Category: random

The tiny town of Fort Dick is north of Crescent City, California, and only a few miles south of the Oregon state line. Also called ‘Russell’s Prairie,’ at one point, Fort Dick dates to before the official establishment of Crescent City, when an unknown settler’s log house served as a “fort” as a defense from the Indian attacks.

Jedediah Smith entered the area of Fort Dick and skirted the eastern edge of Lake Earl between June 14th and the 16th, 1828.  During this time, not only did they explore the area, but they made contact with the Tolowa Indians.

The company pushed up the beach until they struck a “low neck of land running into the sea where there was plenty of clover and grass for our horses” on June 14th and camped. The trappers were forced to take to the sea for several hundred yards at a time, “the swells some times would be as high as the horses (sic) backs.”

The company remained on the south bank of Elk Creek on the 15th, while several hunters went out, where one of them killed a buck elk, “weighing 695 lbs., neat weight.” A number of Tolowa came into camp at this time, “bringing fish, clams, strawberries, and camas roots,” which the party bought.

The next day, the company rode out, heading north-northwest, where they had a lot of difficulty in getting the horses across Elk Creek, and had to “to make a pen on the bank to force them across.” They then camped on the wooded flats south of Lake Earl.

Skirting the eastern margin of Lake Earl, the trappers camped three nights in between the lake and what would later be known as Kings Valley. On June 20th the company struck eastward, crossed Howland Hill, where Smith saw the river destined in later years to bear his name.

After they climbed the ridge separating the watersheds of Smith River and Myrtle Creek. The night of the 21st was spent overlooking the headwaters of Little Mill and Myrtle Creeks.

Instead of pushing on to High Divide, Smith led his men westward out of the mountains, halting for the night of the 22nd near where Morrison Creek flows into Smith River.  By the following day that had unknowingly entered the Oregon territory, where they pitched camp along the Windchuck Creek.

As they rode northward up the Oregon coast, the Mountain Men advanced along the shore where possible, though a rocky bluff often forced them inland. To ford the many water courses, Smith had to wait for ebb tide.

Although less difficult than passing through the mountains, progress was slow. The 12 miles made on June 25th, was called the ‘best march for a long time,’ by Smith.

By the evening of July 13th, the company had reached the Umpqua River. The next morning, as the men were cooking breakfast, they were attacked by 100 or more Indians.

Within a few minutes, all the party except Smith, Arthur Black, and John Turner were dead. Turner ran into Smith as he was returning from a reconnaissance, where he told Smith of the massacre.

Believing they were the only ones who escaped, the two started for the Willamette Valley. However, Black was able to track Smith and Turner, eventually joining them for the trek north.

Of the 18 white men who first entered the Fort Dick area, 15 died.  Their June 14th camp site is along Elk Creek, a quarter of a mile west of U.S. 101 and  Elk Valley Road.

Due to continuous unrest between the settlers and Indians, in 1862 the military was called in, at the request of the Department of Indian Affairs, to set up a presence at Fort Dick. However, the military selected a site at what is known as Camp Lincoln, jus’ east of Fort Dick.

In 1888 a shake and shingle mill, owned by the four Bertsch brothers (Frederick, Jacob, Joseph  and William H.) moved to Fort Dick and town was renamed ‘Newburg.’  A second post office was set up in 1917 — the first in 1896 — and the name of the town reverted back to Fort Dick.

Nearby is the Yontocket Historic District, where a Tolowa village named Hawunkwut was once located. The district is an archeological site added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1973, commemorating the Yontocket Massacre of Tolowa people by white settlers in 1853.

The dead were unceremoniously thrown into the slough, and the village burned, after which it was known as ‘Burnt Ranch.’ The Yontocket Slough was once the main drainage channel of the Smith River, but about 900 years ago, the river abandoned the channel.

A 1856 map of the area shows the slough (then named ‘Ottawa Slough’) tidally connected to the Smith River and the upstream Tryon Creek flowing south into Lake Earl but dune migration has cut off this connection.  The slough has silted about 16 inches since the 1850s.

In 1881, Yontocket Slough was described as “literally alive with salmon” even after years of commercial harvest. In December 1861, an early fishery, Woodbury’s cannery and 400 barrels of salmon were washed out by the Noachian Deluge.

