Showing posts with label Stephen C. Webster. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Stephen C. Webster. Show all posts

The Republican Party chairman for the state of Illinois resigned on Tuesday, telling CNN that he’d lost the party’s support after endorsing marriage equality earlier this year.


“I’ve been going at it hard for six years, I need to focus on my family, and obviously I had lost the support of the state Central Committee because of my position on gay marriage,” Pat Brady reportedly said. Brady’s wife is also suffering from cancer.


His announcement comes just one month after Sen. Mark Kirk (R-IL) became the second Republican senator to endorse marriage equality, amid a debate in the general assembly on whether to allow same sex marriage in the state. That bill appears to be on the brink of passage in the House, and Gov. Pat Quinn (D) has indicated that he will sign it.


Brady, who’s run the Illinois GOP since 2009, has been trying to stave off party critics who’ve sought to have him removed ever since he announced his support for marriage equality. Attempts to do just that in February and April failed, but last month the GOP’s state central committee approved a plan to search for a successor. Brady’s resignation was all but certain after that.


“In stepping down, I want to express thanks to my wife, Julie and our four children,” he wrote in his resignation letter, which did not mention marriage equality. “Although the role will change, I will continue to be active in Illinois and national politics in a variety of capacities, including organizations supporting our candidates in the upcoming gubernatorial and congressional races,” he added.


This video is from WGN-TV, published Tuesday, May 7, 2013.






via The Raw Story http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/05/07/illinois-gop-chairman-claims-resignation-due-to-his-position-on-gay-marriage/
09:55

Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) said Sunday that he believes rejecting LGBT people is similar to fighting slavery during the pre-Civil War era.


Appearing on the Family Research Council‘s program “Stand With Scouts Sunday,” the arch conservative governor urged the Boy Scouts to stand strong against any impulse to “tear apart” the organization’s values and replace them with the “flavor of the month.”


“The fact is, this is a private organization,” Perry said of the Boy Scouts. “Their values and principles have worked for a century now. And for pop culture to come in and try to tear that up, which happens to be the flavor of the month so to speak, and to tear apart one of the great organizations that has served millions of young men, helped them become men and great fathers, that is just not appropriate and I hope the American people will stand up and say, ‘Not on my watch.’”


The Boy Scouts have in recent years been caught in the crossfire over LGBT equality, singled out for their policy of banning openly gay people from becoming members or scout leaders. The group is in the process of dropping that ban, but the official policy decision hinges on a vote coming up this month at the scouts’ National Executive Board.


Perry added that the greatest governor in Texas’s history, Gov. Sam Houston, opposed slavery and opposed leaving the union in the pre-Civil War era. “That’s the type of principled leadership, that’s the type of courage, that I hope people across this country, on this issue of scouts and keeping the Boy Scouts the organization it is today, [will have],” he said.


“And if we change and become more like pop culture, young men will be not as well served,” he concluded. “America will not be as well served, and Boy Scouts will start on a decline that I don’t think will serve this country well as we go into the future.”


Although Texas is one of 29 states where employers can legally discriminate against and even fire workers for being gay, LGBT advocacy group Equality Texas found in a poll taken earlier this year that 65.7 percent of Texas voters favor legalization of civil unions and domestic partnerships, while 47.9 percent support legalizing full marriage equality.


This video is from the Family Research Council, published Sunday, May 5, 2013 and snipped by Right Wing Watch.







via The Raw Story http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/05/06/rick-perry-compares-rejecting-lgbt-people-to-fighting-slavery/
09:08

A series of lab tests conducted by Consumer Reports finds that most ground turkey tested was contaminated by the kinds of fecal bacteria that can sicken humans who eat it.


A full 69 percent of samples contained enterococcus bacteria, while 60 percent had escherichia coli, both of which are associated with fecal contamination. Most of the contaminated samples contained antibiotic resistant bacteria, too — a growing concern for major factory farms where birds are fed drugs to keep diseases from spreading.


The consumer watchdog criticized the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) standards for salmonella, particularly for facilities where turkey is processed.


Citing multiple turkey recalls issued by Cargill Meat Solutions Corp. in 2011 in response to a salmonella outbreak that sickened over 130 people, the magazine noted that a package of turkey from Cargill’s facility in Springdale tested positive for antibiotic-resistant salmonella more than a year after the recalls.


