Don't forget to vote fraudulently.
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At least 7 dead, including gunman, in Santa Monica shooting
NBC LA: A gunman killed six people and injured another five before being shot and killed by police during a rampage that ended on the Santa Monica College in California.
Police said they are unsure whether he acted alone. A second individual, described by authorities as a “person of interest” has been taken into custody.
The shootings started blocks from the college when a man killed 2 then fired on a car, wounding one person before leaving in another car. Police then received reports of a man shooting at passing cars and buses in two separate locations near the college campus.
The gunman reportedly then moved across the campus and into the library where he was shot and killed by police.
Photo: Police at the scene of a shooting at Santa Monica College on Friday, June 7. (KNBC-TV) -
Revealed: Letters From Republicans Seeking Obamacare Money | The Nation Even before President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law, Republicans were vowing to repeal it. It’s no wonder, because polls showed that the basic elements of the ACA were quite popular, and there was a real danger that it would become more so as people found out that the plan denounced as a “monstrosity” by the National Republican Senatorial Committee would not trample on their liberties so much as help protect their health. Desperate to avoid this, the GOP-controlled House has voted no fewer than thirty-seven times to repeal Obamacare in the three years since it was enacted.
Now letters produced by a Freedom of Information Act request reveal that many of these same anti-Obamacare Republicans have solicited grants from the very program they claim to despise. This is evidence not merely of shameless hypocrisy but of the fact that the ACA bestows tangible benefits that even Congress’s most extreme right-wing ideologues are hard-pressed to deny to their constituents.
As I reported here last September, Congressman Paul Ryan, who as Mitt Romney’s running mate in 2012 called for its repeal, sent a letter requesting ACA money for health clinics in his district two years earlier. The Nation has obtained documents revealing that at least twenty other Obamacare-bashing GOP lawmakers have similarly pleaded for ACA funds on behalf of constituents. Among them are Kristi Noem, a Republican lawmaker from South Dakota likely to run for the Senate next year, as well as Ohio Senator Rob Portman, who has been touted as a potential GOP presidential candidate in 2016.
In one of two letters sent by Portman to the Department of Health and Human Services, the senator requested ACA funds to help a federal health center in Cleveland, where the money could help “an additional 8,966 uninsured individuals” to receive ”essential services,” in his words. In Noem’s case, the congresswoman requested ACA funds to construct a community health center in Rapid City to provide primary services to the uninsured. Both Noem and Portman won office in 2010 campaigning vigorously against the law and have since worked to repeal it.
Though notably less transparent, the behavior of these GOP lawmakers parallels that of GOP governors like Arizona’s Jan Brewer, who blast the president’s health reform package while embracing the millions in Medicaid funds that it provides.
The letter writers include GOP rank-and-file Congress members, leaders and committee chairs, all of whom have supported the repeal effort. David Valadao, for example, a freshman representative who campaigned last year on his opposition to Obamacare, requested funds in a letter to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius two years ago for a program to improve “the general health” of the Fresno County area, which he then served as a California assemblyman. Congressman Jeff Denham, a two-term GOP lawmaker who won his seat with support from Tea Party activists, penned a letter recommending the same application for Fresno County. The county Department of Public Health won the grant. Valadao’s and Denham’s offices declined to comment.
The Affordable Care Act authorizes an array of grants to local hospitals, community health clinics and doctor training programs, as well as public health initiatives to improve health and access to care. The billions of dollars in grants are awarded on a competitive basis, and lawmakers on the state and federal levels have sent letters endorsing applicants.
Texas Senator John Cornyn, the Republican whip, wrote to the Centers for Disease Control to recommend a grant for Houston and Harris County. Congressman Michael McCaul, a Republican and the chair of the Homeland Security Committee, wrote a letter praising the same grant request, calling the effort a “crucial initiative to achieve a healthier Houston/Harris County.” Senators Johnny Isakson and Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, Mark Kirk of Illinois and Thad Cochran of Mississippi also recommended grant request approval for public health or health clinic funding.
