Who told Erin Heatherton that she had to “lose weight”? https://t.co/cRSFZ89P52 pic.twitter.com/rda8UqSOhz
— VOGUE.CO.UK (@BritishVogue) April 9, 2016
Steve Miller was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Friday night, but apparently he didn't enjoy the experience.Still more.
Speaking in the press room after his induction, Miller, 72, insisted, "The whole process needs to be changed ... It doesn't need to be this hard. There's nothing fancy going on out there that requires all of this stuff."
Miller complained about access to the event. "When they told me I was inducted they said 'You have two tickets, one for your wife and one for yourself.' ... What about my band? What about their wives?'"
He made other accusations concerning "legal work," and claimed, "They need to respect the artists they say they're honoring, which they don't."
When a press representative tried to wrap up the session, Miller became frustrated.
"No, we're not going to wrap this up ... Here's what you need to know: This is how close this show came to not happening because of how the artists are being treated right now.." Then he announced, "I'll wrap it up," and walked off...
Matt Shoemaker lets Rangers get out of the gates fast in Angels' 7-3 loss https://t.co/XBz6UY9ygg
— L.A. Times Sports (@latimessports) April 9, 2016
Back when I was in high school Kate Moss was THE supermodel. It's easy to see why. All these years later, she is still one of the sexiest women on the planet. In this spread for Vogue UK, you can see why. It must have been chilly when they took these pictures because she is nipping for realsies. She exemplifies the thin but slinky sexy silhouette.Well, she also exemplified heroin-chic fashion druggy-culture, which wasn't cool, but let's just forget about that.
Kate Moss Is The Cover Girl Of Vogue May - https://t.co/kalLdTcoGp pic.twitter.com/qt3YvDkrVk— POWER 107.9 LA (@POWER1079) April 4, 2016
Herschel Reynolds mesmerized TV viewers with a wild drive through Los Angeles that included skillfully performing doughnuts in the middle of Hollywood Boulevard and a teenage passenger busting out dance moves.More.
It now appears the 20-year-old can thank the U.S. Marine Corps for helping him hone some of his driving abilities.
The Pentagon confirmed Friday that Reynolds was a trained tactical driver for the Marines before being “prematurely discharged” in January. The U.S. military said Reynolds had served as a motor vehicle operator for the 1st Marine Logistics Group at Camp Pendleton. Reynolds served with the Marines for nearly two years as a private, according to military records.
“Reynold’s premature discharge and rank are indicative of the fact that the character of his service was incongruent with Marine Corps’ expectations and standards,” the Pentagon said.
Identified as the driver, Reynolds both horrified and delighted Angelenos for two hours Thursday during a televised chase that included a close call with a TMZ tour bus and ended with a hero’s welcome in a South L.A. neighborhood – with celebratory high-fives, hugs and selfies with a swelling crowd. Along with a 19-year-old passenger, Isaiah Young, Reynolds peacefully surrendered to sheriff’s deputies, who arrived minutes after he parked the rented Ford Mustang...
GOP is trying to steal nomination from the winner (Trump) not block an insurgent catching up 2 frontrunner (Sanders) https://t.co/OGIsdbNEYq
— Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) April 9, 2016
With Donald Trump locked in a dogfight against much of the rest of the Republican Party, a lot of things are uncertain about the GOP’s convention in Cleveland in July.More.
Here’s a big one: Who will pay for it?
Four years ago, after Mitt Romney clinched the nomination, his fundraising team pulled in millions from GOP stalwarts to close a gap in money for the convention in Tampa, Fla. Sheldon Adelson, the casino mogul, gave $5 million. Energy billionaire and activist David Koch, Los Angeles media figure Jerry Perenchio and hedge fund billionaires Robert Mercer, Paul Singer and John Paulson each donated $1 million.
But Trump’s improbable success has blown a hole in that model of convention financing. Trump hasn’t built a fundraising network of his own and has spent much of the campaign sneering at rivals for being under the thumb of their big donors.
Some of the party’s big-dollar donors from four years ago, unhappy about the prospect of contributing to a chaotic or brokered convention, are holding onto their money. Blue chip corporations that helped underwrite the 2012 convention, including Microsoft and AT&T, are now facing a pressure campaign to stay away.
“All I can tell is there’s disenchantment with the whole system right now,” said Jay Zeidman, a Republican fundraiser from Houston. With his father, Fred, another big GOP donor, Jay Zeidman supported Jeb Bush and now is backing Sen. Ted Cruz.
