Born from the first recruitment drive held at Philadelphia’s Tun Tavern, the first two battalions of Continental Marines were formed on the 10th day of November in 1775.
The Vikings seem to have a strong interest in securing a veteran quarterback once the NFL lockout ends.
It also might be possible the Vikings and Redskins have had some conversations about a deal for 34-year-old quarterback Donovan McNabb, who definitely won’t be a member of his current team once play resumes.
Of course, no deals can be made while the lockout is in progress, but I don’t know if there is any rule against the clubs talking about making a deal.
One reason why McNabb might be the veteran quarterback the team will sign is because Vikings coach Leslie Frazier is personally familiar with McNabb. Frazier was a defensive assistant with the Eagles from 1999 to 2002, when McNabb was in his prime.
This is unbelievable, do the Vikings ever want to win a Super Bowl? An ancient Brett Favre couldn’t get us there, what makes anyone in their right mind think a geriatric Donovan McNabb can get it done? He couldn’t win a Super Bowl in Philadelphia, in his prime, and now he’s 34 and all but washed up! Why the [expletive deleted] do we have to keep trading for QB leftovers, why can’t we draft a QB for the future? Why do the Vikings insist on disappointing their fans and breaking their hearts year in and year out?
/is it wrong to root for the NFL lockout to continue?
The Democrats raped him for his vote and then shunned him like the turncoat whore he is. Hey Arlen, get your [expletive deleted] nasty old wrinkly weasel ass out of my government! Karma’s a real bitch, eh mister shameless political mercenary?
Sen. Arlen Specter, Pennsylvania’s longest-serving senator, lost his bid to run for re-election as a Democrat to Rep. Joe Sestak, the Associated Press reports.
With 65 percent of precincts reporting, Sestak received nearly 53 percent of votes, the AP reports, to Specter’s 47 percent.
Sestak’s victory marks a striking triumph over the establishment candidate, who just last month had a more than 20-point lead in polls.
After serving in the Senate for nearly 30 years as a Republican, Specter switched to the Democratic party in order to salvage his career. He won the support of the Democratic establishment — including Gov. Ed Rendell and Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter, who worked on his behalf to mobilize voters in Philadelphia, a critical part of the state for Specter.
President Obama also supported Specter, but he never joined him on the campaign trail.
While the Democratic establishment worked to elect Specter, Sestak seized on the 80-year-old senator’s party switch to portray Specter as self-interested. He ran a bruising political ad that showed Specter with then-President George W. Bush.
Hey boys and girls, Eric Holder and Obama’s Justice Department say it’s okay to dress up in paramilitary attire and stand ten feet in front of the entrance to a polling place, on election day, wielding a police baton. So, next November, get geared up and get out there and intimidate some Democrat voters! Turnabout is fair play, good for the gander and all.
Assistant Attorney General Thomas E. Perez told the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights on Friday there was “insufficient evidence” to bring a civil complaint against members of the New Black Panther Party who disrupted a Philadelphia polling place in the 2008 general elections.
Mr. Perez, the only Justice Department official to testify publicly before the commission about the case, said that without sufficient proof that party members or the organization’s leader, Malik Zulu Shabazz, directed or controlled unlawful activities at the poll or made speeches to incite or produce lawless action, the complaint “would have likely failed” in court.
Lacks proof my ass! Insufficient evidence? WTF is this? Does the Justice Department need it transcribed into Braille?
How anyone in their right mind can watch that video and then claim, with a straight face, than there’s insufficient evidence of what is obviously blatant, textbook voter intimidation is beyond me.
/it’s beyond farcical, just like the rest of the Obama administration
A Colorado mother whose family said she flew to Ireland last year to join a possibly violent Islamic group was charged Friday with working with a Pennsylvania woman to attend a terrorist training camp in Europe.
Jamie Paulin-Ramirez, 31, had been arrested in Ireland last month with six others on suspicion of planning to assassinate Swedish cartoonist Lars Vilks, whose drawing of the prophet Muhammad with the body of a dog outraged many Muslims. Paulin-Ramirez, from Leadville, Colo, was later released by Irish authorities.
She returned voluntarily to the United States and was arrested Friday in Philadelphia, according to a statement from the Department of Justice. It did not give details of why she returned.
