Internal Emails Offer Details on Bin Laden Burial

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WASHINGTON (AP) – Internal emails among U.S. military officers indicate that no sailors watched Osama bin Laden’s burial at sea from the USS Carl Vinson and traditional Islamic procedures were followed during the ceremony.

The emails, obtained by The Associated Press through the Freedom of Information Act, are heavily blacked out, but are the first public disclosure of government information about the al-Qaida leader’s death. The emails were released Wednesday by the Defense Department.

Bin Laden was killed on May 1, 2011, by a Navy SEAL team that assaulted his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

One email stamped secret and sent on May 2 by a senior Navy officer briefly describes how bin Laden’s body was washed, wrapped in a white sheet, and then placed in a weighted bag.

According to another message from the Vinson’s public affairs officer, only a small group of the ship’s leadership was informed of the burial.

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EPA at it Again: Teaching Guide Tells Non-English Speakers to Spy on Neighbors, Workplace

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(CNSNews.com) – The Environmental Protection Agency has published a teaching guide designed to teach adult non-English speakers the language with a curriculum on environmentalism, including a homework assignment telling students to “observe” their neighbors, school and workplace to see if recycling is taking place.

In the “Teach English, Teach About the Environment,” under the heading “Civic Integration Activity” in the beginner’s level Lesson Plan One on recycling, the following questions are asked:
1. Ask students to observe whether their neighbors recycle their waste.
2. Ask students to observe whether the school or their workplace recycles waste material.
3. Ask at the following class what they observed.

In the same lesson, the homework – or “home support activity” – is to calculate how much each student adds to the “waste stream.”

“Have students weigh themselves on their bathroom scale at home,” the guide states. “Then have them weigh themselves with the bag of household garbage thrown out each day. Multiply the weight difference by seven days, 30 days, and 365 days to get a sense of the amount of garbage generated by each student.”

The teaching guide focused on what the EPA calls the three Rs – recycle, reuse and reduce.

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Grassley Office: Leahy Working Behind Closed Doors on Privacy Bill

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Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley’s office leveled charges of working behind closed doors at Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy and his office following allegations and denials that he is aiming to allow law enforcement’s push for warrantless surveillance.

Leahy’s office first used Twitter and his website to hit back against criticism following a Tuesday CNET report about the senator’s proposed amendment to a bill affecting two 1980s-era surveillance bills — the 1988 Video Privacy Protection Act, and the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA).

Now Grassley, the committee ranking member, is charging that his office has been kept in the dark regarding the development of the bill.

Grassley spokeswoman Beth Levine told The Daily Caller on Wednesday that neither “Sen. Grassley nor his staff have seen the new legislation proposed by Sen. Leahy,” stating that the bill is being rewritten “behind closed doors.”

“But, judging by the concerns on both sides of the issue, it may be time to take a step back, hold additional hearings to address concerns, and discuss the issues being raised instead of rewriting the bill behind closed doors,” she added.

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Dem Operative Suspected in Serial Rapes

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photo credit: aranami

An attack by a Colorado man with close ties to the Democratic Party on an elderly petition gatherer for Personhood USA has led to the identification of a suspect in a series of unsolved sexual assault cases, officials have confirmed to WND.

William Costello, a real estate broker with ties to some of the state’s top political figures in the Democratic Party, was charged after his DNA was tied to unsolved sexual assault cases from 2008, 2010 and 2011.

The Denver Post reported Costello was driving the SUV of Democratic political strategist Mike Stratton when he was pulled over and arrested by authorities. Costello was using the SUV to deliver Democrat campaign signs in Durango, Colo.

Costello is also a friend of former Colorado Democratic Gov. Dick Lamm, who once asserted that elderly people have a “duty to die and get out of the way.” Lamm also has called for health-care rationing and complained that many elderly people feel entitled to have taxpayers fund medical procedures that will prolong their lives.

Costello allegedly sexually assaulted a 13-year-old girl in 2008, a 22-year-woman in 2010 and a 49-year-old woman in 2011. Authorities subsequently charged him with two counts of second-degree kidnapping, two accounts of sexual assault on a child and three counts of sexual assault. He was also charged with two counts of impersonating a police officer during two of the attacks.

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Senator Presses Geithner on Plan to Raise $100B for Global Green Fund

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photo credit: center for american progress

(CNSNews.com) – Ahead of the next big international climate meeting, U.S. Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) has asked Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner how the administration proposes the raise contributions to a $100 billion climate fund to which the U.S. signed up three years ago.

In a letter to Geithner Tuesday Vitter, the incoming ranking member on the Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works, said he was “interested to ascertain how Treasury plans on finding the lion’s share of an additional $100 billion, to give away to foreign nations while we continue to run deficits in excess of $1 trillion.”

At a climate conference in Copenhagen in December 2009, the U.S. and other developed nations agreed to put together a global fund to help developing countries curb greenhouse gas emissions and cope with phenomena blamed on climate change, such as droughts and rising sea levels.

