By Paul Craig Roberts

August 27, 2010 – Chuck Norris is no pinko-liberal-commie, and Human Events is a very conservative publication. The two have come together to produce one of the most important articles of our time, Obama’s US Assassination Program.

It seems only yesterday that Americans, or those interested in their civil liberties, were shocked that the Bush regime so flagrantly violated the FlSA law against spying on American citizens without a warrant. A federal judge serving on the FISA court even resigned in protest to the illegality of the spying.

Nothing was done about it. “National security” placed the president and executive branch above the law of the land. Civil libertarians worried that the U.S. government was freeing its power from the constraints of law, but no one else seemed to care.

Encouraged by its success in breaking the law, the executive branch early this year announced that the Obama regime has given itself the right to murder Americans abroad if such Americans are considered a “threat.” “Threat” was not defined and, thus, a death sentence would be issued by a subjective decision of an unaccountable official.

There was hardly a peep out of the public or the media. Americans and the media were content for the government to summarily execute traitors and turncoats, and who better to identify traitors and turncoats than the government with all its spy programs.

The problem with this sort of thing is that once it starts, it doesn’t stop. As Norris reports citing Obama regime security officials, the next stage is to criminalize dissent and criticism of the government. The May 2010 National Security Strategy states: “We are now moving beyond traditional distinctions between homeland and national security. This includes a determination to prevent terrorist attacks against the American people by fully coordinating the actions that we take abroad with the actions and precautions that we take at home.”

Most Americans will respond that the “indispensable” U.S. government would never confuse an American exercising First Amendment rights with a terrorist or an enemy of the state. But, in fact, governments always have. Even one of our Founding Fathers, John Adams and the Federalist Party, had their “Alien and Sedition Acts” which targeted the Republican press.

Few with power can brook opposition or criticism, especially when it is a simple matter for those with power to sweep away constraints upon their power in the name of “national security.” Deputy National Security Adviser John Brennan recently explained that more steps are being taken, because of the growing number of Americans who have been “captivated by extremist ideology or causes.” Notice that this phrasing goes beyond concern with Muslim terrorists.

In pursuit of hegemony over both the world and its own subjects, the U.S. government is shutting down the First Amendment and turning criticism of the government into an act of “domestic extremism,” a capital crime punishable by execution, just as it was in Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Russia.

Initially German courts resisted Hitler’s illegal acts. Hitler got around the courts by creating a parallel court system, like the Bush regime did with its military tribunals. It won’t be long before a decision of the U.S. Supreme Court will not mean anything. Any decision that goes against the regime will simply be ignored.

This is already happening in Canada, an American puppet state. Writing for the Future of Freedom Foundation, Andy Worthington documents the lawlessness of the U.S. trial of Canadian Omar Khadr. In January of this year, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the interrogation of Khadr constituted “state conduct that violates the principles of fundamental justice” and “offends the most basic Canadian standards about the treatment of detained youth suspects.” According to the Toronto Star, the Court instructed the government to “shape a response that reconciled its foreign policy imperatives with its constitutional obligations to Khadr,” but the puppet prime minister of Canada, Stephen Harper, ignored the Court and permitted the U.S. government to proceed with its lawless abuse of a Canadian citizen.

September 11 destroyed more than lives, World Trade Center buildings, and Americans’ sense of invulnerability. The event destroyed American liberty, the rule of law and the U.S. Constitution.

Popularity: 3% [?]

BOSTON, Massachusetts – August 24, 2010 – As the privacy controversy around full-body security scans begins to simmer, it’s worth noting that courthouses and airport security checkpoints aren’t the only places where backscatter x-ray vision is being deployed. The same technology, capable of seeing through clothes and walls, has also been rolling out on U.S. streets.

American Science & Engineering, a company based in Billerica, Massachusetts, has sold U.S. and foreign government agencies more than 500 backscatter x-ray scanners mounted in vans that can be driven past neighboring vehicles to see their contents, Joe Reiss, a vice president of marketing at the company told me in an interview. While the biggest buyer of AS&E’s machines over the last seven years has been the Department of Defense operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, Reiss says law enforcement agencies have also deployed the vans to search for vehicle-based bombs in the U.S.

“This product is now the largest selling cargo and vehicle inspection system ever,” says Reiss.

