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Such is the reign of terror now being imposed on innocent English families by social workers that scores of parents have been fleeing with their children to Ireland to escape their clutches. I have followed a dozen such stories over the past two years, and in all of them two things stand out. One is that the English social workers seem prepared to stop at nothing to get the children back. The other is the extraordinary contrast between them and the Irish social workers, who again and again have satisfied themselves that the children are at no risk from their...

~~Come on in and shoot the breeze~~   Gun Talk Radio   02/19/12~~07:00 CST Listen to the Podcast Hereor the KIDO 580 stream Here

57% of Republicans are Protestant and 23% are Catholic, if I read the data at Pew Research correctly. Today, after church (Presbyterian, but thinking about joining an unaffilated church), a group of us older and more conservative men began discussing the lack of enthusiasm among the Republican base for any of the current candidates. One fellow said "I am not Catholic because I do not agree with the Catholic Church's teachings and I am not Mormon because I do not want to be a Mormon". Others generally agreed and said that the candidate's religion mattered a lot. Is the talk...

Commentary: You’re Going to Celebrate BHM With Fried Chicken, Really? Is Black History Month turning into a stereotypical holiday? I love Black History Month because it serves as a time to acknowledge the contributions of little-known Black inventors, learn the struggles of Black ancestors and celebrate the victories of how far Black people have come as a whole. Companies, schools, churches and organizations across the country organize events to pay tribute, but is there an appropriate way to honor Black History Month? After recent reports in the news, I’m thinking the answer to that question may be "yes." In a...

High Court Dilemma: Can Lie About Medal Be Crime? Xavier Alvarez was in good company when he stood up at a public meeting and called himself a wounded war veteran who had received the top military award, the Medal of Honor. Alvarez was lying about his medal, his wounds and his military service, but he wasn't the first man to invent war exploits. He was, however, one of the first people prosecuted under a 2006 federal law aimed at curbing false claims of military valor. Concerns that the law improperly limits speech and turns people into criminals for things they...

Howie Carr thread for the week starting with his Sunday Bos. Herald column, "Globe biased for Granny, you've been Warren-ed". Howie is off Mon. (Col. Hunt in); death pool (triggered by passing of Gary Carter) Tue. or Wed.

This video was taken from the bridge the Costa Concordia in the moments after hitting rocks on the Island of Giglio. The video offers the first glimpse of the officers, Captain and other crew members from the bridge following the initial grounding. We’ve been seeing snippets of this video over this past week but this seems to be full version (and with English subtitles). Analysis to follow…

Ralph Reed, founder of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, brought his message to Palm Beach County Wednesday, where he spoke to multiple area Republican clubs at the Binks Forest Country Club in Wellington. Reed shared his vision of the work that needs to be done among conservative groups in 2012 in preparation for the upcoming election. He also answered a few questions exclusively for BPR: VIDEO

Most Births Among Those Under 30 Are To Unwed Moms It used to be called illegitimacy. Now it is the new normal. After steadily rising for five decades, the share of children born to unmarried women has crossed a threshold: More than half of births to U.S. women younger than 30 occur outside marriage. Once largely limited to poor women and minorities, motherhood without marriage has settled deeply into middle America. The fastest growth in the past two decades has occurred among white women in their 20s who have some college education but no four-year degree, according to Child Trends,...

Court Reverses Red-Light Camera Conviction A court ruling that reversed a red-light camera conviction for a Los Angeles woman could have implications for drivers throughout California, including San Diego County, a local attorney said. Last month, the state’s 2nd District Court of Appeal in Los Angeles agreed with the woman’s argument that a Beverly Hills police officer who testified at her traffic court trial was unqualified to do so because he was not the one who monitored and calibrated the red-light camera that cited her. Instead, Annette Borzakian — an attorney who represented herself in the case — argued that...

