Clipmarks | Anomaly100's clips

Iranian Court To Review U.S. Journalist, Roxana Saberi's Conviction

Tue, 05 May 2009 21:54:02 GMT

clipped by: Anomaly100
clipper's remarks: Although Jamshidi did not announce a specific date, Reza Saberi said he thinks the hearing will be May 12. "We hope for a lenient verdict," he said.

According to Saberi's family, she was briefly taken to a hospital Monday after a 15-day hunger strike. "She probably had fainted," her father said.
Another group of lawyers, headed by Ebadi, tried five times to contact Saberi in prison so she could sign papers allowing them to defend her during the appeal. But they never received permission from prison authorities to meet with her.

"It's clear they are afraid that we will make details of the charges public," said one of the lawyers, Abdolfattah Soltani. "There must be serious irregularities in her file."

Clip Source: www.washingtonpost.com

Iranian Court to Review U.S. Journalist's Conviction

TEHRAN, May 5 -- An Iranian appeals court will review the conviction of imprisoned Iranian American journalist Roxana Saberi next week, a judiciary spokesman said Tuesday.

The announcement of the review came after Saberi's family agreed not to employ a group of prominent lawyers headed by Nobel Peace Prize winner and human rights activist Shirin Ebadi.

"Judicial authorities have advised us that it is better to use other lawyers," said the journalist's father, Reza Saberi.

Roxana Saberi, 32, a freelance reporter who had worked in Iran for National Public Radio, the BBC and other news organizations, was convicted April 18 of spying for the United States. She was sentenced to eight years in prison after a one-day trial behind closed doors.

"Experts from the Bar Association, the Intelligence Ministry and the Prosecutor's Office have been invited to attend the court session," Jamshidi said.

Tags: roxana saberi, us journalist, iranian notorious prison

A Health Benefits Law Formed The Basis For The 'Torture Memo'

Sat, 02 May 2009 19:57:05 GMT

clipped by: Anomaly100
clipper's remarks: Jack Goldsmith, who succeeded Bybee at OLC, said that Yoo, a former OLC attorney who now teaches at Chapman University in Orange, Calif., arrived at that definition by relying on statute written in 2000 related to health benefits.

"That statute defined an ‘emergency medical condition’ that warranted certain health benefits as a condition ‘manifesting itself by acute symptoms of sufficient severity (including severe pain)’ such that the absence of immediate medical care might reasonably be thought to result in death, organ failure, or impairment of bodily function," Goldsmith wrote in his book, The Terror Presidency.

"The health benefits statute's use of ‘severe pain’ had no relationship whatsoever to the torture statute. And even if it did, the health benefit statute did not define ‘severe pain.’ Rather it used the term ‘severe pain’ as a sign of an emergency medical condition that, if not treated, might cause organ failure and the like.... OLC’s clumsily definitional arbitrage

Clip Source: www.pubrecord.org

How a Health Benefits Law Formed the Basis For the 'Torture Memo'

John Yoo, the author of one of the infamous Aug. 1, 2002, "torture" memos that formed the legal basis for so-called "enhanced" interrogation techniques against high-level terrorist detainees, used a statute governing health benefits when he provided the White House with a legal opinion defining torture.

Yoo's legal opinion, which was signed by Jay Bybee, the former head of the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), stated that unless the amount of pain administered to a detainee results in injury "such as death, organ failure, or serious impairment of body functions" than the interrogation technique could not be defined as torture.

Waterboarding, a brutal and painful technique in which a prisoner believes he is drowning, therefore was not considered to be torture.

Tags: john yoo, torture, judge jay bybee, health benefits law

Cats Are Now Censoring The Internet

Fri, 01 May 2009 21:17:28 GMT

clipped by: Anomaly100
clipper's remarks: When censorship began, I knew it would come down to this. Apparently, cats are taking over! Let's hope they don't send us to shelters!

Clip Source: icanhascheezburger.com

Censor Cat Blocks Mature Content

Tags: cats, censor, shelters

Cats Forced To Move Because Of Younger Kittehs!

Fri, 01 May 2009 21:02:42 GMT

clipped by: Anomaly100

Clip Source: icanhascheezburger.com

*sigh* u wunna start packing ur bags? ai awredi did, en yours too..

Tags: cats, kitties, forced from homes, meow

Michael Steele" Specter "Fliipped the Bird" At the GOP

Thu, 30 Apr 2009 00:11:34 GMT

clipped by: Anomaly100
clipper's remarks: There's a video at the source but couldn't clip it.

Mr Steele, I understand him flipping the bird at the GOP because I'm doing it too. Steele is another Democrat incognito. He sits on the fence swaying back and forth...

