Why I'm Voting For Mitt Romney Video Breakdown

This video is a depressing yet pretty accurate description of the republican party and  as a whole our current political discourse! It's sot of funny, yet very sad at the same time. Do yourself a favor and be informed!

Below is the link to the original video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bzvm7zd4Z-s

6 Largest Government Contractors Slideshow | Investopedia

6 Largest Government Contractors Slideshow | Investopedia

6 Largest Government Contractors

There's a lot of controversy over the United States government's balance sheet. Many argue that the U.S. spends too much money, but where that money goes very few know. Here is a list of the top five companies that receive the most government contracts. Most of the contracts are in the areas of defense and technology, but science also receives a large amount of government dollars.

Read more: http://www.investopedia.com/slide-show/gov-contractors/#ixzz2BnKOpFBX

Embarrassing Punishments Hurt Kids, Experts Say

Embarrassing Punishments Hurt Kids, Experts Say

By: Rachael Rettner
Published: 05/15/2012 10:47 AM EDT on MyHealthNewsDaily
Parents and teachers who try to make their kids behave by subjecting them to humiliating punishments are taking the wrong approach to discipline, experts say.

Just this month, a Florida teacher was suspended for making tardy students wear a wide-brimmed dog collar dubbed the "cone of shame." And parents in Minnesota who were disappointed with their daughter's grades were arrested after they shaved the 12-year old girl's head and forced her to wear a diaper and run around outside.

While these cases are certainly extreme, experts say that any punishment that shames or embarrasses a child is not an effective way to discipline youngsters, and may cause long-term psychological damage.

"The research is pretty clear that it's never appropriate to shame a child, or to make a child feel degraded or diminished," said Andy Grogan-Kaylor, an associate professor of social work at the University of Michigan. Such punishments can lead to "all kinds of problems in the future," Grogan-Kaylor said, including increased anxiety, depression and aggression.

Malicious punishments can also damage a parent's relationship with their child, and lead to a cycle of bad behavior, experts say.

Instead, parents should use other discipline strategies, such as setting clear rules for kids and taking away privileges. Overall, parents should aim to create a supporting environment for their child.

"Positive things have a much more powerful effect on shaping behavior than any punishment," Grogan-Kaylor said.

Damaging punishments

Out-of-the norm punishments can have social repercussions for children, said Jennifer Lansford, a research professor at Duke Univesity's Center for Child and Family Policy. An odd punishment can make a child stand out, and provoke bullying, Lansford said.

In addition, children evaluate their own experiences in the context of what they see their peers experiencing, Lansford said. If children are disciplined in ways that are not condoned by society, "it can lead children to perceive they are personally rejected by their parents," Lansford said.

Humiliating punishments can also disconnect parents from their children, making kids less likely to want to behave and do what their parents say, said Katharine Kersey, a professor of early childhood education at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Va., and author of the upcoming book "101 Principles for Positive Guidance with Young Children" (Allyn & Bacon, August 2012).

"Each time we [embarrass children with a punishment] we pay a price, and we drive them away from us, and we lose our ability to be a role model for them," Kersey said.

"When you disconnect from a child, he no longer wants to please you, he no longer wants to be like you. You've lost your power of influence over him," Kersey said.

Children who are punished in these ways usually still commit the behavior, but do it behind their parents' backs, Kersey said.

Better ways to discipline

To properly discipline a child, experts recommend the following:

Focus on the positive — the behaviors you want to see more of — rather than the mistakes, Kersey said. "If a child is running, instead of saying stop running, you say use your walking feet," Kersey said.
Be proactive: establish rules you want your kids to follow, and be reasonable in your expectations, Lansford said.
Listen to your kids: Often times, bad behavior is a mistake, Grogan-Kaylor said. Parents should listen to why their children did something, and explain why the behavior is inappropriate.
Timeouts are appropriate for younger kids. For older kids, taking away privileges such as watching TV may be effective, Lansford said. In a classroom setting, teachers may consider rewarding kids for good behavior, Lansford said.
Parent should model the responsible behaviors they want children to repeat, Kersey said.
Pass it on:  Humiliating punishments don't work to discipline children, and may have long-term consequences.

Another innocent executed? - Death Penalty - Salon.com

Another innocent executed? - Death Penalty - Salon.com

The state of Texas killed Carlos DeLuna for a crime he appears not to have committed, according to a new report

BY RANIA KHALEK

 
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TOPICS: DEATH PENALTY, TEXAS, POLITICS NEWS

Carlos De Luna

Death-penalty abolitionists long believed that the execution of an innocent person would turn the public against capital punishment. But that conviction has recently been shaken. First, there was Cameron Todd Willingham, who, after his 2004 execution in Texas, was found to have been likely innocent of killing his three small daughters. Nearly a decade later, Georgia executed Troy Davis despite widespread doubts about his guilt.

