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Church, Religion Crimes and Abuse

 

Porn producer sues to block L.A. condom law

Mandatory rubbers violates the First Amendment???
“The idea of allowing a government employee to come and examine our genitalia while we’re on set is atrocious”

Sex film star Amber Lynn

Source

Porn producer sues to block L.A. condom law

Associated Press Fri Jan 11, 2013 12:06 PM

LOS ANGELES — A major adult filmmaker sued to block a new Los Angeles County law requiring porn actors to wear condoms, calling it a threat to free expression.

Vivid Entertainment contends that Measure B, passed by county voters last fall, violates the First Amendment right to free speech and expression and is unnecessary because the adult industry already has safeguards, such as regular blood testing of actors, to prevent the spread of AIDS and other venereal diseases.

The suit, filed Thursday in federal court, also contends that the law is vague, burdensome and ineffective and is pre-empted by California laws and regulations. It asks the court to block the measure’s enforcement and to rule it unconstitutional.

A call to the county counsel’s office seeking comment from attorneys involved in the case was not immediately returned.

The measure requires adult film producers to apply for a permit from the county Department of Public Health to shoot sex scenes. Permit fees will finance periodic inspections of film sets to enforce compliance.

However, public health authorities have not announced specific enforcement measures for the law.

The AIDS Healthcare Foundation, which sponsored the initiative, said the measure will help safeguard the public, as well as porn workers, from sexually transmitted infections.

Adult film actors rallied to oppose the law before its November passage.

“The idea of allowing a government employee to come and examine our genitalia while we’re on set is atrocious,” sex film star Amber Lynn told the Los Angeles Daily News at the time.

Industry critics also said that fans don’t want to see actors using condoms. They contend that if the law is enforced, the 200 or so companies that now produce adult films in Los Angeles, primarily in the San Fernando Valley, will simply move elsewhere, taking with them as many as 10,000 jobs.

“Overturning this law is something I feel very passionate about. I believe the industry’s current testing system works well,” Steven Hirsch, Vivid’s founder and co-chairman, said in a statement. “Since 2004 over 300,000 explicit scenes have been filmed with zero HIV transmission. The new law makes no sense and it imposes a government licensing regime on making films that are protected by the Constitution.”

The law also will have “have vast unintended consequences which may undermine industry efforts to protect the health of our actors and actresses,” Hirsch said.

Califa Productions, which produces adult films for Vivid, and actors who uses the stage names Kayden Kross and Logan Pierce, joined the suit, which names the county, its district attorney and public health director.


Did God tell him to jump into the mine shaft???

Singh said he jumped in the mine shaft at the bottom of Meteor Crater to “appease the gods.”

Source

Man rescued from mine shaft at bottom of Meteor Crater

By Kristen Hwang The Arizona Republic-12 New Breaking News Team Fri Jan 11, 2013 12:59 PM

Rescuers pulled a 28-year-old California man from a mine shaft in the bottom of Meteor Crater Friday morning after he was seen trespassing in the crater Thursday afternoon.

An employee at Meteor Crater was watching Parminder Singh with binoculars when Singh jumped into the mine shaft. The shaft is more than 100 feet deep, authorities said.

The Coconino County Sheriff’s Office responded to a phone call from the employee saying that a man was at the bottom of the crater. While tourists can walk around the edge of part of the crater, the crater itself is off-limits.

The resue operation lasted more than eight hours. More than 30 people worked in below-freezing temperatures to save the man.

Rescuers cut through a seven-foot tall fence topped with barbed wire to access the opening of the mine shaft.

Food, water, a radio, warm clothing and a flashlight were lowered to Singh. Singh radioed that he believed he had a broken arm and leg.

A member of the Flagstaff Fire Department Technical Rescue Team was lowered into the mine shaft to assess Singh and lift him out.

Helicopters were used Thursday night to insert rescuers into the crater, but windy conditions Friday morning prevented the responders from flying Singh out.

Rescuers carried Singh out of the crater on foot. The hike out consisted of a 600-foot incline and a mile-long walk to the visitor center parking lot. The hike took more than two hours.

Singh suffered from severe hypothermia, according to the Sheriff’s Office. He is at the Flagstaff Medical Center in stable condition.

In an interview with deputies, Singh said he jumped in to “appease the gods.”


Some states unhappy about the idea of happy hours

Government screws up happy hours across the land.

To really screw up things it takes GOVERNMENT

You had a lousy day and are looking for a cheep cold brew after work to unwind, but a lot of elected officials think they know how to run your life better then you do and have passed laws to prevent you form doing that.

Source

Some states unhappy about the idea of happy hours

Posted: Wednesday, January 9, 2013 4:00 pm | Updated: 9:53 am, Wed Jan 9, 2013.

Associated Press

During "happy hour" at the Summer Winter bar in Burlington, Mass., the bargain is on the bivalves, not the brews.

That's because Massachusetts legislators passed a law in 1984 banning bars from offering cut-price drinks. So James Flaherty, the bar's director of food and beverage, decided to use shellfish specials to draw customers.

"We've had to get creative by offering something other than a typical happy hour," he said. "Having a raw bar at the heart of the restaurant, we launched Oyster Happy Hour to appeal to the after work crowd with fresh, local selections and it's become a popular draw."

And Massachusetts isn't alone. The concept of happy hour — when bars offer lower prices or two-for-one specials — may seem like an American tradition, but is in fact illegal or restricted in quite a few places.

Laws vary by state, and even districts within states, so it's hard to get a handle on the national picture, but Ben Jenkins, vice president of government communications for the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States (DISCUS), has noted some recent activity aimed at updating happy hour laws.

A few states, including Oklahoma, Massachusetts and Virginia, recently have considered changes to existing restrictions. The bills failed, but are likely to re-emerge.

Meanwhile, happy hour became legal in Kansas last year after a 26-year ban. In 2011, Pennsylvania extended happy hour potentials from two to four hours and New Hampshire changed its law to allow establishments to advertise drinks specials.

DISCUS does not take a position on happy hour bills, but Jenkins sees the activity in the context of a larger modernization trend. "States across the country are updating their liquor laws to provide better consumer convenience and increased revenue without raising taxes," he says.

The patchwork nature of the laws is a holdover from Prohibition, when states were left to set regulations once the federal ban had been repealed. Some of the laws written then are still on the books, which can strike an anachronistic note today. For instance, it's still illegal to sell alcohol in South Carolina on Election Day. And it may surprise you to know that Moore County in Tennessee is "dry" and also home to the Jack Daniel Distillery.

The reasoning behind happy hour bans or restrictions generally stems from concerns that lowering prices will encourage high consumption and its ensuing problems.

"Some communities have issues of morality regarding promoting the drinking of alcohol or concerns regarding the kinds of behavior that can come from drinking too much," notes Kyle-Beth Hilfer, an advertising and marketing attorney with the New York-based law firm Collen IP.

Having so many different rules means bar owners and restaurateurs need to keep up with changes in the laws and read existing statutes carefully, says Hilfer.

Some states allow happy hours, but ban advertising them. Oregon, on the other hand, is OK with bars advertising general happy hours but not specific price discounts. Utah outlawed happy hours in 2011.

Advertising also can be tricky. A state may OK advertising happy hour specials, but going beyond the simple price and inviting customers to "lose weight at our low-carb beer happy hour," could be subject to regulation by state alcohol beverage officials, Hilfer explains. She recommends that proprietors of venues that serve alcohol and have happy hours have a lawyer vet advertising copy.

Social media has added a new twist to the mix. In Virginia, it's illegal for bars and restaurants to advertise happy hours in electronic media, radio, TV and the Internet, a law that goes back to 1984, long before Twitter had left the nest. This year, Virginia legislators considered changing the rules, though the bill ultimately was withdrawn, partly due to concerns about underage drinking.

This wasn't Virginia's first time to update old laws. In 2006, a tapas restaurant was cited for serving sangria because its recipe, a mix of red wine, brandy and fruit, violated a 1934 law prohibiting the mixing of wine or beer and spirits.

In 2008, lawmakers passed a bill sanctioning sangria.


Jesus loves you, but Pastor Terry Greer wants to kill you!!!

Jesus loves you, but Rev. Terry Greer wants to kill you!!!

Source

Pastor killed wife, wounded daughter, police say

Associated Press Fri Jan 11, 2013 4:14 PM

GARDENDALE, Ala. — A prominent Alabama pastor fatally shot his wife and wounded their 18-year-old daughter in their church-owned home before grabbing a kitchen knife and trying to stab himself to death, police said Friday.

The Rev. Terry Greer, 54, is being charged with murder in the slaying of 52-year-old Lisa Greer and attempted murder in the wounding of Suzanna Greer, a University of South Alabama student, according to police in Gardendale, a suburb about 10 miles north of Birmingham.

Greer is senior pastor at Gardendale-Mt. Vernon United Methodist Church near Birmingham. Prominent in Methodist circles in the area, he leads a church with an average Sunday attendance of about 670.

After Greer opened fire on his wife and daughter Thursday, the teenager grabbed the gun and ran to a neighbor’s house to alert authorities, police said.

The minister then grabbed a kitchen knife and went to a bathroom where he repeatedly stabbed himself in his chest and neck, police said. Responding officers stopped Greer and took him into custody.

Lisa Greer died early Friday at Birmingham Hospital, and police said the couple’s daughter is expected to make a full recovery. Authorities did not disclose details on where the women were wounded or how many times they were shot.

Greer underwent surgery and remained hospitalized with self-inflicted knife wounds, said Police Chief Mike Walker. When he is stabilized, Greer will be arrested and held on $135,000 bond, police said.

The reverend has been on medical leave since experiencing heart problems and a car accident in autumn, and details on what may have led up to the violence were not immediately available.

“We’re not going to speculate on motive or anything like that,” Walker said during a news conference.

Police said the family has lived in the Birmingham area since the middle of 2012, and authorities have never been called to their house before the shooting. Before moving to the Birmingham area, authorities say the reverend worked at a church in Decatur.

A worship leader at Greer’s church was recently arrested on charges of soliciting a child for sex and traveling to have sex with a child, but Walker said there did not appear to be any link between that case and the shootings.

A note posted on the church’s Facebook page said a counselor would be on hand for members in need of help.

“The Bishop and the Conference are being proactive in helping us as a church to cope with this tragedy,” said the note.


Worlds largest gun show is in Las Vegas

SHOT Gun Show - Shooting, Hunting, Outdoor Trade Show

While the "Shooting, Hunting, Outdoor Trade Show" which is hosted by the National Shooting Sports Foundation of Newtown, Conn. is not open to the public I suspect anybody that is associated with the gun or sporting industry can get in for free if you pre-register.

Their web site is here: www.nssf.org

You can register for the show here: www.shotshow.org and here


Source

Defiance, discretion at Vegas gun show

Justin Berton

Updated 7:26 am, Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Las Vegas -- A month after the elementary school massacre that threatens to change the American gun industry, a group based where that atrocity took place mixed defiance with discretion Tuesday in opening the doors to the world's largest gun show.

More than 60,000 gun dealers, retailers and apparel makers are in Las Vegas this week for the annual Shooting, Hunting, Outdoor Trade Show, hosted by the National Shooting Sports Foundation of Newtown, Conn.

The four-day "SHOT Show" is not for the public - it's for those who sell to the public. With the killings of 20 schoolchildren and seven adults in Newtown prompting the Obama administration to move quickly on proposing changes in federal gun laws, the attitude in Las Vegas this week is a combination of aggressiveness, attention to image and adaptation to a new environment.

"You didn't cause the monstrous crime in Newtown and neither did we," Steve Sanetti, president and CEO of the National Shooting Sports Foundation, told members in opening-night remarks. A new product

On the floor of the Sands Expo and Convention Center, browsers gripped sleek new AR-15 rifles, such as the latest version of the Bushmaster Predator, which has an automatic option and can fire 30 rounds in a few seconds. Retailers showed off new inventions, including the iPhone case that doubles as a stun gun, a woman's bra that can holster a handgun - and a product from a Florida company designed to protect schoolchildren from a killer with a gun.

Unlike in past years, the SHOT Show isn't going out of its way to attract attention. Foundation officials declined interview requests from non-trade outlets and denied credentials to mainstream media a month before the trade show opened. A spokesman said a large media presence would be a distraction for people trying to do business at the show.

Gun control proponents interpreted the silence as an attempt to limit coverage of the convention, where assault weapons are on display and the latest military-style weaponry is geared up to amaze potential clients. Not 'puffed up' now

Josh Sugarmann, executive director of the Violence Policy Center, said industry executives were "puffed up" last year and happy to be interviewed on the convention floor after they reported record sales and estimated the value of the sporting gun industry at $4.1 billion.

"This industry is circling the wagons now," Sugarmann said. "The last thing the industry wants America to see and to think about right now is that these are the very guns the industry is promoting. Most people today would be shocked by what the gun industry has become - primarily marketing military-style weapons because that's the profit center."

Sanetti, the SHOT Show organizer, was among industry leaders who met Thursday with Vice President Joe Biden, who is leading an administration group that will recommend changes in federal gun laws.

On Monday, Sanetti issued a statement saying, "A prerequisite to any dialogue involving our industry and its products is an honest recognition of the legitimacy of what we do and the important part of the national culture we represent. Hunting and the recreational shooting sports are here to stay. And so are we."

The national debate dominated the concerns of conventioneers on the first day of the SHOT Show.

Gregg Thompson, co-owner of Crye Precision of Brooklyn, N.Y., which makes camouflage-pattern apparel including vests and helmets, said foot traffic appeared to be light.

"We are not in a good environment for what we do," said Thompson, whose sales team wore T-shirts that took a dig at the Obama administration: "Freedom Was Awesome 1776-2008."

Thompson added, "We should be looking for the solutions that give us more freedoms, not take them away."

Bad rap for rifle

For others, the trade show was an opportunity to network and try to put a new face on the gun industry.

Chris Cheng, a San Francisco resident and winner of the History Channel's reality marksman competition, "Top Shot," said he hoped to show that competitive shooters come from diverse backgrounds.

Cheng, an Asian American who left a job at Google to pursue his career as a marksman, uses the AR-15 as his primary rifle. It's the same gun that was used by Newtown killer Adam Lanza, which AR-15 fans say has given it a bad rap.

"Not only do thousands of other competitive shooters use the AR-15, but it is also the most popular modern sporting rifle in America," Cheng said. "That's an important piece of information to understand why talk of an 'assault weapons' ban is resonating with many gun owners."

Cheng was mindful of presenting a positive picture of gun owners. He answered questions through e-mail after his responses were vetted by his History Channel sponsors, and he declined to be photographed next to a poster of hunting rifles at the show.

School market

With the gun control debate focusing on the elementary school killings, Mike Hengstebeck was earning a lot of attention at his booth with a new item for schoolteachers called the LAD - Lockdown and Defend.

The $795 device resembles a fire extinguisher when it's not in use. If a teacher hears gunshots, Hengstebeck said, he or she can unfurl a bullet-resistant 2-by-4-foot sheet from LAD. The device also has two doorstops, which can be used to try to bar a gunman from breaking into the classroom.

Hengstebeck said the teacher can also hang the canvas over the window to protect the class or use it as a shield while students huddle behind it.

He said his company, SRT Supply of St. Petersburg, Fla., had just completed the product days before the show started and had already won the attention of local lawmakers.

"Unfortunately, a lot of times the people who get killed in school shootings are in the hallway," Hengstebeck said. "They hear the shots and they go running. With LAD, we're telling them to lock it down and defend themselves to give them a chance."

Justin Berton is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: jberton@sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @justinberton


Menlo Park police officer caught naked with prostitute

Menlo Park police officer caught naked with prostitute while on duty

More of the old "do as I say, not as I do" from our government masters.

Aren't these the same cops that want to also throw us in jail for smoking pot, but they get an unlimited supply of free pot from the evidence room????

Source

Menlo Park police officer caught naked with prostitute while on duty

By Bonnie Eslinger

Daily News Staff Writer

Posted: 01/15/2013 08:12:09 PM PST

A Menlo Park police detective arrested in Sunnyvale after being caught naked in a Motel 6 with a prostitute is still working for the city's law enforcement department.

According to an incident report from the Sunnyvale Department of Public Safety, officers went to the motel at 806 W. Ahwanee Ave. at about 5:30 p.m. on Feb. 18, 2011, to conduct a probation warrant search on 32-year-old Natalia Ramirez. When police opened the door, they found Ramirez dressed in a black cat suit with several rolled-up $20 bills tucked into her cleavage.

Inside the bathroom, they found Menlo Park police Officer Jeffrey Kenneth Vasquez unclothed and "on his knees on the bathroom floor," according to the report, which does not say what the 48-year-old man was doing other than to note it did not appear he was trying to destroy contraband.

Vasquez eventually told Sunnyvale police he's a Menlo Park officer, said he was there for sex and said he had found Ramirez on My Redbook, a website commonly used to advertise sexual services. Ramirez confirmed she was there as a prostitute, according to the police report.

The Menlo Park detective said he was on duty when he went to Sunnyvale to serve a subpoena and had an "hour to kill" because the person he was trying to serve wasn't home yet, according to the police report. It was not the first time he had solicited a prostitute for sex, he told the officers. [Yea, it's always the "first time" when a cop gets caught committing crimes. ]

Throughout the incident, "Vasquez was remorseful and fully cooperated with the investigation," according to the report. [What do you expect, this cop wants to keep his high paying job. I think he is remorseful because he got caught] Asked by one officer why he would call a prostitute, Vasquez initially replied he didn't know, but a minute later said he was divorced and his mother had recently died.

"I feel like a loser," he told another officer.

According to the police report, Vasquez was released into the custody of two Menlo Park Police Department officers: Watch Commander Tim Brackett and internal affairs Sgt. Matt Brackett.

Charged with misdemeanor solicitation, Vasquez pleaded not guilty in June 2011 and by July his case was dismissed because the officer who interviewed Ramirez was unable to testify in court, according to Santa Clara County Deputy District Attorney Rob Baker, who supervised the case. [How convenient his fellow cops just forgot to testify against him!!!!]

"The investigator's wife was extremely ill," Baker said. "I wasn't going to ask a person who was going through that to come to court and deal with a misdemeanor situation." [Does he only use that lame excuse to keep cops from testifying against cops???]

Baker said the case wasn't postponed because Ramirez had not waived her right to a speedy trial. Knowing that the Sunnyvale officer wasn't available to testify, Vasquez's attorney, William Rapoport, filed to have his client's case dismissed.

Baker said he wanted to prosecute both cases, but when Ramirez "got the benefit" of having her case dismissed, it "didn't sit well" with him to continue to go after Vasquez.

Officials from Menlo Park would not confirm that Vasquez had been arrested or discuss any disciplinary measures that may have been taken against him for the alleged crime. [Of course the cops always have time to demonize people who are not police officers that were arrested for prostitution]

According to The Almanac, a local print and online news outlet, Menlo Park had to reinstate the officer after he challenged the city's undisclosed disciplinary action against him. An arbitrator sided with Vasquez, according to a conversation an Almanac reporter overheard between City Manager Alex McIntyre and former city manager Glen Rojas while sitting near the men at a table in the Menlo Hub restaurant. McIntyre and Rojas did not identify Vasquez by name, but the Almanac reporter was able to track down the arrest information using information from the conversation about the officer's gender and tenure with the police department.

According to salary data provided by Menlo Park to The Daily News, Officer Jeffrey K. Vasquez earned a base salary of $133,468.78 in 2010 for a full year of service, and $111,056.87 in 2011, a year in which it is noted that he did not work the entire year.

Vasquez was not available for comment; he did not work on Tuesday, according to the police department. Rapoport did not respond to a request for comment.

Email Bonnie Eslinger at beslinger@dailynewsgroup.com; follow her at twitter.com/bonnieeslinger.


Teacher fired for porn work not allowed to return to classroom

Another good reason to get rid of government schools!!!!

I suspect most school teachers have lots of sex their partners who may be married or not married.

But because Stacie Halas was being paid to have sex with her partners the government bureaucrats singled out her and claimed she is unfit to teach.

The issue shouldn't be about who Stacie Halas is sleeping with, but rather if she can teach.

Source

Teacher fired for porn work not allowed to return to classroom

January 15, 2013 | 7:42 pm

An Oxnard middle school teacher’s bid to return to the classroom after she was fired for appearing in pornographic films has been struck down by the state Office of Administrative Hearings.

The Commission on Professional Competence found Stacie Halas, 32, unfit to teach eighth-grade science at Haydock Intermediate School and ordered her dismissal.

In a 47-page report dated Jan. 3, the commission said Halas’ work in the adult film industry hindered her ability to be a role model. The report also repeatedly took issue with her failure to be honest during the investigation.

Although Halas filmed the scenes between 2005 and 2006, before she was employed at the middle school, the ongoing availability of the videos will continue to hamper her ability to be an effective teacher, Judge Julie Cabos-Owen wrote.

Although Halas “failed to establish that she can be trusted as a role model for children or an example of redemption,” the report said, “the circumstances of this case most certainly demonstrate that one’s decisions and conduct, particularly continual deceit, must bring with them certain consequences.”

The Oxnard School District Board of Trustees fired Halas in April after students discovered the pornographic films she appeared in, a district spokesman said. Officials argued at the time that her past would continue to be a problem because students would be more focused on her adult films and not the teaching material.

Halas appealed the decision to the Commission on Professional Competence, which ruled against her after days of hearings in October.

“We were very pleased with the decision,” said Tom DeLapp, a spokesman for the Oxnard School District. “It vindicated and validated the arguments we’ve been making.”

Halas should have disclosed her past when she applied to work at the district, DeLapp said.

“She repeatedly and consciously had a pattern of lies and cover-ups when asked about it by her employers,” DeLapp said. “She would say ‘I didn’t do it’ or would create other lies to try and minimize the damage.”

Richard Schwab, Halas’ attorney, disagreed with the commission’s findings, in particular that his client was dishonest.

“I’m very disappointed,” Schwab said. “We believe Ms. Halas was very honest and forthright, but extremely nervous and embarrassed by her past. She’s obviously very disappointed and hurt.”

Halas presented an opportunity to teach others about redemption and overcoming obstacles, he said. At the time she participated in the adult films, Halas faced financial strains and helped support her family, then went on to be a teacher.

“A lesson can still be learned, but it would be a lesson that if you make a mistake you’re not going to be able to dig yourself out of a hole,” Schwab said.

Halas has not made a decision on whether to appeal the commission’s order, Schwab said, but if she did it would go before the Ventura County Superior Court.

Halas is on administrative leave, but the Oxnard School District Board of Trustees is expected to make a decision on whether to revoke her pay Wednesday, said district Supt. Jeff Chancer.

“She continuously lied to us about just about everything,” Chancer said. “I think educators, police, firefighters and clergy should be held to a higher standard.”


NRA hits Obama over ‘hypocrisy’ of armed guards for daughters

 
 

I suspect most government tyrants don't like guns because they know the Second Amendment was created to allow "The People" to protect themselves against government tyrants.

But it sounds so much better to say they want to take our guns away from us to protect innocent children from violence, rather then to protect themselves from "The People".

Source

NRA hits Obama over ‘hypocrisy’ of armed guards for daughters

By Olivier Knox, Yahoo! News | The Ticket

In a sign of how brutal, emotional and deeply personal the coming battle over gun violence is likely to be, the National Rifle Association on Tuesday accused President Barack Obama of hypocrisy for having the Secret Service protect his daughters even as he opposes the NRA's call for armed guards in schools.

