Geraldo Rivera is not letting Trayvon Martin‘s wardrobe escape scrutiny as the court begins work on the George Zimmerman trial, calling his black hoodie “thug wear.” On The O’Reilly Factor last night, Rivera dismissed the THC in Martin’s bloodstream as a serious issue, but once again noted that, given his size and wardrobe, he considered it reasonable for Zimmerman to think Martin could be a criminal, something Bill O’Reilly was quick to call profiling.

It’s been quite a couple of weeks for John Derbyshire. After writing a stunningly racist screed that got him fired from the right-wing National Review, Derbyshire suddenly found himself free to fully express the hard-core racism that the right keeps under wraps for fear of being called out on it.

Now, before anyone complains about how I’m “painting the right with a broad brush,” stop. Just stop. Welfare Queens. Southern Strategy. Barack the Magic Negro. Don’t ReNig in 2012. Birtherism. Skinny ghetto crackhead. Reparations. Trayvon Martin “deserved” it. Ted Nugent. Food stamp president. Obama is a Muslim. Every other word out of Pat Buchanan’s mouth.

I’m not even going to provide the links. Why? If you don’t know what all of these examples mean while claiming the right is not motivated by deep racism, you literally have no idea what you are talking about. Go educate yourself or stop living in denial and come back later.

In 2004, Malaika Brooks, seven months pregnant and accompanied by her 11-year-old son, was pulled over by two Seattle cops for driving 32 mph in a 20 mph zone. She was willing to accept a speeding ticket, but incorrectly thought signing it was an admission of guilt. She refused.

In response, one of the officers held up his Taser and asked if she knew what it was. She said she didn't, but added: “I have to go to the bathroom... I am pregnant. I’m less than 60 days from having my baby.”

According to Adam Liptak, reporting for the New York Times, this is what followed when a patrol supervisor joined the cops and decided to place Brooks under arrest, all in front of her young son:

The three men assessed the situation and conferred. “Well, don’t do it in her stomach,” one said. “Do it in her thigh.”

May 15, 2012 "Information Clearing House" --Texans can sleep more soundly at night knowing that Elisa Castillo, a grandmother and nonviolent first-time drug offender, is serving a life without parole sentence in Fort Worth. Yes, you read that right — the latest casualty of our War on Drugs is a grandmother who never even touched the drugs that sent her to prison. Though she may not look like public enemy No. 1, our persistently illogical criminal justice system has determined that this harsh punishment fits her crime. The truth, though, is that her fate was sealed, in large part because she didn't have a card to play when negotiating her sentence.

The FBI announced today that George Zimmerman could be charged with a federal hate crime, a charge that would mean Zimmerman could face the death penalty if convicted. The FBI made the announcement shortly after Zimmerman’s lawyers received the list of witnesses and evidence materials, which included never before seen accounts of the shooting from witnesses, new footage and new 911 call recordings.

State Prosecutors made the case that Zimmerman, who admitted to fatally shooting 17 year old Trayvon Martin, profiled and stalked the youth prior to a confrontation, which lead to Martin’s death, something that has prompted the FBI to investigate the possibility of raising the charge from second degree murder to a federal hate crime.

Only a few months have passed since Trayvon Martin was mercilessly gunned down by George Zimmerman in a gated neighborhood in Florida. Conservatives have defended the shooting as an act of self-defense even though Trayvon was unarmed and being chased by his killer. Trayvon was wearing a hoodie and carrying a bag of Skittles and an iced tea. George Zimmerman was carrying a pistol and a heart full of hate.

Since the shooting, racists around the country have expressed their support of Zimmerman’s right to shoot and kill an unarmed African-American teenager and have begun using Trayvon’s name as a racial slur. Many of these same folks, including anchors at Fox News have attempted to blame the hoodie for the shooting. But until now, nobody has attempted to profit off of the tragedy. A person in Virginia created gun range targets featuring a dark hoodie like Trayvon’s with Skittles and an iced tea. They were sold in packs of ten on GunBroker.com, who appears to have since removed the item.

A radio personality in Cleveland is facing tremendous backlash after telling a father that he should get one of his male friends to rape his daughter to force her to turn straight.

In response to an email from a father who suspected his daughter was gay after discovering her kissing another girl, DJ Dominic Deiter declared on the air that “You should get one of your friends to screw your daughter straight.”

You read that correctly. An apparently anti-gay radio personality told a father that he should arrange for his daughter to be raped repeatedly until she magically turns straight.

Ted Nugent isn't backing down from his fiery rhetoric about President Obama.

The Republican rocker and Mitt Romney backer stood by his controversial remarks, in which he called the commander in-chief "vile," "evil" and "America-hating," in addition to saying if Obama is reelected, “I will either be dead or in jail by this time next year."

"I spoke at the NRA and I will stand by my speech,” Nugent told the Dana Loesch radio show on Tuesday, adding he was being unfairly criticized.

"I'm a black Jew at a Nazi-Klan rally," the 63-year-old gun enthusiast griped. "And there are some power-abusing, corrupt monsters in our federal government that despise me because I have the audacity to speak the truth."

The Secret Service also entered the picture following his rant at the National Rifle Convention in St. Louis over the weekend. A spokesman said the organization would conduct an "appropriate follow-up" given the nature of the violent rhetoric.

Team Romney — who sought out Nugent's endorsement — also weighed in after Democratic National Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz called on the Republican presidential candidate to condemn Nugent's remarks.

The presumptive Republican nominee's spokeswoman Andrea Saul said in a statement that "Divisive language is offensive no matter what side of the political aisle it comes from,” adding "Mitt Romney believes everyone needs to be civil."

During the Dana Loesch interview, Nugent also went after Wasserman Shultz, calling her a "brain-dead, soulless idiot."

"I am on the right track and she just encourages me to stand stronger," he said.

When it comes to America's racial past and present, lies and snake oil are sold in many colors.

In the wake of the Trayvon Martin tragedy, conservatives in media have sought to deflect from the racism and racial profiling that precipitated his untimely death by referencing the broader social malaise of supposed "black-on-black violence."

On last week's episode of This Week on ABC, Washington Post columnist George Will said that despite the Trayvon tragedy, "150 black men are killed every week in this country," and "about 94 percent of them by other black men."

Will parroted arguments made by many conservatives, his intended point being that black-on-black crime remains the real problem our nation should address. The half-truth he spoke went curiously unchallenged by the panel -- including former White House adviser Van Jones -- largely because the meta-narrative of black-on-black violence is widely accepted in journalistic and political circles.

On This Week, there was a panel discussion on the Trayvon Martin case, as there probably was on every Sunday show this week. It's somewhat ironic that most shows left the discussion to white men, who naturally understand what it feels like to walk down the street, unarmed, with some candy and iced tea and be looked at sideways like they're about to start a riot or rob the little old lady down the street. At least ABC saw fit to have Van Jones join their panel to talk about the Trayvon Martin case.

