Amplify’d from endrtimes.blogspot.com
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Hillary Clinton to gay teens: "Tomorrow Will Be Better"
Amplify’d from endrtimes.blogspot.com
Hillary Clinton to gay teens: "Tomorrow Will Be Better"
Clinton calls recent suicides by gay teenagers "a reminder that all Americans have to work harder to overcome bigotry and hatred."
"Hang in there and ask for help," she says to teens being bullied because of their sexuality. "Your life is so important -- to your family, your friends, and to your country. And there is so much waiting for you, both personally and professionally -- there are so many opportunities for you to develop your talents and make your contributions."
"Here at the State Department, I am grateful every day for the work of our LGBT employees who are serving the United States as foreign service officers and civil servants here and around the world," she says later. "It wasn't long ago that these men and women would not have been able to serve openly, but today they can -- because it has gotten better. And it will get better for you.
"So take heart, and have hope, and please remember that your life is valuable, and that you are not alone. Many people are standing with you and sending you their thoughts, their prayers and their strength. Count me among them. Take care of yourself."
The video was shot and produced quickly after members of the group Gays and Lesbians in Foreign Affairs Agencies contacted State Department Counselor Cheryl Mills asking for the secretary to speak out, said Michelle Schohn, a spokeswoman for the group.
Schohn noted that Clinton was one of the first public figures to speak publicly about gay teen suicides, raising the issue during a Gay Pride Month speech at the State Department in June:I think that each and every one of you not only professionally, particularly from State and USAID in every bureau and every embassy and every part of our government, have to do what you can to create that safe space, but also personally to really look for those who might need a helping hand, particularly young people, particularly teenagers who still, today, have such a difficult time and who still, in numbers far beyond what should ever happen, take their own lives rather than live that life. So I would ask you to please think of ways you can be there for everyone who is making this journey to defend not only human rights globally, but to truly defend themselves and their rights. The struggle for equality is never, ever finished. And it is rarely easy, despite how self-evident it should be.
A State Department spokesman did not return requests for comment on the video.
By Ed O'Keefe October 20, 2010; 8:00 AM ET
,
Source
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Playing Catholic politics with US healthcare
Amplify’d from www.guardian.co.uk
Playing Catholic politics with US healthcare
A nun who authorised an abortion to save a mother's life was excommunicated. How will Catholic hospitals act in future?
Even though the Catholic hierarchy can take years to issue a reprimand against priests found to be guilty of sexual abuse, Sister Margaret McBride, a member of the ethics board at St Joseph's hospital in Phoenix, Arizona was reassigned and excommunicated in November 2009 after authorising an abortion in order to save the life of a 27-year-old mother of four. Bishop Thomas J Olmsted justified his actions by stating: "An unborn child is not a disease … the end does not justify the means." In December 2010, he stripped the hospital of its Catholic status, an ecclesiastical decision that renders the chapel unable to administer the eucharist.
St Joseph's hospital released a statement in support of McBride: "In this tragic case, the treatment necessary to save the mother's life required the termination of an 11-week pregnancy." A statement issued by Sr Carol Keehan, DC, president and chief executive office of the Catholic Health Association of the United States (CHA) concurred with this assessment: "They carefully evaluated the patient's situation and correctly applied the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services to it, saving the only life that was possible to save." Along those lines, America magazine, a national weekly Catholic magazine published by the Jesuits, ran two articles by a leading Catholic moral theologian, Kevin O'Rourke, a Dominican priest, which concluded that, according to church law, excommunication was not justified in this case.
However, the Catholic Medical Association (CMA) noted that this case "represents a significant step by a bishop to exercise his legitimate role as teacher and defender of the faith in his diocese as well as an unfortunate refusal of hospital officials to respect the bishop's role as a teacher and pastor". These contradictory statements need to be viewed in light of the fact that the CMA advances the doctrinal positions held by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) whereas the CHA, a trade organisation representing the business interests of Catholic hospitals, advocates to ensure that their member hospitals provide patient care for the entire community.
While this story may on the surface appear to be a specific diocesan dispute, currently there are 600 Catholic hospitals in the United States, comprising about one-fifth of all hospital beds. Also, about 45 Catholic hospitals in the US are sole providers, meaning they're the only hospital serving a community. As reported by The Revealer, a daily review of religion in the news and the news about religion, "these hospitals are governed by 72 ethical and religious directives that are written by the USCCB and enforced by the local bishop".
While Catholic hospitals receive about half of their funding from the Federal government via Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements, Catholic hospitals can claim exemption from federal laws through a web of "conscience" clauses. Ann Neumann, editor of the Revealer, observes: "In most Catholic health care facilities, the conscience of the church supersedes the rights of patients and individual doctors by limiting care services according to Catholic doctrine. Men, women, the elderly, the poor and the victimised – effectively, entire communities served by Catholic hospitals – suffer a drastic and often traumatic loss of patients' rights when information or services are denied, particularly when a Catholic hospital is the only game in town."
