Republican DeMaio Gaining Momentum, Dem Peters Panicking...
Lois Lerner’s BlackBerry was intentionally destroyed after Congress had begun its probe into IRS targeting of conservative groups, a senior IRS lawyer acknowledged in a sworn declaration. Thomas Kane, Deputy Assistant Chief Counsel for the IRS, wrote in the declaration, part of a lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch against the IRS, that the BlackBerry was "removed or wiped clean of any sensitive or proprietary information and removed as scrap for disposal in June 2012." That date - June 2012 - is significant because by that time, ex-IRS official Lerner had already been summoned before congressional staffers who interviewed her about reports of the IRS' targeting of conservative groups. "We had already talked to her. Our personal staff and Oversight Committee staff had sat down with Ms. Lerner and confronted her about information we were getting from conservative groups in the state of Ohio and around the country," Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, told Fox News. "If you intentionally destroy evidence, that is a crime. If you make a statement in court saying the evidence is not available and it is, that is also a crime," said Jay Sekulow, Chief Counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice.
Netanyahu at press conference: Cease fire is both military and diplomatic achievement for Israel. Hamas hit hard, and achieved nothing.
— Herb Keinon (@HerbKeinon) August 27, 2014. @netanyahu: We have great military and diplomatic achievements. Hamas was struck hard, didn't get 1 of conditions it wanted for ceasefire
— Lahav Harkov (@LahavHarkov) August 27, 2014
Besides the budgetary limitations, news organizations often hesitate to send reporters into Gaza at all because of the constant danger, and not from Israeli airstrikes. In 2007, BBC reporter Alan Johnston was kidnapped by Palestinian militants and held for more than three months. Many other foreign journalists were kidnapped there and held for a day or two around that time. There have been no kidnappings recently, but the message was clear—foreigners are fair game. The message was heard and understood. For lack of an alternative, news organizations began to rely more and more on local stringers, giving the regime considerable leverage through intimidation. It’s expected that news organizations will deny all this—it’s part of the dance.
No one knows the true scale of child sexual exploitation (CSE) in Rotherham over the years. Our conservative estimate is that approximately 1400 children were sexually exploited over the full Inquiry period, from 1997 to 2013.... It is hard to describe the appalling nature of the abuse that child victims suffered. They were raped by multiple perpetrators, trafficked to other towns and cities in the north of England, abducted, beaten, and intimidated. There were examples of children who had been doused in petrol and threatened with being set alight, threatened with guns, made to witness brutally violent rapes and threatened they would be next if they told anyone. Girls as young as 11 were raped by large numbers of male perpetrators.... By far the majority of perpetrators were described as 'Asian' by victims, yet throughout the entire period, councillors did not engage directly with the Pakistani-heritage community to discuss how best they could jointly address the issue. Some councillors seemed to think it was a one-off problem, which they hoped would go away. Several staff described their nervousness about identifying the ethnic origins of perpetrators for fear of being thought racist; others remembered clear direction from their managers not to do so.....This has been in the British papers for days, with The Daily Mail leading the way:
As a historian who has studied the American far Left for many years, and decades ago was part of, I immediately noticed that many on the initial list of signers are veterans of the already old New Left and either supporters of or fellow-travelers of the defunct Soviet Union and the Communist movement. Indeed, I know many of them personally, and are aware of their old affiliations and political allegiances.I looked up the first eight or so people on the list, and it was an interesting exercise.
She is the third of at least four Americans who were known to be held by ISIS, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. American journalist James Foley was executed by the group in a video that appeared online last week. Another writer, Steven Sotloff, was seen alive but under duress in the same footage. In addition to the multi-million dollar ransom, the terror group has also demanded that the U.S. release Aafia Siddiqui, an MIT-trained neuroscientist who was convicted by the U.S. in 2010 of trying to kill U.S. officials two years before, according to a supporter of Siddiqui who has been in contact with the hostage’s family.
"With our nail polish, any woman will be empowered to discreetly ensure her safety by simply stirring her drink with her finger. If her nail polish changes colour, she'll know that something is wrong." The team was granted $11,250 (£6,600) from North Carolina State's Entrepreneurship Initiative, which aims to develop solutions to "real-world challenges". Each of the students personally know someone who has been sexually assaulted.
Last October, the yes/no split was 37% to 63%, suggesting that the traditional two-to-one balance against independence was holding in the referendum context. But then the nationalists began to narrow the gap. In February, Westminster's three unionist parties made a heavy-handed intervention on the question of the currency, warning that an independent Scotland could not count on keeping the pound. This backfired, and by April, the poll of polls was running at 45%-55%. The race was looking increasingly competitive, before opinion congealed and then froze. Glasgow's Commonwealth Games and the first debate, which a Guardian/ICM poll established Alistair Darling had won for the no camp, came and went without materially affecting the picture.The last debate between the Scottish National Party and the British Labour Party produced a strong win for the SNP. A Guardian/ICM poll taken immediately after the debate showed 71% of respondents handing victory to Alex Salmond, the SNP's pro-independence spokesman. Whether a debate win translates to actual votes is another issue though.