A new investigative report by the Columbia Human Rights Law Review reveals that Carlos DeLuna, who was executed by the state of Texas in 1989, was likely innocent as well. The full report, titled “Los Tocayos Carlos: An Anatomy of a Wrongful Execution,” can be viewed at CHRLR’s newly launched interactive website where readers can view all of the evidence cited in the article.

DeLuna, a poor Latino man described as having the intelligence of a child, was convicted of murdering Wanda Lopez, a 24-year-old single mother who was stabbed to death with a folding knife in 1983 while working behind the cash register at a gas station in Corpus Christi, Texas.

Lopez called 911 when her killer entered the store, leaving behind a recording of the encounter. She is heard answering a series of yes or no questions asked by the dispatcher about the creepy customer with the knife in his pocket and then whispering that he’s “standing right here at the counter” and “can’t talk,” followed by “Okay. This? Eighty-five,” in response to the customer. After more questions from the dispatcher, Lopez is heard pleading for her life and the line cuts off.

The only evidence against DeLuna was the shoddy eyewitness testimony of Kevin Baker, a car salesman who came face to face with Lopez’s killer as he fled the scene. Although DeLuna partly resembled the description given by Baker, upon further investigation it seems that DeLuna and the man Baker described were not the same person. For example, Baker told police that the culprit had a full mustache and so much facial hair that he looked like “he hadn’t shaved in, you know, ten days, a couple weeks.”

When police found DeLuna, he was lying half naked, shoeless and shirtless, underneath a pickup truck with little more than a day or two of stubble and no mustache. DeLuna testified that he was at the nightclub across the street from the crime scene trying to find a ride home when the sound of police sirens freaked him out because he was on parole at the time. So he ran, losing his shirt when he jumped a fence.

According to the CHRLR report, two decades after the murder, Baker admitted to a detective that he was only 70 percent certain that the half-naked man he saw in the back of the police car (DeLuna) and the man he saw stab Lopez were the same. Even family and friends had a hard time telling the difference between pictures of DeLuna and pictures of Hernandez.

From the time he was arrested to his subsequent execution in 1989, DeLuna maintained his innocence, repeating over and over again to his lawyers, family and the media, “I didn’t do it, but I know who did.” Nobody listened. At his trial DeLuna testified that “some other dude named Carlos” was the culprit, and still nobody listened.

DeLuna was referring to Carlos Hernandez, a Latino man whom the police were all too familiar with given his violent criminal history.

The night before his trial, DeLuna told his lawyer that an acquaintance had accompanied him to the nightclub the night of the murder. On the way there, DeLuna said the acquaintance stopped at the gas station to buy a pack of cigarettes for 85 cents, the same amount Lopez was heard saying on the 911 recording.

Like most people in the neighborhood, DeLuna was terrified of Hernandez, which is why it took him several months to identify him by name. Hector De Peña, DeLuna’s first state-appointed lawyer, recalls him saying, “I’m dead whether I’m out [of jail] or in if I identify him.”

Just weeks after Lopez was murdered, Eddie Garza, a Corpus Christi detective, heard from his vast network of informants that Carlos Hernandez was bragging in the streets that he got away with killing Wanda Lopez. At one point, he was suspected of fatally stabbing another woman.

Despite the evidence implicating Hernandez as the possible culprit, police and prosecutors never passed the information on to DeLuna’s lawyer. Instead, the prosecution argued in court that Carlos Hernandez was nothing more than a figment of DeLuna’s twisted imagination, an accusation that was upheld during his appeal.

DeLuna’s identification of Hernandez wasn’t taken seriously until 16 years after his execution. In an in-depth investigation, the Chicago Tribune uncovered evidence showing Carlos Hernandez to be the likely killer. “Ending years of silence, Hernandez’s relatives and friends recounted how the violent felon repeatedly bragged that DeLuna went to death row for a murder Hernandez committed,” reported the Tribune. They didn’t feel safe sharing their knowledge of Hernandez’s crime until after he died of liver cirrhosis in 1999 while serving a prison sentence for assault with a knife.

Given the mishandling of the investigation, prosecutorial misconduct and an inadequate defense, the jury unanimously found DeLuna guilty and he was sentenced to death.

