The Ledes

Sunday, October 6, 2024

New York Times: “Two boys have been arrested and charged in a street attack on David A. Paterson, a former governor of New York, and his stepson, the police said. One boy, who is 12, was charged with second-degree gang assault, and the other, a 13-year-old, was charged with third-degree gang assault, the police said on Saturday night. Both boys, accompanied by their parents, turned themselves in to the police, according to Sean Darcy, a spokesman for Mr. Paterson. A third person, also a minor, went to the police but was not charged in the Friday night attack in Manhattan, according to an internal police report.... Two other people, both adults, were involved in the attack, according to the police. They fled on foot and have not been caught, the police said. The former governor was not believed to have been targeted in the assault....”

Weather Channel: “Tropical Storm Milton, which formed in the Gulf of Mexico on Saturday, is expected to become a hurricane late Sunday or early Monday. The storm is expected to pose a major hurricane threat to Florida by midweek, just over a week after Helene pushed through the region. The National Hurricane Center says that 'there is an increasing risk of life-threatening storm surge and wind impacts for portions of the west coast of the Florida Peninsula beginning late Tuesday or Wednesday.'”

The Wires
powered by Surfing Waves
Help!

To keep the Conversation going, please help me by linking news articles, opinion pieces and other political content in today's Comments section.

Link Code:   <a href="URL">text</a>

OR here's a link generator. The one I had posted died, then Akhilleus found one, but it too bit the dust. He found yet another, which I've linked here, and as of September 23, 2024, it's working.

OR you can always just block, copy and paste to your comment the URL (Web address) of the page you want to link.

Note for Readers. It is not possible for commenters to "throw" their highlighted links to another window. But you can do that yourself. Right-click on the link and a drop-down box will give you choices as to where you want to open the link: in a new tab, new window or new private window.

Thank you to everyone who has been contributing links to articles & other content in the Comments section of each day's "Conversation." If you're missing the comments, you're missing some vital links.

Public Service Announcement

Washington Post: "Americans can again order free rapid coronavirus tests by mail, the Biden administration announced Thursday. People can request four free at-home tests per household through covidtests.gov. They will begin shipping Monday. The move comes ahead of an expected winter wave of coronavirus cases. The September revival of the free testing program is in line with the Biden administration’s strategy to respond to the coronavirus as part of a broader public health campaign to protect Americans from respiratory viruses, including influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), that surge every fall and winter. But free tests were not mailed during the summer wave, which wastewater surveillance data shows is now receding."

Washington Post: “Comedy news outlet the Onion — reinvigorated by new ownership over this year — is bringing back its once-popular video parodies of cable news. But this time, there’s someone with real news anchor experience in the chair. When the first episodes appear online Monday, former WAMU and MSNBC host Joshua Johnson will be the face of the resurrected 'Onion News Network.' Playing an ONN anchor character named Dwight Richmond, Johnson says he’s bringing a real anchor’s sense of clarity — and self-importance — to the job. 'If ONN is anything, it’s a news organization that is so unaware of its own ridiculousness that it has the confidence of a serial killer,' says Johnson, 44.” ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: I'll be darned if I can figured out how to watch ONN. If anybody knows, do tell. Thanks.

Washington Post: “First came the surprising discovery that Earth’s atmosphere is leaking. But for roughly 60 years, the reason remained a mystery. Since the late 1960s, satellites over the poles detected an extremely fast flow of particles escaping into space — at speeds of 20 kilometers per second. Scientists suspected that gravity and the magnetic field alone could not fully explain the stream. There had to be another source creating this leaky faucet. It turns out the mysterious force is a previously undiscovered global electric field, a recent study found. The field is only about the strength of a watch battery — but it’s enough to thrust lighter ions from our atmosphere into space. It’s also generated unlike other electric fields on Earth. This newly discovered aspect of our planet provides clues about the evolution of our atmosphere, perhaps explaining why Earth is habitable. The electric field is 'an agent of chaos,' said Glyn Collinson, a NASA rocket scientist and lead author of the study. 'It undoes gravity.... Without it, Earth would be very different.'”

The New York Times lists Emmy winners. The AP has an overview story here.

