Is the Pledge of Allegiance 'Divisive?' Some Politicians Think So
Entry #4,954
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NBA is shutting down at midnight
Lockout looms: NBA owners tell players at meeting that league is shutting down midnight Thursday
Mitch Lawrence
DAILY NEWS SPORTS WRITER
Thursday, June 30th 2011, 4:29 PM
Mary Altaffer/AP
Spurs forward Matt Bonner arrives at a midtown hotel for Thursday's negotiating session.
The NBA has shut down operations and fallen into the abyss.
As expected, the NBA is locking out its 450 players, effective Thursday night at midnight, with the expiration of the current CBA. The owners informed the players of their decision when a three-hour meeting in Manhattan ended around nine hours before the midnight deadline, with no progress.
The owners' side was comprised of commissioner David Stern, deputy commissioner Adam Silver, Garden CEO Jim Dolan and Spurs owner Peter Holt, chairman of the owners' labor committee.
"It's with some sadness that we recommend this lockout," Stern said. "This has a very large impact on a lot of people, most of whom are not associated with either side. I'm not scared. I'm resigned to the potential damage it can cause to our league.''
The contract dispute could keep the league's arena doors padlocked for the entire 2011-12 season, a move that Stern has said will lead both sides into "the abyss."
"It's disappointing that they decided to lock us out," said the NBA Players Association president Derek Fisher after a three-hour session produced no movement. "There were no surprises. The talks were direct. But we knew this is what we were faced with.''
Fisher left the midtown hotel with other players reps before Stern met with the media.
The two sides could resume talks in the next few weeks, according to Billy Hunter, the NBA Players Association esecutive director. For that reason, the union is not going to decertify and try to win an anti-trust lawsuit in the courts. Such a legal move would force the union to disband, as was the case when the NFL players went to court when they were locked out by the NFL owners.
"The closing agreement we made was that we would not let the imposition of the lockout stop us from meeting," Hunter said. "We'll probably meet in the next two weeks or so."
But owners continue to push for a hard salary cap and demand major rollbacks in players salaries and benefits that could total $800 million per season. Players want to continue with the current soft-cap system that has given them 57% of the revenues, totaling in excess of $2 billion annually. So it doesn't look like there will be any settlement anytime soon.
Entry #4,953
The Constitution's framers were flawed
The Founding Fathers, Unzipped
Simon Schama
Newsweek
June 26, 2011
The Constitution’s framers were flawed like today’s politicians, so it’s high time we stop embalming them in infallibility.
He may have written the Declaration of Independence, but were he around today Thomas Jefferson wouldn’t have a prayer of winning the Republican nomination, much less the presidency. It wouldn’t be his liaison with the teenage daughter of one of his slaves nor the love children she bore him that would be the stumbling block. Nor would it be Jefferson’s suspicious possession of an English translation of the Quran that might doom him to fail the Newt Gingrich loyalty test. No, it would be the Jesus problem that would do him in. For Thomas Jefferson denied that Jesus was the son of God. Worse, he refused to believe that Jesus ever made any claim that he was. While he was at it, Jefferson also rejected as self-evidently absurd the Trinity, the Virgin Birth, and the Resurrection.
Jefferson was not, as his enemies in the election of 1800 claimed, an atheist. He believed in the Creator whom he invoked in the Declaration of Independence and whom he thought had brought the natural universe into being. By his own lights he thought himself a true Christian, an admirer of the moral teachings of the Nazarene. It had been, he argued, generations of the clergy who had perverted the simple humanity of Jesus the reformer, turned him into a messiah, and invented the myth that he had died to redeem mankind’s sins.
All of which would surely mean that, notwithstanding his passion for minimal government, the Sage of Monticello would have no chance at all beside True Believers like Michele Bachmann. But Jefferson’s rationalist deism is not the idle makeover of liberal wishful thinking. It is incontrovertible historical fact, as is his absolute determination never to admit religion into any institutions of the public realm.
So the philosopher-president whose aversion to overbearing government makes him a Tea Party patriarch was also a man who thought the Immaculate Conception a fable. But then real history is like that—full of knotty contradictions, its cast list of heroes, especially American heroes, majestic in their complicated imperfections.