The Z Backscatter Vans, or ZBVs, as the company calls them, bounce a narrow stream of x-rays off and through nearby objects, and read which ones come back. Absorbed rays indicate dense material such as steel. Scattered rays indicate less-dense objects that can include explosives, drugs, or human bodies. That capability makes them powerful tools for security, law enforcement, and border control.

It would also seem to make the vans mobile versions of the same scanning technique that’s riled privacy advocates as it’s been deployed in airports around the country. The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) is currently suing the DHS to stop airport deployments of the backscatter scanners, which can reveal detailed images of human bodies. (Just how much detail became clear last May, when TSA employee Rolando Negrin was charged with assaulting a coworker who made jokes about the size of Negrin’s genitalia after Negrin received a full-body scan.)

“It’s no surprise that goverments and vendors are very enthusiastic about [the vans],” says Marc Rotenberg, executive director of EPIC. “But from a privacy perspective, it’s one of the most intrusive technologies conceivable.”

AS&E’s Reiss counters privacy critics by pointing out that the ZBV scans don’t capture nearly as much detail of human bodies as their airport counterparts. The company’s marketing materials say that its “primary purpose is to image vehicles and their contents,” and that “the system cannot be used to identify an individual, or the race, sex or age of the person.”

Though Reiss admits that the systems “to a large degree will penetrate clothing,” he points to the lack of features in images of humans like the one shown at right, far less detail than is obtained from the airport scans. “From a privacy standpoint, I’m hard-pressed to see what the concern or objection could be,” he says.

But EPIC’s Rotenberg says that the scans, like those in the airport, potentially violate the fourth amendment. “Without a warrant, the government doesn’t have a right to peer beneath your clothes without probable cause,” he says. Even airport scans are typically used only as a secondary security measure, he points out. “If the scans can only be used in exceptional cases in airports, the idea that they can be used routinely on city streets is a very hard argument to make.”

The TSA’s official policy dictates that full-body scans must be viewed in a separate room from any guards dealing directly with subjects of the scans, and that the scanners won’t save any images. Just what sort of safeguards might be in place for AS&E’s scanning vans isn’t clear, given that the company won’t reveal just which law enforcement agencies, organizations within the DHS, or foreign governments have purchased the equipment. Reiss says AS&E has customers on “all continents except Antarctica.”

Reiss adds that the vans do have the capability of storing images. “Sometimes customers need to save images for evidentiary reasons,” he says. “We do what our customers need.”

Popularity: 3% [?]

WASHINGTON – August 23, 2010 – The Department of Justice is seeking to hire linguists fluent in Ebonics to help monitor, translate, and transcribe the secretly recorded conversations of subjects of narcotics investigations, according to federal records.

A maximum of nine Ebonics experts will work with the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Atlanta field division, where the linguists, after obtaining a DEA Sensitive security clearance, will help investigators decipher the results of “telephonic monitoring of court ordered nonconsensual intercepts, consensual listening devices, and other media.”

The DEA’s need for full-time linguists specializing in Ebonics is detailed in bid documents related to the agency’s mid-May issuance of a request for proposal (RFP) covering the provision of as many as 2100 linguists for the drug agency’s various field offices. Answers to the proposal were due from contractors on July 29.

In contract documents, Ebonics is listed among 114 languages for which prospective contractors must be able to provide linguists.

The 114 languages are divided between “common languages” and “exotic languages.” Ebonics is listed as a “common language” spoken solely in the United States.

Ebonics has widely been described as a nonstandard variant of English spoken largely by African Americans. John R. Rickford, a Stanford University professor of linguistics, has described it as “Black English” and noted that “Ebonics pronunciation includes features like the omission of the final consonant in words like ‘past’ (pas’ ) and ‘hand’ (han’), the pronunciation of the th in ‘bath’ as t (bat) or f (baf), and the pronunciation of the vowel in words like ‘my’ and ‘ride’ as a long ah (mah, rahd).”

However, Ebonics is not a true dialect; it is just a bastardization of the English language.

The Department of Justice RFP does not, of course, address questions of vernacular, dialect, or linguistic merit. It simply sought proposals covering the award of separate linguist contracts for seven DEA regions. The agency spends about $70 million annually on linguistic service programs, according to contract records.

Popularity: unranked [?]