Turkey that was raised “organic” or not given antibiotics, they found, generally had less bacterial contamination.


Thankfully, avoiding poop-laced turkey burgers isn’t that difficult. Consumer Reports recommends buying turkey labeled “organic” or “no antibiotics,” and making sure it cooks all the way through by using a meat thermometer.


The USDA also recommends the use of a meat thermometer particularly with ground turkey, which can look pinkish and under-cooked due to flavorings used by distributors.

——


Photo: Shutterstock.com.






via The Raw Story http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/05/02/lab-tests-most-ground-turkey-has-poop-in-it/
09:20

Gentlemen, put down the razors. Put them down and back away. For once, there is good news about facial hair.


A study in the May edition of the journal Evolution & Human Behavior finds that, among a test group of 351 women and 177 heterosexual men shown a series of photos of guys at four stages of bearding — clean-shaven, light stubble, heavy stubble and fully beaded — images showing heavy stubble were perceived to be the most attractive.


That’s not the only good news for facial hair aficionados in this study, either.


Researchers at the University of New South Wales also looked at factors that could impact perception, like fertility and the use of hormonal birth control, and found found that women perceive facial hair to be most attractive during the most fertile days of their menstrual cycle.


It’s not all bad news for the clean-shaven, however. Dudes with no facial hair at all generally rated on par with fully bearded men, researchers noted.


However, the more masculine-looking mane still has an advantage, they found. Full-bearded men “may be perceived as better fathers who could protect and invest in offspring,” researchers wrote.


Although the public stigma of whiskers remains — famously headlined by The New York Times as: “Got a Beard? Don’t Bother to Run” — at least the bristly have this much to console them: No matter how you look at this study’s results, for once it’s advantage, beard.


The folks at the recently-announced Bearded Entrepreneurs for the Advancement of a Responsible Democracy PAC (BEARD PAC) are sure to be thrilled.

——


Photo: Shutterstock.com.






via The Raw Story http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/04/30/study-finds-women-perceive-men-with-heavy-stubble-most-attractive/
09:06

A message sent to police in Montgomery County, Virginia on Saturday caused a SWAT team to descend upon a home owned by CNN host Wolf Blitzer, under the impression that someone at the residence had just been shot.


The report turned out to not be true, according to The Washington Post , which noted that Blitzer was not home at the time. Police were already suspicious of the message when they arrived on the scene, the Post noted, having received a text message sent through a phone provider’s emergency relay service.


The case is yet another instance of the growing trend known as “swatting,” where authorities are called to someone’s home under false pretenses. Other recent notable victims of swatting include Fox News contributor Erik Erickson, television personality Ryan Seacrest and talk show host Russell Brand, along with former Washington Post tech columnist Brian Krebs.


Police said they are still trying to determine who sent the message about a shooting at Blitzer’s home. “Wolf is fine,” a CNN spokesperson reportedly said. “That’s what matters most.”






via The Raw Story http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/04/29/swat-team-sent-to-home-of-cnns-wolf-blitzer/
09:35

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is considering a rule that could stem the tide of shadowy corporate money into political advocacy groups, plugging a hole in campaign finance law blown open by the Supreme Court’s controversial decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission .


The rule, supported by a broad coalition of advocacy groups, pension funds, academics and more than 70 members of Congress, surprisingly hinges upon a portion of the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United, in which Justice Anthony Kennedy says that while the government cannot ban speech ahead of elections based upon corporate identity, it does have a compelling interest in protecting shareholders from unknowingly funding political speech whenever it may occur.


“There is, furthermore, little evidence of abuse that cannot be corrected by shareholders ‘through the procedures of corporate democracy,’” Kennedy wrote, citing corporate free speech precedent set by the court’s 1978 ruling in First Nat’l Bank of Boston v. Bellotti .


As a result, activists are pushing the SEC to consider a rule that would force all publicly traded companies to disclose their political spending to shareholders, forcing hundreds of millions of secretly-spent dollars out into the open. A petition on the agency’s website has garnered nearly half a million signatures and comments, which The New York Times notes is vastly more public comments than any other rule has received in the agency’s history.


Republicans in Congress are already gearing up to fight back, however: The Times adds that House GOP members introduced legislation last week that would tie the agency’s hands when it comes to political donations. Republican-aligned special interest groups are also preparing their rhetorical and financial strategies, and none other than Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) is already demanding the agency turn over documents related to discussions on the rule.


