Random Politics & Religion #00

Police have opened an investigation into the killing of an unarmed black man by law enforcement officers outside Baltimore, authorities said on Saturday, two months after the city was rocked by protests over the death of another African-American who was taken into custody.

The latest incident unfolded in the Baltimore suburb of Owing Mills, where three officers fired at least 19 rounds and killed Spencer Lee McCain, 41, during a domestic disturbance on Thursday. The Baltimore County police's homicide unit is investigating, police said in a statement Saturday.

Police will conduct an internal review to determine compliance with departmental policy, rules and regulations, the department said. It will send the findings to the Baltimore County State’s Attorney’s Office for review.

The investigation comes at time when U.S. law enforcement is under close scrutiny over the use of lethal force, especially in confrontations with African-American men.

In April, 25-year-old Freddie Gray died from a spinal injury suffered in custody of Baltimore police. His death triggered protests and rioting on the day of his funeral, drawing national attention to the city. Six Baltimore police officers are now facing criminal charges in his death.

A statement by the Baltimore County police identified the officers involved in the latest incident as Wilkes, Besaw and Stargel, providing only their last names.

A police spokesman would not provide first names or ages, saying he was prohibited from doing so by union rules.

Baltimore County Police Department salary records show Shenell Wilkes, Jonathan Besaw and Shannon Stargel as the only employees with those last names.

Wilkes is a six year veteran, Besaw an eight year veteran, and Stargel is a five year veteran, police said.

Officers were called to a home in Owings Mills just after 1 a.m. on Thursday. They forced their way inside when they heard a disturbance, police said.

Three officers shot McCain, fearing he had a weapon, but no firearms were found. Investigators found 19 shell casings, but the exact number of rounds fired was unknown, police said.

McCain was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead. The officers have been placed on administrative leave.

A woman and two children were also in the home and the woman was injured, the police statement said. McCain was under a protective order barring him from having contact with the woman and the children and from going to the home.

Police had been called to the address about 17 times since January 2012, police said.

Cue the riots!

Baltimore police open probe into new shooting of unarmed black man

Greece moved to check the growing strains on its crippled financial system on Sunday, closing its banks and imposing capital controls that brought the prospect of being forced out of the euro into plain sight.

After bailout talks between the leftwing government and foreign lenders broke down at the weekend, the European Central Bank froze vital funding support to Greece's banks, leaving Athens with little choice but to shut down the system to keep the banks from collapsing.

Banks are expected to be closed all next week, and there will be a daily 60 euro limit on cash withdrawals from cash machines, which will reopen on Tuesday. Capital controls are likely to last for many months at least.

"The more calmly we deal with difficulties, the sooner we can overcome them and the milder their consequences will be," a somber-looking Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said in a televised address. He promised bank deposits would be safe and salaries paid.

Even as Tsipras spoke, the lines forming at petrol stations and in front of the shrinking number of bank machines that still contained cash highlighted the scale of the disaster facing Greeks, who have endured more than six years of economic decline.

The failure to reach a deal with creditors leaves Greece set to default on 1.6 billion euros of loans from the International Monetary Fund that fall due on Tuesday. Athens must repay billions of euros to the European Central Bank in the coming months.

The impending default on the IMF loans leaves Greece sliding toward a euro exit with unforeseeable consequences for Europe's grand project to bind its nations into an unbreakable union by means of a common currency. It also carries broad implications for the global financial system.

After months of wrangling, Greece's exasperated European partners have put the blame for the crisis squarely on Tsipras' shoulders. The 40-year-old premier caught them by surprise in the early hours of Saturday by rejecting the demands of lenders and calling a bailout referendum.

The creditors wanted Greece to cut pensions and raise taxes in ways that Tsipras has long argued would deepen one of the worst economic crises of modern times in a country where a quarter of the workforce is already unemployed.

After announcing the referendum, Tsipras asked for an extension of Greece's existing bailout until after the July 5th vote. Euro zone officials refused, and in his televised address Tsipras bemoaned the refusal as an "unprecedented act".

Despite the hardening of positions, officials around Europe and the United States made a frantic round of calls and organized meetings to try to salvage the situation.

The government should not prevent people from making contracts but that does not mean that the government must confer a special imprimatur upon a new definition of marriage.

Perhaps the time has come to examine whether or not governmental recognition of marriage is a good idea, for either party.

Since government has been involved in marriage, they have done what they always do — taxed it, regulated it, and now redefined it. It is hard to argue that government’s involvement in marriage has made it better, a fact also not surprising to those who believe government does little right.

Which is what Rand Paul is doing, stomping his feet and going nowhere. Marriage has not been redefined, its doing just fine. Amazing how the sky has not fallen, nothing has gotten worse, no one has been affected in a negative way, the fearmongerers were wrong.

Uh oh. Gays can get married. Better scrap the whole system. It's tainted. You know, before they go after the churches or whateverrrrrr.

I knew Effeminate, Chainsaw-Wielding Satan was behind this! The jig is up you guys.

Who else could it have possibly been?

Who else could it have possibly been?

NLCFZTCNIF

The state has to give legal rights to every person unless they are reasonably unworthy of those rights by reasonable legal exemption(A convicted felon cannot own a gun, natural born citizens cannot hold public office, non-citizens cannot vote, etc.etc.etc.)

However, the state cannot legally bar someone from a perceived set of rights based on religious doctrine that dictates against that minority. So in general, because God says is not a valid legal excuse to not let someone get legally married and share the benefits of that status as every other citizen.

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is planning a military intervention into northern Syria to prevent Syrian Kurds from forming their own state there, despite concerns among his own generals and possible criticism from Washington and other NATO allies, according to reports in both pro- and anti-government media.

In a speech last Friday, Erdogan vowed that Turkey would not accept a move by Syrian Kurds to set up their own state in Syria following gains by Kurdish fighters against the so-called Islamic State, or ISIS, in recent weeks. “I am saying this to the whole world: We will never allow the establishment of a state on our southern border in the north of Syria,” Erdogan said. “We will continue our fight in that respect whatever the cost may be.” He accused Syrian Kurds of ethnic cleansing in Syrian areas under their control.

Following the speech, several news outlets reported that the president and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu had decided to send the Turkish army into Syria, a hugely significant move by NATO’s second biggest fighting force after the U.S. military. Both the daily Yeni Safak, a mouthpiece of the government, and the newspaper Sozcu, which is among Erdogan’s fiercest critics, ran stories saying the Turkish Army had received orders to send soldiers over the border. Several other media had similar stories, all quoting unnamed sources in Ankara. There has been no official confirmation or denial by the government.

The government refused to comment on the reports. Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said “the necessary statement” would be issued after a regular meeting of the National Security Council, which comprises the president, the government and military leaders, this Tuesday.

The reports said up to 18,000 soldiers would be deployed to take over and hold a strip of territory up to 30 kilometers deep and 100 kilometers long that currently is held by ISIS. It stretches from close to the Kurdish-controlled city of Kobani in the east to an area further west held by the pro-Western Free Syrian Army (FSA) and other rebel groups, beginning around the town of Mare. This “Mare Line,” as the press calls it, is to be secured with ground troops, artillery and air cover, the reports said. Yeni Safak reported preparations were due to be finalized by next Friday.

In Syria meanwhile, only Kurdish forces backed by the US-led coalition have been able to effectively tackle the group, with analysts saying opposition forces and the regime appear to lack the weapons or the resolve to fight the jihadists.

Serbia on Sunday unveiled a monument to Gavrilo Princip, whose assassination of the Austro-Hungarian crown prince in Sarajevo helped ignite World War I and still provokes controversy in the ethnically-divided Balkans.

Hundreds of citizens attended the ceremony in central Belgrade held on the anniversary of the 1914 assassination which is also the Serbian national holiday of St. Vitus Day.

President Tomislav Nikolic described Princip — who is viewed as a terrorist by many outside Serbia — as a freedom fighter and hero.

"Today, we are not afraid of the truth," Nikolic said. "Gavrilo Princip was a hero, a symbol of the idea of freedom, the assassin of tyrants and the carrier of the European idea of liberation from slavery."

