High-stakes gambling casinos have not been a part of Florida’s landscape until now. Sheldon Adelson’s $250,000 contribution to the Florida Republican Governor’s Association has evidently bought him a foot in the door. enlarge Rick Scott’s predictable reversal : Scott said Thursday he is open to the proposals even though while running for governor he rejected the expansion of gambling. “As you know, I’ve said in the campaign that I don’t want our revenue dollars to be tied to gaming,” Scott told the Miami Herald/St. Petersburg Times. “We’ve already approved gaming in the state, so we’ll look at it going forward.” Scott’s turnabout may be rooted in his campaign promise to pump hundreds of thousands of jobs into Florida’s struggling economy and a meeting he had with a major casino executive last November. Two weeks after the Nov. 2 election, Scott flew his private jet to Las Vegas for a private meeting with Sheldon Adelson, owner of the Las Vegas Sands casino empire. Scott was on his way to the Republican Governor’s Association meeting in San Diego, and he brought his wife, Ann, and no other staff to the Sand’s opulent resort. “It was an introductory meeting,” said Ron Reese, spokesman for the Las Vegas Sands, which also owns casino resorts in Macau, China and Singapore. For the past two years, Adelson’s company has been leading the charge for bringing destination casinos to Florida. He has said he is willing to invest as much as $3 billion in a project in Miami. Actually, it’s more likely that his reversal was already in process before his little tete a tete with Adelson, given the nice fat contribution made. Like the Michigan RGA, the Florida RGA was used to launder contributions from the likes of Adelson, Rick Perry, and others in order to finance his ascendance to Florida’s governorship. I’m certain it’s only the first of many such reversals. By the time they’re done, Florida will be teeming with casinos, crooked health care franchises, tobacco farms and unregulated environmental disasters. I’m betting on offshore drilling as Scott’s next push. You?
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Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Gifford has been shot in the head after a man opened fire at a Tucson Safeway. While casualty counts are still conflicted, Gifford is believed to be in surgery while others in her entourage are thought to have been killed. Gifford was a “target” for Sarah Palin’s “Take Back the 20” campaign. As one can see at their website , a bulls-eye is shown over Gifford’s district. Wave 3: U.S. Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, D-AZ, was shot at point-blank range at a public event in Tucson, AZ. Seven people were injured and four were killed in the incident. According to Darci Slaten, University Medical Center public affairs officer, Gifford’s death has not been confirmed. “She is alive and in surgery right now,” Slaten said. Read more Related Entries December 30, 2010 New Year’s Call for a Border Reboot December 27, 2010 The Case of the Missing Murder
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NPR : U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona was shot outside a grocery store in Tucson while holding a public event, Arizona Public Media reported Saturday. Giffords, who was re-elected to her third term in November, was hosting her first “Congress on Your Corner” event at the Safeway in northwest Tucson when a gunman ran up and started shooting. At least five other people, including members of her staff, were hurt, according to Peter Michaels, news director of Arizona Public Media. Giffords was transported to University Medical Center in Tucson. Her condition was not immediately known. Michaels said Giffords was talking to a couple when the man ran up, firing indiscriminately, and then ran off. He was tackled by a bystander. An MSNBC producer at the event tweeted that Giffords was shot in the head , which has yet to be confirmed. Fox News is reporting that three staffers have also been shot. UPDATE : CNN is reporting that witnesses heard 15-20 gunshots. At least nine people were shot. UPDATE #2 : NPR is reporting that Giffords and six others have been killed by the gunman. CNN is reporting that the gunman is young, “late teens to early 20s”.
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In a biting piece of Israeli comedy, this video shows an Israeli kindergarten that teaches, for example, the perils of disillusioned leftism and the proper way to describe an Arab (“Sorry, I meant demographic threat”). Related Entries January 5, 2011 Israel’s Lieberman Says Peace Will Have to Wait December 31, 2010 Former Israeli President Katsav Convicted of Rape
Continue reading …The IRA Can’t Be Terrorists! Rep. Peter King Has A Strange Double Standard
January 8, 2011 No CommentIt’s okay to be confused about Peter King’s fluid definition of “terrorist.” Basically, it’s any violent group to which he doesn’t relate on a personal level: Now that Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., has assumed the chairmanship of the House Homeland Security committee and is promoting hearings on Muslim “radicalization,” there’s been a burst of media coverage surrounding his decades-long support for the IRA, the Irish terrorist group, which he broke with only recently, in 2005. But for Tom Parker, an official at Amnesty International in Washington who hails from Britain, the distaste for King is personal. As Parker notes in a new Op-Ed, and explained further in an interview with Salon Thursday, he survived an IRA terrorist bombing in 1990 when he was 21. “I have no problem with his support for a unified Ireland. What really bothers me is the hypocrisy of the man,” says Parker, who is now policy director for terrorism, counterterrorism and human rights at Amnesty International USA. It was King’s designation of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange as a terrorist that prompted Parker to go public. Parker himself is critical of Assange, “but to call him a terrorist when you have supported people who actually blow stuff up, it seemed to me that that was really beyond the pale,” he says. “This is a guy who is happy to bully other people when he has a whole crowd of skeletons in his closet on this issue.”
