More Assassins With Badges

The sharp cracks echoing from the East Bakersfield street were loud enough to jolt Ruben Ceballos from a midnight slumber. Then he heard screams.

The 19-year-old jumped from his living room sofa and hurried to the kitchen door, which offered a view of the violent scene outside — Kern County sheriff's deputies repeatedly striking a man in the head with batons as he lay on the pavement.

"I saw two sheriff's deputies on top of this guy, just beating him," Ceballos said in an interview Monday. "He was screaming in pain … asking for help. He was incapable of fighting back — he was outnumbered, on the ground. They just beat him up."

The man was David Sal Silva, 33, a father of four, and he was pronounced dead less than an hour later. The altercation last week was videotaped by witnesses and has roiled the Central Valley city for days.

One woman frantically called 911, telling the operator: "The guy was laying on the floor and eight sheriffs ran up and started beating him up with sticks. The man is dead laying right here, right now. I got it all on video camera and I'm sending it to the news. These cops have no reason to do this to this man."

In an unusual move, sheriff's officials later detained for several hours two witnesses who had videotaped the incident on their phones. They were released only after they surrendered their phones to deputies.

Read the rest here.

Can the dead repent and be saved?

It's been a while since I have posted on, or linked to a weighty theological topic. I think this one fits the bill though. Please leave your comments on the respective posts.

Here  Here  and Here

Afghanistan: Law protecting women is tabled - called "un-Islamic"

The bill would have set a minimum age for marriage for girls, outlawed domestic violence, supported shelters for women who were victims of domestic abuse, barred prosecution of women for rapes committed against them, and banned "baad" (a practice of trading a young girl to settle a family dispute).

From here.

This is what we have been fighting for.

Japan: Is the Sun Rising Again?

WHEN Shinzo Abe resigned after just a year as prime minister, in September 2007, he was derided by voters, broken by chronic illness, and dogged by the ineptitude that has been the bane of so many recent Japanese leaders. Today, not yet five months into his second term, Mr Abe seems to be a new man. He has put Japan on a regime of “Abenomics”, a mix of reflation, government spending and a growth strategy designed to jolt the economy out of the suspended animation that has gripped it for more than two decades. He has supercharged Japan’s once-fearsome bureaucracy to make government vigorous again. And, with his own health revived, he has sketched out a programme of geopolitical rebranding and constitutional change that is meant to return Japan to what Mr Abe thinks is its rightful place as a world power.

Mr Abe is electrifying a nation that had lost faith in its political class. Since he was elected, the stockmarket has risen by 55%. Consumer spending pushed up growth in the first quarter to an annualised 3.5%. Mr Abe has an approval rating of over 70% (compared with around 30% at the end of his first term). His Liberal Democratic Party is poised to triumph in elections for the upper house of the Diet in July. With a majority in both chambers he should be able to pass legislation freely.

Read the rest here.
HT: T-19

France: Where it all went wrong

The French Stalinist Maurice Thorez spent the second world war in Moscow, where he called himself “Ivanov”. When France was liberated, he came home and entered government. After Charles de Gaulle stepped down as French leader in 1946, Thorez picked up one of the general’s pet projects: the creation of a school, the Ecole Nationale d’Administration, to train the new republic’s top bureaucrats. This caste, Thorez must have thought, was the “vanguard of the proletariat” that Lenin had always talked about. ENA has since produced countless members of the French political and financial elite, culminating in President François Hollande.

Elite-bashing in France dates back to the guillotine but the “énarques” and their buddies are currently at an all-time low. Within a single year, governments of both right and left have become despised. France has record unemployment. Elite scandals keep coming (most recently, around the budget minister, Jérôme Cahuzac, with his secret Swiss bank account). Something has gone horribly wrong for Thorez’s caste.

Read the rest here.

Good News for the IRS

After an absolutely horrible week, things may be looking up for the IRS. The odds overwhelmingly suggest that someone is going to discover in the next 24 hours that they owe the US Government something north of $150,000,000.00 (that's 40% of $376 million).

If you’re lucky enough to win the upcoming $600 million Powerball, you’ll also be putting a big smile on Uncle Sam’s face.

And when it comes time to give the tax man his share, your total bill will have a lot to do with which state you live in.

