Video: School Bus Worker Chokes Autistic Boy

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After a 13-year-old autistic child wet his pants while riding on a Broward school bus, the bus attendant — whose job is to assist special-needs students — responded by choking the boy.

The incident, which lasted roughly 45 minutes, was captured by the school bus surveillance camera. Broward Sheriff’s Office deputies this week arrested bus attendant Darryl Blue, 48, on one count of aggravated child abuse. The bus driver who nonchalantly continued on her route, even as the boy screamed in pain, had not been charged Friday.

Neither Blue nor the bus driver have been fired by the school district, though both have been reassigned to “a position away from students,” said Broward school district spokeswoman Marsy Smith. The district is conducting an internal investigation before taking further action.

Blue has worked for the district on and off since 2000, while the driver is a recent hire still in the probationary phase of her employment.

BSO released the surveillance video Friday afternoon. Read more from this story HERE.

Now, British Boycotting Starbucks Over Allowing Children Access to Porn on its Free Wi-Fi

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Children are at risk of being exposed to porn in their local Starbucks because the firm has failed to filter adult material from its free wi-fi. The coffee chain was warned a year ago that youngsters could see ‘the most obscene pornographic sites’ being viewed by other customers in their stores – but did nothing.

There are also concerns children could visit Starbucks to look at adult sites they are barred from seeing in their home.

The scandal was revealed just weeks after it emerged that the firm has paid no tax in the UK for the past three years – despite sales exceeding [$1.5] billion.

Baroness Massey, a former chairman of the Family Planning Association, told the House of Lords she was boycotting Starbucks over its failure to ‘set an example’ over access to web porn. She also called on the Government to write to all high street firms to remind them of their responsibility to filter out harmful material.

A minister told her he was ‘alarmed’ by the revelations. Costa Coffee, Starbucks’ main rival, pointed out that it blocks adult material over its stores’ wi-fi, while McDonald’s also applies a filter.

Read more from this story HERE.

Attorney Conceived-in-Rape Blasts Ann Coulter

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I knew this would happen! I predicted that Republican party apologists would blame Richard Mourdoch and Todd Akin’s losses on the fact that they are 100% pro-life, instead of acknowledging that the losses were due to how poorly they expressed their positions. And sure enough, the day after the election, Ann Coulter did just that. In her article entitled, “Don’t Blame Romney,” she spent half of the article blaming these two Senate candidates for daring to defend the life of every preborn child. Her exact words were, “because these two idiots decided to come out against abortion in the case of rape and incest,” calling them “pro-life badasses,” “purist grandstanders,” with “insane positions,” who were “showing off.” Unfortunately, Coulter has a huge following and will surely influence many uninformed readers with her misstatement of the facts and her flawed reasoning. I have great concern that these Senate losses will have a chilling effect on pro-life legislators and voters. Hence, a swift and thorough response is in order.

Ann Coulter, referenced “all the hard work intelligent pro-lifers . . . in the trenches” and what they have accomplished, as if she was one of them. Well, I’ve been in the trenches since 1995, and I must point out that Ann Coulter has been missing in action. I’ve never once seen her in here, so I can’t comprehend how she could possibly include herself in this group. I’m a hard-working intelligent pro-life activist, and I’m 100% pro-life – for good reason. I was not only conceived in rape, but nearly aborted at two back-alley abortionists. The only reason I wasn’t killed through a brutal abortion is because I was legally protected. My heroes are those pro-life legislators and activists who were hard-working and intelligent enough to understand that mine was a life worth saving.

Coulter went on to erroneously write that Mourdoch and Akin lost because they had “abortion positions that less than 1 percent of the nation agrees with.” Her figure is way off, and she has totally ignored the fact that their abortion position adheres to the Republican party platform! All she’s doing is further alienating the base. Mitt Romney alienated the base – not only by making the rape exception, but also by his own gaffes, such as when he said, “There’s no legislation with regards to abortion that I’m familiar with that would become part of my agenda.” Pro-life leaders were left to mop up that mess, from which he never recovered. Many pro-lifers who were already skeptical either voted third-party or stayed home. Three million Republicans stayed home, compared to 2008. Making matters worse, Romney ran ads in battleground states suggesting that it’s extreme to be 100% pro-life. How could anyone deny that such ads hurt Senate candidates like Akin in Missouri, Mourdoch in Indiana, and Smith in Pennsylvania, as well as congressional candidates like Koster in Washington and Bachmann in Minnesota? And let’s not forget how the party leadership threw these candidates under the bus – something Democrats do not do to their own.