Federal prosecutors added Paulin-Ramirez to a case against Colleen R. LaRose, 46, who went by the online name “JihadJane” and was charged in a sealed indictment in October with recruiting people to kill Vilks.
According to the new indictment unveiled Friday, LaRose last summer invited Paulin-Ramirez to join her at a “training camp” in Europe. The day after she arrived, Paulin-Ramirez married another participant, a man with whom she had corresponded online.
The charges against Paulin-Ramirez carry a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
Seven people have been arrested in the Irish Republic over an alleged plot to kill a Swedish cartoonist for depicting the Prophet Muhammad, police say.
The four men and three women are all Muslim immigrants, according to media reports, though a police statement did not confirm this.
Cartoonist Lars Vilks had depicted the Prophet Muhammad with the body of a dog in the Nerikes Allehanda newspaper.
Islamic militants put a $100,000 (£67,000) bounty on his head.
Mr Vilks was quoted as saying he was unfazed by the arrests, which he said he thought could be linked to two death threats he had received by telephone in January.
‘Slaughter’ bonus
Irish police said the seven suspects were arrested after an investigation into a “conspiracy to murder an individual in another jurisdiction”, a probe that also involved police in the US and other European countries.
The suspects ranged in age from their mid-20s to late-40s.
Ireland’s RTE news network reported that five were detained in Waterford and two others in Cork.
RTE said those in custody were originally refugees from Morocco and Yemen, but had gained asylum and were in the Republic of Ireland legally.
Mr Vilks has been under police protection in Sweden since threats were made against his life.
“I’m not shaking with fear, exactly,” he told Swedish news agency TT after Tuesday’s arrests.
“I have prepared in different ways and I have an axe here in case someone should manage to get in through the window.”
In 2007 a group linked to al-Qaeda in Iraq offered a $100,000 reward for killing Mr Vilks, and a 50% bonus if he was “slaughtered like a lamb” by having his throat cut.
A woman from Montgomery County who used the online nickname of “JihadJane” has been indicted for conspiring to provide support to Islamic terrorists with whom she allegedly plotted to kill a Swedish artist.
Prosecutors accused Colleen R. LaRose, 46, of emailing terrorists sympathizers and offering to use her American looks and identity to carry out an attack. She was arrested last October but her incarceration was kept secret until today.
American and foreign governments used the time to sweep up a terrorist network in Ireland, according to news media in that country. The Irish Times said seven men, most from other nations, were arrested as part of a plot to murder a Swedish artist who drew a controversial image of the Prophet Muhammad.
Two American officials told the Inquirer that LaRose’s arrest was connected to the Irish investigation and planned attack in Sweden.
LaRose was arrested at Philadelphia International Airport when she stepped off a plane from Europe in October. Her internet postings sympathetic to radical jihad attracted the FBI’s attention.
American officials say LaRose, who is divorced, lived in Texas before moving to the Philadelphia area in 2004. A white woman of slight build, LaRose has no known occupation.
LaRose lived in a Pennsburg apartment building, attached to a post office, when FBI agents started their investigation last fall.
She is accused of recruiting women online to travel to Europe “in support of violent jihad,” the indictment says.
The court document quotes email messages in which LaRose, who also used the online name “Fatima LaRose,” as telling a South Asian man that her appearance would allow her to “blend in with many people.”
She later received a “direct order” to kill a citizen of Sweden, identified as Lars Vilks.
LaRose is accused of writing this email: “i will make this my goal till i achieve it or die trying.”
A STAR is primed to explode in a blast that could wipe out the Earth, according to American astronomers.
A new study shows the star, called T Pyxidis, is much closer than previously thought at 3,260 light-years away – a short hop in galactic terms.
It is set to self-destruct in an explosion called a supernova with the force of 20 billion billion billion megatons of TNT.
The blast from the thermonuclear explosion could strip away the Earth’s ozone layer that keeps out deadly space radiation, scientists said.
The doomsday scenario was described today by astronomers from Villanova University in Philadelphia.
They said the International Ultraviolet Explorer satellite has shown them that T Pyxidis is really two stars, one called a white dwarf that is sucking in gas and steadily growing. When it reaches a critical mass it will blow itself to pieces.
