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Compendium Of Pax Posts On "The Thinking Housewife," Laura Wood

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Alan: "The Thinking Housewife" considers Pope Francis a proud, sloganeering, non-Catholic anti-Pope. Ms. Wood insists on the papacy's monarchical trappings and bemoaned Pope Francis' refusal to wear the traditional ermine cape when he greeted his "new flock" from the balcony of St. Peter's. 

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"The Thinking Housewife's Passion For Pope Paul IV Who Initiated Jewish Ghettos"

The Thinking Housewife and Closeted White Supremacy

"The United States Of Homosexual Imperialism," By Laura Wood, "The Thinking Housewife"

The Thinking Housewife: Marriage, Divorce And Absolutism

"Totalitarian Absolutism And The Thinking Housewife"

The Thinking Housewife: "The Non-Gentleman From Wolfeboro"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-thinking-housewife-non-gentleman.html

Laura Wood, "The Thinking Housewife," On "Bergolio's Ideology"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/10/laura-wood-thinking-housewife-on.html

"Why We Must Discriminate," By The Thinking Housewife. Must We?
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/06/why-we-must-discriminate-by-thinking.html

"The Oh So Stressful Suburbs" by "The Thinking Housewife" Laura Wood 
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-oh-so-stressful-suburbs-by-thinking.html

"The Thinking Housewife" Slags Pope Francis As "Sloganeering Papal Impostor"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-thinking-housewife-slags-pope.html

"The Thinking Housewife Applauds The Insight Of A Life-Long Hallucinogen User"





George Carlin: Go Ahead! Cut Education

Pope Francis Faults "The Invisible Hand Of The Market"

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Pope Francis: “A savage capitalism has taught the logic of profit at any cost, of giving in order to get, of exploitation without thinking of people… and we see the results in the crisis we are experiencing.”6

Previous Catholic teaching on capitalism: "[The Church] has likewise refused to accept, in the practice of “capitalism,” individualism and the absolute primacy of the law of the marketplace over human labor. Regulating the economy … solely by the law of the marketplace fails social justice, for “there are many human needs which cannot be satisfied by the market.” Caritas in Veritate by Pope Benedict XVI



















Pope Francis Preaches On Abortion, Gays, Contraception And "The Rich"

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Alan: I marvel at how much energy self-professed Christians devote to abortion and contraception, topics on which the bible says nothing, and - in similar vein - how much energy these same Christians devote to homosexuality, a topic Jesus did not remark.

Censorious Christians seem to think that God -- in his infinite wisdom? -- overlooked something... and they must compensate His deficiency.

On the other hand, the bible makes thousands of references to "the wealthy" and "the poor" with "the latter" always championed and "the former" routinely admonished.

"And again I say to you: It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven."
Matthew 19:24

Where are the biblical literalists when they can be put to good use?

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Tellingly, not one Christian in ten is as devoted to the poor as to abortion and same-sex relationship.

The disproportion is flabbergasting.

Does it not seem plausible -- even convincing -- that Yeshua would prefer we heed what he said rather than what he did not say?

Yeshua Excoriates Fellow Pharisees: "The Woe Passages"


Division Of Iraq Into Shiastan, Sunnistan and Kurdistan Only Way Calm Chaos

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A fighter from the Shi'ite Badr Brigade militia wears a religious flag as he guards a checkpoint recently taken from militants of the Islamic State outside the town of Amerli, in this September 5, 2014 file photo. REUTERS-Ahmed Jadallah-Files
1 OF 6. A fighter from the Shi'ite Badr Brigade militia wears a religious flag as he guards a checkpoint recently taken from militants of the Islamic State outside the town of Amerli, in this September 5, 2014 file photo.




