Breaking News Events

[Jess]

Originally Posted by AtLastHome

Aj!!! You have brought some light into my life!!!

One area that I believe to be significant is the growing Hispanic populations reaching voting age. With the current GOP/Tea Party sentiments, I cannot see this group embracing either. Oh, but there is that Mario Rubio... Will be interesting to see what really happens with that conservative rising-star.

Speaking of breaking news of the past couple of weeks... Isn't it interesting that the Mosque and Obama's citizenship status has continued as the big items while Petraeus has been making quite a few appearances (one on charlie Rose I found quite interesting) and talking about his new tenure over Afghanistan? No one seems to be paying much attention and he has made it rather clear that the July '11 withdrawal date is not all that solid.

Combat troops just leaving Iraq will be in Afghanistan in about 6 months. The very same troops that have been deployed over and over again.....

And news about our jobs crisis and the recently announced decline in the housing industry (dipping big time this summer) that is a major variable with economic recovery is hardly being discussed????

Couldn't be choreographed any better....

[nomedia="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fko9_gEJ3w8"]YouTube- The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas - The Movie Part 11[/nomedia]

[Cowboi]

Originally Posted by Rook

Why do I have such a filthy mind?
hmpf...
I hear "teabagger" and I instantly think of the scene on "Soul Plane"{with d.l. hughley, snoop dogg, tom arnold}..
"A man that squats on top of a womans face and lowers his genitals into her mouth during sex, known as "teabagging"

On a seperate note, w/o derailing...

Martin Short's wife of 30 years passed away after a 3 year battle with Cancer....

And of course, amongst other post-contest shit stirring news, Miss Philippines could've had a chance if she didn't flub her question{same for Miss Puerto Rico had she worn the gown her organizers picked out for her...right}

Hell, I thought that is what teabagging was!!!! LoL

[SuperFemme]

Residents of a neighborhood in Toronto, Canada confronted a group of church members accused of preaching hate outside the home of a gay couple last weekend, reports CTV News. About a dozen members of the Highfield Road Gospel Hall were met with shouts of “Stay the hell out of my neighborhood” by about ten residents of Toronto’s Leslieville neighborhood.

The church group eventually departed.

As the church group prayed outside the home of a gay couple and condemned them as sinners, one of the local residents, Geoff Skelding, recorded a portion of the confrontation and later posted in online. Describing the video on YouTube, Skelding writes the group has been reading the Bible loudly in front of the couple’s house for 7 years. "They may have also driven another couple from the area as well by doing the same thing,” he writes. “Tonight most of our neighbors came out and were successful in getting them to leave. The people who go to that church don't even live in our area!"

[waxnrope]

I love my "sins" of the flesh. I like crisp, so burning a bit is tasty.

[Greyson]

I am going to refrain from giving an editorial on this piece of information. One thing I will say, " We are everywhere. Across all genders, classes, race, ethnicity, nations of origin, religions, philosophies, political parties, lifestyles, belief systems and in nature."

Bush Campaign Chief and Former RNC Chair Ken Mehlman: I'm Gay

By Marc Ambinder

Ken Mehlman, President Bush's campaign manager in 2004 and a former chairman of the Republican National Committee, has told family and associates that he is gay.


Mehlman arrived at this conclusion about his identity fairly recently, he said in an interview. He agreed to answer a reporter's questions, he said, because, now in private life, he wants to become an advocate for gay marriage and anticipated that questions would arise about his participation in a late-September fundraiser for the American Foundation for Equal Rights (AFER), the group that supported the legal challenge to California's ballot initiative against gay marriage, Proposition 8.


"It's taken me 43 years to get comfortable with this part of my life," said Mehlman, now an executive vice-president with the New York City-based private equity firm, KKR. "Everybody has their own path to travel, their own journey, and for me, over the past few months, I've told my family, friends, former colleagues, and current colleagues, and they've been wonderful and supportive. The process has been something that's made me a happier and better person. It's something I wish I had done years ago."


