Thursday, February 12, 2015

MSNBC's Duck Dynasty

By D.R. Tucker

I hate having to agree with Fox Opinion Channel personality Megyn Kelly, but I can't dispute her point about the bizarre segment on the February 8 edition of MSNBC's Melissa Harris-Perry, in which Harris-Perry actually asked outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder to quack like a duck.
 
Granted, MSNBC's weekend programming hasn't been the same since Chris Hayes left Up in 2013 to host his weeknight broadcast All In, but this segment was just too daffy. Holder, who answered graciously nonetheless, seemed to know that something had gone off the rails; while responding to Harris-Perry, he seemed to be second-guessing his decision to participate in the interview.

Reportedly, there has been a lot of second-guessing at the network, and it's not hard to understand why. MSNBC has a credibility problem - though its not about ducks or even Brian Williams - but a segment on the February 9 edition of The Ed Show unintentionally highlighted its magnitude...

In that segment, host Ed Schultz discussed President Obama's remarks in a recent interview with Matthew Yglesias of Vox, in which Obama observed that the press tends to give the climate issue short shrift, while obsessing over issues such as terrorism.

Schultz, Ring of Fire radio host and attorney Mike Papantonio, League of Conservation Voters Senior VP for Government Affairs Tiernan Sittenfeld and conservation biologist Reese Halter noted that the mainstream media had indeed been negligent about covering the climate crisis, with Papantonio specifically citing the role of the Fox Opinion Channel in warping the climate conversation.

The problem with the segment was that one could not watch it without remembering that MSNBC is:
As great as MSNBC hosts Hayes, Schultz, Rachel Maddow and Alex Wagner are on the climate issue, it's hard to deny that in many respects, MSNBC has itself ducked its journalistic obligation to provide comprehensive coverage of the most significant issue of our time, presumably due to concerns about offending fossil-fuel advertisers. The Fox Opinion Channel has certainly poisoned the waters of scientific discussion, but MSNBC also deserves criticism for not giving the climate crisis top billing.
* * *
D.R. Tucker is a Massachusetts-based freelance writer and a former contributor to the conservative website Human Events Online. He has also written for the Washington Monthly, Huffington Post, the Boston Herald, the Boston Globe Magazine, ClimateCrocks.com and FrumForum.com, among others. In addition, he hosted a Blog Talk Radio program, The Notes, from August 2009 to June, 2010, and served as a co-host of On the Green Front with Betsy Rosenberg on the Progressive Radio Network from August 2011 to March 2014. Currently, he is a contributor to the Climate Minute and Climate Notes podcasts for the Massachusetts Climate Action Network. You can follow him on Twitter here: @DRTucker.

Welcome to what the Supreme Court wrought

Posted by Jim Hightower


After the Supreme Court's democracy-mugging decree that corporations can dump unlimited amounts of their shareholders' money into our election campaigns, a guy named Larry sent an email to me that perfectly summed up what had just been done to us: "Big money has plucked our eagle!"

Thanks to the court's freakish Citizens United ruling, the Koch brothers have already amassed an unprecedented $900 million electioneering fund, making them the Godfathers of tea-party Republicanism.

Thus, such presidential wannabes as Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, and Scott Walker are shamelessly scurrying to kiss the Koch ring and pledge fealty to the brotherhood's extremist plutocratic agenda.

But big money is not only corrupting candidates, but also greatly diminishing voter participation in what has become a made-for-TV farce. The biggest chunk of cash spent by Koch, Inc. will go right into a mind-numbing squall of ads. They will not explain why we should vote for so and so, but instead will be nauseatingly-negative attack ads, trashing the candidates the Koch syndicate opposes.

Worse, voters will not even be informed that the the Kochs paid for this garbage, since the Supreme Court says they can run secret campaigns, laundering their money through front groups to keep voters from knowing what special interests are really behind the attacks.

We saw the impact of secret, unrestricted corporate money in last year's midterm elections. It produced a blight of negativity, a failure of the system to address the people's real needs, an upchuck factor that kept nearly two-thirds of the people from voting, a rising alienation of the many from the political process – and a Congress owned by corporate elites.

The Koch machine spent about $400 million to get those results. This time, they'll spend more than twice that.

"16 Koch Budget is $889 Million," The New York Times, January 27, 2015.
"Shine light on campaign 'dark money'," The Austin American Statesman, February 1, 2015.
"Koch Network Vows To Spend Nearly $900 Million To Buy Presidency And Congress," www.alternet.org, January 27, 2015.

Fox Crew Robbed While Filming Powerball News Segment




A Fox-affiliated news crew was attacked in Hayward early Wednesday, the latest in a string of robberies targeting media in the Bay Area, authorities said.

The KTVU-Channel 2 crew was wrapping up filming for a Powerball segment at a convenience store in Hayward when the attack occurred, said Sgt. Tasha Decosta of the Hayward Police Department.
Authorities said a cameraman was loading his equipment into a news van when two men walked up and pushed him to the ground.

