NewsWhoar Thread

[theholycow]

It's illegal to wear the flag as clothes.

§ 8. Respect for Flag.
No disrespect should be shown to the flag of the United States of America; the
flag should not be dipped to any person or thing. Regimental colors, state flags, and
organization or institutional flags are to be dipped as a mark of honor.
(a) The flag should never be displayed with union down, except as a signal of dire
distress in instances of extreme danger to life or property.
(b) The flag should never touch anything beneath it, such as the ground, the floor,
water, or merchandise.
(c) The flag should never be carried flat or horizontally, but always aloft and free.
(d) The flag should never be used as wearing apparel, bedding, or drapery. It
should never be festooned, drawn back, nor up, in folds, but always allowed {...}

Now, that said, it sounds like they were wearing clothes with American Flag designs, not wearing actual flags, so that should be the most strongly protected free speech around.

[Cez★]

i heard teh guy wearing a mexican flag shirt went to school all day

---------- Post added at 10:18 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:56 AM ----------

wow

The Sugar Land high school senior found beaten to death in Mexico last weekend wanted to be a coyote who smuggled illegal immigrants across the border and also worked as a stripper, according to her mother's statement to police, a Houston Police Department missing persons report reveals.

Elisabeth Mandala, 18, who attended Kempner High School in the Fort Bend Independent School District, was found dead Saturday along with the bodies of two men on the highway to Monclova, just west of Mina, a town of 6,000 near Monterrey.

The pickup had been staged to look as if it had been involved in an accident, but investigators found evidence the truck's accelerator may have been jammed with a rock, according to the Monterrey newspapers, Milenio and El Norte

“It's pretty apparent she was doing stuff down there she shouldn't have been,” said a law enforcement source close to the investigation who asked not to be identified by name.

Mandala's family has declined to comment on the case or the mother's statement to police, calling the investigation into the teen's slaying “a very sensitive situation.” A phone call to their home went unanswered Wednesday.

Mandala's mother did not contact Houston police to report her daughter was missing until after the teen had already been found dead Saturday in Mexico.

Paula Benitez Mandala, 47, told Houston police her daughter was driving a rental car when the teen left Houston last week because the girl had wrecked her own car. The mother, however, could not provide Houston police a description of the rental car.

Plans were vague
The girl, a U.S. citizen born in Texas, left her mother's home in the 10100 block of Synott Road on April 27 to go meet “somebody” and maybe go to Mexico, according to her mother's statement in the HPD report. The next day, Elisabeth Mandala posted on her Facebook page that she was in Mexico and would be back in Houston the following day. But she did not return.

By noon on Saturday, Paula Mandala had grown worried enough to call Houston police to report her daughter missing. But her daughter's beaten body had already been found six hours earlier on a Mexican highway in a Dodge Dakota pickup with Texas license plates. It was unclear if that was the same vehicle that Elisabeth Mandala had rented before leaving Houston.

Found beaten to death with her were Dante Ruiz Siller, 38, and Luis Angel Estrella Mondragon, both from Mexico City, but described as having local ties. Fingerprints confirmed Mondragon, a taxi driver, had a criminal record, but Mexican police were unable to say what his criminal history included, El Norte reported. One Mexican media outlet reported the two men were brothers.

Mandala's relationship with the two men or how she knew them is unclear.

Falsified papers
Mexican authorities also recovered false identification papersin Mondragon's possession, El Norte reported.

Houston police could not elaborate on Mandala's desire to be an immigrant smuggler because her mother did not provide them with any additional details, they said.

The U.S. Consulate has filed paperwork on the Mandala family's behalf to claim the teen's body, according to a report in El Norte on Wednesday.

[Cez★]

rabble rabble
http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20100506/ts_csm/299351

[theholycow]

:taloconationaldayofprayer:

[stonehenge]

http://www.kvoa.com/news/arizona-to-...-on-freeways1/

[Cez★]

rofl you have cameraz on highways?

[Biggs]

Texting during sex? some say it's ok

Off of cnn.com
Sorry, but if you're able to text during sex, yer doing it wrong...

[theholycow]

According to TFA,

one in 10 people younger than 25 say that they would not mind being "interrupted by an electronic message" during sex.

I wonder what the actual survey said? Because TBH, I wouldn't mind; I'd just fucking ignore it and keep on plowing.

