Jail Deputy Testifies That He Heard Eddie Routh Say Why He Killed Chris Kyle

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Photo Credit: New York NewsBy New York News. Former Marine Cpl. Eddie Ray Routh enters the courtroom for his capital murder trial Friday in Stephenville, Texas. Routh, 27, of Lancaster, is charged with the 2013 deaths of former Navy SEAL Chris Kyle and his friend Chad Littlefield at a shooting range.

The deranged man charged with killing “American Sniper” Chris Kyle and another vet said he gunned them down because “they wouldn’t talk to me,” it was revealed Friday.

In dramatic testimony at Eddie Ray Routh’s double murder trial, a Texas jail deputy testified that he heard Routh say, “I shot them because they wouldn’t talk to me.”

“I feel bad about it, but they wouldn’t talk to me,” the deputy, Gene Cole, testified.

“I’m sure they’ve forgiven me.” (Read more about what the deputy heard Eddie Routh say HERE)

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Bradley Cooper: Chris Kyle Never Really Left Me

By Rebecca Keegan. “You’ve got your back to the window, so you’re kind of screwed,” Bradley Cooper said.

Cooper was scanning the room from a high-backed chair, his eyes tracking the waiter carrying his breakfast, the guy in the hoodie tapping away on a laptop near the door, the “at risk” reporter staring back at him.

Assessing the potential threats in a space — even in a Tribeca luxury hotel on a sleepy December morning with horizontal rain — was a habit Cooper had picked up while making “American Sniper.”

“After that, you’re more aware of everything,” he said of the experience of crawling inside the mind of the military’s deadliest sniper, Chris Kyle . “He didn’t really leave me.” (Read more from this story HERE)

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New Jersey Judge Bars Experts Who Believe Homosexuality is a Mental Disorder in Lawsuit Against Reparative Therapy Group

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A New Jersey judge hearing a lawsuit made against a sexual orientation change therapy group has decided to bar the testimony of experts who consider homosexuality a mental disorder.

State Superior Court Judge Peter F. Bariso Jr. ruled last week that Jews Offering New Alternatives for Healing (JONAH) could not bring certain experts in due to their position that homosexuality should still be considered a mental illness.

“The overwhelming weight of scientific authority concludes that homosexuality is not a disorder or abnormal. The universal acceptance of that scientific conclusion – save for outliers such as JONAH – requires that any expert opinions to the contrary must be barred,” wrote Bariso.

“No doubt, general acceptance within the scientific community is not an end in itself … Nevertheless, general acceptance constitutes strong – some might say conclusive – indicia of whether a sufficient level of reliability has been achieved.”

JONAH is being represented by the group Rancho Santa Fe, California-based legal group the Freedom of Conscience Defense Fund. (Read more “Expert Barred from Court Who Believes Homosexuality is a Mental Disorder” HERE)

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Why the American Psychiatric Association’s DSM No Longer States Homosexuality is a Mental Disorder

By Laissez-faire Capitalist. In 1973, The American Psychiatric Association (APA) removed homosexuality as a mental disorder from the APA’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-II).

This decision was a significant victory for homosexual activists and they have continued to claim that the APA based their decision on new scientific discoveries that proved that homosexual behavior is normal and should be affirmed in our culture.

This is false and part of numerous homosexual urban legends that have infiltrated every aspect of our culture. The removal of homosexuality as a mental disorder has given homosexual activists credibility in the culture, and they have demanded that their sexual behavior be affirmed in society. . .

Dr. [Charles] Socarides, writing in Sexual Politics and Scientific Logic : The Issue of Homosexuality writes: “To declare a condition a ‘non-condition,’ a group of practitioners had removed it from our list of serious psychosexual disorders. The action was all the more remarkable when one considers that it involved an out-of-hand and peremptory disregard and dismissal not only of hundreds of psychiatric and psychoanalytic research papers and reports, but also a number of other serious studies by groups of psychiatrists, psychologists, and educators over the past seventy years…”

Socarides continued: “For the next 18 years, the APA decision served as a Trojan horse, opening the gates to widespread psychological and social change in sexual customs and mores. The decision was to be used on numerous occasions for numerous purposes with the goal of normalizing homosexuality and elevating it to an esteemed status.”