Continual harvesting in excess of 50 tons per year however, led to the decline of the fishery which was closed to commercial take during the 1930s. The 1964 Christmas flood added several inches of silt on top of the sediments, further reducing its depth and the fish habitat.

By 1942, the slough began to isolate from tidal influences. Before the 1942 construction of Pala Road, dividing the slough into a lower (near the Smith River at the northern end) and an upper part, salmon used the three-and-a-half mile stretch of water to migrate between the river and their upstream spawning grounds.

A transplanted Italian, Andrew Tomasini arrived in California March 15th, 1911. His Fort Dick Tavern opened in 1930.

At that time, the Volstead Act was law and the establishment was instead ‘an ice cream and sandwich shop.’  When Prohibition lifted in 1933, Tomasini obtained his liquor license, which eventually became the oldest ever held in Del Norte County at the time.

The original bar, now well over a century old, is still in use at ‘Tomasini’s Enoteca,’ on 3rd Street in Crescent City. The restaurant is owned and operated by Sacha Tomasini, Andrew’s granddaughter.

Former long-time resident Victor Shaw writes in his blog, ‘Tells-n-Lies,’ “Fort Dick also claims ownership of Pacific Shores one of the largest failed ocean front subdivisions in all of California. The miles and miles of abandoned paved roads of Pacific Shores provided a place for thousands of us to learn to drive.”

“The main road leading to Pacific Shores Kellogg Road is maintained as access to Kellogg Beach and literally leads right to the sand and beach,” he adds. “Kellogg Road has served as the Crescent City drag strip for the last forty years.”

“On Lake Earl Drive there has always been a sign that says Fort Dick and list a population and elevation just like every other city or town in California,” Shaw concludes. “The population has been 350 or 500 in my time and has swelled with the arrival of the prison and these days’ nearly 1000 people call Fort Dick home.”

Opening in 1989, Pelican Bay State Prison is a supermax California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation state prison. The 275-acre facility is explicitly designed to keep California’s alleged “worst of the worst” prisoners in long-term solitary confinement.

“The biggest problem that we’re facing right now,” Illinois state senator Barack Obama said in 2008, “has to do with George Bush trying to bring more and more power into the executive branch and not go through Congress at all, and that’s what I intend to reverse when I’m president of the United States of America.”

But now that he’s the one in the White House, he’s plans to use his executive privilege to deny the gun industry of working capital and credit. It’s dressed up as fraud prevention, but many of the companies targeted have good credit histories and operate good and well-managed companies.

The Obama Administration is using the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to impose a “high risk” label on any business making firearms. Add to this the Justice Department’s ‘Operation Chokepoint,’ and the gun industry, which generates about $37 billion in business each year and is responsible for 250,000 full-time jobs, will fail.

Since 2011, regulators have increased scrutiny on banks’ customers. The FDIC in 2011 urged banks to better manage the risks of their merchant customers who employ payment processors, such as PayPal, for credit card transactions.

“We’re committed to ensuring that our efforts to combat fraud do not discourage or inhibit the lawful conduct of these honest merchants,” the Justice Department said in a May 7th blog post.

Banks are being forced to comply with Washington’s demands out of fear, because conducting business with clients deemed “risky” puts them in jeopardy of audits. This overreach also side-steps the 2nd Amendment.

“It’s pretty clear,” says Texas Congressman Steve Stockman, “that unless Congress uses the power of the purse to stop him, Barack Obama will use his ‘phone and his pen’ to ban guns by cutting off money for gun manufacturers and dealers.”

In 2012, Bank of America dropped the 12-year account of McMillan Group International, a gun manufacturer in Phoenix. Gun parts maker American Spirit Arms in Scottsdale, Arizona, received similar treatment by B of A.

The banking giant blamed a misunderstanding with the Arizona gun manufacturers McMillan Group International and American Spirit Arms.

“We would not deny banking services to an organization solely on the basis of its industry,” the banking giant later claimed.

However, the American Banking Association (ABA,) the industry’s advocacy group in Washington D.C. says there is an ongoing push to shutdown gun manufacturers through banking regulations.

