Breaking News Events

[Soon]

Syracuse associate men's basketball coach Bernie Fine, accused by two former ball boys of molesting them over a 16-year period, strongly denied the allegations Friday in a statement released by his lawyer.

[Soon]

Originally Posted by HowSoonIsNow

Syracuse associate men's basketball coach Bernie Fine, accused by two former ball boys of molesting them over a 16-year period, strongly denied the allegations Friday in a statement released by his lawyer.

http://sports.nationalpost.com/2011/...ketball-coach/

ESPN said it first investigated the accusations in 2003, but decided not to run the story because there was no independent evidence to corroborate the allegations. Recently, a second man contacted ESPN, alleging that Fine also molested him. That person said he decided to come forward after seeing the Penn State coverage.

[AtLast]

Originally Posted by HowSoonIsNow

http://sports.nationalpost.com/2011/...ketball-coach/

ESPN said it first investigated the accusations in 2003, but decided not to run the story because there was no independent evidence to corroborate the allegations. Recently, a second man contacted ESPN, alleging that Fine also molested him. That person said he decided to come forward after seeing the Penn State coverage.

From reports I have seen, the statute of limitations ran out on the first report.

My guess is that we might see more sex abuse charges come out of this and at other schools. So common that victims, especially male victims keep this secret. Very sad. But, this can of worms is long overdue to be opened.

[Toughy]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz...isogynist.html

'This man doesn't represent our community': Warren Beatty's transgender son brands Chaz Bono a misogynist

[Dominique]

Warning: Gruesome Reading
http://kstp.com/kstpImages/repository/cs/files/Sandusky-Grand-Jury-Presentment-1.pdf

[SoNotHer]

Gay soldier shares reaction to GOP debate boos
By LISA LEFF

In this Nov. 16, 2011 photo, Capt. Stephen Hill, left, and his partner, Joshua Snyder, pose for a photo in their home in Columbus, Ohio. Hill, the U.S. Army captain who was booed during a Republican presidential debate when he asked a question about "don't ask, don't tell," just returned from a year-long deployment in Iraq, and says he wasn't trying to score political points, just peace of mind for himself and his husband of four-and-a-half months. (AP Photo/Jay LaPrete)



SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Army Capt. Stephen Hill says he wasn't trying to score political points when he asked the Republican presidential candidates if they would reinstate the ban on gays serving openly in the U.S. military. He wasn't worried that his debate question, posed via a YouTube video recorded in Iraq, would generate boos or reveal his sexual orientation to millions of people, including his superiors and fellow troops. All Hill was thinking about in September was his husband of four-and-a-half months, Joshua Snyder, in Columbus, Ohio.

Now that "don't ask, don't tell" has been lifted, he needed to know if the military would take the next step and recognize his marriage, or if a new president would try to force soldiers like him back into the closet. "I was looking forward to the future and hoping everybody would realize we are soldiers first, always," said Hill, 41, an Army reservist who returned last week from his yearlong deployment. "I was hoping 'don't ask, don't tell' would be a distant memory for everybody."

In an interview with The Associated Press, Hill reflected publicly for the first time on his reasons for submitting the pre-recorded question for the Sept. 22 debate, as well as his reaction to the heckles heard around the world; the answer that former Sen. Rick Santorum gave to thunderous applause; and the outrage expressed on his behalf by, among others, his commander in chief.

With Snyder on the telephone, Hill watched the debate live from Iraq at 4 a.m. And this is what he asked: "In 2010, when I was deployed to Iraq, I had to lie about who I was because I'm a gay soldier and I didn't want to lose my job. My question is, under one of your presidencies, do you intend to circumvent the progress that's been made for gay and lesbian soldiers in the military?"

Santorum replied that he would reinstitute the ban on open service by gay troops because "any type of sexual activity has absolutely no place in the military." "What we are doing is playing social experimentation with our military right now. That's tragic," he continued. "Leave it alone. Keep it to yourself whether you are heterosexual or homosexual."

Hill says the fact that he just outed himself on national television had barely registered when he absorbed the boos and Santorum's answer followed by applause. "When the actual booing occurred, my gut dropped out, because my first inclination was, did I just do something wrong?" he said. "The answer, obviously, wasn't very supportive of gay people, and there was a lot of fear of how the Army would take the question."