The robbers - who never brandished a weapon - stole a camera, microphone and other equipment, Decosta said. The equipment was valued at $50,000.

An ambulance was called after the cameraman complained of neck pain.  The victim was not taken to a hospital, Decosta said.

This incident is the latest attack on media representatives in the Bay Area. Last July, a KPIX-TV news team had a laptop and personal belongings stolen from a TV van, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. A member of that same news crew was punched and robbed during a live broadcast in 2012, the newspaper reported.

The Chronicle reported that some news stations have ordered security guards to accompany reporters and news crews when covering stories.

KTVU did not return a call for comment.

Wednesday, February 11, 2015

Don’t disrespect our President, black lawmakers tell Netanyahu

By Edward-Isaac Dovere and Lauren French

The audience for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress on March 3 is shaping up to be largely Republican—and almost completely white.

Many members of the Congressional Black Caucus say they’re planning to skip the speech, calling it a slight to President Barack Obama that they can’t and won’t support.

Israeli officials have been caught by surprise by the CBC backlash, kicked off by Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), a civil rights leader who said last week he wouldn’t attend, quickly followed by Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) and others. As a result, they’re working to set up a meeting for CBC members with Ambassador Ron Dermer or even Netanyahu himself when he’s in Washington.

“To me, it is somewhat of an insult to the president of the United States,” said Rep. Greg Meeks (D-N.Y.), leaving the White House on Tuesday after a long meeting with Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, who’s skipping the speech himself. “Barack Obama is my president, he’s the nation’s president, and it is clear therefore that I’m not going to be there, as a result of that, not as a result of the good people of Israel.”

Netanyahu’s speech to Congress, scheduled just two weeks before Israeli national elections, is aimed at stopping a deal with Iran over its nuclear weapons program — a diplomatic opening Obama administration officials believe could reintegrate Iran into the international community and enhance Israel’s security. Netanyahu, however, feels the United States and its international partners are being naive about Iran’s true intents.

“I’m determined to speak before Congress to stop Iran,” Netanyahu tweeted on Tuesday.

Democrats across Capitol Hill have been increasingly vocal about their opposition to the speech, criticizing the prime minister and House Speaker John Boehner for making them choose between their support for their president and support for Israel. Announcements that Democrats plan to sit out the speech have trickled in steadily for days.

But the CBC reaction has been particularly potent, striking at the political alliance between Jews and African-Americans that dates to the Civil Rights movement but has grown more fraught over the years.

Often Obama’s strongest defenders against political attacks, black members say they’re outraged that a foreign leader would try to intervene in the U.S. political process.

“It’s not just about disrespect for the president, it’s disrespect for the American people and our system of government for a foreign leader to insert himself into a issue that our policy makers are grappling with,” said Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.). “It’s not simply about President Obama being a black man disrespected by a foreign leader. It’s deeper than that.”

CBC chair Rep. G.K. Butterfield (D-N.C.) told reporters that the speech didn’t come up as a topic in the 90 minutes they spent with Obama in the Cabinet Room. But he, like Meeks, Johnson and many of his members, is not planning to go to Netanyahu’s speech.

Butterfield said the black caucus is in “conversation” with Israeli officials to set up a meeting with either Netanyahu or the ambassador, who has already met with several black members of Congress as part of his efforts to calm the furor.

“CBC members are willing certainty to meet with any representative of Israel. We understand Israel’s plight and we support the state of Israel,” Butterfield said.

The CBC leader said Boehner is as much or more responsible for the slight as the Israeli leader.

“I don’t hold Netanyahu responsible,” Butterfield said. “I hold Speaker Boehner responsible but I would hope that Mr. Netanyahu would not want to get involved. I personally think it is disrespectful.”

That was a word many members used: “It is very disrespectful to this president, and what concerns me more is that I think it’s a pattern that is starting to developing from this speaker that we’re getting more and more disrespectful of the office of the presidency,” said Rep. Cedric Richmond (D-La.). “I think it’s silly and petty.”

Asked if CBC members see the speech as an insult, Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-Fla.) said, “I think they kind of think it is.”

Cory Booker (D-N.J.), the only CBC member in the Senate, hasn’t ruled out attending, but he won’t commit to going either.

“I’ve been asked that a number of times — I’m not commenting,” he said before slipping out the White House gates and onto a waiting bus to bring him back to the Capitol.

A spokesman for the Israeli Embassy had no comment about the breakdown with the CBC over the speech. but a spokesman for Boehner defended the speaker’s decision to invite the Israeli leader: “Prime Minister Netanyahu’s upcoming visit isn’t about Speaker Boehner, and it’s not about President Obama,” spokesman Cory Fisher said. “At this critical moment it’s important that the American people hear from Israel about the grave threats posed by Iran and Islamic radicalism.”

Though many CBC members are boycotting, for now they’ve decided not to make it an official caucus position.

