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Montana judge admits fault for blaming victim of rape


Raw Story
Wed, 19 Feb 2014 06:33 UTC
Image
© AFP
A Montana judge, under fire for suggesting a 14-year-old girl was partly to blame for being raped by a teacher, admitted on Tuesday that he violated judicial standards and invited censure from the state's highest court, documents show.

Judge G. Todd Baugh drew fierce public criticism last year when he sentenced the former teacher, 54-year-old Stacey Rambold, to just a month in prison for the 2007 sexual assault of his student, Cherice Moralez, who later killed herself.

In a complaint filed with the Montana Supreme Court earlier this month, a Montana panel that oversees jurists sought to discipline him over the sentence as well as for saying the girl appeared "older than her chronological age," and "as much in control of the situation" as her teacher.

The Montana Judicial Standards Commission said Baugh undermined public confidence in the judiciary, created an appearance of impropriety and "justified the unlawful sentence by blaming the child victim," according to papers from the commission.
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Smoking

MP Charles Walker states the obvious: Smoking ban could 'criminalise' good parents

Martin Ford
Herforshire Mercury
Wed, 19 Feb 2014 13:12 UTC
Image
PLANS to ban smoking in cars with children risk "criminalising" parents, Broxbourne's Conservative MP has claimed.

MPs voted last week by 376 votes to 107 in favour of banning smoking while a child is present in cars.

In the Commons debate, Charles Walker said: "It would be appalling if people who have been good parents in every other way found themselves being criminalised as a result of smoking in a car when their children were present," he said.

"We should guard against that," he added.

Comment: Not only is there no real science to back up any claims that 2nd or 3rd hand smoke is dangerous, the anti tobacco cult and their junk science have succeded in tarnishing a perfectly healthy plant and way of stimulating our neuroreceptors.
Passive smoking - another of the Nanny State's big lies
Signs of Desperation, Catapulting the Propaganda: Third-Hand Smoke Exposure As Deadly As Smoking
Smoking Does Not Cause Lung Cancer
Smokers' lungs used in half of transplants: Improves Survival Rate!
Smoking Does Not Cause Lung Cancer (According to WHO/CDC Data)
Air pollution causes lung cancer in non-smokers (erm, can't it cause it in smokers too then?)
Government Suppresses Major Public Health Report
Air pollution leading cause of cancer, World Health Organisation warns
5 Health Benefits of Smoking
'World No Tobacco Day'? Let's All Light Up!

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Attention

Massachusetts father charged for speaking about his daughter's kidnapping


Police State USA
Wed, 19 Feb 2014 17:56 UTC
Lou and Linda
© Avital Greener/Mail Online
Lou and Linda Pelletier.
Boston - A father is being charged by the state of Massachusetts for speaking about the kidnapping of his daughter and the oppression his family has endured for the last year.

After reaching emotional, physical, and financial exhaustion, Lou Pelletier decided that the only way to save his daughter was to speak out and make his daughter's story as public as possible. Breaking a judge's so-called "gag order" may cause him to be punished for exercising his right to free speech.

The heartbreaking story began in February 2013 when Lou and Linda Pelletier took their daughter to Boston Children's Hospital for treatment for influenza. Doctors there attempted to radically change a diagnosis of one of then-14-year-old Justina Pelletier's existing medical conditions.

In summary, a mitochondrial disorder previously established by her regular physician was reversed and turned into a psychiatric disorder. The doctors of Boston Children's Hospital wanted to cease treating her for her old diagnosis and start her up on psychotropic drugs. Her family objected and wanted to discharge her from the hospital. That's when security guards instead removed Lou and Linda from their daughter's side, and within days they were stripped of custody of Justina.

The Pelletier family suffered for months with limited contact with Justina and frustrating legal battles. To make matters worse, they were threatened by a judge with a "gag order" to not disclose details of the case.
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No Entry

Obamacare's 'disincentive' scheme could discourage people from working

David R. Henderson
defining ideas
Tue, 18 Feb 2014 08:00 UTC
The law taxes low-income people and encourages them to work less.

Obamacare
© Personal Liberty Digest

In 2009 and 2010, when the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) - known informally as Obamacare - was being debated, many critics pointed to a bad disincentive within the proposed law: the law would discourage people from working. How so? Obamacare required people to buy health insurance that fit the federal government's specifications, and that health insurance was expected - correctly as it turns out - to be expensive. So the law also included large subsidies for low-income people. To keep the outlay for subsidies from being extremely large, the government phases out the subsidy as a low-income family's income rises.

Economists who were paying attention pointed out that reducing the subsidy as people earn more would act like a tax on income and, thus, would reduce the incentive to earn income. A reasonable estimate is that this implicit tax rate is about 15 percent! That's on top of the federal income tax rate of 15 percent for many low-income families, the Social Security and Medicare tax rate of 7.65 percent, and state income tax rates of 2 or 3 percent. The implicit tax rate, then, on an additional dollar of income would be about 40 percent. Why work an extra hour for, say, $16, when you get to keep only $9.60?
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Light Saber

Florida single mom injured, spends night in jail for phone recording traffic stop, falsely threatened with felony charges

Jason Howerton
TheBlaze
Tue, 18 Feb 2014 16:37 UTC
police arrest cellphone record
© WPLG-TV
Brandy Burning
A Florida woman spent the night in jail after a Broward County sheriff's deputy accused her of committing a "felony" by audio recording their conversation during a simple traffic stop. Upon review, all charges against her were dropped - but now the Broward Sheriff's Office (BSO) is facing a lawsuit.

