7:15 p.m. Saturday – Police said the pastor of a southwest Atlanta church shot and wounded a 13-year-old in retaliation for throwing a rock at his car. Alex Williams, of the Mechanicsville Church of God in Christ, pulled out a .38 revolver and shot the teen in the hip after the boy threw a rock through the back window of William’s car, police said.

Neighbors and members of the congregation say the church and Williams’ house have been vandalized and set afire. The pastor faces aggravated assault charges. The teenager was in stable condition Monday.

A conservative billionaire who opposes government meddling in business has bought a rare commodity: the right to interfere in faculty hiring at a publicly funded university.

A foundation bankrolled by Libertarian businessman Charles G. Koch has pledged $1.5 million for positions in Florida State University's economics department. In return, his representatives get to screen and sign off on any hires for a new program promoting "political economy and free enterprise."

Traditionally, university donors have little official input into choosing the person who fills a chair they've funded. The power of university faculty and officials to choose professors without outside interference is considered a hallmark of academic freedom.

Under the agreement with the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, however, faculty only retain the illusion of control. The contract specifies that an advisory committee appointed by Koch decides which candidates should be considered. The foundation can also withdraw its funding if it's not happy with the faculty's choice or if the hires don't meet "objectives" set by Koch during annual evaluations.

Cornell Hood II got off with probation after three marijuana convictions in New Orleans.

View full sizeEllis Lucia, The Times-PicayuneSt. Tammany Parish Justice Center, Covington

He didn't fare too well after moving to St. Tammany Parish, however. A single such conviction on the north shore landed the 35-year-old in prison for the rest of his life.

The central idea of America, which has invigorated the country for more than 240 years, is that anyone who wants a better life can come here and make one.
Unlike other countries, in other words, where "class" and "birth rank" and other luck of the birth-draw determine one's station in life, America is different. America is the land of self-determination.
Work hard in America, this story goes, and you'll get rewarded for it. In America, your station in life is all about you. Just look at Andrew Carnegie! Bill Gates! Steve Jobs!
This self-determination "American Dream" is deeply important to the American psyche. It has helped the country build the most vibrant economy in the world. It has made millions of Americans rich. It has also, unfortunately, allowed us to justify inequality that is appalling to just about every other developed country in the world.
So what if the richest 1% of Americans control a third of the country's wealth, this story goes--they deserve to. The other 99% are just a bunch of lazy bastards with their hands out.
If that were actually true--if the riches of the richest Americas were entirely a product of their own efforts and value to society--America's increasing inequality might be more tolerable. But, increasingly, it isn't.
Yes, it's still possible for people to go from rags to riches in this country, and that's a great thing. But it's also increasingly unusual.
As the chart below shows, America now has less "social mobility" than most European countries. Increasingly in America, your "station in life" is determined by your parents' station in life--even more so than in the European countries that earlier generations of Americans were so desperate to escape.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/remember-the-american-dream-what-a-bunch-of-cr...

In 2008, Douglass Boulevard Christian Church (DBCC) decided to designate itself an Open and Affirming Community of Faith, signifying its “commitment to full acceptance of all people, regardless of race, gender, age, or sexual orientation,” and this decision keeps it in line with those values, church leaders said. The church will continue to perform religious wedding ceremonies but will no longer sign official licenses, according to an official release on its web site:

“[O]ur membership is committed to treating homosexuals and heterosexuals equally. Our congregation believes it is unfair to provide different services and benefits to heterosexual couples than we can provide to gay and lesbian couples,” said associate minister Rev. Ryan Kemp-Pappan.

In an interview with ThinkProgress, the church’s senior minister, Rev. Derek Penwell, said the decision came after more than a year of discussion among church leaders, who decided to pitch it to church members last Sunday. The church has a “small percentage” of openly gay members, he said, but a large number of its visitors come from the gay and lesbian community. And while DBCC has participated in community outreach programs with the Kentucky Fairness Alliance, the Louisville Fairness Campaign, and the Kentucky ACLU, Penwell said the decision is based in Biblical scripture:

“The church, over the course of time, has come to a fuller understanding on a variety of issues that even just a few years before would have seemed inconceivable. [Churches] made the same arguments about interracial marriage or about precluding women in church leadership, based on certain areas of scripture. The interpretation of those scriptures made sense at the time and in a certain context, but in a modern American context, don’t make the same sense. … It’s not like we’re going to the Bible and saying, ‘We don’t like it, we’re going to ignore it.’” [...]

“At some point, we’re going to look back on this and wonder why it was that big of a deal.“

Under a new budget proposal from State Sen. Bruce Casswell, children in the state’s foster care system would be allowed to purchase clothing only in used clothing stores.

Casswell, a Republican representing Branch, Hillsdale, Lenawee and St. Joseph counties, made the proposal this week, reports Michigan Public Radio.

His explanation?

“I never had anything new,” Caswell says. “I got all the hand-me-downs. And my dad, he did a lot of shopping at the Salvation Army, and his comment was — and quite frankly it’s true — once you’re out of the store and you walk down the street, nobody knows where you bought your clothes.”

Under his plan, foster children would receive gift cards that could only be used at places like the Salvation Army, Goodwill and other second hand clothing stores.

The plan was knocked by the Michigan League for Human Services. Gilda Jacobs, executive director of the group, had this to say:

“Honestly, I was flabbergasted,” Jacobs says. “I really couldn’t believe this. Because I think, gosh, is this where we’ve gone in this state? I think that there’s the whole issue of dignity. You’re saying to somebody, you don’t deserve to go in and buy a new pair of gym shoes. You know, for a lot of foster kids, they already have so much stacked against them.”

Casswell says the plan will save the state money, though it isn’t clear how much the state spends on clothing for foster children or how much could be saved this way

Gone are the plans to golf, garden or read on a creaky porch swing.

Almost 40% of working Americans said they will never afford retirement, according to a report released Wednesday by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants.

Retirement is overrated anyway, right? Who wants to deal with that all day? Am I right?

What of these hoaxes? And was the media lax? Let's see the birth certificate...

While this is not surprising, it is interesting.

Just to show how much of a laughing stock we are to the rest of the world about our archaic system of putting people in prison for profit.