Vernon Baker, who was the only living black veteran awarded the Medal of Honor for valor in World War II, receiving it 52 years after he wiped out four German machine-gun nests on a hilltop in northern Italy, died Tuesday at his home near St. Maries, Idaho. He was 90.Enlarge This ImageVernon Baker during World War II.Enlarge This ImageRick Wilking/ReutersMr. Baker received the Medal of Honor from President Bill Clinton at age 77.The cause was complications of brain cancer, said Ron Hodge, owner of the Hodge Funeral Home in St. Maries.“I was a soldier and I had a job to do,” Mr. Baker said after receiving the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest award for bravery, from President Bill Clinton in a White House ceremony on Jan. 13, 1997.
via Vernon Baker, Black Medal of Honor Recipient, Dies at 90 – Obituary Obit – NYTimes.com.
“Almost one-fourth of their ranks” is “a scattering”? Sounds like a pretty good chunk to me, especially in a country that is after all still mostly white. Let’s go to the tape. The data-filled graphic says that 77 percent of Tea Party supporters are “non-Hispanic whites.” And this 2008 Census report says that the United States as a whole is 65 percent non-Hispanic white. So the Tea Party is indeed somewhat more “white” than the country at large, but not by that much. Twelve points above the national average is not “overwhelmingly white,” and 23 percent Hispanics, Asian Americans and African Americans is not “a scattering.” At a rough estimate, it represents about 14 million non-Anglo Americans who support the Tea Party movement.How does this compare to the demographics of other movements? Strangely enough, I can’t find any real data on the demographics of the enviromental movement. Maybe pollsters and mainstream journalists don’t want to know. But here’s a report that 84 percent of the visitors to the Sierra Club website are Caucasian. Similar implication here. And here’s a story on the environmentalist movement’s desperate attempt to seem not so “overwhelmingly white.” Yet somehow journalists don’t focus on that obvious fact about the environmentalist movement.
via The Not-So-White Tea Party | Cato @ Liberty.
A car carrying state Sen. Eric Schneiderman, a Democratic candidate for New York attorney general, sideswiped a parked minivan on Monday evening and then drove away.Mr. Schneiderman and his driver, a campaign aide who is the niece of Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan, did not notify the police nor the owner of the vehicle, which suffered minor damages. Nobody was injured in the incident. While downplaying the incident, the campaign disciplined the driver, 22-year-old Rachel Kagan. A passing bicyclist who witnessed the incident jotted down Schneiderman’s plate number and remained on the scene waiting for the owner of the damaged vehicle, who turned out to be NY1 executive editor Melissa Rabinovich.She contacted Schneiderman yesterday demanding an explanation.”He told me he had disciplined the staffer. But he was also insisting that it was just a bump and not a moving violation,” Rabinovich said. “I told him, ‘Your car was moving and then you drove away. A total stranger realized you damaged my car, but you didn’t?’ “Her 2008 Chrysler Town & Country sustained damage to the rear bumper and rear panel and a broken tail light. The station put the repair cost at about $3,000.
via JammieWearingFool.
The National Institutes of Health NIH has awarded $181,406 this year to a researcher at the University of Kentucky to study how cocaine enhances the sex drive of Japanese quail.“Controlled preclinical studies that utilize animal models have demonstrated that prior repeated exposure to cocaine enhances sexual motivation and behavior,” says the grant description posted by the NIH. “However, no parametric or systematic studies further investigating the basic mechanisms underlying this relationship have been conducted.
via CNSNews.com – U.S Government Spent $181,406 to Study How Cocaine Enhances Sex Drive of Japanese Quail.
SHE was only 14 when she was forced into marriage with an older man.Yet within a year of her wedding, Azar Bagheri was charged with adultery and sentenced to be stoned to death.The sentence could not be carried out until she was 18. So for the past four years, Ms Bagheri has been languishing on death row while the courts waited for her to reach maturity so she could be put to death.According to Iranian human rights activist Mina Ahadi, Ms Bagheri was denounced by her husband, who accused her of committing adultery with two men.Ms Ahadi said the teenager had been subjected to two mock stonings. On each occasion she was taken out of her cell and buried up to her shoulders in the yard of Tabriz prison, in northwest Iran, as if being prepared to be pelted to death with stones.
via Wed at 14, ‘adulterous’ girl, Azar Bagheri, awaits stoning | The Australian.
Price tag for schools complex at former Ambassador Hotel site now tops $578 millionIt is the Los Angeles Unified School District’s most expensive school project. The school board approves an additional $6.6 million in new expenses to already costly revisions.
The price tag for a complex of schools at the site of the famed Ambassador Hotel has become the Los Angeles Unified School District’s most expensive school project, now surpassing $578 million.
The latest cost increase, approved Tuesday by the Board of Education, adds $6.6 million for expenses related mostly to safety and historic preservation at the complex for 4,200 students.
via Price tag for schools complex at former Ambassador Hotel site now tops $578 million – latimes.com.
The Helena Public Schools Board of trustees faced a large and emotionally charged crowd at its meeting Tuesday night as it considers whether to begin its sexual education curriculum in kindergarten.Members of the community were invited to give public comment on the proposed K-12 Health Enhancement Comprehensive Curriculum before the nine-member board votes next month.Click here to view the proposed curriculum.The Montana Family Foundation is fighting the proposed changes, telling Fox News its biggest concern is teaching graphic sexual detail to kids who are not emotionally able to process or comprehend it. If the changes pass, kids as young as 5 will begin to learn medically accurate names for a number of both male and female “private parts.”According to the draft proposal, beginning in kindergarten, school nurses will teach students proper terms such as “nipple, breast, penis, scrotum and uterus.” And once they are promoted to first grade, children will learn that sexual relations could happen between two men or two women. By the time students are 10 years old, instruction will include the various ways people can have intercourse, be it vaginally, orally or through “anal penetration,” according to the proposal.
via Helena, Mont., Mulls Kindergarten Sex Ed « Liveshots.
Two strange canines some say are eerily similar to the legendary chupacabra have been killed in North Texas over the past week.A rancher in Hood County, southwest of Fort Worth, said he heard a growl coming from inside his barn. When he looked in, he said he saw the ugliest creature he has ever seen. An animal control officer was called to the rancher’s property and shot and killed the animal, which some people believe is the mythical goat sucker.”I’m not sure on that part. All I know is, it wasn’t normal,” said Animal Control Office Frank Hackett. “It was ugly, real ugly. I’m not going to tell no lie on that one.”
via Chupacabras? Mysterious creatures killed in Texas county | WOAI.COM: San Antonio News.
Former Vice President Dick Cheney announced Wednesday that he has undergone surgery to install a small pump to help his heart work, as the 69-year-old enters a new phase of what he called “increasing congestive heart failure.“”The operation went very well and I am now recuperating,” Cheney said in a statement released by his office. The surgery took place last week at Inova Fairfax Heart and Vascular Institute in northern Virginia, where Cheney said he is currently receiving care.
via Cheney recuperating from heart surgery – NYPOST.com.
So here’s the irony: Google ranks Pakistan No. 1 in the world in searches for pornographic terms, outranking every other country in the world in searches per person for certain sex-related content.Pakistan is top dog in searches per-person for “horse sex” since 2004, “donkey sex” since 2007, “rape pictures” between 2004 and 2009, “rape sex” since 2004, “child sex” between 2004 and 2007 and since 2009, “animal sex” since 2004 and “dog sex” since 2005, according to Google Trends and Google Insights, features of Google that generate data based on popular search terms.The country also is tops — or has been No. 1 — in searches for “sex,” “camel sex,” “rape video,” “child sex video” and some other searches that can’t be printed here.
via FOXNews.com – No. 1 Nation in Sexy Web Searches? Call it Pornistan.
The Obama administration has officially approved the first instance of taxpayer funded abortions under the new national government-run health care program. This is the kind of abortion funding the pro-life movement warned about when Congress considered the bill.The Obama Administration will give Pennsylvania $160 million to set up a new “high-risk” insurance program under a provision of the federal health care legislation enacted in March.It has quietly approved a plan submitted by an appointee of pro-abortion Governor Edward Rendell under which the new program will cover any abortion that is legal in Pennsylvania.
via Obama Administration OKs First Tax-Funded Abortions Under Health Care Law.
Police in New Jersey must explain the state’s implied consent law to motorists in a language that they understand, the state Supreme Court ruled on Monday.In a 4-3 decision, the court overturned a conviction for refusing to take an alcohol breath test because the man, who spoke only Spanish, did not understand the consequences.The court found that a Plainfield police officer failed to inform German Marquez, who is from El Salvador, in Spanish that he would automatically lose his driver’s license for seven months if he refused the test.Police had responded to a two-car accident in 2007. The officer initially asked in English for Marquez to show his license. When the officer repeated the request in Spanish, Marquez complied.
via NorthJersey.com: N.J. top court rules police must explain DWI test laws in native language.
The Department of Transportation has analyzed dozens of black boxes in Toyota vehicles involved in accidents blamed on unintended acceleration, finding the throttles were open and the brakes were not engaged, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.That suggests that drivers of the speeding cars were stepping on the accelerator rather than hitting the brakes. The vehicles investigated came from a sample in which the drivers said they were braking but failed to stop the car before crashing, the newspaper said, citing unnamed sources familiar with the findings.Transportation Department officials declined to confirm the report and did not comment. Toyota spokesman Mike Michels said the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has not shared its findings with the Japanese automaker but said their own findings from investigations of unintended acceleration are consistent with the report.
via Report: Toyota crash data suggests driver error – Yahoo! News.
The confluence between the Obama administration and the journalists who cover it can leave news consumers wondering if they’re getting the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.Two prominent media personalities — liberal Fox News Channel commentator Bob Beckel and media mogul Mort Zuckerman, owner of the New York Daily News — have recently let slip that they have worked closely with the Obama administration. Neither disclose this fact with regularity. Indeed, their recent admissions were revelatory.Zuckerman, a self-described Obama supporter, has written at least one speech for the President. Beckel, who worked with David Axelrod during the campaign, is now an adviser in some capacity to the White House.
via Zuckerman, Beckel Reveal Previously Undisclosed Ties to Obama WH | NewsBusters.org.