House Republicans and the Senate Republican Policy Committee have trashed the ACA’s Community Transformation grants as an Obamacare “slush fund.” In the letters seeking these grants, however, GOP lawmakers have heaped praise on their potential. Cornyn writes in his letter that the grant would help “improve the health and quality of life of area residents.” Congressman Aaron Schock, a Republican from Illinois, congratulated a local nonprofit for winning a Community Transformation grant, noting that the program will give “people the tools to live healthier and longer lives.”
The National Republican Senatorial Committee warns of Obamacare that “as this awful legislation gets ever closer to going into effect, the negative consequences are only becoming increasingly clear.” But the NRSC’s chair, Jerry Moran, has hailed programs that exist because of it. In August, he attended a ceremony announcing a $4.7 million expansion of the Community Health Center of Southeast Kansas. A picture posted on Moran’s official Facebook page shows the senator in a suit with his foot on a shovel to break ground for the health clinic. “That funding—that came from the Affordable Care Act, and he voted no,” says Krista Postai, CEO of the CHC-SEK clinics. She adds that Moran had been supportive of health clinics in the past, and she was disappointed to see him vote against the law that made her clinic expansion possible. Postai noted that her clinics are already improving lives with ACA funding, and that there are thousands of uninsured and disabled people in her community who now receive coverage and preventive care thanks to the law.
Some of the letters obtained by The Nation are from lawmakers who are no longer in office, including Jerry Lewis, Bobby Schilling, Kay Bailey Hutchison and Robert Dold.
The letters of support for ACA grants are a reminder (if one is needed) that some Republican claims against the bill reflect politics rather than policy preferences. GOP Congressman Hal Rogers, who rails against healthcare reform as “socialistic,” wrote a letter asking for an Obamacare health clinic grant almost as soon as the money became available. Federal health centers provide a range of healthcare services regardless of a patient’s ability to pay. The ACA dramatically boosts spending on these centers, by about $11 billion, with the goal of reaching 1.25 million additional patients.
Congressman Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican who has led efforts to repeal healthcare reform, stood next to a 6-foot stack of papers he dubbed the “Obamacare Red Tape Tower of Regulations” at a press conference in May. In October, Cassidy posed for a different type of press event, standing with school administrators in Baton Rouge, scissors in hand, at a ribbon-cutting ceremony for three school-based health centers. The ceremony was a celebration of a $500,000 grant authorized by the Affordable Care Act to expand health clinics in area schools.
Before healthcare reform made nearly every federal health program a political football, the Bush administration routinely requested greater funds for federal community health centers with little controversy. But health clinics once supported by the GOP are now on the chopping block. Republicans, led by Congressman Michael Burgess of Texas, have attempted to roll back the ACA’s expanded clinic funding. Also, several of the repeal bills in Congress have targeted the entire law, including funds for health centers and public health initiatives. The fact that they have sought grants for those centers has not stopped Republicans from voting against them. Louisiana’s Cassidy, for instance, voted for Burgess’s bill to shut down funding for clinics.
Whether cutting a ribbon or signing a letter, no Republicans have acknowledged that the health programs they are endorsing are provided by Obamacare.
Some GOP lawmakers have balked at the charges of hypocrisy. “Sen. Chambliss voted against the Affordable Care Act, just as he did the stimulus package. But the bill passed, and if the money is available, we want Georgians to be able to compete fairly with folks from other states for it,” wrote Lauren Claffey, the senator’s press secretary, in an e-mail. Similarly, Senator Isakson’s office e-mailed a statement from the senator claiming: ”I voted against Obamacare and will continue to work to repeal it. However, one of the most important parts of my job as senator is to assist Georgia individuals, businesses and local governments in their dealings with the federal government. Any time one of my constituents has business with the federal government, I try to be as helpful as possible by supporting worthy projects.”
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Billo The Clown Mainstreams Leader Of Violent British Islamophobic Hate Group EDL Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly provided a platform for Tommy Robinson, head of the English Defence League, a violent, extremist anti-Muslim hate group in Great Britain.
O’Reilly hosted Robinson on The O’Reilly Factor to discuss the EDL’s efforts to, as Robinson described, “fight for Christianity, fight for our children’s future, fight for our culture, and fight for our country’s identity, which is completely under attack.” Robinson went on to claim that British politicians aren’t doing enough to suppress the growth of Muslim communities in the United Kingdom, adding “actions speak a lot louder than words.”
