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Deputy National Security Adviser for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism John Brennan. (AP File Photo/Carolyn Kaster) Replica Watches

New York, NY – President Barack Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser is praising the New York Police Department’s work. He says the department has struck a balance between keeping people safe and protecting their rights.

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John Brennan said Friday at an NYPD event that the federal government can’t identify terrorists and stop attacks without help from local agencies.

He said the NYPD’s work has been responsible for keeping the city safe and that the department has done nothing illegal.

His comments follow criticism of the agency’s domestic intelligence operation that has placed Muslim businesses, mosques and student groups under surveillance.

The Associated Press revealed the details of the program in a series of articles that won the Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting this week.

Brennan says he’ll also speak with Muslim leaders in New York.

Tire skid marks cross the highway where a van plunged over both the concrete and iron railing, Sunday, April 29, 2012, in New York. Authorities say the out-of-control van plunged off a roadway near the Bronx Zoo, killing seven people, including three children. (AP Photo/ Louis Lanzano)

New York, NY – A New York City official says the height of the guardrails on a highway overpass in the Bronx will be among the factors examined in the probe of a deadly crash.

Seven people from three generations of a family—including three children—were killed when the SUV they were traveling in plunged more than 50 feet off the overpass yesterday and into a ravine on the grounds of the Bronx Zoo.

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It landed in a wooded area on the edge of zoo property that is closed to the public and far from any animal exhibits.

The accident was the second in the past year in which a car fell from the same stretch of the Bronx River Parkway.

A neighbor tells the Daily News that the victims were “a good Professional Tattoo Kits, wholesale family.” She says Starbrite Tattoo Ink, “The mother always kept an eye on her children.”

Relatives say the two grandparents who died had arrived from the Dominican Republic three days earlier. They were headed to a family party when the accident occurred.

A spokesman for Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz, says city agencies will be asked to look at safety issues on the highway including guardrail height.

Sean Harris, pastor of Berean Baptist Church in Fayetteville, N.C., has now “apologized” for a delivering a sermon in which he told parents to “punch” their “limp-wristed” sons and force their “butch” daughters to “dress up” and “smell nice” from time to time. However, he claims that his words were meant “in jest.”

That is outrageous, as even the most open-minded and generous viewing of his sermon will quickly reveal. (Click on the link above and see for yourself.)

Having seen the remarkable documentary “Bully” just last night, I couldn’t sit back and swallow his calling this “a joke.” I sent him the following email this afternoon.

Dear Pastor Harris,

I hope this finds you well. I wanted to thank you for the apology you issued with regard to your sermon advocating parents getting strong with kids who don’t conform to your idea of appropriate gender roles. I take you at your word that you did not mean to insult members of the GLBT community or to advocate violence toward children.

However, what I do not accept is that you meant what you said “in jest.” I’ve seen the video of your talk. I’ve watched your comments in context. There was nothing the slightest bit funny in what you said. What, precisely, is the meaning of your “joke”? Where is the humor in telling a father to “punch” his “limp-wristed” son or a mother to force her too-”butch” daughter to be “attractive” and “smell nice”? Explain to me the hilarity of telling parents that any non-gender conforming behavior they observe in their children should be “squashed like a cockroach.” What could possibly be funny about any of this? Especially since violence against “feminine boys” and “masculine girls” is a real problem in too many real homes in this country. What, pray, is funny — or even potentially funny — about reprimanding a child in the horrible and demeaning ways you recommended?

No, this wasn’t a joke. You meant what you said. The only thing you are sorry about is that you got caught saying it. Trying to weasel out of it by saying humor was the intent is the worst form of lying and hypocrisy. As a man of God, you know that lying and hypocrisy are serious matters. I assume that as a Baptist you take personal testimony seriously. As such, you should know that this lying and hypocrisy call the power of your witness to the Lord into serious question. By trying to get us to believe that what you said was “a joke,” you, sir, have undermined the truthfulness of your word. Allow me to remind you that the Ten Commandments are silent on the “proper” gender expression of children but they have something unambiguous to say about the crime of lying.

You said “limp-wristed” boys need to “man up.” I know lots of sissy-acting guys. But guess what: they all show more “manliness” in their actions than calling the horrible things you said “a joke” demonstrates about yours. The sissies I know are kind and strong. They don’t demonize other people. They defend the weak. They rise up for justice. They tell the truth. And they stand by their words. Man up? I suggest you take the plank out of your own eye and “man up” by admitting what you said was no joke at all. You may be sorry for hurting people. But you should be honest Office 2007 Key, stand by your words, and admit that what you said, as the video of your “sermon” so clearly demonstrates, was no joke.