The decision will ultimately fall to new SEC chair Mary Jo White, a Democrat who officially took office on April 10. The SEC’s board is split between two Democrats and two Republicans, with the sitting administration selecting the chair.


The Times added that SEC officials say they could formally propose the rule by the end of April, setting up an early test of White’s leadership in the midst of what could be an onslaught of political lobbying for and against the rule.

——


Photo: Shutterstock.com, all rights rights reserved.






via The Raw Story http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/04/24/sec-may-force-wall-street-to-disclose-all-corporate-political-donations/
09:05

A Nevada state senator announced to his colleagues on Monday evening that he is gay, in comments delivered ahead of a key vote to repeal the state’s ban on same sex marriage.


“I’m black. I’m gay,” Sen. Kelvin Atkinson (D) said, in a quote caught by The Las Vegas Sun . “I know this is the first time many of you have heard me say that I am a black, gay male.”


He reportedly added: “If this [bill] hurts your marriage, then your marriage was in trouble in the first place.”


The vote passed 12-9, splitting along party lines with a single Republican, Sen. Ben Keickhefer, breaking ranks to join them. The Sun noted that Keickhefer did not utter a single word during the debate period.


The bill begins the process of repealing the state’s same sex marriage ban and implementing universal marriage rights, regardless of gender. It still has to be passed by the House, where Democrats hold a strong majority, and then again by both chambers in 2015. If all three of those future votes succeed, the measure will appear on the state’s 2016 ballot, putting the question of equality to the state’s voters.


A survey taken in February (PDF) by the Retail Association of Nevada found that 54 percent of the state’s voters support repealing Nevada’s same sex marriage ban.

——


Photo: Atkinson for Nevada State Senate.






via The Raw Story http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/04/23/nevada-state-senator-comes-out-during-marriage-equality-vote/
09:05

Authorities say they have photos of two men who are being sought in connection to the Boston marathon bombing, but they’re not the same two men on the cover of Thursday’s New York Post , which previously mis-reported that police had a Saudi national in custody as a suspect.


The Post explained that the photo comes from images police are circulating “in an attempt to identify the individuals highlighted therein,” but the front page headline exclaims: “BAG MEN, Feds seek these two pictured at Boston Marathon.”


Sluths on Reddit, however, have apparently settled the matter, discovering the Facebook page of one of the men and individuals who claim to know the other, and neither appears to be the mysterious bombers.


The Post‘s latest comes immediately following a report of a Saudi national the paper said was being held as a “suspect” in the bombing. The man turned out to be a witness who was questioned about what he saw, and Boston police subsequently denied the report.


Despite the apparent confusion, the Post stuck by its story, leading to widespread reports by CBS News, CNN and other outlets that a Middle Eastern suspect was in custody. Those reports were later walked back.


Authorities are expected to release an image of two people of interest later Thursday.






via The Raw Story http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/04/18/new-york-post-repeatedly-misidentifies-boston-suspects/
08:21

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) said at a breakfast meeting Wednesday morning that he’s considering a run for the White House in 2016.


“We’re considering it and won’t make a decision before 2014,” he told an audience at The Christian Science Monitor‘s breakfast series, according to quotes published in The Hill.


Paul added that his early announcement of interest in a race still nearly four years off will ensure he’s “part of the national debate.”


“Being considered is something that allows me to have a larger microphone,” he said.


The libertarian-leaning senator is the first federally elected Republican to openly declare interest in the 2016 contest during a time when most of his colleagues want to be as non-specific about their ambitions as possible.


That might have something to do with Paul’s father, the retired Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX), who repeatedly ran for the Republican nomination to the presidency with little success.


Despite his numerous failed runs, Paul inspired a near-fanatical following that disrupted the 2012 Republican convention and continues to support his son.


Paul told the Monitor‘s breakfast crowd that he feels President Barack Obama has “not shown much leadership” on Republican causes like slashing Social Security payments and cutting Medicare costs, adding that he would make dramatic changes to the nation’s beloved social safety net programs.


He also recently told an audience of mostly African-American college students that being upset about Republican voter suppression efforts “demeans” the civil rights movement.

——


Photo: Flickr user Gage Skidmore.






via The Raw Story http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/04/17/rand-paul-confirms-interest-in-white-house-run/
09:06

A nonpartisan group led by a former top Bush administration official concluded a two-year review on Tuesday that finds the former president and his top advisers knowingly ordered interrogation techniques that U.S. officials have previously referred to as torture.