“You can’t compare last time with where we are now, because we’re sort of in uncharted territory,” he said.
Trump supporters call concerns about paying for the convention mere hand-wringing by traditional party power brokers who fear being shut out.
“There’s a little heartburn on K Street,” Washington campaign consultant Barry Bennett, who has advised Trump, said, referring to the downtown Washington street that houses many lobbying and law firms. “It’s a lot of people who make their living based on proximity to power, if not access, so they’re threatened.”
The convention won’t be at risk, he said; Trump has enough rich friends to write checks...
New data reflects what many have long said: Poorer areas of LA have most trash on streets https://t.co/8dS0Kr43ZD pic.twitter.com/UAn4FlX67p— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) April 9, 2016
A new database measuring garbage on more than 9,100 miles of Los Angeles streets and alleys shows poorer areas of the city see more illegal dumping and litter than affluent ones.
City officials on Friday released details on the far-reaching study, which is designed to help guide the city sanitation bureau to prioritize the grimiest areas and send clean-up crews there.
More than 370 miles of roads and alleys in L.A. — or 4% of all city blocks — were found to be so dirty that they require immediate cleanup, according to the rating system released by the city Friday. An additional 42% of road miles need some form of service.
A little more than half of the dirtiest streets are in Central, East and South L.A. But pockets of filth were found across the city, including east San Fernando Valley, Venice and Wilmington, the analysis found.
Officials aim to clean all the dirtiest locations by 2018, a spokeswoman for LA Sanitation said.
“Prior to this, we had no data to really look [at] to intelligently deploy resources,” said Leo Martinez, who oversees solid resource operations for the bureau. “This has given us an incredible amount of knowledge.”
A Times data analysis last year found that cleanup of illegal dumping in many poor areas of L.A. lagged behind wealthier neighborhoods.
The findings of the database are not surprising for residents in some working-class neighborhoods, who say that dealing with street trash is a frustrating part of everyday life. Some expressed disappointment about the city's inability to clean up streets...
Read an excerpt from @Regnery's 'Defeating Jihad: The Winnable War' https://t.co/Odvxf9BOJh pic.twitter.com/nkX6EmIj3P
— Free Beacon (@FreeBeacon) April 9, 2016
CHICAGO — Late at night this month, the pastor’s phone beeped with a text message from an anguished parishioner. Andre Taylor, the church member’s great-nephew, had been shot and killed.Keep reading.
“Dre had just turned 16,” the message to the pastor, the Rev. Ira Acree, read. “I think that it’s time to call for action and solicit help, have the National Guard to take over and patrol the Chicago streets.”
Four days earlier, he had received another text. A different parishioner’s granddaughter, Daysha Wright, a 21-year-old nursing student, had been shot to death in a car, leaving a 2-year-old son.
At his desk at Greater St. John Bible Church, Mr. Acree said he was bracing for the coming months. “Unless something radical takes place, it’s going to be a blood bath this summer,” he said.
Chicago has long been troubled by violence, but homicides and shootings have risen sharply this year. Violent crime remains below the levels of two decades ago, and criminologists caution against finding trends in only a few months of data. But City Hall, the police and community leaders are alarmed by the surge: As of Friday, 131 people had been killed here in the first months of 2016, an 84 percent rise in homicides from the same period in 2015. There had been 605 shootings, nearly twice as many as at this point last year.
The increase could hardly have come at a more difficult time. The city is at a pivotal moment for law enforcement, mired in a crisis over police conduct and discipline and over distrust of officers, particularly among African-American residents, who make up about one-third of Chicago’s population.
The Justice Department is scrutinizing the patterns and practices of the city’s police force; the mayor on Monday named an interim police superintendent to replace the department’s fired leader; and voters have rejected Cook County’s top prosecutor, defeating her in a primary on March 15. The release in November of a police video that showed a white officer shooting a black teenager, Laquan McDonald, 16 times caused longstanding anger about police conduct to boil over.
And Mayor Rahm Emanuel faces enormous challenges: tamping down a flood of crime while simultaneously repairing frayed relations with the people who live here, as well as addressing low morale among officers.
“Trying to rebuild and do all of that at the same time, when violence is going up, creates all kinds of additional struggles and issues,” said Kim Foxx, who defeated a two-term incumbent in the Democratic primary to be the next Cook County state’s attorney in a race that revolved around the McDonald case.
