Image by Robb AllenAbout 30 people circled together inside Owens Dining Hall Saturday afternoon to discuss a unified response. The meeting, led by Student Government Association president Brandon Carroll, tossed around several ideas in handling the church.It looks like the main victim of their protest will be Morgan Harrington.
“We want everybody on the same page,” Carroll said.
[...]
The group voted, agreeing that a counter-protest will be formed.
Church officials said they were not protesting the 2007 shootings, saying they were “coming for the event that happened last month,” referencing slain student Morgan Harrington. A 20-year-old education major, Harrington was found in late January 2010 after going missing in October 2009 while attending a Metallica concert in Charlottesville, Va.I still find it strikingly coincidental that this will be exactly one week before April 16.
The LGBTA community has also shown outrage about the church’s protest. Aimee Kanode, a senior humanities, science, and environment major at Tech and president of Tech’s LGBTA said she would not attend the protest, as she has work on the day of the protest.The bastards are probably hoping to distract from other events, too.
“These people are awful, appalling, despicable,” Kanode said. “My method is to just ignore them. Me wasting energy on those people is not worth my time.” Kanode said that while the group would not officially organize for the protest, several members and officers would be in attendance. Kanode said she advised her members to “be smart about it.”
Another concern for community members is the potential for the protest to take away from other events for the day. Among the events scheduled for April 9 include a memorial for David Seth Mitchell, a US Marine killed in Afghanistan and Tech’s Relay for Life event, which is a fundraiser for cancer research.They're trying to get their money's worth out of this trip, it seems. Scum.
Seizing or sinking the mothership and taking the pirates prisoner works a whole lot better than just letting them go. Hopefully, these pirates will go to jail for a long time.NAIROBI, Kenya – Suspected Somali pirates fired on a U.S. Navy warship off East Africa early Thursday in what appeared to be a ransom-seeking attack on an American guided missile frigate, officials said.
The USS Nicholas returned fire on the pirate skiff, sinking it and confiscating a nearby mothership. The Navy took five pirates into custody, said Navy Lt. Patrick Foughty, a spokesman.
[...]
The U.S. Africa Command said the five pirates seized Thursday would remain in U.S. custody on board the frigate for now. The Nicholas is home-ported in Norfolk, Va.
Image by Robb AllenPhelps' followers notified town officials in a letter Monday that the group planned demonstrations at three locations around town, including the Blacksburg Jewish Community Center and Blacksburg High School.Another location, near the Virginia Tech campus, was also identified.
Demonstrating near the high school seems pointless - it's been closed since the gym roof collapsed in February.
After the April 16, 2007, shootings at Tech, Phelps threatened to protest at the funerals of the 32 students and faculty slain that day. Then-Attorney General Bob McDonnell, now the governor, issued a warning that anyone willfully disrupting funerals in Virginia could face charges. Those protests never materialized.
As I remember it, a radio station bought them off with an interview - giving them airtime in exchange for them canceling the protests. While I despise the idea of giving scum like that airtime, it was probably the best thing to do for the sake of the families. (I also think that if they had tried to protest those funerals, someone would have been killed. The pain and grief in town then was a hair's breadth from flashing over to rage as it was - there's a good possibility these bastards would have started a riot just by being there.)
It looks like one protest is planned to be across the street from a gift shop operated by a gay couple. I wonder if that's deliberate (they may not know)?
This warms my heart, though:
A Facebook page advertising a counterprotest organized by Tech students and others had drawn more than 4,500 members by Thursday afternoon. More than 1,500 of those members indicated they would attend a counter-rally.
To those planning to attend: Be careful. They have a history of provoking people and then suing anyone who acts out against them, and they carry video recorders.
(* They have a history of announcing protests and then not showing up. Looking at their schedule, I think they do plan on being here - their schedule (I won't link to them. If you want to see it, you'll need to Google it.) puts them in Charleston, WV in the morning, Lawrence, KS from 1130 to 1200, then three separate protests in Blacksburg starting at 1300. I doubt they would go from WV to KS for just a 30 minute protest and fake the 2 1/2 hours planned here. Also, it doesn't leave them enough time to get from WV to KS - it's a 12+ hour drive, and I doubt that group could get through airport security and fly there within the roughly 4 hours the schedule allows. Charleston to Blacksburg, on the other hand, is only about a 2 1/2 hour drive. It's much more likely the Charleston and Blacksburg protests are real, and the KS one is a red herring.)
