Speculation about Mitt Romney's running mate has kicked up a notch, as one possibility seemed to remove himself from the running, another took a more central role in the campaign and a third saw Mr. Romney confirm him as a serious contender.More at Memeorandum.
The field of Mr. Romney's potential choices seemed to narrow Tuesday as Republican officials and friends of Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels said he was likely to be chosen as the next president of Purdue University, based on what they had heard from people at the university or inside Mr. Daniels's camp. Mr. Daniels's selection was reported by the Indianapolis Star. The governor's office and Purdue declined to comment.
On Tuesday, a friend of Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, a conservative favorite, said that he wasn't currently being vetted by the Romney campaign. Mr. Romney brushed off a question about Mr. Rubio during the day in an appearance on Fox News, but by evening he said that the senator "is being thoroughly vetted as part of our process.''
Meantime, attention increasingly is turning to Tim Pawlenty, the former Minnesota governor and onetime Romney primary-season foe. Of elected officials who joined Mr. Romney in a recent six-state campaign tour, Mr. Pawlenty stood out to party leaders as they handicapped who might be chosen to join the GOP ticket.
Privately, some Romney campaign officials have offered that Mr. Pawlenty has impressed them with his work as a Romney representative on the campaign trail and with the press. "He's never done a bad interview" while acting as a campaign spokesman, said one Republican operative.
Moreover, Mr. Pawlenty's background as the son of a truck driver from South St. Paul, Minn., is a potential counterweight to Mr. Romney's wealth. The former governor also could help Mr. Romney in the battleground states of Minnesota and neighboring Iowa, both of which the campaign sees as potential pickups from President Barack Obama's 2008 column.
At one point or another for an entire week last November, most of the Israeli establishment showed up at the Bauhaus home in the Rehavia neighborhood of Jerusalem: members of the Cabinet and Knesset, security officials, rabbis, businessmen, journalists, supplicants of all stripes, “everyone who didn’t want to get in any trouble,” as one participant put it. They stood solemnly around the small stone courtyard with a tent on top, officially mourning, but also studying who else was there, who was whispering to whom. Ehud Barak, the defense minister and, by many accounts, the most vigorous proponent of an Israeli strike against Iran, was there. So was Avigdor Lieberman, the foreign minister, who then held the key to the current government’s survival. Even an Arab member of the Knesset, Ahmad Tibi, came by later on. The guest registry also included Sheldon Adelson, the ubiquitous gambling magnate, and Ronald Lauder, an heir to the Estée Lauder cosmetics fortune—a pair of American billionaires who, improbably, have also become major Israeli media moguls.Continue reading.
The occasion was the shivah, or memorial observance, for a man named Shmuel Ben-Artzi, who had just died at the age of 97. Luminaries like this wouldn’t normally show up to honor a beloved but relatively obscure Israeli poet and educator like Ben-Artzi; few of the guests had even met him. They were there more for his son-in-law: Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel. They had come to the prime minister’s official residence less out of friendship and respect—for Netanyahu is something of a loner, someone who antagonizes even his allies—than for reasons of realpolitik: even back then, before the shakeup that has left him with one of the largest majorities in Israeli history, Netanyahu was all-powerful. Attention had to be paid.
But, as is often the case in Israeli politics, it was even more complicated than that: many of the guests had come primarily for Sara Netanyahu, Ben-Artzi’s daughter and Bibi’s wife. Here, too, it was not so much out of love or respect, but fear. Even Bibi couldn’t stray very far, though he had other pressing business—like a memorial service commemorating the 1995 assassination of the Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin. So, there he was, at his wife’s insistence, sticking around for the whole week, periodically reading her late father’s poetry aloud to the mourners in a way that elicited pity even from his detractors. “I have no choice,” lamented one tycoon about his reasons for coming. “She’s running the show here in Israel. She can make or break anyone.”
It is the paradox of Israel that in Benjamin Netanyahu, 62 years old, now entering his seventh year in office, the country has both its strongest and its weakest leader in memory—and, as things now look, will have both sides of him for many years to come.
As of early May, when his coalition suddenly and surprisingly swallowed up the largest opposition party, Kadima, Netanyahu now controls 94 of the 120 seats in the Knesset. An Iranian atom bomb may be some time off, but as Yossi Verter writing in Israel’s liberal daily, Haaretz, put it, an atom bomb has fallen on Israeli politics. Until elections in the fall of 2013, Netanyahu can now do pretty much what he wants. The question is just what that is, and whether even he knows, for he’s proven better at holding power than wielding it.
It has been many years since I have tended bar (or even drank alcohol, for that matter), but my little personality quirk has stayed with me and it has both served me well and caused me harm, but it is part of who I am and it’s just how I roll. Some people have a problem with that; they take issue with the fact that I am not quick to turn my back on outcasts or jump on a bandwagon to throw a social pariah beneath its wheels, but I think that perhaps that is more THEIR problem than it is mine.Zilla's been good to me personally. She organized a blogburst to smack down the despicable hate-blogger Walter James Casper III. I won't ever forget that kind of support, so I'm doubly irked by how she's been treated by some folks on the right.