The Web video, first obtained by The Blaze, opens with a narrator asking, “Are the president’s kids more important than yours? Then why is he skeptical about putting armed security in our schools when his kids are protected by armed guards at their school?”

The 35-second video makes no effort to hide the tension and animosity between the NRA and Obama, even stepping into the recent "fiscal cliff" debate.

The video continues, “Mr. Obama demands that the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes but he’s just another elitist hypocrite when it comes to a fair share of security” as an altered image of the president peers over a stack of dollar bills, followed by images of “Meet the Press” host David Gregory, California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Vice President Joe Biden.

A White House official declined to comment on the video. However, spokesman Jay Carney did announce that Obama would outline his administration’s plan to address gun violence on Wednesday.

Eric Pfeiffer contributed to this report.


Freedom of Religion for Beer Drinkers & Bullies???

Beer drinkers and bullies deserve freedom of religion too!!!
Beer drinkers and bullies deserve freedom of religion too!!!
Beer drinkers and bullies deserve freedom of religion too!!!


Court weighs San Francisco public nudity ban

Source

Court weighs San Francisco public nudity ban

By Associated Press Paul Elias Thu Jan 17, 2013 7:00 AM

SAN FRANCISCO — A federal judge is set to consider San Francisco’s new law that bans public nudity.

Public nudity activists are requesting that U.S. District Judge Edward Chen on Thursday block the law from going into effect on Feb. 1 while he considers their lawsuit seeking to invalidate the ordinance.

The activists argue that ban violates their 1st Amendment freedom of speech because their nudity is a political statement.

They also argue the law violates equal protection rights because it exempts children younger than 5 and public nudity at certain events such as an annual street fair, the city’s Gay Pride Parade and its Bay-to-Breakers foot race, which is noted for the wacky costumes — or lack thereof — of participants.

Attorneys representing the city counter that the ban is a matter of public health, safety and the “general welfare” of all residents.

The Board of Supervisors authorized the ban on a 6-5 vote last month after enduring several vocal and naked protests from nudists and their supporters. They argued that the citywide ban is unnecessary and would draw police officers’ attention away from bigger problems while undermining San Francisco values like tolerance and appreciation for the offbeat.

Supervisor Scott Wiener, who represents San Francisco’s largely gay Castro District, introduced the legislation after receiving constituent complaints about the naked men who gather in a small neighborhood plaza most days and sometimes walk the streets naked.

The ban requires clothing below the waist of all appearing in public.

If the ban becomes law, a first offense carries a maximum penalty of a $100 fine, but prosecutors would have authority to charge a third violation as a misdemeanor punishable by up to a $500 fine and a year in jail.


Wanna buy some meth??? Ask Monsignor Kevin Wallin

Sources: Cross-dressing meth priest liked sex in rectory

Source Sources: Cross-dressing meth priest liked sex in rectory

Daniel Tepfer

Updated 8:49 pm, Thursday, January 17, 2013

The Catholic priest busted for allegedly dealing crystal meth was suspended after church officials discovered he was a cross-dresser who was having sex in the rectory at Bridgeport's St. Augustine Cathedral.

Monsignor Kevin Wallin was relieved of his duties in May, but the Roman Catholic Diocese of Bridgeport had continued to pay him a stipend until his Jan. 3 arrest -- a day he was planning to fly to London on vacation.

Now dubbed "Msgr. Meth" by some, Wallin seemed to live a life that easily could have been ripped from the script of "Breaking Bad," the popular AMC series about a high school chemistry teacher turned crystal methamphetamine producer. At one point, Wallin was selling upwards of $9,000 of meth a week, according to his indictment.

In his post-priesthood, Wallin, 61, bought an adult specialty and video store in North Haven called Land of Oz that sells sex toys and X-rated DVDs. Investigators believe the shop helped him launder thousands of dollars in weekly profits.

Wallin's arrest sent shock waves through the Bridgeport and Danbury communities where he was known as a charismatic speaker who was involved in many charitable activities, and who enjoyed Broadway musicals and show tunes. He often attended musicals with his mentor, former N.Y. Cardinal Edward Egan and parishioners.

"There is an evil invading our world and it has come to our church," said Maria Spencer-Fonseca, a long-time parishioner at St. Augustine as she stood outside the cathedral Thursday. "This was a work of evil -- and I am praying for the monsignor."

"I can't fathom it," said 77-year-old Therese Ruppert, a parishioner at the Church of St. Peter in Danbury, where Wallin was pastor from 1996 to 2002. "He was so spiritual. His sermons were wonderful. He had such knowledge of theology."

Wallin, who is represented by a federal public defender, is charged with possession with intent to distribute and distribution of methamphetamine. He has been detained without bond pending an arraignment next week.

Diocese officials stressed that they had no information that Wallin was selling drugs when he was pastor of St. Augustine's Cathedral or when he previously served as pastor of St. Peter Parish.

Ordained in 1984, he served in Bridgeport from that year until 1996, when he went to Danbury. He returned to Bridgeport in 2002 and remained until his resignation in 2011.

"We had no indication he had a drug problem and never had complaints regarding him and drugs," said Diocese Spokesman Brian Wallace.

Instead, Wallace said they became concerned in the spring of 2011 when they began receiving complaints from parishioners regarding Wallin's appearance and erratic behavior.

"We approached him and he admitted he was struggling a bit and shortly after that he resigned (July 2011) and the bishop granted him a sabbatical," Wallace said.

Wallin did go for a health assessment but then didn't go for follow-up examinations and subsequently dropped out of sight. As a result, Wallace said Wallin was suspended.

But sources knowledgeable with the case said the situation went deeper than diocese officials will publicly admit.

While pastor of St. Augustine's, sources said he often disappeared for days at a time; and rectory personnel became concerned and notified diocese officials when Wallin, sometimes dressed as a woman, would entertain odd-looking men, some who were also dressed in women's clothing and engaging in sex acts.

In addition, diocese officials found bizarre sex toys in Wallin's residence, the sources said.

Diocese officials consulted lawyers about the situation and were assured none of Wallin's behavior appeared illegal.

After he left the church, federal authorities say, Wallin rented two apartments on Golden Hill Street in Waterbury, one for himself and the other for his alleged partner in the drug business, Kenneth "Lyme" Devries, who was also arrested in the case along with Chad McCluskey and his girlfriend, Kristen Laschober, both of California.

Federal authorities said in July 2012 they received information from an informant that Wallin was selling methamphetamine in the Waterbury area.

They said the informant had met Wallin at a party in early 2012 and struck up an agreement for Wallin to sell the informant six ounces of the drug a week for a total of $9,000.

The arrangement last about six weeks, delayed only when Wallin had to go into rehabilitation for his own addiction to meth. During that time Wallin gave the informant the number of his California source so that the informant would still get the drug, the indictment affidavit states.

Beginning in late September 2012, an undercover officer with the Statewide Narcotics Task Force began buying meth from Wallin. During one of their meetings in Wallin's Waterbury apartment -- where he was later arrested -- the affidavit states the undercover officer saw a gallon-size plastic bag filled with crystal meth.

The telephone transactions between Wallin and the officer were recorded.

Despite the huge amounts of cash rolling in, Wallin would often get into disputes about money and disagreements with his partners over the weight of the drugs.

Wallin also kept three cell phones, rented two Waterbury apartments and delivered meth in magazines, the affidavit shows. The crystal meth came in shipments from McCluskey and his girlfriend, Laschober, who live in California. Both also have been indicted.

Wallin also was fluent in drug lingo, and in text messages he would often use street phrases such as "5 Grover Clevelands," for $500 worth of meth or "eight balls," for an eighth of an ounce, the indictment states.

Staff writer Michael P. Mayko contributed to this story


Chandler Mayor Jay Tibshraeny is mixing government and religion here!!!

It certainly seems like Chandler Mayor Jay Tibshraeny is mixing government and religion here!!!

Chandler Mayor Jay Tibshraeny, who will present an official proclamation lauding the Chandler United Methodist Church longevity and continued good works in the community.

Source

Chandler Methodist church to celebrate 100 years on Sunday

By Coty Dolores Miranda Special for The Republic | azcentral.com Fri Jan 18, 2013 2:06 PM

The year-old city of Chandler wasn’t much in 1913. Cotton, alfalfa and wheat fields ringed the downtown that included the Bank of Chandler and the Eastern Railroad Depot, and the San Marcos Hotel.

But there was another bit of history made Jan. 20, 1913, when some new residents, including Rev. Kramer M. Gilbert, Bessie Gilbert and their family, celebrated their first Sunday as the Chandler Methodist Community Church. It eventually became Chandler United Methodist Church.

On Sunday, 100 years later to the day, the founders’ descendents, newer members and friends are scheduled to celebrate their church’s centennial at a special 9:30 a.m. service in their newest location, 450 E. Chandler Heights Road, which has been the congregation’s home since 2008.

It will be followed by a noon luncheon attended by Chandler Mayor Jay Tibshraeny, who will present an official proclamation lauding the church’s longevity and continued good works in the community. The luncheon, at Tumbleweed Recreation Center, is sold out.

Alex Knox, a lifelong member whose ancestors joined the church in 1914, will present a historical review of the church titled, “Chandler’s First Church.”

Knox, a U.S. Airways pilot and great-grandson of founding member Thompson Alexander Knox, will recall how his ancestor, a Scottish orphan, immigrated from Canada to Chandler with friends John and Wesley Dobson.

“I can’t believe the risks my great-grandfather took to come to Arizona,” said Knox, representing the church’s fourth generation of the Knox family. “He gave us such a wonderful foundation.”

The congregation first began meeting in an “old flap church,” a 26-by-40-foot wooden structure on two downtown lots on West Chandler Boulevard. The building’s name comes from the canvas window flaps that were lowered in cold weather, pulled up during warmer months.

Though from the start members planned a more imposing edifice “built of brick and cement,” for the next 44 years, with modifications and additions, the “old flap church” served the congregation until a new mission style church grew up around it.

The flaps were replaced by windows in 1938, and the building was sold for $1 to a Mormon congregation and moved to Maricopa in 1959.

Former state representative and senator James Sossaman’s maternal grandparents were also charter members of the church. “Like many, my grandfather grew alfalfa and melons which he would sell to the Indians. He’d get his wagon loaded and go 6 miles south. He also drove a horse-drawn school wagon,” said Sossaman.

His wife, church historian Sue Sossaman, is co-chairing the CUMC Centennial. “It’s been a privilege to be a part of this congregation for so many years,” said Sue Sossaman, who married James 57 years ago in Chandler Methodist’s second church building.

Like others, Alex Knox said the centennial celebration is as much a send off to the next century as a marking of the past. “We have our challenges ahead of us for the next century, but I think we’re up to it,” he said.

Information: 480-963-3360, chandler methodist.org.


Mixing religion & government in Colorado City

When you mix religion and government as they have in Colorado City it causes nothing but problems.

I think Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne is wrong here. We don't need to reduce the power of religion, but we simply need to stop allowing the state of Arizona to mix government and religion.

Source

Horne pushes bill to reduce FLDS power

By Dennis Wagner The Republic | azcentral.com

Tue Jan 22, 2013 11:25 PM

A young mother with six children who fled the polygamist community of Colorado City has told state authorities she was forced into a marriage at age 14 and held against her will for 12 years before escaping in December.

Ruby Jessop Barlow appeared with her children at an emotional Phoenix news conference Tuesday, as Attorney General Tom Horne and others described her ordeal and denounced the practices of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

Mohave County Sheriff Tom Sheahan and Barlow’s sister, Flora Jessop, who escaped from Colorado City in 1986, appeared with Horne and said Barlow’s ordeal illustrates the cultish control exercised by self-proclaimed prophet Warren Jeffs, who continues to lead the church from behind bars.

They also announced plans for new legislation to strip the Colorado City Town Marshal’s Office of its law-enforcement powers, which they believe would reduce the church’s clout. The bill, which is similar to legislation introduced last session, would also provide money for Sheahan’s deputies to patrol Colorado City.

“As long as that Marshal’s Office is in place, the FLDS and Warren Jeffs have the power to control and manipulate ... and keep children trapped inside the cult,” Jessop said.

Horne denounced Colorado City’s culture as “the biggest injustice that I know of in the state of Arizona.”

The FLDS church advocates plural marriages, often with underage girls, as a key to salvation. Numerous sect leaders, including Jeffs, have been prosecuted in Arizona, Utah and Texas for crimes against minors. Jeffs is serving a life sentence for his Texas conviction on a charge of sexual assault of a child.

Jessop, who lives in Phoenix, said she finally fulfilled a vow to help Barlow break free. “It was pure joy to have my sister back,” Jessop said, her voice breaking. “I thought the day would never come.”

Jessop and Barlow were among 27 siblings in an extended family with multiple mothers.

Jessop said Barlow pleaded for help as she was being forced into marriage as a teen but was whisked to a secret ceremony in Nevada, then moved to other locations over the years.

Jessop said her sister finally found the courage to run away five months ago as Jeffs, from behind bars, used his purported divine authority to impose austere rules on his followers. “In the last six months, Warren Jeffs has taken every dietary product away except beans and water,” she said. “They are to suffer as much as he is in prison.”

Jessop said her sister returned to the community after running away because her children were being kept from her by their father, John H. Barlow. But she fled a second time in December and filed for divorce.

According to Mohave County Superior Court records, she was granted temporary custody during a hearing, but the children remained hidden in the Arizona-Utah border towns of Colorado City and Hildale, Utah. Horne and Sheahan said marshals resisted a judicial order to produce the children but finally relented.

Jessop said her sister was reunited with the children, ages 2 through 10, last week. She said the children had been indoctrinated to believe that their mother was “wicked,” but they’ve already embraced the food, clothing and freedoms of an outside world.

“They came out of Colorado City with only the long skirts on their backs,” she added, referring to old-fashioned dresses worn by women in FLDS society. “It’s been interesting and amazing to watch them change from little soldiers to children ... who laugh and play.”

John Barlow did not return a phone call Tuesday.

The town government of Colorado City is controlled by the sect, which is not affiliated with the mainstream Mormon church. Authorities in Arizona and Utah have struggled for decades to deal with alleged underage marriages, fraud, banishment of young males and other FLDS practices.

Last year, Horne asked state lawmakers to adopt legislation voiding the Colorado City marshal’s authority while providing funds for sheriff’s deputies to patrol the community. The measure failed in part because lawmakers from Mohave County opposed it. Horne then provided $420,000 from his budget to pay for sheriff’s patrols.

Sheahan and Jessop described an atmosphere of fear, psychological manipulation and surveillance that form a virtual prison for disaffected church members. “There are more people like Ruby in Colorado City,” Sheahan said.

Besides criminal charges against sect members, authorities have taken over local schools and an FLDS trust that owns most of the town’s homes and businesses. The Justice Department sued Colorado City and Hildale last year, alleging two decades of civil-rights violations in connection with policing, housing and public facilities. The complaint accuses town leaders of religious discrimination against non-FLDS residents.

Jeff Matura, a Phoenix attorney who represents the town, said the portion concerning parks and other public facilities has been dismissed, but the remainder of the case is pending.


Supreme Court rejects atheist's appeal over cross

If you ever sue demanding the government obey the Constitution about separating religion and government don't expect to get a fair trial.

Robert Sherman says it better then I can with:

"This action by the Supreme Court affirms that our nation's court system is a joke, refusal to take my case means that any legislative (body), whether it be Congress, a state legislature or a municipal board, can make blatantly unconstitutional grants to advance religion simply by naming an executive branch agency as a middleman in the transaction"
Source

Supreme Court rejects atheist's appeal over cross

By JIM SUHR, Associated Press

Updated 8:44 am, Wednesday, January 23, 2013

ST. LOUIS (AP) — The U.S. Supreme Court has rejected without comment a Chicago-area atheist's final appeal in his lawsuit challenging the use of state funds to renovate an 11-story cross atop southern Illinois' tallest peak.

The nation's high court on Tuesday declined to review Robert Sherman's request to hear his case involving the $20,000 grant given in 2008 to the 111-foot-high Bald Knob Cross of Peace near Alto Pass. Lower courts already had ruled that Sherman lacked standing to sue over the grant.

Sherman sued in August 2010, arguing that efforts to repair the cross using state money have "the primary effect of advancing a particular religious sect, namely Christianity." He noted that the grant came from a $5 million pot of money that the state Legislature channeled to the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity.

Sherman insisted that the grant was a legislative earmark — not a discretionary allocation from the executive branch — and therefore violated the First Amendment's prohibition against the establishment of religion.

"This action by the Supreme Court affirms that our nation's court system is a joke," Sherman said in a statement. The high court's "refusal to take my case means that any legislative (body), whether it be Congress, a state legislature or a municipal board, can make blatantly unconstitutional grants to advance religion simply by naming an executive branch agency as a middleman in the transaction.

"What a joke! What a fraud against the taxpayers of this country."

Messages were left Wednesday with D.W. Presley, president of the cross' board of directors, and with the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity.

The grant in question has long been spent, used as a down payment on the recently completed, three-year effort to restore the nearly 50-year-old cross that had been showing its age with hundreds of white porcelain panels rusting, missing or hanging on by coat hangers and bailing wire.

The panels and the electrical system have been replaced on the structure, which was peeled back to its steel-and-concrete frame during the renovation. Forty ground-level, 1,000-watt incandescent bulbs that had been frequently vandalized were replaced with elevated, more efficient LED illumination, and security cameras were added.

The cross, about 130 miles southeast of St. Louis near the Shawnee National Forest, was built largely thanks to local farmers' profits from selling pigs. It has been a fixture on the 1,025-foot-high Bald Knob Mountain, a sentry standing over forests and the region's orchards and burgeoning wine country. Easter services have been held on the mountain since 1937.


Prayers for Obama, Biden at National Cathedral

What part of the First Amendment doesn't Obama understand???

I am not sure, but I think the National Cathedral is church funded by the U.S. Government, and if that is true it certainly is a violation of the First Amendment.

Source

Prayers for Obama, Biden

David Jackson, USA TODAY

4:50p.m. EST January 22, 2013

President Obama sought spiritual sustenance for his second term on Tuesday, attending a National Prayer Service in the nation's capital.

A variety of prayers at the interfaith service -- including Christian, Jewish, Muslim and Sikh -- went out to Obama and Vice President Biden, who also attended the event at the National Cathedral in Washington.

"Strengthen their hearts, make them bold, grant them wisdom to discern your will," said one prayer.

Another prayer -- to "keep this nation under your care" -- went out to lawmakers, judges and other public officials.

First lady Michelle Obama also attended the service, as did Biden's wife, Jill. They heard brief sermons, holy readings and music ranging from hymns to the Star Spangled Banner.

The traditional service came a day after Obama's public second-term inauguration ceremony, where he gave an inaugural address in which he called for "collective action" on such issues as debt reduction, immigration, women's and minority rights and climate change.

Obama did not speak at the prayer service.


70 percent of Phoenix's general fund is spent on the police!!!!

Wow!!! 70 percent of Phoenix's general fund is spent on cops or the police!!!!
"70 percent of the city’s general fund is spent on public safety"

Councilman Michael Nowakowski

I have know about that percentage for years, and for most city governments spending in the area of 70 percent of their general budget is about normal.

I think when you consider the total budget as opposed to the general budget the figure is about 40 percent of it. Most city fire departments grab the next 20 percent of the total budget, with all other departments combined grabbing splitting up the final 40 percent of the budget up.

Now considering that two thirds of the people in prison are there for victimless drug war crimes, you could easily tell the police to stop arresting pot smokers and not affect public safety at all!!!!

And of fire a whole bunch of unneeded cops at the same time and save a whole bunch of money.

Of course the war on drugs is a jobs program for cops and the police union would hate that!!!! Even if those jobs are 100 percent unneeded the police union is not going to let them go without a fight!!!

Repeal the stinking sale tax. We don't need those cops!!!

Source

Food-tax repeal may hit Phoenix hard

By Dustin Gardiner The Republic | azcentral.com Fri Feb 1, 2013 10:38 AM

As political pressure builds to repeal Phoenix’s food tax, city officials have outlined several financial obstacles that could complicate such a move.

City Manager David Cavazos this week sent a memo to the mayor and City Council listing major budget constraints to ending the tax, including concerns that it could affect the city’s perfect credit rating or result in a loss of revenue needed to help support police and fire services. [screw the credit rating, I want lower taxes. and it certainly wouldn't hurt to fire a bunch of cops who mainly arrest people for victimless drug war crimes]

The update comes as some council members have renewed calls to repeal the tax this spring, roughly two years before its 2015 sunset. The 2 percent tax on residents’ grocery bills is shaping up to be a contentious point of spring budget negotiations.

Mayor Greg Stanton, who pledged during his 2011 campaign to repeal the tax by April, has been a focus of much of the debate. He has yet to take a definitive position on the issue and could provide the crucial fifth vote needed to abolish the tax early.

“We still have significant challenges,” Stanton said, describing the city’s murky budget picture. “The economy is not bouncing back as quickly as people had hoped.”

He said Cavazos’ memo points out the “stark circumstances” Phoenix faces as it weighs the food-tax repeal: revenue for the current budget year is less than projected. Stanton said he hopes the city can still eliminate or reduce the tax but that he plans to review detailed spending-cut options before making a decision.

Two of the council’s more fiscally conservative members, Jim Waring and Sal DiCiccio, said the city could immediately repeal the tax without affecting public-safety services. DiCiccio has questioned why the city spent tens of millions of dollars on employee raises and bonuses these past few years, costs that are fixed as part of the city’s contracts with unions.

“Delaying the promised repeal of the food tax is the kind of tactic that hurts the middle class and working families,” DiCiccio said. “If the food tax is to be removed by April 1, the public needs time to consider the details of how that will be done without affecting public safety, as promised.”

Council members created the emergency food tax in February 2010 as Phoenix was facing an unprecedented $277 million general-fund shortfall. The tax was proposed as a way to prevent large layoffs of public-safety personnel and keep libraries and senior centers open. [really the expense of libraries and senior centers is insignificant compare to the cops of paying police officers who account for 70 percent of Phoenix's budget] So far, it has generated about $127 million in additional revenue, or about $50million per year.

Although some council members hoped to remove the tax by April, Cavazos’ proposed time line makes that appear unlikely. He plans to present options for cutting the tax on March 26, along with the rest of his trial budget for the next fiscal year, which starts July 1. The council would have months to make a final decision.

City officials said two primary challenges will be maintaining the city’s AAA bond rating and continuing to provide support for public safety.

Phoenix has relied on money from the food tax to help pay for about $30 million in general-fund expenses per year, most of which goes toward public safety and court expenses. On top of that, $8 million goes to help support specialty police and fire funds that have run a negative balance.

“Because 70 percent of the city’s general fund is spent on public safety, I am concerned about how it would be affected by a possible repeal of the tax,” Councilman Michael Nowakowski said recently. “Phoenix’s leaders must consider that and all other consequences in the process.”

A loss in revenue from the food tax could also hurt how credit-rating agencies evaluate Phoenix, Cavazos said. A lower credit rating would require the city to pay higher interest rates when it borrowed money.

Cavazos and city budget staff will spend the next several weeks outlining the council’s specific options, including a budget with recommended service levels and another with cuts to compensate for the loss of the food tax. He said both options will be shown to residents at numerous public meetings.

