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Army Sends Infant to Protective Services, Mom to Afghanistan

Dahr Jamail
Inter Press Service
Fri, 13 Nov 2009 19:58 EST

Ventura, California - U.S. Army Specialist Alexis Hutchinson, a single mother, is being threatened with a military court-martial if she does not agree to deploy to Afghanistan, despite having been told she would be granted extra time to find someone to care for her 11-month-old son while she is overseas.

Hutchinson, of Oakland, California, is currently being confined at Hunter Army Airfield near Savannah, Georgia, after being arrested. Her son was placed into a county foster care system.

Best of the Web: Morality vs. Material Interests

Paul Craig Roberts
Information Clearing House
Sat, 14 Nov 2009 19:52 EST

Myths of Our Time

It is conventional wisdom that it was the draft that ended the Vietnam war. According to this explanation, cowardly college students subject to the draft and their unpatriotic families, forced an end to the war. This is Karl Marx's explanation. Material interests, not empty morality, are said to have brought the war to an end.

That fact that in those days the US still had an independent media of sorts that sometimes framed the war in moral terms is ignored. Are we sure, for example, that the film of the naked little girl running in terror down the road burning with napalm was ineffectual in arousing moral opposition to the war? Are we certain that it wasn't an aroused moral conscience that brought about the end of the war but was college students' fears for their lives and limbs?

If we ascribe ending the war to material interests, it makes ending the war look as unworthy as the war itself.

Daniel Tencer
Raw Story
Fri, 13 Nov 2009 19:25 EST

Liberal bloggers are accusing Fox News of launching an Internet war against them in a campaign to selectively remove Fox clips from YouTube.

On Wednesday, YouTube shut down the popular News1News channel, which featured news clips that many progressive bloggers and news sites would add to their stories. On the rare occasion, Raw Story also embedded News1News clips in stories having to do with media coverage. The channel provided clips from all news networks, but often focused on Fox's controversial commentators.

The decision to shut down News1News came after Fox News issued 150 take-down notices to the channel, which they are entitled to do under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, reports Adrian Chen at Gawker. YouTube's policy is to shut down any accounts that receive three or more take-down notices, so News1News was immediately pulled offline.

Citizen's Commission on Human Rights International
Sat, 14 Nov 2009 19:13 EST

Information: The newly-forged 1990-page "Affordable Health Care for America Act" (HR 3962) offered by the House of Representatives is filled with mental health provisions intended to prop up psychiatry as well as the pharmaceutical industry with billions in future income. Key mental health components of this House bill:

Christine Kearney
Reuters
Thu, 12 Nov 2009 18:12 EST

© Reuters/Larry Downing/Files
Former CIA employee Valerie Plame Wilson appears at a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington in this March 16, 2007 file photo. REUTERS/Larry Downing/Files

A former CIA agent whose unmasking led to the conviction of former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney's top aide lost an appeal on Thursday to declassify parts of her memoir.

Valerie Plame Wilson and her publisher Simon & Schuster sued the CIA in 2007 to overturn its efforts to black out the dates she worked for the agency prior to 2002 in her now published memoir Fair Game.

The second circuit federal appeals court ruled on Thursday that the agency had "demonstrated good reason" for wanting Plame's dates of service to remain classified.

"Because Ms. Wilson is obligated by a secrecy agreement with the CIA not to disclose information, the district court correctly ruled," the opinion said.

Julie Ingwersen
Reuters
Sat, 14 Nov 2009 17:31 EST

Marengo, Illinois - Brothers Steve and Ron Pierce spent most of an hour in a chilly northern Illinois field last week clearing a clog of soybean chaff from the guts of their combine, using a mix of tools and their bare hands.

"The beans get tough when they pick up moisture," Steve Pierce said.

The clog had idled the $260,000 harvester, another delay in what has been the harvest from hell across the U.S. Midwest corn and soybean belt.

The clock is ticking on farmers like the Pierce brothers all across the Midwest as they scramble to bring in the largest U.S. soybean crop on record and the second-largest corn crop before winter arrives.

Late-maturing crops and persistent rain throughout October halted fieldwork, making this the slowest start for the U.S. harvest since the 1970s. The delays -- and questions about crop quality -- have kept Chicago Board of Trade grain markets on the boil.

"Just look at the price of corn from October to now. The delayed harvest has had a bullish impact on prices," said Terry Reilly, an agricultural analyst with Citigroup.

CNN
Fri, 13 Nov 2009 17:16 EST

© Courtesy USUHS
Nidal Malik Hasan, an Army psychiatrist accused of the Fort Hood shootings, met with his attorney for an hour Thursday.

Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the accused Fort Hood gunman, is paralyzed from the waist down, his lawyer said Friday.

"It appears he won't be able to walk in the future," said Hasan's civilian attorney, retired Army Col. John Galligan.

Hasan also has severe pain in his hands, the attorney said.

Authorities say Hasan, a U.S. Army psychiatrist, opened fire at a military processing center at Fort Hood on November 5, killing 13 people. Two civilian officers engaged Hasan, wounding him. One officer was wounded.

Patrick Jonsson
ABC News
Sat, 14 Nov 2009 16:00 EST

Because of the Swine Flu, 15 States are Considering Laws to Mandate Paid Sick Days

Nearly half of all American workers do not have paid sick leave, and half of these are more likely to go to work feeling unwell -- or send an ill child to school -- rather than take an unpaid day off.

These findings threaten to undermine President Obama's effort to have anyone exhibiting swine-flu-like symptoms stay at home for as many as four days. The emphasis on prevention and individual responsibility is a welcome departure from the punitive government actions -- such as quarantines and forced vaccinations -- called for under previous pandemic-response plans, some health experts say.

Alison Gendar, Henrick Karoliszyn and Larry Mcshane
Daily News
Fri, 13 Nov 2009 17:06 EST

A pair of computer virtuosos helped conceal Bernie Madoff's $65 billion ripoff - and shook the Ponzi schemer down for hush money two years before his arrest, court records revealed Friday.

James O'Hara and George Perez, both Madoff employees since the early 1990s, collected 25% raises and $60,000 bonuses after a 2006 threat to turn their boss in, the documents said.

The duo - who cooked up phony books, records and documents for the Wall Street crook - emptied their Madoff Investment Securities accounts that same year, ensuring they didn't lose a penny when Madoff confessed in December 2008.

E. Richard Walton
Greenville Online
Fri, 13 Nov 2009 17:03 EST

Twenty-eight students were injured Friday night when a cement wall collapsed during a football game at Union County Stadium.

Union County Athletic Director Mike Massey said 16 students were checked at the scene and released, while 12 were taken to a hospital. He said he didn't know the seriousness of their injuries.

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"The free press is the mother of all our liberties and of our progress under liberty" Adlai E. Stevenson

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"This is, in theory, still a free country, but our politically correct, censorious times are such that many of us tremble to give vent to perfectly acceptable views for fear of condemnation. Freedom of speech is thereby imperiled, big questions go undebated, and great lies become accepted, unequivocally as great truths." Simon Heffer in The Daily Mail, 7 June 2000

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