Another Friday, Another Friday DoJ Document Dump
M Catharine Evans – American Thinker

If the White House orders the Department of Justice to dump another 500 pages of Fast and Furious documents on a Friday evening, will they make a sound if only a few alternative journalists are around? Yes.

Mike Vanderboegh at Sipsey Street Irregulars and David Codrea of the Washington Examiner reported the NPR (surprise, surprise) story late last evening. A “series of sensitive emails” inside the dump leave no doubt Attorney General Eric Holder knew about Fast and Furious long before he said he knew.

The email messages show the former top federal prosecutor in Arizona, Dennis Burke, notifying an aide to Holder via email on Dec. 15, 2010 that agent Brian Terry had been wounded and died. “Tragic,” responds the aide, Monty Wilkinson. “I’ve alerted the AG, the acting Deputy Attorney General…”

Only a few minutes later, Wilkinson emailed again, saying, “Please provide any additional details as they become available to you.”

Burke then delivered another piece of bad news: “The guns found in the desert near the murder [sic] … officer connect back to the investigation we were going to talk about — they were AK-47s purchased at a Phoenix gun store.”

Is it a scandal yet? Can we assume from the scads of circumstantial evidence gathered over the past year that major leaders in the Obama administration were in on the whole thing?

We don’t know yet, except heavily redacted pages in the doc dump related to a meeting with Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer on February 4, 2011 are followed by the suggestion to have a “High Level meeting in the Spring to address the arms trafficking issue. (Please note that the idea of holding a high level meeting came up during Secretary Clinton’s visit to Mexico last week).”  Wouldn’t the Secretary of State have to sign off on shipping arms to cartels?

Other big names include Janet Napolitano who flew down in a Blackhawk helicopter to Rio Rico to take a first-hand look at the crime scene. What about Rahm Emanuel? What part did he play in this anti-gun program’s development?

Of course, the president should have known what was going on in his administration, right?

The release of these emails comes five days before AG Eric Holder will testify before Issa’s House Oversight Committee.

The Current INS Officially Recognizes A Delineation Between Natural-Born and Native-Born.
NaturalBornCitizen.wordpress.com – Leo Donofrio

I was just made privy to a very important piece of research I had not previously been aware of. It comes by way of a comment forwarded to me by the author of the h2ooflife blog:

“I had presumed that the idiom “natural born citizen” appeared nowhere in U.S. Law other than A2S1C5, but I found it in administrative law and it is contrasted with native and naturalized citizenship. I’ve never seen any mention of this fact before and wonder how many are aware of it in the ineligibility camp. Here’s the quotes:
http://www.uscis.gov/ilink/docView/SLB/HTML/SLB/0-0-0-1/0-0-0-45104/0-0-0-48602.html

He then quoted two provisions from the link provided, but there’s actually three at the official INS “.gov” site which establish official recognition by the federal government that native-born and natural-born should be separately delineated. When you visit the suggested link to the Immigration and Naturalization service, it brings you to “Interpretation 324.2 Reacquisition of citizenship lost by marriage.”

Interpretation 324.2 (a)(3) provides:

“The repatriation provisions of these two most recent enactments also apply to a native- and natural-born citizen woman who expatriated herself by marriage to an alien…” (Emphasis added.)

Then, Interpretation 324.2(a)(7) provides:

“(7) Restoration of citizenship is prospective . Restoration to citizenship under any one of the three statutes is not regarded as having erased the period of alienage that immediately preceded it.

The words “shall be deemed to be a citizen of the United States to the same extent as though her marriage to said alien had taken place on or after September 22, 1922″, as they appeared in the 1936 and 1940 statutes, are prospective and restore the status of native-born or natural-born citizen (whichever existed prior to the loss) as of the date citizenship was reacquired.” (Emphasis added.)

And again, Interpretation 324.2(b) provides:

“The effect of naturalization under the above statutes was not to erase the previous period of alienage, but to restore the person to the status if naturalized, native, or natural-born citizen, as determined by her status prior to loss.” (Emphasis added.)

http://www.uscis.gov/ilink/docView/SLB/HTML/SLB/0-0-0-1/0-0-0-45077/0-0-0-48438.html

Three times in this official INS Interpretation – currently published by the Obama Administration – native-born and natural-born are given separate consideration. And in the third example – from Interpretation 324.2(b) – the INS clearly states that each delineation, “naturalized, native, or natural-born citizen“, is a separate status.

The INS includes the following explanation of Interpretations:

“Interpretations were created to supplement and clarify the provisions of the statute and regulations as interpreted by the courts. These materials usually are not included in the regulations because they deal generally with procedural matters and do not deal directly with application and benefit requirements. They are still a useful tool to help you understand how the DHS Bureaus performs their different immigration services and enforcement functions. Users of the Operation Instructions and Interpretations should always consult the relevant regulations and manuals in conjunction with these materials. As the DHS Bureaus have grown, the trend has been towards inclusion of more materials in the regulations and field manuals, and the Operations Instructions and Interpretations have been updated less frequently.”

I am rather rocked by this find, having never seen it before, and it certainly comes to the attention of the nation at a critical moment [...]

Read the rest of this article by CLICKING HERE

And, with a commie like O’bommie in office, America isn’t that far behind Russia in shutting down free speech:

- Near as I can loosely translate, it says, "President - Do Not Confuse the Interests of the People with Your Own Interest!!!"

Doll ‘protesters’ present small problem for Russian police
Police in Siberian city ask prosecutors to investigate legality of protest involving display of toy figures holding miniature placards
- Miriam Elder in Moscow – guardian.co.uk

Russian police don’t take kindly to opposition protesters – even if they’re 5cm high and made of plastic.

Police in the Siberian city of Barnaul have asked prosecutors to investigate the legality of a recent protest that saw dozens of small dolls – teddy bears, Lego men, South Park figurines – arranged to mimic a protest, complete with signs reading: “I’m for clean elections” and “A thief should sit in jail, not in the Kremlin”.

“Political opposition forces are using new technologies to carry out public events – using toys with placards at mini-protests,” Andrei Mulintsev, the city’s deputy police chief, said at a press conference this week, according to local media. “In our opinion, this is still an unsanctioned public event.”