For example, if you buy a ticket and live in Florida, you'll pay less than if you live in New York; Florida does not collect state tax on lottery winnings. A New York City Powerball winner can expect to pay about $197.1 million – or more than half of a $376.9 million lump sum payment – in federal, state and city taxes.

The tax bite happens in stages. The very day you cash in your winning ticket you'll be hit with a withholding that is deducted immediately from your payout. Then, next April, you’ll pay whatever additional tax you owe based on the bracket you’re in after you add up all your other earnings.

Read the rest here

Next coronation to involve other faiths besides Christianity

The coronation of the next monarch will include a role for people of other faiths besides Christianity, in a break with a thousand years of history, The Sunday Telegraph has learnt [sic].

Read the rest here.

It doesn't matter. Britain will be a Muslim country within the next fifty years. The Queen will be Europe's last explicitly Christian crowned sovereign unless the monarchy is restored in Serbia (possible) or Russia (unlikely, at least while uncle Vlady is running the shop).

God save The Queen and God save Europe!

Britain: Almost half want out of the EU

Asked the exact question Conservatives want to put the public in the 2017 referendum – “Do you think that the UK should remain a member of the EU” – 46 per cent opt to come out, a higher figure than in other recent surveys.

Just 30 per cent say they want to remain.

In a further boost for the eurosceptic cause, 44 per cent want an “in/out” referendum immediately, although 29 per cent are prepared to wait until 2017, David Cameron's preferred option.

Read the rest here.

Vatican Moves to Tighten Canon Law

While the pontifical council is looking at small adjustments to several sections of the Code of Canon Law, promulgated in 1983, and ways to speed up the process for evaluating the validity of marriages, the section concerning offenses and penalties was judged to be in need of more than a touch up.

The current code was drafted in the 1970s, Bishop Arrieta said, "a period that was a bit naive" in regard to the need for a detailed description of offenses, procedures for investigating them and penalties to impose on the guilty. It reflected a feeling that "we are all good," he said, and that "penalties should be applied rarely."

"The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, when Pope Benedict was prefect, was obliged to act as a consequence of the fact that the (church's) penal law was not working," he said.

Read the rest here.
HT: Rorate Caeli

Egypt: Muslims Target Christians With Blasphemy Laws

CAIRO — The pale, young Christian woman sat handcuffed in the courtroom, accused of insulting Islam while teaching history of religions to fourth-graders. A team of Islamist lawyers with long beards sang in unison, "All except the Prophet Muhammad."

The case against Dimyana Abdel-Nour in southern Egypt's ancient city of Luxor began when parents of three of her pupils claimed that their children, aged 10, complained their teacher showed disgust when she spoke of Islam in class. According to the parents, Abdel-Nour, 24, told the children that Pope Shenouda, who led the Egyptian Coptic Church until his death last year, was better than the Prophet Muhammad.

Blasphemy charges were not uncommon in Egypt under the now-ousted autocrat Hosni Mubarak's regime, but there has been a surge in such cases in recent months, according to rights activists. The trend is widely seen as a reflection of the growing power and confidence of Islamists, particularly the ultraconservative Salafis.

"Salafis are the engineers of these stories," said Abdel-Hamid Hassan, a Muslim and the head of the parents' council at the primary school where Abdel-Nour teaches. Hassan's daughter was among several students who denied any wrongdoing by Abdel-Nour.

Read the rest here.

This is going to make a great movie plot

Premiering this year at the Cannes Film Festival: “To Catch a Thief.”

Someone stole a hotel-room safe and made off Friday with $1 million worth of gems by Chopard, a Swiss jeweler that decks the stars in its ritzy wares for the red carpet at the most celebrated gathering in cinema.

Police said that the jewels were meant to be loaned to stars, but a spokeswoman for the jeweler later said they were not.

A police source told NBC News that the safe was torn from wall of the hotel room of an American employee of Chopard. The heist took place in the middle of the night, French media reported.

It’s common for employees of jewelers to stay out all night during events like the Cannes festival, either surveying loaned-out jewelry or recovering pieces of it from the stars after parties.

French judicial police were investigating.

Read the rest here.

Party Like It's 1813

So what was it like to throw, or be invited to a party 200 years ago?

IRS stalled conservative groups, but gave speedy approval to Obama foundation

When the Barack H. Obama Foundation sought tax-exempt status to raise money for good works in Kenya, the Internal Revenue Service provided quick help.

