His arm in a cast and his face swollen, a blase-looking Dzhokhar Tsarnaev pleaded not guilty Wednesday in the Boston Marathon bombing in a seven-minute proceeding that marked his first public appearance since his capture in mid-April.
As victims of the bombing looked on, Tsarnaev, 19, gave a small, lopsided smile to his sisters upon arriving in the courtroom. He appeared to have a jaw injury and there was swelling around his left eye and cheek.
Then, after he leaned in toward a microphone and said, “Not guilty” over and over in a Russian accent, he was led out of the courtroom in handcuffs, making a kissing gesture toward his family with his lips. His sister sobbed loudly, resting her head on a woman seated next to her.
Tsarnaev faces 30 federal charges, including using a weapon of mass destruction to kill, and could get the death penalty if prosecutors choose to pursue it.
The day President Obama stepped into office he inherited a record projected $1.2 trillion deficit that turned out to be $1.4 trillion by the end of fiscal year 2009. This year the projected deficit is $759 billion, down from a projected $973 billion.
That means the deficit of the president’s first year of his second term is about 45% smaller than the deficit of his first year in office. It’s a bit shy of his promise to reduce the deficit in half by the end of his first term. But he made that promise before anyone had any idea just how bad the financial crisis of 2008 really was.
At least one economist suggests that we have a 1 in 3 shot of ending up with a budget surplus in the next few years.
Of course, this rapid deficit reduction is the result of the only way that long-term deficit reduction has ever been achieved: tax increases on the rich and job creation.
We’ve been in a slow but steady economic recovery for years. More than a million jobs were created int he first half of this year.
Can you imagine how quickly Republicans would turn Mt. Rushmore into Mt. Romney if he’d cut the deficit by $214 billion and created a million jobs?
So how are Republicans reacting to the news of Obama’s epic feat of fiscal conservatism? Threatening to blow up the global economy by defaulting on our debt if the president won’t cut Social Security, a program that’s completely solvent until 2033.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev will show his face Wednesday for the first time since he was arrested in connection with the Boston Marathon bombings.
The 19-year old is scheduled to appear before a federal judge in Boston to answer a 30-count indictment for the April 15 attack and subsequent manhunt. The twin blasts near the marathon finish line killed three and injured 264
Security will be tight at the waterfront courthouse where the teenager will be arraigned before Judge Marianne Bowler on the charges, 17 of which are punishable by death, including use of a weapon of mass destruction.
Tsnaraev, who is being held in a prison hospital outside of Boston, is expected to enter a plea at the hearing.
Three months after they were released from being kidnapped for a decade, the three victims of Ariel Castro broke their silence. In a video recorded June 2nd, the three victims thanked everyone for their support.
Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight were kidnapped and kept in Castro’s home for 10 years. They were discovered by a neighbor and reunited with family. Castro faces 329 charges including murder, rape and kidnapping and was indicted in a 142 page document spanning the years from August 2002, when the first victim disappeared to 2007. Prosecutors are still investigating more charges, and have left open the possibility of pursuing the death penalty.
Pat Buchanan has said some… dumb and questionable things at times. His apparent hatred for other races has come out on many occasions. So hearing him say again that immigration reform would be the end of America, the collective response is oh, there goes Pat again. Like it’s expected. But at what point do we stop giving these hate mongers a mic?
Pat’s has been attributing immigration reform to America’s destruction for quite sometime now. Back in 2007, he lamented that the America where most immigrants came from European countries “is gone forever.” He questions why “third world countries” are now becoming a major source for new immigrants.
And keeping true to form, Buchanan continued his be-afraid-of-the-immigrant warning, saying that America will break up just like the Soviet Union did.
The Daily Caller posts a clip of Buchanan warning that if “you put 100 million Hispanic folks in the United States,” the southwest will become “as much a part of Mexico as it is of the United States.”
“If they have a different language, different culture, different faith, basically you get two peoples and two peoples eventually become two countries,” he said.