July 14, 2010 – More than 15 million Americans are unemployed, homelessness has increased by 50% in some cities, and 38 million people are receiving food stamps, more than at any time in the program’s almost 50-year history.

Evidence of rising economic hardship is ample. There’s one commonly used standard for measuring it: the U.S. Census Bureau’s poverty rate. It guides much of federal and state spending aimed at helping those unable to make a decent living.

According to Richard Bavier, a former analyst for the federal Office of Management and Budget, already available data about employment rates, wages, and food stamp enrollment suggest that an additional 5.7 million people were officially poor in 2009. That would bring the total number of people with incomes below the federal poverty threshold to more than 45 million. The poverty rate, Bavier expects, will hit 15% – up from 13.2% in 2008, when the Second Great Depression first started to take its toll.

The current formula for setting the federal poverty line – unchanged since 1963 – takes the cost of food for an individual or family and multiplies the number by three, under the assumption that people spend one-third of their incomes putting meals on the table. While the formula may have been a good way to estimate a subsistence cost of living in the early 1960s, experts say food now represents only one-eighth of a typical household budget, with expenses such as housing and childcare putting increasing pressure on struggling families.

In addition, the official measure fails to account for regional differences in the cost of housing, it doesn’t include medical expenses or transportation, and at $22,000 for a family of four, the poverty line is considered by many to be simply too low. Nearly two decades ago, Congress asked the National Academies of Science (NAS) to revisit the official poverty measure and come up with recommendations for a new measure that would satisfy critics on both ends of the spectrum.

This past March, the Obama administration said it would use the NAS 1995 guidelines to update the federal government’s poverty calculation and promised to unveil the first new “supplemental poverty measure” in September of 2011. Under the NAS recommendations, Commerce Department expenditure data for food, clothing, shelter and other household expenses would be used to set a poverty threshold for a reference family of four – two adults and two children. Then a family or individual’s resources would be compared to that line by including income and in-kind benefits, with taxes and other non-discretionary expenses, such as medical expenses and child care, excluded.

Because many expect the new calculation will result in a higher poverty count, the March announcement met with fiery criticism from some conservatives who charged the federal government could ill afford to increase its safety-net spending. The administration’s supplemental poverty measure remains controversial, and some leaders on both ends of the political spectrum are urging Congress and the administration not to adopt the new formula for purposes of allocating federal funding or determining individual eligibility anytime soon.

Popularity: 4% [?]

OAXACA, Mexico – August 1, 2010 – Two days ago, more than one hundred Oaxaca state troopers raided the autonomous indigenous municipality of San Juan Copala, in Oaxaca, Mexico.

The shocking move reveals the extent of the Oaxaca government’s complicity in the murders, illegal blockade and rampant human rights violations of the Triqui community at the hands of the paramilitary group UBISORT.

Following the raid, roughly thirty members of UBISORT, who had accompanied the police on their so-called ‘humanitarian mission’, occupied the autonomous municipality’s town hall. As a result, San Juan Copala is now effectively under the control of UBISROT.

At approximately 12:15 pm on July 30, over one hundred Oaxaca state police raided the autonomous municipality of San Juan Copala. Approximately thirty heavily armed members of the Union for the Social Well-being of the Triqui Region (UBISORT, a paramilitary organization) accompanied the police on the raid. Rufino Juárez, UBISORT’s leader, reportedly participated in the raid.

The goal of the raid, according to the state government, was to remove the body of Anastasio Juárez Hernández from his home in San Juan Copala. Police did remove the dead man from his home and then left San Juan Copala. However, the paramilitaries, taking advantage of the police presence, took over San Juan Copala’s town hall. The town hall is now occupied by thirty UBISORT paramilitaries armed with automatic assault rifles. “They have taken over control of the entire town,” reports a source close to the autonomous authorities.

Meanwhile, the Mexican military has deployed soldiers to La Sabana, a nearby town that is controled by UBISORT. Thus far the soldiers have not entered San Juan Copala.

Two young indigenous Triqui women were wounded when the paramilitaries and police entered San Juan Copala. The women were part of a human blockade at the entrance to the town that attempted to impede the police and paramilitaries’ access. The two women, ages 15 and 18, were “gravely wounded” when paramilitaries from UBISORT shot them as they entered San Juan Copala. The women were evacuated and are being treated at an undisclosed location.