Privately, in off-the-record conversations with this reporter over the years, Mehlman voiced support for civil unions and told of how, in private discussions with senior Republican officials, he beat back efforts to attack same-sex marriage. He insisted, too, that President Bush "was no homophobe." He often wondered why gay voters never formed common cause with Republican opponents of Islamic jihad, which he called "the greatest anti-gay force in the world right now."


Mehlman's leadership positions in the GOP came at a time when the party was stepping up its anti-gay activities -- such as the distribution in West Virginia in 2006 of literature linking homosexuality to atheism, or the less-than-subtle, coded language in the party's platform ("Attempts to redefine marriage in a single state or city could have serious consequences throughout the country..."). Mehlman said at the time that he could not, as an individual Republican, go against the party consensus. He was aware that Karl Rove, President Bush's chief strategic adviser, had been working with Republicans to make sure that anti-gay initiatives and referenda would appear on November ballots in 2004 and 2006 to help Republicans.


Mehlman acknowledges that if he had publicly declared his sexuality sooner, he might have played a role in keeping the party from pushing an anti-gay agenda.


"It's a legitimate question and one I understand," Mehlman said. "I can't change the fact that I wasn't in this place personally when I was in politics, and I genuinely regret that. It was very hard, personally." He asks of those who doubt his sincerity: "If they can't offer support, at least offer understanding."


"What I do regret, and think a lot about, is that one of the things I talked a lot about in politics was how I tried to expand the party into neighborhoods where the message wasn't always heard. I didn't do this in the gay community at all."


He said that he "really wished" he had come to terms with his sexual orientation earlier, "so I could have worked against [the Federal Marriage Amendment]" and "reached out to the gay community in the way I reached out to African Americans."


Mehlman is aware that his attempts to justify his past silence will not be adequate for many people. He and his friends say that he is aware that he will no longer control the story about his identity -- which will simultaneously expose old wounds, invite Schadenfruede, and legitimize anger among gay rights activists in both parties who did not hide their sexual orientations.


Mehlman, who has never married, long found his sexuality subject to rumor and innuendo. He was the subject of an outing campaign by gay rights activist Mike Rogers, starting when Mehlman was Bush's campaign manager. Rogers's crusades against closeted gay Republicans split the organized gay lobby in Washington but were undoubtedly effective: he drove several elected officials, including Virginia Rep. Ed Shrock, from office, pushed out a would-be presidential campaign manager for George Allen well before Allen was set to run, slung rumors about Sen. Larry Craig's sexual orientation well before Craig's incident in a Minneapolis airport bathroom, and even managed to make homosexuality a wedge issue within the party's activist circles.


In 2006, Rogers caught up to Mehlman and asked him why he gave "so many confusing answers to social conservatives about your homosexuality," and followed up by asking whether Mehlman knew of a man who Rogers had claimed was Mehlman's secret partner. Mehlman denied to Rogers that he had given conflicting answers and said that the man in question was a law school classmate.


In several discussions I've had with Mehlman since he stepped down from the Republican National Committee in 2007, he never volunteered information about his sexual orientation, although charges that he presided over a resurgence in anti-gay sentiment were clearly an ongoing burden to him.


The disclosure at this stage of Mehlman's life strikes one close friend as being like a decision to jump off of a high diving board: Mehlman knows that there is plenty of water below, but it is still very scary to look down and make the leap. Mehlman likes order and certainty, and he knows that the reaction to his public confirmation cannot be predicted or contained.


Mehlman is the most powerful Republican in history to identify as gay.


Because his tenure as RNC chairman and his time at the center of the Bush political machine coincided with the Republican Party's attempts to exploit anti-gay prejudices and cement the allegiance of social conservatives, his declaration to the world is at once a personal act and an act of political speech.


"I wish I was where I am today 20 years ago. The process of not being able to say who I am in public life was very difficult. No one else knew this except me. My family didn't know. My friends didn't know. Anyone who watched me knew I was a guy who was clearly uncomfortable with the topic," he said.