Buchanan went on to offer an alternate history of the United States, which he said became “one nation back around 1960, when all the immigrants who had come from eastern and southern Europe 1890-1920 had been assimilated and Americanized” through the Depression, World War II and television programming. “That brought us all together, and now we’re falling apart,” he said.
What you get is a growing disintegration of the country, a fragmentation into different parts. And we see this happening all over the world in the last few decades, where ethnic groups and linguistic minorities, ethnic minorities, cultural minorities, given the pressures of ethno-nationalism, are breaking up countries all over the world. It’s happening all over the Middle East; it happened in the Balkans, where Yugoslavia broke up into seven countries; the Soviet Union broke up into 15 countries.
You put 100 million Hispanic folks in the United States, and say 70 million of them on the southwest border, that becomes as much a part of Mexico as it is of the United States. If they have a different language, different culture, different faith, basically you get two peoples and two peoples eventually become two countries.
This is what I see as the future of America is the balkanization and disintegration of the country that had become one nation back around 1960, when all the immigrants who had come from eastern and southern Europe 1890-1920 had been assimilated and Americanized. We’d all gone through the Depression together, heard radio together, went through World War II together, and American television together. That brought us all together, and now we’re falling apart. – See more at: http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/buchanan-immigration-reform-will-cause-us-break-soviet-union#sthash.RABfrSaR.dpuf
A hospital spokesman said Teresa Heinz Kerry, right, was hospitalized Sunday, July 7, 2013 in critical but stable condition in a hospital on the island of Nantucket, Mass. (Michael Dwyer, File/AP Photo)
Teresa Heinz Kerry was in critical but stable condition at a Boston hospital after being transferred there from a hospital in Nantucket, where she and husband Secretary of State John Kerry were vacationing.
A family spokesman said that Heinz Kerry was transferred to Massachusetts General Hospital from Nantucket Cottage Hospital, where she was taken by ambulance earlier today.
Her husband Nelson Mandela had just been sentenced to life imprisonment, but she was still strong enough to say, “I will continue the struggle.”
1.
Winnie Madikizela was born on September 26, 1936 in the village of Mbongweni, Bizana, in the Transkei, South Africa. She was the fourth of eight children. Her father, Columbus, was minister of the Transkei Governments’ Forestry and Agriculture Department during Kaizer Matanzima’s rule. Her mother, Nomathamsanqa Mzaidume (Gertrude), a domestic science teacher, died when Winnie was only eight years old.
2.
Winnie attended primary school in Bizana and matriculated at Shawbury High School, where she distinguished herself as a person with exceptional leadership qualities. In 1953, she was admitted to the Jan Hofmeyr School of Social Work in Johannesburg. She completed her degree in social work in 1955, and was offered a scholarship for further study in the USA. However she turned it down and opted for a challenging position as the first qualified Black medical social worker at the Baragwanath Hospital in Johannesburg instead.
3.
She became interested in politics while working at the hospital. She was particularly influenced by the research she had carried out in Alexandra Township to establish the rate of infantile mortality, which stood at 10 deaths for every 1,000 births.
4.
In the mid-1950s, she became involved in the African National Congress (ANC). In 1957, she met Nelson Mandela. At the time he was on trial, along with 155 other people, in the now infamous Treason Trial following the civil disobedience campaigns of the early 1950s. They were married on 19 June 1958 in a Methodist service in the Transkei, after which Winnie settled in Mandela’s home in Soweto.
5.
By March 1961, the Treason Trial was over and the accused were found not guilty. By this time Winnie had given birth to two daughters, Zenani, born in 1959 and Zinzi, born in 1960. Between March and December of 1961, the Mandela’s enjoyed a normal family life, in the sense that they were all together. Throughout most of her married life, however, Winnie Mandela had to endure a forced separation from her husband. He was detained and imprisoned on more than one occasion and spent twenty-six years of his life on Robben Island. Although she had visitation rights during that period, she was unable to have physical contact with him.
6.
