You have to listen to it to believe it, but this state legislator, part of Obama’s “Truth team,” believes that Romney is speaking only to racists in America, people who don’t want to see anyone other than “a white man in the White House or in any other elected position.” The tirade begins at 2:15.
Photo credit: DonkeyHotey
A report issued by the United Nations-backed Global Commission on HIV and the Law recommends that nations around the world get rid of “punitive” laws against prostitution – or what it calls “consensual sex work” — and decriminalize the voluntary use of illegal injection drugs in order to combat the HIV epidemic.
The commission, which is made up of 15 former heads of state, legal scholars and HIV/AIDS activists, was convened in 2010 by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon and is jointly backed by the United Nations Development Programme and UNAIDS – the Joint U.N. Programme on AIDS/HIV.
The commission recommends repealing all laws that prohibit “adult consensual sex work,” as well as clearly distinguishing in law and practice between sexual trafficking and prostitution.
The report–“HIV and the Law: Risks, Rights & Health”–cites a recommendation by the International Labour Organization, which recommends that “sex work” should be recognized as an occupation in order to be regulated “in a way that protects workers and customers.”
Specifically, the commission wants to: “Decriminalise private and consensual adult sexual behaviours, including same-sex sexual acts and voluntary sex work.”
For other actions that the UN commission wants to take, please read more from this story HERE.
This week, Kansas Republican Sen. Jerry Moran called on Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack to explain why the agency’s employee newsletter encouraged them to not eat meat and participate in the “Meatless Monday” initiative for the environment.
“One simple way to reduce your environmental impact while dining at our cafeterias is to participate in the ‘Meatless Monday’ initiative https://www.meatlessmonday.com/,” The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) July 23, 2012 “Greening Headquarters Update” read. “This international effort, as the name implies, encourages people not to eat meat on Mondays. Meatless Monday is an initiative of The Monday Campaign Inc. in association with the John Hopkins School of Public Health.”
Pointing to the United Nations as their informational authority, the USDA’s newsletter said that going meatless is good for the environment because “animal agriculture is a major source of greenhouse gases and climate change. It also wastes resources. It takes 7,000 kg of grain to make 1,000 kg of beef. In addition, beef production requires a lot of water, fertilizer, fossil fuels, and pesticides.” It further charged that heavy meat consumption has detrimental health effect.
Moran, who represents the third-largest beef-producing state in America, was shocked by the revelation.
“Never in my life would I have expected USDA to be opposed to farmers and ranchers,” Moran said in a statement. “American farmers and ranchers deserve a USDA that will pursue supportive policies rather than seek their further harm.”
Read more from this story HERE.
Here’s the video of Senator Moran attacking this crazy USDA directive from the Senate floor:
Photo credit: Charlie Day
Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore
This past week, 34 senators, the bare minimum, were convinced to stand against the internationalist Law of the Sea Treaty. Today, Obama may attempt to subject the US to the UN’s Arms Trade Treaty. But another bad UN treaty that has not received the same amount of publicity as LOST and the Arms Trade Treaty, is also being considered. This proposed treaty addresses national laws pertaining to persons with disabilities. According to Rick and Karen Santorum, parents of a disabled child, the proposed treaty is an attack on the fundamental rights of parents to educate, care, and raise their disabled children:
On the surface, United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (“CRPD”) calls for numerous protections for people with disabilities. Many of these protections are consistent with the Americans with Disabilities Act. However, CRPD also includes provisions that were drafted by the United Nations and should concern all Americans. If ratified, CRPD would become the law of the land under the U.S. Constitution’s Supremacy Clause, and would trump state laws, and could be used as precedent by state and federal judges. Since it is a treaty, the Constitution requires that it must be ratified by two-thirds of the United States Senate.
There are two very troubling provisions in this treaty. The first spreads the identical standard for the control of children with disabilities as is contained in the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child. This means that the Federal government, acting under U.N. directions, can determine for all children with disabilities what is best for them. The second, the education provision of CRPD does not support the parental rights rules of past U.N. human rights treaties. Omission of these rules would potentially eradicate parental rights for the education of children with disabilities.
Over the years we have seen many U.N. treaties which can endanger the American way of life by attempting to trump U.S. laws. As a matter of foreign policy, we firmly believe that we should never allow our beliefs and values to be outsourced to outside entities that may not always have our best interests in mind.
On this particular treaty, however, we come at it from a more personal experience.
During our campaign for president, many of you learned about our daughter Bella. She is a special-needs child who has blessed our hearts. In working with health-care professionals, we found that a few advised treatments were not only not helpful to Bella, but could actually be quite harmful. As parents, it was crucial to be involved to make the proper decision for the best benefits of our child. And through our experience caring for her, we found that we are far from alone.
Read more from the Santorums’ critique of the CRPD .
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In this short video, watch Obama’s spokesman fumble and refuse to answer two senior correspondents’ questions about where Israel’s capital is. Why? Because the Obama administration refuses to acknowledge Jerusalem as Israel’s national capital.
Photo credit: phauly
Voter fraud has a shocking new meaning in eastern Kentucky.
That is where in some cases, major cocaine and marijuana dealers admitted to buying votes to steal elections, and the result is the corruption of American democracy. The government continues to mete out justice in the scandal, as two people convicted in April in a vote-buying case face sentencing this week, and another public official pleaded guilty Tuesday to conspiracy.
“We believe that drug money did buy votes,” Kerry B. Harvey, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Kentucky, said of a separate vote-buying case.
He described a stunning vote-buying scheme that includes “very extensive, organized criminal activity, involving hundreds of thousands of dollars, and in many cases that involves drug money.”
Harvey has led a recent string of federal prosecutions exposing the widespread and accepted practice of vote buying in eastern Kentucky. The soft-spoken federal prosecutor, along with his team and state authorities, are waging a battle against what he characterizes as a vote-buying culture embedded in many of the communities for generations.
Read more from this story HERE.
View the video reporting on the cocaine-vote buying outrage here:
Photo credit: Vishnu Balunsat
Taking aim at a long history of civil rights abuses, corruption and slipshod oversight within the New Orleans Police Department, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu unfurled a bevy of sweeping reforms Tuesday afternoon in the nation’s most expansive consent decree to date. The long-awaited agreement, to be overseen by an appointed monitor and U.S. District Judge Susie Morgan, amounts to a 492-point, court-enforced action plan for overhauling NOPD policies and practices — from when officers can pull their weapons to the kind of data they track. The announcement at Gallier Hall on Tuesday afternoon featured Holder, Landrieu and other federal and city officials, including Assistant Attorney General Tom Perez, U.S. Attorney Jim Letten, New Orleans Police Superintendent Ronal Serpas and City Attorney Richard Cortizas.
It came after several months of detailed and sometimes testy negotiations over hot-button topics such as off-duty police details and the sheer financing of the reforms, all of which will fall to the city.
Landrieu estimated that putting the consent decree in motion will set the city back $11 million a year to start. Holder said the government would offer support by way of available federal grants and advice, but the city is on the hook for the full tab.
Still, Landrieu exuded pride in what amounts to an unprecedented local-federal pact, even though the far-reaching document is a response to a yawning breadth of problems that he said have plagued the NOPD for years.
The consent decree follows what Holder called “one of the most extensive investigations of a law enforcement agency ever conducted by the (Justice) department.”
Read more from this story HERE.
Photo credit: Kyle Taylor
Testimonies delivered in recent weeks by former employees of the National Security Agency suggest that the US government is granting itself surveillance powers far beyond what most Americans consider the proper role of the federal government.
In an interview broadcast on Current TV’s “Viewpoint” program on Monday, former NSA Technical Director William Binney commented on the government’s policy of blanket surveillance, alongside colleagues Thomas Drake and Kirk Wiebe, the agency’s respective former Senior Official and Senior Analyst.
The interview comes on the heels of a series of speeches given by Binney, who has quickly become better known for his whistleblowing than his work with the NSA. In their latest appearance this week, though, the three former staffers suggested that America’s spy program is much more dangerous than it seems.
In an interview with “Viewpoint” host Eliot Spitzer, Drake said there was a “key decision made shortly after 9/11, which began to rapidly turn the United States of America into the equivalent of a foreign nation for dragnet blanket electronic surveillance.”
These powers have previously defended by claims of national security necessity, but Drake says that it doesn’t stop there. He warns that the government is giving itself the power to gather intel on every American that could be used in future prosecutions unrelated to terrorism.
Read more from this story HERE.
Photo credit: DonkeyHotey
While many pundits have been quick to advocate for gun control in the aftermath of the Aurora, Colo., theater rampage that killed 12 and wounded 58, rapper Ice-T took to the airwaves to defend gun rights.
Speaking with Channel 4 London’s Krishnan Guru-Murthy, the rapper and “Law & Order: SVU” actor said: “The right to bear arms is because that’s the last form of defense against tyranny. Not to hunt. It’s to protect yourself from the police.”
Guru-Murthy pushed back against the rapper who penned “Cop Killer” by asking if a link between the Second Amendment and the tragedy in Colorado exists.
“No, not really. You know what I’m sayin,’ if somebody wants to kill people they don’t need a gun to do it,” the rapper responded.
Ice-T’s comments stand in stark contrast to New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s remarks immediately following the theater massacre.
Read more from this story HERE.
Here’s the video:
Photo credit: Tom Mooring
If you didn’t see this on O’Reilly the other night, take the three or four minutes to watch this video. In it, O’Reilly advocates for a massive expansion of federal oversight over the purchase of guns and ammo, erroneously (and repeatedly) citing the Aurora shooter’s “60,000 rounds” of ammo purchased on the Internet. Watch this video and send a note of thanks to Rep. Chaffetz HERE.
Photo credit: Michael.Jolley