Bryan Cones, managing editor of US Catholic, a lay-edited national Catholic monthly magazine, places this debate within the larger framework of the ongoing discussion surrounding the intersection of Catholic faith and public healthcare in the United States. "The bishops in general and Olmsted in particular are insisting that their prudential judgment must be followed; that was the US bishops' position on the healthcare reform bill. I think it is unprecedented in the US Catholic church that the personal judgment of a bishop on a particular ethical situation has to be affirmed by a Catholic organisation or individual."
Catholics for Choice (CFC), an independent organisation that challenges the Catholic hierarchy on issues of human sexuality and reproduction, has been tracking healthcare in US-based Catholic hospitals since the early 1990s. According to the CFC president, Jon O'Brien: "Even though Olmsted is on the extreme end of how bishops enforce the 72 directives, it's significant that a Catholic hospital turned Olmsted down and are no longer considered to be Catholic. This hospital made a step in the right direction by showing that the bishop's stamp on their letterhead isn't as critical as providing services to the community."
Despite the fact that St Joseph's hospital is no longer considered Catholic, the staff continues to provide medical care following their interpretation of the directives. The question remains how other Catholic hospitals will respond when faced with a traditionalist bishop who overrides judgments made by trained medical personnel.
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Why are 'witches' still being burned alive in Ghana?
Amplify’d from www.guardian.co.uk
Why are 'witches' still being burned alive in Ghana?
Elderly women are used as scapegoats for all ills in large parts of Ghanaian society – leading to exile, and sometimes murder
Women accused of being witches in Ghana are often ostracised from society and sent to live in special camps. Photograph: Sean Smith for the Guardian
Ghanaians are waiting for their normally slow court system to deliver a verdict in a shocking case that illuminates resurgent beliefs in witchcraft.
Six people are currently appearing before a magistrate at Tema, near Accra, for allegedly burning a 72-year-old woman to death, in the belief that she was a witch. Earlier, the media had made fun of an elderly woman who, it was claimed, was "arrested" by villagers who claimed that she had "fallen out of the sky" after running out of "witches' gas" on a flying expedition with her coven, and fallen under a tree.
In both cases, anyone with the slightest knowledge of dementia would recognise symptoms of the disease from the accounts given of the behaviour of the women. They were where they were not supposed to be, and when they were asked what they were doing there, they could not explain themselves. This is because dementia sometimes robs its victims of the ability to speak coherently.
The woman who was burnt to death, Madam Ama Ahima, hailed from Ajumako Assasan in the Central Region. She was found in a bedroom of a house in which she knew no one. She had alighted from a lorry at the wrong place and got lost. But she could not explain this and a mob soon gathered around her and subjected her to angry questioning. One of the questioners happened to be an "evangelist", and the suggestion soon gained ground that she was a witch.
A member of the mob asked for kerosene and matches, poured the kerosene on the woman and set her ablaze. A nurse who lived next door heard of the commotion and took the victim to a police station, where she lodged a complaint. The police rushed her to a hospital but within 24 hours, she was dead.
Because belief in witchcraft forms part of Ghanaian mythology, elderly women are often subjected to cruel treatment and mental torture. A lack of scientific knowledge of the natural physical and mental degenerations that can occur during old age – including Alzheimer's disease, but not excluding hysterical dissociation and schizophrenia – means that witchcraft is blamed for a lot of "strange" happenings.
At the same time, a lot of Ghanaians have studied the Bible in a patchy sort of way, and swallow in a literal manner stories about the "casting out of devils". An evangelist who wants to be feared as one who casts out devils cannot lose if he or she picks on an elderly lady. Such women are vulnerable, and where the congregation is itself predisposed towards believing she is a witch, she has no chance. Cruel, brutal acts of "exorcism" are often used to "cure" her.
Many of the latter-day evangelists are ruthless religious mercenaries, who implant the idea in people's minds that nothing bad can happen to them without malign intervention by witches in their families.
So, a marriage breaks down, due to infidelity or pecuniary hardship, and the older woman in the household is responsible. A young, unemployed man becomes listless and shows signs of depression: an elderly lady wants to destroy him. A lorry driver gets drunk and crashes his vehicle at night: an elderly woman shone a torch into his eyes and blinded him, running his vehicle into a ditch. Even simple things such as pupils failing exams, or crops failing, or an inability to save money, are laid at the doors of "witches".