Alan: I have supported tripartite division of Iraq nearly as long as Joe Biden has. http://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2014/01/joe-biden-was-right-about-dividing-iraq/77954/ The following article examines the age-old conflict between Sunnis and Shiites in "Iraq." These competing  factions will not reconcile for centuries. The restoration of a "united" Iraq is a political fiction.
(Reuters) - Among the thousands of militia fighters who flocked to northern Iraq to battle militant group Islamic State over the summer was Qais al-Khazali.
Like the fighters, Khazali wore green camouflage. But he also sported a shoulder-strapped pistol and sunglasses and was flanked by armed bodyguards. When he was not on the battlefield, the 40-year-old Iraqi donned the robes and white turban of a cleric.
Khazali is the head of a militia called Asaib Ahl al-Haq that is backed by Iran. Thanks to his position he is one of the most feared and respected militia leaders in Iraq, and one of Iran's most important representatives in the country.
His militia is one of three small Iraqi Shi'ite armies, all backed byIran, which together have become the most powerful military force in Iraq since the collapse of the national army in June.
Alongside Asaib Ahl al-Haq, there are the Badr Brigades, formed in the 1980s during the Iran-Iraq War, and the younger and more secretive Kataib Hezbollah. The three militias have been instrumental in battling Islamic State (IS), the extremist movement from Islam's rival Sunni sect.
The militias, and the men who run them, are key to Iran's power and influence inside neighboring Iraq.
That influence is rooted in the two countries' shared religious beliefs. Iran's population is overwhelmingly Shi'ite, as are the majority of Iraqis. Tehran has built up its influence in the past decade by giving political backing to the Iraqi government, and weapons and advisers to the militias and the remnants of the Iraqi military, say current and former Iraqi officials.
That was clear this summer, when fighters from all three militias took on IS. During IS's siege of one town, Amerli, Kataib Hezbollah helicoptered in 50 of its best fighters, according to Abu Abdullah, a local Kataib Hezbollah commander. The fighters set up an operations room to coordinate with the Iraqi army, the other militia groups, and advisers from the Quds Force, the branch of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps that handles operations outside Iran and oversees Tehran's Iraqi militias. Over days of fierce fighting in August, and with the help of U.S. bombing raids – a rare example of Iran and the United States fighting a common enemy – those forces successfully expelled IS.
Tehran's high profile contrasts sharply with Washington's. Both Iran and the United States are preparing for a long battle against IS. But Iraqi officials say the two take very different views of Iraq.
"The American approach is to leave Iraq to the Iraqis," said Sami al-Askari, a former member of Iraq's parliament and one-time senior adviser to former prime minister Nuri al-Maliki. "The Iranians don't say leave Iraq to the Iraqis. They say leave Iraq to us."
The danger, Iraqi officials say, is that Iran's deep influence will perpetuate sectarian conflict in Iraq. Many Iraqi Sunnis complain that Maliki, who was Iraq's leader until he was forced out in August, was beholden to Tehran and prevented Sunnis from getting greater political power. Maliki has denied sidelining Sunnis.
Former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, a secular Shi'ite who left office in 2005, told Reuters that "Iran is interfering in Iraq. Foreign forces are not welcome here. And militias controlled by foreign powers are not welcome also."
Iraq's Shi'ite militias have certainly fueled sectarian violence. In the past few months they have taken revenge on Sunnis thought to be sympathetic to IS, burned homes and threatened to stop Sunnis returning to their towns. Shi'ite fighters have kidnapped or killed civilians, say Sunni family members.
"The militias are a problem," said Askari, the former Maliki adviser. "What do you say after Islamic State ends? Thank you very much and go home?"
ECHOES OF LEBANON
The main body funding, arming, and training the Shi'ite militias is Iran's Quds Force. The model it uses is Hezbollah in Lebanon. Created by Tehran in the early 1980s, and operating as both a military outfit and political party, Hezbollah has grown to become the most powerful force in Lebanon.
Like Hezbollah, Iran's three big Iraqi militias have political wings and charismatic leaders.
Coordinating the three is Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani, who, at least until the IS victories in Iraq this summer, had gained a reputation as one of the region's most effective military leaders.
After the collapse of the Iraqi military in June, Soleimani visited Iraq several times to help organize a counter-offensive. He brought weapons, electronic interception devices and drones, according to a senior Iraqi politician.
"Soleimani is an operational leader. He's not a man working in an office. He goes to the front to inspect the troops and see the fighting," said one current senior Iraqi official. "His chain of command is only the Supreme Leader. He needs money, gets money. Needs munitions, gets munitions. Needs materiel, gets materiel."
The Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is the most senior religious authority in Iran and wields huge constitutional power.
Soleimani, who Reuters was unable to reach, knows the heads of the three big Iraqi militias personally, Iraqi officials say. A picture posted on a Facebook page in August shows him in an olive shirt and khaki pants next to Khazali, who is in clerical robes. A picture on Facebook and Twitter late last month showed Soleimani and the leader of the Badr Brigades grinning and wrapped in a tight hug after what was reportedly a victory against IS.
In an interview with Iranian state television in September, a senior Revolutionary Guard commander, General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, said that Soleimani, with a force of only 70 men, had prevented IS from overrunning Arbil. "If Iran hadn't helped, Daesh would have taken over Kurdistan," he said, using a common Arabic name for IS.
The way Iran and Soleimani work is "completely the opposite of Saudi intelligence that just gives money but are not on the ground," said the current senior Iraqi official. "Soleimani sees a target and he has the powers to go after it."
THE BADR BRIGADES
Iran's oldest proxy in Iraq is the Badr Brigades, which is headed by Hadi al-Amri, a veteran of both combat and politics. The group renamed itself the Badr Organisation once it entered politics.
Amri fought alongside Iran's Revolutionary Guard against Saddam's army during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. After the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, he won a seat in parliament and served as Minister of Transportation during Maliki's second term.
Amri, who could not be reached for comment, is feared and loathed by many Sunnis for his alleged role in running death squads in recent years. In July, Human Rights Watch accused Badr forces of killing Sunni prisoners.
In recent battles with IS, Amri replaced his suit with a military uniform and transformed into a battlefield commander overnight, giving television interviews from the frontlines.
"Look at Amri's uniform and then compare it to any Iraqi uniform ... It's completely different," said a senior former security official. "Look for the uniform of the IRGC"– Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps - "it's exactly one of them."
KATAIB HEZBOLLAH
The head of Iran's second proxy, Kataib Hezbollah, goes by the nom de guerre Abu Mahdi al-Mohandes. Many Iraqi officials simply call him al-Mohandes, or "the Engineer."
Mohandes, who could not be reached for comment for this story, is Iran's most powerful military representative in Iraq, according to senior Iraqi officials. At 60, he has distinctive white hair and a white beard. He studied engineering in Basra and joined Dawa, a political party banned by Saddam, according to a Facebook page set up in his name.
He began working with Iran's Revolutionary Guard in Kuwait in 1983, organizing attacks against embassies of countries that supported Saddam in the war against Iran. He has repeatedly denied involvement in such attacks.
Following the first Gulf War, Mohandes lived in exile in Iran. After the United States invaded Iraq, he returned home and was elected to parliament. Even then, it was clear where his allegiances lay. On a 2006 trip to Tehran, when protocol dictated that the Iranian and Iraqi delegations sit apart, "he sat with the Iranians," said Askari, the former Maliki adviser. "This was not normal."
Kataib Hezbollah is the most secretive of Iraq's militias, and the only one the U.S. Treasury labels a terrorist organization. In 2009 the Treasury sanctioned Mohandes for his alleged role in committing and facilitating attacks against U.S. and Iraqi forces. Mohandes has denied those charges, though his group's website features several video clips showing improvised explosive devices blowing up American Humvees.
He has a house in Baghdad's Green Zone close to Maliki, Iraqi officials say. In recent years, he occasionally delivered messages between Maliki and Iranian officials. He frequently visits Iran, where his family lives, according to a former senior Iraqi official.
When Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Iraq's most powerful cleric, called on Shi'ites to rise up and fight IS earlier this year, Mohandes took charge of the tens of thousands of new volunteers. "He's involved in everything: administration, funding, logistics and planning," said a senior Iraqi security official.
ASAIB AHL AL-HAQ
The third big Iraqi militia, Asaib Ahl al-Haq, started as a splinter group of the Mahdi Army, a paramilitary force formed by anti-American Shi'ite leader Moqtada al-Sadr during the U.S. occupation.
Under leader Khazali, Asaib gained notoriety for kidnapping and killing Sunni civilians and carrying out attacks against U.S. forces.
In 2007 he was arrested by U.S. military forces for his alleged role in an attack on an Iraqi government compound in Karbala, which left five American soldiers dead. Khazali managed to use a kidnapped British consultant as a bargaining chip to win his own release. (British and U.S. military denied striking such a deal.)
Askari, the former Maliki adviser, played a key role in negotiations. When a senior British commander was skeptical that Khazali could wield power from Camp Cropper, the high security facility where he was imprisoned, Khazali asked for a phone. "They brought him a phone and he made a call," said Askari. "Within two weeks the attacks stopped."
Asaib has grown stronger in recent years. Sunnis say Maliki allowed Shi'ite militias, particularly Asaib, to kidnap and kill ordinary Sunnis to solidify his grip on power. Some Sunnis began to see Asaib as Maliki's personal militia.
Khazali was not available to be interviewed. At Asaib's offices in an upscale Baghdad neighborhood, the group's spokesman, Naim al Aboudi, denied that Asaib is closely linked with Maliki or that the group targeted Sunni civilians. "We are ... working toward building a more stable country," he said.
THE SYRIA CONNECTION
Fighters from all three militias have sharpened their combat skills in Syria in recent years. In late 2011, as the Syrian conflict grew, Iran stepped in to defend Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Assad is a follower of the Alawite faith, an offshoot of Shi'ism.
Iraqi Shi'ite fighters also flocked to Syria. Billboards and posters in Baghdad praise Iraqi "martyrs" in the conflict.
Syria has also helped militia fighters hone their media skills. Internet videos set to a booming soundtrack of Shi'ite militant religious songs show fighters shooting rocket-propelled grenades, sniping from rooftops and firing heavy machine guns from pickup trucks.
Some Iraqi Shi'ite militia commanders concede that defending Assad has been unsavory. But they argue that fighting in Syria was necessary for broader regional reasons, namely the struggle that Iran and its allies are waging against Israel.
"Bashar is a dictator," said Abu Hamza, a burly commander from Kataib Hezbollah who has fought in Syria. "But his presence there preserves the line of resistance."
BREAKING THE SIEGE
One of the biggest rallying points in recent months was Amerli, an Iraqi town of some 15,000 Shi'ites, which was besieged by IS for two months. Most residents there are Turkmen, not Arabs, but that did not change the symbolism of the conflict for Shi'ites. Graffiti sprayed outside the town in August read "Amerli is the Karbala of the age"– a reference to a seventh century battle that is a defining moment for Shi'ites.
Iran helped train Kataib fighters in the use of AK-47 assault rifles, heavy machine guns, mortars, rockets and IEDs, according to Abu Abdullah, the Kataib commander. Kataib fighters also used a camera-equipped drone to gather information on IS positions. A Reuters reporter met two men who spoke Farsi, the language of Iran, accompanying Asaib fighters during the battle. A third man said he had come from Iran to train police.
When the battle began in late August, Shi'ite militias teamed up with Kurdish fighters to attack IS positions, as American aircraft bombed around the town.
The importance of the battle for Iran was underscored when photographs and videos surfaced on the Internet that allegedly showed Revolutionary Guard commander Soleimani in the town.
In early September, a group of Shi'ite fighters and Kurdish peshmerga fought to protect a small village near Amerli called Yangije. Some 50 IS fighters had attacked the village in the early morning. After nearly eight hours of fighting, the Shi'ites and Kurds pushed the fighters out.
The next morning, Shi'ite and peshmerga fighters went house-to-house to check IS had cleared out. They came across an IS fighter hiding beneath a blanket. The man shot and killed one peshmerga and detonated a suicide belt, injuring several others.
Around midday, the burned and mangled body of the IS fighter was lying in the sun when a group of Shi'ite fighters approached. A Reuters team saw one Shi'ite fighter behead the corpse with a large knife while a handful of fighters filmed with their phones. The dead fighter's head was mounted on a knife, and one Shi'ite fighter shouted, "This is revenge for our martyrs!"
The Shi'ite fighters put the head in a sack and took it away with them.
(Additional reporting by Ned Parker, Isabel Coles and Ahmed Rasheed; Edited by Simon Robinson)

