US Army Warns Against Gun Nuts

Via the Stars & Stripes:

The Army has warned its recruiters to treat the gun-toting civilians gathering at centers across the country in the wake of the Chattanooga, Tenn., shooting as a security threat. Soldiers should avoid anyone standing outside the recruiting centers attempting to offer protection and report them to local law enforcement and the command if they feel threatened, according to a U.S. Army Recruiting Command policy letter issued Monday. Armed citizens — some associated with activist groups and militias — were standing vigil outside recruiting centers in Wisconsin, Georgia, Tennessee, Idaho and elsewhere this week, saying they want to provide protection to servicemembers barred from carrying firearms on duty. Four Marines and a sailor were killed by Mohammad Youssef Abdulazeez, a 24-year-old Kuwait-born native of Tennessee, during an attack Thursday on a strip mall recruiting center and a Navy facility that is being investigated as an act of terrorism.

Recruiting officers have been warned not to "acknowledge or interact" with the militia members.

Pam Geller Sues DC Metro

Via the right wing Daily Caller:

Activist and blogger Pamela Geller is suing the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority after the agency refused to run her ads with a drawing of the prophet Muhammad on public transportation in the District of Columbia. On May 20, Geller submitted her ad to WMATA to be placed on buses and in train stations throughout the city, but about a week later the agency announced it would no longer accept “issue-oriented advertising.” At the time, a spokesman for WMATA told The Daily Caller News Foundation the decision to ban issue-oriented ads was not related to any particular organization, but Geller believes it was an attempt to block her right to speak freely. “It’s an end run around the first amendment,” Geller said in an email. “… [and] Public safety has been thrown in for good measure as if these craven quislings know what is conducive to the public good.” In the lawsuit, Geller, along with her non-profit organization American Freedom Defense Initiative, claims WMATA violated her First Amendment rights by refusing to run her ad.

Geller has fought similar battles against transit agencies in New York City, San Francisco, Philadelphia, and Chicago.

ISRAEL: Government Mocks Foreign Media With Cartoon About Gaza Terrorism

Via the New York Times:

As part of Israel’s intensifying effort to undermine potential criticism from the United Nations of its military assault on Gaza last summer, the country’s Foreign Ministry released an animated YouTube video on Monday mocking coverage of the conflict by Western reporters as absurdly inaccurate. The 50-second cartoon broadside, produced by the ministry and featured on its website, portrays a blond, American-accented foreign correspondent as such a dunce that he reports breezily from Gaza that “there are no terrorists here, just ordinary people,” as a masked militant launches a rocket from a residential neighborhood right behind him. In a second scene, the reporter is pictured in what he calls “Gaza’s underground city, a fascinating attempt by Hamas to build a subway system,” as a series of heavily armed militants march in the direction of Israel past a sign reading, “Minimum: 8 Terrorists Per Tunnel.” The animation then shows a militant arresting a man standing under a rainbow-colored flag as the clueless correspondent tells his viewers that “there is no doubt that the Palestinian society here is liberal and pluralistic, and that Hamas allows everyone to live in dignity.”

The scene with the murder of a gay man occurs at :28.

John Oliver On Torture

Headline Of The Day

Death Sentence For Boston Bomber

Suspect ID'd In Geller Event Shooting

ABC News reports:

One of the suspects in the shooting in Garland, Texas, late Sunday has been identified as Elton Simpson, an Arizona man who was previously the subject of a terror investigation, according to a senior FBI official. Overnight and today FBI agents and a bomb squad were at Simpson's home in an apartment complex in north Phoenix where a robot is believed to be conducting an initial search of the apartment. Officials believe Simpson is the person who sent out several Twitter messages prior to the attack on Sunday, in the last one using the hashtag #TexasAttack about half an hour before the shooting.

