Listen! That sound you hear is the shredding of the social contract. - Bill Moyers
Tea time is supposed to be a time to relax and regroup, but it could be one of the riskiest moments of the day. At least, that’s according to a new study released by Greenpeace earlier this month [.pdf] that found a number of popular tea brands contain high doses of pesticide residues. Some teas even tested positive for the long-banned DDT.Say, will it poison Tea Party folk? or are their brains already too toxic?
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| Tea - the toxic brew! |
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Earlier this year, the Supreme Court gave its blessing to local governments that want to open their public meetings with religious prayer.So... all religions are equal, but some are more equal than others. I don't know the status of UUs, but I have a feeling I would not be asked... nay, not be permitted... to say the invocation at a Greece, NY town board meeting.
It was a victory for the town board of Greece, N.Y., which stressed that it was fighting not just for Christian prayer but for the right of all people express their views regardless of their faith. In a 5-4 ruling along ideological lines, the Court ruled against the Jewish and atheist plaintiffs, who argued that the practice violated the establishment clause of the First Amendment.
Less than four months later, the town of Greece has adopted an invocation policy that excludes non-religious citizens and potentially shuts out faiths that aren't well-established in the town, according to a top secular group.
Seeking to "avail itself of the Supreme Court's recognition" that government prayer is constitutional, the new policy restricts opening remarks to "assemblies with an established presence in the Town of Greece that regularly meet for the primary purpose of sharing a religious perspective."
Translation: atheists and agnostics need not apply. And unless the board clerk decides that your faith has an "established presence" in the New York town of fewer than 100,000, you may not deliver an invocation.
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Echoing the arrests of the Huffington Post's Ryan Reilly and the Washington Post's Wesley Lowery earlier this week, three reporters said they were briefly handcuffed and detained by police. Other reporters said officers threatened them with mace, while one radio reporter caught an officer's threat to shoot him on tape.
They forgot to show
the handcuffs...
Three journalists -- Neil Munshi of the Financial Times, Robert Klemko of Sports Illustrated and Rob Crilly of the Telegraph -- tweeted that they were briefly detained and handcuffed by Missouri highway police Capt. Ron Johnson. Munshi emphasized that the three of them were held by police but were not arrested.
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It's more than just your government spying on you, though they almost certainly are as well. If you or your company ever had any secrets, you probably don't now. Or maybe you have need of someone else's secrets, and also have $4m to spare...Software created by the controversial U.K. based Gamma Group International was used to spy on computers that appear to be located in the United States, the U.K., Germany, Russia, Iran and Bahrain, according to a leaked trove of documents analyzed by ProPublica.
It's not clear whether the surveillance was conducted by governments or private entities. Customer email addresses in the collection appeared to belong to a German surveillance company, an independent consultant in Dubai, the Bosnian and Hungarian Intelligence services, a Dutch law enforcement officer and the Qatari government.
The leaked files — which were posted online by hackers — are the latest in a series of revelations about how state actors including repressive regimes have used Gamma's software to spy on dissidents, journalists and activist groups.
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| MRAP, Queensbury, NY |
...And you thought your primary danger of being shot full of holes came from the criminals. What goes around, comes straight at us; the US has terrorized the people of other nations with these weapons for decades, most recently in preemptive, invasive wars, and now the remaindered weapons from those same wars are driving into our neighborhoods and shooting up our own children. Welcome to America!
In 1984, according to Radley Balko's Rise of the Warrior Cop, about 26% of towns with populations between 25,000 and 50,000 had SWAT teams. By 2005, that number had soared to 80% and it’s still rising, though SWAT statistics are notoriously hard to come by.
As the number of SWAT teams has grown nationwide, so have the raids. Every year now, there are approximately 50,000 SWAT raids in the United States, according to Professor Pete Kraska of Eastern Kentucky University’s School of Justice Studies. In other words, roughly 137 times a day a SWAT team assaults a home and plunges its inhabitants and the surrounding community into terror.
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AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Texas could start allowing alcohol sales at gun shows provided they don't allow live ammunition or let buyers take possession of their weapons at the events.
The Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission announced the proposal Friday. It will hold a 30-day public comment period before any change is made.
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The recipe is simple: Guns... Gun
Guys with Guns
Guy with More Guns
Drunks with Guns???
[Bolds mine. - SB]The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit on behalf of five Muslims allegedly denied American citizenship because of a secretive policy a Homeland Security Department’s immigration agency operates. The program grants the government broad discretion to designate those applying for citizenship as “national security concerns.”
According to the ACLU’s filed complaint [PDF], the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) has engaged in the “unlawful delay and denial of plaintiffs’ applications for citizenship and lawful permanent residence [LPR] under a secretive policy” known as the Controlled Application Review and Resolution Program (CAARP) [sic - should be "CARRP" — SB]. The policy has allegedly barred USCIS from upgrading plaintiffs’ immigration status and violated the Immigration and Nationality Act.
USCIS has declined to voluntarily make public information related to its policy of designating people as “national security concerns.” In fact, if a person is designated a “national security concern”—and this can happen because of “innocuous activity and associations, and characteristics such as national origin,” there is no notice provided to applicants that they have been taken off an “adjudication track” and will not be approved.
Between 2008 and 2012, more than 19,000 people, who were from Muslim-majority countries or regions were subjected to CAARP.
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In 1990, Clayton Williams "joked" about rape while campaigning against Ann Richards. You might think that a few decades would be enough to teach politicians not to make light of rape, but that sadly isn’t so. This November there’s a collection of men running for state office who think that politicians know better than women – even victims of rape – about what decisions are best for them. This is why we organize. This is why we fight to #StopGregAbbottTwenty-four years after Clayton Williams's infamous gaffe, Republicans are more determined than ever to wrest total control of women's bodies away from those women, right down to the most personal decisions a woman can make. A woman who votes for Greg Abbott is voting for her own enslavement. Save your personal rights instead: vote for Wendy Davis.
Guarantee:
• Equal rights
• Reproductive rights
• Equal pay for equal work!
