Rules Committee Turns Into Shouting Match

It was all going so well in the state House of Representatives. Lawmakers were positioned to vote on several bills Wednesday that would change the way state government in Pennsylvania operates, and then the wheels came off.

"You should be ashamed of yourselves," one lawmaker could be heard yelling.

News 8 government reporter Matt Belanger reported that there was shouting, profanity, and accusations. It culminated with one person throwing a stack of papers into the air and Democrats storming out of the room.

Anti-government protests in Egypt moved into their third day early Thursday, with unconfirmed reports of police "massacres" of civilians in the port city of Suez.

In Cairo, protesters "played cat and mouse with police" into the early hours of Thursday, Reuters reported. Opposition groups reported on their websites that electronic communications had been cut off in the city center, and parts of the city were experiencing blackouts.

The official death toll stood at six over the first two days of protests, but social networks were abuzz with claims of police shooting at protesters, many of those reports focusing on the city of Suez, where protesters torched a government building on Wednesday.

"Security forces are committing heinous massacres and there is zero media coverage," read an update on the web page of Suez from Egyptian Association for Change - USA, an opposition group that had joined the call for an uprising starting on January 25.

"Government is trying to cover up what happened in city of Suez. Media banned from entry," read another update. "Reporters from Suez, Al Jazeerah, Dream and Al Mehwar were prohibited from entering Suez to enforce a media blackout on the subject."

Others reported on the web page that a curfew was placed on the city and police were using "live ammunition."

On the anniversary of the Citizens United decision, Vermont politicians are moving to deny corporations the rights that humans enjoy.

A year ago today, the Supreme Court issued its bizarre Citizens United decision, allowing unlimited corporate spending in elections as a form of "free speech" for the corporate "person." Justice John Paul Stevens, writing for the dissent, had the task of recalling the majority to planet earth and basic common sense.

"Corporations have no consciences, no beliefs, no feelings, no thoughts, no desires," wrote Stevens. "Corporations help structure and facilitate the activities of human beings, to be sure, and their 'personhood' often serves as a useful legal fiction. But they are not themselves members of 'We the People' by whom and for whom our Constitution was established."

Fortunately, movements are afoot to reverse a century of accumulated powers and protections granted to corporations by wacky judicial decisions.

In Vermont, state senator Virginia Lyons on Friday presented an anti-corporate personhood resolution for passage in the Vermont legislature. The resolution, the first of its kind, proposes "an amendment to the United States Constitution ... which provides that corporations are not persons under the laws of the United States." Sources in the state house say it has a good chance of passing. This same body of lawmakers, after all, once voted to impeach George W. Bush, and is known for its anti-corporate legislation. Last year the Vermont senate became the first state legislature to weigh in on the future of a nuclear power plant, voting to shut down a poison-leeching plant run by Entergy Inc. Lyons' Senate voted 26-4 to do it, demonstrating the level of political will of the state's politicians to stand up to corporate power.

The language in the Lyons resolution is unabashed. "The profits and institutional survival of large corporations are often in direct conflict with the essential needs and rights of human beings," it states, noting that corporations "have used their so-called rights to successfully seek the judicial reversal of democratically enacted laws."

Thus the unfolding of the obvious: "democratically elected governments" are rendered "ineffective in protecting their citizens against corporate harm to the environment, health, workers, independent business, and local and regional economies." The resolution goes on to note that "large corporations own most of America's mass media and employ those media to loudly express the corporate political agenda and to convince Americans that the primary role of human beings is that of consumer rather than sovereign citizens with democratic rights and responsibilities."

Sardinata - An explosion likely caused by a methane gas buildup ripped through an underground coal mine in Colombia during a shift change Wednesday, killing 21 workers, officials said. A similar fatal blast occurred at the same mine four years ago.

Five of the victims died at the mine's entrance and by afternoon two bodies had been removed from the mine with another 14 left to recover, said the provincial Colombian Red Cross director, Johel Enrique Rodriguez.

He told The Associated Press that rescuers had seen the rest of the bodies, which he said were covered in burns and scattered throughout the kilometer-long (0.6 mile-long) tunnel that extended horizontally beneath a verdant mountain.