“After conducting our own two-year investigation, weighing the credibility of all sources and studying the current public record, we have come to the regrettable, but unavoidable, conclusion that the United States did indeed engage in conduct that is clearly torture,” former Rep. Asa Hutchinson (R-AR), who served as undersecretary of the Department of Homeland Security during the Bush administration, said in an advisory.


The 577-page review, put together by the advocacy group The Constitution Project, includes interviews with dozens of people who have first-hand knowledge of the discussions about interrogation techniques and their implementation. Although Bush administration loyalists said at the time that “enhanced interrogation tactics” like stress positions, waterboarding, mock executions, sensory deprivation and prolonged diapering were not torture, this report aims to specifically and finally emphasize that these activities meet the clinical definition of “torture.”


“As long as the debate continues, so too does the possibility that the United States could again engage in torture,” the report says, according to The New York Times , which received an advance copy.


Both President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have admitted in public that they specifically ordered the use of enhanced interrogation tactics. Both men used the same words several years apart, saying they “damn right” ordered such abuse. Cheney has since lobbied the Obama administration to embrace the tactic, and insisted he would order it again if given the chance. They have continued to say that the tactics were legal thanks to preclearance by Department of Justice attorneys, one of whom once compared waterboarding a prisoner to breaking the speed limit and said that the president could theoretically order a child’s testicles to be crushed without violating any law.


“We went to a lot of trouble to find out what we could do, how far we could go, what was legal and so forth,” Cheney said in 2011. “Out of that emerged what we called enhanced interrogation. It worked. It provided some absolutely vital pieces of intelligence. It was a good program. It was a legal program. It was not torture. I would strongly recommend we continue it.”


The Obama administration has consistently denied that the use of torture led to information that helped them find and assassinate al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, as many torture proponents suggest.


“What sets the United States apart as a world leader, in addition to our military might, are our values and respect for the rule of law. All the available evidence led us to conclude that, for many of these detainees, the U.S. violated both international law and treaties and our own laws, greatly diminishing America’s ability to forge important alliances around the world,” former Rep. James R. Jones (D-OK) added in the group’s advisory.


The report also notes dozens of instances in which U.S. officials and U.S courts treated similar tactics as torture when applied to U.S. persons, and urges the Obama administration to declassify a 6,000-page Senate report on the extent of torture’s use during the Bush years.


“This has not been an easy inquiry for me, because I know many of the players,” Hutchinson told The New York Times. “But I just think we learn from history. It’s incredibly important to have an accurate account not just of what happened but of how decisions were made.”


All criminal investigations into the Bush torture program have been called off by the Obama administration.

——


Photo: AFP.






via The Raw Story http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/04/16/nonpartisan-review-concludes-bush-knowingly-ordered-torture/
08:21

A breakthrough cellular engineering process detailed in the latest edition of the journal Nature Biotechnology holds promise for people who suffer from multiple sclerosis and cerebral palsy.


Researchers explained that a new process allows them to take common skin cells and engineer them to morph into myelinating brain cells that help protect the nervous system and keep it function properly.


In diseases like multiple sclerosis, the myelin layer of cells that coat nerves gets destroyed, and scientists have worked for years trying to figure out how to make it regenerate.


Now, it looks like researchers at Ohio’s Case Western Reserve University have figured out how to do just that in rats, and they’re aiming to replicate their results with human cells next.


All it took was a little “cellular alchemy,” study author Paul Tesar explained in an advisory. “We are taking a readily accessible and abundant cell and completely switching its identity to become a highly valuable cell for therapy.”


The breakthrough will also alleviate the concerns of the anti-abortion community, in that it removes the need to obtain myelinating cells from fetal tissue.


“The progression of stem cell biology is providing opportunities for clinical translation that a decade ago would not have been possible,” Stanton Gerson, director of the National Center for Regenerative Medicine, added in the school’s announcement. “It is a real breakthrough.”

——


Photo: Shutterstock.com, all rights reserved.






via The Raw Story http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/04/15/breakthrough-process-turns-skin-cells-into-protective-brain-cells/
09:05

When President Barack Obama directed the Centers for Disease Control to take up studies on gun violence, it represented an about face for the agency, but few expected this problem: there aren’t enough researchers in the whole country who specialize in the topic to even get new studies off the ground.


