modern life is nihilistic and the solution is to start thinking like St. Augustine) decided to contribute to the Guardian. The little subtitle for his article is: "We need a radical feminism that ends women's enslavement and allows them to be neither subordinate nor men writ large". While sometimes these subtitles can be misleading, in this particular case it is quoted word for word from the penultimate paragraph. Yes, the article is as awful as that suggests...
For my personal critique of the article, you can click here. I reckoned that actually you guys would probably have much more interesting things to say. I've put the LJ cut on the centre of the article because I think the last few paragraphs are perhaps the best for snarking. John Milbank appears to be responding to the following article by Deborah Orr where, unlike Milbank, she actually talks a lot of sense.
For Feminism and Family
John Milbank
Monday 7 December 2009
Today, the defence of the family is seen as a rightwing cause. Conversely, liberal feminism is seen as a leftwing cause. But these associations are questionable. In both cases, a liberal left unconcerned with notions of intrinsic good "conservatively" sanctifies existing tendencies. Thus Deborah Orr cites the fact that women, like men, were once made wage-slaves as if this were a good thing. She also cites the fact that today middle class women tend to have babies late as if this were a sign of the rise of freedom. Meanwhile she contends against David Cameron that "the days of the typical family are numbered". ( Read more... ) The downside of this hybrid female subjectivity is the continued enslavement of women in both workplace and home and the loss of a male code of honour as to the assistance of women and children, which has had devastating consequences for the working class. All this combines with an increased state and market control of reproduction which amounts to a new general rule of men over women. Instead of this we need a true radical feminism more focused on the question of what constitutes good relations between women and men. This needs to include mutual equity concerning procreation and above all equal rights to the combining of work and child nurture without economic loss. In cultural terms we need women to play a public role neither as subordinate, nor as men writ large. Such a feminism would promote the family as the first school of association and of resistance to the depravations of both market and state. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/dec/07/feminism-family-women-men
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| Coverage Without Borders |
[09 Dec 2009|11:54pm] |
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music |
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Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds | People Ain"t No Good |
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Coverage Without Borders by Robert Mahony | New York Times
AS the leaders of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops noted last month, the current health care reform bills in Congress are fundamentally flawed because they fall short in three critical areas: the prohibition of federal financing for abortions and the protection of current conscience laws; the inclusion of meaningful provisions to ensure affordability; and the defense of immigrants’ rights to health care.
( More )
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| Human rights report exposes US abuse of immigrant detainees |
[10 Dec 2009|12:39am] |
Human Rights Watch released a report Wednesday detailing how US authorities are indiscriminately transferring thousands of detained immigrants away from their attorneys and family members in order to prevent them from fighting deportation.
The report, “Locked Up Far Away: The Transfer of Immigrants to Remote Detention Centers in the United States” presents previously unreleased data that the human rights organization obtained under the Freedom of Information Act from the department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The organization also interviewed detainees, family members and immigration attorneys.
Since 2003, ICE—which was established under the aegis of the US Department of Homeland Security following the 9/11 attacks—has detained 1.7 million individuals in some 350 facilities, including for-profit prisons and state and local jails it contracts. This year, ICE officials say 442,000 immigrants will be detained, more than double its first year of operations.
( Read more... )
source
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| Concerns deepen over local refugees (follow up post) |
[10 Dec 2009|12:35am] |
Photo Caption: Resettled refugees Retaj, 7 (from left), Baker, 5, and Farah, 10, came here from Iraq with their parents, who did not want to give their last name. The family lives at Hunters Glen Apartments, and they have no heat.
Want to help? To donate money, goods or time to help refugees, contact:
* The Guilford Congregational Assistance Network: Holy Trinity Episcopal Church, Attn: Rev. Virginia Herring, 607 N. Greene St., Greensboro, NC 27401. 272-6149, Ext. 220.
* Islamic Center of the Triad: Attn: Refugee Committee, 4930 Mary St., Greensboro, NC 27409-2810. 856-2870. ------------
GREENSBORO — Guilford County’s resettlement agencies are taking in too many refugees without enough resources to support them, faith leaders said this week.
Recent concern has focused on the plight of newly settled Iraqis at the Hunters Glen Apartments, along with the story of a homeless Burmese refugee who arrived at Greensboro Urban Ministry’s shelter in November.
A key minister in the Refugee Information Network of Guilford said there has been growing unease since last winter, when a wave of African and Burmese refugees arrived and were nearly destitute within three months.
“I’m distressed. We as a community have let this thing go on too long,” said the Rev. Virginia Herring, assistant to the rector at Holy Trinity Episcopal Church, who helped form the volunteer network. “This is tragic. It has to be fixed.”
( Read more... )
source
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| Franken Challenges Napolitano on Imprisonment of Asylum Seekers |
[10 Dec 2009|12:05pm] |
Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) asked Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing this morning why it is that Immigration and Customs Enforcement is imprisoning people coming to the United States seeking asylum from persecution abroad.
“A 2005 congressionally authorized bipartisan commission found that it wasn’t appropriate to detain asylum seekers in prisons,” said Franken. “That was four years ago. Now they’re still being detained in prison, put in jumpsuits and shackles. They’re even put in solitary confinement,” he said. “They aren’t criminals.”
Napolitano responded that part of the agency’s detention reform process, still being implemented, is “to really do a risk analysis for every individual who comes into our system.”
Franken persisted. “There’s a credible fear interview. Very often they continue to be detained even after it’s been determined that they have a credible fear if they go back.”
Napolitano did not deny the problem. “We’re working with officers to increase the speed by which they are paroled into the country if there has been a determination of credible fear.”
According to a recent report on the detention of asylum seekers by Human Rights First, the U.S. detention system for asylum seekers “is inconsistent with international refugee protection and human rights standards.”
source
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| Just out of curiosity |
[10 Dec 2009|10:51pm] |
Hi runners! (or runners high?)
Just out of curiosity i've been wondering about a form question. I see some runners run and they appear to swipe with one partly open hand across their body while the other hand minds it's own business. It looks sorta like a tiger trying to attack something:
http://www.karennutton.co.uk/content/binary/Tiger.jpg
http://www.fractionalplates.com/images/tiger1.jpg
I don't do this (that i know :S) but i wonder what are your thoughts about why this happens? It seems so inefficient to me. Does anyone out there run a bit like this?
Anyway I was also wondering if when you run you ever think of yourself as an animal or as someone different. I sometimes imagine i'm a horse (yeah i'm a dag) or occasionally a dog if i want to feel lighter on my feet. I think that mental imagery can really help with running anyways.
P.S. If you are a 'swiper' please don't take offence at this post as i have just compared you to a tiger and you can't get too much more awesome than that...well unless you are a cheetah instead :)
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