Autonomous authorities questioned the circumstances of the raid in a communique published on their website, http://autonomiaencopala.wordpress.com. In the communique, the autonomous municipality claims that Juárez Hernández was actually murdered in the city of Juxtlahuaca, implying that his body was later planted in San Juan Copala in order to justify the police raid.

Local press immediately parroted the government’s claims that Juárez Hernández, who was UBISORT leader Rufino Juárez’s brother and the government-recognized “municipal agent” of San Juan Copala, was murdered in his home in San Juan Copala. Juárez Hernández was not elected to the position of municipal agent; UBISORT appointed him to that position this past November.

The claim that Juárez Hernández was murdered in his home in San Juan Copala raises several questions about its veracity: How did Juarez Hernandez enter San Juan Copala, a town which his organization, UBISORT, has successfully blockaded with boulders, logs, and gunmen since January? Why would Juárez Hernández enter San Juan Copala, a town whose remaining residents fully support the autonomous municipality? UBISORT claims that the autonomous municipality is armed. So why would Juárez Hernández enter a town whose only residents are bitter enemies whom his organization claims are armed?

It is true that police retrieved Juárez Hernández’s body from his home in San Juan Copala. San Juan Copala has historically been an important cultural, political, economic, and spiritual center for the lower Triqui region. San Juan Copala has historically had very few permanent residents. Leaders had homes in San Juan Copala, but they only lived there when they were serving the public. When their service was over, they returned to their permanent homes in other communities. Furthermore, most of San Juan Copala’s residents (seasonal and permanent) have fled the area due to the violence and the paramilitary blockade. As a result, many Triquis have homes in San Juan Copala that they rarely or never inhabit. Such was Juárez Hernández’s case. While his body was recovered on his property, residents report that he did not live there at the time of the murder.

Due to frequent fire that comes from paramilitary sharpshooters stationed in the hills that surround San Juan Copala, the town’s streets are deserted. No one leaves their homes unless absolutely necessary, and those who do leave frequently come under fire if the sharpshooters spot them. The siege makes it relatively easy for someone who his complicit with the sharp-shooters to plant a body without anyone noticing, because residents spend the majority of their lives hidden in their homes away from any windows.

Regardless of how or where Juárez Hernández died, the consequences of his murder are painfully apparent for San Juan Copala’s residents. Their town is occupied by heavily armed paramilitaries who were escorted in by state police. To add insult to injury, the raid comes after seven months of a paramilitary blockade that the government has claimed it is incapable of breaking despite the autonomous municipality’s claims that residents may starve to death if the blockade continues.

The government’s preferential treatment of the paramilitaries is unmistakable: in addition to deploying armed state police to guard the UBISORT’s blockade when the humanitarian caravan attempted to enter San Juan Copala this past June, the government has failed to act when members of the autonomous municipality have come under attack, presumably by government-aligned paramilitaries. Just this past July 26, Maria Rosa Francisco disappeared when her home in San Juan Copala came under fire. All of her animals were killed in the attack, and she remains missing and is feared dead. The Bartolomé Carrasco Briseño Human Rights Center publicly denounced the attack and called on its supporters to contact the government and demand that put an end to the violence.

The Human Rights Center’s pleas were met with indifference in the government. However, as soon as a paramilitary’s cadaver appeared in San Juan Copala, the government acted.

Popularity: 5% [?]

WASHINGTON – July 25, 2010 – In the Associated Press they did a report that over 41 million people are exposed to pharmaceutical drugs in TREATED drinking water.

We have all heard the saying “There is something in the water.” Well There IS.

It is time to Stand Up and Get Pissed for Once AMERIKA. Remember your baby’s formula is now being contaminated with drugs. There are NO FEDERAL or STATE REGULATIONS ON WATER TREATMENT FOR DRUGS.

‘There Is Something In The Water’ well this saying is no more just an idea of a conspiracist. This is what is really going on across Amerika from major cities to suburban neighborhoods.

Are you the Amerikans going to take this with a smile? Are you going to trust the government to fix this problem when they dont even have any regulations for it? What are you going to do?

The New World Order, Big Corporations taken over, 911 inside job, Alex Jones, Michael Moore, George Bush, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, IRS, Illuminati, Free Masons, WTC, Major Media, Corrupt Politicians, Iraq, Iran, Israel, Jews running the world, Terrorist trying to take freedom, etc. All of this does not matter when Amerikans cannot even get up and DEMAND CLEAN WATER.