During the Rogers crusades, many news organizations made attempts to confirm rumors and stories about Mehlman's sexuality. Republicans close to Mehlman either said they did not know, or that it did not matter, or that the question was offensive.


Mehlman once joked in public that although he was not gay, the rumors put a crimp on his social life. He admits to having misled several people who asked him directly.


He said that he plans to be an advocate for gay rights within the GOP, that he remains proud to be a Republican, and that his political identity is not defined by any one issue.


"What I will try to do is to persuade people, when I have conversations with them, that it is consistent with our party's philosophy, whether it's the principle of individual freedom, or limited government, or encouraging adults who love each other and who want to make a lifelong committment to each other to get married."


"I hope that we, as a party, would welcome gay and lesbian supporters. I also think there needs to be, in the gay community, robust and bipartisan support [for] marriage rights."


Ed Gillespie, a former RNC chairman and long-time friend of Mehlman, said that "it is significant that a former chairman of the Republiucan National Committe is openly gay and that he is supportive of gay marriage." Although Gillespie himself opposes gay marriage, he pointed to party stalwarts like former Vice President Dick Cheney and strategist Mary Matalin as open advocates for gay rights who had not been drummed out of the party. He acknowledged "big generational differences in perception when it comes to gay marriage and gay rights as an agenda, and I think that is true on the Republican side."


But, Gillespie said, he does not envision the party platform changing anytime soon.


"There are a lot of Republicans who are gay, there are a lot of Republicans who support government sanction of gay marriage, a lot of Republicans who support abortion on demand, a lot of Republicans who support cap-and-trade provisions. They're not single-issue voters." Gillespie acknowledged that the party had been inhospitable to gays in the past, and said that he hopes Mehlman's decision to come out leads the party to be "more respectful and civil in our discourse" when it comes to gays.


Mehlman said that his formal coming-out process began earlier this year. Over the past several weeks, he has notified former colleagues, including former President Bush. Once he realized that the news would probably leak, he assembled a team of former advisers to help him figure out the best way to harness the publicity generated by the disclosure for the cause of marriage rights. He is worried that some will see his decision to go public as opportunistic. Mehlman recently moved to Chelsea, a gay mecca in New York City. He refused to discuss his personal life with me, and he plans to give only a few print interviews on the subject.


Chad Griffin, the California-based political strategist who organized opposition to Proposition 8, said that Mehlman's quiet contributions to the American Foundation for Equal Rights are "tremendous," adding that "when we achieve equal equality, he will be one of the people to thank for it." Mehlman has become a de facto strategist for the group, and he has opened up his rolodex -- recruiting, as co-hosts for the AFER fundraiser: Paul Singer, a major Republican donor, hedge fund executive, and the president of the Manhattan Institute; Benjamin Ginsberg, one of the GOP's top lawyers; Michael Toner, a former chairman of the Federal Election Commission; and two former GOP governors, William Weld of Massachusetts and Christie Todd Whitman of New Jersey.


Dustin Lance Black, the Academy Award winning writer of "Milk," said, "Ken represents an incredible coup for the American Foundation for Equal Rights. We believe that our mission of equal rights under the law is one that should resonate with every American. As a victorious former presidential campaign manager and head of the Republican Party, Ken has the proven experience and expertise to help us communicate with people across each of the 50 states."


This article available online at:

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/...-im-gay/62065/

[Spirit Dancer]

http://glossynews.com/other-world-ga...ive-americans/
This is older news but I've not seen it here so I'm sharing it.


Tags: Apache, Arizona, Gov. Brewer, Hopi, illegal immigrants, Navajo
Posted by P. Beckert


Navajo Nation – The Navajo, Hopi, all Apache Nations and all other Native Americans who presently reside in Arizona have joined forces in an effort to show the haughty Arizona residents just exactly who has every right to be in that State.