[BillyJeanKing]

answer that bish after i squirt

[Cez★]

updating teh facebewkz

[Biggs]

Candles offer a whiff of White Castle's burgers

Do you want fries with your candles bish?!?

[BillyJeanKing]

Only a guy would appreciate a candle that smells like a burger but guys dont buy or use candles

DNC

:headexplodes:

[Biggs]

If the candle woulda smelled like bacon, it might be different.

[BillyJeanKing]

i'd buy it fo sho

[theholycow]

http://www.wtnh.com/dpps/news/strang...ar-jgr_3346685

Lord Jesus Christ hit by Mass. car
His real name, according to his ID

Updated: Friday, 07 May 2010, 8:49 AM EDT
Published : Friday, 07 May 2010, 8:49 AM EDT
Barry Kriger

NORTHAMPTON, Mass. (WWLP) - Northampton police issued a traffic citation this week to a driver whose car hit Lord Jesus Christ.

It happened Tuesday on Main Street in front of Fitzwilly's.

Lt. Michael Patenaude told 22News 50-year-old Lord Jesus Christ of Belchertown was struck as he crossed Main Street a little after 3:30 p.m. Tuesday.

20-year-old Brittany Cantarella of Pittsfield was cited for failure to yield to a pedestrian in a crosswalk.

Lord Jesus Christ was treated for facial injuries at Cooley Dickinson Hospital.

Lt. Patenaude said Lord Jesus Christ had a Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles identification card. Officers checked his ID and discovered that, indeed, his legal name is Lord Jesus Christ.

http://www.wtnh.com/dpps/news/strang...cu-jgr_3346636

Alleged beauty salon in baby ICU probed
'We've quickly taken decisive action'

Updated: Friday, 07 May 2010, 7:36 AM EDT
Published : Friday, 07 May 2010, 7:36 AM EDT

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Two county hospital workers were placed on paid leave after anonymous complaints that they set up a makeshift beauty salon in an intensive care ward for newborns, authorities said.

The two complaints said manicures and eyebrow waxes were given to nurses and doctors in the neonatal intensive care unit at county-run Olive View-UCLA Medical Center.

"The smell of acetone permeates the back area of the NICU," according to one complaint obtained by the Los Angeles Times and reported Thursday.

The same complaint alleged a doctor "had a French manicure right on the high-frequency ventilator."

No babies in the intensive care unit were harmed, officials said.

The complaints were made to the Joint Commission, a nonprofit group that accredits the hospital. The panel asked the hospital to respond to the complaints by May 17.

The county Department of Health Services sent an investigator to the hospital on Tuesday and has placed two employees on paid leave while it investigates.

"We've quickly taken decisive action," said Carol Meyer, the health department's chief network officer.

One complaint also alleged the neonatal ICU is understaffed and unqualified doctors and staff made mistakes and failed to report them.

Those allegations also are being investigated, Meyer said.

"There's no patient who is unsafe," she said.

The hospital also is investigating the complaints, chief executive Carolyn Rhee.

"The first concern of the hospital is always patient safety and quality of care," she said.

[Cez★]

http://marquee.blogs.cnn.com/2010/05...itter/?hpt=Mid

[Cez★]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100510/...sculpture_ebay

[Cez★]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100510/...tion_architect

---------- Post added at 01:40 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:26 PM ----------

The early debate over Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan's record is focusing squarely on the controversial decision she made as Harvard Law School's dean to temporarily ban military recruiters from campus over objections to the "don't ask, don't tell" policy.

Kagan was concerned at the time that the military's policy banning gays from serving openly was violating the school's anti-discrimination rules.

Republican senators, aside from questioning the solicitor general's lack of judicial experience, said after President Obama nominated her to the high court Monday that the recruitment stand-off will be front and center during the confirmation process.

"She has taken very few policy positions, and the one policy position that she took in favor of gay rights when she was dean of the Harvard Law School, directly contrary to congressional law ... troubled many," Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., told Fox News, accusing Kagan of putting her "gay rights agenda above U.S. law."

Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said the move was a "step too far" and that Kagan would "have to deal with that" in the weeks ahead.

Vice President Biden defended Kagan on ABC's "Good Morning America" on Tuesday, saying she made the right call and showed no discrimination in her decision to side with universities in a brief to the Supreme Court against allowing recruiters on campus.