Below is a list of some of the pharmaceuticals they found in treated drinking water.

ANTIBIOTICS

Amoxicillin — for pneumonia, stomach ulcers
Azithromycin — for pneumonia, sexually transmitted diseases
Bacitracin — prevents infection in cuts and burns
Chloramphenicol — for serious infections when other antibiotics can’t be used
Ciprofloxacin — for anthrax, other infections
Doxycycline — for pneumonia, Lyme disease, acne
Erythromycin — for pneumonia, whooping cough, Legionnaires’ disease
Lincomycin — for strep, staph, other serious infections
Oxytetracycline — for respiratory, urinary infections
Penicillin G — for anthrax, other infections
Penicillin V — for pneumonia, scarlet fever, infections of ear, skin, throat
Roxithromycin — for respiratory, skin infections
Sulfadiazine — for urinary infections, burns
Sulfamethizole — for urinary infections
Sulfamethoxazole — for traveler’s diarrhea, pneumonia, urinary and ear infections
Tetracycline — for pneumonia, acne, stomach ulcers, Lyme disease
Trimethoprim — for urinary and ear infections, traveler’s diarrhea, pneumonia

PAIN RELIEVERS

Acetaminophen — soothes arthritis, aches, colds; reduces fever
Antipyrine — for ear infections
Aspirin — for minor aches, pain; lowers risk of heart attack and stroke
Diclofenac — for arthritis, menstrual cramps, other pain
Ibuprofen — for arthritis, aches, menstrual cramps; reduces fever
Naproxen — for arthritis, bursitis, tendinitis, aches; reduces fever
Prednisone — for arthritis, allergic reactions, multiple sclerosis, some cancers

HEART DRUGS

Atenolol — for high blood pressure
Bezafibrate — for cholesterol problems
Clofibric acid — byproduct of various cholesterol medications
Diltiazem — for high blood pressure, chest pain
Gemfibrozil — regulates cholesterol
Simvastatin — slows production of cholesterol

MIND CONTROL DRUGS

Carbamazepine — for seizures, mood regulating
Diazepam — for anxiety, seizures; eases alcohol withdrawal
Fluoxetine — for depression; relieves premenstrual mood swings
Meprobamate — for anxiety
Phenytoin — controls epileptic seizures
Risperidone — for schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, severe behavior problems

OTHER HUMAN DRUGS

Caffeine — found in coffee; also used in pain relievers
Cotinine — byproduct of nicotine; drug in tobacco, also used in products to help smokers quit
Iopromide — given as contrast agent for medical imaging
Nicotine — found in tobacco, also in medicinal products to help smokers quit
Paraxanthine — a byproduct of caffeine
Theophylline — for asthma, bronchitis and emphysema

VETERINARY

Carbadox — for control of dysentery, bacterial enteritis in pigs; promotes growth
Chlortetracycline — for eye, joint, other animal ailments
Enrofloxacin — for infections in farm animals and pets; treats wounds
Monensin — for weight gain, prevention of severe diarrhea in farm animals
Narasin — for severe diarrhea in farm animals
Oleandomycin — for respiratory disease; promotes growth in farm animals
Salinomycin — promotes growth in livestock
Sulfachloropyridazine — for enteritis in farm animals
Sulfadimethoxine — for severe diarrhea, fowl cholera, other conditions in farm animals
Sulfamerazine — for a range of infections in cats, fowl
Sulfamethazine — for bacterial diseases in farm animals; promotes growth
Sulfathiazole — for diseases in aquarium fish
Tylosin — promotes growth, treats infections in farm animals, including bees
Virginiamycin M1 — prevents infection, promotes growth in farm animals

All these pharmaceutical drugs and more were found in TREATED WATER SUPPLY.

Do something for once. Stand up and be heard. Stop this insanity NOW.

See Video: Poison tap water in Major USA Cities

Popularity: 6% [?]

LAREDO, Texas – July 24, 2010 – In what could be deemed an act of war against the sovereign borders of the United States, Mexican drug cartels have seized control of at least two Amerikan ranches inside the U.S. territory near Laredo, Texas.