The IRS approved charitable status for the foundation, which was run by President Obama’s brother and named after his father, in about a month’s time. The IRS also agreed to give the group this important financial status retroactively, back to 2009, when it had begun its fundraising.

The 34 days the IRS’s Cincinnati office took to process the foundation’s application stands in contrast to the waits of several months — and sometimes longer than a year — that several conservative groups say they experienced with the same office. Obama has apologized, saying Americans have a right to be angry that the office improperly targeted conservative groups for extra scrutiny.

Read the rest here

Harry Reid Preparing to Restrict the Filibuster

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is increasingly focused on the month of July as the time to exercise the so-called “nuclear option” and revisit filibuster reform, and he has privately told top advisers that he’s all but certain to take action if the Senate GOP blocks three upcoming key nominations, a senior Senate Democratic aide familiar with his thinking tells me.

Reid has privately consulted with President Obama on the need to revisit filibuster reform, and the President has told the Majority Leader that he will support the exercising of the nuclear option if Reid opts for it, the aide says, adding that senior Democrats expect the President to publicly push for it as well. “If Senator Reid decides to do something on nominations, the president has said he’ll be there to support him,” the aide says.

Read the rest here.

Satanic

Not a word I use lightly. But sometimes it's the only appropriate adjective.

Trouble in Socialist Paradise

First milk, butter, coffee and cornmeal ran short. Now Venezuela is running out of the most basic of necessities — toilet paper.

Blaming political opponents for the shortfall, as it does for other shortages, the embattled socialist government says it will import 50 million rolls to boost supplies.

That was little comfort to consumers struggling to find toilet paper on Wednesday.

Read the rest here.

I would just like to say well done to my vast right wing co-conspirators who secretly bought up all of Venezuela's TP just to make the lefties look bad.

The Real Military Sexual Assault Crisis

Most military victims of sexual assault are men.

The Christian Flight From Egypt Continues

CAIRO — Wasfi Amin Wassef used to buy and sell jewelry from his shop in Cairo’s vast Khan al-Khalili bazaar. Now he mostly buys it.

Well into a third year of economic malaise following the overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak, many ordinary Egyptians are selling their most cherished possessions, including heirloom jewelry, to raise cash for a ticket that will let them start a new life abroad. Official figures or estimates are not publicly available, but anecdotal evidence suggests emigration is rising.

“The number of people who sell us their gold since the revolution has increased three times,” Mr. Wassef said during an interview this month.

Some are Muslims but most are Christians, said Mr. Wassef, a member of Egypt’s ancient Coptic Orthodox Christian minority.

Read the rest here.

Bravo!

We can't count the number of times we've wanted to enact vengeance on some inconsiderate audience member whose cell phone goes off during a performance. But, like most people, we just bottle that fury up deep down inside and take it out on the break room vending machine later. Not Kevin Williamson. Last night the National Review writer was in attendance at the marvelous new musical Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812 when one theatergoer's incessant cell phone use finally drove him over the edge... into vigilantism.

Read the rest here.
HT: The Deacon's Bench

Just because you lean libertarian doesn't mean you aren't an idiot

Activist Adam Kokesh has asked 1,000 people to march across the Potomac on July 4 carrying loaded rifles.

He calls it a protest against “tyranny.”

Suppose the D.C. police, as they have promised, block the marchers from crossing into Washington? How should they respond?

Read the rest here. Arrest jail and a criminal record are among the less bad ways this could end for those involved. I can think of a number of scenarios where it might be a lot worse. This herb is playing a dangerous game to stoke his own ego.

Gosnell To Get Life in Prison

He cut a deal with prosecutors in which he forswears any appeals and in exchange he gets to die of natural causes. Given his age and the interminable appeals process in capital cases this seems like a very sensible course of action.

FBI Launches Criminal Investigation in IRS Scandal

Federal authorities have launched a criminal investigation into allegations that Internal Revenue Service officials targeted conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status for extra scrutiny, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said Tuesday.

In what is the most serious escalation yet of the revelations surrounding the agency, Holder said the Justice Department and FBI would examine whether any laws were violated at the IRS, which has acknowledged that it selected groups with the words “tea party” and “patriot” in their names for special audits.

Read the rest here.

