Reuters Does a Great Article; George Zimmerman: Prelude to a shooting

(Reuters) – A pit bull named Big Boi began menacing George and Shellie Zimmerman in the fall of 2009. The first time the dog ran free and cornered Shellie in their gated community in Sanford, Florida, George called the owner to complain. The second time, Big Boi frightened his mother-in-law’s dog. Zimmerman called Seminole County Animal Services and bought pepper spray. The third time he saw the dog on the loose, he called again. An officer came to the house, county records show. “Don’t use pepper spray,” he told the Zimmermans, according to a friend. “It’ll take two or three seconds to take effect, but a quarter second for the dog to jump you,” he said. “Get a gun.” That November, the Zimmermans completed firearms training at a local lodge and received concealed-weapons gun permits. In early December, another source close to them told Reuters, the couple bought a pair of guns. George picked a Kel-Tec PF-9 9mm handgun, a popular, lightweight weapon. By June 2011, Zimmerman’s attention had shifted from a loose pit bull to a wave of robberies that rattled the community, called the Retreat at Twin Lakes. The homeowners association asked him to launch a neighborhood watch, and Zimmerman would begin to carry the Kel-Tec on his regular, dog-walking patrol – a violation of neighborhood watch guidelines but not a crime. Few of his closest neighbors knew he carried a gun – until two months ago. On February 26, George Zimmerman shot and killed unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin in what Zimmerman says was self-defense. The furor that ensued has consumed the country and prompted a re-examination of guns, race and self-defense laws enacted in nearly half the United States. During the time Zimmerman was in hiding, his detractors defined him as a vigilante who had decided Martin was suspicious merely because he was black. After Zimmerman was finally arrested on a charge of second-degree murder more than six weeks after the shooting, prosecutors portrayed him as a violent and angry man who disregarded authority by pursuing the 17-year-old. But a more nuanced portrait of Zimmerman has emerged from a Reuters investigation into Zimmerman’s past and a series of incidents in the community in the months preceding the Martin shooting. Based on extensive interviews with relatives, friends, neighbors, schoolmates and co-workers of Zimmerman in two states, law enforcement officials, and reviews of court documents and police reports, the story sheds new light on the man at the center of one of the most controversial homicide cases in America. The 28-year-old insurance-fraud investigator comes from a deeply Catholic background and was taught in his early years to do right by those less fortunate. He was raised in a racially integrated household and himself has black roots through an Afro-Peruvian great-grandfather – the father of the maternal grandmother who helped raise him. A criminal justice student who aspired to become a judge, Zimmerman also concerned himself with the safety of his neighbors after a series of break-ins committed by young African-American men. Though civil rights demonstrators have argued Zimmerman should not have prejudged Martin, one black neighbor of the Zimmermans said recent history should be taken into account. “Let’s talk about the elephant in the room. I’m black, OK?” the woman said, declining to be identified because she anticipated backlash due to her race. She leaned in to look a reporter directly in the eyes. “There were black boys robbing houses in this neighborhood,” she said. “That’s why George was suspicious of Trayvon Martin.” “MIXED” HOUSEHOLD George Michael Zimmerman was born in 1983 to Robert and Gladys Zimmerman, the third of four children. Robert Zimmerman Sr. was a U.S. Army veteran who served in Vietnam in 1970, and was stationed at Fort Myer in Arlington, Virginia, in 1975 with Gladys Mesa’s brother George. Zimmerman Sr. also served two tours in Korea, and spent the final 10 years of his 22-year military career in the Pentagon, working for the Department of Defense, a family member said. In his final years in Virginia before retiring to Florida, Robert Zimmerman served as a magistrate in Fairfax County’s 19th Judicial District. Robert and Gladys met in January 1975, when George Mesa brought along his army buddy to his sister’s birthday party. She was visiting from Peru, on vacation from her job there as a physical education teacher. Robert was a Baptist, Gladys was Catholic. They soon