“There are a number of members who aren’t going to attend, but they don’t want to make it sound like a group decision,” said Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.).

CBC members Reps. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) and Donna Edwards (D-Md.) have also announced they’re skipping the speech. Fellow CBC member Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) co-signed a letter Tuesday to Boehner with Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) calling for the speech to be postponed.

“The timing of this invitation and lack of coordination with the White House indicate that this is not an ordinary diplomatic visit,” they wrote. “When the Israeli prime minister visits us outside the specter of partisan politics, we will be delighted and honored to greet him or her on the floor of the House.”

The idea of meeting with Dermer or Netanyahu separately doesn’t seem to be catching on with CBC members either. Noting that Dermer once worked for Republican pollster Frank Luntz, Johnson called the ambassador a “long-time, right-wing political hack” and said he was uninterested in meeting with either him or Netanyahu.

“I don’t think I would be willing to come to such a meeting,” Johnson said. “Not at that time, and under this condition, no.”

Friday, February 6, 2015

Chris Hayes: What's Really In Those Supplements Sold By Major Retailers?

By karoli

Chris Hayes expanded on the story Susie posted earlier this week about the natural supplements which were devoid of that ingredient on the label they purported to contain.



Here's a little more specific information:
Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman and Executive Deputy Attorney General Martin J. Mack issued cease-and-desist orders to GNC Holdings, Inc., Target Corporation, Walgreens, Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., regarding the marketing of up to seven herbal supplements: Gingko [sic] biloba, St. John’s Wort, Ginseng, Garlic, Echinacea, Saw Palmetto, and Valerian root. (Valerian was only tested from Target, in place of Ginseng.)
The office states that products from three or four New York state retail stores were tested up to five times each by a DNA barcoding technique developed at the University of Guelph, Ontario and published last year in the journal, BMC Medicine.
The actions have nothing to do with the clinical effectiveness of the products, another issue entirely and one that is not required under the 1994 Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA).
According the formal documents, an attorney general’s researcher, Dr. James A. Schulte II of Clarkson University in Potsdam, NY, determined that only 4 percent to 41 percent of products contained DNA from the plant species indicated on the product label.

While some samples had absolutely no DNA in them, some had DNA from other plants entirely. Some Ginkgo and saw palmetto products contained garlic whereas some garlic products contained no garlic at all.
Isn't this straight-up fraud? Whatever you might think about the efficacy of supplements themselves, people are being told that a bottle of "X" actually contains "X" when in fact, it contains little pieces of "A, Z and Y". It seems to me that a cease-and-desist order is the very least they should be doing here. How about an investigation?

Or better yet, how about some regulation of the supplement industry? Oh, wait. As Hayes points out, Senator Orrin Hatch is the guy who made sure supplements could escape regulation, since Utah is the "Silicon Valley" of the supplement industry.

I wonder if there's a connection between the lunacy that is anti-vaxxers and the supplements they're taking.

Yes, ISIS Burned A Man Alive. White Americans Did The Same Thing To Thousands Of Black People

Thursday, February 5, 2015

Don Lemon tweets shirtless selfie of “measles shot scar” — and gets mercilessly mocked

Why does Don Lemon still have a job?




Don Lemon tweets shirtless selfie of "measles shot scar" -- and gets mercilessly mocked (Credit: CNN)
The latest public health scare is the recent measles outbreak, which originated in Anaheim, Calif.’s Disneyland and has spread to 14 states thanks to the un- and under-vaccinated. Now, pundits and politicians are all weighing in on the issue of mandatory vaccinations, with sane, educated adults rightly promoting their universal use.
CNN’s Don Lemon, the same man who asked if a plane could have been swallowed by a black hole or other supernatural force, couldn’t resist chiming in. On Monday evening, he posted the below tweet:
Thing one: I do not, under any circumstances, need to see Don’s chest hair. Thing two: Measles vaccinations don’t leave a scar, although the smallpox vaccine used to.


The anchor later corrected his mistake, tweeting:
The only issue with that explanation is that the smallpox vaccination was stopped in 1972 when the disease was eradicated in the United States. Measles has obviously not been eradicated.

Why is Don Lemon still talking at us?
Joanna Rothkopf Joanna Rothkopf is an assistant editor at Salon, focusing on science, health and society. Follow @JoannaRothkopf or email jrothkopf@salon.com.

Wednesday, February 4, 2015

Why the Right’s Free-Market Health Philosophy Is Ludicrous

No, America Has Never Been a Christian Country - Why Does the Myth Persist?

A historian challenges conservative claims that the U.S. has a single religious heritage.

By Laura Miller, Salon



As Peter Manseau, author of “One Nation, Under Gods: A New American History,”would have it, nothing has done more damage to the ideal of American religious pluralism than the “stubborn persistence of words spoken more than a century before the United States was a nation at all.” Those words are “a city upon a hill,” preached by the Puritan John Winthrop to his fellow colonists as they prepared to leave their ship at Massachusetts Bay in 1630.