As DeLuna languished on death row, Hernandez managed to get arrested nine times, once for killing a woman and another time for stabbing a Hispanic woman nearly to death. Again, the police and district attorney failed to inform DeLuna’s lawyers and the judges overseeing his appeals. Meanwhile, the prosecution continued to argue that Carlos Hernandez did not exist outside of DeLuna’s mind.

Rev. Carroll Pickett, the death house chaplain who presided over nearly 95 executions, was struck by DeLuna’s claim of innocence until his very last breath. Pickett said that inmates would eventually confess before meeting their maker, which is why Pickett believes that DeLuna was indeed innocent. The chaplain became an advocate for the abolition of the death penalty as a result.

By chronicling the mistakes made by authorities at every stage of DeLuna’s case, the CHRLR report highlights the ease with which the criminal justice system can lead to wrongful conviction and, in capital cases, a deadly and irreversible outcome.

Cameron Todd Willingham, Troy Davis and Carlos DeLuna make up just a handful of people that have been executed despite serious doubts about their guilt, which raises the question: How many more people will be strapped to a gurney and injected with poison before the death penalty is abandoned?

Close

MORE RANIA KHALEK.

Baltimore police delete personal videos at Preakness

National Database Planned to Combat Cellphone Theft - NYTimes.com

National Database Planned to Combat Cellphone Theft
By EDWARD WYATT
Published: April 9, 2012

WASHINGTON — The soaring popularity of smartphones has produced an unwelcome, if predictable, side effect: an epidemic of smartphone thefts.

Now, police departments, the Federal Communications Commission and the wireless phone industry have devised a plan to fight back: the creation of a central database to track stolen phones and prevent them from being used again.

On Tuesday, Julius Genachowski, the chairman of the F.C.C., is scheduled to join police chiefs from New York, Pennsylvania and Maryland and representatives of a wireless industry trade group to announce the new plan, which will allow wireless providers to disable and block further use of a device once it is reported stolen.

The groups are also working with members of Congress to write legislation that would make it a federal crime to tamper with a phone’s unique identifiers in an attempt to evade the blocking process.

“It’s just too easy for a thief to steal a phone and sell it on the black market,” Mr. Genachowski said. “This program will make it a lot harder to do that. And the police departments we are working with tell us that it will significantly deter this kind of theft.”

Over the last year, roughly one out of three robberies nationwide have involved the theft of a cellphone, according to an F.C.C. summary of the new plan. The thefts have grown most rapidly in urban areas; cellphones are stolen in more than 40 percent of all robberies in New York City and 38 percent of robberies in the District of Columbia, according to the groups.

Read More At The New York Times Here

National Database Planned to Combat Cellphone Theft - NYTimes.com

Racist Rant Gets John Derbyshire Fired From National Review

How To Handle the Police! Know Your Rights so they don't violate em!

How to Handle a Police Stop

A large part of a police officer’s job is to develop evidence that will lead to a conviction. At every stage of your encounter with the officer, you must assume that they are seeking evidence from you or your surroundings that could land you in jail.

If you believe that you may be stopped by the police in the near future, or if you believe that you may be a suspect, you should enlist my aid as soon as possible by calling (301) 556-8709. I can give you specific advice relevant to your particular situation, and I may sometimes even be able to stop a prosecution before charges are filed.

Be Polite, Remain Silent, and Assert Your Legal Rights

An initial “Hello, Officer” without more is polite and will not hurt you – but after those two words, there are only two categories of responses to an officer that are useful:

1. Silence, and
2. An assertion of your legal rights that you have memorized beforehand, or carry with you.
• “I do not consent to any search.”
• “I am not comfortable answering any questions without an attorney present.”
• “Am I free to leave?”

The officer has a plan for his interaction with you. You also need to have a plan if you want to be successful.

You playing a game against a much more experienced adversary with your freedom at stake. The Officer will likely be more levelheaded than you and will remain capable of following a complex plan, because your interaction with him is relatively ordinary. He knows that there is no possibility that he will go to jail if he loses. You will be acutely aware that your freedom is on the line, and will be, at best, somewhat anxious. If your interaction with the officer becomes complex, the officer’s superior experience and other advantages will result in near certain victory. Therefore, you must follow simple rules that will minimize your interactions with the officer.

You must resist with your silence, and your forceful but polite memorized assertions of your rights. If the officer orders you out of the car, or arrests you, or orders you to get out of the way, cooperate with them physically while saying, “I do not consent to any search.”

Do not physically resist or unnecessarily antagonize the officer – it will only make things worse. To you, the officer is a threat to your freedom that you must politely resist. To a police officer, your encounter is just part of the job. Try not to take the encounter personally – the officer likely has no personal feelings toward you whatsoever.

