If you're selected to have dinner with the Obamas, you'll be in a position very few people have ever been in: sitting at the dinner table with the President and First Lady of the United States, having a genuine, personal conversation.
So what would you ask them?
By the spring, kiosks could open up in Big Bend National Park allowing people from the tiny Mexican town of Boquillas del Carmen to scan their identity documents and talk to a customs officer in another location, at least 100 miles away.
The crossing, which would be the nation's first such port of entry with Mexico, has sparked opposition from some who see it as counterintuitive in these days of heightened border security. Supporters say the crossing would give the isolated Mexican town long-awaited access to U.S. commerce, improve conservation efforts and be an unlikely target for criminal operations.
"People that want to be engaged in illegal activities along the border, ones that are engaged in those activities now, they're still going to do it," said William Wellman, Big Bend National Park's superintendent. "But you'd have to be a real idiot to pick the only place with security in 300 miles of the border to try to sneak across."
Maybe you like Rap Music maybe you don't. The actions of the government toward this blog site might - Make Ya Wanna Bust a Cap!!
Link To Article
Breaking News: Feds Falsely Censor Popular Blog For Over A Year, Deny All Due Process, Hide All Details...
from the copyright-as-censorship dept
Imagine if the US government, with no notice or warning, raided a small but popular magazine's offices over a Thanksgiving weekend, seized the company's printing presses, and told the world that the magazine was a criminal enterprise with a giant banner on their building. Then imagine that it never arrested anyone, never let a trial happen, and filed everything about the case under seal, not even letting the magazine's lawyers talk to the judge presiding over the case. And it continued to deny any due process at all for over a year, before finally just handing everything back to the magazine and pretending nothing happened. I expect most people would be outraged. I expect that nearly all of you would say that's a classic case of prior restraint, a massive First Amendment violation, and exactly the kind of thing that does not, or should not, happen in the United States.
But, in a story that's been in the making for over a year, and which we're exposing to the public for the first time now, this is exactly the scenario that has played out over the past year -- with the only difference being that, rather than "a printing press" and a "magazine," the story involved "a domain" and a "blog."
Read More
Bombshell charges are whipping through Washington that Michelle Obama is sneaking out of the White House to romance a secret hunk as the President fights to stay in the White House. You'll learn why the rumors are flying and who insiders believe the First Lady is meeting up with - only in the current GLOBE.
This link is not authorized by Yahoo! If you would like to continue to this link's intended destination at your own risk, click here.
The solution is a new weapon aimed to stop smugglers and criminals before they reach Texas' shores. At 34-feet long, powered by three 300 horsepower engines and armed with six machine guns, the "JD Davis" resembles a military patrol boat.
The $580,000 shallow water interceptor can patrol in just 12 inches of water and is the first of a planned fleet of six such vessels comprising the newly-created Highway Patrol Tactical Marine Unit.
Each vessel will be named after a DPS trooper killed in the line of duty. Jerry Don Davis was shot and killed in 1980, and the first cruise of his namesake vessel was taken by members of his family.
I just left both people involved with the incident that took place in the last few days. The soldiers do not want to pursue this matter any further, in any way shape or form. I was advised that the situation is being dealt with inhouse and there will be internal investigations into the conduct of certain ‘officers’ who started the poll and ordered certain persons held. The person allegedly being held was only there for a couple of hours.
No punishment will be handed down to any of the soldiers involved. I cannot give any further information as to names dates reasons units or places. This is in respect to my friends here. If this upsets anyone I am sorry but this is the way the soldiers want it. You have my deepest apology and I truly wish I had never spoken about any of this with my friends here on or FB. I will be posting no more information of this type due to the repercussions which could come from this.
A U.S. District Court judge in Portland has drawn a line in the sand between "journalist" and "blogger." And for Crystal Cox, a woman on the latter end of that comparison, the distinction has cost her $2.5 million.
Speaking to Seattle Weekly, Cox says that the judgement could have impacts on bloggers everywhere.
the judge ruled that this single post was indeed defamatory because it was presented, essentially, as more factual in tone than her other posts, and therefore a reasonable person could conclude it was factual.
The judge in Cox's case, however, ruled that the woman did not qualify for shield-law protection not because of anything she wrote, but because she wasn't employed by an official media establishment.
From the opinion by U.S. District Judge Marco A. Hernandez:So there we have it.
. . . although defendant is a self-proclaimed "investigative blogger" and defines herself as "media," the record fails to show that she is affiliated with any newspaper, magazine, periodical, book, pamphlet, news service, wire service, news or feature syndicate, broadcast station or network, or cable television system. Thus, she is not entitled to the protections of the law
Cox tells Seattle Weekly that she plans to appeal the ruling by proving her assertion that Obsidian co-founder Kevin Padrick is guilty of bankruptcy fraud--a statement that, as Cox is quite proud of, is abundantly advertised if one simply Googles Padrick's name and sees the dozens of Cox's posts that spring up about him.