If you really want to apologize, sir, invite gay and lesbian people — particularly gay and lesbian Christian people — to sit down with you and tell you how your words struck our ears. Listen to what we could tell you about parents who abuse us in the ways you advocated. About friends who’ve been thrown out of their houses by parents who have done as you suggested. About other friends we used to have but who have killed themselves by suicide or the slow death of drug or alcohol abuse because of the self-loathing caused in them by parents acting in the ways you suggested. About our GLBT peers who think Christianity is a load of bull and can no longer think of Jesus as anything other than a hate-monger because so many of his supposed followers condemn them in his name. All of this is inhuman Office Stand-Alone Programs, inhumane, and a scandal to Christianity. This is the stuff that should be “squashed like a cockroach.”

It is no apology at all when the apology is not meant. The lie of calling your disgusting words “a joke” shows you aren’t really sorry. If you are, then apologize by your actions. Not by your hollow Windows 7 Key, hypocritical attempt to justify the unjustifiable.

Man up, indeed.

Regards,
Scott MacDougall

I’ll comment on this post with his response. If he’s “man” enough to send one.

(Image Credit: Christopher Gregory/AP Photo)

Latinos, the nation’s fastest-growing voting bloc, are poised to play a potentially decisive role in this fall’s presidential election, but new data suggests that turnout might fall short of lofty projections, which could change the fate of the race for the White House.

The number of registered Latino voters has dropped significantly in recent years, from 11.6 million in 2008 to 10.9 million in 2010, according to new data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey. While 2008 was a presidential election year and 2010 was only a midterm congressional election, that is still a sizable decline, especially given the increase in the Latino population nationwide.

In the past decade alone, the Latino population has increased by 43 percent. There are more than 50 million Latinos in this country replica watches, nearly one in six Americans. A record 12.2 million Latinos are set to vote in November, a 26 percent increase from 2008, according to projections released in the fall by the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO).

But that was before the new Census numbers revealed the surprisingly steep decline in registered Hispanic voters.

The William C. Velasquez Institute (WCVI), a non-partisan organization focused on Latinos’ political and economic participation, crunched the Census numbers earlier this month and found that “a significant decline in national Latino voter registration in 2010 may diminish the size of Latino voter turnout in November 2012 by more than a million votes,” according to the organization’s president, Antonio Gonzalez.

The off-year decline in Latino voter registration is not unexpected: Registration fell by 4,000 voters after the 2004 presidential election. What is unexpected is that the drop in registration after the 2008 election was far bigger, a fall-off of 626,000 voters, down 5 percent. Nine states “experienced significant declines” in Latino voter registration in 2009-2010, WCVI found: California, Texas, Nevada, Florida, Washington, New Mexico, Michigan, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

Some possible reasons for this decline, the group stated, are “a spike in residential mobility” coupled with “intensive downward economic mobility due to the combined effect of significant (and disproportionate) unemployment and mortgage foreclosures” in these nine states in the past two years. In January, for instance, a survey by the Pew Hispanic Center found that a majority of Latinos believed that the country’s economic downturn had hit their ethnic group harder than other Americans.

The Velasquez Institute predicts now that national Latino turnout this fall will be “no higher than 10.5 million votes cast.”

While Latino voter turnout might not appear crucial at first glance, it could potentially determine the fate of November’s election, and who occupies the Oval Office for the next four years. Latinos cast 6.6 million votes in 2008 and, with more than two-thirds for President Obama replica watches, paving the way for the Illinois Democrat’s resounding win. Generally speaking, Latinos are liberals, tending to disagree with Republicans on key issues such as immigration reform and the government’s role in improving the economy. For Obama, Latino turnout could be the difference between winning and losing the White House.

The Obama campaign has made a concerted effort this year to replicate its success among Latinos four years ago. Campaign strategists frequently cite the growing Latino electorate as an advantage and they have taken aim at states with booming Latino populations such as Arizona and Colorado. To that end, the Obama campaign has pounced on some of the inflammatory rhetoric that Republican presidential hopefuls such as Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum have used toward Latinos in the past year’s GOP primary.