Swaths of Ghanaian society absolve themselves of personal responsibility in almost all things, and, with the aid of both traditional superstitions and the modern equivalent preached in the "charismatic churches", embark on acts of brutality against helpless scapegoats, such as occurred at Tema.
As many as three "witches' camps" have been established in the northern region of Ghana – the Gambaga camp in the East Mamprusi district, Tindanzie camp in the Gushegu district and the Tindang camp in the Yendi district – where elderly women alleged to be witches have been dumped by members of their families. They would probably have lost their lives had they not been placed in the care of government officials and non-governmental organisations. A 55-minute film, called The Witches of Gambaga, co-produced and directed by a Ghanaian-British filmmaker, Yaba Badoe, tells the story of one of the camps. It won the 2010 Black International Film Festival best documentary award.
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Premium power grab! Feds take control of insurance prices
Amplify’d from www.wnd.com
Premium power grab! Feds take control of insurance prices
New Sebelius 'regulation' called 'one more way' to drive companies out of market
By Gene Koprowski
© 2010 WorldNetDaily
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and her staff are implementing a new 136-page federal regulation which, for the first time ever, gives the federal government the power to set health insurance premium prices, a regulatory role traditionally reserved for the states, health policy experts are telling WND.
The new price control rule centralizes regulation of insurance policy premiums – and coverage – in Washington, D.C., under the aegis of Sebelius, a longtime radical abortion advocate and instrumental player in President Obama's cabinet for the Obamacare agenda.
Sebelius, a former Democratic governor of Kansas, has been a mover in liberal health policy circles for years.
"Government control over the health care sector is the ultimate goal of Obamacare, and the latest rule giving the secretary authority over health insurance prices is part of the march," Grace-Marie Turner, president of the Galen Institute, an Alexandria, Va.-based health policy think tank, told WND. "We're only seeing the beginning of the onslaught of regulations to come."
Another analyst noted that the policy essentially creates another layer of red tape for health insurance firms to jump through in order to bring policies to market, and likely will discourage new companies from entering the market, or established companies from expanding their offerings.
That means fewer choices for consumers, who purchase policies for their families, or employers who offer their workers health insurance, say experts.
"It's just one more way to drive health insurers out of the health insurance market," Hans Bader, a senior attorney with the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free market think tank in Washington D.C., told WND.
The move seems to be in line with recommendations from Obama advisers that his administration simply rule by executive action.
The recommendation had come from the Center for American Progress in Washington, headed by former Clinton Chief of Staff John Podesta. He has said Obama can implement almost any progressive agenda he wants, now that he's facing a GOP majority in the U.S. House, in complete disregard of Congress.
Podesta's report said Obama should use executive orders, rulemaking through executive branch administrative agencies, agency management, convening and creating public-private partnerships, commanding the armed forces and diplomacy to achieve want he wants without Congress have a voice.
"The ability of President Obama to accomplish important change through these powers should not be underestimated," Podesta said. "Congressional deadlock does not mean the federal government stands still."
Bader also sees other nefarious motives behind the Obama administration's price control policy. Having the power to set premium rates serves as a "club" for Obama which he can use against any health insurance company that dares to speak out against his policies.
"The administration can try to chop the rates of individual insurance companies it dislikes," said Bader
Bader said that is going to be rough on the industry, as profit margins in the health industry are already low.
"It's just too low to be reduced much on an industry-wide basis through price caps," said Bader, who worked on an amicus brief with the Cato Institute in support of Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinnelli's lawsuit against Obamacare in Richmond, Va. At the district court level, Obamacare's individual mandate was declared unconstitutional, a decision that now is on appeal.
This came to a boil earlier this year during the public debate over Obamacare, said Bader, who also has filed an amicus brief in the legal case against Obamacare in federal court in Florida.
The administration issued a gag order against Humana, a leading health insurer and provider of Medicare Advantage coverage, for daring to speak out on the ill effects of Obamacare on health care for senior citizens.
Ultimately, Humana's criticisms were correct, Bader said.
"Obamacare did indeed harm Medicare Advantage programs, as well as increasing the cost of health insurance and reducing the availability of health insurance," said Bader, noting that in October, Harvard Pilgrim Healthcare terminated its Medicare Advantage program, which insured 22,000 seniors in the Boston metro area.
Other insurers are getting out of the market already, too, Bader said. Principal Financial, which insures about 840,000 through its employer-based health insurance plans, will stop selling health insurance.
Policy experts believe this is a rational business choice for many insurers. The Obama administration "wants to force insurance providers to operate at a net loss," Rev. Isaac C. Hayes, spokesman for the Illinois Coalition of Black Republicans, said.
Some employers also are starting to drop health care coverage as a result of the new health reform act signed by Obama, Bader said.
