Mountain Sage

From what I’m hearing on CNN and according to a special on this case I saw a couple of months ago, there is a lot of room for doubt concerning Amanda Knox’s guilt.  Rudy Guede was found guilty of this  murder last year and it is reported that he said Amanda Knox was not at the scene of the crime and had nothing to do with the crime.  The Italian jury evidently discounted Guede’s statement and found Knox and her boyfriend guilty.

Perugia, Italy (CNN) — An Italian jury has found American student Amanda Knox and her Italian boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito guilty in the stabbing death of British exchange student Meredith Kercher.

Knox was sentenced to 26 years in prison and Sollecito was sentenced to 25 years.

Both were convicted on all charges except theft and together must pay 5 million euros ($7.4 million) to the victim’s family. In addition, Knox must pay 40,000 euros ($60,000) to a man whom she falsely accused of the killing.

Knox, wearing a lime jacket, her hair in a single braid, began to sob — her sniffles and sobs punctuating the otherwise silent courtroom — as the judge read the verdict quietly, without expression.

[snip]

Knox and Sollecito were charged with murder and sexual violence in the November 2007 stabbing death of Meredith Kercher. Knox and Kercher, both studying abroad, were roommates. A third suspect was found guilty in a separate trial.

Prosecutors argued Seattle, Washington native Amanda Knox was a resentful American so angry with her British roommate that she exacted revenge during a twisted sex misadventure at their home two years ago.

They said Knox directed Sollecito and another man infatuated with her, Rudy Guede, to hold Kercher down as Knox played with a knife before slashing Kercher’s throat.

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How is unemployment in your area?  Are more jobs showing up in the Help Wanted ads?  While the fact unemployment didn’t go up is good news, I’m not ready to celebrate yet.

The U.S. unemployment rate edged down to 10 percent in November from 10.2 percent the month before, suggesting that the economy is stabilizing and starting to claw its way back from the deep recession.

Non-farm payrolls fell by just 11,000, the Labor Department said Friday, a sign that companies are starting to hang on to workers. In October, 111,000 jobs had vanished, and analysts had expected a much higher number of jobs had been lost in November — as many as 130,000 or more.

“The numbers are a lot better than we expected,” said David Wyss, chief economist of Standard & Poor’s. “We’re still looking at unemployment rates that are going to be highest since the postwar record in 1982, but this is encouraging. . . . Small negatives are better than big negatives. Flat is the new up.”

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Officials from the State of Hawaii have confirmed Barack Obama’s birth certificate as being on file in Hawaii and that he is a U.S. citizen, so just what part of the “birther” discussion is fair game, Sarah?  Her nuttiness just keeps spilling out.

Just FYI, Article II, Section I of the Constitution says:

No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that office who shall not have attained to the age of thirty five years, and been fourteen Years a resident within the United States.

Obama is a citizen of the U.S. and that should be enough said.

Sarah Palin declared on Thursday that the legitimacy of President Obama’s birth certificate is “rightfully” an issue with the American public, and that it is “fair game” for politicians to question Obama’s citizenship.

The comments came during an interview with conservative radio host Rusty Humphries, who asked Palin whether she planned to “make the birth certificate an issue” if she runs for president in 2012.

“I think the public rightfully is still making it an issue,” Palin said. “I don’t have a problem with that. I don’t know if I would have to bother to make it an issue, because I think that members of the electorate still want answers.”

SOURCE

In a later flip flop:

Sarah Palin scrambled away from the birther movement last night after giving them a wink and a nod on a conservative radio talk show yesterday. Posting on her Facebook page at 1:16am, Palin writes that, “at no point – not during the campaign, and not during recent interviews – have I asked the president to produce his birth certificate or suggested that he was not born in the United States.” She tries to dismiss her birther flirtation as just an acknowledgment of voters’ right to know: “Voters have every right to ask candidates for information if they so choose. I’ve pointed out that it was seemingly fair game during the 2008 election for many on the left to badger my doctor and lawyer for proof that Trig is in fact my child.”
SOURCE

I guess one looney tune deserves another.  I don’t think “many” on the left got into that Trig is not Sarah’s child.  It was a group of nuts.

Why aren’t these child abusers in jail in addition to the financial compensation?  Where’s the justice in allowing them to buy their way out of their abuse?  And I don’t think their regret will help those damaged by their abuse.  According to the article they are guilty of permitting and covering up endemic rape, molestation, beatings and mental cruelty in their children’s institutions.