Stormfront, the dumb, white and angry neo-nazi group, has been getting a boner over exploiting the Trayvon Martin case as yet another instance of the white man being brought down and forced to appease those gangsta blacks. Well, it didn’t take Storm front very long to flagrantly twist the perception of the murdered black teenager in order to satisfy its ridiculously racist agenda.

It seems that the neo-nazi group is responsible for circulating a photo of what they contend is Trayvon Martin looking all gangsta and very scary to nice, white block captains.

Don’t tread on me? It is confirmed today that it was Tea Party leader Michael Kobulnicky who was arrested Thursday in San Diego for the alleged brutal kidnapping and rape of a 56 year old woman.

According to East County Magazine, Michael John Kobulnicky is accused of offering a woman a ride on February 25, but instead of taking her home, he drove to secluded island, pulled the victim out of the vehicle, sexually assaulted her, and left her in the sand. San Diego Police Lt. Andra Brown said, “He dragged her out of the car and sexually assaulted her pretty brutally.”

Kobulnicky, the public relations director for the San Diego Tea Party, is also the former regional director of the Southern California Conservative Party.

According to his Facebook Page, the divorced father of five was engaged and planning on getting married in April. He also writes, “I am one of the leaders of the San Diego Tea Party and I am the Public Relations representative and leader of our media team. I am also in charge of recruiting new members….Mr. Kobulnicky cherishes our Constitution and values the sacred freedoms we have unlike all other countries! His passion is to educate youth and adults concerning the Constitution and other topics and to motivate people to take action and protect our Constitution, country, and our American way of life.”

On his website, Kobulnicky describes himself as, “Michael is single and has five sons. He loves to read all different types of books, especially books relating to the Constitution and our Founding Fathers, among other types of interests. He is a Christian too.” Notice how he left out the part about being a kidnapper and a rapist. I guess those two little details don’t fit in with taking America back.

A small-town Ohio police department was shut down Friday after a cop allegedly used a taser on a 9-year-old boy, and the police chief kept quiet about it.

Details about the taser incident on Tuesday are few, but the Coshocton Tribune reported that the officer had been called to a Mount Sterling apartment where a child was refusing to go to school.

At some point, the visit became hostile and the part-time officer allegedly used a taser to subdue the boy. The police chief is accused of hiding the incident from village leaders.

City officials suspended Mount Sterling Police Chief Mike McCoy for three days, leaving the village without a police department. Meanwhile, the office's computers and weapons were seized, and state investigators are probing the incident, 10-TV reported.

The county sheriff's office will take over police operations in the area until city officials determine what to do next.

The closure isn't the first for the Mount Sterling police force. The village laid off all its officers except for the chief in September due to budget cuts, the station reported.

It's yet unclear when the department will be reformed.

Mount Sterling had a population of just under 2,000 in 2010, according to Census data.

ake hero Xavier Alvarez lied to his fellow Californians.

He never rescued an American ambassador. He was never a Marine. Most definitely, contrary to what he told a Southern California audience, Alvarez was never awarded the Medal of Honor.

He lied, until he was caught. Now, the Supreme Court must decide whether the First Amendment protects Alvarez and other wannabes from prosecution. The consequences could stretch well beyond what lawmakers and veterans call stolen valor.

"If false factual statements are unprotected, then the government can prosecute not only the man who tells tall tales of winning the Congressional Medal of Honor, but also the JDater who falsely claims he's Jewish or the dentist who assures you it won't hurt a bit," Judge Alex Kozinski of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals warned in a ruling that overturned Alvarez's conviction under the Stolen Valor Act, which criminalizes false claims to military honors.

But Congress, the Obama administration and veterans organizations all consider false military claims uniquely harmful. Just ask George Washington, they say.

"Should any who are not entitled to the honors, have the insolence to assume the badges of them, they shall be severely punished," Washington stated in a 1782 military order, according to a legal brief filed by the American Legion.

In oral arguments Wednesday, the Supreme Court will start sorting this all out.

A former elected board member of the Three Valleys Water District in Claremont, Calif., Alvarez spoke of his spurious Marine exploits in a September 2007 hearing. Even his own lawyer admits Alvarez's sometimes tenuous hold on the truth.

New York City’s war on freedom could be adding a new weapon to its arsenal, especially if NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly has his say.

The head of the New York Police Department is working with the Pentagon to secure body scanners to be used throughout the Big Apple.

If Kelly gets his wish, the city will be receiving a whole slew of Terahertz Imagining Detection scanners, a high-tech radiation detector that measures the energy that is emitted from a persons’ body. As CBS News reports, "It measures the energy radiating from a body up to 16 feet away, and can detect anything blocking it, like a gun."

What it can also do, however, is allow the NYPD to conduct illegal searches by means of scanning anyone walking the streets of New York. Any object on your person could be privy to the eyes of the detector, and any suspicious screens can prompt police officers to search someone on suspicion of having a gun, or anything else under their clothes.

I’ll be the first to admit, when it comes to the police, I am the beneficiary of White Privilege. I’ve never been stopped, harassed and certainly never arrested. Obviously, I’ve never been assaulted by a police officer either. So the reality of how badly the police behave has never really been part of my reality. The few times it did intrude, by way of my noticeably Hispanic father being bothered for not being white, I was too young to understand it.

However, since the spread of cell phone cameras, I, and more importantly, White America, have gotten quite a good look at just how the police behave when they think no one is paying attention. Worse, we’re starting to see that they don’t care that anyone is watching because they think they can illegally confiscate the cameras or they just won’t get in any real trouble. There’s a tipping point coming where the public becomes fed up with an increasingly militarized and violent police force and the ubiquitous nature of smart phones is bringing it on faster than anyone could have imagined just a few years ago.

I don’t want to say that cops are out of control. I don’t want to say that they are treating American citizens as Abu Ghraib prisoners. I don’t want to say that because I don’t actually believe that. I still believe that the majority of police officers are in their jobs for the right reason, to Protect and to Serve the public. That being said, videos like this are hard to swallow, and we’ve seen far too many of them lately.

In the video, an Allentown, PA police officer was clearly shown tasing a 14-year-old girl while her hands were up in the air.

Yesterday, Alpha Natural Resources, the parent company of Massey Energy, agreed to pay $209 million in criminal and civil penalties, and compensation to the families of twenty-nine miners killed by an explosion at the Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia last year.

But for Free Speech for People, Appalachian Voices and the Rainforest Action Network, a financial settlement and admission of criminal liability simply isn’t enough. The groups have renewed their call for Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden to revoke Massey’s corporate charter.