Fifteen phony products — including a gasoline-powered alarm clock — won a label from the government certifying them as energy efficient in a test of the federal "Energy Star" program.
Investigators concluded the program is "vulnerable to fraud and abuse."Really? It's "vulnerable to fraud and abuse?" No kidding!
But the General Accountability Office, Congress' investigative arm, said Energy Star doesn't verify claims made by manufacturers — which might explain the gasoline-powered alarm clock, not to mention a product billed as an air room cleaner that was actually a space heater with a feather duster and fly strips attached, and a computer monitor that won approval within 30 minutes of submission.So, in a program involving tax credits and rebates (i.e. taxpayer money), the government doesn't bother to actually verify the claims those credits and rebates are based on. Even worse they don't even bother to find out what it is they're certifying!
"EPA officials confirmed that because the energy-efficiency information was plausible, it was likely that no one read the product description information," GAO said.And they lie about it!
According to the GAO, the EPA and Energy Department told investigators in briefings that although the program is based on manufacturers' certifying their products meet efficiency standards, that efficiency is ensured through aftermarket tests and self-policing.Remember, this is the same government that is now in charge of our health-care system. Be afraid, be very afraid.
Less than 24 hours after the House of Representatives gave final approval to a sweeping overhaul of healthcare, attorneys general from several states on Monday said they will sue to block the plan on constitutional grounds.Republican attorneys general in 11 states warned that lawsuits will be filed to stop the federal government overstepping its constitutional powers and usurping states' sovereignty.
[...]
Ten of the attorneys general plan to band together in a collective lawsuit on behalf of Alabama, Florida, Nebraska, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah and Washington.
Virginia Attorney General Kenneth Cuccinelli, who plans to file a lawsuit in federal court in Richmond, Virginia, said Congress lacks authority under its constitutional power to regulate interstate commerce to force people to buy insurance. The bill also conflicts with a state law that says Virginians cannot be required to buy insurance, he added.The governor must have signed that bill in the last day or so - the last time I checked, it hadn't been signed and therefore wasn't the law. Other states are doing the same.
Maybe this massive government expansion will be killed in the courts.In addition to the pending lawsuits, bills and resolutions have been introduced in at least 36 state legislatures seeking to limit or oppose various aspects of the reform plan through laws or state constitutional amendments, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
So far, only two states, Idaho and Virginia, have enacted laws, while an Arizona constitutional amendment is seeking voter approval on the November ballot. But the actual enactment of the bill by President Barack Obama could spur more movement on the measures by state lawmakers.
The initial blush of President Barack Obama's health care triumph immediately gives way to a sober political reality — he must sell the landmark legislation to an angry and unpredictable electorate, still reeling from the recession.Some are saying that after the Repubs get control of Congress back, they can repeal this insanity. While I agree that they could, I think pigs growing wings and joining the avian family is far more likely. Obama will never sign a repeal, and I doubt they'll get the numbers to override a veto. By the time we have a President who may be receptive, there will be a massive bureaucracy in place, working against repeal in order to protect itself. Let's face it - when was the last time the government made itself smaller?Voters may not buy it.
And that could mean a disastrous midterm election year for Obama and his fellow Democrats.
But that's not the stupid part. This is:
The two skiffs were destroyed and the pirates were set free on the mothership after it had been cleared of weapons. [emphasis mine]Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, over?
Jene Newsome played by the rules as an Air Force sergeant: She never told anyone in the military she was a lesbian. The 28-year-old's honorable discharge under the "don't ask, don't tell" policy came only after police officers in Rapid City, S.D., saw an Iowa marriage certificate in her home and told the nearby Ellsworth Air Force Base.This was blatant retaliation, despite the police department's claims that once they knew they "had" to tell the military. They knew that giving that information to her superiors would destroy her career - it's not like DADT is a secret. Telling the military she's a lesbian could do nothing to help them bring in her partner, the only possible goal was to hurt Newsome for not cooperating.
[...]