Said Chief Standing Wolf, “it is not those of European decent who should be making the laws of this state, but we, the tribal people, who have been suppressed for too long. Our ancestors have been here for thousands of years, while the white man only came a few hundred years ago. Yet, it is the white man who wants to make ridiculous laws and keep everything lily white. We can no longer stand by and let this happen.”

Short of declaring war on the Arizona government, Chief Standing Wolf instead issued a warning “reverse your laws entitling only English-speaking people to inhabit Arizona. Only then will we back down and allow peace to again grace Arizona, but if you deny our fellow red and brown men their rightful place in this state, there will be bloodshed.”

Of course, Chief Standing Wolf was speaking in his native tongue, so the lawmakers in the State weren’t exactly sure what the message was.

[Corkey]

http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2010/08/23...-legal-appeal/

Another victory for equality.

[Abigail Crabby]

Originally Posted by Corkey

http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2010/08/23...-legal-appeal/

Another victory for equality.

Thanks for sharing this Corkey

[AtLast]

Police: Cab Driver Stabbed By Passenger Who Asked "Are You Muslim?"

A city cab driver is in the hospital after being stabbed by a passenger who allegedly asked if he was Muslim, police tell NY1.

Investigators with the New York City Police Department say it all began Monday night when a 21-year-old man hailed a cab at 24th Street and Second Avenue in Manhattan.

Police say the passenger asked the driver, "Are you Muslim?" When the driver said yes the passenger pulled a knife and slashed him in the throat, arm and lip.

The 43-year-old driver was able to lock the passenger in the back of the cab and call 911.

Both the driver and the passenger were taken to Bellevue Hospital.

As of late Tuesday, no charges had been filed.




http://manhattan.ny1.com/content/top...e-you-muslim--

[Abigail Crabby]

Originally Posted by AtLastHome

Police: Cab Driver Stabbed By Passenger Who Asked "Are You Muslim?"

A city cab driver is in the hospital after being stabbed by a passenger who allegedly asked if he was Muslim, police tell NY1.

Investigators with the New York City Police Department say it all began Monday night when a 21-year-old man hailed a cab at 24th Street and Second Avenue in Manhattan.

Police say the passenger asked the driver, "Are you Muslim?" When the driver said yes the passenger pulled a knife and slashed him in the throat, arm and lip.

The 43-year-old driver was able to lock the passenger in the back of the cab and call 911.

Both the driver and the passenger were taken to Bellevue Hospital.

As of late Tuesday, no charges had been filed.




http://manhattan.ny1.com/content/top...e-you-muslim--

I read this Susan - I was so dismayed

[christie]

The Government's New Right to Track Your Every Move With GPS

By ADAM COHEN – Thu Aug 26, 3:45 am ET

Government agents can sneak onto your property in the middle of the night, put a GPS device on the bottom of your car and keep track of everywhere you go. This doesn't violate your Fourth Amendment rights, because you do not have any reasonable expectation of privacy in your own driveway - and no reasonable expectation that the government isn't tracking your movements.

That is the bizarre - and scary - rule that now applies in California and eight other Western states. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which covers this vast jurisdiction, recently decided the government can monitor you in this way virtually anytime it wants - with no need for a search warrant.

It is a dangerous decision - one that, as the dissenting judges warned, could turn America into the sort of totalitarian state imagined by George Orwell. It is particularly offensive because the judges added insult to injury with some shocking class bias: the little personal privacy that still exists, the court suggested, should belong mainly to the rich.

This case began in 2007, when Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents decided to monitor Juan Pineda-Moreno, an Oregon resident who they suspected was growing marijuana. They snuck onto his property in the middle of the night and found his Jeep in his driveway, a few feet from his trailer home. Then they attached a GPS tracking device to the vehicle's underside.
After Pineda-Moreno challenged the DEA's actions, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit ruled in January that it was all perfectly legal. More disturbingly, a larger group of judges on the circuit, who were subsequently asked to reconsider the ruling, decided this month to let it stand. (Pineda-Moreno has pleaded guilty conditionally to conspiracy to manufacture marijuana and manufacturing marijuana while appealing the denial of his motion to suppress evidence obtained with the help of GPS.)