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Arizona is at it again. A controversial law governing ethnic studies programs has taken effect in the state. The first victim: the Tucson school district’s Mexican-American program. —JCL The New York Times: The class began with a Mayan-inspired chant and a vigorous round of coordinated hand clapping. The classroom walls featured protest signs, including one that said “United Together in La Lucha!” — the struggle. Although open to any student at Tucson High Magnet School, nearly all of those attending Curtis Acosta’s Latino literature class on a recent morning were Mexican-American. For all of that and more, Mr. Acosta’s class and others in the Tucson Unified School District’s Mexican-American program have been declared illegal by the State of Arizona — even while similar programs for black, Asian and American Indian students have been left untouched. “It’s propagandizing and brainwashing that’s going on there,” Tom Horne, Arizona’s newly elected attorney general, said this week as he officially declared the program in violation of a state law that went into effect on Jan. 1. Read more Related Entries December 30, 2010 New Year’s Call for a Border Reboot December 27, 2010 The Case of the Missing Murder
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Anti-U.S. cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has returned home to Iraq from his self-imposed exile in Iran, delivering a speech urging support for the new Maliki government and resistance against the U.S.—but not necessarily through armed struggle. —JCL Reuters: Iraqi Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr urged a sea of rapturous followers Saturday to resist all occupiers of Iraq and oppose the United States, but not necessarily with arms. In his first speech since his homecoming Wednesday after years of self-imposed exile in Iran, the one-time firebrand burnished his anti-U.S. credentials and urged supporters to give Iraq’s new government led by Shi’ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki a chance. “We are still fighters,” said Sadr, who led two uprisings against the U.S. military after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion and has called for an earlier U.S. withdrawal than the agreed deadline of the end of this year. Read more Related Entries December 30, 2010 New Year’s Call for a Border Reboot December 27, 2010 The Case of the Missing Murder
Continue reading …In one of the most ignorant political moves known to man, a controversial law in Arizona has gone into effect that bans ethnic studies program taught in the state, declaring illegal classes that “advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals”. Because Arizona, of course, doesn’t treat anyone differently because of their ethnicity. —JCL The New York Times: The class began with a Mayan-inspired chant and a vigorous round of coordinated hand clapping. The classroom walls featured protest signs, including one that said “United Together in La Lucha!” — the struggle. Although open to any student at Tucson High Magnet School, nearly all of those attending Curtis Acosta’s Latino literature class on a recent morning were Mexican-American. For all of that and more, Mr. Acosta’s class and others in the Tucson Unified School District’s Mexican-American program have been declared illegal by the State of Arizona — even while similar programs for black, Asian and American Indian students have been left untouched. “It’s propagandizing and brainwashing that’s going on there,” Tom Horne, Arizona’s newly elected attorney general, said this week as he officially declared the program in violation of a state law that went into effect on Jan. 1. Read more Related Entries January 5, 2011 Israel’s Lieberman Says Peace Will Have to Wait December 31, 2010 Former Israeli President Katsav Convicted of Rape
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New drama over WikiLeaks has come to light. The U.S. government has subpoenaed Twitter to secretly hand over details of five accounts on its site thought to be related to leaked classified information, suggesting a wide-ranging trawl for other evidence online. WikiLeaks has demanded Google and Facebook admit to any subpoenas they received as well. It is commendable that the U.S. government used the appropriate mechanism for obtaining evidence, rather than the Patriot Act-enabled spying we have been accustomed to. —JCL The Guardian: WikiLeaks has demanded that Google and Facebook reveal the contents of any US subpoenas they may have received after it emerged that a court in Virginia had ordered Twitter to secretly hand over details of accounts on the micro-blogging site by five figures associated with the group, including Julian Assange. Amid strong evidence that a US grand jury has begun a wide-ranging trawl for details of what networks and accounts WikiLeaks used to communicate with Bradley Manning, the US serviceman accused of stealing hundreds of thousands of sensitive government cables, some of those named in the subpoena said they would fight disclosure. “Today, the existence of a secret US government grand jury espionage investigation into WikiLeaks was confirmed for the first time as a subpoena was brought into the public domain,” WikiLeaks said in a statement. Read more Related Entries December 30, 2010 New Year’s Call for a Border Reboot December 27, 2010 The Case of the Missing Murder
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Dissent is rippling through the ranks of the Republican Party. Some prominent right-wing groups have announced that they will not attend a major party event next month due to the presence of gay groups and others perceived to be at odds with conservatism. —JCL Los Angeles Times: Some prominent right-wing groups say they will not attend a major Republican gathering in Washington next month, objecting to the presence of gay groups and other organizations whose aims they say are incompatible with conservatism. An estimated 10,000 people are expected to attend the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, to hear aspiring presidential candidates and vote in one of the first straw polls of the 2012 cycle. Among the missing will be the Family Research Council, a conservative Christian group and once a sponsor of CPAC; the Heritage Foundation; and the American Family Assn., which opposes same-sex marriage. Read more Related Entries December 30, 2010 New Year’s Call for a Border Reboot December 27, 2010 The Case of the Missing Murder
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