Although O’Reilly mentioned press reports describing the EDL as “fascist” and “racist” and described the group’s views as “militant” at the beginning of the segment, he failed to note the EDL’s history of incendiary and often violent actions.O’Reilly is not the first right-wing media figure to highlight the EDL or its leader. Ann Coulter defended the organization from critics after a protest against the slaying of a British soldier by two Muslim men in Woolwich turned violent last month.
Pamela Geller, an Islamophobic blogger and activist, has repeatedly expressed her support for the EDL in the past. She wrote at the conservative American Thinker that “Free people should support the English Defence League in its efforts to stand for England and the West against the belligerent invaders and Islamic imperialists.” This past January, she defended Robinson after he was arrested for illegally entering the United States. Geller and Robinson sit together on the President’s Council of Stop Islamization of Nations, which claims to be ”the first activist leadership team uniting counter-jihadists in Europe, the U.S., and Australia.”
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America’s unending epidemic of gun tragedy continues to take its toll.
Raw Story: A Texas girl died on Tuesday night after being accidentally shot with an AK-47 assault-style rifle while her stepbrother was “making the weapon safe by pulling the trigger,” authorities said.
In a press release on Wednesday, Johnson County Sheriff Bob Alford explained that deputies responded to a call Tuesday night about 8 p.m to find 13-year-old Emilee Bates shot in the stomach.
According to KSAX, Lt. Tim Jones told how the girl’s 19-year-old step-brother, Austin McCord, accidentally fired the weapon while cleaning it.
The sheriff’s office said that McCord had ejected two “dummy” rounds from the AK-47, but he had forgotten about other live rounds in the magazine.
“He believed he was making the weapon safe by pulling the trigger to drop the bolt on an empty chamber,” Jones noted in the news release. “However, the chamber wasn’t empty and discharged.”
Anyone else sick of this shit yet?
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![thepoliticalfreakshow:
The GOP’s Gameplan: In case you were still unclear, Texas Tea Party leader, Ken Emanuelson clears it up for you.
No, seriously, tell us what you really think. A Texas Tea Party leader admitted recently what most of us already knew, the Republican party doesn’t want African-Americans to vote.
When asked at a meeting of Texas Republicans “what can Republicans do to get black people to vote,” a Texas Tea Party leader, Ken Emanuelson, gave the following answer:
“I’m going to be real honest with you, the Republican Party doesn’t want black people to vote if they’re going to vote 9-to-1 for Democrats.”
Ruh roh.
Vote by Shutterstock.
The Tea Party, for all of its short years, already has a long history of racism. Remember when Tea Party protesters spat on civil rights hero Rep. John Lewis and called him the n-word? Or Tea Party darling Rand Paul’s opposition to the Civil Rights Act? Or just the other day when a Tea Party leader, and former GOP party chair in Texas, accused Republican anti-tax activist Grover Norquist of being a stealth Muslim because he has a beard?
Not that the GOP is any better (and honestly, let’s stop the facade of pretending that the Tea Party is anything more than a group of conservative Republicans). The Republican party has its own checkered past of trying to impede the black vote, especially in the south. And in recent years, the GOP has doubled up its effort to disenfranchise voters from all walks of life:
As the nation gears up for the 2012 presidential election, Republican officials have launched an unprecedented, centrally coordinated campaign to suppress the elements of the Democratic vote that elected Barack Obama in 2008. Just as Dixiecrats once used poll taxes and literacy tests to bar black Southerners from voting, a new crop of GOP governors and state legislators has passed a series of seemingly disconnected measures that could prevent millions of students, minorities, immigrants, ex-convicts and the elderly from casting ballots. “What has happened this year is the most significant setback to voting rights in this country in a century,” says Judith Browne-Dianis, who monitors barriers to voting as co-director of the Advancement Project, a civil rights organization based in Washington, D.C.Republicans have long tried to drive Democratic voters away from the polls. “I don’t want everybody to vote,” the influential conservative activist Paul Weyrich told a gathering of evangelical leaders in 1980. “As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.” But since the 2010 election, thanks to a conservative advocacy group founded by Weyrich, the GOP’s effort to disrupt voting rights has been more widespread and effective than ever. In a systematic campaign orchestrated by the American Legislative Exchange Council – and funded in part by David and Charles Koch, the billionaire brothers who bankrolled the Tea Party – 38 states introduced legislation this year designed to impede voters at every step of the electoral process.
