In Ferguson, Missouri, a festering truth about the entire United States has come to light.

What Ferguson has made clear, specifically, is that the social contract has been broken.
......we are seeing nothing less than the state proving itself illegitimate.

When the decisions of a justice system are so repugnant to a significant mass of people that the state apparatus expects and must contend with popular unrest, then this political system has lost the grounds on which political legitimacy is based.
When, on Monday, Missouri Governor Jay Nixon declared a state of emergency in Ferguson ahead of the grand jury decision,
I like to think the ghost of Jean Jacques Rousseau looked on and whispered through the icy Missouri air, "Rise up."

The social contract is broken, Rousseau stated, when a government does not represent the general will of the sovereign — the sovereign being the people, united — and when justice is not the expression of the general will of the people. And so, in Ferguson, where the National Guard must be called for fear that people will be moved to violence because of the decisions of our justice system, the social contract, it seems, is broken.

This, for Rousseau, would be grounds enough for revolution.

Those were the words he shared with a grand jury. And late Monday, Wilson's explanation of that deadly day in early August became public for the first time, in a small part of an enormous trove of documents released by St. Louis County Prosecutor Robert McCulloch.

During today's meeting of the New Jersey State Investment Council, private equity executive Robert Grady announced he is stepping down from the chairmanship of the panel. Christie has called Grady a "friend of mine for nearly 40 years" whom he relies on for political advice.

In recent months, campaign finance documents revealed that under Grady’s leadership, the state has awarded lucrative pension management contracts to hedge fund, private equity, venture capital and other so-called “alternative investment” firms whose executives made campaign contributions to Christie's campaign, his state party, the Christie-led Republican Governors Association and the Republican National Committee. The donations included a $10,000 contribution from Massachusetts Republican Gov.-elect Charlie Baker to the New Jersey Republican State Committee just months before Baker’s firm was given a New Jersey pension investment.

The donations were made despite New Jersey and federal rules aiming to restrict contributions to state officials like Christie who oversee pension investment decisions. Documents uncovered by International Business Times showed that Grady, a former Carlyle Group executive, was in regular communication with Christie’s campaign officials at the time the campaign was raising money and he was overseeing the state's pension investments. Grady pushed New Jersey to move pension money into an investment in which his private financial firm was also investing, documents revealed. New Jersey also invested in Carlyle Group funds during Grady's tenure, though he recused himself from final votes on those investments.

New Jersey's largest union has filed a complaint with the state ethics commission about the donations, and New Jersey lawmakers are currently considering legislation to strengthen existing restrictions on campaign donations to state officials from firms managing state pension money.

A sound bomb detonated on Thursday morning at Ramsis railway station in central Cairo, railway authority spokesman Nagwa Albert told Ahram Online..

The explosion of sound bombs at transportation hubs around the country has been a recurrent phenomenon in recent months.

Last week, a sound bomb burst at Helmiyat El-Zeitun metro station in east Cairo, setting off a stampede which left 16 people with minor injuries.

The agreement also sets the stage for future product integrations, but so far the companies are keeping quiet on what those might be. Firefox has lost market share in recent years but is still used by roughly 17 percent of webgoers. According to Mozilla CEO Chris Beard, Firefox users search the web more than 100 billion times each year, suggesting a major windfall for Yahoo as a result of the deal.

By comparison, only 10 percent of web searches are made through Yahoo, as Google and to a lesser extent Bing have made major gains in recent years. Nonetheless, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer said search traffic is still a major priority for the network, and one they expect to explore through the new partnership. "At Yahoo, we believe deeply in search – it’s an area of investment, opportunity and growth for us," said Mayer. "I can’t wait to see what innovations we build together."

The Woodlands,Texas, is just north of Houston and is one of the more conservative Bible-thumping areas of the state.
They just elected a new legislator by the name of Mark Keough who is the senior pastor of Woodlands Bible Church.

Keough, 61, said that ultimately winning the House District 15 seat is the most exciting time of his life.
He called it a “divine appointment, and criticized local high-profile churches for being silent on important social and political issues.

“We do believe that, as an extension of The Woodlands Bible Church, that this is almost as if it was a ministry as well,” Keough said.
“I approached it from that perspective. It sounds crazy, because you ask, ‘where is the separation of church and state?’ You tell me.
Where is separation of church and state? It’s not there."

FERGUSON, Mo. – Ferguson Police Chief Tom Jackson told NewsChannel 5 that Officer Darren Wilson could return to the police force.

Chief Jackson said if the grand jury does not indict Wilson, he will immediately return to active duty. Wilson's assignment has yet to be determined.

However, Chief Jackson said if the grand jury does return an indictment, Officer Wilson will most likely be fired.