“We’re being threatened with a regulatory regime that attempts to foist on us the obligation to monitor all types of transactions,” senior ABA vice president Richard Riese, said in the April 28 issue of American Banker. “All of this is predicated on a notion that the banks are a choke point for all businesses.”

Just last month, Black Rifle Armory in Henderson, Nevada, had its bank accounts frozen as the bank tried to determine whether any of Black Rifle’s online transactions were suspicious.

Congressmen Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and Jim Jordan, chairman of the House’s Economic Growth Subcommittee, sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder accusing the administration of abusing it’s authority.

“The (committee) is concerned that both the goal and mechanisms of Operation Choke Point may constitute serious mismanagement and abuse of (your) department’s … authority…” reads the letter in part.

“There is evidence that the true goal of Operation Choke Point is to target online lenders and the payment processors who serve them,” the letter continues. “The extraordinary breadth of the Department’s dragnet prompts concern that the true goal of Operation Choke Point is not to cut off actual fraudsters’ access to the financial system, but rather to eliminate legal financial services to (businesses to) which (your) Department objects…”

“(Your Department) is needlessly punishing good actors with the bad, and threatening legitimate merchants,” it concludes.

Holder has so far refused to release any of the documentation demanded by Issa and Jordan.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi is placing the blame for the Veterans Affairs scandal on former President George W. Bush, while arguing Democrats have worked hard for veterans in recent years. Pelosi took a shot at Bush while saying that the scandal is a high priority for Obama.

“He sees the ramifications of some seeds that were sown a long time ago, when you have two wars over a long period of time and many, many more, millions more veterans,” she told reporters during a press briefing. “And so, I know that he is upset about it.”

She never mentioned Bush by name, but she alluded to him.

“Maybe when we go into war, we should be thinking about its consequences and its ramifications,” Pelosi said. “You would think that would be a given, but maybe it wasn’t. And so, we go in a war in Afghanistan, leave Afghanistan for Iraq with unfinished business in Afghanistan. Ten years later, we have all of these additional veterans. In the past five years, two million more veterans needing benefits from the VA. That’s a huge, huge increase.”

Of course she overlooked President Obama’s 2008 campaign promise press release title, “Fulfilling A Sacred Trust With Our Veterans,” to reduce the VA’s claims backlog:

“As president, Obama will hire additional claims workers and convene our nation’s leading veterans groups, employees and managers to develop an updated training and management model that will ensure that VA benefit decisions are rated fairly and consistently, and stem from adequate training and accountability for each claims adjudicator.”

She also suggests Obamacare might hold the key to solving the problem.

“We have the Affordable Care Act that is out there that is providing resources for more federally-qualified health clinics around the country,” Pelosi said. “Maybe we should take a look at how we deal with our veterans’ needs in a way that says let’s help them closer to home, whether that’s a federally qualified health clinic or in some other institution that provides health care closer to home. (It’s) especially important for our veterans who live in rural areas.”

In the end, getting the VA Medical System to collapse and then replacing it with Obamacare is really what this whole scandal is about.

The Washington Redskins are telling Senate Democrats to pound sand when it comes to the team’s name. The 49 Democratic Senators claim the name ‘Redskins’ is a racial slur and must be changed.

In a letter to Senator Harry Reid, team President Bruce Allen wrote: “Our use of ‘Redskins’ as the name of our football team for more than 80 years has always been respectful of and shown reverence toward the proud legacy and traditions of Native Americans.”

It also notes that the team’s logo was designed by Native American leaders and cites surveys that Native Americans and Americans as a whole support the name, including a 2014 Associated Press poll that showed 83 percent of Americans favored keeping the name.

After taking to the Senate floor to complain that the name ‘Redskins’ is ‘racist,’ Reid and Senator Maria Cantwell, of Washington, led a letter-writing effort.  In it, the senators mentioned the NBA’s quick action recently to ban Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling for life after he was heard on an audio recording making offensive comments about blacks.

They said Roger Goodell should formally push to rename the ‘Redskins.’

“We urge you and the National Football League to send the same clear message as the NBA did: that racism and bigotry have no place in professional sports,” read the letter.

The senators noted that tribal organizations representing more than 2 million Native Americans across the U.S. have said they want the ‘Redskins’ name dropped.

