MOSCOW, Dec 4 (Reuters) - Moscow has banned gays and lesbians from promoting their way of life because they can help spread HIV/AIDS, the Russian capital’s 72-year-old mayor was quoted as saying on Thursday by RIA news agency.

Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, speaking at an HIV/AIDS conference in Moscow, also said there was no scientific proof that condoms provided full protection against sexually transmitted diseases.

“We have banned, and will ban, the propaganda of sexual minorities’ opinions because they can be one of the factors in the spread of HIV infection,” Luzhkov was quoted as saying by state-owned RIA.

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L4284496.htm

CHICAGO/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President-elect Barack Obama is not planning to implement a windfall profit tax on oil companies because prices have dropped below $80 a barrel, an aide said on Tuesday.

“President-elect Obama announced the policy during the campaign because oil prices were above $80 per barrel,” an aide on Obama’s transition team said. “They are currently below that now and expected to stay below that.”

Oil prices have fallen from a record $147 a barrel in July to under $50 this

Apparently he made this dire prediction more than 10 years ago and believes the time is near.  Panarin envisions six new smaller nations once the USA has collapsed.

I hope my part gets Florida!

http://www.drudgereport.com/flashrur.htm

Rahm Emanuel - Chief of Staff - Clintonista
Eric Holder - Attorney General - Clintonista
Tim Geithner - Treasury Sec. - Career Insider
Hillary Clinton - Sec. of State - Clintonista
Bill Richardson - Clintonista
Jant Napolitano - Clintonista

... the far left must be losing all Hope of Change…

Sharpe James served as mayor of Newark, New Jersey’s largest city, for 21 years.

A state senator since 1999, he was a political force to be reckoned well beyond Newark’s borders — arguably the state’s most important voice for cities and minorities, but widely derided as a master of patronage but not policy. In 2002, he faced the fiercest challenge to his control of City Hall, and narrowly defeated Cory Booker, a charismatic young lawyer. Four years later Mr. James chose not to run for re-election as mayor, and in April 2007 he announced that he would retire from his senate seat at the end of his term.

Shortly after he left the mayoralty a federal investigation began into the sale of city lands and Mr. James’s use of city credit cards; he was indicted on July 12, 2007.

Read More…

On April 16, 2008, a jury found him guilty of fraud for conspiring to sell city-owned properties to a former companion at a fraction of their value.-- April 17, 2008

Our friend rbb misses another one!

A former New Jersey Congressman, Cornelius E. Gallagher, pleaded guilty yesterday in Federal District Court to lying to a bank in 1986 to help his son-in-law obtain a $200,000 loan. In 1986, Mr. Gallagher falsely stated to Pamrapo Savings and Loan of Bayonne that his son-in-law, Michael Brennan, was employed by his corporation, Panamarkets Inc., at a salary of $100,000 a year, said R. Scott Thompson, an Assistant United States Attorney. Mr. Gallagher, 74, a Democrat who served in the House of Representatives from 1959 to 1973, also admitted yesterday that he omitted from his 1989 tax return $90,000 in profit that he earned on the sale of a home in the Dominican Republic.

Where is that rbb guy when we really need him...?

WOODBURY — No one’s sure when daily recitations of the Pledge of Allegiance fell by the wayside at Woodbury Elementary School.

But efforts to restore them have erupted into a bitter dispute in this tiny (pop. 810) Vermont town, with school officials blocking the exercise from classrooms amid concerns that it holds nonparticipating children up to scorn.

Supporters say the classroom is the place for it, and the disagreement has fueled an increasingly acrimonious debate.

“The whole thing is tearing our community apart,” said Heather Lanphear, 39, the mother of a first-grade student.

Unlike other Pledge controversies, this one centers on how and where schoolchildren say it, not whether they should be allowed to.

The brouhaha in the Vermont school began in September, when parent Ted Tedesco began circulating petitions calling for its return as a daily practice in the 19th-century schoolhouse, which has 55 children in grades kindergarten through six.

School officials agreed to resume the pledge as a daily exercise, but not in the classroom.

“We don’t want to isolate children every day in their own classroom, or make them feel they’re different,” said Principal Michaela Martin.

Instead, starting last week, a sixth grade student was assigned to go around to the four classrooms before classes started, gathering up anyone who wanted to say it and then walking them up creaky wooden steps to a second-floor gymnasium, where he led them in the pledge.

About half the students chose to participate, according to Martin.

The Supreme Court ruled decades ago that students could not be required to say the Pledge if their religion forbade it.

But when did saying the Pledge become a “political” choice and why?

http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/article/20081114/NEWS/81114027

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aYcW5btjaU.Y&refer=worldwide

The St. Olaf (Northfield, Minn.) professor who, in a well-read Huffington Post item, recounted tearing down McCain campaign signs has resigned.

Per the Northfield News, it appears that Philip Busse was forced out.

St. Olaf spokesman David Gonnerman issued the following statement Monday afternoon:

“The St. Olaf College administration first learned of Phil Busse’s self-admitted theft and destruction of campaign signs on the morning of Oct. 31 as a result of his posting on the Internet.

“The St. Olaf administration immediately referred the matter to local law enforcement authorities and commenced an investigation of its own.

“Mr. Busse has tendered his resignation and is no longer affiliated with St. Olaf College.

Busse has been charged with misdemeanor theft.

... and these are the college instructors who are educating our kids… just the tip of the iceberg!