Police used a stun gun to subdue an Oklahoma man wielding a hammer and a Bible during a fight with another man.

A judge set bond at $35,000 for Mitchell D. Hummingbird, who authorities said could face charges of assault and battery with a deadly weapon, assault and battery on an officer, resisting, and public intoxication.

Cherokee County sheriff's deputies were called to break up a fight Saturday at Butterfly Trailer Park, where they found Hummingbird clutching the weapon, a Bible and another man's shirt collar.

Deputies pulled Hummingbird outside the trailer home, and Deputy Michael Cates drew his gun and ordered Hummingbird to set down the weapon.

National People's Action members recognize that to reverse the economic and political conditions that are crushing American families, we need a long-term strategy. We believe that if we let the challenging circumstances of now lower our expectations of what's possible, we've already lost. Instead, we have decided to completely reimagine what is possible.

That is why 500 NPA members worked for a year to develop the Long-Term Agenda to the New Economy. Family farmers and public housing residents, employed workers and those seeking work, new immigrants and those whose families have been here for generations worked together identifying the structural reforms necessary to change the balance of power to favor people and democracy over corporate interests. Our members provided direction to the process from start to finish, building an agenda that is truly representative of people.

We started by dissecting the agenda of the corporate elites that produced what we call the 1% economy. The economic and political reality of today is not accidental. Corporate CEOs, think tanks, and political operatives created the 1% economy. Their strategy was to expand the focus of corporate America from simply amassing profit to aggregating power. They organized individual companies and families into a corporate infrastructure, working to build power to advance their agenda. Over the course of decades, they have gained control of our political process, government, and media and used them to shape an economy that serves their interests at the expense of the American people.

With that in mind, we built our own agenda. Imagine a new economic ethos in America. Imagine it creates an economy in which the prosperity and well-being of all people is accounted for in our national bottom line. One that lifts everybody up, and is defined by a robust commitment to dismantling the structural barriers that lock poor and working-class people, people of color, and women out of economic opportunity. Envision a society where global sustainability is a defining economic priority. Imagine that the best-case scenario isn't simply hoping to share in the prosperity of corporate elites.

Experts say a steel pipe is at least partly to blame for halting a massive tunnel-boring machine beneath downtown Seattle.

The state Department of Transportation said Friday the 8-inch-diameter pipe was discovered protruding through an opening in the machine's cutter-head. Officials say the pipe is a well casing installed by the department in 2002 to monitor groundwater.

The tunneling machine, known as "Bertha," is digging a new path for State Route 99, one of the region's primary north-south arterials. It's been halted since encountering a mysterious obstruction Dec. 6.

Police in Harvey, Ill., shot a man in the back of the leg without cause, threatened to "shoot the shit out of" a witness with a camera, then shot to death a witness's puppy, the wounded man and dog owner claim in federal lawsuits.

Paul Manning sued the City of Harvey, its police Officer James Sinnot, and Officer O'Shea. In the second lawsuit, Karnischa Miller, who owned the 14-week-old puppy, sued the City of Harvey, Sinnot, and Officer Davres.

Harvey, Il, populations 30,000, a far south suburb of Chicago, is 90 percent black and Latino. Manning claims he was walking down the street on Dec. 30, 2012, when the officers began following him in a squad car.

"Defendant officer stopped his car and told Mr. Manning, 'Come here!', the complaint states. Mr. Manning had done nothing wrong, and, therefore, did not stop. Mr. Manning had no weapon or other objects in his hands.

After a short distance of moving away from the defendant officer, Mr. Manning slipped and fell. As Mr. Manning tried to get up, one of the defendant officers willfully shot Mr. Manning in the back of his leg. Mr. Manning fell again and tried to get up again. Defendant officer then fired more shots at Mr. Manning Mr. Manning suffered excruciating pain from these gunshot wounds. One of the defendant officers then stood on top of Mr. Manning with the full force of his leg on Mr. Manning's back. One of the defendant officers handcuffed Mr. Manning while he was lying down after having been shot."

Thousands of anti-government protesters have gathered in Ukraine's capital Kiev in a fresh show of force against the government's decision to shelve a deal with the European Union.

On Wednesday, the protesters convened on Kiev's Independence Square to continue more than a month of demonstrations opposing President Viktor Yanukovych's refusal to sign an association pact with the EU.

The protesters, wrapped in Ukrainian and EU flags, demanded that President Yanukovych and his government step down.

They also called for early parliamentary and presidential elections.

Ukraine has been rocked with anti-government protests after Yanukovych refrained from signing the association agreement with the EU at the third Eastern Partnership Summit in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, in November 2013.

European Union leaders blame Russia for Ukraine's refusal to sign the deal.

This is surreal. According to report, Federal agents abused their power by illegally detaining and strip-searching a woman before taking her to the hospital where she underwent extensive body cavity searches and probes. Wow.

