Random Politics & Religion #00

This, I think, is a mistake. It's going to be found out; just get it out of the way. People will only speculate more when you withhold information.

Never mind this wasn't the crash they were talking about... This guy is either Polish or German.

These information are not relevant.

State Sen. Anthony Williams (D-Delaware/Philadelphia) will introduce legislation that will make voting compulsory. Meaning if you don’t vote, you’ll be fined.

Is anyone going to be surprised if the co-pilot has ties to ISIS or some other Islamic terrorist faction?

Ah the Islamic apologists are out in full force already.

The United Federation of Planets (UFP) is consistently described as having socialist characteristics. The Federation operates under what is called the "New World Economy," in which people pursue to better themselves and humanity rather than accumulate material wealth and assets. The Federation is structured as an egalitarian democracy and has a President, a Legislature, and court system. By fact of the presence of a state structure itself, the socialist society of the Federation has not yet advanced into communism. Because the nature of the state is not political but rather a coordinator of public order and defense against external hostility, the Federation could accurately be described as a socialist state in an advanced phase of development before becoming fully communist.

Is anyone going to be surprised if the co-pilot has ties to ISIS or some other Islamic terrorist faction?

Star Trek's United Federation of Planets is a communist authority which is trying to take over the galaxy.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents had alleged "sex parties" with prostitutes over several years, said a report published on Thursday and stemming from a review of allegations of misconduct by several DEA agents in Colombia.

The alleged parties were funded by local drug cartels, said the report by the Justice Department's Office of the Inspector General, an agency internal watchdog.

The report raised concerns about inadequate reporting of allegations of misconduct and sexual harassment by several law enforcement agencies, including the DEA, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the U.S. Marshals Service and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).

Among the DEA allegations, 10 agents - an assistant regional director and nine special agents - had the alleged sex parties "at government-leased headquarters," and three of the special agents "were provided money, expensive gifts, and weapons from drug cartel members," according to the report.

After investigation, seven of the agents admitted attending the parties, and were suspended for between two and 10 days.

One special agent was cleared of all wrongdoing, the report said. None of the agents was named in the report.

The inspector general said it investigated allegations of sexual harassment and sexual misconduct between October 2008 and September 2012. The Office of the Inspector General declined to confirm where the alleged "sex parties" took place.

The DEA declined to comment.

The report cited "repeated allegations of DEA Special Agents ... patronizing prostitutes and frequenting a brothel while in an overseas posting."

It came in the wake of a prostitution scandal involving Secret Service agents in Cartagena, Colombia, in 2012 that damaged the agency's straitlaced reputation.

Where there was alleged high-risk sexual misdeeds, security agency personnel often were not told "until long after they occurred or were never informed, even though such behavior presents significant security risks," the report said.

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz called the allegations regarding the DEA agents "stunning" and urged action.

Inspectors also criticized the FBI and DEA for initially refusing to provide unredacted information requested, and then providing information that was "still incomplete."

Department of Justice spokesman Patrick Rodenbush said the department is already working with the agencies "to ensure a zero tolerance policy on sexual harassment and misconduct is enforced and that incidents are properly reported."

A pastor leading a protest Wednesday outside a Detroit-area police department threatened to shut down the city until white officers are fired for the bloody arrest of a black man who was pulled from his car and repeatedly punched in the head.

The march in Inkster came a day after TV station WDIV aired police dashcam video of the Jan. 28 arrest of Floyd Dent, 57. In it, an officer punches Dent many times in the head while another officer tries to handcuff the motorist, who is on the ground. Dent's face and shirt were bloodied.

Police say Dent disregarded stop signs and refused to pull over, then resisted arrest and threatened them. They also say they found a bag of crack cocaine in his car.

Dent, who said he spent three days in the hospital with broken ribs, blood on his brain and other injuries, told reporters at a news conference that he was defending himself as an officer was "nearly choking me to death."

"I wasn't resisting arrest," he said. "When someone is beating your face, you're going to protect yourself."

Hours earlier, Rev. Charles Williams II and about 50 protesters were told to leave the police department because they were blocking the door. Inkster Police Chief Vicki Yost met them outside and said Michigan State Police would investigate the arrest. She told The Associated Press the department also was conducting an internal probe.

