The LAPD's deputy chief, Michael Downing, who heads the department's counterterrorism and special operations bureau, said officers are dealing with "an adversary who is more sophisticated, more tactically trained."
Downing emphasized that though police might train with soldiers, they're not warriors with a mission to kill but public servants with no "enemies."
"In police work there are times we have to become soldiers and control through force and fear," Downing said. "But we have to come back to being a public servant as quick as we can to establish that normality and that ethical stature with communities, because they're the ones who give us the authority to do our police work."
Political campaign advertisements have never been famous for candor or veracity. But it seems to me we’ve hit a perfect storm of circumstances in which our cherished value of free speech could be our undoing. Citizens United; extreme wealth concentrated in the hands of a few people with extreme views and no scruples; Fox News; media technology that quickly spreads unfiltered disinformation to targeted audiences — these things have contributed to an unprecedented corruption of political discourse.
Andrew Cuomo is the Governor of New York, and he takes a lot of money from large powerful interests and then hands out tax credits to them. It's a Reaganomics model of financial monopoly capitalism. But the problem here isn't just Cuomo, it's that people like Cuomo dominate the Democratic establishment. Rahm Emanuel, Tim Geithner, Larry Summers, Robert Rubin, and so on and so forth, these people believe in a world where powerful economic interests control our lives and fate through monopoly power, and their partners in government help structure those monopolies. Political corruption and economic monopoly are two sides of the same coin-- too much concentrated power in too few hands.
There's been some action in western states this week. Wisconsin organizers have formed a new group called Wisconsin Unites for Marriage. Their goal is public education while also persuading Attorney General J. B. Van Hollen to drop his defense of the state's marriage ban. A federal judge ruled against Wisconsin's law in June, and oral argument in an appeal is scheduled for August 26th, along with a hearing on an Indiana case.
Our research shows that the ancestors of birds were the only lineage of dinosaurs to continually shrink in size for an extended period of time (at least 50 million years, and perhaps twice as long). They were also the fastest-evolving lineage of dinosaurs.
We now know that many bipedal, meat-eating dinosaurs (theropods) – including relatives of T. rex and Velociraptor – were adorned with a variety of feathers. They were preserved in such detail in fine volcanic ash that often even their colours can be reconstructed. Plumage might have even been present in all dinosaurs.
I wonder how the Ebola doctor feels now that his humanitarian trip has cost a Christian charity much more than any services he rendered. What was the point? Whatever good Dr. Kent Brantly did in Liberia has now been overwhelmed by the more than $2 million already paid by the Christian charities Samaritan's Purse and SIM USA just to fly him and his nurse home in separate Gulfstream jets, specially equipped with medical tents, and to care for them at one of America's premier hospitals. (This trip may be the first real-world demonstration of the economics of Obamacare.) Why did Dr. Brantly have to go to Africa? The very first 'risk factor' listed by the Mayo Clinic for Ebola -- an incurable disease with a 90 percent fatality rate -- is: 'Travel to Africa.' Can't anyone serve Christ in America anymore? All our elite cultural institutions laugh at virginity and celebrate promiscuity. So no, there's nothing for a Christian to do here.
But why is the region so underdeveloped, why is poverty so entrenched, and why has the colonial legacy of inequality proven so resistant to social and political change? Though the situation is admittedly complex, the dismal state of affairs in Central America is in no small part the result of the failure of social democratic and left-of-center governments to maintain power and enact socioeconomic change; this failure, in turn, is sadly (in part) the consequence of the ironic “success” of U.S. foreign policy.
As it did elsewhere, the legacy of the colonial and postcolonial era meant massive inequalities in land ownership in Guatemala, with large numbers of dispossessed peasants condemned to lives of severe poverty. This status quo was maintained in the 1930s and ’40s by the U.S.-supported dictator Jorge Ubico, but it was challenged following his overthrow in 1944, particularly after the election of Jacobo Árbenz in 1951. “All the riches of Guatemala,” Árbenz announced at his inauguration, “are not as important as the life, the freedom, the dignity, the health and the happiness of the most humble of its people.” And he delivered: In seeking to take Guatemala out of feudalism, Árbenz redistributed lands of the United Fruit Company (with full compensation) to landless peasants.