A major employer, 3M, said it will eventually stop offering health insurance to retirees, as a result of the new law. Fast food chain McDonald's is planning to drop health care coverage too, and major employers, including Caterpillar and AT&T, are reporting dramatically increased health care costs for employees in their financial statements.
Bader is fearful that the Obama administration is going to continue to try to suppress free speech which harms the socialized health care agenda, which may be why others have not stepped up, yet, to announce changes as a result of the law. Many insurance companies are government contractors, especially those which provide health insurance for seniors and the disabled and children, and may feel chilled by Sebelius' earlier push back against Humana.
Case law indicates that the Constitution provides free speech protections for government contractors, Bader said, noting that the Supreme Court ruled on the matter 14 years ago in the case of "Board of County Commissioners v. Umbehr," 518 U.S. 668 (1996).
In the meantime, Obama's political apparatchiks are granting waivers from Obamacare for labor unions and other friends of the administration which are having financial difficulty complying with the byzantine law and related regulations. Even the administration, with those waivers, clearly acknowledges that the health care act does not deliver as much real reform as advertised during the debate during the last year. For health insurance companies, however, this is remains a real threat, and not an abstract battle over policy. Insurers may now have to live, and fear for the future, by the whims of Obama's radical appointees.
Some analysts also fear that Obama may continue to try to override the Constitution to achieve Fidel Castro-style health care in the U.S.
"It is clear this administration is keen on pursuing one end," said Hayes. "Totalitarian use of force."
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New eligibility challenge reaches Supreme Court: Attorney calls for recusal of Obama judicial appointees
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New eligibility challenge reaches Supreme Court
Attorney calls for recusal of Obama judicial appointees
By Bob Unruh
© 2010 WorldNetDaily
Another legal challenge to Barack Obama's eligibility to occupy the White House has been docketed for consideration before the U.S. Supreme Court, and the plaintiff this time formally is asking that the justices appointed by Obama, the "respondent" in the case, be excluded.
"There is a widespread perception among 'conservative' media figures such as Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin that judicial appointments have been made by the respondent Obama with the expectation of favors in return. This has combined with a campaign of ridicule and 'unthinkability' on these serious issues led by the press spokesman of the respondent Obama among others," said a "motion to recuse" submitted by attorneys working on behalf of Gregory S. Hollister, a retired military officer.
The motion cites Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, both of whom were awarded the lifetime tenure positions on probably the most influential court in the world by Obama.
"What is very much at issue here is the question of public perception. Will this court be bound by the Constitution and the law that it sets out under the Constitution? It is important that this court, above all institutions, preserves and protects the Constitution and a rule of law based upon it," the motion states.
It also reminded the justices of the verbal attack they sustained from Obama at last year's State of the Union address, when Obama publicly criticized their ruling in an election case.
"We would think that this is particularly the case in light of the historically unprecedented attack on this court's determination to uphold the constitutional rule of law engaged in by the respondent Obama during the State of the Union Address that he gave in January of 2010. It is as if he and those working with him and backing him believe that this court and the federal judiciary can be manipulated and intimidated in the manner that investigations have revealed as having occurred in the courts of Cook County, Illinois.
"We would suggest that this court should particularly avoid the appearance of favoritism as overriding the rule of law based upon the Constitution," the motion said.
Hollister's case is one of the longest-running among those challenging Obama's eligibility. It is scheduled to be heard in "conference" by the Supreme Court justices on Jan. 14.
It is at those conferences that the justices would determine by vote whether the case would be heard. Although proceedings are not public, it is believed that a case must earn four votes among the nine justices before it is heard.
WND reported when another eligibility case attorney, Orly Taitz, approached Justice Antonin Scalia about the issue.
"Scalia stated that it would be heard if I can get four people to hear it. He repeated, you need four for the argument. I got a feeling that he was saying that one of these four that call themselves constitutionalists went to the other side," Taitz said.
At that time, the Supreme Court was considered to have mainly a 4-4 conservative-liberal split, with one swing vote on most issues. On the conservative side generally were Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Samuel Alito, Scalia and Justice Clarence Thomas. Justice Anthony Kennedy often is the swing vote. The liberal side frequently included Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David Souter and John Paul Stevens.
Since then Stevens and Souter have departed and were replaced by Obama, after he evaluated their philosophies, with the like-minded Kagan and Sotomayor. Presumably, should there be only seven justices in the discussion, three votes might be sufficient to move the case forward.
Laurence Elgin, one of those coordinating the efforts to reveal the problems with following the Constitution in the United States, also announced a new organization and website, the Constitutional Rule of Law Fund, to pursue cases that defend the U.S. legal system and the Constitution.
He told WND that the Hollister case, throughout the district and appellate court levels, never was denied standing, a major hurdle that has torpedoed many of the other eligibility disputes to rise to the level of court opinions.