Additionally, the 1% figure Coulter threw out there is just not even close to being true. Polls in the last few years have consistently shown that the number is between 20 to 24% of Americans who believe abortion should be illegal in cases of rape. The other 31%+ of Americans who are pro-life with exceptions are 99% of the way there, and only need to be nudged another 1%. My experience shows that this is easy to achieve – if you try, just as how my story changed the heart of Gov. Rick Perry during his presidential campaign. And that’s the key. Who has really tried? I know that the number of 100% pro-life Americans would be much higher if the pro-life movement as a whole actually went after this ground. Instead, Coulter is right in pointing out where the effort has been focused – on things like parental notification laws and efforts to ban partial birth abortion. The lives of children conceived in rape are often minimized with the standard dismissive language of: “Well, it’s only 1%.” Why continue to minimize? Why not stand up and really defend our lives? We need to try to gain ground on this issue, by educating the public, by equipping candidates and legislators on how to most effectively respond to the rape question, by making ads with children conceived in rape available for anyone who wishes to utilize them, and by removing rape exceptions from the law, beginning with the Hyde Amendment.

My response to people like Ann Coulter is – WE ARE NOT CANNON FODDER! You do not get to put us out on the front lines and then take a giant step back. The “burning building” analogy fails because you have no interest in working to save all. You do not get to call yourself pro-life by shutting off the water, sending the fire trucks home, while you stand there watching the building burn down with the 1 inside of it. If you want to see who the real extremist is, Ann Coulter, come on Fox News with me, look me in the eyes and tell me how you think my birthmother should have been able to abort me. Tell me that my life was not worthy of protection and that I don’t deserve to be living, and I’ll show you who is the one who is extreme.

Read more from this story HERE.

Marines Egged While Collecting Donations for Toys For Tots

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A group of Marines who were collecting donations from early morning commuters on behalf of Toys for Tots in Texas, were hit with a barrage of eggs, according to police.

The incident occurred shortly before 6 a.m., according to San Angelo police. The department received several calls about the occupants of a pickup truck throwing eggs at pedestrians and other vehicles in town.

The pedestrians were four Marines, volunteers for the Marine Toys for Tots Foundation, who had set up shop at a street corner to collect new Christmas toys to be given to less fortunate children in the community.

The truck almost hit one of the Marines as it sped by — and almost collided head-on with another vehicle — before hitting a traffic island a short while later, according to Lt. Mike Hernandez, a police spokesman.

The driver, Hunter Holbert, 18, was arrested and charged with reckless driving and criminal mischief. Two other 18-year-olds, Brandon Garcia and Taylor White, and an unidentified juvenile male, all passengers in Holbert’s vehicle, were also cited for criminal mischief.

Read more from this story HERE.

Father Rapes, Impregnates Daughter, Gets One Year in Jail

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A woman who was repeatedly raped by her father and gave birth to her own brother has hit out after her attacker was only jailed for a year.

Tiara Stevens said on Monday she had waited 14 years for justice only to see her father’s sentence as a ‘slap in the face.’

An outraged Tiara said: ‘To wait 14 years and all a person gets is one year?

‘A pat on the back, telling them it’s okay to molest your daughter, impregnate her, and for her to have a child, a blind child? It’s ok?’

Fred Montgomery, 47, had pleaded guilty to criminal sexual conduct with a minor. He was sentenced on Monday to 15 years in jail, but all but one year was suspended.

Tiara was just 12 years old when she was impregnated by her father at the trailer home they shared.

Read more from this story HERE.

Video: Children Bullying, Assaulting Public School Teacher Caught on Camera

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The video uploaded to YouTube is of an incident two weeks ago. It is obviously recorded on a phone by a student in a classroom; Baltimore City Schools confirms it is from Digital Harbor High School in Federal Hill.

You can watch as the female student flicks at and taunts the substitute teacher at the front of the room.

Then you can see the teacher dodging something that comes at her…all to the giggles and laughter of the rest of the class.

“My initial response was again, disgust.”

Marietta English is the head of the teachers union in Baltimore city.

She’s seen the video and says it happens more often than you think.