Perhaps unsurprisingly – in the context of the reductionist zero-sum politics of the Cold War – Árbenz was soon deemed a communist threat; however strong his democratic credentials and however nonexistent Soviet involvement might be, his days were numbered.
In Operation PBSUCCESS, the CIA achieved the overthrow of Árbenz by destabilizing the Guatemalan economy, engaging in various innovative forms of psychological warfare and ultimately orchestrating an invasion of the country from Honduras in 1954. Following his overthrow, a military dictatorship was installed, and variably supported, for decades. But this status quo could only be maintained with violence and authoritarianism; insurgency would follow, while inequality and social deprivation would remain largely untouched.
The House speaker, John Boehner, tried on Thursday to pass a bill dealing with the crisis of migrant children at the Texas border — a harsh bill to deport the children more quickly to their violent home countries in Central America, and to add more layers of border enforcement. But it wasn’t harsh enough to suit the Tea Party, and it was pulled for lack of votes. The hapless House leadership had to drag members back from the start of a five-week vacation to try again on Friday.
The revised legislation sought to appease the hard-liners, who were insisting on swiftly expelling migrant children but also intent on killing the Obama administration’s program to halt the deportations of young immigrants known as Dreamers. Tea Party members believe, delusionally, that the program, called DACA, has some connection to the recent surge of child migrants, who would never qualify for it. On Friday night, the House passed a bill that dragged immigration reform so far to the right that it would never become law.
As Congress takes the rest of the summer off, there may be no two happier House Republicans than Steve King and Michele Bachmann, charter members of the “hell no” caucus that resolutely blocks all efforts at sensible immigration reform.
In yet another incident of judicial corruption and lawlessness in South Florida over the last 18 days, today, Broward County Circuit Judge Dale Cohen overthrew Florida’s voter-approved Constitution and denied Floridians their fundamental voter rights. Millions of Americans died fighting in battlefields around the world to defend the constitutional rights Judge Cohen has denied Floridians todays. He has violated his Oath of Office and the Code Judicial Conduct. This is a racist ruling that destroys public confidence in the judiciary and inflicts irreparable harm to respect for the Rule of Law. Cohen’s lawless decision to overthrow Florida’s Constitution, violate constitutional separation of powers, and deny fundamental voter rights is in brazen contempt to the legally binding precedent established by the U.S. Supreme Court in U.S. vs. Windsor. In so doing, Mr. Cohen has also offended basic human decency, violated his Oath of Office, the Code of Judicial Conduct, and the Florida Bar Canons of Ethics. Cohen has forfeited his legacy and his right to remain on the bench.
Appearing on Fox News Hannity, frequent guest Ann Coulter told host Sean Hannity that she wished Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was “our president,” so he could deal with our border problems the way he deals with border issues in his own country.
Comparing tunnels found at the U.S./Mexican border with tunnels used by Hamas, Coulter asserted the U.S. is being invaded.
“More than a hundred tunnels have been found on our border,” Coulter said. “To smuggle in weapons, guns, they’re invading, They’re murdering, they’re raping. The head of the DEA said about a year ago that he thinks the surge of homicides in Chicago is a Mexican drug cartel. . . . "
“We need a Netanyahu here. Can you imagine all these — yes, sometimes Palestinian kids get killed, ” she said as she began to laugh. “That’s because they are, they’re associated with a terrorist organization that is harming Israel, and Netanyahu doesn’t care what the religious leaders say, weeping about Palestinian children. He doesn’t care what the UN says. He doesn’t care what the media says.”
Emphasis added.
