Thursday, July 09, 2015
Wednesday, July 08, 2015
Tuesday, July 07, 2015
Eric Holder: The Justice Department could strike deal with Edward Snowden
"Former Attorney General Eric Holder said today that a “possibility exists” for the Justice Department to cut a deal with former NSA contractor Edward Snowden that would allow him to return to the United States from Moscow.
In an interview with Yahoo News, Holder said “we are in a different place as a result of the Snowden disclosures” and that “his actions spurred a necessary debate” that prompted President Obama and Congress to change policies on the bulk collection of phone records of American citizens."
Monday, July 06, 2015
A Level Playing Field: Why the USA Is So Strong in Women's Soccer - NBC News
The United States Sunday will fight to win its third Women's World Cup and extend a quarter-century run of dominance in women's soccer.
The national team has never finished worse than third in the competition and has consistently ranked near the top of the worldwide rankings since FIFA started keeping such records in 2003. Four Olympic gold medals in five tries adds to the Americans' haul. Victory is normal. Losses are rare — and painful.
So, the obvious question is: Why are we so good at women's soccer? And it's especially notable considering the U.S. men's soccer team didn't even crack the top-10 ranking until 2005, and has since plummeted to 27th.
A Level Playing Field: Why the USA Is So Strong in Women's Soccer - NBC News
Saturday, July 04, 2015
Recommended read from Salon.com: As Fox News mourns, the rest of us have an Independence Day to celebrate
"July 4 has always been a time for aggrieved progressives to remind the world that most Americans weren’t liberated on that first Independence Day. Enslaved Africans; dispossessed native Indians; women of every race; white men without property; LGBT Americans; the rights claimed in the stirring Declaration of Independence didn’t fully belong to most of us for many years.
That’s still a real, historic truth. But maybe, at least this year, we can celebrate the genuinely liberating, animating ideals of a country that came close to living up to them in a dizzying 24 hours last week."
Thursday, July 02, 2015
America Ferrera: "Thank You, Donald Trump!" - CBS News
"You've said some pretty offensive things about Latino immigrants recently, and I think they're worth addressing. Because, you know, this is the United States of America, where I have a right to speak up even if I'm not a billionaire. Isn't that awesome?" she wrote.
"Anyway, I heard what you said about the kind of people you think Latino immigrants are -- people with problems, who bring drugs, crime and rape to America. While your comments are incredibly ignorant and racist, I don't want to spend my time chastising you. I'll leave that to your business partners like Univision and NBC, who have the power to scold you where it hurts. Instead, I'm writing to say thank you!"
"You see, what you just did with your straight talk was send more Latino voters to the polls than several registration rallies combined!" the former "Ugly Betty" star wrote in a blog post published Thursday, adding, "Remarks like yours will serve brilliantly to energize Latino voters and increase turnout on election day against you and any other candidate who runs on a platform of hateful rhetoric."
Pocket: Nicholas Winton, Rescuer of 669 Children From Holocaust, Dies at 106
Nicholas Winton, a Briton who said nothing for a half-century about his role in organizing the escape of 669 mostly Jewish children from Czechoslovakia on the eve of World War II, a righteous deed like those of Oskar Schindler and Raoul Wallenberg, died on Wednesday in Maidenhead, England. He was 106.
The Rotary Club of Maidenhead, of which Mr. Winton was a former president, announced his death on its website. He lived in Maidenhead, west of London.
It was only after Mr. Winton’s wife found a scrapbook in the attic of their home in 1988 — a dusty record of names, pictures and documents detailing a story of redemption from the Holocaust — that he spoke of his all-but-forgotten work in the deliverance of children who, like the parents who gave them up to save their lives, were destined for Nazi concentration camps and extermination.
For all his ensuing honors and accolades in books and films, Mr. Winton was a reluctant hero, often compared to Schindler, the ethnic German who saved 1,200 Jews by employing them in his enamelware and munitions factories in Poland and Czechoslovakia, and to Wallenberg, the Swedish businessman and diplomat who used illegal passports and legation hideaways to save tens of thousands of Jews in Nazi-occupied Hungary.
Pocket: Nicholas Winton, Rescuer of 669 Children From Holocaust, Dies at 106
Wednesday, July 01, 2015
“You’re giving me a f***ing ticket for what?” It’s totally legal (though maybe not smart) to curse the police - Salon.com
"Being rude is not illegal, even if some of us sometimes wish it were. Being rude to cops, including cursing them out may be ill-advised, but it is protected speech. Yet that doesn’t mean you won’t end up in bracelets anyway.
As the Marshall Project reports, many citizens are illegally arrested for cursing at cop, when in fact, their speech is protected. A police officer from the McKinney, TX police department was captured on the now infamous pool party video throwing a 15-year-old girl to the ground after he accused her of mouthing off. He was later fired for his actions.
Last week, the Washington Supreme Court threw out an obstruction case against a man who cursed at cops after they were called to investigate a disturbance at his home in 2011. In December, a Georgia woman was awarded a $100,000 settlement after cops arrested her in 2012 and placed her in solitary confinement for cursing at them and flipping the officers the bird."
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Obama announces re-establishment of U.S.-Cuba ties - CNNPolitics.com
"Washington (CNN)President Barack Obama said Wednesday that it was past time for the U.S. to re-establish diplomatic relations with Cuba as he announced that the two countries were reopening their embassies after more than 50 years.
"When the United States shuttered our embassy in 1961, I don't think anyone thought it would be more than half a century before it reopened," he said in remarks from the White House Rose Garden."
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