Activists set up the display after authorities repeatedly rejected their request to hold a sanctioned demonstration of the kind held in Moscow to protest disputed parliamentary elections results and Vladimir Putin’s expected return to the presidency in a March vote.

Passersby admired the display with giggles, but police took it more seriously, examining its details and writing down each placard.

“The authorities’ attempt to limit citizens’ rights to express their position has become absurd,” said Lyudmila Alexandrova, a 26-year-old graduate student and protest organiser. “We wanted to hyperbolise this attempt and show the absurdity and farce of officials’ struggle with their own people.”

They are not the first. Russia’s Blue Buckets group, formed to protest officials’ wanton flouting of traffic rules, have run across government cars while wearing buckets on their heads, drawing the state’s ire.

Voina, the rebellious art collective, won worldwide fame after painting a 65-metre-long phallus on a drawbridge in St Petersburg that, when erected, faced the city’s Federal Security Service (FSB) headquarters. Its members have been repeatedly detained.

The activists in Barnaul say they have no choice but to adopt creative measures. Local authorities have refused to issue approval for opposition protests since 10 December, the first nationwide day of protest in Russia. Around 2,000 people turned out in Barnaul that day, an unprecedented number for the small city.

Police have tried to pressure them into shutting down the doll protests, organisers said. “They tried to tell us our event was illegal – they even said that to put toys in the snow, we had to rent it from the city authorities,” Alexandrova said.

All authorities appear to be on high alert, as Russia prepares for its next day of protest on 4 February, one month before a presidential vote that Putin hopes will sweep him back into the Kremlin. On Thursday, the Moscow mayor’s office approved the opposition’s request to gather up to 50,000 people for a march through part of the city centre.

The jumpiest police were found this week in Kaliningrad, Russia’s Baltic exclave. As two dozen nationalist youth took to the streets for a jog designed to promote a healthy lifestyle, carrying their traditional black, yellow and white flag, police descended upon the rally, having confused it for a gay pride parade. Gay rights remain largely unrecognised in Russia, and gay rights rallies are regularly banned. Police questioned the activists before releasing them, local media reported.

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Obama Signs Global Internet Treaty Worse Than SOPA

White House bypasses Senate to ink agreement that could allow Chinese companies to demand ISPs remove web content in US with no legal oversight.

Paul Joseph Watson – Infowars.com – Thursday, January 26, 2012

Months before the debate about Internet censorship raged as SOPA and PIPA dominated the concerns of web users, President Obama signed an international treaty that would allow companies in China or any other country in the world to demand ISPs remove web content in the US with no legal oversight whatsoever.

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement was signed by Obama on October 1 2011, yet is currently the subject of a White House petition demanding Senators be forced to ratify the treaty. The White House has circumvented the necessity to have the treaty confirmed by lawmakers by presenting it an as “executive agreement,” although legal scholars have highlighted the dubious nature of this characterization.

The hacktivist group Anonymous attacked and took offline the Federal Trade Commission’s website yesterday in protest against the treaty, which was also the subject of demonstrations across major cities in Poland, a country set to sign the agreement today.

Under the provisions of ACTA, copyright holders will be granted sweeping direct powers to demand ISPs remove material from the Internet on a whim. Whereas ISPs normally are only forced to remove content after a court order, all legal oversight will be abolished, a precedent that will apply globally, rendering the treaty worse in its potential scope for abuse than SOPA or PIPA.

A country known for its enforcement of harsh Internet censorship policies like China could demand under the treaty that an ISP in the United States remove content or terminate a website on its server altogether. As we have seen from the enforcement of similar copyright policies in the US, websites are sometimes targeted for no justifiable reason.

The groups pushing the treaty also want to empower copyright holders with the ability to demand that users who violate intellectual property rights (with no legal process) have their Internet connections terminated, a punishment that could only ever be properly enforced by the creation of an individual Internet ID card for every web user, a system that is already in the works.

“The same industry rightsholder groups that support the creation of ACTA have also called for mandatory network-level filtering by Internet Service Providers and for Internet Service Providers to terminate citizens’ Internet connection on repeat allegation of copyright infringement (the “Three Strikes” /Graduated Response) so there is reason to believe that ACTA will seek to increase intermediary liability and require these things of Internet Service Providers,” reports the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

The treaty will also mandate that ISPs disclose personal user information to the copyright holder, while providing authorities across the globe with broader powers to search laptops and Internet-capable devices at border checkpoints.

In presenting ACTA as an “international agreement” rather than a treaty, the Obama administration managed to circumvent the legislative process and avoid having to get Senate approval, a method questioned by Senator Wyden.

“That said, even if Obama has declared ACTA an executive agreement (while those in Europe insist that it’s a binding treaty), there is a very real Constitutional question here: can it actually be an executive agreement?” asks TechDirt. “The law is clear that the only things that can be covered by executive agreements are things that involve items that are solely under the President’s mandate. That is, you can’t sign an executive agreement that impacts the things Congress has control over. But here’s the thing: intellectual property, in Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution, is an issue given to Congress, not the President. Thus, there’s a pretty strong argument that the president legally cannot sign any intellectual property agreements as an executive agreement and, instead, must submit them to the Senate.”.

26 European Union member states along with the EU itself are set to sign the treaty at a ceremony today in Tokyo. Other countries wishing to sign the agreement have until May 2013 to do so.

Critics are urging those concerned about Obama’s decision to sign the document with no legislative oversight to demand the Senate be forced to ratify the treaty.

This updates our previous coverage HERE.

P.S. – Obviously, the following article is biased towards the Muzzies.  I just wanted to give you all fair warning.

Muslims Arrested At Rye Playland Melee To File Federal Civil Rights Lawsuit
gothamist.com

Westchester County prosecutors have agreed to drop charges against 15 Muslims who were arrested at Rye Playland last summer after women visiting the park were told they could not go on certain ride while wearing their hijabs. The chaotic melee started after some Muslim women demanded a refund, and text messages were sent amongst some of the 3,000 Muslims visiting the amusement park with the Muslim American Society of New York. As growing numbers gathered near the park police station, local police rushed to the scene, and the situation quickly escalated, with a park ranger allegedly yelling, “I don’t give a f*** about your culture.”

