Welcome to the Arab Spring: Tunisian Woman Raped by Police Faces Jail for Indecent Exposure

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Tunisia’s minister for women has condemned the alleged rape by police of a woman who was later – together with her fiance – charged with indecency.

“Nobody is above the law,” the minister, Sihem Badi, told reporters.

A lawyer for the woman says she was charged with public indecency after being raped by two officers.

The Tunisian interior ministry says that before the alleged rape took place, the woman and her fiance were found in an “immoral position”.

The woman’s lawyer, Bouchra Belhaj Hmida, told AFP news agency that the governing Islamist Ennahda party bore a “political and moral responsibility”.

US Death Toll Hits 2000 in Afghanistan but LSM Silent

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A suicide bomber driving a motorcycle packed with explosives rammed his bike into a patrol of Afghan and international forces on Monday morning in eastern Afghanistan, killing at least 14 people, including three NATO service members and their translator, officials said.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the blast, which came a day after the U.S. death toll in the war in Afghanistan reached 2,000 troops and as relations between international forces and their Afghan partners have been pushed to the breaking point by a surge in insider attacks by Afghan allies.

The bomber struck a group of Afghan police and international troops shortly after they got out of their vehicles to walk through a market area in Khost city, the capital of Khost province, said provincial government spokesman Baryalai Wakman.

Six civilians and four police officers were killed in the blast, Wakman said. He said the police officers were part of a specialized quick-reaction force.

Blood could be seen on the market road as Afghan police and soldiers tried to clean up the area after the blast. Slippers and bicycle parts were strewn about.

Read more from this story HERE.

Chinese Government Hackers Break into White House Military Office in Charge of Nuclear Football

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Hackers linked to China’s government broke into one of the U.S. government’s most sensitive computer networks, breaching a system used by the White House Military Office for nuclear commands, according to defense and intelligence officials familiar with the incident.

One official said the cyber breach was one of Beijing’s most brazen cyber attacks against the United States and highlights a failure of the Obama administration to press China on its persistent cyber attacks.

Disclosure of the cyber attack also comes amid heightened tensions in Asia, as the Pentagon moved two U.S. aircraft carrier strike groups and Marine amphibious units near waters by Japan’s Senkaku islands.

China and Japan—the United States’ closest ally in Asia and a defense treaty partner—are locked in a heated maritime dispute over the Senkakus, which China claims as its territory.

U.S. officials familiar with reports of the White House hacking incident said it took place earlier this month and involved unidentified hackers, believed to have used computer servers in China, who accessed the computer network used by the White House Military Office (WHMO), the president’s military office in charge of some of the government’s most sensitive communications, including strategic nuclear commands. The office also arranges presidential communications and travel, and inter-government teleconferences involving senior policy and intelligence officials.

Read more from this story HERE.

Alaskan Scientist Galvanized ESA, Global Warming Movement to Polar Bear Drownings with Article that Used “Incomplete” and “Understated” Data

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Photo credit: USGS

An Alaska scientist whose observations of drowned polar bears helped galvanize the global warming movement has been reprimanded for improper release of government documents.

An Interior Department official said emails released by Charles Monnett were cited by a federal appeals court in decisions to vacate approval by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management of an oil and gas company’s Arctic exploration plan.

The official, Walter Cruickshank, deputy director of BOEM, said in a memo that an inspector general’s investigation contained findings that Monnett had improperly disclosed internal government documents, which he said were later used against the agency in court. He also said the investigation made other findings in regards to Monnett’s conduct, but he wasn’t taking action on those. He would not specify those findings.

Cruickshank called Monnett’s “misconduct very serious,” and said any future misconduct may lead to more severe discipline, including removal from federal service.

Read more from this story, including the government’s conclusion that Monnett and his co-author had used an “incomplete database as their primary source of information to write the article, made conflicting statements to investigators regarding the writing and editing process and understated data in the manuscript,” HERE.

As College Student, Eric Holder Participated in `Armed’ Takeover of Columbia ROTC Office

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As a freshman at Columbia University in 1970, future Attorney General Eric Holder participated in a five-day occupation of an abandoned Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) headquarters with a group of black students later described by the university’s Black Students’ Organization as “armed,” The Daily Caller has learned.

Department of Justice spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler has not responded to questions from The Daily Caller about whether Holder himself was armed — and if so, with what sort of weapon.

Holder was then among the leaders of the Student Afro-American Society (SAAS), which demanded that the former ROTC office be renamed the “Malcolm X Lounge.” The change, the group insisted, was to be made “in honor of a man who recognized the importance of territory as a basis for nationhood.”

Black radicals from the same group also occupied the office of Dean of Freshman Henry Coleman until their demands were met. Holder has publicly acknowledged being a part of that action.

The details of the student-led occupation, including the claim that the raiders were “armed,” come from a deleted Web page of the Black Students’ Organization (BSO) at Columbia, a successor group to the SAAS. Contemporary newspaper accounts in The Columbia Daily Spectator, a student newspaper, did not mention weapons.