Followers of ISIS had been sending messages about the event in Texas for more than a week, calling for attacks. One referenced January's Charlie Hebdo massacre in France and said it was time for "brothers" in the United States to do their part. Simpson was well known to the FBI. Five years ago he was convicted for lying to federal agents about his plans to travel to Africa, but a judge ruled the government did not adequately prove he was going to join a terror group there. As for the second suspect, the FBI is combing through files on all of Simpson's known associates in Phoenix and elsewhere, but so far there has been no word on the accomplice's identity.

One-Man Helicopter Lands On US Capitol Lawn, Feds Order Security Lockdown

ABC News reports:

A small helicopter landed on the Capitol's West Front this afternoon in Washington, D.C. and the man piloting the small aircraft has been arrested, authorities said. According to the Tampa Bay Times, a 61-year-old mailman in Florida threatened to drive his gyrocopter through protected airspace to deliver the mail. The Ruksin native, Dough Hughes, has contemplated the plan for more than two years, according to the newspaper. “No sane person would do what I’m doing,” he reportedly said. ABC has not yet confirmed the Times’ report or that the pilot is the same person.

Click over to the Tampa Bay Times the read about this guy's strange quest. He's very lucky he wasn't blown out of the sky. Also, why wasn't he blown out of the sky?

ISIS Threatens Times Square Bombing

Via Vocativ:

A new ISIS rap video, subtitled in English, features some of the group’s most bloody scenes of beheading and torture, while promising suicide bombers in Germany as well as New York City’s Times Square. A terrorist is shown donning a suicide belt, with subsequent imagery showing scenes from New York’s bustling Times Square, after which the bomber, dressed in western clothes, pulls the pin. The three-minute long clip was broadcast on ISIS’s al-Hayat media network, the propaganda arm that focuses on a Western audience. Images of injured western troops being evacuated are juxtaposed with graphic scenes of beheadings and the immolation of Jordanian pilot Muath al-Kaseasbeh, shown struggling as flames engulf him.

The video below has been heavily edited by Vocativ.

Editorial Of The Day

From the editorial board of the Boston Globe:

As the trial now moves into its sentencing phase — the jury must unanimously vote to execute Tsarnaev, or else he will receive a life sentence — the defense team may also raise legal mitigating factors. Tsarnaev was 19 at the time of the bombing; he was apparently a heavy drug user; he had no prior criminal record. By themselves, none of these would seem like a particularly good reason to spare him, but taken as a whole, and alongside evidence of his brother’s dominant role, they should plant seeds of doubt. In sorting through such life-and-death considerations, jurors face an unenviable task — and mixed precedent. The Oklahoma City bomber, Timothy McVeigh, was put to death. The Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, wasn’t. Tsarnaev obviously should spend the rest of his life in prison. His defense has already made a good case that he does not meet the exceptionally high standards for a federal execution.

Boston Marathon Bomber Found Guilty

Via the Boston Globe:

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was convicted Wednesday of carrying out the April 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, which devastated a festive crowd near the world-renowned race’s finish line, killing three people and wounding more than 260 others. Tsarnaev, 21, who prosecutors said was a self-radicalized Muslim bent on striking a blow against America, now faces a second phase of his trial in which a jury will decide whether to sentence him to death. The second phase could begin within days. Tsarnaev and his late older brother, Tamerlan, planted twin bombs at the race on the afternoon of April 15, 2013. Prosecutors have said that Tsarnaev carried out the crimes in a “heinous, cruel and depraved manner” and that he deserves the death penalty. He was charged with 30 crimes, including 17 that carried the possibility of a death sentence. The jury of seven women and five men deliberated for just over 11 hours before rendering its verdict, after hearing the lawyers’ closing arguments early Monday.

Many death penalty opponents find themselves questioning their position in cases like this. Myself included.

Religion's Gifts To The World

The monthly series is back.