New York Times: “Hvaldimir, a beluga whale who had captured the public’s imagination since 2019 after he was spotted wearing a harness seemingly designed for a camera, was found dead on Saturday in Norway, according to a nonprofit that worked to protect the whale.... [Hvaldimir] was wearing a harness that identified it as “equipment” from St. Petersburg. There also appeared to be a camera mount. Some wondered if the whale was on a Russian reconnaissance mission. Russia has never claimed ownership of the whale. If Hvaldimir was a spy, he was an exceptionally friendly one. The whale showed signs of domestication, and was comfortable around people. He remained in busier waters than are typical for belugas....” ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: Oh, Lord, do not let Bobby Kennedy, Jr., near that carcass. ~~~

     ~~~ AP Update: “There’s no evidence that a well-known beluga whale that lived off Norway’s coast and whose harness ignited speculation it was a Russian spy was shot to death last month as claimed by animal rights groups, Norwegian police said Monday.... Police said that the Norwegian Veterinary Institute conducted a preliminary autopsy on the animal, which was become known as 'Hvaldimir,' combining the Norwegian word for whale — hval — and the first name of Russian President Vladimir Putin. 'There are no findings from the autopsy that indicate that Hvaldimir has been shot,' police said in a statement.”

New York Times: Botswana's “President Mokgweetsi Masisi grinned as he lifted the diamond, a 2,492-carat stone that is the biggest diamond unearthed in more than a century and the second-largest ever found, according to the Vancouver-based mining operator Lucara, which owns the mine where it was found. This exceptional discovery could bring back the luster of the natural diamond mining industry, mining companies and experts say. The diamond was discovered in the same relatively small mine in northeastern Botswana that has produced several of the largest such stones in living memory. Such gemstones typically surface as a result of volcanic activity.... The diamond will likely sell in the range of tens of millions of dollars....”