15 people, all Muslims, were arrested. Most were charged with disorderly conduct and obstruction of governmental administration, but a handful were charged with second-degree assault. Yesterday, they accepted an offer to have the charges dismissed provided they aren’t arrested in the coming months. An attorney representing the group, Lamis Deek, says her clients would have won had the case gone to trial, but most of them live in NYC, and she tells the Associated Press, “It’s unfortunately more convenient to accept this offer, not have to enter a plea of guilty, move on with their lives and pursue this matter in a civil courtroom.”

Deek tells LoHud.com her clients plan to file federal civil rights lawsuits against Westchester County, claiming that the arrests were “abusive” and that the headgear ban violates the civil rights of the Muslim patrons. Rye Playland is located in a public park operated by the county, at a loss of $5 million a year. Rye Playand’s rules are stricter than other amusement parks’. Six Flags in New Jersey, for instance, permits hijabs on rides as long as they are securely wrapped around the head. On the other hand, Six Flags hasn’t had a fatal accident since the ’80s, and it may be that Rye Playland has tighter safety regulations because of a 2005 incident in which a 7-year-old boy who was killed on a boat ride at the park.

Here’s video of the chaotic scene last summer; it shows police pushing at least one Muslim woman to the ground, and over 100 officers responded to the melee, which was sparked by one 17-year-old girl from Brooklyn who refused to comply with the head scarf ban.

Kathleen Sebelius vs. Religious Freedom
By The Editors
January 23, 2012 – National Review Online

Last August, under authority granted by Obamacare, Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius published an “interim final rule” for comment that would require private health-insurance plans to cover, as “preventive services,” all FDA-approved “sterilization procedures” and “contraceptive methods” — and without deductibles or co-pays. We and other critics raised numerous objections, none of which were addressed last Friday, when Secretary Sebelius announced the final promulgation of the rule, which will go into effect August 1.

Since the FDA approves, as “contraceptives,” drugs such as Plan B and Ella that may cause early-stage abortions, the federal government could force nearly every employer in America to pay for abortions and sterilizations. Colleges and universities providing insurance to their students will face the same requirement.

The one exemption HHS offers is for those plans offered by “religious employers,” which is defined so narrowly that practically no one but actual houses of worship can qualify. Religious schools, colleges and universities, hospitals, social-service organizations, and charitable institutions — in short, all those who try to do good in the world by serving all who come to their table — will not qualify for the exemption, and will be forced to provide contraception, abortion, and sterilization. The alternatives are to drop health insurance for one’s employees (forcing them into the government “exchanges” and paying a hefty fine as well), or to close one’s doors.

To their credit, the Catholic bishops objected strenuously to the proposed mandate last year, as did other leaders of religious institutions. Belmont Abbey College in North Carolina filed suit, represented by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. But none of this swayed Sebelius: The rule announced Friday contains no revision or expansion of Sebelius’s absurdly narrow “religious exemption.” Cynically playing to a compliant media eager to praise her for being “accommodating,” the secretary gave many (but not all) of the organizations outside the terms of the exemption an additional year (until August 2013) “to adapt to this new rule.” For “adapt” read “fall into line, or else.” The administration’s true purpose in the deferral is to get past the November election without this becoming a real issue.

There is also language in the secretary’s announcement suggesting that those religious institutions that do enjoy an exemption will have to refer those they insure to “contraceptive services” available elsewhere. The administration’s attack on conscience, it seems, will spare no one.

Just a week before Sebelius’s announcement last Friday, the administration suffered an embarrassing Supreme Court defeat in the most significant religious-liberty case in many years. In Hosanna-Tabor v. EEOC, the administration had argued that there was no constitutional basis for a “ministerial exception” to federal employment-discrimination laws — a First Amendment principle recognized in lower courts for four decades — and lost 9–0. The Roberts Court endorsed the commonsense principle that the Constitution protects the right of religious organizations to govern their own internal affairs without the government’s interference, and to determine for themselves what their religious tenets and doctrines require of them. It would be a strange limitation on this principle if the government could force religious schools, hospitals, and charities to pay for “preventive services” that their scriptures and traditions regard as profoundly evil.

It should be no surprise that the government’s takeover of health care is a threat to every kind of freedom. But the HHS insurance mandate — bad enough in itself for its hostility to a culture that affirms life — is a direct assault on the religious freedom of individuals and institutions that cannot, in good conscience, be complicit in such hostility. Congress, the courts, the voting public — all must come to the defense of conscience and the Constitution, and turn back the tyranny of this administration.

Immigration authorities released man who went on to kill 3 in North Miami
In a year-old mystery, a felon freed after he could not be returned to Haiti killed three people. Was it random, or was he working with someone?
Miami Herald
When burglar Kesler Dufrene became a twice-convicted felon in 2006, a Bradenton judge shipped him to prison for five years. And because of his convictions, an immigration judge ordered Dufrene deported to his native Haiti.

That never happened.

Instead, when Dufrene’s state prison term was up, Miami immigration authorities in October 2010 released him from custody. Two months later, North Miami police say, he slaughtered three people, including a 15-year-old girl in a murder case that remains as baffling today as it did the afternoon the bodies were discovered.

DNA on a rifle found inside the house and cellphone tracking technology later linked Dufrene to the Jan. 2, 2011, slayings.

But North Miami detectives never got to interrogate him. Just 18 days after the murders, Dufrene shot and killed himself when he was cornered by Manatee County sheriff’s deputies in Bradenton after an unrelated break-in and shooting there.

Well…  At least he saved the taxpayers some money.
The episode is a black eye for U.S. authorities, who by law could not detain Dufrene indefinitely after the Obama administration ordered a temporary halt of deportations to the island nation. The deportations were halted because of the carnage wrought by Haiti’s January 2010 earthquake.

“Because of the moratorium on removals to Haiti in effect when Dufrene came into ICE custody, his removal to Haiti was not likely in the reasonably foreseeable future,” an Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman said in a statement Friday.

[...]