Now That Obama Is "On His Own," He Should Join Forces With Elizabeth Warren

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Elizabeth Warren Quotes

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Alan: "No drama" Obama hasn't got the grit to "get through" to most Americans. 

Elizabeth Warren is the personification of that grit. 

Using Ralph Nader's "campaign strategy" (outlined below) Obama and Warren would wisely join forces for twice-monthly "road shows" starting asap and running through November, '16.

A sustained campaign that spotlights the crucial linkage between "infrastructure restoration" and "job creation" is just what the doctor ordered. 

Such a campaign would "get in the face" of the GOP, demanding that "The Party of Angry White Guys" propose its own program for job growth while pointing out that "the invisible hand of the marketplace" -- coupled with "lower taxes" -- is a failed strategy. 



Obama/Warren should also steal Republican thunder by pointing out that the Keystone pipeline will only create 5000 permanent, a fact that reduces "The Poster Child" to an exercise in ideological distractionism.

Nader's strategy:

"President Obama could have traveled the country saying:
“Give me a Democratic Congress, and I’ll sign legislation that will create millions of jobs repairing and upgrading the public works of our neglected land. There will be non-exportable, good paying jobs restoring our water sewage systems, our highways and bridges, our public transit systems and our crumbling schools, ports and public buildings. We’ll pay for these critical public investments by shrinking crony capitalism (taxpayer subsidies, handouts, giveaways and bailouts) and by making hugely profitable companies like General Electric, Verizon and Apple pay their fair share of taxes rather than shifting the tax burden onto the backs of middle-class taxpayers. And we’ll impose a tiny sales tax, far less than you pay on your necessities of life, on Wall Street stock transactions to raise about $300 billion a year. Every American can benefit from these community and policy improvements, strictly monitored as they develop with honesty and efficiency. Every local chamber of commerce, every union, every worker, supplier, and every civic organization will support our programs which I am going to call ‘Come Home America.’ 
If you don’t think these grand initiatives would have brought voters out and won elections for the Democrats, I have another idea. Even with the Republicans controlling Congress, a group of progressive Democrats could unite to create a major bottom-up and top-down initiative demanding for public works programs that would itemize projects in every community to reverse the costly deterioration of our country’s public infrastructure. Such action would even gain the support of money from those on the other side of the aisle and create a Left-Right coalition in the new Congress, even if it required those on the Right to defy their Wall Street-indentured leaders, Senator Mitch McConnell and House Speaker John Boehner."

