Despite the state Board of Pardons and Parole voting to spare Robert Lee Thompson's life, Bush Jr's successor, Rick 'Hair Club of Men' Perry voted to kill him anyway. Why have a board when you have a dictator?

Because of the current recession and job losses, more people are going hungry now that at any time since the statistic has been recorded. Unfortunately, most likely these numbers will be even worse next year as the full effects of the recession come to fruition. As always with hunger children were some of the hardest hit.

On Sept. 12, 1960, presidential candidate John F. Kennedy gave a major speech to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association, a group of Protestant ministers, on the issue of his religion. At the time, many Protestants questioned whether Kennedy's Roman Catholic faith would allow him to make important national decisions as president independent of the church. Kennedy addressed those concerns before a skeptical audience of Protestant clergy. The following is a transcript of Kennedy's speech:---I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute, where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote; where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference; and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the president who might appoint him or the people who might elect him. I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish; where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source; where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials; and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.

The United States is in open competition with the same countries from which we buy our goods and finance our government. These countries supply our consumption while simultaneously competing fiercely against our companies in international markets. Nations like India, Japan and China, along with trade blocs like the European Union, rail against “protectionism” in the U.S. because they do not want to have their unfettered access to our market tampered with.

Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) is warning fellow Democrats not to mess with his restrictive anti-abortion amendment. .... Now Stupak is saying he won't go easily.

President Barack Obama is under pressure — and not just from the burden of turning America around from the worst economic recession in this generation but also from gay rights advocates as fight for same-sex marriage, repeal of "Don't ask, don't tell policy" and the possible appointment of a gay Supreme Court Justice heat up.

Congress took a reasonable step in 1994 when it required states receiving federal education money to expel students who brought guns onto school property, but states and localities overreacted, as they so often do. They enacted “zero tolerance” policies under which children are sometimes arrested for profanity, talking back, shoving matches and other behavior that would once have been resolved with detention or meetings with the students’ parents. This arrest-first policy has been disastrous for young people, who are significantly more likely to drop out and experience long-term problems once they become entangled in the juvenile justice system. It has led to egregious racial profiling, with black and Hispanic students being shipped off to court at a higher rate than white students. And it has been a waste of time for the police to haul off children to the courts when they should be protecting the public from real criminals.

In a classic case of state-sponsored murder, the Commonwealth of Virginia is preparing to add another fatality to the murder spree in 2002 that terrified residents in the Washington, DC metro area. Despite John Allen Muhammad's continuing claims of innocence and possible withholding of exculpatory evidence, racial bias in the investigation, and Muhammad's history of post-traumatic stress disorder, brain damage and other mental illness, it appears unlikely that Virginia Governor Tim Kaine, nor anyone in the White House (who has the authority to commute his sentence) will intervene. Muhammad is sentenced to die for the murder of Dean Harold Meyers, one of ten people killed and three wounded during a three-week period in October of 2002. No word on whether those killed by Muhammad will come back to life and rise from the grave after the execution, thus justifying the taking of another life. There has also been no word from anti-abortion activists on whether Muhammad qualifies as an embryo or fetus.

"There's a very important editorial in The Nation this week that I hope everyone will take the time to read. It's about the wrongful conviction of Anthony McKinney, who's been in prison for thirty-one years for a murder he did not commit." NOTE: The entire editorial is here: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20091123/editors

The narrative has already started to emerge in the media, in which no one pays any attention to the fact that the Military apparently insisted on deploying to Iraq a man who was absolutely against the US mission there, in which instead the Fort Hood slayings become the reason why each and every American has to watch very carefully what he or she says in public, and on the internet particularly: where bad thoughts are increasingly viewed as proto-crimes. "At least six months ago, Hasan came to the attention of law enforcement officials because of Internet postings about suicide bombings and other threats, including posts that equated suicide bombers to soldiers who throw themselves on a grenade to save the lives of their comrades. They had not determined for certain whether Hasan is the author of the posting, and a formal investigation had not been opened before the shooting, said law enforcement officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to discuss the case. One of the officials said late Thursday that federal search warrants were being drawn up to authorize the seizure of Hasan's computer. Retired Army Col. Terry Lee, who said he worked with Hasan, told Fox News that Hasan had hoped President Barack Obama would pull troops out of Afghanistan and Iraq. Lee said Hasan got into frequent arguments with others in the military who supported the wars, and had tried hard to prevent his pending deployment."