Brandy Burning, a single mom, was pulled over by BSO Lt. William O'Brien for driving in an HOV lane. After some back-and-forth about her traffic violation, Burning informed the officer that she was recording their conversation.

"Oh, I forgot to tell you I was recording our conversation," Burning is heard saying in the audio.

"I'm sorry?" O'Brien responds.

"I have to tell you, I forgot to tell you I was recording," she repeats.

It was at this point that O'Brien accused her of committing a "felony" and demanded the cellphone. He also told her he knows the law better than she does.

"You are committing a felony. Hand me the phone," O'Brien orders.

"No, I am not," the defiant woman says in the audio. "I am not giving up my phone."


As Washington Post opinion blogger Radley Balko correctly notes, "[In] every state in America, you are well within your rights to record an on-duty police officer."
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Sheriff

Georgia cop fatally shoots teen boy who was holding a Wii video game controller

David Edwards
Raw Story
Wed, 19 Feb 2014 15:51 UTC
Image

Christopher Roupe, 17, was in the ROTC at Woodland High School and wanted to join the Marines. His friends said he looked after them
A family in Georgia said this week that a police officer should never have killed 17-year-old Christopher Roupe because he was only holding a video game controller, not a gun as authorities have claimed.

According to WSB-TV, Roupe had been shot to death on Friday when Euharlee officers showed up at his home to serve a probation violation warrant on his father. The officer later told state investigators that she was forced to shoot because Roupe had pointed at gun at her when he opened the door.

But Roupe's family and witnesses who were at the scene said that the officer's statement was just not true.

Attorney Cole Law, who is representing the family, told WSB-TV that the boy was holding a Wii video game controller because he was getting ready to watch a movie.
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USA

Blondie Bennett, Barbie-obsessed woman, uses hypnotherapy to make herself 'brainless'


Huffington Post
Wed, 19 Feb 2014 15:44 UTC
Image

Blondie, 38, regularly uses Botox and lip fillers and is training herself to become 'dumb' like the doll she idolises
A California woman who describes herself as Barbie-obsessed says she uses hypnotherapy sessions in the hopes that it will decrease her IQ.

"I just want to be the ultimate Barbie. I actually want to be brainless," Blondie Bennett, 38, told Barcroft TV. "I don't like being human, if that makes sense... Natural is boring... I would love to be like, completely plastic."

Bennett has had five breast augmentations and other procedures in the hopes of attaining her goal. But now she says she's undergoing hypnotherapy sessions two-to-three times a week in order to dumb down her thoughts.

She says it's working.
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Handcuffs

Caught on video: Man shoving girlfriend into manhole to escape debt he owed her

YJ News
Anika Rao
Wed, 19 Feb 2014 00:00 UTC
Image
A man owed his girlfriend a lot of money, and rather than paying her back he tried to kill her.

Shocking surveillance video showed the assassination attempt in southern China.

The video that was taken in the city of Haikou, in Hainan province, showed the unidentified man removing a manhole cover and replacing it with a piece of cardboard.

Next, he was seen walking with his girlfriend into the trap he had set for her.

When she fell in, he aggressively pushed her deeper into the sewer drain and replaced the lid.
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Stock Down

Snowballing Disaster: Fourth Georgia hospital closes due to Obamacare payment cuts


The Daily Caller
Wed, 19 Feb 2014 14:26 UTC
Image
The fourth Georgia hospital in two years is closing its doors due to severe financial difficulties caused by Obamacare's payment cuts for emergency services.

The Lower Oconee Community Hospital is, for now, a critical access hospital in southeastern Georgia that holds 25 beds. The hospital is suffering from serious cash-flow problems, largely due to the area's 23 percent uninsured population, and hopes to reopen as "some kind of urgent care center," CEO Karen O'Neal said.

Many hospitals in the 25 states that rejected the Medicaid expansion are facing similar financial problems. Liberal administration ally Think Progress has already faulted Georgia for not expanding Medicaid as Obamacare envisioned.
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Arrow Down

Newly found coal ash spill pouring arsenic into North Carolina river

Sarah Lazare
Common Dreams
Wed, 19 Feb 2014 00:00 UTC
Image
© Eric Chance / Appalachian Voice
The Dan River in Danville, approximately 20 miles downstream of the spill, was left dark and cloudy from the first release of tens of thousands of tons of coal ash
North Carolina authorities believe that a second storm pipe has burst at the Eden coal ash dumping pond owned by Duke Energy, sending another mass discharge of arsenic and lead-laden waste into the Dan River, which is still severely polluted from a similar spill in early February.

The N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources announced Tuesday that it had made the discovery while investigating the site. Their statement noted "elevated levels of arsenic" in the water.

"Given what we've seen, we're concerned that this second stormwater pipe on site may also be leaking water contaminated with coal ash pollutants into the Dan River," said Tom Reeder, director of the N.C. Division of Water Resources. "As such, we are ordering Duke Energy to eliminate this unauthorized discharge immediately."
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