This is not a minor offer from President Putin of Russia. It is not likely he will repeat it.

Mr. Snowden should take this offer seriously and begin his life over. He is young with a promising future. 

He will have a life there. As a matter of fact Moscow can be a very exciting city.

But, the future he has in the USA is very dim and limited. All President Putin asks is for Mr. Snowden to stop exhibiting hostility toward the USA. That is not an unreasonable a request. I would not ignore the President of Russia. 

Families can travel to Russia. The future is not a terrible reality. There will be a learning curve, but, it won't be different than Ecuador or Iceland or Hong Kong. Mr. Snowden needs to put his conscience to rest and realize he has done all he can to educate the people of his homeland. He needs to turn a page in his life and get on with it.

Republicans need to abandon their corrupt funding sources. Currently, their cronies are Un-American and Anti-Constitutionalists.

State Senator Wendy Davis is a sweetheart. She is willing to carry justice on her shoulders. She is noble.

To be completely frank, this is getting disgusting. Perry and his peers in other states are able to get away with their political pandering because they are assaulting the rights of women and those unable to afford lawyers and lobbyists. It is called taking advantage of the disadvantaged.

These laws are a waste of taxpayers monies. They are unconstitutional, we all know it, the legislators know it and they do it for their political cronies that will dump lots of money into their coffers.

Roe v Wade is about women. It is not about babies. Roe v Wade has saved the lives of women. When these laws make it to the Supreme Court it will be found insufficient in protecting women's lives. In order to save a woman's life there has to be ACCESS to the clinics to obtain an abortion. These laws seek to close clinics and that is immoral and Un-American.

Abortions are vital aspects of a woman's life. A uterus are a management problem that falls square in the middle of a woman's survival. Uteri are very vascular and can be a dangerous organ and threat to a woman's life if there is an emergency with hormone levels, genetic defects of a fetus, spontaneous abortions, cancer and sometimes plain old dysfunction of an organ that just doesn't behave itself. 

There is no equivalent in a man's life. There just isn't. Women know the perils of being a woman and it is up to them to protect and save their own lives. There is no prediction to the health needs of a woman. Abortions have to be available. This is an issue between a woman and her physician. No one else should even be in the picture. 

It is very odd to hear Republicans defame President Obama and denigrate the Affordable Care Act stating it will diminish the quality of care in the USA, only to have the same Republicans deny women their right to a life free of burdens to obtain care. If these laws aren't death panels against women, I don't know what is.

These laws are wrong and I don't know what we would do without women like State Senator Wendy Davis.

Texas state Sen. Wendy Davis at an abortion-rights rally in Austin on Monday. (click here)

July 1, 2013
By Emily Deruy

...A lot more than the loss of abortion options for the women of Texas. Republican Gov. Rick Perry says he's fighting to protect the lives of unborn children, but he stands to hurt living, breathing Texans in the process.

Both men and women, particularly low-income minorities who are more likely to lack health insurance and medical-care options, rely on the "abortion clinics" for services like contraception, STD testing and even cancer screenings. One in four women in the state are uninsured.
"That is part of the concern that's getting drowned out in the abortions versus pro-life soundbite," Texas Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer (D) said during a Monday phone interview. 

Right now, Texas has more than 40 clinics that not only perform abortions but also offer birth control and condoms. All but a handful will be prohibited from operating under the proposed bill. Those that could remain open are in a few urban areas, which would leave rural women with few options....

Amnesty International is not including the Climate Crisis in their annual reports of human rights abuses.

Amnesty International needs to partner with the IPCC to report on the progress countries are taking to improve the Climate Crisis.

The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment mapped out a strategy for important protections of rainforest and natural resources to provide an economy to nations with sensitive assets such as carbon sinks. It would be a good place to start for several reasons.

The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (click here)
 
The Millennimum Ecosystem Assessment was widely received globally as a scientific basis to develop economies that were benevolent and worthy of the dignity of peoples living on Earth.

Currently, there are droughts, wildfires, crop failures, loss of potable water sources, outbreaks of disease, The Sixth Extinction, melting ice caps and icefields all of which relate to hunger, famine and imperiled humanity.