For instance, after Romney vowed to veto the DREAM Act – the Democrats’ measure to provide a path to citizenship for some children of undocumented immigrants who attend college or serve in the military – praised Arizona’s strict immigration law that ordered immigrants to carry their registration documents at all times and mandated that police question them if there was reason to suspect that they were in the country illegally, and touted the endorsement of the controversial law’s author Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, Obama campaign surrogates dubbed Romney “the most extreme presidential candidate” ever on Latino issues.

Thus far, it appears, Chicago’s strategy of ripping Romney’s record with Latinos has worked. A late January poll conducted by Latino Decisions for ABC News and Univision found that 67 percent of Latinos would back Obama in a matchup against Romney, who only earned 25 percent of their support. Forty-one percent of Latinos nationwide said they had a somewhat unfavorable or very unfavorable view of Romney, while a whopping 72 percent of Latinos said the Republican candidates in the primary either didn’t care too much about Latinos or were being outright hostile toward them.

But in what might be an alarming sign of lower-than-expected turnout this year, four in 10 Latinos nationwide said they were either not following the GOP primary too closely or not following it at all. In addition, a Pew Hispanic Center study released in December showed that a majority of Latino voters – 56 percent – have not yet engaged in the presidential campaign replica watches, saying they have given little or no thought to the candidates in the race.

Perhaps wary of that fact, Hispanic groups have kicked off efforts to increase the number of Latino voters come November. The National Council of La Raza has launched a national “Mobilize to Vote” campaign focused on registering and mobilizing thousands of Latinos, especially in critical swing states such as Florida, Nevada and Colorado.

The race is a close one in Florida, with Obama leading Romney 49 percent to 42 percent, according to a new Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday. The Latino Decisions poll in January found a similar edge for Obama: 50 percent to 40 percent. But on the economy – the top issue for voters – Romney, who won the state’s January primary, holds the edge on who would do a better job improving the country’s fortunes: 48 percent for the former Massachusetts governor compared with 45 percent for the president, according to the Quinnipiac survey.

In battleground states such as Florida, both parties are well aware, Latino voters could swing the election one way or another, but only if they show up to vote. And that, it seems, is a real question at this point.

Matthew Jaffe is covering the 2012 campaign for ABC News and Univision.

SHOWS: World News

The federal government has reportedly scrapped a promise to cut the company tax rate.

Labor promised to use revenue from its new mining tax to cut the corporate tax rate from 30 per cent to 29 per cent.

Instead the $3.6 billion budget saving will be used to fund upfront payments to help low and middle-income families cope with cost-of-living pressures.

A typical family earning $85,000 with two kids will receive a $1830 upfront payment.

Treasurer Wayne Swan is due to hand down his budget at 7.30pm (AEST) but, in what appears to be a deliberate ploy by the government, details have been leaked to selected media outlets.

The budget provides a seed payment of $1 billion for the National Disability Incentive Scheme, $500 million for dental health and $250 million for e-health.

It defers a commitment to increase overseas aid in a move that saves nearly $3 billion.

Cracking down on golden handshake payments will save nearly $200 million, while ending the ending the away-from-home allowance after one year saves $1 billion.

The surplus in 2012/13 is forecast to be $1.5 billion, rising to $2 billion the year after, $5.3 billion in 2014/15 and $7.5 billion in 2015/16.

The decision to scrap the tax cut would not upset too many small business owners Tattoo Inks, a tax expert said.

Professor Bob Deutsch, from the University of NSW, said the cut was a useless idea to begin with.

“It wasn’t going to help anybody terribly much,” he told AAP, adding it overlooked the fact that a very large percentage of small businesses were not companies.

Those that were did not make a profit.

“So a one per cent cut in the company tax rate couldn’t help them,” Prof Deutsch said.

Chamber of Commerce and Industry WA chief James Pearson said scrapping the company tax cut would be “just another slap in the face” for WA businesses, who were doing the heavy lifting in the national economy.

“There are some 90,000 businesses in WA alone that stood to benefit from the promised one per cent company tax cut,” Mr Pearson told Sky News.

“It’s not just that it’s been taken away, it’s been put into the form of cash splash, which means instead of a sustainable cut in the rate of company tax it could have proportionately helped small and medium business who are doing it tough in the two-speed economy.”

Such a move was a “sugar hit for consumers”, Mr Pearson said.

“It may well be smart in short-term politics Tattoo Kits For Cheap, but I understood the intent of the mining tax was about sustainable long-term redirection of the benefits of the boom Iron Tattoo Machines,” he said.

Chamber of Commerce and Industry Queensland president David Goodwin said some businesses had banked on the cut.