He did not have to wait long to find out. At breakfast later that morning, the segment was playing on the chow hall television. Hill immediately tracked down his commander, who told him she had no problem with what he'd done but that she would need to run it up the chain of command. She later relayed the response.

"She said, 'What the military's most concerned with is that you are OK, because it's a lot of pressure on you and we want to make sure if there is anything we can do to help,'" he recalled.

President Barack Obama, about a week later, chided the Republican contenders for staying silent when several people booed an American soldier. Santorum said he had not heard the booing but condemned the audience members who did it.

What Hill remembers most was that a presidential candidate defined his marriage and military service in terms of sex. He holds that up against the times he hid Snyder's photograph because Army buddies were coming over to play video games, introduced his husband as his roommate or brother, and the legal vows they exchanged at the grave of Air Force Sgt. Leonard Matlovich, who was discharged in 1975 after becoming the first gay service member to challenge the U.S. military's ban on gay troops.

Snyder and Hill last month joined other same-sex military couples in suing the government for the same benefits as straight military couples, which the Pentagon denies them on grounds that federal law defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

"This is not about sex," Hill said. "A special privilege is not hiding pictures in my house or God forbid, taking mortar fire again and not knowing if Josh will be recognized. I'm fighting every day to protect everyone's rights as human beings, and it seems counterintuitive for me to be fighting for those rights and not have them."

[Cin]

Game Over for Planet Earth: The Month’s Biggest Story You Never Read

While you were paying attention to Herman Cain, the Kardashians and the Penn State child sex abuse scandal, the U.S. Department of Energy administered last rites to the planet.
November 16, 2011
By Tom Engelhardt

What's the biggest story of the last several weeks? Rick Perry’s moment of silence, all 53 seconds' worth? The Penn State riots after revered coach JoePa went down in a child sex abuse scandal? The Kardashian wedding/divorce? The European debt crisis that could throw the world economy into a tailspin? The Cain sexual harassment charges? The trial of Michael Jackson’s doctor?

The answer should be none of the above, even though as a group they’ve dominated the October/November headlines. In fact, the piece of the week, month, and arguably year should have been one that slipped by so quietly, so off front-pages nationwide and out of news leads everywhere that you undoubtedly didn’t even notice. And yet it’s the story that could turn your life and that of your children and grandchildren inside out and upside down.

On the face of it, it wasn’t anything to shout about -- just more stats in a world drowning in numbers. These happen to have been put out by the U.S. Department of Energy and they reflected, as an Associated Press headline put it, the “biggest jump ever seen in global warming gases.” In other words, in 2010, humanity (with a special bow to China, the United States, and onrushing India) managed to pump more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than at any time since the industrial revolution began -- 564 million more tons than in 2009, which represents an increase of 6%.

According to AP’s Seth Borenstein, that’s “higher than the worst case scenario outlined by climate experts just four years ago.” He’s talking about the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, which is, if anything, considered "conservative" in its projections of future catastrophe by many climate scientists. Put another way, we’re talking more greenhouse gases than have entered the Earth’s atmosphere in tens of millions of years.

Consider as well the prediction offered by Fatih Birol, chief economist at the International Energy Agency: without an effective international agreement to staunch greenhouse gases within five years, the door will close on preventing a potentially disastrous rise in the planet’s temperature. You’re talking, that is, about the kind of freaky weather that will make October’s bizarre snowstorm in the Northeast look like a walk in the park. (That storm had all the signs of a climate-change-induced bit of extreme weather: New York City hadn’t recorded an October snowfall like it since the Civil War and it managed to hit the region in a period of ongoing warmth when the trees hadn’t yet had the decency to lose their leaves, producing a chaos of downed electrical wires.) And don’t get me started on what this would mean in terms of future planetary hot spells or sea-level rise.

Honestly, if we were sane, if the media had its head in the right place, this would have been screaming headlines. It would have put Rick Perry and Herman Cain and the Kardashians and Italy and Greece and Michael Jackson’s doctor in the shade.

The only good news -- and because it unsettled the politics of the 2012 election, it did garner a few headlines -- was that the movement Bill McKibben and 350.org spearheaded to turn back the tar-sands pipeline from Hades (or its earthly global-warming equivalent, which is Alberta, Canada) gained traction in our Occupy Wall Street moment. Check out McKibben’s account of it, “Puncturing the Pipeline,” and think of it as a harbinger. Mark my words on this one: sooner or later, Americans are going to wake up to climate change, just as they have this year on the issue of inequality, and when they do, watch out. There will be political hell to pay.