The First World has to respond to the global impacts of their societies causing hardship among people that have done nothing wrong or caused them any hardship. 

There is currently sea level rise where people no longer have land to live on. Land is a requirement for people to carry out their lives. These are serious issues with dire consequences. It is not just enough to report the human rights abuses of governments of their people, there is also the responsibility of a climate able to sustain them. When governments slash and burn their forests or allow biotic deterioration that is as much a human rights problem as any jail or prison.

The IPCC and Dr. Chris Field (click here) knows the dynamics and knows the work there needs to be to save people from themselves.

Currently, there are nations in Africa where subsistence farming doesn't support the families depending on it. The land is unable to provide for them. The problem is more the lack of a First World directive to change the economy from subsistence to manufacturing, crafts persons, exportable goods and services.

Subsistence farming will wane in the face of economic productivity of products and services. Africa needs to manufacture their own medications, preserve the land for tourism, seek to produce items and participate in a global economy. Subsistence farming is not possible in growing populations. It provides for some while leaving many in poverty and outside the ability to participate.

The Climate Crisis is a huge issue and needs to be included as a human rights abuse when governments seek to avoid their responsibility rather than embrace it.

Let's make something really clear here. The USA under Bush developed an abominal human rights record.

I didn't make this stuff up. This has been the case for over a decade now. These international opinions do matter and they are felt by citizens serving this country in sensitive areas of our government. Those people have a conscience.

The USA has not conducted it's national security in a responsible way when one realizes such significant breaches in clearance have occurred. When the actions of a country drive the conscience of those pledged to protect it's secrets it is vitally important the USA act in ways of responsible leadership that reflect the values of the nation. 

Brut power has never been the USA forte.' We don't live in this world alone. 

Forty-three men (click here) were executed during the year, and concerns about cruel prison conditions continued. Scores of detainees remained in indefinite military detention at Guantánamo. Pre-trial proceedings continued in six cases in which the administration was intending to seek the death penalty following trials by military commission. Use of lethal force in the counter-terrorism context continued to raise serious concerns, as did continuing reports of the use of excessive force in domestic law enforcement.

Counter-terror and security

Detentions at Guantánamo
At the end of 2012, nearly three years after President Obama's deadline for closure of the Guantánamo detention facility, 166 men were still held at the base, the vast majority without charge or criminal trial....'

John Bolton was the pride of the Bush White House. His idea of effective leadership within the United Nations was to seek to change the way things were done. He made people scramble to seek shelter in numbers against the USA.

...Bolton (click here) often equates diplomacy with weakness and indecisiveness, and has suggested Israel should consider attacking Iran with nuclear weapons....

Impunity

The absence of accountability for crimes under international law committed under the administration of President George W. Bush in relation to the CIA's programme of secret detention was further entrenched....

Use of lethal force

The USA's “targeted killing” of terrorism suspects, including in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen, particularly through the use of unmanned aerial vehicles, continued during the year. Available information, limited by secrecy, indicated that US policy permitted extrajudicial executions in violation of international human rights law under the USA's theory of a “global war” against al-Qa'ida and associated groups.

Excessive use of force

At least 42 people across 20 states died after being struck by police Tasers, bringing the total number of such deaths since 2001 to 540. Tasers have been listed as a cause or contributory factor in more than 60 deaths. Most of those who died after being struck with a Taser were not armed and did not appear to pose a serious threat when the Taser was deployed....

Prison conditions

Incarceration rates remained at historically high levels....

The USA courts continue to act AGAINST the legislative bodies in the USA. The legislatures are practicing politics and not governance for short term gain to satisfy their crony political allies. The USA Constitution continues to prove to be the best ally of the people of nation.

Children's rights

In June, in Miller v. Alabama, the US Supreme Court outlawed mandatory life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for offenders who were under 18 years old at the time of the crime. The ruling came two years after the Court prohibited life imprisonment without parole for non-homicide crimes by under-18s.