"All during that period, she has reached out to veterans in the law school, she has been at promotions ceremonies, she's recognized veterans coming to the law school. So this is not a single bit of anti-military bias. She DOES think, and I agree with her, that the don't-ask-don't-tell policy is a very bad policy," he said.

Kagan's battle with recruiters at Harvard took several twists and turns and was not a stand unique to her term as dean. Harvard had banned recruiters from the main recruitment office for more than two decades by time Kagan got there.

After the Solomon Amendment was passed, allowing the federal government to cut off funding to campuses that ban recruiters, the military was allowed to recruit students through the Harvard Law School Veterans Association, a student group.

However, after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, Republicans in Congress called it a disgrace that military recruiters were being hampered in a time of war, and the Bush administration threatened to cut off funding.

In 2002, Harvard Law School relented and allowed military recruiters to use a campus office. Kagan continued that policy after becoming dean in 2003, the same year a major lawsuit was brought by 36 law schools challenging the Solomon Amendment. Harvard did not join the lawsuit, but filed a brief siding with the other schools. At the time Kagan called "don't ask, don't tell" a "moral injustice of the first order."

She had her chance to act in 2004, after the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found the Solomon Amendment unconstitutional. The next day, Kagan banned military recruiters from using the campus office, though still allowed work through the veterans group.

However, under the threat of another funding cutoff, Harvard relented and Kagan allowed the recruiters to use a campus placement office.

In 2005, the Supreme Court unanimously reversed the 3rd Circuit, finding it constitutional to deny funding to schools that do not allow military recruiting. Afterward, Kagan wrote to the Harvard Law School community to express her displeasure with the ruling.

"I have said before how much I regret making this exception to our anti-discrimination policy. I believe the military's discriminatory employment policy is deeply wrong -- both unwise and unjust. ... I look forward to the time when all our students can pursue any career path they desire, including the path of devoting their professional lives to the defense of their country," she wrote.

The unanimous ruling was a blow to Kagan and has been used to question her judgment.

"It is unfortunate that President Barack Obama has chosen to replace the only military veteran on the Supreme Court with extensive wartime experience with a nominee whose only significant record indicates deliberate hostility and opposition to laws protecting the culture and best interests of the American military," read a statement from Elaine Donnelly, president of the Center for Mlitary Readiness.

Still, some Republicans have indicated they're open to considering her nomination and potentially even voting for her. Seven Republicans voted for her as solicitor general last year -- she is not considered a highly controversial pick, despite the military issue.

"I think she should be given a full chance to explain (the recruitment decision), and she will be given that chance," Sessions said.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010...est=latestnews

[BillyJeanKing]

http://www.ajc.com/news/razor-blades...ed-524634.html

[theholycow]

[Cez★]

http://tv.yahoo.com/blog/lady-gaga-t...om-girls--1234

---------- Post added at 10:40 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:15 AM ----------

...

Outraged family members and community groups are accusing a Muslim group of trying to rewrite history with its plans to build a 13-story mosque and cultural center just two blocks from Ground Zero, where Islamic extremists flew two planes into the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.

"This is a place which is 600 feet from where almost 3,000 people were torn to pieces by Islamic extremists," said Debra Burlingame, whose brother died in the attack on the Pentagon that day.

"I think that it is incredibly insensitive and audacious really for them to build a mosque, not only on that site, but to do it specifically so that they could be in proximity to where that atrocity happened," said Burlingame, who is co-founder of 9/11 Families for a Safe and Strong America.

The 13-story mosque and cultural center will be built on the site of a four-story building that was a Burlington Coat Factory retail store until 9/11, when part of a plane's landing gear crashed through the roof. The building, which will be razed, currently houses a mosque.

The New York City Mayor's office says "It's private property, and the area is zoned for uses that include this one."
Pamela Gellar, executive director of Stop Islamization of America, blasted the organization behind the plans, Cordoba Initiative, and its leader, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, saying the project is "an insulting flag of conquest of Islamic supremacism."

"How can you build a shrine to the very ideology that brought down the World Trade Center?" asked Geller, whose group is planning a June 6 rally to protest the project.

"We have to do everything we can to stop this ... a huge Muslim monument, a stone's throw from Ground Zero, with a mosque pointing toward Mecca."

