In a scene reminiscent of non-violent civil rights confrontations from the 1960s, Ohio Tea Partiers quickly turned ugly when facing off with health care advocates in front of Ohio Rep. Mary Jo Kilroy’s office Tuesday.

In shocking video taken by a Columbus Dispatch reporter Doral Chenowith, Tea Party protestors mock a seated counter-protestor with a sign indicating he has Parkinson’s disease. They then proceed to hurl wadded up bills at him shouting, “I’ll decide when to give you money!”

See and read more on the Columbus Dispatch

The object of this desirable item has melted away, but the news itself is still hot and provocative.

After Rahway, N.J., police received an anonymous complaint about “a naked snow woman,” the artistic family behind a front-yard tribute to Venus de Milo says an officer paid a visit and told them to cover up their Greek goddess of love and beauty.

The story attracted local attention this week and then popped up on the international radar.

“We had a visit from the local police who told us that a neighbor had complained about the statue and we needed to cover it up or knock it down,” Elisa Gonzalez, who sculpted Venus with her daughter and son, told Agence France-Presse. “We didn’t want to have any problem with the police so we covered it up.”

She did say the unidentified officer complimented her. “He said, ‘It’s very good.’” Gonzalez outfitted Venus with a green bikini top and blue sarong.

Read More: USA Today

The U.S. Supreme Court hears arguments Tuesday in a case that pits an individual’s right of free speech and association against a federal law aimed at combating terrorism. At issue is part of the Patriot Act that makes it a crime for an American citizen to engage in peaceful lawful activity on behalf of any group designated as a terrorist organization.

Federal law makes it a crime to provide material support to any organization designated as a terrorist group by the secretary of state. But the definition of material support includes not just providing weapons or money or bomb-making skills; it includes providing any sort of expert advice, training or personnel — including advice on how to resolve disputes peaceably or training on how to make human rights claims before the United Nations.

The nonprofit Humanitarian Law Project has a long history of engaging in such activity, mediating international conflicts and promoting human rights. But it has stopped doing some of its work for fear of being prosecuted under the material support provision.

“My speech is particularly nonviolent,” says Ralph Fertig, president of the organization. “I’ve gone to jail in the United States for my advocacy for peace.”

The federal government, he maintains, cannot constitutionally make it a crime to help others advocate lawful, peaceful solutions to international conflicts. In particular, Fertig and his organization have helped the Kurdistan Workers Party, known as the PKK, make human rights claims before international bodies. They have trained Kurdish leaders in peacemaking negotiations and have brought them to Washington to lobby. But when the PKK was designated an international terrorist organization under the Patriot Act, that all stopped, and the Humanitarian Law Project went to court.

The government, arguing that the PKK had engaged in terrorist activities that have cost some 22,000 lives, said it was justified in making the organization a pariah. Thus, the government contended, even filing a legal brief on behalf of the PKK in an American court, would be a crime…

[continues at NPR]

That famous definition of a cynic as someone who knows the price of everything — and the value of nothing — has come to define this present moment of American politics.

No wonder people have lost faith in politicians, parties and in our leadership. The power of money drives cynicism deep into the heart of every level of government. Everything, and everyone, comes with a price tag attached: from a seat at the table in the White House to a seat in Congress, to the fate of health care reform, our environment, and efforts to restrain Wall Street’s greed and prevent another financial catastrophe.

Our government is not broken; it’s been bought out from under us, and on the right and the left and smack across the vast middle, more and more Americans doubt representative democracy can survive the corruption of money.

Last month, the Supreme Court carried cynicism to new heights with its decision in the Citizens United case. Spun from a legal dispute over the airing on a pay-per-view channel of a right-wing documentary attacking Hillary Clinton during the 2008 presidential primaries, the decision could have been made very narrowly. Instead, the conservative majority of five judges issued a sweeping opinion that greatly expands corporate power over our politics.

Never mind that in at least two separate polls an overwhelming majority of Americans from both political parties say they want no part of the Court’s decision; they want even more limits on the power of money in elections. But candidates and their campaign consultants are gearing up to exploit the court’s gift in the fall elections.

Read More: Huffington Post

The following is the first chapter from Russ Kick’s classic bite-size Disinformation book 50 Things You’re Not Supposed to Know, published in 2003.

For more on Russ Kick, check out his website, The Memory Hole.

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First Amendment battles continue to rage across the US over the posting of the Ten Commandments in public places — courthouses, schools, parks, and pretty much anywhere else you can imagine.

Christians argue that they’re a part of our Western heritage that should be displayed as ubiquitously as traffic signs. Congressman Bob Barr hilariously suggested that the Columbine massacre wouldn’t have happened if the Ten Commandments (also called the Decalogue) had been posted in the high school, and some government officials have directly, purposely disobeyed court rulings against the display of these ten directives supposedly handed down from on high.

Too bad they’re all talking about the wrong rules. Every Decalogue you see — from the 5,000-pound granite behemoth inside the Alabama State Judicial Building to the little wallet-cards sold at Christian bookstores — is bogus. Simply reading the Bible will prove this. Getting out your King James version, turn to Exodus 20:2-17. You’ll see the familiar list of rules about having no other gods, honoring your parents, not killing or coveting,
and so on. At this point, though, Moses is just repeating to the people what God told him on Mount Si’nai. These are not written down in any form.

Later, Moses goes back to the Mount, where God gives him two “tables of stone” with rules written on them (Exodus 31:18). But when Moses comes down the mountain lugging his load, he sees the people worshipping a statue of a calf, causing him to throw a tantrum and smash the tablets on the ground (Exodus 32:19).

