“The Stupidest Idea I Ever Heard” The Irrationality of the Case against Iran’s Nuclear Program “…President Obama has informed the Iranians they have one “last chance” to avoid attack. They must suspend higher uranium enrichment, close down the Fordow enrichment facility, and “surrender” their stockpile of uranium enriched to 20 per cent purity. Iranian officials respond matter-of-factly that such demands are “irrational.” …” – Gary Leupp, Counter Punch

Growth of Income Inequality Is Worse Under Obama than Bush “…why President Obama is able to continue to speak as if his administration has not presided over a significant expansion of income redistribution upward. The data on inequality shows that his policies are not incrementally better than those of his predecessor, or that we’re making progress too slowly, as liberal Democrats like to argue. It doesn’t even show that the outcome is the same as Bush’s…” – Matthew Stoller, Naked Capitalism

Ozzie Guillen and Free Speech “…If an athlete wants to “support the troops,” rally behind a new publicly funded stadium, or in the case of Tim Tebow, do commercials for rightwing evangelical hate-shop like Focus on the Family, then you are a role model. Anyone who dares step out of that box would bear a very different set of consequences…” – David Zirin, the Progressive

Obama: ‘I don’t mind debate’ but no to legalizing drugs “…President Barack Obama continued his opposition towards legalizing drugs, including marijuana, this weekend ahead of the Summit of Americans in Colombia…” – the Raw Story

Obama targets journalists in war on whistleblowers “…While the Bush administration treated whistleblowers unmercifully, the Obama administration has been far worse. It is actually prosecuting them, and doing so under the Espionage Act — one of the most serious charges that can be leveled against an American…” Glenn Greenwald, Salon

Why Obama’s JOBS Act Couldn’t Suck Worse “…Boy, do I feel like an idiot. I’ve been out there on radio and TV in the last few months saying that I thought there was a chance Barack Obama was listening to the popular anger against Wall Street that drove the Occupy movement, that decisions like putting a for-real law enforcement guy like New York AG Eric Schneiderman in charge of a mortgage fraud task force meant he was at least willing to pay lip service to public outrage against the banks. Then the JOBS Act happened…” Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone

Nordbank reviewed more than 2000 mortgages that were sold to them by Barclay’s packaged as secured investment vehicles and found that none of the mortgages were assigned to the trusts before they were sold.

The Financial Times reported that officials who were party to the recent agreement between the nation’s largest banks and the US Department of Justice and many of the nation’s state attorney’s general that released the banks from criminal prosecution for the same acts alleged in the Nordbank lawsuits, said that Barclay’s “alleged failure to properly transfer and maintain loan files” is the same activity that “led in part to the ‘robosigning scandal’.”

it’s all true:
HSH sues Barclays over mortgage securities

Spain has an enlightened approach to marijuana use that allows citizens to cultivate cannabis for medical and recreational use but which strictly prohibits the sale and distribution of marijuana. Residents in the village of Rasquera, in Spain’s Catalan region, have agreed to rent 15 hectares of public and to the Barcelona Personal Use Association to grow cannabis, the sale of which is expected to raise $1.3 million Euros needed by the town to repay debt left after the real estate market crashed in Spain and worldwide in 2008. The project is expected to support 40 jobs for the village’s residents.

Mayor Bernat Pellisa told reporters recently, “We want to put an end to mafias, we want to finish with the black market, we want to put an end to the underground economy. The only thing this humble mayor wants and has tried to do is to supervise all this in order to benefit society and the neighbors of our village.”

So far the 900 resident hamlet has raised $47,000 for the project and is awaiting approval of the scheme by the Spanish Attorney General and regional authorities. Local authorities anticipate beginning marijuana cultivation this month.

It’s all true:
Spanish Town Wants to Grow Cannabis to Pay Off Debt

Trujillo was interviewed in advance of April’s Summit of the Americas, where Columbia’s current president has stipulated that participants, including members of the Obama administration, must be exposed to arguments in favor of drug legalization as a mechanism of mitigating the brutal and murderous consequences of the United States’ policy of drug prohibition.

It’ all true:
Columbia’s Former President Calls America’s Drug War a Failure

The “Bronx Defenders” working with the law firm of Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP, found that 44 percent of the marijuana personal possession arrests they reviewed revealed “clear constitutional and evidentiary problems stemming primarily from unconstitutional searches and seizures and improper charging of clients by the NYPD.” The survey also found that 87 percent of those wrongly arrested were either black or Latino.

It’s all true:
Bronx Public Defender Says Data Shows Wrongful Marijuana Arrests Rose After Kelly’s Order

Dempsey, as quoted by the Washington Post, said, “It’s both the narcoterrorism activities that we see destabilizing our southern border (and) it’s that network itself that can be used for other purposes — and probably will be.” The Army general theorized, that because the drug smuggling network “can move anything (that will) go to the highest bidder…looking to the future, it’s certainly in our interest to do what we can to help the nations in this region to break those networks” so they cannot become weapon supplying networks used by Islamist terrorists.

The general continued, “We learned how to defeat al-Qaida by attacking the network along its entire length…The question here would be, can we take the same paradigm in how to attack a network,” but do this with the cooperation of South American nations. General Dempsy visited military outposts in Columbia and Brazil to discuss the deployment of US soldiers to act as “military advisors” to host country’s armed forces.

It’s all true:
Joint Chiefs Chairman Sees Security Ties with Latin America as Key to War on Terror

The study, Primary Sources: America’s Teachers on the Teaching Profession, found that America’s teachers work longer hours than most workers, averaging 53 hours per week. Many teachers work even longer hours if they supervise extracurricular activities. Teachers who volunteer to supervise students who participate in sports, debate clubs, student newspapers and other activities donate an additional 11 hours per week to their workplaces.

The survey, which interviewed 10,000 teachers across the nation, also reported that teachers were seeing the effects of the dire economic downturn reflected in their classrooms. Fifty six percent of the responding teachers report seeing more students living in poverty and forty nine percent said that they see children attending school hungry.

It’s all true:
Primary Sources: America’s Teachers on the Teaching Profession