We’ve seen GOP voter suppression in countless states. Ohio was one, just this past November. Arizona is another, where the GOP is challenging the Voting Rights Act itself. As our own Gaius Publius has explained, that’s the Republicans’ ultimate goal in all of this, taking down the Voting Rights Act, which was put in place specifically because racists didn’t want blacks to vote.
But it’s not just African-Americans they’re targeting, Republicans are also trying to stop college kids from voting, since college kids tend to vote Democratic. And even on the issue of voting rights for felons, when we see movement on the GOP side, it’s done in a way that’s only half sincere.
The Republican party has a long history of voter suppression, so it’s no surprise that they still want to suppress the black vote in 2013. It is surprising, however, that they’d actually admit it.
[AmericaBlog]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/e2db0ec424d2be88c630bf9d700c9d65/tumblr_mnxy5jgJhk1qjo9duo1_1280.jpg)
The GOP’s Gameplan: In case you were still unclear, Texas Tea Party leader, Ken Emanuelson clears it up for you.
No, seriously, tell us what you really think. A Texas Tea Party leader admitted recently what most of us already knew, the Republican party doesn’t want African-Americans to vote.
When asked at a meeting of Texas Republicans “what can Republicans do to get black people to vote,” a Texas Tea Party leader, Ken Emanuelson, gave the following answer:
“I’m going to be real honest with you, the Republican Party doesn’t want black people to vote if they’re going to vote 9-to-1 for Democrats.”
Ruh roh.
Vote by Shutterstock.
The Tea Party, for all of its short years, already has a long history of racism. Remember when Tea Party protesters spat on civil rights hero Rep. John Lewis and called him the n-word? Or Tea Party darling Rand Paul’s opposition to the Civil Rights Act? Or just the other day when a Tea Party leader, and former GOP party chair in Texas, accused Republican anti-tax activist Grover Norquist of being a stealth Muslim because he has a beard?
Not that the GOP is any better (and honestly, let’s stop the facade of pretending that the Tea Party is anything more than a group of conservative Republicans). The Republican party has its own checkered past of trying to impede the black vote, especially in the south. And in recent years, the GOP has doubled up its effort to disenfranchise voters from all walks of life:
As the nation gears up for the 2012 presidential election, Republican officials have launched an unprecedented, centrally coordinated campaign to suppress the elements of the Democratic vote that elected Barack Obama in 2008. Just as Dixiecrats once used poll taxes and literacy tests to bar black Southerners from voting, a new crop of GOP governors and state legislators has passed a series of seemingly disconnected measures that could prevent millions of students, minorities, immigrants, ex-convicts and the elderly from casting ballots. “What has happened this year is the most significant setback to voting rights in this country in a century,” says Judith Browne-Dianis, who monitors barriers to voting as co-director of the Advancement Project, a civil rights organization based in Washington, D.C.Republicans have long tried to drive Democratic voters away from the polls. “I don’t want everybody to vote,” the influential conservative activist Paul Weyrich told a gathering of evangelical leaders in 1980. “As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.” But since the 2010 election, thanks to a conservative advocacy group founded by Weyrich, the GOP’s effort to disrupt voting rights has been more widespread and effective than ever. In a systematic campaign orchestrated by the American Legislative Exchange Council – and funded in part by David and Charles Koch, the billionaire brothers who bankrolled the Tea Party – 38 states introduced legislation this year designed to impede voters at every step of the electoral process.
We’ve seen GOP voter suppression in countless states. Ohio was one, just this past November. Arizona is another, where the GOP is challenging the Voting Rights Act itself. As our own Gaius Publius has explained, that’s the Republicans’ ultimate goal in all of this, taking down the Voting Rights Act, which was put in place specifically because racists didn’t want blacks to vote.
