July 31, 2016


News and Views


http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/muslims-go-catholic-mass-across-france-italy-show-solidarity-n620521

Muslims Go to Catholic Mass Across France, Italy to Show Solidarity
by THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
NEWS JUL 31 2016, 1:27 PM ET

Image: Muslim call to go to Sunday Mass, Members of the congregation in Santa Maria Trastevere church in Rome, Italy, 31 July 2016, during a multi faith service organized by Italy's Islamic Religious Community. MASSIMO PERCOSSI / EPA
Image: TOPSHOT-FRANCE-ATTACK-CHURCH-RELIGION, A catholic monk discusses with a muslim worshipper in front of the Saint-Pierre-de-lAriane church, prior a mass on July 31, 2016, in Nice, southeastern France. JEAN CHRISTOPHE MAGNENET / AFP - Getty Images
Related: Priest Killed in ISIS-Linked Hostage Drama at French Church
Image: FRANCE-ATTACK-CHURCH-RELIGION, A catholic monk welcomes muslim worshippers in the Saint-Pierre-de-lAriane church, prior to a mass on July 31, 2016, in Nice, southeastern France. JEAN CHRISTOPHE MAGNENET / AFP - Getty Images
Related: French Church Attack: How Should Known Jihadis Be Tracked?
Play -- Pope Francis: Pope Francis: 'World Is at War' 1:06


ROUEN, France — In a gesture of solidarity following the gruesome killing of a French priest, Muslims on Sunday attended Catholic Mass in churches and cathedrals across France and Italy.

An Associated Press reporter at the scene said that a few dozen Muslims gathered at the towering Gothic cathedral in Rouen, near Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray where the 85-year-old Rev. Jacques Hamel had his throat slit by two teenage Muslim fanatics on Tuesday.

"We are very moved by the presence of our Muslim friends and I believe it is a courageous act that they did by coming to us," said Dominique Lebrun, the archbishop of Rouen, after the service.

Some of the Muslims sat in the front row, across from the altar. Among the parishioners was one of the nuns who was briefly taken hostage at Hamel's church after the priest was killed. She joined her fellow Catholics in turning to shake hands or embrace the Muslim churchgoers after the service.

Outside the church, a group of Muslims were applauded when they unfurled a banner: "Love for all. Hate for none."

Churchgoer Jacqueline Prevot said that the attendance of Muslims was "a magnificent gesture."

"Look at this whole Muslim community that attended Mass," she said. "I find this very heartwarming; I am confident. I say to myself that this assassination won't be lost, that it will maybe relaunch us better than politics can do; maybe we will react in a better way."

Many of the Muslims who attended the service in Rouen — including those with the banner — were Ahmadiyya Muslims, a minority sect which differs from mainstream Islam in that it doesn't regard Muhammad as the final prophet.

Similar interfaith gatherings were repeated elsewhere in France, as well as in neighboring Italy.

At Paris' iconic Notre Dame cathedral, Dalil Boubakeur, the rector of the Mosque of Paris, said repeatedly that Muslims want to live in peace.

"The situation is serious," Boubakeur told BFMTV. "Time has come to come together so as not to be divided."

In Italy, the secretary general of the country's Islamic Confederation, Abdullah Cozzolino, spoke from the altar in the Treasure of St. Gennaro chapel next to Naples' Duomo cathedral. Three imams also attended Mass at the St. Maria Church in Rome's Trastevere neighborhood, donning their traditional dress as they entered the sanctuary and sat down in the front row.

Mohammed ben Mohammed, a member of the Union of Islamic Communities in Italy, said that he called on faithful in his sermon Friday "to report anyone who may be intent to damage society. I am sure that there are those among the faithful who are ready to speak up."

Ahmed El Balzai, the imam of the Vobarno mosque in the Lombard province of Brescia, said he did not fear repercussions for speaking out.

"I am not afraid. ... These people are tainting our religion and it is terrible to know that many people consider all Muslim terrorists. That is not the case," El Balazi said. "Religion is one thing. Another is the behavior of Muslims who don't represent us."

Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni thanked Italian Muslims for their participation, saying they "are showing their communities the way of courage against fundamentalism."

Like in France, Italy is increasing its supervision of mosques. Interior Minister Angelino Alfano told the Senate this week that authorities were scrutinizing mosque financing and working with the Islamic community to ensure that imams study in Italy, preach in Italian and are aware of Italy's legal structure.

Meanwhile the Paris prosecutor's office said it has requested that a cousin of one of the two 19-year-olds who slit the priest's throat should be charged with participating in "a terrorist association with the aim of harming others."

In a statement it said it appeared 30-year-old Frenchman Farid K. "knew very well, if not of the exact place or time, of his cousin's impending plans for violence."

The office added that a Syrian refugee detained in the wake of the attack was released Saturday.



http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/french-church-attack-how-should-known-jihadis-be-tracked-n617866

French Church Attack: How Should Known Jihadis Be Tracked?
by ALASTAIR JAMIESON and MICHELE NEUBERT
JUL 30 2016, 5:07 AM ET

Video -- FROM JULY 27: Pope Francis: 'World Is at War' 1:06
Video -- Spit and Garbage Left at Site of Truck Attacker's Death 0:33
Video - FROM JULY 27: FROM JULY 27: Pope Francis: 'World Is at War' 1:06
Image: A police officer in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, France, A police officer secures a position in front of Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray City Hall on Tuesday. Pascal Rossignol / Reuters
Video -- FROM JULY 26: Watch Masked Police Arrest Suspect in France Terror Attack 0:36
Play -- FROM JULY 26: Priest Killed by ISIS-Linked Militants During Mass at French Church 2:07
Image: Adel Kermiche and Abdel-Malik Nabil Petitjean, still from a video released by the ISIS-affiliated Amaq News Agency shows Adel Kermiche (left) and Abdel-Malik Nabil Petitjean (right). HANDOUT / Reuters
Play -- FROM JULY 26: Watch Masked Police Arrest Suspect in France Terror Attack 0:36



LONDON — France is facing questions over its monitoring of extremists after both of the attackers who slit the throat of an elderly priest were known to authorities - including a teen who twice tried to wage jihad in Syria.