Newsome was at work at the base at the time and refused to immediately come home and assist the officers in finding her partner, whom she married in Iowa — where gay marriage is legal — in October.Police officers, who said they spotted the marriage license on the kitchen table through a window of Newsome's home, alerted the base, police Chief Steve Allender said in a statement sent to the AP. The license was relevant to the investigation because it showed both the relationship and residency of the two women, he said.
[...]
In the complaint filed last month with the department, ACLU South Dakota said police had no legal reason to tell the military Newsome was a lesbian and that officers knew if they did, it would jeopardize her military career.
Newsome, who was discharged in January, said she didn't know where the marriage license was in her home when police came to her house on Nov. 20 and claims the officers were retaliating because she wouldn't help with her partner's arrest.
(b) Policy.— A member of the armed forces shall be separated from the armed forces under regulations prescribed by the Secretary of Defense if one or more of the following findings is made and approved in accordance with procedures set forth in such regulations:So gays who join the military can't have a romantic relationship (after all, even kissing or holding hands by two men can be considered "a homosexual act or acts"). I stand by my original conclusion: I might support that - but only if we apply it to heterosexuals, too.
(1) That the member has engaged in, attempted to engage in, or solicited another to engage in a homosexual act or acts(3) That the member has married or attempted to marry a person known to be of the same biological sex.
[...]
[omitted sections deal with exceptions to the law]
Lawmakers working to craft a new comprehensive immigration bill have settled on a way to prevent employers from hiring illegal immigrants: a national biometric identification card all American workers would eventually be required to obtain.Can you think of a better way to unite large numbers of conservatives and liberals than this? I mean, Real ID has states passing laws making it illegal for state agencies to comply with parts of the RealID Act. Why?
Under the potentially controversial plan still taking shape in the Senate, all legal U.S. workers, including citizens and immigrants, would be issued an ID card with embedded information, such as fingerprints, to tie the card to the worker.Potentially controversial? What planet were they living on when Real ID was being debated? Do they really think Americans have changed enough that quickly for this to not stir up a rain of fecal matter?
"It is fundamentally a massive invasion of people's privacy," said Chris Calabrese, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. "We're not only talking about fingerprinting every American, treating ordinary Americans like criminals in order to work. We're also talking about a card that would quickly spread from work to voting to travel to pretty much every aspect of American life that requires identification."Exactly. Just like social security numbers were only supposed to be used for Social Security purposes. It will spread to everything.
Now a new "Climategate" scandal is emerging, this time based on documents released by NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in response to several Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) suits filed by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI). The newly released emails further demonstrate the politicized nature of climate science, revealing a number of questionable practices that cast doubt on the credibility of scientific data provided by NASA.There's more - you should go read the whole thing. Remember - even in science - where there's money involved, there's politics involved.
[...]
In another email, he reveals that NASA had inflated its temperature data since 2000 on a questionable basis. “[NASA's] assumption that the adjustments made the older data consistent with future data… may not have been correct,” he says.
[...]
Unfortunately, it seems that the discrepancy privately highlighted by Dr. Ruedy was not coincidental, but part of a broader pattern of misrepresentation on the part of GISS. Between 2002 and 2005, GISS chief James Hansen issued press releases headlined "2005 Warmest Year in a Century;" "2006 was Earth's Fifth Warmest Year;" and "The 2002 meteorological year is the second warmest year in the period of accurate instrumental data." In other words, global warming is happening and that immediate action is necessary.
[...]
In fact, further corrections revealed by the emails indicate that U.S. temperatures on average had only increased by 0.5 degree Celsius since 1934, rather than 1 degree, as originally claimed.
The dominant sentiment on the Court was to extend the Amendment beyond the federal level, based on the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of “due process,” since doing so through another part of the 14th Amendment would raise too many questions about what other rights might emerge. [emphasis mine]Why is that relevant? Or, to echo a point Mr. Gura made at one time, the SCOTUS should be concerning itself with what the Constitution means, not whether it’s a good idea to follow it.