“To some American psychiatrists, this action remains a chilling reminder that if scientific principles are not fought for, they can be lost–a disillusioning warning that unless we make no exceptions to science, we are subject to the snares of political factionalism and the propogation of untruths to an unsuspecting and uninformed public, to the rest of the medical profession, and to the behavioral sciences.” Dr. Socarides’ report is available from the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality: www.narth.com. (Read more from this story HERE)

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Just After a Conversation With Edward Snowden, New York Times Author Drops Dead

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By Newser Editors. David Carr, author of the New York Times’ “Media Equation” column, collapsed and died at his office last night just hours after moderating a “TimesTalks” conversation with Edward Snowden, director Laura Poitras, and journalist Glenn Greenwald on Citizenfour, a documentary about Snowden’s NSA leaks. Carr, 58, lived in Montclair, NJ, with his wife and their daughter (he has two more children), and wrote The Night of the Gun, a 2008 memoir about how he went from cocaine addict to single father raising twin daughters to, ultimately, sober media columnist. Prior to joining the Times in 2002, he helmed alternative weeklies in Minneapolis and Washington, DC, and was a contributing writer for the Atlantic and New York magazine, the AP reports.

Last year, Carr started teaching a Boston University class on how journalism can sustain itself in the digital age, an issue about which he had written extensively. “I think a lot of journalism education that is going on is broadly not preparing kids for the world that they are stepping into,” he told the Boston Globe. (Read more about New York Times author passing away HERE)

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Author David Carr Dies at 58

By Bruce Weber and Ashley Southall. David Carr, who wriggled away from the demon of drug addiction to become a journalistic celebrity, a name-brand media columnist at The New York Times and a best-selling author who reported on his own near demise and recovery, died on Thursday in Manhattan. He was 58.

Mr. Carr collapsed in the Times newsroom, where he was found shortly before 9 p.m. He was taken to St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. The cause had not been determined.

Mr. Carr also survived cancer and struggled with alcoholism, but none of that undercut his energy. He made frequent television appearances on talk shows and news programs, often spoke to journalism classes, and in 2011 was the leading figure in a documentary about The Times.

On the evening he died, he had moderated a panel discussion of “Citizenfour,” the Oscar-nominated documentary about Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who leaked classified information indicating that the United States government was conducting global surveillance on a far larger scale than was publicly known. (Read more from this story HERE)

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UPDATE: Autopsy Suggests David Carr Died From “A Particularly Aggressive Strain of Lung Cancer”

By Thomas Tracy. New York Times columnist David Carr died of complications from a particularly aggressive strain of lung cancer, the city’s medical examiner ruled Saturday.

The renowned 58-year-old scribe, who wrote the influential Media Equation column, was suffering from small cell lung cancer when he collapsed in the newsroom shortly before 9 p.m. on Thursday.

He was rushed to Mount Sinai Roosevelt Hospital, where he died, the Times reported. (Read more from this story HERE)

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Former U.S. Army Soldier Pleads Guilty to Conspiring to Kill Federal Agent and Informant

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By BBC. A former US soldier who allegedly formed an international band of snipers as mercenaries has confessed to a murder plot in New York.

Joseph Hunter, nicknamed Rambo after the hero of the 1980s action films, pleaded guilty to conspiring to kill a federal agent and an informant.

The 49-year-old faces up to 10 years in prison.

He believed he had been working for drug traffickers who were actually working for the US anti-drugs agency.