Take another of the Founders routinely canonized in the current fairy-tale version of American origins that passes muster for history by those who don’t actually read very much of it: Alexander Hamilton. Outed by the Andrew Breitbart of his day, James Thomson Callender, for having had an “amorous connection” with the married Maria Reynolds, Hamilton responded by making an unapologetic preemptive confession—insisting that since on the truly serious issue of whether he had profited from the management of public finances he was innocent, the rest was nobody’s business but his own. Callender retorted that Hamilton had owned up to the sexual impropriety as a cover for the more serious financial one.
True history is the enemy of reverence. We do the authors of American independence no favors by embalming them in infallibility, by treating the Constitution like a quasi-biblical revelation instead of the product of contention and cobbled-together compromise that it actually was. Even the collective noun “Founding -Fathers” planes smooth the unreconciled divisiveness of their bitter and acrimonious disputes. History is a book of chastening wisdom to which we ought to be looking to deepen our understanding of the legitimate nature of American government—including its revenue-raising power, an issue that deeply captivated the antagonized minds of that first generation. But unfortunately, there is little evidence of citizens engaging in close, critical reading ofThe Federalist Papers,of the debates surrounding constitutional ratification, or of the dispute that pitted Hamilton and James Madison against Patrick Henry over what was at stake in Congress’s authority to make laws “necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the…Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States.”
Instead of knowledge, we have tricorn hats. Staring at a copy of the Constitution in the National Archives and making promotional pilgrimages to revolutionary New England didn’t prevent Sarah Palin from butchering the truth of Paul Revere’s ride, turning it into some sort of NRA advisory to the British to keep their gosh-darned hands off American firearms.
Facts, as John Adams insisted when defending British redcoats after the Boston Massacre, “are stubborn things.” He would be horrified by the regularity with which American history is mangled in the interests of confirming prejudices. It matters when Glenn Beck’s guest Andrew Napolitano pins the responsibility for the 17th Amendment, instituting direct election of senators, on a Wilsonian plot against American liberties, rather than the proposal of a Republican senator in 1911 that was approved by Congress before Wilson ever set foot in the White House. It matters when Bachmann mischaracterizes the Founding Fathers as working “tirelessly until slavery was no more in the United States.” What made the Constitution acceptable throughout the Union was a Faustian bargain that counted slaves as three fifths of a citizen, thus artificially bloating the political representation of the slaveholding South.
With adult history buffs so deluded about the reality of the American past, it’s even more alarming that the National Assessment of Educational Progress recently rated history as the subject at which students are least proficient. This wouldn’t matter if history were just some recreational stroll down memory lane. But it isn’t. In the fiery debates of Americans long dead can be discerned the lineaments of the same core issues that divide us today. Right now, the education that might inform such a debate has turned into a schoolyard shouting match.
As the electioneering rises to a din, those who dare to read history for its chastening wisdom will be fatuously accused of “declinism.” But it is those who reduce history’s hard and honest reckonings to exceptionalist chest-thumping who will be the true agents of degeneration. As one of Jefferson’s favorite books, Gibbon’sDecline and Fall of the Roman Empire,so luminously argued, there is no surer sign of a country’s cultural and political decay than an obtuse blindness to its unmistakable beginnings.
Schama, a professor of history at Columbia University, debuts as a NEWSWEEK/DAILY BEAST contributor in this issue.
Books: The Historical Founders
Revolutionaries:A New History of the Invention of Americaby Jack Rakove.
Compulsive and compulsory reading on the Revolution and forging of the Constitution.
Defiance of the Patriots:The Boston Tea Party & the Making of Americaby Benjamin L. Carp.
A wise and illuminating study of the original tea party.
American Scripture:Making the Declaration of Independence by Pauline Maier.
The definitive book, and a thrilling read, on the writing of the Declaration.
The Federalist Papers.The priceless document of two mighty intellects, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, united in common cause of creating an enduring American government.
Entry #4,952
John Lennon Closet Republican and Ronald Reagan Fan
John Lennon Closet Republican, Ronald Reagan Fan
John Nolte
Big Hollywood
Jun 29th 2011 at 9:35 am
Sounds at though John Lennon might have grown up before his untimely death:
John Lennon was a closet Republican, who felt a little embarrassed by his former radicalism, at the time of his death – according to the tragic Beatles star’s last personal assistant.
Fred Seaman worked alongside the music legend from 1979 to Lennon’s death at the end of 1980 and he reveals the star was a Ronald Reagan fan who enjoyed arguing with left-wing radicals who reminded him of his former self.
In new documentary Beatles Stories, s thought he was while he was his assistant.
He says, “John, basically, made it very clear that if he were an American he would vote for Reagan because he was really sour on (Democrat) Jimmy Carter.
“He’d met Reagan back, I think, in the 70s at some sporting event… Reagan was the guy who had ordered the National Guard, I believe, to go after the young (peace) demonstrators in Berkeley, so I think that John maybe forgot about that… He did express support for Reagan, which shocked me.
What’s crazy is that the failed president known as Barack Obama makes Jimmy Carter look like Ronald Reagan and our current crop of “stars” apparently haven’t yet woke up to that fact. Of course, they might all be in the closet like Lennon. But that would be silly. Don’t they read Patrick Goldstein at the L.A. Times? Don’t they know they have nothing to fear in Hollywood if they openly oppose Obama?
Entry #4,950
'To Catch a Predator' host Chris Hansen caught on hidden camera cheating on his wife
'To Catch a Predator' host Chris Hansen caught on hidden camera cheating on his wife: report
Gabriela Resto-Montero
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Wednesday, June 29th 2011, 7:27 PM
Virginia Sherwood, NBC
NBC News reporter Chris Hansen was reportedly caught cheating on his wife on-camera.Gotcha!
Chris Hansen, who has made his name confronting pedophiles on-camera as the host of Dateline NBC’s "To Catch a Predator", was reportedly caught on tape cheating on his wife with a much younger woman, according to the National Enquirer.
Cameras allegedly recorded Hansen taking Florida TV reporter Kristyn Caddell, 30, to dinner at a Ritz-Carlton hotel before spending the night at her Palm Beach apartment.
Hansen, who lives with his wife, Mary, 53, and their two sons in Connecticut, has allegedly been seeing Caddell for four months.
The 51-year-old reporter has been spending time in Florida investigating the disappearance of James Trindale, according to reports.
Hansen has hosted "To Catch a Predator," a show where volunteers from the group Preverted-Justice pose as underage girls to lure pedophiles into homes where he waits to surprise them on-camera, since 2004.
Entry #4,947
Man tries to buy fake pot with fake $1M bill
Entry #4,946
Appeals court upholds Obama's health-reform plan
Cincinnati appeals court upholds Obama's health-reform plan
1:07 PM, Jun. 29, 2011
Dan Horn
President Barack Obama’s health care reform law won a major victory Wednesday when a Cincinnati appeals court ruled that the government could require people to buy health insurance without violating the U.S. Constitution.
The decision by the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals is the first from a federal appeals court on the health care reform law and likely moves the case closer to a showdown at the U.S. Supreme Court.
The three-judge panel voted 2-1 to uphold the law, with one of the court’s most liberal members, Judge Boyce Martin Jr., and one of its most conservative, Judge Jeffrey Sutton, joining in the majority. Sutton expressed reservations about the law, but agreed with Martin that the requirement to purchase health insurance falls under Congress’ powers under the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution.
“We find that the minimum coverage provision is a valid exercise of legislative power,” the judges wrote.
The court’s majority rejected claims that the law, known as the Affordable Care Act, is an unconstitutional and expensive intrusion into the lives of millions of Americans.
But the dissenting judge, James Graham, said the law goes beyond what the constitution allows and could, if it is allowed to stand, lead to greater government intrusions in the future.
“If the exercise of power is allowed and the mandate upheld, it is difficult to see what the limits on Congress’s Commerce Clause authority would be,” Graham wrote. “What aspect of human activity would escape federal power?”
The decision Wednesday is based on a case from Michigan and is one of several now winding through the federal courts. A federal appeals court in Virginia has heard arguments in a similar case, but the 6th Circuit is the first to issue a ruling.
Both opponents and supporters of the law expect the U.S. Supreme Court will get the last word, possibly within the next year or two.
Entry #4,945
Man busted for 'pretending' to be soldier to get first-class upgrade
LI man busted for 'pretending' to be soldier to get first-class upgrade
PHILIP MESSING, C.J. SULLIVAN and BOB FREDERICKS
NY Post
Last Updated: 10:51 AM, June 27, 2011
1:24 AM, June 27, 2011
This GI Joe wannabe got a hero's welcome just by dressing the part.
A Long Island man was arrested for donning an Army uniform and brazenly posing as a soldier so he'd get bumped up to first class on a flight to JFK from the Dominican Republic, Port Authority cops have charged.
Rock Diaz, 22, of Freeport, has a history of pretending to be a military man to get VIP treatment, cops said -- he once even smooth-talked his way into a jetliner's pit, where he was photographed sitting at the controls wearing a goofy grin.
The mile-high huckster was finally brought to earth Friday afternoon when a sharp-eyed customs official at JFK asked him his rank -- and he gave an answer that didn't match the insignia on the uniform he was wearing.
BUSTED: GI "imposter" Rock Diaz right after his arrest in a phony uniform.
"If you knew anything about the military and you looked at him, you could tell he wasn't really a soldier," a cop said.
But Diaz -- in camouflage fatigues and sporting a military-style buzz cut -- allegedly insisted he was the real thing when questioned after getting off an American Airlines flight.
Asked his rank, he said "E-5," referring to a pay grade. But Diaz was wearing the insignia of a staff sergeant, the source said, which is "E-6," a higher pay grade. He also couldn't say where he was stationed, sources said.
Although he was wearing a standard-issue "Army Combat Uniform" and cap, he could not produce a military ID.
Diaz -- who sources said never served in the military -- also had a black POW patch on his sleeve, which an actual soldier would never wear in that spot, the sources said.
And his "dog tags" were comically engraved with the words, "U.S.A. Marines Corp."
The faux soldier allegedly admitted he had pulled the scam at least once before -- when the pit photo was taken in December 2009. Other photos obtained by The Post show him wearing the uniform in Haiti and elsewhere.
Interviewed yesterday, the Spanish-speaking Diaz claimed he did nothing wrong and blamed any confusion on a language barrier.
"I never asked to get upgraded. The stewardess offered me a new seat and I asked why? They explained it to me in English and I did not understand," Diaz said. "I moved where they told me to sit."
He was charged with second-degree impersonation.
American Airlines did not return calls for comment.
Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/gi_faux_scams_airline_ARkpJzHfxRxYhf0KOlb3tM#ixzz1QfmFj4KG
Entry #4,944
Body Exhumed To Swap Dentures
Entry #4,943
5 Foods That Make You Fat, 5 That Don't
5 Foods That Make You Fat, 5 That Don't
Harvard Researchers Identify Foods Linked With Weight Gain Over Time, Foods Linked With Less Weight Gain
Kathleen Doheny
WebMD Health News
WebMD Health News
Reviewed by Laura J. Martin, MD
June 22, 2011 -- Avoiding weight gain as you age isn't impossible, after all.
If you yearn to be among those who sail through the years without picking up a pound for each birthday, Harvard doctors have a game plan for you. And it goes far beyond the old "eat less, exercise more" mantra.
Reducing your intake of specific foods, sleeping 6 to 8 hours nightly, getting some exercise, and turning off the TV all predicted less weight gain with time, they found.
They also found five foods strongly linked with weight gain and five others linked with less than average weight gain.
''The message here is that the type and quality of food and beverage one eats are incredibly important," says researcher Dariush Mozaffarian, MD, DrPH, associate professor of medicine and epidemiology at Harvard School of Public Health, Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School.
The new research, he says, ''shows how multiple lifestyle factors, including diet, were related to long-term weight gain."
The study appears in theNew England Journal of Medicine.
Avoiding Weight Gain: Study Details
The researchers wanted to focus on what leads to long-term weight gain and why the average adult gains about a pound a year.
They tracked 120,000 participants in three studies, the Nurses' Health Study, the Nurses' Health Study II, and the Health Professionals Follow-up Study. Every four years, they evaluated the links between changes in lifestyle habits and weight.
On average, the study participants gained an average of 3.35 pounds over each four-year period. That added up to nearly 17 pounds after 20 years. At the start of the three studies, the men and women's average ages were 37, 50, and 52.
5 Foods That Make You Fat; 5 That Don't
When the researchers looked more closely, they found five foods associated with the greatest weight gain over the study period:
- Potato chips
- Other potatoes
- Sugar-sweetened beverages
- Unprocessed red meats
- Processed meats
They also found five foods linked with less gain and even weight loss:
- Vegetables
- Whole grains
- Fruits
- Nuts
- Yogurt
Deciphering the Findings
"There were huge differences in four-year weight gains based on what people did," he says. "The quantity of fat in the food didn't seem to be strongly related to weight gain." For instance, no differences were seen for low-fat or skim milk compared to whole-fat milk.
Rather, he says, focusing on the quality of food -- not simply total calories, or fat grams, or grams of carbohydrates -- seems most important in avoiding weight gain.
They write: "A habitual energy imbalance of about 50 to 100 kilocalories per day may be sufficient to cause the gradual weight gain seen in most persons."
Yogurt was perhaps the biggest surprise on the list of foods linked with less weight gain, Mozaffarian says. The researchers aren't sure why. They cite some other research finding that changes in gut bacteria from eating yogurt may help in weight control. Or those who eat yogurt may have other healthy habits.
Changes in diet had the strongest link to weight gain. However, the researchers also found that those who slept 6 to 8 hours a night gained less than those who slept less than 6 or more than 8. Weight gain was also linked with changes in the amount of television viewing and changes in physical activity.
''Small differences add up over time," Mozaffarian says. He sees that as both ''a danger and an opportunity." If you don't pay attention, he says, the pounds can pile on quickly. "If you do pay attention, a handful of changes could add up in a beneficial way," he says.
He is not suggesting people completely avoid foods linked with weight gain. "If someone wants to eat some of the foods on the list associated with weight gain, as long as they eat a lot of other foods that are not associated with weight gain, and exercise, and not watch a lot of TV, that would be OK," he says.
Mozaffarian reports receiving honoraria from Unilever, Aramark, and other food-related companies for speaking on diet-related topics.
Avoiding Weight Gain With Age: Perspective
The study provides some good support for factors other experts have assumed are linked with weight gain, says Connie Diekman, RD, director of university nutrition at Washington University in St. Louis. She reviewed the study but was not involved in it.
Diekman says that among the most interesting findings is that the lower the intake of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, and yogurt, the more significant the weight gain. That result jibes with the recommendation in the Dietary Guidelines to shift food intake to more plant foods.
Another important finding, she tells WebMD, is that "a shift in calorie intake of as little as 50 to 100 calories a day may be all it takes to gain or lose weight."
Advice? "I'd encourage consumers to think about one portion you can cut down on each day or one 10-minute walk you can add to your day. These small steps can then become the steps on the path you need to make more changes to achieve, and maintain, a healthier weight."
Entry #4,942
Father arrested after daughter turns him in for pot
Father arrested after daughter turns him in for pot
Tuesday, June 28, 2011 11:29 a.m. MDT
Pat Reavy
Deseret News
COTTONWOOD HEIGHTS — Two teens apparently fed up with their father's marijuana smoking called police Monday to hand over his bag of weed.
The children, a 15-year-old boy and 13-year-old girl, were visiting their father who had partial custodial rights, said Cottonwood Heights Police Sgt. Scott Peck. The children had reportedly noticed in the past that their father's residence always "smelled funny," he said.
The girl, apparently fed up with her father's smoking and drinking, called police to turn him in, Peck said. When officers arrived, the girl found her dad's bag of pot and took it out to officers, he said.
While the young girl was standing outside her father's residence talking to police, her dad texted her to come back into the house, apparently not realizing police were present, Peck said. The officers had the girl text her dad back and tell him to come outside.
When the 44-year-old father came out, he was arrested for investigation of drug possession and child endangerment.
Entry #4,941
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