“I think it’s pretty clear that we have lots of constraints, ” Cavazos said. “We have to work very carefully with our departments and listen very carefully to the public before we can fully identify what those consequences are.”


Obama offers faith groups new birth-control rule

What part of separation of church and state doesn't Obama understand????

As and atheist I don't agree with any of the religious reasons for not allowing woman to practice birth control. Nor do I think the government or religious leaders should be ordering woman what to do, or not do with their bodies.

But because of the First Amendment the government certainly should not be ordering religious groups to practice birth control when their religious doctrines says it is wrong.

Source

Obama offers faith groups new birth-control rule

Associated Press Fri Feb 1, 2013 10:17 AM

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration on Friday announced a new accommodation for religious nonprofits that object to providing health insurance that covers birth control.

The new regulation attempts to create a barrier between religious groups and contraception coverage, through insurers or a third party, that would still give women free access to contraception. Whether religious groups will accept this new approach depends in part on the technical details of how it’s paid for.

The new health care law requires most employers, including faith-affiliated hospitals and nonprofits, to provide health insurance that includes artificial contraception, including sterilization, as a free preventive service. The goal, in part, is to help women space out pregnancies to promote health.

Religious groups which primarily employ and serve people of their own faith — such as churches — were exempt. But other religiously affiliated groups, such as church-affiliated universities and Catholic Charities, were told they had to comply.

Roman Catholic bishops, evangelicals and some religious leaders who have generally been supportive of President Barack Obama’s policies lobbied fiercely for a broader exemption. The Catholic Church prohibits the use of artificial contraception. Evangelicals generally permit the use of birth control, but some object to specific methods such as the morning-after contraceptive pill, which they argue is tantamount to abortion.

Obama had promised to change the birth control requirement so insurance companies — and not faith-affiliated employers — would pay for the coverage, but religious leaders said more changes were needed to make the plan work.

Since then, more than 40 lawsuits have been filed by religious nonprofits and secular for-profit businesses claiming the mandate violates their religious beliefs. As expected, this latest regulation does not provide any accommodation for individual business owners who have religious objections to the rule.

The latest version of the mandate is now subject to a 60-day public comment period. The mandate takes effect for religious nonprofits in August.

Policy analyst Sarah Lipton-Lubet of the American Civil Liberties Union said the group was assessing details of the proposal, but that it appeared to meet the ACLU’s goal of providing “seamless coverage” of birth control for the affected women.


Look who's coming out of the closet for medical marijuana

A drug warrior comes to his senses on medical marijuana!!!!

Of course for years former U.S. Attorney Mel McDonald was a hypocrite who sent pot smokers to prison while allowing his son to smoke marijuana.

Let's face it, it's time to end the insane and unconstitutional drug war.

Source

Laurie Roberts | azcentral opinions

Look who's coming out of the closet for medical marijuana

Posted on February 1, 2013 5:00 pm by Laurie Roberts

Look who's coming out of the closet for medical marijuana

Rep. John Kavanagh, R-Fountain Hills is a tyrant 
                        who wants to repeal Prop 203 which is Arizona's medical marijuana law “No medical authority would say it’s helping you. They all say it’s harming you.”

Rep. John Kavanagh, on medical marijuana

It starts the minute he wakes up and puts his feet on the floor. The nausea quickly builds from the base of his stomach to the back of his throat and he tries to think mind over matter but matter generally wins and this is just the beginning of the day. The really hard time, he would tell you, comes later in the afternoon, when he must force down the pills he needs to stay alive and hope they stay down. Food? The thought of it makes him gag and this goes on day after week after year. His parents wonder whether he can survive it. So far, in 14 years, Bennett Black has only found one thing that eases the nausea enough so that he can eat, so that he can live.

That’s marijuana.

Now there’s a move afoot to repeal the medical marijuana law that Arizona voters have approved three times now. Bennett Black’s father is hoping the Legislature will take a pass on Kavanagh’s bill to put repeal on the 2014 ballot.

“I can’t imagine people saying ‘I’m going to take away a sick person’s lifeline, their ability to have a quality of life and to criminalize that which is keeping him alive,’ ” the father told me. “If there’s a problem, the problem doesn’t come from keeping it away from people that need it.”

Lest you think these the words of some aging hippy, think again. Black’s father is former U.S. Attorney Mel McDonald, a Ronald Reagan appointee who led the war on drugs in Arizona in the 1980s and sat on the 15-member advisory commission of attorneys general that helped set national drug policy. He’s a Mormon, a former Maricopa County prosecutor who also served as a Superior Court judge and has been appointed to various boards and commissions by six of the last seven Arizona governors.

And he’s a fierce supporter of medical marijuana, because he’s seen the relief it offers his son.

I’ve been skeptical about the whole medical marijuana movement, sold as a godsend to cancer and glaucoma patients but used mostly by people with “chronic pain.” The picture of the young man holding his skateboard and his white bag of pot in December, when Arizona’s first dispensary opened, wasn’t exactly a PR coup for the medical marijuana industry.

Then I met Bennett Black and his parents, Mel and Cindy McDonald.

In 1997, Black was riding his Go-Ped when he was hit by a car going 45 mph. The 14 year old suffered a serious brain injury that left him with a severe form of epilepsy.

He’s seen some of the best neurologists in the country. He’s had a golf ball-sized piece of his brain removed. He’s had a vagus nerve stimulator wired to his brain, a device that sends out electrical charges every 30 seconds. And still the epilepsy controls his life, racking his body with life threatening grand-mal seizures that can last up to 75 minutes.

He takes five anti-seizure medications, which leave his stomach one roiling pit of uuuugh. Every day, he is sick. All the time, sick. By 1999, his weight had dropped from 180 pounds to 119 as he would go days without food. His mother, Cindy, talks of spending hour upon exhausting hour in the dead of night, trying to coax seizure medication into his empty stomach only to find the pills minutes later in a bucket of vomit.

A neighbor, suffering the after effects of a broken neck, suggested to Cindy that her son try marijuana. At first, Cindy says she resisted giving it to her son but eventually she became desperate. It was, she says, like a miracle. A few puffs and Bennett could a least gag down a few bites of food, enough to keep him alive.

And so came Cindy the criminal, the mother who snuck around and broke the law, obtaining marijuana so that her son could live, knowing that if she were caught it would make headlines: Wife of former US attorney snared in drug bust.

But knowing, too, that she had no choice.

Mel McDonald also faced a dilemma. He knew his son needed the illegal drug. But he knew also that he could lose his license to practice that which he had always stood for and respected — the law.

For a decade, the McDonalds lived with what he calls “the iron curtain” in their house. Cindy would obtain the marijuana, storing it in a safe only she had access to and giving it to her son when he needed it, which was pretty much every day — though never when Mel was around.

And Mel? It was his job to look the other way and to live with that.

“It’s almost like the story of Les Miserables. Jean Valjean breaking in to steal bread,” he said, recounting a decade of his wife’s clandestine activity. “Here’s a mother who has found one way to keep her son eating food — the only thing that works is marijuana – to keep him alive. To have to go out there and create that barrier in our home because I can’t be a part of it, I can’t be with you. I don’t want to know what you’re doing. I’ve literally got to keep a barrier in my own home to satisfy the requirements of the law and the bar.”

Voters first approved legalizing marijuana for medical use in 1996 but the Legislature repealed the law. Voters again approved it in 1998 but it never took effect because federal officials threatened to prosecute any doctor who prescribed the drug.

Then in 2010, voters narrowly approved it a third time, this time with a requirement only that a doctor “recommend” the drug, and Cindy sobbed relief and gratitude.

For nearly two years, the state dragged its feet before finally the first dispensaries were allowed to open in December. Now Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery is asking the state Supreme Court to toss out the law, contending that it’s pre-empted by federal law.

Meanwhile, Rep. Kavanagh is working to put repeal on the 2014 ballot, noting that 90 percent of medical marijuana users are seeking relief from “chronic pain”, not cancer or glaucoma. He also cites a recent federal appellate court ruling that upheld a Drug Enforcement Agency decision to keep marijuana as a Schedule 1 drug — one deemed to have no legitimate medical uses.

Bennett Black would beg to differ. He is among nearly 34,000 Arizonans who have state permission to use marijuana.

We met at noon on Thursday, along with his parents and his service dog Aggie, who is trained to call for help when a seizure occurrs. Black hadn’t eaten for 22 hours when we met. At most, he says he has one meal a day and only then because the marijuana temporarily eases the nausea, giving him a window of opportunity to eat.

“All you have to do is see someone in my situation and see how much it helps and they would completely feel differently,” Black told me. “They would go from being against it to for it in the blink of an eye.”

Cindy says the program has given dignity to people like her son, who can now obtain the drug legally to ease his nausea and stimulate his appetite.

“It saved his life,” she told me. “I will go to my grave knowing he would have been dead.”

Mel McDonald says a repeal would have the effect of turning his wife into a criminal. Mothers will do what they must, after all. Who among us wouldn’t?

If people are abusing the law, McDonald says we should go after the abusers, not the patients whose lives are often transformed because they can get legal access to relief.

“There are tens of thousands of people that marijuana genuinely helps,” he said. “We’ve been to the best doctors in the world for Bennett, from chiefs of staff on down. Nobody gave us a medication to take away the nausea and enable him to eat. It isn’t out there except marijuana. If there was a magic pill somebody could give us that would cure the nausea and let him eat we would take the pill but marijuana is the only thing that works…

“One of the tough things is for me not to pick up the phone and call Tom Horne or Bill Montgomery, both of whom are friends of mine and who I know well, and just say, ‘For hell sakes, there’s people that really need this. If there’s a problem, tighten the laws to stop the abuse but don’ t take the medicine away from the patient.’ ”


Texas Gov. Perry to Scouts: Keep no-gay policy

While technically this isn't mixing government and religion, it is sad when a governor of an American state endorses discrimination of gays.

The Boy Scouts are a private group and nobody should be able to tell them they can't discriminate against gays or atheists, even if you think it is wrong.

However the government certainly should NOT be giving any money to this organization which discriminates against gays and atheists.

Source

Texas Gov. Perry to Scouts: Keep no-gay policy

By Will Weissert Associated Press Sat Feb 2, 2013 3:10 PM

AUSTIN, Texas — Texas Gov. Rick Perry said emphatically Saturday that the Boy Scouts of America shouldn’t soften its strict no-gays membership policy, and dismissed the idea of bending the organization to the whims of “popular culture.”

Perry is an Eagle Scout and in 2008 he authored the book “On My Honor: Why the American Values of the Boy Scouts Are Worth Fighting For.” It detailed the governor’s deep love for the organization and explained why it should continue to embrace traditional, conservative values — including excluding openly gay members and Scout leaders.

America’s longest-serving governor addressed the Texas Scouts’ 64th annual Report to State, where hundreds of Scouts from around Texas filled the state House of Representatives to announce their delegation’s recent accomplishments.

Perry has addressed the gathering several times before, most recently in 2010, but not since the announcement that the Scouts’ national leadership is mulling scrapping the mandatory exclusion of gay members. Instead, the group could allow different religious and civic groups that sponsor Scout units to decide for themselves how to address the issue — either maintaining the exclusion or opening up their membership.

Even though the Boy Scouts reaffirmed the no-gays policy just seven months ago, the proposal is expected to be discussed, and possibly voted on, at the meeting of the Scouts’ national executive board, which begins Monday in Irving, outside Dallas.

Perry told the youngsters that the Scouts was a key reason he joined the U.S. Air Force and later sought public office, and that society’s failure to adhere to the organization’s core values was a cause for high rates of teen pregnancy and wayward youth who grow up to be “men joining their fathers in prison.”

Speaking to reporters afterward, Perry said: “Hopefully the board will follow their historic position of keeping the Scouts strongly supportive of the values that make Scouting this very important and impactful organization.”

“I think most people see absolutely no reason to change the position and neither do I,” Perry said. He said his views on the subject haven’t changed since writing his book, in which he noted that profits would be donated to the Boy Scouts of America Legal Defense since “they continue to be under attack from the forces of secularism.”

Asked if he would feel different about the Scouts if the policy is changed, Perry wouldn’t say. But he added: “to have popular culture impact 100 years of their standards is inappropriate.”

He also disagreed that allowing members of all sexual preferences would make the Scouts more tolerant: “I think you get tolerance and diversity every day in Scouting.”

Fred Sainz of the Human Rights Campaign, a national gay rights group, said Saturday, “It’s a shame that Governor Perry has chosen to be on the wrong side of history.”

“Governor Perry and the Boy Scouts are both completely out of touch with where America is going on this issue,” he said “There should be one national, non-discrimination policy. We can’t quite wrap our heads around why that is so difficult to do in 2013.”

Perry wrote in his book that he doesn’t “believe the teaching of sexual preference fits within the parameters of Scouting’s mission,” but also made it very clear he’d like to keep gay members from joining.

“Because gay activism is central to their lives, it would unavoidably be a topic of conversation within a Scout troop. This would distract from the mission of Scouting: character building, not sex education,” he wrote.

Perry also questioned whether sexual preference is determined at birth or is a matter of personal choice in his book, and wrote that he doesn’t believe in “condemning homosexuals that I know personally.” [Governor Perry sounds like the racist who says "I don't hate Blacks, but ...." and then rambles on forever saying why Blacks should be second class citizens. Only here he is doing it with gays!]

Zach Wahls is an Eagle Scout raised in Iowa by two lesbian moms who has become a leading activist against the no-gays policy. Wahls said by phone Saturday he believes national Scout leaders will soften the membership policy next week, and he hopes the move won’t make Perry won’t turn his back on the Scouts.

“We’ve been called bullies and had people say ‘you’re imposing your will,’” he said. “Our organization isn’t calling for the removal of anybody who disagrees with us. We support fully inclusive Scouting.”


Priest files reveal disturbing stories of child molestation, coverup

Source

Priest files reveal disturbing stories of child molestation, coverup

February 2, 2013 | 8:19 am

More disturbing stories of priests' molestations of children -- and questionable actions by church leaders -- emerged in 12,000 pages of once-confidential personnel files.

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles posted the documents on its website Thursday night, an hour after a Los Angeles judge ended 5-1/2 years of legal wrangling over the release of the files with an order compelling the church to make the documents public within three weeks.

Victims, their lawyers, reporters and other members of the public spent hours Friday poring through records that stretched back to the 1940s and provided details about the scope of abuse in church ranks never before seen.

The archdiocese of Los Angeles learned in the late 1970s that one of its priests had sexually assaulted a 16-year-old boy so violently that he was left bleeding and "in a state of shock." The priest said he was too drunk to remember what happened and officials took no further action.

But two decades later, word reached Cardinal Roger M. Mahony that the same priest was molesting again and improperly performing the sacrament of confession on his victim. The archdiocese sprang to action: It dispatched investigators, interviewed a raft of witnesses and discussed the harshest of all church penalties — not for the abuse but for the violation of church law.

"Given the seriousness of this abuse of the sacrament of penance … it is your responsibility to formally declare the existence of the excommunication and then refer the matter to Rome," one cleric told Mahony in a memo.

The case of Father Jose Ugarte is one of several instances detailed in newly released records in which archdiocese officials displayed outrage over a priest's ecclesiastical missteps while doing little for the victims of his sexual abuse.

The files also suggested that the attempts to protect abusers from law enforcement extended beyond the L.A. archdiocese to a Catholic order tasked with rehabilitating abusers.

"Once more, we ask you to PLEASE DESTROY THESE PAGES AND ANY OTHER MATERIAL YOU HAVE RECEIVED FROM US," the acting director of the order's treatment program wrote to Mahony in 1988 in a letter detailing therapists' reports about a prolific molester. "This is stated for your own and our legal protection."

The order, the Servants of the Paraclete, closed the New Mexico facility where many Los Angeles priests were sent amid a flood of lawsuits in the mid-1990s. A lawyer for the order declined to comment, but indicated in a 2011 civil court filing that all treatment records were destroyed.

Mahony disregarded the order's advice, and therapy memos are among the most detailed records in the files.

One evaluation recounts how Father Joseph Pina, an East L.A. parish priest, said he was attracted to a victim, an eighth-grade girl, when he saw her in a costume.

"She dressed as Snow White … I had a crush on Snow White, so I started to open myself up to her," he told the psychologist. In a report sent to a top Mahony aide, the psychologist expressed concern the abuse was never reported to authorities.

"All so very sad," Mahony wrote years later after Pina was placed on leave. He was defrocked in 2006.

The limitations of the treatment at the Servants' center are evident in the file. After months of therapy in 1994, Father John Dawson was allowed to leave the facility for a weekend. Among the first things Dawson, who had been accused of plying altar boy victims with pot and beer, did was apply for a job at the Arizona Boys School in Phoenix.

Treatment center staff found out only after the school phoned Dawson to arrange an interview. "Had they not called the Villa, it is doubtful that Fr. Dawson would have informed us of that job application and interview," according to a 1994 letter to Mahony's vicar for clergy, Msgr. Timothy Dyer.

Responding to a public rebuke by his successor, Mahony insisted Friday that he tried his best to deal with the priest molestation scandal but fell short because not enough was known about the problem early in his career.

In an extraordinary open letter to Archbishop Jose Gomez, Mahony insisted Friday that he ultimately instituted state-of-the-art protections against child sexual abuse within the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles. He seemed to suggest that Gomez had acted unfairly by publicly announcing that he was stripping the cardinal of any public role in the local church.

"Not once over these past years did you ever raise any questions about our policies, practices or procedures in dealing with the problem of clergy sexual misconduct involving minors," he wrote.

"Unfortunately, I cannot return now to the 1980s and reverse actions and decisions made then," he added. "But when I retired as the active archbishop, I handed over to you an archdiocese that was second to none in protecting children and youth."

Mahony posted the letter on his blog Friday afternoon, hours after he said he had sent it to Gomez.

In a letter Thursday to parishioners, Gomez announced that "effective immediately, I have informed Cardinal Mahony that he will no longer have any administrative or public duties." The move came a week after the release of church records showing Mahony worked to conceal abusers from police in the 1980s.

-- Harriet Ryan, Victoria Kim, Ashley Powers, Mitchell Landsberg and Teresa Watanabe


Obama loves HIS guns????

 
President Obama loves his guns - President Obama shooting a Browning Citori 725 shotgun - Of course Obama wants to take away OUR guns and keep HIS guns
 

Like Obama, most government rulers love guns. They love guns, because guns allow them to stay in power. Ask Hitler, Stalin and Mao if they loved guns and they will all say yes.

The only people that rulers like Obama, Hitler, Stalin and Mao don't want to have guns are the serfs they rule over.

Source

White House photo shows Obama firing shotgun

By Zachary A. Goldfarb and Howard Schneider, Published: February 2

On his 51st birthday last August, President Obama hit the links with a group of buddies and then flew by helicopter to Camp David. There, he changed into jeans and picked up a shotgun. And then, before it got too dark, he started a round of clay target shooting.

You’d be forgiven if you didn’t think this was headline-worthy news. But on Saturday morning, the White House released and promoted a photograph of Obama shooting skeet at the presidential retreat in Maryland.

White House aides were trying to end a growing distraction just as the president plans to make a fresh push to rally public support behind his ambitious agenda to tighten gun laws, traveling to Minnesota on Monday.

The photo, taken by White House photographer Pete Souza, depicts a sunglasses-wearing Obama firing what appears to be a Browning Citori 725, the shotgun wedged against his left shoulder, a pillow of white smoke emerging from the barrel.

The photo was published a week after Obama claimed in an interview with the New Republic that he routinely shoots skeet at Camp David. The surprising assertion — Obama’s golfing and basketball hobbies are far better known — instantly stirred the political zeitgeist.

Jay Carney, Obama’s press secretary, was asked for evidence in the White House briefing room. “The Daily Show’s” Jon Stewart poked fun at the president’s apparent hobby. Gun-rights activists dismissed it, and some were skeptical that Obama was a routine skeet shooter.

A Republican congresswoman even challenged the president to a shooting contest.

“I’m sure they released the photo because there were folks raising questions about his answer, and those questions are a silly distraction in the midst of a serious debate,” David Axelrod, a longtime adviser to Obama, said in an e-mail.

“I know him pretty well. He doesn’t embellish,” Axelrod added. “If he says he’s done some shooting up there on occasion, I’m sure he has. He’s not a hunter or marksman and doesn’t pretend to be.”

The White House did not say how often Obama has gone shooting.

In the interview with the New Republic, Obama was asked if he had ever shot a gun.

“Yes, in fact, up at Camp David, we do skeet shooting all the time,” he said.

Asked if his whole family goes shooting, Obama replied: “Not the girls, but oftentimes guests of mine go up there. And I have a profound respect for the traditions of hunting that trace back in this country for generations. And I think those who dismiss that out of hand make a big mistake.”

But while the White House made clear Saturday that the president has shot skeet at least once, the release of the photo seemed more likely to inflame passions around the issue than douse them.

Current and former advisers to Obama compared skeptics of Obama’s skeet-shooting prowess to a group of conservatives, known as birthers, who cast doubt on whether Obama was born in the United States and kept exerting pressure until the president released a long-form birth certificate showing he was born in Hawaii.

“Attn skeet birthers. Make our day — let the photoshop conspiracies begin!” David Plouffe, Obama’s senior adviser until last week, wrote on Twitter early Saturday. Later in the day, he wrote, “Day made. The skeet birthers are out in full force in response to POTUS pic. Makes for most excellent, delusional reading.”

Dan Pfeiffer, Obama’s senior adviser, coined a term for those who didn’t believe Obama had gone shooting: “skeeters.”

On the other side, Obama’s critics in the gun-rights community were not impressed by the photo.

“One picture does not erase a lifetime of supporting every gun ban and every gun-control scheme imaginable,” said Andrew Arulanandam, a spokesman for the National Rifle Association.

Ladd Everitt, a spokesman for the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, regarded the whole episode as a sideshow.

“If that’s something the president enjoys doing, God bless him,” he said. “I’m no more offended by this photo than by one showing him throwing a Frisbee.”

The White House would not confirm what firearm Obama used. But gun dealers and enthusiasts said that from the picture, it appeared to be a Browning Citori, a model popular among those involved in the sport.

The “over and under” design features two barrels, one on top of the other, allowing the gun to hold and fire two shotgun shells.

The smoke in the photo is emanating from air vents in the barrel, a feature known as “porting” that reduces recoil shock and allows for steadier aim.

Gun dealers said the shotgun appeared to be a stock model of the Browning, which retails for $2,000 to $3,000. According to the Browning Web site, some of the Citori models are made in a left-handed version, with a slight bend near the butt — though it was not apparent from the photo whether the left-handed president was using one of those.

“It looked like he was shooting regular American skeet,” said Michael Hampton Jr., head of the National Sporting Clays Association. “It’s a gun that is used for this discipline — a good middle-of-the-road gun, very functional and very standard.”

The sport originated early in the 20th century when hunters were looking for ways to practice and improve their marksmanship.

Over time, the activity developed as a sport of its own. There are several variations, all involving a shooter attempting to down a roughly three-ounce clay disk that has been launched from a spring-loaded machine.

In skeet shooting — the activity the White House said Obama was pursuing at Camp David — the clay targets are launched at different heights and travel across the shooter’s field of vision.

Hampton said that even novices can get quick satisfaction. In a 100-target session, he said even beginners will hit 25 or 30 targets and quickly develop 50-50 proficiency.


Kyrsten Sinema a gun grabber???

From this articles Kyrsten Sinema certainly sounds like a gun grabber.

I should also note that US Congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema when she was a member of the Arizona Legislator tried to slap a 300 percent tax on medical marijuana. She is fairly well hated in Arizona for that.

Source

County attorney says he would bring gun to a hearing

By Brahm Resnik 12 News Fri Feb 1, 2013 6:14 PM

"Sunday Square Off" is the leading weekend political news program in Arizona. "Square Off's" newsmaker interviews feature elected officials at the national, state and local levels. Our political roundtables bring together insiders with unique perspectives on the stories of the day and insight on what's next.

This Sunday

• Congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema • Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery • State Rep. John Kavanagh • Promise Arizona's Petra Falcon • Panel: Chris Herstam, Christina Martinez, Stan Barnes

Maricopa County attorney says he would bring weapon into a hearing

Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery says he would probably carry a gun into a mediation hearing like the one that led to the fatal shootings this week of a Phoenix lawyer and his client.

Montgomery is one of my newsmaker guests on this weekend's special edition of "12 News Sunday Square Off." The show was taped before a studio audience taking part in a daylong "Politics and the Press" event sponsored by ASU's Cronkite School of Journalism, the Arizona Republic and 12 News.

Also on the show:

-Congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema (D-9th District) says she believes universal background checks on gun buyers have the best chance of passing Congress this year.

-Republican State Rep. John Kavanagh, a border hawk, debates Promise Arizona executive director Petra Falcon, an immigrant rights advocate, on the new immigration plans released this week.

--The roundtable of Stan Barnes, of Copper State Consulting; Christina Martinez, of Adalante Public Affairs; and 12 News political insider Chris Herstam make the cold political calculations on which big bills -- immigration reform and gun controls -- can get through Congress.

"12 News Sunday Square Off" airs at 8 a.m. Sunday on 12 News, right after "Meet the Press."


F* the First Amendment, they are Muslims and must be criminals.

Well at least that what the cops in the NYPD seem to think.

Source

NYC police defend undercover spying of Muslims

Associated Press Mon Feb 4, 2013 1:53 PM

WASHINGTON — The New York Police Department is defending its use of undercover officers to prevent terrorism attacks, saying it follows the Constitution regardless of what civil rights lawyers say about its surveillance of the Muslim community.

Police spokesman Paul Browne commented in a statement Monday. It came after civil rights lawyers claimed in court papers that the police department had resumed now-banned tactics it used against anti-war demonstrators in the 1960s and 1970s.

Civil rights lawyers say the NYPD has subjected the Muslim community to “widespread and intense” surveillance, including where they eat, shop and worship.

They seek a court order against further surveillance of Muslims without evidence of crimes. Browne said terrorists have tried to attack the city at least 16 times since Sept. 11, 2001.


Father Lovell loves children - In a Biblical sense!!!

Source

Problem priests were sent to Arizona

By Michael Clancy The Republic | azcentral.com

Mon Feb 4, 2013 10:05 PM

Two allegedly abusive priests who served in Arizona came from the Los Angeles Diocese, where they had abused prior to their transfers, documents show. The information comes from the Los Angeles Archdiocese’s court-ordered release of more than 12,000 pages of files on 124 priests who had been accused of abuse.

The two priests who came to Arizona were Lawrence Lovell, who served in the Phoenix Diocese, and Kevin Barmasse, who was sent to the Tucson Diocese.

The file on Lovell is small. Lovell was a member of the Claretian religious order, not a diocesan priest. The Claretians have not released his full file.

He served in Prescott; San Gabriel, Calif.; and Phoenix before an allegation surfaced in California in 1985.

He immediately was removed from ministry. Later, allegations surfaced in Prescott and Phoenix.

He currently is in prison after pleading guilty to cases in Yavapai and Maricopa counties.

The file on Barmasse is far more detailed.

It shows his entire history, including a reassignment to Tucson as a result of the first allegation in Los Angeles in 1983.

Barmasse served in Tucson until 1991, when he was sent to a therapy center.

It is unknown whether Tucson Bishop Manuel Moreno knew of the allegations against Barmasse. A statement from the diocese to its parishioners says he did, but Bishop Gerald Kicanas, Moreno’s successor, says no records exist to indicate whether Moreno knew anything.

“When the diocese accepted him for ministry in 1983, the diocese was aware that an allegation of sexual misconduct with a minor had been made against him while he served as a priest in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles,” Tucson officials said in a document for which the date is redacted.

The first allegations in Tucson came in August 1991, Kicanas said, months after Barmasse went to St. Luke Institute, a therapy center.

Besides going into Barmasse’s assignments and future in great detail, the documents also show great concern about legal exposure for the archdiocese.

In 1986, then-Monsignor Thomas Curry of Los Angeles, who as a bishop resigned over this past weekend for his role in the cover-up, wrote to Cardinal Roger Mahony, who succeeded Cardinal Timothy Manning in 1985. He said Barmasse’s victim was close to 18 years old.

“So Kevin should not return for another two years,” Curry wrote, “by which time the period for filing lawsuits will have passed.”

Two years later, Moreno told Barmasse that he was willing to take him into the Tucson priesthood, only to be dissuaded by Los Angeles officials, who wanted to send Barmasse to St. Luke.

In May 1991, a letter from the Los Angeles priest in charge of clergy assignments to St. Luke makes the first mention of allegations in Tucson. He does not provide details.

Those came in August 1991, in a memo to Manning from the Rev. Timothy Dyer, who had replaced Curry as vicar for priests. The memo mentions “inappropriate approaches” to five young men during a trip to California; back rubs that “turned in to genital fondling”; and the promise of “financial favors if this young man would help relieve Fr. Barmasse’s ‘loneliness.’”

In 1998, a memo shows, Los Angeles officials still were concerned about possible criminal liability.

“The statutes of limitations have been substantially reworked,” Monsignor Richard Loomis wrote to Mahony. “The archdiocese is clearly ‘on notice’ regarding Barmasse’s problems.”

Barmasse officially had his permission to serve as a priest removed in 1992; he was laicized in 2006. Several civil cases were filed against the Diocese of Tucson in regards to Barmasse’s violations. All were settled in the diocesan bankruptcy case in 2004, Kicanas said.

No criminal charges ever were filed against Barmasse. He currently resides in suburban Los Angeles.


"Justice Dept justifies killing Americans if they pose ‘imminent threat

I saw a blurb on MSNBC network about this and they seemed to say that the Obama Administration was greatly stretching the term ‘imminent threat’ to mean that if they kinda, sorta, maybe think their might be a tiny threat to US security it will justify them to murder any American citizen they feel like anywhere on the planet.

Of course you have to remember that MSNBC reports the news as objectively and unbiased as the FOX network reports it so you have to take that with a grain of salt.

Here is a link to the 16 page document is titled “Lawfulness of a Lethal Operation Directed Against a U.S. Citizen Who Is a Senior Operational Leader of al-Qaeda or An Associated Force.” which was released by NBC. [http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnbc/sections/news/020413_DOJ_White_Paper.pdf ]

Source

Justice Dept. document justifies killing Americans overseas if they pose ‘imminent threat’

By Karen DeYoung, Published: February 4

The United States can lawfully kill a U.S. citizen overseas if it determines the target is a “senior, operational leader” of al-Qaeda or an associated group and poses an imminent threat to the United States, according to a Justice Department document published late Monday by NBC News. [http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnbc/sections/news/020413_DOJ_White_Paper.pdf ]

The document defines “imminent threat” expansively, saying it does not have to be based on intelligence about a specific attack since such actions are being “continually” planned by al-Qaeda. “In this context,” it says, “imminence must incorporate considerations of the relevant window of opportunity” as well as possible collateral damage to civilians.

Guiding the evolving U.S. counterterrorism policies: White House counterterrorism adviser John O. Brennan is compiling a “playbook” that will lay out the administration’s evolving procedures for the targeted killings that have come to define its fight against al-Qaeda and its affiliates.

The memos outline the case for the targeted killing of U.S. citizens in counterterror operations overseas.

It says that such determinations can be made by an “informed, high-level official of the U.S. government.”

NBC said the document was provided by the Obama administration last summer to members of the Senate Intelligence and Judiciary committees as a summary of a classified memo on targeted killings of U.S. citizens prepared by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel.

The memo was written months prior to a September 2011 drone strike in Yemen that killed Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S.-born Muslim cleric accused of helping al-Qaeda’s Yemeni affiliate plan attacks against the United States. Three other Americans, including Awlaki’s 16-year-old son, have also been killed in U.S. strikes in Yemen.

The Obama administration, in decisions upheld in federal court rulings, has repeatedly denied demands by lawmakers, civil rights groups and the media to release the memo and other information on targeted killings — or even to acknowledge their existence. Senators are expected to closely question John O. Brennan, President Obama’s chief counterterrorism adviser, on drone strikes, the memo and the Awlaki killing during Brennan’s confirmation hearing Thursday on his nomination to become Obama’s new CIA director.

Justice officials could not be reached for comment on the document, which NBC posted on its Web site. The 16-page document is titled “Lawfulness of a Lethal Operation Directed Against a U.S. Citizen Who Is a Senior Operational Leader of al-Qaeda or An Associated Force.”

In announcing Awlaki’s death, Obama described him as the leader of “external affairs” of Yemen-based al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

The American Civil Liberties Union on Monday night called the document a “profoundly disturbing” summary of “a stunning overreach of executive authority — the claimed power to declare Americans a threat and kill them far from a recognized battlefield and without any judicial involvement before or after the fact.”

The ACLU sought the original Justice Department memo as part of a case dismissed last month by a federal judge in New York. Last Friday, the ACLU filed a notice of appeal in that case.

“Needless to say, the white paper is not a substitute for the legal memo. But it’s a pretty remarkable document,” ACLU Deputy Legal Director Jameel Jaffer said. [http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnbc/sections/news/020413_DOJ_White_Paper.pdf ]


Source

Justice Department memo: Drone strikes on U.S. citizens can be legal

By Cheryl K. Chumley

The Washington Times

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

The U.S. Justice Department finds it legal to target American citizens with drone strikes under certain circumstances, according to a memo that just surfaced.

The undated memo, titled “Lawfulness of a Lethal Operation Directed Against a U.S. Citizen who is a Senior Operation Leader of al Qaeda or An Associated Force,” was obtained by NBC News. The memo defines as legal drone attacks on U.S. citizens who were involved in violent attacks, according to United Press International. [ The memo can be viewed here http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnbc/sections/news/020413_DOJ_White_Paper.pdf ]

Specifically, the memo states: “The condition that an operational leader present an ‘imminent’ threat of violent attack against the United States does not require the United States to have clear evidence that a specific attack on U.S. persons and interests will take place in the immediate future,” according to UPI. Citizens who present such “imminent threats” were defined as those who participated in violent acts — and maintained the views that led to their violent acts, according to UPI.

In those instances, a fatal drone attack would be considered a “legitimate act of national self-defense that would not violate the assassination ban,” according to the memo.

The memo was distributed to various members of Senate and House intelligence committees.


Source

Drone strikes on Americans on U.S. soil are LEGAL, says confidential Justice Department memo

By Damian Ghigliotty

PUBLISHED: 23:58 EST, 4 February 2013

The U.S. government can order the killing of American citizens if they are believed to be ‘senior operational leaders’ of the Islamic terrorist organization Al Qaeda or ‘an associated force,’ according to a confidential Justice Department memo leaked on Monday.

The U.S. government can do so even if there is no clear evidence that the American targeted is engaged in an active plot to attack the U.S.

The news was first reported by NBC’s Open Channel, which obtained a copy of the 16-page document and released it to the public.

The undated memo, which is not an official legal document, sheds new light on the reasoning behind a reported increase in the number of drone strikes used against Al Qaeda suspects in recent years -- including those aimed at American citizens -- under the Obama administration.

The memo, ‘Lawfulness of a Lethal Operation Directed Against a U.S. Citizen who is a Senior Operational Leader of Al Qa’ida or An Associated Force,’ was reportedly provided to members of the Senate Intelligence and Judiciary committees in June by unnamed administration officials.

It was provided on the condition that authorities keep the memo confidential and not discuss its contents publicly, according to NBC.

‘The condition that an operational leader present an “imminent” threat of violent attack against the United States does not require the United States to have clear evidence that a specific attack on U.S. persons and interests will take place in the immediate future,’ the memo states.

Insight: The document sheds new light on the legal reasoning behind a reported increase in the number of drone strikes used against al-Qaida suspects in recent years, including those aimed at American citizens

Insight: The document sheds new light on the legal reasoning behind a reported increase in the number of drone strikes used against al-Qaida suspects in recent years, including those aimed at American citizens

The Justice Department told MailOnline that it would not comment on the news.

The Obama administration has remained relatively hush about reports of increased drone strikes carried out since 2008.

The Long War Journal reports that the U.S. has been conducting a covert program to target and kill Al Qaeda and Taliban commanders in Pakistan's northwest region.

‘The US ramped up the number of strikes in July 2008, and has continued to regularly hit at Taliban and Al Qaeda targets inside Pakistan,’ the non-profit news outlet writes.

‘There have been 332 strikes total since the program began in 2004; 322 of those strikes have taken place since January 2008.’

The New York Times reported in November that the Obama administration had been mapping out a strategy weeks before the presidential election to develop definitive rules for the targeted killing of terrorists by drones, so that a new president would ‘inherit clear standards and procedures’ if Obama was not re-elected.

The secrecy surrounding such strikes may soon be unraveled, as indicated by the release of the 16-page Justice Department memo.

Proponent: John Brennan, Obama's pick for CIA director, has called drone strikes 'consistent with our inherent right of national self-defense'

John Brennan, a White House counter-terrorism adviser, one of the leading architects behind the government’s drone policy and Obama’s pick to become the country’s new CIA director, is expected to face tough questions about his involvement in Obama’s drone program during his Senate confirmation hearing on Thursday.

Brennan was the first administration official to formally acknowledge drone strikes in a speech he gave at the Woodrow Wilson Center in April 2012, calling drone strikes ‘consistent with our inherent right of national self-defense.’

A bipartisan group of 11 senators wrote a letter to Obama on Monday asking his administration to provide its legal justification for its use of drone strikes over the past four years.

‘We ask that you direct the Justice Department to provide Congress, specifically the Judiciary and Intelligence Committees, with any and all legal opinions that lay out the executive branch's official understanding of the President's authority to deliberately kill American citizens,’ the senators lead by Democrat Ron Wyden of Oregon wrote in their letter.

Political blogger Marcy Wheeler, who says she has closely tracked the group’s repeated requests, writes that it was at least the 12th time Congress had asked for those documents.

Among the overseas attacks that have killed U.S. citizens with terrorist ties on Obama's watch, a September 2011 missile strike in Yemen took out alleged Al Qaeda members Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan.

Both men were U.S. citizens who had never been indicted by the U.S. government or charged with any specific crimes.

Read the full Justice Department white paper released on Monday night here. [http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnbc/sections/news/020413_DOJ_White_Paper.pdf ]


Ireland regime ran Catholic workhouses of teenage girls

Source

Ireland regime ran Catholic workhouses of teenage girls

By Shawn Pogatchnik Associated Press Tue Feb 5, 2013 9:32 PM

DUBLIN -- Ireland’s government oversaw workhouses run by Catholic nuns that once held thousands of women and teenage girls in unpaid labor and usually against their will, a fact-finding report concluded Tuesday, establishing state involvement in the country’s infamous Magdalene Laundries for the first time.

But Prime Minister Enda Kenny stopped short of making any official apology for the decades of harsh treatment documented in 10 Magdalene Laundries, the last of which closed in 1996. He emphasized that the 1,000-page report offered a nuanced view of life in the laundries far less stark or one-sided than has been depicted on stage and in film.

Kenny rejected activists’ claims of laundry conditions akin to prison and slavery, and confined his statement of regret to the longtime popular view in Ireland that most residents of the Magdalene Laundries were “fallen women,” a euphemism for prostitutes.

Opposition leaders demanded that he offer an official apology for the state’s failure to enforce labor laws and human rights standards in the facilities, and to pledge to establish a taxpayer-funded compensation program for survivors. But Kenny instead said all lawmakers should read the report and debate its findings in two weeks.

The report’s lead author, former Irish Sen. Martin McAleese, said until now the facts and figures of the workhouses run by four orders of Catholic nuns had been shrouded in “secrecy, silence and shame.”

McAleese, the husband of Ireland’s former President Mary McAleese, said the failure of successive governments and the nuns to provide any public records on the laundries’ operations meant that “stories grew to fill these gaps.”

He wrote in the report’s introduction that the investigators “found no evidence to support the perception that unmarried girls had babies there, or that many of the women of the Magdalene Laundries since 1922 were prostitutes. The reality is much more complex.”

The report found that 10,012 women were committed to the workhouses from 1922, the first year of Ireland’s independence from Britain, to the closure of the last two laundries in 1996. It found that the average length of stay was just seven months, not the lifetime imprisonment commonly depicted in fictional works. It said 14percent stayed more than 5 years, and 8percent more than a decade. And many hundreds checked into the facilities repeatedly for short periods, reflecting their poverty and the Irish state’s inadequate facilities for women needing a home.

It found that 27 percent of the women were ordered into the facilities by an array of state employees: judges, probation officers, school truancy officials, social workers, doctors at psychiatric hospitals, or officials at state-funded shelters for unwed mothers and their babies.

Some 16 percent entered laundries voluntarily, 11percent were consigned there by other family members, and 9 percent were sent there on the recommendation of a priest.

The report disputed depictions in popular culture of physical beatings in the institutions, noting that many Magdalene residents had transferred there as teenagers from other Catholic-run industrial schools where such violence was common, and some survivors failed to distinguish between the two.

It found no evidence of such attacks in the nuns’ care and, specifically, no complaints of sexual abuse by the nuns.

Campaigners for justice for the “Maggies” expressed disappointment with the report and particularly the government’s response.

“These women were locked up against their will and not paid a penny for their work,” said Clare McGettrick, spokeswoman for the Justice for Magdalenes pressure group. She noted that the state inspected the laundries as licensed workplaces, yet never required the nuns to fund any state pension entitlements for the women as normal employers do, which means they are among Ireland’s poorest residents today.

The United Nations Committee on Torture in 2011, hearing a legal petition from the Justice for Magdalenes group, rejected the Irish government’s arguments and ordered the fact-finding effort subsequently undertaken by McAleese and officials from six Irish government departments.

McAleese concluded that his investigation had “found significant state involvement with the Magdalene Laundries.”


Only fundamentalist Christians can be trusted to give us good science information???

Source

Posted on February 6, 2013 11:28 am by Laurie Roberts

Flat earth revisted?

In keeping with Arizona’s national reputation as Kooksville, one of our leaders has introduced a bill aimed at allowing science teachers to explain that man had no hand in global warming and that evolution is some crackpot’s idea of a joke.

Sen. Judy Burges has decided – with what suspiciously looks like a little help from the American Legislative Exchange Council – that the schools can’t be trusted to teach real science to our kids.

Thus comes Senate Bill 1213, which says Arizona officials “shall not prohibit any teacher in this state from helping pupils understand, analyze critique and review in an objective manner the scientific strengths and weakness of existing scientific theories covered in the course being taught.”

The scientific theories listed: evolution, the chemical origins of life, global warming and human cloning.

Burges’ bill appears to spring from ALEC, the business-oriented lobby that keeps many of our legislators in its hip pocket and just coincidentially raises a lot of its money from the fossil fuel industry. For several years, ALEC has been pushing “model legislation” that questions whether humans are changing the weather.

Burges, an ALEC member, told Howard Fischer of Capitol Media Services that she didn’t get the bill from ALEC but that she believes the schools are suppressing science when it comes to global warming.

“There should be an opportunity for teachers to step up to the plate and give their opinion if they have scientific proof that it isn’t happening, that it’s a natural phenomena, without retribution,” the Sun City West Republican told Fischer.

Reminds me of the old days when a former longtime House Education Committee chairman who was serving as Arizona Gov. Evan Mecham’s education advisor decreed that children should not be corrected by their teacher if they beleive that the earth is flat.

No, really, that happened.


Obama doesn't get that First Amendment thing???

Obama doesn't seem to get that 1st Amendment thing about not mixing government and God

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Obama laments divisiveness in Washington at National Prayer Breakfast

By Rachel Rose Hartman, Yahoo! News | The Ticket

The annual National Prayer Breakfast bills itself as a celebration of faith and togetherness. Unfortunately, President Barack Obama noted, that spirit doesn't last much past the coffee.

During his speech at the breakfast Thursday morning at the Washington Hilton, where he spoke before community and religious leaders as well as some lawmakers, the president lamented the current tone in Washington.

"I do worry sometimes that as soon as we leave the prayer breakfast, everything we've been talking about the whole time at the prayer breakfast seems to be forgotten. On the same day of the prayer breakfast," Obama said, and paused as the attendees laughed. "I mean, you'd like to think the shelf life wasn't so short. I go back to the Oval Office and I start watching the cable news networks, and it's like we didn't pray."

Obama used his speech to call for the country's most powerful lawmakers, including himself, to conduct themselves with humility to God, and for all citizens and lawmakers to strive to find common ground. Obama noted fights over the deficit, taxes and education.

"This morning I want to summon the resolve that comes from our common faith," Obama said, speaking of the country at large.

More...Obama also used Thursday's speech to reflect on the Bibles he used during his inauguration last month: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s traveling Bible and the one President Abraham Lincoln used for his swearing-in in 1861. He noted the adversity and challenges they each faced and their desire for guidance from God.

Obama also reflected on his personal faith and his use of the scripture, saying, "As president I sometimes have to search for the words to console the inconsolable. Sometimes I search scripture to determine how best to balance life as a president and as a husband and as a father. I often search for scripture to figure out how I can be a better man as well as a better president."


Christian worker quits over ‘666’ on tax form

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Christian worker quits over ‘666’ on tax form

By Bob Smietana USA Today Thu Feb 7, 2013 9:51 AM

CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. -- A man said that he quit his job last week in order to save his soul.

Walter Slonopas, 52, resigned as a maintenance worker at Contech Casting LLC in Clarksville after his W-2 tax form was stamped with the number 666.

The Bible calls 666 the “number of the beast,” and it’s often used as a symbol of the devil. Slonopas said that after getting the W-2, he could either go to work or go to hell.

“If you accept that number, you sell your soul to the devil,” he said.

Bob LaCourciere, vice president of sales and marketing for the Revstone Corp., which owns Contech Casting, said that Slonopas’ W-2 was labeled with 666 by the company that handles Contech’s payroll. It refers to the order in which the forms were mailed out, he said.

This isn’t the first time that the satanic number has caused Slonopas trouble at work.

During his first day on the job in April 2011, Slonopas was supposed to be assigned the number 668 to use when he clocked in. But the human resources department gave him the wrong number -- 666 -- instead.

Slonopas, who said he became a born-again Christian about 10 years ago, complained and was given a new number.

In July 2011, the company changed time clock systems, and once again Slonopas got 666. This time he quit. The company apologized and he returned to work a few days later.

This latest incident with the W-2 baffled company spokesman LaCourciere. He could not believe it had happened again.

“I am completely at a loss for words,” he said.