Most strenuously invoked by Ronald Reagan, the city on the hill, according to Manseau, has for the past 50 years “dominated presidential rhetoric about the nation’s self-understanding, causing an image borrowed from the Gospels to become a tenet of faith in America’s civil religion.”

The incessant citation of Winthrop’s metaphor — which envisioned the fledgling colony as a shining example set up to inspire the world but also to invite its comprehensive moral scrutiny — keeps reinforcing the assumption that the United States is fundamentally Christian. There’s more behind that stubborn belief than just rhetoric, of course, but when even ostensibly pluralistic presidents like John F. Kennedy and Barack Obama conjure up Winthrop’s biblical metaphor, it starts to take on the aura of an unquestioned truth.

Well, Manseau certainly questions it with “One Nation, Under Gods,” an unusual work of history meant to revive the idea that the U.S. is a “land shaped and informed by internal religious diversity — some of it obvious, some of it hidden.” Most key points in our national narrative involve a non-Christian element if you look closely, he maintains. “One Nation, Under Gods” is less a continuous narrative itself than a series of isolated snapshots, each chapter telling the story of a person considered a heretic, blasphemer, atheist or heathen, who nevertheless helped in some way to shape the course of American history.

A few of Manseau’s examples are familiar, particularly Thomas Jefferson, the founding father often branded an atheist in his own time and whose Deism today’s Christian conservatives strategically overlook. In a deft move, Manseau captures Jefferson’s heterodox status by relating how, as an old man, the third president offered to sell 6,000 volumes from his own personal library to the nation. (These books remain the core collection of the Library of Congress.) It was a controversial proposal, as some critics complained that Jefferson’s library “abounded with productions of atheistical, irreligious and immoral character,” and some were even “in the original French”! In examining Jefferson’s own cataloging system, Manseau finds evidence of the Sage of Monticello’s conviction that “religious systems inevitably and necessarily interact with each other in ways at once contentious, intimate and transformative.”

Some of the stories in “One Nation, Under Gods” are more surprising. “It is perhaps the greatest of forgotten influences on American life and culture,” Manseau writes, that some 20 percent or more of Africans living in America around the time of the Revolutionary War were Muslims, a quantity that “dwarfed the number of Roman Catholics or Jews.” The majority of enslaved Africans did practice such Western African religions as Yoruba and Obeah, all of which contributed to the distinctive customs of African-American Christianity. But we also have a handful of stories of African Muslims abducted to the U.S., where, as in the case of one Omar ibn Said, they astonished the natives by writing fluently in a strange alphabet (Arabic) and impressed, if also bewildered, everyone with their abstemious piety.

Tituba, a slave, was the first person accused in the Salem Witch Trials, and although often depicted as African, she was most likely an “Indian” from South America, by way of Barbados. She had made a “witch cake” (a nasty concoction of rye flour and urine) for divinatory purposes, and in doing so was probably tapping into multiple folk traditions, including those of the colonists’ own native England.

Manseau believes such practices, though forbidden, were anything but rare in the colonies and should be thought of as “a kind of spiritual equalizer, providing religious authority outside social structures that were inevitably defined at times by class and gender.” Tituba herself quickly figured out that the best course of action when called up before the court was to “confess” every lurid detail the magistrates wanted to hear, including the visits she received from the devil, his commands that she serve him, and the culpability of her two co-defendants (unpopular village women) in casting spells on children. As a result, Tituba was the only one of the three to escape execution. Long before the advent of modern-day spin doctors, she grasped the advantage of getting ahead of the story.

Then there is the network of Jewish merchants extending from Pennsylvania to Amsterdam by way of the island of St. Eustatius, in the Caribbean, a major conduit of supplies and funds through the British blockade during the Revolutionary War. One Polish Jew, Haym Solomon, gave so much money to the cause of independence that he died penniless. He and his co-religionists, driven from one European nation to another in a roundelay of persecution, hoped and believed they could finally find refuge in the fledgling nation.

It was Ralph Waldo Emerson’s brilliant, irascible Aunt Mary, a “prototypical American eccentric,” who first introduced her nephew and intellectual protégé to the concepts and iconography of Hindu mythology after she met “a Visitor here from India” in 1822. Their correspondence on these and other spiritual matters would inform Transcendentalism and in turn the Eastern-infused philosophies of generations to come. (Manseau provides a survey of Hindu beliefs and stories cropping up in the work of Thoreau and even Melville, as well as a persistent interest in Indian religion on the part of American feminists like Elizabeth Palmer Peabody and Margaret Fuller.)

But perhaps the most fascinating chapter in “One Nation, Under Gods” explores recent theories about the influence of a syncretic Native American revival movement on Joseph Smith and his Book of Mormon. The young half-brother of a Seneca chief, Handsome Lake, was an aging, ne’er-do-well hunter who experienced a revelation during a near-fatal illness. What was revealed to him fused Iroquois mythology with Quaker-like morality into a re-imagined creation story explaining how the Iroquois had fallen so low in their own land. Handsome Lake died when Smith was 10, but a Mormon scholar has pointed out that only weeks before Smith’s own visions commenced, Handsome Lake’s nephew spoke at a public gathering in Smith’s town of Palmyra, New York.