The pleadings submitted to the court, compiled by longtime attorney John D. Hemenway, cite the incredible importance of the claims that Obama, in fact, failed to qualify for the office.
"If proven true, those allegations mean that every command by the respondent Obama and indeed every appointment by respondent Obama, including the appointment of members [Kagan and Sotomayor] of this and every other court, may be only de facto but not de jure [by right of law]," states the pleading.
"Further, his signature on every law passed while he occupies the Oval Office is not valid if he is not constitutionally eligible to occupy that office de jure," it continued.
"Thus, it is not hyperbole to state that the entire rule of law based on the Constitution is at issue. Moreover, it would indicate that the respondent Obama ran for the office of president knowing that his eligibility was at the very least in question," it continued.
The case made headlines at the district court level because of the ruling from District Judge James Robertson of Washington.
In refusing to hear evidence about whether Obama is eligible, Robertson wrote in his notice dismissing the case, "The issue of the president's citizenship was raised,
vetted, blogged, texted, twittered, and otherwise
massaged by America's vigilant citizenry during
Mr. Obama's two-year-campaign for the
presidency, but this plaintiff wants it resolved by
a court."
Besides the sarcasm involved, the pleading states, the very evidence pertinent to the dispute at issues was ignored.
The pleading outlines that information, which challenges Obama's claim to eligibility and his campaign's citation of a computer-generated Certification of Live Birth from the state of Hawaii, a document also made available to those not necessarily born in the state, as proof of Obama's eligibility.
It suggests there are "sufficient allegations" that Obama was not born inside the United States, and outlines the law and regulations in force at the time of Obama's birth, in 1961.
"At the time of the birth of the respondent Obama in 1961 as alleged, Congress had … the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1952. Under the applicable provision of that act … for the respondent Obama to have been a naturalized citizen of the United States at birth, were he born of one U.S. citizen parent and one alien parent, as he has alleged throughout his political career he was, his mother would have had to have been continuously resident in the United States for a period of 10 years preceding the date of his birth and, most importantly, she would have had to have resided continuously for five years preceding his birth in the United State after she had turned 14 years old. Since she was only 18 when Obama was born, this condition was clearly not fulfilled," the arguments said.
It also raised the suggestion that there are sound arguments to the effect that a "natural born citizen," a requirement the Constitution imposes on the president but not other federal officials, is someone born to two citizen parents, and Obama himself has documented that his father never was a citizen of the U.S.
The fact that the evidence never was reviewed and the judge based a "biased" decision on "a completely extrajudicial factor" [twittering], prevented Hollister from having the constitutional rule of law applied, the petition states.
The motion to recuse explains that federal law requires that judges exclude themselves when circumstances arise that would involve "even the appearance of impartiality."
"It would seem literally to apply to Justice Kagan in any case since she was serving as Solicitor General during the pendency of this and other cases involving the ineligibility question. The U. S. Attorney did make a brief appearance in this case in the appellate document and did appear in many parallel cases," the motion said.
The president is represented by the private law firm in the current case.
"Historical analysis establishes, therefore, that ... respondent Obama, since his father was a Kenyan of British citizenship and not a U. S. citizen, was not 'eligible to the office of president,…' Therefore his appointment of the present Justices Sotomayor and Kagan are not valid appointments under the Constitution and they should not, therefore, be sitting as justices deciding upon our petition if this court itself observes the law it has set out under the Constitution as the supreme law of the land. Otherwise the concept of a rule of law based upon the Constitution, which we contend is at issue in our petition, is being flouted at the very outset of consideration of the petition," the motion explains.
Elgin told WND the Hollister case is the starting point for the Constitutional Rule of Law Fund and website.
The case "places squarely before the high court the question of whether the constitutional Rule of Law will be preserved in this nation, as opposed to egregious bias on the part of a judge who relied upon such extra-judicial factors as that 'The issue of the president's citizenship was raised, vetted, blogged, texted, twittered, and otherwise massaged by America's vigilant citizenry during Mr. Obama's two-year-campaign for the president,…'
"The judge then went on to sarcastically declare: '...but this plaintiff wants it resolved by a court.' Imagine that, a citizen wanting a serious constitutional issue resolved by a court! John Marshall, roll over in your grave. We believe this sentiment is called in the language of the Supreme Court in numerous cases a denial of 'access to the courts,' or of 'access to justice,' and is rooted in the First and Seventh Amendments as well as a number of other constitutional provisions," the website explains.
Neither is Hollister a novice on the issue of eligibility, it explains.
