Bill Maher closed Real Time on Friday by ripping Republicans' embrace of the phrase "middle-class economics."

"It's the new bullsh*t, and it's what's for dinner," he said, noting that both Jeb Bush and Mitt Romney had started decrying income inequality. (At least, before Romney eliminated himself as a presidential candidate on Friday.)

Even former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) tried to get into the act, Maher noted, before showing footage of her mangling the term "status quo" during her infamous speech in Iowa last week.

To the issues dividing Americans by race, add the publication of satirical cartoons about religion.

A survey released by the Pew Research Center this week found that Americans, by more than 2-to-1, believe it's OK to publish cartoons poking fun of religion, such as those printed by the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo. But that seemingly overwhelming support for the right to make fun came largely from white respondents to the survey, the organization reported. A plurality of non-whites, just shy of a majority, said they were opposed to such satire.

Why that divide exists has much to do with the way the country's dominant culture has treated minority groups over the years, say experts on race and religion. No one likes being the butt of jokes - and if that's been your role in society, you're more sensitive to the offense, they said.

"Non-white Americans might be more sensitive than whites to negative media images of Islam (and religious diversity in general) because they understand how it feels to believe, rightly or wrongly, that one's community is under attack by the media and mainstream society," said Henry Goldschmidt, director of education programs at Interfaith Center of New York, a nonprofit organization that promotes communications among different faith, ethnic and cultural traditions.

Anyone paying attention knows that 9/11 has been used to create a police/warfare state. Years ago NSA official William Binney warned Americans about the universal spying by the National Security Agency, to little effect. Recently Edward Snowden proved the all-inclusive NSA spying by releasing spy documents, enough of which have been made available by Glenn Greenwald to establish the fact of NSA illegal and unconstitutional spying, spying that has no legal, constitutional, or "national security" reasons. Yet Americans are not up in arms. Americans have accepted the government's offenses against them as necessary protection against "terrorists."

Neither Congress, the White House, or the Judiciary has done anything about the wrongful spying, because the spying serves the government. Law and the Constitution are expendable when the few who control the government have their "more important agendas."

Bradley Manning warned us of the militarization of US foreign policy and the murderous consequences, and Julian Assange of WikiLeaks posted leaked documents proving it.

Were these whistleblowers and honest journalists, who alerted us to the determined attack on our civil liberty, rewarded with invitations to the White House and given medals of honor in recognition of their service to American liberty?

Thousands of people gathered in Madrid on Saturday in an anti-governmental rally organized by the Spanish anti-austerity left-wing party Podemos, following the recent victory of the eurosceptic Syriza party in Greece's parliamentary elections.

"Thousands of people have already filled up Cibeles [a square in Madrid], have come to tell the government of Rajoy [Mariano Rajoy, Prime Minister of Spain] that they will not continue tolerating the plundering to which we are subjected to, that we will chuck them out," Podemos wrote on its Facebook page.

More than 260 buses with more than 10,000 people from all over the country came to Madrid ahead of the rally, local media reported. Around 100 people have volunteered to carpool, a Podemos spokesperson told Sputnik.

At least seven people have been killed and dozens more are injured after a powerful fuel tank explosion outside a maternity and children's hospital in Mexico.

Four babies and three adults were killed in the blast in Mexico City today, according to the latest tally. Some are still feared trapped under the rubble of the collapsed building.

Rescue workers have been scouring through ruined sections of concrete and twisted metal for survivors. 'For the moment there are seven people dead, four of them babies, two women and a man,' an official in the Mexico City mayor's office told AFP.

Passers-by rushed into the building after the blast and made their way to the nursery section, rescuing eight babies, it has been reported.

Dozens were evacuated after the truck exploded outside the hospital with many of the injuries caused by broken glass.

The city's mayor Angel Mancera had told Milenio television earlier that a woman and two men were among the dead.

He told the Televisa network that at least 54 people were injured, 22 of them children.

Most of the injuries were relatively minor, he said, many caused by flying glass.

One of Russia's largest academic libraries, which contains millions of unique historic documents, has gone up in flames in Moscow. A part of the building's roof collapsed before dozens of fire fighters managed to contain the blaze.The fire erupted at around 10 pm local time (7 pm GMT) on the third floor of the Academic Institute of Scientific Information on Social Sciences (INION) in Moscow. According to the Emergency Situations Ministry, some 2,000 square meters were engulfed in flames, prompting the roof to cave in.

According to preliminary data, the cause of the fire could be a malfunction of the electrical system, a law-enforcement source told RIA Novosti news agency. "A short circuit in the electrical system is currently being regarded as a primary lead," he said Saturday.

На юго-западе Москвы сгорела библиотека ИНИОН РАН. https://t.co/vm2LCuZiHx pic.twitter.com/qBO8AH2xxb

- Петр Петров (@VolschebnikNNT4) January 31, 2015

A total of 147 rescue workers and 38 pieces of fire-fighting equipment were used to contain the fire shortly after midnight, the ministry said.

A special prosecutor says she won't pursue charges against two Santa Fe police officers who shot a 26-year-old man in the cheek in August 2013 as he tried to flee in an SUV that his mother had reported stolen.

A Santa Fe County grand jury, in a rare finding in an officer-involved shooting, determined last year after reviewing evidence in the case that the shooting was not justified.

But Roswell District Attorney Janetta Hicks announced Thursday in a letter to New Mexico State Police that she will not prosecute Officers John DeBaca and Stephen Fonte. First District Attorney Angela "Spence" Pacheco had asked Hicks to serve as a special prosecutor in the case after the local grand jury's October finding.


Tom Clark, who represents the injured man, Roberto Mendez, said he was in shock when he learned that Hicks had declined to prosecute the case. "This means that the grand jury doesn't mean anything," Clark said. "I would have liked to see justice out of the criminal justice system," he said, adding that he plans to file a lawsuit against the city. In September, Clark filed a tort claim notice informing the city of his client's intention to sue.

Hicks' announcement comes at a time when police use of force is under heightened scrutiny around the country. Earlier this month, District Attorney Kari Brandenburg of Albuquerque filed murder charges against two Albuquerque officers who had fatally shot James Boyd, a 38-year-old mentally ill homeless man who had been camping illegally on a mountainside in March 2014. Brandenburg said she was deviating from her past practice of presenting evidence in officer-involved shooting cases in secret grand jury proceedings because she wanted transparency in how the widely publicized incident is handled by the criminal justice system.


Hicks' letter says that after she reviewed evidence of the Santa Fe officers' actions, she determined that "a reasonable person in the same circumstances would be in fear of death or great bodily harm to himself or others and might use deadly force."

Protesters who attend a planned anti-Islam event outside Clonskeagh Mosque on Sunday are welcome to come in for a cup of tea, the Islamic Cultural Centre has said.

Speaking to TheJournal.ie today, Summayah Kenna, spokesperson for the centre, said they had been informed by members of their community about plans for a protest. "Like any protest we can't and we will not object," she said. "Everybody has a right to protest. All we can ask is that it goes off peacefully."

Plans for the protest have been circulating online, and it is said the event has been organised by an Irish anti-Islam group. A counter-event has also been organised by Anti-Imperialist Front Ireland.

Just when it seemed that the crackdown on free speech in France could not get worse, French police today questioned a second grader on suspicion of "defending terrorism."

BFMTV says that administrators at a primary school in Nice reported the child to police on 21 January after the boy allegedly said that he "felt he was on the side of the terrorists."

"A police station is absolutely no place for an eight-year-old child," the boy's lawyer Sefen Guez Guez told BFMTV. He said that the incident showed that France was going through a state of "collective hysteria."

Guez Guez said that on 8 January, the day after two French gunmen attacked the offices of the magazine Charlie Hebdo, the boy, whose name has been reported as Ahmed, was in class when he was asked if he was "Charlie."

"He answered, 'I am on the side of the terrorists, because I am against the caricatures of the prophet,'" the lawyer said.

A peculiar part of paperwork that's presented to new parents in New York City is raising eyebrows around the Big Apple. The new form, according to recent reports, asks parents to specify if a newborn's mother is male or female.

The New York Post first reported on Friday that an updated Department of Health (DOH) form handed to parents requesting a birth certificate removes the risk of misgendering new mommies.

The form [PDF], provided by the New York City DOH's Bureau of Vital Statistics, requires parents to answer if the "woman giving birth" is male or female, along with more run of the mill questions concerning legal names and Social Security Numbers.

"What is your DATE OF BIRTH, current AGE and SEX?" the form asks in the section labeled "Mother/Parent (Woman Giving Birth)."