In a joint statement the groups said, “A financial settlement, even for hundreds of millions of dollars, is just not enough to prevent corporations like Massey from abusing their enormous power over our lives. Alpha earned $2.3 billion in the last quarter alone. It is simply not acceptable for corporations to buy their way out after criminally killing people.”

Two people, including a campus police officer, were shot dead Thursday at Virginia Tech, where 33 people were killed in 2007 in the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history, a university spokesman said.

Officials warned everyone to seek shelter while an armed suspect was at large on the campus.

The officer was shot during a traffic stop, Virginia Tech spokesman Mark Owczarski told NBC News.

"Witnesses reported to police the shooter fled on foot heading toward the Cage, a parking lot near Duck Pond Drive. At that parking lot, a second person was found. That person is also deceased, Owczarski said.

A Virginia Tech alert described the suspected shooter as a white male wearing gray sweat pants, a gray hat with a neon green brim and a maroon hoodie, and carrying a backpack.

The Virginia Tech alert posted on the school's website said the suspect was last seen walking toward McComas Hall, which is the main gym on campus, about two blocks from Lane Stadium.

The shooting came the same day as Virginia Tech was appealing a $55,000 fine by the U.S. Education Department in connection with the university's response to the 2007 rampage.

In the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history, 33 people, including the mentally ill gunman, were killed on the Virginia Tech campus on April 16, 2007. The massacre in a classroom building began at 9:40 a.m. when Seung-Hui Cho chained the doors and killed dozens before committing suicide.

"Anti-racist is a code word for anti-white," she replied. "If a group of Jews wanted to move to an area that had a high concentration of Jews already, would that make them Jewish supremacists? If Blacks choose to associate and work with other Blacks to form a 'black racial community,' is that racist? Apparently only White people cannot work for the advancement of their race, while groups like La Raza are accepted as 'cultural groups.' What if the 14 words said 'We must secure the existence of our race and a future for Native American children ' instead of 'We must secure the existence of our race and a future for White children?' Would human rights activists call that racist?"

The "14 words" is a popular white nationalist slogan coined by David Lane, a member of the 1980s right-wing domestic terrorist group The Order. The group committed armed robberies, including a $3.6 million armored car heist, in part to fund the neo-Nazi group Aryan Nations, whose founder, Richard Butler,called for the mass migration of white supremacists to the northwestern United States after headquartering Aryan Nations in a northern Idaho compound in the 1970s. He branded the concept the Northwest Territorial Imperative. (Aryan Nations was crippled by a Southern Poverty Law Center lawsuit in 2000; it has all but disintegrated since Butler's death in 2004.)

Skinner himself gave a perfect summary:

“All the district attorney (has) got to do is turn over the evidence, test it and let the chips fall where they may,” Skinner said in an interview with CNN last year. “If I’m innocent I go home. If I’m guilty I die.”

Whether or not the execution of a guilty prisoner is moral is a debate worth having. But whether or not to execute an innocent prisoner is, under no circumstances, up for debate. Every measure must be taken to ensure the innocent are not  murdered by the state. There is no such thing as “collateral damage” when it comes to capitol punishment. This is a significant flaw in our justice system which rewards not the accuracy of verdicts but the number of successful convictions. The fact that many criminal lawyers that enter politics campaign on their ”win” record displays a perverse incentive  to secure as many convictions as possible, especially in high profile cases. This is not conducive to justice.

To make matters worse, despite a new law passed that makes it easier for convicted criminals to have access to the DNA evidence as part of their appeal, the judge simply denied the request without explanation.

The Texas system has shown a marked lack of interest in getting to the truth but rather appears more concerned with racking up a body count for its Governor to boast about to an audience of cheering, bloodthirsty savages. Having the most executions should be a badge of ultimate shame for a politician. It means you have failed to make safe the populace of your state and rely instead on extravagant displays of retribution to create a false sense of security.

Hank Skinner will, in all likelihood, be just another spectacle to distract the mob from the real problems facing Texas. Bread and Circuses, indeed.

Last week, a federal court in Mississippi sentenced a key figure in a $3 million mortgage fraud scheme to two and a half years in federal prison. Just a few days earlier, however, a Mississippi federal judge imposed a significantly harsher sentence on a woman who lied on her benefits applications in order to receive just $4,367 in food stamps to help feed her family:

[I]n moments of desperation, a lie can seem like the only option. Anita McLemore, a Mississippi mother of two, faced one of those unfortunate moments when filling out her application for food stamps — and now she’ll pay the price, by spending three years of her life behind bars in federal prison.

Thanks to a federal ban on food stamps for people with felony drug convictions, people like McLemore are out of luck when it comes to getting assistance with putting food on their tables. Though states can opt out of the ban, those that don’t (like Mississippi) deny food stamps even to individuals who have already served their sentences or overcome previous addictions. It’s true that McLemore’s past isn’t perfect — she has four felony drug convictions and one misdemeanor, which place her firmly in the category of people the federal government has declared unfit to receive public benefits. Hence, faced with the prospect of being unable to feed her family, McLemore lied on her application.

In a compassionate nation, the penalty for drug use is not starvation. In a just nation, the penalty for drug use is not that your two children must be hungry as well. There is no excuse for a federal drug policy that punishes anyone by taking away their ability to put food on the table — and that punishes them so severely for the crime of needing to eat.

It’s a question many are asking as more details emerge from the Penn State scandal: How could you see a child being sexually abused and not intervene?

As a 28-year-old grad student, assistant coach Mike McQueary, now on administrative leave, claims he witnessed Jerry Sandusky raping a 10-year-old boy in the locker room showers. McQueary immediately called his own father to tell him what he’d seen, according to the grand jury report, but waited until the next morning to notify coach Joe Paterno. Even given the powerful institutional hierarchy within the school’s football program, which some have gone so far as to compare to the Catholic Church, most find it difficult to imagine standing by as a pre-pubescent boy is allegedly sodomized by a middle-aged man — no matter who that man is.

But there is no shortage of criminal cases where witnesses’ reactions, or lack thereof, seem baffling from the outside. The most infamous example is the 1964 rape and murder of Kitty Genovese, during which, according to popular legend, 38 neighbors listened to her cries for help and did not even call the cops.

A racial epithet-spewing NYPD cop was ordered held without bail Monday on charges of fabricating criminal charges against a black man on Staten Island.

"I fried another n-----," Officer Michael Daragjati crowed last April, according to a transcript of a phone conversation intercepted by the feds. "Another n----- fried, no big deal."

Assistant Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Paul Tuchman called Daragjati, who is white, "a blatant racist."

Besides violating the civil rights of the unnamed man, Daragjati also is charged with orchestrating the violent beatdown and extortion of another victim he suspected of stealing a snowplow from his off-duty contracting business.