That’s according to Dr. Garen Wintemute, a gun researcher at the University of California Davis, who spoke to ABC’s “20/20″ this week. Wintemute said the problem is so severe, there’s fewer than 15 people nation-wide applying scientific discipline to the study of gun violence.


The shortage came about starting in 1997, when Congress, reacting to National Rifle Association lobbyists, directed the CDC to stop studying gun violence altogether. That language was updated six years later to tighten the ban, and then again in 2012, when Republicans passed language that extends the ban to all agencies in the Department of Health and Human Services.


As a result, virtually everyone who specialized in studying gun violence went into other fields, Wintemute said. “I don’t think there’s anyone at the CDC who has done significant work in this area in a decade,” he added.


Studies conducted by the CDC prior to 1997 found that having a firearm in one’s home increased the chance of unexpectedly being killed by gunfire by about 300 percent. The risk of suicides shot up even higher, rising by roughly 500 percent.

——


Photo: Shutterstock.com.






via The Raw Story http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/04/10/nras-ban-on-gun-violence-research-created-severe-shortage-of-experts-in-field/
07:50

In a wide-ranging conversation Monday night at the Clinton Global Initiative University in St. Louis, Comedy Central host Stephen Colbert jokingly suggested that the former president should team up with Ted Talks and form “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Initiative.”


The quip came after President Bill Clinton explained his views on the nature of selfishness, saying people don’t realize that being selfless is a form of selfishness, “if you understand how the world works.”


“The more you reduce poverty overseas, the more you increase education and improve health care and empower women and girls, the more you will have growth overseas, the more you will have global growth, the better off Americans will be,” he said. “Every time you cut off somebody’s opportunity, you shrink your own horizons.”


Later in the interview, which absorbed Colbert’s entire program Monday night, Clinton said he enjoys spending more time on the details of charity work now that he’s not in the White House, because he feels it can be sometimes even more effective than even the broad powers of the presidency.


Colbert seemed unmoved. “That sounds very good, but I listen to a lot of right wing radio, and I know that there’s nothing that you and Mrs. Clinton do that’s not got some angle,” he said. “You’re both always hungry for power. So what is the grift here in helping people? What’s your secret plan here?”


“It’s totally selfish,” Clinton said again. “I do it because I’m good at it and I’m not good enough to play golf on the senior tour, and I don’t play my saxophone as much as I used to so I don’t like to do it in public. It makes me happy. I do it because, I think after the life I’ve been given by the American people, I’d be kind of a slug if I didn’t do it.”


“Have you done Ted Talks?” Colbert asked later.


“I have, and I like them,” Clinton said.


“Have you ever thought of having the Clinton Global Initiative and Ted Talks team up to make Bill and Ted’s Excellent Initiative? Think about it?


“That’s a wonderful idea,” the president replied.


These videos are from “The Colbert Report,” aired Monday, April 8, 2013.


Part 1:



Part 2:



Part 3:







via The Raw Story http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/04/09/colbert-to-clinton-team-up-with-ted-talks-for-bill-and-teds-excellent-initiative/
08:35

New laws in Michigan that took effect Monday requires doctors who recommend medical marijuana to conduct a full patient examination, complete with an face-to-face evaluation, a review of the person’s medical history, other prescription medications and a follow-up visit to ensure the drug is working.


The laws also require that the state’s roughly 27,000 licensed caregivers who produce medical marijuana have criminal histories that are free of any felony or assault charges — an enhancement of the prior standard which barred people who’ve committed drug felonies. Both measures were approved by a large majority of voters last November, ABC affiliate WXYZ-TV noted.


On the plus side for the state’s 131,000 registered medical marijuana users, the new law also extends their license term from one year to two, ensuring those who follow the proper guidelines to procure their medicine will not be required to go through the process again so soon.


The Michigan Supreme Court ruled in February that the buying and selling of marijuana in storefront locations is not permitted by the state’s medical marijuana law, which was more narrowly designed to give patients access to the drug, not to create a boutique retail industry.


Despite the ruling, which gave local authorities the power to shut down dispensaries, many remain open. A bill pending Michigan lawmakers seeks to legalize the shops, but it’s not clear if there’s support for that in the Republican-dominated legislature.


This video is from ABC affiliate WXYZ-TV in Michigan, aired Monday, April 1, 2013.