[SoNotHer]

"...In other words, in 2010, humanity (with a special bow to China, the United States, and onrushing India) managed to pump more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than at any time since the industrial revolution began -- 564 million more tons than in 2009, which represents an increase of 6%...

Put another way, we’re talking more greenhouse gases than have entered the Earth’s atmosphere in tens of millions of years...

Honestly, if we were sane, if the media had its head in the right place, this would have been screaming headlines. It would have put Rick Perry and Herman Cain and the Kardashians and Italy and Greece and Michael Jackson’s doctor in the shade."

Originally Posted by Miss Tick

Game Over for Planet Earth: The Month’s Biggest Story You Never Read

While you were paying attention to Herman Cain, the Kardashians and the Penn State child sex abuse scandal, the U.S. Department of Energy administered last rites to the planet.
November 16, 2011
By Tom Engelhardt

What's the biggest story of the last several weeks? Rick Perry’s moment of silence, all 53 seconds' worth? The Penn State riots after revered coach JoePa went down in a child sex abuse scandal? The Kardashian wedding/divorce? The European debt crisis that could throw the world economy into a tailspin? The Cain sexual harassment charges? The trial of Michael Jackson’s doctor?

The answer should be none of the above, even though as a group they’ve dominated the October/November headlines. In fact, the piece of the week, month, and arguably year should have been one that slipped by so quietly, so off front-pages nationwide and out of news leads everywhere that you undoubtedly didn’t even notice. And yet it’s the story that could turn your life and that of your children and grandchildren inside out and upside down.

On the face of it, it wasn’t anything to shout about -- just more stats in a world drowning in numbers. These happen to have been put out by the U.S. Department of Energy and they reflected, as an Associated Press headline put it, the “biggest jump ever seen in global warming gases.” In other words, in 2010, humanity (with a special bow to China, the United States, and onrushing India) managed to pump more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than at any time since the industrial revolution began -- 564 million more tons than in 2009, which represents an increase of 6%.

According to AP’s Seth Borenstein, that’s “higher than the worst case scenario outlined by climate experts just four years ago.” He’s talking about the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, which is, if anything, considered "conservative" in its projections of future catastrophe by many climate scientists. Put another way, we’re talking more greenhouse gases than have entered the Earth’s atmosphere in tens of millions of years.

Consider as well the prediction offered by Fatih Birol, chief economist at the International Energy Agency: without an effective international agreement to staunch greenhouse gases within five years, the door will close on preventing a potentially disastrous rise in the planet’s temperature. You’re talking, that is, about the kind of freaky weather that will make October’s bizarre snowstorm in the Northeast look like a walk in the park. (That storm had all the signs of a climate-change-induced bit of extreme weather: New York City hadn’t recorded an October snowfall like it since the Civil War and it managed to hit the region in a period of ongoing warmth when the trees hadn’t yet had the decency to lose their leaves, producing a chaos of downed electrical wires.) And don’t get me started on what this would mean in terms of future planetary hot spells or sea-level rise.

Honestly, if we were sane, if the media had its head in the right place, this would have been screaming headlines. It would have put Rick Perry and Herman Cain and the Kardashians and Italy and Greece and Michael Jackson’s doctor in the shade.

The only good news -- and because it unsettled the politics of the 2012 election, it did garner a few headlines -- was that the movement Bill McKibben and 350.org spearheaded to turn back the tar-sands pipeline from Hades (or its earthly global-warming equivalent, which is Alberta, Canada) gained traction in our Occupy Wall Street moment. Check out McKibben’s account of it, “Puncturing the Pipeline,” and think of it as a harbinger. Mark my words on this one: sooner or later, Americans are going to wake up to climate change, just as they have this year on the issue of inequality, and when they do, watch out. There will be political hell to pay.

[LeftWriteFemme]

CA could be first in nation to offer redress to gay vets
NEWS
Published 11/17/2011
by Dan Aiello


Sacramento Valley Veterans Michael D. Williams and President Ty Redhouse joined Assemblyman Dr. Richard Pan and Mario Guerrero, director of government affairs for Equality California, at a press conference last week where Pan announced proposed legislation to give state veterans benefits to LGBT service members discharged under "Don't Ask, Don't Tell."