Jesse Ventura, the pro-wrestler turned Minnesota governor turned Conspiracy Theory host, filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration, saying their full body scanners and pat-down methods are unconstitutional, according to The Associated Press.

Ventura, who is nicknamed "The Body," alleges the TSA's new methods for flight screening violate the the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution, which protects citizens from unreasonable searches and seizures.

The suit argues that "unwarranted and unreasonable intrusions on Governor Ventura's personal privacy and dignity and are a justifiable cause for him to be concerned for his personal health and well-being," the AP reported.

An iPad and two laptops stolen from the Dallas Convention Center don't contain Super Bowl security information after all, Dallas police said Wednesday.

The items belonged to a private investigator and security consultant based in California. Sources say the company was hired to do work for the NFL in some capacity during the Super Bowl. The owner of the items association to the big game led to concerns about the contents of the laptop, but police now say security hasn't been compromised.

"After talking with the victims, it was determined that neither the laptops nor the iPad contained any information that would compromise or jeopardize the security of any Super Bowl related events," said Kevin Janse, with the Dallas Police Department. "Detectives further believe the laptop theft was nothing more than a crime of opportunity and that the suspects probably didn't even realize who the owners of the property were."

Initially, police said the items were taken from a Starbucks kiosk inside the convention center. The latest information indicates those items were taken while inside a ballroom where they were left unattended for about 25 minutes, Janse said.

Woman snatched close to $100 from Palm Beach Girl Scouts

There's another cookie monster on the loose in West Palm Beach and she's behind the wheel of a car.

Two Girl Scout cookie sellers were targeted by a woman who drove up to their cookie stand and snatched their hard-earned dough, reports WPBF.com

The drive-by happened Sunday night at a shopping center in Palm Beach Gardens.

A woman in a maroon, four-door Honda pulled up to 7-year-old Vanessa Bergeron's cookie table and asked for a box of the treats. Her mother, Missy, was also at the table and walked up to the vehicle with a box in hand.

Son Saves The Day But Only After Getting Beaten Up, Too

Police on Staten Island are looking for a man and woman robbery team that viciously attacked an elderly couple as they were entering their home on Sunday night.

As CBS 2's John Slattery reports from the Tompkinsville section is the borough, it was the victims' son who put an end to the beatings.

Joseph Naimo, 81, and his son, Rocco, were recovering Wednesday night from the beatings they received. Joseph's wife, however, took the worst of the attack.

"They beat her up bad. They beat her up bad. They beat her up very bad," Joseph said.

A celebrity journalist now claims he misspoke when he said last week that Hawaii's governor told him he was unable to find President Barack Obama's original birth certificate after a search of state and hospital archives.

Mike Evans told FoxNews.com on Wednesday he was remorseful and embarrassed that he appeared to have given the impression that he had discussed the search for Obama's birth certificate with Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie.

Evans, who says he has been a close friend of Abercrombie since the 1980s, appeared on Minnesota's KQRS radio last week and said he'd been told by the governor himself that Obama's birth certificate was nowhere to be found. Evans told KQRS on Jan. 20:

"Yesterday, talking to Neil's office, Neil says that he searched everywhere using his powers as governor ..... there is no Barack Obama birth certificate in Hawaii. Absolutely no proof at all that he was born in Hawaii."

But that's no longer Evans' story.

"Only this I can you tell you is 100 percent fact: that Neil never told me there was no birth certificate," Evans told Fox News. "I never talked to him."

Last week's radio interview was part of Evans' syndicated five-minute feature, On the Road with Mike Evans, which is broadcast on 34 stations across the country each morning.

Durban - More than 750 African Grey parrots worth about R2m died on a flight from Johannesburg to Durban.

The news has caused shock waves among conservationists, bird breeders and those involved in the aviation industry. The parrots died on December 24 on a flight operated by 1time.

Dr Steve Boyes, director of the organisation World Parrot Trust Africa, said steps should be taken to ensure that something like this never happens again.

The parrots were part of an order of 1 650 adult African Greys which were caught in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to be sold to South African breeders.