From CBS:

Federal agents wrongfully strip-searched a New Mexico woman at the El Paso border crossing, then took her to a hospital where she was forced to undergo illegal body cavity probes in an attempt to find drugs, according to a federal lawsuit filed Wednesday.

The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in El Paso said the unnamed 54-year-old U.S. citizen was "brutally" searched by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents in December 2012 after being selected for additional random screening at the Cordova Bridge in El Paso when a drug sniffing dog jumped on her. The woman was returning from a visit to a recently deported family friend in Cuidad Juarez, Mexico, the lawsuit said.

Agents quickly stripped searched her and did cavity searches but found no evidence of drugs, court documents said. But the woman was transported in handcuffs to the University Medical Center of El Paso, the lawsuit said, where doctors subjected her to an observed bowel movement, a CT scan and other exams without a warrant.

Read the Rest

I understand that being a law enforcement officer must be tough. They are human, they lose their temper, they get tired, they forget things, they simply make mistakes. But honestly, regardless of the reasoning, is there any excuse for doing this? Have these officers ever heard of the Constitution?

The liberty of the individual who has not been convicted of a crime should be the most important thing to any officer.

Two New York legislators say they will introduce a bill to strip state aid from universities that take part in a recent movement to boycott Israeli academic centers.

State Sen. Jeff Klein, a Bronx Democrat, and Assemblyman Dov Hikind, a Brooklyn Democrat who is also a former member of the Jewish Defense League that was classified as a "terrorist group" by the FBI in 2001, say they want to cut off state aid to universities affiliated with the American Studies Association's movement to boycott Israeli institutions.

Earlier this month, members of the ASA overwhelmingly voted to ban Israeli universities from collaborations with their campuses.

The organization said the reason behind its decision was that the Israeli insitutions were "a party" to policies "that violate human rights" as Israel's "violation of international law and UN resolutions" continues and the "impact of the Israeli occupation on Palestinian scholars and students" is well-documented.

Suspected Israeli extremistshave set cars on fire in the West Bank overnight, after Tel Aviv released 26 Palestinian prisoners.

Israeli official Luba Samri said on Tuesday that the latest instance of vandalism and violence against Palestinians was an apparent "price tag" attack. Hate crimes carried out against Palestinians by Israeli extremists are referred to as price tag incidents.

At least three Palestinian cars were torched in the town of Jalzoun, north of Ramallah.

The Israeli settlers also spray-painted "blood will flow in Judea and Samaria," and "this is war" on the wall of a nearby Palestinian house.

Millions of older Americans say they will never be able to retire. They simply don't have the savings. According to CNN, "Roughly three-quarters of Americans are living paycheck-to-paycheck, with little to no emergency savings...50% have less than a three-month cushion and 27% had no savings at all...." ("76% of Americans are living paycheck-to-paycheck", CNN Money)

"No savings at all"?

That's right. So retirement is out of the question. A sizable chunk of the adult population is going to punch a clock until they keel-over in the office parking lot and get hauled off in the company dumpster. And those are the lucky ones, the so called baby boomers. By the time we get to the millennials it'll be even worse because the economy will have been ravaged by 25 or 30 years of austerity leaving the proles to scrape by on hardtack and gruel. Pensions are already being looted, Social Security is under fire, and any small stipend that supports the poor, the unemployed, or the infirm is going to be terminated. That's why everyone is so down-in-the-mouth, because their expectations of the future are so bleak. Check this out from Business Insider:

"For millennials, the situation is even more grim. Compared to their parents at their age, the under-30 set is worth only half as much. And while this is a sobering reminder of the scale of the Great Recession's impact on younger generations, it's not the whole story. These households were actually falling behind even before the stock market and housing crash, researchers found.

Young people not only saw their wages stagnate or drop but also suffered a rise in fixed costs. They leave college with an average $27,000 debt load and have a harder time finding jobs that pay well, while facing more expensive health care and housing costs.

"If these generations cannot accumulate wealth, they will be less able to support themselves when unexpected emergencies arise or when they eventually retire," the study authors said. "This financial uncertainty could reverberate throughout the economy, since entrepreneurial activity, saving, and investment tend to build on a base of confidence and growing wealth."("AMERICA IN DECLINE: Young People Are Much Worse Off Than Their Parents Were At That Age", Business Insider)

When thugs...I mean, police officers...attempted to serve a warrant on a prostitute named Josie Bobbitt, Holly Hill, Florida, resident Richard Stohler refused to allow them entry, stating that the woman they were looking for didn't live there, and that he had no idea who she was.

The brave policemen, however, were determined to serve the warrant and went into Stohler's backyard, where his two dogs were responsibly fenced in. Like any self-respecting dog, they barked at the intruders. Being dogs, of course, they did not differentiate between intruders in a uniform and every day, garden variety intruders.