Assemblyman Dr. Richard Pan (D-Sacramento) announced last week that he will author legislation that will restore state veterans benefits to gay and lesbian service members who were discharged or court-martialed for being homosexual.

If passed, Pan's legislation will be the first such effort at redress by any state or federal agency.

"I am proposing this legislation to assure that gay and lesbian veterans who would otherwise have qualified for these benefits, see them restored," Pan told the Bay Area Reporter . "We need to correct this past injustice."

Asked if the legislation would include language apologizing for the unwarranted discrimination, Pan said, "Personally I believe an apology is due. They fought to defend our country and our country rejected them. The language is not yet finalized but because you have asked me, I think it's an important question I will certainly look to add to the language an apology."

Brian O'Hara, Pan's media director, told the B.A.R. that the proposed legislation will be introduced January 4, the first day of the legislative session.

Pan estimates there were approximately 3,000 Californians discharged under "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." The military's 17-year-old anti-gay policy was repealed last year by Congress; the repeal went into effect September 20 after a number of certifications were completed by Defense Department officials and President Barack Obama.

If passed, Pan's law would apply to all service member discharges or court-martials where the only crime the veteran committed was being homosexual.

State benefits that would be restored include home loan assistance, college assistance for state schools for both the veteran and his or her children, business waiver fees, access to health care, and tax breaks for veterans who run small businesses.

"I hope this bill will start a national conversation and lead to other states and the federal government following California's lead," said Pan.

He referred to DADT as "an unfortunate political compromise" and "blatant and unwarranted discrimination."

"Our country is safer when gay and lesbian citizens can serve in the military," Pan told the B.A.R.

Asked if this legislation will address benefits or offer redress to the families of service members who have been killed or committed suicide following torment from other soldiers, Pan said it would not.

"There are some tragic, tragic stories. The whole thing is a blight on our nation's history. I'm under no illusions. This bill is not the end all of addressing every wrong that came with DADT," he said.

Pan, a physician, said health benefits for ousted vets and college assistance for them and their dependents are important first steps.

"As a pediatrician I have had the opportunity to care for youth who are LGBT or questioning. I've heard about the discrimination they face. Hearing about the struggles my patients have made, their issues have for me, made me sensitive," Pan told the B.A.R. "As a minority growing up in this country I have also experienced bullying at times because of my ethnicity, personally, growing up. Not to the extent that I've heard from some of my LGBT patients, but enough that I can appreciate their suffering.

The bill may also lead to a national conversation, Pan's spokesman noted.

"This is an important step to, first of all, send a clear message these vets deserve to be honored by the nation and second, that these benefits are deserved and should be restored," said O'Hara. "We are looking to right these past injustices and to spark a national conversation."

Equality California announced on Veterans Day that it was sponsoring Pan's bill.

"We say a lot that invisibility is inequality. The contributions of these service members made have largely been invisible to the American public and now we have an opportunity to shine a light on that," EQCA spokeswoman Rebekah Orr told the B.A.R.

Orr said the legislation originated with Pan.

"It was an idea that came from Dr. Pan – we were really thrilled to be able to support him with that," she said.

Retired Staff Sergeant Ty Redhouse, president of the other sponsoring organization, Sacramento Valley Vets, explained that denial of benefits differed between those veterans given honorable discharges under DADT and those who were ousted prior to the Clinton administration policy.

"Some veterans discharged before DADT were deemed undesirable," Redhouse told the B.A.R. "I have met veterans whose discharge papers listed them as 'undesirable.'"

Redhouse claimed those veterans who received dishonorable or undesirable discharges were denied all veterans benefits. Redhouse, who worked as an intelligence analyst for the Air Force from 1998 until 2006, served in Kosovo, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

"I think that the next step is to address the benefits of loved ones of veterans, their partners," Redhouse said. The most important of those benefits would be college tuition, access to health care and to burial benefits. Because it specifically denies benefits to spouses or domestic partners of gay and lesbian vets, Redhouse said his organization sees the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act as a critical next step in redress.

Redhouse's organization, online at www.SacValleyVets.org, provides speakers on the repeal of DOMA, as well as California's pending redress legislation.