Click on photo to enlarge.

~~~ Guardian: "On a distant reef 16,000km from Paris, surfer Gabriel Medina has given Olympic viewers one of the most memorable images of the Games yet, with an airborne celebration so well poised it looked too good to be true. The Brazilian took off a thundering wave at Teahupo’o in Tahiti on Monday, emerging from a barrelling section before soaring into the air and appearing to settle on a Pacific cloud, pointing to the sky with biblical serenity, his movements mirrored precisely by his surfboard. The shot was taken by Agence France-Presse photographer Jérôme Brouillet, who said “the conditions were perfect, the waves were taller than we expected”. He took the photo while aboard a boat nearby, capturing the surreal image with such accuracy that at first some suspected Photoshop or AI." 

Washington Post: “'Mary Cassatt at Work' is a large and mostly satisfying exhibition devoted to the career of the great American artist beloved for her sensitive and often sentimental views of family life. The 'at work' in the title of the Philadelphia Museum of Art show references the curators’ interest in Cassatt’s pioneering effort to establish herself as a professional artist within a male-dominated field. Throughout the show, which includes some 130 paintings, pastels, prints and drawings, the wall text and the art on view stresses Cassatt’s fixation on art as a career rather than a pastime.... Mary Cassatt at Work is on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art through Sept. 8. philamuseum.org”

New York Times: “Bob Newhart, who died on Thursday at the age of 94, has been such a beloved giant of popular culture for so long that it’s easy to forget how unlikely it was that he became one of the founding fathers of stand-up comedy. Before basically inventing the hit stand-up special, with the 1960 Grammy-winning album 'The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart' — that doesn’t even count his pay-per-view event broadcast on Canadian television that some cite as the first filmed special — he was a soft-spoken accountant who had never done a set in a nightclub. That he made a classic with so little preparation is one of the great miracles in the history of comedy.... Bob Newhart holds up. In fact, it’s hard to think of a stand-up from that era who is a better argument against the commonplace idea that comedy does not age well.”

Contact Marie

Click on this link to e-mail Marie.

Page Links
Saturday
Apr202013

The Commentariat -- April 21, 2013

Maureen Dowd pouts that once again it is President Obama's fault that Congress didn't do something: in this case, that gun control legislation didn't pass the Senate (even though a watered-down background-check bill received a majority of votes.) You can read Dowd's argument. ...

     ... CW: Here's what I think. (a) Dowd never misses a chance to diss the President. (I guess that's a given.) (b) Obama is playing the long game, & Dowd is too shortsighted to see it. Even if Obama had succeeded at all the arm-twisting Dowd recommends & overcome the GOP filibuster, there is no way in hell a background check bill would have passed the GOTP House. So, given that reality, Obama is working toward getting a different Congress, something he has not bothered to do in the past but appears to be mobilizing to do now. Yes, innocent people are going to die between then & now because Congress won't pass a bill which attempts to limit gun ownership to competent, lawful people. But that is not President Obama's fault, MoDo. That is the fault of both Houses of Congress. ...

... ** Former Obama Chief of Staff Bill Daley in a Washington Post op-ed: Heidi Heitkamp betrayed me & I want my money back, specifically the $2,500 I contributed to her campaign. "... nine in 10 Americans and eight in 10 gun owners support a law to require every buyer to go through a background check on every gun sale. In North Dakota, the support was even higher: 94 percent. Yet in explaining her vote, Heitkamp had the gall to say that she 'heard overwhelmingly from the people of North Dakota' and had to listen to them and vote no. It seems more likely that she heard from the gun lobby and chose to listen to it instead.... I’ll have some advice for my [deep-pockets] friends in Chicago, New York and Los Angeles: Just say no to the Democrats who said no on background checks." CW: so besides being a PretendDem, Heitkamp is a brazen liar.

Prof. William Reese in a New York Times op-ed on "the first race to the top" -- in mid-19th-century Boston.

Jeremy Herb & Mike Lillis of the Hill: "Two powerful GOP senators [that would be famed sabre-rattlers John McCain & Lindsey Graham] are calling on the Obama administration to treat the captured suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings as an 'enemy combatant' and deny him counsel even though he is reportedly an American citizen." ...

... Steve Benen: "The same week in which Senate Republicans insisted that the Second Amendment is sacrosanct, McCain and Graham are arguing that the Fourth Amendment is a nicety that the nation must no longer take seriously." ...

... Canning Miranda. Glenn Greenwald says, get over it, liberals; what Graham & McCain are proposing is already Obama's policy. ...

... Emily Bazelon of Slate: "The police can interrogate a suspect without offering him the benefit of Miranda if he could have information that’s of urgent concern for public safety. That may or may not be the case with Tsarnaev. The problem is that Attorney General Eric Holder has stretched the law beyond that scenario.... Who gets to make this determination [as to whether or not to invoke the public safety exception]? The FBI, in consultation with DoJ, if possible. In other words, the police and the prosecutors, with no one to check their power." ...

... Charlie Savage of the New York Times: "The Obama administration’s announcement that it planned to question the Boston Marathon bombing suspect for a period without first reading him the Miranda warning of his right to remain silent and have a lawyer present has revived a constitutionally charged debate over the handling of terrorism cases in the criminal justice system." ...

