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17 Feb 2011 13:05

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U.S.: South Dakota’s controversial fetal protection proposal shelved

  • NO South Dakota won’t vote on “justifiable homicide” issue source
  • » The controversy is, for now, dead: State Rep. Phil Jensen’s bill would have added the protection of an unborn fetus to the qualifications for “justifiable homicide.” Jensen insisted it had “nothing to do with abortion,” which frankly renders him either phenomenally disingenuous, or utterly politically tone-deaf. If he wants his legal tweak to go through, all he needs to do is add, “but you can’t murder medical practitioners who perform abortions” and he’s be set. And yet, apparently adding such an amendment was bother enough that he’d rather the whole bill, which he claims is about protecting women from domestic violence, be shelved. Seems like a morally dubious decision if you’re really out to protect battered women, doesn’t it? If that is, as he says, what this is all about.
Posted by Chris Tognotti • 0 Comments • Permalink

16 Feb 2011 13:26

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U.S.: Judge throws the book at pirate from Maersk Alabama hijack

  • 34 years in jail for Abdiwali Abdiqadir Muse, Somalian former pirate source
Posted by Chris Tognotti • 0 Comments • Permalink

16 Feb 2011 10:46

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U.S., World: More details on the Lara Logan case: What happened?

  • egypt The Wall Street Journal reports that CBS’ Logan was separated from her crew from 20 to 30 minutes. While she was beaten and sexually assaulted, she was not raped.
  • hospital The Daily Beast’s Howard Kurtz reports that Logan, who is staying in an NYC hospital, will likely be let out today. Her injuries have not been disclosed. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

16 Feb 2011 10:33

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U.S.: Why Jerry Brown’s California state hiring freeze likely means nothing

  • Davis The recalled governor pushed a hiring freeze on the state in 2001, but made some exceptions for certain departments. Those departments hired 6,500 more people in just six months. Oops.
  • Ah-nold During his time in office, he also enforced a hiring freeze, but allowed exceptions for state workers approved by the governor’s office – around 10,000 of them in his final year of office.
  • Brown Now, Jerry Brown plans to do the same thing – with the same loophole as Schwarzenegger. Stop us if you think you’ve heard this one before. Actually, we’ll just stop ourselves. source
  • » One thing Brown won’t be doing, though: The California governor quietly killed a lawsuit put in by Schwarzenegger that would have cut state worker pay to minimum wage during unresolved budget crises. Brown’s office, however, didn’t make a big deal about this. It’s also worth noting that the hiring freeze contains no specifics in terms of how much it’ll actually save.
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

15 Feb 2011 15:21

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U.S.: Three Medal of Freedom recipients you should get to know

  • one John Sweeney, he of a prototypically heart-warming “America” story, grew up the child of Irish immigrants (his mother a domestic worker, his father a bus driver) to later become head of the AFL-CIO.
  • two Dr. Tom Little, a New York optometrist who was murdered in Afghanistan, where he lived and raised his family for over 30 years, while working to provide eye care to any Afghans who needed it.
  • three Sylvia Mendez, who as a young child was the central figure in a legal battle over segregation in California. Her family’s victory in 1946 was a precursor to the Brown v. Board of Education ruling in 1954. source
Posted by Chris Tognotti • 0 Comments • Permalink

15 Feb 2011 13:33

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U.S.: If you build it, a carefully managed number of people will come

  • coming soon The World Trade Center memorial is on pace to be opened for public attendance by the ten-year anniversary of the attacks (which, as it always bears mentioning, betrays a shamefully slow process).
  • not so fast Due to the expected volume of visitors, size of the memorial, and transit/security concerns, it’s anticipated that visiting the memorial will be crowd-restricted at about 1,500 people. source
Posted by Chris Tognotti • 0 Comments • Permalink

15 Feb 2011 10:31

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U.S., World: Dalai Lama’s nephew killed in unfortunate car accident

  • Yesterday, Jigme K. Norbu, the nephew of the Dalai Lama, started a 300-mile walk across Florida (with a large group of other people, by the way) to help raise awareness for the Tibetan Independence Movement. He didn’t get very far. Norbu was hit by a car less than 50 miles from his starting point, near the end of the first leg of the journey, off the coastal State Road A1A. A terrible, meaningless accident. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 

14 Feb 2011 20:13

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U.S.: PATRIOT Act renewal passes House – with simple majority in tow

  • last week It appeared a far-right uprising had sidelined the PATRIOT Act’s renewal in the House, with the bill falling short of the two-thirds total it needed to succeed.
  • this week By passing the bill with rules that only required a simple majority, the extension will go over to the Senate. The vote totals were nearly the same as last week. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

14 Feb 2011 11:27

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U.S.: By the numbers: Obama’s budget cut plans deep, but not too deep

  • $3.73
    trillion     the size of Obama’s latest budget plan, just released today
  • $1.1
    trillion     the amount Obama plans to cut from the deficit over the next decade
  • 2/3 the share of deficit cuts that would come from cutbacks in various federal programs
  • $7.2T the amount that would be added to the public debt – not the deficit – over the next decade
  • $4T the amount Obama’s own deficit commission wanted to cut over the next decade source
  • » Only one silo gets the cuts: Obama wants to effectively limit all non-security discretionary spending for the next five years, an area which only accounts for 12 percent of federal spending, at the cost of doing something about defense spending or programs like Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security – which, as popular as they are, account for huge chunks of the pie. The cuts are also much lower than what Republicans want, although they’re also hoping to avoid defense spending cuts, even though that’s a huge chunk.
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

14 Feb 2011 10:23

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U.S.: Chandra Levy’s mom not 100% sure Ingmar Guandique killed her

  • To be honest, I always have that 5 percent of not being sure.
  • Susan Levy • Expressing doubts about the conviction of Ingmar Guandique – whether he was the dude who killed her daughter, Chandra Levy, a decade ago. This didn’t stop the elder Levy from calling Guandique “lower than a cockroach” and a “hideous creature” the other day, mind you. We understand Levy’s pain, and while we hope, for both their sakes, the right man was convicted, we can understand her doubts. This case has been a freaking mess ever since the name “Gary Condit” was tied to it all those years ago. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 
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