"Ralph Nader Reviews The Republican Romp And Tells How The Tide Could Have Turned"

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/11/ralph-nader-reviews-republican-romp.html













Pope Francis: “A savage capitalism has taught the logic of profit at any cost, of giving in order to get, of exploitation without thinking of people… and we see the results in the crisis we are experiencing.”6

Previous Catholic teaching on capitalism: "[The Church] has likewise refused to accept, in the practice of “capitalism,” individualism and the absolute primacy of the law of the marketplace over human labor. Regulating the economy … solely by the law of the marketplace fails social justice, for “there are many human needs which cannot be satisfied by the market.” Caritas in Veritate by Pope Benedict XVI













Democrats need a way to reach the white working class. In the last election, Republicans showed that by muting their conservatism on social issues, they can sway white voters who are nervous about taxes and government debt. Republicans won over working-class whites, even though this group feels that the economy favors the rich, polls show. The New York Times.


Elizabeth Warren Quotes

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Even Republicans Support Net Neutrality... And Overwhelmingly!

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FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler might not go alongwith President Obama's push for net neutrality, but the American people are speaking loudly on the issue: They don't want "fast-lanes." They want net neutrality.

In a new survey, the University of Delaware's Center for Political Communication found that support for neutrality is strong and widespread -- regardless of gender, age, race and level of education. About 81 percent of Americans oppose allowing Internet providers like Comcast and Verizon to charge Web sites and services more if they want to reach customers more quickly, that is, allowing what are often called "Internet fast lanes."

Most surprising of all, given comments by Republican lawmakers over the past couple of days, is that support for net neutrality is bipartisan. Indeed, Republicans were slightly more likely to support net neutrality than Democrats. Eighty-one percent of Democrats and 85 percent of Republicans in the survey said they opposed fast lanes. The poll's margin of error was 3.2 percentage points.

Maybe Republican lawmakers hope to sway their constituents, but as Joe DiStefano writes, this poll indicates that people will only become more likely to support net neutrality as they learn more about it. Among those who said they'd "heard a lot" about the issue (only about one in ten of those surveyed), 56 percent strongly opposed fast lanes. The corresponding figure was 44 percent among those who said they'd "heard nothing."

All the same, these findings raise the question of why Republicans in Congress have been so quick and so forceful in their responses to President Obama's call for strict net neutrality rules. There is a convincing conservative case for net neutrality regulations. While that might be an attractive position for the GOP, some suggest that Republicans are just dependent on campaign donations from the cable industry.



Police Shootings Reach Two Decade Peak While Violent Crime Contines To Plummet

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Meanwhile, nationally police shootings are at their most frequent in the past two decades. Law-enforcement officers shot and killed 461 people suspected of a felony last year, according to the FBI's annual report. Kevin Johnson in USA Today.
5. In case you missed it

European Spacecraft "Philae" Anchors Itself To Surface Of Comet!

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Philae Spacecraft
Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philae_(spacecraft)

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Bravo Europe!

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Jesuit Head Of Vatican Observatory Wins "Carl Sagan Award"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/11/jesuit-head-of-vatican-observatory-wins.html


Photo of comet 67P/CG as the Philae robot descends upon landing 

Philae touches down on the surface of a comet

By Dave Gilbert and Ed Payne, CNN
updated 11:57 AM EST, Wed November 12, 2014
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
  • NEW: Scientists say Philae has landed on Comet 67P
  • NEW: The probe tweets: "Touchdown! My new address: 67P!"
  • Philae is equipped with nine experiments including a drill to sample the surface and test in an on-board oven
  • The comet's gravity is so weak that engineers have come up with ingenious solutions to keep Philae in place
VIDEO: http://www.cnn.com/2014/11/12/world/comet-landing-countdown/

London (CNN) -- Touchdown! The Philae probe has landed on the surface of a comet, scientists from the European Space Agency (ESA) announced Wednesday.
It is the first time a soft landing has been achieved on a comet.
Shortly after news came, the probe tweeted: "Touchdown! My new address: 67P!"
"This is a big step for human civilization," ESA director Jean-Jacques Dordain told colleagues who had waited anxiously for confirmation of the landing. "The biggest problem with success is it looks easy."
And William Shatner,who played Captain Kirk in the science fiction series "Star Trek" tweeted: "touchdown confirmed for away team @Philae2014, captain!"
Led by ESA with a consortium of partners including NASA, scientists on the Rosetta mission hope to learn more about the composition of comets and how they interact with the solar wind -- high energy particles blasted into space by the Sun.

Comet landing an 'engineering miracle'

Lander snaps goodbye picture of Rosetta
The Philae lander separated from the mother ship Rosetta around 3:30 a.m. ET to begin its 7-hour descent.
Philae, which has spent 10 years fixed to the side of Rosetta during the journey across the solar system, could not be steered. Once it was released, it was on its own.
How Rosetta lands on the comet
Philae lander on its way to comet

Rosetta ready for comet landing
Before the spacecraft separation, ESA lander system engineer Laurence O'Rourke told CNN that the orbiter Rosetta had to be in the right position to allow the craft to "free fall" on the correct trajectory to the chosen landing site.
Scientists are hoping the probe will help us learn a lot more about the composition of comets and how they react when they get close to the Sun.
Weighing in at 220 pounds, it might be the size of a domestic washing machine but Philae is considerably smarter.
It is equipped with an array of experiments to photograph and test the surface of Comet 67P as well as finding out what happens when the roasting effect of the Sun drives off gas and dust.
The comet's gravity is so weak that engineers have come up with ingenious solutions to keep Philae in place. At touchdown two harpoons fire out from the legs and screws on each of the three feet help attach it to the comet.

What is a comet?

Could Rosetta unlock Earth's secrets?

How Rosetta will land on a comet
Built by a European consortium, led by the German Aerospace Research Institute (DLR), the landing probe has nine experiments.
If all continues to go well the first picture should be of the landing site taken by Philae during the final moments of descent, followed by a panoramic image from seven cameras on the top edge of the lander, O'Rourke told CNN.