The Code of Handsome Lake, like the Mormon story of the Native Americans as a lost tribe of Israel, is “a tale of white and Indian unity interrupted by evils brought across the sea.” Both creeds stressed sobriety and involved the manifestation of three angelic presences charged with guiding the inhabitants of the New World to a better future. Both were born during a period of intense, innovative religious activity known as the Second Great Awakening and arose in a region of Western New York state dubbed “the Burned-Over District” for the fervor that seemed to consume everyone in the vicinity. Shakers, utopian communities, millenarians and spiritualists were just some of the unorthodox and fractious believers who flourished there.

But even the idea that Winthrop’s little community represented a unified city on a hill is an illusion, as the Puritan dissidents Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson could testify. The Pilgrims might have all called themselves Christians, but some differences among them were seen by their theocratic leaders as profound threats to the spiritual survival of the community. Both Williams and Hutchinson were cast out and created communities of their own. There was literally never a point in the history of the colonies or the U.S. when all or most Americans genuinely shared the same faith. “The true gospel of the American experience,” Manseau writes, “is not religious agreement but dissent.”

Tuesday, February 3, 2015

Magna Carta originals reunited for 800th anniversary

By




















Visitors look at the Lincoln Cathedral Magna Carta during the opening of an exhibition celebrating the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, November 6, 2014.

The four surviving original Magna Carta copies go on display together for the first time from Monday as Britain kicks off 800th anniversary celebrations for a contract with global significance.

Considered the cornerstone of liberty, modern democracy, justice and the rule of law, the 1215 English charter forms the basis for legal systems around the world, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the US constitution.

A total of 1,215 people, drawn from a ballot, have won the chance to see the unification at the British Library, which is bringing together its two originals with those of Lincoln and Salisbury cathedrals from Monday to Wednesday.

The four parchments will also be on private show in parliament on Thursday, kicking off a year of celebrations for a document that still has resonance eight centuries on.

"No free man shall be taken or imprisoned or disseized or outlawed or exiled or in any way ruined, nor will we go and send against him except by the lawful judgement of his peers by the law of the land," it states in Latin.

"To no one will we sell, to no one will we deny or delay right or justice."

- Rebel barons challenged king -

In June 1215, the wayward king John agreed to the demands of rebellious barons to curb his powers and sealed the charter at Runnymede, a meadow by the River Thames west of London.

Although nearly a third of the text was dropped or substantially rewritten within 10 years and almost all the 63 clauses have been repealed, Magna Carta's principles have become "a potent, international rallying cry against the arbitrary use of power", says the British Library.

Anthony Clarke, one of Britain's Supreme Court judges, said it remains important as governments seek a balance between issues of security, individual rights, the rule of law and the "principles of justice that lie at the foundation of society".

The principles that justice should be available to all, the law applies to all equally and leaders can only exercise power in accordance with the law continue to be fought for in many parts of the world.

The Magna Carta Trust, which looks after the memorial site in Runnymede, believes the charter's importance is growing.

"800 years on, Magna Carta's best days lie ahead," it said.

"As an idea of freedom, democracy and the rule of law, it is lapping against the shores of despotism.

"The principles set out in Magna Carta have driven the Arab Spring and the continuing protests against despotism around the world."

- Charter linked to prosperity -

Magna Carta's principles extend well beyond the world's common law jurisdictions such as the United States, India and Australia which inherited England's legal system.

Lawyer David Wootton, a former lord mayor of London -- a role representing the city's business heartland -- said English law was the "common currency" of global business deals precisely due to the protections derived from Magna Carta.

"Investors regard their money as safe here (in London) because of the protections in the legal system," he said.

"There is a close relationship between economic development, societal development and the quality of a country's legal system."

Events are being staged across England throughout 2015 to mark the anniversary, including a major international commemoration event at Runnymede on June 15.

Exhibitions, debates, conferences, church services, lectures, charity dinners, theater performances, tourist trails, village fetes, and even a national peal of bells are being staged.

There will also be a mock trial of the barons who forced the creation of the charter in parliament's Westminster Hall to debate whether they were guilty of treason.

Magna Carta Found In Council Archives, Valued At £10 Million
PA | [Press Association] Posted: 08/02/2015 02:04 GMT Updated: 08/02/2015 02:59 GM

An edition of the Magna Carta which could be worth up to £10 million has been found after it lay forgotten in a council's archives. The discovery of the version of the historical parchment which established the principle of the rule of law, in the files of the history department of Kent County Council, has been described as an important historical find by an expert.