In neither of these cases does the Bible refer to “commandments.” In the first instance, they are “words” which “God spake,” while the tablets contain “testimony.” It is only when Moses goes back for new tablets that we see the phrase “ten commandments” (Exodus 34:28). In an interesting turn of events, the commandments on these tablets are significantly different than the ten rules Moses recited for the people, meaning that either Moses’ memory is faulty or God changed his mind.

I. Thou shalt worship no other god.

II. Thou shalt make thee no molten gods.

III. The feast of unleavened bread thou shalt keep.

IV. Six days thou shalt work, but on the seventh day thou shalt rest.

V. Thou shalt observe the feast of weeks, of the firstfruits of wheat harvest,
and the feast of ingathering at the year’s end.

VI. Thrice in the year shall all your men children appear before the Lord God.

VII. Thou shalt not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leaven.

VIII. Neither shall the sacrifice of the feast of the passover be left unto the morning.

IX. The first of the firstfruits of thy land thou shalt bring unto the house of the LORD thy God.

X. Thou shalt not seethe a kid [ie, a young goat] in his mother’s milk.

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Look for more 50 Things You’re Not Supposed to Know in the next 50 days under the tag “50 Things” on disinfo.com.

Above Image: Moses with the Ten Commandments by Rembrandt (1659).

The Western world, from Australia to the United States, UK and parts of Europe, are moving in a unified front toward dictatorial Internet censorship. Australia has led the way, despite outcry from its populace, by “filtering” out certain banned content. In the United States, Sen. Jay Rockefeller, in continuing his family’s tradition of oppressing free humanity, has pushed forward Cybersecurity legislation that has already passed the House. He has done so in the name of warding off ghastly cyber “attackers” conceivably fronting for al Qaeda while ushering in a means to restrict free speech and expression online for the general population.

With Obama’s support, most of the developed world has accepted plans for government-approved online activity and Pentagon-monitored internet traffic. The U.S. and UK are facilitating the hijacking of what has, until now, been a highly-democratic Internet. Overall, it has been a technological God-send for bringing together communication and strongly expressing thought outside of the mainstream information available on television and in print.

Now, people are being forced onto the corporate-dominated Internet2– once again, in the name of “security.” (Internet) Freedom sacrificed at the same false alter of (Internet) Security. Independent blogs, news sites and online businesses will all be financially disadvantaged by access fees not demanded of dominant entities. What is today outside the ‘norm’ but well within free speech will tomorrow be evaluated by politically-correct criteria that will be used to identify sites to block and users to deny access. Currently, a campaign is underway to convince the public to accept “driver’s licenses” for the once-free Internet.

Already, government “blacklists” have been exposed. On its lists? The usual suspects– Infowars.com, PrisonPlanet.com, Wikileaks.org and the like…

[continues at Prison Planet.com]

If you voted for marijuana as a CitizenTube question, then your vote didn’t count. Yes, questions about marijuana were the most popular in the CitizenTube voting Monday afternoon.

But YouTube, in a gutless move, decided at the last minute not to present the highest ranked questions to the President. Initial reports that the President had ignored the marijuana questions were inaccurate; YouTube took pot, the top vote getter, out of the running.

President Obama never even got an opportunity to answer the most popular question of all.

Wait, what? “We’ll let you vote, but don’t expect it to actually MEAN anything.”

If they were going to ignore the questions that got the most votes, then why, exactly, did YouTube ask viewers to go to the trouble of voting? And why did they go through the motions of counting those votes, if they were good for bupkis, nada, zilch?

Read More of Steve Elliott’s article in Toke of the Town

Count this as another savage blow for those cherished corporate interests:

In a stunning reversal of the nation’s federal campaign finance laws, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 Thursday that as an exercise of free speech, corporations, labor unions and other groups can directly spend on political campaigns.

The justices also struck down part of the landmark McCain-Feingold campaign finance bill that barred union- and corporate-paid issue ads in the closing days of election campaigns.

“The notion that the First Amendment dictated [today's ruling] is, in my judgment, profoundly misguided,” dissenting Judge John Paul Stevens wrote for the others.

“In the context of election to public office, the distinction between corporate and human speakers is significant. Although they make enormous contributions to our society, corporations are not actually members of it,” he added. (Via FOXnews.com)

I frequently hear arguments from all sides citing the ‘restrictions’ on free speech. What used to be a staple of progressive thought is now slowly being eroded in some seemingly well intentioned yet disastrous attempt at peace keeping.

Yet when some entity with a shit-ton of money to spend on buying a politician, I mean contributing to a political campaign, exploits the concept to get a law passed, everyone is breaking their backs upholding the concept.

Except that this has nothing to do with freedom of speech, considering those angling for this decision spend millions of dollars on advertising and propaganda and cold calls that the average person does not have access to.

I can’t launch a multi million dollar campaign against an elected official I have a problem with, no matter how righteous my complaint may be. However, corporations can afford to do this. So can special interest groups, unions, oil and pharmaceutical companies, basically anyone with enough money burning a hole in their pocket can buy up some prime air time and lob away.

Of course this was all happening before, albeit behind closed doors. The Supreme Court just made it easier for crooked types to get their shady agendas passed by all sorts of sinister politicians looking to install a gold plated kidney shaped pool at one of their many manses.

I’m not one to opine some impending American revolution, because that’s kid’s stuff. Things would have to get much, much worse here for anything like an uprising to happen, and I think it’s just wish fulfillment to assume otherwise.

However, I do wonder, at what point are we going to get pissed? Taxpayers just handed over billions to Wall Street, only to see the money funneled to CEOs in the name of bonuses, while unemployment remains on the rise. The great black hope, Mr. Obama, has emerged as a rather large disappointment, in addition to being overly agreeable to corporate interests, in a stark contrast to his campaign promises. And now this. Corporations are afforded rights and privileges that many Americans find to be on the wane. If this doesn’t make you mad, please send me a little of whatever you are smoking.