Clip Source: videocafe.crooksandliars.com

Michael Steele: Specter "Flipped the Bird" at the GOP

By Heather Wednesday Apr 29, 2009 5:30am

Michael Steele bids Arlen Specter good riddance. So much for that big tent.

Steele: For the senator to flip the bird back to Senator Cornyn and the Republican Senate Leadership, a team that stood by him, who went to the bat for him in 2004, to save his hide to me is not only disrespectful but down right rude. I'm sure his mama didn't raise him that way.

Tags: michael steele, arlen specter, gop

Michele Bachmann:Is Swine Flu A Coincidence? ( A Democrat Is President)

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 00:53:41 GMT

clipped by: Anomaly100
clipper's remarks: http://www.thestar.com/living/article/625225

"Human outbreaks of swine flu – an illness caused by types of viruses that are typically endemic to pigs (hence the name) – can occur, but are typically rare. The last time there was major public concern over swine flu in the United States was in 1976, when a soldier at Fort Dix died and millions of Americans were immunized as a precaution."

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/homepage/20090428_U_S___concerned__as_swine_flu_rages.html

Check the source for some more Bachmann claims that are proved false...again.

Clip Source: www.dccc.org

Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann is at it again. The same woman who once said Congress should be investigated for those with anti-American leanings and once argued that she couldn't support the economic recovery act because America was "running out of rich people" has continued to make fantastic claims and lies – lies that can be quickly disproven. Just check out a few of them below:

swine flu outbreak:

"I find it interesting that it was back in the 1970s that the swine flu broke out then under another Democrat president Jimmy Carter. And I'm not blaming this on President Obama, I just think it's an interesting coincidence."

Actually...the swine flu outbreak Bachmann refers to began while Republican President Gerald Ford was in office. The first cases surfaced when some Fort Dix soldiers became ill:

"The Fort Dix cases became international news and spurred then-U.S. president Gerald Ford to begin a national flu vaccination program, which Jimmy Carter continued."

Tags: michele bachmann, crazy michele, swine flu, democrats

Hate-Mongering Conservative Commentators Use Swine Flu To Promote Racism!

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 00:01:14 GMT

clipped by: Anomaly100
clipper's remarks: "What happens if there's a rash of deaths in Mexico... and if you're a family in Mexico and people are dying and Americans are not, why wouldn't you flood this border?" announces Glenn Beck.

These loud mouths are also trying to convince their audiences that Islamic terrorists have somehow been able to do what has eluded scientists elsewhere in the world — concoct a deadly new flu virus — and then introduce it into the Mexican population.

"What better way to sneak a virus into this country than to give it to Mexicans....then spread a rumor there there are construction jobs here, and there they come," blathers Boortz.
the first American cases of swine flu have turned up in New York City students who recently returned from a trip to Cancun, Mexico — they brought it with them. They're the human mules! American tourists returning from Mexico are at this point virtually all the other culprits spreading the new flu!

The fact that this new flu is just an excuse to spread racism becom

Clip Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

Hate-Mongering Conservative Commentators Using Swine Flu to Promote Racism!

Responsible members of the Republican party need to speak out IMMEDIATELY against the conservative commentators in their own ranks using swine flu as an excuse to spew out racist hatred.

Radio, TV and newspaper personalities have jumped on the illness as a platform to attack "illegal aliens" for being responsible for carrying the disease across the Mexican border and infecting innocent Americans.

Despite the fact that there is no evidence to support such claims, talk radio hosts Michael Savage and Neal Boortz, radio and Fox TV personality Glenn Beck, and columnist Michelle Malkin are spreading them faster than the contagion.

"Illegal aliens are bringing in a deadly new flue strain. Make no mistake about it," blares Michael Savage.

"I've blogged for years about the spread of contagious diseases from around the world into the US as a result of uncontrolled immigration," writes Michelle Malkin.

Tags: fox, republican party, malkin, savage, racism, hate

The Incredible Shrinking Republican Party

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 22:13:07 GMT

clipped by: Anomaly100
clipper's remarks: In that same poll, 35 percent self-identified as Democrats and 38 percent called them Independents.

Clip Source: crooksandliars.com

Republican Party has a shrinkage problem

Clip Source: www.youtube.com

[Video]

Clip Source: crooksandliars.com

Yes, it's true: the Republican Party is leaderless except for Rush Limbaugh and Dick Cheney which hasn't worked out very well as new polling shows that Americans are turning away from the GOP in droves.

The new Washington Post/ABC news poll has all sorts of intriguing numbers in it but when you are looking for clues as to where the two parties stand politically there is only one number to remember: 21.