But it’s not just African-Americans they’re targeting, Republicans are also trying to stop college kids from voting, since college kids tend to vote Democratic. And even on the issue of voting rights for felons, when we see movement on the GOP side, it’s done in a way that’s only half sincere.
The Republican party has a long history of voter suppression, so it’s no surprise that they still want to suppress the black vote in 2013. It is surprising, however, that they’d actually admit it.
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![shychemist:
agooddaytowhy:
qbits:
likeiknewiwould:
canadian-communist:
Confirmed: Canada 2011 Polls Fraudulent
The Canadian Federal Court has confirmed that the country’s 2011 federal election, which led to the victory of Stephen Harper’s government, was fraudulent.
“Either senior leaders of the Conservative Party were directly involved in election fraud or they were astoundingly negligent in securing access to their voter database. Illegal or incompetent—just like in the Senate scandal.”
Garry Neil, Executive Director of the Council of Canadians said “This Federal Court decision is a major indictment of the Conservative Party of Canada.”
The court emphasized in a Thursday ruling that it has found in no uncertain terms that widespread election fraud took place during the vote. The ruling also stated that “there was an orchestrated effort to suppress votes during the 2011 election campaign by a person with access to the [Conservative Party’s] CIMS database.” Accordingly, the Council of Canadians has called on the Conservative Party to investigate the issue. It says anything less at this point would be a cover-up on behalf of the Conservatives. The Council of Canadians says that the non-cooperation, obstructionism, and attempts to disrupt the Federal Court case by the CIMS makes it look like Prime Minister Harper has something to conceal.
Source
Outrageous.
Just another day for the Harper government…
It is nice to see my suspicions confirmed. In a a depressing manner.
Just a reminder that this happened.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/a0a363ad59b248c8bcaa1e6f0e749463/tumblr_mnu4n0uSAN1rwx482o1_1280.jpg)
Confirmed: Canada 2011 Polls Fraudulent
The Canadian Federal Court has confirmed that the country’s 2011 federal election, which led to the victory of Stephen Harper’s government, was fraudulent.“Either senior leaders of the Conservative Party were directly involved in election fraud or they were astoundingly negligent in securing access to their voter database. Illegal or incompetent—just like in the Senate scandal.”Garry Neil, Executive Director of the Council of Canadians said “This Federal Court decision is a major indictment of the Conservative Party of Canada.”The court emphasized in a Thursday ruling that it has found in no uncertain terms that widespread election fraud took place during the vote.
The ruling also stated that “there was an orchestrated effort to suppress votes during the 2011 election campaign by a person with access to the [Conservative Party’s] CIMS database.”
Accordingly, the Council of Canadians has called on the Conservative Party to investigate the issue. It says anything less at this point would be a cover-up on behalf of the Conservatives.
The Council of Canadians says that the non-cooperation, obstructionism, and attempts to disrupt the Federal Court case by the CIMS makes it look like Prime Minister Harper has something to conceal.Outrageous.
Just another day for the Harper government…
It is nice to see my suspicions confirmed. In a a depressing manner.
Just a reminder that this happened.
(via liberalsarecool)
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Hacker who outed Steubenville rapists could get more jail time than Steubenville rapists Meet Deric Lostutter, a 26-year-old cybersecurity consultant who also goes by the moniker “KYAnonymous.” Lostutter obtained and published tweets and Instagram photos in which members of the Steubenville High School football team joked about an incident in which a 16-year-old girl was raped.
Lostutter’s actions inspired a group of people to take justice into their own hands. A hacker called “Bobcat” vandalized the Facebook page of the Steubenville football team. Other hackers took similar action.
It’s unclear if Lostutter participated in any hacking shenanigans, but if he’s indicted and found guilty of any, he faces 10 years in jail. By comparison, the Steubenville rapists received one- and two-year sentences each.
(via yall)
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House Republicans Booed As They Vote To Deport DREAMers To a chorus of boos from the gallery, House Republicans voted 224-201 on Thursday to approve an amendment that defunds the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. The amendment, from Rep. Steve King (R-IA), undercuts the flexibility that allows the Department of Homeland Security to halt deporting DREAMers and instead focus on people convicted of crimes.