He added that "others can think whatever they want."

Austria accused Serbia of masterminding the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914. Backed by Germany, Austria attacked Serbia, whose allies, Russia and France, were quickly drawn into the conflict. Britain, with its sprawling Commonwealth empire, and the United States also joined the fighting.

Princip's legacy is also viewed differently by different nations in the Balkans, which remains a smoldering patchwork of ethnic and religious rivalries two decades after the end of the conflict in the 1990s that followed the breakup of the former Yugoslavia.

In Bosnia, Serbs regard Princip as a hero, while the country's Muslims and Croats widely regard him as a killer and a Serbian nationalist whose goal was Bosnia's occupation by Serbia. A century ago, Muslim Bosnians and Catholic Croats preferred to stay in the big Austrian empire that had brought progress, law and order.

Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik said during the Belgrade ceremony that the unveiling of the Princip monument amounted to "fighting for freedom today."

World War I claimed some 14 million lives — 5 million civilians and 9 million soldiers, sailors and airmen — and left another 7 million troops permanently disabled. Princip, who was only 19, was immediately arrested and died in captivity months before the war ended.

Less than two weeks before the Srebrenica massacre's 20th anniversary, Muslims and Eastern Orthodox Serbs in the Bosnian town are as divided as ever.

Serbs put up anti-European Union posters on Sunday with Russian President Vladimir Putin's portrait on them and the words "Eastern alternative" and "Republika Srpska," or "Serb Republic." Most of them were plastered on the bullet-riddled walls of a warehouse in the nearby village of Kravica, where Serb forces executed Muslim Bosnians during the 1995 genocide.

Bosnia's Muslims want the country to join the EU, while Serbs would like their half — called Republika Srpska — to secede and stay close to Russia as an independent country.

Muslims in Srebrenica are outraged by the posters and believe the postwar division of Bosnia is a product of genocide.

"I am hurt and disappointed," said Sabra Mujic, 50, who lost her husband in the massacre. She said the posters are taking Srebrenica backward.

NATO air raids against the Serbs stopped the 1992-95 Bosnian war shortly after more than 8,000 Muslim Bosnians from Srebrenica were killed in Europe's worse massacre since the Holocaust.

More than 100,000 people died during the Bosnian war. The Dayton Peace Accords, which ended the war, divided the country into two political entities, one for the Muslim Bosniaks and Catholic Croats, and the other for the Christian Orthodox Serbs. Each has state-like institutions, with the central government above them.

The Serbs say the posters are meant as an anti-EU protest and to call for Russia to veto a British-drafted U.N. resolution that honors the Srebrenica victims and suggests July 11 should be a memorial day. The Srebrenica massacre happened on July 11-13, 1995.

"Serbs expect Russian support because Russia promotes justice. The world would be much better if there were more Putins," said Ranko Cvjetkovic, 64, from nearby Bratunac where such posters also decorate walls.

Radomir Ostojic, 38, said "Europe is no good. Look at the crisis there while Russia is rich. I hope Russia will help us and I live for that day."

The churches remain unaffected. If they don't want to perform a wedding ceremony, they don't have to. This fact was never in any danger of being changed.

The governor is warning that Puerto Rico can't pay its $72 billion public debt, delivering another jolt to the recession-gripped U.S. island as well as a world financial system already worrying over Greece's collapsing finances.

As hard as investors try to wean themselves off stocks, the habit is proving impossible to kick.

In a year when fund clients pulled about $60 billion from equities, the value of shares has climbed by $527 billion, pushing the total owned by households to $20 trillion, data compiled by Bloomberg and Ned Davis Research Inc. show. Today, Americans have 41 percent of their financial assets in stocks, matching the high in 2007 and trailing only the Internet bubble.

natural born citizens cannot hold public office

Who else could it have possibly been?

Uh oh. Gays can get married. Better scrap the whole system. It's tainted. You know, before they go after the churches or whateverrrrrr.

leaders of the Boston Catholic Charities said they would not be renewing their nearly 20-year-old contract with the Massachusetts Department of Social Services (DSS) to provide adoption services, citing state law that says homosexuals must be allowed to adopt.