That's the percent of people in the Post/ABC survey who identified themselves as Republicans, down from 25 percent in a late March poll and at the lowest ebb in this poll since the fall of 1983(!).

These numbers come on the heels of Steve Schmidt, former campaign manager for Arizona Sen. John McCain's presidential bid, declaring the Republican party a "shrinking entity" last week -- citing the decline of GOP numbers in the west, northeast and mountain west as evidence.

Tags: republican party, shrinking republican party

Limabaugh To Specter:Take McCain & His Daughter With You

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 21:04:19 GMT

clipped by: Anomaly100
clipper's remarks: "This is a sad day for the GOP," Michael Smerconish, a longtime conservative radio host in Philadelphia, told the Huffington Post. "He is what the party needed to be. They need to cultivate more Specters instead of deriding him as a RINO [Republican In Name Only].... The fact that Michael Steele is deriding him for his left wing record is just the same type of bullshit of playing to the base."
Pointing to a Washington Post poll that showed only 21 percent of voters identify themselves as Republicans, Smerconish concluded: "I think the number is down to 20 percent."

Meanwhile Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine, one of the few remaining moderate Republicans in the Senate, told the Huffington Post Tuesday that Specter's abandonment of the GOP is "devastating," both "personally and I think for the party."

Clip Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

Limbaugh To Specter: Take McCain And His Daughter With You

"A lot of people said, well Specter, take McCain with you, and his daughter. Take McCain and his daughter with you," talk show host Rush Limbaugh declared during the early hour of his Tuesday program.

"Let's be honest," read a statement from RNC Chairman Michael Steele. "Senator Specter didn't leave the GOP based on principles of any kind. He left to further his personal political interests because he knew that he was going to lose a Republican primary due to his left-wing voting record."

The 'screw Specter' mentality seems expected for a party that, already on its heels, now likely faces filibuster-proof minority status in the Senate. But the more open-minded within the GOP see the reactions of Steele and Limbaugh as reflective of why Specter left the party in the first place.

For years, many in the conservative world have wished for an ideologically purer GOP. Their wish has been granted. Happy?"

Tags: rush limbaugh, arlen specter

President Obama "Furious" Over Plane Incident

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 01:40:45 GMT

clipped by: Anomaly100
clipper's remarks: When President Obama was told about the incident, he was "furious," a White House official says.

Caldera was called into a meeting with White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and deputy chief of staff Jim Messina.

"It didn't sound like a fun meeting," the White House official says.

Clip Source: blogs.abcnews.com

President Obama "Furious" to Hear of Plane Incident

A White House official tells ABC News that President Obama was "furious" to hear about the incident this morning when Air Force One and Air Force fighter jets appeared to be flying into the Manhattan skyline, scaring many New Yorkers into thinking they were about to face another terrorist attack.

Many buildings in lower Manhattan evacuated. Angry New York politicians lashed out at whoever was responsible for the incident -- which turned out to have been for a photo op.

“Last week, I approved a mission over New York," Louis Caldera, director of the White House military office, said. "I take responsibility for that decision. While federal authorities took the proper steps to notify state and local authorities in New York and New Jersey, it’s clear that the mission created confusion and disruption. I apologize and take responsibility for any distress that flight caused.”

Tags: plane incident, president obama

Pirates Chased Away From Italian Cruise Ship

Sun, 26 Apr 2009 19:07:39 GMT

clipped by: Anomaly100
clipper's remarks: Italian authorities confirmed a Spanish warship would meet up with the MSC Melody to escort the cruise ship to safety.

Clip Source: www.upi.com

Pirates repelled from Italian cruise ship

MOGADISHU, Somalia, April 26 (UPI) -- A group of pirates were chased away from an Italian cruise ship near the Seychelles islands in the Indian Ocean by armed guards, the vessel's captain says.

Commander Ciro Pinto of the MSC Melody said his vessel received slight damage to its port side during Saturday's incident when the pirates exchanged gunfire with the ship's security guards, The Sunday Times of London said.

"They tried to put up a ladder with hooks. They were climbing up, so we reacted. We started firing. When they saw us firing -- we even sprayed them with water with the fire hose -- they gave up and went off," Pinto said.

The incident took place 600 miles from Somalia and nearly 200 miles from the Seychelles capital of Victoria.

None of the 991 passengers and 536 crew members on the Italian vessel at the time of the attack were injured in the incident, The Times said.

Tags: pirates, italian cruise ship

Gov Perry Asks For Antiviral Medications From CDC

Sun, 26 Apr 2009 17:23:48 GMT

clipped by: Anomaly100
clipper's remarks: World Health Organization Director-General Margaret Chan says the outbreak involves "an animal strain of the H1N1 virus, and it has pandemic potential."