The failure to deport Dufrene infuriates the victims’ family members. “This guy shouldn’t have been in America,” said Audrey Hansack, 37, who moved back to her native Nicaragua after the murder of her daughter Ashley Chow. “I’m so upset with the whole situation. Because of immigration, my daughter is not alive.”

Ashley, a North Miami High School student who aspired to become a lawyer, lived in the house in the 400 block of Northwest 134th Street. Her mother owned the house, and rented an attached efficiency to a family friend, Harlen Peralta, 25, and her boyfriend, Israel Rincon, 35.

[...]
Dufrene, a native of Haiti, had a long history of arrests in Manatee County — nine in all, his first at age 14 for battery on a teacher.

[...]

In August 2007, records show, a U.S. immigration judge ordered him deported. He was released from state prison in September 2010, and handed over to immigration custody at West Miami-Dade’s Krome Detention Center.

The federal government annually deported hundreds of Haitians convicted of felonies in the United States.

But after the devastating January 2010 earthquake in Haiti, the Obama administration announced it was indefinitely halting deportations to the country.

“Under binding Supreme Court precedent, ICE’s authority to detain any individual is limited when the removal of that individual is not likely in the reasonably foreseeable future,” the immigration agency’s statement said.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2001 and 2005 that foreign nationals who cannot be deported may not be held in detention longer than six months. Deportations resumed in mid-January 2011 — three months after Dufrene was released from custody under ICE supervision. The agency did not specify what that supervision entailed.

ICE did not say how many convicted criminals like Dufrene were put back on the streets during the moratorium.

[...]

School Fears “Cougars” Mascot Will Offend Women

By Todd Starnes – FOXNews Radio

A Utah school district decided not to select a cougar as the mascot of a new high school partly because school officials and some parents believed the word is disrespectful to women.

Students in the Canyons School District named the cougar their top choice to become the mascot of the new Corner Canyon High School. The school is expected to open in 2013.

However, district officials overrode the student vote after complaints that that the word “cougar” is offensive and derogatory towards women.

“We heard from folks who were worried about the connotation of the word ‘cougar’ as it pertains to the current vernacular — in a derogatory manner,” Jennifer Toomer-Cook, a spokesperson for the school district told Fox News & Commentary.

In pop culture, the term “cougar” refers to a sexually aggressive middle-aged woman who attracts younger men.

However, the cougar is also a large mountain cat — that also happens to be the mascot for Brigham Young University — along with three other Utah high schools.

Toomer-Cook said that was the chief reason the district decided to override the students’ vote — even though it was the highest vote-getter out of more than 1,000 suggestions.

Instead, school officials decided to select the “Chargers” as the new mascot. Toomer-Cook said they wanted to have a unique mascot name.

“Instead of going to a place where people were seeing something potentially divisive, go to a mascot that could more easily unify,” she said. “No other Utah school has Chargers as its mascot. The board members were also saying this presents an image of strength and captures a little bit of the area’s culture.”

The controversy caught some local residents by surprise.

“To me, a mascot is usually an animal – I mean, I don’t know how to even respond to that,” local football coach Bill Cosper told the Salt Lake Tribune. “In all my years here, or in all of sports, that’s never been brought up.”

THE RESULTS: Santorum finished ahead by 34 votes
MISSING DATA: 8 precincts’ numbers will never be certified
PARTY VERDICT: GOP official says, ‘It’s a split decision’

Uh…  Yeah…  Why is that when the unofficial tally came in with R’omni supposedly winning Iowa with only 8 votes, the GOP was hailing it as a great victory for their “Bismark“  and now that the official tally is saying that Santorum actually won by more than 4 times that number of votes, it’s suddenly a “split decision?”  Anyone else smell a rat?

Rick Santorum – Final total: 29,839 Change: -168
Mitt Romney – Final total: 29,805 Change: -210

CLICK HERE for more info.

Good thing she’s in the United States and just facing an irate judge rather than a public lashing…

Story HERE.

CLICK HERE for more coverage of her arrest as reported by TMZ.

Pelosi: SCOTUS, superPACs lost Dems our majority
17 JAN 2012 – by Joel Gehrke Commentary Staff Writer – Washington Examiner

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said that Democrats lost control of the House in 2010 because of superPACs, and by extension the Supreme Court, which caught Democrats by surprise when they started spending money in the 2010 cycle.

“Once those major special interests knew that they could contribute endlessly, secretly, without anybody knowing where the money came from, then the floodgates opened,” Pelosi said during the Politico Playbook breakfast. “May of last year — Easter, say, Passover of last year — not many people thought we would lose the house. By the time the [DISCLOSE campaign finance legislation] failed in the Senate, it was all over because it was going to be endless, endless money coming up on 9.5 percent unemployment.”

Pelosi explained that superPACs came about through a “miserable decision by the Supreme Court to allow any and all funding — secret, large, special interest contributions into campaign.” She dismissed the Supreme Court decision as “ridiculous.”

“What the court did is something so drastic,” Pelosi [said],  “it rolled back progress for 100 years.” She called for a “new politics, free of the special interest.”

[...]

Study suggests junk food in schools doesn’t cause weight gain among children

Contact: Daniel Fowler
pubinfo@asanet.org
202-527-7885
American Sociological Association

Press Release

WASHINGTON, DC, January 17, 2012 — While the percentage of obese children in the United States tripled between the early 1970s and the late 2000s, a new study suggests that—at least for middle school students—weight gain has nothing to do with the candy, soda, chips, and other junk food they can purchase at school.

“We were really surprised by that result and, in fact, we held back from publishing our study for roughly two years because we kept looking for a connection that just wasn’t there,” said Jennifer Van Hook, a Professor of Sociology and Demography at Pennsylvania State University and lead author of the study, which appears in the January issue of Sociology of Education.

How quaint; Just long enough to allow Moochelle the time she needed to cram her “healthy foods initiative” down the throats of schoolchildren everywhere…

The study relies on data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998-1999, which follows a nationally representative sample of students from the fall of kindergarten through the spring of eighth grade (the 1998-1999 through 2006-2007 schools years). Van Hook and her coauthor Claire E. Altman, a sociology and demography doctoral student at Pennsylvania State University, used a subsample of 19,450 children who attended school in the same county in both fifth and eighth grades (the 2003-2004 and the 2006-2007 school years).