“To me, they’re breaking the law when they come here,” a hooded man identifying himself as Robert Jones said. “If we can’t turn them back, I think if we pop a couple of them off and leave the corpses laying on the border, maybe they’ll see that we’re serious about stopping immigration.”
Zoo Berlin recently welcomed five baby Capybaras to their South American exhibit! Born just several weeks ago, the five pups, along with mother, Lucia, explored their enclosure for the first time! Careful to stay close to mother and each other, they enjoyed their time investigating various aspects of their home at the zoo.
Germany is now producing 28.5 percent of its energy—nearly a third—with solar, wind, hydro, and biomass. In 2000, renewables accounted for just 6 percent of its power consumption.
This is further proof that Germany is, essentially, the world leader in renewable energy. No other country has demonstrated such a dedicated, accelerated drive toward transitioning to clean power—in Germany's case, away from nuclear to solar and wind. It has done so by intensely incentivizing private and commercial solar, aggressively pursuing wind power contracts, and, yes, by raising, slightly, the cost of energy in the process.
Guinness & Co. is currently airing a commercial for its beer with a popular gospel hymn as background music. The song "Leaning on the Everlasting Arms" is played during the entire ad and even though there are no lyrics it is unmistakably the beloved hymn Christians know and love. The cherished "Everlasting Arms" hymn has no place in a beer commercial. Christian music should not be associated with an advertisement promoting drinking. The choice of including this hymn in the ad disrespects the Christian faith.
Host David Gregory asked the representative to speak to comments he made in January of 2013, in which Ryan said the country struggles with "more and more able-bodied people" becoming "dependent on the government." Gregory said Ryan didn't sound like he had much "sympathy" for impoverished Americans.
"We don't want to have a poverty management system that simply perpetuates poverty," Ryan said, pitching his poverty proposal that he says will allow for a customized approach to each individual's needs.
The centerpiece in Ryan’s new plan is what he calls the Opportunity Grant — a program that would consolidate as many as 11 separate federal initiatives into a single chunk of funding for states.
In a speech at the American Enterprise Institute on Thursday, Ryan said that the setup would aid state governments and local organizations that should be the “front lines” in the war on poverty, instead of the federal bureaucracy.
“Success is measured by how many programs we create, how much money we spend,” Ryan said about the government’s current approach. “Not on outcomes. Not on results. How many people are we getting out of poverty? How many people are getting out of poverty and staying out of poverty?”
What does scholarly research on antipoverty programs actually say? We have quite good evidence on the effects of food stamps and Medicaid, which draw most of Mr. Ryan’s ire — and which his budgets propose slashing drastically. Food stamps, it seems, do lead to a reduction in work and working hours, but the effect is modest. Medicaid has little, if any, effect on work effort.
Over all, here’s the verdict of one comprehensive survey: “While there are significant behavioral side effects of many programs, their aggregate impact is very small.” In short, Mr. Ryan’s poverty report, like his famous budget plan, is a con job.
Men in prehistoric Europe scarred, pierced and tattooed their penises, likely for ritualistic and social group reasons, according to a new study.
Analysis of phallic decorations in Paleolithic art, described in the December issue of The Journal of Urology, may also show evidence of the world's first known surgery performed on a male genital organ. The alteration, or surgery, might have just been for ornamental purposes, or a piercing, the researchers suggest.
The past may additionally be tied to the present, as Angulo and his team suspect that the Paleolithic phallic art may show the anthropological origin of current male genital piercing and tattooing.
One of the most transparent tactics opponents of marriage equality will attempt is to claim that supporters of marriage equality are intolerant of their opinion.
It’s not only a transparent tactic but highly cynical. And apparently it’s the tactic that Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida is attempting:
While Rubio has consistently held conservative positions on abortion and gay marriage, his current emphasis appears to be an effort to appeal to social conservatives who have yet to settle on a favored candidate for 2016. “Even before this speech is over, I will be attacked as someone who is a hater or a bigot,” Rubio said.