In fact, the government violated Pineda-Moreno's privacy rights in two different ways. For starters, the invasion of his driveway was wrong. The courts have long held that people have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their homes and in the "curtilage," a fancy legal term for the area around the home. The government's intrusion on property just a few feet away was clearly in this zone of privacy.

The judges veered into offensiveness when they explained why Pineda-Moreno's driveway was not private. It was open to strangers, they said, such as delivery people and neighborhood children, who could wander across it uninvited.

Chief Judge Alex Kozinski, who dissented from this month's decision refusing to reconsider the case, pointed out whose homes are not open to strangers: rich people's. The court's ruling, he said, means that people who protect their homes with electric gates, fences and security booths have a large protected zone of privacy around their homes. People who cannot afford such barriers have to put up with the government sneaking around at night.

Judge Kozinski is a leading conservative, appointed by President Ronald Reagan, but in his dissent he came across as a raging liberal. "There's been much talk about diversity on the bench, but there's one kind of diversity that doesn't exist," he wrote. "No truly poor people are appointed as federal judges, or as state judges for that matter." The judges in the majority, he charged, were guilty of "cultural elitism." (Read about one man's efforts to escape the surveillance state.)

The court went on to make a second terrible decision about privacy: that once a GPS device has been planted, the government is free to use it to track people without getting a warrant. There is a major battle under way in the federal and state courts over this issue, and the stakes are high. After all, if government agents can track people with secretly planted GPS devices virtually anytime they want, without having to go to a court for a warrant, we are one step closer to a classic police state - with technology taking on the role of the KGB or the East German Stasi.

Fortunately, other courts are coming to a different conclusion from the Ninth Circuit's - including the influential U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. That court ruled, also this month, that tracking for an extended period of time with GPS is an invasion of privacy that requires a warrant. The issue is likely to end up in the Supreme Court.

In these highly partisan times, GPS monitoring is a subject that has both conservatives and liberals worried. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit's pro-privacy ruling was unanimous - decided by judges appointed by Presidents Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

Plenty of liberals have objected to this kind of spying, but it is the conservative Chief Judge Kozinski who has done so most passionately. "1984 may have come a bit later than predicted, but it's here at last," he lamented in his dissent. And invoking Orwell's totalitarian dystopia where privacy is essentially nonexistent, he warned: "Some day, soon, we may wake up and find we're living in Oceania."

Link to story on Yahoo News: http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/08599201315000

[Nat]

How absolutely terrible about the taxi driver - I am so glad he lived and was able to lock the guy in the cab.

The gps tracking is insane. And yet another reason not to drive. I wish more of Texas had public transportation handy.

Anybody who carries a cell phone that is on is leaving a trail of exactly where they've been. In court, they have a rep of the phone company use a map to show the path of a person using cell phone tower triangulation. Gps on the car sucks too, but most people don't think to turn off their phones to protect their privacy.

[SuperFemme]

Ex-Cop Pleads Guilty to Trans Beating

One month before his scheduled retrial, a former Memphis police officer pleaded guilty to beating the late Duanna Johnson, positioning himself to receive a two-year sentence rather than the 10 years he would have faced if convicted by a jury.

According to ABC24 in Memphis, Bridges McRae admitted to using excessive force against Johnson while booking her into the Shelby County Jail in June 2008 on a prostitution charge. The brutal beating was caught on surveillance tape.

“After watching video of the beating, all but one member of the jury wanted to convict Bridges McRae,” reports ABC24. “His April 2010 trial ended with a hung jury. A month before McRae was set to be retried his attorney’s reached a plea deal. Will Batts, Executive Director of The Memphis Gay and Lesbian Community Center is happy McRae will serve time behind bars, but feels two years is a light sentence. “It’s incredibly senseless. It’s hard to imagine somebody watching that and not feeling horror.”