Israeli Police Accused of Assaulting Christians

JERUSALEM (Ma’an) -- Patriarchs and heads of Christian churches in Jerusalem on Sunday released a joint statement denouncing attacks by Israeli police officers on worshipers and pilgrims during Holy Saturday at the Church of Holy Sepulcher.

Signatories of the statement highlighted that they saw “awful scenes of the brutal treatment to clerics, average people and pilgrims in Jerusalem during Holy Saturday.”

Read the rest here.

North Carolina May Ban Tesla Sales To Prevent “Unfair Competition”

No. I'm not making this up.

From the state that brought you the nation’s first ban on climate science comes another legislative gem: a bill that would prohibit automakers from selling their cars in the state.

The proposal, which the Raleigh News & Observer reports was unanimously approved by the state’s Senate Commerce Committee on Thursday, would apply to all car manufacturers, but the intended target is clear. It’s aimed at Tesla, the only U.S. automaker whose business model relies on selling cars directly to consumers, rather than through a network of third-party dealerships.

The bill is being pushed by the North Carolina Automobile Dealers Association, a trade group representing the state’s franchised dealerships. Its sponsor is state Sen. Tom Apodaca, a Republican from Henderson, who has said the goal is to prevent unfair competition between manufacturers and dealers. What makes it “unfair competition” as opposed to plain-old “competition”—something Republicans are typically inclined to favor—is not entirely clear. After all, North Carolina doesn’t seem to have a problem with Apple selling its computers online or via its own Apple Stores.

Read the rest here.

IRS Scandal Widens

Internal Revenue Service officials in Washington, and at least two other offices were involved in the targeting of conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status, making clear that the effort reached well beyond the branch in Cincinnati that was initially blamed, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post.

IRS officials at the agency’s Washington headquarters sent queries to conservative groups asking about their donors and other aspects of their operations, while officials in the El Monte and Laguna Niguel offices in California sent similar questionnaires to tea party-affiliated groups.

IRS employees in Cincinnati also told conservatives seeking the status of “social welfare” groups that a task force in Washington was overseeing their applications, according to interviews with the activists.

Lois G. Lerner, who oversees tax-exempt groups for the IRS, told reporters on Friday that the “absolutely inappropriate” actions were undertaken by “front-line people” working in Cincinnati to target groups with “tea party,” “patriot” or “9/12” in their names.

In one instance, however, Ron Bell, an IRS employee, informed an attorney representing a conservative group focused on voter fraud that the application was under review in Washington. On several other occasions, IRS officials in Washington and California sent conservative groups detailed questionnaires about their voter outreach and other activities, according to the documents.

“For the IRS to say it was some low-level group in Cincinnati is simply false,” said Cleta Mitchell, a partner in the law firm Foley & Lardner LLP who sought to communicate with IRS headquarters about the delay in granting tax-exempt status to True the Vote.

Moreover, details of the IRS’s efforts to target conservative groups reached the highest levels of the agency in May 2012, far earlier than has been disclosed, according to Republican congressional aides briefed by the IRS and the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) on the details of their reviews.

Read the rest here.

US Government Secretly Collected Journalists' Phone Records

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for The Associated Press in what the news cooperative’s top executive called a “massive and unprecedented intrusion” into how news organizations gather the news.

The records obtained by the Justice Department listed outgoing calls for the work and personal phone numbers of individual reporters, for general AP office numbers in New York, Washington and Hartford, Conn., and for the main number for the AP in the House of Representatives press gallery, according to attorneys for the AP. It was not clear if the records also included incoming calls or the duration of the calls.

In all, the government seized the records for more than 20 separate telephone lines assigned to AP and its journalists in April and May of 2012. The exact number of journalists who used the phone lines during that period is unknown, but more than 100 journalists work in the offices where phone records were targeted, on a wide array of stories about government and other matters.

Read the rest here.

Gosnell is Guilty of First Degree Murder

The jury has convicted him of three counts of First Degree Murder and numerous other charges. This modern day Dr. Mengele will now spend the rest of his life in prison, which is certainly where he belongs. If you want to see the face of abortion, it is Kermit Gosnell.

Gosnell Jury Deadlocked on Two Charges

PHILADELPHIA — Jurors here informed a judge Monday morning that they were hung on two charges in the capital murder trial of abortion provider Kermit Gosnell, who is accused of severing the spinal cords of babies born to women during procedures at his clinic.