The document was found in the archives kept in Maidstone but belonging to the town of Sandwich. Speaking from Paris, Professor Nicholas Vincent, of the University of East Anglia, who authenticated the document, said: "It is a fantastic discovery which comes in the week that the four other known versions were brought together at the Houses of Parliament. It is a fantastic piece of news for Sandwich which puts it in a small category of towns and institutions that own a 1300 issue."

Prof Vincent said the fact Sandwich had its own Magna Carta gives backing to the theory that it was issued more widely than previously thought to at least 50 cathedral towns and ports. And he added the discovery gives him hope that further copies will also turn up.

There are only 24 editions of the Magna Carta in known existence around the world.

Prof Vincent said: "It must have been much more widely distributed than previously thought because if Sandwich had one... the chances are it went out to a lot of other towns. And it is very likely that there are one or two out there somewhere that no one has spotted yet."

Prof Vincent, who specializes in medieval history, said the value of the Sandwich edition could be up to £10 million, but it was ripped with about a third missing. He said: "This would be an upper value as it has, like the town of Sandwich, suffered over time from French invasions and the like."

The discovery was made by archivist Dr Mark Bateson at the end of December just before the 800th anniversary year celebrations of King John's concession. The Sandwich Magna Carta was found when Prof Vincent asked Dr Bateson to look up a copy of the town's original Charter of the Forest.

It was found next to the charter in a Victorian scrapbook and its high value comes from the fact it also comprises the Forest Charter. There is only one other such pair in the world, owned by Oriel College, Oxford. It is understood that Sandwich does not intend to sell its Magna Carta but instead is hoping to benefit from its potential as a tourist attraction.

Paul Graeme, mayor of Sandwich Town Council, said: "On behalf of Sandwich Town Council, I would like to say that we are absolutely delighted to discover that an original Magna Carta and original Charter of the Forest, previously unknown, are in our ownership.

"To own one of these documents, let alone both, is an immense privilege given their international importance. Perhaps it is fitting that they belong to a town where Thomas Paine lived, who proposed in his pamphlet Common Sense a Continental Charter for what were then the American colonies, 'answering to what is called the Magna Carta of England... securing freedom and property to all men, and ... the free exercise of religion'."

He added: "Through the American Declaration of Independence, continuing in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Magna Carta still underpins individual liberties worldwide. To own such a document - and the Charter of the Forest - is an honor and a great responsibility."

The four known 1215 editions are from Salisbury Cathedral, Lincoln Cathedral and two held at the British Library. They were brought together for a one-day exhibition at Parliament for a crowd of 2,015 chosen by a public ballot.

Speaking of the exhibition, the Lord Speaker, Baroness D'Souza, said: "Magna Carta established the principle of the rule of law and equality before the law; for 800 years we have been influenced by its contents and it remains one of the most important political documents in the world, with countries such as the United States, Australia, New Zealand and Canada tracing constitutional influences back to Magna Carta.

The Speaker, Rt Hon John Bercow MP, said: "Over the past eight centuries the public and their Parliament have shaped society and changed the way we live our lives. The sealing of the Magna Carta in 1215 and the Montfort parliament of 1265 marked the start of the journey towards modern rights and representation, paving the way for the House of Commons and democracy as we know it today."

The parchment, which was issued by Edward I in 1300, is the final version of Magna Carta and three of its clauses remain on the statute books today. These include the defense of the church, the protection of the City of London and the right to trial by jury.

The first Magna Carta was drafted by the Archbishop of Canterbury and agreed by King John on June 15, 1215 to make peace with a group of rebel barons. It was reissued and reaffirmed on many occasions in subsequent years.

  • Alastair Grant/AP
    Members of the media film four of the original surviving Magna Carta manuscripts that have been brought together by the British Library for the first time, during a media preview in London, Monday, Feb. 2, 2015. The event marks the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta, which established the timeless principle that no individual, even a monarch, is above the law. The original Magna Carta manuscripts were written and sealed in late June and early July 1215, and sent individually throughout the country.
  • Matt Dunham/AP
    Lines of manuscript text are seen through a glass cabinet on the Salisbury Cathedral 1215 copy of the Magna Carta as it is displayed with the three other surviving original parchment engrossments of the Magna Carta to mark the 800th anniversary of the sealing of Magna Carta at Runnymede in 1215, in the Queen's Robing Room at the Houses of Parliament in London, Thursday, Feb. 5, 2015.
  • Alastair Grant/AP
    The seal of King John is seen on one of the four original surviving Magna Carta manuscripts that have been brought together by the British Library for the first time, during a media preview in London, Monday, Feb. 2, 2015. King John agreed the terms of the charter known originally as the Charter of Runnymede, now known as the Magna Carta, on June, 15, 1015, they were authenticated by John's great seal, not his signature, which established the timeless principle that no individual, even a monarch, is above the law.
  • Matt Dunham/PA Wire
    The Salisbury Cathedral 1215 copy of the Magna Carta is installed in a cabinet by Chris Woods (right), the director of the National Conservation Service, to be displayed alongside the other three surviving original parchment engrossments of the Magna Carta to mark the 800th anniversary of the sealing of Magna Carta at Runnymede in 1215, in the Queen's Robing Room at the Houses of Parliament in London.
  • Matt Dunham/PA Wire
    People including Salisbury Cathedral archivist Emily Naish (left) look at the Salisbury Cathedral 1215 copy of the Magna Carta as it is displayed with the three other surviving original parchment engrossments of the Magna Carta to mark the 800th anniversary of the sealing of Magna Carta at Runnymede in 1215, in the Queen's Robing Room at the Houses of Parliament in London.
  • Matt Dunham/PA Wire
    People look at the four surviving original parchment engrossments of the 1215 Magna Carta as they are displayed to mark the 800th anniversary of the sealing of Magna Carta at Runnymede in 1215, in the Queen's Robing Room at the Houses of Parliament in London.
  • Philip Toscano/PA Wire
    Director of Information Services and Librarian at the House of Lords, Elizabeth Hallam Smith (second right) with Sir Tim Berners-Lee (right) with his family, looking at the Salisbury Cathedral 1215 copy of the Magna Carta as part of the Maqna Carta and Parliament exhibition in the Palace of Westminster, London.