Two sources inside the Laredo Police Department confirmed the incident is unfolding and they would continue to coordinate with U.S. Border Patrol today. “We consider this an act of war,” said one police officer on the ground near the scene. There is a news blackout of this incident at this time and the sources inside Laredo PD spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Word broke late last night that Laredo police have requested help from the federal government regarding the incursion by the Los Zetas. It appears that the ranch owners have escaped without incident but their ranches remain in the hands of the bloodthirsty cartels.

Laredo Border Patrol is conducting aerial surveillance over the ranches to determine the best way to regain control of the U.S. ranches, according to the Laredo Police department.

The approximate location of the U.S. ranches are10 miles northwest of I-35 off Mines Road and Minerales Annex Road. Just off 1472 (Mines road) near Santa Isabel Creek north of the city of Laredo, Texas.

The Los Zetas drug cartel is an offshoot of the elite Mexican military trained in special ops. The mercenary organization is said to include members of corrupt Mexican Federales, politicians as well as drug traffickers. The group was once part of the Gulf cartel, but has since splintered and now directly competes with the Gulf cartel for premium drug smuggling routes in the Texas region.

The new leader of Los Zetas is Heriberto “El Lazca” Lazcano and is considered the most violent paramilitary group in Mexico by the DEA.

Recently the drug organization has kidnapped tourists, infiltrated local municipalities and continues to smuggle narcotics into a very hungry U.S. market.

The violence south of the border continues to spin out of control and has left Nuevo Laredo, Mexico on virtual lockdown with businesses refusing to open the doors. Last week a particularly violent attack by the Los Zetas included the use of grenades and resulted in a dozen deaths and 21 injuries.

The hostile takeover of the ranches has met with silence with local and national media; however sources say they could be waiting to report the stories once the ranches are back in U.S. control. This journalist questions whether if this were a Middle Eastern terrorist attack, would the media would sit on their hands?

Popularity: 14% [?]

‘If I had to prove citizenship, then why not Obama?

July 08, 2010 – A Mexican-born candidate for U.S. Senate said he is considering a lawsuit against the Missouri secretary of state for discrimination because her office forced him to produce a birth certificate but “didn’t make Obama show proof of citizenship” to appear on the ballot.

Hector Maldonado, 38, a self-described “Lincolnian Republican conservative,” is seeking the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate in Missouri. He was born one of 10 children in Durango, Mexico. His father is a migrant field worker who owns a small hog ranch in Perris, California.

During the following July 5 interview with Karen Berka of Branson Radio Live posted on YouTube, Maldonado explains why he thinks his rights were violated when the secretary of state’s office asked for proof of U.S. citizenship when he filed to run for the Senate.

Maldonado, a U.S. Army combat veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, explains on his website that he became a U.S. citizen in 1995. But he said Secretary of State Robin Carnahan sent him a letter in May asking him to produce documentation.

“It said, ‘Hey, you have to prove you’re a citizen.’ I ignored it,” he said. “You know, Obama ignored it, so I figured I could get away with it, too.”

The audience began laughing, applauding and cheering during his statement.

Maldonado continued, “But it’s not that simple. I didn’t get away with it. I got a certified letter from Ms. Robin Carnahan’s office saying that if I did not prove that I was a U.S. citizen, then I would be removed from the ballot.”

He claims Carnahan’s office gave him a deadline of May 12.

“I got all my documents together: my birth certificate, which is a Mexican birth certificate; my naturalization certificate; my orders sending me to Iraq and Afghanistan; my bronze-star citations and a couple of officer evaluations that say I’m a pretty good and effective leader,” he said. “So I brought all this documentation, and they were only interested in the naturalization certificate. They made a photocopy of it.”

Maldonado said he asked Carnahan’s office if his citizenship documentation would be public record and available to anyone who wants a copy.

“They said, oh yes, absolutely, anyone that wants proof, we have it,” he explained. “I said, OK, can you do me a favor then? I’m sure Ms. Carnahan requested the same of Barack Obama when he petitioned to get on the Missouri ballot to become president.”

He added, “They had no response. They had nothing.”

Maldonado said he thought about picketing during Obama’s visit to Missouri today to raise money for Carnahan’s U.S. Senate campaign. Obama arrived in Kansas City this morning to make appearances at two fundraising events for Carnahan. Missouri’s primary election will take place on August 3.