Weekends and summer nights have often presented the most danger here, but these days shootings feel constant. On March 14, three police officers were shot and wounded in an exchange of gunfire that left a suspect dead. The next day, three people were killed in a single hour. The next, people inside two cars were reported shooting at one another along Lake Shore Drive.
“I’m really tired of it, and tired of worrying,” said Gloria Johnson, 37, who serves food at a restaurant in Austin, a neighborhood where the authorities say violence has been particularly harsh. Like other parts of the West Side, Austin has long wrestled with economic distress, gangs and crime, and Ms. Johnson bears a long scar on her elbow from a bullet fired about a decade ago. “But it seems like this year is just the worst of the worst,” she said.
The police say much of the violence in this city of about 2.7 million people is tied to gangs, which have become disorganized and have splintered into more factions. While shootings along Lake Shore Drive and near a W Hotel not far from Chicago’s Gold Coast have drawn notice, most of those dying are young men on the South and West Sides, the police say...
There had been hope among some Catholics that the pontiff might overhaul its position on gay marriage, but the large document that ends with the hand-written signature of “Franciscus” — the pope’s Latin name — made it clear that would not happen. It said there are “absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar … to God’s plan for marriage and family.”
The document also made repeated references to Christian marriage as a “union between a man and a woman.”
Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders’ plan to attend a Vatican-sponsored conference put him in the middle of a diplomatic row as a senior Vatican official accused the senator of showing “monumental discourtesy” in angling for an invitation that puts a political cast on the gathering.More.
Sanders, whose foreign policy experience is under attack by competitor Hillary Clinton, said Friday he was “very excited” to have been invited to the conference on economic and social issues hosted by a pontifical academy in Rome on April 15. It will put him at the seat of the Roman Catholic Church four days before the New York primary.
It has also inserted Sanders into a dispute among Vatican officials. The president of the academy said Friday that Sanders didn’t follow proper protocol by failing to contact her office, and that his presence threatens to make the event political. The academy’s chancellor said he arranged the invitation and defended the Vermont senator.
“Sanders made the first move, for the obvious reasons,” Margaret Archer, president of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, which is hosting the conference, said in a telephone interview. “I think in a sense he may be going for the Catholic vote but this is not the Catholic vote and he should remember that and act accordingly -- not that he will.”
Trump is right about Megyn Kelly.https://t.co/srL6BT31w1 pic.twitter.com/qzXmihp3uE— National Interest (@TheNatlInterest) April 6, 2016
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has repeatedly said that Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly is overrated and treated him unfairly at the first GOP presidential debate last August. Yet with the exception of Trump’s most die-hard supporters, few on the right agree. This is a sign of Trump’s problems with women (73 percent of them currently have an unfavorable view of him), but it is also a symptom of the GOP’s wussiness to ask tough questions about a popular female anchor, as well as of its failure to challenge the insidiousness of the Left’s prevailing narrative about women.Keep reading.
At issue is conservatism’s decades-old battle against identity politics, in which hostility has been declared toward the grievance industry that gins up phony allegations of racial, ethnic or gender injustice.
On the Fox News Channel, Kelly has exhibited a penchant for kissing up to liberal women, fawning over their feminist agenda, berating conservative men and behaving unprofessionally toward guests. No prominent conservative has ever dared to question the perception that Kelly is an exemplary anchor, or to observe that she spends far too much time peddling a softer, kinder version of feminist dogma.
Trump is the only major national figure on the right who has challenged Kelly’s status as a demigod at Fox News. By declaring unabashedly that Kelly is not very good, Trump has—unwittingly—offered conservatives an opportunity to reflect on the grave disservice that a star on the only major conservative television network often does to conservatism.
As it turns out, Kelly’s not being nearly as good as everyone says is directly intertwined with her being not very conservative.
"The demon is a liar. ... The attack is psychological ... and powerful." https://t.co/jgzQDzvCtD @KelKilken pic.twitter.com/ruGYH8mFSM
— FreeStacy (@Not_RSMcCain) April 8, 2016
I don't know about that.Keep reading.
But it occurred to me: Why aren't we entitled to a recording of what is said around our body when we're under anesthesia? Why should you have to sneak a recording device into your ponytail? You have to be knocked out for the surgery, and all these people have access to your vulnerable body, why shouldn't you have a right to use an artificial device to do what your senses would normally do — monitor what's happening to you? Do the doctors and nurses have an interest in having a private conversation around your body? I'd say you have the greater interest in finding out what's happening to you when you're unconscious. Anyone who wants to make a recording should be able to do it openly. You wouldn't need to take any additional steps to improve the "bedside manner" of doctors and nurses...