Monday, February 2, 2015

17 Year Old Kristiana Coignard Shot And Killed By 3 Police Officers After Brandishing Knife

Sunday, February 1, 2015

Insiders aiding online, off-shore loan sharks

Posted by Jim Hightower


When it comes to pursuing their prey, sharks are master maneuverers. Loan sharks, that is.

These days, this usurious species goes by the less threatening name of "payday lenders." But they are no less voracious, targeting folks in rough financial straits and luring them with easy-money come-ons. With lethal interest rates of more than 700 percent, automatic renewal clauses, and other razor-sharp gotchas, a $500 payday loan can sink a hapless borrower thousands of dollars into debt. That's why states have been restricting the sharks' interest-rate gouging and entrapment techniques.

But, with a flip of their tails, many payday lenders are simply swimming around state laws by operating online and offshore from such regulatory safe-harbors as the Bahamas, the Isle of Man, and Malta. From there, sharks can make loans, then begin devouring their borrowers' bank accounts, even in states that ban such loans.

How can shady operators pull-off billions of dollars worth of these devious – and maybe illegal – transactions each year? With inside help from such pillars of the financial establishment as Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo. Of course, these upstanding corporate citizens don't dirty their hands (or reputations) by making these predatory loans, but they willingly allow offshore sharks to tap directly into the borrowers' checking accounts and withdraw unconscionable interest payments electronically… and mercilessly.

There's a four-letter F-word for what the banks are doing to their own depositors: Fees. Automatic withdrawals by the sharks can cause a tsunami of overdrafts in a borrowers' bank account – and banks happily collect fat fees for every overdraft.

To help stop this multibillion-dollar feeding frenzy on hard-up people go to www.responsiblelending.org

"Major Banks Aid in Payday Loans Banned by States," The New York Times,
February 24, 2013.

"Short-term loans meet real, immediate needs," Austin American Statesman, March 7, 2013.

Friday, January 30, 2015

Mitt Romney's Terrible Timing

For the third election cycle in a row, the former Massachusetts governor was in the right place at the wrong time.

By

Everyone's got a theory for why Mitt Romney never made it to the White House. Too stiff. Too rich. Bad staff. Too many flip-flops. Prejudice against Mormons. A failure to convey the real Mitt. But more than anything, Romney's problem might have been bad timing.

During a call with staffers Friday morning, Romney told them he wouldn't run for president in 2016, ending a period of intense speculation, as the prospect of a third Romney campaign went from improbable rumor to widely held expectation.

"After putting considerable thought into making another run for president, I’ve decided it is best to give other leaders in the Party the opportunity to become our next nominee," he said, according to a prepared statement obtained by Hugh Hewitt. "I believe a Republican winning back the White House is essential for our country, and I will do whatever I can to make that happen."

Once again, it seems Romney has ended up in the right place at the wrong time. As I noted a couple weeks ago, when the Romney boomlet began, he ran in 2008 as a true conservative candidate. But after the disappointments of the George W. Bush's second term, a conservative former governor simply wasn't what his party wanted. If Romney had beaten John McCain in the GOP primary, he might have been perfectly poised to win the White House: With the economy collapsing, a turnaround whiz from the private sector could have appealed to many Americans. But it was too late for that. McCain floundered, and Barack Obama won.
The best time for Romney to run for president was probably in 2011, when President Obama's standing was still battered by the recession and the backlash to the Affordable Care Act. It was the right moment for a guy who could sell himself as a business leader with a track-record of fixing troubled enterprises. Unfortunately for him, the economy improved enough over the course of the following year to help Obama win reelection in November 2012 by a solid margin.