Adel Kermiche, 19, was intercepted and arrested as he traveled to fight alongside ISIS using family members' identity documents two times last year.

He was put under house arrest in his hometown of Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray near Rouen, Normandy, with an electronic surveillance ankle bracelet after a judge freed him, terror prosecutor Francois Molins said.

However, the bracelet was deactivated for a few hours every morning as part of the surveillance agreement, giving Kermiche the chance to murder 85-year-old Rev. Jacques Hamel during Tuesday's morning Mass.

Kermiche and his accomplice, later identified as 19-year-old Abdel-Malik Nabil Petitjean, held five people hostage — Hamel, two nuns and an elderly couple — in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray before slashing the priest's throat and seriously wounding the other man. Police fatally shot both attackers as they left the church.

Kermiche was one of 1,100 French citizens or residents who want to travel to the Middle East to fight alongside ISIS or who have already been and come back, according to government estimates. Security services had opened a special file on Petitjean on June 29 amid suspicions he had been radicalized, a police source told Reuters.

The ISIS-linked attack piles pressure on intelligence services and legal procedures in a country still under a state of emergency that began after November's coordinated attacks in Paris that left 130 dead.

"We may have had the possibility to check on this guy. If he was released without any treatment or any evaluation of his dangerousness to society, there was a failure — period," center-right French senator Nathalie Goulet told the BBC.

She added: "You cannot predict everything but … if the guy was effectively in jail for radicalization and released … without any treatment, this thing becomes predictable."

Kermiche first tried to travel to Syria in March 2015 but was arrested in Germany. Upon his return to France he was placed under surveillance and barred from leaving the Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray area. Less than two months later, he slipped away and was intercepted in Turkey making his way towards Syria again.

Although he was wearing an ankle bracelet on his release from prison in March, a neighbor and school acquaintance remembered him as a normal teenager who became obsessed with hardline interpretations of the Quran after the deadly attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine in January 2015.

"He tried to indoctrinate us," said the 18-year-old, who gave his name to reporters only as Redwan. "He was saying that we should go [to Syria] and fight for our brothers.

Kermiche told his people around him that France was "the land of unbelievers … that we should not live here," Redwan said.

France's security services, already stretched after eight months under a state of emergency, have strained ever further since an attack in the southern city of Nice on July 14 that killed 84 people.

Kermiche was one of 112 people in France released into the community under some kind of court-imposed supervision relating to terrorism offences, according to Le Figaro newspaper.

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said in March that 609 French nationals or residents were currently fighting in Syria or Iraq, including 283 women and 18 minors. Almost 170 others have been killed, and some 300 more have returned and are living in their communities, he said.

"Almost 800 would today like to go to these wars zones, according to intelligence services," Valls said, adding that about 1,000 people in France were being monitored by authorities. "Each day [we] ... trace networks, locate cells, arrest individuals," he said.

France is not alone in having to confront a extremist threat at home. Governments across Europe have been tightening anti-terrorism laws as the Syrian conflict enters its sixth year, agreeing to share more intelligence and taking down radical websites to try to stop their citizens from going to fight in the Middle East and bringing militancy home.

Britain's most senior police officer told NBC News that the sheer number of individuals being monitored means cases have to be prioritized.

Bernard Hogan-Howe, commissioner of London's Metropolitan Police, said: "No doubt, it's hard. It's a really difficult decision."

He added: "We have got many people who we are worried about ... either involved in or supporting terrorism so all the time we are trying to assess: 'Are they thinking about it? Are they getting together equipment to do something about it? Are they working with other people to conspire to organize it?'"

"It's a real challenge to get enough intelligence because we cannot follow everybody all the time so we have to make rational choices," Hogan-Howe add.

Jimmy Deliste, general secretary of France's biggest prison workers' union, said that it was impossible to track the movements of all individuals wearing court-ordered ankle bracelets.

"It's not like the U.S. where, in case of non-compliance, an armed [officer] arrives at the person's home," he told Le Figaro. "Beyond the [jail] walls, individuals are not controlled. We are in a trust agreement. Can we trust a man who tried to reach [ISIS] in Syria? I think the answer is in the question."

"WE'VE BEEN TALKING ABOUT THE DANGER OF THE GLOBAL JIHADIST INSURGENCY. THIS IS WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE."

Even when an electronic bracelet triggers a warning, probation officers are overwhelmed by the number of alerts, he said.

Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who is expected to enter a conservative primary for next year's presidential election, accused the country's socialist government of being soft.

"We must be merciless," Sarkozy said in a statement to reporters. "The legal quibbling, precautions and pretexts for insufficient action are not acceptable."

France's center-right opposition wants all Islamist suspects to be either held in detention or electronically tagged to avert potential attacks.

However, President Francois Hollande in March dropped plans to strip foreign-born suspected jihadis of their French passports and deport them.

Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far-right National Front, said both Sarkozy's and Hollande's parties had failed on security.

"All those who have governed us for 30 years bear an immense responsibility. It's revolting to watch them bickering!" she tweeted.

Britain also plans to enforce new laws to seize the passports of suspected terrorists, but a former intelligence chief said European countries should keep their doors open to repentant fighters.

"Many of the people who have been most successful in undermining the terrorist narrative are themselves ex-extremists," Richard Barrett, a former terror chief at British intelligence services MI5 and MI6, told The Guardian newspaper.

It is a view echoed by CAGE, a British non-profit that campaigns on behalf of terror detainees including former inmates at Guantanamo Bay. It has even called for returning jihadis to be given pastoral help "to help them reintegrate into society."

"The suspension of conventional justice in France with the state of emergency hasn't really been effective at all in preventing attacks," said CAGE spokesman Ibrahim Mohamoud. He added that the attacker in Nice "didn't fit the profile at all" of a jihadi and suggested that terror attacks were a predictable "blowback" from Western intervention in the Middle East.

The cluster of towns outside Rouen where Kermiche and Petitjean launched their attack has been inked to ISIS before.

A micro-cell of recruits from the area included a Frenchman seen cutting the throat of a Syrian soldier in a November 2014 video. Maxime Hauchard, the jihadi in the video, was among at least four people who met at a local mosque and later left to join the extremists.

But Haras Rafiq, managing director of British anti-radicalization Quilliam Foundation think tank, described Tuesday's attack as a turning point.

"What these two people have done is ... shifted the tactical attack to the attack on Rome ... an attack on Christianity," he said.

As Europe becomes painfully inured to a summer of repeated bloodshed, the extremists are looking for greater ways to shock, Rafiq said. "This is going into a house of God. This is attacking and killing a priest."

He added: "We've been talking about the danger of the global jihadist insurgency. This is what it looks like." he said.



https://www.yahoo.com/news/convention-over-clinton-faces-hacking-trump-criticism-070837144--election.html

Bill Clinton and Tim Kaine: Trump lacks empathy for Khans
LISA LERER and JONATHAN LEMIRE, Associated Press
July 30, 2016

JOHNSTOWN, Pa. (AP) — Hillary Clinton's top surrogates are taking aim at rival Donald Trump for criticizing the bereaved mother of a Muslim Army captain, a comment that sparked outrage across the political spectrum on Saturday.

Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Kaine expressed shock that the GOP nominee would attack Ghazala Khan for not speaking during her husband's address to the Democratic convention.

"He was kind of trying to turn that into some kind of ridicule," Kaine said after a campaign event in Pittsburgh. "It just demonstrates again kind of a temperamental unfitness. If you don't have any sense of empathy than that, then I'm not sure you can learn it."

Former President Bill Clinton, who joined Kaine and his wife at the event, agreed: "I cannot conceive how you can say that about a Gold Star mother."

Lawyer Khizr Khan gave a moving tribute to their son, Humayun, who received a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart after he was killed by a suicide bomber in Iraq in 2004. During the speech, Khan's wife, Ghazala, stood silently by his side, wearing a headscarf.

"If you look at his wife, she was standing there. She had nothing to say. She probably, maybe she wasn't allowed to have anything to say. You tell me," Trump said, in an interview with ABC's "This Week."

Ghazala Khan has said she didn't speak because she's still overwhelmed by her grief and can't even look at photos of her son without crying.

Trump also disputed Khan's criticism that the billionaire businessman has "sacrificed nothing and no one" for his country.

"I've made a lot of sacrifices. I work very, very hard. I've created thousands and thousands of jobs, tens of thousands of jobs, built great structures," Trump said. He added: "Sure those are sacrifices."

Trump's comments sparked immediate outrage on social media, including from Republicans, who criticized Trump both for attacking a mourning mother and because many considered them racist and anti-Muslim.

In a statement that made no mention of Trump, Hillary Clinton said she was "very moved" by Ghazala Khan's appearance.

"This is a time for all Americans to stand with the Khans and with all the families whose children have died in service to our country," she said. "Capt. Khan and his family represent the best of America and we salute them."

Trump's comments about Khan came a day after he criticized retired four-star Gen. John Allen and slammed a Colorado Springs, Colorado, fire marshal for capping attendance at the event. The fire marshal, Brett Lacey, was recently honored by the city as "Civilian of the Year" for his role in helping the wounded at a 2015 mass shooting at a local Planned Parenthood.

"Our commander in chief shouldn't insult and deride our generals, retired or otherwise," Clinton told a crowd gathered Saturday on a factory floor in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. "That should really go without saying."

Trump also accused Clinton via Twitter of "trying to rig" the fall presidential debates by scheduling two of the three debates on the same night as NFL games. The schedule was set last September by a nonpartisan commission, which said the campaigns were not consulted about dates. Trump also said the NFL complained to him about the debate schedule in a letter, but the league said it sent no such letter.

Post-convention it has become clear the presidential race will be fought in the struggling manufacturing towns, cities and rural farming communities of the Rust Belt, as Clinton used the days following her convention to try and win back some of the white working class voters that once made up a key piece of the Democratic Party's electoral coalition. Trump's anti-trade message has appealed to those voters, who feel frustrated with an economic recovery that's largely left them behind.

On Saturday, Clinton made stops in rural western Pennsylvania, a largely white part of the swing state that traditionally votes Republican.

