Phan In Phlorida wrote:OMG! N. Korea called Obama a monkey!

(link)

jerseyhoya wrote:Bulleit, at family's house for the holidays, so it was a classier inebriation

mozartpc27 wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:Bulleit, at family's house for the holidays, so it was a classier inebriation

Mmmm... Bulleit

pacino wrote:Corbett leaves an unmitigated disaster for Wolf. He cut taxes, cut funding, and widened the gap between rich and poor school districts, essentially ensuring that some districts are never able to improve. Great legacy.

CalvinBall wrote:Pretty predictable that the house majority whip is a white supremacist.

“Doody,” who was number 3,673 on the kill list, had been designated as a priority level three on a scale of one to four by NATO, meaning he wasn’t particularly important within the Taliban leadership structure. Spotted on the ground by the crew of a British Apache combat helicopter, the pilot and gunner were given the go-ahead to kill him, however poor visibility resulted in a launched Hellfire missile striking the child and his father instead. Realizing they had missed their target, the Apache pilot then fired 100 rounds at “Doody” with his 30-mm gun, critically injuring the man.
According to reports, the U.S. changed tactics in Afghanistan after President Barack Obama assumed office, focusing on fighting the Taliban insurgency with targeted attacks on Taliban members rising to between 10 and 15 a night. Those attacks were based upon lists maintained by the CIA and NATO, in a strategy called “escalate and exit” by the White House.

Of all the contentious history between Koch Industries and the U.S. government, the Corpus Christi, Texas, case from 1995 is the one that Charles Koch remembers most vividly.

A federal grand jury indicted his company on 97 felonies involving alleged environmental crimes at an oil refinery.

Prosecutors dropped all but one of the charges six years later, after the company spent tens of millions of dollars defending itself.

Ultimately, Koch Petroleum Group agreed to pay a $10 million settlement.“It was a really, really torturous experience,” said Mark Holden, Koch’s chief counsel. “We learned first-hand what happens when anyone gets into the criminal justice system.”

Holden said Charles Koch wondered afterward “how the little guy who doesn’t have Koch’s resources deals with prosecutions like that.”

No one at Koch wants to re-litigate the Corpus Christi case, Holden said. But it prompted Charles Koch to study the justice system – both federal and state – wondering whether it has been over-criminalized with too many laws and too many prosecutions of nonviolent offenders, not only for him but for everybody.

His conclusion: Yes, it has.

Gilkey is a former Wichita crack addict and an ex-convict who spent nearly four years in Kansas prisons. But in the nine years since his release, Gilkey has become a respected Wichita mentor to young people.

He’s no liberal on many social or justice issues. He tells boys to treat police officers with respect.

He wishes he could legally obtain a gun because of some of the tough neighborhoods he walks into to mentor youths.

He says marijuana should never be legalized, because as a drug addict, he learned first-hand that pot is “the gateway drug to all the other drugs.”

But he said we have devised a “crazy” and costly system where we spend tens of millions in Kansas to incarcerate people and train them so well in prison that many of them earn tech school certificates to become plumbers or electricians or other trade workers.

“When they get out, they can’t get jobs,” Gilkey said. “They have to check that box on the job application that says, ‘Have you ever been convicted?’ No one hires them then.”

MIAMI — Florida officials are embracing a sharply limited view of a federal judge’s ruling that struck down the state’s ban on same-sex marriages.

A temporary stay of that ruling is set to expire on Monday, potentially authorizing same-sex couples across the state to obtain marriage licenses. Such a move would set the stage for Florida to become the 36th state to recognize such marriages.

But lawyers with the state attorney general’s office are arguing that the judge’s ruling only applies to one same-sex couple seeking a marriage license in Washington County.

They say US District Judge Robert Hinkle’s decision applies to the statewide actions of two Florida officials – the Secretary of Health and the Secretary of Management Services – but to only one court clerk who was instructed by Judge Hinkle to issue a marriage license to one same-sex couple.

The question arose after lawyers for the Florida Association of Court Clerks advised the state’s 67 clerks that they were not bound by Hinkle’s injunction. The legal advice included a warning that any clerks not named in the injunction, who nonetheless violate the terms of the state’s ban on same-sex marriages, may be subject to punishment under a Florida law that requires enforcement of the ban.

The law makes it a crime for any clerk to issue a marriage license to a same-sex couple. Those who do so may face up to a year in prison and a $1,000 fine.

The only court clerk who is not subject to enforcement of this criminal sanction, according to the association’s lawyers, is the Washington County clerk who is specifically named in the injunction.

pacino wrote:Florida clerks don't feel like issuing marriage licenses to gay couples:

MIAMI — Florida officials are embracing a sharply limited view of a federal judge’s ruling that struck down the state’s ban on same-sex marriages.

A temporary stay of that ruling is set to expire on Monday, potentially authorizing same-sex couples across the state to obtain marriage licenses. Such a move would set the stage for Florida to become the 36th state to recognize such marriages.

But lawyers with the state attorney general’s office are arguing that the judge’s ruling only applies to one same-sex couple seeking a marriage license in Washington County.

Modeled utility-scale PV system prices fell below $2 a watt in 2013, and have continued to decline in 2014, to roughly $1.80 a watt, which is 59 percent below what modeled pricing showed in 2010.

SK790 wrote:Solar Energy is much cheaper than we thought it would be, but we should go ahead and build another pipeline anyway.

http://www.nrel.gov/news/press/2014/15405.html

Modeled utility-scale PV system prices fell below $2 a watt in 2013, and have continued to decline in 2014, to roughly $1.80 a watt, which is 59 percent below what modeled pricing showed in 2010.

drsmooth wrote:

SK790 wrote:Solar Energy is much cheaper than we thought it would be, but we should go ahead and build another pipeline anyway.

http://www.nrel.gov/news/press/2014/15405.html

Modeled utility-scale PV system prices fell below $2 a watt in 2013, and have continued to decline in 2014, to roughly $1.80 a watt, which is 59 percent below what modeled pricing showed in 2010.

TPie with his chart of where relative usage is 2 years ago in 4,3,2....

Electricity generation from solar PV generation nearly tripled from 2009 to 2010. It more than doubled in 2011. And more than tripled in 2012. Achieving such a growth rate is easy when you’re tiny, but the bigger the base the tougher it gets. Wind power is a good model — it managed to grow 19% last year from a much bigger base, to 168 million Mwh. But keep in mind that both wind and solar have to overcome the challenge of geography — developers install systems in the most windy and sunny spots first. The worse the location, the more panels or windmills you need to get the same amount of electricity

drsmooth wrote:

SK790 wrote:Solar Energy is much cheaper than we thought it would be, but we should go ahead and build another pipeline anyway.

http://www.nrel.gov/news/press/2014/15405.html

Modeled utility-scale PV system prices fell below $2 a watt in 2013, and have continued to decline in 2014, to roughly $1.80 a watt, which is 59 percent below what modeled pricing showed in 2010.

TPie with his chart of where relative usage is 2 years ago in 4,3,2....