It will become as bright as all the other stars in the galaxy put together and shine like a beacon halfway across the universe.
The experts said the Hubble space telescope photographed the star gearing up for its big bang with a series of smaller blasts or “burps”, called novas.
These explosions came regularly about every 20 years from 1890, but stopped after 1967.
So the next blast is very overdue, said scientists Edward M Sion, Patrick Godon and Timothy McClain at the American Astronomical Society in Washington.
Robin Scagell, vice-president of the UK’s Society for Popular Astronomy, said, “The star may certainly became a supernova soon – but soon could still be a long way off so don’t have nightmares.”
Although the odds are literally astronomical, what if T Pyxidis already exploded 3259 years ago? There’s Al Gore global warming and then there’s supernova global warming.
/what do we do, buy lots of carbon credits or really high SPF sunscreen?
Recruits at Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island got a brief respite Tuesday afternoon from the rigors of boot camp to celebrate the 234th birthday of the Marine Corps.
More than 300 Marines, recruits, veterans and local leaders packed into the depot’s All-Weather Training Facility for the annual birthday pageant and cake-cutting ceremony. It was in 1775 that the Continental Congress passed a resolution to create two battalions of Marines to fight the British.
“One of the reasons we celebrate this day is to remember those that have gone before us,” said Brig. Gen. Frederick Padilla, commanding general of Parris Island. “Each generation of Marines takes that history and puts their own mark on it.”
The Corps began celebrating its birthday in 1921 when then-Commandant Gen. John Lejeune ordered Marines everywhere to pause Nov. 10 to celebrate “the birthday of our Corps by calling to mind the glories of its long and illustrious past.”
In keeping with Lejeune’s order, 16 Parris Island Marines marched one by one Tuesday across the concrete floor, each wearing a period uniform spanning the Corps’ history.
Sgt. Terrance Bowens, a Columbia native, was selected to tote a musket and sport the green overcoat and cream-colored trousers worn by the first Continental Marines during the Revolutionary War.
“I had never even been to a pageant before, so it feels good to have been selected to wear this uniform,” Bowens said. “I’m very honored to have been able to play such a big part in this ceremony.”
In part, the honor is bestowed upon Marines who can fit into the uniforms.
Recruits halted Tuesday for the hour-long ceremony, said Staff Sgt. Tracie Kessler, depot spokesman.
The pageant helps bring to life the storied history the recruits became a part of when they enlisted.
“It’s great because this pageant and seeing those uniforms reinforces that this is what being a Marine is all about,” Kessler said.
The Marine Corps has been a part of the Lowcountry since June 1891 when a small security force was assigned to U.S. Naval Station Port Royal, a base on Parris Island. The Corps officially opened a recruit depot on Parris Island in 1915.
Chris Christie leads Jon Corzine 47-41 in PPP’s final poll of the New Jersey Governor’s race, with Chris Daggett at 11%.
Corzine had pulled to within a point of Christie on our poll three weeks ago after trailing by as many as 14 points over the summer, but his momentum has stalled since then and Christie’s built his lead back up to 4 points last week and now 6.
But, of course, if you’re a Republican in New Jersey, you already know that a six point lead against a Democrat candidate might not be safe.
The race for governor in New Jersey is so close in final polls that it may well end up in a recount — the 1981 election did and was decided by less than 1,800 votes. If there is a recount, you can bet disputes about absentee ballots will loom large. Moreover, if serious allegations of fraud emerge, you can also expect less-than-vigorous investigation by the Obama Justice Department — which showed just how seriously it takes such allegations when it walked away from an open-and-shut voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party in Philadelphia earlier this year.
Plenty of reasons exist for suspecting absentee fraud may play a significant role in tomorrow’s Garden State contests. Groups associated with Acorn in neighboring Pennsylvania and New York appear to have moved into the state. An independent candidate for mayor in Camden has already leveled charges that voter fraud is occurring in his city. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party in New Jersey is taking advantage of a new loosely written vote-by-mail law to pressure county clerks not to vigorously use signature checks to evaluate the authenticity of absentee ballots, the only verification procedure allowed.