Clinton is playing up economic opportunity, diversity and national security. Democrats hammered home those themes this week with an array of politicians, celebrities, gun-violence victims, law enforcement officers and activists of all races and sexual orientation. Their goal is to turn out the coalition of minority, female and young voters that twice elected Obama while blunting some of the expected losses among the white men drawn to Trump's message.

At a rally in Pittsburgh, she was introduced by Mark Cuban, the Dallas Mavericks owner, technology investor and television personality who recently endorsed her. "Leadership is not yelling and screaming and intimidating," he said.

Trump has made plans to visit some of the same areas Clinton is campaigning in during her three-day bus tour through Ohio and Pennsylvania, scheduling Monday stops in Columbus and Cleveland.

The Trump campaign swaggered out of the convention weeks, feeling bullish about the bump the nominee received from his own nominating convention.

While Clinton and Kaine attempted to sell their positive economic message, much of their strategy centers on undermining Trump, particularly the business record that makes up the core of his argument to voters.

Clinton highlighted Trump's use of outsourcing to manufacture some of his branded products, arguing he's profited from the same foreign labor he now blames for killing U.S. jobs.

"What part of America first leads Trump to make Trump dress shirts in Bangladesh not Ashland, Pennsylvania," said Clinton. "I just find it so maddening that Trump goes around saying this and all the stuff he makes in other countries."



Although I tend to close off immediately nearly anything that Trump says, nowadays, this was not only very unwise social policy, but the root of the hateful back and forth that goes on between Fundamentalists of all stamps – yes, I do mean Fundamentalist Christians also. We need to have someone in the presidency who gives a happy d**n about what he says and does and won’t stir up more discord rather than solving what we already have.

This kind of behavior fuels the flames, and we may have some real violence between Christian and Islamic groups. There have been such attacks at Jewish Synagogues and some Mosques as well, though usually random and with no one being harmed. There are members of the armed militias and White Supremacists all over this country, not just in the rural areas of the South and West, who have already shown up at Ferguson, MO when the problems started there and a couple of other such BLM actions. People like that admire Trump’s “free speech.” I have become alarmed at how numerous they are becoming, and how bold. See the Yahoo article below on that general subject.



KRLD IS NOT OWNED BY FOX, BUT BY CBS


https://www.yahoo.com/news/dallas-weatherman-resigns-post-bashing-201900440.html

Dallas Weatherman Resigns After Post Bashing DNC For 'Parading Mothers of Slain Thugs'
Inside Edition
July 30, 2016


A Dallas meteorogist has resigned after writing a racially insensitive Facebook post bashing the Democratic National Convention.

Bob Goosmann was a weatherman at KRLD when he posted about the DNC speeches by the so-called "Mothers of the Movement," such as Eric Garner's mother, on Wednesday.

"As many of you have probably noticed, I've stayed away from politics on FB. The DNC parading the mothers of slain thugs around on their stage has me furious," read the post, which has since disappeared.

The post has disappeared and Goosmann's Twitter account also appears to have been disabled.

Among the mothers who appeared Tuesday in the lead-up to Hillary Clinton's nomination were Gwen Carr, mother of Eric Garner; Geneva Reed-Veal, mother of Sandra Bland; Sybrina Fulton, mother of Trayvon Martin; and Lezley McSpadden, mother of Mike Brown.

Paul Mann, KRLD's news director, confirmed that Goosmann had resigned as the station's chief meteorologist, "effective immediately" according to the Dallas News.

According to his Facebook profile, Goosmann is now employed as a real estate agent.

Goosmann has held several television meteorologist positions previously, including at stations in Denver, Richmond and Dallas.



UPSKIRTING “LEGALIZED”

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/georgia-appeals-court-upskirting-is-legal/

Georgia appeals court says "upskirting" is legal
CBS/AP
July 25, 2016, 12:58 PM

Photograph -- Surveillance footage of Brandon Lee Gary attempting to take photos and videos up a woman's skirt at a Publix grocery store in Houston County, about 100 miles south of Atlanta. WGCL-TV
Play VIDEO -- "Upskirting" photos ruled legal by Massachusetts high court


ATLANTA - A man admitted he surreptitiously took cellphone video up a woman's skirt while she shopped at a grocery store, but a Georgia court said he didn't break the law.

A divided Georgia Court of Appeals this month tossed out the conviction of former grocery store employee Brandon Lee Gary, who recorded videos up a woman's skirt - known as "upskirting" - while she shopped. The 6-3 majority opinion said Gary's behavior, while reprehensible, doesn't violate the state's invasion of privacy law, under which he was prosecuted.

In a ruling issued July 15, Judge Elizabeth Branch said it is "regrettable that no law currently exists which criminalizes Gary's reprehensible conduct."

"Unfortunately, there is a gap in Georgia's criminal statutory scheme, in that our law does not reach all of the disturbing conduct that has been made possible by ever-advancing technology."

In 2014, a Massachusetts man's conviction for taking upskirt photos was also overturned by the state Supreme Judicial Court, largely also because of technicalities in the law.

In a strongly worded dissent, Judge Amanda Mercier argued there is no gap in the law and that Gary's actions were clearly illegal.

Numerous residents of Atlanta told CBS affiliate WGCL-TV they were deeply troubled by the ruling.

No one disputes the facts of the case: Gary aimed his cellphone's camera up the woman's skirt at least four times as she walked through the aisles of a Publix grocery store in Houston County, about 100 miles south of Atlanta.

An indictment charged him with violating the state's invasion of privacy law, which prohibits "the use of any device, without the consent of all persons observed, to observe, photograph, or record the activities of another which occur in any private place and out of public view."

Whether Gary's behavior violates that law hinges on how the word "place" is interpreted.

The law defines a place as a physical location, not an area of the body, the majority opinion says. The appeals court also agreed with Gary's lawyers, who argued that because the recording happened in a grocery store that is open to the public, it cannot be considered private and out of public view.

In the dissenting opinion, Mercier argues that "with the stroke of a pen" the court is negating privacy protections by narrowly interpreting place in a way that excludes a person's body.

"As the victim's genital area was not exposed to the public, it was out of public view and the victim had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the area under her skirt," Mercier wrote.

The majority opinion calls Gary's behavior offensive but says it is not prohibited by law. It is up to the state's lawmakers to fix the problem, Branch wrote. Lawmakers in other states have recognized that existing laws didn't criminalize actions like Gary's and created voyeurism statutes to prohibit such behavior, according to a footnote in Branch's opinion.

Chuck Spahos, who heads the Prosecuting Attorneys Council of Georgia, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that his group plans to draft legislation to solve the problem. State Rep. Rich Golick, a Republican who chairs the House Judiciary Non-Civil Committee, told the newspaper he would welcome such a bill. And State Sen. Vincent Fort, a Democrat, told CBS affiliate WGCL-TV he plans to make sure the law is fixed during the next legislative session, which begins in January.

Tanya Washington, a GSU law professor, told WGCL the ruling is a setback for privacy rights.

"You've just given people a license to continue this kind of conduct," said Washington, adding that waiting until next year to fix the problem in the legislature is bad.



http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/07/29/487944304/u-s-navy-to-honor-gay-rights-icon-harvey-milk

U.S. Navy To Honor Gay Rights Icon Harvey Milk
RICHARD GONZALES
July 29, 20164:44 PM ET


The U.S. Navy plans to honor slain gay rights activist and former San Francisco supervisor Harvey Milk by naming a ship after him. The USNS Harvey Milk, which hasn't been built yet, is the latest in a series of Navy vessels named for civil rights icons.

The news came in a report published by the U.S. Naval Institute, citing a notification sent to Congress earlier this month by Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus, signaling his intention to name a Military Sealift Command fleet oiler after Milk. The Navy has not officially confirmed the plan.

According to the USNI News, the ship will be built by General Dynamics NASSCO in San Diego.

Milk was the first openly gay elected official in California. As a young man, he served in the Navy as a diving officer during the Korean War. He was honorably discharged from the service with the rank of lieutenant in 1955.

Milk was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977. A year later, he was assassinated, along with Mayor George Moscone, by another former Supervisor Dan White, over a dispute about White's resignation from the Board. When White changed his mind and tried to get his job back, Milk and Moscone opposed his reinstatement. In a rage, White killed them both.

The news of the Navy's plans to honor Milk was met with cheers and some mixed reactions by local leaders and activists who knew him.

Milk's nephew Stuart Milk, who long had organized public pressure for the Navy to honor his uncle told the San Francisco Chronicle:

"We have just reached the point recently where LGBT people can serve openly in the military, and what better message can there be of that than this ship? It's a very fitting tribute to a man whose primary goal was for people to be authentic and not have to wear a mask."

The Chronicle also quoted Cleve Jones, a former Milk intern who went on to spearhead the Names Project's AIDS Memorial Quilt.

"I have no idea what Harvey would think of this. He has been dead a long time. I can tell you I have mixed feelings. It is obviously an indication that gay people are more accepted than they were when he lived. And I think he would be glad of that. But he did not like war."

The USNS Harvey Milk is one is a series of vessels known as the John Lewis-class, named for civil rights activist Rep. John Lewis, (D-Ga.).

Others in the class include ships named for former Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren, former Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, women's rights activist Lucy Stone and abolitionist and women's rights activist Sojourner Truth.



I am proud of our military groups for standing up for our civil rights, even as so many of our good Christians can’t bring themselves to do it.


POLITICS -- NOT CRUCIAL, BUT INTERESTING NONETHELESS


http://www.cbsnews.com/news/women-who-helped-shatter-glass-ceilings-before-hillary-clinton/

Woman were cracking glass ceilings long before Clinton
CBS NEWS
July 30, 2016, 10:56 AM

Play VIDEO -- Would a Hillary Clinton presidency have impact on women in America?


Hillary Clinton made history this week, becoming the first woman nominated to the presidency by a major American party.

This comes 32 years after Geraldine Ferraro was chosen as Walter Mondale's running mate - the first woman to appear on a presidential ticket, reports "CBS This Morning: Saturday" co-host Vinita Nair.

Three years earlier, President Ronald Reagan made good on a campaign promise by nominating Sandra Day O'Connor to the Supreme Court. Two months later, she was sworn in, becoming the first female justice to sit on the nation's highest court.

But the first cracks in the glass ceiling of politics were made exactly 100 years ago, when Jeannette Rankin was the first woman elected to Congress, four years before women won the right to vote.

And even earlier than that, Marie Curie was making history as the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in 1903 and winning again eight years later.

Speaking of prizes, Edith Wharton was the first woman to take home the Pulitzer for fiction for her 1923 novel "The Age of Innocence."

But it took 87 more years for a female director to be recognized at the Oscars - Kathryn Bigelow winning the Academy Award for her work on "The Hurt Locker."