California's sea otters have struggled for years with diseases, parasites and even the occasional collision with boats. But now the fuzzy coastal mascots are increasingly facing another threat: shark attacks. It's difficult to say that white shark numbers are increasing. Last year, the first comprehensive study of the number of white sharks off the California coast estimated there are 219, fewer than previously thought. Block said other species of sharks, including sevengills and makos, might also be attacking otters. She said having a population of large predators is healthy for any ecosystem, and that more research is needed before...

Europe rewrites the Holocaust in order to revive patriotic traditions free from guilt. Nearly 70 years after the massacre of more than 27,000 Jews in Rostov, on the banks of the River Don, the Russian Ministry of Culture has announced it will replace the plaque adorning the monument to the dead. But once the text of the new inscription was revealed, it became clear that this was not merely an exhibition of the low level officialÂ’s love of new unveilings and plaque dedications. Rather it was another attempt by a European state to revise the history of the Holocaust and...

FRESNO, Calif. — It was the sound of a wailing cat that first caught the neighbor’s attention. When she looked toward the sound she told authorities that she saw her next-door neighbor cutting off the crying feline’s head with a knife. The call she subsequently made to deputies started a bizarre animal cruelty investigation that has focused attention from around the country on a working-class neighborhood in a Bakersfield suburb where a man allegedly was fileting cats and cooking them on his backyard barbecue. “I’ve been getting calls on this from around the country,” Kern County Sheriff’s spokesman Ray Pruitt...

Chelsea Clinton did her second report for NBC's "Rock Center with Brian Williams" Wednesday night, and it was just as flawed as the first. The learning curve does not appear to have bent one degree in the direction of growth. This one-dimensional, under-reported, naive celebration of a charter school in Rhode Island was just as much of an empty-headed puff job as Clinton's first report on an after-school program in Little Rock. And before you take to your computer to send an email telling me how mean it is for me to criticize this 31-year-old woman who has been given...

What do Bigfoot, Sasquash and miniature chameleons have in common? Until recently, nearly anyone would tell you they didn’t exist. That has changed, at least for the dwarf chameleon. Brookesia micra, the world’s tiniest reptile has been discovered on the island of Nosy Hara, northern Madagascar. This tiny creature reaches less than one- inch in length at maturity. Researches discovered these miniature chameleons sleeping in bushes four inches above the ground level. "They mostly live in the leaf litter in the day ... But at night they climb up and then you can spot them." Says lead investigator Frank Glaw....

ARLINGTON, Texas - A two-time “Teacher of the Year” in Arlington is now fighting to keep her job after allegedly telling a Hispanic student to “Go back to Mexico.” Barnett Junior High School math teacher Shirley Bunn has 24 years of teaching experience. But her career could end with what she called a moment of frustration. Bunn admitted she lost her temper on Sept. 30 while distributing Title 1 forms to her eighth grade students. According to public documents, a student who had a history of being disruptive repeatedly asked his teacher for a form printed in Spanish by saying,...

The Argentine authorities were either unwilling or unable to bring Nazi war criminals to justice even when they had them in custody, archives made public for the first time today show. The archives on five Nazi war criminals that were made available by Argentina show a pattern that confirms what many have said for years, that war criminals found a safe haven here and that this country was probably one of the easiest in which to disappear and escape justice. Last week, President Carlos Saul Menem ordered the files opened and gave Government agencies 30 days to produce any they...

MILWAUKEE -- When President Obama's motorcade drove through Milwaukee Wednesday, traffic was shut down. That's a standard security measure normally handled by the Sheriff's Department, but Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke said because of budget cuts he didn't have the manpower, and so the State Patrol handled it instead. Sources tell 12 News the department had plenty of people on duty, but they were in Waukesha County. The Sheriff's department confirms they had people at the Association of SWAT Conference and Vendor show in Oconomowoc. Sources said more than 15 and as many as 25 members of the Milwaukee County...

