From the Trenches World Report

WND – by AARON KLEIN

The new head of the U.S. pardon office is not only deeply tied to former Weather Underground leader Bill Ayers – as WND exclusively reported Wednesday – but also to Ayers’ wife, Bernardine Dohrn, a co-founder with him of the domestic terrorist group.

The Justice Department announced Wednesday that Deborah Leff, currently a senior adviser to Attorney General Eric Holder, will take over the Office of the Pardon Attorney, where she will oversee vetting federal inmate applicants for presidential grants of clemency.   Continue reading “New Obama pardon chief tied to ex-domestic terrorist Dohrn”

The Hartford Courant – by DAVE ALTIMARI

The FBI has released about 175 pages of heavily blacked-out documents from the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre investigation.

Of the 175 pages released in response to a Courant Freedom of Information request, 64 were completely redacted and most of the other 111 pages were heavily redacted. The Courant submitted the request in January after state police released a report on the Dec. 14, 2012, shooting that left 20 first-graders and six women dead at the Newtown school.   Continue reading “FBI Releases Heavily Blacked Out Sandy Hook Records”

Huffington Post – by Inae Oh

Each new day seems to bring another strange development in the highly-publicized bid to ban horse carriages in New York City.

Friday’s cover of The Daily News — which has launched its own campaign in support of carriage drivers — is dedicated to a report the FBI is now peripherally involved in the debate, with agents probing a claim that threats were made against former mayoral candidate Christine Quinn.   Continue reading “Is The FBI Now Involved In NYC’s Crazy Horse-Carriage Debate?”

Update: Apparently, we won’t be moving until early next week.  I did not realize they do not work on the weekend and there is ‘Migration Assessment’ that has to take place before the big move.

Sorry for the chicken neck and feel free to send in articles and post comments.

From the Trenches World Report will be moving to another server this afternoon after the broadcast of The Word From the Trenches.  We hope this will be done painlessly and with as little downtime as possible, but one never knows about these things.

Until the transfer is complete we will be unable to upload articles and any comments you post during the transfer will be lost.

All apologies and we hope things will go smoothly.  Thanks for your understanding.

In a recent study, a team of French researchers discovered that the way pesticides, herbicides and fungicides are currently evaluated for safety is entirely misleading. 

Under current regulatory practice, only some of the ingredients are tested for toxicity, and the patented formula as a whole is not tested at all.  When these researchers tested the whole formula, they discovered that some pesticides are, in fact, up to one thousand times more toxic to humans than they are commonly presumed to be.    Continue reading “Pesticides Found to be Far More Toxic than Previously Believed”

The Washington Free Beacon – by Bill Gertz

A Russian intelligence-gathering ship has been operating off the U.S. East Coast and near the Gulf of Mexico for the past month, the Pentagon said Thursday.

“We are aware that the Russian ships Viktor Leonov and Nikolay Chiker are currently operating in waters that are beyond U.S. territorial seas but near Cuba,” said Lt. Col. Tom Crosson, a Pentagon spokesman. “We respect the freedom of all nations, as reflected in international law, to operate military vessels beyond the territorial seas of other nations.”   Continue reading “Pentagon: Russian Spy Ship, Tug Operating Near U.S.”

Continue reading “I’ve never seen a car like this”

Los Angeles Times – by Frank Shyong

A man believed to be armed with a shotgun barricaded himself inside of a disabled veterans facility in Woodland Hills on Friday and has threatened to kill himself, authorities said.

Los Angeles police responded to reports of a barricaded gunman in the 6500 block of Corbin Avenue around 7:30 a.m., said Los Angeles police Cmdr. Andy Smith. Helicopters and a  SWAT team were dispatched to the scene and authorities have evacuated the surrounding areas, Smith added.   Continue reading “Man barricaded in veterans hall threatening to kill himself, cops say”

Mail.com

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — Aubrey Stewart was standing next to his family’s car three years ago when a massive branch from a city-owned tree suddenly broke and crashed down on him, breaking the then-15-year-old’s spine and leaving him paralyzed from the waist down.

Jacksonville officials had been warned about the rotting tree, so they quickly reached a $3.5 million settlement with Stewart’s parents to pay for his care and to make their home wheelchair accessible. But most of that money has never been paid.   Continue reading “Paralyzed teen waiting on $3.5 million settlement”

Mail.com

SCRANTON, Pa. (AP) — A builder of for-profit youth detention centers was sentenced Friday to a year in prison for his role in a “kids for cash” scandal in which thousands of juveniles were sent to his facilities by judges who took money from him.

The builder, Robert Mericle, was also fined $250,000 and ordered to serve 100 hours of community service by a federal judge who upped the sentence recommended by prosecutors, citing the severity of the crime and Mericle’s lies to investigators about what he knew of the judges’ scheme.   Continue reading “Juvenile jail scandal gets builder year in prison”

Bundy Ranch – by Cliven Bundy

What I am saying is that all we Americans are trading one form of slavery for another.  All of us are in some measure slaves of the federal government.  Through their oppressive tactics of telling the ranchers how many cows they can have on their land, and making that number too low to support a ranch, the BLM has driven every rancher in Clark County off the land, except me.  The IRS keeps the people of America in fear, and makes us all work about a third or a half of the year before we have earned enough to pay their taxes.  This is nothing but slavery from January through May.     Continue reading “We are trading one form of slavery for another.”

Common Dreams – by Andrea Germanos

In an unprecedented legal action, the small Pacific nation and former U.S. nuclear testing site of the Marshall Islands has filed lawsuits “on behalf of all humanity” at the International Court of Justice against the U.S. and 8 other nations for their “flagrant denial of human justice” by failing to work towards nuclear disarmament.

The nations cited by the Republic of Marshall Islands (RMI) are the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France and China — all parties to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, as well as nuclear-armed Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea — which are not parties to the NPT but which the challenge says are “bound by customary international law.”   Continue reading “‘David Against Nuclear Goliaths’: Nation Wages Legal Fight ‘for All Humanity’”

Yahoo News – by Michelle Conlin and Maggie Lu Yueyang

NEW YORK/SYDNEY (Reuters) – For the first time, the Chinese have become the biggest foreign buyers of apartments in Manhattan, real estate brokers estimate, taking the mantle from the Russians – whose activity has dropped off since the unrest in Ukraine and the imposition of sanctions against Russia by the United States.

Wealthy Chinese are pouring money into real estate in New York and some other major cities around the world, including London and Sydney, as they seek safe havens for their cash and also establish a base for their children to get an education in the West.   Continue reading “The Chinese take Manhattan: replace Russians as top apartment buyers”

Continue reading “They are predicting rain later today. Imagine that.”

USA Today – by Doyle Rice

Drought spread and intensified this week in seven western and central states, including California, Oregon, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and Oklahoma, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, a federal site that tracks drought.

This week marks the first time in the 15-year history of the Drought Monitor that 100% of California was in moderate to exceptional drought.   Continue reading “Drought worsens in western USA”