DC Council Wants to Give Non-Citizens the Right to Vote

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District of Columbia council members voiced their support Wednesday for a new law that would allow non-citizens to vote in local elections.

“These are residents who are well on their paths to citizenship,” Councilman David Grosso said. “Unfortunately not all of our residents have a say in the politicians who are elected to represent them.”

The bill would allow permanent residents in the city who are not American citizens to vote in elections for mayor, city council, the attorney general and State Board of Education members, among other things.

“They are our neighbors and our friends and they want to see our city flourish, yet they have no say in how the city’s government is run,” said Councilwoman Elissa Silverman.

Silverman went on to say that nearly one in eight D.C. citizens are immigrants, but only about 30 percent of them are American citizens, and that “all long-term residents of a city should have a right to have a choice in who represents them.” (Read more from “DC Wants to Give Non-Citizens the Right to Vote” HERE)

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Is a Mini ICE AGE on the Way? Scientists Now Warn the Sun Will ‘Go to Sleep’ in 2030

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A new study claims to have cracked predicting solar cycles – and says that between 2020 and 2030 solar cycles will cancel each other out.

This, they say, will lead to a phenomenon known as the ‘Maunder minimum’ – which has previously been known as a mini ice age when it hit between 1646 and 1715, even causing London’s River Thames to freeze over.

The new model of the Sun’s solar cycle is producing unprecedentedly accurate predictions of irregularities within the Sun’s 11-year heartbeat.

It draws on dynamo effects in two layers of the Sun, one close to the surface and one deep within its convection zone.

Predictions from the model suggest that solar activity will fall by 60 per cent during the 2030s to conditions last seen during the ‘mini ice age’ that began in 1645, according to the results presented by Prof Valentina Zharkova at the National Astronomy Meeting in Llandudno. (Read more from “Is a Mini ICE AGE on the Way? Scientists Warn the Sun Will ‘Go to Sleep’ in 2030” HERE)

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Leaders of the Largest Association of Psychologists Reportedly Collaborated With CIA to Allow for Torture

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Leaders of the largest association of psychologists in the country reportedly collaborated with Pentagon and CIA officials to weaken the group’s guidelines, allowing psychologists to take part in and cover up their involvement in coercive interrogation tactics after the 9/11 attacks.

The American Psychological Association’s report details findings from a former federal prosecutor that seem to show the complicity of psychologists in interrogation programs that sometimes relied on torture, according to The Washington Post.

The investigation into the association concludes that the APA’s ethics director and others colluded with top level Department of Defense officials to have the association issue “loose, high-level ethical guidelines that did not constrain” the Pentagon in its interrogations of Guantanamo Bay detainees.

The Post reports the investigation also found that “current and former APA officials” had pertinent interactions with the CIA between 2001 and 2004 when the agency used waterboarding and other extreme measures to try and get information from prisoners at the camp.

The scathing 542-page report was commissioned by the psychological association’s board of directors last year base on an investigation led by David H. Hoffman. Hoffman was an assistant U.S. attorney in Chicago from 1998 to 2005. (Read more from “Leaders of the Largest Association of Psychologists Reportedly Collaborated With Officials on Abusive Interrogations” HERE)

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Obamacare Administrators Fail to Protect Individuals’ Personal Data Entered on Obamacare Website

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The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) did not implement auditor recommendations to protect personal information at HealthCare.gov, Politico reported.

An official told lawmakers that CMS “has not yet implemented auditors’ recommendations that it conduct privacy impact assessments on HealthCare.gov systems that store personal information,” states Politico.

This is cause for concern considering the Office and Personnel Management (OPM) news that more than 21 million individuals had their sensitive information, including Social Security numbers and family and personal data, accessed by hackers because of a data breach.

“The U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has identified a cyber security incident potentially affecting personnel data for current and federal employees, including personally identifiable information (PII),” said OPM in a statement on June 4.