And after an all-male inaugural class in 1986, Aretha Franklin busted down the doors as the first female inductee to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.



https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/07/28/sanders-delegates-ready-one-last-protest-against-the-dnc/

Post Politics
Sanders delegates ready one last protest against the DNC
By David Weigel
July 28, 2016

Photograph -- Supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders at the Democratic National Convention on Wednesday. (Photo by Michael Robinson Chavez/The Washington Post)


PHILADELPHIA -- Steven Abreu paid for his convention week with a GoFundMe campaign. He showed up bright and early the first three nights. On the third, he proudly flashed a sign reading "TPP," with the acronym for the Trans-Pacific Partnership crossed out. He hoisted it whenever the crowd rose to cheer a speaker. He yelled "racist" when former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg took the stage. He got some cross looks from Clinton delegates, and figured that was the end of it.

On Thursday morning, Abreu went to pick up his daily floor credentials, and was denied. Too much of a disturbance, he was told.

"I'd understand if I was holding up signs that said 'Obama's from Kenya' or 'Crooked Hillary belongs in jail,' " Abreu said. "But I did the least disruptive thing I could. I only held up my sign when others stood up and cheered. I don't know why they stripped my credentials, because all I did was express civil disobedience against the TPP."

Supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont spent Thursday trading rumors, hurrying to Wells Fargo Center, and prepping for one last show of strength as Hillary Clinton accepts the Democratic nomination. Clinton's team, hoping for a bounce out of Philadelphia, was watching nervously for anything that could come off as a sign of disunity or chaos -- a walkout being the worst option.

"Looking at the audience the last couple nights, she might want to concentrate on her base a little," Republican National Committee spokesman Sean Spicer snarked at a news conference today.

Some of Sanders's supporters were hoping for a resolution, one last show of good faith from Clinton's team. If someone from the DNC apologized for the expulsions, that could smooth over tension. If Clinton herself praised Sanders, as President Obama did on Wednesday night, some -- not all -- of the bad feelings could fade.

But on Twitter and Facebook there were reports of up to 700 Sanders delegates being kept outside, of Clinton delegates filling seats so that Sanders delegates would be locked out, and of the DNC being so desperate to cover up for walkouts that it was hiring actors to fill seats.

Almost all of the rumors were false. There was no mass stripping of credentials; delegates, like Abreu, had to pick up new passes each day, as a security measure, and it was at that point when volunteers for Sanders fell off the roles. A Craigslist ad asking for "700 actors" to fill seats did not come from anyone related to the convention and bore little relationship to the reality of the convention, where the sporting arena was packed cheek-to-jowl, with fire marshals cutting off access to some areas as they filled in.

In fact, that rumor contradicted the much truer story of seats being filled in before Sanders delegates got chances to pack them. The final day of the convention lacked some of the drama of the first days but filled the gap with paranoia about crucial space in the arena being filled by the wrong team.

Shortly after 4 p.m., a few dozen Sanders delegates rallied inside the arena-adjacent media tent that had become an ad hoc protest hub. They splayed neon yellow sheets of copy paper on the ground, writing #NoVoice #NoUnity on one side and slogans of their choice on the other. They wore shirts in the same gaudy neon with the slogan "Enough Is Enough," credited to Sanders himself, written across them.

"I've had Hillary supporters call me names," said Edward Alexander, a Sanders delegate from Alaska, one of the Vermont senator's strongest states. The back of his sign read "Our Vote Is Sacred," something he'd grown worried about in the wake of DNC email revelations.

"I've had people shout at me because I wasn't smiling or waving signs," he said. "Somebody explain the taking-away of 'No TPP' signs -- why do that when both candidates are against the TPP?"

Sanders has said nothing about the protests, except that it is not up to him to corral every one of the people he brought into the party. But "enough is enough," one of his catchphrases, actually refers to what he sees as an oligarchy's tightening grip around the country, not any fight among Democrats.

At the small protest in the media tent, Jeffrey Eide, a Sanders delegate from North Dakota, told protesters to stand their ground and to be polite. They did not have to relinquish their signs if anyone asked them to, but it was not in their interest to create a scene.

What worried Abreu was that the DNC would find ways to minimize even minor scenes. "I'm under the impression that the California delegation has had its lights turned off," he said, and that there are "white noise machines in front of their sections."

Clinton delegates from California disputed some of that, but they were led to believe that microphones near their delegation had been quieted to avoid picking up boos and chants. (All such noise has been hard to hear on audio feeds since Wednesday afternoon, when the role of state delegations in picking the nominees ended.) They also winced at the memory of Monday morning's delegation breakfast, where Sanders delegates chanted "Count the votes!" at California Secretary of State Alex Padilla, blaming him for a (typically) slow count after the primary.

As Thursday night's program got underway, the "Enough Is Enough" shirts were visible in all sections of Wells Fargo Center.



THE PARTY’S OVER. IT’S TIME TO CALL IT A DAY. BERNIE DIDN’T WIN THE ELECTION, BUT HE PUT UP A MIGHTY FIGHT AND WON SOME SIGNIFICANT POINTS, WHICH WAS HIS DEEPER GOAL ALL ALONG. IT WAS STARTLING HOW LARGE A FOLLOWING HE DID GET.

THE REASON IS BECAUSE OUR COUNTRY NEEDS SOCIAL AND INCOME REFORM, AND THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY SHOULD PAY ATTENTION TO THAT SITUATION. THEIR CONTINUED CONTROL OVER THOSE OF US WHO LEAN LEFT, IS BY NO MEANS GUARANTEED, AND I EXPECT MANY OF US TO LEAVE THE PARTY AFTER NOVEMBER.