The CDC says two flu drugs, Tamiflu and Relenza, seem effective against the new strain.

Drug-maker Roche says the company is prepared to quickly deploy its drug stockpile if requested.

As many as 68 people may have died of swine flu in Mexico, although the strain has been confirmed in just 20 of the deaths.

More than a thousand others are sick.

Mexico City is suspending all public events for 10 days as officials try to contain the outbreak.

Clip Source: www.kwtx.com

Perry Requests Antiviral Medications From CDC

AUSTIN (April 25, 2009)—Gov. Rick Perry Saturday asked the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for 37,430 courses of antiviral medications from the Strategic National Stockpile as a precaution after three cases of swine flu were confirmed in Texas.

The medication will be available for treatment of those with confirmed or suspected cases of swine flu as well as for healthcare providers who may come into contact with the patients, Perry said.

All three of the Texas cases involved high school students from the same school in Guadalupe County.

Also, a 10-year-old California boy traveled to the state through Dallas before he was diagnosed with the strain.

Symptoms of swine flu, which are similar to those of seasonal flu, include fever, fatigue, lack of appetite and coughing, and in some cases runny noses, sore throats, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea.

Tags: rick perry, texas, didn't they want to secede, cdc

N.Y. Gay Marriage Back In The Game

Sat, 25 Apr 2009 03:34:24 GMT

clipped by: Anomaly100
clipper's remarks: It's a shame that it's come down to this. America is taking sides and it doesn't seem fair that some folks have to fight for the same rights we are given. Why should anyone be afraid of two people they don't know wanting to be together.

Clip Source: thenewcivilrightsmovement.com

BREAKING NEWS: NY Gay Marriage Back In The Game

The New York State Senate Judiciary Committee is taking up the governor’s gay marriage bill on Tuesday. After a grand introduction by Governor Paterson last week, the governor announced Wednesday he would defer to the state senate majority leader and not demand the bill receive a vote without knowing if there were enough votes to pass.

Perhaps not coincidentally, Tuesday is also the day of the Empire State Pride Agenda’s Equality & Justice Day.

A just-released poll determined a wide majority of New Yorkers favor passage of the gay marriage bill.

Tags: gay marriage, same sex marriage

Pirate Hostage Slams Rush Limbaugh

Sat, 25 Apr 2009 02:52:37 GMT

clipped by: Anomaly100
clipper's remarks: "You gotta get with us or against us here, Rush," Murphy said. "The president did the right thing...It's a war.... It's about good versus evil. And what you said is evil. It's hate speech. I won't tolerate it."

Clip Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

Shane Murphy, Freed Pirate Hostage, Slams "Disgusting" Rush Limbaugh

Shane Murphy, second-in-command aboard the ship seized by Somali pirates this month, is happy to be home. But he's not happy to be sharing turf with land-lubber Rush Limbaugh, who politicized the pirate affair by referring to the pirates as "black teenagers."

"It feels great to be home," said Murphy in an interview with WCBV in Boston. "It feels like everyone around here has my back, with the exception of Rush Limbaugh, who is trying to make this into a race issue...that's disgusting."

Limbaugh made the remark to suggest why President obama might have appeared preoccupied at church on the day of the operation to rescue the ship's captain, who was taken hostage by the pirates until Navy SEAL snipers shot them in a daring rescue effort.

"He was worried about the order he had given to wipe out three teenagers on the high seas," Limbaugh said. "Black Muslim teenagers."

Tags: pirate, hostage, shane murphy, rush limbaugh

Ronald Reagan On Prosecuting Torture

Sat, 25 Apr 2009 01:28:19 GMT

clipped by: Anomaly100
clipper's remarks: My italics. Reagan was admant about prosecuting torture, but also prosecuting inhuman treatment that some might claim was not full-on torture. Now go read National Review or The Weekly Standard. And look what has happened to conservatism in America.

Clip Source: andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com

Reagan On Torture Prosecutions

From his signing statement ratifying the UN Convention on Torture from 1984:

"The United States participated actively and effectively in the negotiation of the Convention . It marks a significant step in the development during this century of international measures against torture and other inhuman treatment or punishment. Ratification of the Convention by the United States will clearly express United States opposition to torture, an abhorrent practice unfortunately still prevalent in the world today.

The core provisions of the Convention establish a regime for international cooperation in the criminal prosecution of torturers relying on so-called 'universal jurisdiction.' Each State Party is required either to prosecute torturers who are found in its territory or to extradite them to other countries for prosecution."

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Tags: ronald reagan, torture