Subsequently established in 2011, the “Green Climate Fund” (GCF) is meant to raise $100 billion a year from public and private sources by 2020.

At the climate conference beginning next Monday in Doha, Qatar, developing nation representatives and environmental advocates are hoping for progress in discussions on how the money will actually be raised.

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Two Dead, Eighty Injured in Massive 100 Vehicle Pileup in Texas

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BEAUMONT, Texas — Two people died and more than 80 people were hurt Thursday when at least 100 vehicles collided in Southeast Texas in a pileup that left trucks twisted on top of each other and authorities rushing to pull survivors from the wreckage.

The collision occurred in extremely foggy conditions at about 8:45 a.m. Thanksgiving Day on Interstate 10 southwest of Beaumont, a Gulf Coast city about 80 miles east of Houston.

A man and a woman were killed in a Chevy Suburban SUV crushed by a tractor trailer, the Texas Department of Public Safety told KFDM-TV.

Officials at Acadian Ambulance service said at least 51 people have been taken to area hospitals and at least eight are critically hurt.

According to DPS, a crash on the eastbound side of the highway led to other accidents in a dangerous chain reaction. There were multiple crashes on the other side of the highway as well.

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Report: Corroboration of Claim That Anonymous Hacked Romney’s Project ORCA (+video)

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A nonprofit devoted to election reform says a video released by hacktivist collective Anonymous days prior to the election corroborates claims from a mysterious hacktivist group that it is behind the Election Day failures of the Romney campaign’s Project ORCA.

The left-wing Velvet Revolution, which works to investigate and prove instances of electronic election tampering, offered IT specialists a $1 million reward for proof of instances of electronic election tampering during the 2012 cycle. The Velvet Revolution is particularly suspicious of Republicans.

Following the election, Velvet Revolution says they received a letter from a hacktivist group — referring to itself as “we protectors of democracy” — that claimed it was responsible for the program’s technical failures, and that it had found a system in place to electronically rig the election in three states. The letter did not offer any proof of its allegations.

“Regarding the Protectors letter, we posted the reward asking for info about electronic manipulation of the vote and then right after the election we received ‘The Protector’ letter at our POBox,” said Kevin Reese, an attorney for Velvet Revolution and a board member, in a press statement.

See Anonymous video:

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TSA Regrets ‘Accidental’ Breast Exposure of Congressman’s 17-Year-Old Niece During Pat-Down

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The Transportation Security Administration said it regrets the “accidental” breast exposure of a Texas congressman’s 17-year-old niece during a pat-down at Los Angeles International Airport.

The congressman, Republican Rep. Ralph Hall, and Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) are calling for a federal investigation into how the incident occurred, Atlanta’s WSB-TV reported Tuesday. The event took place more than two years ago, but only recently came to light through a Freedom of Information Act request.

According to a TSA incident report, Hall’s niece — who has not been publicly identified — was traveling to Australia with her Christian youth group on March 5, 2010 when she was pulled aside for a secondary screening. According to the report, the girl’s “loose-fitting strapless sundress” slipped down to her stomach during the pat-down by a female officer, “revealing her breasts.”

“During the pat-down of the stomach area (slide procedure), minor passenger’s sundress slipped down to her stomach, revealing her breasts,” the report said. The TSA officer “apologized to the minor passenger for the incident and contacted terminal management.”

The incident took place in the middle of the terminal, the report said. The officer did not offer the passenger a private screening and she did not request one. The girl’s chaperones were “visibly upset” and her father filed a complaint the following day, including noting that he had contacted Hall.

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Republican Senator Caves to Obama’s Demand for Higher Taxes

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photo credit: world economic forum

Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss (Ga.) on Wednesday said that addressing the nation’s looming “fiscal cliff” took precedence over honoring the anti-tax pledge he signed for conservative activist Grover Norquist.

“I care more about my country than I do about a 20-year-old pledge,” said Chambliss to local Georgia television station 13WMAZ. “If we do it his way then we’ll continue in debt, and I just have a disagreement with him about that.”

Chambliss said he expected that Norquist and some conservatives might hold his decision against him when he is up for reelection in 2014, but said he was confident he had made the right choice.

“I don’t worry about that because I care too much about my country. I care a lot more about it than I do Grover Norquist,” said Chambliss.

“I’m willing to do the right thing and let the political consequences take care of themselves,” the Georgia senator added.

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Americans Prefer Tebow to Obama as Thanksgiving Dinner Guest

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photo credit: jeffrey beall

Tim Tebow is America’s most popular Thanksgiving dinner guest, a new survery shows.

According to the survey, conducted by Nielsen, when asked who they would like to have as a Thanksgiving dinner guest, more Americans preferred Tim Tebow to President Obama.

The survey, released today by Destination America, shows that 23 percent of people in the United States said they would prefer the Jets backup to the Commander in Chief, who only garnered five percent of the vote.

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