In July, Terry Branstad, Governor of Iowa, responded to the Miller v. Alabama decision by commuting 38 life without parole sentences being served in Iowa by inmates convicted of first degree murder committed when they were under 18, to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for 60 years. Any mitigating evidence that was not considered at the time of the trial due to the automatic imposition of the life without parole sentence, was again neglected in the Governor's blanket commutation.

Migrants' rights

In June, the US Supreme Court struck down key parts of an Arizona immigration law, including a provision that made it a state crime for irregular migrants to seek or hold a job. However, the Court upheld a section requiring state law enforcement officials to check the immigration status of individuals they suspect of being in the country illegally, despite criticism from human rights groups that this would encourage “racial profiling”– that is, targeting individuals solely on account of their appearance or racial or ethnic origin. Following the ruling, federal courts upheld similar legislation in Alabama and Georgia....

Right to health

In June, the US Supreme Court upheld The Affordable Health Care Act, passed in 2010, which would expand health care coverage by 2014 to more than 30 million people in the USA who lack medical insurance. While a number of the law's provisions addressed barriers to obtaining quality maternal health care, such as preventing insurance companies from charging women more for health coverage, gaps and obstacles remained.
The Maternal Health Accountability Act remained before Congress at the end of the year.

Women's rights

Legislation outlawing the shackling of women prisoners at all stages of pregnancy was passed in California in October. This was the first such law in the USA.
In June, legislation came into effect in Virginia requiring women to undergo an ultrasound before having an abortion.
Congress failed to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act, which includes provisions to address the high levels of violence against Indigenous women and to provide protection and services for survivors of domestic violence.
Reauthorization of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, which would protect the thousands of individuals trafficked into the USA every year, remained stalled in Congress at the end of 2012.

Death penalty

Forty-three prisoners – all of them men – were executed in the USA during the year, all by lethal injection. Fifteen of the executions were carried out in Texas. By the end of 2012, Texas accounted for 492 of the 1,320 executions in the USA since 1976, when the US Supreme Court approved new capital laws....

The Nobel. President Obama needs to pay attention to someone whom might be a colleague in the future.

Army Pfc Bradley Manning is escorted into a courthouse at Fort Meade on the third day of his court martial. Photograph: Patrick Semansky/AP
Peace (click here) is more than simply the absence of war; it is the active creation of something better. Alfred Nobel recognized this when he created alongside those for chemistry, literature, medicine and physics, an annual prize for outstanding contributions in peace. Nobel's foresight is a reminder to us all that peace must be created, maintained, and advanced, and it is indeed possible for one individual to have an extraordinary impact. For this year's prize, I have chosen to nominate US Army Pfc Bradley Manning, for I can think of no one more deserving. His incredible disclosure of secret documents to Wikileaks helped end the Iraq War, and may have helped prevent further conflicts elsewhere....

July 1, 2013

FORT MEADE, Md. (AP) — Prosecutors (click here) at the court-martial of an Army private at Fort Meade remain focused on the more than 250,000 State Department diplomatic cables he gave to the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks.
The trial of Pfc. Bradley Manning enters its fifth week Monday at the Army installation near Baltimore. Manning is charged with aiding the enemy and 20 other offenses.
He admits leaking the cables while working as an intelligence analyst in Iraq but denies stealing them. Manning says reading cables on a classified computer network was part of his job. He says he sent them to WikiLeaks to expose secret deals and hypocrisy by American diplomats.
A State Department official says at least 117 of the cables contained classified information potentially harmful to national security.

Someone needs to give these Whistle Blowers safe haven. They are witnesses.

This is so completely ridiculous. Germany and the EU are allies. It was Germany that first warned about Atta BEFORE the attacks.

Where does anyone believe this memo came from? The CIA issued this memo to Former President Bush. This is the memo Senator Feinstein persisted in demanding Former Vice President Cheney pay attention to because the timeline was three months. Cheney stated they could not get to it for six months. Cheney completely disregarded the burgeoning danger because he was more interested in his energy committee than the nation.