After the vote, the House Hispanic Caucus tweeted,”House Republicans just voted to treat DREAMers and undocumented spouses of servicemembers in the same way as violent criminals.” Only six Republicans voted against the measure.
As King’s amendment passed, the House gallery erupted in boos.
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One Day in Gun-merica: May 9, 2013
From Joe Nocera, NY Times
A 3-year-old boy died Wednesday night after a self-inflicted shooting in Corsicana, Tex. Kinzler Allen Davis found a handgun inside a bedroom in his home and then discharged it, striking himself in the head. The boy’s father was in another room at the time. There were no immediate plans to charge the parents.
Authorities are searching for a 45-year-old man they say fatally shot his wife and two young daughters in their rural Northern California home. Shasta County Sheriff’s deputies received a call from the residence of Shane Franklin Miller Tuesday evening and found the bodies of Miller’s wife, Sandy, 34, and two daughters, Shelby, 8, and Shasta, 4. All three had been shot multiple times. Police found several weapons in the house. Miller is considered to be armed and extremely dangerous.
A man who had recently been in trouble with the law shot and killed his estranged wife and her parents with a high-powered rifle Wednesday evening outside a home in Hendersonville, N.C. Authorities hunted for the suspect, 32-year-old Ralph Robert Warren III, for about two and a half hours before finding him dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound a few miles from the crime scene. The victims are Carrie Tracy Warren, 30; Theresa Russell Tracy, 49; and Richard Allen Tracy, 51.
An 11-year-old boy is recovering after being shot inside a Detroit, Mich., home Tuesday night. The gunman came from between two houses and fired a gun from across the street, striking the boy and a 26-year-old man standing outside. Both the boy and the adult were taken to the hospital in critical condition. Police are seeking tips.
A 19-year-old man was shot and killed in a drive-by shooting in the Bronzeville neighborhood of Chicago, Ill., Wednesday night. Someone fired shots from a light-colored sedan just after 11 p.m., striking the Kevin Ambrose in the back as he walked down the sidewalk. The victim managed to run through a vacant lot before collapsing. He died in the hospital.
A 14-year-old boy is in the hospital and his mother could wind up facing charges after he was shot in the leg by an older friend who lives at their Santa Fe, Tex., home Tuesday evening. Pete Jesse Rodriguez, 24, was playing with a gun when it fired, striking the teen in the thigh. But he wasn’t seen by a doctor for seven hours, as his mother looked up information about gunshot wounds on the WebMD website first. Investigators are reviewing images from a video system set up inside the house. The teenager’s mother may be charged with felony injury to a child by omission.
Toquan Hayes, 19, suffered a gunshot wound to the leg in Huntington, W. Va., Wednesday afternoon. Witnesses reported seeing a red Pontiac with Ohio license plates fleeing the scene. Hayes was a standout athlete at Huntington High School and was recruited to play football at the University of Charleston last fall.
—WSAZ
A 70-year-old man was shot inside a Milwaukee, Wis., home around 8:40 p.m. Wednesday. He suffered a graze wound to the head and is expected to survive. Police say a man entered the victim’s residence and fired numerous shots. No one is in custody.
Salem, Ore., police arrested a 24-year-old man for shooting his sister in the leg Wednesday night. Raymond Hernandez had been drinking before his handgun discharged as he was unloading it. The bullet struck Nikki Apodaca, 18, before lodging in the door of a bedroom, where a 19-year-old man was staying. The victim will survive. Hernandez is charged with assault and reckless endangerment.
Robinson Hao Davalos, 19, was shot after a handgun accidentally discharged in Fairfield Twp., Ohio, early Wednesday. Davalos was in the backseat of a car where drug activity was occurring when the firearm discharged, causing a round to go through the back of the driver’s seat and striking him in his back. He was taken to the hospital. Todd Armstrong, 22, was arrested in connection with the shooting.