Look, I'm not a collectivist. I don't care about celebrities. I don't care if someone is "important" or not. Screw Ali's political connections. You love him? Want to blacklist me? Be my guest. Won't be the first time that's happened. Been happening for two years now anyway. It's the sort of thing I think Ali likes to do to people who get crosswise with him - trash them, prevent them from getting work, and so on. I could regale you with first-hand stories I've heard, but this post is already too goddamn long.Go read it all at that link.
Ann Barnhardt, one such elitist bastard, says she wrote the rag on Paul Lemmen at the request of friends. BULLSHIT. She wrote it to draw attention away from Ali Akbar, the president of the NBC where she is a full fledged member, for fear the recent revelations on him would bring her drama-queen ass down with him. She pushes the envelope as far as to TELL Paul to withdraw from the fight on the Kimberlin goon squad, and the SWAT-ing incidents. Followed by her kiss-ass minions, she goes on to say that Paul is still conning people.Keep reading.
WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU, Ann Barnhardt?? Who died and made you queen of the right-wing dextrosphere?? What gives you the right of life and death over smaller bloggers who engaged in this fight to expose the left wing terrorists?? You are the most self-centered, elitist piece of shit I have EVER encountered. Fuck you, Ann Barnhardt! You won't silence us! Nor will you silence the STRONG voices of MUCH BETTER bloggers than you are who sided with Paul.
Thank you Don. I have no words beyond there that will be believable by those who found it necessary to repeat their blacklist of me from March. I get it, okay? "STFU and go away" is the order of the day. They want and need the intel I have gotten but can't be seen putting me in any positive light.Someone, somewhere in all of this is not telling me the truth. So this all stays up for the record.
That's okay with me, the fight is not about me but about Brett Kimberlin and his associates. That is what should be remembered instead of the rhetoric about me.
The meeting between Attorney General Eric Holder and Chairman of the House Oversight Committee Darrell Issa has ended after 20 minutes of discussion. Holder came with an offer of a briefing on Fast and Furious documents, but did not physically turn over any documents. This is unsatisfactory to Issa who has said repeatedly that in order for Holder to avoid a contempt vote Wednesday at 10 AM, he must hand over 1300 Fast and Furious documents to the Committee.Continue reading (via Memeorandum).
"The documents they may choose to give in the future, we need before tomorrow," Issa said to reporters. "“Ultimately the documents needed for postponement seem to be in their possession.”
Holder's failure to produce documents at the 5 PM meeting come after he failed to present them by this morning as requested, after he failed to respond to an October 2011 subpoena as requested and after more than a year of requests for transparency surrounding his role in Operation Fast and Furious.
Issa said there is a chance Holder would submit the requested documents tonight but that a contempt vote is still scheduled for Wednesday and has released an official statement.
The Muslim Brotherhood signalled a step back from confrontation with the army as it called for dialogue to solve Egypt's worsening constitutional crisis.
CAIRO -- Egyptian officials denied reports Tuesday night that deposed President Hosni Mubarak was clinically dead after he suffered a stroke and slipped out of consciousness at a prison hospital in Cairo, according to state and independent news media.Also at Jerusalem Post, "Egyptian ex-president Mubarak on life support."
Conflicting reports about the former leader’s health emerged after a report by the official state news agency MENA that Mubarak was declared “clinically dead” after he was transferred from a prison hospital to a nearby military hospital. The report could not be independently verified.
Ahram Online said the 84-year-old Mubarak, who was sentenced to life in prison this month for complicity in the deaths of hundreds of protesters in last year’s uprising, was on life support. Al Jazeera quoted Mubarak’s lawyer Farid Deeb as denying his client was dead.
CNN quoted Gen. Mamdouh Shahin, a member of the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, or SCAF, as saying: "He is not clinically dead as reported, but his health is deteriorating and he is in critical condition."
This is pathetic. MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell refused to even apologize for misleading their viewers yesterday by distorting and mischaracterizing Romney’s comments yesterday. Instead Mitchell simply said there was more and “we didn’t get a chance to play it”, and then played a few more seconds adding context to Romney’s comments. And then they quickly moved on:
The crisis of the euro zone is a geopolitical as well as an economic event. While Europe may yet find a path out of its economic quagmire, it will turn inward for some time as it reorganizes some of its core institutions. The world will not stand still while this happens.Plus, Mead has summary comments here: "WRM on the Geopolitics of the Euro."
To begin with, Europe's disorder is a grand opportunity for Russia. It is not all good news in the Kremlin—Russia will hurt economically, as the European Union is its most important trading partner and customer for oil and gas. But geopolitically, Russia will have a lot of new opportunities. Ukraine, Moldova and Belarus will feel less pull from the West and more from the East.
It is also likely that Russian commercial and to some degree political penetration of countries like Romania and Bulgaria (to say nothing of Cyprus and Greece) is going to become easier. Those countries will be hurting from the general slowdown in Europe. EU aid budgets could be cut or redirected if the crisis deepens, and issues like judicial transparency and reform will loom less large in a Brussels consumed by the struggle for the euro. Europe's East will be less deferential to its West as this crisis drags on.