There needs to be a consortium of nations handling these investigations. This is sovereignty issue. The USA has no business exploring the infrastructure of Germany. They are allies. Like what? The USA is appropriating funding for this? In Germany? I don't think so. This is just asserting power to simply asset power.

A screenshot of the Boundless Informant tool released by Edward Snowden shows Germany in orange, representing the most spied upon country in the EU.
June 10, 2013
BRUSSELS, June 10 (UPI) -- While the United States (click here) spies on all European Union nations, it spies on Germany the most, say papers supplied by a former employee of the top U.S. spy agency.
The rankings of what EU nations are snooped on, and how much, can be seen in a color-coded map of covert National Security Agency surveillance activities, EUObserver.com reported Monday.
Nations subject to the least spying activities are shaded green; those with the most red.
All EU members are various shades of green on the map. Germany is orange.
The map, called Boundless Informant, is among documents released by Edward Snowden, a former CIA employee and NSA contractor who says he is the person who this month leaked information about the U.S. metadata collection program known as PRISM.
About 3 billion pieces of metadata information were collected in a 30-day period, the map shows. That data includes calls made, location of the phone, time of the call and duration.
A handbook for the map says it uses "big data technology" to "produce near real-time business intelligence."
Boundless Informant "allows users to select a country on a map and view the metadata volume and select the details about the collection against that country," the handbook adds.

By Harriet Torry
July 1, 2013
 

...Chancellor Angela Merkel's government (click here) on Monday demanded clarity from the U.S. over allegations that the National Security Agency spied on European Union institutions, saying that if true they would constitute an unacceptable breach of trust between the close partners.

Seeking clarification on the matter, the foreign ministry has called the U.S. ambassador to Germany, Philip Murphy, for a meeting later Monday, a spokesman for the ministry said....

July 1, 2013
Active Fire Map (click here)

The entire region is the balance. There are many fires in the West and Alaska.

It would be a mistake to bring firefighters in from surrounding states, they may be needed where they are. If more firefighters are coming in to assist they should come in from east of the Mississippi.

Residents throughout these states have to be aware of very dry conditions to prevent any opportunity for fires. These fires are where the severest temperatures are being experienced.

US Drought Monitor (click here)
June 25, 2013

It is the drougth. It has been sustained and severe. The entire region where there is a severe to exceptional rating is at risk.

This is June 25th, there will be another later in the week, but, it will not have changed that much.

Tropical Storm Dalila has picked up some velocity. It is up to 40 knots per hour. It's central pressure is 1001 millibars and with any luck it will continue to build, but, it's a lethargic system right now.

July 1, 2013
1030:17z
UNISYS Water Vapor satellite of West and North Hemisphere (click here for 12 hour loop - thank you)

Isla de la Juventud of Cuba has a small turbulence. It might pick up in velocity. It is forming over an island with sea spray so it might have an autonomous water vapor source to begin it's spin.



There was very marginal improvement in temperatures yesterday due to the marginal increase in velocity of the East Pacific tropical storm.

HOWEVER, the heat is moving east at a very significant pace.


June 28, 2013
The Weather Channel Actual High Map

The heat will bring 'drying' conditions, especially in newly recovered areas of drought. Drought is a long term emergency. It lasts and lasts and lasts and just because the drought has broken and there is now rain doesn't mean the land, forests and buildings have completely recovered the resistance to prevent ignition.

There is a second large incident fire near the Yarnell Hill fire. The entire region is in question.

Burnt Area:

6,767 Acres (click here)

Location:

Yavapai County, AZ (7 miles NW of Prescott, AZ)

Cause:

Human

Incident Team Type:

IMT Type 3

Team Leader:

Dave Ramirez

Containment Status:

96% contained

Expected Containment:

30-JUN-13

Fuels:

Heavy timber transitions to dense brush Extreme 6911000.00 90PRIM

Here we go. High temperatures and droughted forests. Infernos. You could melt a battleship.

The fire is estimated to be about 9000 acres and there is no public report from the National Interagency Fire Center.

The area has to be evacuated of people and crew. The fire is not dependable in it's character. It is too dry THROUGHOUT and there is no containing anything.