If you're a fan of doo wop then you probably know all about the popular seventies band Sha Na Na. Tonight the band's infamous "Bowzer" was in Owego to show his support for Congressional Candidate Martha Robertson. As the candidate for District 23, Robertson is fighting for the rights of seniors in the Southern Tier. "Bowzer" spoke about the importance of senior benefits and of course played a little bit of music.There's no embed code for the video, but you can watch it here. The Featured Image shows Robertson and Bowzer on stage with Robertson and a handful of supporters (staffers?): Here's the crowd gathered for this major endorsement. Robertson and the same handful of people:
The President of the United Nations Human Rights Council, Ambassador Baudelaire Ndong Ella (Gabon), today announced the appointment of Mary McGowan Davis as an additional member of the Commission of Inquiry charged with investigating human rights violations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, in particular the occupied Gaza Strip, in the context of the military operations conducted since 13 June 2014. Justice McGowan Davis will join William Schabas and Doudou Diène whose appointments were announced by the Council President on 11 August. ... In carrying out its work, the Commission of Inquiry will aim to establish the facts and circumstances of human rights violations and crimes perpetrated in order to identify those responsible. The Council also requested that the Commission of Inquiry present a written report to the Human Rights Council at its twenty-eighth session in March 2015.The report will unofficially be called Goldstone II after the Goldstone report, headed by Judge Richard Goldstone of South Africa launched by the UNHRC after Israel's Operation Cast Lead in 2008-9 to stop rocket fire by Hamas from Gaza.
Army Radio quotes “the most senior and official” Israeli government source confirming that Israel has accepted the Egyptian proposal for an open-ended truce. The official says the terms do not include any response to Hamas demands, including those for a seaport, airport, prisoner releases, or transfer of funds to pay salaries. He adds that those issues will be discussed in a month, if the quiet proves itself. Hamas’s spokesman in Gaza, Sami Abu Zuhri, is hailing victory for several reasons, Army Radio reports — for example, because it imposed what he calls an “air blockade” on Israel, a reference to the suspension by many foreign airlines of flights to Ben Gurion Airport for two days last month. It also forced Israelis close to Gaza to flee their homes, he says. They can return now, he says, because Hamas has decided they can — not because Netanyahu has decided they can.
Israel has agreed to Egyptian proposal for ceasefire that will be unlimited in time.
— Israel Foreign Min. (@IsraelMFA) August 26, 2014Fireworks and celebratory gunshots are heard in the Gaza Strip as its residents celebrate what Hamas spokesmen have hailed as a resistance “victory” against Israel, Al Jazeera reports.
Police wife on #Ferguson: "This could have easily been us in this situation"...
California’s 10-day waiting period for gun purchases was ruled unconstitutional by a federal judge this morning in a significant victory for Second Amendment civil rights. The laws were challenged by California gun owners Jeffrey Silvester and Brandon Combs, as well as two gun rights groups, The Calguns Foundation and Second Amendment Foundation. In the decision released this morning, Federal Eastern District of California Senior Judge Anthony W. Ishii, appointed to the bench by President Bill Clinton, found that “the 10-day waiting periods of Penal Code [sections 26815(a) and 27540(a)] violate the Second Amendment” as applied to members of certain classifications, like Silvester and Combs, and “burdens the Second Amendment rights of the Plaintiffs.” Under the court order, the California Department of Justice (DOJ) must change its systems to accommodate the unobstructed release of guns to gun buyers who pass a background check and possess a California license to carry a handgun, or who hold a “Certificate of Eligibility” issued by the DOJ and already possess at least one firearm known to the state.Here's the full decision:
The lasting importance of this summer’s war, I believe, doesn’t lie in the war itself. It lies instead in the way the war has been described and responded to abroad, and the way this has laid bare the resurgence of an old, twisted pattern of thought and its migration from the margins to the mainstream of Western discourse—namely, a hostile obsession with Jews. The key to understanding this resurgence is not to be found among jihadi webmasters, basement conspiracy theorists, or radical activists. It is instead to be found first among the educated and respectable people who populate the international news industry; decent people, many of them, and some of them my former colleagues....
The U.S. military's Central Command, which oversees American operations in the region, requested more surveillance aircraft, including drones, to gather more intelligence on potential Islamic State targets, and officials said they could start flying missions over eastern Syria shortly.Of course, the question on everyone's mind is whether or not drone surveillance will translate into the use of drones to take out hostile targets. The U.S. Military's Central Command, however, has not indicated that they intend to use the drones for that purpose at least for now:
"The Pentagon is preparing to conduct reconnaissance flights over Syria," a senior U.S. official said. "There is no decision yet to do strikes, but in order to help make that decision, you want to get as much situational awareness as possible."It doesn't help matters that Syria has been locked in its current conflict since early 2011. The Syrian Civil War started three years ago with mostly peaceful protests against the rule of President Bashar al-Assad. Since then, almost 200,000 people have died amidst clashes that have spread beyond Syria and into northern Iraq and Lebanon.