... CW: excuse me while I get pragmatic. Let's say the federal investigators don't mirandize Tsarnaev & he gives them a boatload of information, some of which, BTW, is self-incriminating. What next? Why, his lawyers can argue that he wasn't mirandized & the incriminating information he gave up cannot be used against him. Then let's suppose the court agrees. Guess what? There's already enough evidence against this kid to convict him of capital murder. I get what Greenwald & Bazelon, et al., are saying, & it could certainly be relevant in other cases where there is not enough evidence to convict without information obtained -- directly or indirectly -- from the interrogation. I just don't think it matters in this case. It's more important to learn what Tsarnaev has to say than it is to afford him his Fifth Amendment rights. None of which is to say, BTW, that I agree with a word Sens. Frick & Frack have said.

Koch Brothers Planning to Kill U.S. Journalism. Amy Chozick of the New York Times on the Koch brothers' plan to purchase the Tribune Company, which owns the Chicago Tribune & other papers including The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Baltimore Sun, The Orlando Sentinel and The Hartford Courant. If they succeed, they will exert editorial control to press their anti-government ideas.

Neil Diamond sang "Sweet Caroline" during the 8th inning at Fenway Park Saturday. "The Fenway tradition has been used by teams across all sports to honor Boston since Monday's marathon bombings. The crowd got into the song like never before with Diamond leading them." Sorry about the echo; that's just how it is:

     ... More from Jimmy Golen of the Boston Globe.

News Ledes

AP: "A Massachusetts police official say the brothers suspected of bombing the Boston Marathon before having shootouts with authorities didn't have gun permits." ...

... New York Times on the London Marathon, which took place today "with no security scares and the minds of virtually all involved soaring westward to the victims of last Monday’s attack." ...

... NBC News: "Despite a serious throat wound that prevents him from speaking, the surviving Boston Marathon bombing suspect is beginning to respond to questions from investigators, federal officials tell NBC News. Nearly 48 hours after he was taken into custody following an intense gun battle and manhunt, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, was communicating with a special team of federal investigators at Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital. He was responding to questions mostly in writing because of the throat wound, according to the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The suspect remains in serious condition. The throat wound may be the result of a suicide attempt, investigators said." ...

... New York Times: "The Massachusetts State Police on Sunday released new video showing the final moments of Friday night’s standoff with Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, before he was taken into custody." Includes video. ...

... AP: "... the city's police commissioner said the two suspects [in the Boston Marathon bombings] had such a large cache of weapons that they were probably planning other attacks.... 'We have reason to believe, based upon the evidence that was found at that scene — the explosions, the explosive ordnance that was unexploded and the firepower that they had — that they were going to attack other individuals. That's my belief at this point." [Commissioner Ed] Davis told CBS's 'Face the Nation.' ... The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is tracing the weapons to try to determine how they were obtained by the suspects."

Boston Globe: "Speaking on 'This Week’ today, Senator Dan Coats of Indiana, a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Committee, said, 'The information we have is that there was a shot to the throat [of Dzhohkar Tsarnaev], and it’s questionable when and whether he’ll be able to talk again.  Doesn’t mean he can’t communicate.  But right now I think he’s in a condition where they can’t get any information from him at all.'” ...

... AP: " Doctors say the Boston transit police officer wounded in a shootout with the marathon bombing suspects had lost nearly all his blood and his heart had stopped from a single gunshot wound that severed three major blood vessels in his right thigh. Surgeons at Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge say 33-year-old Richard Donohue is in stable but critical condition. He is sedated and on a breathing machine but opened his eyes, moved his hands and feet and squeezed his wife's hand Sunday."

New York Times: "Secretary of State John Kerry announced Sunday morning that the United States would double its aid to the Syrian opposition, providing $123 million in fresh assistance." ...

... AP: "Wrapping up a 24-hour visit to Istanbul, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Sunday sought to cement and speed up an improvement in relations between Turkey and Israel as well as explore new ways to relaunch Mideast peace efforts."

Denver Post: "Gunshots pierced the fog of marijuana smoke hanging in Denver's Civic Center on Saturday afternoon, sending attendees at the largest pot smokeout in the country scrambling for their lives. Denver police said two people who were shot in their legs were rushed to a hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. Also, a juvenile grazed by a bullet walked to a nearby hospital."

Reuters: "A Cairo court on Saturday ordered Egypt's former president Hosni Mubarak released pending a verdict on illicit gains charges, the second release order in a week, but he will remain in detention because he still faces other charges, court sources said. The appeal hearing on Saturday was held in Torah prison, to where 84-year-old Mubarak was transferred from an army hospital on Wednesday after an apparent improvement in his fragile health."

AP: "Rescuers and relief teams struggled to rush supplies into the rural hills of China's Sichuan province Sunday after an earthquake left at least 180 people dead and more than 11,000 injured and prompted frightened survivors to spend a night in cars, tents and makeshift shelters."