"It is a matter of record that Colonel Hollister, while on active duty in the Air Force, in a career from which he honorably retired, inquired into the legitimacy of President Clinton's orders because President Clinton participated, while at Oxford, in communist protest marches in Eastern Europe against the Vietnam War at a time when we were at war with communism in Vietnam, something that would seem to violate the Fourteenth Amendment," the site explains.
The questions suggested by the petition are weighty:
- "Did the district court examine the complaint, as required by the decisions of this and every other federal court, to see if it alleged facts to support its claims?"
- "By refusing to consider the issue of defendant Obama not being a 'natural born citizen' as set out in Article II, Section 1, Clause 5 of the Constitution, did the district court violate its obligations to consider the issues raised by the complaint?"
- "In … relying on extrajudicial criteria such as an assertion that 'the issue of the president's citizenship was raised, vetted, blogged, texted, twittered and otherwise massaged by America's vigilant citizenry during Mr. Obama's two-year-campaign for the presidency' combined with an attack on petitioner … did the district court not engage in such obvious political bias and upon extrajudicial factors as to render its opinion void?"
- "Did the … bias engaged in lead to a decision which ignored the law as set out above and as a result place the respondent-defendant Obama above that law and the rule of law in this country generally and threaten the constitutional basis and very existence of our rule of law?"
- "Did the courts below not completely ignore the decisions of this court and the clear language of Rule 15 of the federal Rules of Civil Procedure concerning amendments so as to compound its biased elevation of the defendant Obama above the rule of constitutional law?"
While the district judge dismissed the case because it had been "twittered," the appeals court simply adopted his reasoning, but wouldn't even allow its opinion affirming the decision to be published, the petition explains.
Hollister's concern rests with the fact that as a retired Air Force officer in the Individual Ready Reserve, it is possible that he at some point could be subject to Obama's orders.
"If Congress called up the Air Force Individual Ready Reserve the respondent Obama would have to give the order … If, as it appears, those orders would not be lawful, Col. Hollister would be bound … to question them and look to the respondent [Vice President Joe] Biden as constitutionally next in succession for lawful orders," the pleading said.
This case doesn't have the "standing" dispute that has brought failure to so many other challenges to Obama's eligibility, the pleading explains, because Robertson "found that it had jurisdiction of the case, and therefore that petitioner Hollister had standing."
John Eidsmoe, an expert on the U.S. Constitution now working with the Foundation on Moral Law, has told WND a demand for verification of Obama's eligibility appears to be legitimate.
Eidsmoe said it's clear that Obama has something in the documentation of his history, including his birth certificate, college records and other documents that "he does not want the public to know."
WND has reported on dozens of legal and other challenges to Obama's eligibility. Some suggest he was not born in Hawaii has he claims; others say his birth location makes no difference because a "natural born citizen" was understood at the time to be a child of two citizen parents, and Obama's father was subject to the British crown when Barack Obama was born.
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Artificial intelligence to transform web: Russian tycoon
Amplify’d from www.google.com
MOSCOW — The emergence of artificial intelligence is to transform the Internet industry and social networking over the next decade, Russia's leading web tycoon said in an interview on Tuesday.
The low-profile Yury Milner, chairman in the rapidly expanding Mail.ru Internet firm and CEO of DST Global investment company who built minority stakes in Facebook and other Western firms, made the comments in an rare interview with Vedomosti.
"I think that in 10 years if you ask a question on a social network and you get an answer you will not know if a computer or a person has answered you," Milner told the financial daily.
"When you receive a question, you will not know if it has been asked by a person or an artificial intelligence. And by answering you help the computer create an algorithm."
Mail.ru, which is part owned by Russian magnate Alisher Usmanov and recently enjoyed a solid IPO in London, has grown into the biggest Internet firm in the Russian-speaking world with stakes in the most prominent portals.
It rose to prominence abroad when it unexpectedly took a 2.4 percent stake in Facebook. DST Global, the investment vehicle, also has an undisclosed stake of its own that unconfirmed reports put at a total holding of 10 percent.
In the interview Milner made no comments on the size of the Facebook stake, or Mail.ru's holdings in online games portal Zynga and deal-of-the-day website Groupon.
Milner said there had been a revolutionary change in demand for information and now there was "as much information generated in the the last two days as there was in the history of civilisation up to 2003."
He defended the company's tight focus on consumer Internet products, and in particular social Internet, saying that "we have chosen a strategy to have a global expertise in a very narrow sector."
He said that in every Internet sector, there was a tendency for one single firm to become dominant, as with Facebook in social networking in the English-speaking world.
"On the Internet there is a tendency for 'winner takes all' and a leader emerges in every niche with surprising consistency," he said.
"This is the main issue that we look at. When we made our first investment in Facebook, it was not obvious that it was a winner."