"We are very supportive of Dr. Pan and we're glad to be a part of the announcement of this legislation," said Redhouse.

Orr said the background that led to DADT almost 18 years ago was one of homophobia.

"I think that the motivations of DADT were very complicated," stated Orr. "The driver behind every effort to roll back equality, or prevent advances in equality, is to allow our opposition to continue to portray LGBT people as outsiders and not citizens of our country. I think it's more dehumanizing than that. I think it's that their efforts have always been to portray LGBT people as harmful to society. Something like DADT or the visibility of committed LGBT couples, those things sort of fly in the face of the lies they tell of LGBT people."

Pan, a freshman lawmaker, defeated Proposition 8 author Andrew Pugno last year for the 5th Assembly District seat. According to O'Hara, he was the only Democrat in the nation to win a Republican-held seat.

[AtLast]

Bloomberg to speak in a few about this incident during a Press Conference.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/n...ss-conference/

[EnderD_503]

I hate to say "I told you so," but well...I did say it. Many said it. Others just chose to ignore the very real threat that Muslim extremists would use the Arab revolutions to their own advantage. And little by little, in Egypt, in Tunisia, in Libya, it's happening. It's becoming Afghanistan all over again. But of course, that's likely what Western powers wanted. They definitely stand to benefit from this, as far as Western imperialism in the middle east is concerned. Their so-called wish to "spread democracy" is total bull.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/...7AK0OF20111121

[SoNotHer]

Texas Drought 2011: Depleted Lakes Expose Ghost Towns, Graves And Prehistoric Bones

AP By MICHAEL GRACZYK and ANGELA K. BROWN

BLUFFTON, Texas -- Johnny C. Parks died two days before his first birthday more than a century ago. His grave slipped from sight along with the rest of the tiny town of Bluffton when Lake Buchanan was filled 55 years later. Now, the cracked marble tombstone engraved with the date Oct. 15, 1882, which is normally covered by 20 to 30 feet of water, has been eerily exposed as a yearlong drought shrinks one of Texas' largest lakes.

Across the state, receding lakes have revealed a prehistoric skull, ancient tools, fossils and a small cemetery that appears to contain the graves of freed slaves. Some of the discoveries have attracted interest from local historians, and looters also have scavenged for pieces of history. More than two dozen looters have been arrested at one site.

"In an odd way, this drought has provided an opportunity to view and document, where appropriate, some of these finds and understand what they consist of," said Pat Mercado-Allinger, the Texas Historical Commission's archeological division director. "Most people in Texas probably didn't realize what was under these lakes." Texas finished its driest 12 months ever with an average of 8.5 inches of rain through September, nearly 13 inches below normal. Water levels in the region's lakes, most of which were manmade, have dropped by more than a dozen feet in many cases.

The vanishing water has revealed the long-submerged building foundations of Woodville, Okla., which was flooded in 1944 when the Red River was dammed to form Lake Texoma. A century-old church has emerged at Falcon Lake, which straddles the Texas-Mexico border on the Rio Grande. Steven Standke and his wife, Carol, drove to the old Bluffton site on a sandy rutted path that GPS devices designate not as a road but the middle of the 22,335-acre lake, normally almost 31 miles long and five miles wide.

"If you don't see it now, you might never see it again," said Carol Standke, of Center Point, as she and her husband inspected the ruins a mile from where concrete seawalls ordinarily would keep the lake from waterfront homes. Old Bluffton has been exposed occasionally during times of drought. The receding waters have revealed concrete foundations of a two-story hotel, scales of an old cotton gin, a rusting tank and concrete slabs from a Texaco station that also served as a general store. The tallest structure is what's left of the town well, an open-topped concrete cube about 4 feet high. Johnny Parks' tombstone is among a few burial sites.

Local historian Alfred Hallmark, whose great-great-great grandfather helped establish Bluffton, said his research showed 389 graves were moved starting in 1931 when dam construction began. That's the same year Bluffton's 40 or 50 residents started moving several miles west to the current Bluffton, which today amounts to a convenience store and post office at a lonely highway intersection serving 200 residents. Residents had to leave their ranches and abandon precious pecan trees, some of which produced more than 1,000 pounds of nuts each year. "It was devastating," said Hallmark, 70, a retired teacher, of the move. "They had no choice."