Journey to the surface of a comet
According to details on ESA's Rosetta website, sensors on the lander will measure the density and thermal properties of the surface, gas analyzers will help to detect and identify any complex organic chemicals that might be present, while other tests will measure the magnetic field and interaction between the comet and solar wind -- high-energy particles given off by the Sun.
Philae also carries a drill that can drive 20cms (8 inches) into the comet and deliver material to its on-board ovens for testing.
However, mission scientists are already pleased with progress.
ESA project scientists Matt Taylor said: "The orbiter will remain alongside the comet for over a year, watching it grow in activity as it approaches the Sun, getting to within 180 million kilometers (112 million miles) in summer next year, when the comet will be expelling hundreds of kilograms of material every second.
"It's got an awesome profile -- the adventure of the decade-long journey necessary to capture its prey, flying past the Earth, Mars and two asteroids on the way," he said.
Daniel Brown, an astronomy expert at Nottingham Trent University in the UK, said: "Although we have landed on planets, moons and asteroids, it has never been attempted for a nucleus of a comet -- and with good reason. These objects have a very low gravity, are loosely composed of ice, dust and rocks, and are very irregular in shape. They are temperamental in their behavior and notoriously difficult to predict.
"Comets such as 67P have already been exposed to the intense heat of the Sun in their past orbits, resulting in their surface being altered, but going beneath the surface will give us an insight into unchanged material, allowing us to peak into the chemical composition of our early solar system.
"Apart from the amazing scientific results, the sheer challenge and ambition of such a mission is outstanding and illustrates how our space exploration of the solar system has become more advanced and successful. It gives us much to hope for in future missions."
And science fiction writer Alastair Reynolds added: "This is science fiction made real in terms of the achievement of the mission itself, but Rosetta is also taking us a step closer to answering science fiction's grandest question of all -- are we alone?"

Some American Veterans Get Kicked Out Of The Country They Served

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Servicemen from the US military take an oath during a naturalization ceremony at the Al-Faw Palace in Baghdad's Camp Victory on July 4, 2011.
Hector Barajas has a strange relationship with the United States.
He's a proud former US Army paratrooper who served for six years in the famed 82nd Airborne Division. But he now lives in Tijuana, Mexico, sent back to the country of his birth by the country where he lived and for whom he served. He's one of thousands of former American servicemen and women who have been deported after being in the US military.
“If I die today, I can be buried as an American, and my family would be given a flag saying, ‘Thank you for your son’s service,’” he says. “We should be able to live as Americans if we’re able to be buried as Americans.”
None of those soldiers were citizens, but all had some form of legal status in the country and chose to enlist. Do so, they were told, and you'll get full citizenship. Some risked their lives fighting on the front lines in places like Vietnam, Iraq and Kosovo. 
But their new lives in the States weren't easy once they got out of the military. And those who committed crimes — anything ranging from serious felonies all the way down to minor offenses like cashing a bad check — were kicked out of the country.
Many, like Barajas, are from Mexico. He lived there only briefly as a child, but after he was accused of attempted murder, he was sent back across the border in 2004. Barajas ended up pleading guitly to the charge of discharging a firearm, but he says he has served his time and deserves to return to his real home — the United States.
Meanwhile, his 9-year-old daughter remains in California. 
“A lot of these men, when they went to these wars and volunteered, they were willing to leave their children without fathers and mothers, or die in combat like many men did — and their children are left fatherless," he says. "I think separating them from their families is like turning their back on them and it’s unjust.”
But the law isn't lenient in this case. According to the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigration Responsibility Act of 1996, any person who isn't a full citizen who commits a crime — even a minor offense — loses his right to stay in the US. The promises of citizenship made to these veterans, like the one Barajas got when he enlisted in 1995, don't count.
“There is a lot of promising of citizenship via recruiters and different parts of the military,” Barajas says. “A lot of the veterans — especially during the Vietnam era — they thought that when they [enlisted], they were being made US citizens, but that wasn’t the case.” 
The expelled veterans can appeal their deportations, but Barajas says that process is lengthy and difficult. And during the appeal, the accused has to stay in a detention center.
"A lot of the men, they get tired of being separated from their families and just pretty much sitting in there without any bail or treatment ... so they just give up," he explains.
Barajas has started Banished Veterans, an organization that helps deported veterans try to adjust to post-service life in their new countries. The organization also created the "Deported Veterans Support House"— casually called "The Bunker"— where deported veterans can live for 30 days while they figure out other accomodations. 
Banished Veterans estimates that anywhere from 3,000 to 30,000 veterans have been deported from the US, but exact numbers are difficult to obtain — the government doesn't count veteran deportees separately. And while most of these veterans are Mexican, the organization says they are working with veterans deported to 19 other countries around the world.
And as awareness of this issue grows, fellow veterans have begun to honor their comrades who can't live in the country they fought for. Earlier this week, before Veterans Day, a group of veterans in San Diego conducted a ceremony for their deported peers.
Alfred Gonzalez, a veteran who is now secretary of the San Diego All Airborne Chapter, says this was the first time American veterans recognized their fellow vets who were expelled from the US — and, he says, those soldiers deserve just as much honor and recognition as the rest of those who fought.

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Diane Rehm Interviews "For Love Of Country" Authors. Brilliant Probe Of U.S. Veterans



Americans Are Outlandishly Wrong In Their False Views Of Politics And Society

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Unlike the manipulated quotation above, the actual quotation on page 261 of Obama's autobiography, “Audacity of Hope,” is as follows: “Of course, not all my conversations in immigrant communities follow this easy pattern. In the wake of 9/11, my meetings with Arab and Pakistani Americans, for example, have a more urgent quality, for the stories of detentions and FBI questioning and hard stares from neighbors have shaken their sense of security and belonging. They have been reminded that the history of immigration in this country has a dark underbelly; they need specific reassurances that their citizenship really means something, that America has learned the right lessons from the Japanese internments during World War II, and that I will stand with them should the political winds shift in an ugly direction.”

Alan: American "conservatives" are both reprehensible and diabolical in the way they play loose with Truth. They immediately indulge bald-faced falsehood whenever mendacity might further their short-term goals. This antinomianism is rooted in the widespread religious and theocratic belief that God's Truth is so transcendentally important that we "mere mortals" not only can - but must - lie in "his" defense, as if any God worthy of the name needs human lies to protect "himself."

"Perils Of Perception" Study Reveals How Terribly Wrong Public Opinion Is


Study: Americans Don’t Know The Facts On U.S. Issues

Americans don’t have their facts straight. At least that’s the conclusion of a new study from the research group Ipsos-MORI.
When it comes to the nation’s biggest issues, many Americans do not know the basics. They massively overestimate unemployment rates and the number of immigrants. They assume that the nation’s murder rate is rising, when in fact it’s falling.
It may not be the duty of Americans to know the numbers, but the result of what some call “political ignorance” could be huge when it comes to electing leaders.
Pollster Julia Clark of the non-partisan research group Ipsos-MORI spoke with Here & Now’s Robin Young about the study and what it means.
  • Want to test your knowledge? Take the quiz from Ipsos-MORI here.