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Photo: Shutterstock.com.






via The Raw Story http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/04/01/new-michigan-law-further-restricts-availability-of-medical-marijuana/
07:35

It takes a rare piece of satire to get under the skin of the professional talker class on Fox News and right-wing radio, but comedian Jim Carrey’s anti-gun music video has done just that, and conservatives like Ann Coulter, Greg Gutfeld and Laura Ingraham can’t help but publicize it.


“He is probably the most pathetic tool on the face of the earth, and I hope his career is dead, and I hope he ends up sleeping in a car the way his life began,” Gutfeld said on Monday’s episode of “The Five.” “This video only made me want to go out and buy a gun. He thinks this is biting satire, going after rural America and a dead man?”


He went on to chastise Carrey for penning an essay in 2009 advocating against early childhood vaccinations, saying that publicizing his viewpoint “has killed more people than all the rifles combined,” and calling him “a little, sad freak.”


Ingraham told the hosts of “Fox & Friends” Tuesday morning that she felt Carrey’s video was really just a “mask” for his “cold, dead career” following a chilly box office reception for his latest film, “The Incredible Burt Wonderstone.”


“Carrey has not been funny since, I dunno, ‘The Truman Show’?” she said. “‘Ace Ventura: Pet Detective,’ ‘Dumb and Dumber.’ He was gonna be in the sequel, what happened there? He’s not going to be in the sequel there, which I think is not disappointing to many people.”


Over on “Hannity” the night prior, Republican author Ann Coulter was similarly apoplectic. “I note that he only said his bodyguards don’t have 100-round magazines,” she said. “Who has a 100-round magazine? I don’t really see the point of banning them if they jam. A 100-round magazine would be as tall as I am!” (Note: A 100-round magazine compatible with M4 and AR-15 assault rifles is approximately 12.2 inches long.)


She added that “it’s very strange [the government] will not answer questions” about recent stories popularized by conspiracy theorists claiming federal agencies are stockpiling ammunition for nefarious purposes. “Given that what we know about ‘Fast and Furious’ and how they will create incidents… you do sort of wonder, are they just refusing to answer questions about these gun buys to try to induce paranoid responses from right-wingers?”


“Please note, again, they can have guns and we can’t,” Coulter said. “That’s the only question with gun control.”


Carrey, for his part, is bound to be enjoying the newfound platform in conservative media despite the criticism, which he failed to provoke with his last appearance on “Funny or Die” in 2010, in a sketch which featured him playing President Ronald Reagan.


“Wow!” Carrey tweeted early Tuesday morning. “I haven’t bn on here since 10:15am.14hrs n u guys r still arguing without me.I’m gonna go 2 bed now bt don’t let that stop you! YAWN”


These videos are from The Fox News Channel, aired March 25-26, 2013. Embeds courtesy of Mediaite.


Watch the latest video at video.foxnews.com






via The Raw Story http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/03/26/conservatives-flip-out-over-jim-carreys-anti-gun-music-video/
08:05

A third student has been charged in the Torrington High School sexual assault investigation, and police say even more charges could be on the way.


The third student is a 17 year old male who cannot be named due to his age, according to Fox affiliate WTIC-TV in Hardford, Connecticut. His charges follow the arrests of Edgar Gonzalez and Joan Toribio, two 18-year-old football players who are accused of sexually assaulting two 13-year-old girls in February, in a case that ultimately led to the girls being harassed by fellow students.


Gonzales and Toribio were both arrested in February. Police and school officials announced the arrests, along with the charges for the unnamed third individual, at a media briefing on Wednesday.


Speaking to reporters, Lt. Michael Emanuel cautioned that there may yet be more arrests forthcoming. “It’s very complex, but [the case is] under control,” he said, according to The Hartford Courant . “I’m not minimizing this.”


He added that the incident is being investigated as sexual assault because of the age difference between the suspects and victims. “It was consensual in the sense that it was not an attack but not consensual in the eyes of the law,” Emanuel reportedly said.


Both victims reportedly faced harassment by fellow students on social media and at school following the football players’ arrests, according to local media reports. In particular, The Register Citizen found posts on social media showing that the girls were harassed by “dozens” of athletes and students at the school.