MAYBE WE SHOULD ALL GO OVER TO THE GREENS, OR SIMPLY BECOME INDEPENDENTS, LEAVING IT LESS CLEAR TO THE DEMS OF THE FUTURE WHETHER OR NOT THEY HAVE OUR VOTES. MAYBE THEY WON'T BE SO ARROGANT AFTER THAT. THAT COULD BE GOOD. THEY HAVEN’T HAD TO REALLY THINK ABOUT ANY OF THIS UNTIL SANDERS CAME ALONG.



TRUMP LEAVE MINIMUM WAGE UP TO STATES/”YOU NEED TO HELP PEOPLE”

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/donald-trump-cant-clearly-explain-his-position-on-the-minimum-wage/

Donald Trump can't clearly explain his position on the minimum wage
By REBECCA SHABAD CBS NEWS
July 27, 2016, 10:14 AM

Donald Trump claimed Tuesday that Bernie Sanders lied about the GOP nominee's position on the minimum wage, but then he failed to clearly articulate his stance.

"Wow, that was really a lie. He said that I want to do go less than minimum wage. This is a new one because I'm the one Republican that said in some cases we have to go more than minimum wage but what I like is states," Trump said in an interview on Fox News' "The O'Reilly Factor."

Trump said that the states should be allowed to make their own determinations about the minimum wage. Host Bill O'Reilly said to Trump that there has to be a federal minimum wage and asked him what number he would set it at.

"There doesn't have to be. Well, I would leave it and raise it somewhat. You need to help people. I know it's not very Republican to say but you need to help people," Trump said.

Asked to give a specific number like $10, Trump said, " I would say 10. I would say 10. But, with the understanding that somebody like me is going to bring back jobs, I don't want people to be in that $10 category for very long. But, the thing is, Bill, let the states make the deal."

O'Reilly said that he now had Trump on the record saying that he supports a $10 federal minimum wage and that states can do what they want.

"No, you have me on record saying the states are going to raise it higher than that," he said.

In an interview with MSNBC's "Morning Joe" last August, Trump said that "having a low minimum wage is not a bad thing for this country." Then at a debate in November, Trump said that "wages are too high."

In an interview on "CBS This Morning" Wednesday, Trump's campaign chairman Paul Manafort was asked to clarify Trump's position on the federal minimum wage because he keeps changing his comments on it, but he failed to give a clear answer.

"We'll be dealing with that, his national economic policy and some of his tax policies in the course of the next several weeks as he makes several speeches dealing with these type of topics," said Manafort, who then accused Democrats of not explaining how they'll pay for their proposed programs and policies.

Asked again if Trump believes in raising the federal minimum wage, which is currently $7.25 an hour, Manafort said, "Donald said what he did and that will be explained in the context of an overall economic package that we're doing over the course of the next two weeks."



Is Trump trying to “play nice” part of the time now?? He says, "There doesn't have to be. Well, I would leave it and raise it somewhat. You need to help people. I know it's not very Republican to say but you need to help people," Trump said. Asked to give a specific number like $10, Trump said, " I would say 10. I would say 10. But, with the understanding that somebody like me is going to bring back jobs, I don't want people to be in that $10 category for very long. But, the thing is, Bill, let the states make the deal." O'Reilly said that he now had Trump on the record saying that he supports a $10 federal minimum wage and that states can do what they want. "No, you have me on record saying the states are going to raise it higher than that," he said.”



http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/07/27/sanders-loyalists-warn-democratic-party-could-rupture-over-clinton-nomination.html

DEMOCRATS
Sanders loyalists warn Democratic Party could rupture over Clinton nomination
Published July 27, 2016 Associated Press

2016 Election Headquarters -- The latest headlines on the 2016 elections from the biggest name in politics.
Video -- Sanders supporters pushing to include him in roll call vote


PHILADELPHIA – Bernie Sanders loyalists warned that the Democratic Party could rupture over the nomination of Hillary Clinton after a volatile night that saw a large group of Sanders delegates and supporters exit the party's national convention to stage a sit-in at a nearby media tent.

They rejected Sanders' call for unity even after the Vermont senator took the symbolic step of declaring Clinton the winner of the state-by-state delegate count inside the convention in Philadelphia.

"I suspect we are witnessing an event that will fundamentally change American politics," said Cory James, 22, a college student from Flint, Michigan, who expects the Democratic Party to break apart over Clinton's victory.

Thousands of activists have taken to the streets during the convention this week to voice support for Sanders, a liberal U.S. senator, and his progressive agenda. The "Bernie or bust" brigades that have marched across the sun-warped city threatened to disrupt Clinton's moment as the first woman to be nominated for president by a major U.S. political party.

"We all have this unrealistic dream that democracy is alive in America," said Debra Dilks, of Boonville, Missouri, who spoke as a protest broke up near Philadelphia's City Hall.

She said she wasn't sure she would even vote in November.

"Hillary didn't get the nomination. The nomination was stolen," Dilks said.

At the media tent protest, some had their mouths taped shut, while a few others spontaneously sang, "This land is our land." They said they were holding a peaceful protest to complain about being shut out by the Democratic Party.

In the streets outside, Sanders supporters who had spent the day protesting began facing off with police. They started scaling 8-foot walls that blocked off the secure zone around the arena parking lot. Police and the Secret Service immediately arrested four protesters, who will be charged with entering a restricted area. They're scheduled to appear in court Wednesday.

Protests continued into the night as Sanders supporters and an anti-police brutality group joined together. Later, another protester set an Israeli flag on fire as people chanted, "long live the intifada."