Months after the beating, Johnson was shot and killed outside her home. The murder remains unsolved.

The attorney for Johnson plans to file a civil suit on behalf of her family seeking money and policy changes.

http://www.advocate.com/News/Daily_N...Trans_Beating/

[Tommi]

Originally Posted by SuperFemme

Ex-Cop Pleads Guilty to Trans Beating

One month before his scheduled retrial, a former Memphis police officer pleaded guilty to beating the late Duanna Johnson, positioning himself to receive a two-year sentence rather than the 10 years he would have faced if convicted by a jury.

According to ABC24 in Memphis, Bridges McRae admitted to using excessive force against Johnson while booking her into the Shelby County Jail in June 2008 on a prostitution charge. The brutal beating was caught on surveillance tape.

“After watching video of the beating, all but one member of the jury wanted to convict Bridges McRae,” reports ABC24. “His April 2010 trial ended with a hung jury. A month before McRae was set to be retried his attorney’s reached a plea deal. Will Batts, Executive Director of The Memphis Gay and Lesbian Community Center is happy McRae will serve time behind bars, but feels two years is a light sentence. “It’s incredibly senseless. It’s hard to imagine somebody watching that and not feeling horror.”

Months after the beating, Johnson was shot and killed outside her home. The murder remains unsolved.

The attorney for Johnson plans to file a civil suit on behalf of her family seeking money and policy changes.

http://www.advocate.com/News/Daily_N...Trans_Beating/

Maybe a person will want McRae for his lover. Imagine a cop in jail. He probably will get put in a secure location away from those that would like to get their hands on him though.

[SuperFemme]

Originally Posted by Tommi

Maybe a person will want McRae for his lover. Imagine a cop in jail. He probably will get put in a secure location away from those that would like to get their hands on him though.

right?

in my heart of hearts i feel that this man has something to do with her murder. if he didn't directly do it himself, then he had a hand in it.

two years for what he did to her is not enough.

the fact that nobody is working to solve her murder? makes me wish he'd bunk with bubba for a few weeks.

no human being deserves what happened to Duanna Johnson.

[T D]

I hardly think this cop felt that he was in a life threatening situation.

I'm soooooooooooo sick and tired of people hurting others and getting away with it. It disgusts me in so many ways. People get a little power and they'll find all kinds of ways to abuse it, and think they're justified in doing so.

[Nat]

Originally Posted by SuperFemme

right?

in my heart of hearts i feel that this man has something to do with her murder. if he didn't directly do it himself, then he had a hand in it.

two years for what he did to her is not enough.

the fact that nobody is working to solve her murder? makes me wish he'd bunk with bubba for a few weeks.

no human being deserves what happened to Duanna Johnson.

Here's news coverage from when she was beaten, including interview footage with her. It's a scary world.



I wish her death had been / would be investigated.

[AtLast]

Originally Posted by T D

I hardly think this cop felt that he was in a life threatening situation.

I'm soooooooooooo sick and tired of people hurting others and getting away with it. It disgusts me in so many ways. People get a little power and they'll find all kinds of ways to abuse it, and think they're justified in doing so.

Oh yeah. Living between two cities that are notorious for police brutality, most specifically against POC and TG and queer people brings this home. It will be very interesting to see the trial and outcome for the female-identified butch that was kid abducted and gang raped then left for dead in Richmond when it finally goes to trial. If the trial is held in Contra Costa county, I doubt these asses will facing much in the way of sentencing, even if they are convicted. Frankly, I want it to go into federal hands due to the kidnapping. But, the actual charges that will be tried have not been released yet.

Frankly, the cops really didn't give a flying fuck about what happened to this butch.

[CrankyOldGuy]

Frankly, the cops really didn't give a flying fuck about what happened to this butch.

sadly, i'd have to agree.

[AtLast]

Originally Posted by CrankyOldGuy

sadly, i'd have to agree.

Probably true. This kind of stuff makes me crazy!!