They ride around seeking out girls who they feel sinned by wearing revealing clothing (anyone who isn't dressed in an ankle-length skirt with a shirt buttoned up all the way and a kerchief covering her hair, apparently), and pass out repugnant pamphlets blaming rape victims for the actions of deranged lunatics who seek power by sexually violating women!One passage from the pamphlet reads:
Nicki hits the nail on the head:
“Scripture tells us that when a man looks on a woman to lust for her he has already committed adultery in his heart. If you are dressed in a way that tempts a men to do this secret (or not so secret) sin, you are a participant in the sin,” the leaflet states.“By the way, some rape victims would not have been raped if they had dressed properly. So can we really say they were innocent victims?” [emphasis mine]
The only difference between these drooling, frothing zealots and their Taliban counterparts is that they haven't gained enough power to start stoning women to death for provocative dress yet.I hope I never run into one of these idiots. Testing the limits of my self-control is not a good thing, and I really don't need to deal with an assault trial - but someone who tries to tell me a rape victim brought it on herself because of the way she was dressed stands a good chance of losing many teeth. Though I would push for a jury trial if I lost that battle, since I doubt the jury selection process could find 12 people around here who would vote to convict.
"You mean all the machines in the office have a browser icon on the desktop?"If only we knew.
"Yes," she replied.
"And a fat pipe right to the Web?"
"Uh-huh."
"And this seems like a good idea to you?"
One male and one female were shot at about 3:30 p.m. outside Deer Creek Middle School in Littleton, Jefferson County Sheriff's office spokeswoman Jacki Kelley said. Both students were taken to a nearby hospital and were expected to survive.
Student Steven Seagraves said he was about 10 feet away when an adult approached students and asked them: "Do you guys go to this school?"
When the students said they did, he shot them, Seagraves said.
Seventh-grade math teacher David Benke, a 6-foot-5 inch former college basketball player who oversees the school's track team, tackled the suspect as he was trying to reload his weapon.
Nobody could have blamed Mr. Benke for running for cover. He was unarmed, against someone with a rifle. He saw an opening and took it - at great risk to his own life - to protect his students.
"He was trying to rack another round. He couldn't get another round in before I got to him so I grabbed him," Benke said, recalling that he didn't have time to fear for his life.
They don't say what kind of rifle it was, other than "high-powered" - of course, to the MSM, any rifle is "high-powered." The story says he was reloading, but it sounds more like it may have jammed. I suppose we'll find out later, though I don't expect the media to get it right without getting it wrong at least three different times.
[Update Feb. 24, 2010: NPR says this morning that it was a bolt-action rifle.]
At this time, the shooter appears to have no connection to the school, and no motive has been released.
Good job Mr. Benke, it sounds like you prevented a massacre. Any praise I can offer will fall infinitely short of what you deserve for your courage and quick thinking. Don't beat yourself up because you couldn't stop the first shots - when you have no reason to expect an attack, the attacker will always have the initiative, and the advantage of surprise. You overcame that, and took advantage of a single moment pure, blind luck to save many children.
Scientists have been forced to withdraw a study on projected sea level rise due to global warming after finding mistakes that undermined the findings.They didn't "allow fully for temperature change over the last 2,000 years." Doesn't that cover the entire period where any man-made climate change would actually have occurred? That's some "mistake"!
[...]
“One mistake was a miscalculation; the other was not to allow fully for temperature change over the past 2,000 years. Because of these issues we have retracted the paper and will now invest in the further work needed to correct these mistakes.”
[N]one of that gets at the question du jour, which is how big a role humans are playing. Until later on. Lashof and Deans say it’s a big one, and their source for saying so is a government report compiled by the nation’s top science, defense, and diplomatic agencies—NOAA, NASA, the Pentagon, the National Science Foundation, the Department of State (none of which have been marred in scandal)—over the course of two decades, through four presidential administrations.Notice their source is a government report - they don't say where the agencies got their data for the report. Remember, most of the problems cropping up recently in the whole AGW theory are about problems with the data. It doesn't matter how "nonpartisan" the report is if it's based on corrupted, compromised, cherry-picked, or imaginary data.
A comprehensive new study on foreign militaries that have made transitions to allowing openly gay service members concludes that a speedy implementation of the change is not disruptive. The finding is in direct opposition to the stated views of Pentagon leaders, who say repealing a ban on openly gay men and women in the United States armed forces should take a year or more.Remember, a lot of the people pushing for a "slow" repeal of DADT are the ones who don't want it repealed in the first place - or would prefer to go back to the complete ban that existed before DADT.
