NEW YORK TIMES: “It’s shocking, from my perspective, the number of people that we all know who are recreational marijuana users,” said Gavin Newsom, the lieutenant governor. “These are incredibly upstanding citizens: Leaders in our community, and exceptional people. Increasingly, people are willing to share how they use it and not be ashamed of it.” Marijuana can be smelled in suburban backyards in neighborhoods from Hollywood to Topanga Canyon as dusk falls — what in other places is known as the cocktail hour — often wafting in from three sides. In some homes in Beverly Hills and San Francisco, it […]
There Is A Mass Murder In This Country Every 2 Weeks
USA TODAY: Mass killers target Americans once every two weeks on average, in attacks that range from robberies to horrific public shooting sprees like the massacre Friday of 27 people in Newtown, Conn., a USA TODAY examination found. Using news accounts and FBI records from 2006 through 2010, the most recent years for which complete records were available, USA TODAY identified 156 murders that met the FBI definitions of mass killings, where four or more people were killed. All told, the attacks killed 774 people, including at least 161 young children. The review offers perhaps the most current, complete picture […]
ARTSY: Postering Over The Fiscal Bluff
RELATED: Our country isn’t broke — It’s being robbed. Stand up against cuts to vital programs and demand the wealthy pay their fair share. You’ve probably heard about the political game called “The Fiscal Cliff.” But, it’s actually a Fiscal Bluff — a self inflicted crisis designed to create urgency to make us believe our nation is broke and that we must cut vital programs. This is false and we won’t stand for it. Corrupt billionaires, tax-dodging corporations, and those who serve them have manufactured this crisis and are refusing to pay their fair share. Join us in telling them: […]
WORTH REPEATING: A Well-Regulated Militia
NEW YORKER: Does the Second Amendment prevent Congress from passing gun-control laws? The question, which is suddenly pressing, in light of the reaction to the school massacre in Newtown, is rooted in politics as much as law. For more than a hundred years, the answer was clear, even if the words of the amendment itself were not. The text of the amendment is divided into two clauses and is, as a whole, ungrammatical: “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” […]
How To Disarm The NRA: All You Need Is Love & $38 Mil
BY JONATHAN VALANIA FOR THE PHILLY POST It is a sad testament to the depth of our national indifference that it took the massacre of 20 six year olds in their first grade classroom to finally trigger a united and sustained public outcry for an end to the madness. After 62 mass murders and counting since 1982, we have, it would appear, finally reached the tipping point. On this we can all agree: Never again. In fairness, this complacency was not entirely our own fault, it was, by and large, fostered and fomented by the National Rifle Association, which runs […]
Meet The Man Boy Currently Powning Westboro Baptist
BETA BEAT: Anonymous announced its intention to “destroy” Westboro Baptist Church this weekend following news that the group would be picketing the funerals of children who died in Friday’s horrific school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. Now, infamous 15-year-old hacker Cosmo the God of the Underground Nazi Hacktivist Group (UGNazi) appears to have joined the fray. The Twitter account of much-reviled Westboro spokesperson Shirley Phelps-Roper has been hacked, and Cosmo is claiming responsibility. Ms. Phelps-Roper is the daughter of Fred Phelps, who is the head of the WBC. Cosmo and the UG Nazi crew gained notoriety over the past year for […]
Mother Of Sandy Hook Gunman Was A ‘Doomsday Prepper,’ Armed To The Teeth & Stockpiling Food
…And seemingly oblivious to the real threat. BELFAST TELEGRAPH: The mother of Sandy Hook gunman Adam Lanza who slaughtered 20 US schoolchildren and seven adults was a gun-hoarding survivalist who was stockpiling weapons in preparation for an economic collapse, it has emerged. Nancy Lanza was shot four times in the head before her son Adam gunned down young pupils and teachers at Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut. Her sister-in-law Marsha Lanza told reporters at her Illinois home that her gun-obsessed relative was part of the ‘prepper’ movement that fears an economic collapse will lead to a breakdown in […]
SMUS: Corporate Wealthfare To Work
BY WILLIAM C. HENRY Recently I authored a piece on the fiscal impasse that showcased the deceit of the military/industrial complex and its partners in arms the cowardly and complicit in the Democratic and Republican parties, and the scapegoat social welfare programs on which they’re trying to pin the rap. Now I’d like to shed a little light on the second most rogue elephant in the rooms of capitol hill. It’s called “corporate” welfare. It’s the aptly named, equally insidious, other nasty little secret the One Percenters and their Washington minions are loathe to talk about lest they be […]
SH*T MY UNCLE SAYS: Beware The Trojan Elephant
BY WILLIAM C. HENRY In the coming weeks, look for Republicans to offer a percentage point or two increase in the top tax rate in exchange for slashed spending on social welfare programs, and parade it as evidence of their willingness to “compromise.” How magnanimous. Even more deceitful, however, pay particular notice to the fact that neither party will even hint at reasonable, let alone drastic, reductions in our barbarous military squandering — call it the ultimate “hawk” that never gets dredged up and expelled — when they present their respective Pecksniffian “equitable” and “responsible” (do not under any […]
NOTHING IS REAL: The JFK Assassination
Illustration by PRINT MAFIA The Last Confessions of E. Howard Hunt He was the ultimate keeper of secrets, lurking in the shadows of American history. He toppled banana republics, planned the Bay of Pigs invasion and led the Watergate break-in. Now he would reveal what he’d always kept hidden: who killed JFK BY ERIK HEDEGAARD/ROLLING STONE EDITOR’S NOTE: Ordinarily we would tease a few paragraphs from the story and then send you to RS’s web site, but for reasons unclear this article is no longer there. Hence we have run it here in its entirety. It originally ran in the […]
MEDIA: Anderson Cooper’s First World Problems
The difference between Anderson Cooper flying to Gaza to get the ‘optics’ right for his reporting on the Israel Defense Forces’ bombing campaign — ducking off-camera when one lands a little too close for comfort — and the Palestinians that live in Gaza is that Anderson Cooper can leave any time he wants. RELATED: Death From Above
NPR FOR THE DEF: Giving Public Radio Edge Since 2006
Illustration by ROBERLAN FRESH AIR What did Jesus look like? The many different depictions of Christ tell a story about race and religion in America. Edward J. Blum and Paul Harvey explore that history in their new book, The Color of Christ: The Son of God and the Saga of Race in America. The book traces how different races and ethnic groups claimed Christ as their own — and how depictions of Jesus have both inspired civil rights crusades, and been used to justify the violence of white supremacists. The Ku Klux Klan could not rely on Christian doctrine to […]
SIDEWALKING: Death From Above
A Palestinian man carries the dead body of a child from the al-Dallu family out from the rubble after an Israeli missile struck a family home killing at least seven members of the same family in Gaza City on November 18, 2012. Via AFP CBS NEWS: An Israeli missile ripped through a two-story home in a residential area of Gaza City on Sunday, killing at least 11 civilians, including four young children and an 81-year-old woman, in the single deadliest attack of Israel’s offensive against Islamic militants. A similar scene unfolded elsewhere in the city early Monday, when an airstrike […]