After 12 years with Rainbow Foods in Minnesota, Scott Ostrom felt pretty confident in his job security.  Then, one day the grocery store manager was stabbed at work by an angry customer who became frustrated with the self-checkout.

Ostrom was lucky to live — a notebook in his pocket and his name badge managed to deflect most of the blow to his chest.  But his luck didn’t hold out professionally.  After suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder because of the incident, the grocery store fired Ostrom, claiming he was taking too long of breaks when he was at work.

A Detroit police officer was charged Tuesday in the slaying of a 7-year-old girl who was shot to death during a midnight raid on her home by a special unit that was being shadowed by a reality television show crew.

Officer Joseph Weekley, a member of the Detroit Police Special Response Team, was indicted on an involuntary manslaughter charge after a nearly yearlong Michigan State Police investigation into the May 16, 2010, death of Aiyana Stanley-Jones.

Aiyana was on a sofa on the first floor of a two-family home when Detroit police tossed a flash grenade through a window and burst through the front door.

As we have reported in the past, (It’s Not “Christianity” It’s Just Hate; Let’s Treat It As Such!) in many conservative school districts, any recognition of gay students is often frowned upon as giving legitimacy to homosexuality.  Let’s face it folks, it’s easier for simple people to deny facts of life they don’t like, then learn, change and adapt.

In spite of Moser’s position, to his credit, Chris Sigler wasn’t about to give up on starting a GSA.  So Chris had the unmitigated gall to wear a T-shirt to school affirming his support for at a Gay Student Alliance group at Sequoyah High School.

In his first remarks on the 10th anniversary of attacks of September 11, 2001, President Barack Obama remembered was has changed since that fateful day, and celebrated was hasn't.

After reading Psalm 46 at the dedication of the 9/11 memorial in New York City, and visiting memorials at the Pentagon and the field in Shanksville, PA where United Flight 93 was brought down, Obama addressed a memorial service at the Kennedy Center to testify to the resilience of the American people.

"More than monuments, that will be the legacy of 9/11 – a legacy of firefighters who walked into fire and soldiers who signed up to serve; of workers who raised new towers, citizens who faced down fear, and children who realized the dreams of their parents," he said. "It will be said of us that we kept that faith; that we took a painful blow, and emerged stronger."

The Rev. Al Sharpton swooped into the middle of another controversial Brooklyn shooting Thursday that pits the grieving family of a beloved mom against the NYPD.

Denise Gay was killed on her stoop by a stray shot as cops were locked in a raging gun battle with an ex-con - and her family believes she was felled by a police bullet.

"I need Al Sharpton down here," Tashmaya Gay said. "I asked him to help and we have an appointment to meet with him."

Sharpton has been in touch with Gay's brother, Les Gay Jr., and will meet with the family soon, the reverend's spokeswoman said.

"He absolutely intends to get involved with this," Rachel Noerdlinger said.

In our authority-oriented society, we're expected to put our trust in certain powerful figures: the police officers charged with protecting us, the clergy charged with guiding us.

So why is a culture of sexual abuse so rampant in many outposts of these kinds of institutions?

The answer, of course, lies in the question: wherever there is unquestioned power and authority, we'll see sexual abuse, because in our "rape culture" rape is above all about power, domination, and violence. And when the attacker feels that he or she can get away with it--as those who are revered or set aside by society do--the problem worsens.

Last week, the wonderful video of a dog joyously welcoming home his owner, a soldier who had been away for nine months. Unfortunately, there’s a flip side to stories like that and today we got a heartbreaking reminder. A picture making the rounds online today shows the funeral of Petty Officer 1st Class Jon Tumilson, one of the 30 American special operation troops killed earlier this month when a helicopter was downed in Afghanistan.

A former FDNY official shed light on a troubling back-room practice that helped white firefighter candidates get hired despite having criminal records.

A sworn deposition by Patricia Kavaler, an assistant commissioner for personnel in 2004, contained the explosive revelations.

Raquel Nelson, who was convicted of second-degree vehicular manslaughter after her four-year-old son was killed by a drunk driver, will not be going to jail after all. On Tuesday a judge sentenced Nelson to 12 months of probation and 40 hours of community service, and offered her a new trial, which she’s since decided to pursue. She faced three years in prison.

It was a stunning move in a dramatic case that’s captured national headlines and for criminal justice reform advocates, exemplified the racialized impacts of aggressive prosecutions.

One might assume that the Rev. Al Sharpton's likely appointment as a nightly talk show host on MSNBC is evidence that America is increasingly post-racial. It is actually evidence to the contrary. MSNBC, having suffered criticism for not having enough minorities in prominent slots, has opted for what used to be called tokenism.

Not that Sharpton doesn't have a considerable footprint — although its nature is misunderstood by many, who continue to labor under an impression that he is what might be called influential. Sharpton himself was even given, back in the day, to supposing he was on his way to becoming the leader of black America. Of late, however, Sharpton has been settling into a role I always thought he would be best suited for: that of a celebrity.

Although President's Obama's partial Afghan troop withdrawal announcement has received more attention, his June 29 "National Strategy for Counterterrorism" is of far greater long-term significance. This remarkable document states that the U.S. government intends to "disrupt, dismantle, and eventually defeat al-Qa'ida and its affiliates and adherents," in the following "areas of focus": "The Homeland, South Asia, Arabian Peninsula, East Africa,Europe, Iraq, Maghreb and Sahel, Southeast Asia (and) Central Asia."

The shocking verdict is a nod to the power of what might be called "suggestive sympathetic projection." Anthony’s defense attorney Jose Baez, implying that Casey may have been the victim of family sexual abuse, successfully instilled enough doubt and sympathy into jurors’ minds to apparently lead them away from common sense, arriving at a virtual acquittal. Tangled up in rhetoric and the agonizing confusion of the conflicting messages between the competing attorneys, jurors believed that the prosecution’s lack of knowing exactly "who what, where, when and why,” combined with the possibility of imprisoning a victim of child abuse for the rest of her life, made not guilty the only palatable verdict.

Today a nation gasped collectively as Casey Anthony was acquitted of murder and manslaughter of her two year old daughter, Caylee Anthony. Without getting into the specifics of the case, which I leave to legal experts, or the emotion inherent in the case, which Nancy Grace has exploited already, this case brings into sharp relief the issue of the media as the 13th Juror. It was shocking that Casey Anthony was cleared in the death of her daughter given the media’s treatment of her case.

Nancy Grace led the charge in ratcheting the public’s emotions until we became a collective lynch mob, akin to a witch-hunt. The law is not supposed to be interpreted by our moral outrage or led around by our guts or feelings. America bathes in the slime of reality TV collective emotional purging, as if there is nothing immune from what we seem to view as the imperialism of our emotions.

Homes for Our Troops formally announced at a press conference today they would not build a home for paralyzed veteran Sean Gittens at the Knob Hill subdivision in Evans.

Standing next to the Gittens family at the site where the home would have been built over the weekend, the group’s founder, John Gonsalves, said he was sad to be looking at an empty lot instead. Homes for Our Troops has built homes free of charge for over 100 severely disabled veterans nationwide.

A young Muslim woman is accusing preppy retailer Abercrombie & Fitch of firing her for wearing her headscarf on the job, according to court papers.

Hani Khan, 20, said that managers at an Abercrombie-owned Hollister Co. store in San Mateo, Calif., initially said she could wear a head covering, or hijab, when they hired her to work in the stockroom in October 2009.

The only condition was that the scarf matched company colors - navy blue, gray or white, Khan said.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau's projections (Excel), the white population in the United States will decline from just under 80 percent at present to 74 percent in 2050.

This is an uninteresting piece of demographic trivia. It's likely that a day doesn't pass, however, without a major publication “reporting” that the U.S. will become a “minority-majority” country in 2050. These stories are received as anything but trivial, both by people terrified of the prospect of white minority status and those looking forward to a more diverse electorate in the future (it will be more racially diverse in 2050, but just by 6 percentage points).

The day that Elaine Riddick had her first and only child, the state of North Carolina had her sterilized on the orders of a court. Riddick had been raped but the state said she was promiscuous.

“They said that I was feeble-minded, they said that I was promiscuous,” Riddick told CBS News. “I’ve always been able to take care of myself – I’ve never been promiscuous.”

“So how can people use these things to describe a child that had been abandoned? Or that had been raped by the neighbor and then again, raped by the state of North Carolina?”

North Carolina is the first state to consider a $20,000 payment to victims of sterilizations, but it is doubtful that the Republican-controlled legislature will aside the necessary funds.

More than 60,000 women in 32 states were sterilized to keep down welfare costs.

(Video)

The student has been threatened with physical violence, death threats, demeaned by teachers, ostracized by the community, and cut off from all financial support by his parents who threw him and his belongings out of his house. The young man has been the subject of ridicule and was accused of being Satan, and at a pre-graduation event the community publicly closed ranks around him for abuse and there is video to support his allegations. The incident is not isolated, and around the country young people are being provoked to insist that prayer be reinstated in the schools.

A homeless woman from Bridgeport who enrolled her 6-year-old son at a Norwalk elementary school has become the first in the city to be charged with stealing more than $15,000 for the cost of her child's education.

Tonya McDowell, 33, whose last known address was 66 Priscilla St., Bridgeport, was charged Thursday with first-degree larceny and conspiracy to commit first-degree larceny for allegedly stealing $15,686 from Norwalk schools. She was released after posting a $25,000 bond.

A Portland, Ore., family with two severely ill sons must go back to Kenya, where there is no treatment for them, the federal government says.

For eight years, Aamir and Hanzallah Khandwalla have been treated in Portland for Desbuquois syndrome, a rare and painful genetic disease that causes dwarfism, dislocated and loose hips and knees and curved spines,

A 78-year-old Louisiana state prisoner was surgically castrated this week at a hospital in Baton Rouge as part of a plea deal in a child molestation case.

The prisoner, Francis Phillip Tullier, was arrested in 1997 and, according to newspaper reports at the time, was facing more than 6,000 counts of aggravated oral sexual battery and molestation of a juvenile. He was accused of repeatedly sexually abusing young girls for more than 20 years, some of whom had been in the care of his wife, a baby sitter.

Emily "Amy" Medwin, 56, of Yadkin County, was arrested Feb. 20 for the unlawful practice of midwifery.

It isn't the first time Medwin, who has delivered hundreds of babies since 1979, has attracted attention from police.

She was arrested in 1998, although the charges were dropped when the complainant, a Mocksville woman whose baby Medwin delivered, declined to testify.

Convicted felon Kelley Williams-Bolar is sitting in an Akron, Ohio, jail right now for trying to provide a better education and safer environment for her children. Years ago, Williams-Bolar took her daughters from Akron's public housing after their home was burglarized and placed them with their grandfather in Copley Township. Summit County prosecutors contend the move was all a ruse and the girls belonged in Akron Public Schools, not the Copley-Fairlawn district. Williams-Bolar and her father were indicted. She was convicted of tampering with records.

This is the county's first-ever criminal indictment accusing a parent of theft and record tampering for usurping school residency requirements. Williams-Bolar maintains that her daughters resided in both residences

A Pennsylvania boy who was 11 years old when he allegedly shot and killed his father's pregnant fiancee could find himself being the youngest person ever sentenced to life without parole.

Human rights campaigners have said the case shows the US' justice system to be unusually harsh towards juvenile offenders, and argue that a life sentence for the boy could violate international law.

Prosecutors allege that Jordan Brown, now 13, shot and killed 26-year-old Kenzie Houk as she slept in her home in Lawrence County, near Pittsburgh, in February, 2009. Houk was pregnant with a nearly full-term child at the time. Brown was charged with two counts of homicide.

There was a time when MSNBC and Keith Olbermann both needed each other badly.

For the first decade or so of its existence, the cable news channel had only the vaguest of identities. Every few months, a new host or two would be tossed into the lineup, only to be shuffled around a few months later, and put out to pasture a few months after that. One day, Phil Donahue was the network's prime-time face; the next it was Alan Keyes. Sometimes it seemed like the only programming MSNBC actually believed in was Don Imus' tired minstrel show in the mornings and weird prison documentaries on the weekends.

Meanwhile, the other cable news channel launched in 1996 was tearing it up in the ratings. From the very beginning,

During an interview on MSNBC's Hardball, Media Matters President and CEO David Brock accused Glenn Beck of being "responsible for three thwarted assassination attempts this year." Indeed, in each of the three examples Brock cited -- Gregory Giusti, Charles Wilson, and Byron Williams -- the incendiary and often violent rhetoric spewed by the Fox News host and elsewhere on the network was said to be a motivating factor, if not the inspiring factor, in the men's actions.

This is a story about a plan to end chronic homelessness in the United States. It's not an indeterminate "war on homelessness," but a methodical approach to do away with a major social problem. Each day, roughly 700,000 people in the country are homeless. About 120,000 are chronically homeless. They often live on the streets for years and have mental disabilities, addiction problems and life-threatening diseases like heart disease, cancer and diabetes. They are also five times more likely than ordinary Americans to have suffered a traumatic brain injury, which may have precipitated their homelessness. Without direct assistance, many will remain homeless for the rest of their lives — at enormous cost to society and

Yet another study has been released proving that watching Fox News is detrimental to your intelligence. World Public Opinion, a project managed by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland, conducted a survey of American voters that shows that Fox News viewers are significantly more misinformed than consumers of news from other sources. What's more, the study shows that greater exposure to Fox News increases misinformation.