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Forecasters keep eye on looming 'Solar Max'
Amplify’d from www.breitbart.com
Many people may be surprised to learn that the Sun, rather than burn with faultless consistency, goes through moments of calm and tempest.
But two centuries of observing sunspots -- dark, relatively cool marks on the solar face linked to mighty magnetic forces -- have revealed that our star follows a roughly 11-year cycle of behaviour.
The latest cycle began in 1996 and for reasons which are unclear has taken longer than expected to end.
Now, though, there are more and more signs that the Sun is shaking off its torpor and building towards "Solar Max," or the cycle's climax, say experts.
"The latest prediction looks at around midway 2013 as being the maximum phase of the solar cycle," said Joe Kunches of NASA's Space Weather Prediction Center.
But there is a prolonged period of high activity, "more like a season, lasting about two and a half years," either side of the peak, he cautioned.
At its angriest, the Sun can vomit forth tides of electromagnetic radiation and charged matter known as coronal mass ejections, or CMEs.
This shock wave may take several days to reach Earth. When it arrives, it compresses the planet's protective magnetic field, releasing energy visible in high latitudes as shimmering auroras -- the famous Northern Lights and Southern Lights.
But CMEs are not just pretty events.
They can unleash static discharges and geomagnetic storms that can disrupt or even knock out the electronics on which our urbanised, Internet-obsessed, data-saturated society depends.
Less feared, but also a problem, are solar flares, or eruptions of super-charged protons that can reach Earth in just minutes.
In the front line are telecommunications satellites in geostationary orbit, at an altitude of 36,000 kilometres (22,500 miles) and Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites, on which modern airliners and ships depend for navigation, which orbit at 20,000 kms (12,000 miles).
In January 1994, discharges of static electricity inflicted a five-month, 50-million-dollar outage of a Canadian telecoms satellite, Anik-E2.
In April 2010, Intelsat lost Galaxy 15, providing communications over North America, after the link to ground control was knocked out apparently by solar activity.
"These are the two outright breakdowns that we all think about," said Philippe Calvel, an engineer with the French firm Thales. "Both were caused by CMEs."
In 2005, X-rays from a solar storm disrupted satellite-to-ground communications and GPS signals for about 10 minutes.
To cope with solar fury, satellite designers opt for robust, tried-and-tested components and shielding, even if this makes the equipment heavier and bulkier and thus costlier to launch, said Thierry Duhamel of satellite maker Astrium.
Another precaution is redundancy -- to have backup systems in case one malfunctions.
On Earth, power lines, data connections and even oil and gas pipelines are potentially vulnerable.
An early warning of the risk came in 1859, when the biggest CME ever observed unleashed red, purple and green auroras even in tropical latitudes.
The new-fangled technology of the telegraph went crazy. Geomagnetically-induced currents in the wires shocked telegraph operators and even set the telegraph paper on fire.
In 1989, a far smaller flare knocked out power from Canada's Hydro Quebec generator, inflicting a nine-hour blackout for six million people.
A workshop in 2008 by US space weather experts, hosted by the National Academy of Sciences, heard that a major geomagnetic storm would dwarf the 2005 Hurricane Katrina for costs.
Recurrence of a 1921 event today would fry 350 major transformers, leaving more than 130 million people without power, it heard. A bigger storm could cost between a trillion and two trillion dollars in the first year, and full recovery could take between four and 10 years.
"I think there is some hyperbole about the draconian effects," said Kunches.
"On the other hand, there's a lot we don't know about the Sun. Even in the supposedly declining, or quiet phase, you can have magnetic fields on the Sun that get very concentrated and energised for a time, and you can get, out of the blue, eruptive activity that is atypical. In short, we have a variable star."
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China has carrier-killer missile, U.S. admiral says
Amplify’d from www.defence.pk
China has carrier-killer missile, U.S. admiral says
Adm. Robert F. Willard, commander of the U.S. Pacific Command, disclosed to a Japanese newspaper on Sunday that the new anti-ship ballistic missile (ASBM) is now in the early stages of deployment after having undergone extensive testing.
"An analogy using a Western term would be 'initial operational capability (IOC),' whereby I think China would perceive that it has an operational capability now, but they continue to develop it," Adm. Willard told the Asahi Shimbun. "I would gauge it as about the equivalent of a U.S. system that has achieved IOC."
The four-star admiral, who has been an outspoken skeptic of China's claims that its large-scale military buildup is peaceful, said the U.S. deployment assessment is based on China's press reports and continued testing.
The new weapon, the "D" version of China's DF-21 medium-range missile, involves firing the mobile missile into space, returning it into the atmosphere and then maneuvering it to its target
Military officials consider using ballistic missiles against ships at sea to be a difficult task that requires a variety of air, sea and space sensors, navigation systems and precision guidance technology - capabilities not typical of other Chinese missiles.
