TV News LIES

Unless you can prove you're being surveilled in a program the government keeps secret, you have no right to sue

In a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court on Tuesday threw out a lawsuit challenging the US government’s warrantless surveillance powers on the grounds that the plaintiffs do not have “standing.”

A bruised cheek. A broken bone. Verbal battering. A window shattered in an effort to intimidate. The rate of such violence or abuse between husband and wife – or any two intimate partners – has been on the wane in America, falling by a stunning 64 percent between 1994 and 2010.

That finding, from a recent report by the US Department of Justice on intimate partner violence (IPV), parallels the overall drop in violent crime during that period. Many in the field cite a broad shift in attitudes that began in the 1980s and '90s, crediting public awareness campaigns, national legislation protecting victims, and subsequent training of police and prosecutors to recognize intimate partner violence as a crime, rather than as a private matter.

A training document released in response to a civil liberties organization's lawsuit and obtained by The Huffington Post reveals that the government considers an "analyst's wisdom" the ultimate arbiter of whether data on American citizens can be classified as "terrorist information" and retained forever.

"Only a CT (counter-terrorism) analyst can determine whether data constitutes terrorism information," the electronic training course for new National Counterterrorism Center analysts states. "There is no requirement that the analyst's wisdom be rock solid or infallible."

For more than a decade now we have heard that the high-stakes testing obsession in K-12 education that began with the enactment of No Child Left Behind 11 years ago has resulted in high school graduates who don’t think as analytically or as broadly as they should because so much emphasis has been placed on passing standardized tests.

Here, an award-winning high school teacher who just retired, Kenneth Bernstein, warns college professors what they are up against. Bernstein, who lives near Washington, D.C. serves as a peer reviewer for educational journals and publishers, and he is nationally known as the blogger “teacherken.” His e-mail address is This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . This appeared in Academe, the journal of the American Association of University Professors:

An Arkansas lawmaker said Tuesday that he would ease his proposed ban on most abortions in the state so the procedure could still be performed until a heartbeat is detected using an abdominal ultrasound.

Even with the change, state Sen. Jason Rapert's proposal would likely be the strictest abortion ban in the nation, prohibiting the procedure as early as 10 to 12 weeks into pregnancy. Rapert had original proposed a ban that could have applied as early as six weeks into a pregnancy, and North Dakota lawmakers are considering similar legislation.

Sex abuse victims' advocates are criticizing the Archdiocese of Newark, N.J., for promoting a priest who allegedly admitted to groping a teenage boy.

The Rev. Michael Fugee, who has been barred from one-on-one contact with children as part of a binding agreement with law enforcement, has been promoted to a prestigious post within the archdiocese, where he will now help in the "formation" of new priests, heading up the Office of Continuing Education and Ongoing Formation of Priests, Newark Archbishop John J. Myers said recently.

The Newark (N.J.) Star Ledger said Sunday victims' advocates were aghast at the news, saying it showed "breathtaking arrogance" and "an alarming disdain for common sense."

More...