This morning while I was working on a bid for a job, my phone quit working. I tried it a few more times and then thought about it for a minute and then asked my wife, is your phone working? It wasn't.
So I sat and waited.
Then they came.
I watched them scatter.
America has 30 million cameras recording four billion hours of footage each week. Everyone is being watched. Now witness host and master tracker Kevin Reeve give two everyday Americans the chance to escape this surveillance and win one million dollars. Contestants race to complete simple tasks and evade Kevin and his highly-trained team of trackers hunting them down with cutting-edge technology for the largest prize in cable television history.My bet is that no one will win. These "tasks will be engineered for them to be caught. Just like "Son's of Guns" can whip out a triple M-16 or a quad MG-42's in record time. The wonders of editing.
Job training for an Internment/Resettlement Specialist requires nine weeks of Basic Training, where you'll learn basic Soldiering skills, and eight weeks of Advanced Individual Training. Part of this time is spent in the classroom and part in a field environment. Some of the skills you'll learn are:
Five-year-old Michael Davis, who attended the Rio Calaveras Elementary of Stockton, has a behavioral problem. According to his mother, Thelma Gray, he has been medically diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder or ADHD. His behavior is inappropriate at times, and he is a handful.
School officials, in an attempt to change Michael’s behavior, wanted him to meet with the school’s police officer, in an attempt, a local media report said, to scare him straight.
Only, when Michael and the cop, a Stockton, Calif., police lieutenant, met at a room in the school, the meeting didn’t go well. Michael, the cop said in his report, “he pushed my hand away in a batting motion, pushed papers off the table, and kicked me in the right knee.”
When the boy wouldn’t calm down, the officer – a police lieutenant – zip-tied his hands and feet and hauled him off to a nearby psychiatric hospital in the back of a squad car, all without calling Michael’s mom or dad. It gets worse. Michael was officially charged with battery of a police officer. The kid is five years old.
| Program: | SBIR | |
| Topic Number: | SB121-002 (DARPA) | |
| Title: | Assessment of Asymmetric Social Indicators | |
| Objective: | Develop and implement algorithms for capturing, measuring, and assessing social interactions in military contexts (training, medical and mental health settings, security) based on asymmetric data. |
| Description: | Effective social interactions are vital in military, law enforcement, and other life critical environments. Practitioners under extreme stress are routinely asked to enter unfamiliar situations in cultures alien to their own and conduct activities, adjudicate arguments, and facilitate life altering decisions. Enabling these complex social interactions affords improved performance (e.g., fewer misunderstandings, increased efficiency, better decisions). However, in order to train or provide feedback to individuals about their social interactions, one must first have an understandable way to capture and represent those interactions. Manual, ethnographic techniques provide significant insights, but are not scalable. Automated techniques involving wearable sensors and video processing show significant promise. However, these methods assume that all parties involved in an interaction are instrumented in a way that allows for subsequent data analysis. In many realistic situations, it is only possible to instrument one party in an interaction. For instance, military emergency department staff involved in an on-the-job assessment could be instrumented while their patients could not. This limits the environments in which these technologies can be actively used to training and experimental venues, which lose real-world contextual cues critical in social interactions. This topic seeks innovative algorithmic approaches to "filling in the gaps" in social interactions when data collection systematically misses one party in bi-lateral and multi¬-lateral social encounters. Solutions should show the utility of particular approaches on quasi-realistic data sets, and should articulate the assumptions being made respecting data collection approaches, sensor types, and domain requirements. A field or laboratory validation study is critical to assess the utility of any proposed approach. Solutions must be capable of hypothesizing social interactions with 70% accuracy compared to "ground truth" in a “known” realistic dataset provided by the performer. Alternative metrics of performance will be considered. Algorithms must be capable of being run on commercially available PCs and, eventually, state of the art mobile platforms. Interpretability by relevant subject matter experts of the hypothesized social interactions must be demonstrated. |
| PHASE I: Describe and implement algorithms designed to represent bi-lateral or multi-lateral social interactions based on datasets chosen by the company with incomplete or asymmetric collection. Demonstrate utility of the algorithms in a quasi-realistic dataset that does not involve human use to generate. | |
| PHASE II: Refine and implement algorithms; integrate algorithms within a system created by the performer designed for description, measurement, and assessment of social interaction or team performance; demonstrate on a realistic dataset. | |
| PHASE III: Develop operational system for use in assessing military and law enforcement interactions in operational settings. Should be able to examine effectiveness of military or law enforcement training oriented toward social performance with asymmetric data collection. |
As we have discovered, winter operations require a tremendous amount of gear, logistics, and supply line. Knowledge and ability are a must. Slight difficulties any other time of year can be debilitating in the snow and cold. The dangers to life and limb are great. Even when things are going well, they are doing so at a greater effort and overall cost to operator and team. The skills needed to fight, function, and survive in these environments are many. But if you live in areas that enjoy these conditions you owe it to yourself to develop the talents of the winter war fighter. To be able to make war effectively where others are not capable sounds like my definition of a good idea.