An overnight shooting in Northeast Portland, Ore., left a man dead and a woman injured Wednesday. Police activity is focused around a nude bar called Club Skinn, where a man fatally shot Anton Leshawn Hill, 33, a father of five, and injured a 21-year-old woman before fleeing on foot. Hill collapsed on the sidewalk outside the club and died from a single gunshot to the head. The attack stemmed from a fight that began inside the club.
“You don’t know who’s pulling guns these days,” a relative said. “The minute someone gets into an argument, the first thing someone does is start pulling the trigger.”
A man has been booked on an attempted murder charge after he allegedly fired four shots at a man driving a truck Tuesday evening near the Atlantis Casino Resort and Spa in Reno, Nev. Eric Dale, 37, hailed police after a shooting near the parking lot, but upon investigation and surveillance video, police determined Dale was the shooter. The victim, who was shot an unknown number of times, was taken to the hospital and is expected to survive.
A man was gunned down in the Charlestown area of Boston, Mass., Tuesday night. Police were called at 10:18 p.m. Tuesday and found Steven Jones, 21, on the ground with gunshot wounds. He was pronounced dead at the scene. His uncle said he was trying to break up a fight. Police are seeking Pablo Flores for questioning.
At least two people were wounded Wednesday evening in a shooting in the Marquette Park neighborhood of Chicago, Ill. Shortly after 6 p.m., paramedics responded to the 6200 block of South Artesian Avenue where two people were shot. Both victims, whose ages, genders and conditions were not immediately available, were taken to the hospital.
Two people were shot and injured in Las Vegas, Nev., Wednesday evening. One victim was shot in the leg and the other in the arm by two different guns. One suspected shooter fled the area and the other is believed to be hiding in a nearby apartment complex.
A man was shot and killed at a home in East San Jose, Calif., Wednesday afternoon. Officers were called to a residential street lined with single-family homes to find a man who had been shot at least once. He was pronounced dead at the scene. Investigators are still looking for the shooter.
Because freedom.(via truth-has-a-liberal-bias)
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Maybe not the best movie-promotion idea: In Jefferson City, Missouri, a movie theater known for having actors portray characters from popular films did the same thing with “Iron Man 3.” But not everyone was aware of this promotion, as people called into police after spotting a man wearing full tactical gear and a fake gun in the parking lot—and police treated the situation as an active shooter situation. Less than a year ago, James Holmes was suspected of opening fire in a Colorado movie theater during a midnight screening of “The Dark Knight Rises.” (photo via Amber & Amanda Photography’s Facebook page)
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“I have to wonder how many NRA members would shriek if the Federal Government passed a law requiring all gun owners to participate monthly in a government-run militia. And if it was worded right? They would have no Constitutional right to complain. To me, that sounds like the best method of handling gun ownership. Currently, gun ownership is a “right” but a lazy right. How many gun owners don’t regularly use their guns? Keep them in a forgotten closet or the like in case of emergency? So let’s require all gun owners to belong to government-run militias as dictated in the Constitution. The militias will include physical exercise regimens, gun safety and protocol, target practice, and the like. Oh, and a gun buyback program so that anyone who doesn’t want to belong to the militia can opt out by no longer owning a gun.” -
“When you dehumanize a group with terms like “illegals” then they cease being people and can be dealt with as an act — a performance that can be corrected.” -
Real, complete, fire-able 3D printed ‘liberator’ gun downloaded tens of thousands of times
May 9, 2013If gun control advocates hoped to prevent blueprints for the world’s first fully 3D-printable gun from spreading online, that horse has now left the barn about a hundred thousand times.
That’s the number of downloads of the 3D-printable file for the so-called “Liberator” gun that the high-tech gunsmithing group Defense Distributed has seen in just the last two days, a member of the group tells me. The gun’s CAD files have been ten times more popular than any component the group has previously made available, parts that have included the body of an AR-15 and the magazine for an AK-47.”This has definitely been our most well-received download,” says Haroon Khalid, a developer working with Defense Distributed. “I don’t think any of us predicted it would be this much.”
The controversial gun-printing group is hosting those files, which include everything from the gun’s trigger to its body to its barrel, on a service that has attracted some controversy of its own: Kim Dotcom’s Mega storage site. Although the blueprint is only publicly visible on Defense Distributed’s own website Defcad.org, users who click on it are prompted to download the collection of CAD files from Mega.co.nz, which advertises that it encrypts all users’ information and has a reputation for resisting government surveillance.