Others then came together for a candlelight vigil.

Earlier in the day, activists held a midday rally at City Hall, and then made their way down Broad Street to the convention site. By early evening, a large crowd had formed outside the subway station closest to the arena. The crowd consisted of an assortment of protesters espousing a variety of causes, but mostly Sanders supporters and other Clinton foes on the left.

"I think people were hoping we could sway the delegates and show that there really is a movement here," said Alexis Holmes, a school janitor from Carbondale, Illinois, who has been protesting in the city since Sunday.

The longstanding bitterness between Sanders' supporters and Clinton's seemed to grow worse over the past few days after a trove of hacked emails showed that officials at the Democratic National Committee played favorites during the primaries and worked to undermine Sanders' campaign.

Sanders had urged supporters Monday to fall in line behind Clinton for the good of the country. But many were not swayed.

Engineer Chris Scully, of Troy, New York, said he opposes Clinton because of her war record as U.S. secretary of state. He carried a "Jill Before Hill" sign Tuesday at a demonstration at City Hall, in a nod to Green Party candidate Jill Stein.

As Scully spoke, a passer-by called out: "That's a vote for Trump!"

In a separate protest against police brutality and racial injustice, about 500 people marched down Broad Street to City Hall. Protest leader Erica Mines told the crowd that it was an "anti-police rally" and a "black and brown resistance march" and instructed all white people to move to the back.

March participant Tiara Willis, of Philadelphia, said she subscribes to the slogan "I'm with her ... I guess." She said she would not back Trump and called Clinton, "the lesser of two evils."



ALAN GRAYSON’S DEMISE??


July 26, 2016


I’M SAD TO SEE THAT ALAN GRAYSON’S WIFE IS COMING UP AGAIN. A MAN WHO HITS HIS WIFE MUSTN’T BE IN PUBLIC OFFICE. TOO BAD, BECAUSE HE IS A LEFT-LEANING LIBERAL. WE COULD HAVE USED HIM. THERE ALSO IS A STORY ABOUT HEDGE FUNDS AND THE CAYMAN ISLANDS, IN WHICH LITERALLY “SLAVERY” HAS BEEN ALLEGED. WHAT THEY MEAN IS FORCED LABOR, BUT IT AMOUNTS TO THE SAME THING. HE SAID HE DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT IT.


OFF THE PRESIDENTIAL TRAIL (WASHINGTON POST):
It was not a good day for Rep. Alan Grayson (D), the Florida Senate hopeful.

This morning, Politico reported that Grayson's ex-wife "repeatedly went to police with accusations of domestic abuse over a two-decade period." Later in the day, Grayson reacted to the story by "barreling out of the magazine’s convention space, threatening to get a reporter arrested, and losing two endorsements from loyal progressive groups," The Post reports.

Weigel has more detail. "Grayson visited Politico’s public event space outside the convention, and pushed past reporter Isaac-Edward Dovere as multiple cameras hit record. 'You’re getting in my way,' said Grayson. 'You’re assaulting a member of Congress. You’re pushing me.'"

Later, progressive groups Democracy for America and Progressive Change Campaign Committee withdrew their support for Grayson's campaign.

Read more about the whole saga -- which benefits Grayson rival Rep. Patrick Murphy (D-Fla.) -- here.


OTHER NEWS


http://finance.yahoo.com/news/fbi-woman-robbed-wyoming-bank-return-prison-224157972.html?post_id=1605282889713411_1772448659663499#_=_

FBI: Woman robbed Wyoming bank to return to prison
Ben Neary, Associated Press
July 30, 2016

Photograph -- In this undated inmate mug released by the Oregon Department of Corrections shows inmate Linda Patricia Thompson in Salem, Ore.


CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) -- A woman who was recently released from prison in Oregon robbed a bank in Wyoming only to throw the cash up in the air outside the building and sit down to wait for police, authorities said Friday.

Investigators say 59-year-old Linda Patricia Thompson told them she wanted to go back to prison.

Thompson said she had suffered facial fractures after strangers beat her at a Cheyenne park last weekend.

She said she couldn't get a room at a homeless shelter and decided to rob the bank Wednesday because she could no longer stay on the streets, court records say.

She faces a detention hearing Tuesday on a bank robbery charge and doesn't have an attorney yet.

FBI Special Agent Tory Smith said in court documents that Thompson entered a US Bank branch in Cheyenne and handed a teller a cardboard note that said, "I have a gun. Give me all your money."

The teller turned over thousands of dollars.

Outside, Thompson threw money into the air and even offered some to people passing by, Smith stated. He added that Cheyenne police Lt. Nathan Busek said he found Thompson with a large sum of money when he arrived at the bank.

"Lt. Busek asked Thompson what was going on, and Thompson replied, 'I just robbed the bank, I want to go back to prison,'" Smith wrote.

Thompson had been serving time at Coffee Creek Correctional Facility in Wilsonville, Oregon, for a second-degree robbery conviction in Union County until her release in June, Betty Bernt, communications manager with the Oregon Department of Corrections, said Friday.

Thompson told investigators then that she didn't want to be released and advised the Oregon state parole office that she would not do well on parole.

An attempt to reach Thompson's parole officer for comment wasn't successful on Friday.



My feeling about this woman is one of sympathy and sadness. She solved her problem in her own way, though. For an old American Classic on that poignant subject, go to O’Henry’s excellent story, from another age when Americans were living on the streets.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cop_and_the_Anthem