“There’s a lot of businesses out there that had expected the government to keep faith on this and they’ve let them down,” he told Sky News.

Charles Darwin University says it will build a 4,000 square metre business school at the Darwin Waterfront precinct.

The University has not released projected costs for the plan but says it has approached private partners interstate and the Northern Territory Government to help fund it.

The school would provide degrees in the Business faculty Tattoo Guns For Cheap, and vocational training in hospitality, hotel management and the travel industry.

Vice-Chancellor Barney Glover says the university is keen to have a presence in the centre of Darwin.

“Importantly it gives us an opportunity Cheap Tattoo Machines, here in the heart of the CBD, to engage with the business community of the Northern Territory and an opportunity to engage with Government and the community more broadly Tattoo Tools,” he said.

Mr Glover says the project would reconnect the university to Darwin city.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Standard & Poor’s on Thursday cut its credit rating on Spain to BBB-plus from A, a two-notch downgrade, citing its expectation the government’s budget deficit will deteriorate even more than previously thought due to economic contraction.

The ratings agency put a negative outlook on the credit and said it believes the government will also have to provide more financial support for the euro zone nation’s banking sector.

Moody’s Investors Service rates Spain one notch higher at A3 with a negative outlook, and Fitch Ratings has it two notches higher at A, also with a negative outlook.

“We think risks are rising to fiscal performance and flexibility, and to the sovereign debt burden DKNY Clothing sale, particularly in light of the increased contingent liabilities that could materialize on the government’s balance sheet Discount Chloe Dresses,” S&P said in a statement.

(Reporting By Daniel Bases, Burton Frierson, and Pam Niimi; Editing by Leslie Adler and Dan Grebler)

Japanese manufacturers are continuing to feel the sting of the March tsunami and earthquake disasters. Last month, the Toyota Camry was the only vehicle from a Japanese automaker to make the list of top ten best-selling cars and trucks. The four-door typically holds onto the top slot among passenger cars Tattoo Supplies, but June saw the Chevrolet Cruze take that honor. The Camry fell to the fourth-best-selling car and eighth most popular model overall. General Motors managed to move 24,896 Cruze models off of dealer lots compared to 21,375 Camry vehicles.

Not surprisingly, the Ford F-150 and Chevrolet Silverado continued to be the most popular vehicles in the land of the free. GM walked away with the second Tattoo Supplies, third and fourth top-spots with the Silverado, Cruze and Malibu.

Toyota says that Camry production is ramping back up to pre-disaster levels, so it won’t be long before the Japanese sedan gives the new Chevrolet compact a run for its money. Head over to USA Today for a full breakdown on the top-10 best-selling models in America last month.

Hurricane Irene, however weak or strong it ends up being, is so large that it could affect much of the East Coast this weekend. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has ordered New York City’s first mandatory evacuations, the city’s mass transit will shut down at noon, and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has bluntly warned people to seek higher ground. Check back frequently for the latest from Slate.

Come for the Refuge, Stay for the Eats: Shelter hopping in North Carolina during the height of Irene
ROCKY MOUNT, N.C.— Like many trailer parks around here, the King’s Way in Little Easonburg sits in a serious flood zone. For this reason, neighbors Mae Powell Cheap Missoni Dresses, Marcella Smith, and Reathella Richardson find themselves gathered around a book of word-search puzzles at Englewood Baptist Church, waxing rhapsodic about the food. “I ate more here than I ever ate at home,” Mae says. “These people feed you so much.”
Read the rest of the story.

Water, Water, Everywhere, but Not a Drop of Bourbon Yesterday a friend told me she heard that our local Brooklyn supermarket—about a block from Zone C Chanel Dresses sale, which could experience flooding from a Category 3 or 4 storm —was out of bottled water. (Irene is a Category 1 storm but a really nasty one.) I went there today to verify this third-hand information Cheap Emilio Pucci Dresses, and it turned out to be false: The shelves were teeming with all manner of Poland Spring, SmartWater Christian Audigier Clothes sale, and Evian. Read the rest of the story.

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Come On Irene: Awaiting the Hurricane
See how people are preparing for the arrival of Hurricane Irene, from New York to North Carolina.

Flying Air-Conditioners: A Minor Study in Risk Assessment I’ve never appreciated advice from strangers, and I’m getting plenty of it. Email chain letters, mostly, forwarded from a guy in New Orleans or a girl from Galveston, someone who’s lived through a few of these tropical storms in his or her day, and now deigns to provide a few hurricane tips for me and you and all the other friends-of-a-friend-of-a-friend on the Internet. Read the rest of the story.