Saudi Arabia Has Begun Bombing Yemen

REPORT: ISIS Beheads Gay Men In Iraq

Via News 24:

ISIS has publicly beheaded three men in northern Iraq, two of them for allegedly engaging in homosexual acts, according to photos shared by sympathisers on social media on Tuesday. The jihadist group, which controls swathes of Iraq and neighbouring Syria, has carried out hundreds of executions as it has imposed its brutal version of Islamic law, many of them photographed or videotaped. The latest images did not show the claimed beheadings and their authenticity could not be independently verified. A series of photographs shows the blindfolded men kneeling in the centre of what appears to be a traffic circle with a crowd of people looking on as a masked, black-clad executioner stands by with a long, rusty blade. Accompanying captions said the trio were then executed, the third of them for alleged blasphemy.

Some reports say all three young men were accused of homosexuality, adding that two of them may have been a couple. However ISIS is known to accuse its enemies of being gay in order to "justify" their executions.

CNN On Gays Living Under ISIS Rule

In a report on the ISIS executions of allegedly gay men, CNN today interviewed a gay couple who fled Syria just before ISIS took control. CNN reports that gays still living in ISIS-controlled regions are living in terror.

Headline Of The Day

Details. As always, it's important to keep in mind that these terrorists routinely accuse people of being gay in order to "justify" their murders.

Unions Demand Apology From Gov. Scott Walker After CPAC Comparison To ISIS

Via press release:

We’re not going to stand by and let Scott Walker smear hard-working Americans, simply because the exercise their first amendment freedom to disagree with him. You don’t attack good men and women who give their time every day to make this country a better place.

Public service workers have confronted terrorism. In the aftermath of September 11, they performed search and rescue operations and helped the devastated city recover. Halloveen Brightly, an AFSCME DC37 police communications specialist, stayed on the line with those who would never make it out of the towers. Patrick Bahnken of DC37 in New York City dug by hand for victims. Leonard Benjamin, a mortuary care technician from DC37, picked up the remains of the deceased at the World Trade Center. And Father Mychal Judge, an AFSCME member, arrived on scene as the towers burned, to provide aid and comfort to the injured, before falling victim himself.

To compare the 100,000 men and women who stood up in Madison and called Governor Walker out for his attack on workers’ freedom to terrorists is disgusting. That’s the desperate act of a craven, career politician, not a leader whose values are aligned with what this country stands for. In Madison, we marched alongside military veterans, firefighters, police officers, nurses, librarians and teachers. There were senior citizens and children. College students and clergy.

This cannot stand, Governor Walker, and the nation deserves an apology.

We hope they aren't holding their breath.

Italians Mock ISIS After Threat To Throw Gays Off The Leaning Tower of "Pizza"

You can see the mocking responses and memes here and here. The Italian government is taking the threat seriously.

In the wake of the threat, Italian security chiefs have approved plans to put 4,800 soldiers on the country's streets and 'sensitive sites' to prevent terrorist attacks. Reports claim 500 will be deployed in Rome - where soldiers are already guarding diplomatic residences, synagogues and Jewish schools. The troops are also expected to be deployed at tourist venues such as archeological sites and monuments. The commander of Vatican's 110-man Swiss Guard said they were ready to defend Pope Francis if ISIS attack. ISIS have executed four men in recent weeks for alleged homosexuality.

GOP Arkansas Pol: It's Time To Nuke ISIS

"With ISIS spreading all over the Middle East and Africa and Islamic Extremists carrying out violence in Europe, The United Kingdom and even in the United States, I wonder why the civilized world just sits by when we have weapons that could wipe out these barbarians where they are concentrated? I believe it is time to annihilate the strongholds and pursue the rest till we have them all captured or killed. A strategically placed nuclear weapon would save the lives of our soldiers and quickly turn things around. It is time for the insanity to be stopped." - GOP Arkansas state Sen. Jason Rapert, in a posting on his Facebook page. Rapert did not specify where this nuclear weapon should be detonated. The above image is from the Arkansas Times.

RELATED: Until this week Rapert was most famous for telling a Tea Party gathering that they should not allow "minorities to run roughshod over what you people believe in." Last summer Rapert authored a resolution calling on the Arkansas Supreme Court to invalidate the same-sex marriages that took place in the brief period in which they were legal. The resolution failed.

Obama Speaks On War Powers Request

I've replaced the live stream with a recording.