She called it an act of deception that the group has been able to get the green light from the Lower Manhattan Community Board, whose finance committee gave it a thumbs-up last week.

Though the Cordoba Initiative's website calls part of the $100 million-plus project a mosque, its founder, Imam Rauf, says the project is not a mosque but a community center for all faiths that will include recreational facilities, a prayer space and a 500-seat theater that can be a part of the neighborhood's trendy Tribeca Film Festival.

Rauf insists the effort is meant to help heal the wounds of 9/11, "We've approached the community because we want this to be an example of how we are cooperating with the members of the community, not only to provide services but also to build a new discourse on how Muslims and non-Muslims can cooperate together to push back against the voices of extremism."

But Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, says there are more productive ways to fight Islamic extremism.

"Even when they have the resources, they are using it for a place of worship, a cultural center for organizations," he said. They are not using it for a counterterrorism research center.

"They are not using it to lead the war like Americans need to see us do and they are wasting our resources, not to mention that being close to the hallowed ground that is so sensitive in the souls of the families of 9/11. I think it is extremely poor judgment."

Jasser also has questions about the financing.

According to reports, the building that occupies the site was purchased last year for $4.85 million in cash by Soho Properties, a real estate company run by Muslims. Imam Rauf, who's also the founder of American Society for Muslim Advancement, ASMA, was an investor in that transaction.

The balance of the $100-150 million total cost still needs to be raised, but Rauf says he's confident it will be.
Jasser says that with such a financial commitment, there needs to be full disclosure about where the money is coming from.

"There should be transparency about who those investors are," he said, "whether that money is coming from domestic interest or not, and if it's coming from foreign interests we need to know, because I think that's a liability, and it shows that there is another agenda rather than domestic security and tranquility."

Madeline Brooks, a member of the New York chapter of Act! for America, a non-profit organization that "is opposed to the authoritarian values of Islam fascism," believes the Cordoba Initiative's agenda is to co-opt the 9/11 narrative and transform it into a Muslim conquest.

"Is it a victory for Islam over non-Muslims?" she asks. "Is this a feather in his (Rauf's) cap?"

Brooks says she's received hundreds of angry e-mails from people who say they can't believe the audacity of this project. "Why here?" she asks. "Why are you offending and outraging people... stirring up a huge hornet's nest?"

Rauf says the intent is to do exactly the opposite. "[T]his is where we can amplify the voice of the moderates," he says. "We have been condemning terrorism since 9/11; our voices have not been heard."

"If they wanted peace and harmony," counters Brooks, "do you really think they'll get that?"

Burlingame says, "The idea that you would establish a religious institution that embraces the very Shariah Law that terrorists point to as their justification for what they did ... to build that where almost 3,000 people died, that is an obscenity to me."

Burlingame said she plans to attend a meeting next week of the full Community Board One. She and other groups are ramping up their opposition to the project and promise to wage a long fight to defeat it.

[Chris]

epic fell

[BillyJeanKing]

Originally Posted by Chris

epic fell

lol WUT?

[Cez★]

imo. but its private property

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. -- Activists took to the campus of the University of Tennessee on Friday to protest Al Gore's honorary doctorate for his work on climate change as the man behind a documentary challenging Gore hired a bannered-plane to fly over the graduation ceremony.

Protesters handed out mock graduation programs and degrees as well as dressed in Gore masks to add to the theatrical flare.

Journalist-turned-filmmaker Phelim McAleer, who made headlines for the film "Not Evil, Just Wrong," which challenges Gore's Oscar-winning "An Inconvenient Truth" told FoxNews.com that the sign behind the plane reads, "Mr. Gore, why send jobs to China?"

"What he is proposing has a very, very serious effect on America and the American economy," McAleer said, noting that he has tried many venues to get Gore to answer his questions about the data, which has come under suspicion following the release of thousands of e-mails from climate scientists that raise questions about internationally accepted data.

"I am disappointed that Al Gore has come to Knoxville and is once again appearing in public but won't makes himself available to journalists," McAleer said.

Gore won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize along with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for his work on global warming. "An Inconvenient Truth" was awarded an Oscar for documentary filmmaking and several other accolades.

Gore was awarded an honorary doctorate in laws and humane letters in ecology and evolutionary biology by the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.

In awarding the degree, UT Knoxville Chancellor Jimmy G. Cheek said the former vice president is "among the most accomplished and respected Tennesseans in history."