Church orders and parish priests today remain official patrons of most schools, and the Sisters of Mercy congregation also owns key Dublin hospitals. What the hell?  Why?  Did the Irish government learn nothing?  All child abuse is horrific, but even  more so when done in a religious environment and the government turns a blind eye.

DUBLIN – A major Irish order of Roman Catholic nuns, the Sisters of Mercy, offered Thursday to pay child abuse victims, the government and charities a further $193.5 million to compensate for decades of abuse in its schools and orphanages.

The compensation offer to the Irish Education Department is by far the largest from 18 orders of Catholic priests, brothers and nuns found guilty of chronic child abuse. They ran scores of residential schools, workhouses and orphanages for generations of Ireland’s most deprived children from the mid-19th century to the 1990s.

The Sisters of Mercy said in a statement it “wholeheartedly regrets the suffering experienced by the children in their care” and hoped this latest offer would show that its nuns were being “faithful to the values of reparation, reconciliation, healing and responsibility.”

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For many people the recession means one thing – no job.  I’m not sure exactly what the answer is to the unemployment problem but something must be done.  We will never, as a nation, pull out of this economic slump until people who want a job can find a job.

The unemployment rate is considered a lagging indicator meaning that it measures the effect of a recession and can worsen even after the economy starts to turn around. In October, unemployment rose to 10.2%. The states with the highest unemployment rate in October were Michigan (15.1%),Nevada (13%), Rhode Island (12.9%), California (12.5%) and South Carolina (12.1%). A total of 29 states had a rise in unemployment rates in October.

President Barack Obama says chronic unemployment isn’t merely academic and is “a struggle that cuts deep and touches people across the nation.”

Seeking to set a can-do tone for a jobs forum he hosted at the White House, Obama claimed progress toward an economic recovery while saying much more work needs to be done.

Obama said the leading question of the day is “how do we get businesses to start hiring again.” He spoke to a gathering of academics, business executives and labor leaders on the eve of the government’s report, due Friday, on the state of joblessness in November. The jobless rate in October shot up to 10.2 percent.

[snip]

“Increasing employment is everyone’s responsibility, from government to businesses to households,” Obama economic adviser Larry Summers said in advance of the forum. “The White House jobs forum will take stock of where we are on the implementation of the Recovery Act and explore new job creation measures, including infrastructure investment, incentives for small businesses, developing our green economy and promoting U.S. exports.”

SOURCE.

If the Salahi’s did breach security they should go to jail.  I can’t imagine what could possibly cause the Secret Service agents to admit someone – anyone – who wasn’t on the White House list.

Secret Service chief Mark Sullivan told a Congressional committee Thursday morning that the agents who admitted Tareq and Michaele Salahi through a White House checkpoint at last week’s state dinner have been placed on administrative leave and could lose their jobs.

Sullivan’s testimony came during a hearing of the House Homeland Security Committee, at which he took full responsibility for the security failure. He said the agents face a range of disciplinary actions, including the possibility of being fired.

Although the Salahis and White House social secretary Desirée Rogers were invited to testify as well, they refused, raising the possibility that they could be subpoenaed and required to tell their part of a story that has drawn international headlines.

[snip]

Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, has said he intends to subpoena the Salahis if they do not come to the Hill voluntarily to testify.

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It’s time for the rest of the world to ante up and send some significant troops into Afghanistan if they are in agreement that Afghanistan needs help to stabilize the country.  The token number of troops being sent by other countries is just plain bullshit.  If Afghanistan is the world’s problem, then the solution needs to be equally shared and NATO’s 5,000 troops to our 30,000 troops is not equitable.

BRUSSELS (AP) — European and other U.S. allies will contribute more than 5,000 new troops to the international force in Afghanistan, NATO’s chief said Wednesday, declaring that the war is not America’s alone.

Still, aside from Poland, the pledges came in small numbers from small nations. European powers like France and Germany praised President Barack Obama’s speech on his new strategy for Afghanistan but were silent on the offer of new troops.

Reacting to Obama’s call for more help, a Polish official said the government will likely send 600 combat-ready reinforcements, mainly for patrolling and training, to beef up its existing 2,000-strong contingent.

Albania pledged to increase its 250-member unit by 85 troops, army trainers and medical workers, Prime Minister Sali Berisha said.

Spain’s El Pais daily said the defense ministry was considering adding 200 soldiers to its 1,000 contingent. Italy declared it would do its part and Finland confirmed that it had been asked to consider sending more troops and would do so next week.

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Remarks by the President in Address to the Nation on the Way Forward in Afghanistan and Pakistan
Eisenhower Hall Theatre, United States Military Academy at West Point, West Point, New York

8:01 P.M. EST

THE PRESIDENT: Good evening. To the United States Corps of Cadets, to the men and women of our Armed Services, and to my fellow Americans: I want to speak to you tonight about our effort in Afghanistan — the nature of our commitment there, the scope of our interests, and the strategy that my administration will pursue to bring this war to a successful conclusion. It’s an extraordinary honor for me to do so here at West Point — where so many men and women have prepared to stand up for our security, and to represent what is finest about our country.

To address these important issues, it’s important to recall why America and our allies were compelled to fight a war in Afghanistan in the first place. We did not ask for this fight. On September 11, 2001, 19 men hijacked four airplanes and used them to murder nearly 3,000 people. They struck at our military and economic nerve centers. They took the lives of innocent men, women, and children without regard to their faith or race or station. Were it not for the heroic actions of passengers onboard one of those flights, they could have also struck at one of the great symbols of our democracy in Washington, and killed many more. [Read the rest of this entry...]

I can’t even imagine being in school today.   It seems everyone is considered a criminal until proved otherwise.

Problems with over-policing our schools

By Marian Wright Edelman

Imagine being four years old and put into handcuffs because you and your friend wouldn’t take a nap in your pre-K class. Or being five years old, handcuffed, and taken away from your school by ambulance to a hospital psychiatric ward after throwing a tantrum in the kindergarten room. These scenarios might sound far-fetched, but both are true stories that captured the local media’s attention after they happened to children at their New York City public schools. The over-policing of public schools – not just in New York, but around the country – is one more threat to our nation’s children at risk of entering the pipeline to prison.

In New York, the expanded police presence started becoming especially obvious about ten years ago when the New York Police Department (NYPD) took control over school safety from the Board of Education. By the start of the 2005-06 school year, the NYPD employed 4,625 School Safety Agents in New York City schools – more personnel than there are officers in the police forces of Washington, DC, Detroit, Boston or Las Vegas, according to the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) report, “Criminalizing the Classroom: The Over-Policing of New York City Schools.” In addition to increasing the numbers of these school safety agents, who are unarmed but can make arrests, the city also launched the Impact Schools Initiative, in which armed police officers have been deployed in the city’s “most dangerous” schools. Modeled after the NYPD’s Operation Impact program for fighting street crime, the initiative is designed to flood those schools with armed officers and surveillance cameras. Over the last five years, a total of 28 schools have been designated as “impact schools.”

A June 2005 report by the Drum Major Institute found that impact schools were among the most overcrowded and underfunded in the city and serve a student body that is disproportionately poor, Black and over-age for their grade. Another report by Fordham University found that targeting a school as an impact school led to a significant decline in attendance there. This is exactly the opposite of what schools serving poor, at-risk youths should want to happen. But since the NYPD-takeover of school security, many students and teachers have said that their schools feel more like prisons than places of learning.

One English teacher described the scene this way in the NYCLU report: “On this random Wednesday morning, scanners were set up in the cafeteria of the public high school in the South Bronx where I work. Students’ bags were placed on a scanner, they were forced to walk through metal detectors, and any item deemed inappropriate for school – including food, keys and spare change – were taken away. Many students were patted down, some even with their hands on a police car. An overwhelming ratio of adults to students made the cafeteria seem a lot like a police station…[C]an we please not treat already-struggling, inner city teenagers who have gotten themselves to school like they’ve committed a crime?” REST OF ARTICLE

Hey, why not send more troops…..things worked out so well in Vietnam.  Yes, I’m sure someone will show up to lecture me on how this is so different from Vietnam and I am aware of those differences, but it still feels like déjà vu all over again.

President Obama huddled at 5 p.m. Sunday with his top military and national security team, issuing orders for the Pentagon to implement his plan for sending more than 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters that Obama “issued orders” from the Oval Office to Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Gen. David Petraeus, Adm. Mike Mullen, National Security Adviser Jim Jones, Gen. James Cartwright and chief of staff Rahm Emanuel. Before that meeting he spoke via phone with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

“The president communicated his final decision on the strategy … and issued orders on the strategy’s implementation,” Gibbs said.

Obama also will be in “close consultation with our friends and allies throughout the day” because the administration believes the war “is a shared international challenge.”

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