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Judge's order barring deadbeat dad from fathering more kids upheld by Ohio court

Scott Kaufman
The Raw Story
Wed, 14 May 2014 09:03 UTC
Image
© Naturallymoi.com
Asim Taylor
An Ohio appeals court upheld a judge's decision to bar a man from having any more children until he made good on child support payments for those he already has.

Lorain County Probate Judge James Walther issued an order last year prohibiting Asim Taylor from having any children for the five years he was on probation for failing to pay the $100,000 in child support for his four current children.

"I put this condition on for one reason and one reason alone," Walther told Taylor at the time of his sentencing. "It's your personal responsibility to pay for these kids."

If Taylor violates the terms of his probation by impregnating another woman, he faces an automatic jail sentence of one year. Judge Walther also stipulated that he would remove the ban if Taylor paid the child support he already owed.

Taylor's attorney claimed that the prohibition was unconstitutional, because the only way Taylor could meet the order's demand that he "make all reasonable efforts to avoid impregnating a woman" was abstinence.
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Arrow Up

U.S. Supreme Court: Police can stop vehicles based on anonymous tips


Police State USA
Sun, 25 May 2014 16:53 UTC
"The makers of our Constitution undertook to secure conditions favorable to the pursuit of happiness. They recognized the significance of man's spiritual nature, of his feelings and of his intellect. They knew that only a part of the pain, pleasure and satisfactions of life are to be found in material things. They sought to protect Americans in their beliefs, their thoughts, their emotions and their sensations. They conferred, as against the government, the right to be let alone - the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men."

- Justice Louis Brandeis, dissenting in Olmstead v. United States (1928)
Traffic Stop
© Shutterstock
Washington, D.C. - In a recent 5-4 ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court set the legal precedent which allows police to initiate traffic stops based solely on anonymous tips. The Navarette v. California decision was so dangerous that one Justice called it "a freedom-destroying cocktail."

On August 23, 2008, Pravdo Navarette was stopped by a California Highway Patrol (CHP). No police officer ever witnessed Navarette driving in a way that would have indicated that he was impaired behind the wheel of his truck. Instead, entire basis for the stop was an anonymous phone call to police alleging that Navarette had driven dangerously. The caller identified the make, model and license plate number of the truck. Fifteen minutes later, a highway patrolman proceeded to follow Navarette for five minutes before finally pulling him over.

Once officers had Navarette on the side of the road, they observed that he was not intoxicated. However, officers began fishing for reasons to search the vehicle. One officer reported smelling the odor of marijuana. Police proceeded to search his truck, found a bundle of cannabis, and then arrested both men in the vehicle.
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Water

Texas town seeks solution to drought with 'toilet water'

Lauren Rothman
Munchies
Fri, 23 May 2014 12:00 UTC
Toilet
© Ingram Publishing/Thinkstock
The old adage of "desperate times call for desperate measures" has been taken up by a drought-stricken Texas town that's looking to a new source for its drinking water: its toilets. Wichita Falls, a city of about 100,000 located in the north of the state, is well into its third year of the severe water shortage that's affecting much of much of the west. Mandatory water conservation measures have already reduced residents' water usage by more than a third, but when city officials realized that remaining water supplies would still run out in about two years, they decided that Fido was on to something when he deigned to drink from the porcelain bowl.

OK, not exactly. The city's new direct potable reuse project, as it's called, is far more involved than slaking your thirst at the toilet rather than at the tap. Instead, in a $13 million effort designed by Wichita Falls' Public Works department, the city has installed a 13-mile pipeline connecting its water treatment plant (where ordinary tap water is filtered and purified before entering the city's pipes) with its wastewater treatment plant (i.e., all the stuff that goes down drains - not just toilet water, which makes up about 20 percent of the mix, but also water from sinks, tubs, washing machines, and dishwashers), creating a two-destination, multi-step cleansing system. Wastewater is first treated at its respective plant, then sent down the pipeline to be treated once more with all the rest of the drinking water. The project, now in its final stages of testing, should begin producing about five million gallon of water per day by early July.
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Black Magic

Chilling drug cartel style threat messages found on El Paso, TX billboards

Jason Howerton
The Blaze
Sat, 24 May 2014 12:35 UTC
el paso drug cartel billboard
© AP Photo/El Paso Times, Victor Calzada
An El Paso, Texas police officer checks a makeshift mannequin Thursday, May 22, 2014, which was left hanging on a billboard along with the message, “silver or lead” in Spanish, a threat heard in Mexico signifying pay up or get shot. El Paso police were investigating two mysterious messages painted onto billboards in the border city that included mannequins dressed in suits hanging from nooses.
El Paso police were investigating two mysterious messages painted onto billboards in the border city that included mannequins dressed in suits hanging from nooses.

The El Paso Times reported that motorists alerted police to the graffiti early Thursday morning. Both billboard companies said the painted messages were vandalism and not paid advertisements. They have been removed.
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Chart Pie

Europe against sanctions on Russia: It would mean 'cutting the trees they are sitting on'


RT.com
Sun, 25 May 2014 10:49 UTC
global CEO Summit
© RIA Novosti / Vladimir Astapkovich
St. Petersburg hosts Global CEO Summit
While this year's Int Economic Forum in St Petersburg saw fewer foreign guests due to sanctions tension, those who chose to leave politics aside told RT imposing economic restrictions on Moscow would mean "cutting the trees" they are "sitting on".