The fire is creating it's own winds and environmental conditions. It is not predictable. A perimeter has to be set up at a significant distance to actually put a dent in it. 

If a fire creates it's own wind and the entire area is dry as a bone, the sparks are guaranteed to fly in directions and set their own backfires. That doesn't mean a fire crew doesn't set up a perimeter.

By Jackee Coe, Laurie Merrill and Michelle Ye Hee Lee The Republic

Mon Jul 1, 2013 12:11 AM

 

Arizona forestry(click here) officials confirmed Sunday night that 19 firefighters have died in the Yarnell Hill Fire that has ripped through half of the town, sent residents to Prescott for safety and given the state its biggest ever wildfire firefighter tragedy.

“It’s a dark day,” said Mike Reichling, Arizona State Forestry Division spokesman.

Reichling said the 19 firefighters were found in an area that also had 19 fire shelters deployed. Some of those found were inside a shelter, which is typically used as a last resort to withstand the fire as it blows over. Some of the crew members were found outside the shelters....

"Morning Papers - It's Origins" (click here)

The Rooster

"Okeydoke"

"Good Night, Moon"

Waning Crescent

23 days old

40.8% Full

Don't forget "Independence Day" is this week.

Some night sky sights for June 28 – July 6 (click here)

by Alan M. MacRobert

 

...Thursday, July 4 Watching the fireworks tonight? As you're waiting for them to begin, point out to people some sky sights. The two brightest stars of summer, Vega and Arcturus, are high overhead toward the east and southwest, respectively. Far below Arcturus are the planet Saturn and, to its lower right, Spica. Nearly that high in the southeast is the orange-red supergiant Antares, amid fainter stars of upper Scorpius....

 

 

We are losing our liberties.

Our nation has become perverse in political rhetoric that threatens our very lives. Intolerance is very apparent. 

The USA has some of the most wonderful young minds in the world and yet we don't appreciate their abilities to be sure they are employed.

Taking liberty with the national security of the USA while pumping up the dividends of Wall Street is nothing anyone bargained for. I cannot believe Security Clearance is done by an independent insurance company. Who was the genius that came up with this one? Oh, wait. Let me guess. The privatized government President, Bush. The man that gave us the bloated national security machine.

By Tom Hamburger and Zachary A. Goldfarb 
Published: June 27 

Federal investigators have told lawmakers they have evidence that USIS, (click here) the contractor that screened Edward Snowden for his top-secret clearance, repeatedly misled the government about the thoroughness of its background checks, according to people familiar with the matter.

The alleged transgressions are so serious that a federal watchdog indicated he plans to recommend that the Office of Personnel Management, which oversees most background checks, end ties with USIS unless it can show it is performing responsibly, the people said....

USIS is the leader in providing background investigations to the federal government. (click here) With our highly experienced team of investigators, we mitigate risk with accurate in-depth investigations in a range of areas, including federal security clearance investigations, Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO), site investigations, and fraud waste and abuse investigations.

USIS, Inc. provides third party administration (click here) and managed care services for workers' compensation and liability claims. It offers administration services, such as workers' compensation claims administration, medical management and certified managed care programs, cost containment/medical bill auditing and review, claim-reporting procedures, third party recoveries, liability claims, information systems, and risk management services. The company also provides claim information combining with online statistical claims data, reports, and file documentation. It offers its services to commercial carriers, self insurance funds, and risk pools and trusts, as well as self insured employers in the private and public sectors. The company was founded in 1982 and is based in Orlando, Florida. USIS, Inc. operates as a subsidiary of Brown & Brown Inc.

Oh, you mean this Brown and Brown, Inc.?

Brown & Brown, Inc. Announces the Asset Acquisition of The Rollins Agency, Inc. (click here)

"We sell...to several thousand independent agents throughout the United States." (click here)  "Our renewals are very high..."  I bet.

I am curious where these companies put their political contributions.

There are soon to be more guns in the USA than people. For every person dead from gun violence there are that many less children born. Isn't that the value system on the Right? Babies. Yes?