How it’s interpreted

The number 666 first appears in chapter 13 of the New Testament book of Revelation, which describes a satanic figure called the beast or Antichrist who takes over the world and stamps everyone with a mark bearing the number 666. According to Revelation, no one will be able to buy or sell anything without that number stamped on them.

That’s caused people to fear anytime that number pops up, said Jay Phelan, senior professor of theological studies at North Park University in Chicago.

“It’s seen as a very dangerous number,” he said.

For believers such as Slonopas, who take the book of Revelation literally, any tie to 666 is a betrayal of their faith. Phelan said he understands why Slonopas quit.

“It’s a desire to be loyal to his faith and to not be identified with the Antichrist,” he said. “The company ought to find a way to cut him some slack.”

Amy-Jill Levine, professor of New Testament and Jewish studies at Vanderbilt University Divinity School, said the writer of Revelation was using a technique called “gematria” -- in which letters have numerical values -- to refer to a Roman emperor as the beast.

She said that over the past 2,000 years, readers of Revelation have tried to use 666 to figure out who the Antichrist is. Among the candidates were political figures such as Hitler, Ronald Reagan, and Barack Obama and corporations such as Procter & Gamble and IBM.

The number has caused problems for at least one other worker in the past. In 2011, a factory worker from Georgia named Billy Hyatt sued his former employer after he was fired for refusing to wear a sticker with 666 on it. The sticker referred to the number of accident-free days he’d had on the job.

Worker wants new W-2 to file taxes

Slonopas, though, said he has no interest in suing anyone. All he wants is for his former employer to give him a new W-2 without a satanic number on it. Otherwise, he said, he can’t file his taxes.

He shakes his head when asked if he’d go back to work for Contech, even if the company gives him a new W-2. That would send the message that he sold out his faith for money.

“God is worth more than money,” he said.

His wife, Anna, said the couple will be fine. She said God will take care of them. They live frugally and are house-sitting for their older son, who is in the military.

“If my husband makes $10, one goes to God, two go to savings, and we live on seven,” she said. “It’s not that my husband makes $10 and I spend $11.”

LaCourciere said the firm planned to mail out a new W-2, in a plain envelope, by the end of the day on Tuesday. The company also wants to rehire him.

“We’d love to have him back,” he said.


Woman accused of being witch burned alive

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Woman accused of being witch burned alive

Fri Feb 8, 2013 12:01 AM

PORT MORESBY, Papua New Guinea — mob stripped, tortured and bound a woman accused of witchcraft, then burned her alive in front of hundreds of horrified witnesses in a Papua New Guinea town, police said Friday in the latest sorcery-related murder in this South Pacific island nation.

Bystanders, including many children, watched and some took photographs of Wednesday’s brutal slaying. Grisly pictures were published on the front pages of the country’s biggest circulating newspapers, The National and Post-Courier, while the prime minister, police and diplomats condemned the killing.

In rural Papua New Guinea, witchcraft is often blamed for unexplained misfortunes. Sorcery has traditionally been countered by sorcery, but responses to sorcery allegations have become increasingly violent in recent years.

Kepari Leniata, a 20-year-old mother, had been accused of sorcery by relatives of a 6-year-old boy who died in the hospital the day before.

She was tortured with a hot iron rod, bound, doused in gasoline, then set alight on a pile of car tires and trash in the Western Highlands provincial capital of Mount Hagen, national police spokesman Dominic Kakas said.

Deputy Police Commissioner Simon Kauba on Friday blasted Mount Hagen investigators by phone for failing to make a single arrest, Kakas said.

The public were apparently not cooperating with police, and police carrying out the investigation were not working hard enough, Kakas said.

“He was very, very disappointed that there’s been no arrest made as yet,” Kakas said.

“The incident happened in broad daylight in front of hundreds of eyewitnesses and yet we haven’t picked up any suspects yet. He was very, very curious about that and he blasted the investigators on the phone,” Kakas added.

Kakas described the victim’s husband as the “prime suspect” and said the man fled the province. Kakas said he did not know if there was a relationship between the husband and the dead boy’s family.

He said more than 50 people are suspected to have “laid a hand on the victim” and committed crimes in the mob attack. While many children had witnessed the murder, there were no child suspects, he said.

Kakas said onlookers were shocked by the brutality but were powerless to stop the mob. Police officers were also present but were outnumbered and could not save the woman, he said. There is an internal investigation underway into what action police at the scene took.

Police Commissioner Tom Kulunga described the murder as “shocking and devilish.”

“We are in the 21st century and this is totally unacceptable,” Kulunga said in a statement.

He suggested courts be established to deal with sorcery allegations, as an alternative to villagers dispensing justice.

Prime Minister Pete O’Neill said he had instructed police to use all available manpower to bring the killers to justice.

“It is reprehensible that women, the old and the weak in our society should be targeted for alleged sorcery or wrongs that they actually have nothing to do with,” O’Neill said.

The U.S. Embassy in the national capital Port Moresby issued a statement calling for a sustained international partnership to enhance anti-gender-based violence laws throughout the Pacific.

The embassy of Australia, Papua New Guinea’s colonial ruler until independence in 1975 and now its biggest foreign aid donor, said “We join … all reasonable Papua New Guineans in looking forward to the perpetrators being brought to justice.”

In other recent sorcery-related killings, police arrested 29 people in July last year accused of being part of a cannibal cult in Papua New Guinea’s jungle interior and charged them with the murders of seven suspected witch doctors.

Kakas could not immediately say what had become of the 29 since their first court appearances last year in the north coast province of Madang.

Police alleged the cult members ate their victims’ brains raw and made soup from their penises.

The killers allegedly believed that their victims practiced sorcery and that they had been extorting money as well as demanding sex from poor villagers for their supernatural services.

By eating witch doctors’ organs, the cult members believed they would attain supernatural powers.

Murder in punishable by death in Papua New Guinea, a poor tribal nation of 7 million people who are mostly subsistence farmers. But no one has been hanged since independence.


Gun-licensing mandate an affront to our rights

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Gun-licensing mandate an affront to our rights

Mon Feb 11, 2013 1:14 AM

Comparing guns to cars is a common and seductive but subtle error of logic.

If it makes sense to license drivers and register cars, then it would make sense to license pilots and register airplanes. And we do. That’s parallel logic.

However, if it makes sense to license gun owners and register guns, then it would make sense to license writers and register printing presses. That would be parallel logic, too. But we don’t do that, because that doesn’t make sense. That’s because those are rights, and government has no legitimate power to license your rights.

So, why would an honest writer object to having a license? Most reporters I know can’t answer that question, which explains why so many support “universal registration” — they understand the issue very poorly. I’ll answer it for you.

If you must pass a government test, pay a tax called a “fee,” get fingerprinted, photographed, listed in the criminal database and carry around your card with an expiration date to publish an article, or else go to prison, that’s flat out wrong. Licensing and registering freedom is tyrannical, assaults the innocent and serves no legitimate purpose in America. That’s why.

—Alan Korwin, Scottsdale

The writer is author of “The Arizona Gun Owner’s Guide.”


Pope Benedict XVI to resign, citing age and waning energy

Hmmm... If the Christian or Catholic God is the supreme master of the Universe, why doesn't he just use his book of magic tricks to give Pope Benedict XVI the energy and youth to run his empire???

Maybe Jesus, the Father, the Holy Ghost or who ever allegedly runs things in Heaven could wave their magic wand and turn Pope Benedict XVI into a 25 year old super hero who could run the church for the next 50 years???

Source

Pope Benedict XVI to resign, citing age and waning energy

By Anthony Faiola and Michelle Boorstein, Updated: Monday, February 11, 10:32 AM

LONDON — Recognizing what he described as his failing strength of “mind and body,” Pope Benedict XVI announced Monday that he would step down as head of the Catholic church, the first pontiff to give up his duties since 1415.

“After having repeatedly examined my conscience before God, I have come to the certainty that my strengths, due to an advanced age, are no longer suited to an adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry,” Benedict said in a statement.

Federico Lombardi, director of the Vatican press office, said Benedict will move to the papal residence in Castel Gandolfo following his abdication on Feb. 28, then return to Rome to live in a monastery of cloistered nuns inside the Vatican for a period of prayer and reflection.

In Washington, President Obama said he and first lady Michelle Obama, “on behalf of Americans everywhere,” extend their “appreciation and prayers” to Benedict.

“Michelle and I warmly remember our meeting with the Holy Father in 2009, and I have appreciated our work together over these last four years,” Obama said in a statement released by the White House. “The Church plays a critical role in the United States and the world, and I wish the best to those who will soon gather to choose His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI’s successor.”

The choice by the 85-year-old pontiff, born in Germany as Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger and ordained a priest in the aftermath of World War II, shocked lay Catholics and high-ranking clergy, including the pope’s closest aides.

“It came as an enormous surprise,” said Cardinal Donald Wuerl, archbishop of Washington, who last saw Benedict in Rome in October. “He presided at meeting after meeting after meeting,“ Wuerl said. “There was no doubt that he was in full possession of his faculties .”

Benedict’s decision to step down “says to me he is a very humble and honest person,” Wuerl added. “His love for the church is such that he has concluded it would be better not to try to lead this huge flock without the full strength of all of his energies.”

Catholics attending 7 a.m. Mass at St. Matthews Cathedral in downtown Washington agreed. “If he’s feeling weak or frail, well, [retiring] is such a loving and caring decision on his part,” said Tara Shaughnessy, 23, of the District.

During his eight-year tenure, Benedict has tried to guide the church through troubling sexual abuse and financial scandals while seeking to reinforce conservative doctrine among the global ranks of more than 1 billion faithful.

Liberal Catholics bemoaned his promotion of conservative bishops who believe the church will hold together best if its teachings are communicated as eternal and unchanging. They bristled at a church crackdown on the largest group of U.S. nuns after the nuns wrote and lectured about homosexuality and contraception.

Traditional Catholics, however, have celebrated Benedict’s focus on orthodoxy.

“If you don’t sell full-throttle Catholicism, people are not going to buy it. Everyone knows the whole package is more compelling and interesting than some sort of Catholic hors d’oeuvres that leave you hungry,” said George Weigel, who has written multiple books on the church and the pope.

Quiet and soft-spoken, especially in comparison to his gregarious predecessor, Pope John Paul II, Benedict nevertheless maintained a vigorous travel and speaking schedule, visiting Lebanon as recently as September and, in December, launching the first ever papal Twitter account. He was 78 when he was elected pope in 2005, the oldest person chosen to head the church since the 18th century.

The conclave of cardinals that will choose the next pope is expected to convene in mid-March. Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, said “we should have a new pope for Easter,” which this year falls on March 31. Benedict will be the first former pope in nearly six centuries to witness the election of his successor, but he does not plan to participate in the selection, Lombardi said.

Analysts immediately began predicting a turbulent debate between reformers and conservatives. At a time when the church is declining in its former stronghold of Europe but gaining strength in Africa, Asia and Latin America, pressure is growing on the College of Cardinals – the global princes of the church – to break with tradition by electing a non-European as pope

Benedict made his extraordinary announcement in Latin, to a private gathering of cardinals inside Vatican City. “I have had to recognize my incapacity to adequately fulfill the ministry entrusted to me,” Benedict said. “For this reason, and well aware of the seriousness of this act, with full freedom I declare that I renounce the ministry of Bishop of Rome, Successor of Saint Peter.”

Benedict encouraged a revival of the Latin Mass and promoted a range of traditionalists into the Vatican hierarchy, hoping to win back conservative Catholics opposed to the church reforms spelled out by the Second Vatican Council of 1962. He attempted to recruit new members, including Anglicans disenchanted with liberal views on female as well as openly gay clergy in their own denomination. His unprecedented move to allow Anglicans to become Catholic but remain in their own communities drew some 1,600 lay people and 30 priests in North America alone. Benedict has designated 2013 the “year of faith,” or evangelization, encouraging Catholics who have spent a half-century focusing on their own disputes to return to being missionaries.

Benedict is seen as the most intellectual pontiff in generations , but he was never quite able to exude the charisma that made Pope John Paul II a beloved figure among Catholics and non-Catholics alike. “He had a hard act to follow in John Paul, who was bigger than life. Benedict suffered by comparison because he was much more shy, he wasn’t an actor, he preferred to write books and issue encyclicals rather than travel,” said the Rev. Thomas Reese, a Catholic writer and former editor of “America,” a Catholic magazine.

Reese said Benedict would be remembered as the pope who “cleaned up sex abuse” because he demanded that bishops around the world institute more extensive preventative procedures, the way the U.S. church has. However, only a minuscule number of clergy worldwide have been held accountable for sexual abuse and removed from their positions, which Reese acknowledged “has been a problem. . . . However, he did a lot more than Pope John Paul did.”

At various times, Benedict made statements — some say gaffes — that included what critics called slights against Protestants, Muslims and Jews.

“He will be remembered as a conservative pope,” said John Pollard, an expert on the modern papacy at Cambridge University. “People will remember his conservatism, moral high ground over same-sex marriage, women priests and contraception, his involvement in dealing with the pedophile scandals.”

Benedict departs amid a sense of crisis in a Vatican still reeling from a litany of scandals and at a time when questions of reform are dividing Roman Catholics worldwide.

The most recent problems facing the church involve a bevy of documents leaked by the pope’s personal butler, Paolo Gabriele, to Italian journalists and alleging corruption and heated disputes within the marbled Vatican walls.

The church has also faced criticism over efforts to comply with international rules governing money laundering at the institution’s internal bank. Earlier this year, the Vatican’s financial troubles escalated to the point where international banks temporarily suspended credit card links at the Sistine Chapel, forcing tourists to use cash.

After scores of new pedophilia accusations, and cover-up allegations, surfaced in Europe in 2010, the spotlight focused on Benedict’s own management of a case involving a German priest and sex offender while he was bishop of Munich in 1980. Despite promises to the victim’s family that the priest would not work with children again, the priest was allowed to return to the ministry, after which he molested more children.

Accusations also surfaced that a Vatican office Benedict had headed in the 1990s failed to defrock an American priest who allegedly molested 200 deaf boys in Wisconsin.

Benedict’s defenders hailed actions he took to address the scandals, including a rare official apology to Catholics in Ireland for widespread clergy sexual abuse there.

The pope’s decision to step aside to make way for a new and almost surely younger pope was seen Monday as another manifestation of his fierce generosity and goodwill.

“As a Christian and as a Catholic, one can’t help but be moved and touched by this,” German government spokesman Steffen Seibert said at a news conference in Berlin, according to Reuters. “He has left a very personal signature as a thinker at the head of the church, and also as a shepherd.”

Boorstein reported from Washington. James Arkin, Maggie Fazeli Fard and Debbi Wilgoren in Washington and Eliza Mackintosh in London contributed to this report.

Pope Benedict XVI to become first pope in 600 years to resign

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Pope Benedict XVI to become first pope in 600 years to resign

By Tom Kington

February 11, 2013, 7:55 a.m.

VATICAN CITY -- Pope Benedict XVI announced Monday that he will step down on Feb. 28 due to failing health, stunning the world's 1 billion Catholics by becoming the first pope in nearly 600 years to resign from the office.

The German pontiff, 85, made his surprise statement to cardinals during a Vatican concistory on Monday, saying “my strengths, due to an advanced age, are no longer suited to an adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry,” a reference to his duties as leader of the church.

Speaking at a ceremony held to canonize three new saints, Benedict said he would step down at 8 p.m. on Feb. 28. Father Federico Lombardi, a Vatican spokesman, said a conclave of cardinals would be held in March to elect a new pope in time for Easter.

Italian cardinal Angelo Sodano, the dean of the College of Cardinals, said Benedict's announcement was a "bolt out of the blue."

Describing his decision as being “of great importance for the life of the church,” Benedict told cardinals that “in today’s world, subject to so many rapid changes and shaken by questions of deep relevance for the life of faith, in order to govern the bark of Saint Peter and proclaim the Gospel, both strength of mind and body are necessary.”

His strength, he added, “has deteriorated in me to the extent that I have had to recognize my incapacity to adequately fulfill the ministry entrusted to me.”

Vatican insiders have noted that Benedict has become more frail in recent months; he requires a moving platform to transport him down the aisle at St Peter’s Basilica during services and has slowed during his walks in the Vatican gardens. His private life was recently exposed to public scrutiny after his butler was convicted by a Vatican court for leaking papal correspondence.

Lombardi said Benedict had not been persuaded to step down by a particular illness, but said "he had become more tired and fatigued than in the past."

Benedict’s decision, which he described as being "of great importance for the life of the church," marks the first papal resignation since Pope Gregory XII reluctantly stepped down in 1415 to end a dispute with a rival claimant to the papacy. The last pope to resign willingly was Celestine V in 1294 after reigning for only five months.

Benedict told cardinals he wished to “devotedly serve the Holy Church of God in the future through a life dedicated to prayer.” Lombardi said the pope would transfer from his papal apartment to live in a building in the Vatican’s gardens formerly occupied by nuns. The pope, who has recently finished a series of three books about the life of Jesus, could continue to write books, Lombardi said.

Beyond giving details of the coming conclave, Lombardi said the Vatican was entering unchartered waters with a pope set to replace a living, former pope. “We are heading into an unknown situation,” he said at a hastily called Vatican news conference.

Describing the moment the pope made his announcement, Lombardi said “the pope sat down, took the microphone and read his statement shortly after 11:30,” adding “he said it in Latin so not everyone understood immediately.”

Lombardi said he had no fear that Vatican officials -- unaccustomed to sharing the Holy See with a former pope -- might continue to defer to Benedict. “This is recognized by canon law, there is no risk of confusion,” he said.

Lombardi said the German pontiff, who was elected in 2005 at age 78, had shown “courage, a humble spirit, responsibility and a desire that the church be governed in the best way,” adding that he had met the pope recently and found him “serene.” The pontiff’s decision, he said, “did not completely surprise me.”

Benedict has previously suggested that a pope could break with tradition and step down if he no longer felt able to carry out his duties.

In a book-length interview, "Light of the World," with the German journalist Peter Seewald, Benedict responded to a question about whether a pope could resign: “Yes. If a Pope clearly realizes that he is no longer physically, psychologically, and spiritually capable of handling the duties of his office, then he has a right and, under some circumstances, also an obligation to resign.”

The pope’s decision will trigger weeks of speculation about who will take his place as the Vatican recovers from the scandal of pedophile priests and seeks to retain believers as the church challenges rights to abortion and gay marriage.

Asked if Benedict had set an example for future popes to resign instead of dying in office, often after debilitating illness, Lombardi said: “This is not intended to influence successors,” but he added, “Next time [it happens], it won’t be the first time in centuries, it could be an approach to the problem.”

One Vatican expert said Benedict had probably been mulling his decision to resign since his election eight years ago. “When he took over the church had been through the suffering from illness of his predecessor John Paul II,” said John Thavis.

“It will have put in his mind questions about the governance of the church if the pope becomes incapable,” he said.

Pope confided in brother about his infirmity

Source

Pope confided in brother about his infirmity

February 11, 2013, 8:54 a.m.

LONDON -- Pope Benedict XVI's decision to step down may have taken almost everyone by surprise Monday, but one person said he had known such a move was likely: his older brother.

Georg Ratzinger, 89, told the German DPA news agency that Benedict increasingly felt his physical limitations. The pope's doctor had advised him against any further transatlantic journeys, and walking had become more difficult, Georg Ratzinger said.

Deciding to retire was a "natural step," the elder Ratzinger told DPA.

"My brother wants to have more rest in his old age," he said.

The two men grew up in Bavaria and attended seminary together outside the town of Traunstein.


Rep. Judy Burges attempting to mix government and religion in Arizona???

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Bad bill aims to teach bad science to your kids

Posted on February 10, 2013 6:00 pm by Laurie Roberts

Bad bill aims to teach bad science to your kids

In keeping with Arizona’s growing national reputation, one of our leaders has introduced a bill aimed at allowing science teachers to explain that man has no role in global warming. [If you ask me I am a bit skeptical about global warming myself!!!]

And that the world really was created in six days. [Sounds like something straight out of the Bible!!!]

And possibly that the world is flat. (OK, I made that last part up, but you could believe it, couldn’t you?) [Well according to the Bible the world is FLAT!!!! But only a few of the most fanatic Bible thumpers push that line. After all it is kind of hard to claim the world is flat as the Bible says, when images from space show it being round.]

Rep. Judy Burges is the sponsor of this latest piece of crackpottery. The Sun City West Republican is best known for her efforts in previous years to ferret out the truth behind Barack Obama’s birth and to foil the United Nations’ dastardly plot to create a one-world order. She was a big supporter of guns on college campuses last year, reasoning that if you’re old enough to go to war, you’re old enough to pack heat on the way to the fraternity keg party.

Now, she’s at it again, deciding – with what suspiciously looks like a little help from the American Legislative Exchange Council – that the schools can’t be trusted to teach real science to our kids.

Thus comes Senate Bill 1213, mandating that state, county and local school officials “shall endeavor to create an environment in schools that encourages students to explore scientific questions, learn about scientific evidence, develop critical thinking skills, and respond appropriately and respectfully to differences of opinion about controversial issues.”

Which begs the question: Don’t they already?

I wanted to ask state Superintendent John Huppenthal that question but he was curiously unavailable over the course of two days to discuss it. His spokeswoman told me it’s a local issue. Go figure.

As for Burges, she isn’t talking to me either – or anyone in the media, according to her office. But she told longtime political reporter Howard Fischer last week that teachers who don’t believe in human-caused global warming should be able to express their views during science class without fear of retribution.

“There should be an opportunity for teachers to step up to the plate and give their opinion, if they have scientific proof, that it isn’t happening, that it’s a natural phenomomena,” she said.

Because, of course, your kid’s eighth-grade teacher knows far more about the subject that the 97 to 98 percent of the world’s climate scientists who agree that man-made global warming is occurring.

Burges’ bill says that Arizona officials “shall not prohibit any teacher in this state from helping pupils understand, analyze, critique and review in an objective manner the scientific strengths and weakness of existing scientific theories covered in the course being taught.”

The “controversial” scientific theories listed: evolution, the chemical origins of life, global warming and human cloning.

The bill appears to spring from ALEC, the business-oriented lobby that keeps many of our legislators in its hip pocket and just coincidentally raises a lot of its money from the fossil fuel industry. Since 2008, ALEC has been pushing “model legislation” – the Environmental Literacy Improvement Act — that questions whether humans are changing the weather.

Burges, an ALEC member, told Fischer that she didn’t get the bill from ALEC but from Tennessee. What she doesn’t mention is that Tennessee, which passed the bill last year, got it from ALEC.

“I just happen to think,” Burgess told Fischer, “that if a person believes that this is not man-caused or that man only contributes so much, then they should be able to stand before their class and discuss it.”

Reminds me of the old days when Burges’ predecessors at the Legislature were trying to bring a little Bible study into science classes on evolution. At the time, then-Gov. Evan Mecham’s education advisor decreed that children should not be corrected by their teacher if they proclaim that the earth is flat.

No really, that happened.

Burges bill is being co-sponsored by Republican Sens. Chester Crandell of Heber, Rick Murphy of Peoria, Steve Pierce of Prescott, Don Shooter of Yuma and Steve Yarbrough of Chandler. To her credit, Senate Education Committee Chairman Kimberly Yee hasn’t scheduled the bill for a hearing.

Yet, that is.


Gilbert, Arizona seems to be mixing religion and government

Source

Gilbert wins court battle over sign law

By Connor Radnovich Cronkite News Fri Feb 8, 2013 11:06 PM

WASHINGTON -- A divided federal appellate court on Friday upheld a Gilbert sign ordinance, saying it did not infringe on the First Amendment rights of Good News Presbyterian Church.

A panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that town restrictions on the placement of church signs were not based on the signs’ content and did not infringe on the church’s right to free exercise of religion or its right to equal protection.

But in a dissenting opinion, Judge Paul Watford said the sign ordinance was unconstitutional, saying that it favored political and ideological signs over signs promoting events, like those the church used.

“Gilbert’s sign ordinance violates the First and 14th amendments by drawing content-based distinctions among different categories of non-commercial speech,” Watford wrote.

An attorney for the church said he was reviewing the case and will decide soon whether to appeal. The pastor of Good News said he was disappointed in the ruling.

“We thought we had a solid case, but the 9th Circuit said it wasn’t solid enough,” said the Rev. Clyde Reed. “I guess we didn’t do a good enough job.”

The spat began in 2005 when town officials told the church of several dozen members that the signs it was posting in public rights of way to advertise Sunday services were being put up too early.

The church reduced the number of signs and the amount of time the signs were in place, but friction continued.

The church sued the city in 2008, claiming its rights under the First and 14th amendments were violated by the town’s sign ordinance.

Kim S. Alvarado, one of the attorneys who represented Gilbert, said the town was surprised when the suit was filed. She called Gilbert one of the few towns in the area with a sign ordinance that was intended to help small organizations like the church advertise.

Alvarado said she does not know of any other complaints about the law, which the town changes regularly based on community input. The law changed several times during the course of the case, though that did not affect Friday’s ruling.

The code sets specific rules on how large a sign can be, and where and how long it can be displayed.

As “temporary directional signs,” the church’s signs could not exceed 6 square feet or be displayed more than 12hours before or one hour after an event. But “ideological” signs could be up to 20 square feet and had no time restrictions.

The church argued that the town could not enforce the ordinance without first judging the content of the sign.

Watford agreed, but the other two judges on the panel said the “restrictions are based on objective factors relevant to the creation of the specific exemption and do not otherwise consider the substance of a sign.” As such, the law is constitutional, they wrote.

This is not the first time the circuit court heard this case.

In 2009, it upheld a lower court’s decision rejecting the church’s request for an injunction to block enforcement of the ordinance.

But the Appeals Court then sent the case back, with orders for the U.S. District Court to more closely consider the First and 14th Amendment questions in the case. The District Court then ruled that the law was content-neutral, a decision upheld in Friday’s ruling.

The church’s attorney, Jeremy Tedesco, said they have 14days to appeal for rehearing by the full circuit court, “so you’ll know in 14days what we plan to do.”

“To us, it’s a very simple case of content-based discrimination,” said Tedesco, senior legal counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom. “Of course we’re disappointed the court did not see it this way.


Phoenix government to force you to love your neighbor????

While the government should not be allowed to discriminate against anyone for any reason, it isn't right for the government to force people in the private sector to love each other.

This law will also end up mixing government and religion because many religious sects that believe in hating gays, will now be forced to love gays.

We don't have a problem with gays, lesbian, bisexual or transgender folks but we do have a problem with the government forcing people to love them.

Source

Phoenix hearing to focus on discrimination ordinance

By Dustin Gardiner The Republic | azcentral.com Mon Feb 11, 2013 10:09 PM

Phoenix will hold a public hearing Tuesday night on proposed changes to its discrimination ordinance, including protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender residents.

The city is considering amending the law to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity or expression. Discrimination would be prohibited in the areas of housing, employment and public accommodations, such as restaurants or hotels.

City code currently offers no such safeguards, excluding city workers. State and federal laws don’t provide protections.

Leaders also proposed outlawing discrimination against disabled people in employment and public accommodations. Federal law gives protections in these areas, so the change would not have as much impact. The hearing will be held at 5:30p.m. at the Adams Street Training Center, 304 W. Adams St.


Arizona AG Tom Horne wants his hit and run case tossed

Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne wants his hit and run case tossed

Source

Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne wants traffic case tossed

Associated Press Wed Feb 13, 2013 5:10 PM

Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne violates campaign finance laws and gets into a hit an run accident PHOENIX — Lawyers for Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne asked a judge Wednesday to dismiss a misdemeanor hit-and-run case against him, arguing he’s being singled out for prosecution and FBI agents who witnessed the incident while tailing him are refusing to answer questions.

A court filing obtained by The Associated Press accused the FBI’s top agent in Arizona of personally calling Phoenix Police Chief Daniel V. Garcia and asking him to investigate after FBI agents tailing Horne saw him back into another vehicle and leave. Horne’s lawyer, Michael D. Kimerer, wrote in his court filing that police did so even though it violated their own written policy of not investigating cases involving less than $5,000 in private property damage.

Kimerer wrote that singling out Horne for prosecution violates the U.S. Constitution’s Equal Protection clause. The only logical explanation for doing so when others are not investigated or prosecuted for similar crimes is that Horne is an elected official.

Horne is accused in Phoenix city court of not stopping or leaving a note after he backed a borrowed car he was driving into another vehicle. FBI reports released by Phoenix police in October say he left the scene because he was having an affair with a female employee who was in the car and he didn’t want their relationship to be reported.

Horne has declined comment on allegations of an affair and repeatedly said he didn’t know he had caused any damage. He declined comment Wednesday, referring instead to the court filing.

The agents who were following Horne in March 2012 had apparently been doing so during the course of a campaign finance investigation, although agents interviewed by Kimerer refused to say that was the case.

The FBI waited seven months before notifying Phoenix police, until after the Maricopa County attorney’s office filed civil charges in the campaign finance case.

“It just shows animus the way they pursued this,” Kimerer said in an interview. “They were just rabid to get him.”

In the campaign finance case, Horne and employee Kathleen Winn are accused of illegally coordinating with an independent expenditure committee during the 2010 election. Horne is appealing Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery’s findings that Horne illegally coordinated his 2010 campaign with a group that was supposed to be operating independently. The group aired television advertising critical of Horne’s general election opponent.

Montgomery is demanding that Horne’s 2010 campaign and the other group, Business Leaders for Arizona, return up to $513,000 of contributions. There also could be large civil fines.

Because of the alleged coordination, the contributions made to a group headed by a Horne ally who now works in his office actually were contributions that exceeded campaign finance limits on money given to candidates, Montgomery said. Candidates aren’t allowed to discuss strategy or other matters with so-called independent expenditure committees, but there’s evidence that Horne was involved in both raising money and deciding how to spend it on advertising by Business Leaders for Arizona, Montgomery said in October.

Horne, a lawyer who is the top-elected law enforcement official for the state, denied any coordination. He had been considering running for governor but now says he’ll seek re-election in 2014.


Sassing a cop is constitutionally protected free speech!!!

Source

Sassing a cop may be unwise, but it’s constitutionally protected

Talking back to a police officer while you’re under arrest is usually not the smartest move, a bit like tugging on Superman’s cape, or spitting into the wind. But it’s legal, according to a federal appeals court — and if the officer retaliates in some way, like hauling you off to jail instead of giving you a ticket and letting you go, you might be entitled to damages.

“Police officers may not use their authority to punish an individual for exercising his First Amendment rights,” the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said in a 2-1 ruling Feb. 8 that reinstated a lawsuit against the city of Yakima, Wash., and two of its policemen.

Eddie Ford, an African American who grew up in the central Washington community, was driving to his night-shift job at a bottling company in July 2007 when a police car came up from behind and stopped him, apparently for playing his stereo too loud. As Officer Ryan Urlacher approached, Ford got out of the car shouting that the stop was racially motivated. Urlacher told him to get back in the car, then said he would arrest Ford for violating a city noise ordinance, and commented, according to the court, that “he might only get a ticket if he cooperates.”

Ford kept talking for awhile after Urlacher handcuffed him, put him in the patrol car and threatened to jail him unless he shut up. He quieted down, but the officer drove him away and booked him at the suggestion of a superior officer, telling Ford that “your mouth and your attitude talked you into jail.” Urlacher later testified that he jailed Ford because of “his rageful … behavior towards the law enforcement,” which, the officer said, put public safety at risk.

Ford went to trial on the noise-violation charge, was found not guilty, and then sued for damages. A judge dismissed the suit, ruling that Urlacher had acted reasonably and had not punished Ford for freedom of speech, but the appeals court said a jury might conclude otherwise.

The Constitution protects “a significant amount of verbal criticism and challenge directed at police officers,” the court said, quoting a 1987 Supreme Court ruling. Even if police had reason to arrest Ford in the first place, they were not entitled to jail him in retaliation for speaking his mind, said the court majority, Judges Procter Hug and Dorothy Nelson.

Dissenting Judge Connie Callahan looked at the case through the other end of the telescope, the viewpoint of the officers. Once someone is under arrest, she said, that person’s free-speech rights are reduced, and police are entitled to jail someone like Ford based on what he says, which might indicate he posed a danger to himself or others. In this case, Callahan said, Urlacher may have simply been trying to give Ford “an opportunity to change his attitude,” and the court oversteps its bounds when it tries to “impose such etiquette upon peace officers.”

Robert Christie, a lawyer for the city and its police, said they agreed with Callahan and were considering whether to ask the full appeals court for a rehearing. Ford’s lawyer, William Pickett, said the court had reaffirmed a basic constitutional principle.

“Citizens have an absolute right to be critical of law enforcement, and they can vocalize that criticism without any fear of being retaliated against,” Pickett said.

The ruling can be viewed here.


Let the police decide which rights we have???

Vanessa Goldberg thinks the police should decide which rights we are allowed to have

Vanessa Goldberg doesn't seem to understand that the whole purpose of the Bill of Rights which includes the Second Amendment is to protect us from government tyrants.

And of course the police are the arm of government that tyrants use to force their will on us.

So if we let the "police" pick and choose which "rights" we get to keep, we will soon have no rights.

Source

Listen to police, not NRA

Wed Feb 13, 2013 9:08 PM

Listen to the police on the weapons issue!

Who would know the weapons issue better than the police, who are on the front lines of combating gun-related crimes and dealing with the horrific aftermaths? Should we not therefore listen to what they have to say about the question of gun control?

Should we not be made thoughtful by the fact that the International Association of Chiefs of Police has historically backed gun-control measures?

Their IACP website recently stated: “Our membership was, and remains, a leading proponent of universal background checks for gun purchases, the ban on military-style assault weapons, high-capacity magazines, and ensuring that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (and Explosives) has both a permanent director and sufficient resources to enforce our nation’s gun laws.”

I ask my fellow readers: Should we listen to police chiefs or to the NRA?

— Vanessa Goldberg

Scottsdale


Legal Loophole Could Hold Up $1M Christopher Dorner Reward

Source

Legal Loophole Could Hold Up $1M Dorner Reward

By RUSSELL GOLDMAN | ABC News

A legal loophole could prevent good Samaritans, instrumental in ending the manhunt for a fugitive ex-cop accused of killing four people, from claiming more than $1 million in reward money because Christopher Dorner died and was not captured.

Last weekend, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa pledged $1 million, sourced from private individuals, companies and unions, "for information that will lead to Mr. Dorner's capture."

The L.A. City Council followed up with its own promise of a $100,000 reward, for information "leading to the identification, apprehension and conviction of Christopher Dorner."

But Dorner, accused of killing four people and threatening the lives of several dozen more, was never captured, apprehended or convicted. Instead, he died following a standoff with police near Big Bear, Calif., when the cabin in which he was barricaded burned down with him inside.

The mayor's office has not yet determined if the reward could still be paid out given Dorner died.

"At this time, no decision has been made on the reward," Villaraigosa's spokesman Peter Sanders told ABC News.com in an email.

So far, none of the privately sourced "funds have been deposited into the City's 'Special Reward Trust Fund,'" according to the Frank T. Mateljan, spokesman for the city attorney.

That still leaves an additional $100,000 that the city council could pay with municipal money, but there legal questions there, as well.

"The reward is definitely still on the table," said Jessica Tarman, spokeswoman for Councilman Daniel Zine.

But there are still plenty of questions.

The council ultimately decides how and to whom the reward will get paid. If its members are feeling generous, they could interpret the language of the original offer to make sure a worthy recipient gets paid.

"Arguably, city law is broad enough to allow payment to persons who assisted in the "identification, apprehension OR arrest and conviction" of a suspect," Metaljan said in an email [emphasis his].

If the city decides to honor the reward, there are still multiple steps before a claimant can be paid.

Anyone who thinks they are worthy must apply in writing. That claim would then be reviewed by the LAPD robbery and homicide division, and a recommendation would be made to the police commissioner. The commissioner would tell the council to consider the claim, and the council would vote on it.

So far, no one has come forward to ask for the reward. More than 1,000 leads were called to a city hotline

One couple seems most deserving, if they decide to seek the reward. Jim and Karen Reynolds, a couple in whose Big Bear, Calif., home Dorner is believed to have hidden for days, called in the tip Tuesday that ultimately put police on the trail to Dorner's final location.

On Tuesday, the couple found Dorner at their home. He briefly held them captive, but they managed to escape and call in their tip.


Mom busted for hiring stripper for kids birthday party!!!!

Don't these pigs have any REAL criminals to hunt down??? You know REAL criminals that hurt people, like robbers, rapists and murders! Not some mom that hires a stripper for her child's birthday party!

Source

Mom hired strippers for son, 16, cops say

Associated Press Tue Feb 19, 2013 11:42 AM

SOUTH GLENS FALLS, N.Y. — Police say a 33-year-old upstate New York woman accused of hiring strippers for her son’s 16th birthday party has been arrested on child endangerment charges.

South Glens Falls police tell local media outlets Judy Viger of Gansevoort faces five counts of endangering the welfare of a child.

They say she hired two women who did lewd dances for five teens under the age of 17 during the party at a bowling alley.

The investigation began after people concerned about the November party showed authorities racy photos posted online. One showed a scantily clad, tattooed woman clinging upside down to a seated teen as others looked on.

The answering machine at Viger’s phone number wasn’t accepting messages Monday.

No other arrests are expected.

South Glens Falls is in Saratoga County, 44 miles north of Albany. rental car and payment for his medical expenses.


Lawsuit brought by Wiccan inmates revived by appeals court

Source

Lawsuit brought by Wiccan inmates revived by appeals court

February 20, 2013 | 12:14 pm

A lawsuit by female prisoners who contend the California prison system is violating their rights by refusing to hire a full-time Wiccan chaplain has been revived by a federal appeals court.

A district court rejected the inmates' suit, but a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday that the inmates may have a valid claim.

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation hires chaplains for five faiths: Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim and Native American. Inmates of other religions are permitted to worship with those chaplains or with volunteer chaplains.

In their lawsuits, inmates at the Central California Women's Facility in Chowchilla contend the prison policy favors mainstream religions in violation of the establishment clause of the 1st Amendment. The inmates said there were more Wiccans at the women's prison than there were Jewish, Muslim or Catholic prisoners.

Wicca is a pagan religion that involves witchcraft. [Duh!!! Every religion I can think of with perhaps the exception of the Flying Spaghetti Monster religion incorporates magic and witchcraft into their religion]


The full text of the white paper on the killing of U.S. citizens abroad

Source

The full text of the white paper on the killing of U.S. citizens abroad

Source

The full text of the white paper on the killing of U.S. citizens abroad

By Chris Wilson, Yahoo! News | The Ticket

This week, NBC News published a confidential Justice Department memo presenting the Obama administration's case for the lawful killing of U.S. citizens abroad who are involved with al-Qaida, reigniting a debate over presidential power that raged during much of the George W. Bush administration. NBC released a PDF of the 16-page white paper liberally embossed with watermarks of the outlet's logo on each page.

Given the extreme gravity of the subject, Yahoo News retyped the portions of the documents that could not be digitized automatically due to the watermarks, presented below. Information for how to contribute corrections is included at the bottom of the article.

DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE WHITE PAPER

Lawfulness of a Lethal Operation Directed Against a U.S. Citizen Who Is a Senior Operational Leader of Al-Qa'ida or An Associated Force

This white paper sets forth a legal framework for considering the circumstances in which the U.S. government could use lethal force in a foreign country outside the area of active hostilities against a U.S. citizen who is a senior operational leader of al-Qa'ida or an associated force of al-Qa'ida—that is, an al-Qa'ida leader actively engaged in planning operations to kill Americans. The paper does not attempt to determine the minimum requirements necessary to render such an operation lawful; nor does it assess what might be required to render a lethal operation against a U.S. citizen lawful in other circumstances, including an operation against enemy forces on a traditional battlefield or an operation against a U.S. citizen who is not a senior operational leader of such forces. Here the Department of Justice concludes only that where the following three conditions are met, a U.S. operation using lethal force in a foreign country against a U.S. citizen who is a senior operational leader of al-Qa'ida or an associated force would be lawful:
an informed, high-level official of the U.S. government has determined that the targeted individual poses an imminent threat of violent attack against the United States;

capture is infeasible, and the United States continues to monitor whether capture becomes feasible; and

the operation would be conducted in a manner consistent with applicable law of war principles.

This conclusion is reached with recognition of the extraordinary seriousness of a lethal operation by the United States against a U.S. citizen, and also of the extraordinary seriousness of the threat posed by senior operational al- Qa'ida members and the loss of life that would result were their operations successful.

The President has authority to respond to the imminent threat posed by al-Qa'ida and its associated forces, arising from his constitutional responsibility to protect the country, the inherent right of the United States to national self defense under international law, Congress's authorization of the use of all necessary and appropriate military force against this enemy, and the existence of an armed conflict with al-Qa'ida under international law. Based on these authorities, the President may use force against al-Qa'ida and its associated forces. As detailed in this white paper, in defined circumstances, a targeted killing of a U.S. citizen who has joined al-Qa'ida or its associated forces would be lawful under U.S. and international law. Targeting a member of an enemy force who poses an imminent threat of violent attack to the United States is not unlawful. It is a lawful act of national self defense. Nor would it violate otherwise applicable federal laws barring unlawful killings in Title 18 or the assassination ban in Executive Order No. 12333. Moreover, a lethal operation in a foreign nation would be consistent with international legal principles of sovereignty and neutrality if it were conducted, for example, with the consent of the host nation's government or after a determination that the host nation is unable or unwilling to suppress the threat posed by the individual targeted.

Were the target of a lethal operation a U.S. citizen who may have rights under the Due Process Clause and the Fourth Amendment, that individual's citizenship would not immunize him from a lethal operation. Under the traditional due process balancing analysis of Mathews v. Eldridge, we recognize that there is no private interest more weighty than a person's interest in his life. But that interest must be balanced against the United States' interest in forestalling the threat of violence and death to other Americans that arises from an individual who is a senior operational leader of al-Qa'ida or an associated force of al-Qa'ida and who is engaged in plotting against the United States.

The paper begins with a brief summary of the authority for the use of force in the situation described here, including the authority to target a U.S. citizen having the characteristics described above with lethal force outside the area of active hostilities. It continues with the constitutional questions, considering first whether a lethal operation against such a U.S. citizen would be consistent with the Fifth Amendment's Due Process Clause, U.S. Const. amend. V. As part of the due process analysis, the paper explains the concepts of "imminence," feasibility of capture, and compliance with applicable law of war principles. The paper then discusses whether such an operation would be consistent with the Fourth Amendment's prohibition on unreasonable seizures, U.S. Const. amend. IV. It concludes that where certain conditions are met, a lethal operation against a U.S. citizen who is a senior operational leader of al-Qa'ida or its associated forces—a terrorist organization engaged in constant plotting against the United States, as well as an enemy force with which the United States is in a congressionally authorized armed conflict—and who himself poses an imminent threat of violent attack against the United States, would not violate the Constitution. The paper also includes an analysis concluding that such an operation would not violate certain criminal provisions prohibiting the killing of U.S. nationals outside the United States; nor would it constitute either the commission of a war crime or an assassination prohibited by Executive Order 12333.

I.

The United States is in an armed conflict with al-Qa'ida and its associated forces, and Congress has authorized the President to use all necessary and appropriate force against those entities. See Authorization for Use of Military Force ("AUMF"), Pub. L. No. 107-40, S 2(a), 115 Stat. 224, 224 (2001). In addition to the authority arising from the AUMF, the President's use of force against al-Qa'ida and associated forces is lawful under other principles of U.S. and international law, including the President's constitutional responsibility to protect the nation and the inherent right to national self defense recognized in international law (see, e.g., U.N. Charter art. 51). It was on these bases that the United States responded to the attacks of September 11, 2001, and "[t]hese domestic and international legal authorities continue to this day." Harold Hongju Koh, Legal Adviser, U.S. Department of State, Address to the Annual Meeting of the American Society of International Law: The Obama Administration and International Law (Mar. 25, 2010) ("2010 Koh ASIL Speech").

Any operation of the sort discussed here would be conducted in a foreign country against a senior operational leader of al-Qa'ida or its associated forces who poses an imminent threat of violent attack against the United States. A use of force under such circumstances would be justified as an act of national self-defense. In addition, such a person would be within the core of individuals against whom Congress has authorized the use of necessary and appropriate force. The fact that such a person would also be a U.S. citizen would not alter this conclusion. The Supreme Court has held that the military may constitutionally use force against a U.S. citizen who is a part of enemy forces. See Hamdi, 542 U.S. 507, 518 (2004) (plurality opinion); id. at 58?, 59? (Thomas, J., dissenting); Ex Parte Quirin, 317 U.S. at 37-38. Like the imposition of military detention, the use of lethal force against such enemy forces is an "important incident of war." Hamdi, 542 U.S. at 518 (2004) (plurality opinion) (quotation omitted). See, e.g., General Orders No. 100: Instructions for the Government of Armies of the United States in the Field P 15 (Apr. 24, 1863) ("[m]ilitary necessity admits of all direct destruction of life or limb of armed enemies") (emphasis omitted); International Committee of the Red Cross, Commentary on the Additional Protocols of 8 June 1977 on the Geneva Conventions of 12 Aug. 1949 and Relating to the Protection of Victims of Non-International Armed Conflicts (Additional Protocol II) S 4789 (1987) ("Those who belong to armed forces or armed groups may be attacked at any time."); Yoram Dinstein, The Conduct of Hostilities Under the Law of International Armed Conflict 94 (2004) ("When a person takes up arms or merely dons a uniform as a member of the armed forces, he automatically exposes himself to enemy attack.") Accordingly, the Department does not believe that U.S. citizenship would immunize a senior operational leader of al-Qa'ida or its associated forces from a use of force abroad authorized by the AUMF or in national self-defense.