Officers will often use their own expressions of annoyance with you in order to encourage you to speak, to consent to a search, or to remain present when you are free to leave. They may make it seem if you do not “cooperate” with them, you will go to jail, when the exact opposite is true. Remember that the officer is asking you to “cooperate” in your own conviction. If you are effectively handling the situation by remaining silent and asserting your rights, the officer may become frustrated by that alone, as the vast majority of people are not disciplined enough to remain silent when actually confronted by a police officer. In these situations, the officer’s annoyance may be genuine, but it means that you are performing well, not badly.

Remember that the officer has been professionally trained to manipulate and lie to suspects in order to induce them to incriminate themselves. The officer also has had the opportunity to practice on a daily basis for years. If a police officer speaks to you, irrespective of what he may say to the contrary, you must assume that he is doing so because you are a suspect.

Your Normal Social Reflexes Will Not Help You

You have been culturally conditioned to behave in certain ways when interacting with other human beings. Police officers know this, and will use social and cultural norms against you in your encounters with them. You will have to engage every ounce of will to resist your day to day tendencies in interacting with others.

Social Reflexes:

1. Walking away is either rude or cowardly.
2. Stone faced silence is a bizarre or cowardly response.
3. When someone asks you a question, or talks to you, you are expected to talk back.
4. If you are disgusted by a comment or question, you are frequently expected to express that disgust.

Effective Interaction With A Police Officer:

1. If you can walk away, or leave, do so as soon as possible. It is safe to say “I’m sorry, but I’m very busy right now”. Do not elaborate or say anything else, particularly about what you might be busy doing. You do not owe the officer any justification.
2. If you can’t leave, the only good response is silence, intersped with the nonresponsive answer of “I’m sorry officer, but I’m not comfortable answering any questions without an attorney present. I do not consent to any search.” And that is all. All other responses, no matter how helpful they may seem to you at the time, are not helpful. Feel free to repeat either of those sentences, especially the second one if the officer appears to be conducting some sort of search or test on you.
3. If you are not sure whether or not you can leave, ask, “Officer, am I free to leave?” Repeat the question if necessary, insist on an unambiguous answer. If you can’t get an unambiguous answer, say that you wish to leave, and that you will leave unless ordered to stay. Then leave.

There are a some cases where you are required by law to do something, or may be punished if you do not. Some examples are below.

When You May Be Punished for Noncompliance:

1. You may have to sign a ticket. It must say something to the effect that your signature is not an admission of guilt, which is usually in fine print near where you sign it. You are signing the ticket to indicate that you received the ticket, and that you will appear in court as required. If you do not sign, the officer may arrest you.
2. If you are driving, produce your valid license, registration, and/or insurance information when asked.
3. If you are cited for a crime, produce valid identification.
4. In Maryland, where there is no federal jurisdiction, you are allowed to refuse a breath test or blood test, but you will face severe administrative penalties for doing so. It is sometimes advantageous to refuse the test. You can and should ask to consult an attorney before making this decision. The police are required to allow you to do so, as long as it will not unreasonably delay the test.
5. Within Federal Jurisdiction, you are required to consent to a breath or blood test.

You Are Not Required to Perform Field Sobriety Tests in Maryland

An officer may ask you to perform one or more field sobriety tests in order to collect evidence necessary for an arrest, and eventually a conviction. The Walk and Turn, One-Leg Stand, and Horizontal Gaze Nystagmus tests are standardized field sobriety tests (SFSTs) that you may have heard of, but there are also a variety of other field sobriety tests that the officers sometimes use, including math problems, counting, or finger exercises. The officer may also ask you to submit to a portable breath test using a small hand-held device. You do not have to perform any field sobriety tests. They are not required by Maryland law, and you should generally refuse to participate in any of them. Please note, however, that while declining to perform a field sobriety test will help prevent the officer from acquiring evidence necessary to lawfully arrest and convict you, the officer will often arrest you anyway.

You can do a great job handling the situation and still get arrested. The officer may have decided that he was going to arrest you before you even saw him. It isn’t over. At every step, you need to avoid giving the authorities anything that can be used against you in court.

What to do After You Have Been Arrested

How do TV Ratings Work?

An article by PolitcalUsa.com on why Obama can't lose in 2012!

http://www.politicususa.com/en/orecasting-model-obama-2012
Sorry GOP, the country isn't quite ready for your type of crazy just jet.

Rick Santorum Embarrases Himself