“Respect for adults. Somewhere there’s just, no civility. They don’t even respect the adults in the classroom who are trying to deliver a lesson and this is the battle we fight,” said English. Read more from this story HERE.

GOP’s Problem With Women: Twice As Many Unmarried Women Voted for Obama

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The Republican party is suffering from a serious failure to attract the female vote, exit polls following the election released on Wednesday reveal. Just 44 per cent of female voters supported Mitt Romney, while 55 per cent voted to re-elect Barack Obama – and with women making up 53 per cent of the electorate, those numbers were enough to play a significant role in keeping the GOP out of the White House.

Republicans fared particularly poorly among single women, 67 per cent of whom voted for Obama while just 31 per cent supported Romney. If Romney had been able to attract the votes of just half of women, he would have cruised to an easy victory.

The Republican failure among women was not for lack of trying – with Ann Romney playing a large role in the last few weeks of the campaign. But in the end, the party was arguably damaged by its position on key issues such as abortion and contraception.

Exit polls showed Obama holding an 11-point lead over Romney with female voters, while the Republican candidate won the male vote by just seven points.

While nearly all elections have some sort of ‘gender gap’, with women leaning left and men tending towards the right, 2012 has seen a much more pronounced trend. The total gap in this year’s election was 18 points, compared to a 12-point gap in 2008.

Read more from this story HERE.

Woman Angered by Not Having to Show ID Tries to Vote Twice

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Roxanne Rubin was upset poll workers did not check her ID, so she tried to vote twice to prove a point, according to the Nevada secretary of state’s office.

Rubin, 56, was arrested Friday by the state’s multijurisdictional Elections Integrity Task Force and charged with trying to vote more than once in the same election, a felony.

When reached Monday, Rubin said she wants to share her side of the story. “I can’t talk, and I’m dying to,” Rubin said. “I’m talkative by nature.”

In a sworn affidavit, criminal investigator Shelley Neiman wrote that Rubin was “willing to risk the penalty in order to expose what she perceived as a weakness in the voting process” and that Rubin “was unhappy with the process; specifically in that her identification was not checked.”

Neiman wrote that Rubin “wanted to make a point” by testing the system and trying to cast another vote.

Read more from this story HERE.

Forbes: Latest Poll Shows Women’s Vote Will Deliver Obama Victory

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A new USA Today/Gallup poll released Monday reveals female voters in critical swing states favor Barack Obama over Mitt Romney in Tuesday’s presidential election by 16 points. At 52% of the electorate, Democrats are enthusiastic that these XX-votes will all but deliver incumbent Obama a second term in office.

“It’s actually over 52% of the electorate,” Obama deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter chided Chris Matthews on Mondaynight’s Hardball. “But we still need them to come out and vote tomorrow. Tomorrow’s the time to demonstrate this support.”

It’s no surprise to me that female swing voters are going to vote Obama—he made their core issues the most vocal issues of his entire campaign. Abortion was named the “single most important issue for women in this election” by female voters in 12 key swing states in an October Gallup poll and Democrats have been serving up women’s issues including abortion, access to contraception and healthcare for nearly a year, hammering home a Republican “war on women” that threatens their right to decision-making over their own bodies.

“How many women count on Planned Parenthood,” Cutter asked Matthews before repeating Mitt Romney’s debate statement on the publicly an privately funded women’s health clinic. According to Romney’s campaign website, “As president, [Romney] will end federal funding for abortion advocates like Planned Parenthood.” The Presidential candidate has gone on the record saying he would appoint court justices to repeal Roe v. Wade.

Read more from this story HERE.

At Least Michelle Obama Will Still Have a Job: TV Exec’s Eyeing Her as Talk Show Host

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Her husband could be out of a job in 48 hours, but Michelle Obama could step into a new career as a chat show host.

TV executives believe the First Lady would be a natural to become a talk show host. She has even been compared to Oprah Winfrey, the queen of chat show hosts and one of the most recognisable names in show business.

“Personally I would like to see her in the White House,” said Hilary Estey McLoughlin, president of syndication company behind the Ellen DeGeneres show. “But if she were not going to be in the White House, I’d love to see her as the host of a show. She’s amazing.”

And former CNN president Jon Klein agreed that the First Lady would be snapped up by TV chiefs if her husband does not win a second term in office. “Daytime syndicators are desperate for a new voice and she is tailor made for it,” he told TV Guide magazine.

Read more from this story HERE.