Despite federal laws protecting their identity, “Every Sunday during football season, the Washington, D.C., football team mocks their culture,” they wrote. “The NFL can no longer ignore this and perpetuate the use of this name as anything but what it is: a racial slur.”

In the past, Redskins owner Daniel Snyder has resisted pressure to change the name, citing tradition. However there has been a renewed attempt in recent weeks to force Snyder to change the name by President Obama, lawmakers in both parties and civil rights groups.

Why bother to have rules?

From the Detroit Free Press:

U.S. Rep. John Conyers’ on-again, off-again roller-coaster ride for the Aug. 5 ballot took a new twist Friday when U.S. District Judge Matthew Leitman put the 85-year-old congressman back on the ballot.

Leitman’s decision, released late Friday, contradicts the Secretary of State’s review of Conyers’ petitions, which found earlier in the day that Conyers had less than half the required signatures of valid registered voters on the petitions he turned in to qualify for the Aug. 5 primary ballot.

But Leitman said the requirement that petition circulators be registered voters — the issue that got Conyers booted off the ballot in the first place — put serious limitations on the free speech rights of the circulators, the people who signed the petitions and Conyers.

“The public interest favors the enjoining of the likely unconstitutional Registration Statute,” for circulators, Leitman said.

As one friend so gently put it, “The rules aren’t made for Progressives — jus’ everyone else.”

“Sports are a microcosm of society,” former World number one professional tennis player and current LGBT rights activist Billie Jean King is reported to have said.

If that is true – both are missing the mark.

Michael Sam, the first openly homosexual player ever to enter the National Football League draft, was taken in the seventh-round by the St. Louis Rams. Because of this certain groups are claiming the late-round pick was because of homophobia.

ESPN claims there, “… were hints of that when Miami Dolphins player Don Jones tweeted “OMG” and “horrible” in reaction to Sam’s on-screen kiss. The tweets were soon deleted.

Jones was then fined an undisclosed amount and must undergo educational training. He has been excused from all team activities until he completes the training.

“We were disappointed to read Don’s tweets,” Coach Joe Philbin said in a statement. “They were inappropriate and unacceptable, and we regret the negative impact these comments had on such an important weekend for the NFL. We met with Don today about respect, discrimination and judgment. These comments are not consistent with the values and standards of our program.”

Jones later apologized for his ‘tweets.’

“I want to apologize to Michael Sam for the inappropriate comments that I made last night on social media. I take full responsibility for them and I regret that these tweets took away from his draft moment,” said Jones in a statement.

ESPN commentator Stephen A. Smith took issue with the Dolphins’ decision to punish Jones for his reaction to Sam’s kiss with his boyfriend, Vito Cammisano.  While he repeatedly indicated his support for same-sex marriage and gay rights, Smith called on Sam’s supporters to practice the tolerance they preach.

“It’s a very, very dangerous thing when people see something and they have a problem with what they’re seeing and they express themselves, and ultimately they’re fined,” he said on ESPN2’s First Take. “You can say they’re wrong, you could be the Miami Dolphins and talk to them, but to fine them and prohibit them from team activities — that’s getting a bit dicey now.”

Speaking of ‘a bit dicey’ — in a move which he said will teach companies a lesson for “trampling on Christian values”, Jack Burkman has also aimed his protest against financial giant Visa, who gave Sam his first advertising contract.  He claims several evangelical Christian leaders from around the U.S, as well as grassroots organizations in 27 of the 50 states, have mobilized against the firm.

As part of the protest, Rams fans will be told to stop buying the team’s merchandise and not to attend games, while members of the public will be asked stop using their Visa cards, and to sell any of the company’s stocks they may own.

“Visa and the Rams will learn that when you trample the Christian community and Christian values, there will be a terrible financial price to pay,” said Burkman, head of the Washington DC lobbying firm JM Burkman & Assoc.

As well as the boycott, Burkman’s firm is attempting to push a draft bill through Washington, which will ban all openly gay players from the NFL and other professional sports in the country.  Called “The American Decency Act of 2014,” it mandates a fine for any professional sports team of $8 to $13 million for each openly gay player hired.