The tales of horror keep pouring in: Two middle school girls are forced into a lesbian kiss as part of an anti-bullying program; an Air Force sergeant is fired because he opposes same-sex marriage; a high school track team is disqualified from a meet after an athlete thanks God for the team’s victory; a Veterans Affairs hospital bans Christmas cards with religious messages; a man fixing the lights in a Christmas tree falls victim to a wave of War-on-Christmas violence; an elementary school student is punished for praying over his school lunch; a little boy is forced to take a psychological evaluation after drawing a picture of Jesus.
None of these stories is true. But each has become a stock tale for Religious Right broadcasters, activists, and in some cases elected officials. These myths – which are becoming ever more pervasive in the right-wing media – serve to bolster a larger story, that of a majority religious group in American society becoming a persecuted minority, driven underground in its own country.
This narrative has become an important rallying cry for a movement that has found itself on the losing side of many of the so-called “culture wars.” By reframing political losses as religious oppression, the Right has attempted to build a justification for turning back advances in gay rights, reproductive rights and religious liberty for minority faiths.
Instead of protecting persons, [the Employment Non Discrimination Act] uses the force of the law to coerce everyone to accept a deeply problematic understanding of human sexuality and sexual behavior and to condone such behavior. The current proposed ENDA legislation is not about protecting persons, but behavior. Churches, businesses and individuals should not be punished in any way for living by their religious and moral convictions concerning sexual activity.
Eliminating truly unjust discrimination – based on personal characteristics, not sexual behavior – and protecting religious freedom are goals that we all should share. The current political climate makes it very difficult to maintain a reasonable dialogue on these contentious issues, but we must keep trying.
I hardly know where to start -- Cordileone is as good as Tony Perkins at distorting and misrepresenting facts. (But at least we don't have to deal with middle-school word-play.)
1) "Deeply problematic understanding of human sexuality" -- in what way? Anyone who knows what they're talking about understands that homosexuality is part of the range of normal human behavior. It seems the Church's "understanding" of human sexuality, as in most areas of human behavior, is problematic.
2) "to condone such behavior" -- no one's insisting you condone anything, only that you keep your nose out of people's private lives.
3) "Churches, businesses and individuals should not be punished in any way for living by their religious and moral convictions concerning sexual activity." --No one's suggesting that. The law just says you can't force your religious convictions on anyone else. See # 2, minding your own business.
4) "Eliminating truly unjust discrimination – based on personal characteristics" -- you mean, like the decision to join the Catholic Church, or follow any religious tradition? Which I don't think anyone can characterize as a "personal characteristic" -- that's really a behavior. Or maybe you mean something more fundamental, such as being female? The Church has a real good record there. The consensus among those who actually know something about human psychology is that same-sex orientation is, in fact, an innate characteristic.
5) "and protecting religious freedom" -- trans.: I have the right to force my religious dogma on everyone else. Just ask me.
6) "The current political climate makes it very difficult to maintain a reasonable dialogue on these contentious issues," -- "dialogue" means you listen as well as speak, something for which the Catholic hierarchy is not noted. In fact, there's been a quite spirited dialogue, in the media, the courts, and the Internet. Sorry you missed it.
And all this, coming from a highly placed member of an institution that has repeatedly proven itself not only hypocritical, but morally bankrupt.
Lobbying for coercive laws that violate freedom will not promote justice in the workplace. Nor will it advance the common good to seek to silence debate about sexual morality. We, like all Americans, wish there was an easy way forward. There is not. But there is an honest one. And it starts with the unflinching commitment to the inherent dignity of every human person, and to the “healthy pluralism” we all wish to share.
Seriously, atheist dudes, the Christian Right is not Jesus’ fault. The CR may have adopted Jesus as its team mascot, but it’s ignored his teachings for years. And seeing Jesus ridiculed is as jarring to Christians — including the tolerant, progressive ones — as watching their mothers being publicly humiliated.
