World Atlas UpdateOver the last seven days...
Kentucky: Pastor Jody Dewain Lusk faces life in prison over new federal charges of raping a 13 year-old girl. Lusk began serving 20 years in prison last month after being convicted of six counts of child rape by the state.
Virginia: Pastor Jeremy Duffer sentenced to 17 years in prison for molesting two girls.
California: Sunday school teacher Melissa Huckaby pleads guilty to murdering an 8 year-old girl.
New York: Pastor Phillip Joubert to be indicted on two charges of raping an underage female. He faces 25 years in prison.
Pennsylvania: Catholic Youth Organization basketball coach Michael Kman arrested for offering bribes to league referees.
New York: Rabbi Baruch Lebovits accused of molesting man on trial for a similar crime. Lebovits was convicted of child molestation earlier this year.
Delaware: Monsignor George J. Mazzotta accused of child molestation.
Bahamas: Pastor David McCartney charged with conspiring with an immigration fraud ring.
Minnesota: Pastor Jeffrey Mobley sentenced to a month in jail and ten years of probation for groping and sending sexually explicit text messages to a female minor.
Uganda: Pastor Victor Ocloo sentenced to five years in prison for embezzling $50,000 meant for a group home for people with AIDS.
California: Rancho Bernardo Presbyterian Church sued for allowing a known sexual predator to remain as the church's youth choir teacher.
Colombia: Father Luis Enrique Duque captured after three years on the lam following his 2007 conviction for child molestation.
This Week's Winner
Ohio: Organizers of the website Bishop Accountability are demanding that the Catholic Diocese of Cleveland reveal the names of 73 priests accused of child molestation. According to the group, that diocese has the "worst record in the nation" for shielding the identities of priests. In 2004 Bishop Anthony Pilla admitted that 118 priests in the diocese have been accused of sexual offenses. Only 45 of those priests have ever been named.
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Yet another beef recall. 53,000 lbs. of the stuff.
Fun fact: there's been no one leading USDA's food safety & inspection service since December 2008. The Republicons have been holding up the nominee process. Call your senators and tell them to grow up and get someone into that position post haste.
Note to Dick: I've never heard of tens of thousands of pounds of Boca Burgers being recalled.
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Obama dispatches ragtag team of scientists to rescue us from Gulf oil spill -- before it's too late!
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GOP - A party adrift
Dana Milbank believes Republicans are becoming unglued.
Future historians tracing the crackup of the Republican Party may well look to May 8, 2010, as an inflection point.
That was the day, as is now well known, that Sen. Robert Bennett, who took the conservative position 84 percent of the time over his career, was deemed not conservative enough by fellow Utah Republicans and booted out of the primary.
Less well known, but equally ominous, is what happened that same day, 2,500 miles east in Maine. There, the state Republican Party chucked its platform — a sensible New England mix of free-market economics and conservation — and adopted a manifesto of insanity: abolishing the Federal Reserve, calling global warming a "myth," sealing the border, and, as a final plank, fighting "efforts to create a one world government."
Milbank is not exaggerating when he refers to the "crackup of the Republican Party". Eight years of George W. Bush, the election of an African-American president and back to back massive wins by Democrats in Congress have all given rise to a Republican party teetering on the brink of madness. It has left them with an identity crisis they seem ill equipped to handle.
Enter Palin, Beck, Limbaugh, teabaggers and a host of crackpots to fill in the void in leadership. Combine this with politicians all too ready to sell their souls for the approval of empty-headed fools professing to understand conservatism. End result? A truly screwed-up political party lacking vision and integrity.
A pathetic spectacle from any angle you look at it.
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Not a solution
BP has succeeded in capturing "some" oil and gas by inserting a mile-long tube into the main Gulf of Mexico leak, but would not say if it was a significant percentage of the gusher or just a dribble.
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Ask yourselves: is it possible for mortgage originators, ratings agencies, underwriters, insurers and supervising agencies NOT to have known that the system of housing finance had become infested with fraud? Every statistical indicator of fraudulent practice – growth and profitability – suggests otherwise. Every examination of the record so far suggests otherwise. The very language in use: "liars' loans," "ninja loans," "neutron loans," and "toxic waste," tells you that people knew. I have also heard the expression, "IBG,YBG;" the meaning of that bit of code was: "I'll be gone, you'll be gone.".
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So, via Joe Romn, the NASA-GISS data show that the past 12 months were the hottest 12-month period on record. Here's my plot of the temperature anomaly — the difference, in hundredths of a degree centigrade, from the average over 1951-80:
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This ought to make the wingnut heads explode.
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The people of Gaza just can't win.
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Brit Hume shrugs off oil gusher - "Where is the oil?"
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Southern culture on the skids
Alabama Agriculture Commissioner candidate makes awesome, terrifying campaign ad.