It remained unclear which of the many charges he faces had caused the stalemate. When jurors were brought into the courtroom about 11:15 a.m., Judge Jeffrey P. Minehart gave them what is commonly called a Spencer charge, telling them to reexamine the evidence and continue trying to reach a verdict.

“The fact that you are stuck on two counts — it shows you are considering the evidence seriously. It’s an indication of your sincerity and your objectivity,” Minehart said. “It’s a difficult case. We appreciate that.”

Minehart said the gridlock also could represent “confusion” about the details of the charges in the case and the evidence presented. He said he was sending the jurors back to further consider that evidence in hopes of reaching a consensus. But, he added, “no juror should surrender an honest conviction” merely to reach a verdict.

Read the rest here.

Having had the experience of sitting on a murder jury I sympathize. What is obvious to some may not be to others. In the case I sat on we spent a day and a half debating between First and Second Degree Murder and at one point I thought we were going to be hung. Then we went back and watched the rather long video taped confession and reread transcripts from the police interview and the clear "premeditation" pretty much just leaped out.

Gordon Brown Slams Scottish Independence Bid

Gordon Brown has warned the SNP is willing to endanger Scottish jobs, mortgages and state pensions in the hope of winning next year’s independence referendum.

Launching Labour’s campaign to keep together the UK, the former Prime Minister delivered a passionate and sometimes angry critique of the Nationalists’ economic blueprint for separation.

He argued that the consequences of the SNP’s policies would be less money for basic services and pensions, while their desire to keep the pound would mean ceding control of the economy to what would be a foreign country.

Scotland would have no input, either at Westminster or Bank the England, over decisions that would have a major impact on job levels or mortgage repayments, he said.

But the former Chancellor suggested SNP ministers deliberately ignore the risks their plans pose to ordinary families because their overriding concern is the “dogma of separation”

Read the rest here.

Saudis Sentence Two For Aiding Conversion to Christianity

Naharnet today reports that a court in the Saudi Arabian city of Khobar has sentenced two men for helping a young woman, identified only as "the girl of Khobar", convert to Christianity and flee to Sweden. All 3 were co-workers at an insurance company in Khobar. A Lebanese man was sentenced to 6 years in prison and 300 lashes for encouraging the conversion. A Saudi man was sentenced to 2 years in prison and 200 lashes for helping the woman flee the country. The defendants say they will appeal. Still pending are possible charges of corruption and forging official document that allowed the woman to leave Saudi Arabia without her family's consent.

From here.

Sometimes things just need to be said bluntly. Islam is a barbarous religion.

Pope Francis Canonizes 800 Martyrs of Islamic Persecution

ROME -- Pope Francis canonized more than 800 Catholics in Saint Peter’s Square Sunday – the largest number to be elevated to sainthood at once in the history of the Catholic Church.

The choice of some of the new saints was also striking, touching on the already-fragile relationship between Christianity and Islam.

The new saints included hundreds of laymen from the southern Italian port town of Otranto who were slain in the 15th century by the invading Ottoman Turkish army after they refused to convert to Islam.

In 1480, after conquering Constantinople – modern day Istanbul - the Ottoman Sultan Mohammed II planned to invade Rome, and Otranto became his army’s port of entrance into Italy.

The local population fought back in a week-long siege, putting up a brave but hopeless resistance. When Ottoman soldiers finally overrun the town, they were ordered to kill every man over the age of 15 who refused to convert to Islam.

More than 800 resisted, locking themselves up into the town’s Cathedral. Their ringleader, local shoemaker Antonio Primaldo, was first to be beheaded. According  to local legend, his headless body remained standing until the last of his fellow townspeople was killed.

Since then, Primaldo and his townsfolk, who chose to die rather than betray their Catholic faith, have been hailed as martyrs. Their bones and skulls – proudly on display behind glass walls in the Cathedral of Otranto – are well-known Catholic relics and a popular pilgrimage destination.

Read the rest here.

Republicans (finally) Have a Real Scandal

After four years of desperately looking for a scandal to pin on the Obama Administration, the GOP appears to have just been handed the real deal. No, I am not talking about Benghazi. As scandals go that one is fairly garden variety. Basically it was the keystone cops running crisis management and then they tried to cover up their incompetence. Lots of knavery but I don't see anything criminal.