But Burkman’s boycott may have backfired as Michael Sam’s jersey is the number two seller according to NFLShop.com. Sam’s jersey have also outsold those of Jadeveon Clowney, the number one pick overall who was drafted by Houston.

The top selling jersey belongs to Johnny Manziel, the quarterback taken in the first round by the Cleveland Browns. Manziel had an advantage in terms of uniform sales since he was taken earlier in the draft.

The league’s online shop did not release the number of jerseys sold, only the rankings. But it did say this was the biggest draft weekend for sales in the site’s history.

When all is said and done, Ram’s coach Jeff Fisher said Sam is just another young player trying to make the team’s 53-man roster.

“He’s a good football player, and we got a good football player right after him,” Fisher said, “so I’m excited about our draft, excited about our production, excited about the possibility of adding him to our defensive front.”

President Barack Obama congratulated Michael Sam for being the first openly gay football player taken in the National Football League draft, the White House said in a statement.

“From the playing field to the corporate boardroom, LGBT Americans prove everyday that you should be judged by what you do and not who you are,” Obama said.

One of eight children, Sam grew up in Hitchcock, Texas, where he was raised primarily by his mother. At one point, he has said, he lived out of his mother’s car and briefly stayed with another family.

Three of Sam’s siblings have died, including an older brother he saw die from a gunshot wound. Two of his brothers are serving prison sentences.

GOP strategist Karl Rove recently brought up Hillary Clinton’s December 2012 hospital stay, saying he’s convinced there is much more to the story that has not been released.

“Thirty days in the hospital?” he asked. “And when she reappears, she’s wearing glasses that are only for people who have traumatic brain injury? We need to know what’s up with that.”

Of course, Clinton handlers deny Rove’s allegations, writing them off as nothing more than partisan scare tactics.

“Please assure Dr. Rove she’s 100 percent,” a Clinton representative said in response to his comments.

The comments are being used to divert people’s attention from the real problem Clinton is facing.

The U.S. Office of Inspector General (OIG) says $6 billion dollars in State Department funding is ’missing,’ much of it under Hillary Clinton’s watch. Two-million dollars has disappeared which was ear-marked for the embassy in Baghdad, Iraq.

The State Department misplaced the money due to the improper filing of contracts over the past six years. The unaccounted funds poses a “significant financial risk and demonstrates a lack of internal control over the Department’s contract actions,” reads the OIG’s report.

Contracts related to the U.S. war in Iraq, for instance, could not be produced in 33 out of 115 instances, according to the report.

“A recent OIG audit of the closeout process for contracts supporting the U.S. Mission in Iraq revealed that contracting officials were unable to provide 33 of 115 contract files requested in accordance with the audit sampling plan,” the report states.

The value of the 33 “missing files” totaled $2.1 billion. Additionally, 48 of the 82 contract files produced “did not contain all of the documentation required by” internal regulations and are worth another $2.1 billion.

The investigation also found instances where a company owned by the spouse of a contractor employee was not properly documented.

“In the case of work undertaken by OIG’s Office of Investigations, one investigation revealed that a contract file did not contain documentation reflecting that modifications and task orders were awarded to the company owned by the spouse of a contractor employee performing as a Contract Specialist for the contract,” the report states.

The contract in question was worth $52 million.

The report outlines several other instances where contracts worth great values were mishandled.

“In a number of recent OIG inspections, OIG identified contract file management deficiencies. For example, COR files for a $2.5 million contract lacked status reports and a tally of the funds expended and remaining on the contract,” the report states.

But it appears Clinton has bigger problems than a few billion missing dollars.

It’s come to light that her 2008 presidential campaign was illegally funded by District of Columbia businessman Jeffery Thompson.  In March of this year, Thompson pled guilty to funding what prosecutors called a $653,000 ‘shadow campaign for D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray in 2010.  Five of Thompson’s associates have also pleaded guilty in federal court, including two who worked on Gray’s 2010 campaign.

Two other associates pleaded guilty to making straw contributions to political candidates on his behalf, and another acknowledged using illicit funds to help Clinton run for president in 2008.