A Connecticut mother reportedly received an unusual gift for her 98th birthday from her eldest son -- eviction papers. Mary Kantorowski, who has lived in the same Fairfield, Conn., home since 1953, is now facing eviction from her yellow, Cape Cod-style home valued at $333,410, the Connecticut Post reports. Her son Peter Kantorowski, 71, a retired taxidermist, said he's doing it for her own good. "She would be better off living with people her own age," he told the newspaper. According to Probate Court records, Mary Kantorowski and her husband, John, agreed to transfer the house to a trust administered...

SAN FRANCISCO — As Air Force One sat on the tarmac at Los Angeles International Airport this morning, the North American Aerospace Defense Command scrambled two F-16 fighter jets to intercept a small private plane that had invaded the airspace. The disturbance occurred just minutes before President Obama was scheduled to depart for San Francisco. His plane ultimately took off at 11:40 a.m. PT without incident.

Google has bypassed the privacy settings on Apple's web-browser to track the Internet activity of millions of people without their knowledge, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal late Thursday. Apple's Safari web-browsing software was reportedly tricked by a special code used by Google and other companies, the report said. Google disabled the code after it was contacted by Wall Street Journal reporters, the report said. The Journal said the Google code was uncovered by a Stanford researcher and later confirmed by an independent technical adviser.

If your name were Joseph Patrick, your candidacy would be a joke. That is of course a paraphrase of what Eddie McCormack said to Ted Kennedy back in their 1962 Senate debate. But it’s just as true now of Teddy’s great-nephew JoJoJo Kennedy. So what if he doesn’t have any qualifications. He’ll drive off that bridge when he comes to it. Actually, he does have a record, and that’s the fact that his name is Kennedy and he doesn’t have a record, a police record that is. For a Kennedy, that’s quite a record to run on. Somebody said yesterday...

<p>CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) - Actor Sean Penn criticized Republican presidential candidates during a visit to Venezuela on Thursday, saying that right-wing policies in the United States aim to benefit the wealthy. Penn made the remarks after meeting with socialist President Hugo Chavez at Venezuela's presidential palace, when he was asked by a reporter about criticisms of Chavez by some Republican candidates.</p>

    At the FReeper Canteen! C'mon and take a break ! Walk on over to the water cooler and lets chat. Post your thoughts, opinions, news of the day, rantings, ravings, pontificates, hypothesis, hyperboles, your soap box cause, your mantra, your baggage, your garbage, your blogging, your secrets, whatever you feel would make talk around the water cooler real interesting! Please remember that The Canteen is here to support and entertain our troops and veterans and their families, and is family friendly.       FUN FACTS The shortest war on record was fought between Zanzibar and England...

HONOLULU - Two dog owners filed a lawsuit claiming their pets were mutilated while being groomed at an Oahu pet store. The lawsuit filed in state court Monday said plaintiff Gladys Kapuwai dropped off her dog Dodo for grooming at the Petco store in Kaneohe in July, and that the pet was returned with its ear cut off. In addition, there appeared to be an effort to "reattach, glue or sew" the ear back on, the lawsuit states. "I couldn't believe what they did. I started crying because this is our baby, too, you know." Kapuwai told Hawaii News Now....

Neighbors in the active Tuscany block are reeling over an alleged murder committed there. The victim, Franklin Manuel Santana, had just moved from the Miami area a month ago with his wife Raquel and baby daughter. Santana did not know Tyrirk Harris, but he would meet Harris for the first and last time in a quarrel over dog poop.

Melissa Petro has spent much of her young life writing about the plight of sex workers: The stigma and shame, their treatment as victims or villains. Now Petro has been trampled by the forces she was trying to fight. After writing about her own experience as a sex worker, Petro was forced to resign from her teaching post. With two master's degrees, five years' experience in nonprofit work and three years as a teacher, as well as a litany of published writings, Petro is skipping meals. No one will give her a job. ~SNIP~ Petro began stripping when she was...

It's his birthday party, and he'll sing if he wants to.