Elsewhere, the euro crisis has reinforced Turkey's decision to drop its long courtship of Europe and become an independent actor. Europe looks less and less to the Turks like a model to imitate and more and more like a fate to avoid. Turkey in any case would like to replace the EU as a major political and economic force in the Arab world, and it is likely to use this period of European introspection and preoccupation to advance its agenda.
Between Russia's new geopolitical opportunities and Turkey's detachment from Europe, the situation in the Balkans is going to become much more confused and perhaps even dangerous. If Greece ends up leaving the euro or is deeply embittered with Brussels and the EU over the long term, and if Cyprus is similarly affected (likely, given its close economic ties to Greece), we could see Greece and Cyprus tilt toward Russia.
Despite my discomfort in general with this girl part thing (they are confusing like calculus except calculus has rules and shit) her specific statement, "'And finally, Mr. Speaker,’ she said. ‘I'm flattered that you're all so interested in my vagina, but no means no.’" is just silly. A cutesy little shocka line. The controversial part of the bill that was passed was a halfway mark "no abortions after 20 weeks" thing.Yeah, it's silly, but radical progressives are using it like a cudgel to hammer the evil troglodyte Republicans.
It seems silly to me for Republicans to muzzle her in response to her use of the word "vagina" however cutesy stupid her motivation.
Oh shit. I said it.
The Obama Record: The chief executive who swore to faithfully execute the nation's laws picks those he'll ignore and makes up others through regulation and executive order. He sees no need for a Congress or Constitution.Continue reading. It keeps going, and going...
Maybe it's because Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts stumbled a bit in leading President Obama through the oath of office that the president doesn't feel bound by it.
But through the awkwardness these words were heard: "I, Barack Hussein Obama, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."
It would not take Obama long to make clear he meant his interpretation of the Constitution, not the Supreme Court's, a principle established in Marbury v. Madison, the 1802 case that formed the basis for the exercise of judicial review in the U.S. under Article III of the Constitution.
In his State of the Union address a year later on Jan. 27, 2010, he shamefully scolded the justices on national television for "having reversed a century of law" in the Citizens United ruling in which the court was protecting the freedom of political speech enshrined more than two centuries ago in the First Amendment. We agree with Justice Samuel Alito's eloquent rebuff of the president, in which he was seen mouthing the words "Not true."
Then came ObamaCare...
With accused killer Luka Rocco Magnotta back on Canadian soil, Montreal police must now question the 29-year-old suspect to try to get to the bottom of a grim mystery: where is Jun Lin’s severed head?Also at CBC News, "Luka Magnotta arrives home to face Canadian justice" (via Blazing Cat Fur).
Dressed in a green sweatshirt, dark jeans and handcuffs, a sullen-looking Luka Rocca Magnotta faced the cameras back in Canada Monday night for the first time since his arrest earlier this month in Berlin.
Magnotta will appear in court at 2:30 p.m. Tuesday via video link to face five charges, including first-degree murder in the dismemberment death of 33-year-old Lin.
Lin’s dismembered torso was found inside a suitcase behind Magnotta’s Montreal apartment last month. His hands and feet were mailed separately to the offices of two political parties in Ottawa, and to two schools in Vancouver.
CAIRO — The Muslim Brotherhood appeared headed for a showdown with Egypt's ruling generals hours after claiming victory in Egypt's first freely contested presidential election, even as the military sought to assure the public it would hand over power.See also Pamela Geller, "Obama Threatens Any Opposition to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt with the Withdrawal of All U.S. Aid."
The Brotherhood, intent on reclaiming some of the powers that the military has claimed for itself in recent days, said it would convene Parliament on Tuesday in defiance of a court order dissolving the body, and called on Egyptians to take to the streets to challenge the military's recent moves to consolidate power.
The calls sets up a possible showdown with security forces who have been ordered to keep all lawmakers from entering the Parliament building.
The Brotherhood's presidential candidate, Mohammed Morsi, and his rival, ex-Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq, both claimed victory in the weekend vote. But the Brotherhood's precinct-by-precinct reporting of results convinced many analysts it was the more reliable of the two camps, showing Mr. Morsi winning 52% of the vote.
Mr. Shafiq's campaign has claimed victory by the same margin, but hasn't provided numbers of its own to challenge the Morsi campaign's results for any individual precinct.
Instead, Mr. Shafiq's campaign appears to be hoping the Presidential Election Commission will back its allegations of voter fraud and irregularities to tip the race in Mr. Shafiq's favor.
Mr. Shafiq's candidacy was made possible by the commission, which rejected a law passed by the Muslim Brotherhood-dominated Parliament—and approved by the military—that would have banned Mr. Shafiq from running because of his ties to the old regime.
he commission is headed by a judge who was appointed to the Supreme Court by former President Hosni Mubarak and came up as a judge serving in state security courts used to try political dissidents. The commission's decisions are unappealable.
The confrontation with the Brotherhood, brewing for months, has boiled over in just the past week, as the Egyptian state seemed to mobilize on multiple fronts to trim the Brotherhood's political ambitions.