The charges come in the shadow of the Steubenville rape case, which garnered national media attention after hackers publicized shocking video of a teen revealing details about how two football players at the Ohio school drugged and raped a 16-year-old girl at a party as others watched and cheered them on. The two teens, 17-year-old Trent Mays and 16-year-old Ma’lik Richmond, were tried as juveniles and found guilty earlier this month.


This video is from WTIC-TV, aired Thursday, March 21, 2013.






via The Raw Story http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/03/22/third-teen-charged-in-torrington-high-school-sexual-assault-investigation/
07:36

When Politico asked on Wednesday if Georgia Sen. Saxby Chambliss, a staunch anti-LGBT Republican, had changed his views on same sex marriage in light of increasing support nationwide, he responded, “I’m not gay. So I’m not going to marry one.”


The quote was featured along with several other Republican senators’ take on same sex marriage in the wake of Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) coming out in favor of equality, much to the dismay of many conservatives.


The response Chambliss gave to Politico doesn’t shed much light on how deep his views run, but he did support a proposed constitutional amendment in 2008 to forever ban LGBT people from getting married, and he voted against repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” LGBT advocacy group The Human Rights Campaign has also consistently given his voting record a zero percent rating.


The Georgia Republican was especially criticized by equality activists in 2010 when a post to the LGBT-friendly website Joe My God reading “All fags must die” was traced back to his office. Chambliss confirmed in a statement that the comment was posted by someone in his office, but was not sure who.


The longtime member of Congress and Senator since 2003 said earlier this year that he will be retiring in 2014. It’s not clear who the frontrunners are to replace him, but speculation is swirling around possible runs by former Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue (R) or Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA), among others.

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Photo: Sen. Saxby Chambliss’s “assorted pictures” gallery.






via The Raw Story http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/03/21/gop-sen-chambliss-exclaims-im-not-gay-so-im-not-going-to-marry-one/
07:36

President Barack Obama is putting the finishing touches on a deal to strip the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of its control over the nation’s drone aircraft, putting that offensive military capability in the hands of the Department of Defense, The Daily Beast reported Wednesday.


Citing three unnamed senior officials as his source, reporter Daniel Klaidman explained that the transition would take place over the course of a year, during which time the CIA would still be involved in marking targets for drone strikes and working alongside their Department of Defense counterparts.


The move has long been supported by Obama’s new CIA chief, John Brennan, one of the drone program’s architects. Klaidman noted that the move is a part of Brennan’s plans to establish a more rigid legal framework for carrying out targeted killings overseas and shrink the CIA’s purview to gathering and analyzing intelligence, leaving the military work to the actual military.


It’s not clear whether this move will endow the drone program with greater transparency, which Obama promised in his 2012 State of the Union address. Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates once proposed the establishment of secret courts to oversee requests to authorize targeted killing operations, but it’s not clear if that will materialize.


What will change, however, is the legal basis for the program, shifting authorization from laws pertaining to intelligence onto laws governing use of military force. For years the CIA has refused to even acknowledge that it has anything to do with the drone program, even though Obama, Brennan and former CIA director Leon Panetta have made statements about it in public.


The Washington D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Friday that, because of those public statements, the CIA must disclose at least some basic information about the program, like whether the agency is even “interested” in it or not. The Department of Defense, on the other hand, would likely be subject to greater transparency when it comes to information requests on how it uses drones and to what effect.


The Bureau of Investigative Journalism estimates that more than 4,600 people, 216 of them children, have been killed by drone strikes in three countries the U.S. is not actually occupying: Yemen, Pakistan and Somalia. A United Nations committee also said in February that “hundreds” of children have been killed by U.S. drone strikes since 2008. Furthermore, a report published last September (PDF) by researchers at New York University and Stanford found that for every one known terrorist killed in a drone strike, 50 civilians also perished.


Despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) insisted at a recent Senate Intelligence Committee hearing that the number of annual civilian casualties from drone strikes is “in the single digits.”






via The Raw Story http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/03/20/obama-stripping-cia-of-drone-powers-report/
07:21

The mercenary group formerly known as Blackwater worked as a “virtual extension of the CIA,” the company’s former CEO revealed to Daily Beast reporter Eli Lake, who obtained court documents showing the company argued as much when its executives were facing prosecution.


It has long been known that Blackwater, now called Academi, worked with the Central Intelligence Agency, and there were even some pretty straightforward clues that former Blackwater CEO Erik Prince was an agency asset. That relationship is strongly clarified by the company’s own legal defense in a three-year prosecution that collapsed in February, going from having the potential to jail several of the company’s executives to wrapping up with a guilty plea from two men punishable by probation, house arrest and a $5,000 fine.