Obama Girl has released a new music video expressing dissatisfaction with her suitor, warning him in Olivia Newton John fashion that he better "step up" if he wants her vote again, "or change indeed back in D.C."

MSG Network might be the next media entity to apologize for a regrettable reaction to the success of the New York Knicks’ Jeremy Lin. After Lin led the Knicks to a 100-85 win over the Sacramento Kings on Wednesday, the network displayed a graphic featuring the point guard. Lin’s face was posted above a broken fortune cookie with the words “The Knicks Good Fortune” on a sheet of paper. Lin, who is of Taiwanese and Chinese descent, has been the target of disparaging tweets about his heritage since his play thrust him into the public eye. Boxer Floyd Mayweather said...

Supervisor Nadia Lockyer, wife of California treasurer, acknowledges substance abuse, affair (Alameda County Supervisor Nadia Lockyer at a public event in San Leandro, Calif., April 22, 2011.) Alameda County Supervisor Nadia Lockyer, wife of California Treasurer Bill Lockyer, said Tuesday that she's in rehabilitation for a substance-abuse problem after an extramarital affair culminated in a beating by her ex-lover. The announcement marked a sharp turn in the career of a woman who at 40 had been seen as a rising star in California politics. The scandal is also an ugly footnote on her husband's nearly four-decade-long career, which made him...

From his appearance on the Tonight Show

President Barack Obama's job approval rating has hit the 50-percent mark--an important reelection barometer--and he would beat any of the major Republican contenders for the White House if the vote were held today, according to a new CBS/New York Times public opinion poll that illustrates the political benefits of a steady stream of positive economic news. In hypothetical match-ups, Obama bests Rick Santorum 49 percent to 41 percent, Mitt Romney 48 percent to 42 percent, Ron Paul 50 percent to 39 percent, and former House speaker Newt Gingrich 54 percent to 36 percent, according to the survey, which was conducted...

Update: The Heartland Institute says the documents were obtained through "pretexting," in which a person posing as a board member sent an e-mail asking a staffer to "re-send" documents from board meetings. The Institute says one of the documents, a "climate strategy" memo, "is a total fake," and the institute says it has not had a chance to reach its president, who is traveling, to determine whether any of the other documents were altered. See the full statement from Heartland below. Internal documents have been leaked from the Heartland Institute, a Chicago nonprofit think tank, showing its funding of leading...

Joe Kennedy III to announce candidacy tomorrow

Even the president of the United States and the NBA commissioner are "all-Lin." Commissioner David Stern called New York Knicks guard Jeremy Lin's meteoric rise a "phenomenon," according to USA Today.

ABC News’ Jake Tapper and Luis Martinez report: Two days ago President Obama authorized the deployment to Uganda of approximately 100 combat-equipped U.S. forces to help regional forces “remove from the battlefield” – meaning capture or kill – Lord’s Resistance Army leader Joseph Kony and senior leaders of the LRA. The forces will deploy beginning with a small group and grow over the next month to 100. They will ultimately go to Uganda, South Sudan, the Central African Republic, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, with the permission of those countries. The president made this announcement in a letter...

"It’s a curious thing why it’s okay for Planned Parenthood to be as politically affiliated as it wants and turn its quest to kill as many babies as possible for profit into political alliances, but when pro-life organizations say no to them they go full-on thug with the media and calls and name calling."

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been in discussions with the White House about leaving her job next year to become head of the World Bank, sources familiar with the discussions said on Thursday. The former first lady and onetime political rival to President Barack Obama quickly became one of the most influential members of his Cabinet after she began her tenure at State in early 2009. She has said publicly she did not plan to stay on at the State Department for more than four years. Associates say Clinton has expressed interest in having the World Bank job should...

His species is renowned for its ability to blend in, but this tiny critter is even better than most as the world's smallest chameleon. Balanced on the tip of a scientist's fingernail in Madagascar, the-three centimetre reptile is no bigger than the flies that form his average-sized cousin's lunch. Scientists discovered four new species - called Brookesia micra - on a small islet just off the main island.