In addition, the United States retains its authority to use force against al-Qa'ida and associated forces outside the area of active hostilities when it targets a senior operational leader of the enemy forces who is actively engaged in planning operations to kill Americans. The United States is currently in a non-international armed conflict with al-Qa'ida and its associated forces. See Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, 548 U.S. 557, 628-31 (2006) (holding that a conflict between a nation and a transnational non-state actor, occurring outside the nation's territory, is an armed conflict "not of an international character" (quoting Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions) because it is not a "clash between nations"). Any U.S. operation would be part of this non-international armed conflict, even if it were to take place away from the zone of active hostilities. See John O. Brennan, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, Remarks at the Program on Law and Security, Harvard Law School: Strengthening Our Security by Adhering to Our Values and Laws (Sept. 16, 2011) ("The United States does not view our authority to use military force against Al-Qa'ida as being restricted solely to 'hot' battlefields like Afghanistan."). For example, the AUMF itself does not set forth an express geographic limitation on the use of force it authorizes. See Hamdan, 548 U.S. at 631 (Kennedy, J., concurring) (what makes a non-international armed conflict distinct from an international armed conflict is "the legal status of the entities opposing each other"). None of the three branches of the U.S. Government has identified a strict geographical limit on the permissible scope of the AUMP's authorization. See, e.g., Letter for the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the President Pro Tempore of the Senate from the President (June 15, 2010) (reporting that the armed forces, with the assistance of numerous international partners, continue to conduct operations "against al- Qa'ida terrorists," and that the United States has "deployed combat-equipped forces to a number of locations in the U.S. Central ... Command area[] of operation in support of those [overseas counterterrorist] operations"); Bensayah v. Obama, 610 F.3d 718, 720, 724-25, 727 (D.C. Cir. 2010) (concluding that an individual turned over to the United States in Bosnia could be detained if the government demonstrates he was part of al- Qa'ida); al-Adahi v. Obama, 613 F.3d 1102, 1003, 1111 (D.C. Cir. 2010) (noting authority under AUMF to detain individual apprehended by Pakistani authorities in Pakistan and then transferred to U.S. custody).

Claiming that for purposes of international law, an armed conflict generally exists only when there is "protracted armed violence between governmental authorities and organized armed groups," Prosecutor v. Tadic, Case No. IT-94-1 AR72, Decision on the Defence Motion for Interlocutory Appeal on Jurisdiction, P 70 (Int'l Crim. Trib. for the Former Yugoslavia, App. Chamber Oct. 2, 1995), some commenters have suggested that the conflict between the United States and al-Qa'ida cannot lawfully extend to nations outside Afghanistan in which the level of hostilities is less intense or prolonged than in Afghanistan itself. See, e.g., Mary Ellen O'Connell, Combatants and the Combat Zone, 43 U. Rich. L. Rev. 845, 857-59 (2009). There is little judicial or other authoritative precedent that speaks directly to the question of the geographic scope of a non- international armed conflict in which one of the parties is a transnational, non-state actor and where the principal theater of operations is not within the territory of the nation that is a party to the conflict. Thus, in considering this potential issue, the Department looks to principles and statements from analogous contexts.

The Department has not found any authority for the proposition that when one of the parties to an armed conflict plans and executes operations from a base in a new nation, an operation to engage the enemy in that location cannot be part of the original armed conflict, and thus the subject to the laws of war governing that conflict, unless the hostilities become sufficiently intense and protracted in the new location. That does not appear to be the rule of the historical practice, for instance, even in a traditional international conflict, See John R. Stevenson, Legal Adviser, Department of State, United States Military Action in Cambodia: Questions of International Law, Address before the Hammarskjold Forum of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York (May 28, 1970), in 3 The Vietnam War and International Law: The Widening Context 23, 28-30 (Richard A. Falk, ed. 1972) (arguing that in an international armed conflict, if a neutral state has been unable for any reason to prevent violations of its neutrality by the troops of one belligerent using its territory as a base of operations, the other belligerent has historically been justified in attacking those enemy forces in that state). Particularly in a non-international armed conflict, where terrorist organizations may move their base of operations from one country to another, the determination of whether a particular operation would be part of an ongoing armed conflict would require consideration of the particular facts and circumstances in each case, including the fact that transnational non- state organizations such as al-Qa'ida may have no single site serving as their base of operations. See also, e.g., Geoffrey S. Corn & Eric Albot Jensen, Untying the Gordian Knot: A Proposal for Determining Applicability of the Laws of War to the War on Terror, 81 Temp. L. Rev. 787, 799 (2008) ("If ... the ultimate purpose of the drafters of the Geneva Conventions was to prevent 'law avoidance' by developing de facto law triggers—a purpose consistent with the humanitarian foundation of the treaties— then the myopic focus on the geographic nature of an armed conflict in the context of transnational counterterrorist combat operations serves to frustrate that purpose.") [2]

If an operation of the kind discussed in this paper were to occur in a location where al-Qa'ida or an associated force has a significant and organized presence and from which al-Qa'ida or an associated force, including its senior operational leaders, plan attacks against U.S. persons and and interests, the operation would be part of the non-international armed conflict between the United States and al-Qa'ida that the Supreme Court recognized in Hamdan. Moreover, such an operation would be consistent with international legal principles of sovereignty and neutrality if it were conducted, for example, with the consent of the host nation's government or after a determination that the host nation is unable or unwilling to suppress the threat posed by the individual targeted. In such circumstances, targeting a U.S. citizen of the kind described in this paper would be authorized under the AUMF and the inherent right to national self-defense. Given this authority, the question becomes whether and what further restrictions may limit its exercise.

II.

The Department assumes that the rights afforded by Fifth Amendment's Due Process Clause, as well as the Fourth Amendment, attach to a U.S. citizen even while he is abroad. See Reid v. Covert, 354 U.S. 1, 5-6 (1957) (plurality opinion); United States v. Verdugo-Urquidez, 494 U.S. 259, 269-70 (1990); see also In re Terrorist Bombings of U.S. Embassies in East Africa, 552 F.3d 157, 170 n.7 (2d Cir. 2008). The U.S. citizenship of a leader of al-Qa'ida or its associated forces, however, does not give that person constitutional immunity from attack. This paper next considers whether and in what circumstances a lethal operation would violate any possible constitutional protections of a U.S. citizen.

A.

The Due Process Clause would not prohibit a lethal operation of the sort contemplated here. In Hamdi, a plurality of the Supreme Court used the Mathews v. Eldridge balancing test to analyze the Fifth Amendment due process rights of a U.S. citizen who had been captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan and detained in the United States, and who wished to challenge the government's assertion that he was part of enemy forces. The Court explained that the "process due in any given instance is determined by weighing 'the private interest that will be affected by the official action' against the Government's asserted interest, 'including the function involved' and the burdens the Government would face in providing great process." Hamdi, 542 U.S. at 529 (plurality opinion) (quoting Mathews v. Eldridge, 424 U.S. 319, 335 (1976)). The due process balancing analysis applied to determine the Fifth Amendment rights of a U.S. citizen with respect to law-of-war detention supplies the framework for assessing the process due a U.S. citizen who is a senior operational leader of an enemy force planning violent attacks against Americans before he is subjected to lethal targeting.

In the circumstances considered here, the interests on both sides would be weighty. See Hamdi, 542 U.S. at 529 (plurality opinion) ("It is beyond question that substantial interests lie on both sides of the scale in this case."). An individual's interest in avoiding erroneous deprivation of his life is "uniquely compelling." See Ake v. Oklahoma, 470 U.S. 68, 178 (1985) ("The private interest in the accuracy of a criminal proceeding that places an individual's life or liberty at risk is almost uniquely compelling."). No private interest is more substantial. At the same time, the government's interest in waging war, protecting its citizens, and removing the threat posed by members of enemy forces is also compelling. Cf. Hamdi, 543 U.S. at 531 (plurality opinion) ("On the other side of the scale are the weighty and sensitive governmental interests in ensuring that those who have in fact fought with the enemy during a war do not return to battle against the United States."). As the Hamdi plurality observed, in the "circumstances of war," "the risk of erroneous deprivation of a citizen's liberty in the absence of sufficient process . . . is very real," id. at 530 (plurality opinion), and, of course, the risk of an erroneous deprivation of a citizen's life is even more significant. But, "the realities of combat" render certain uses of force "necessary and appropriate," including force against U.S. citizens who have joined enemy forces in the armed conflict against the United States and whose activities pose an imminent threat of violent attack against the United States—and "due process analysis need not blink at those realities." Id. at 531 (plurality opinion). These same realities must also be considered in assessing "the burdens the Government would face in providing greater process" to a member of enemy forces. Id. at 529, 531 (plurality opinion).

In view of these interests and practical considerations, the United States would be able to use lethal force against a U.S. citizen, who is located outside the United States and is an operational leader continually planning attacks against U.S. persons and interests, in at least the following circumstances:

where an informed, high-level official of the U.S. government has determined that the targeted individual poses an imminent threat of violent attack against the United States;

where a capture operation would be infeasible—and where those conducting the operation continue to monitor whether capture becomes feasible; and

where such an operation would be conducted consistent with applicable law of war principles.

In these circumstances, the "realities" of the conflict and the weight of the government's interest in protecting its citizens from an imminent attack are such that the Constitution would not require the government to provide further process to such a U.S. citizen before using lethal force. Cf Hamdi, 542 U.S. at 535 (plurality opinion) (noting that the Court "accord[s] the greatest respect and consideration to the judgments of military authorities in matters relating to the actual prosecution of war, and . . . the scope of that discretion necessarily is wide"); id. at 534 (plurality opinion) ("The parties agree that initial captures on the battlefield need not receive the process we have discussed here; that process is due only when the determination is made to continue to hold those who have been seized.") (emphasis omitted).

Certain aspects of this legal framework require additional explication. First, the condition that an operational leader present an "imminent" threat of violent attack against the United States does not require the United States to have clear evidence that a specific attack on U.S. persons and interests will take place in the immediate future. Given the nature of, for example, the terrorist attacks on September 11, in which civilian airliners were hijacked to strike the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, this definition of imminence, which would require the United States to refrain from action until preparations for an attack are concluded, would not allow the United States sufficient time to defend itself. The defensive options available to the United States may be reduced or eliminated if al-Qa'ida operatives disappear and cannot be found when the time of their attack approaches. Consequently, with respect to al-Qa'ida leaders who are continually planning attacks, the United States is likely to have only a limited window of opportunity within which to defend Americans in a manner that has both a high likelihood of success and sufficiently reduces the probabilities of civilian causalities. See Michael N. Schmitt, State­ Sponsored Assassination in International and Domestic Law, l7 Yale J. Int'l L. 609, 648 (l992). Furthermore, a "terrorist 'war' does not consist of a massive attack across an international border, nor does it consist of one isolated incident that occurs and is then past. It is a drawn out, patient, sporadic pattern of attacks. It is very difficult to know when or where the next incident will occur." Gregory M. Travalio, Terrorism, International Law, and the Use of Military Force, 18 Wis. Int'l L.J. 145, 173 (2000); see also Testimony of Attorney-General Lord Goldsmith, 660 Hansard. H.L. (April 21. 2004) 370 (U.K.), (what constitutes an imminent threat "Will develop to meet new circumstances and new threats . . . . It must be right that states are able to act in self-defense in circumstances Where there is evidence of further imminent attacks by terrorist groups, even if there is no specific evidence of where such an attack will take place or of the precise nature of the attack."). Delaying action against individuals continually planning to kill Americans until some theoretical end stage of the planning for a particular plot would create an unacceptably high risk that the action would fail and that American casualties would result.

By its nature, therefore, the threat posed by al-Qa'ida and its associated forces demands a broader concept of imminence in judging when a person continually planning terror attacks presents an imminent threat, making the use of force appropriate. In this context, imminence must incorporate considerations of the relevant window of opportunity, the possibility of reducing collateral damage to civilians, and the likelihood of heading off future disastrous attacks on Americans. Thus, a decision maker determining whether an al-Qa'ida operational leader presents an imminent threat of violent attack against the United States must take into account that certain members of al- Qa'ida (including any potential target of lethal force) are continually plotting attacks against the United States; that al-Qa'ida would engage in such attacks regularly to the extent it were able to do so; that the U.S, government may not be aware of all al-Qa'ida plots as they are developing and thus cannot be confident that none is about to occur; and that, in light of these predicates, the nation may have a limited window of opportunity within which to strike in a manner that both has a high likelihood of success and reduces the probability of American casualties.

With this understanding, a high-level official could conclude, for example, that an individual poses an "imminent threat" of violent attack against the United States where he is an operational leader of al-Qa'ida or an associated force and is personally and continually involved in planning terrorist attacks against the United States. Moreover, where the al-Qa'ida member in question has recently been involved in activities posing an imminent threat of violent attack against the United States, and there is no evidence suggesting that he has renounced or abandoned such activities, that member's involvement in al-Qa'ida's continuing terrorist campaign against the United States would support the conclusion that the member poses an imminent threat.

Second, regarding the feasibility of capture, capture would not be feasible if it could not be physically effectuated during the relevant window of opportunity or if the relevant country were to decline to consent to a capture operation. Other factors such as undue risk to U.S. personnel conducting a potential capture operation also could be relevant. Feasibility would be a highly fact-specific and potentially time-sensitive inquiry.

Third, it is a premise here that any such lethal operation by the United States would comply with the four fundamental law-of-war principles governing the use of force: necessity, distinction, proportionality, and humanity (the avoidance of unnecessary suffering). See, e.g., United States Air Force, Targeting, Air Force Doctrine Document 2-1.9, at 88 (June 3, 2006); Dinstein, Conduct of Hostilities at 16-20, l 15-16, l 19-23; see also 2010 Koh ASIL Speech. For example, it would not be consistent with those principles to continue an operation if anticipated civilian casualties would be excessive in relation to the anticipated military advantage. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Instruction 5810.01D, Implementation of the DoD Law of War Program P 4.a, at 1 (Apr. 30, 2010). An operation consistent with the laws of war could not violate the prohibitions against treachery and perfidy, which address a breach of confidence by the assailant. See, e.g., Hague Convention IB, Annex, art. 23(b), Oct. 18, 1907, 36 Stat. 2277, 2301-02 ("[I]t is especially forbidden .... [t]o kill or wound treacherously individuals belonging to the hostile nation or army . . . ."). These prohibitions do not, however, categorically forbid the use of stealth or surprise, nor forbid attacks on identified individual soldiers or officers. See U.S. Army Field Manual 2?-10, The Law of Land Warfare, 31 (1956) (article 23(b) of the Annex to the Hague Convention IV does not "preclude attacks on individual soldiers or officers of the enemy whether in the zone of hostilities, occupied territory, or elsewhere"). And the Department is not aware of any other law-of-war grounds precluding use of such tactics. See Dinstein, Conduct of Hosrilfries at 94-95, 199; Abraham D. Sofaer, Terrorism, the Law, and the National Defense, 126 Mil. L. Rev. 89, 120-21 (1989). Relatedly, "there is no prohibition under the laws of war on the use of technologically advanced weapons systems in armed conflict—such as pilotless aircraft or so-called smart bombs—so long as they are employed in conformity with applicable laws of war." 2010 Koh ASIL Speech. Further, under this framework, the United States would also be required to accept a surrender if it were feasible to do so.

In sum, an operation in the circumstances and under the constraints described above would not result in a violation of any due process rights.

B.

Similarly, assuming that a lethal operation targeting a U.S. citizen abroad who is planning attacks against the United States would result in a "seizure" under the Fourth Amendment, such an operation would not violate that Amendment in the circumstances posited here. The Supreme Court has made clear that the constitutionality of a seizure is determined by "balanc[ing] the nature and quality of the intrusion on the individual's Fourth Amendment interests against the importance of the governmental interest alleged to justify the intrusion." Tennessee v. Garner, 471 US. 1, 8 (1985) (internal quotation marks omitted); accord Scott v. Harris, 550 U.S. 372, 383 (2007). Even in domestic law enforcement operations, the Court has noted that "[w]here the officer has probable cause to believe that the suspect poses a threat of serious physical harm, either to the officer or to others, it is not constitutionally unreasonable to prevent escape by using deadly force." Garner, 471 U.S. at 11. Thus, "if the suspect threatens the officer with a weapon or there is probable cause to believe that he has committed a crime involving the infliction or threatened infliction of serious physical harm, deadly force may be used if necessary to prevent escape, and if, where feasible, some warning has been given." Id. at 11-12.

The Fourth Amendment "reasonableness" test is situation­ dependent. Cf. Scott, 550 U.S. at 382 ("Garner did not establish a magical on/off switch that triggers rigid preconditions whenever an officer's actions constitute 'deadly force.'"). What would constitute a reasonable use of lethal force for purposes of domestic law enforcement operations differs substantially from what would be reasonable in the situation and circumstances discussed in this white paper. But at least in circumstances where the targeted person is an operational leader of an enemy force and an informed, high-level government official has determined that he poses an imminent threat of violent attack against the United States, and those conducting the operation would carry out the operation only if capture were infeasible, the use of lethal force would not violate the Fourth Amendment. Under such circumstances, the intrusion on any Fourth Amendment interests would be outweighed by the "importance of the governmental interests [that] justify the intrusion," Garner, 471 U.S. at Sr»-the interests in protecting the lives of Americans.

C.

Finally, the Department notes that under the circumstances described in this paper, there exists no appropriate judicial forum to evaluate these constitutional considerations. It is well-established that "[m]atters intimately related to foreign policy and national security are rarely proper subjects for judicial intervention," Haig v. Agee, 453 U.S. 280, 292 (1931), because such matters "frequently turn on standards that defy judicial application," or "involve the exercise of a discretion demonstrably committed to the executive or legislature," Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186, 211 (1962). Were a court to intervene here, it might be required inappropriately to issue an ex ante command to the President and officials responsible for operations with respect to their specific tactical judgment to mount a potential lethal operation against a senior operational leader of al- Qa'ida or its associated forces. And judicial enforcement of such orders would require the Court to supervise inherently predictive judgments by the President and his national security advisors as to when and how to use force against a member of an enemy force against which Congress has authorized the use of force.

III.

Section 1119(b) of title 18 provides that a "person who, being a national of the United States, kills or attempts to kill a national of the United States while such national is outside the United States but within the jurisdiction of another country shall be punished as provided under sections 1111, 1112, and 1113." 18 U.S.C. § 1119(b) (2006).[3] Because the person who would be the target of the kind of operation discussed here would be a U.S. citizen, it might be suggested that section 1119(b) would prohibit such an operation. Section 1119, however, incorporates the federal murder and manslaughter statutes, and thus its prohibition extends only to "unlawful killing[s]," 18 U.S.C. 1111(a), 1112(a) (2006). Section 1119 is best construed to incorporate the "public authority" justification, which renders lethal action carried out by a government official lawful in some circumstances. As this paper explains below, a lethal operation of the kind discussed here would fall within the public authority exception under the circumstances and conditions posited because it would be conducted in a manner consistent with applicable law of war principles governing the non-international conflict between the United States and al-Qa'ida and its associated forces. It therefore would not result in an unlawful killing.[4]

A.

Although section 1119(b) refers only to the "punish[ments]" provided under sections 1111, 1112, and 1113, courts have geld that section 1119(b) incorporates the substantive elements of those cross-referenced provisions of title 18. See, e.g., United States v. Wharton, 320 F.3d 526, 533 (5th Cir. 2003); United States v. White, 51 F. Supp. 2d 1008, 1013-14 (E.D. Cal. 1997). Section 1111 of title 18 sets forth criminal penalties for "murder", and provides that "[m]urder is the unlawful killing of a human being with malice aforethought." 18 U.S.C. S 1111(a). Section 1112 similarly provides criminal sanctions for "[m]anslaughter," and states that "[m]anslaughter is the unlawful killing of a human being without malice." Id. S 1112(a). Section 1113 provides criminal penalties for "attempts to commit murder or manslaughter." Id. S. 1113. It is therefore clear that section 11119(b) bars only "unlawful killing."

Guidance as to the meaning of the phrase "unlawful killing" in sections 1111 and 1112—and thus for purposes of section 1119(b)—be found in the historical understandings of murder and manslaughter. That history shows that states have long recognized justifications and excuses to statutes criminalizing "unlawful" killings.[5] One state court, for example, in construing that state's murder statute, explained that "the word 'unlawful' is a term of art" that "connotes a homicide with the absence of factors of excuse or justification." People v. Frye, 10 Cal. Rptr. 2d 217, 221 (Cal. Ct. App. 1992). That court further explained that the factors of excuse or justification in question include those that have traditionally been recognized. Id. at 221 n.2. Other authorities support the same conclusion. See, e.g., Mullaney v. Wilbur, 421 U.S. 684, 685 (1975) (requirement of "unlawful" killing in Maine murder statute meant that killing was "neither justifiable nor excusable"); cf also Rollin M. Perkins & Ronald N. Boyce, Criminal Law 56 (3d ed. 1982) ("Innocent homicide is of two kinds, (l) justifiable and (2) excusable."). Accordingly, section 1119 does not proscribe killings covered by a justification traditionally recognized under the common law or state and federal murder statutes. "Congress did not intend [section 1119] to criminalize justifiable or excusable killings." White, 51 F. Supp. 2d at 1013.

B.

The public authority justification is well-accepted, and it may be available even in cases where the particular criminal statute at issue does not expressly refer to a public authority justification. Prosecutions where such a "public authority" justification is invoked are understandably rare, see American Law Institute Model Penal Code and Commentaries S 3.03 Comment 1, at 23-24 (1985); cf Visa Fraud Investigation, 8 Op. O.L.C. 284, 285 n.2, 286 (1984), and thus there is little case law in which courts have analyzed the scope of the justification with respect to the conduct of government officials. Nonetheless, discussions in the leading treatises and in the Model Panel Code demonstrate its legitimacy. See 2 Wayne R. LaFave, Substantive Criminal Law S 10.2(b), at 135 (2d ed. 2003); Perkins & Boyce, Criminal Law at 1093 ("Deeds which otherwise would be criminal, such as taking or destroying property, taking hold of a person by force and against his will, placing him in confinement, or even taking his life, are not crimes if done with proper public authority."); see also Model Penal Code S 3.03(1)(a), (d), (e) at 22023 (proposing codification of justification where conduct is "required or authorized by," inter alia, "the law defining the duties or functions of a public officer," "the law governing the armed services or the lawful conduct of war," or "any other provision of law imposing a public duty"); National Commission on Reform of Federal Criminal Laws, A Proposed New Federal Criminal Code S 602(1) (1971) ("Conduct engaged in by a public servant in the course of his official duties is justified when it is required or authorized by law."). And the Department's Office of Legal Counsel ("OLC") has invoked analogous rationales when it has analyzed whether Congress intended a particular criminal statute to prohibit specific conduct that otherwise falls within a government agency's authorities. See, e.g., Visa Fraud Investigation, 8 Op. O.L.C. at 287-88 (concluding that a civil statute prohibiting issuance of visa to an alien known to be ineligible did not prohibit State Department from issuing such a visa where "necessary" to facilitate an important Immigration and Naturalization Service undercover operation carried out in a "reasonable" fashion).