The authors found that 59.2 percent of fifth graders and 86.3 percent of eighth graders in their study attended schools that sold junk food. But, while there was a significant increase in the percentage of students who attended schools that sold junk food between fifth and eighth grades, there was no rise in the percentage of students who were overweight or obese. In fact, despite the increased availability of junk food, the percentage of students who were overweight or obese actually decreased from fifth grade to eighth grade, from 39.1 percent to 35.4 percent.

“There has been a great deal of focus in the media on how schools make a lot of money from the sale of junk food to students, and on how schools have the ability to help reduce childhood obesity,” Van Hook said. “In that light, we expected to find a definitive connection between the sale of junk food in middle schools and weight gain among children between fifth and eighth grades. But, our study suggests that—when it comes to weight issues—we need to be looking far beyond schools and, more specifically, junk food sales in schools, to make a difference.”

According to Van Hook, policies that aim to reduce childhood obesity and prevent unhealthy weight gain need to concentrate more on the home and family environments as well as the broader environments outside of school.

“Schools only represent a small portion of children’s food environment,” Van Hook said. “They can get food at home, they can get food in their neighborhoods, and they can go across the street from the school to buy food. Additionally, kids are actually very busy at school. When they’re not in class, they have to get from one class to another and they have certain fixed times when they can eat. So, there really isn’t a lot of opportunity for children to eat while they’re in school, or at least eat endlessly, compared to when they’re at home. As a result, whether or not junk food is available to them at school may not have much bearing on how much junk food they eat.”

The study results also intimate that when it comes to combating childhood obesity and weight issues, policymakers should put more emphasis on younger children, Van Hook said. “There has been a lot of research showing that many children develop eating habits and tastes for certain types of foods when they are of preschool age, and that those habits and tastes may stay with them for their whole lives,” Van Hook said. “So, their middle school environments might not matter a lot.”

- END -

Well, there you have it; junk food in schools does not increase the obesity rates in children.  No wonder the kids were booing Moochelle Obama the other day:

Kids ‘boo’ Michelle Obama over healthy lunches
by Joel Gehrke Commentary Staff Writer – Washington Examiner

13 January 2012

First Lady Michelle Obama seemed to delight middle schoolers in Virginia when she attended a special screening of her appearance on a Nickelodeon show, but the audience showed some displeasure, booing when she told them  about the healthy food initiative that changes their school lunch menu.

“Booo,” cried the students who heard Mrs. Obama report that “my husband and the Congress passed a legislation to make sure we could put more nutritious foods into the schools.  So you should be seeing more vegetables, more fruit, more healthy foods,” she explained, according to the event transcript.

The disc jockey helping with the event commented, “Uh-oh.  They’re turning,” but the First Lady stayed on message. “I know, they’re turning. It happens,” she replied.  “But this is for you all, because we want you to be the next leaders out there,” Michelle Obama told the children.  “And let me tell you that something I know the cast will tell you, that it’s hard to do what you do if you’re not healthy and you’re not eating right, and you’re not putting good foods in your body, you’re not getting exercise.  And so we care very much that you start learning those habits early.  And schools are going to be stepping up.”

The First Lady also revealed, during the question and answer session, that if she could have any superpower, it would be the power of flight.

Yeah, to get the hell out Dodge!

Iran cracks down on Barbie, plans toys of captured U.S. drone

Reuters  Jan 16, 2012 – By Mitra Amiri

TEHRAN — Iran’s morality police are cracking down on the sale of Barbie dolls to protect the public from what they see as pernicious western culture eroding Islamic values, shopkeepers said on Monday.

[...]

“About three weeks ago they [the morality police] came to our shop, asking us to remove all the Barbies,” said a shopkeeper in a toy shop in northern Tehran.

[...]

The new order, issued around three weeks ago, forced shopkeepers to hide the leggy, busty blonde behind other toys as a way of meeting popular demand for the dolls while avoiding being closed down by the police.

A range of officially approved dolls launched in 2002 to counter demand for Barbie have not proven successful, merchants told Reuters.

The dolls named Sara, a female, and Dara, a male arrived in shops wearing a variety of traditional dress, with Sara fully respecting the rule that all women in Iran must obey in public, of covering their hair and wearing loose-fitting clothes.

“My daughter prefers Barbies. She says Sara and Dara are ugly and fat,” said Farnaz , a 38-year-old mother, adding that she could not find Barbie cartoon DVDs as she was told they were also banned from public sale.

Agreed!  BTW – I wonder how much the plastic surgery will cost to enlarge one’s head when Iranian girls begin experiencing inferiority complexes over having such small craniums:

Note:  Language/Sexual Content Warning – If you have small children, turn down the sound immediately following the Onion report on the Bratz Dolls (when the reporter starts talking about the Lexus recall).

[...]

As another swipe at the West, Iranians will soon be able to buy toy versions of the U.S. spy drone that it captured in December, Iranian media reported.

Models of the bat-wing RQ-170 Sentinel — which Iran’s military displayed on TV after it was downed near the Afghan border — will be mass produced in a variety of colours, reports said.

UK Barrister Wants Shari`ah Tribunals
OnIslam & Newspapers – Monday, 16 January 2012

CAIRO – A leading British barrister at Harvard Law School wants Britain to become more Shari`ah-literate, saying that Islamic teachings are compatible with human rights legislations that can serve the whole community.

“It’s very important that they be acknowledged and allowed to exist,” Sadakat Kadri, a barrister and contemporary of Barack Obama at Harvard Law School, told The Guardian on Monday, January 16.

“So long as they’re voluntary, which is crucial, it’s in everyone’s interests these things be transparent and publicly accessible.

“If you don’t have open tribunals, they’re going to happen anyway, but behind closed doors,” he added.Kadri confirmed that the 1400-year-old Islamic law is compatible with the human rights legislations.

The Harvard professor said that “Shari`ah courts”, such as the Muslim arbitration tribunal, could serve “the community as a whole.”

This aim could be reached by putting Shari`ah laws on a transparent, public footing to be more widely accessible to those who want to use or know about these laws, he said.

