Fugitive Snowden to Meet with Human Rights Groups

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Photo Credit: ReutersFormer intelligence agency contractor Edward Snowden asked to meet human rights groups at a Moscow airport on Friday to discuss what he called “threatening behaviour” by the United States to prevent him gaining asylum.

The meeting would be the first of its kind since Snowden flew to Moscow from Hong Kong on June 23. He has been stranded in the transit area of Sheremetyevo airport ever since, unable to take up asylum offers from third countries.

Snowden is wanted by Washington on espionage charges for divulging details of secret U.S. surveillance programs. The email address from which he sent the invitation to human rights groups was confirmed as authentic by an airport official.

“In recent weeks we have witnessed an unlawful campaign by officials in the U.S. Government to deny my right to seek and enjoy this asylum under Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” Snowden wrote.

“The scale of threatening behavior is without precedent,” read the letter, a copy of which was posted to Facebook by an official of Human Rights Watch.

Read more from this story HERE.

House Narrowly Passes Farm Bill After Republicans Carve Out Food Stamps

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Photo Credit: Fox NewsThe House on Thursday narrowly passed a massive farm bill, after Republicans took the risky step of carving out the food stamp program — a move Democrats effectively boycotted.

The bill passed on a 216-208 vote. Zero Democrats voted for it.

House Democrats spent most of the afternoon lambasting their Republican colleagues for dropping the food stamp component, making clear that House Speaker John Boehner would need to rely on Republicans only to pass the bill. After some marathon nose-counting, GOP leaders were able to minimize the number of Republican defectors — just 12 Republicans voted against it on Thursday.

The farm bill historically has been a vehicle for both billions in farm subsidies and billions in food stamps. Twinning the two massive programs has in the past helped win support from rural-state lawmakers and those representing big cities. But after the bill failed in the House last month amid opposition from rank-and-file Republicans, House leaders removed the food stamp portion in a bid to attract conservative support.

The fate of the measure is unclear, though, as the matter now kicks back to the Senate or to a so-called conference committee to resolve differences between the two chambers’ bills. The Democratic-led Senate overwhelmingly passed a farm bill with smaller cuts to food stamps, but would be reluctant to go along with a bill that carves out food stamps.

Read more from this story HERE.

Dad, Son Arrested For Setting 7-Year-Old On Fire, Videotaping It (+video)

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Photo Credit: CBSA Saxonburg man has been arrested for dousing his then-girlfriend’s 7-year-old son with a flammable liquid.

Then, police say the man’s own 15-year-old son set the younger boy’s shirt on fire.

Edward B. Myers, 35, allegedly used his cell phone to film the attack at his Carol Drive home as he watched the boy burn.

Read more from this story HERE.

Hospital in Zimbabwe Where Desperately Poor Women Are Charged $5 Every Time They Scream During Childbirth

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Photo Credit: AFP/GettyPoor women have been exploited at their most vulnerable time by a hospital that charged them $5 every time they screamed during child birth.

The shocking discovery was made by a U.S. group that campaigns against corruption, as it released its annual Global Corruption Barometer.

At the hospital in Zimbabwe, one of the poorest countries in the world, the fine was said to be for ‘raising a false alarm’, according to Transparency International.

Women who were unable to pay the fine were allegedly kept in the hospital until their families could pay. Interest was also added to the fines, according to the Washington Post.

Many mothers already avoid hospital deliveries in the African nation because of the $50 cost, which is about the third of the average $150 income.

Read more from this story HERE.

Report: Feds Helped Orchestrate Anti-Zimmerman Protests after Trayvon Martin Shooting

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Photo Credit: APBy Fox News. A conservative watchdog group accused the Justice Department of helping manage the “pressure campaign” last year against George Zimmerman in the wake of the Trayvon Martin shooting, citing documents that show an obscure agency spent thousands assisting local demonstrations.

The little-known agency, the Community Relations Service, is described by the Justice Department as their “peacemaker” for community conflicts over race.