He is accused of recruiting ex-military snipers with the aim of carrying out murders on behalf of drug organisations. (Read more about the soldier conspiring to kill the federal agent HERE)

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A Family Was Not Told Their Mother’s Death Was a Suicide Until They Saw News Report on Television

By Sheboygan Press Media. The family of a soldier from Kiel who died last year in Kosovo from a gunshot wound had not been informed by military investigators that they had concluded their daughter had committed suicide until they read about it in the Sheboygan Press on Wednesday.

Stars and Stripes newspaper reported Monday that Army Staff Sgt. Heidi Ruh died on May 9, 2014, from a self-inflicted gunshot wound at Camp Bondsteel, Kosovo, citing the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command. Stars and Stripes is published by the U.S. Department of Defense.

Ruh’s parents, Catherine and Scott Ruh, who live in rural Newton, learned about it from friends and relatives who read a story that appeared in Wednesday’s Sheboygan Press and online at sheboyganpress.com.

News of the investigation’s conclusion was carried by many other media outlets.

A family relative, who wished to remain anonymous, told the Sheboygan Press Thursday that Ruh’s two sons, who were 8 and 11 when she died, saw the news that their mother had committed suicide while watching TV in Texas, where they live. (Read more from this story HERE)

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Amazing: How a Mother Gets Closure Five Years After Daughter is Raped and Murdered [+video]

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By Hailey Winslow. The home where Somer Thompson was killed 5 years ago was burned to the ground Thursday afternoon. Officially, it was done for firefighter training, but it also helped the victim’s mother and her community gain another bit of closure by eliminating a permanent reminder of the tragedy.

Small fires were started and extinguished in the Gano Avenue house all morning while firefighters with the Orange Park, Clay County and NAS Jacksonville fire departments conducted training. About 1:10 p.m., the murdered girl’s mother joined firefighters, setting the house on fire.

“I get to burn their house down,” Diena Thompson said. “I am the big bad wolf this time, knocking down your door.”

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A round of cheers went up when smoke started pouring from the windows of the burning house, and again when flames became visible about 10 minutes later . . .

Seven-year-old Somer disappeared in 2009 while walking home from school. The Clay County Sheriff’s Office said she was kidnapped, raped and suffocated inside the home before her body was found in a Georgia landfill days later. (Read more from “A Mother Gets Closure After Burning Murderer’s House Down” HERE)

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Man Pleads Guilty in the Murder of Somer Thompson

By Fox News. A man pleaded guilty in the abduction and slaying of a 7-year-old Florida girl who was found in a landfill.

Jarred Harrell, 26, was sentenced to life in prison. Somer Thompson, a second-grader, disappeared Oct. 19, 2009, while walking home from Grove Park Elementary School. She was with her sister and some friends, but ran ahead of them after they had a spat. Two days later, she was discovered in the landfill.

Dozens of Somer’s family and friends sat in the courtroom for the hearing, wearing shades of purple — the little girl’s favorite color. So many people, including law enforcement, attended the hearing that officials opened an overflow room.

Harrell wasn’t arrested until about three months after Somer’s death. Initially, authorities interviewed convicted sex offenders within a 5-mile radius of Somer’s suburban north Florida home, but didn’t come up with any substantial leads.

On a hunch, they tailed nine garbage trucks from Somer’s neighborhood to the landfill and picked through the trash as each rig spilled its load. They sorted through more than 225 tons of garbage before they spotted her legs sticking out of the garbage. (Read more from this story HERE)

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Democrat Congresswoman to Colleagues: ‘Man Up’ and Strip Military Benefits

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By Brendan McGarry. A U.S. congresswoman implored her colleagues to “man up” and accept the recommendations from a blue-ribbon panel to overhaul military benefits.

Rep. Jackie Speier, a Democrat from California and a member of the House Armed Services Committee, praised the recent work of the Military Compensation and Retirement Modernization Commission. The panel called for offering troops 401(k)-like retirement plans and military families a choice of commercial health insurance plans in lieu of Tricare, among other proposals.

“We’ve just now have got to inject a little guts into all of us to do the right thing,” she said Wednesday during a hearing of the committee’s military personnel subcommittee, which received testimony from commission members.

The hearing was the latest in what will be a series of debates on Capitol Hill over the future of military compensation. Members of the congressionally mandated panel have said their 15 recommendations were designed to give troops, military families and retirees more benefits choices while saving the Pentagon an estimated $12 billion a year in personnel costs by 2040. (Read more about the congresswoman telling colleagues to strip military benefits HERE)

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Wounded Warrior Abused by Doctor and Social Worker

By Richard Sisk. A soldier currently at the Fort Carson, Colo., Warrior Transition Unit (WTU) suffered mistreatment by a doctor and a social worker for several months last year, an Army investigation concluded.

The soldier was mistreated at the Embedded Behavioral Health clinic while he was assigned to 1st Battalion, 8th Infantry Regiment before he joined Fort Carson’s WTU.

The fact-finding investigation under Article 15-6 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice found that the two heath care providers engaged in “problematic encounters” with the soldier between February and May of 2014, the Army said.

At a roundtable session with Pentagon reporters Friday, Army Surgeon General Lt. Gen. Patricia Horoho said that the doctor and the social worker “showed a lack of dignity and respect to one soldier” and had been disciplined. (Read more from this story HERE)

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If You’re a Fan of ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’, Please Seek Counseling

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I struggled with whether to write this. It seems like a foregone conclusion at this point that “Fifty Shades of Grey” will be a massive hit at the box office. There’s probably nothing anyone can say to change that; the hand wringing only serves to promote the film even more.

The thing exists, after all, purely to make money and engender controversy because it’s making money and then make more money off of the controversy it engendered. It has us cornered. If we complain about it, we’re doing exactly what they want us to do.

It’s not like anyone involved in producing this smoldering pile of cinematic sewage would necessarily disagree with the criticisms anyway. They know what they’ve done. It’s not as though they thought the story was remotely compelling or substantive. It wasn’t like when Francis Ford Copolla first read “The Godfather” and knew it was an epic tale destined to become one of the greatest cinematic achievements of all time.

I imagine whoever first cooked up the idea to make a “Fifty Shades” movie probably didn’t even read it. They kind of got the gist and thought, “eh, it’s garbage but it’ll probably make a billion dollars because we can vomit just about anything into the trough and Americans will come in droves to devour it.”

So before we even get to the content itself — rancid as it is — we already know that the film is cynical and worthless, and, as I’ve previously discussed, born purely out of a desire to bilk sexually frustrated suburban soccer moms out of their disposable income. It has no other purpose. It serves no other function. It is an empty vessel (well, a vessel filled with leather whips and ball gags, but empty besides that). It’s not art, and anyone who pays to see it is degrading themselves — and I’m not even talking about the bondage and the glamorized rape yet. (Read more about the review of ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ HERE)

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New Studies Show Cohabitating Before Marriage is a Very Bad Idea [+video]

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Photo Credit: The Daily Signal More young adults are opting to cohabit rather than marry or to delay marriage for financial reasons, such as debt, according to a recent study published in Demography. However, National Marriage Week presents a good opportunity to review how rigorous, long-term studies have measured the substantial impact of marriage on financial stability, as well as relationship longevity and health outcomes. . .

•Even after marrying, women who cohabitated prior to marriage are more apt to separate or divorce than those who did not. One study demonstrated that for women who lived with their partners before marriage, it was 33 percent more likely for their marriages to result in separation or divorce.

•Men who cohabit tend to make less money than their married counterparts. Married men tend to make more money than their unmarried guy friends, according to a study based on the 1990 U.S. Census. Once husbands and wives reach pre-retirement age, another study found never-married cohabiters had less wealth than married couples—78 percent less. . .

•Cohabiting couples report more depression and more alcohol problems than married couples. Even when controlling for race, age and gender, cohabiting individuals reported higher levels of depression than married ones, 2.8 points according to one study. In another study, cohabiting individuals were three times more likely to report having problems with alcohol consumption than those who were married, as well as 25 percent more problems than single people who did not cohabit.

(Read more from the new studies showing cohabitating before marriage is a bad idea HERE)

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Colorado Taxpayers Forced to Send $14 Million to Planned Parenthood

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By Sarah Zagorski. Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) has filed their opening brief in an appeal of a trial court’s decision that upheld the state’s alleged misuse of more than $14 million in taxpayer dollars. ADF, former Governor Bill Owen and former Senate candidate Jane Norton, filed the lawsuit against Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains because they violated the state constitution by using state funding to go to their abortion business.

Michael Norton, from ADF’s Senior Counsel said the following about the appeal: “No one is above the law, including Colorado politicians who are violating our state’s constitution by continuing to fund Planned Parenthood’s abortion activities with state taxpayer dollars. The state acknowledges that about $1.4 million of state taxpayer money flowed from state government agencies through Planned Parenthood to its abortion affiliate. The lower court seems to have agreed with that but dismissed the case on a technicality.”

Natalie Decker, ADF legal counsel and co-counsel in the case also said, “Colorado bureaucrats should not use taxpayer dollars to pay for abortions, especially when the Colorado Constitution prohibits it. The lower court should not have dismissed this case on a technicality since it agreed that $14 million of taxpayer funds flowed from state government agencies to Planned Parenthood and its abortion affiliate, presumptively in violation of the state constitution.” (Read more about the Colorado taxpayers being forced to send millions to Planned Parenthood HERE)

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Students Raise Money for Planned Parenthood Abortion Biz With Anonymous “Condomgrams”

By Sarah Zagorski. Apparently around Valentines Day, Planned Parenthood in New York sells condoms with candy at Columbia University and calls their volunteers, “condomgram fairies.” Students can purchase the condomgrams for $2 and have them delivered anywhere on campus.

Melissa Quintana, a junior at Columbia and a member of the student Democrats, said the condomgrams could even be send to TA’s anonymously. She said, “Basically we get a condom, a blow-pop, extremely suggestive as it sounds, and miscellaneous candies and we make a Valentine-gram out of them and we deliver them on Valentine’s Day.”

In an interview with Campus Reform she shared more about their fundraising efforts: “Basically we get a condom, a blow-pop, extremely suggestive as it sounds, and miscellaneous candies and we make a Valentine-gram out of them and we deliver them on Valentine’s Day. And all proceeds, like everything that we make we put forth the money for materials, we donate it to Planned Parenthood, which we think is a fantastic cause that not only promotes just access to health care in general for women and men, but just reproductive justice in general which we think is an amazing cause and something that we believe in really heavily as well.”

On Wednesday, the College Democrats were tabling in a student center and encouraged students to include a “fun, activist pick-up line” with their condomgrams, such as “hey girl, how about this Valentine’s I make you a sandwich,” or “together we can be the 100 percent.”

Additionally, the students pass out literature and information on Planned Parenthood, especially in regards to the abortion giant’s push for mandatory sexual education for students K-12. “It’s a really cool initiative that Planned Parenthood is doing and we’re encouraging people with a cool photo campaign,” said Quintana. (Read more from this story HERE)

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Flight Service Has Been Cut Off for Three Weeks to Alaskan Village

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The only flight service to a remote Alaska island village has been cut off for three weeks because a designated helicopter was sidelined by maintenance work.

Oregon-based Erickson Aviation spokeswoman Susie Elliott says service to Alaska’s Little Diomede Island is expected to resume Saturday. The last flight to the tiny community of Diomede was Jan. 22.

Company officials say the helicopter was in Anchorage for maintenance when extensive problems were discovered on the aircraft. Elliott says a backup helicopter also had maintenance issues. (Read more about the flight service being cut off to the Alaskan village HERE)

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