From 1962, Winnie was subjected to a virtually uninterrupted series of legal orders, which prevented her from living, working and socializing. She was banned under the Suppression of Communism Act for her part in the struggle and was restricted to the Orlando Township in Soweto. She started to work clandestinely for the ANC, which included participating in underground meetings and the printing and circulation of pamphlets.
7.
She decided to send her daughters to boarding school in Swaziland, in the hope that the girls could escape harassment and continue their education. In 1969, she was detained under the Terrorism Act and was placed in solitary confinement for seventeen months. In 1970, she was placed under house arrest. She repeatedly flaunted this order and was charged on a number of occasions.
8.
During the 1976 youth uprisings, she established the Black Women’s Federation and the Black Parents’ Association. Both these organisations allied themselves to the Black Consciousness Movement, an ideology which rejected all ‘White’ values and embraced a positive ‘Black’ world view. For this role Winnie was detained, in 1977, under the Internal Security Act and banished to Brandfort in the Orange Free State. There she helped set up a crèche and a clinic with Dr. Abu Baker Asvat.
9.
She returned to her home in 1986 and resumed her ANC activities. Although Winnie’s opposition to P.W. Botha’s regime earned her the title of “Mother of the Nation”, her conduct was not irreproachable. In a speech at Munsieville outside Johannesburg in 1986 Winnie propagated the barbaric necklace method of killing township dissidents and alleged police informers by saying: “Together hand-in-hand, with our boxes of matches and our necklaces, we shall liberate this country.” She was referring to the method of killing in which victims had a tire placed around their neck, were doused with petrol and set on fire.
10.
Her controversial Mandela United Football Club, a group of young men who acted as her bodyguards, caused some anti-apartheid groups to distance themselves from her in 1988.
11.
Winnie stood next to her husband Nelson when he was released from prison on 11 February 1990. However, she separated from President Nelson Mandela in April 1992 and was divorced in March 1996. After the divorce, Winnie established a museum at the Orlando home where she and Mandela had lived, and adopted the surname Madikizela-Mandela.
12.
From 1991, Winnie’s life was steeped in both achievement and controversy. In 1991, after the unbanning of the ANC and other political organisations, she was elected to the ANC’s National Executive Committee. In 1991, she was charged with the kidnapping and murder of 14 year old Stompie Seipei. Stompie was believed to be a police informant against the struggle.
13.
Consequently, Winnie was sentenced to six years in jail for the kidnapping. The sentence was reduced to a fine of R15 000 on appeal. Shortly after her conviction, in 1992, she resigned all her ANC leadership positions, including her position as Member of Parliament. In 1993, however, she made a remarkable comeback when she was elected president of the ANC Women’s League, a position which she held until 2003. After the 1994 election, Winnie was appointed deputy minister of Arts, Culture, and Science and Technology, but was dismissed in 1995 by Nelson Mandela following allegations of financial mismanagement.
14.
In 1997, Winnie was re-elected as president of the ANC Women’s League. In 2001, she was charged and in April 2003 found guilty on 43 counts of fraud and 25 of theft. She pleaded not guilty to the charges, which related to money taken from loan applicants’ accounts for a funeral fund, but from which the applicants did not benefit. Madikizela-Mandela was sentenced to five years in prison. In 2004, an appeal judge of the Pretoria Supreme Court overturned the conviction for theft, but upheld the one for fraud, handing her a three years and six months suspended sentence.
15.
After her conviction, she resigned as president of the ANC Women’s League (2003). She was elected to the ANC National Executive Committee at the 52nd ANC conference in Polokwane.
U.S. employers are sending a message of confidence in the economy — hiring more workers, raising pay and making the job market appear strong enough for the Federal Reserve to slow its bond purchases as early as September.
The economy gained a robust 195,000 jobs in June and many more in April and May than previously thought. The unemployment rate remained 7.6 percent in June because more people started looking for jobs — a healthy sign — and some didn’t find them. The government doesn’t count people as unemployed unless they’re looking for work.
The Labor Department’s report Friday pointed to a U.S. job market that’s showing surprising resilience in the face of tax increases, federal spending cuts and economic weakness overseas. Employers have added an average 202,000 jobs for the past six months, up from 180,000 in the previous six.