Students and parents in Forth Worth, TX are outraged after the school district declared that Christmas celebrations – including visits from Santa Claus would no longer be allowed during the school day.
The Fort Worth Independent School District also banned students exchanging Christmas gifts after they determined that public schools could no longer “endorse or sponsor any religious activity or doctrine.”
A spokesman for the school district told Fox News & Commentary that “in an effort to be politically correct” teachers are not allowed to “post something that would foster or promote or impugn one doctrine or religion over another – or even give that impression.”
Entry Page Time: Dec 2 2011 03:09:04 PMVisit Length: 0 secondsBrowser: IE 8.0OS: Win7Resolution: 1555x875Total Visits: 1Location: Washington, District of Columbia, United StatesIP Address: United States Senate (156.33.145.36)
| Main Entry: | traitor | |
| Part of Speech: | noun | |
| Definition: | person who is disloyal | |
| Synonyms: | Benedict Arnold, Judas, apostate, back-stabber, backslider, betrayer, conspirator, deceiver, defector, deserter, double-crosser, fink, hypocrite, impostor, informer, intriguer, miscreant, quisling, rebel, renegade, snake*, sneak*, snitch, snitcher, spy, squealer, stool pigeon, tattletale, traducer, treasonist, turncoat, two-timer, whistle-blower, wolf | |
| Antonyms: | loyalist |
| S. 1867 National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012 | |||||
| YEAs ---93 | ||
| Akaka (D-HI) Alexander (R-TN) Ayotte (R-NH) Barrasso (R-WY) Baucus (D-MT) Begich (D-AK) Bennet (D-CO) Bingaman (D-NM) Blumenthal (D-CT) Blunt (R-MO) Boozman (R-AR) Boxer (D-CA) Brown (D-OH) Brown (R-MA) Burr (R-NC) Cantwell (D-WA) Cardin (D-MD) Carper (D-DE) Casey (D-PA) Chambliss (R-GA) Coats (R-IN) Cochran (R-MS) Collins (R-ME) Conrad (D-ND) Coons (D-DE) Corker (R-TN) Cornyn (R-TX) Crapo (R-ID) DeMint (R-SC) Durbin (D-IL) Enzi (R-WY) | Feinstein (D-CA) Franken (D-MN) Gillibrand (D-NY) Graham (R-SC) Grassley (R-IA) Hagan (D-NC) Hatch (R-UT) Heller (R-NV) Hoeven (R-ND) Hutchison (R-TX) Inhofe (R-OK) Inouye (D-HI) Isakson (R-GA) Johanns (R-NE) Johnson (D-SD) Johnson (R-WI) Kerry (D-MA) Kirk (R-IL) Klobuchar (D-MN) Kohl (D-WI) Kyl (R-AZ) Landrieu (D-LA) Lautenberg (D-NJ) Leahy (D-VT) Levin (D-MI) Lieberman (ID-CT) Lugar (R-IN) Manchin (D-WV) McCain (R-AZ) McCaskill (D-MO) McConnell (R-KY) | Menendez (D-NJ) Mikulski (D-MD) Moran (R-KS) Murkowski (R-AK) Murray (D-WA) Nelson (D-FL) Nelson (D-NE) Portman (R-OH) Pryor (D-AR) Reed (D-RI) Reid (D-NV) Risch (R-ID) Roberts (R-KS) Rockefeller (D-WV) Rubio (R-FL) Schumer (D-NY) Sessions (R-AL) Shaheen (D-NH) Shelby (R-AL) Snowe (R-ME) Stabenow (D-MI) Tester (D-MT) Thune (R-SD) Toomey (R-PA) Udall (D-CO) Udall (D-NM) Vitter (R-LA) Warner (D-VA) Webb (D-VA) Whitehouse (D-RI) Wicker (R-MS) |
| NAYs ---7 | ||
| Coburn (R-OK) Harkin (D-IA) Lee (R-UT) | Merkley (D-OR) Paul (R-KY) Sanders (I-VT) | |