Comments Off

Reader Comments (12)

It's more important to learn what Tsarnaev has to say than it is to afford him his Fifth Amendment rights?

Justice Thurgood Marshall, in his blistering dissent to New York v. Quarles, pointed out that the public safety exception was never anything more than a plausible lie, or as he more diplomatically termed it a "chimerical quest." “Miranda was not a decision about public safety; it was a decision about coerced confessions. Without establishing that interrogations concerning the public's safety are less likely to be coercive than other interrogations, the majority cannot endorse the "public safety" exception and remain faithful to the logic of Miranda v. Arizona.” This would never happen because, as Marshall noted, "custodial interrogations are inherently coercive." "A public safety exception destroys forever the clarity of Miranda for both law enforcement officers and members of the judiciary. The Court's candor cannot mask what a serious loss the administration of justice has incurred."

The Center for Constitutional Rights condemns Miranda exception in Boston Marathon suspect case:

“Like Obama's expanded killing program and his perpetuation of indefinite detention without trial at Guantanamo, this is yet another erosion of the Constitution to lay directly at the President's feet. Obama's Justice Department unilaterally expanded the "public safety exception" to Miranda in 2010 beyond anything the Supreme Court ever authorized. Each time the administration use this exception, it stretches wider and longer. However horrific the crime, continuing to erode constitutional rights invites continued abuse by law enforcement, and walks us down a dangerous path that becomes nearly impossible to reverse.”

“To deny Tsarnaev the legal status conferred on prior domestic terrorists, or to support such a denial, is to abandon the most elementary commitment of modern jurisprudence, which is the equality of all people under the law. It's to stand for legal bigotry.” – Freddie deBoer, http://lhote.blogspot.com/

April 21, 2013 | Unregistered CommenterDenis Neville

It's movie magic for Maureen! Heck, she wants results just like she sees in films and damn, that pesky thing called reality just doesn't enter in. Blaming Obama is tiresome and wrong here. A president can be responsible for a myriad number of things, but hands are tied if, as in this case, the filibuster rears its ugly head along with other heads in the Legislative body who are determined to block passage.What one wonders would she do if she were Potus? Lift a skirt here and there with a wink and a nod? Do as LBJ––who, by the way fought like hell to get what he wanted and never got all he wanted–––by telling some stubborn Senator––"I got your pecker in my pocket, you sombitch, don't forget it!" I would bet, however, that the voice of Dowd, who sounds very much like the nasal Brooklynese of whatshername that played in the TV show, "The Nanny"––would either put the Congressional body to sleep or agree to anything she wants just so she'd shut up.

It's Sunday, for Pete's sake––God's special day for the round tables of blabberfests, so stuff it all and go outside and play or get those gardens up to snuff. Nothin like Spring and things sprouting.

April 21, 2013 | Unregistered CommenterPD Pepe

@Denis Neville: I'm not sure if (a) you didn't understand my comment or (b) you don't understand the utility of the Fifth Amendment. You're missing something, so let me try again at what I thought I made obvious:

If the government (whatever entity that might be) already has enough evidence against me to convince a jury I'm guilty of a capital crime, my Fifth Amendment rights become superfluous.

Whether Tsarnaev (a) incriminates himself or (b) he does not but he provides information that leads to more evidence against him, his goose is cooked. The evidence against him right now appears to be overwhelming.

On the other hand, if he incriminates others sans Miranda, and that leads authorities to these others, that's great. The authorities can read those guys their rights & do their best to develop evidence of their guilt in some plot or whatever. If the other people also incriminate Tsarnaev, & their information was the fruit of the poisonous tree, so what? The prosecutors won't be able to use that information in court, BUT THEY DON'T NEED IT.

It would be a good idea for liberals to be a little more practical.

Marie

April 21, 2013 | Registered CommenterMarie Burns

I am more afraid of the Koch brothers than terrorists. Sigh.

April 21, 2013 | Unregistered CommenterJulie in Massachusetts

If Dowd weren't so desperately searching for a daddy, it might be more obvious to her that when Harry Reid gleefully handed his balls to Mitch McConnell over the filibuster, it was the demise of any smart legislation in the Senate. Unfortunately, neurosis does not live on Reality Lane.

April 21, 2013 | Unregistered CommenterDiane

Re: Know your rights;
"You have the right to free
Speech as long as you're not
Dumb enough to actually try it." The Clash
@CW; In the Boston case I agree with you; the subject is guilty, guilty, three times guilty and info gleaned from him is not going to influence or spoil the case against him.
I'm a shout from the future though; "three hundred people were arrested tomorrow at the Federal Building in Spokane following a "illegal gathering" to protest the droning of a suspected terrorist family of five who were incinerated in their Volkswagen bus while on a holiday. All three hundred are being held in a undisclosed location without legal representation until the authorities decide what they are guilty of. Please stay in your homes while public security officers protect your safety. What a brave new world.

April 21, 2013 | Unregistered CommenterJJG

And I'm a bit conflicted too. Have been reading expressions of sympathy and compassion for the sweet-faced boy who deliberately murdered and maimed so many, I confess to some of the same feelings. It's not his fault, some say; he was in the thrall of an older, more evil brother, and my thoughts want to move in that same direction.

