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Al-Jazeera is reporting that medics treating casualties in a rebel neighborhood in the city of Homs believe that some of the wounded were victims of a poison gas attack. Here's the video. (Warning: The video graphically shows a victim struggling to breathe.) Here's another video with more apparent victims of a gas attack. Seven people have died in Homs after they inhaled a poisonous gas sprayed by government forces in a rebel-held neighbourhood, activists said. Activists also told Al Jazeera that scores of others were affected in al-Bayyada neighbourhood. Side effects reported include nausea, relaxed muscles, blurred vision, and breathing...

A three-month investigation into academic fraud at the University of North Carolina revealed that not only student-athletes were given added academic benefits within the school's African and Afro-American Studies department. Rather, students at large benefited from anomalies specific to the department, such as unauthorized grade changes, forged faculty signatures on grade rolls and limited or no class time. "This was not an athletic scandal," former North Carolina Governor Jim Martin told UNC's board of trustees. "It was an academic scandal, which is worse." The independent investigation, headed by Martin, shows that irregularities in the African and Afro-American Studies department went...

Russian military advisers are manning some of Syria's more sophisticated air defences – something that would complicate any future US-led intervention, the Guardian has learned.The advisers have been deployed with new surface-to-air systems and upgrades of old systems, which Moscow has supplied to the Assad regime since the Syrian revolution broke out 21 months ago.The depth and complexity of Syria's anti-aircraft defences mean that any direct western campaign, in support of a no-fly zone or in the form of punitive air strikes against the leadership, would be costly, protracted and risky. The possibility of Russian military casualties in such a...

After it surfaced that Democratic Congressional candidate Wendy Rosen had been voting in two states she dropped out of her race against Republican Rep. Andy Harris (R-MD) in September

It may seem strange for a Jew to write about his favorite Christmas memories, but my happiest are from Christmas Eve in the early 1960s, in Johnstown, the town where I grew up in upstate New York. I usually helped out late in my father’s store, wrapping packages and ringing up sales, work that required no familiarity with the merchandise – ladies clothing – of which I had none. I can still make change in my head, but, alas, have lost my package-wrapping skills over the years. Even though I knew there’d be no presents waiting for me under the...

All I see is the sidebar for breaking news on my left, and I logged out and logged in again I am going to taqke a shower, keep posting if anything new happens!

News that the Treasury Department's Inspector General has opened an investigation to determine whether three solar companies inflated the cost of their work to increase the payments they would receive from the government should send shivers down the spine of the taxpayer-subsidized green energy industry.The Washington Post reports that SolarCity, SunRun and Sungevity have received subpoenas from the Treasury Department’s office of inspector general for financial records to justify more than $500 million in federal grants and tax credits the firms tapped for performing work. The probe seeks to determine whether the companies accurately reported the market value of...

Word For The Day, Monday, 12/24/12 In order that we might all raise the level of discourse and expand our language abilities, here is the daily post of "Word for the Day". jubilate; verb : rejoice Etymology: Latin jubilatus, past participle of jubilare; akin to Middle High German jū (exclamation of joy), Greek iygē shout First Known Use: circa 1641 Rules: Everyone must leave a post using the Word for the Day in a sentence. The sentence must, in some way, relate to the news of the day. The Review threads are linked for your edification. ;-) Practice makes perfect.....post...

Scholarly studies have found that the more hospitals that exist in a country, the more people die in hospitals. This alarming conclusion shows that the United States, with the highest number of hospitals, has the most people die in hospitals. Countries with few hospitals have few die in them, a country fortunate enough to be without hospitals would have no one die in a hospital. This leads to the inescapable conclusion that we should ban hospitals in order to prevent hospital deaths.

Appears to be same problem from the past (a month or so ago). Admins? how is the eggnog supply?

Ted Kennedy Jr. is seriously considering a run for the US Senate seat of John Kerry if, as expected, the Massachusetts senator becomes Secretary of State. Kennedy's brother, former Rhode Island Rep. Patrick Kennedy, told the Boston Globe that leading Democrats, including Senator Charles Schumer of New York, want his brother to consider a campaign to replace Kerry and hold the seat for Democrats.

Ted Kennedy Jr. is seriously considering a run for the US Senate seat of John Kerry if, as expected, the Massachusetts senator becomes Secretary of State. Kennedy's brother, former Rhode Island Rep. Patrick Kennedy, told the Boston Globe that leading Democrats, including Senator Charles Schumer of New York, want his brother to consider a campaign to replace Kerry and hold the seat for Democrats.

The tea party movement has been nearly invisible in the intensive lobbying campaign over the “fiscal cliff,” even as Congress and the White House debate the issues of government spending and national debt that are at the core of the movement’s identity. In many ways, the tea party was made for this moment. The grass-roots opposition to President Obama’s agenda that arose in 2009 has been so focused on fiscal concerns that leaders once prevented speakers at tea party rallies from even discussing abortion and other social issues. And in fact, it is the tea party that helped bring the...

GALVESTON, Tex. — Angelica Gonzales marched through high school in Goth armor — black boots, chains and cargo pants — but undermined her pose of alienation with a place on the honor roll. She nicknamed herself after a metal band and vowed to become the first in her family to earn a college degree. “I don’t want to work at Walmart” like her mother, she wrote to a school counselor. Weekends and summers were devoted to a college-readiness program, where her best friends, Melissa O’Neal and Bianca Gonzalez, shared her drive to “get off the island” — escape the prospect...

The following organizations have lent monetary, grassroots or some other type of direct support to anti-gun organizations. In many instances, these organizations lent their name in support of specific campaigns to pass anti-gun legislation such as the March 1995 HCI "Campaign to Protect Sane Gun Laws." Many of these organizations were listed as "Campaign Partners," for having pledged to fight any efforts to repeal the Brady Act and the Clinton "assault weapons" ban. All have officially endorsed anti-gun positions. snip=========== Anti-Gun Corporations/Corporate Heads The following listing includes the most prominent national corporations that have lent their corporate support to gun...

Merry Christmas to all, from your Jewish friends and from the State of Israel.

According to Peter Schmidt in the Chronicle of Higher Education, yet another individual working in higher education has been demolished for saying the wrong thing about homosexuality. The basis on which to define people as "anti-gay" has, however, taken a turn to the absurd (and eerie). Unlike Angela McCaskill, who was nearly fired from Gallaudet University for signing a petition on gay marriage, Crystal Dixon of the University of Toledo was fired for writing an editorial in a local newspaper. She referred to Exodus and mentioned people who chose to leave the gay lifestyle. For this column I will stick...

A news roundup from today’s Sydney Morning Herald, giving another bracing insight into the success of our immigration program. Item one: When two men in traditional Middle Eastern dress sat down with the owner of a Bankstown restaurant recently, they were after only one thing. At first they shared a hookah pipe and chatted amiably about religion, but the conversation quickly turned to extortion: they wanted $50,000 in exchange for ‘’protection’’. The terrified restaurant owner told Fairfax Media they asked him a menacing question he was sure was rhetoric: ‘’Have you heard of Brothers 4 Life?’’ It’s a question many...

Why do the innocent suffer? It's a question as old as the Book of Job and as current as today's headlines. Many criticized prominent evangelicals like James Dobson and Mike Huckabee for claiming last week's Connecticut school massacre was God’s punishment of a morally disobedient nation, but don't expect such views to change. Scholars say the belief in divine retribution for personal and national transgressions not only goes back as far as the Bible's Book of Job, it’s also a concept fused into the American worldview. “This is a recurring pattern in American history since the Puritans,” said Barry Hankins,...