Other depleted lakes across Texas are revealing much older artifacts. More than two dozen looters have been arrested at Lake Whitney, about 50 miles south of Fort Worth, for removing Native American tools and fossils that experts believe could be thousands of years old. The Army Corps of Engineers, which oversees Lake Whitney, is patrolling a number of areas that contain artifacts, including some rock shelters once filled with water, said Abraham Phillips, natural resources specialist with the agency.

At Lake Georgetown near Austin, fishermen discovered what experts determined was the skull of an American Indian buried for hundreds or thousands of years. It's not clear what will become of the skull, said Kate Spradley, a Texas State University assistant anthropology professor who is keeping it temporarily in a lab. Strict federal laws governing American Indian burial sites bar excavations to search for other remains.

No such restrictions exist for the nearly two dozen unmarked graves discovered this summer in a dried-up section of a Navarro County reservoir. Some coffin lids are visible just under the dirt. Crews plan to excavate the site about 50 miles south of Dallas and move the remains to a cemetery, said Bruce McManus, chairman of the county's historical commission. He said the area of Richland-Chambers Lake is on property formerly owned by a slave owner.

"This is a once-in-a-lifetime find ... and maybe the only silver lining in the ongoing drought," McManus said.

Please sign.

http://www.allout.org/en/actions/russia_silenced

[AtLast]

Report: one of two new alleged victims of Sandusky was a family member
Posted by Ben Kercheval on November 23, 2011, 2:58 PM EST AP

Ugh.

Yesterday, the Patriot News reported that two new cases of alleged sexual abuse by former Penn State defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky were being opened by Children and Youth Services of Pennsylvania.

Today, it’s been revealed by Sandusky’s lawyer Joe Amendola that one of those two cases came from allegations made by a member of Sandusky’s family. Both new cases involve individuals who are still under the age of 18 and were reported within the past 60 days.The investigation of these cases are still in their early stages.

The assault with the family member allegedly occurred before Sandusky’s arrest earlier this month, but was not brought to the attention of authorities until after Sandusky was indicted on Nov. 4 with 40 counts of sex crimes against children.

If the allegations are true, the two new cases would be the first to involve victims who are still children; the other alleged victims who have come forward up to this point have been adults, even though the allegations of the sex crimes took place when they were children.



http://collegefootballtalk.nbcsports...member/related

[Queerasfck]

FBI arrests 7 in Amish haircut attacks in Ohio

I can't help but be fascinated by the Amish haircut attacks.

[Corkey]

http://news.yahoo.com/fort-sill-apac...205642852.html

This warms my cold heart.

[DapperButch]

Originally Posted by John Shaft

FBI arrests 7 in Amish haircut attacks in Ohio

I can't help but be fascinated by the Amish haircut attacks.

I am surprised, yet glad that it is being charged as a hate crime. Cutting an Amish man's beard is akin to being raped, or worse (per CNN last night). The fact that it is being charged as a hate crime tells me that the police really get this. I'm impressed by that.

[SoNotHer]

Russia: a bill to silence millions

www.allout.org/russia_silenced/taf



Watch this video from Polina, our friend from Russia, and share her message with friends.

192,511 People support this campaign. Help us get to 200,000
Political leaders in St. Petersburg are about to vote on law that will make it illegal for any person to write a book, publish an article or speak in public about being gay, lesbian or transgender. The ruling party led by President Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin could make millions of people invisible with the stroke of a pen.

Human rights defenders around the country are doing everything they can to stop it. They are risking their freedom to organize flashmobs and protests, but they are afraid that it won't be enough.

Right now, the world needs to speak up and tell Russian authorities to drop the bill. Join this call to leaders around the world to reach out to their counterparts in the Russian government - and ask them to reject this discriminatory and anti-democratic law.

[AtLast]

Originally Posted by DapperButch

I am surprised, yet glad that it is being charged as a hate crime. Cutting an Amish man's beard is akin to being raped, or worse (per CNN last night). The fact that it is being charged as a hate crime tells me that the police really get this. I'm impressed by that.

I agree- hate crimes take many forms. And given the right combination of personality disorder or mental health issues, any group could be targeted for worse such as being beaten or killed.

[AtLast]

http://photoblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news...ops-in-arizona

Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords serves Thanksgiving meal to troops in Arizona

Amazing recovery!