US president sought pledge against Bashar al-Assad at G20 summit, leaving Syria facing the prospect of increasing violence.
Barack Obama and Russia's president Vladimir Putin completed a bilateral meeting on the margins of the G20 summit in Los Cabos, Mexico, on Monday with an agreement that there should be a cessation of hostilities in Syria.More at the link.
But, crucially, Obama failed to secure the support of Putin for regime change in Syria. The US president had been seeking Putin's help in trying to persuade Syrian president Bashar al-Assad to relinquish power and leave the country.
A joint statement issued after their meeting said simply that the Syrian people should independently and democratically be allowed to decide their own future, but there was no joint call for Assad to stand down, as the White House has been urging.
Relations between the US and Russia have been cool for months over several issues, including continued concerns in Moscow over US missile plans for Europe as well as Syria.
The White House has publicly expressed frustration with Russia for its support for Syria, a Cold War ally, and its blocking of tougher United Nations actions against the Syrian government, such as sanctions.
There was little sign of rapprochment at Los Cabos, with Obama describing the discussion as 'candid', diplomatic-speak for disagreement. Their body language was poor too, with no smiles and little eye contact between the two in the short period in which journalists were invited in.
One of the key complaints of the board members who orchestrated the ouster of Teresa A. Sullivan as president of the University of Virginia was that she rebuffed their suggestions that she eliminate or sharply cut German programs, sources familiar with the discussions have told Inside Higher Ed. The Washington Post on Sunday reported that one of the most specific disagreements between board members and Sullivan was their view that she "lacked the mettle to trim or shut down programs that couldn't sustain themselves financially, such as obscure academic departments in classics and German."Continue reading.
To faculty members and others at the university who have been puzzled and dismayed since word last Sunday of Sullivan's forced resignation, news that she may have been punished for protecting liberal arts disciplines seems likely only to increase support for Sullivan and anger with the Board of Visitors. Protests by faculty members and students are expected today as the board meets this afternoon, and more calls came Sunday from prominent Virginians seeking to have Sullivan continue on as president. Sullivan has asked to speak to the board in open session, but has been told that she will be permitted to speak only in closed session.
Since her resignation, Sullivan issued a brief statement citing a philosophical difference of opinion with the board and has said nothing more. Board leaders have spoken about a sense that Sullivan was not moving to address changes in higher education and was not bold enough to deal with financial challenges facing the university. Since board members have declined to elaborate, and Sullivan had instituted a well-received new budgeting system that many have said was long overdue, various theories have been floating around campus (many of them without substantiation) about the clash between Sullivan and the board.
The reports that board leaders pushed for cuts of some liberal arts programs and that Sullivan resisted are the most specific details to date about what led the board to seek her removal. So even though most people at the university assume that multiple issues were at play, the difference of opinion over these departments has many faculty members and students angry, even beyond their frustrations with Sullivan's dismissal. In part that is because UVa -- unlike many universities -- is considered a place where liberal arts are central to the institution's identity.
The brief afterglow from Greece's vote Sunday to try to remain in the euro was quickly extinguished by a cascade of bad news out of Spain that again rattled faith in the currency bloc's ability to support its most troubled members.Spain's going to need another bailout --- or it's going to default. Plain and simple.
Fresh data from Spain's central bank showed the country's lenders were sitting on the highest level of bad loans in 18 years and that their deposits continued to leak away. The gloomy figures—and worries that consultants scouring the creaky banking system will find yet more problems—helped drive Spanish bond yields deep into territory that is widely viewed as unsustainable.
The yield on the Spanish 10-year bond was at 7.18% late Monday in London, an unwelcome euro-era record for the zone's fourth-largest economy. The worrying signal demonstrates how Spain's troubles continue despite what plays out in Greece or elsewhere in the bloc.
The Spanish stock market fell 3%, and Italian stocks slid 2.8%. Italian bonds weakened somewhat, and other global markets largely shrugged off the Athens results. The U.S. Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped 0.2%. In early Asian trading Tuesday, stocks edged downwards after rising Monday.
"Spain is the bigger uncertainty and until there is greater clarity around Spanish bank recapitalizations and sovereign funding costs, risk in financial markets will remain elevated," said Jeffrey Rosenberg, chief investment strategist for fixed income at asset manager BlackRock Inc. in New York.
Greeks voted Sunday for pro-Europe parties who will try to continue the troubled country's bailout program, relaxing fears of a popular uprising that could have threatened Greece's place in the euro zone. Many analysts had feared that a vote for antibailout forces in Greece could cause sudden deposit or capital flights there that would quickly spill over to Spain.
The streets were calm in Athens Monday as political leaders met to wrangle over the terms of a coalition government. That effort appeared on track, and even as Germany stressed it would not abide any delay in Greece fulfilling its budget-cut targets, the Athens stock exchange ended the day up 3.6% and the country's thinly traded, highly volatile bonds were stronger.
But Greece's results did little to help Spain's troubles. "The picture doesn't change that much for Spain," said Juan Pablo Lopez, an analyst with EspÃrito Santo Investment Bank in Madrid.