The protests last spring over Martin’s death certainly qualified as such a conflict. But while the department claims its “peacemaker” agency does not “take sides” in such disputes, Judicial Watch said the documents and public accounts show otherwise.

“These documents detail the extraordinary intervention by the Justice Department in the pressure campaign leading to the prosecution of George Zimmerman,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said.

The documents the group received — and has since published online — show the CRS agency filing a series of expenses incurred during the late March and early April demonstrations. Read more from this story HERE.

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Federal Agency Involved in Protests is a Secretive Branch of the Justice Department

By Tom Topousis. A secretive branch of the U.S. Department of Justice was deployed to Sanford, Fla., in the aftermath of the Trayvon Martin shooting to help organize rallies, including one headlined by the Rev. Al Sharpton, calling for the arrest and prosecution of George Zimmerman.

Records obtained by the watchdog group Judicial Watch, under the Freedom of Information Act, showed that members of the Justice Department’s Community Relations Service were sent to Sanford in March and April of 2012 to help manage protests, The Daily Caller reported Wednesday.

The 347 pages of documents obtained from the federal government showed that $5,320 in expenses was claimed by the Community Relations Service for workers assigned to protests and marches in and around Sanford after Zimmerman was accused of shooting Martin. Read more from this story HERE.

Bill O’Reilly Believes that Preachers Should be Jailed for Telling Homosexuals They’re Going to Hell (+video)

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In a pathetic exchange with Fox Commentator John Stossel, Bill O’Reilly maintains that a preacher should not be allowed to tell homosexuals that they’re going to hell.

O’Reilly pontificated that “that should be against the law.” In O’Reilly’s view, preaching hell as a consequence to sin brings “intentional personal anguish” to the homosexual and he or she should be protected from such words.

Stossel weakly pushed back, suggesting that the line should be drawn at “fighting words” but O’Reilly interrupted retorting, “Well, going to Hell is pretty violent…”

O’Reilly concluded that no one should be able to “terrorize someone” because of disagreements over beliefs.

International Human Rights Group: NSA Surveillance Undermining US Democracy

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Photo Credit: WNDBy F. Michael Maloof. The National Security Agency, probably the most secretive of the U.S. intelligence branches, has very limited congressional oversight, and those privileged few – generally the chairmen of the respective intelligence committees in the House and Senate – cannot divulge information to other members.

Supporters say it’s needed for national security.

But a human rights organization is warning that such “national security” efforts may, in fact, be undermining the democracy on which America was built, or worse.

“A system of secret surveillance for the protection of national security many undermine or even destroy democracy, under the cloak of defending it,” warns the European Court of Human Rights, a part of the European Union’s European Council.

The issue of secret spying on Americans has been flooding the headlines since whistleblower Edward Snowden grabbed as many classified surveillance secrets from the government as he could, then took off on a globe-trotting trip and started spilling secrets about the tentacles Washington is using to spy on individual Americans. Read more from this story HERE.

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Government tapping into underseas cables for surveillance?

By Fox News. Not only is the U.S. government gathering information from tech companies on global Internet traffic — according to new reports, the NSA is also siphoning off data from underseas cables that criss-cross the world.

The Washington Post on Wednesday published a classified NSA slide that provided side-by-side guidance on the two surveillance programs.

“You Should Use Both,” the slide said, in an apparent message to NSA personnel. Read more from this story HERE.

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The NSA slide you haven’t seen

Photo Credit: Washington Post

By Craig Timberg. Recent debate over U.S. government surveillance has focused on the information that American technology companies secretly provide to the National Security Agency. But that is only one of the ways the NSA eavesdrops on international communications.

A classified NSA slide obtained by The Washington Post lists “Two Types of Collection.”

One is PRISM, the NSA program that collects information from technology companies, which was first revealed in reports by the Post and Britain’s Guardian newspaper last month…

The slide also shows a crude map of the undersea cable network that carries data from either side of North America on to the rest of the world. As a story in Sunday’s Post made clear, these undersea cables are essential to worldwide data flows and to the surveillance capabilities of the U.S. government and its allies…

Both slides have circles attached to arrows suggesting possible collection points, but they cover areas too broad to discern where NSA accesses fiber-optic cable networks. The slides also list code names under the Upstream program. Read more from this story HERE.