At least 136 countries across the world have rejected the death penalty by law or in practice, and worldwide support for abolition of the death penalty continues to mount. Still, the U.S. remains an outlier. Earlier this month, the United States submitted to its first Universal Periodic Review (UPR) with the U.N. Human Rights Council, in which U.N. member states had an opportunity to assess and review our country's human rights record. The U.S. death penalty — an ultimate and irrevocable human rights violation — was one of the leading concerns addressed during the review.

unkgate is in full force, and things are only getting weirder. As the TSA's procedures on how to handle airline passengers are coming under scrutiny, it seems like everybody's speaking out about their touched junks. But perhaps the most unusual anecdote belongs to pilot Michael Roberts, who told Sean Hannity last night that he's suing both the TSA and the Department of Homeland Security. As he explained, "They wanted to see my penis."

At this point, you probably know that Bristol Palin has moved to the finals on Dancing with the Stars. You also might know that some don't believe she deserves it and aren't happy about it. What you probably don't know, is that one of those people got so angry he shot his TV with a shotgun and then had a 15 hour standoff with the police. If Bristol Palin doing well on dancing show can make the guy this angry, lets hope he never tries to watch the

The examinations routinely involve the touching of breasts and genitals, invasive searches designed to find weapons and suspicious items. The searches, performed by TSA security officers of the same sex as the passenger, entail a sliding hand motion on parts of the body where a lighter touch was used before, aviation security analysts say. The areas of the body that are being touched haven't changed.

"There's nothing punitive about it; it just makes good security sense," the TSA said via its blog. "And the weapons and other dangerous and prohibited items we've found during pat-downs speak to this."

Poor racists. In this digital age, they can't even go on an old-fashioned, bigoted rant without having it secretly recorded, uploaded onto the Internet, and seen around the world. The Hingham, MA, woman below may not be a celebrity on par with Michael Richards or Mel Gibson, but her obscenely racist and eventually violent tirade against a postman is making her famous in her own way. Oh, and the recipient of the ugly tirade? He allegedly lost his job because of it. Wait, what?

A Morgan Stanley wealth manager will not face felony charges for a hit-and-run because Colorado prosecutors don't want him to lose his job.

Martin Joel Erzinger, who manages more than $1 billion in assets for Morgan Stanley in Denver, is being accused only of a misdemeanor for allegedly driving his Mercedes into a cyclist and then fleeing the scene, Colorado reports. The victim, Dr. Steven Milo, whom Erzinger allegedly hit in July, suffered spinal cord injuries, bleeding from his brain and, according to his lawyer Harold Haddon, "lifetime pain."

But District Attorney Mark Hurlbert says it wouldn't be wise to prosecute Erzinger -- doing so might hurt his source of income.

It hasn't gotten a lot of press, but a case involving AT&T that goes before the U.S. Supreme Court next week has sweeping ramifications for potentially millions of consumers.

If a majority of the nine justices vote the telecom giant's way, any business that issues a contract to customers — such as for credit cards, cellphones or cable TV — would be able to prevent them from joining class-action lawsuits.

This would take away in such cases arguably the most powerful legal tool available to the little guy, particularly in cases involving relatively small amounts of money. Class-action suits allow plaintiffs to band together in seeking compensation or redress, thus giving substantially more heft to their claims.

The ability to ban class actions would potentially also apply to employment agreements such as union contracts.

She was the slaver Erie, and she had recently come to New York as a captive herself. A U.S. naval vessel, patrolling for ships engaged in the illicit trade, had seized her off the mouth of the Congo River. Flinging open the hatches to the cargo hold, the officers saw a dim tangle of bodies moving in the darkness, packed so tightly that they seemed almost a single tormented soul. Nearly 900 Africans — half of them children — had been stripped naked and forced belowdecks at the height of equatorial summer, aboard a vessel barely more than 100 feet long. Just a few days into their weeks-long voyage, a witness later recalled, "their sufferings were really agonizing, and . . . the stench arising from their unchecked filthiness was absolutely startling." Even after their rescue, dozens died in a matter of days.

During a discussion about Proposition 19 on Bill Maher's HBO show "Real Time" last night, Zach Galifianakis commented that the people's opposition to marijuana legalization might be rooted in a feeling that smoking marijuana is still taboo. He then shocked the panel and delighted the audience by pulling out a joint and lighting up on the set.

He passed it to one of the stunned panelists, who smelled it, and seemed to confirm that it was indeed the real stuff.

Galifianakis point, presumably, was to show that you can smoke marijuana and not act in a crazy manner.
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About 25 years ago, Jonathan Jay Pollard, a U.S. naval intelligence analyst, betrayed his country by providing highly classified information to Israel. Even though Israel was and still is a U.S. ally and is routinely supplied with U.S. intelligence, Pollard deserved to be severely punished for his actions. However, the punishment should fit the crime. In his case, it does not.

After his arrest and indictment by a grand jury, Pollard agreed to plead guilty to one count of giving classified information to a U.S. ally. In return for his guilty plea

THE REMARKABLE thing about the American middle class is that we still have one, given the job losses, housing bust, and 401(k) wipeout of the past three years—and considering that for 35 years, politicians (and the bankers who own them) have been hammering away at middle-class institutions. The assault began in the 1970s, when New York City's fiscal crisis and California's property-tax revolt marked the start of a long decline in public services. Next came the recession and anti-union policies of the early 1980s, whose whip's end hit the black working class especially hard. (Automakers have long been among the nation's largest private employers of African Americans. In the late '70s, one in every 50 African Americans in the workforce was employed in the industry.) Thanks to the UAW,

Well I hope teabagger Ginni Thomas is proud of herself for her phone call to Anita Hill asking her to apologize for her testimony about her husband during his confirmation hearing for the Supreme Court 19 years ago, because it seems she's brought some other women out of the woodwork to defend Anita Hill. I can only hope that McEwen isn't the last of them.

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The conflict between religious imperatives and the legal obligations one has as a citizen of a secular state — a state that does not take into account the religious affiliations of its citizens when crafting laws — is an old one (Scalia is quoting Reynolds v. United States, 1878); but in recent years it has been felt with increased force as Muslim immigrants to Western secular states evidence a desire to order their affairs, especially domestic affairs, by Shariah law rather than by the supposedly neutral law of a godless liberalism. I say "supposedly" because of the obvious contradiction: how can a law that refuses, on principle, to recognize religious claims be said to be neutral with respect to those claims? Must a devout Muslim (or orthodox Jew or fundamentalist Christian) choose between his or her faith and the letter of the law of the land?