The country appears to be in a vicious cycle in which the deteriorating economy weighs on the banks, whose declining fortunes weigh on the government, which moves to slash spending, hurting the economy.
Spain's chief problems are its banks and its bonds. Last week, the country was thrown a lifeline of as much as €100 billion ($124.5 billion) from other euro-zone countries to rescue the banks from a morass of bad real-estate loans that is worsening amid the diving economy. There hasn't been any conclusion on how much bailout money is needed or whether the latest pledge will be enough.
That has helped crush investors' appetite for Spanish government bonds. The country's financial plan calls for it to sell more than €30 billion of long-term debt this year.
This week, the Spanish government is expected to receive the results of a "stress test" on its banking system, done by consultants Oliver Wyman and Roland Berger Strategy Consultants. Preliminary news reports, which rattled investors Monday morning, said that the total needed funds recommended by the outside consultants could be higher than the €100 billion bailout figure.
Spain hired the external consultants in May, amid a surprise announcement that one of Spain's biggest banks needed €19 billion in funds. The government could disclose some aspects of the report as early as Tuesday, according to people familiar with the matter. Both firms declined to comment on the contents of the report.
ATHENS — Greece's two leading pro-bailout parties appeared late Monday to be headed into an alliance that would give them the majority needed to keep promised overhauls on course, but they were working to find support from others in Parliament for a broad cross-party coalition government.Continue reading.
After formally receiving an exploratory mandate from Greek President Karolos Papoulias earlier in the day, conservative New Democracy leader Antonis Samaras met with the heads of four other parties. Following those meetings, Mr. Samaras signaled a deal between him and his Socialist Pasok party counterpart, Evangelos Venizelos, would be reached within three days.
"Mr. Venizelos and I are in agreement that, no matter what, a government of national salvation must be formed within the deadline for the mandate given to me by the president," Mr. Samaras said after the third of the four scheduled meetings.
Although New Democracy won the most votes in Sunday's elections, it doesn't control enough seats to govern on its own and must seek a coalition partner to form a majority in Greece's 300-member Parliament.
Its former coalition partner, Pasok—which also supports the country's European-led bailout—came in third in the vote. Combined, the two parties would control 162 seats, giving them a comfortable margin of support.
The new government will face high hurdles, with a central administration threatened by a cash crunch within weeks, an economy in free fall and an angry public exhausted by two years of austerity measures.
Its first task will be to come up with €11.5 billion ($14.6 billion) or more of new austerity measures demanded by the country's creditors, which could further inflame the public.
Facing strident opposition in Parliament from Greece's antiausterity Syriza party—which came in a strong second in Sunday's vote—Messrs. Samaras and Venizelos have been trying to bring in other party leaders to gain broad backing for tough decisions ahead.
One possible candidate could be the small, Democratic Left party, which accepts the loan deal but wants an easing of the terms of the austerity measures.
But even without that support, the two are ready to reach a deal and have held advanced talks on forming a government, officials from both parties said.
JANESVILLE, WIS. - Mitt Romney, expressing confidence while campaigning with Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, said Monday that he plans to win the battleground state that Democrats have dominated in recent presidential elections.More at the link.
"We're going to win Wisconsin, and we're going to get the White House," the presumptive Republican nominee told an audience at a textile factory in Janesville.
Romney is keeping his focus on the economy as he campaigns through contested states, saying he'll promote a climate friendlier to small business, domestic energy production and job creation, while asserting that President Obama has mismanaged the recovery.
"If there's ever been a president who has not been able to provide the American people a fair shot, it's this president," Romney said. "We're going to replace him with someone who will go to work again for you."
Walker, introducing Romney at a Monterey Mills factory, referred to his recent recall election victory.
"It is my honor to still be the 45th governor of the great state of Wisconsin," he said. "And it's my honor to be on stage with the man I hope is the 45th president of these United States."
The Obama campaign called Romney's speech Monday "an exercise in angry and evasive rhetoric."
"He offered no ideas of how to create jobs now or strengthen the economy," campaign spokeswoman Lis Smith said in an e-mailed statement.
Romney was also joined by Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., the House Budget Committee chairman who endorsed him in March and is often mentioned in media reports as a possible running mate.
Nine seventh grade students at a San Diego-based middle school were suspended last month after watching pornographic videos as part of a so-called "gay test," according to reports.Oh brother.
According to U-T San Diego News, students in all-boys English class at Bell Middle School in Paradise Hills allegedly wore gym shorts as they watched videos on their cell phones. Whoever became sexually aroused while watching the videos was labeled gay, and several adolescents masturbated openly during the class.
In addition, peers complained of inaction by teacher Ed Johnson, who is now reportedly under fire because he did not respond to students who told him about the behavior while it was allegedly happening, according to NBC San Diego.
Among those to condemn the news was Patiti Boman of Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, who called the incident "terrible," even though Bell Middle School officials have yet to confirm many details.
"I was thinking we were getting better and that’s why we go out and speak in schools. This is news to me and this gives me chills,” Boman, part of the team which helped craft the district’s anti-harassment policy, told U-T San Diego news. "They use that to attack and intimidate."