married, in a Catholic ceremony in Alexandria, and moved to nearby Manassas. Gladys came to lead a small but growing Catholic Hispanic enclave within the All Saints Catholic Church parish in the late 1970s, where she was involved in the church’s outreach programs. Gladys would bring young George along with her on “home visits” to poor families, said a family friend, Teresa Post. “It was part of their upbringing to know that there are people in need, people more in need than themselves,” said Post, a Peruvian immigrant who lived with the Zimmermans for a time. Post recalls evening prayers before dinner in the ethnically diverse Zimmerman household, which included siblings Robert Jr., Grace, and Dawn. “It wasn’t only white or only Hispanic or only black – it was mixed,” she said. Zimmerman’s maternal grandmother, Cristina, who had lived with the Zimmermans since 1978, worked as a babysitter for years during Zimmerman’s childhood. For several years she cared for two African-American girls who ate their meals at the Zimmerman house and went back and forth to school each day with the Zimmerman children. “They were part of the household for years, until they were old enough to be on their own,” Post said. Zimmerman served as an altar boy at All Saints from age 7 to 17, church members said. “He wasn’t the type where, you know, ‘I’m being forced to do this,’ and a dragging-his-feet Catholic,” said Sandra Vega, who went to high school with George and his siblings. “He was an altar boy for years, and then worked in the rectory too. He has a really good heart.” George grew up bilingual, and by age 10 he was often called to the Haydon Elementary School principal’s office to act as a translator between administrators and immigrant parents. At 14 he became obsessed with becoming a Marine, a relative said, joining the after-school ROTC program at Grace E. Metz Middle School and polishing his boots by night. At 15, he worked three part-time jobs – in a Mexican restaurant, for the rectory, and washing cars – on nights and weekends, to save up for a car. After graduating from Osbourn High School in 2001, Zimmerman moved to Lake Mary, Florida, a town neighboring Sanford. His parents purchased a retirement home there in 2002, in part to bring Cristina, who suffers from arthritis, to a warmer climate. YOUNG INSURANCE AGENT On his own at 18, George got a job at an insurance agency and began to take classes at night to earn a license to sell insurance. He grew friendly with a real estate agent named Lee Ann Benjamin, who shared office space in the building, and later her husband, John Donnelly, a Sanford attorney. “George impressed me right off the bat as just a real go-getter,” Donnelly said. “He was working days and taking all these classes at night, passing all the insurance classes, not just for home insurance, but auto insurance and everything. He wanted to open his own office – and he did.” In 2004, Zimmerman partnered with an African-American friend and opened up an Allstate insurance satellite office, Donnelly said. Then came 2005, and a series of troubles. Zimmerman’s business failed, he was arrested, and he broke off an engagement with a woman who filed a restraining order against him. That July, Zimmerman was charged with resisting arrest, violence, and battery of an officer after shoving an undercover alcohol-control agent who was arresting an under-age friend of Zimmerman’s at a bar. He avoided conviction by agreeing to participate in a pre-trial diversion program that included anger-management classes. In August, Zimmerman’s fiancee at the time, Veronica Zuazo, filed a civil motion for a restraining order alleging domestic violence. Zimmerman reciprocated with his own order on the same grounds, and both orders were granted. The relationship ended. In 2007 he married Shellie Dean, a licensed cosmetologist, and in 2009 the couple rented a townhouse in the Retreat at Twin Lakes. Zimmerman had bounced from job to job for a couple of years, working at a car dealership and a mortgage company. At times, according to testimony from Shellie at a bond hearing for Zimmerman last week, the couple filed for unemployment benefits. Zimmerman enrolled in Seminole State College in 2009, and in December 2011 he was permitted to participate in a school graduation ceremony, despite being a course credit shy of his associate’s degree in criminal justice. Zimmerman was completing that course credit when the shooting occurred. On March 22, nearly a month after the shooting and with the controversy by then swirling nationwide, the