Why is a dead person in Chicago less valuable to our national shame than those massacred at Sandy Hook?  Because these deaths are often the result of handguns. Handguns have a special status that should not concern us when they fall into the wrong hands? Guns have become such a prevalence in some areas of the USA, young people shoot and ask questions later. "Better them than me."

My father was a Korean Veteran. He once stated to me, "The day fear keeps you locked in your house for your safety, is the day America has lost her liberties to us." He was an appointee to the local zoning board. He wanted his neighborhoods safe for children, including his own. At one point the town formulated a "Special Police Force" of those in town with skills to serve when police were able to or over qualified to act as a security force. In those days there was no ADT or any thought of it.

In the year 2013, women are viewed as objects of control. Behavior, sexuality, work and play, basically oppressed from sincere self-expression and self-determination. There is a huge divide between how women are viewed in their sexuality as opposed to men. "The man cave" as opposed to women living in burden of all responsibility for family. The idea of a 'Man Cave' is separation of powers and places. It carries over to social norm.

I think this legislator has it right. If women are to be treated by government standards to control child bearing, then every standard for men should be to the same end result.

By Jackie Borchardt

Columbus Bureau

March 12, 2013

COLUMBUS – Before getting a prescription for Viagra (click here) or other erectile dysfunction drugs, men would have to see a sex therapist, receive a cardiac stress test and get a notarized affidavit signed by a sexual partner affirming impotency, if state Sen. Nina Turner has her way.
The Cleveland Democrat introduced Senate Bill 307 this week....

An erection is only for making babies. Isn't it? 

The society of the USA has been so manipulated by political paradigms it does not even know what sincere freedom is anymore. 

Wireless devices, invasion of privacy, guns on the street, food that kills with the taste of kindness, impoverishment, illiteracy, educational cuts in spending and extreme militarization in a world where the USA is out ranked in spending than all major militarized countries together. Children that die when they should be practicing for a school recital. Young people identifying with violence rather than a purpose in a community of many unrecognized heroes. People without homes and homes without people. People without citizen status, but with a job and little pay to show for it. Young people educated and invested into by the USA only to be sent out of our borders and never to seen of or heard from again. Justices that ridicule the vital vote without understanding who they are oppressing in their high minded decisions. 

There is a lot wrong with the USA and it is high time we decided to take back the liberties we have lost. 

Power. Not decency. Not conscience, but, power oppresses still today. I've had enough of it.

Is this still liberty?

By Dennis  Hevesi
February 5, 2013

...Reviews were mixed. (click here) “Miss Nyman’s performance is monotonous, and her only redeeming vice is her anger, which seems genuine and illimitable,” Joseph Morgenstern wrote in Newsweek. In The New York Times, Vincent Canby wrote, “Lena Nyman and Borje Ahlstedt are good, in addition to being perfectly presentable, in the central roles.” He added that the sex scenes were “so unaffectedly frank as to be nonpornographic...

I mean I can still sit in a theater to watch stone cold XXX entitled, "The Family Jewels, right?" And I can do that in mixed company, right? An no one expects birth control to fail? That's liberty?

This is liberty? No. This is extremism.

I thought the NRA always stated these folks were seriously disturbed and now that little Delaware wants to remove the danger out of the hands of the 'dangerously mentally ill' and not just 'the criminally insane' there seems to be a problem.

Is there always a problem with everything the government 'OF THE PEOPLE' wants to do? Is there? That is not liberty that is Wall Street and gun sales.

June 30, 2013
Written by Jonathan Starkey

Gun-control opponents (click here) are rallying at Legislative Hall against a measure that aims to require individuals found to be dangerously mentally ill to turn over their guns. The bill failed in the state Senate on Thursday, receiving just six yes votes, but many worry that it will be brought up for another vote today, the last day before the General Assembly session adjourns until January. Attorney General Beau Biden's office authored the bill. A spokesman for Biden did not deny the bill could come back for debate in the final hours of the legislative session.

"We're still working," spokesman Joe Rogalsky said. "The attorney general made clear he is not giving up."