Cherokee activists who say Elizabeth Warren’s campaign has ignored their emails and phone calls will trek to Boston this week in hopes they can force a meeting with the Democratic Senate candidate over her “offensive” Native American heritage claims.These women are Democrats and independents, so it's about authenticity not politics.
“It’s almost becoming extremely offensive to us,” said Twila Barnes, a Cherokee genealogist who has researched Warren’s family tree. “We’re trying to get in contact and explain why her behavior hurts us and is offensive, and she totally ignores that. Like we don’t exist.”
Late last night, a Warren campaign official told the Herald that staffers will “connect” and “offer to have staff meet with them.”
The four women, who Barnes said are all registered Cherokee tribal members — from Missouri, Oregon, Oklahoma and one within the Bay State — are due to arrive in Boston late today for four days. But they are closely guarding their itinerary, and Barnes would not say exactly what they have in mind.
“We’re going to be visible. We have some things planned,” said Barnes, hinting: “It’s (Warren’s) birthday this week.”
TROY, Ohio — Mitt Romney posed for a roadside photo with a herd of grazing cows in rural Pennsylvania. He scooped ice cream for locals in the quaint town square of Milford, N.H. In Brunswick, Ohio, he served pancakes at aFather's Day breakfast.Continue reading.
Romney calls his five-day trek across remote regions of presidential battleground states a journey along "the backbone of America."
It is also the backbone of Romney's campaign: Republican strongholds of older white voters, many of them blue-collar.
For Romney, rural areas, small towns and outer-edge suburbs like Brunswick, on the outskirts of Cleveland, are crucial to offsetting President Obama's strength in urban centers.
Shifting demographics — the Democrats' coalition of younger and racially diverse voters is growing while the Republican base of white conservatives is shrinking — play to Obama's advantage. In several states, such as Nevada and Colorado, Obama's order Friday to stop deportation of many young illegal immigrants could add to his edge by lifting his standing among Latinos, putting more pressure on Romney to turn out his own voters.
But the stalled economy has given Romney a chance to overcome any erosion of his party's core of support. As he traveled across swing-state back roads over the weekend, Romney focused relentlessly on the nation's meager job growth, laying blame on Obama.
Romney also played up the struggles of small businesses that are vital to the far-flung communities on his route.
In Weatherly, Pa., on Saturday, he pounded Obama in remarks to supporters at the Weatherly Casting & Machine Co. factory. Obama, Romney told the crowd, may be "well spoken and articulate and eloquent" on the economy, but has failed to turn it around.
"If you want to know who can really get this economy going, go and talk to small businesses in your community," said Romney, who was introduced by the company president, Michael Leib. "Talk to people like Mike."
Romney's tour, which hits Wisconsin and Iowa on Monday and Michigan on Tuesday, is aimed not only at ensuring robust turnout of conservatives who shunned him in the Republican primaries, but also at small-town voters inspired by Obama to abandon the GOP in 2008. Many are disappointed in Obama and poised to vote Republican, just as they did in the 2010 midterm election.
"When you just look at where the votes come from, clearly a Republican candidate has to do well in the suburbs, exurbs and rural areas to carry states like Ohio," said Russ Schriefer, a senior Romney campaign advisor.
MOSCOW — Introducing an unpredictable new element into the Syrian crisis, a news agency said on Monday that two Russian naval vessels with marines on board were ready to head for Syria to protect Russian citizens and a naval base there, in what would be the first known reinforcement of Moscow’s military presence since the start of an uprising against President Bashar al-Assad.RELATED: From Thomas Donnelly, "Obama Fails To Act In Syria."
The Interfax news agency quoted a Russian naval official, who was not identified, as saying that the two amphibious assault ships would head for the Mediterranean port of Tartus, where Russia has its only warm-water naval base in the region. Russia has been the staunchest ally of Mr. Assad in the 16-month-old conflict, shielding the Damascus government from stern international measures to remove him from office.
Moscow is also Syria’s biggest arms supplier, and the relationship provides Russia with its main foothold in Middle East diplomacy.
Interfax quoted the official as saying the ships were “ready to ensure security of Russian citizens and infrastructure of the Russian Navy logistics base” in Tartus.
The official said the crews “jointly with the marine units they carry are capable of protecting the security of Russian citizens and evacuating a part of the property of the logistics base.”
The Russia Today English-language television news channel said the vessels were currently moored in the Crimean port of Sevastopol. Talk of evacuation of material and “protection” of Russian citizens in Syria, who include military advisers, seemed to be one more sign of alarm about the deteriorating security situation there after United Nations monitors announced over the weekend that they were suspending their operations as violence mounts.
The United Nations said the monitors would not be withdrawn from Syria, but were being locked down in Syria’s most contested cities, unable to conduct patrols. While the decision to suspend their work was made chiefly to protect the unarmed monitors, the unstated purpose appeared to be to force Russia to intervene to assure that the observers are not the targets of Syrian forces or their sympathizers. Russia has opposed Western intervention and, by some accounts, continues to arm the forces of Mr. Assad.
