Congressional Members Honor America’s Biblical Foundation Through Public Scripture Reading

By The Christian News Service

WASHINGTON D.C. – The National Bible Association hosted a special scripture reading Tuesday on the east lawn of the U.S. Capitol. This special event honored America’s Biblical foundation as a number of congressmen read from the historic Aitken Bible, printed in 1782. Also, there was a special reading of the Lord’s prayer from the Eliot Indian Bible, the first bible printed in North America, by Naticksqw Chief Caring Hands. The bibles for this event were coordinated by Museum of the Bible.

Posted on November 23, 2015

Which 2016 Presidential Candidates Would Win And Lose Under A Small Donor Matching Program?

By The U.S. Public Interest Research Group

Candidates in the 2016 presidential race would see a dramatic shift in fundraising success under a proposed small donor public financing system, according to a study released on Wednesday by U.S. PIRG Education Fund.
Using third quarter fundraising data filed with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) this October, the report examines the impact of a program that matches small contributions with limited public funds for candidates who agree not to accept large donations.
“Right now, most candidates from both parties are dependent on large donors to fund their campaigns, while voters across the political spectrum are calling for reform,” said Abe Scarr, Illinois PIRG Education Fund director. “It doesn’t have to be that way. A small donor matching program would fundamentally change the way our elections work, giving candidates who engage with regular Americans a chance to compete with fundraising by those who choose to rely on big money.”

Posted on November 20, 2015

What’s The Evidence That Mass Surveillance Works? Not Much

By Lauren Kirchner/ProPublica

Current and former government officials have been pointing to the terror attacks in Paris as justification for mass surveillance programs.
CIA Director John Brennan accused privacy advocates of “hand-wringing” that has made “our ability collectively internationally to find these terrorists much more challenging.”
Former National Security Agency and CIA director Michael Hayden said, “In the wake of Paris, a big stack of metadata doesn’t seem to be the scariest thing in the room.”
Ultimately, it’s impossible to know just how successful sweeping surveillance has been, since much of the work is secret. But what has been disclosed so far suggests the programs have been of limited value. Here’s a roundup of what we know.

Posted on November 19, 2015

Trail Of Paris Attackers Winds To Terrorism’s Longtime Outpost

By Sebastian Rolle/ProPublica

Before a SWAT team stormed a tenement in the Belgian city of Verviers in January, police used listening devices to monitor their targets inside: Belgian jihadis who had returned from Syria to attack a local police station in the name of the Islamic State.
Police gunned down two suspects during the pre-dawn firefight, foiling the plot. But a chilling detail stuck with the Belgian counter-terror investigators who tracked down the plotters with help from French and U.S. intelligence. As investigators listened, the militants responded to the police assault with a ferocity forged in the battlegrounds of the Middle East.
“They were talking about their plans to commit violence here,” a senior Belgian counter-terror official recalled in a recent interview. “The police flash-bang grenade goes off. And immediately these two start firing their AK-47s. No hesitation, no panic. These are guys with combat experience. They were ready to fight and die.”
As the fast-paced investigation of the rampage in Paris that left at least 129 people dead unfolded, elite tactical teams carried out another pre-dawn raid Wednesday on suspected terrorists holed up in an apartment outside the French capital. The target was the accused Belgian mastermind of the thwarted effort to attack the police station in Belgium in January who is also believed to have played a central role in directing the Paris attacks last week: Abdelhamid Abaaoud.

Posted on November 18, 2015

Bad, Bad Dorothy Brown

With Apologies To Jim Croce

Well in downtown old Chicago
in the saddest part of town
if you go down there, you better just be aware
of a clerk named Dorothy Brown

Posted on November 17, 2015

Special Report: An Iraqi Smuggler’s Tale

By Isabel Coles and Shadia Nasralla/Reuters

In photo after photo, Sediq Sevo’s Facebook page lays out the riches and allure of Europe.
In one picture the young Iraqi Kurd poses beneath the Eiffel Tower. In another he stands in a neon-lit restaurant in Rotterdam. A third has him grinning beside a train in Milan.
He stopped posting pictures in August. That was the month Sevo helped smuggle five fellow Iraqi Kurds to Europe, he told Reuters. They ended up dead, trapped with 66 other migrants inside a truck abandoned alongside an Austrian highway.
Like Sevo, many of the dead came from Iraqi Kurdistan. They had joined hundreds of thousands of people who have entered Europe illegally this year from homes wrecked by civil war, sectarian violence or repressive governments in countries such as Syria, Afghanistan and Eritrea. Many are young men ready to risk their lives for the chance of stability and wealth. On their side are determination, sheer numbers, and people-smugglers.

Posted on November 16, 2015

Homan Square: A Report Back

By First Defense Legal Aid

First Defense Legal Aid (FDLA, First Defense) will report back on its recent experience with Homan Square and other Chicago police facilities where youth and adults are held incommunicado on Thursday.
Chicago has made international news for Homan Square, record numbers of false confessions, police shootings, torture, and a department-wide code of silence on police crimes and misconduct, all disproportionately affecting African Americans.
Chicago can be known for a unique solution! FDLA will make specific calls to action for getting volunteer attorneys into police stations.

Posted on November 12, 2015

The Dog Ate My Vote: How Congress Explains Its Absences

By Derek Willis and Cecilia Reyes/ProPublica

On a Monday afternoon in October 2011, West Virginia Democrat Nick J. Rahall II waited at the Charleston airport for a 4:50 p.m. U.S. Airways Express flight to Washington. If the plane left on schedule, the roughly 80-minute flight would allow him to get to the Capitol in time for votes in the House of Representatives that evening.
Things did not go according to plan. The flight didn’t leave Charleston for another four hours, giving Rahall, then the top Democrat on the House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee, plenty of time to “boil over,” as he later wrote. When he finally arrived in Washington, having missed three votes, he lambasted the airline’s handling of the delay in a statement in the Congressional Record:
“At moments, the arrival/departure information was so confused that the airplane would have had to violate the laws of physics in order to abide by the airline schedule,” Rahall’s statement read.
“Needless to say, all passengers were inconvenienced and the airline’s explanations were wholly unsatisfactory. This flight delay prevented me from carrying out my Constitutional duty to represent the people of southern West Virginia: I feel I owe them and this body an explanation about why that was not possible last night.”
Voting is one of the most important duties of a lawmaker, and most miss very few votes. Yet voting attendance has become a topic of discussion in the Republican presidential primary, as Florida Sen. Marco Rubio has missed about a third of all votes this year, by far the most in that chamber.
In the House, unlike the Senate, lawmakers are given a chance to provide “Personal Explanations” to explain missed votes. These entries filed in the Congressional Record say not only how a representative came to be absent, but also how they would have voted though they don’t have the effect of adding or changing a vote.

Posted on November 10, 2015

Special Report: Small White House Office Puts The Brakes On Life-Saving Regulations

By Scot J. Paltrow/Reuters

But for a small, little-known White House agency, Melissa Helcher might not have killed Clark Biddle in a Columbus, Ohio, parking lot one day in February.
The 24-year-old Helcher had just eaten lunch with her two children at an O’Charley’s restaurant and was backing her 2012 Ford Fusion sedan out of a tight space. Biddle and his wife, Betty, both 88 and a couple since ninth grade, were making their way across the lot toward a high-school reunion lunch.
Helcher, looking over her right shoulder and through the rear windshield, didn’t see the Biddles coming from the other direction as she eased her car out. Clark Biddle had just enough time to push Betty out of the way before Helcher’s car knocked him over.

Posted on October 31, 2015

Uber’s Surge Pricing May Not Lead To A Surge In Drivers

By Lauren Kirchner and Surya Mattu/ProPublica

Uber has long stirred controversy and consternation over the higher “surge” prices it charges at peak times. The company has always said the higher prices actually help passengers by encouraging more drivers to get on the road. But computer scientists from Northeastern University have found that higher prices don’t necessarily result in more drivers.
Researchers Le Chen, Alan Mislove and Christo Wilson created 43 new Uber accounts and virtually hailed cars over four weeks from fixed points throughout San Francisco and Manhattan. They found that many drivers actually leave surge areas in anticipation of fewer people ordering rides.
“What happens during a surge is, it just kills demand,” Wilson told ProPublica. “So the drivers actually drive away from the surge.”

Posted on October 30, 2015

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