A conservative Facebook group this week suggested that the lynching of President Barack Obama should be made into a "national holiday."

Earlier this week, Examiner.com's Robert Sobel pointed out that the Facebook group "America the next generation" had posted a photo of the president in a noose with the caption "The making of a National Holiday." The image was apparently a composite of Obama's head and a frame from the leaked video of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein being executed.

After some discussion between members of the "America the next generation" group and criticism from other Facebook users, the photo was eventually taken down. Some group members feared that lynching the president could make him into a "martyr."

An Iraq War veteran who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder became the first person to legally buy recreational marijuana under a new Colorado law that went into effect New Year's Day.

Sean Azzarti, of Denver, who helped campaign for Amendment 64, a voter-approved measure that permits anyone over 21 to buy or consume marijuana, purchased an eighth of an ounce of Bubba Kush marijuana and a pot-infused truffle for $59 from one of the two dozen stores that started selling up to an ounce of the drug Wednesday morning.

"I feel amazing. This is a huge step forward for veterans," said Azzarti, who was unable to purchase medical marijuana under his diagnosis. "Now I get to use recreational cannabis to alleviate my PTSD."

Long lines began forming outside the stores later in the morning, and at least one shop raised prices for an eighth of an ounce - from $25 to $45 - as demand soared.

Police reported no problems in the first day of legal sales in spite of the large crowds.

"What I love about it is the peacefulness of the crowd ... and the diversity," said Denver City Councilman Albus Brooks.

At least 37 shops across the state are fully licensed to sell marijuana for any purpose, according to the Denver Post.

Want to understand the failures of the "free market" and the key to getting a decent wage? Here's the real story.

Let me tell you the story of an "unskilled" worker in America who lived better than most of today's college graduates. In the winter of 1965, Rob Stanley graduated from Chicago Vocational High School, on the city's Far South Side. Pay rent, his father told him, or get out of the house. So Stanley walked over to Interlake Steel, where he was immediately hired to shovel taconite into the blast furnace on the midnight shift. It was the crummiest job in the mill, mindless grunt work, but it paid $2.32 an hour - enough for an apartment and a car. That was enough for Stanley, whose main ambition was playing football with the local sandlot all-stars, the Bonivirs.

Stanley's wages would be the equivalent of $17.17 today - more than the "Fight For 15" movement is demanding for fast-food workers. Stanley's job was more difficult, more dangerous and more unpleasant than working the fryer at KFC (the blast furnace could heat up to 2,000 degrees). According to the laws of the free market, though, none of that is supposed to matter. All that is supposed to matter is how many people are capable of doing your job. And anyone with two arms could shovel taconite. It required even less skill than preparing dozens of finger lickin' good menu items, or keeping straight the orders of 10 customers waiting at the counter. Shovelers didn't need to speak English. In the early days of the steel industry, the job was often assigned to immigrants off the boat from Poland or Bohemia.

"You'd just sort of go on automatic pilot, shoveling ore balls all night," is how Stanley remembers the work.

Stanley's ore-shoveling gig was also considered an entry-level position. After a year in Vietnam, he came home to Chicago and enrolled in a pipefitters' apprenticeship program at Wisconsin Steel.

So why did Rob Stanley, an unskilled high school graduate, live so much better than someone with similar qualifications could even dream of today? Because the workers at Interlake Steel were represented by the United Steelworkers of America, who demanded a decent salary for all jobs. The workers at KFC are represented by nobody but themselves, so they have to accept a wage a few cents above what Congress has decided is criminal.

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.

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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.