Amber, a soft-spoken, feminine 12-year-old who loves Hello Kitty and fashion design, lives with a secret. It is a secret most sixth-graders can't fathom, one she hides behind pink skirts and makeup. It is a secret that led to all her baby pictures being tucked away as though her childhood had never happened.Okay, keep reading at the link.
Amber was born a boy.
When she was 10, she stopped going by her given name, Aaron, and began dressing as a girl. Last year, she started taking medication to keep her from going through puberty.
"I can be who I am," Amber said. "I can be a girl."
An increasing number of children like Amber are realizing they are transgender and seeking care at clinics around the nation. Because of their age, the complex and emotional journey is as much their parents' as their own. Families are forced to make tough decisions about therapy and medication, and about what to tell friends and relatives. They are trying to give their children a normal upbringing with summer camps and sleepovers while protecting them from harm and embarrassment.
"How do you move through society with a gender-variant child?" said Nancy Quay, a psychotherapist at the University of Michigan gender services program. "What do you tell your neighbors? How do you keep your child safe?"
Just a few clinics around the nation serve transgender children. It wasn't until about five years ago that doctors began treating them with puberty-blocking drugs to give them time to explore their gender identity before taking hormones whose effects would be irreversible.There's absolutely no science involved in such treatment. It's all touch-feely and emotionally driven.
The medication is approved by the Food and Drug Administration for children who start puberty prematurely but not for transgender adolescents. Two professional organizations that study hormonal and gender issues recommend the drugs' use in certain transgender cases, but doctors remain divided on whether to prescribe the controversial and expensive medication.
Supporters say the drugs can prevent the devastation a transgender girl feels when she grows facial hair or her voice drops and when a transgender boy develops breasts or begins menstruating. They can reduce depression and anxiety and eliminate the need for some future surgeries, said Jo Olson, Amber's doctor and the medical director of the transgender clinic at Children's Hospital Los Angeles.
"Puberty in the right body is hard enough," Olson said. "Puberty in the wrong body is really hard."
Other doctors, however, express caution based on a lack of research. Walter Meyer, an endocrinologist and psychiatrist in Texas who works with transgender patients, said that puberty blockers are helpful for some adolescents but that knowing which ones is sometimes difficult. Not all children who identify with the opposite gender end up as transgender adults, he said, and giving medication to those may be going too far.
The drugs are administered through a surgical implant in the arm or monthly injections. They suppress the production of sex hormones, making it easier to pass as the opposite gender, Olson said. If the youngsters stop taking the drugs, they will go through puberty.
Olson acknowledged that doctors are making clinical decisions based on instincts and observations rather than research. "That's what makes this incredibly difficult," she said. Olson said she prescribes blockers only to adolescents who are in counseling and have been persistent about their gender identity.
Amber's father said he thinks of the puberty suppressors as a stopgap to "make sure everybody is 100% on board with the way it's going."
But Amber insists she never wants to be male. "Why would I have started if I am going to change my mind?"
These days, ‘gender identity’ has become one of the fashionable syndromes of our time and, in the hands of the politically correct, one of the latest social tyrannies, to which we must all pay heed. ‘Trapped in the wrong body’ has been said so often that it has slipped into public consciousness in such a way that it is now beyond the pale to question it.Ain't that the truth.
Maricopa County Sheriff Office deputies arrested a 6-year-old suspected illegal immigrant Friday, the day President Barack Obama softened the country's deportation policy toward young illegal immigrants.It goes on like that, but see Bryan Preston at PJ Media, "Six-Year-Old Illegal Alien Gets Arrested. Whose Fault Is It?":
The girl was with 15 other people believed to be in the country illegally who were traveling to the Midwest and northeast United States, said Chris Hegstrom, spokesman for the Sheriff's Office.
"She's been turned over to ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) to try to determine where she's from. She told us she's from El Salvador. That's what she told us," he said.
President Obama announced a new immigration policy on Friday that tells the whole world he has no intent of doing his job, which is to faithfully execute the laws of this nation. That announcement probably played no role in this specific case, but it will attract more illegal aliens, and it will create more business for the coyotes who smuggle these people, and drugs and other things, into the United States. It will make it more difficult to secure the border. Sheriff Joe will see more six-year-old illegal aliens making a very dangerous journey in the hands of some unsavory and dangerous characters thanks to President Obama.Word.
We also shouldn’t exonerate the little girl’s family in all this. Six-year-old girls don’t make the decision to cross borders on their own, they don’t hire the smugglers, they don’t make this trek unless some adult has made the decisions for them. These family decisions to abandon one country and break the laws of another, and continue to break those laws every day, don’t start with the six-year-old, and they don’t end with a presidential declaration either. Sheriff Joe still has to do his job. We are either a nation of laws, or we are not.
Women are often at their most fertile and attractive at the ages (18-22) that Swindle is describing. Men being attracted to women of this age is called normal. Should you act on it? Maybe not, but that’s not the point that Swindle is making. He doesn’t even seem to think that you should be fantasizing about women who are of age 18-22. Why not? Why should men only be interested in “mature women,” especially for a fantasy?Dave responds here, but it's the comment section that's especially good.