Making his point clear, Kadri sets out the history of Shari`ah in a new book, Heaven and Earth, to be published next week.

The book describes the slow development of Shari`ah law, which is derived directly from the Qur’an and Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessing be upon him)’s Sunnah, in the centuries after the Prophet’s death.

“I’m not a theologian,” said Kadri.

“But this is my interpretation of Islamic history. There’s a mistaken belief that Islamic law is a vast unchanging body of rules – 1,400 years of Muslim history shows that little could be further from the truth.

“It’s really important that the Muslim community engage with its actual history, as well as idealized traditions. If that’s to take root, critical engagement with the past among young Muslims will be crucially important.”

In Islam, Shari`ah governs all issues in Muslims’ lives from daily prayers to fasting and from, marriage and inheritance to financial disputes.

The Islamic rulings, however, do not apply on non-Muslims, even if in a dispute with non-Muslims.

Uh…  Yeah, tell that to the numerous Christians who have been put to death under Sharia Law for proselytizing and/or “blasphemy.”

Misconceptions

The leading British barrister said that misconceptions about Islam and Muslims following the 7/7 attacks helped spread rumors about a claimed violent nature of Shari`ah.

“After 7/7 people were saying the Shari`ah is all about violence, it’s all about chopping people’s hands off, it’s all about stoning adulterers to death. Others said it’s nothing to do with that, Islam is a religion of peace,” Kadri said.

“Clearly both of those things were true at a certain level, but very early on I just realized no one had a clue what Shari`ah said about this or that.”

Britain is home to a sizable Muslim minority of nearly 2 million who have taken full brunt of anti-terror laws since the 7/7 attacks.

They have repeatedly complained of maltreatment by police for no apparent reason other than being Muslim.

Kadri’s call was earlier echoed by Rowan Williams, archbishop of Canterbury, in 2008 when he suggested that Shari`ah law should be more widely adopted.

Under the Arbitration Act 1996, the rulings of religious bodies, including the Muslim arbitration tribunal, already have legal force in disputes involving matters such as inheritance and divorce.

Barrister Kadri said that many of the punishments associated in people’s minds with Shari`ah law have only been applied very recently.

“I try to show how it’s only really in the last 40 years, since Colonel Gaddafi in Libya, but more especially since the Iranian revolution in 1979 that the idea of enforcing Islamic rules through national laws has come to the fore,” he said.

“Before 1973, it was only Saudi Arabia which actually did that.”

However, I see that the Lame Stream Media and Obamasuckov are busy making it into an international incident, so, since Mark Levin has quite eloquently summed up my views on it, I figured you might enjoy listening to him rather than reading a meandering rant from moi:

H/T – The Right Scoop

UK prisons adviser blames imams for spike in number of jailed Muslims

David Sapsted – The National
Jan 14, 2012

LONDON // The UK’s Muslim adviser on prisons said that outdated attitudes among imams were the reason record numbers of young British Muslims are turning to crime.

Mosques fail to offer facilities relevant to young, British-born Muslims while imams are often brought in from abroad, do not speak English and focus only on religious rituals, said Ahtsham Ali, who has been adviser to Britain’s Prison Service for the past eight years.

Mr Ali also blamed family breakdowns, arranged marriages and drugs for the fact that there are almost 11,000 Muslim males, most in their teens or 20s, in prison.

That figure is almost six times what it was 20 years ago and represents 12.6 per cent of the total prison population, compared to the 3 per cent of Muslims in the population as a whole.

In an interview in The Times newspaper this week, Mr Ali said that old-fashioned attitudes in mosques had resulted in young people turning away from religion in droves.

“It is a tragedy,” he said. “I have seen youngsters – the next generation – just totally switch off from it. This is dangerous. It allows others to take advantage, to take up the vacuum.

“Nearly all mosques are their own independent kingdoms and they will decide what to do. Mosque committees have supreme power. Most will get imams imported from other countries who can’t speak English. More importantly they can’t relate to second and third-generation youngsters growing up here.”

Mr Ali said that it was often only when Muslims ended up in prison that they encountered imams who could speak English fluently. Currently, 55 full-time imams work in jails, backed up by 59 part timers and another 96 available on an occasional basis.

“I believe I have got the cream of Muslim imams in Britain, which is a shame in one sense,” he said.

“Prison imams will play five-a-side football, will go around and chat. Ask: ‘How was the film last night?’. That kind of relevant bonding is very good. I have had prisoners say to me: ‘Tell me why do I have to go to prison to get an [sic] good imam?’. That is the sad state of affairs we have.” But Ibrahim Mogra, who chairs the mosque and community affairs committee of the Muslim Council of Britain, rejected Mr Ali’s argument saying that “hundreds of imams and mosques have woken up to the dangers faced by the youth and have been preaching solutions and remedies against them”.

“Not only that, but they are highlighting the opportunities that they should take advantage of to better themselves and society. Imams and mosques have realised that in the mosques they are preaching to the converted. They are now taking their message out to the youth.”

Inayat Bunglawala, the chairman of Muslims4UK, a group promoting participation by Muslims in UK society, said it seemed “rather unfair” to blame imams for the high Muslim jail population.

He felt failings in parenting and peer pressure were much more influential factors.

“If we are really looking to point fingers at who is responsible for Muslim criminality then I don’t think it is appropriate to blame imams, who are very often poorly paid. As a rabbi friend once told me, if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.”

White House Official Heather Higginbottom Needs to Explain Marxist Connection
by Trevor Loudon- BigGovernment

There has been some speculation that Heather Higginbottom, Deputy Director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, may get the top job, as her boss, Jack Lew leaves to become President  Obama’s chief of staff.

Before Ms. Higginbottom is considered for one of the key posts in the U.S. government, maybe she should be asked to explain this photo from October 30, 2001.

The photo depicts Heather Higginbottom, then working for Massachusetts Senator John Kerry addressing a Boston  Democratic Socialists of America organized forum “Welfare, Children and Families: The Impact of Welfare Reform”, with panelists   William Julius Wilson, Dottie Stevens, Jack Clark and Bob Haynes.