But just a month or so ago as part of an anti-mice campaign at our cabin, one of the cutest mice in the world was trapped by only one haunch when I found him, still alive. Indeed, he was cute and his desperate eyes cast their own spell, but he was also obviously damaged beyond recovery. I hesitated (for he was very cute and I knew a mouse can't help being a mouse, dropping cute little turds on the countertops and in the oven; his mouse-hood and all that mice leave behind was not his fault), but still put him out of his misery, adding briefly to my own in the process by disturbing my own admitted delicacy.

I believe the torture we inflicted in the wake of 9/11 was flat wrong. Beatings with rubber hoses to extract confessions should never happen, but much as I abhor the McCain's mouthings--he has become little more than a skeleton animated by a testosterone patch--there is an aspect of war to this whole terror business. Killing people you don't know who have done you no direct harm is a kind of conflict for which we have not worked out all the rules, and since the idea behind terror is to toss out all the "rules" that govern something (war) already uncivilized, we probably never will. And understandably when those familiar guideposts are not obvious to everyone, those who miss them will continue to have civilized discussions like these.

I don't have the all the answers but along with Marie, I don't believe that the first intelligent step in the interrogation of an obvious "terrorist" is to place a lawyer between him and any answers he might give because other innocent lives may well remain at risk. The answer is somewhere between a lawyer and a rubber hose.

As I said, I'm a bit conflicted.

The militarization of justice thing, though, I have no doubts about. We have dealt with terrorist bombers before. How about the LA TIMES bombing nearly a 100 years ago, when Clarence Darrow got himself in trouble trying to bribe a juror? And there have been many other incidents in our history, too, that certainly qualify as acts of terror where our civil justice system, tho' it may not have always meted out what everyone would agree was justice absolute, was never too afraid or delicate to do its job and therefore handed the task to the military. In such circumstances, civil trials, not military tribunals, are as close as we can come to a civilized response to barbarism.

April 21, 2013 | Unregistered CommenterKen Winkes

http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/04/21/1899581/arkansas-republicans-shoot-lawmakers-for-expanding-medicaid/

Have you noticed the bloodlust comments and expressions of retaliatory violence that come out of the mouths of conservatives? Desires to ignore the constitutional rights for an American citizen, desires to torture a citizen, longings for powerful guns to silence anyone who doesn't bend to their will or share their political or religious beliefs, and a general willingness to ignore the democratic process when it doesn't go their way. These conservatives are no different from the extremist, disaffected, stunted individuals who choose to act out their frustrations through acts of terrorism. I think the only thing holding them back from acting out their evil desires is the fact that they don't feel as alienated or isolated in their own country, being insulated by others who share their narrow views and have obtained positions of political power that they can use, along with lies and propaganda, to carry out their extremist desires.

April 21, 2013 | Unregistered CommenterLisa

@Marie: According to ABC News and several other news sources, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev became a United States citizen on September 11, 2012. The judge administering the citizenship oath remarked on the date.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/boston-marathon-bombing-suspected-tsarnaev-brothers/story?id=19000426#.UXQifL_w5UQ

I am not aware of any precedent that would allow the government to abrogate Tsarnaev's 6th Amendment right to a jury trial in Federal District Court in Boston and instead try him as an "enemy combatant." The 6th Amendment is explicit and unambiguous.

April 21, 2013 | Unregistered CommenterCalyban

I second Julie's comments re: Koch Empire News

Not only because it would surely enable those two sociopaths to strengthen their misinformation campaigns and further dumb down the low info. citizen, but also because it would likely be just a primer into more media acquisitions in our highly-consolidated media market. Thinking of them becoming Murdoch 2.0 makes me shudder considering the potential impacts of the mass dissemination of Tea Party Central.

Thankfully intelligent civil society has banded together through the internet's webs and created a counter-media culture where Truth still exists and cordial civil debate develops thoughts and perspectives.

Here's a shout out to Checkin' Reality, merci encore

April 21, 2013 | Unregistered Commentersafari

@MoDo: Maybe she should read the Constituttion. We do not have a parliamentary system-we have three co-equal branches of government. The Prime Minister has much more power over the legislative branch than does the President.

On another note the governor of Maine never lets the truth get in his way.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/04/18/1892111/governor-lepage-maine-wind-turbine-runs-on-a-little-electric-motor-that-turns-the-blades/?mobile=wt

April 21, 2013 | Unregistered CommenterBarbarossa

It hasn't been that long ago that the younger of the bombers studied for his US citizen exam, which includes questions about the Constitution. What happens if he decides to invokes the Fifth Amendment on his own and demands a lawyer? Plus, I'm sure he's seen enough cop shows on TV to know very well what the Miranda warning is. This kid doesn't lack intelligence.

April 21, 2013 | Unregistered CommenterBarbarossa
Comments for this entry have been disabled. Additional comments may not be added to this entry at this time.