Hurricane Irene Bears Down on Northeast
Update Cheap Chanel Dresses, 1 p.m., Aug. 27:  Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, speaking at FEMA headquarters in Washington, said that there were no outstanding requests for federal aid from state governments, according to  The New York Times. Saying coastal areas had moved from the preparation phase to riding out the impact and assesing dammage, Secretary Napolitano also said that the storm’s slightly weakened status should not encourage anyone to relax about the impact.
Stay up to date on all the latest Irene developments with The Slatest.

Irene Nearly Twice the Size of Typical Hurricane
Hurricane Irene is not the fastest nor the strongest storm in recent memory. Instead, it is her size that has helped to turn her into such a star over the past 20 hours. ”You only have to look at the weather maps to understand how big this storm is and how unique it is,” New York Mayor Bloomberg said at a news conference Friday, “and it’s heading basically for us.”
Read the rest—and see more dramatic photos— here.

Disasters Can Be Good for You
They don’t want to talk about it Buy DKNY Dresses, so I will:  Natural disasters can be good for politicians. For every New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, who melts down under the pressure of dealing with Hurricane Katrina, there is a Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, who stays frosty and works his White House connections to get  more and more federal aid. There’s an Alabama Gov. Bob Riley, who goes from being locked in a primary with Roy “Ten Commandments” Moore to basking in credit and sympathy and making his opponent totally irrelevent.
Read the rest of the post at David Weigel’s blog.

Hurricane Irene Bears Down on East Coast; Conjures Memories of Katrina on Twitter
The East Coast is on high alert as Hurricane Irene churns up the Atlantic Coast. The large Category 2 hurricane, which threatens to do damage from North Carolina to New England, is triggering memories of Katrina on Twitter. Six years ago this week, Katrina formed over the Bahamas and ultimately reached Category 5, slamming New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, killing over 1,800 people and causing over $80 billion in property damage.
Watch the video at our Trending News Channel  blog.

Oil prices briefly jumped to a record high of $100 per barrel on Wednesday and then crossed into the three digits again on Thursday. Although energy prices have been rising for months, newspaper headlines warned of $4 gasoline and possible shortfalls from OPEC. Is $100 for a barrel of oil really that much worse than $99 per barrel?

Not in the long run. Impressive as the number may be, $100 is just another step in the price climb that oil has been on since the beginning of 2007. The news shouldn’t take Wall Street types or major businesses by surprise, since companies probably already budgeted for higher energy costs in their long-term plans. In fact, some experts predicted that we’d breach the $100 threshold before 2007 was over.

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So, why are oil prices such big news this week? We assign special significance to numbers that are easier to remember, like those ending in 0 or 5. So even though $99 is merely $1 less than $100 Discount DKNY Dresses, the extra digit in $100 makes the difference feel much greater than it actually is, and much bigger than Christian Audigier Clothing sale, say Replica Chanel Dresses, the difference between $100 and $101. Professional investors are less likely than consumers to act on these biases, but they can still make mistakes. Given the volatility of the stock market, small psychological effects like this could have an impact.

To make matters worse, investors tend to change their opinions in a hurry rather than inch steadily toward a particular belief. A person might hold on for some time to the idea that the economy remains strong and then suddenly adopt the opposite view after hearing seemingly insignificant news. This week’s headlines about $100 barrels of oil might nudge some people into active worrying.

It’s also a bad sign that the government allowed oil prices to hit triple digits. In theory, policy-makers understand the importance of the psychological threshold and try as hard as possible to avoid crossing it. If they weren’t able to avoid $100 oil, then perhaps the economy is in a worse state than we realize. A similar line of thinking explains why companies that miss their quarterly earnings forecasts are punished in the market Cheap Chanel Dresses, even when they’re just pennies short.

In the end Bandage dresses sale, no one really knows exactly how much of an effect these psychological thresholds have on the economy. High oil prices do hurt in the long run, but our fears about symbolic numbers probably don’t cause anything more than a temporary dip in the stock market.

Got a question about today’s news? Ask the Explainer.

Explainer thanks Raymond Fisman of Columbia Business School Cheap Herve leger strapless, Fadel Gheit of Oppenheimer & Co., Bruce Jaffee of Indiana University, and Terry Odean of the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley.