Hissyspit
Hissyspit's JournalItaly Top Appeals Court Overturns Amanda Knox Acquittal; Orders Retrial
Source: Associated Press
@Reuters: Italy top appeals court overturns Amanda Knox acquittal in Meredith Kercher murder case, orders retrial #breaking
U.S. & World News
Italy high court overturns Amanda Knox acquittal
Updated at 05:12 AM today
ROME -- Italy's highest criminal court has overturned the acquittal of Amanda Knox in the slaying of her British roommate and ordered a new trial.
The Court of Cassation ruled Tuesday that an appeals court in Florence must re-hear the case against the American and her Italian-ex-boyfriend for the murder of 21-year-old Meredith Kercher.
Kercher's body was found in November 2007 in her bedroom of the house she shared with Knox and other roommates in Perugia, an Italian university town where the two women were exchange students. Her throat had been slashed.
Prosecutors alleged Kercher was the victim of a drug-fueled sex game gone awry. Knox and Raffaele Sollecito denied wrongdoing. An Ivory Coast man, Rudy Guede, was convicted of the slaying in a separate proceeding and is serving a 16-year sentence.
Read more: http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=news/national_world&id=9039917
@BreakingNews: Update: Amanda Knox will not be compelled to appear at retrial, can be tried in absentia - @NBCNews
Senate Votes 40-59 to Reject Ryan Budget
Source: Talking Points Memo
Senate Votes 40-59 To Reject Ryan Budget
SAHIL KAPUR 8:51 PM EDT, THURSDAY MARCH 21, 2013
The Senate voted 40-59 to reject the Paul Ryan budget on Thursday night.
Republican Sens. Mike Lee (UT), Ted Cruz (TX), Dean Heller (NV), Susan Collins (ME) and Rand Paul (KY) joined a unified Democratic caucus in voting against it. Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) missed the vote.
Republicans did not offer the Ryan budget; Senate Budget Chair Patty Murray (D-WA) forced the vote by bringing up the plan as a substitute to her own Democratic budget.
"There seemed to be some resistance among my Republican colleagues in bringing up the House Republican budget for a vote. And it's pretty easy to see why that is," she said in a floor speech before the vote. "The House Republican approach has been thoroughly reviewed and just as thoroughly rejected by the American people."
- snip -
The Ryan blueprint passed the House Thursday morning.
Read more: http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/senate-votes-40-59-to-reject-ryan-budget
Chicago to Close 54 Elementary Schools: Union
Source: Reuters
Chicago to close 54 elementary schools: union
Thu Mar 21, 2013 6:24pm EDT
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Chicago Public Schools will close 54 elementary school programs and 61 school buildings, representing 13 percent of the elementary school buildings in the country' third largest public school district, the Chicago Teachers Union said on Thursday.
Citing a list of schools to be closed provided by the district, the union said the schools would be shuttered primarily in Hispanic and African-American neighborhoods. The district, which has a $1 billion annual deficit, has said it needs to close schools to save money.
Enrollment in Chicago Public Schools has fallen 20 percent in the last decade, mainly because of population declines in poor neighborhoods. The first teachers' strike in 25 years last September resulted in a pay raise for teachers, and contributed to the district's financial crisis.
Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSBRE92K1CI20130321
Yeah, That's Off By 6 God-Damned TRILLION Dollars...
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/03/charts-cost-iraq-warCharts: Bush Lowballed Us on Iraq by $6 Trillion
By Tasneem Raja on Tue. March 19, 2013 3:00 AM PDT
Ten years later, the Bush administration's projected price tag for the war in Iraq seems downright cute. According to the first-ever comprehensive count of the true toll of the combined wars, the estimate the administration used to sell the invasion in 2003 was about 100 times too low.
So what did that $6 trillion get us, exactly? Since we borrowed to pay for much of the war, we're facing nearing $4 trillion in cumulative interest between now and 2053, according to the 30 researchers who worked on the "Costs of War" report for Brown University's Watson Institute for International Studies.
To date, according to the report, medical and disability claims of US war veterans of Iraq have reached $84 billion; ongoing care for wounded Iraq war vets and their families is expected to require nearly $500 billion more over the next several decades. Homeland Security got $245 billion in additional funding thanks to increased threats of terror—real, imagined, and staged—over the last 10 years. On-the-ground operations alone ended up being 16 times more expensive than the Bush Cabinet's original estimate for the entire enterprise.
Apparently the Office of Management and Budget was really, really bad at math for a while there in 2003.
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Al Qaeda Claims Attacks on Iraq Invasion Anniversary
Source: Reuters
Al Qaeda claims attacks on Iraq invasion anniversary
Wed Mar 20, 2013 4:11am EDT
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Al Qaeda in Iraq has claimed responsibility for a wave of bombings and suicide attacks on Tuesday that killed around 60 people on the 10th anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion.
Islamic State of Iraq, the country's al Qaeda wing, is regaining strength, invigorated by the Sunni Muslim rebellion in next door Syria and has carried out dozens of high-profile attacks since the start of the year.
"What has reached you on Tuesday is just the first drop of rain, and a first phase, for by God's will, after this we will have our revenge," the al Qaeda statement posted on a jihadist website said.
Car bombs and suicide blasts hit mainly Shi'ite districts in Baghdad and other cities on Tuesday. Suicide attackers have struck nearly two times a week since January, a rate Iraq has not seen for several years.
Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSBRE92J09C20130320
Juan Cole: What We Did To Iraq
http://www.juancole.com/2013/03/what-we-did-to-iraq.htmlWhat we Did to Iraq
Published on March 19th, 2013
Written by: Juan
The US public was always carefully protected by its media from full knowledge of what the US government did to Iraq. The networks had a rule, of never showing blood. They almost never showed wounded Iraqis with bloody bandages. Of course, they never showed dismemberment (bodies blown up, unlike in Hollywood movies, don’t just pile up whole). Since Arabic satellite t.v. showed such images every day, the Arab world and the US saw two different wars on their screens. US media almost never interviewed Iraqi politicians (magazine shows like 60 Minutes very occasionally took up that task). Frequently, Pentagon talking points were swallowed whole. Propaganda about ‘al-Qaeda’ and Zarqawi being responsible for “80%” of the violence was used to hide from Americans that there were both Sunni and Shiite resistance movements against American occupation, and that they were Iraqis and widespread.
Many excellent reporters risked their lives to get compelling stories from American-occupied Iraq, but often appear to have faced resistance from editors back in the US. It was to the point that when I wrote one of my all-time most read pieces, “If America were like Iraq, what would it be like?” readers told me that it came as a revelation because it gave them a sense of proportion.
The US created a power vacuum and exercised a pro-Shiite favoritism in Iraq that fostered a Sunni-Shiite civil war. At its height in 2006-2007, as many as 3,000 Iraqis were being killed a month by militias. Many showed signs of acid or drilling or electrical torture. The Baghdad police had to establish a corpse patrol in the morning to collect the cadavers. How many Iraqis died as a result of the US invasion and occupation will never be known with any precision, but I think 200,000 would be the lower minimum. Since three to four times as many people are typically wounded as killed in conflict situations, that would suggest that as many as one million Iraqis were killed or wounded, some 4% of the population.
- snip -
The war was illegal in international law. Since the US had no-fly zones over northern and southern Iraq, likely there would have been an Iraqi spring in 2011 and the regime would have been prevented, as in Libya, by US air power from putting it down with military force. The regime would have been gone, but by the Iraqi people acting unitedly, instead of by a foreign imposition that championed one ethnic group over others. The outcome would surely have been more stable. The worst thing was, the whole nightmare was unnecessary.
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Bombs (in Iraq) Kill at Least 50 on 10th Anniversary of Iraq Invasion (160 Wounded)
Source: Reuters
Bombs kill at least 50 on anniversary of Iraq invasion
By Kareem Raheem
Tue Mar 19, 2013 4:33am EDT
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Car bombs and a suicide blast hit Shi'ite districts of Baghdad and south of Iraq's capital on Tuesday, killing at least 50 people on the 10th anniversary of the invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein.
Sunni Islamist insurgents tied to al Qaeda have stepped up attacks on Shi'ite targets since the start of the year in a campaign to stoke sectarian tension and undermine Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's government.
Tuesday's car bombs exploded near a busy Baghdad market, close to the heavily fortified Green Zone and in other districts across the capital. A suicide bomber driving a truck attacked a police base in a Shi'ite town just south of the capital, police and hospital sources said.
"I was driving my taxi and suddenly I felt my car rocked. Smoke was all around. I saw two bodies on the ground. People were running and shouting everywhere," said Al Radi, a taxi driver caught in one of the blasts in Baghdad's Sadr City.
Another 160 people were wounded in the attacks, hospital officials said.
Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSBRE92I04Q20130319
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-202_162-57575040/officials-attacks-across-baghdad-kill-at-least-21
@CBSNews: Officials: Attacks across Baghdad kill at least 21, on 10th anniversary of U.S. invasion
Officials: Attacks across Baghdad kill at least 21
March 19, 2013
BAGHDAD Iraqi officials say a wave of attacks in different Shiite areas of Baghdad has killed at least 21 people and wounded dozens.
Police officials say the attacks, mostly by car bombings, targeted mainly small restaurants, daily laborers and bus stops in the Iraqi capital within a one-hour period on Tuesday morning.
The officials say about 80 people were wounded in the attacks. Medics in nearby hospitals confirmed the casualty toll. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to talk to the media.
The attacks come as the country prepares to mark a decade since the U.S.-led invasion, which began on March 20, 2003. Violence has ebbed but insurgent attacks are still frequent across Iraq.
Hillary Clinton Announces Support for Gay Marriage at Human Rights Campaign
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton explains why she supports marriage equality for lesbian and gay couples.
http://www.HRC.org/MarriageEquality
http://www.hrc.org/americansformarriageequality#.UUcp5_q9LCQ
Tom Tomorrow: Conservative Mystery Date
Daily Kos Link: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/03/18/1194414/-Conservative-Mystery-Date
Breaking: Authorities Investigating Death Find Explosive Devices at UCF; 100s of Students Evacuated
Source: Associated Press
@BreakingNews: Authorities find explosive devices while investigating death at University of Central Florida; hundreds of students evacuated - @AP
Dorm evacuated, classes cancelled after police find man dead, explosive devices at UCF
Article by: Associated Press Updated: March 18, 2013 - 6:14 AM
ORLANDO, Fla. - Hundreds of students have been evacuated from a dorm on the University of Central Florida campus in Orlando after explosives devices were found while authorities were investigating a death.
Police were called to Tower 1 early Monday after a fire alarm went off. Arriving officers found a man dead from what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Police told local TV stations they found an assault weapon and improvised explosive devices on the scene.
About 500 students were evacuated from the dorm and a parking garage was closed.
The university has cancelled classes through noon Monday as a precaution.
Read more: http://www.startribune.com/nation/198753021.html
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