CAIRO — The Muslim Brotherhood early Monday projected its candidate, an Islamist, as the winner of Egypt’s first competitive presidential election, hours after the ruling military council issued an interim constitution granting itself broad power over the future government, all but eliminating the president’s authority in an apparent effort to guard against just such a victory.More at that top link.
The military’s new charter is the latest in a series of swift steps that the generals have taken to tighten their grasp on power just at the moment when they had promised to hand over to elected civilians the authority that they assumed on the ouster of Hosni Mubarak last year. Their charter gives them control of all laws and the national budget, immunity from any oversight, and the power to veto a declaration of war.
After dissolving the Brotherhood-led Parliament elected four months ago, and locking out its lawmakers, the generals on Sunday night also seized control of the process of writing a permanent constitution. State news media reported that the generals had picked a 100-member panel to draft it.
“The new constitutional declaration completed Egypt’s official transformation into a military dictatorship,” Hossam Bahgat, director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, wrote in an online commentary. Under the military’s charter, the president appeared to be reduced to a powerless figurehead.
Though final results were not available, Brotherhood supporters called the apparent victory by their candidate, Mohamed Morsi, a rebuke to the military’s power grab. “Down, down with military rule!” a crowd at Mr. Morsi’s campaign headquarters chanted as he prepared to give a victory speech shortly after 4 a.m. Monday.
Mr. Morsi thanked God, who, he said, “guided Egypt to this straight path, the path of freedom and democracy.” He pledged to represent all Egyptians, including those who had voted against him. And he made a special profession of support for the rights of members of Egypt’s Coptic Christian minority, many of whom had rallied against him out of fear of the Brotherhood.
While one can certainly sympathize with the idea of letting an elected parliament take office, that’s not necessarily such a clear call in strategic terms. The parliament — which will write the constitution and thus define the powers of the president — is almost 75 percent rabidly anti-American and antisemitic. (I don’t write that last word lightly, but it is quite accurate.) Imagine if this situation had arisen in Iran in 1979 with the Iranian military refusing to turn over power to the forces led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Would it have been wise for Washington to demand that this be done as soon as possible?Read it all.
Yet, here is Defense Secretary Leon Panetta calling on Egypt’s military in a manner that “highlighted the need to move forward expeditiously with Egypt’s political transition, including conducting new legislative elections as soon as possible.” Senator Patrick J. Leahy has called for withholding U.S. aid to Egypt, saying, “I would not want to see the U.S. government write checks for contracts with Egypt’s military under the present uncertain circumstances.” What circumstances are more appropriate for sending U.S. arms and money? When the Muslim Brotherhood dominates parliament, the presidency, has written a constitution mandating Sharia law, and follows a policy of death to America and death to Israel? Who are you going to cheer for if Islamists rebel against the regime?
Maybe now is a good moment for the U.S. government to remain quiet.
LOS ANGELES — Rodney G. King, whose 1991 videotaped beating by the Los Angeles police became a symbol of the nation’s continuing racial tensions and subsequently led to a week of deadly race riots after the officers were acquitted, was found dead Sunday in a swimming pool at the home he shared with his fiancée in Rialto, Calif. He was 47.More at the link.
There was no evidence of foul play, the Rialto police said.
Mr. King, whose life was a roller coaster of drug and alcohol abuse, multiple arrests and unwanted celebrity, pleaded for calm during the 1992 riots. More than 55 people were killed and 600 buildings destroyed in the violence.
In a phrase that became part of American culture, he asked at a news conference, “Can we all get along?”
“People look at me like I should have been like Malcolm X or Martin Luther King or Rosa Parks,” he told The Los Angeles Times in April. “I should have seen life like that and stay out of trouble, and don’t do this and don’t do that. But it’s hard to live up to some people’s expectations.”
Mr. King published a memoir in April detailing his struggles, saying in several interviews that he had not been able to find steady work.
He said he had once blamed politicians and lawyers “for taking a battered and confused addict and trying to make him into a symbol for civil rights.” But he was unable to escape that role. On Sunday, the Rev. Al Sharpton, said in a statement, “History will record that it was Rodney King’s beating and his actions that made America deal with the excessive misconduct of law enforcement.”
And more recently, Mr. King seemed to embrace the role himself, saying that his beating enabled others to succeed and “made the world a better place.”
“Obama, he wouldn’t have been in office without what happened to me and a lot of black people before me,” he told The Los Angeles Times. “He would never have been in that situation, no doubt in my mind. He would get there eventually, but it would have been a lot longer. So I am glad for what I went through. It opened the doors for a lot of people.”
Though Mr. King wrote in his memoir that he still drank and used drugs occasionally, he insisted that, with his fiancée, Cynthia Kelley, who had been a juror in a civil suit he brought against the City of Los Angeles, he was on the road to reclaiming his life.
“I realize I will always be the poster child for police brutality,” he said, “but I can try to use that as a positive force for healing and restraint.”
Mr. King said he was essentially broke, though he said he received an advance for his book, “The Riot Within: My Journey from Rebellion to Redemption,” published to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the riots.
He still walked with a limp and several of his scars were visible. His best outlets for relaxation, he said, were fishing and swimming.