Matthew Hoh says that occupying Afghanistan is not going to defeat them. Hoh has gained support from troops in the military which does not understand what they are fighting for, according to Hoh. Within the Pashtun society there is a civil war and that war has noting to do with us. This is a divide amongst the Pashtuns between the urban Pashtuns and the rural Pashtuns; and just like with the Soviets this war is unwinnable and has lasted for centuries. Karzai is from the urban wealthy Pastuns. You will find his interview with Fareed and his letter here: http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/fareed.zakaria.gps/ Listen to what Hoh has to say:

I have been covering the option ARM fiasco for a very long time now and as I have highlighted before, this is very much a California problem. Apparently I’m not the only one that has realized that option ARMs are a ticking time bomb just waiting to go off. None other than our own attorney general, Jerry Brown is going after the top option ARM banks and servicers. He has a few of the same questions that we have. How in the world are banks going to deal with the coming recasts? Have banks done anything since the crisis has started in addressing these loans? Inquiring minds would like to know. The AG has been busy in the last year. He went after toxic mortgage poster child Countrywide successfully and recently, has gone after State Street. Jerry Brown recently came on CNBC regarding State Street:

Many of our journalists desire to exercise their 1st Amendment rights by gathering information about what happens in school board meetings, community events, county commission meetings or in the state legislature. Others simply hope to share the news from their communities that mainstream newspapers routinely overlook. Some of our writers advocate for causes. Others want to share entertainment and cultural news with you. We also have journalists here who are interested in writing about sports, history or the arts of Kansas.

What was once depicted as a grave act of lawlessness -- Bush's NSA program -- is now deemed a vital state secret.

Today most Americans remain blissfully unaware of how emaciated our economy has become.

Pouring money into the private banking system has only fixed the economy for bankers and the wealthy; it has not done much to address either the fundamental problem of unemployment or the debt trap so many Americans find themselves in. President Obama's $787 billion stimulus plan has so far failed to halt the growth of unemployment: 2.7 million jobs have been lost since the stimulus plan began. California has lost 336,400 jobs. Arizona has lost 77,300. Michigan has lost 137,300. A total of 49 states and the District of Columbia have all reported net job losses. In this dark firmament, however, one bright star shines. The sole state to actually gain jobs is an unlikely candidate for the distinction: North Dakota. North Dakota is also one of only two states expected to meet their budgets in 2010. (The other is Montana.) North Dakota is a sparsely populated state of less than 700,000 people, largely located in cold and isolated farming communities. Yet, since 2000, the state's GNP has grown 56 percent, personal income has grown 43 percent and wages have grown 34 percent. The state not only has no funding problems, but this year it has a budget surplus of $1.3 billion, the largest it has ever had.

Evidence that the U.S. is a failed state is piling up faster than I can record it. One conclusive hallmark of a failed state is that the crooks are inside the government, using government to protect and advance their private interests. Another conclusive hallmark is rising income inequality, as the insiders manipulate economic policy for their enrichment at the expense of everyone else.

All in the name of TERRORISM... Police are gathering the personal details of thousands of activists who attend political meetings and protests, and storing their data on a network of nationwide intelligence databases.The hidden apparatus has been constructed to monitor "domestic extremists", the Guardian can reveal in the first of a three-day series into the policing of protests. Detailed information about the political activities of campaigners is being stored on a number of overlapping IT systems, even if they have not committed a crime.An investigation by the Guardian can reveal:• The main unit, the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU), runs a central database which lists thousands of so-called domestic extremists. It filters intelligence supplied by police forces across England and Wales, which routinely deploy surveillance teams at protests, rallies and public meetings. The NPOIU contains detailed files on individual protesters who are searchable by name.• Vehicles associated with protesters are being tracked• Police surveillance units, known as Forward Intelligence Teams (FIT) and Evidence Gatherers, record footage and take photographs of campaigners as they enter and leave openly advertised public meetings.• Surveillance officers are provided with "spotter cards" used to identify the faces of target individuals who police believe are at risk of becoming involved in domestic extremism. etc...

The US has every characteristic of a failed state. The US government’s current operating budget is dependent on foreign financing and money creation. Too politically weak to be able to advance its interests through diplomacy, the US relies on terrorism and military aggression. Costs are out of control, and priorities are skewed in the interest of rich organized interest groups at the expense of the vast majority of citizens. For example, war at all cost, which enriches the armaments industry, the officer corps and the financial firms that handle the war’s financing, takes precedence over the needs of American citizens. There is no money to provide the uninsured with health care, but Pentagon officials have told the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee in the House that every gallon of gasoline delivered to US troops in Afghanistan costs American taxpayers $400. “It is a number that we were not aware of and it is worrisome,” said Rep. John Murtha, chairman of the subcommittee. According to reports, the US Marines in Afghanistan use 800,000 gallons of gasoline per day. At $400 per gallon, that comes to a $320,000,000 daily fuel bill for the Marines alone. Only a country totally out of control would squander resources in this way.---

In Pleasant Hill, a suburb outside San Francisco, I met a remarkable young woman named Amy Fedeli. Only 24-years old, she has deferred her dream of college and a career in nursing to support her 75-year-old grandmother, Margaret, and seven-year-old niece, Emilia. She's keeping faith with her loved ones in a state that is systematically abandoning its poorest and least powerful people. Margaret, who suffers from a neurological disorder and mild dementia, is too frail to be left home alone while Amy goes to her job at a medical-records company. So she attends a state-funded adult day-care programme where she gets physical and occupational therapy, health checkups, and a chance to interact with other people and keep her mental faculties sharp. But as part of the effort to pare down the budget deficit, California has cut many programmes for the elderly poor.