“Blackwater’s work with the CIA began when we provided specialized instructors and facilities that the Agency lacked,” Prince told Lake. “In the years that followed, the company became a virtual extension of the CIA because we were asked time and again to carry out dangerous missions, which the Agency either could not or would not do in-house.”


Prince added that for many missions he did not even charge the CIA, saying his work at the company came not out of a desire for enrichment, but because “in the wake of 9/11, I felt it my patriotic duty.”


“[The] CIA routinely used Blackwater in missions throughout the world,” the company’s attorneys explain in defense filings. “These efforts were made under written and unwritten contracts and through informal requests. On many occasions the CIA paid Blackwater nothing for its assistance. Blackwater also employed CIA officers and agents, and provided cover to CIA agents and officers operating in covert and clandestine assignments. In many respects, Blackwater, or at least portions of Blackwater, was an extension of the CIA.”


Lake added that sealed testimony described to him adds the caveats that the CIA had its own direct phone line, along with training and command facilities, in Blackwater’s North Carolina headquarters.


The company came to notoriety over a 2007 massacre in Baghdad that left 17 people dead, including unarmed women and children. Blackwater was banned from Iraq after that, but it reformed into numerous shell companies and many of its contractors returned under new employment.


Prince sold Blackwater in 2010 for $200 million and has since gone on to form a new mercenary group in the United Arab Emirates.

——


Photo: Shutterstock.com.






via The Raw Story http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/03/14/former-ceo-reveals-blackwater-worked-as-virtual-extension-of-the-cia/
07:35

Former astronaut Mark Kelly, spouse of former Rep. Gabby Giffords (D-AZ), sparked an online firestorm recently by publishing a photograph of himself buying an AR-15 at an Arizona gun store, saying he made the buy to show how easy it is to pass a background check.


“I just had a background check a few days ago when I went to my local gun store to buy a 45. As I was leaving, I noticed a used AR-15. Bought that too,” he wrote. “Even to buy an assault weapon, the background check only takes a matter of minutes. I don’t have possession yet but I’ll be turning it over to the Tucson PD when I do. Scary to think of people buying guns like these without a background check at a gun show or the Internet. We really need to close the gun show and private seller loop hole.”


Kelly bought the weapons the day before he and wife Gabby Giffords appeared at the Tucson supermarket where she and 18 others were shot in January 2011. The shooter, Jared Loughner, used a semi-automatic pistol with an extended magazine, and wasn’t stopped until he was forced to reload. Kelly and Giffords have since become two of the nation’s foremost advocates of gun control legislation, including an outright ban on most semi-automatic weapons like the AR-15.


The Senate Judiciary Committee voted Tuesday to approve a bill that would require universal background checks for all firearms sales, regardless of whether they’re conducted through a private seller or a licensed dealer. It’s not clear if the bill will have the 60 votes needed to clear the Senate at large.


”I applaud the members of the Senate Judiciary committee who voted to send this bill to the Senate floor,” New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said in response to the Senate Judiciary Committee’s vote on background checks. “Now we’ll work with their colleagues in the Senate to ensure passage of this common sense legislation that will help save lives and protect our communities. Americans are demanding action from Washington to prevent gun violence – and meaningful reform is within our reach.”


The bill passed the Judiciary Committee by a vote of 10-8, split down partisan lines — something the director of Americans United for Change called “truly remarkable.”


“Let’s be clear: 91% of Americans support background checks – including 91% of independents, and 87% of Republicans,” he said in an advisory. “So who are these Republicans listening to? It’s not the NRA’s membership who support background checks by an overwhelming majority. They’re not listening to the families of gun violence victims in their states imploring them to keep weapons out of dangerous hands so fewer families have to endure what they’ve gone through. The only people they seem to have these Republicans’ full and undivided attention are the big gun manufacturers that oppose any and all sensible gun violence prevention measures because they think it’ll hurt their bottom line.”


Kelly’s group, Americans for Responsible Solutions, did not respond to a request for comment about his purchase.

——


Photo: AFP.






via The Raw Story http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/03/13/gabby-giffords-husband-reveals-he-bought-an-ar-15-assault-rifle-on-a-whim/
06:50
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