Cody Wilson, Defense Distributed’s 25-year-old founder, says that the group chose to use Mega mostly because it was fast and free. But he also says he feels a degree of common cause with Kim Dotcom, the ex-hacker chief executive of Mega who has become a vocal critic of the U.S. government after being indicted for copyright infringement and racketeering in early 2012. “We’re sympathetic to Kim Dotcom,” says Wilson. “There are plenty of services we could have used, but we chose this one. He’s down for the struggle.”
The most downloads of Defense Distributed’s “Liberator,” surprisingly, haven’t come from the U.S., but from Spain, according to Khalid’s count. The U.S. is second, ahead of Brazil, Germany, and the U.K., he says, although he wasn’t able to provide absolute download numbers for each country.
Update: Although Spain was initially outpacing the U.S. in downloads, it seems more Americans have now downloaded the file.
The gun’s blueprint, of course, may have also already spread far wider than Defense Distributed can measure. It’s also been uploaded to the filesharing site the Pirate Bay, where it’s quickly become one of the most popular files in the site’s 3D-printing category. “This is the first in what will become an avalanche of undetectable, untraceable, easy-to-manufacture weapons that will turn the tables on evil-doers the world over,” writes one user with the name DakotaSmith on the site. “Share and enjoy.”
It’s worth noting that only a fraction of those who download the printable gun file will ever try to actually create one. Defense Distributed used an $8,000 second-hand Stratasys Dimension SST to print their prototype, a 3D printer that the vast majority of its fans won’t have access to.
Nonetheless the “Liberator,” which I first revealed last Friday and then witnessed being test-fired over the weekend, has caused an enormous stir online. Defense Distributed says that it received 540,000 users to its website in the two days since its printable gun was released, and its video revealing the gun has attracted 2.8 million views on YouTube.
The project has also already immediately inspired a legal backlash. New York congressmen Steve Israel and Chuck Schumer have both called for the renewal of the Undetectable Firearms Act to ban any gun that can’t be spotted with a metal detector.
But Defense Distributed’s real goal hasn’t been to create an undetectable gun so much as an uncensorable, digital one. As the group’s founder radical libertarian founder Cody Wilson sees it, firearms can be made into a printable file that blurs the line between gun control and information censorship, blending the First Amendent and the Second and demonstrating how technology can render the government irrelevant.
“Call me crazy, but I see a world where contraband will pass underground through the data cables to be printed in our homes as the drones move overhead,” Wilson said when we first spoke in August of last year. “I see a kind of poetry there…I dream of this very weird future and I’d like to be a part of it.”
Scary. We reported this about a year ago when they only had a few parts of the gun available to print. It got reblogs with comments like ‘yah but they won’t develop the technology in our lifetime to print the whole gun.’ Welp, as I said then and I say now, this is not some distant-future technology. It is here now, available to people who have an expensive 3D Printer, but in the next few years, 3D printers will become cheaper and cheaper and eventually, way cheaper. So I think this is important & I think we should be paying attention to this.
As much as I love 3D printing, here is a darker side to it. The double edge sword theory comes in play with most technologies and 3D printing isn’t immune to that.
(via edwad)
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A WOMAN’S BODY IS NOT THE SAME FUCKING THING AS AN OBJECT OR A PLACE. IT IS HER BODY.
If someone is literally changing your body and possibly harming you, you damn well can throw them out of your house and your car and your boat.
No one is allowed to use my body without my consent. No. One. It is not selfish or wrong to want to have control of your body.
This comic says a lot about how the pro-life crowd sees women and women’s bodies, doesn’t it.
It is every person’s dream to be seen as equivalent to a house, car, or boat. Thank you, profilers, for making me feel so special!
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The Minnesota House of Representatives overwhelmingly voted in support of marriage equality today.
The Minnesota Senate has enough votes to pass the bill, and the Governor of Minnesota has pledged to sign the bill into law when it passes (hopefully).
New Jersey, you’re next.
(via truth-has-a-liberal-bias)