What the children are fleeing is anarchy. they are fleeing failed states in which there is no functional criminal justice system and criminal activity, including murder, is carried out with impunity. People arm themselves and join gangs just to survive. In short, it’s the sort of place the “open carriers” and Bundy Ranch militia crowd are trying to turn the U.S. into.
A federal employment ad posted in January showing that 65,000 unaccompanied minors will enter the U.S. illegally shows that the administration expected this cross-border child abuse and encouraged it.
Concrete evidence has shown up proving our earlier assertion: The breach of our border by waves of unaccompanied alien children was orchestrated by the administration based on a strategy straight out of the playbook President Obama studied as a community organizer. His goal is to get his way on immigration reform by overwhelming the U.S. Border Patrol and collapsing an already weakened system.
On "Fox News Sunday," guest host Brit Hume on Sunday grilled Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) on his plan for addressing the influx of undocumented children at the border — sending in the National Guard.
Perry argues that the presence of the National Guard will deter immigrants from continuing to attempt to cross the border.
"They need to be right on the river. They need to be there as a show of force because that’s the message that gets sent back very quickly to Central America," he said.
Hume challenged Perry, asking what purpose troops could actually serve.
"They’re not, under the law, allowed to apprehend any of these children that are crossing, are they?" he asked.
"The issue is with being able to send that message because it’s the visual of it, I think, that is the most important," Perry responded. "If you don’t stop the bleeding. If you don’t staunch this flow of individuals that are coming up here, this is only going to get worse."
Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX), chairman of the House Homeland Security committee, said that while it was sad to see young undocumented immigrants at the southwest border, some of the teens looked like a "threat."
When Hume asked whether Republicans would allocate money to deal with the children who have already crossed the border, McCaul spoke generally about “dealing with it in a humane and compassionate way, but I’m not in favor of building large warehouses in the United States to warehouse these kids.”
“It’s about deterrence, about security, and about dealing with these children in a humane and compassionate way — to send them home,” he concluded.
Two Richmond, Va. open carry advocates organized a demonstration in the city's Carytown neighborhood on July 4, but they were the only two people to attend.
They invited more than 300 people on Facebook to walk down one of the city's main streets openly carrying handguns, rifles and long guns, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch.
Organizer Jason Spitzer, a Chesterfield County steel mill worker, was unable to explain the low turnout.
"I don’t know why," he told the Times-Dispatch.
Spitzer said he thought Independence Day was the perfect day to "spread Constitutional awareness" and promote Second Amendment rights.
"But even if nobody came I’d still walk," he said. "It’s the Fourth of July and I love my country."
Even the National Rifle Association, which supports the legal open and concealed carrying of firearms, initially questioned the wisdom of the Texas tactics in a posting on its website.
“Let’s not mince words, not only is it rare, it’s downright weird and certainly not a practical way to go normally about your business while being prepared to defend yourself,” the article said.
“To those who are not acquainted with the dubious practice of using public displays of firearms as a means to draw attention to oneself or one’s cause, it can be downright scary. It makes folks who might normally be perfectly open-minded about firearms feel uncomfortable and question the motives of pro-gun advocates.”
On measures of general health and family cohesion children aged 5 to 17 years with same-sex attracted parents showed a significantly better score when compared to Australian children from all backgrounds and family contexts. For all other health measures there were no statistically significant differences.
Having read the opinion only briefly I am not at all clear on why Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the majority, is so certain that he can hold the line here to closely held corporations and that the parade of “me too” litigants promised by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, writing in dissent, won’t show up on the court steps in the coming months and years.
For one thing we are—going forward—no longer allowed to argue the science. “It is not for us to say that their religious beliefs are mistaken or insubstantial,” writes Alito.
An Indianapolis woman has sued the city's police department, contending that an order to remove an "Unmarked Police Car" bumper sticker from her minivan violated her rights to free speech, the group representing her said on Monday.
A lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana on Friday argued that Indianapolis police did not have the right to question and make demands of Pamela Konchinsky after pulling over her vehicle earlier this month.
"We contend that the police officers who detained and interrogated our client without legal grounds to do so violated her constitutional rights," ACLU attorney Kelly Eskew said in a statement. "The promise of our Constitution is that these lines cannot be crossed."
According to the complaint, Indianapolis police officers told Konchinsky the bumper sticker would make people think she was impersonating a police officer and could get her shot, before demanding that she remove it from her rear window.
If this is a big problem then I'm going to guess that cops should stop wearing uniforms and driving around in those black and white cars.
To hear the best and the brightest of the conservative movement tell it, Americans' freedom of religion is in dire peril. At Liberty University in April, Texas Senator Ted Cruz cautioned, "Religious liberty has never been more under attack." Ben Sasse, the Nebraska GOP Senate candidate, went even further in declaring that "the free exercise of religion is co-equal to our right to life," adding "government cannot force citizens to violate their religious beliefs under any circumstances." Competing with Cruz in the 2016 Falwell primary, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal used his Liberty University commencement address to similarly warn his audience. "Make no mistake," Jindal said, "The war over religious liberty is the war over free speech and without the first there is no such thing as the second."
Coming as it did in the run-up to the Supreme Court's ruling in the Hobby Lobby case, the right-wing outcry about a supposed war on religious freedom is especially galling--and more than a little ironic. After all, less than two months ago in Town of Greece v. Galloway, the Roberts Court ruled that sectarian Christian prayers used to open a town council meeting did not violate the constitutional prohibition against government establishment of religion. On Thursday, the Supreme Court in McCullen v. Coakley ruled that 35 foot buffer zones created to protect patients entering family planning clinics in Massachusetts were unconstitutional. (As Sarah Posner summed up the opinion limiting women's protections from verbal harassment and threats of violence, the Court in essence concluded that "your uterus is 'an important subject' about which your fellow citizens 'wish to converse.'") In April 2011, a 5-4 majority upheld an Arizona law designed to evade restrictions on school vouchers by giving gives taxpayers there a dollar-for-dollar state tax credit of up to $500 for donations to private "student tuition organizations." Meanwhile at the White House, President Obama has continued to pour billions of Americans' tax dollars into George W. Bush's so-called "faith-based initiatives," despite his unfulfilled 2008 campaign pledge to protect beneficiaries and employees alike from discrimination practiced by grant recipients.
In striking down Kentucky's ban on gay marriage, a federal judge Tuesday rejected Gov. Steve Beshear's argument that the ban is needed because only opposite sex couples can procreate and maintain the state's birth rate and economy..
"These arguments are not those of serious people," wrote Senior U.S. District Court Judge John G. Heyburn II
In a 19-page ruling, Heyburn said he recognized that many Kentuckians oppose same-sex marriage for religious reasons, but added, "In America, even sincere and long-held religious beliefs do not trump the constitutional rights of those who happen to have been outvoted."
"According to their religious beliefs the four contraceptive methods at issue are abortifacients."Fascinating. They aren't "abortifacients." That is simple scientific fact. But they say they believe they are and their "belief" trumps objective reality.
Today, a bare majority of the Court held that under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, employers do not have to adhere to federal regulations requiring that health insurance offered to employees cover contraceptives if the requirement conflicts with their religious beliefs. The majority opinion supporting this view, written by Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr., and joined by the Court's four other Republican appointees—all men—is a disaster. It is unpersuasive and illogical, and creaes a standard that is unworkable. It also reflects an instructive lack of concern for the interests of the women, whose statutory rights will be burdened by the majority's decision.
"The exemption sought by Hobby Lobby and Conestoga would…deny legions of women who do not hold their employers' beliefs access to contraceptive coverage."