If the sport of football ever dies, it will die from the outside in. -- Jonah Lehrer If an increasing number of economists and trend analysts are to be believed, we may one day look back at something like Colt McCoy's concussion against the Pittsburgh Steelers in 2011 as one of many galvanic events that blew football apart, and reduced the country's most popular sport to a marginal pastime. It's unlikely that such a colossal financial concern as football could be killed off entirely, but as Malcolm Gladwell first wrote in the New Yorker in 2009, it's not crazy to...

While I’m sure Barack Obama loves to stick it to traditional religious institutions any way he can, he certainly doesn’t want to stick it to himself in the process. This is why I’m fairly sure he and his advisors didn’t anticipate that his contraception mandate would result in a knock-down, drag-out fight with the most powerful religious institution in the world. I think they miscalculated, and the reason why brings me to a link between the contraception issue and Islam. What is it? Simply this: The modern, secular-environment-weaned man is largely incapable of grasping the devoutly religious mindset. This is...

Mexico's top domestic security official says a U.S. State Department travel warning on almost half of Mexico's states is "ridiculous" and "out of proportion." Interior Department Alejandro Poire says million of tourists visit Mexico without incident.

Yuba City, CA. – With a standing ovation, the crowd at Tuesday night’s, Jan. 31, Sutter County Board of Supervisors meeting praised the board’s action in which it unanimously rejected a resolution to apply for a state grant to update the county’s zoning ordinance. Lisa Wilson, the county Planning Division Manager, had asked the Board to approve submitting a grant application to the Sustainable Communities Planning Grant and Incentive Program for Local Sustainable Planning funds to update the zoning ordinances to comply with the recently adopted General Plan.

Last week, the other slipper dropped daintily when 69-year-old Mimi Alford, whose dalliance with the leader of the Free World as an intern had been documented earlier by Sally Bedell Smith and Robert Dallek, described in her own words her seduction at 19 by John F. Kennedy. She thereby became one of a circle of "friends" entertained by our hero during a presidency that was doomed to be short, but intense. In this, we learn that she was seduced on her fourth day at work, (and in Jackie's bedroom); that they sometimes played with rubber ducks in a bathtub, and...

"He said, 'Ever since I got here to the White House I've had to shut my body down sexually I mean, but I screwed up with this girl. I didn't do what they said I did, but I may have done so much that I can't prove my innocence,'" Morris recalls in the film "Clinton," which was written and directed by Barak Goodman.

1-year-old Energy Conversion Devices, Inc. a pioneer in materials science and renewable energy technologies, today voluntarily filed a petition for relief under Chapter 11 in the US Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Michigan. As part of its bankruptcy plan, ECD intends to sell through separate sales its wholly owned operating subsidiary United Solar Ovonic LLC (USO) and other assets, including its minority stake in Ovonyx, Inc. On 13 February ECD sold its majority owned subsidiary, Ovonic Battery Company, Inc. (OBC), to BASF Corporation for the gross purchase price of $58 million in cash before transaction fees, minority participations,...

An unidentified male at the White House was taken to a hospital after suffering a hand injury Tuesday morning... Shortly before 11 a.m., a man...had a “possible amputation of one or two fingers,”

Bourque Industries today announced that the Company has earned National Institute of Justice (NIJ) certification for its Level III stand-alone Kryron Terminator Armor – under the model designation KT-MIA-II – complying with the most recent and rigorous NIJ Standard-0101.06. NIJ certification is a prerequisite for most US law enforcement agencies when purchasing personal body armor for its officers. This essential government stamp of approval allows Bourque's innovative Kryron Terminator Armor to be marketed and sold to federal law enforcement, state police, sheriff's offices, and municipal police forces across the country. Bourque's Level III armor joins the Level II Ultralight, the...

A healthcare worker has filed a complaint alleging the Service Employees International Union Healthcare Workers West and Chapman Medical Center illegally ...