Guest

Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

Jesuit Head Of Vatican Observatory Wins "Carl Sagan Prize"

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Michigan-raised Jesuit Brother Guy Consolmagno will become the first clergyman awarded the prestigious Carl Sagan Medal. (Vatican Observatory)
Michigan-raised Jesuit Brother Guy Consolmagno will become the first clergyman awarded the prestigious Carl Sagan Medal. 
(Vatican Observatory)

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Vatican Observatory
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vatican_Observatory

***

Vatican Astronomer Wins Top Science Prize

Audio File: http://hereandnow.wbur.org/2014/11/11/vatican-astronomer-sagan-medal

On Thursday, Michigan-raised Jesuit Brother Guy Consolmagno will become the first clergyman awarded the prestigious Carl Sagan Medal “for outstanding communication by an active planetary scientist to the general public.”

Consolmagno co-authored the new book “Would You Baptize an Extraterrestrial?,” which came out last month. His short answer to his book’s title question is, “if she asked.”
He speaks to Here & Now’s Sacha Pfeiffer about the Vatican Observatory, why the Vatican has astronomers, and the effect of the Vatican’s 1633 persecution of the astronomer Galileo Galilei.

Interview Highlights: Guy Consolmagno

On the history of Vatican astronomy
“In 1891, Pope Leo XIII decided that he wanted a national observatory for the Vatican. And it served two functions: one was political to show that the Vatican was an independent country with its own observatory, but the other was to show the world that the church supports science. It’s interesting that this came up in the end of the 19th century because that’s when the myth began that the church was against science. Before then most people realized that either you’re a nobleman or you’re a clergyman because who else has the education and free time for science.”
On the church supporting science
“I find today that most scientists understand that the church supports them and indeed when I became a Jesuit, I sort of ‘came out of the closet’ as a churchgoer, I discovered so many of my friends and fellow scientists were also churchgoers. To me, the big mission we have is to convince the people in the pews that science is good. If I’m a missionary of anything I’m a missionary of science to the religious.”
On his research
“The asteroids and meteorites are the junk pile of the solar system. By studying them we can see what’s inside the planets and you even get a feel for what conditions were going on when the planets were being formed. The one thing that we’ve contributed at our work at the Vatican observatory is that we’ve done a survey of measuring physical properties so that if you’re interested in doing a model of how planets form and you want to know ‘well what’s the typical density of this kind of meteorite or that kind of meteorite,’ you look it up in our tables, you want to know their magnetic properties, you look it up in our tables. It’s taken 20 years to make the tables we’ve come up with so far—this is the kind of work that no one else could do because no one could get funded for 20 years to do this, but since we don’t have to worry about funding, we just saw this is the kind of work we can do that we can contribute to the field.”
Video: A public lecture by Br. Consolmagno

Guest



Nation of 300,000,000 Understands President Can Only Come From 2 Families

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WASHINGTON, D.C. (The Borowitz Report)—The United States of America, a nation with a population of approximately three hundred million people, totally accepts that the next President of the United States can only be selected from two families.
In interviews conducted across the country, Americans acknowledged that, while the United States boasts many exceptional people in the fields of technology, business, public policy, and government, none will be offered to voters as candidates because they do not come from one of the two families deemed eligible.

“No doubt about it, there are a lot of great people out there who could be President,” said Stoddard Vinton, of Toledo. “But I guess our system of choosing people from just two families has worked out pretty well.”
Leslie McEdwards, of San Jose agreed, that, while “it would be cool” to choose a President from more than two families, “on the plus side, we voters don’t have to learn a bunch of new names.”
“This country is facing unprecedented problems, and it’s going to take some fresh ideas to solve them,” said Doug Chessing, of Grand Rapids. “I’ve got my fingers crossed that someone from one of those two families can do it.”
The fact that the current President, Barack Obama, belonged to neither of the families “always felt kind of weird to me,” said Halynn Cross, of Knoxville. “He tried really hard and all, but, after eight years, it’ll be nice to get back to someone from the two families.”
In one of the strongest endorsements of America’s two-family system, Rick Keelins of Albany said that he is “sick and tired” of people complaining about it. “At least we have two families to choose from,” he said. “A lot of countries, like North Korea, just have one.”


The Borowitz Report: Exit Polls Indicate Nation Suffering from Severe Memory Loss

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WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)Exit polls conducted across the country on Election Day indicate a nation suffering from severe memory loss, those who conducted the polls confirmed Tuesday night.
According to the polls, Americans who cast their votes today had a difficult time remembering events that occurred as recently as six years ago, while many seemed to be solid only on things that have happened in the past ten days.

While experts were unable to explain the epidemic of memory loss that appears to have gripped the nation, interviews with Americans after they cast their votes suggest that their near total obliviousness to anything that happened as recently as October may have influenced their decisions.
“I really think it’s time for a change,” said Carol Foyler, a memory-loss sufferer who cast her vote this morning in Iowa City. “I just feel in my gut that if these people were in charge they’d do a really amazing job with the economy.”
Harland Dorrinson, who voted in Akron, Ohio, and who has no memory of anything that happened before 2013, said his main concern was a terrorist attack on American soil.
“I really think we need to put a party in charge that won’t ever let something like that happen,” he said.
In Texas, exit polls showed strong support for George P. Bush, who was running for the Republican nomination for Texas land commissioner. “George Bush sounds like the name of someone who would be really good at running things,” said one voter.
The national exit polls revealed an electorate deeply fearful of a number of threats, including ISIS, Ebola, and, oh, what was that other thing?


Who Is Still Uninsured Under Obamacare - And Why

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With open enrollment for Obamacare coming up Saturday, it's a good time to take stock of the tens of millions of people who still don't have insurance coverage.
An additional 10.3 million people gained health insurance in the first year of expanded coverage under the Affordable Care Act, according to ananalysis published in the New England Journal of Medicine this summer. We still won't have the most official count from the U.S. Census Bureau until next fall, but that's the number the Obama administration is using. And that, according to the Department of Health and Human Services, leaves about 32 million people still lacking coverage heading into this ACA open enrollment period.
Here's what we know about who's still uninsured and what's kept them from getting covered.
 