Read more from this story HERE.

California Bans Mental Health Intervention for Children Who Say They’re Gay, Bi-Sexual, Transgendered, etc.

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Photo credit: Guillaume Paumier

On Saturday, California became the first state in the nation to sign into law a prohibition on mental health intervention to address a child’s homosexual or bisexual proclivities. It also prohibits therapy to address “transgendered” children. It applies to all children under 18 years of age.

In a statement issued upon the signing of the new legislation, Governor Jerry Brown stated that “These practices have no basis in science or medicine, and they will now be relegated to the dustbin of quackery.”

Specifically, the law bans “any practices by mental health providers that seek to change an individual’s sexual orientation. This includes efforts to change behaviors or gender expressions, or to eliminate or reduce sexual or romantic attractions or feelings toward individuals of the same sex.” If a practitioner violates the law, he or she will face adverse licensing action by the “licensing entity for that mental health provider.” In other words, the offending mental health professional will likely lose his or her license.

A number of groups opposed the new law including California’s Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays & Gays. Calling the bill unconstitutional, the group told legislators that, “As parents of gays and ex-gays, we are ashamed of your willingness to take action against parents, children, and the family in order to support gay activists…California is not a socialist state and our children do not belong to the government, subject to the ideology of the state over the objections of their parents.”

One conservative California group has pointed out that this “is what you get with Democrats in charge” and suggests the legislature should consider Isaiah 5:20: “Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; Who put darkness for light, and light for darkness.”

Veteran’s outrage after apartment complex BANS him from flying American flag

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The management of an apartment complex in Indiana has found itself in hot water this week after banning residents from flying American flags.

Chris Smith enlisted in the U.S. Army after the September 11 attacks and served four years.

His unit at the Applegate Apartment complex has become a repository of military insignia and other patriotic symbols, including the star-spangled banner.

‘It represents freedom…it represent the blood that has been shed so that we can live free,’ the emotional Smith explained to Fox News.

But after three years of living at the Columbus housing complex, the veteran received a letter from management informing him that he can no longer display an American flag outside his unit. In response, the veteran took to the Internet and created a Facebook group called Let It Fly in hopes of overturning the ban.

Read more from this story HERE.

Texas GOP Congresswoman Blocks Obama’s Effort to Slip Egypt $450 Million

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The Obama administration notified Congress on Friday that it would provide Egypt’s new government an emergency cash infusion of $450 million, but the aid immediately encountered resistance from a prominent lawmaker wary of foreign aid and Egypt’s new course under the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood.

The aid is part of the $1 billion in assistance that the Obama administration has pledged to Egypt to bolster its transition to democracy after the overthrow last year of the former president, Hosni Mubarak. Its fate, however, was clouded by concerns over the new government’s policies and, more recently, the protests that damaged the American Embassy in Cairo.

The United States Agency for International Development notified Congress of the cash infusion on Friday morning during the pre-election recess, promptly igniting a smoldering debate over foreign aid and the administration’s handling of crises in the Islamic world.

An influential Republican lawmaker, Representative Kay Granger of Texas, immediately announced that she would use her position as chairwoman of the House appropriations subcommittee overseeing foreign aid to block the distribution of the money. She said the American relationship with Egypt “has never been under more scrutiny” than it is in the wake of the election of President Mohamed Morsi, a former leader of the Muslim Brotherhood.

“I am not convinced of the urgent need for this assistance and I cannot support it at this time,” Ms. Granger said in a statement that her office issued even before the administration announced the package.

Read more from this story HERE.

Video: Huckabee Says Libya Lie is Obama’s Watergate & Worse

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In a compelling interview yesterday, Governor Huckabee compares Obama’s repeated lies about the Libyan murder of the US ambassador and its connection to an American pornographer’s YouTube video (the Innocence of Muslims) to Nixon’s Watergate lies.

He says there’s a big difference though: unlike Nixon’s prevarication, Obama’s lies probably got people killed:

Million Swing State Voters Getting DVD Claiming Obama’s Real Father Was Davis, Mother Bondage Star of Adult Photos (+video)

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More than a million voters in swing states are being sent an anti-Obama documentary that claims the President’s mother once posed for pornographic photos wearing bondage gear.

The shocking – and totally unfounded – claims made in the DVD represent a new low in the election dirty tricks war today provoking fury among Democrats and likely to trigger outrage in the White House.

‘Dreams From My Real Father’, made by a right-wing film-maker who is a long-time critic of Obama, includes images of a woman it claims is the President’s mother Ann Dunham clad in leather gloves, boots and a corset posing seductively on a couch.

The film also alleges that Mr Obama’s real father is left wing poet poet and Communist party activist Frank Marshall Davis, and that Ms Dunham’s marriage was a ‘sham’ to cover this up. Read more from this story HERE.

Here’s a trailer from the controversial movie: