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Middleboro Review 2

NEW CONTENT MOVED TO MIDDLEBORO REVIEW 2

Toyota

Since the Dilly, Dally, Delay & Stall Law Firms are adding their billable hours, the Toyota U.S.A. and Route 44 Toyota posts have been separated here:

Route 44 Toyota Sold Me A Lemon



Showing posts with label death row. Show all posts
Showing posts with label death row. Show all posts

Thursday, November 19, 2015

NYC KILL SHELTERS DEATH ROW CAN YOU HELP?





9,000 ANIMALS ARE PUT TO DEATH EACH DAY!

Please support the HEROES who rescue & adopt.
Please support SPAY & NEUTER PROGRAMS!

Adopt! Don't BUY!



HAILEI - A1057174 - Brooklyn - Rescue Only
TO BE DESTROYED 11/20/15 ** NEW HOPE RESCUE ONLY ** Sometimes you can have too many dogs, four is a alot. It seems that Hailei has a personality that would do better in a home being the one and only. She is a Boxer Pittie mix that lived with three other dogs, she has had incidents with squabbles. The last she redirected towards the owner with an accidental biting incident. Hailei was surrendered to the ACC witha Department Of Health hold. The ACC of NYC SAFER results were quite good, but they have to take her history in consideration. Hailei needs an experienced foster or adopter, plus the help of a New Hope rescue. Please share, pledge and advocate for this girl that has been listed to be destroyed. Her life is on the line, and she needs someone with no other dogs. Hailei is young, spayed, and lived in a home that had alot going on, a change in environment can be life saving. If you can help please get in touch with the Urgent Help desk. Hailei has been quiet and well behaved, do not let her die for being misunderstoood.

CLICK HERE FOR ADDITIONAL INFO/PHOTOS/VIDEOS & STATUS:http://nycdogs.urgentpodr.org/hailei-a1057174/
**PLEASE POST ALL OFFERS TO FOSTER/ADOPT & PLEDGES TO MAIN WEBSITE THREAD. THIS WILL MAKE IT EASIER FOR RESCUES TO VIEW & RESPOND**


WINTERFELL - A1056945 - Manhattan - Publicly Adoptable
**TO BE DESTROYED 11/20/15 ** SECOND CHANCE FOR WINTERFELL!! WINTERFELL is just 3 years old and now is going to be in the fight of her life! She’s been a dream with her assessor, appreciates attention and petting,allowed handling and for her GREAT behavior she’s earned an AVERAGE rating! Now she needs a FOSTER or ADOPTER to spring her out of this jail that she’s in! She would be so greatful if you can save her…one couldn’t help but know that once she sees you,it would be apparent if WINTER FELL for YOU!

Manhattan Center
My name is WINTERFELL. My Animal ID # is A1056945. - P
I am a male white and gray domestic sh. The shelter thinks I am about 3 YEARS old.
I came in the shelter as a STRAY on 11/04/2015 from NY 10466, owner surrender ...
CLICK HERE FOR ADDITIONAL INFO/PHOTOS/VIDEOS & STATUS:http://nyccats.urgentpodr.org/winterfell-a1056945/
**PLEASE POST ALL OFFERS TO FOSTER/ADOPT & PLEDGES TO MAIN WEBSITE THREAD. THIS WILL MAKE IT EASIER FOR RESCUES TO VIEW & RESPOND**

Sunday, July 12, 2015

Children's Defense Fund: Redlined for Failure and the Prison Pipeline




Take Action
Redlined for Failure and the Prison Pipeline



Email - Marian Wright Edelman Photo

Ndume Olatushani is an artist, organizer, and a passionate advocate for justice who works with the Children’s Defense Fund’s Nashville organizing team. He helps us fight to keep children and people of color, especially Black boys, out of the Cradle to Prison Pipeline™ and mass incarceration system which will trap 1 in 3 Black boys born in 2001 sometime during their lifetime. He also combats zero tolerance school discipline policies that push Black children, especially Black boys, out of school and criminalize children of color. I met Ndume soon after he was freed as an inmate wrongly convicted of murder who served almost 28 years in prison, 20 on death row, before his release June 1, 2012. He’s a gentle, forgiving man. Long before that, Ndume was a small Black boy trying—and failing—to survive the violence, poverty, and low expectations that surrounded him.
Not long after his release from prison, he wrote his story:  

“My name is Ndume Olatushani. I was born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri. I currently reside in the Nashville, Tennessee area. I spent my early years in the notorious Pruitt- Igoe Projects where the best and worst of human behavior were always on display. Because the Pruitt-Igoe Projects had become so lawless they were the first to be torn down by the federal government in the 1970's.

NdumeOlatushani 150x200.jpg
“At a young age I was exposed to all kind of things that no child should ever be exposed to. At the age of five I witnessed my first murder, which was of a young black man. At the time, I did not realize how this tragic event would help shape me but, like any child exposed to violence over a sustained period of time, I gradually became desensitized to violence. In some ways I became the people who stood around at the site of the playground murder, laughing and joking, as the young man took his last breaths.
“Though I officially dropped out of school in the eleventh grade, I had checked out of school mentally years earlier. In the newly integrated schools I attended, I experienced hostility from my white peers and discouragement from my teachers. My fourth grade teacher who was white asked my class what we wanted to be when we grew up. When I told her I wanted to be a veterinarian, her response was that I should instead aspire to do something with my hands, like construction.
“Years later, when I was sitting in a prison cell assessing my life, I understood the significance of her statement. As a child I did not understand the effect her statement had on me psychologically, and I did not understand the pathology of racism. Of course I do not lay the misguided decisions I made on her doorstep, but she was a part of the thread that weaved the quilt of my life. It was her and so many small but significant events that I was exposed to as a child that contributed to the trajectory of my life's decisions.
“As a young man, I began making some bad decisions that landed me in jail and prison on a range of felony charges. I have seen the inside of jails and prisons in four states. While I was making the decisions that landed me in all those jail and prison cells, I had no idea that the criminal record I was developing would lead to me being falsely accused and wrongly convicted of a robbery murder. I was 26 years old when, in 1985, I was wrongly convicted and sentenced to death for a murder  that took place in Memphis, Tennessee, a state  I  had never even stepped foot in before standing trial there.
“It took 28 years — 20 of which I spent on death row—for me to finally prove that I was innocent. In December of 2011, a court overturned my conviction in the face of overwhelming proof that the prosecutors in my case had buried a mountain of evidence demonstrating my innocence. The bulk of the buried evidence showed that an entirely different group of suspects were the real perpetrators of the crime…
“I was red-lined for failure, although I do not absolve myself from the decisions that I made that helped make it possible. But those decisions were not without some guidance and direction from a system [whose] only use for some people is for them to be sitting in a jail or prison cell. We have to ensure that we are fully aware of this system and we have to continue to work hard at disrupting and dismantling this system to save our children.
“I feel strongly about not forgetting all the men I left behind in prison. I am deeply committed to working for criminal justice reform. The work [I and my coworkers are] doing to challenge polices resulting in the mass incarceration of people of color and especially the zero tolerance policies leading to the criminalization of our children is incredibly important to me and it should be to all of us. I witnessed what the policies of mass incarceration have done to generations and we don’t have to wonder about its effects on our future.”


Ndume taught himself to become a fine artist in prison and has not a bitter or mean bone in his body. He works tirelessly today with poor children, especially boys of color living in Nashville housing projects, encouraging alternatives to the street through art.
Ndume’s art along with his mentees’ creations grace our offices in Washington, D.C. and Tennessee to remind us of the gifts children have if we enable them to come forth and blossom and not discourage them. Every parent and educator ought to be very mindful about the power their words and attitudes convey to the children we raise and teach. They will live up or down to our expectations. Let’s make sure we lift them all up and give them something to strive toward.


Marian Wright Edelman is President of the Children's Defense Fund whose Leave No Child Behind® mission is to ensure every child a Healthy Start, a Head Start, a Fair Start, a Safe Start and a Moral Start in life and successful passage to adulthood with the help of caring families and communities. For more information go to www.childrensdefense.org. 

Mrs. Edelman's Child Watch Column also appears each week on The Huffington Post.


Sunday, June 21, 2015

CLG: Radiation detected in groundwater at Exelon's Peach Bottom nuclear plant, WikiLeaks publishes the Saudi Cables




News Updates from CLG
21 June 2015
 
Previous edition: Nine dead in shooting at black church in Charleston, South Carolina - police
WikiLeaks publishes the Saudi Cables | 19 June 2015 | Today, Friday 19th June at 1pm GMT, WikiLeaks began publishing The Saudi Cables: more than half a million cables and other documents from the Saudi Foreign Ministry that contain secret communications from various Saudi Embassies around the world. The publication includes "Top Secret" reports from other Saudi State institutions, including the Ministry of Interior and the Kingdom's General Intelligence Services...The Saudi Cables are being published in tranches of tens of thousands of documents at a time over the coming weeks. Today WikiLeaks is releasing around 70,000 documents from the trove as the first tranche. [Gee, I sure hope the correspondence between the Saudi sociopaths and the Bush regime reveals the truth behind the 9/11 inside job. --LRP]
Saudi Arabia regime warns citizens against sharing 'faked documents' [LOL!] | 21 June 2015 | [US anti-democracy ally] Saudi Arabia on Saturday urged its citizens not to distribute "documents that might be faked" in an apparent response to WikiLeaks' publication on Friday of more than 60,000 documents it says are secret Saudi diplomatic communications. The statement, made by the Foreign Ministry on its Twitter account, did not directly deny the documents' authenticity. The released documents, which WikiLeaks said were embassy communications, emails between diplomats and reports from other state bodies, include discussions of Saudi Arabia's position regarding regional issues and efforts to influence media.
U.S. Marine convicted of murdering Iraqi is sentenced by military jury to 'time served' | 19 June 2015 | A U.S. Marine convicted of the 2006 murder of a former Iraqi police officer was sentenced on Thursday to time he had already served in confinement, in a decision by a military jury at Camp Pendleton in California. The jury also gave Marine Sergeant Lawrence Hutchins III a bad-conduct discharge from the Marine Corps...After the killing in Iraq came to light, then-U.S. Navy Secretary Ray Mabus called it a "cold-blooded murder".
 
Spy court clears path to renewing NSA powers | 19 June 2015 | The secretive federal court that oversees the nation's spies is laying the groundwork for temporarily reauthorizing the National Security Agency's (NSA) sweeping collection of U.S. phone records. In an order released on Friday, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court said that a brief lapse in some Patriot Act provisions would not bar the court from renewing the NSA's powers. Although the court asserted its ability to renew the controversial NSA program, it has yet to issue an order giving a green light to the spy agency. The court also decided that it doesn't need the advice of a new expert panel, in its first-ever opportunity to use the friend-of-the-court analysis.
 
Surveillance court moving toward renewal of NSA spying program for 6 months | 19 June 2015 | The secretive court that oversees US government spying requests has indicated that it will temporarily renew the National Security Agency's bulk phone records collection authority despite a new reform law that ended the dragnet. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) -- often seen as a compliant "rubber stamp" for US government spying requests -- released an order on Friday positing that lapsed spying powers vested in the Patriot Act -- which expired without renewal on June 1 -- would not restrict the court from reauthorizing for six months the phone metadata collection program.
 
Radiation detected in groundwater at Exelon's Peach Bottom nuclear plant | 19 June 2015 | Radiation at levels above industry safety thresholds was detected in groundwater at Peach Bottom Atomic Power Station [Delta, PA], according to an Exelon report to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Exelon, the company that owns and operates the power plant, reported that on April 17, a groundwater monitoring well detected tritium -- a radioactive isotope -- at 37,700 picocuries per liter. Neil Sheehan, Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman, said Exelon has to report any level of tritium in excess of 20,000 picocuries per liter, the EPA-endorsed threshold for safe [sic] levels in drinking water.
 
Govt emails reveal Fukushima radiation could cause thyroid cancer to skyrocket in Americans | 19 June 2015 | Censored and heavily redacted emails from U.S. government scientists and officials reveal that there were major concerns among American policymakers shortly after the devastating Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster in March 2011 that there would be widespread radiological contamination and spikes in thyroid cancer rates...Nuclear science experts were clearly concerned that radioactive fallout from the disaster would not merely spread to the U.S. West Coast but cause a spike in thyroid cancer rates there, as well -- though none of those concerns were publicized by reports or expressed publicly by the Obama Administration at the time.
 
Fukushima operator 'knew of need to protect against tsunami but did not act' | 18 June 2015 | The operator of Japan's ruined Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant was aware of the need to improve the facility’s defences against tsunami more than two years before the March 2011 disaster but failed to take action, according to an internal company document. The revelation casts doubt on claims by Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) that it had done everything possible to protect the plant, which suffered a triple meltdown after being struck by a towering tsunami. The utility disclosed the document this week during a lawsuit brought by more than 40 Tepco shareholders who are demanding damages totalling 5.5 trillion yen from company executives.
 
TPP fight: Fast-track legislation approved in US House, heads to Senate | 19 June 2015 | The US House of Representatives on Thursday reversed course, approving "fast-track" legislation central to President Barack Obama'strade corporate takeover deal with Pacific Rim nations and sending it back to the Senate. The close vote in the House, which last week rejected a related bill, kept alive Mr Obama's goal of bolstering US ties with Asia subjugating the US government to trans-national corporations through a 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). The House voted 218-208 to give Mr Obama the fast-track authority to speed 'trade' deals, including the TPP, to conclusion with reduced interference from Congress.
 
South Korea reports three new cases of MERS, taking total to 169 | 20 June 2015 | South Korea's Health Ministry reported on Sunday three more cases of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, bringing the total to 169 in an outbreak that is the largest outside of Saudi Arabia. The ministry late on Saturday reported the 25th fatality, a patient who had suffered a heart ailment and diabetes.
 
Dozens sick at Antioch, Calif., water park after being exposed to chemical --Hazmat crews on scene to determine cause of exposure | 18 June 2015 | Officials are reporting at least 40 people, mostly children, are being treated for minor respiratory issues after being exposed to a chemical at Antioch's Prewett Family Water Park this afternoon. At 2:29 p.m., emergency crews responded to reports of a child complaining of respiratory problems after swimming at the water park, according to a fire inspector with Contra Costa Fire Protection...As of 4 p.m., 10 to 15 people had been taken to the hospital, fire inspector Lisa Martinez said.
 
East Texas firefighter fired after Charleston shooting post | 19 June 2015 | A volunteer firefighter from East Texas was terminated Friday after a post the man allegedly made in response to the deadly Charleston, S.C. shooting. On their Facebook page early Friday afternoon, the Mabank Fire Department said Kurtis Cook was "terminated" and "trespassed from all Mabank Fire Department property" after an investigation into allegations against the volunteer firefighter. According to a KLTV.com report, Cook was accused of making a post on a South Carolina newspaper's Facebook page that said Dylann Roof "needs to be praised for the good deed he has done."
 
F.B.I., Charleston police officials examine Dylann Roof's purported website and manifesto | 20 June 2015 | Dylann Roof posed for pictures wearing a No. 88 T-shirt, had 88 Facebook friends and wrote that number -- white supremacist code for "Heil Hitler" -- in the South Carolina sand. A website discovered Saturday appears to offer the first serious look at Mr. Roof's thinking, including how the case of Trayvon Martin, the black Florida teenager shot to death in 2012 by George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer, triggered his racist rage...It is not clear whether the manifesto was written by Mr. Roof or if he had control of it. The F.B.I. and Charleston police officials say they are examining the site.
 
Suspect Roof held without bail on 9 murder charges in church shooting; $1M for gun charge --Dylann Roof appeared Friday at bond court in North Charleston, SC | 19 June 2015 | Dylann Storm Roof stood up during a Bible study Wednesday at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, pulled a .45-caliber pistol from a fanny pack and shot nine people several times, according to arrested affidavits released Friday. The details emerged as family members of the nine victims' faced Roof, 21, through closed-circuit television during a bond hearing. The proceeding was a formal airing of the nine counts of murder and the gun charge that Roof faces.
 
Charleston terror suspect Dylann Roof wore jacket bearing images of flags from apartheid-era South Africa --What We Know About South Carolina Shooting Suspect Dylann Roof | 18 June 2015 | Police have reportedly arrested Dylan Storm Roof as the chief suspect in the fatal shooting of nine people Wednesday night at a historic black church in South Carolina. Roof is a 21-year-old white man from Lexington, South Carolina, the Associated Press reports...A Facebook page in the name of Dylann Roof, featuring a photo released by Berkeley County authorities in South Carolina, suggest the suspect attended White Knoll High School and was from the city of Columbia. In the picture featured on the Facebook page [page has been disabled by Fb-see CLG stored image, below], he is wearing a jacket bearing images of the flags of apartheid-era South African and the Republic of Rhodesia, the name for Zimbabwe when it was run by a post-colonial white minority in the 1970s.
 
South Carolina church shooting: police hunt gunman after 'hate crime' attack | 18 June 2015| At least nine people have been killed after a gunman opened fire at a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina, in what police have described as a "hate crime"... Police released a image of the gunman and a car from video at a press conference on Thursday. The suspect, who is still on the loose, has been described as a clean-shaved, white male aged approximately 21, with a small, slender build, wearing a grey sweatshirt with jeans and boots.
 
Police converge on NY towns where escaped prisoners said sighted | 20 June 2015 | Heavily-armed police converged on towns in western New York state on Saturday to investigate possible sightings of two convicted murderers who escaped a maximum-security prison two weeks ago, police said. A witness saw two men who might have been the escapees walking along a railroad track in Friendship, a community of about 2,000 residents in a rural patch of Allegany County, New York State Police said in a statement. Police set up a perimeter in the area of Friendship, about 280 miles (450 km) southwest of the Clinton Correctional Facility where the escaped convicts had been serving sentences for murder, said New York State Police spokesman Beau Duffy.
 
U.S. top court rules for death row inmate over intellectual disability claim | 18 June 2015 | The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that a federal judge was correct to hold a hearing on whether a convicted cop killer on Louisiana's death row is intellectually disabled and therefore potentially ineligible for the death penalty...The court, in a 5-4 decision, threw out an appeals court ruling that said Kevan Brumfield was not eligible for the special hearing in which the lower court judge found he was intellectually disabled. Brumfield will remain on death row for now, as the appeals court has yet to decide if the judge was correct to find that Brumfield was ineligible for the death penalty.
 
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Monday, April 6, 2015

RSN: The Shocking Climate Threat Nobody's Even Talking About, Poll: White Americans Far More Accepting of Police Violence






It's Live on the HomePage Now:
Reader Supported News



Frank Rich | Anchorman: A Dumb Job
NBC News anchor Brian Williams. (photo: Robert Deutsch/USA Today)
Frank Rich, New York Magazine
Rich writes: "Some two months into Brian Williams's six-month banishment from NBC for making stuff up, it's not known whether he will ever return to the anchor chair at Nightly News."
READ MORE

Columbia's Rolling Stone/UVA Report: 'An Anatomy of a Journalistic Failure'
Sheila Coronel, Steve Coll, and Darek Kravit, Rolling Stone
Excerpt: "Last July 8, Sabrina Rubin Erdely, a writer for Rolling Stone, telephoned Emily Renda, a rape survivor working on sexual assault issues as a staff member at the University of Virginia."
READ MORE

Exoneration From Death Row Does Not Guarantee Justice
Matt Schiavenza, The Atlantic
Schiavenza writes: "In 1985, Anthony Ray Hinton was convicted of murdering two men in Alabama and sentenced to death."
READ MORE

Poll: White Americans Far More Accepting of Police Violence
Jesse J. Holland, Associated Press
Holland writes: "Whites in the United States approve of police officers hitting people in far greater numbers than blacks and Hispanics do, at a time when the country is struggling to deal with police use of deadly force against men of color, according to a major American trend survey."
READ MORE

Obama Calls Iran Nuclear Deal 'Our Best Bet'
Peter Baker, New York Times
Baker writes: "President Obama strongly defended last week's preliminary agreement with Iran as a 'once in a lifetime opportunity' to curb the spread of nuclear weapons in a dangerous region while reassuring critics that he would keep all options available if Tehran ultimately cheated."
READ MORE

Chelsea Manning Got 1,000 Followers on Twitter Before Her First Tweet
David Ferguson, Raw Story
Ferguson writes: "Former U.S. Army specialist Chelsea Manning has joined the social medium Twitter and is now tweeting to the outside world from inside Fort Leavenworth Military Prison, where she is serving a 35-year sentence for leaking classified U.S. military information."
READ MORE

The Shocking Climate Threat Nobody's Even Talking About
Chris Mooney, Washington Post
Mooney writes: "Rapid Arctic warming is expected to lead to the thawing of a great deal of frozen soil or permafrost, which, as it thaws, will begin to emit carbon dioxide and methane to the atmosphere."
READ MORE
 
 
 
 
 

Wednesday, March 25, 2015

RSN: Glock Lawsuit: Gun Biz Run Like the Mob, A $600 Million Fracking Company Sued Ohio Town for Its Water,




It's Live on the HomePage Now:
Reader Supported News



Robert Parry | Ukraine's Oligarchs Turn on Each Other
Igor Kolomoisky, billionaire and governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region. (photo: Valentyn Ogirenko/Reuters)
Robert Parry, Consortium News
Parry writes: "Ukraine's post-coup regime is facing what looks like a falling-out among thieves as oligarch-warlord Igor Kolomoisky, who was given his own province to rule, brought his armed men to Kiev to fight for control of the state-owned energy company, further complicating the State Department's propaganda efforts."
READ MORE

Obama Says US, Israel Face 'Clear, Substantive Challenge'
Eyder Peralta, NPR
Peralta writes: "A significant disagreement between the United States and Israel was on full, public display at the White House on Tuesday."
READ MORE

Arizona Woman Cleared After 22 Years on Death Row: 'This Is Not Happiness'
Lauren Gambino, Guardian UK
Gambino writes: "Debra Milke describes her release as 'bittersweet' after 25 years served for the murder of her son, in a case that rested on the work of disgraced detective."
READ MORE

For Migrants in Arizona Who Call 911, It's Border Patrol on the Line
Puck Lo, Al Jazeera
Lo writes: "Critics say system of transferring emergency calls to border agents may contribute to needless deaths."
READ MORE

Why 2016 Contenders Might Be Taking Their Time Before Saying They'll Run
Max Ehrenfreund, Washington Post
Ehrenfreund writes: "With Sen. Ted Cruz's announcement on Monday that he'll run for president, the first major Republican candidate is officially in the race."
READ MORE

Glock Lawsuit: Gun Biz Run Like the Mob
Brandy Zadrozny, The Daily Beast
Zadrozny writes: "Gunmaker Gaston Glock allegedly hired a team to root out embezzlement-then turned on them when they found his own dirty dealings."
READ MORE

A $600 Million Fracking Company Sued Ohio Town for Its Water
Samantha Page, Think Progress
Page writes: "A tiny town in eastern Ohio is being sued by an Oklahoma-based oil and gas company that bought more than 180 million gallons of water from the town last year."
READ MORE
 
 
 
 
 

Thursday, March 6, 2014

RSN: Obamacare Is Already Helping Boost Americans' Personal Incomes, America's Staggering Hypocrisy in Ukraine et al



It's Live on the HomePage Now:
Reader Supported News



Robert Parry | America's Staggering Hypocrisy in Ukraine
An armed man alleged to be with Russian forces stands guard in front of surface-to-air missiles in Sevastopol, Ukraine, on March 5. (photo: Drache/AFP/Getty)
Robert Parry, Consortium News

Parry writes: "Since World War II - and extending well into the Twenty-first Century - the United States has invaded or otherwise intervened in so many countries that it would be challenging to compile a complete list. Just last decade, there were full-scale U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, plus American bombing operations from Pakistan to Yemen to Libya."
READ MORE

Charles Pierce | Michele Bachmann to Jews: "They Sold Out Israel"
Charles Pierce, Esquire
Pierce writes: "It's been a while since The Girl With The Faraway Eyes had anything interesting to say. Give her credit, though, she's going out as shiksa-in-chief."
READ MORE

Putin Dials Back the Rhetoric on the Ukraine
Vladimir Isachenkov, Tim Sullivan, Associated Press
Excerpt: "Vladimir Putin talked tough but cooled tensions in the Ukraine crisis in his first comments since its president fled, saying Russia has no intention 'to fight the Ukrainian people' but reserved the right to use force."
READ MORE

From Death Row, a Powerful Letter on Slavery
Gawker
Excerpt: "Texas death row inmate Ray Jasper is scheduled to be put to death on March 19. He has written us a letter that, he acknowledges, 'could be my final statement on earth.' It is well worth your time."
READ MORE

Arizona Advances Bill for Surprise Inspections of Abortion Clinics
David Schwartz, Reuters
Schwartz writes: "Arizona lawmakers advanced a Republican-backed measure on Tuesday that would allow unannounced inspections of licensed abortion clinics in a state that has taken some of the country's toughest stances on abortion."
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Pope Francis Suggests Support for Civil Unions
Rebecca Leber, Think Progress
Leber reports: "Over the last year, Francis has nudged the church in a more welcoming direction on issues like contraception, divorce, and marriage equality."
READ MORE

Obamacare Is Already Helping Boost Americans' Personal Incomes
Tara Culp-Ressler, Think Progress
Ressler reports: "According to a new report from the U.S. Department of Commerce's Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), the health reform law is having a positive effect on personal incomes and spending."
READ MORE