 
 
The big picture
One of the best looks at the uninsured right now comes from the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, which has been tracking the uninsured rate since 2008. The most recent survey from October found that the overall uninsured rate dropped from 18 percent before last year's open enrollment period to 13.4 percent after the sign-up period ended in April. And the rate has remained steady since then.
What about the young invincibles?
There was a lot of attention paid to the young adults in the last enrollment period. They lack insurance more than any other age group, and they're an attractive demographic for insurers to cover because they're relatively healthy. The Gallup survey shows they made coverage gains over the past year, but people between 18 and 34 years old still trail other age groups.
Coverage gains across racial groups
An earlier Gallup poll from June also showed declines in the uninsured rate among whites, blacks and Hispanics. There has been a particularly strong emphasis on enrolling Hispanics, who have the highest rates of uninsurance of any demographic. They're a comparatively younger population, but they also pose enrollment challenges. Gallup showed that their uninsured rate dropped 5.5 percentage points by the end of April.
Geography matters
As expected, the uninsured rate has dropped faster for adults in about half the states that expanded their Medicaid programs, according to the Urban Institute's Health Reform Monitoring Survey. This effect is particularly noticeable in the southern states, which have resisted the Medicaid expansion and is now home to a greater share of uninsured adults. About 4 million people aren't eligible for either Medicaid coverage or the ACA insurance marketplaces in the 23 states that haven't expanded Medicaid.
Slowing progress for kids
The uninsured rate has dropped for pretty much every demographic group this past year — except children, according to another Urban Institute analysis. And it seems that the children's uninsured rate has been leveling off over the past couple of years, according to the Center for Children and Families at Georgetown University. How this rate looks in the future also depends on whether Congress next year reauthorizes the Children's Health Insurance Program, which provides low-cost health coverage to children in families that aren't poor enough to qualify for Medicaid. 
Enrollment period? What enrollment period?
As the most recent Kaiser Family Foundation tracking poll shows, it's going to take some extra effort to reach the remaining uninsured. About nine in 10 uninsured adults potentially eligible for marketplace coverage didn't know the enrollment opened again in November. About two-thirds said they knew "only a little" or "nothing at all" about the marketplaces, and just more than half (53 percent) said they didn't know the ACA offers financial assistance to help people purchase insurance.
Why aren't they signing up?
About two-thirds of the uninsured didn't bother looking for coverage in the past enrollment period, according to a report this summer from Enroll America, the national industry-backed group. The most frequent reason people offer for being uninsured — and this is true of basically every survey on the topic — is affordability of coverage. Another Kaiser poll from earlier in the year, just after the first Obamacare enrollment period ended, also showed some confusion about people's obligations to get covered under the law.
Jason Millman covers all things health policy, with a focus on Obamacare implementation. He previously covered health policy for Politico.


Scientists Discover New Stupidity Virus

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"Ebola Represents A Trivial Threat To Americans' Health"

The next time you lose your keys or bomb a test, try blaming it on a virus. Researchers from Johns Hopkins University and the University of Nebraska have discovered a virus that makes you just a little bit dumber.
The scientists stumbled upon the previously unknown "stupidity virus" in the throat cultures of healthy subjects during a completely unrelated experiment. The 44 percent of people who tested positive for the virus performed 7 to 9 points lower on IQ tests that measured attention span and how fast and accurately people process visual information.
When the Nebraska researchers injected the virus into the digestive systems of mice, same thing. The rodents blundered around mazes, appeared flummoxed by new toys and seemed oblivious to new entry ways in and out of their cages. In short, they acted a tiny bit stupider than the average mouse.
“This is a striking example showing that the ‘innocuous’ microorganisms we carry can affect behavior and cognition,” said lead investigator Dr. Robert Yolken, a virologist and pediatric infectious disease specialist at the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center in Baltimore who led the study.
Yolken said this unintended study provides a good example of how behavior and psychology come down to more than the genes you inherit from your parents. Some of these traits may be shaped and influenced by the trillions of viruses, bacteria and fungi that colonize our bodies, he said.
Viruses are infectious agents that invade cells and replicate themselves within those cells, said Dr. Aaron E. Glatt, a spokesman for the Infectious Disease Society of America. Once they enter a host, they range from completely benign or, as is the case of the Ebola virus, they can be deadly.
Glatt said while he is skeptical of a virus can actually affect intelligence, he is keeping an open mind.
“We don’t completely understand the full implications of viruses yet but they, obviously, can impact the functioning of cells and entire organism with a myriad of outcomes,” he said.
Yolken said this particular virus may work by changing the way genes are expressed in an area of the brain responsible for memory and other higher brain functions. He also said he has suspected for some time that viruses have ways of messing with human intelligence.
In previous studies, for example, his team found small but definite decreases in cognitive function after exposure to the common herpes simplex virus.
The new research appears in the latest issue of the online journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

The One Thing Barack And Michelle Are Not

Duped by Medill Innocence Project, Milwaukee Man Now Free

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Former Milwaukee resident Alstory Simon was freed last week from Jacksonville Correctional Center in Illinois. He served nearly 15 years in prison after he was coerced into confessing to a double murder in Illinois.

Former Milwaukee resident Alstory Simon was freed last week from Jacksonville Correctional Center in Illinois. He served nearly 15 years in prison after he was coerced into confessing to a double murder in Illinois.


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"Frontline: A Rape-Murder Case Involving A Daisy Chain Of 4 False Confessions"


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"More DNA Exonerations: 20% Of People Who Confess To Capital Crimes Are Coerced"


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"Scalia Pushed Death Penalty For Now-Exonerated Inmate Henry Lee McCollum"

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"After My Mugging C. 1970, The Police Pressured Me To Give False Testimony"