Not so today's announcement by the IRS that they targeted conservative political groups in 2010 and 2012 for special scrutiny. That's not just unethical, its illegal. And not just in the administrative sense. This could (big word there) be a major scandal involving the politically motivated use of one of the most powerful law enforcement agencies in the country against the opposition party.

That's bad news for Obama. Worse, I don't see anyway he can order an in house investigation that would not be stripped of all credibility from its inception. The best thing he could do, and frankly the only thing he should do, is to call up Speaker Boehner and Minority Leader McConnell and ask them for the name of someone he could appoint as an independent council with full prosecutorial authority and a mandate to go wherever the evidence takes him/her..

IRS Admits They Targeted Conservatives

The Internal Revenue Service on Friday said that it inappropriately selected tea party political groups for special scrutiny in the 2012 campaign, an admission likely to fuel long-simmering suspicions among conservatives that the IRS has been singling them out for unfair treatment.

The IRS official who oversees tax-exempt groups, Lois Lerner, acknowledged at a conference on Friday the actions were wrong and apologized, according to the Associated Press. Lerner said groups with the words “tea party” or “patriot” in their applications for tax-exempt status faced additional screening.

In a statement, the IRS said the screening occurred by career employees in Cincinnati who, between 2010 and 2012, were seeking to centralize work related to tax exempt organizations. The agency said that while it made errors, they were not politically motivated.

Read he rest here.

 

Political Humor From Britain

The traditions of the House of Commons are quite different from  our more sedate speechifying in the House and Senate where as often as not speeches are delivered to a dead silent and more or less empty chamber. In Britain the Prime Minister and the Cabinet are expected to appear for a weekly grilling called "Question Time." In this and major debates on important subjects there is a lot of heated back and forth with much shouting and jeering in the Commons. And being a good parliamentary debater means being quick with the cutting and or witty remark.

Memo to Employers

No, you can't force your employees to join the Scientology cult.

High Tech "Flash Mob" Loots Banks of $45 Million

NEW YORK — A worldwide gang of criminals stole a total of $45 million in a matter of hours by hacking their way into a database of prepaid debit cards and then draining cash machines around the globe, federal prosecutors said Thursday — and outmoded U.S. card technology may be partly to blame.

Seven people are under arrest in the U.S. in connection with the case, which prosecutors said involved thousands of thefts from ATMs using bogus magnetic swipe cards carrying information from Middle Eastern banks. The fraudsters moved with astounding speed to loot financial institutions around the world, working in cells including one in New York, Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch said.

She called it “a massive 21st-century bank heist” carried out by brazen thieves.

One of the suspects was caught on surveillance cameras, his backpack increasingly loaded down with cash, authorities said. Others took photos of themselves with giant wads of bills as they made their way up and down Manhattan.

Here’s how it worked:

Read the rest here.

How quaint. Apparently some people still rob banks instead of the other way around.

Sad News

It is looking grim for the flagship of America's merchant marine. The SS United States, one of the world's last transatlantic liners and still the fastest, is in imminent danger of being sent to the scrap yard. Future generations will not judge us kindly for allowing this to happen.

Hell hath no fury...

Ah, romance. Boy meets girl. Boy dates girl. Boy dumps girl. Girl embarks on a campaign of online harassment that lands her a prison sentence. Girl flees country.

Lee David Clayworth, 35, met Lee Ching Yan, 29, while he was teaching at an international school in Malaysia. They began casually dating in mid-2010, said Clayworth, who called it quits by December. "I decided to go my own way," he told TODAY, describing a relationship that at times "wasn't the healthiest." Unfortunately, he said, the dumping "didn't go down so well with her."

After the split, Yan broke into Clayworth's home and took his laptop, external hard drive, teaching portfolio and other significant personal belongings, he said.

"And then this online onslaught started," Clayworth said. "My email account was hacked into, my Skype account was hacked into. Emails started coming from my account ... claiming that I'm having sex with underage students."

Read the rest here.

Bright Tuesday

Liturgy in honor of the Iberian Icon of the Mother of God in Moscow's Novodevichy Convent.

Yellow Dog Republicans

Once upon a time in South Carolina election day meant Democratic Primary day. There was a popular expression used to describe white southerners back in the days of the "Solid South." They were called (and embraced the term) "yellow dog Democrats." By which it was meant that they would sooner vote for a yellow dog on the Democratic ticket than a Republican. Last night confirmed beyond a shadow of doubt that the pendulum has now swung all the way.