Jack Clark , at the time, was was Boston D.S.A. Chair, William Julius Wilson  was a long time D.SA. member and Bob Haynes was President of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO, with which D.S.A worked “frequently”.

The Boston D.S.A. logo can be seen on the wall in the center right of the picture.

Despite its relatively innocuous name, Democratic Socialists of America is a radical Marxist organization that believes, according to Democratic Left, Spring 2007, page 9

Our goal as socialists is to abolish private ownership of the means of production.

One of the panelists,  in the Boston forum , William Julius Wilson, incidentally addressed another D.S.A. forum in Chicago, 5 years before.

Over three hundred people attended the first of two Town Meetings on Economic Insecurity on February 25. in Ida Noyes Hall at the University of Chicago. Entitled “Employment and Survival in Urban America”, the meeting was sponsored by the UofC DSA Youth Section, Chicago DSA and University Democrats.

The panelists on that occasion were Toni Preckwinkle, Alderman of Chicago’s 4th Ward, Barack Obama, candidate for the 13th Illinois Senate District, Professor , Center for the Study of Urban Inequality at the University of Chicago, Professor Michael Dawson, University of Chicago and Professor Joseph Schwartz, Temple University and a member of D.S.A.’s National Political Committee.

That is the only confirmed incident of Obama’s direct involvement with D.S.A. per se, while he lived in Chicago.

Obama was at the time however  close to several known D.S.A, members in Chicago, including his personal physician and mentor in socialized health care Quentin Young, his neighbor and friend Rabbi Arnold Jacob Wolf, his friend and political mentor Timuel Black and his  political allies Saul Mendelson and Reps Jan Schakowsky and Danny Davis.

Since entering office President Obama has appointed several D.S.A. connected individuals to influential positions in his administration, including ;

• Ron Bloom , former Manufacturing Czar.
• David Bonior,  member of the Obama Economic Transition Team
• Rosa Brooks,  senior advisor to the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, Michele Flournoy.
• Carol Browner, former Energy Czar/Director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy
• Eliseo Medina, served on Obama’s Latino Advisory Council
• Hilda Solis,  Secretary of Labor.
• Cornel West, served on Obama’s National Black Advisory Council.

If  Heather Higgingbottom is indeed promoted, will it be another hat tip to Obama’s Marxist D.S.A. comrades? Will it be yet another case of the socialist nepotism, so rife in the Obama Administration?

Perhaps Ms. Higginbottom, couldand restore confidence in her office, , by publicly explaining the exact nature of her relationship to Democratic Socialists of America.

H/T – WeaselZippers.us

Two ‘All-American Muslim’ stars caught with marijuana, authorities say
4:30 PM, Jan. 11, 2012 – Detroit Free Press

Two reality TV stars from TLC’s “All-American Muslim” show found some real life drama at the Ambassador Bridge recently: Authorities said they were caught with pot at the border.

It happened on New Year’s Day, according to Ron Smith, spokesman for Customs and Border Protection in Detroit.

Smith told the Free Press today that two cast members of the TLC reality show were caught with 9 grams of marijuana in the trunk while trying to cross into the U.S. from Windsor. The cast members – a man and a woman — were not named by authorities. One of them, Smith said, had a medical marijuana card, although federal law does not recognize the card.

TLC has declined to comment.

According to Smith, the two travelers had to pay a $500 civil fine for failing to declare the bag of weed to border agents.

He explained how it all went down:

At the first checkpoint after crossing the bridge, an officer decided to pull the two passengers over for inspection after asking them a series of routine questions. The officer, Smith noted, did not recognize the travelers from the TV show.

“Some officers will look in a lot of trunks. This officer picked their trunk to look in,” Smith said.

But inside the inspection area, Smith said, some officers and bystanders recognized the pair from the show. During the inspection, an officer checked the trunk and found a weed-like substance in a small bag – enough to roll about 10 joints.

The travelers were released because, as Smith explained, nine grams of marijuana doesn’t warrant prosecution.

“This wasn’t a criminal matter, it was a civil matter,” Smith said, adding. “It’s very hard to get someone to prosecute for something that small.”

All-American Muslim follows the lives and customs of five Muslim American families in Dearborn.

Coptic Christian on trial over Mickey Mouse cartoon

by Michael Gryboski, Christian Post

A Coptic Christian who is a billionaire telecommunications mogul is on trial in Egypt over allegations of “blasphemy and insulting Islam”.

Naguib Sawiris posted a cartoon of a bearded Mickey Mouse alongside a veiled Minnie Mouse. If convicted, Sawiris could face a year in prison.

“This is a religious agenda being acted out,” said Dr Carl Moeller of Open Doors, a ministry that focuses on supporting persecuted Christians.

“It was never socially popular to do what he did,” said Moeller, who added that putting Sawiris on trial for expressing an unpopular religious opinion was “problematic.”

Kamal Nawash, founder of the Free Muslims Coalition, said it would be “a very sad day for Islam and rational people if Naguib Sawiris is actually tried for ‘insulting’ Islam”.

For many onlookers, including Fr. Bishoy Andrawes of St. Mark Coptic Church in Washington DC, this is yet further proof that Christians have it worse now than when dictator President Hosni Mubarak was in power.

Andrawes, who was raised in Egypt, said that the situation in Egypt was worse because of the lack of proper police protection and the efforts to advance Sharia law, or Islamic law, by powerful political groups like the Salafists and the Muslim Brotherhood.

“As of now, they are making their intentions clear,” said Andrawes.

“Things will get a lot worse as the Muslim Brotherhood and their Salafii associates control the government.”

Andrawes noted that since the ousting of Mubarak, efforts by groups like the Muslim Brotherhood have included imposing a special tax on Copts for not converting to Islam.

Outside of Egypt, Andrawes said that Coptic Christians were taking these developments “with considerable sadness and anger”, with a fear that Egypt will experience an exodus of Christians similar to that of Iraq.

“The main and necessary first step is to ensure that the new constitution protects all minorities. If it is left in the hands of the new government, representing the Muslim majority, it will not do that,” said Andrawes.

Nawash of Free Muslims Coalition believes that although the current government of Egypt “probably opposes discrimination,” it is “too weak to vigorously defend the rights of any segment of the population, including Christians.”