In April, a hotel executive and Democratic fundraiser pleaded guilty to witness tampering and conspiracy to evade campaign finance laws. Sant Singh Chatwal was accused of working with an unidentified informant to use straw donors to make contributions to three unnamed political candidates, raising at least $100,000 for Clinton’s 2008 presidential.

The Center for Public Integrity highlighted a year ago that Thompson and others who donated to campaign efforts, listing his accounting company as their employer contributed at least $514,350 to federal candidates as well as political action committees since the 2002 campaign cycle came into effect. The top beneficiary of those funds was Hillary Clinton, whose campaigns raked in $50,400 while her campaign committee accepted $40,300 from employees at Thompson’s company in November of 2007.

Other recipients were Barack Obama being given $14,500 during the 2008 cycle and John Kerry who was handed over $20,000 in the 2004 presidential election cycle. John McCain was given $13,800 in the 2008 cycle.

The revelations raise reminders of fundraising improprieties just as her supporters are gearing up for a probable run for the presidency in 2016.

In 2007, when Clinton was considered the front-runner for the Democratic nomination, she took the unprecedented step of returning $850,000 in contributions raised by Norman Hsu, a top campaign bundler who was wanted on criminal charges in a multimillion-dollar Ponzi scheme.  At the time, Clinton campaign officials said they would undertake “vigorous” extra vetting procedures to make sure her sources of campaign funds were legitimate.

In 2009, a federal judge sentenced Hsu to more than 24 years in prison for violating campaign finance laws and defrauding investors.

The Hsu scandal, in turn, brought unwelcome reminders for Clinton of her husband’s fundraising controversies in the 1990s, including Little Rock businessman Charlie Trie. In that episode, about $640,000 was returned or refused after accusations that Trie funneled fraudulent donations.

There was also the case of businessman Johnny Chung, where the Democratic National Committee returned more than $360,000 in donations raised during President Clinton’s 1996 re-election bid. Chung admitted that he accepted some of the money from Chinese military officials.

In her younger days, Clinton served as an attorney during the Watergate investigation, but was apparently fired because of her dishonesty. She got the job working on the investigation at the request of her former law professor, Burke Marshall, who was also Senator Ted Kennedy’s chief counsel in the Chappaquiddick affair.

Clinton’s then-supervisor, Jerry Zeifman fired her immediately following the investigation concluded and refused to give her a good recommendation.

“…(S)he was a liar,” Zeifman said. “She was an unethical, dishonest lawyer. She conspired to violate the Constitution, the rules of the House, the rules of the committee and the rules of confidentiality.”

It seems that not much has changed with Clinton over the years.

A Michigan teacher is on suspension after attempting to break up a violent fight between two male students using a broom. Cell phone video captured the fight between the two teenaged boys, along with the desperate attempt by the teacher to separate them.

In the video, the teacher can be seen striking one of the boys on the back with the broom’s handle as the boys continue to tussle. The teacher first yelled at the teens to stop, and only picked up the broom after they failed to do so and the fight got more heated.

She’s now being labeled a bully.

The mother of the boy who was hit by the teacher with the broom said her son’s back was bruised from the incident. The students were suspended for 10 and three days, respectively.

A 19-year-old senior at the school, said the teacher went too far.

“The lady she should have never grabbed the broom. She could have just grabbed the security guard,” he said. “He could have got hurt from her hitting him with the broom like that and she should have gotten charged for it.”

The teacher has her defenders too.

“I feel like if I was there I would have done the same thing trying to break them up. … I don’t think she should lose her job or have charges brought against her,” said Natalie Tyson, mother of a Pershing freshman. “What else could she do? Those guys were kind of big and they were tearing up the classroom.”

The chancellor of Michigan’s Education Achievement Authority, which runs Pershing High School, plans to recommend to the authority’s board of directors that the teacher be terminated, writes authority spokeswoman Chrystal Wilson.

“Which means the termination is effective immediately,” Wilson said in e-mail. “She will have an opportunity, like any other employee, to meet with the board as they consider this recommendation at its next scheduled board meeting” June 17th.

The teacher, whose name was not released, was notified in a May 1st letter about the recommendation that she be terminated. She has not indicated whether she plans to appeal.