“But I decided something different. I’m actually considering suing Ms. Robin Carnahan because she discriminated against me,” he said. “She has said that her job is to protect Missouri from fraud and corruption. But the fraud that she created if she did not make Mr. Obama show proof of citizenship when he petitioned to get on the Missouri ballot … all the votes that he got should be taken back.”

He said he hopes citizens of other states sue their own secretaries of state if they cannot show they requested proper documentation from Obama before allowing him to appear on the state ballot.

Popularity: 3% [?]

NEW YORK – July 13, 2010 – A U.S. appeals court Tuesday struck down a policy aimed at preventing “indecency” in U.S. broadcasting as a violation of free speech protections, slamming the regulations for their “chilling effect.”

The court said the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) policy was an “unconstitutionally vague” guide that violated the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

In upholding a joint 2006 complaint by broadcast TV networks, New York’s Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the policy creates a “chilling effect that goes far beyond the fleeting expletives at issue.”

The commission’s indecency regulations, developed partly in response to the famous “Seven Words You can Never Say on Television” routine performed by late comedian George Carlin, was upheld by the US Supreme Court in the 1970s.

The ruling Tuesday, however, overturned the enforcement – and threat of enforcement – of massive fines for the “single, non-literal use of an expletive” found in a 2004 decision under the administration of former President George W. Bush.

The second circuit’s three-judge panel granted a review of the policy after agreeing with broadcasters that it was too “vague” and lacked clear guidelines.

That vagueness, the court said, forced broadcasters to “steer far wider of the unlawful zone” for fear of being fined, with some expletives allowed in a specific context but not others.

For example, while multiple swear words in a war movie were not considered profane or indecent, the court disagreed how the FCC still deemed “a single occurrence of ‘f(expletive)’” at an awards show “shocking and gratuitous.”

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, in a statement issued after the court’s decision, said the commission was reviewing the ruling “in light of our commitment to protect children, empower parents, and uphold the First Amendment.”

The Parents Television Channel (PTC), a vocal FCC supporter, meanwhile slammed the court’s ruling, which it said greenlit the airing of “unedited profanity at any time of day on broadcast television.”

PTC president Tim Winter called on Genachowski and the White House to immediately appeal the decision.

“Let’s be clear about what has happened here today: A three-judge panel in New York once again has authorized the broadcast networks unbridled use of the ‘f-word’ at any time of the day, even in front of children,” he said.

“For parents and families around the country, this ruling is nothing less than a slap in their face,” Winter added, saying the court’s rationale was “devoid of reality” as its decision against the FCC policy’s vagueness would see practically all U.S. laws overturned due to a lack of clarity.

The Media Access Project, a group defending free speech in U.S. media, however hailed the move, saying the “score for today’s game is First Amendment one, censorship zero.”

The FCC’s indecency rules, said MAP’s vice president Andrew Schwartzman following the decision, “are irredeemably vague and interfere with the creative process. Today’s decision vindicates that argument.”

The next stop, said Schwartzman, is the Supreme Court, adding: “We’re confident that the Justices will affirm this decision.”

The FCC’s policy grew out of Carlin’s landmark “Filthy Words” routine, which triggered a lawsuit taken to the U.S. Supreme Court, and the top court’s ruling eventually came to shape indecency rules for all U.S. television and radio.

The appeals court Tuesday also cautioned that any attempt to strictly regulate offensive language would likely fall short.

“The English language is rife with creative ways of depicting sexual or excretory organs or activities,” the court said Tuesday, adding that even if the FCC was able to provide a complete list of such expressions, “new offensive and indecent words are invented every day.”

Popularity: 3% [?]

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina – June 9, 2010 – China is studying plans to install a satellite dish in Argentina for Beijing’s space program, a local official said Wednesday.

“China sent a delegation to Argentina to study the possibility of constructing an antenna for its space research,” said Adolfo Italiano, director of planning and technology for the Neuquen provincial government in southwest Argentina.

He said Chinese engineers offered few details but indicated an interest in Argentina for the space program.

In addition to Neuquen, the delegation visited other provinces, including Rio Negro and Mendoza and also traveled to Chile.

It is not known when the Chinese government will make a decision.

Beijing is considering launching in 2011 a space module, Tiangong-1, viewed as an important step towards the goal of a manned space station.

In 2003 China became the third country that sent a man into space with the Shenzhou-5 mission.

Popularity: 5% [?]