The state has received a flood of 180,000 absentee ballot requests. On some 3,000 forms the signature doesn’t match the one on file with county clerks. Yet citing concerns that voters would be disenfranchised, Democratic Party lawyer Paul Josephson wrote New Jersey’s secretary of state asking her “to instruct County Clerks not to deny applications on the basis of signature comparison alone.” Mr. Josephson maintained that county clerks “may be overworked and are likely not trained in handwriting analysis” and insisted that voters with suspect applications should be allowed to cast provisional ballots. Those ballots, of course, would then provide a pool of votes that would be subject to litigation in any recount, with the occupant of New Jersey’s highest office determined by Florida 2000-style scrutiny of ballot applications.
Fearing a potentially devastating Democratic loss, the highly controversial Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) group and its affiliated organizations are gearing up to tip the scales and re-elect embattled incumbent in the hard-fought New Jersey gubernatorial race, sources tell Newsmax.
“Acorn is heavily involved in Gov. Jon Corzine’s get-out-the-vote operation, but is maintaining a low profile at the insistence of the Corzine campaign,” Matthew Vadum, senior editor of the conservative Capitol Research Center think tank, tells Newsmax. “If Corzine manages to win reelection, he doesn’t want the victory tainted by his close association with Acorn.”
Wall Street Journal columnist and author John Fund wrote Tuesday that “Plenty of reasons exist for suspecting absentee fraud may play a significant role in tomorrow’s Garden State contests.”
In the upstate New York House race that has attracted national attention, Doug Hoffman, the Conservative Party candidate now embraced by the GOP, leads Democrat Bill Owens by 41 percent to 36 percent with 6 percent backing Republican Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava, who dropped out of the race on Saturday, according to a Siena College poll conducted Nov. 1. Eighteen percent are undecided, The margin of error is 4 points.
The number of undecided voters is now double what it was in Siena’s last poll, when Scozzafava was still in the race.
“Hoffman continues to demonstrate momentum, picking up six points since Scozzafava pulled out,” said Siena’s Steven Greenberg. “It appears, however, that the majority of Scozzafava’s supporters have gone to neither Hoffman nor Owens, but rather into the undecided column.”
The NY-23 special election on Tuesday has the attention of the White House at the highest levels, with White House sources saying that the endorsement of Democrat Bill Owens by “Republican” Dede Scozzafava came only after a call from White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel asking that she throw her support behind the Democrat.
NY 23, are you going to let the Obama White House control your Republican candidates?
Ain’t but one Republican still in the NY 23 race, vote accordingly.
And, if you live in Virginia, you can phone the win in, but you still have to actually get off your collective Republican asses and vote for McDonnell, nuke the election from orbit, just to make sure.
/finally, if you’re a Democrat, remember, you get to vote on Wedbesday, 11/4/09
Can we all now wear paramilitary uniforms and stand in front of polling places on election day, brandishing deadly weapons and harassing voters who look likely to vote for the opposing candidate?
Charges brought against three members of the New Black Panther Party for Self-Defense under the Bush administration have been dropped by the Obama Justice Department, FOX News has learned.
The charges stemmed from an incident at a Philadelphia polling place on Election Day 2008 when three members of the party were accused of trying to threaten voters and block poll and campaign workers by the threat of force — one even brandishing what prosecutors call a deadly weapon.
The three black panthers, Minister King Samir Shabazz, Malik Zulu Shabazz and Jerry Jackson were charged in a civil complaint in the final days of the Bush administration with violating the voter rights act by using coercion, threats and intimidation. Shabazz allegedly held a nightstick or baton that prosecutors said he pointed at people and menacingly tapped it. Prosecutors also say he “supports racially motivated violence against non-blacks and Jews.”
The Obama administration won the case last month, but moved to dismiss the charges on May 15.
The complaint says the men hurled racial slurs at both blacks and whites.
A poll watcher who provided an affidavit to prosecutors in the case noted that Bartle Bull, who worked as a civil rights lawyer in the south in the 1960’s and is a former campaign manager for Robert Kennedy, said it was the most blatant form of voter intimidation he had ever seen.