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/07/after-my-mugging-in-1970-police.html
The first time I wrote about Alstory Simon, then a Milwaukee north sider, was in 1999, right after he confessed to a double murder in Chicago.
Simon's shocking admission — not to police but to an investigator working for Northwestern University's Medill Innocence Project — led to the release and pardon of a man on death row for the crime, and ultimately to the death penalty being abolished in Illinois.
Two years later, I wrote about Simon again. This time he had reached out to me from prison to say the confession and subsequent guilty plea were involuntary. He insisted he was innocent, as do most inmates who send letters to reporters from prison.
My column was not sympathetic. His confession was right there on videotape for everyone to see, including the detail that he had "busted off about six rounds."
Last week, Simon walked out of prison a free man after Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez announced that her office, after a yearlong investigation, was vacating the charges against him and ending his 37-year sentence.
The investigation by the Medill Innocence Project, she said, "involved a series of alarming tactics that were not only coercive and absolutely unacceptable by law enforcement standards, they were potentially in violation of Mr. Simon's constitutionally protected rights."
The truth took 15 years to come out. That's 15 years that Simon, now 64, spent behind bars.
"Believe me, it is mentally painful to walk around every day, locked up for something that you know you didn't do," Simon told Shawn Rech, whose film about the case, "A Murder in the Park," now has an ending. It premieres at a film festival in New York on Nov. 17.
Simon, who moved to Milwaukee from Chicago in the 1980s to find work, is not granting interviews, his attorney, Terry Ekl, told me. But Ekl echoed Alvarez's criticism of former Northwestern journalism professor David Protess, who led the Medill Innocence Project, and the investigator on the team, Paul Ciolino.
"In my opinion, Northwestern, Protess and Ciolino framed Simon so that they could secure the release of (Anthony) Porter and make him into the poster boy for the anti-death penalty movement," he said.
Identified by several eye witnesses, Porter was sentenced to death for the fatal shooting of Jerry Hillard and Marilyn Green at a south side Chicago park in 1982. He was just two days from a lethal chemical injection when he was freed in February 1999 following Simon's confession.
Then-Gov. George Ryan imposed a moratorium on the death penalty in 2000, and Illinois abolished capital punishment in 2011.
But that neat and clean narrative unraveled with the discovery of how the confession by Simon was obtained. Protess discovered that Green's mother had mentioned Simon was with Green and Hillard at the park the day of the murders, so Protess went after Simon in an effort to clear Porter.
Protess and two of his journalism students came to Simon's home in the 200 block of E. Wright St. in Milwaukee and told him they were working on a book about unsolved murders. According to Simon, Protess told him, "We know you did it."
Then Simon received a visit from Ciolino and another man. They had guns and badges and claimed to be Chicago police officers. They said they knew he had killed Green and Hillard, so he better confess if he hoped to avoid the death penalty.
They showed him a video of his ex-wife, Inez Jackson, implicating him for the crime — a claim she recanted on her death bed in 2005 — and another video of a supposed witness to the crime who turned out to be an actor.
They coached Simon through a videotaped confession, promising him a light sentence and money from book and movie deals on the case. Simon, admittedly on a three-day crack cocaine bender, struggled to understand what was going on.
Perhaps worst of all, they hooked up Simon with a free lawyer to represent him, Jack Rimland, without telling him that Rimland was a friend of Ciolino and Protess and in on their plan to free Porter.
At Rimland's urging, Simon pleaded guilty to the crime and even offered what sounded like a sincere apology to Green's family in court. As added leverage to make him cooperate, Rimland had told Simon he was suspected in a Milwaukee murder, though nothing ever came of it.
"Bob told me to get rid of this attorney. ... I should have listened to him," Simon says in the film, referring to Bob Braun, a West Allis man best known around here for protesting against abortion, same-sex marriage, pornography and other issues. The two men are friends.
Braun said he never doubted Simon's innocence. The two men wrote back and forth regularly during Simon's incarceration, and Braun visited him there twice. After 15 years in prison, Simon told Braun, the most noticeable change is that everyone carries a phone, and there are no more pay phones.
When his abuses came to light, Protess was suspended by Northwestern and has since retired from there. The Medill Innocence Project has been renamed The Medill Justice Project. Protess isn't talking, but he is now president of the Chicago Innocence Project, which investigates wrongful convictions. Ciolino put out a statement saying Simon also had confessed to a Milwaukee TV reporter, his lawyer and others.
"You explain that," he said.
We know now that the explanation was that Simon was snared in a trap set by people who wanted to end the death penalty, no matter what the cost. Once they convinced Simon it was for his own good, he was all in.
And now, finally, he's out and back in Chicago. Simon enjoyed a lobster dinner on his first day of freedom. Ekl said he doesn't think Simon has family still in Milwaukee and is not planning to return here. Too many painful memories.
Simon's mother died while he was in prison. He told the filmmaker he's eager to reconnect with his daughter and see his grandchild for the first time.
"I thank God," he said, "that he shined down on me."
Call Jim Stingl at (414) 224-2017 or email at jstingl@jrn.com



Funny Philosophical Quips

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John Glenn...
As I hurtled through space, one thought kept crossing my mind - every part of this rocket was supplied by the lowest bidder.   
Desmond Tutu...
When the white missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said 'Let us pray.' We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land.
David Letterman...
America is the only country where a significant proportion of the population believes that professional wrestling is real but the moon landing was faked.
Howard Hughes...
I'm not a paranoid, deranged millionaire. I'm a billionaire.  
Old Italian proverb...
After the game, the King and the pawn go into the same box.  
Betsy Salkind...
Men are like linoleum floors. Lay 'em right and you can walk all over them for thirty years.

Jean Kerr...
The only reason they say 'Women and children first' is to test the strength of the lifeboats.
Zsa Zsa Gabor...
I've been married to a communist and a fascist, and neither would take out the garbage.
Jeff Foxworthy...
You know you're a redneck if your home has wheels and your car doesn't.
Prince Philip...
When a man opens a car door for his wife, it's either a new car or a new wife.
Emo Philips...
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kickboxing.
Emo Philips and The Essence Of Religious Fanaticism - Christian and Islamic: http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-essence-of-religious-fanaticism.html
Robin Hall...
Lawyers believe a person is innocent until proven broke.  
Jean Rostand...
Kill one man and you're a murderer, kill a million and you're a conqueror
Arnold Schwarzenegger...
Having more money doesn't make you happier. I have 50 million dollars but I'm just as happy as when I had 48 million.   ~
WH Auden...
We are here on earth to do good unto others. What the others are here for, I have no idea.
Jonathan Katz...
In hotel rooms I worry. I can't be the only guy who sits on the furniture naked
Johnny Carson...
If life were fair, Elvis would still be alive today and all the impersonators would be dead.
Warren Tantum...
(School photo album).
I don't believe in astrology. I am a Sagittarius and we're very skeptical
Steve Martin...
Hollywood must be the only place on earth where you can be fired by a man wearing a Hawaiian shirt and a baseball cap  
Jimmy Durante...
Home cooking. Where many a man thinks his wife is.   . 
Doug Hanwell...
America is so advanced that even the chairs are electric.  
George Roberts...
The first piece of luggage on the carousel never belongs to anyone   ~
Jonathan Winters...
If God had intended us to fly he would have made it easier to get to the airport.
Robert Benchley...
I have kleptomania, but when it gets bad, I take something for it.     


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