As long as we've got our bread-and-circuses, we'll ignore the signposts saying "Hell: 200 miles" all along the way. Distract us with a salacious story of a talented sportsman brought down by his reproductive organs, we'll forget all about the evil in the world, all the crazy, all the many ways our government fails again and again to do what it is supposed to do.
One of the signs leading up to the fall of Rome was the distraction of the people from important issues and events through the use of rewards and entertainment. This is the origin of the phrase "bread and circuses."
… Already long ago, from when we sold our vote to no man, the People have abdicated our duties; for the People who once upon a time handed out military command, high civil office, legions — everything, now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things: bread and circuses (Juvenal, Satire 10.77–81)Roman politicians would attempt to secure votes with cheap food and entertainment, rather than by pursuing sound policy. Eventually the great Republic (and then Empire) declined and fell.
This really has gone from bad science to a farcical cover-up. Read the whole thing.“We concluded, with overwhelming statistical significance, that the IPCC’s climate data are contaminated with surface effects from industrialization and data quality problems. These add up to a large warming bias,” he said.
Such warnings are supported by a study of US weather stations co-written by Anthony Watts, an American meteorologist and climate change sceptic.
His study, which has not been peer reviewed, is illustrated with photographs of weather stations in locations where their readings are distorted by heat-generating equipment.
Some are next to air- conditioning units or are on waste treatment plants. One of the most infamous shows a weather station next to a waste incinerator.
Watts has also found examples overseas, such as the weather station at Rome airport, which catches the hot exhaust fumes emitted by taxiing jets.
Legislation that would further limit where sex offenders can live and expand the list of convictions that activate those restrictions has drawn the ire of civil libertarians and advocates of reforming those laws.I have just two comments on this right now:
[...]If enacted, Athey's House Bill 1004 would bar individuals ordered to register as sex offenders for crimes involving a juvenile victim from living within 500 feet of multiple places children are known to frequent.
It would add school bus stops, community parks, playgrounds, recreation centers, public pools and private, parochial and Christian schools to state law, which applies to day care centers, public schools and adjoining public parks.
Any effort to end Tech's contract with the Collegiate Times or its parent company, or to ban student organizations from advertising in the newspaper, "is not in the offing," [university spokesman Larry Hincker] said. "That is not the position of this administration."Good.
The dispute centers upon a CT policy that allows online readers to post anonymous comments at collegiatetimes.com. The [Commission on Student Affairs] and others who support its proposal have objected to reader postings they characterized as racist or otherwise offensive.Essentially, the university wants to ban all anonymous comments on the paper's website because of some "racist or otherwise offensive" postings (ignoring, of course, the question of just who decides what is racist or offensive). The company that owns the CT is standing its ground, and doing so rather aggressively at this point.
[...]Despite its independence, the newspaper receives free office space and $70,000 annually from the university, Vice President for Student Affairs Ed Spencer said.
The commission would further seek to ban student organizations from using university funds to buy ads in the CT, the letter stated.
Such a move could cripple or shut down the newspaper, which derives the majority of its revenues from ad sales. The newspaper's leadership pushed back publicly Thursday.
In a purely private enterprise, this would not be a problem - a sponsor can provide or withdraw funding, facilities, or services at will and for any reason (within the limits of existing contracts). Virginia Tech, however, is an agency of the state (which is why they can't ban firearms on campus for anyone other than employees and students, or for specific events).The commission has requested another meeting with CT representatives.
But in a response to [commission chairwoman Michelle McLeese], [Kelly Wolff, general manager of the Educational Media Company at Virginia Tech, which owns the CT] wrote: "We have advised the Collegiate Times staff to discontinue discussions with CSA members, individually and collectively, on the topic of online comments. ... This is no longer a dialogue; it is coercion.
"We will wait to hear what the commission says. ... But if they are going to pursue this course of action, then we will take legal action," Wolff said in an interview Thursday.
There's a simple way to keep people from going through doors that they're not supposed to go through. It's called a lock. There are even ways to make it easy for the people who are supposed to use the door to open it.