"I understand your concern," Yost told Williams. "Again, we're going to let the investigation play out. ... We're going to act accordingly. We're not hiding from this."

Both Dent and Williams say the officers should be fired. Yost told The Associated Press that one is on "administrative duty" but declined to elaborate.

"We will shut Inkster down until we get justice," said Williams, who added that the video "made me sick."

In the police report released by defense attorney Greg Rohl, Inkster officer William Melendez wrote that he was patrolling for "narcotics activity" when he saw Dent's Cadillac pull into a hotel parking lot. He wrote that Dent went into a hotel room for a few minutes, came out and pulled away.

Melendez said in the report that he turned on his lights after Dent failed to use a proper turn signal and disregarded a stop sign. He said Dent failed to stop for some distance. When Dent pulled over, Melendez said he approached the car with his weapon out and raised it when he thought Dent, who was unarmed, was reaching for a weapon.

An auxiliary officer pulled Dent to the ground and Melendez put the motorist in a hold and punched him in the face after Melendez said Dent bit him on the arm; Dent denies biting Melendez. Another officer used a stun gun three times to subdue Dent, the report said.

A judge has dismissed charges of fleeing and resisting police, but Dent still faces a drug charge. He says he was visiting a friend, and that the officers planted the drugs in his car. He also said he was tested at the hospital and was "clean" of alcohol or drugs.

In 2004, Melendez and seven other Detroit officers were acquitted of lying, falsifying reports and planting evidence. Federal prosecutors had accused him and another officer of being the "masterminds" of a conspiracy to "run roughshod over the civil rights of the victims."

Inkster, population 25,000, is 73 percent black.

U.S. drug agents had sex parties funded by drug cartels: watchdog

Is anyone going to be surprised if the co-pilot has ties to ISIS or some other Islamic terrorist faction?

U.S. drug agents had sex parties funded by drug cartels: watchdog

I can't even tell you how much I don't care. Guys and girls put their lives on the line constantly, let them take the cartels for some free stress relief.

Funded by the same people they're supposed to be arresting all while engaging in sexual harassment too.

The hypocrisy level is through the roof.

Adopting rhetoric similar to Illinois Senator and Minority Whip Richard J. Durbin’s “back of the bus” comment that drew the ire of Republicans, about a dozen women congregated outside Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s office Thursday to protest the delay on confirming Loretta Lynch.

The group, visiting Capitol Hill as part of the Black Women’s Roundtable 2015 National Women of Power Summit, allege Lynch’s race and sex impacted the Kentucky Republican’s timetable for voting on the nomination and used the upcoming Easter holiday to inject religion into their plea.

“We think it, first of all, it’s ironic and distasteful that during this upcoming holy week that she would be used as a sacrificial lamb for — like a pawn being played. First it was immigration. Now its human trafficking. We don’t even know whether it’ll be held up further,” said Barbara Williams-Skinner, a Maryland civil rights leader. “We think it’s unconscionable, it’s immoral, and a man who calls himself Christian, this Mitch McConnell … should do better for America.”

Organizers called the confrontation outside the majority leader’s door a protest. But they were also granted a 20-minute meeting with McConnell’s chief of staff, according to Melanie L. Campbell, president and CEO of the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation and head of the roundtable.

“We felt like we received talking points,” Campbell told CQ Roll Call afterward.

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, who met with the women between House votes, said they would continue to pressure the GOP for “holding hostage the top law enforcement officer in the nation,” throughout the upcoming recess. “The perception is that her race and sex have an impact,” the Texas Democrat said. “Would anyone else be treated with a five-week delay, blaming it on a dispute of legislators over legislation?”

McConnell indicated this week that the bill designed to combat human trafficking, opposed by Democrats due to abortion-related language, remains tied to the nomination. He said people on both sides of the aisle are working to get through the impasse, and he hopes they can do it. Meanwhile, GOP backers of the nomination are holding firm.

Republicans muscled a balanced-budget plan through the Senate early Friday, positioning Congress for months of battling President Barack Obama over the GOP's goals of slicing spending and dismantling his health care law.

