NEW: Michelle Obama Breaks Her Silence on Divorce Rumors
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According to UW-Madison Police, more than 26,500 people showed up for the rally, making it Obama's largest since the campaign. Most packed into the mall on what turned into a crisp fall night, standing shoulder-to-shoulder from Memorial Library to Park Street, while others spilled up Bascom Hill.
They held signs that read "Moving America Forward," while every so often someone would yell out, "Obama, we love you."
Emily Lawless, a UW-Madison junior from Lakeville, Minn., waited in line five and a half hours for the chance to see the president live.
NFL officials are investigating a confrontation between Green Bay Packers safety Nick Collins(notes) and a fan after Monday night’s loss to the Chicago Bears at Soldier Field.
Spokesman Greg Aiello tells The Associated Press the league is “in the process of reviewing all the facts.”
Milwaukee’s WITI-TV aired video footage in which Collins is seen yelling at a fan as he left the field. Collins then appears to throw his mouthpiece into the stands. According to the station’s report, Collins said the fan spit on him and used a racial slur. WITI says Collins apologized for “losing his cool.”
In a more than 8,000-word interview with Rolling Stone Magazine, Obama compared the cable news channel to papers owned by William Randolph Hearst at the turn of the 20th century that unabashedly pushed the media titan's own political views.Let's take a trip down irony lane, shall we? If I recall, the 2008 presidential campaign was one filled with complete, unabashed bias in favor of the boy king's campaign. There was an absolute disappearance of objective reporting. Everyone knows this. Sometimes, it appeared as if reporters from such networks as MSNBC, CBS, CNN, and ABC actually worked for the Obama campaign. Let's look at the numbers Mr. Obama:
Officers detained two men on September 15 and four more yesterday and all six were bailed pending further inquiries, Northumbria Police said.
''The arrests followed the burning of what are believed to have been two Korans in Gateshead on September 11,'' the spokesman said.
''The incident was recorded and a video placed on the internet.''
In a video still accessible on YouTube, six young men in hooded tops or wearing scarves over their faces can be seen pouring petrol on a book and setting it alight, before burning another.
On the video, which appeared to have been filmed behind a pub, they cheer as the first book bursts into flames.
Northumbria Police said the men were not arrested for watching or distributing the video, but on suspicion of burning the Koran.
A 22-year-old man who allegedly spoke of wanting to assassinate Chicago’s mayor was charged by federal prosecutors with plotting to detonate a bomb near Wrigley Field, home to the Chicago Cubs baseball team.
Sami Samir Hassoun blamed Richard M. Daley for “weakening” the city’s security and planned to use the attack to drive him from office, according to the complaint against him. He was arrested Sept. 19 by members of the Chicago-area Joint Terrorism Task Force.
“He wanted to transform the City of Chicago. He wanted to make a statement,” Robert Grant, special agent in charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Chicago office, told reporters after Hassoun appeared before a federal magistrate yesterday. He intended to “kill as many people as he could” by planting the explosive in a neighborhood full of bars, clubs and restaurants, Grant said.
The vast majority of 9/11 observances in this country cannot be seen as politically neutral events. Implicit in their nature are the notions that lives lost at the World Trade Center are more valuable than lives lost in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine and elsewhere; that the motives of the 9/11 attackers had nothing to do with genuine grievances in the Islamic world regarding American imperialism; and that the U.S. has been justified in the subsequent killing of hundreds of thousands in so-called retaliation.
The observance at Saturday’s football game was no different. A moment of silence was followed by a military airplane flyover; in between, Block-I students chanted “USA, USA.” This was neither patriotism nor remembrance in any justifiable sense, but politicization, militarism, propaganda and bellicosity. The University is a public institution that encompasses the political views of all, not just the most (falsely) “patriotic.” Athletic planners should cease such exploitation for political purposes. They might at least consider how most Muslim students, American or otherwise, would respond to this nativist display; or better, Muslims and others that live their lives under the threat of our planes, drones and soldiers.
The overwhelmingly white, privileged, Block-I students should be ashamed of their obnoxious, fake-macho, chicken-hawk chant, while poverty-drafted members of their cohort fight and die in illegal and immoral wars for the control of oil. University administrators need to eliminate from all events such “patriotic” observances, which in this country cannot be separated from implicit justifications for state-sponsored killing.
David Green,
University Academic Professional
"I think it's kind of stupid for them to kick me out of school for a nose piercing," she said. "It's in the First Amendment for me to have freedom of religion."
Iacono and her mother, Nikki, belong to the Church of Body Modification, a small group unfamiliar to rural North Carolina, but one with a clergy, a statement of beliefs and a formal process for accepting new members.
It's enough to draw the interest of the state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, which has contacted school officials with concerns that the rights of the Iaconos are being violated by the suspension.
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"They're basically saying, because they don't agree and because they choose not to respect our beliefs, that it can't be a sincerely held religious belief," he said.
Ivey describes the church as a non-theistic faith that draws people who see tattoos, piercings and other physical alterations as ways of experiencing the divine.
"We don't worship the god of body modification or anything like that," he said. "Our spirituality comes from what we choose to do ourselves. Through body modification, we can change how we feel about ourselves and how we feel about the world."
As followers of this faith, it is our purpose to educate and inspire, to share ideas, and to help each other achieve our dreams. We strive to unify and strengthen our mind, body, and soul so we can overcome any challenges we may encounter. We assert and protect our rights to modify our bodies and to practice our rituals.We believe our bodies belong only to ourselves and are a whole and integrated entity: mind, body, and soul. We maintain we have the right to alter them for spiritual and other reasons.Affirmation of our living, breathing, physical beings is paramount to our self-identities and helps us define who we are. The Church of Body Modification promotes affirmation and growth of a more expansive perspective of our physical and spiritual being.
Militants launched mortar shells into Israel and Israeli jets bombed targets in Gaza on Wednesday, just as Israeli and Palestinian leaders held peace talks in Jerusalem with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Gaza militants opposed to peace with Israel have threatened to derail the fledgling negotiations, and the Israeli military said eight mortars and one rocket hit Israel by mid-afternoon on the day of the talks — the highest daily total since March 2009. There were no injuries.
Police said two of the mortar shells had phosphorous warheads, which can set fires or severely burn people.
“Of Thee I Sing,” which President Obama finished writing in 2008, describes thirteen “groundbreaking Americans and the ideals that have shaped our nation—from the artistry of Georgia O’Keeffe, to the courage of Jackie Robinson, to the patriotism of George Washington,” the publisher said in a statement. It is illustrated by Loren Long.
“It is an honor to publish this extraordinary book," said Random House children's president and publisher Chip Gibson, "which is an inspiring marriage of words and images, history and story. Of Thee I Sing: A Letter to My Daughters celebrates the characteristics that unite all Americans—the potential to pursue our dreams and forge our own paths.”