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San Francisco - Transit officials said Friday they blocked cell phone reception in San Francisco stations for three hours to disrupt a planned demonstrations over a police shooting. Officials with the Bay Area Rapid Transit system, better known as BART, said they turned off the electricity to cell phone towers in four stations from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. Thursday. The move was made after BART learned that protesters planned to use mobile devices to coordinate a demonstration on train platforms. (Snip) The statement noted that it’s illegal to demonstrate on the platform or aboard the trains. BART said it

The majority of Russians remain dissatisfied with the progress of democratization in Russia, a new poll has found. The Moscow Times reports that 62 percent of people recently polled in an All-Russia Public Opinion Research Centre survey answered that they are “dissatisfied with the development of democracy in Russia.” This number, however, is down marginally from the 73 percent who were dissatisfied with domestic conditions twenty years ago. Meanwhile, those who believe the country is showing progress are largely supporters of the ruling "United Russia" party, are under 45 years of age, and generally active Internet users. [Editors’ Note: Given...

DALLAS — At least eight people were hurt when thousands of housing voucher applicants rushed the doors at the Jesse Owens Memorial Complex in Dallas, Texas. An estimated 5,000 applicants waited for hours to receive applications for one of the 3,800 available vouchers. The waiting applicants became a frenzied stampede when officials opened doors to the housing voucher offices earlier than expected. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jaoiegq52y8

In promising a U.S. military pullout from Afghanistan will begin in July, President Barack Obama is permitting his commanders to decide critical details, including the number of troops to depart first and whether any of those will be combat forces, administration and military officials said Sunday. Providing that leeway is important to Army Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan. It allows him to pace this year's phase of the withdrawal in a way that preserves combat power through the end of the traditional fighting season in October or November.

It is a felony offense to know or have reason to know that seditious activity is underway and do nothing about it. The term used in the U.S. Code for such a crime is “misprision of treason.” Counterterrorism expert Patrick Poole reveals today that political appointees in the Obama-Holder Justice Department would appear, at a minimum, to be candidates for prosecution for obstruction of justice and perhaps guilty of violating this statute. In a Pajamas Media article headlined “Did Obama and Holder Scuttle Terror Finance Prosecutions?”, Poole reports that two Justice Department sources confirm that the

Online retail sales keep climbing, big box retailers keep wondering what to do with all their space, and small stores struggle to survive at all. As a result of that nasty brew, Malls Face Surge in Vacancies. Mall vacancies hit their highest level in at least 11 years in the first quarter, new figures from real-estate research company Reis Inc. showed. In the top 80 U.S. markets, the average vacancy rate was 9.1%, up from 8.7%. The outlook is especially bad for strip malls and other neighborhood shopping centers. Their vacancy rate is expected to top 11.1% later this year,...

How much should a college education cost? According to the College Board, the average cost of earning a degree at a private, 4-year university is now more than $100,000. If tuition prices continue to rise as quickly as they did during the past decade, a college degree will cost more than $200,000 by the time today’s third-graders are applying. That price tag is enough to cause most parents to break into a sweat. Is a college degree really worth this cost? Some bright minds think Americans are paying way too much. In fact, Bill Gates--one of the country's most famous...

They’re not just blindly defying the order here. The argument, as it was last week when the Legislative Reference Bureau published the law, is that the TRO only names certain parties and therefore only those parties are enjoined by it. There’s no mention of the Department of Administration in the order, so hey — the Department of Administration’s going to go right on ahead and execute the CB law. Grassroots conservatives will love that, but if Wisconsin were chock full of grassroots conservatives, Mickey Kaus wouldn’t be writing posts like this. Now that the judge has doubled down on the...

Just days after Gov. Scott Walker introduced his budget repair bill, public-sector-union leaders said they would accept Walker’s financial demands as long as he kept collective bargaining intact. However, in the time bought by the flight of 14 Democratic state senators, local governments have been quickly adopting new contracts in advance of Walker’s bill becoming law. In effect, the unions are spraying their benefits with Walker repellent. (In fact, an investigative report shows that there may have been collusion between the missing state senators and City of Madison officials to delay the bill so contracts could be signed.) Three days...

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker on Monday finally had enough of President Obama's hectoring. (Obama at the National Governors' Association meeting on Monday pronounced, "I don't think it does anybody any good when public employees are denigrated or vilified or their rights are infringed upon.") In a statement, Walker reminded Obama -- and the country -- of some key facts: "I'm sure the President knows that most federal employees do not have collective bargaining for wages and benefits while our plan allows it for base pay. And I'm sure the President knows that the average federal worker pays twice as much...

Industry officials warn 7.3million American jobs will disappear if U.S. President Barack Obama's administration tightens regulations in a bid to reduce smog. The industry-sponsored researcher who came up with the number cautioned, however, that there was uncertainty surrounding that number. Although economist Don Norman pointed out: 'Even if the numbers are half of that, the number is huge.'

A Charles Manson follower has been ordered to remain in prison after parole board officials rejected her claim she was a changed woman. The two-member panel said the viciousness and notoriety of Patricia Krenwinkel's crimes outweighed her efforts at rehabilitation behind bars. Krenwinkel, now 63, wept and apologised during the hearing, but officials said the deaths of seven people in the 1969 Tate-LaBianca murders 'remained relevant'.

So claims the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, which just concluded a five-year study on the American public’s knowledge of its foundational legal document. The bad news: the general public gets an F, with just a 49% average on the 33-question civics test. The worse news: those who identified themselves as public officeholders scored an average of five points worse than the general public: The survey asks 33 basic civics questions, many taken from other nationally recognized instruments like the U.S. Citizenship Exam. It also asks 10 questions related to the U.S. Constitution. So what did we find? Well, to put it...

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Friday three top Russian officials should spend New Year's Eve in the dark after failing to fulfill their promise to repair damaged power lines. "You said everything would be fine by 1800 (1500 GMT)," Russia's de facto number one said in nationally televised comments to the three. "You should not have said anything if you were not sure," he added during a meeting that included the governor of the Moscow region as well as federal energy minister and the head of the local power utility. The televised comments were followed an hour later by news...

My very own presence is upon you now , For you have forsaken a sacred cow (flesh) , And in this release you have found my glory instead there , And now it is your covering as hair , My spiritual Samson truly you are , Now disperse the Delilahs push them away far ! For truly they are not helping you or even care ! For all they desire is to cut your hair , They believe they walk in all you know ,(Numbers16:7) So now is the time to let them go , For if you stay your...

WASHINGTON — Cabinet secretaries, top congressional leaders and an exclusive group of senior U.S. officials are exempt from toughened new airport screening procedures when they fly commercially with government-sanctioned security details. New heightened security procedures by the Transportation Security Administration, which require either a scan by a full-body detector or an intimate personal pat-down, have spurred passenger outrage in the lead-up to the Thanksgiving holiday airport crush. The senior government officials can opt out of such measures if they fly accompanied by government security guards approved by the TSA. The agency would not explain why it makes these exceptions, but...

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton acknowledged Sunday that she considers tighter airport security uncomfortably intrusive, while the head of the Transportation Security Administration backed away some from his earlier hard-line defense of pat-downs and full body scans. When asked in an appearance on CBS' "Face the Nation" whether she would submit to a body scan, Mrs. Clinton said, "not if I could avoid it. No. I mean, who would?" She also said the Obama administration must find a way to "limit

Republicans are likely to urge the Obama administration not to shred documents as they transition to the House majority. 

 Before the election, GOP officials on Capitol Hill privately discussed the issue but refrained from publicly tackling it, not wanting to assume what would happen on Election Day.

 Now that Republicans will control the House, the shredding matter will move front and center. 



he high ranking Church functionary of the Archdiocese of Vienna ignores Church teachings regarding the priesthood for women -- a few weeks ago, Landau was still on call as the Austrian Bishops conference's new Secretary. Vienna, (kath.net) The Viennese head of Caritas Michael Landau had set himself against Rome in an interview with Austrian Television regarding celibacy and the ordination of women. Landau said regarding celibacy: "That was introduced at some point in the history of the Church, and can also at the same time be abolished in the same manner." The high ranking Church functionary of the Archdiocese of...

Sladjana Vidovic's body lay in an open casket, dressed in the sparkly pink dress she had planned to wear to the prom. Days earlier, she had tied one end of a rope around her neck and the other around a bed post before jumping out her bedroom window. The 16-year-old's last words, scribbled in English and her native Croatian, told of her daily torment at Mentor High School, where students mocked her accent, taunted her with insults like "Slutty Jana" and threw food at her. It was the fourth time in little more than two years that a bullied high...