Angels get first win of season when Albert Pujols delivers walk-off hit against Rangers https://t.co/KPhQets7Zl
— L.A. Times Sports (@latimessports) April 8, 2016
The Rangers intentionally walk Mike Trout to load the bases and face Albert Pujols, and Pujols delivers walk-off hit. The Angels win, 4-3.
— Pedro Moura (@pedromoura) April 8, 2016
“I got close to 2,000 RBIs for a reason,” Albert Pujols said. “I know how to stay focused in those situations.”
— Pedro Moura (@pedromoura) April 8, 2016
I wonder if there’s a part of Bill Clinton that doesn't really want Hillary Clinton to become president, particularly if she has to distance herself from his legacy to do so. How else to explain why one of the world’s most talented and agile politicians is so consistently flat-footed and destructive when advocating on his wife’s behalf? How else to explain his terrible and destined-to-be-viral confrontation Thursday with Black Lives Matter protesters in Philadelphia?More.
Welcome four-time gold medalist and world record breaker @janetevans to the Orange Box Club. #WheatiesLegends pic.twitter.com/g6KsusTLy6
— Wheaties (@wheaties) April 5, 2016
Sublime @you_kiki on www. https://t.co/pC7b8gi7l5 today hmu @charlietoons pic.twitter.com/9VdS9XssEr
— Alison Webster (@alisonvwebster) April 8, 2016
The Left Seeks End of Sex-Segregation Everywhere: https://t.co/KsskfEGXKa #Leftism #LGBTyranny #Privacy #Modesty #tcot #MediaWatch
— IL Family Institute (@ProFamilyIFI) April 7, 2016
A funny thing happened on the way to the following article getting published. After two pieces appeared in the Chicago Tribune mocking and maligning those who believe sex differences matter, I submitted an op-ed in which I express an opposing view. The associate editor of the Chicago Tribune’s Commentary section, Marcia Lythcott sent me this response:More.
I would love you to offer up an opposing viewpoint but you have submitted a rant. There is no way that this piece would make those on the fence say “Hmmm, that a really interesting viewpoint to consider.” I feel like you are jabbing the opposition in the eyes nonstop. Is it possible for you to do a rewrite, one that is less doctrinaire and reader-friendly? The point is to have as many readers as possible read a piece to the bitter end. I fear that many will stop reading your submission by the third paragraph. No one wants to be screamed at.Readers can make their own judgments about the professionalism and accuracy of Lythcott’s eye-jabbing response, but before doing so, please take a few minutes to read the two pieces that prompted my op-ed, one by Rex Huppke and one by Mary Sanchez. See if their articles are less eye-jabbing, doctrinaire, ranting, and screaming than mine.
“The Left Seeks End of Sex-Segregation Everywhere”
Written by Laurie Higgins — First published on American Thinker
North Carolina’s attorney general recently announced that he would not fulfill his duty to defend a duly enacted law one of the purposes of which was to preserve the right of communities to require that restrooms correspond to biological sex rather than “gender identity.” Progressives are incensed by this type of legislation, which is proposed by conservatives in response to leftist actions in the service of their subversive beliefs about gender dysphoria. Progressives want any persons who wish they were the opposite sex to have unrestricted access to opposite-sex private areas, including restrooms, locker rooms, showers, dressing rooms and single-sex shelters. In the brave new progressive world, beliefs about the meaningfulness of objective, immutable physical embodiment as male or female must be subordinated to desires to be the opposite sex.
The left seeks to prohibit “discrimination” based on “gender identity” and “gender expression” in all contexts, including those areas that were created for the sole purpose of recognizing and accommodating objective, immutable sex differences. The prohibition of discrimination based on sex and the prohibition of discrimination based on “gender identity” and “gender expression” with regard to facilities in which private activities take place are wholly incompatible. The former permits society in some contexts to accommodate sex differences. The latter forbids society in any context from accommodating real, objective, immutable differences between men and women.
Some progressives dishonestly claim that conservatives are “obsessed” with so-called “bathroom bills,” when in reality it’s gender-dysphoric activists and their ideological allies who are obsessed with radically altering the cultural understanding of sex. They seek to mandate that sex-separated facilities, like restrooms, for private activities no longer correspond to the biological sex of humans but to the subjective feelings of humans about their sex.