In his affidavit, obtained by FOX News, Bull wrote “I watched the two uniformed men confront voters and attempt to intimidate voters. They were positioned in a location that forced every voter to pass in close proximity to them. The weapon was openly displayed and brandished in plain sight of voters.”
He also said they tried to “interfere with the work of other poll observers … whom the uniformed men apparently believed did not share their preferences politically,” noting that one of the panthers turned toward the white poll observers and said “you are about to be ruled by the black man, cracker.”
A spokesman for the Department of Justice told FOX News, “The Justice Department was successful in obtaining an injunction that prohibits the defendant who brandished a weapon outside a Philadelphia polling place from doing so again. Claims were dismissed against the other defendants based on a careful assessment of the facts and the law. The department is committed to the vigorous prosecution of those who intimidate, threaten or coerce anyone exercising his or her sacred right to vote.”
Sources told The Bulletin that there is internal dissension in the Department of Justice (DOJ) about a voter intimidation case from last year’s presidential election. Obama appointees did not want to proceed with the case, while the career prosecutors did. The incident occurred in Philadelphia and involved the New Black Panther Party for Self-Defense (NBPPSD).
The DOJ filed a lawsuit under the Voting Rights Act against the NBPPSD and three of its members alleging the defendants intimidated Philadelphia voters during the Nov. 4, 2008 general election. The action was filed in January before President George W. Bush left office.
The complaint, filed in the United States District Court in Philadelphia, alleged that on Election Day, Nov. 4, 2008 in Philadelphia, NBPPSD members Samir Shabazz and Jerry Jackson were stationed at the entrance to a polling location at 1221 Fairmount Avenue, wearing the uniform of the organization. It also states Mr. Shabazz repeatedly brandished a “police-style baton weapon.”
The complaint said NBPPSD Chairman Malik Zulu Shabazz confirmed that the placement of Messrs. Shabazz and Jackson was part of a nationwide effort to deploy NBPPSD members at polling locations on Election Day. The Justice Department sought an injunction to prevent any similar future actions by NBPPSD members at polling locations.
“Intimidation outside of a polling place is contrary to the democratic process,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General Grace Chung Becker at the time. “The Department takes allegations of voter intimidation seriously.”
None of the defendants responded to the lawsuit. Instead of immediately filing for a default judgment as is the normal procedure, sources told The Bulletin the DOJ asked for and received an order from the court providing an extension of time to file. Specifically, they asked the court to give them until May 15.
But on May 15, DOJ changed its mind again. Rather than a default judgment, the DOJ filed a notice of voluntary dismissal of the lawsuit for two of the defendants. This included Mr. Jackson, who identified himself to police as a member of the Democratic Committee in the 14th Ward. He also produced credentials to that effect.
DOJ only asked for a default judgment against one defendant, Samir Shabazz, which was granted on May 18. But sources say the proposed order for the default judgment asks for none of the usual conditions the Justice Department would want, such as keeping Mr. Shabazz away from any polling locations for a set number of years into the future.
Hans von Spakovsky is a former career Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights. He thinks the inaction by the Justice Department is unprecedented. He told The Bulletin that the dismissal by Justice, with no notice on the Justice Department press site, particularly against an organization listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, is a horrible miscarriage of justice. He said DOJ has failed in its duty to enforce voting laws. He is outraged by the action.
“It is absolutely unprecedented for the Justice Department to dismiss a lawsuit after the defendants failed to answer the suit and are thus in default,” he said.
Mr. von Spakovsky said that the NBPPSD’s lack of response was the legal equivalent of an admission of all the allegations made about the defendants’ organized effort to threaten and intimidate voters.
“And dismissing an individual who was a local Democratic party official who defaulted by not answering the complaint smacks of the worst sort of political partisanship,” he said. “It is completely contrary to all of the promises that Eric Holder made when he was confirmed to be Attorney General.”
So, the career prosecutors wanted to proceed with the voter intimidation case but the Obama DOJ political appointees derailed it. Why doesn’t this even surprise me after watching Obama’s Chicago style machine operate for over two years now? It”s like, hey New Black Panthers, thanks for doing your part to help Obama get elected, just don’t do it again, okay? Hell, a wrist slap would have hurt more than a toothless injunction.
/I guess in ObamaWorld, it was just an excellent example of effective community organizing