A busy terminal at John F. Kennedy International Airport was evacuated after a man opened a restricted door and set off an alarm, authorities said, making it the second known security breach at a New York-area airport this month.
[...]
Authorities earlier said the security breach was caused by a passenger who was exiting Kennedy's Terminal 8 and opened a door that was supposed to be used only by airport workers.
Authorities were initially unsure Saturday whether the person had been coming or going from the JFK terminal, and they evacuated the secure areas of the building while they investigated. The Transportation Security Administration said its agents and Port Authority police were involved in the investigation. [emphasis mine]How much damage could a real terrorist have done during that confusion when the authorities didn't know what was going on.
Until last year, prosecutors in all but 10 states could introduce a notarized affidavit from crime lab experts, attesting to their findings with respect to critical evidence. This document was sufficient to state that, for example, the white powder found on a defendant was indeed cocaine, or that a defendant's DNA matched that found on a rape or murder victim. Forensic analysts only appeared if subpoenaed by the defense.
But in June, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled by a 5-to-4 vote that the clause of the Constitution that requires the accused to be confronted by the witnesses against him puts the burden on the state to produce not just paper certificates, but live forensic witnesses, who can be cross-examined. Without these live forensic witnesses, the court decided, forensic evidence cannot be introduced.
The opinion ended up putting actual practice somewhere in the middle - prosecutors must send a notice to the defense that they intend to to introduce an affidavit. The defense can then object to the affidavit being introduced without the witness appearing. If the defendant does not enter an objection, the affidavit is considered sufficient without the witness. This shifts the burden back onto the defendant, but greatly simplifies it by not requiring them to actually go through the more complex process of issuing a subpoena.
Here's the part that concerns me:
Nevertheless, four justices were outraged by the decision, predicting that it would result in a windfall for the defense, huge expense for the states and the release of guilty defendants.
Why do they want to restrict the Rights of the accused based on the expense to the states? Shouldn't a person's Right to face the witnesses against them trump any consideration of convenience and cost-savings of the government? The same government that's prosecuting them?
Only one thing has changed since June. One member of that five-justice majority — David Souter — has retired, and been replaced by Sotomayor. Prosecutors hope that having been a criminal prosecutor herself in New York, Sotomayor will be sympathetic to their cause.
This is why SCOTUS appointments are so important. One Justice can cause a complete reversal of a previous decision. One Justice can tilt the balance of power from the people to the government. One Justice can make the difference in whether you can effectively exercise your rights or not.
Let's not forget that Heller was a 5-4 decision, too.
Some 24 states are asking the court to reverse itself as well, citing backlogs, costs and other problems they say the decision has created.Again, backlogs, costs, or "other problems" do not matter in the face of a Constitutionally Enumerated Right intended to protect the people from an overzealous or abusive government. Frankly, the decision didn't go far enough - the entire burden should be on the prosecution, and the defendant should not have to do anything for the witness against him to appear at trial.
Is this movie an accurate depiction of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's most famous literary invention? That depends.Robert Downey, Jr. does a bang-up job of portraying the Holmes of the books - mania, depression, and all. A man who can fight as well as reason, and is tenacious once the game is afoot.
If you are a fan of the Sherlock Holmes of the books, then yes. If you are a fan of the Hollywood version of the detective -- then no.
This is going to come as a shock to some folks, but Basil Rathbone was a lousy Sherlock Holmes.
Sir Arthur penned a Sherlock Holmes who was a young man -- probably in his late twenties, but no older than mid-30's -- who was a genius, yes, but also manic-depressive.
In "A Study In Scarlet", Sir Arthur -- through Dr. Watson -- described how Holmes would be seized by melancholia and would lie upon his sofa, in the dark, for days without speaking or moving; in other stories, Holmes would be "seized by an intensity" and go for days without eating or sleeping, until he fainted.
He is -- as written by Doyle -- an eccentric, who kept his unanswered mail nailed to the mantel with a pen-knife; his tobacco stored in the toe of a shoe; and his cigars in a coal-bin.
He is an addict, who self-medicates his depression with a 7% solution of IV cocaine, with occasional forays into morphia use.
I guess it’s time to state the obvious- There is no one perfect system. We need a defense in depth strategy that is going to have to include some form of profiling.