The public authority justification would not excuse all conduct of public officials from all criminal prohibitions. Or the legislature may design some criminal prohibitions to place bounds on the kinds of governmental conduct that can be authorized by the Executive. Or the legislature may enact a criminal prohibition in order to limit the scope of the conduct that the legislature has otherwise authorized the Executive to undertake pursuant to another statute. See, e.g., Nardone v. United States, 302 U.S. 379, 384 (1937) (federal statute proscribed government wiretapping). But the generally recognized public authority justification reflects that it would not make sense to attribute to Congress the intent to criminalize all covered activities undertaken by public officials in the legitimate exercise of their otherwise lawful authorities, even if Congress clearly intends to make those same actions a crime when committed by persons not acting pursuant to public authority. In some instances, therefore, the best interpretation of a criminal prohibition is that Congress intended to distinguish persons who are acting pursuant to public authority from those who are not, even if the statute does not make that distinction express. Cf. id. at 384 (federal criminal statutes should be construed to exclude authorized conduct of public officers where such a reading "would work obvious absurdity as, for example, the application of a speed law to a policeman pursuing a criminal or the driver of a fire engine responding to an alarm"). [6]

The touchstone for the analysis whether section 1119 incorporates not only justifications generally, but also the public authority justification in particular, is the legislative intent underlying this statute. Here, the statute should be read to exclude from its prohibitory scope killings that are encompassed by traditional justification, which include the public authority justification. The statutory incorporation of two other criminal statutes expressly referencing "unlawful" killings is one indication. See supra at 10-11. Moreover, there are no indications that Congress had a contrary intention. Nothing in the text or legislative history of sections 1111-1113 of title 18 suggests that Congress intended to exclude the established public authority justification from those justifications that Congress otherwise must be understood to have imported through the use of the modifier "unlawful" in those statutes. Nor is there anything in the text or legislative history of section 1119 itself to suggest that Congress intended to abrogate or otherwise affect the availability of this traditional justification for killings. On the contrary, the relevant legislative materials indicate that, in enacting section 1119, Congress was merely closing a gap in a field dealing with entirely different kinds of conduct from that at issue here.[7]

The Department thus concludes that section 1119 incorporates the public authority justification.[8] This paper turns next to the question whether a lethal operation could be encompassed by that justification and, in particular, whether that justification would apply when the target is a U.S. citizen. The analysis here leads to the conclusion that it would.

A lethal operation against an enemy leader undertaken in national self-defense or during an armed conflict that is authorized by an informed, high-level official and carried out in a manner that accords with applicable law of war principles would fall within a well established variant of the public authority justification and therefore would not be murder. See, e.g., 2 Paul H. Robinson, Criminal Law Defenses S 148(a), at 208 (1984) (conduct that would violate a criminal statute is justified and thus not unlawful "[w]here the exercise of military authority relies upon the law governing the armed forces or upon the conduct of war"); 2 LaFave, Substantive Criminal Law S 10.2(c) at 136 ("another aspect of the public duty defense is where the conduct was required or authorized by 'the law governing the armed services or the lawful conduct of war); Perkins & Boyce, Criminal Law at 1093 (noting that a "typical instance[] in which even the extreme act of taking human life is done by public authority" involves "the killing of an enemy as an act of war and within the rules of war").[9]

The United States is currently in the midst of a congressionally authorized armed conflict with al-Qa'ida and associated forces, and may act in national self-defense to protect U.S. persons and interests who are under continual threat of violent attack by certain al-Q'aida operatives planning operations against them. The public authority justification would apply to a lethal operation of the kind discussed in this paper if it were conducted in accord with applicable law of war principles. As one legal commentator has explained, "if a soldier intentionally kills an enemy combatant in time of war and within the rules of warfare, he is not guilty of murder," whereas, for example, if that soldier intentionally kills a prisoner of war—a violation of the laws of war—"then he commits murder." 2 LaFave, Substantive Criminal Laws S 10.2(c), at 136; see also State v. Gut, 13 Minn. 341, 357 (1868) ("That it is legal to kill an alien enemy in the heat and exercise of war, is undeniable; but to kill such an enemy after he has laid down his arms, and especially when he is confined in prison, is murder."); Perkins & Boyce, Criminal Law at 1093 ("Even in time of War an alien enemy may not be killed needlessly after he has been disarmed and securely imprisoned."). Moreover, without invoking the public authority justification by its terms, this Department's OLC has relied on the same notion in an opinion addressing the intended scope of a federal criminal statute that concerned the use of potentially lethal force. See United States Assistance to Countries that Shoot Down Civil Aircraft Involved in Drug Trafficking, 18 Op. O.L.C. 148, 164 (1994) (concluding that the Aircraft Sabotage Act of 1984, 18 U.S.C. § 32(1))(2) (2006), which prohibits the willful destruction of a civil aircraft: and otherwise applies to U.S. government conduct, should not be construed to have "the surprising and almost certainly unintended effect of criminalizing actions by military personnel that are lawful under international law and the laws of almed conflict").

The fact that an operation may target a U.S. citizen does not alter this conclusion. As explained above, see supra at 3, the Supreme Court has held that the military may constitutionally use force against a U.S. citizen who is part of enemy forces. See Hamdi, 542 U.S. at 518 (plurality opinion); id. at 587, 597 (Thomas, J., dissenting); Ex parte Quirin, 317 U.S. at 37-38 ("Citizens who associate themselves with the military arm of the enemy government, and with its aid, guidance and direction enter [the United States] bent on hostile acts," may be treated as "enemy belligerents" under the law of war). Similarly, under the Constitution and the inherent right to national self-defense recognized in international law, the President may authorize the use of force against a U.S. citizen who is a member of al-Qa'ida or its associated forces and who poses an imminent threat of violent attack against the United States.

In light of these precedents, the Department believes that the use of lethal force addressed in this white paper would constitute a lawful killing under the public authority doctrine if conducted in a manner consistent with the fundamental law of war principles governing the use of force in a non-international armed conflict. Such an operation would not violate the assassination ban in Executive Order No. 12333. Section 2.11 of Executive Order No. 12333 provides that "[n]o person employed by or acting on behalf of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, assassination." 46 Fed. Reg. 59,941, 59, 952 (Dec. 4, 1981). A lawful killing in self-defense is not an assassination. In the Department's view, a lethal operation conducted against a U.S. citizen whose conduct poses an imminent threat of violent attack against the United States would be a legitimate act of national self-defense that would not violate the assassination ban. Similarly, the use of lethal force, consistent with the laws of war, against an individual who is a legitimate military target would be lawful and would not violate the assassination ban.

IV.

The War Crimes Act, 18 U.S.C. S 2441 (2006) makes it a federal crime for a member of the Armed Forces or a national of the United States to "commit[] a war crime." Id. S 2441(a). The only potentially applicable provision of section 2441 to operations of the type discussed herein makes it a war crime to commit a "grave breach" of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions when that breach is committed "in the context of and in association with an armed conflict not of an international character." Id. 2441(c)(3). As defined by the statute, a "grave breach" of Common Article 3 includes "[m]urder," described in pertinent part as "[t]he act of a person who intentionally kills, or conspires or attempts to kill . . . one or more persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including those placed out of combat by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause." Is. S 2441(s)(1)(D).

Whatever might be the outer bounds of this category of covered persons, Common Article 3 does not alter the fundamental law of war principle concerning a belligerent party's right in an armed conflict to target individuals who are part of an enemy's armed forces or eliminate a nation's authority to take legitimate action in national self-defense. The language of Common Article 3 "makes clear that members of such armed forces [of both the state and non-states parties to the conflict] ... are considered as 'taking no active part in the hostilities' only once have disengaged from their fighting function ('have laid down their arms') or are placed hors de combat; mere suspension of combat is insufficient." International Committee of the Red Cross, Interpretive Guidance on the Notion of Direct Participation in Hostilities Under International Humanitarian Law 28 (2009). An operation against a senior operational leader of al-Qa'ida or its associated forces who poses an imminent threat of violent attack against the United States would target a person who is taking "an active part in hostilities" and therefore would not constitute a "grave breach" of Common Article 3.

V.

In conclusion, it would be lawful for the United States to conduct a lethal operation outside the United States against a U.S. citizen who is a senior, operational leader of al-Qa'ida or an associated force of al-Qa'ida without violating the Constitution or the federal statutes discussed in this white paper under the following conditions:

(l) an informed, high-level official of the U.S. government has determined that the targeted individual poses an imminent threat of violent attack against the United States;

(2) capture is infeasible, and the United States continues to monitor whether capture becomes feasible; and

(3) the operation is conducted in a manner consistent with the four fundamental principles of the laws of war governing the use of force. As stated earlier, this paper does not attempt to determine the minimum requirements necessary to render such an operation lawful, nor does it assess what might be required to render a lethal operation against a U.S. citizen lawful in other circumstances. It concludes only that the stated conditions would be sufficient to make lawful a lethal operation in a foreign country directed against a U.S. citizen with the characteristics described above.

We are grateful for any and all corrections to this transcription. Please email errors to cewilson@yahoo-inc.com with the approximate location of the fix.


ASU trying to stop porn site’s use of ‘Sun Devil’

If you ask me the folks at ASU should be more concerned about educating the kids, then stopping porn.

Source

ASU trying to stop porn site’s use of ‘Sun Devil’

By Anne Ryman The Republic | azcentral.com Wed Feb 20, 2013 10:31 PM

Has the devil gotten hold of Arizona State University’s premier trademark?

The school is trying to stop an adult website from using “Sun Devil” in its name, taking legal action against Digital Dream Media Inc., the website operator of SunDevilAngels.com. ASU alleges the website is using its trademark and intellectual property without permission.

Digital Dream Media of Palm Desert, Calif., declined to comment.

It’s not unusual for universities to protect their trademarks. A few years ago, Arizona’s state universities bought a handful of websites with “xxx” domain names linked to state university names before the sites were offered to the public.

ASU spokeswoman Terri Shafer said that the university tried to resolve the issue first but that site operators responded in a “dismissive and uncooperative fashion.”


Mandatory Gun Insurance??? A round about way to disarm Americans???

Machine guns were not made illegal, but the National Firearms Act, enacted on June 26, 1934, slapped a $200 tax on a machine gun that cost $10 to $50 at the time and effectively made them unaffordable for for most people.

I suspect this so called "mandatory gun insurance" is designed to do the same thing.

Requiring people who own guns to purchase insurance which will be made unaffordable to prevent people from legally buying and owning guns by making the insurance too expensive.

And of course after the government passes a law requiring mandatory gun insurance, the next step would be to pass laws that make it impossible for insurance companies to sell the mandatory gun insurance, effectively making guns illegal.

This isn't a new trick by our government rulers. They did the same thing when they made drugs illegal.

The "1914 Harrison Narcotic Tax Act" and the "1937 Marihuana Tax Act" effectively made drugs illegal by slapping a tax on them, while at the same time the government stopped issuing the tax licenses.

Source

Latest Front in the Gun Debate Is Mandatory Insurance

By MICHAEL COOPER and MARY WILLIAMS WALSH

Published: February 21, 2013 609 Comments

In a nation sharply divided over efforts to curb violence and the right to bear arms, both sides of the gun debate seem to agree on at least one thing: a bigger role for the insurance industry in a heavily armed society.

David P. Linsky is a Democratic state representative in Massachusetts who wants to require gun owners to buy insurance.

But just what that role should be, and whether insurers will choose to accept it, are very much in dispute.

Lawmakers in at least half a dozen states, including California, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York and Pennsylvania, have proposed legislation this year that would require gun owners to buy liability insurance — much as car owners are required to buy auto insurance. Doing so would give a financial incentive for safe behavior, they hope, as people with less dangerous weapons or safety locks could qualify for lower rates.

“I believe that if we get the private sector and insurance companies involved in gun safety, we can help prevent a number of gun tragedies every year,” said David P. Linsky, a Democratic state representative in Massachusetts who wants to require gun owners to buy insurance. He believes it will encourage more responsible behavior and therefore reduce accidental shootings. “Insurance companies are very good at evaluating risk factors and setting their premiums appropriately,” he added.

Groups representing gun owners oppose efforts to make insurance mandatory, arguing that law-abiding people should not be forced to buy insurance to exercise their constitutional right to bear arms. But some groups, including the National Rifle Association, endorse voluntary liability policies for their members. And as several states pass laws making it easier for people to carry concealed weapons and use them for self-defense, some gun groups are now selling policies to cover some of the legal costs stemming from self-defense shootings.

The United States Concealed Carry Association recently began selling what it calls Self-Defense Shield. “If you’re forced to justifiably use your gun in self-defense,” its Web site says, “Self-Defense Shield will help pay for your expert pro-2nd Amendment lawyer by reimbursing your legal-defense expenses following your acquittal — an ingenious system critical to the arsenal of any responsibly armed citizen.”

Premiums for such insurance range from around $200 to $300 per year; in general, the coverage is narrowly written and excludes cases where a gun is used to commit a crime.

Some specialized underwriters are reviewing what their policies cover when it comes to shootings, and weighing whether they should offer new types of coverage for gun owners. And as more states pass laws allowing people to bring guns to public venues — including restaurants, bars, churches and the parking lots of their workplaces — some business groups have expressed concerns that they could be held liable for shootings on their properties, which could drive up their insurance costs.

On Thursday, when Gov. Dannel P. Malloy of Connecticut outlined his proposals to reduce gun violence — which included universal background checks, a ban on large-capacity ammunition magazines and a stronger assault weapons ban — he called for officials to study “whether owners of firearms should be required to carry additional insurance.”

The insurance industry is wary of some of the proposals to require gun owners to buy liability coverage — and particularly of bills, like one that was filed in New York that would require coverage for damages resulting not only from negligence but also from “willful acts.”

Robert P. Hartwig, the president of the Insurance Information Institute, said that insurance generally covered accidents and unintentional acts — not intentional or illegal ones. “Insurance will cover you if your home burns down in an electrical fire, but it will not cover you if you burn down your own house, and you cannot insure yourself for arson,” he said.

Some claims stemming from shootings have been covered by homeowners’ insurance — even by policies that said they did not cover illegal acts.

The families of the two students responsible for the 1999 killings at Columbine High School in Colorado were able to use money from their homeowners’ policies to settle a lawsuit brought by families of most of the victims. In 2001, a California court ordered an insurance company to defend a policyholder whose 16-year-old son shot and killed a friend with a Beretta handgun that he had found in his mother’s coat. But the year before, a North Carolina court ruled that an insurance company did not have to cover the expenses of a policyholder who had shot and wounded a prowler on his property.

Christopher J. Monge, an insurance agent and gun owner in Verona, Wis., recently wrote a book, “The Gun Owner’s Guide to Insurance for Concealed Carry and Self-Defense,” which he sells at gun shows. Mr. Monge said that the problem with most liability insurance is that it promises coverage only in cases of a gun owner’s negligence, or an accidental shooting — and not if the gun owner shoots someone intentionally in self-defense. “A negligent act is covered by your liability policy, but if you intentionally shoot somebody, it could be excluded,” he said.

So as more states pass self-defense laws, Mr. Monge said that he found several insurance companies that would specifically offer liability coverage in cases of self-defense, usually in the form of an “umbrella” policy that added a higher level of coverage than the routine coverage for negligence in a homeowners’ policy. An umbrella policy adds coverage for unusual, but potentially expensive, incidents.

But he opposes proposals to make liability insurance mandatory. “They’re barking up the wrong tree, if you ask me,” he said. “Ninety-nine percent of gun owners are going to be safe and not go crazy.”

States have been considering mandatory gun insurance bills for years, but no state has passed one yet, said Jon Griffin, a policy associate at the National Conference of State Legislatures. When Illinois considered a bill in 2009, the National Rifle Association wrote that it would “put firearms ownership out of reach for many law-abiding Illinoisans.” The N.R.A. endorses a policy that offers excess liability coverage — “because accidents do happen no matter how careful you are” — and another that offers “self-defense insurance.”

The recent trend of allowing guns in more public places has alarmed some business groups. When Ohio enacted a law allowing guns in bars in 2011, the Ohio Restaurant Association opposed it, writing officials that restaurant owners “expect that this law would be perceived by insurance companies as increasing the risk of injury in establishments that sell alcohol, which of course would result in increased liability insurance costs.” Owners have not reported higher premiums because of the new law, said a spokesman for the association, Jarrod A. Clabaugh, but some worry that a shooting could drive up their insurance costs.

The current debate over mandatory liability laws is being watched with interest by Nelson Lund, the Patrick Henry professor of Constitutional Law and the Second Amendment at George Mason University School of Law. Professor Lund proposed the idea of mandatory insurance in a 1987 article in the Alabama Law Review, seeing it as a form of gun control that could be consistent with the constitutional right to bear arms. But he said that he had not studied any of the current proposals, and noted that it made a great deal of difference how they are written.

“If this were done, the private insurance market would quickly and efficiently make it prohibitively expensive for people with a record of irresponsible ownership of guns to possess them legally,” he wrote in the 1987 article, “but would not impose unreasonable burdens on those who have the self-discipline to exercise their liberty in a responsible fashion.”


Mandatory Gun Insurance??? A round about way to disarm Americans???

Machine guns were not made illegal, but the National Firearms Act, enacted on June 26, 1934, slapped a $200 tax on a machine gun that cost $10 to $50 at the time and effectively made them unaffordable for for most people.

I suspect this so called "mandatory gun insurance" is designed to do the same thing.

Requiring people who own guns to purchase insurance which will be made unaffordable to prevent people from legally buying and owning guns by making the insurance too expensive.

And of course after the government passes a law requiring mandatory gun insurance, the next step would be to pass laws that make it impossible for insurance companies to sell the mandatory gun insurance, effectively making guns illegal.

This isn't a new trick by our government rulers. They did the same thing when they made drugs illegal.

The "1914 Harrison Narcotic Tax Act" and the "1937 Marihuana Tax Act" effectively made drugs illegal by slapping a tax on them, while at the same time the government stopped issuing the tax licenses.

Source

Latest Front in the Gun Debate Is Mandatory Insurance

By MICHAEL COOPER and MARY WILLIAMS WALSH

Published: February 21, 2013 609 Comments

In a nation sharply divided over efforts to curb violence and the right to bear arms, both sides of the gun debate seem to agree on at least one thing: a bigger role for the insurance industry in a heavily armed society.

David P. Linsky is a Democratic state representative in Massachusetts who wants to require gun owners to buy insurance.

But just what that role should be, and whether insurers will choose to accept it, are very much in dispute.

Lawmakers in at least half a dozen states, including California, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York and Pennsylvania, have proposed legislation this year that would require gun owners to buy liability insurance — much as car owners are required to buy auto insurance. Doing so would give a financial incentive for safe behavior, they hope, as people with less dangerous weapons or safety locks could qualify for lower rates.

“I believe that if we get the private sector and insurance companies involved in gun safety, we can help prevent a number of gun tragedies every year,” said David P. Linsky, a Democratic state representative in Massachusetts who wants to require gun owners to buy insurance. He believes it will encourage more responsible behavior and therefore reduce accidental shootings. “Insurance companies are very good at evaluating risk factors and setting their premiums appropriately,” he added.

Groups representing gun owners oppose efforts to make insurance mandatory, arguing that law-abiding people should not be forced to buy insurance to exercise their constitutional right to bear arms. But some groups, including the National Rifle Association, endorse voluntary liability policies for their members. And as several states pass laws making it easier for people to carry concealed weapons and use them for self-defense, some gun groups are now selling policies to cover some of the legal costs stemming from self-defense shootings.

The United States Concealed Carry Association recently began selling what it calls Self-Defense Shield. “If you’re forced to justifiably use your gun in self-defense,” its Web site says, “Self-Defense Shield will help pay for your expert pro-2nd Amendment lawyer by reimbursing your legal-defense expenses following your acquittal — an ingenious system critical to the arsenal of any responsibly armed citizen.”

Premiums for such insurance range from around $200 to $300 per year; in general, the coverage is narrowly written and excludes cases where a gun is used to commit a crime.

Some specialized underwriters are reviewing what their policies cover when it comes to shootings, and weighing whether they should offer new types of coverage for gun owners. And as more states pass laws allowing people to bring guns to public venues — including restaurants, bars, churches and the parking lots of their workplaces — some business groups have expressed concerns that they could be held liable for shootings on their properties, which could drive up their insurance costs.

On Thursday, when Gov. Dannel P. Malloy of Connecticut outlined his proposals to reduce gun violence — which included universal background checks, a ban on large-capacity ammunition magazines and a stronger assault weapons ban — he called for officials to study “whether owners of firearms should be required to carry additional insurance.”

The insurance industry is wary of some of the proposals to require gun owners to buy liability coverage — and particularly of bills, like one that was filed in New York that would require coverage for damages resulting not only from negligence but also from “willful acts.”

Robert P. Hartwig, the president of the Insurance Information Institute, said that insurance generally covered accidents and unintentional acts — not intentional or illegal ones. “Insurance will cover you if your home burns down in an electrical fire, but it will not cover you if you burn down your own house, and you cannot insure yourself for arson,” he said.

Some claims stemming from shootings have been covered by homeowners’ insurance — even by policies that said they did not cover illegal acts.

The families of the two students responsible for the 1999 killings at Columbine High School in Colorado were able to use money from their homeowners’ policies to settle a lawsuit brought by families of most of the victims. In 2001, a California court ordered an insurance company to defend a policyholder whose 16-year-old son shot and killed a friend with a Beretta handgun that he had found in his mother’s coat. But the year before, a North Carolina court ruled that an insurance company did not have to cover the expenses of a policyholder who had shot and wounded a prowler on his property.

Christopher J. Monge, an insurance agent and gun owner in Verona, Wis., recently wrote a book, “The Gun Owner’s Guide to Insurance for Concealed Carry and Self-Defense,” which he sells at gun shows. Mr. Monge said that the problem with most liability insurance is that it promises coverage only in cases of a gun owner’s negligence, or an accidental shooting — and not if the gun owner shoots someone intentionally in self-defense. “A negligent act is covered by your liability policy, but if you intentionally shoot somebody, it could be excluded,” he said.

So as more states pass self-defense laws, Mr. Monge said that he found several insurance companies that would specifically offer liability coverage in cases of self-defense, usually in the form of an “umbrella” policy that added a higher level of coverage than the routine coverage for negligence in a homeowners’ policy. An umbrella policy adds coverage for unusual, but potentially expensive, incidents.

But he opposes proposals to make liability insurance mandatory. “They’re barking up the wrong tree, if you ask me,” he said. “Ninety-nine percent of gun owners are going to be safe and not go crazy.”

States have been considering mandatory gun insurance bills for years, but no state has passed one yet, said Jon Griffin, a policy associate at the National Conference of State Legislatures. When Illinois considered a bill in 2009, the National Rifle Association wrote that it would “put firearms ownership out of reach for many law-abiding Illinoisans.” The N.R.A. endorses a policy that offers excess liability coverage — “because accidents do happen no matter how careful you are” — and another that offers “self-defense insurance.”

The recent trend of allowing guns in more public places has alarmed some business groups. When Ohio enacted a law allowing guns in bars in 2011, the Ohio Restaurant Association opposed it, writing officials that restaurant owners “expect that this law would be perceived by insurance companies as increasing the risk of injury in establishments that sell alcohol, which of course would result in increased liability insurance costs.” Owners have not reported higher premiums because of the new law, said a spokesman for the association, Jarrod A. Clabaugh, but some worry that a shooting could drive up their insurance costs.

The current debate over mandatory liability laws is being watched with interest by Nelson Lund, the Patrick Henry professor of Constitutional Law and the Second Amendment at George Mason University School of Law. Professor Lund proposed the idea of mandatory insurance in a 1987 article in the Alabama Law Review, seeing it as a form of gun control that could be consistent with the constitutional right to bear arms. But he said that he had not studied any of the current proposals, and noted that it made a great deal of difference how they are written.

“If this were done, the private insurance market would quickly and efficiently make it prohibitively expensive for people with a record of irresponsible ownership of guns to possess them legally,” he wrote in the 1987 article, “but would not impose unreasonable burdens on those who have the self-discipline to exercise their liberty in a responsible fashion.”


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