The job growth is being fueled in part by consumer spending and the housing recovery. Consumer confidence has reached a 5½ year high and is helping drive up sales of homes and cars. Hiring was especially strong in June among retailers, hotels, restaurants, construction companies and financial services firms.
If you don’t yet know what Jay Z is talking about, then you most likely were on a trip to the moon. If that’s the case, then welcome back. Miley Cyrus – children’s icon on Disney – shocked the world when pictures and videos of her twerking hit the internet:
Now that you’re all caught up on Miley Cyrus’ Twerking abilities, you may be asking why is Jay Z mentioning her in his music? A valid question. Some assume that Jay Z was returning a favor because Cyrus gave him a shoutout in her “Party In The USA.” But if Jay Z was really returning the favor, why does it sound as if he was making fun of her.
Here’s Jay’s lyrics:
“When I was talking Instagram, Last thing you wanted was your picture snapped. Feds still lurking, They see I’m still putting work in, Cause somewhere in America Miley Cyrus is still twerkin’, HA! Twerk, twerk, twerk, twerk, Twerk, Miley, Miley, twerk, Twerk, Twerk, Miley, Miley, Miley, twerk, Twerk, yeah, ugh-huh, Twerk, Miley, Miley, Miley. Only in America.”
HuffPo reports that Jay Z “drops in some not-too-subtle laughter throughout the verse, leaving it up to us to discern, rather easily, his views on Cyrus’ treatment of the dance craze — a movement that originated in hip-hop culture.”
Don’t let Jay stop you Miley. Twerk and Twerk some more! 🙂
Despite the cultural relevance and ubiquity of the Trayvon Martin case, I haven’t written about it since the trial started. No blogs, no articles, and not even any tweets or status messages.
This silence has been intentional. I have a sizable emotional stake in the outcome, and keeping up with and writing about the daily ebs and flows of a court case that may not end for weeks—and, most importantly, may not end how I want it to end—would burn me out. I’ve read many of the news stories and opinion pieces spawned by it, but writing—and the thinking/re-writing process that usually accompanies it—is just more of an investment for me.
I decided to break my silence tonight after a friend forwarded a story about the case to me that, all things considered, may very well be the saddest thing I’ve ever read.
With their “big” accomplishments consisting of, umm… nothing and a constant war on women, Ezra Klein of Wonkblog wonders if this Congress is the laziest Congress ever!
Six months into its term, there’s little evidence that the 113th Congress will be the worst Congress ever. But they might be the laziest.
On Monday, simply by doing nothing, they allowed the interest rate on student loans to double, from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent. That might be permissible if they were busy with more important things, like inventing a cure for cancer that’s also a source of endless clean energy. But they’re not even working this week.
The 112th Congress passed 220 laws. That’s the fewest of any Congress since we began keeping track in 1948. But the 113th Congress is on track to pass even fewer laws than that. “Just 15 bills have become law this year, compared to 23 over the same period in 2011,” writes Dashiel Bennett at the Atlantic Wire. It’s the do-nothingest Congress ever!
That doesn’t make it the worst Congress ever. In fact, it doesn’t even make it the worst Congress lately. Looking back at my 14 reasons the 112th Congress is one of the worst congresses ever, the 113th still has a ways to go. For instance, they haven’t derailed the recovery and nearly crashed the global economy, as the 112th managed to do during the debt-ceiling shenanigans of 2011. And that list doesn’t even include sequestration, which the 112th created and didn’t manage to avert. The 113th Congress has inflicted a bit of damage by doing nothing — those student loans being a great example — but the 112th Congress almost blew up the world through gridlock.
Complements of the NRA and your loving Republican party.
Police said a 6-year-old girl was fatally shot by her 4-year-old brother in Hopkinsville, Ky., WSMV reported.
The children’s grandfather told WSMV that he was cleaning his pistol out and thought it was unloaded. His 4-year-old grandson then picked it up and pointed it at his older sister, he said.
The shooting appeared to be an accident, according to the grandfather.
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