school issued a press release saying it was taking the “unusual, but necessary” step of withdrawing Zimmerman’s enrollment, citing “the safety of our students on campus as well as for Mr. Zimmerman.” A NEIGHBORHOOD IN FEAR By the summer of 2011, Twin Lakes was experiencing a rash of burglaries and break-ins. Previously a family-friendly, first-time homeowner community, it was devastated by the recession that hit the Florida housing market, and transient renters began to occupy some of the 263 town houses in the complex. Vandalism and occasional drug activity were reported, and home values plunged. One resident who bought his home in 2006 for $250,000 said it was worth $80,000 today. At least eight burglaries were reported within Twin Lakes in the 14 months prior to the Trayvon Martin shooting, according to the Sanford Police Department. Yet in a series of interviews, Twin Lakes residents said dozens of reports of attempted break-ins and would-be burglars casing homes had created an atmosphere of growing fear in the neighborhood. In several of the incidents, witnesses identified the suspects to police as young black men. Twin Lakes is about 50 percent white, with an African-American and Hispanic population of about 20 percent each, roughly similar to the surrounding city of Sanford, according to U.S. Census data. One morning in July 2011, a black teenager walked up to Zimmerman’s front porch and stole a bicycle, neighbors told Reuters. A police report was taken, though the bicycle was not recovered. But it was the August incursion into the home of Olivia Bertalan that really troubled the neighborhood, particularly Zimmerman. Shellie was home most days, taking online courses towards certification as a registered nurse. On August 3, Bertalan was at home with her infant son while her husband, Michael, was at work. She watched from a downstairs window, she said, as two black men repeatedly rang her doorbell and then entered through a sliding door at the back of the house. She ran upstairs, locked herself inside the boy’s bedroom, and called a police dispatcher, whispering frantically. “I said, ‘What am I supposed to do? I hear them coming up the stairs!’” she told Reuters. Bertalan tried to coo her crying child into silence and armed herself with a pair of rusty scissors. Police arrived just as the burglars – who had been trying to disconnect the couple’s television – fled out a back door. Shellie Zimmerman saw a black male teen running through her backyard and reported it to police. After police left Bertalan, George Zimmerman arrived at the front door in a shirt and tie, she said. He gave her his contact numbers on an index card and invited her to visit his wife if she ever felt unsafe. He returned later and gave her a stronger lock to bolster the sliding door that had been forced open. “He was so mellow and calm, very helpful and very, very sweet,” she said last week. “We didn’t really know George at first, but after the break-in we talked to him on a daily basis. People were freaked out. It wasn’t just George calling police … we were calling police at least once a week.” In September, a group of neighbors including Zimmerman approached the homeowners association with their concerns, she said. Zimmerman was asked to head up a new neighborhood watch. He agreed. “PLEASE CONTACT OUR CAPTAIN” Police had advised Bertalan to get a dog. She and her husband decided to move out instead, and left two days before the shooting. Zimmerman took the advice. “He’d already had a mutt that he walked around the neighborhood every night – man, he loved that dog – but after that home invasion he also got a Rottweiler,” said Jorge Rodriguez, a friend and neighbor of the Zimmermans. Around the same time, Zimmerman also gave Rodriguez and his wife, Audria, his contact information, so they could reach him day or night. Rodriguez showed the index card to Reuters. In neat cursive was a list of George and Shellie’s home number and cell phones, as well as their emails. Less than two weeks later, another Twin Lakes home was burglarized, police reports show. Two weeks after that, a home under construction was vandalized. The Retreat at Twin Lakes e-newsletter for February 2012 noted: “The Sanford PD has announced an increased patrol within our neighborhood … during peak crime hours. “If you’ve been a victim of a crime in the community, after calling police, please contact our captain, George Zimmerman.” EMMANUEL BURGESS – SETTING THE STAGE On February 2, 2012, Zimmerman placed a call to Sanford police after spotting a