Working into Friday's pre-dawn hours, senators approved the blueprint by a near party-line 52-46 vote, endorsing a measure that closely follows one the House passed Wednesday. Both budgets embody a conservative vision of shrinking projected federal deficits by more than $5 trillion over the coming decade, mostly by cutting health care and other benefit programs and without raising taxes.

The Senate was beginning a spring recess after approving the measure, leaving Congress' two GOP-run chambers to negotiate a compromise budget in mid-April. The legislation is a non-binding blueprint that does not require Obama's signature but lays the groundwork for future bills that seem destined for veto fights with the president.

"Republicans have shown that the Senate is under new management and delivering on the change and responsible government the American people expect," said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

Democrats viewed the document differently, saying it relied on gimmickry and touted the wrong priorities.

"The budget we passed today is irresponsible and fails to effectively invest in our future," said Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md.

The budget's solidly ideological tenor contrasted with a bipartisan bill the House overwhelmingly approved Thursday permanently blocking perennial cuts in physicians' Medicare fees. It too will wait until April for final congressional approval by the Senate, with McConnell saying his chamber will handle it "very quickly when we get back."

Though doctors face a 21 percent cut in Medicare fees April 1, the government can delay processing those payments until Congress' return. The measure, which also provides money for health care programs for children and low-income people, would be partly financed with higher premiums for top-earning Medicare recipients.

On the budget, only two Republicans voted no: Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Rand Paul of Kentucky, a pair of presidential hopefuls. Two other potential GOP presidential candidates, Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, voted yes.

All voting Democrats were opposed.

The Senate completed its budget work after enduring one of its more painful traditions: A multi-hour "vote-a-rama" in which senators repeatedly debate and vote on a pile of non-binding amendments well past midnight. Senators offer the amendments because the votes can demonstrate support for a policy or be used to embarrass opponents in future campaigns.

Those approved included one by Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, entitling married same-sex couples to Social Security and veterans' spousal benefits. It got 11 GOP votes, including from several Republicans facing competitive re-elections next year.

Also adopted was one by McConnell aimed at thwarting Obama administration efforts to reduce coal pollution.

Congress' GOP budgets both matched the spending plan that Obama presented last month when it comes to defense, proposing $612 billion for next year, a 4.5 percent boost over current levels. Some conservatives were unhappy because they wanted more of the extra military spending to be offset with savings from elsewhere in the budget.

But mostly, the Republican blueprints diverge starkly from Obama's fiscal plan.

While his leaves a projected deficit exceeding $600 billion 10 years from now, the Senate plan claims a surplus of $3 billion.

Over the decade, Obama would raise $2 trillion in higher taxes from the wealthy, corporations and smokers while granting tax breaks to low-income and middle-class families. He would boost spending on domestic programs including road construction, preschools and community colleges and veterans.

The Senate budget would cut $4.3 trillion from benefit programs over the next 10 years, including annulling Obama's health care law, a step the president would without doubt veto.

Those savings would include $431 billion from Medicare, matching Obama's figure. The House budget would pare $148 billion from the health care program for the elderly and convert it into a voucher-like program for future beneficiaries, a step the Senate shunned.

The Senate budget would cut $236 billion from the budgets of nondefense agencies. The House would go even further, slicing $759 billion.[/url]

California has always done democracy a bit differently than most other states. Every other year, voters in the Golden State cast ballots not just for people to represent them, but for many of the actual laws that govern them. It's not quite the ancient Athenian model of citizens gathering on a hill to make decisions, but it's a version of direct democracy deeply-embedded in California's political culture. Over the years, voters have answered for themselves weighty questions of taxation, same-sex marriage, election laws, and the legalization of marijuana, among many others.

Yet that system is now facing something of a threat from an attorney named Matthew McLaughlin, who wants to use the ballot initiative to authorize the mass murder of gays and lesbians. He has formally proposed the Sodomite Suppression Act, which refers to homosexuality as "a monstrous evil" and an "abominable crime against nature." It would ban communicating messages of tolerance to minors; bar gays and lesbians, or anyone who voices acceptance, from holding government jobs or public office; and authorize mass murder:


The fear isn't that McLaughlin's proposal would ever pass—he is highly unlikely to secure anywhere close to the 365,880 signatures needed merely to get the referendum on next year's ballot, much less to secure a majority at the polls. And the courts would immediately throw out the law, as they have with a number of less extreme measures that Californians have approved. But the mere possibility that McLaughlin could get formal clearance from state officials to begin collecting signatures for a genocidal proposition is raising questions about California's permissive ballot initiative system.