"On one side, we have the elites," Fox News host Glenn Beck explained last month, "and the other side, we have the regular people." The elites are "no longer in touch with what the country is really thinking," Nevada Senate candidate Sharron Angle complained this summer. And when Delaware Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell recently began a campaign ad by saying, "I didn't go to Yale," she could be confident that her supporters would approve.

All this has made the New Elite distinctly touchy (see Maureen Dowd's "Making Ignorance Chic"), dismissive (see Jacob Weisberg's "Elitist Nonsense") and defensive (see Anne Applebaum's "The Rise of the 'Ordinary' Elite").

No matter what Juan Williams says, even the dumbest terrorist in the world wouldn't wear a robe and turban on a plane. Williams' crime wasn't just his comic bigotry but his ignorance.

Let's imagine the thoughts of a suicide bomber. He (or she) is probably sweating profusely, probably trembling as he waits to board. Not only is he about to try to kill scores of people, but these are the final moments of his life.

The clash between the black nationalist and the white lawyer has mushroomed into a fierce debate over the government's enforcement of civil rights laws, a dispute that will be aired next week when the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights unveils findings from a year-long investigation.

Two months after Election Day, Adams and his supervisors in the George W. Bush administration filed a voter-intimidation lawsuit against Heath and his colleagues, even though no voters had complained. The Obama administration months later dismissed most of the case, even though the Panthers had not contested the charges.

When Anita Hill accused Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment during his explosive 1991 Supreme Court confirmation hearing, Thomas vehemently denied the allegations and his handlers cited his steady relationship with another woman in an effort to deflect Hill's allegations.
Lillian McEwen was that woman.

At the time, she was on good terms with Thomas. The former assistant U.S. attorney and Senate Judiciary Committee counsel had dated him for years, even attending a March 1985 White House state dinner as his guest. She had worked on the Hill and was wary of entering the political cauldron of the hearings. She was never asked to testify, as then-Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.), who headed the committee, limited witnesses to women who had a "professional relationship" with Thomas.

Juan Williams, the NPR contributor who was fired Thursday after making anti-Muslim comments on Fox News, apologized for "wrong" and "inappropriate" comments about women staffers after a 1991 investigation by The Washington Post, Raw Story has found.

The investigation of Williams' conduct stemmed from multiple occasions on which he made sexually-themed comments to female employees. An article published about the incidents was vague about what comments Williams actually made, though it makes clear that the sexually-oriented

A Republican candidate in Massachusetts has been accused of allowing a fourteen-year-old girl to be illegally strip searched by a police officer while serving as a police sergeant, according to the Boston Globe.
The victim says Jeffrey D. Perry, who is serving his fourth term as a State Representative and running for Massachusetts' 10th Congressional District, was nearby when the illegal strip search happened, failed stop the abuse, and then tried to cover up the incident afterward.

"I cannot stand by silently any longer while what happened to me is discussed in the press," Lisa Allen said in a statement released to the Boston Globe.

NPR News has terminated the contract of longtime news analyst Juan Williams after remarks he made on the Fox News Channel about Muslims.

Williams appeared Monday on The O'Reilly Factor, and host Bill O'Reilly asked him to comment on the idea that the U.S. is facing a dilemma with Muslims.

O'Reilly has been looking for support for his own remarks on a recent episode of ABC's The View in which he directly blamed Muslims for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Co-hosts Joy Behar and Whoopi Goldberg walked off the set in the middle of his appearance.

The U.S. Army, under the accumulating stress of nine years at war, is suffering an alarming spurt of drug abuse, crime and suicide that is going unchecked, according to an internal study that depicts an Army in crisis.

A small but growing number of soldiers who perform credibly in combat turn to high-risk behavior, including drug abuse, drunken driving, motorcycle street-racing, petty crime and domestic violence, once they return home.

The online genealogy service Ancestry.com now reports that Obama and Palin are 10th cousins, and Obama and Limbaugh are 10th cousins once removed. In both cases, the ties date to the 1600s.

Obama's distant family ties to former President George W. Bush and former Vice President Dick Cheney surfaced during his presidential campaign. Obama also is a distant cousin of billionaire investor Warren Buffett and actor Brad Pitt, according to Ancestry.com.

Anyone want to take a guess how many of these "Tea Party" rallies this woman has been attending? That or how much Fox News she's sitting around watching every day. She's reading straight from the Dick Armey/Glenn Beck I've got mine and the hell with everyone else script.

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A little more than 10 years ago, Wade Richards, a tormented, deeply religious 20-year-old gay man, took his Bible school tuition money and used it to fly to Los Angeles to join forces with Christine O'Donnell, a budding Christian right activist. O'Donnell, a former spokeswoman for Concerned Women for America, had founded an organization called The Savior's Alliance for Lifting the Truth, or The SALT, in 1996; it was meant to organize young people around opposition to abortion, sex education, and homosexuality. Richards had just graduated from an ex-gay rehab program and had been interviewed about it on 20/20.

As unemployment continues to remain near 10 percent, key Republicans are now saying that they are not hiring as long as President Obama's economic and health care policies continue.

With an unemployment rate at 9.6 percent, Republicans say that business owners are not hiring because they believe the Obama's policies are "socialist" or even stupid.

Billionaire Donald Trump called Obama's policies "stupidity" last week on a segment of "The Situation Room" when he was asked why business owners are not hiring. Trump endorsed Obama's rival Republican Sen. John McCain for president.

"Because they're afraid of stupidity," Trump told Blitzer. "Because they're afraid of uncertainty, they're afraid that people are giving away our country, they are very very concerned."

Trump's comments come as Newt Gingrich, who is thought to be running for the GOP's president nomination, says that people are not hiring because they believe that Obama is a "socialist."

"As I crisscross the country, the number of people who tell me that they are not going to hire anybody as long as Obama is president, because they distrust the administration and think it's socialist," Gingrich said told Fox News last month.

Gingrich's comments came just months after conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh said that he wants Obama to "fail."

Limbaugh said: "So I shamelessly say, no, I want him to fail, if his agenda is a far- left collectivism, some people say socialism, as a conservative heartfelt, deeply, why would I want socialism to succeed?"

Armstrong is a 21-year-old University of Michigan student and the openly gay president of the university's student council. Shirvell is an assistant attorney general for the State of Michigan, a University of Michigan alum, and evidently an anti-homosexual advocate who cannot stomach the thought of Armstrong's student leadership. Shirvell has established a blog -- named after Armstrong -- through which he has launched an online assault upon Armstrong and what he claims is Armstrong's "radical homosexual agenda" to "recruit" students to "the homosexual lifestyle." Shirvell apparently also follows Armstrong around to rallies, one of the reasons why the university, in an extraordinary move, reportedly banned Shirvell from campus last month.

