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There's a museum in Tokyo dedicated to Japan's ample history of warfare. But if you visit the plainly named Military Museum, you'll find no reference to the grotesque medical experiments the Japanese army conducted in World War II or the sex slaves it kidnapped.

KERRY'S PINK GIRLY BIKE - graphics and limerick

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Obama Says Americans Don't Want Him 'Twiddling My Thumbs' Obama news conference By KATHLEEN HENNESSEY, CHRISTI PARSONS Americans don't want Obama 'twiddling my thumbs,' president says Obama defends his use of executive power despite GOP threats to sue him Despite Republican charges that he has abused his authority, President Obama said Wednesday he won’t dial back his use of executive power to advance his political agenda without help from Congress. The American public doesn’t want him sitting around “twiddling my thumbs,” Obama said in a wide-ranging news conference. He reiterated his plans to order executive actions on immigration, and said...

Says he doesn’t want to upset powers in D.C. Gov. John Hickenlooper today told a room full of Western gas and oil executives that he hasn’t taken a position on the proposed Keystone XL pipeline because he hasn’t wanted to “piss off” the powers that be in Washington, D.C. “I’ve avoided taking a position (on the Keystone pipeline) because it’s just going to piss off a lot of people in Washington that I don’t need to piss off, and my opinion is not going to change anybody’s opinion there,” Hickenlooper said ... Hickenlooper’s opponent, former U.S. Rep. Bob Beauprez, criticized...

During his first interview with the general leading an investigation into his capture by the Taliban, Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl on Wednesday described details of his disappearance from his tiny combat outpost in eastern Afghanistan five years ago. It was the first time Sergeant Bergdahl, of the Army, had formally described those events since he was released by the Taliban to Special Operations troops in May and flown to Texas after five years of captivity. As soon as the session began, the investigating officer, Maj. Gen. Kenneth R. Dahl, warned Sergeant Bergdahl that he did not have to say anything that...

The Senate’s most vulnerable Democratic incumbents, caught in the crosscurrents of immigration reform, are urging President Barack Obama to show restraint in using his executive powers to slow deportations. Obama is locked between a progressive base demanding aggressive action and voters in conservative states that will decide the fate of the Senate and hold outsized importance in shaping the final two years of his presidency. The White House is weighing how far it can go, legally and politically, in delaying deportations for millions of undocumented immigrants. His decision will be announced just weeks before Election Day, and the timing is...

Mitch Kirsch got up before dawn Wednesday to use the bathroom in his Santa Clara Street home when he bumped into the intruder. "He was right in front of me," Kirsch said. "I'm naked the whole time so it was a little awkward." Kirsch grabbed the man, forced him to drop a laptop he clutched and then let him go. "I don't really want to hold on to this guy for 10 minutes naked," Kirsch said. After the burglar ran off, another break-in happened two houses down and police suspect it was the same man. He was described as white,...

The mysteries of the Nazca Lines carved into the Peruvian desert have intensified after gales and sandstorms revealed previously unseen ancient designs. A pilot discovered a geoglyph of what appears to be a 196ft-long (60 metre) snake, as well as a type of camelid - such as a llama - above an unidentified bird. These new lines join existing geoglyphs of a dog, hummingbird, condor and a monkey, thought to have been drawn by the ancient Nazca people between the first and sixth centuries The discovery was made by pilot Eduardo Herrán Gómez de la Torre as he flew over...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A company that performs background checks for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said on Wednesday it was the victim of a cyber attack, adding in a statement that "it has all the markings of a state-sponsored attack." The computer breach at Falls Church, Virginia-based US Investigations Services (USIS) probably involved the theft of personal information about DHS employees, according to the Washington Post, which first reported the story. DHS has suspended all work with the company amid an investigation by the FBI, the Post reported. A U.S. government official confirmed to Reuters that the FBI is...

JACKSON, Miss. — Mississippi’s state Republican Party on Wednesday refused to hear challenger Chris McDaniel’s effort to overturn his June 24 GOP runoff loss to U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran. The party says McDaniel would do better taking his challenge to court. In a letter to McDaniel’s lawyer, state Republican Party Chairman Joe Nosef wrote that a court is needed to “protect the rights of the voters as well as both candidates.” Nosef wrote that under state Republican Party bylaws, seven days’ notice has to be given before the executive committee can meet. If the notice went out Wednesday, he wrote,...

There was uproar in Saudi Arabia after a female news anchor appeared on national television without wearing a headscarf. The news anchor, name undisclosed, read the headlines for the Al Ekhbariya news channel. Probably the only reason she was allowed to appear on a Saudi channel without the headscarf was that she read news from a London studio. The The "uncovered" girl, whose body is completely covered in a jacket until the neck, has now become a part of a national scandal for the orthodox Muslim country. She apparently wore a hijab on her previous reading sessions as photos appeared...

This afternoon, after a long battle with cancer, Freeper Tminusfour passed away. For those of us who were blessed to know her personally, she was an amazing inspiration. She fought the cancer for nine years, cheerfully saying it would not define who she was. She was a model Christian, showing Christ's love in all that she did. She is survived by her husband, Freeper 4merliberal, by four daughters, and by a son and three stepsons. Now in the arms of her Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, she is released from pain and hears the words "Well done, good and faithful...

A workplace dispute in which a petite female Broward Sheriff's deputy punched a male colleague who is at least a foot taller prompted him to seek treatment for a cut lip and hurt jaw. Deputies Luisa Rosen, 40, and Christopher Szwanke, 35, who both patrolled out of the Lauderdale Lakes district, argued Jan. 25 after responding to a call of a fight in progress at the Granada Apartments on Northwest 24th Court.

Barack Obama's Ivy-League educated half-brother is publishing his autobiography next month, painting a dramatically different picture of their few meetings from the one the president related in his best-selling 'Dreams from My Father' memoir. Mark Obama Ndesandjo includes an appendix in his book, cataloguing what he says are factual errors in 'Dreams' – including words falsely attributed to his mother, a Jewish woman named Ruth. 'A lot of the stuff that Barack wrote is wrong in that book, and I can understand that,' he told the Associated Press last year when he planned to self-publish his book. 'To me,' Ndesandjo...

Last week, my colleague David Frum argued that conservative welfare reformers need to focus on simplification. As a young crop of conservative policymakers announce a range of proposals, there’s some movement in that direction. Florida Senator Marco Rubio’s plan would move most of America’s existing welfare funding into a single “flex-fund” to be disbursed to the states. Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan, partly inspired by the “universal credit” reforms of Britain’s Conservative government, proposes allowing states to combine different forms of federal anti-poverty funding—food stamps, housing assistance, and more—into a single funding stream. In a recent speech about fighting poverty, Utah...

When the fight for gay marriage began to gain traction back in the early years of the last decade, social conservative critics usually went beyond denying that marriage could be redefined to include same-sex couples. Many of them argued that homosexuals were much less inclined than heterosexuals to valorize the ideal of monogamy. Allowing gays and lesbians to marry would therefore introduce a polyamorous option into the institution, and adultery would come to be viewed as an acceptable option for all marriages.A spate of recent articles explicitly making the case for polyamory would seem to vindicate those conservative predictions and...

KAISERSLAUTERN, Germany — For the first time since U.S. troops arrived in Europe during World War II, a German general will serve as chief of staff of U.S. Army Europe. Brig. Gen. Markus Laubenthal is expected to take up his post as early as Monday, an Army news release said. The announcement of Laubenthal’s appointment comes at a time of strained relations between the U.S. and Germany over allegations of U.S. spying and phone tapping. USAREUR said in March it intended to name a German chief of staff. The U.S. military maintains key bases in Germany, where about 40,000 U.S....

Mississippi's state Republican Party is refusing to hear challenger Chris McDaniel's effort to overturn his June 24 GOP runoff loss to U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran. The party says McDaniel would do better taking his challenge to court. In a Wednesday letter to McDaniel's lawyer, state Republican Party Chairman Joe Nosef said a court is needed to ensure a "prudent" review of the challenge.

Failing to respond to Hamas attacks because they were being launched from civilian areas would be a moral and operational mistake that would validate its use of human shields and “hand an enormous victory to terrorists everywhere,” Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said Wednesday.Addressing reporters in Jerusalem amid talks in Cairo aimed at extending a 72-hour, Egyptian-brokered ceasefire currently in place, Netanyahu portrayed the Gaza conflict as a “test” for civilized nations – should terrorists be given immunity because they carry out attacks from schools, mosques or hospitals?He defended the month-long military offensive against Hamas in Gaza, calling it justified...