From the Trenches World Report

The Ugly Truth

A convicted child molester facing new charges of abusing a teenage boy asked a court to dismiss the case because he claimed he married his victim according to Jewish law.

Andrew Goodman, 28, was convicted in 2012 for several years of abuse of a boy who was just 12 years old when the crimes started. He was sentenced to two years in prison but in October 2012 additional charges surfaced because he once took his victim, at the time 15, across state lines to Atlantic City, the New York Daily News reported on Tuesday.   Continue reading “Child abuser claims he and teen victim had ‘Jewish wedding’ and therefore should not be charged with molestation”

My Fox Orlando

Authorities say a sinkhole has apparently swallowed a small lake in Ocala.

Woodland Villages Association property manager Wes Herren told the Ocala Star-Banner that something appeared wrong with the lake on Tuesday afternoon.

By 4:30 p.m., Herren says his phone was bombarded with calls from residents saying the lake was “essentially gone.”   Continue reading “Sinkhole empties small lake in Ocala”

New York Times – by MATTHEW L. WALD

WASHINGTON — The electric grid, as government and private experts describe it, is the glass jaw of American industry. If an adversary lands a knockout blow, they fear, it could black out vast areas of the continent for weeks; interrupt supplies of water, gasoline, diesel fuel and fresh food; shut down communications; and create disruptions of a scale that was only hinted at by Hurricane Sandy and the attacks of Sept. 11.

RT News

The US Air Force is now facing a shortage in the number of pilots able to operate the military’s quickly expanding drone fleet, according to a new report published by a top Washington, DC, think tank.

According to Air Force Colonel Bradley Hoagland, who contributed to a recent report on the Air Force’s drone program prepared by the Brookings Institution, it is quickly hitting a wall in the number of operators for its 159 Predators, 96 Reapers and 23 Global Hawks.    Continue reading “US drone pilot demand outstrips supply”

Syrian Arab News Agency

Damascus, (SANA) – An official spokesman at the Foreign and Expatriates Ministry said that the cooperation agreement between Syria and the international committee for investigating the use of weapons of mass destruction in some areas in Syria didn’t please the terrorists and the countries supporting them, which is why they came up with new false allegations that the Armed Forces used toxic gas in Damascus Countryside.   Continue reading “Foreign Ministry: Allegations of armed forces using toxic gas in Damascus countryside untrue”

Beta Beat – by Molly Mulshine

The federal government is perfecting software that will be able to pick suspects out of a crowd through facial recognition, and while we’re sure it’ll prove itself very useful for finding terrorists, it’s kind of horrifying all the same–especially since they might make it available for use by your neighborhood police.

The crowd-scanning project is called the Biometric Optical Surveillance System, the New York Times reports, and will be known as BOSS, because if there’s one thing our government loves more than chipping away at our privacy, it’s hyper-masculine acronyms.   Continue reading “Government Perfects Crowd-Scanning Facial Recognition Tech for Use by Your Local Cops”

USA Today – by Jon Swartz

SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg late Tuesday announced on his Facebook profile page the formation of a partnership with Samsung Electronics, Nokia, Qualcomm and others to make Internet access available to everyone on Earth.

The group — Internet.org — intends to make the Internet an option for the 5 billion people who don’t have it. Only about one-third of the world’s population – 2.7 billion – has Internet access.   Continue reading “Zuckerberg unveils plan for Internet access for all”

The Blaze – by Liz Klimas

PHOENIX (TheBlaze/AP) — Tough-talking Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio is warning civilians who embark on armed patrols in remote desert terrain that they could end up with “30 rounds fired into” them by one of his deputies.

His unapologetically terse comments came Tuesday after a member of an Arizona Minuteman border-watch movement was arrested over the weekend for pointing a rifle at a Maricopa County sheriff’s deputy he apparently mistook for a drug smuggler.   Continue reading “Famed Arizona Sheriff Sends Ominous Verbal Warning Shot to Armed Militias”

The New American – by Joe Wolverton, II, J.D.

On September 23, the General Assembly of the United Nations will convene to discuss global nuclear disarmament. It is a different type of disarmament, however, that has caught the attention of a group of leaders of national organizations.

In a letter to President Obama dated August 19, representatives of 33 national religious and civil rights groups urge the president to sign the UN’s Arms Trade Treaty “without further delay.”   Continue reading “Religious & Civil Rights Groups Urge Obama to Sign Arms Trade Treaty”

Mail.com

JOINT BASE LEWIS-MCCHORD, Wash. (AP) — An older brother of the U.S. soldier who massacred 16 Afghan civilians last year is telling a military jury about what his sibling was like as a youth.

Bill Bales says Staff Sgt. Robert Bales was an outgoing youngster who served as his high school class president and captain of the football team in Norwood, Ohio, where they grew up. The elder Bales is the first defense witness in the case to determine if his brother should receive life in prison with the possibility of parole, or without it.   Continue reading “Brother testifies for defense in Afghan massacre”

Information Clearinghouse – by Jonathan Turley

While each new national-security power Washington has embraced was controversial when enacted, they are often discussed in isolation. But they don’t operate in isolation. They form a mosaic of powers under which our country could be considered, at least in part, authoritarian. Americans often proclaim our nation as a symbol of freedom to the world while dismissing nations such as Cuba and China as categorically unfree. Yet objectively, we may be only half right. Those countries do lack basic individual rights such as due process, placing them outside any reasonable definition of “free,” but the United States now has much more in common with such regimes than anyone may like to admit.   Continue reading “Ten Reasons the U.S. Is No Longer the Land of the Free”

Vida Latina

Mexico City, Aug 19 (EFE). — More than 100 women in the southern Mexican town of Xaltianguis have taken up arms to protect their community from organized crime groups, a local selfdefense force official said Monday.

The women signed up over the past four days with the Union of Peoples and Organizations of Guerrero State, or UPOEG, Xaltianguis community self defense force commander Miguel Angel Jimenez told reporters.   Continue reading “Over 100 women take up arms in Mexico to defend community”

Economics Voodoo

Continuing reports that banks are making it more difficult for their customers to remove their gold from the banking system, or a trading house getting its gold delivery as Germany faces a slight problem in its request to repatriate its gold being held at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. There are also delivery problems of a different nature.

Recently I learned that a family member has been experiencing great, great difficulty in withdrawing their 401(k) funds for over a year now. I would like to share a few observations in case it helps to highlight the risks and issues with the 401(k) – worse yet, an unallocated 401(k) – that includes below, a notification and request for assistance in locating several individuals and why.   Continue reading “401(k)s: Delivery Problems of a Different Nature”

RT News

Reports by “biased regional media” about alleged chemical weapons use near Damascus might be “a provocation planned in advance,” says Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Aleksandr Lukashevich.

“It draws attention to the fact that biased regional media have immediately, as if on command, begun an aggressive information attack, laying all the responsibility on the government,” Lukashevich said in a statement on Wednesday.    Continue reading “Russia suggests Syria ‘chemical attack’ carried out by rebels, provocation not ruled out”

Continue reading “Male Logic”

Pat Dollard

Excerpted from Washington Times – Students in select areas of the country are heading back to school with the likes of bulletproof backpacks and whiteboards that also work as shields — even though some are calling it overkill.

“It may be well-intended but it’s not well thought-out,” said Ken Trump, a Cleveland-based school safety consultant who is also the father of young children, on NBC. “I would ask this question: If you need a bulletproof backpack, wouldn’t the child also need a bulletproof front pack and a helmet and a Captain America shield?”   Continue reading “Bulletproof Backpacks Sales Surge As Kids Head Back To School”