I've got to hand it to Washington Journal host Robb Harleston. I don't think I could have sat there and listened to this woman and been that polite. I'd love to think that since the caller is 90 years old maybe we're coming to the end of an era where this is considered acceptable, but given the rabid open racism that's been unleashed by the right since the election of President Obama, it's painfully obvious we've still got a really long way to go.

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Suffice to say, Greta does not approve of Allred's behavior. She introduced Allred yesterday by declaring that she was doing the "unthinkable" for "getting your client deported" not to mention the Social Security document Allred is using as evidence will get her "barbecued" if she takes it to court, moreover, Greta thinks that Allred is using this case to 'subvert the electoral process.' It's all "rotten," says Susteren. And that was just the first minute of the interview. Perhaps needless to say, it went downhill from there.

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In addition to being severely underfunded during this crisis, the welfare programs simply aren't set up to help the formerly-middle class people who are trying to get into the system. For instance, here In Pennsylvania where I live someone I know was turned down because his bank statement showed transfers from Paypal into his checking account, and they counted that as monthly income. He tried to explain that he'd sold everything he had left on eBay, and there was nothing left to sell, but the caseworker wouldn't listen. Contrary to popular myth, it's quite difficult for anyone with any assets at all to get onto welfare:

I have a sneaking suspicion that Carl Paladino thinks that the Sopranos show was less a fictional depiction of the underbelly of organized crime as a guideline for how to comport oneself. In addition to exposing his racist and sexually deviant proclivities in emails, he apparently has an anger management problem and doesn't like to be confronted with his
own questionable choices:

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Pat Tillman's brother, Richard Tillman, recently appeared on the "Real Time with Bill Maher" to discuss his brother's death due to friendly fire, the ensuing military cover up, and his criticism of John McCain and Maria Shriver at his brother's memorial service.

Tillman was killed on April 22nd, 2004, in what Army officials called an exchange with hostile forces. It was the perfect story for recruiters: good-looking football star gives up everything, dies for country while battling the enemy.

But it was later revealed that Tillman was in fact killed by friendly fire from his own men, and that the Army had actively tried to cover up this

Federal law enforcement and national security officials are preparing to seek sweeping new regulations for the Internet, arguing that their ability to wiretap criminal and terrorism suspects is "going dark" as people increasingly communicate online instead of by telephone.

Essentially, officials want Congress to require all services that enable communications — including encrypted e-mail transmitters like BlackBerry, social networking Web sites like Facebook and software that allows direct "peer to peer" messaging like Skype — to be technically capable of complying if served with a wiretap order.

During interviews about his new book, Justice Stephen Breyer has spoken mainly about one of its two themes, how the Supreme Court should decide cases. A week before the court's new term, it's the second theme — about the court's legitimacy, or the respect it relies on — that deserves attention.

In the last term of the conservative Roberts court, only Justice John Paul Stevens voted less often with the majority than Justice Breyer. This record, Justice Breyer's 16 years on the court and Justice Stevens's retirement make Justice Breyer the likely leader of the more liberal justices in the next term.

In his dissent from a decision striking down the District of Columbia's gun-control law, he showed why. "In my view," he said, "there simply is no untouchable constitutional right guaranteed by the Second Amendment to keep loaded handguns in the house in crime-ridden urban areas."

: It's official: The longest recession the country has endured since World War II ended in June 2009, according to a group that dates the beginning and end of recessions.

The National Bureau of Economic Research, a panel of academic economists based in Cambridge, Mass., says the recession lasted 18 months. It started in December 2007 and ended in June 2009. That was the longest of any recession since World War II. Previously the longest postwar downturns were those in 1973-1975 and in 1981-1982. Both of those lasted 16 months.

The decision makes official what many economists have believed for some time, that the recession ended in the summer of 2009. The economy started growing again in the July-to-September quarter of 2009,

Things got a little heated on FBN's Money Rocks last night while talking about the post office.
After GOP strategist Jack Burkman suggested the government organization consisted of unskilled Nigerians, former NY Sen. Al D'Amato called this argument "racist" and started dropping BS's –
uncensored.
I'm still not sure why the post office segment got everyone so fired up, but it definitely did. Burkman said "most of these guys working in the post office should be driving cabs," and that they are "like a thing for ceremonial and memorial waste."
At first, D'Amato held back. "Jack could have done well without all the name calling," he said, although agreeing "it probably should be privatized."

But after Burkman reiterated his 'unskilled Nigerians' argument, D'Amato went in for the kill. "You are a nasty racist," he said. "That's a bunch of bull@!$%#. And you should be ashamed of yourself and have your mouth washed out. What the hell are you talking about?"

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Judge Wesley E. Brown's mere presence in his courtroom is seen as something of a daily miracle. His diminished frame is nearly lost behind the bench. A tube under his nose feeds him oxygen during hearings. And he warns lawyers preparing for lengthy court battles that he may not live to see the cases to completion, adding the old saying, "At this age, I'm not even buying green bananas."

At 103, Judge Brown, of the United States District Court here, is old enough to have been unusually old when he enlisted during World War II. He is old enough to have witnessed a former law clerk's appointment to serve beside him as a district judge — and, almost two decades later, the former clerk's move to senior status.

According to a new authorized biography of France's First Lady Carla Bruni, American First Lady Michelle Obama thinks life in the White House is "hell." And honestly, can you blame her?

The book, penned by French journalists Michael Darmon and Yves Derai, reports that that during her visit to the White House in March "she asked the first lady about her post…"Don't ask," Obama said, according to Bruni. 'It's hell. I can't stand it.'"

According to Politico the White House has refused to comment. But really, considering the sort of year the Obamas have had press-wise, I imagine "hell" is a rather tame way of phrasing it.

Update: A French Embassy spokesman is now claiming the words attributed to Carla Bruni are false. From CBS:

There is a telling anecdote in Glenn Beck's 2003 memoir about how the cable news host was influenced by the great fantasist Orson Welles. To travel between performances in Manhattan, Beck recounts, Welles hired an ambulance, sirens blaring, to ferry him around town -- not because Welles was ill but because he wanted to avoid traffic.

Most of us would regard this as dishonest, a ploy by the self-confessed charlatan that Welles was. Beck saw it as a model to be emulated. "Welles," he writes, "inspired me to believe that I can create anything that I can see or imagine."

A few words about who "we" is.

"This is a moment," said Glenn Beck three months ago on his radio program, "... that I think we 'reclaim' the civil rights movement. It has been so distorted and so turned upside down. ... We are on the right side of history. We are on the side of individual freedoms and liberties and damn it, we will reclaim the civil rights moment. We will take that movement, because we were the people that did it in the first place!"

Beck was promoting his "Restoring Honor" rally, to be held Saturday at the Lincoln Memorial, 47 years to the day after Martin Luther King famously spoke there. You'll notice he didn't define the "we" he had in mind,