Progressives ignore substantive conservative arguments. They recast arguments about the nature and meaning of sexual differentiation as bigotry; flippantly mock potential risks, particularly for girls and women; and wholly ignore the near universal understanding that separate facilities for men and women to engage in private activities exist because objective bodily differences exist and have meaning.
The concern of conservatives is not centrally about gender-dysphoric men assaulting women or girls — though that risk is not nil. The safety concern is, rather, that predators may exploit these policies, pretending to be gender-dysphoric in order to access women’s private facilities.
But even this is not the central concern. The central concern is with the meaning and value of physical embodiment from which feelings of modesty and desires for privacy derive.
In order to justify the injustice and irrationality of policies that force women and men to share private areas with persons of the opposite sex, the left resorts to unsound comparisons of gender dysphoria per se to race per se. Their error rests in the fact that while there are no intrinsic and meaningful differences between people of different races, there are intrinsic, substantive and meaningful differences between males and females, which both those who experience gender dysphoria and those who experience same-sex attraction implicitly acknowledge.
Here are some questions for progressives...
A former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State and currently a Distinguished Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, Kim R. Holmes surveys the state of liberalism in America today and finds that it is becoming its opposite—illiberalism—abandoning the precepts of open-mindedness and respect for individual rights, liberties, and the rule of law upon which the country was founded, and becoming instead an intolerant, rigidly dogmatic ideology that abhors dissent and stifles free speech. Tracing the new illiberalism historically to the radical Enlightenment, a movement that rejected the classic liberal ideas of the moderate Enlightenment that were prominent in the American Founding, Holmes argues that today’s liberalism has forsaken its American roots, incorporating instead the authoritarian, anti-clerical, and anti-capitalist prejudices of the radical and largely European Left. The result is a closing of the American liberal mind...More.
Keep reading.
A divided Board of Supervisors voted in 2014 to reinstate the cross on top of a depiction of the San Gabriel Mission, which appears on the seal among other symbols of county history. They were sued by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California and a group of religious leaders and scholars, who said placement of the cross on the seal unconstitutionally favored Christianity over other religions.
A decade earlier, the county had removed a cross from the seal — this one shown floating above the Hollywood Bowl — after being threatened with a similar lawsuit. The proponents of reinstating the cross on the seal argued it was needed to make the image of the mission historically and architecturally accurate. When the seal was redesigned in 2004, there was no cross on top of the mission, as it had gone missing during earthquake retrofitting. The cross was later restored atop the building...
We have been documenting a clear shift in tactics by anti-Israel campus activists, led by Students for Justice in Palestine joined by other groups.Keep reading (additional video there as well).
The shift is towards disruption of Israeli and pro-Israeli speakers on campus in order to create a hostile campus environment. We have reported on several such recent disruptions, including at UC-Davis, University of Chicago, University of Minnesota Law School, UT-Austin, Kings College (London), U. Windsor, University of South Florida, and anLGBTQ Shabbat Event in Chicago. Even events that are not disrupted are protested, such as the appearance of actor Michael Douglas and human rights hero Natan Sharansky at Brown University.
It happened again yesterday at San Francisco State University, where anti-Israel activists have co-opted student protests over proposed budget cuts. International Business Times reports...
More than half of the likely Republican primary voters in New York favor Donald Trump, according to a new Monmouth University poll, potentially allowing the celebrity businessman to sweep the state’s 95 delegates on April 19.
Mr. Trump won 52% support in the poll, while Ohio Gov. John Kasich got 25% and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz got 17%.
“If this result holds in every single congressional district, Trump will walk away with nearly all of New York state’s delegates,” said Patrick Murray, director of the independent Monmouth University Polling Institute.
The poll concludes that about one-third of the state’s GOP vote will come from the 16 congressional districts encompassing New York City and Long Island, though this populated region will produce most of the state’s 95 delegates. Any candidate who wins more than 50% in any district wins all three delegates, forcing Mr. Trump’s challengers to micro-target areas where they might be able to hold his support below a majority.
Most New York Republicans said they were not influenced by Mr. Trump’s recent statements that he favored punishing women who have abortions and allowing Japan and South Korea to make nuclear weapons. But 29% said those controversial statements make them less likely to support him...