Meanwhile, across the country, the Carson City Council in California gave preliminary approval to an ordinance that would target people from kindergarten to age 25 who makes others feel “terrorized, frightened, intimidated, threatened, harassed or molested.”

The first offense could result in a ticket and fine, and the second offense could come with a larger fine and a third offense could result in a criminal misdemeanor.

“If a child is bullying someone, and a parent has to pay a $100 fine as a result of that, a responsible parent will realize their child needs some help,” said Councilman Mike Gipson, who introduced the ordinance and is spearheading a campaign to make Carson bully free.

Adults who bully would be charged with either an infraction or a misdemeanor, which could come with jail time. The measure also cover forms of cyber bullying throughout Los Angeles County.

It’s unclear how the Sheriff’s Department would enforce the law, since infractions and misdemeanors rarely handed out unless the crime is witnessed by a law enforcement officer, officials said.

“A fitness hearing would be required to try a child as a criminal,” Lt. Arthur Escamillas told the newspaper. “But if you see a 4-year-old riding a bike down the street without a helmet, are you going to give a 4-year-old a ticket? It’s discretionary.”

Whether officers cite and charge children with misdemeanors for bullying will have to be decided by the Sheriff’s Department leadership, Escamillas said.

But the bullying isn’t limited to just the local level.

Iowa’s Senator Charles Grassley dismissed the notion that Common Core was a decision made by state educators, saying the federal government pressured most states to adopt the standards.

“In order to get Common Core adopted quickly in the 50 states, it was tied to Race to the Top money,” Grassley said, “A lot of states thought they would get a lot of money. Not more than a dozen actually did. But, they accepted the principle of Common Core. Also, if states wanted waivers from No Child Left Behind, it also involved Common Core.”

“From that standpoint, it’s the pressure of Washington to bring about Common Core as a national approach,” he continued. “Quite frankly, it shouldn’t have been done that way.”

He said if the standards were really an option for the states, they would be allowed to adopt them without being pressured.

“Let’s allow people to make up their minds about the substance of Common Core,” Grassley said. “If states want to adopt it, that’s their business. But, it shouldn’t be crammed down their throat by the secretary of education in Washington, D.C., using federal money.”

“They adopted this and, to make it look like it was state-oriented and coming from the grassroots up, I think maybe it’s easier to sell that until you start looking into where the roots of it happened, basically here in Washington, D.C,” Grassley added.

“I don’t think the governors and chief states school officers were as involved as they want us to believe,” he added. “Even if they were, the fact that it’s tied to federal dollars and having the federal government having conditions for those federal dollars adopting Common Core, you get back to the establishment of curriculum based upon national testing. In the end, subverting the 10th Amendment and usurping what is definitely not just a constitutional state right, but as a practical matter ought to be a state right.”

“Our country is so geographically vast and our population so heterogeneous that policy made in Washington, D.C., doesn’t fit New Hartford, Iowa, where I’m from, the same as New York City,” Grassley said.

Grassley made the comments during an interview on the Tea Party News Network.

An unspecified accident happened on May 17, 2014, at a silo containing an LGM-30 Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile. The silo, Juliet-07, is west of Peetz, Colorado and controlled by the 320th Missile Squadron, 90th Missile Wing at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Cheyenne, Wyoming.

I was stationed at Warren in the late 70s and early 80s.

The missile became non-operational during a diagnostic test during May 16, 2014. The next morning a three-man crew failed to follow technical guidelines during troubleshooting efforts causing severe damaging the missile.

The amount of damage’s estimated to be around $1.8 million, but no further details are being disclosed. No one was injured and the accident poses no risk to public safety, while an Accident Investigation Board is scheduled to look into the incident.

The U.S. Air Force has 450 Minutemen III missiles controlled by Warren AFB, Malmstrom AFB in Montana, and Minot AFB in North Dakota. They’re housed in hardened silos and connected to an underground launch control where crews are on standby around-the-clock.

Over the past couple of years, American’s have been able to look inside ‘polygamist’ arrangements with shows like Home Box Offices’, “Big Love,” and Discovery’s, “Sister Wives,” and “My Five Wives.” Disney also introduced a female homosexual couple on the series “Good Luck Charlie,” as well as a male homosexual couple on “Modern Family.”

