kateoplis:

“Columbine High School had an armed guard when two students went on a murderous shooting rampage there in 1999, and Virginia Tech had an armed police force with its own SWAT team equivalent when one of its students killed 33 people in 2007.”

MotherJones: NRA Chief Calls for More Guns Everywhere

Also note that the NRA has its own video games.

Just want to bring your attention to one of THE BEST tumblrs in existence: govtoversight. Huge fan of these folks. Their reporting and procurement is top notch. We need more hard-information and less soft-opinion making from our news. This story is out-f#cking-rageous. Nearly a billion in late fees for shipping containers? And the GOP wants to cut Big Bird. What is Obama doing??? This story is infuriating.

Why so much this year? Because they just found six years of old invoices. That brings the total the military has paid in late fees since 2001 to $720 million.

This is an unacceptable failure of financial management. If the Pentagon’s late fees are so bad it couldn’t get a library card, how can we trust them with hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars? Read more at ArmyTimes.com.

Totally busted. Ryan requested federal stimulus for energy conservation projects. He took taxpayer money and transferred it to private businesses. As recently as Wednesday (yesterday) he denied requesting the funds from Obama. But, he lied.

His letters requesting stimulus funds were discovered by the Wall Street Journal from a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.

This matters because he built his career attacking the stimulus funds and attacking environmental policies. This goes beyond hypocritical - it’s flat out lying to Americans.

What else has Paul Ryan lied to the American people about? If he blames his memory, why would we elect someone who can’t remember what he does AS A FUNDAMENTAL PART OF HIS JOB?

In 2009, Ryan wrote to Energy Secretary Steven Chu and Labor Secretary Hilda Solis asking for stimulus money to cover costs on two energy conservation projects in his home state of Wisconsin. In the letter, Ryan said the funds would help create jobs and reduce “energy consumption” in the state. At least one of the companies received the requested cash.

The letters were first obtained by The Wall Street Journal through the Freedom of Information Act back in early 2010.  The Boston Globe turned them up for the first time during this campaign season Wednesday. At that point, a Ryan aide referred ABC News back to what a Ryan spokesman said when the letters first went public.

“If Congressman Ryan is asked to help a Wisconsin entity applying for existing Federal grant funds, he does not believe flawed policy should get in the way of doing his job and providing a legitimate constituent service to his employers,” the spokesman told the Milwaukee (Wisc.) Journal Sentinel.

Thursday, Ryan responded to the questions himself.

Police officers shredded mining protesters with assault rifles, killing nearly twenty people. Reuters posted a (warning: very graphic) video of the killings earlier today. The incident happened in South Africa near a mine that produces the metal platinum. Workers have been protesting since January, demanding safer working conditions and better pay.

A police spokesperson blundered through an interview with the local South African press - a press, it must be added, that has shown no interest in the protesters’ demands or plight.

The article is a must be read to be believed:

News24 South Africa report: “What were we supposed to do?”

SOPA is not needed after all…

(Reuters) - A court in Ecuador has rejected an order by arbitrators that an $18 billion pollution ruling against Chevron should be frozen, but the judges referred an appeal by the U.S. oil company to the country’s Supreme Court.

A year after the landmark decision against Chevron, a panel working for The Hague’s Permanent Court of Arbitration told Ecuador last week to take all necessary measures to suspend enforcement of the award at home and abroad. But in a ruling made public on Monday, the court that has been considering the case in the remote Amazon jungle region of Sucumbios said Ecuador should not comply with that order.

“A simple arbitral award … cannot force judges to infringe the human rights of our citizens,” said the court, adding that abiding by the panel’s order would be unconstitutional and would lead to the breach of international human rights conventions.

The court said it had accepted an appeal filed by Chevron, however, and referred it to the Supreme Court in the clearest sign yet that the litigation, which has already run nearly 20 years, could drag on for more years. The plaintiffs say The Hague panel’s ruling will not affect their plans to collect on the $18 billion award in other countries where Chevron has assets.

Read the rest at Reuters

csmonitor:

An episode of the BBC’s Frozen Planet documentary series that looks at climate change has been scrapped in the U.S., where many are hostile to the idea of global warming.

British viewers will see all seven episodes of the multi-million-pound nature series throughout the Autumn.

But U.S. audiences will not be shown the last episode, which looks at the threat posed by man to the natural world.

It is feared a show that preaches global warming could upset viewers in the U.S., where around half of people do not believe in climate change.

Yikes.