As China asserts itself in its nearby seas and Russia wages war in Syria and Ukraine, it is easy to assume that Eurasia’s two great land powers are showing signs of newfound strength. But the opposite is true: increasingly, China and Russia flex their muscles not because they are powerful but because they are weak. Unlike Nazi Germany, whose power at home in the 1930s fueled its military aggression abroad, today’s revisionist powers are experiencing the reverse phenomenon. In China and Russia, it is domestic insecurity that is breeding belligerence. This marks a historical turning point: for the first time since the Berlin Wall fell, the United States finds itself in a competition among great powers.Keep reading.
Economic conditions in both China and Russia are steadily worsening. Ever since energy prices collapsed in 2014, Russia has been caught in a serious recession. China, meanwhile, has entered the early stages of what promises to be a tumultuous transition away from double-digit annual GDP growth; the stock market crashes it experienced in the summer of 2015 and January 2016 will likely prove a mere foretaste of the financial disruptions to come.
Given the likelihood of increasing economic turmoil in both countries, their internal political stability can no longer be taken for granted. In the age of social media and incessant polling, even autocrats such as Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin feel the need for public approval. Already, these leaders no doubt suffer from a profound sense of insecurity, as their homelands have long been virtually surrounded by enemies, with flatlands open to invaders. And already, they are finding it harder to exert control over their countries’ immense territories, with potential rebellions brewing in their far-flung regions.
The world has seen the kind of anarchy that ethnic, political, and sectarian conflict can cause in small and medium-size states. But the prospect of quasi anarchy in two economically struggling giants is far more worrisome. As conditions worsen at home, China and Russia are likely to increasingly export their troubles in the hope that nationalism will distract their disgruntled citizens and mobilize their populations. This type of belligerence presents an especially difficult problem for Western countries. Whereas aggression driven by domestic strength often follows a methodical, well-developed strategy—one that can be interpreted by other states, which can then react appropriately—that fueled by domestic crisis can result in daring, reactive, and impulsive behavior, which is much harder to forecast and counter.
As U.S. policymakers contemplate their response to the growing hostility of Beijing and Moscow, their first task should be to avoid needlessly provoking these extremely sensitive and domestically declining powers. That said, they cannot afford to stand idly by as China and Russia redraw international borders and maritime boundaries. The answer? Washington needs to set clear redlines, quietly communicated—and be ready to back them up with military power if necessary...
It’s time to put the “home” back into our homeland. Part prescription and part memoir, this exceptional view of America’s security concerns by a leading government Homeland Security advisor, Pulitzer Prize–finalist columnist, CNN analyst and mother of three delivers a message and a plan: security begins at home.
“Soccer Moms” are so last decade. Juliette Kayyem is a “Security Mom.” A national security expert who worked at the highest levels of government, and also a mom of three, she’s lived it all—from the fears of being a target of an anthrax hoax, to the challenges of managing the BP Oil spill, to the more intimate challenges of defeating lice in her children’s hair—and now she tells it all. Weaving her personal story of marriage and motherhood into a fast-paced account of managing the nation’s most compelling disasters, Juliette recounts the milestones that mark the path of her unpredictable, daring, funny, and ultimately relatable life....
Security Mom is an utterly modern tale about the highs and lows of having-it-all parenthood and a candid, sometimes shocking, behind-the-scenes look inside the high-stakes world of national security. Unlike so many in her field who seem invested on terrifying citizens into paralysis, Juliette’s motto has always been “don’t scare, prepare!” In her signature refreshing style, Juliette reveals how she came to learn that homeland security is not simply about tragedy and terror; it is about what we can do every day to keep each other strong and safe.
'My God. We've done this': Meet the reporters who probed the Panama Papers: When Gerard Ryle saw a photograph ... https://t.co/YAtmo8PHRR
— Social N Chicago (@SocialInChicago) April 6, 2016
When Gerard Ryle saw a photograph of thousands of protesters gathered outside Iceland's Parliament this week, a thought flickered through his mind: "My God. We've done this."Keep reading.
It was true. Iceland's prime minister stepped down from office Tuesday — the most significant fallout so far of the work by journalists collaborating with Ryle's International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.
Over the weekend, hundreds of reporters in more than 70 countries unveiled a nearly yearlong global investigation and began publishing a series of articles on millions of leaked financial documents they dubbed the "Panama Papers," a trove of information bigger than anything WikiLeaks or Edward Snowden ever obtained.