“It is yet too early to conclude what is the status of religion and political freedom in Egypt,” remarked Nawash.

“However, it does not appear that it will be any better than it was under Mubarak which will be terrible for the future of Egypt.”

Persecution of Coptic Christian in Egypt is nothing new, as sporadic violence occurred under the Mubarak regime. Since the overthrow of Mubarak, however, observers have been troubled by the rising tide of anti-Christian violence in the country. Last October, several Coptic Christians were killed in clashes with the military over the rights of the religious minority.

In the case of Sawiris, however, another factor besides being a Copt may have played a role. Sawiris is also head of the Free Egyptians political party, a secular political group.

“No doubt, it’s political,” said Moeller, who noted that given the blur of religion and politics in Egypt the two issues overlapped in this incident.

Nigeria: Boko Haram Defends Attack on Christians as Violence Worsens

By Daniel Tovrov – IBT

The leader of Boko Haram, Nigeria’s deadly Islamic rebel group, said that the recent attacks on Christians were revenge for years of Muslim persecution.

Deferring blame away from his organization, Abubakar Shekau said in a video address that the Christmas Day church bombings that killed 49 Christians and other recent attacks were a direct response to the killings of Muslims in cities such as Jos, Kaduna, Zangon Kataf and Tafawa Balewa.

“We are also at war with Christians because the whole world knows what they did to us,” Shekau said in the video.

“They killed our fellows and even ate their flesh in Jos,” he added, referencing an incident in the tumultuous Plateau state where Christians killed and ate rivals after religious clashes.

Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa, is split evenly between Christians and Muslim, with the former living primarily in the south and the latter in the north. Boko Haram, whose name translates roughly to “Western education is a sin,” wants to “abolish the secular system and establish an Islamic state” in Nigeria.

In its quest, Boko Haram has wantonly killed hundreds of people, including civilians, soldiers and politicians, and in recent weeks the group has specifically targeted Christian worshippers.

“Everyone has seen how we were treated, people have seen what has happened between us and armed security agents and their accomplices who give them information about us,” Shekau, who wore a bullet-proof vest and sat between two AK-47 rifles in the video, said.

Shekau also challenged President Goodluck Jonathan and Ayo Oritsejafor, the leader of the Christian Association of Nigeria, saying that anyone who tried to stop Boko Haram would be killed.

Last week, Oritsejafor encouraged all Christians to take up arms and defend themselves against the Boko Haram menace.

“The consensus is that the Christian community nationwide will be left with no other option than to respond appropriately if there are any further attacks on our members, churches and property,” Oritsejafor stated.

“I will not encourage Christians to [exact] revenge, but Christians should protect themselves… anyway you can. Why should anybody come and kill you in your house? Protect your place of worship, protect your property; it is very important.”

[...]

After a year of near daily-attacks in parts of Nigeria, and despite the efforts of [President Goodluck] Jonathan’s JTF [Joint Task Force], violence in the country is still escalating.

Boko Haram allegedly shot eight people dead at a bar in in the town of Potiskum in Yobe state on Tuesday night. Five of those killed were policemen.

“The bodies included five policemen, a bartender, a customer and a 10-year-old girl,” a local doctor told Al Jazeera.

[...]
–

Video of Shekau’s comments, in the Hausa language, below:

Man charged with Tampa car bomb plot
Kosovar immigrant planned Ybor, South Tampa blasts

A MyFoxTampaBay.com staff report

TAMPA – A chilling terrorist plot ended with the weekend arrest of a 25-year-old immigrant from Kosovo, FBI agents say. Sami Osmakac allegedly told undercover investigators that he wanted to “die the Islamic way” after attacking locations in Ybor City and South Tampa.

According to the FBI, Osmakac is a naturalized U.S. citizen who now lives in Pinellas Park. Agents were tipped off to the possible plot in September.

The five-month investigation culminated with a sting operation on Saturday. Osmakac was arrested after he allegedly took possession of explosives and firearms that had been rendered inoperable by law enforcement.

Among Osmakac’s alleged bomb targets were nightclubs in the Ybor City area of Tampa, the operations center of the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office in Ybor City, and a business in the South Tampa area.

As part of the second portion of his planned attack, Osmakac allegedly told the undercover FBI employee that, after the car bomb was detonated, he wanted to wear an explosive belt and “get in somewhere where there’s a lot of people” and take hostages.

“Once I have this…they can take me in five million pieces,” he allegedly added, in an apparent reference to a suicide blast.

Osmakac’s family, however, denied the allegations. His father, who owns the Balkan Food Store & Bakery in St. Petersburg, told FOX 13 his son had become more religious recently, but insisted he had no weapons.

He did confirm that federal agents had searched his home over the weekend.

According to the FBI, the plot unfolded through several meetings with undercover sources and agents:

•  September: FBI agents receive information from a confidential human source indicating that Osmakac had asked for al-Qaeda flags.
• November: Osmakac and the FBI source discuss and identify potential targets in Tampa. Osmakac allegedly asks the source for help in obtaining firearms and explosives for the attacks.
•  December 21: Osmakac tells an undercover FBI employee that he wants an AK-47-style machine gun, Uzi submachine guns, high capacity magazines, grenades, and an explosive belt. Allegedly, he later makes a $500 down payment.
• January 1: Osmakac allegedly outlines his attack. He wants to get a hotel room; park a vehicle with a bomb in it at his target, leave the area, detonate the car bomb, and then retrieve weapons and explosives from the hotel room.

It was during that New Year’s Day meeting when the undercover FBI employee noted that Osmakac could change his mind and back out of the plot. According to investigators, Osmakac immediately shook his head and said, “We all have to die, so why not die the Islamic way?”

Saturday, FBI agents arrested Osmakac after he took possession of the explosive devices and firearms, which had been neutralized without his knowledge.

Investigators also say Osmakac made a video of himself explaining his motives for carrying out the planned attack.  They did not divulge details about the message, but other videos posted online show a man who appears to be Osmakac railing against infidels and even assaulting members of the outspoken Westboro Baptist Church.

Osmakac faces one charge of attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction. He is due to make his first appearance in federal court at 2 p.m.