Monthly Archives: March 2013

Obama couldn’t eat at Hill meeting without food ‘taster’

"Following President Obama’s lunch meeting with Senate Republicans on Capitol Hill, Maine Republican Senator Susan Collins described the food served and said the president was not able to eat since his 'taster' was not present. 'He looked longingly at it,' Collins continued. 'He honestly did look longingly at it, but apparently he has to have essentially a taster, and I pointed out to him that we were all tasters for him, that if the food had been poisoned all of us would have keeled over so, but he did look longingly at it and he remarked that we have far better food than the Democrats do, and I said that was because I was hosting.'" Continue reading →

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Bush-era state secrecy expert: Presidents abuse power like in Kafka or Orwell novels

"William Leonard, who was entrusted with ensuring proper treatment of state secrets by government agencies in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, said that over the past decade both the Obama and the previous Bush administrations had manipulated their classification authority to create new executive powers without congressional oversight or judicial review. Leonard, the former head of the Information Security Oversight Office from 2002 to 2007, said that what was at stake was 'the abuse of the very form of government we are operating under, as unilateral executive powers go unchallenged.'" Continue reading →

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Drones killing innocent Pakistanis, U.N. official says

"The study concludes that the strikes have killed far more people than the United States has acknowledged, and traumatized many more innocent people. That trauma is destroying a way of life, Emmerson said. 'The Pashtun tribes of the ... area have suffered enormously under the drone campaign.' And tribal law prescribes revenge for the killing of a tribe member, which serves to radicalize more young men against the United States, he said. Pakistan considers the strikes counterproductive, illegal and a violation of its sovereignty." Continue reading →

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Veteran Faces Jail Time For Using Marijuana As Treatment For PTSD

"Former U.S. Navy Corpsman Jeremy Usher came home in 2003 from Iraq and Afghanistan to sleepless nights and panic attacks, with vivid flashbacks of combat, horrifying nightmares, anxiety and depression, all amid memory loss and a severe stutter. He's doing well in counseling and school, he says, but he faces jail time for using marijuana medicinally while on probation to manage his PTSD and traumatic brain injury. Jeremy finds himself in legal limbo. Medicinal marijuana is the one treatment that's helped him with his PTSD, but he violates his probation when he uses it, which puts him at risk of going back to jail." Continue reading →

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The Case Against Government Bans on Feeding the Homeless

"Cities like New York City, Philadelphia, and Houston have banned residents from sharing food with the homeless and less fortunate. In Chicago, for example, at least one politician, Ald. James Cappleman, recently tried to banish a Salvation Army food truck from feeding the homeless in his neighborhood. I called such laws 'unconstitutional, discriminatory, and wrongheaded' in a column I wrote over the summer. They remain so. But since I wrote that widely read column in June, I’ve noticed a welcome pattern emerging. These unjust laws are under attack." Continue reading →

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Police Cited Homeless Veteran For Dumpster Diving In Search For Food

"They’ve traveled many different roads with all of them leading to the same destination – a place called homelessness. James Kelly, 44, is no exception. 'James Kelly is a nine-year veteran of the Navy, who has fallen on hard times,' said Randall Kallinen, a civil rights attorney. Those hard times recently got even harder, when Kelly was issued a citation as he foraged for food in a trash bin on Bagby Street. 'The mayor is shutting down feeding the homeless,' said Deborah Girton, who is also homeless. Critics point to a city ordinance passed last summer that places restrictions on good Samaritans and how many people they can feed." Continue reading →

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Federal Judge Finds National Security Letters Unconstitutional, Bans Them

"Ultra-secret national security letters that come with a gag order on the recipient are an unconstitutional impingement on free speech, a federal judge in California ruled in a decision released Friday. U.S. District Judge Susan Illston ordered the government to stop issuing so-called NSLs across the board, in a stunning defeat for the Obama administration’s surveillance practices. She also ordered the government to cease enforcing the gag provision in any other cases. However, she stayed her order for 90 days to give the government a chance to appeal to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals." Continue reading →

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Libor Scandal to Reveal Metals Manipulation?

"Gold is being sucked directly into the Libor scandal. Of course, we are on record as pointing out that it can hardly be much of a scandal when central banks set the price and volume of money every day. But nonetheless, the mainstream press has been buzzing about the idea that commercial banks were setting LIBOR rates in ways that accommodated their business practices. It is ultimately all about control. Gold and silver prices are apparently not subject to open marketplace competition for a reason. And now the Libor scandal threatens to unearth the seamy side of metals manipulation from the standpoint of the world's biggest banks." Continue reading →

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Not Your Father’s Stock Market Anymore

"Unfortunately, we live in a world where the majority of investors are granting far too much credit to the market data they are being fed. They are making decisions based on faulty premises. They often do not even understand the basics of monetary expansion and how that affects purchasing power. The most important issue, however, is that the powerful artificial forces affecting stock markets cannot hold free-market adjustments at bay forever. That is why it is important to select stocks based not just on 'mainstream' indicators of performance and industry leadership but also on the business cycle, apparent monetary stimulation and other outside forces." Continue reading →

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Fraud in the Financial Markets: Are You Vulnerable?

"It can be hard for investors to defend themselves, especially because we judge other professions similarly. You go to a doctor with a good reputation for helping patients; you don't assume that he was lucky. But in finance, someone with a good reputation might – believe or not – just be lucky, or worse yet, fraudulent. My advice for avoiding many problems is simple: don't focus on someone's net worth for your investment decisions. Instead, consider their ideas and pretend that you heard them from the intern just starting his first day on the job. Does the idea still sound like a logical and reasonable investment plan?" Continue reading →

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