Here's what the top managers told RT at the Economic Forum in St. Petersburg.

Reiner Hartman, Chairman at the Association of European Businesses
"We as investors have a success story in this country for 22 years. We've started from scratch and we have now such a fantastic story... We have investors from Europe, from the United States, from South America, from Africa, from Asia. They are all here. And why are we being taken hostage by irresponsible, I must say, political decision making people?"

"I've heard about 20 or 57 Chinese high-tech companies ready just to move in and replace Alstom, Siemens, BASF, and Bayer, just to name the few. It's amazing!"
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Dollar Gold

Wealth funds in China and Qatar plan to continue investments in Russia as US interest fades

Megan Davies,
Yahoo News
Fri, 23 May 2014 12:50 UTC
middle east wealth funds
© RDIF
Major sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East and Asia have invested in Russian businesses and backed its state-funded private equity fund, the Russian Direct Investment Fund
Sovereign wealth funds in China and Qatar on Friday signaled their increased commitment to Russia, boosting Moscow's hopes of strengthening ties with Asia and the Middle East as relations with the West deteriorate.

Major sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East and Asia have invested in Russian businesses and backed its state-funded private equity fund, the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF). By contrast, U.S. financial investors in the country remain few.

"CIC has invested several billions of dollars in Russia," said Ding Xuedong, chairman of the $575 billion CIC, on the sidelines of the country's main annual investment conference in St Petersburg.

"We will continue to increase our investment in Russia, not only in the public markets, but in direct investments," he said.

Russia's RDIF separately announced that Qatar's sovereign wealth fund, the Qatar Investment Authority, is allocating $2 billion to investments with the fund.

Numerous U.S. financiers avoided the annual investment conference in St Petersburg on advice from the White House. Washington and the European Union have imposed sanctions against various individuals deemed close to Russian President Vladimir Putin in response to the situation in Ukraine.

Comment: Who needs the United States? Not Russia and China

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Chart Bar

The essential role of volatility, stress and dissent on the micro and macro levels

Charles Hugh Smith
Investment Watch
Sat, 24 May 2014 12:13 UTC
The individual or system that never experiences dissent, volatility or stress is systemically unhealthy and increasingly prone to sudden "gosh, I didn't see this coming" collapse.
Stress
To say that volatility, stress, dissent are not just healthy, but essential for maintaining health sounds counter-intuitive. On an individual level, we try to avoid exertion, stress and crisis, and on a larger systemic level, our institutions devote enormous resources to minimizing systemic volatility and suppressing dissent.

In other words, the notion that stress and dissent are to be avoided is scale-invariant: it works the same for individuals, households, enterprises, economies, governments and empires.

What got me thinking about this was some recent research that suggests short bursts of physical exertion several times a day yields the equivalent positive results as 20+ minutes of strenuous workout in the gym.

Doing some strenuous exercise for 60 seconds a few times of day appears to trigger the same immune response and repair systems that longer duration exercise engenders.
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Nuke

Seriously? Millions of gallons of nuclear waste to be stored next to the Great Lakes

Shawn Ozbun
Truthfed
Thu, 22 May 2014 11:52 UTC
Try and think of the dumbest thing we could do to ensure the destruction of our environment and water supplies. How about storing nuclear waste right next to Lake Huron, which also happens to connect to all the other great lakes, which also happens to make up the greatest collection of fresh water on Earth.


Comment: Seeking the "voice of reason" from the government will likely lead nowhere. The psychopaths in power won't be satisfied until the entire earth and its inhabitants are utterly destroyed.

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Star of David

Stephen Hawking's boycott hits Israel where it hurts: science

Hilary Rose and Steven Rose
The Guardian
Tue, 13 May 2014 09:17 UTC
Stephen Hawking
© Photograph: PA
Hawking's boycott 'threatens to open a floodgate with more and more scientists coming to regard Israel as a pariah state'.
Stephen Hawking's decision to boycott the Israeli president's conference has gone viral. Over 100,000 Facebook shares of the Guardian report at last count. Whatever the subsequent fuss, Hawking's letter is unequivocal. His refusal was made because of requests from Palestinian academics.

Witness the speed with which the pro-Israel lobby seized on Cambridge University's initial false claim that he had withdrawn on health grounds to denounce the boycott movement, and their embarrassment when within a few hours the university shamefacedly corrected itself. Hawking also made it clear that if he had gone he would have used the occasion to criticise Israel's policies towards the Palestinians.
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Heart - Black

Georgia woman with painful, beach ball-sized tumor turned away from four hospitals for lack of insurance

Travis Gettys
The Raw Story
Fri, 16 May 2014 09:10 UTC
Image
© Rawstory.com
Doris Lewis
A Georgia woman says four hospitals turned her away before one agreed to remove a massive and painful tumor.

Doris Lewis said she lost her insurance coverage when her husband died several years ago, reported WSB-TV.

But the 59-year-old said she never felt a sense of urgency to obtain new coverage until she developed the non-cancerous tumor, which has grown to the size of a beach ball in two months.

"It's getting bigger every day," Lewis said. "I can feel it on my body. My heart hurts a little bit."

Lewis said she didn't realize at first that she had developed the tumor, initially believing she was just gaining weight.

Comment:
Health insurance premiums rising faster after Obamacare than in the previous eight years

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