Asked about the integrated system, Adm. Willard said that "to have something that would be regarded as in its early operational stage would require that system be able to accomplish its flight pattern as designed, by and large."
The admiral said that while the U.S. thinks "that the component parts of the anti-ship ballistic missile have been developed and tested," China's testing has not gone as far as a live-fire test attack on an actual ship.
"We have not seen an over-water test of the entire system," he said.
Adm. Willard said he did not view the new missile as a greater threat to U.S. and allied forces than China's submarine forces, which also have been expanded greatly in the past decade.
"Anti-access/area denial, which is a term that was relatively recently coined, is attempting to represent an entire range of capabilities that China has developed and that other countries have developed," he said.
"It´s not exclusively China that has what is now being referred to as A2/AD capability. But in China´s case, it´s a combination of integrated air-defense systems; advanced naval systems, such as the submarine; advanced ballistic-missile systems, such as the anti-ship ballistic missile, as well as power-projection systems into the region," he said.
The new weapons can threaten "archipelagos" in Asia, such as Japan and Philippines, as well as Vietnam and other states that "are falling within the envelope of this, of an A2/AD capability of China," Adm. Willard said.
"That should be concerning - and we know is concerning - to those countries," he said.
Adm. Willard said the new weapons are "an expanded capability that ranges beyond the first island chain and overlaps countries in the region."
"For that reason, it is concerning to Southeast Asia, [and] it remains concerning to the United States."
Andrew S. Erickson, a professor at the U.S. Naval War College, said the admiral's comments on the missile deployment confirm earlier reports that the Chinese are moving ahead with the DF-21D missile.
"China must have conducted a rigorous program of tests, most likely including flight tests, to demonstrate that the DF-21D [missile] is mature enough for initial production, deployment and employment," Mr. Erickson said in an e-mail.
Mr. Erickson estimates that at least one unit of China's Second Artillery Corps, as its missile forces are called, must be equipped with the road-mobile system.
"While doubtless an area of continuous challenge and improvement, the DF-21D´s command, control, communications, computers, information, surveillance, and reconnaissance infrastructure must be sufficient to support attempts at basic carrier strike group targeting," he said.
Mr. Erickson said, based on Chinese missile-deployment patterns, that the new missile system likely will be fielded in "waves" at different units to meet deterrence objectives.
Military specialists have said the DF-21D deployment is a potent new threat because it will force U.S. aircraft carrier strike groups to operate farther from hot spots in the western Pacific.
Currently, U.S. military strategy calls for the Pentagon to send several strike groups to waters near Taiwan in the event China follows through on threats to use force to retake the island. The lone U.S. aircraft carrier strike group based permanently in the region is the USS George Washington, whose home port is inYokosuka, Japan. A second carrier is planned for Hawaii or Guam.
Carrier forces also provide air power in the event of a new war in Korea and are used to assure freedom of navigation, a growing problem as the result of recent Chinese military assertiveness in the South China Sea, East China Sea and Yellow Sea.
Adm. Willard did not discuss what U.S. countermeasures the Navy has taken against the new anti-ship missile. U.S. naval task forces include ships equipped with the Aegis system designed to shoot down ballistic missiles.
Wallace "Chip" Gregson, assistant defense secretary for Asian and Pacific security affairs, said in a speech earlier this month that China's new anti-access and area-denial weapons, including the DF-21D, "threaten our primary means of projecting power: our bases, our sea and air assets, and the networks that support them."
He warned that China's military buildup could "upend the regional security balance."
Richard Fisher, a China military-affairs specialist, said the new ASBM is only one part of a series of new Chinese weapons that threaten the region.
"When we add the ASBM to the PLA's [People's Liberation Army's] growing anti-satellite capabilities, growing numbers of submarines, and quite soon, its fifth-generation fighter, we are seeing the erection of a new Chinese wall in the western Pacific, for which the Obama administration has offered almost nothing in defensive response," Mr. Fisher said.
"Clearly, China's communist leadership is not impressed by the administration's ending of F-22 production, its retirement of the Navy's nuclear cruise missile, START Treaty reductions in U.S. missile warheads, and its refusal to consider U.S. space warfare capabilities. Such weakness is the surest way to invite military adventurism from China," he added.
Mr. Fisher said the Pentagon should mount a crash program to develop high-technology energy weapons, like rail guns and lasers in response to the new ASBMs.
Mark Stokes, a retired Air Force officer who has written extensively on the new missile, said the new deployment is a concern.
"China's ability to place at risk U.S. and other nations' maritime surface assets operating in the western Pacific and South China Sea is growing and closer to becoming a reality than many may think," Mr. Stokes said.
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