Murkowski Votes With Democrats to Advance Bill Forcing Private Employers in 33 States to Hire Homosexual Applicants (ENDA)

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By Daniel Strauss. A Senate panel approved legislation Wednesday in a bipartisan 15-7 vote that would outlaw discrimination in the workplace based on an employee’s gender identity or sexual orientation.

Three Republicans joined 12 Democrats on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee in approving the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA).

The GOP votes came from Sens. Orrin Hatch (Utah), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), and Mark Kirk (Ill.). Hatch voted aye by proxy.

The legislation would outlaw any kind of discrimination based on sexual orientation including both hiring and firing and other employment related matters like salaries and terms of employment.

Federal law currently outlaws employment discrimination centered on age, disability, national origin, race, religion or sex but not gender identity or sexual orientation. ENDA aims to fill the hole in states in the 33 states where there is no separate law against discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation. Read more from this story HERE.

[Editor’s note: Murkowski reported to the pro-homosexual publication Metro Weekly that “When I was home over the break, I think it was 1,174 postcards were delivered to my office from Alaskans from around the state in support of ENDA. If you listen to your folks back home this is important to them.”]
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The Alaska Family Council Recommends You Watch this Documentary on the Left’s International LGBT Agenda

A new documentary entitled Cultural Imperialism examines the Obama Administration’s efforts to impose its LGBT values on many third world countries, particularly African nations. And they are pushing back:

Army Vet Discovers Feds Now Digging Up Decades Old Minor Convictions to Prevent Gun Ownership

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A local Army veteran is fighting for permission to own a gun after a misdemeanor pot conviction from 1971 stopped him from buying .22 caliber rifle.

Ron Kelly, who retired from the Army in 1993, after a career of firing tanks, machine guns and an array of other weapons [shooting an estimated 100,000 rounds through the course of his career], was recently turned away at the Wal-Mart in Tomball after a computerized background check turned up the arrest.

Today’s Houston Chronicle has a front page story on Ron Kellly and his fight to own a gun.

Kelly said he’d forgotten all about the incident, in which he was arrested over a baggie of pot while in high school, and given one year of probation.

He was a bit embarrassed. Now he’s outraged…

According to the FBI, which runs the background checks known as the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, the law states that a person can be prevented from owing a gun if they are convicted of a misdemeanor in which they could spend more than two years behind bars.

Read more from this story HERE.

Police: Marine Corps Veteran Stops Carjacker Holding Knife to Girl’s Throat (+video)

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Photo Credit: WFTVBy WFTV. Police said a carjacker who tried to steal four cars was captured Tuesday.

Detectives said Eliud Montalvo attempted several carjackings that were all within a block of one another at the corner of Conway and Curry Ford roads.

Officials said a retired Marine Corps veteran, Andrew Koplin, stopped the carjacker with his concealed weapon.

The first incident involved an 80-year-old woman in a parking lot. The other attempted carjackings happened within a block of the first one.

The last two were stopped by Koplin, who said he noticed Montalvo pulling a knife in a Publix parking lot.

Read more from this story HERE.

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More on the Attempted Carjackings from the Orlando Sentinel

By Jerriann Sullivan. Several Good Samaritans, including one with a gun, joined police in chasing down an Orlando man after he allegedly tried to carjack four different drivers at knifepoint Monday morning.

Eliud Martir Montalvo’s rampage started at 9:30 a.m. when he ran toward 80-year-old Joan Shedd and grabbed for her car keys in the Publix parking lot at 4402 Curry Ford Road, an Orlando Police Department arrest report said.

Shedd didn’t give up her keys, so 54-year-old Montalvo kicked her rear end, knocking her on the ground, police said.

A witness told police the Orlando man kept kicking the elderly woman before a man chased him away.

Montalvo ran from Shedd’s vehicle to Connie Sue Gooley’s truck and tried to carjack it, the report said. Read more from this story HERE.