The effect has been like shining a flashlight into a series of dark rooms packed with money and lies. The documents leaked from the Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca — and examined by journalists at outlets including the Guardian, the BBC and the Miami Herald — have forced global leaders and public figures to answer for the massive amounts of wealth they had hidden in offshore tax havens, outside the scrutiny of auditors and voters.
But the story started small, with an anonymous writer's message to the German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung in early 2015: "Hello. This is John Doe. Interested in data?"
The newspaper was interested, of course. But the source said there were conditions: "My life is in danger. We will only chat over encrypted files. No meeting, ever."
"Why are you doing this?" a journalist at the newspaper asked the source, according to an account published this weekend.
"I want to make these crimes public."
The documents sent to the newspaper stretched back decades and were unwieldy. They included bank records, emails, phone numbers and photocopies of passports held by Mossack Fonseca to track its clients. But there was no road map to show what they all meant.
It was like trying to read an MRI without a doctor.
Seeking help, the Sueddeutsche Zeitung reached out to Ryle's consortium, a global network of journalists that had handled document leaks from the HSBC bank and the tiny European nation of Luxembourg.
The network is overseen by the Washington-based Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit known for its muckraking journalism in the United States. The two share offices on different floors of the same building...
Depending on the final outcome, Trump will need to capture close to 60% of the remaining delegates to clinch the nomination without a convention fight, said David Wasserman, who is tracking the GOP race for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. “Right now,” Wasserman said, “it looks like a 50-50 chance he gets there.”And see Politico, "Wisconsin meltdown puts Trump on track for convention fight."
Heading into the Wisconsin primary Trump suffered one of the rockiest stretches of his campaign, and that raised the hopes of opponents — including many rallying behind Cruz grudgingly as part of a stop-Trump effort — that the New York businessman's controversies may have finally caught up with him.
Exit polls found a strong aversion to the GOP front-runner, who heads to much friendlier territory Wednesday, starting with a rally on New York's Long Island.
Nearly 4 in 10 of the Republican voters interviewed Tuesday said they would be scared of what Trump would do if elected president, much higher than the levels of concern expressed about Cruz or Kasich.
About 6 in 10 said they were excited or optimistic about a Cruz presidency, and about half said that about Kasich, compared with just over 4 in 10 for Trump.
Additionally, the level of discontent with Washington and the percentage of voters favoring a political outsider for president, while considerable, was much lower than in states where Trump ran strongly.
Wisconsin at first seemed tailored to Trump's advantage. The state has a large population of working-class white voters and allows independents to cast ballots in the GOP primary; both groups have undergirded Trump's political success across the country.
Wisconsin is also more secular and less ideological than states where Cruz, running as a staunch social conservative, has performed well.
But almost immediately Trump ran into difficulties, owing to a series of tactical miscues.
He criticized the state's two most popular Republicans, Gov. Scott Walker, a onetime presidential rival, and House Speaker Paul D. Ryan, and turned off many by insulting the looks of Cruz's wife, Heidi, in a posting on social media.
“That stung him badly,” said Rep. Reid Ribble, who represents Appleton and Green Bay in Congress and endorsed Cruz days ahead of the primary. “There's a real strong sense of family. The idea that somebody would attack anybody's wife, based on just physical appearance, was just so insulting to the typical father, to the typical husband and to the typical woman.”
Trump also faced a relentless battering from Wisconsin's conservative talk radio hosts, a key ally in Walker's pitched battles against organized labor and the political left.
Walker endorsed Cruz and, in effect, turned the primary into a referendum on his performance, telling Republicans to support the senator over Trump “if you liked what we've done” in Wisconsin.
Trump's difficulties were compounded by a series of controversies, including the arrest of his campaign manager on allegations of manhandling a reporter in Florida, and a statement — which Trump quickly revised — that the candidate would support punishing women who have an abortion if the procedure were banned.
Some voters, like Pam Gruettner, said they had backed Trump at first, only to be turned off by his behavior and outlandish statements, especially in the raucous GOP debates.
“I wanted someone to kick butt and get stuff done in the White House,” said Gruettner, a retired saleswoman, pausing after she cast her ballot for Cruz in Waukesha, a conservative stronghold. “I think his ego got the best of him.”
For some, though, Trump's penchant for unpredictability and blithe disregard for most social and political niceties were precisely the reason to support him.