So why not 2016? Romney suggested in his statement that he believed he could win the nomination, but worried that he would lose the general election. "I am convinced that with the help of the people on this call, we could win the nomination," he said. "Our finance calls made it clear that we would have enough funding to be more than competitive. With few exceptions, our field political leadership is ready and enthusiastic about a new race. And the reaction of Republican voters across the country was both surprising and heartening."

Nevertheless, he added, "I do not want to make it more difficult for someone else to emerge who may have a better chance of becoming that president."

One could argue he's got that backwards. The natural pattern of presidential elections suggests that Democrats are the underdogs in the 2016 race—a party seldom holds on to the White House after two terms, and Nate Cohn notes that current economic models would suggest a Democratic popular vote of 48.5 percent. If Romney could have won the Republican nomination, he might have been able to realize his dream of becoming commander in chief.

But just as circumstances seemed to conspire to produce the perfect moment for Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush pulled the rug out from under him. In mid-December, Bush announced his decision to run, assuming the mantle of moderate, establishment candidate from Romney. Since then, some of the people who staffed Romney's campaign, and many of those who helped fund it, have attached themselves to a Bush campaign. On Thursday, operative David Kochel, who ran Romney's Iowa strategy in both previous campaigns, went to work for Bush in a presumptive campaign-manager role. NBC News even reports that some of the people invited to join Romney's Friday call were already committed to work for Bush.

Winning the nomination with Bush in the race would have been very challenging for Romney, despite his sanguine statement. Romney holds a commanding lead in RealClearPolitics' average for the Republican primaries, and a breathtaking 16-point edge on HuffPost Pollster's average. But as political watchers have noted, polling at this stage isn't a reliable gauge of very much. Given Romney's name-recognition and the fact that most people aren't tuned into the race—it's only January 2015, after all—it's only mildly surprising that he rose to the top. Many leading Republicans, including RNC Chair Reince Priebus, tried to throw cold water on the idea of third Romney campaign.

Watching presidential dreams die is always bittersweet, and it must feel especially poignant for Romney. He'd been effectively running for president since he announced that he wouldn't run for reelection as Massachusetts governor in December 2005—a nearly decade-long effort. In some ways, the roots of his candidacy stretched much further, back to his father George Romney's own unsuccessful 1968 campaign. And Romney's aides and family members truly believed in the cause. What others derided as constant reinvention, Mark Halperin notes, Romney's circle viewed as a single, consistent effort to show the American public that Mitt was the right man for the job—a principled, hardworking, competent, decent guy who would be great as president. Romney's aides bridled at the idea that he was "rebranding": Each of these different motifs was just a different way to try to get people to see the Real Mitt, who hadn't changed.

Toward the end of his statement, Romney encouraged those on the call to find a presidential campaign and work to restore Republican control of the White House. With an enormous, crowded field, they should have no trouble finding a spot to land. But for the true believers who thought all Romney needed to win over the American people was a stretch of good luck, that may be little consolation. Once again, Mitt Romney's timing just wasn't quite right.

Scientology Cultists Will Hate This Movie, So Be Sure To Watch It

By Karoli



Mark your calendars for March 16th and tune into HBO. You don't have to have a cable subscription to watch, now that HBO offers subscriptions delivered to your tablet or phone. And you will want to tune in, to see Alex Gibney's new film, Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief.
Huffington Post:
Even if you've read Lawrence Wright's book, Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood and the Prison of Belief on which the film is based, Gibney's adaptation is an eye-opening and transformative experience. The difference between reading about Scientology's bizarre principles and seeing them up on-screen, spelled out in an easily digestible and visually exciting way is profound. The film is eerily entertaining and even funny at times, that is, until you catch yourself and remember how many lives have been ruined in the name of these far-fetched science fiction concepts.
As you might imagine, the Elron devotees are lining up a veritable parade of PR attacks on Gibney and his film:
The Church of Scientology took out advertisements in The New York Times on Jan. 16 comparing the documentary to Rolling Stone’s discredited story about campus rape—and now the Church is expanding its efforts online. A special report has been published on the Church’s Freedom website, and a new Twitter account, Freedom Media Ethics, is “taking a resolute stand against the broadcasting and publishing of false information.”
The Church claims Gibney only spoke to disgruntled former members—who they attempt to discredit one by one on the new site—and failed to allow itself to respond to the allegations in the film.
I'll bet those guys are the same ones who handle Republicans' public relations issues, too. I recognize that whole "attack the messenger" trope they're so famous for.

Personally, I cannot wait to see this. Alex Gibney is a stellar filmmaker, and it's about time this cult was shown for what it is -- a malevolent money machine.

Thursday, January 29, 2015

Sarah Palin’s Back And Dumber Than Ever

Sarah Palin recently gave a speech at the Freedom Summit in Des Moines, Iowa. After her teleprompter feed went out, she inevitably entered an unstoppable state of rambling which made even less sense than the content of her ridiculous Internet channel.

Ring of Fire’s Mike Papantonio and Sam Seder discuss this.