"Vice President Gore's career has been marked by visionary leadership, and his work has quite literally changed our planet for the better," Cheek said in a university announcement of the award.

But members of the group called Collegians for a Constructive Tomorrow, described as a "non-profit, nationwide grassroots organization that deals with environmental and energy issues from a free-market perspective," say the former vice president is completely misguided.

"First he got a Nobel prize although he didn't bring peace, now he's getting an honorary degree for scaring Americans with flawed science," Dillon MacDonald, a CFACT-TN leader said in a statement on the group's website. "He flies in private jets, just bought another mansion, yet tells working people their houses are too large, their showers too warm, their cars too fast and our economy too free. We should give him a doctors in hypocrisy."

Evan Dent, a member of CFACT, told FoxNews.com that about 25 protesters were kept in a "free-speech zone" a fair distance from the 10,000-15,000 guests attending commencement ceremonies, but that hadn't stopped them from making their opposition known.

"It is a graduation, these students deserve to have their moment to shine but we also want to say, 'Hey, it's bad the university is honoring Al Gore,'" she said.

[Cez★]

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/05...include-women/

LONDON (AP) — Prime Minister David Cameron's three-day-old administration was criticized by activists, the press and even his new coalition partners Friday for picking an almost entirely white, male and upper-class Cabinet despite pledging that his Conservative party would no longer be an old boys club.

Cameron and his deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg of the Liberal Democrats, both grew up in wealthy families and attended elite schools. The 23-member Cabinet they selected after forging a coalition government this week includes Britain's first female Muslim to sit at Cabinet, but only three other women. Only two run government departments, the mark of influence and power.

Twenty-two Cabinet members are white, and at least 16 went to top universities Oxford or Cambridge.

Cameron has been trying to detoxify the image of the Conservative party as a small club of aristocrats hostile to minorities and indifferent to the poor. He's been including more minority candidates and pledged in his campaign that a third of senior government jobs would go to women.

The participation of the left-leaning Lib Dems also raised expectations of more diversity, now dashed.

"Cabinet jobs for well-heeled school chums," the Daily Mirror tabloid scoffed. "A huge step backward," wrote gender rights activists in a letter to The Times. "Awash with buddies, backslapping and in-jokes," said a columnist for The Guardian newspaper.

Radio shows were inundated by complaints about the lack of women and minorities in the upper echelons of power.

"When you look at the negotiating teams, they were male and pale," Liberal Democrat lawmaker Lynne Featherstone told the BBC, referring to senior leaders from both parties who cobbled together the power-sharing deal. "We must do better."

Other European nations have greater gender equity at the top. About half of Norway and Sweden's Cabinets consist of women, and Germany has six women in its current 16-member Cabinet. Six of Austria's 13 top ministers are female. In Switzerland, women make up less than a third of the parliament, but within Cabinet there are three women out of seven members.

Former Prime Minister Tony Blair had six women in his 2005 Cabinet. Gordon Brown, who resigned this week, had five in his team.

"The numbers (of women in government) have certainly gone down, and so has the significance of the posts they hold," said Margaret Beckett, who served as foreign secretary under Blair. "(Cameron's) rhetoric has been that we need to bring more women into the administration, but his decisions have not matched that."

Eight percent of Britain's population consists of ethnic minorities, with Indians being the largest group followed by Pakistanis.

Sayeeda Warsi, the first Muslim woman to sit at Cabinet, has not been given a defined policy area.

Theresa May, the most senior female figure in the Conservative Party and the new Home Secretary, will also serve as minister for equalities.

Her appointment was questioned by some gay rights activists. Although praised as a Conservative modernizer, May voted against equalizing the age of sexual consent for gays and heterosexuals in 1998, and in 2002 she voted against letting gay couples adopt children. May did, however, vote in favor of civil partnerships.

Analysts say Cameron's efforts to increase diversity in the party's upper ranks by recruiting women candidates — mockingly dubbed "Cameron's cuties" by the press — didn't work because the new recruits don't yet have enough experience.

"Cameron — and Clegg — were acutely aware they have very few women on which they could credibly draw," said Colin Hay, a politics professor at the University of Sheffield. "The politics of the past was gender discriminatory ... the irony, in a way, is that the Cabinet remains a sort of last bastion of that old order."