Opponents worry the bill will be applied in inappropriate cases and have directed anger at Biden. One protester carried a sign Sunday that read "Beau Biden. Leader of New Nazi Party of Delaware." Another read "Hands off my guns....

At one time in the USA, Americans practiced their liberties in proportion to their society.

Where has that decency gone? Political sparing has replaced proportionality of liberty? Seems rather extreme, no? Desperate even.

I found this interesting. Christianity was incubated under oppression. It survived in the face of oppression. Even today, depending on the country, it still struggles with oppression. The biggest concern of Pope Francis is poverty. Poverty is oppression.

In the USA there is no oppression, but, today extremist Christians seek to oppress.

By Marty Duren
June 28, 2013
CP Op-ed contributor

Religious Liberty is Idolatry? (click here)

...Of equal concern to me is the elevation of religious liberty to a mythos of which Christians should be wary. While our Founding Fathers enshrined religious freedom into the constitution, our Savior did not. In fact, Jesus was born, lived and died in an era when religious freedom was not absolute. (Religious freedom is not absolute in America being affected by the whims of congress, but that is for another time.)

While religious freedom is appreciated it is not part of what followers of Christ should expect at any particular point in history. It could be argued that religious freedom is a primary contributing factor to the morbid obesity of the church in the U.S. Beware lest our rabid pursuit of it lead to possession of a godliness in which is no power to deny (2 Tim 3:5).

Jesus neither commended us to long for religious freedom or to strive for it. It is pretty much the opposite, in fact.

"If the world hates you, understand that it hated Me before it hated you." John 15:18...

...I am saying that holding up "religious liberty" as the highest desired end is a biblically untenable position. If we promote such we may create an idol of the very freedom ostensibly designed to focus us on God.

"Analysis of Supreme Court Decisions" on PBS (click here)

Protecting Liberty or equivalent to CIA Black Sites?

The CIA Black Sites were free to carry out drone strikes based on what was being learned in the torture sessions. 

 

The FBI learns about a person of interest and it turns into a killing? 

 

I think this has a lot to do with the potential of suicide bombers. The guy should not be dead. 

 

Whatever came into play to accept a handwritten confession from him anyway? That is acceptable FBI policy? No handcuffs with ride to the headquarters, just, "Sure, here's a pen. No can state this is harassed either." Like. What the hell?

 

Then the guy ends up dead? Multiple wounds and now the FBI believes his father might be linked to something? This is either the biggest Chechen Mafia organization in the world or there is something very wrong here. All of a sudden everyone is a suspect. If that were the case, the FBI needs to investigate racketeering and not just a bombing. 

 

I think the FBI internal investigations need to have a second outside, autonomous and anonymous review of the findings to be sure the agency is conducting their own shootings without bias. And not the CIA. An autonomous independent review board unknown to anyone at the FBI. I don't like the way any of this sounds. I don't want the FBI to cause a war.

  

The F.B.I. Deemed Agents Faultless in 150 Shootings (click here)

  

By Charlie Savage and Michael S. Schmidt 

June 18, 2013

 

...“The F.B.I. takes very seriously any shooting incidents involving our agents, and as such we have an effective, time-tested process for addressing them internally,” a bureau spokesman said. 

 

But if such internal investigations are time-tested, their outcomes are also predictable: from 1993 to early 2011, F.B.I. agents fatally shot about 70 “subjects” and wounded about 80 others — and every one of those episodes was deemed justified, according to interviews and internal F.B.I. records obtained by The New York Times through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. 

 

The last two years have followed the same pattern: an F.B.I. spokesman said that since 2011, there had been no findings of improper intentional shootings.... 

 

... Occasionally, the F.B.I. does discipline an agent. Out of 289 deliberate shootings covered by the documents, many of which left no one wounded, five were deemed to be “bad shoots,” in agents’ parlance — encounters that did not comply with the bureau’s policy, which allows deadly force if agents fear that their lives or those of fellow agents are in danger. A typical punishment involved adding letters of censure to agents’ files. But in none of the five cases did a bullet hit anyone....