Now that McLaughlin has paid his $200 fee and submitted his proposal, state Attorney General Kamala Harris must provide an official title and summary, so that he can begin the arduous—and surely foolhardy—process of persuading his fellow citizens to sign their names to it. This is generally a formality, and legal experts have said in recent weeks that Harris has no other choice but to process McLaughlin's proposal. The state has provided titles for plenty of other long-shot, kooky, and even offensive ballot measures over the years, according to a database maintained at the University of California-Irvine. A venture capitalist spent millions of dollars to gain support for a proposal to split California into six different states, but it failed to qualify for the 2016 ballot. Another would-be ballot initiative would have banned divorce. In 2013, evangelical pastor Allen Estes tried collecting signatures for a constitutional amendment that would expand protections for "speech based on biblical authority." (According to the awkwardly-worded text, anyone quoting from the Bible would be free—or freer than they are now—to say anything about such topics as "anti-Semitism, astrology, bestiality, bigamy... transgender, trans-sexuality, yoga, or sin.")

No other proposals, however, have been as vile as McLaughlin's. "I would submit this is probably the ugliest one I remember," Kurt Oneto, an attorney specializing in California ballot initiatives, told the Los Angeles Times. The situation puts Harris in a tricky position, since she is a top Democratic contender for Senate in 2016 and is under pressure from gay rights group who want McLaughlin's proposal rejected. (They also want him disbarred as an attorney.) She may have no room to maneuver under the law, but she wants no part of formalizing the anti-gay ballot measure. In a move described by The New York Times as "highly unusual," she announced on Wednesday that she was asking the state Superior Court to relieve of the responsibility to create a title and summary for the initiative.

Harris added that if the court refuses to rule in her favor, "my office will be forced to issue a title and summary for a proposal that seeks to legalize discrimination and vigilantism.” Gay rights supporters, meanwhile, have said they'll make public the names of anyone who signs McLaughlin's petition. And two state assemblymen in California, Evan Low and Richard Bloom, are pushing legislation in response to the proposal that would steeply raise the filing fee for ballot initiatives, from its current $200 up to $8,000. "Mr. McLaughlin’s immoral proposal is the just the latest—and most egregious—example of the need to further reform the initiative process," Low said in a statement.

It's debatable whether all of this handwringing is an overreaction. Nobody believes this incendiary idea is going anywhere, and McLaughlin isn't even making his case in public—newspaper reporters apparently haven't been able to track him down for comment in recent days. Yet while the referendum won't ever reach the voters, it could produce a wholly different outcome: making California's century-old system of direct democracy a little less permissive.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid announced Friday he will retire from the Senate at the end of his term.

The longtime Nevada Democrat announced the decision in a YouTube video message.

Appearing with bruises on his face from a recent at-home exercising accident, Reid said the injury has caused him and his family to have a "little down-time," giving him time to think.

"We've got to be more concerned about the country, the Senate, the state of Nevada than us. And as a result of that, I’m not going to run for reelection,” the senator said in the video.

Reid, ribbing his Republican counterpart, added: "My friend, Senator McConnell, don't be too elated. I'm going to be here for twenty-two months."

Look, at some point, you have to drop "idealistic" and be realistic about things.

Live it up on the cartel dime before you bust them later.

You're not wrong. But...***. What are they suppose to do? Our country still thinks it has a chance in winning the war on drugs. Seriously? Just...ugh. I don't even know.

I agree on the war on drugs, it's pointless. All it's done is made drugs cheaper, more potent, and greater access.

Lastly, a dose of stupid:

Idiot lawyer decides to collect signatures for a ballot initiative to execute gays/lesbians because they are gay.

I swear I posted this story a few days ago...maybe I just referenced it in another thread. It was in response to something Ono said though, I remember that.