At a House Science, Space and Technology Committee hearing on the OPM data breach, Gregory Wilshusen, an information security expert at the Government Accountability Office (GAO), said he is not aware of any efforts by CMS to act on GAO’s recommendations regarding the Obamacare website. GAO recommended in September 2014 that CMS and HHS “implement security and privacy controls to enhance the protection of systems and information related to Healthcare.gov.” (Read more from “Gov’t Agency Fails to Protect Individuals’ Personal Data on Obamacare Website” HERE)

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Wacky World Continues: Dems Declare War on Words ‘Husband,’ ‘Wife’

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More than two dozen Democrats have proposed legislation that would eliminate the words “husband” and “wife” from federal law . . .

“The Amend the Code for Marriage Equality Act recognizes that the words in our laws have meaning and can continue to reflect prejudice and discrimination even when rendered null by our highest courts,” Capps said. “Our values as a country are reflected in our laws. I authored this bill because it is imperative that our federal code reflect the equality of all marriages.”

The Supreme Court ruled in June that the 14th Amendment to the Constitution means all states have to license same-sex marriages, a ruling that effectively ended the same-sex marriage debate in America. Capps said her bill was aimed at taking the next step, which is to ensure the United States Code “reflects the equality of all marriages.”

She said her bill would also have other benefits if it became law. In one example, she noted that U.S. law says it’s illegal to threaten the president’s wife, but says nothing about the president’s husband. (Read more from “Dems Declare War on Words ‘Husband,’ ‘Wife'” HERE)

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Antipsychotic Use Rising Among Teens and Young Adults

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A growing number of teens and young adults are being prescribed antipsychotics, a new study suggests.

In particular, it appears they’re being used to treat attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) – a condition for which the powerful drugs are not approved.

The percentage of teens using antipsychotics rose from 1.10 percent in 2006 to 1.19 percent in 2010. Use among young adults ages 19 to 24 rose from 0.69 percent to 0.84 percent, the study found.

Overall in 2010, approximately 270,000 antipsychotic prescriptions were dispensed to younger children, 2.14 million to older children, 2.80 million to adolescents, and 1.83 million to young adults, the authors write . . .

For younger children, antipsychotic use declined from 2006 to 2010, the researchers report in JAMA Psychiatry. Prescriptions fell from 0.14 percent to 0.11 percent for kids aged one to six, and from 0.85 percent to 0.80 percent for children aged seven to 12. (Read more from “Antipsychotic Use Rising Among Teens and Young Adults” HERE)

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Judge Jails Kids for Refusing Lunch With Dad

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Three Oakland County children who refused to go to lunch with their father, as part of a bitter divorce and custody battle between their parents, are spending their summer in the county’s juvenile detention center, according to court records.

“We’ll review it when school starts, and you may be going to school there,” Oakland County Family Court Judge Lisa Gorcyca told the children during a June 24 hearing, referring to the center in Waterford Township called Children’s Village, where authorities house as many as 200 juvenile offenders.

Gorcyca, who blamed their mother for poisoning the children’s attitude toward their father, ordered the children be sent to the center for defying her orders — while in court — that they go to lunch with their father.

The children — ranging in age from 9 to 14 — were deemed in contempt of court last month by Gorcyca for disobeying her orders to “have a healthy relationship with your father” . . .

“But I do not apologize for — for not talking to him because I have a reason for that and that’s because he’s violent and he — I saw him hit my mom and I’m not gonna talk to him,” the boy said, later telling the judge, “I didn’t do anything wrong.” (Read more from “Judge Jails Kids for Refusing Lunch With Dad” HERE)

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Cheer up, the Post-Human Era Is Dawning

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Unlike many who believe that artificial intelligence will eventually threaten humankind, this author has a far more optimistic view:

The far future will bear traces of humanity, just as our own age retains influences of ancient civilisations. Humans and all they have thought might be a transient precursor to the deeper cogitations of another culture — one dominated by machines, extending deep into the future and spreading far beyond earth.

Not everyone considers this an uplifting scenario. There are those who fear that artificial intelligence will supplant us, taking our jobs and living beyond the writ of human laws. Others regard such scenarios as too futuristic to be worth fretting over. But the disagreements are about the rate of travel, not the direction. Few doubt that machines will one day surpass more of our distinctively human capabilities. It may take centuries but, compared to the aeons of evolution that led to humanity’s emergence, even that is a mere bat of the eye. This is not a fatalistic projection. It is cause for optimism. The civilisation that supplants us could accomplish unimaginable advances — feats, perhaps, that we cannot even understand.

Human brains, which have changed little since our ancestors roamed the African savannah, have allowed us to penetrate the secrets of the quantum and the cosmos. But there is no reason to think that our comprehension is matched to an understanding of all the important features of reality. Some day we may hit the buffers. There are chemical and metabolic limits to the size and power of “wet” organic brains.

Today’s computers do not learn like we do. Their internal network is far simpler than a human brain, but they partly make up for this disadvantage because their “nerves” transmit messages at the speed of light, millions of times faster than the chemical transmission in human brains. They can learn to identify dogs, cats and human faces by crunching through millions of images. They learn to translate from foreign languages by reading multilingual versions of millions of pages of EU rules, among other documents (and, crucially, they never get bored).

(Read more from “Cheer up, the Post-Human Era Is Dawning” HERE)

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MADNESS: 15-Year-Olds to Get State-Subsidized Sex-Change Operations WITHOUT PARENTAL NOTIFICATION

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The list of things 15-year-olds are not legally allowed to do in this state is long: Drive, smoke, donate blood, get a tattoo — even go to a tanning bed.

But, under a first-in-the-nation policy quietly enacted in January that many parents are only now finding out about, 15-year-olds are now allowed to get a sex-change operation. Many residents are stunned to learn they can do it without parental notification — and the state will even pay for it through its Medicaid program, the Oregon Health Plan.

“It is trespassing on the hearts, the minds, the bodies of our children,” said Lori Porter of Parents’ Rights in Education. “They’re our children. And for a decision, a life-altering decision like that to be done unbeknownst to a parent or guardian, it’s mindboggling.”

In a statement, Oregon Health Authority spokeswoman Susan Wickstrom explained it this way: “Age of medical consent varies by state. Oregon law — which applies to both Medicaid and non-Medicaid Oregonians — states that the age of medical consent is 15” . . .

Members are appointed by the governor and paid by the state of Oregon. With no public debate, HERC changed its policy to include cross-sex hormone therapy, puberty-suppressing drugs and gender-reassignment surgery as covered treatments for people with gender dysphoria, formally known as gender identity disorder. (Read more from “This State Is Allowing 15-Year-Olds to Get State-Subsidized Sex-Change Operations” HERE)

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Pope Receives Crucifix in Form of Hammer and Sickle, Makes Shocking Marxist Statements in Bolivia

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By Daniel Burke. Pope Francis delivered a fiery denunciation of modern capitalism on Thursday night, calling the “unfettered pursuit of money” the “dung of the devil” and accusing world leaders of “cowardice” for refusing to defend the earth from exploitation.

Speaking to grassroots organizers in Bolivia, the Pope called on the poor and disenfranchised to rise up against “new colonialism,” including corporations, loan agencies, free trade treaties, austerity measures, and “the monopolizing of the communications media.”

Here’s what one prominent American priest had to say about the speech:

There is quite a lot to unpack in the speech, including the Pope’s apology for the “many grave sins” committed by Catholic Church against Native Americans “in the name of God.” (Read more from “Pope Receives Crucifix in Form of Hammer and Sickle, Makes Marxist Statements in Bolivia” HERE)

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Pope Receives Crucifix in form of Hammer and Sickle from Bolivian President

By Jonathan Watts. Vatican officials appear to have been flummoxed after Pope Francis was presented with a communist crucifix depicting Jesus nailed to a hammer and sickle by Bolivia’s president Evo Morales.

The gift from the leftwing leader caused an immediate stir among conservative Catholics who said the pontiff was being manipulated for ideological reasons.

The response of the pope was less clear. After being handed the wooden crucifix during a formal ceremony, he examined it for a few seconds before returning it to a Bolivian presidential aide.

His comments were largely drowned out by a flurry of camera clicks, prompting a flood of speculation. While some have claimed he expressed irritation, muttering the words “eso no está bien” (“this is not right”), Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said the pope was more likely to have uttered “eso no sabía bien” (“I didn’t know that”) in bemusement at the origins of the present.

The Bolivian government insisted there was no political motive behind the gift. Communications minister Marianela Paco said Morales had thought the “pope of the poor” would appreciate the gesture. (Read more from this story HERE)

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