“Trump is the right person to put in here, because we need somebody who everyone thinks is nuts,” said Tom Podziemski, 67, who cast his ballot in Greenfield, a Milwaukee suburb. “Cruz is just saying what the establishment wants him to say. He's a puppet.”
Cruz ran harder in Wisconsin than any state since Iowa, where he won the first 2016 contest. He faced a two-front battle, against Trump as well as Kasich, who tried to pick off a handful of delegates in friendly pockets of the state, including the university town of Madison.
For Trump, the good news is the balloting now moves to less hostile political terrain, starting in two weeks with a primary in his home state of New York, where he is an overwhelming favorite to capture a substantial chunk of its 95 delegates.
A string of contests follows on April 26 in Pennsylvania and several Northeastern and mid-Atlantic states, where GOP voters tend to be less religious and conservative, which could also play to Trump's advantage...
Mike Scioscia sends you to the dictionary after the Angels 6-1 loss. https://t.co/vBQbjzKkFA
— Jeff Fletcher (@JeffFletcherOCR) April 6, 2016
ANAHEIM – The best thing you can say about the Angels’ season-opening two losses is that they are only two losses.More.
“It doesn’t count as three losses because you gave up a bunch of runs,” Manager Mike Scioscia said after his team dropped a 6-1 game to the Chicago Cubs on Tuesday night.
In their first two games, including a 9-0 loss on opening day Monday, the Angels have been outscored by 14 runs. That’s the worst two-game start in franchise history.
Again, though, just two games. Just a blink of an eye in a season.
“If you look up the definition of a small sample in the dictionary,” Scioscia said, “you’re going to find these two games are a small sample.”
To prove the point, the Angels’ previous worst two-game start came in 2014, when they were outscored by 12 runs in the first two games against the Seattle Mariners. They came back to win a major-league best 98 of their last 160 games that season.
That bit of meaningless trivia aside, the Angels certainly didn’t leave themselves much to feel good about heading into the season’s first off day...
In her Twitter Q&A, @TriciaLockwood made a reference to her essay that we decided to delete. https://t.co/TW1FolejCZ pic.twitter.com/j9DflPWLYZ
— New Republic (@NewRepublic) April 5, 2016
Imagine the enormous amount of trust it must require for an established journalistic institution to allow me to hijack their twitter account
— Patricia Lockwood (@TriciaLockwood) April 5, 2016
god forgive me on this day for using an unironic hashtag
— Patricia Lockwood (@TriciaLockwood) April 5, 2016
well that was fun while it lasted
— Patricia Lockwood (@TriciaLockwood) April 5, 2016
love means never having to say you're making a reference to your essay https://t.co/jk8PRNAgf9
— Patricia Lockwood (@TriciaLockwood) April 5, 2016
A 4-year-old Aurora girl was kicked out of a preschool last month when her parents raised questions about books read in her class, including ones that told the stories about same-sex couples and worms unsure about their gender.Sickening.
Her mother, R.B. Sinclair, sees it as sex education and wanted to opt her daughter out of those discussions.
Instead, school officials from Montview Community Preschool & Kindergarten in Aurora — run as a private, parent cooperative — explained the stories were part of the school's anti-bias curriculum, and because the discussions are embedded through the day, they told her that opting out was not possible.
She's known for playing a nerdy teen on ABC's Modern Family.More.
But Ariel Winter was far from her geeky TV persona as she frolicked on the beach in the Bahamas last week.
The 18-year-old put her incredible bikini body on display in a stringy white two-piece with gold chains clasping her bottoms together...
ICYMI: Jake Arrieta spoiled Angels opening night. https://t.co/FFwXCfhgte— Jeff Fletcher (@JeffFletcherOCR) April 5, 2016
ANAHEIM -- After suffering their worst opening day loss Monday, the Angels are set to "turn the page," to use one of Mike Scioscia's favorite phrases, with the second and final game of the series against the Chicago Cubs on Tuesday.The game's about to start as this post goes live.
It's a battle of lefties, with the Angels' Andrew Heaney facing the Cubs' Jon Lester.
Lester hasn't fared that well at Angel Stadium, posting a 4.76 ERA here in five starts. Heaney has never faced the Cubs.
The Angels are using their expected lineup against a lefty, with Craig Gentry starting in left in place of Daniel Nava. In spring training, it looked as if Mike Scioscia may have dropped Gentry in the lineup -- rather than just swapping him straight into Nava's No. 2 spot -- but Gentry is hitting second...