These shows have desensitized society, changing how we respond to news and entertainment.

For instance, three lesbian women in Massachusetts recently “married” each other after exchanging vows in a wedding-style ceremony last year. They claim they are the world’s first “throuple.” Although Massachusetts recognizes same-sex marriages, the state does not recognize polygamous ones. Nevertheless, the three women named Brynn, Doll, and Kitten still entered into the three-way relationship.

Brynn told The Sun newspaper: “In our eyes we are married. We had specialist lawyers draw up paperwork so our assets are equally divided.”

Doll says, “As far as we know, there aren’t any three women married like us,” she adds, “I had always dated girls, who — although they had boyfriends or girlfriends — were also allowed to date me. I never thought that much about it and I had never really come out as poly to my friends and family. To me, it was just how I was.”

Brynn insists that, despite their novel lifestyle arrangement, that they are “very traditional people” and “perfectly normal.” The three women would also like to raise three children using anonymous sperm donors-one for each of them.

Massachusetts officials will allow the “throuple” arrangement to stand without interference.

Meanwhile, a star in NBC’s “Real Housewives of Atlanta” is in hot water for a sermon she recently preached. Porsha Williams encouraged members of her congregation to reach out to individuals needing “saving” — among them drug dealers, sex workers, people who have attempted suicide and gays and lesbians.

“I woke up this morning disturbed and I felt that my heart was heavy and it was imperative for me to address the issue at hand. First let me say that God loves all his children.” Williams said in her sermon. “And although discriminate against other because of their race, their religion, their sexual orientation, their status in life, that we’re all worthy of God’s love.”

Williams explains in her apology: “The sermon that was shown was shown not in its entirety therefore the message was omitted. I apologize that those words hurt the LGBT community, my fans and my supporters. Life is a journey and I’m growing every day. And I continue to encourage everyone to love each other unconditionally.”

Her co-star Cynthia Bailey recently criticized the anti-gay comments made by Williams noting, “To put gays and lesbians in the same category as drug dealers, hookers, and people who attempt suicide is ignorant and insensitive. Especially when she just recently profited from performing at a popular gay club in NYC.”

Now, the Home & Garden Television (HGTV) network, owned by Scripps Networks Interactive, has decided to pull the plug on an upcoming real estate reality show amid a firestorm of controversy from gay rights activists who accused the evangelical Christian hosts of being anti-gay and pro-life. Twins David and Jason Benham had been in production for “Flip it Forward,” a show that was to début in October.

After the network announced the show was on the fall lineup, the group Right Wing Watch (RWW) labeled David Benham, son of well-known evangelical pastor Flip Benham an “anti-gay extremist” and reported on comments he made about homosexuality, abortion and divorce.

“As leader of OSA (Operation Save America,) Benham has  condemned the interfaith Sandy Hook memorial,  protested in front of mosques while shouting ‘Jesus Hates Muslims’ and  blamed the Aurora shooting on the Democratic Party, which he said promotes a ‘culture of death,’” write Brian Tashman, whose with RWW

Tashman continues, “He has also protested LGBT pride events, interrupted church services during a sermon by ‘sodomite Episcopalian bishop’ Gene Robinson and was found “guilty of stalking a Charlotte abortion doctor after passing out hundreds of ‘wanted’ posters with the physician’s name and photo on it.” Benham even blamed the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on abortion rights…”

The Benhams, who are graduates of Liberty University, said it saddened them to hear about HGTV’s decision.

“If our faith costs us a television show then so be it,” they wrote. “With all of the grotesque things that can be seen and heard on television, you would think there would be room for two twin brothers who are faithful to our families, committed to biblical principles, and dedicated professionals.”

HGTV refuses to say why they decided not to go forward with the show.

This isn’t the first time Scripps Networks Interactive has garnered publicity of this kind. In the January 2014 issue of GQ, the magazine asked Duck Dynasty’s Phil Robertson what he believed to be sinful.

“Start with homosexual behavior and just morph out from there,” he answered.

And if you don’t think the TV has power over your life, consider the fact that the networks spend nearly 28 minutes on Global Warming news and only 15 seconds on the Lois Lerner contempt vote. By the way: The House voted to hold the former IRS head in contempt of Congress.