young black man he recognized peering into the windows of a neighbor’s empty home, according to several friends and neighbors. “I don’t know what he’s doing. I don’t want to approach him, personally,” Zimmerman said in the call, which was recorded. The dispatcher advised him that a patrol car was on the way. By the time police arrived, according to the dispatch report, the suspect had fled. On February 6, the home of another Twin Lakes resident, Tatiana Demeacis, was burglarized. Two roofers working directly across the street said they saw two African-American men lingering in the yard at the time of the break-in. A new laptop and some gold jewelry were stolen. One of the roofers called police the next day after spotting one of the suspects among a group of male teenagers, three black and one white, on bicycles. Police found Demeacis’s laptop in the backpack of 18-year-old Emmanuel Burgess, police reports show, and charged him with dealing in stolen property. Burgess was the same man Zimmerman had spotted on February 2. Burgess had committed a series of burglaries on the other side of town in 2008 and 2009, pleaded guilty to several, and spent all of 2010 incarcerated in a juvenile facility, his attorney said. He is now in jail on parole violations. Three days after Burgess was arrested, Zimmerman’s grandmother was hospitalized for an infection, and the following week his father was also admitted for a heart condition. Zimmerman spent a number of those nights on a hospital room couch. Ten days after his father was hospitalized, Zimmerman noticed another young man in the neighborhood, acting in a way he found familiar, so he made another call to police. “We’ve had some break-ins in my neighborhood, and there’s a real suspicious guy,” Zimmerman said, as Trayvon Martin returned home from the store. The last time Zimmerman had called police, to report Burgess, he followed protocol and waited for police to arrive. They were too late, and Burgess got away. This time, Zimmerman was not so patient, and he disregarded police advice against pursuing Martin. “These assholes,” he muttered in an aside, “they always get away.” After the phone call ended, several minutes passed when the movements of Zimmerman and Martin remain a mystery. Moments later, Martin lay dead with a bullet in his chest.

My Two Cents About Burning the Quran or Drawing Cartoons of Mohammad

If Quran burning or drawing cartoons of Mohammad empowers muslims in fighting us, then did Walt Disney empower the Nazis when he made U.S. war propaganda cartoons? See the flawed logic? I can just picture a Nazi soldier sitting in a foxhole being told Walt Disney drew Goofy to make the Nazis look like idiots, then raising his fist into the air declaring “Death to Americans, Allahu Hitler!”. Yep if it wasn’t for Disney, the Nazis may have been peaceful and willing to live in harmony with their neighbor countries.

Cooking Over Burning Qurans Make My Hot Dogs Taste Funny: Pastor Terry Jones Fulfills Deadline Threat for the Release A Pastor in Iran on Deathrow for not Converting to Islam

Update: New York Post has carried the story The Gainesville Sun- By Cindy Swirko Staff writer Pastor burns holy books in protest of imprisoned clergyman Dove World Outreach Center pastor Terry Jones on Saturday burned copies of the Quran and an image depicting Muhammad in front of his church to protest the imprisonment in Iran of a Christian clergyman. Moments later, Gainesville Fire Rescue issued the church a citation for violating the city’s fire ordinances. Saturday’s act of protest took place in spite of published reports that the Pentagon had urged Jones to reconsider, expressing concern that American soldiers in Afghanistan and elsewhere could be put at greater risk because of the act. A little more than a year ago, on March 20, 2011, Dove World assistant pastor Wayne Sapp burned a copy of the Quran and broadcast it on the Internet. Reports and images of the Quran burning incited violence in northern Afghanistan in which at least 12 people were killed. Days later, a man wearing an Afghan border police uniform shot dead two American military personnel. Dove World denied responsibility then for the deaths. About 20 people gathered Saturday on church property at 5805 NW 37th Street about 5 p.m. for the planned burning. Several Gainesville police officers were stationed across the street from the church or were patrolling the area. A few people watched the scene, but there were no protesters. Jones and another pastor demanded the release of the Christian pastor Youcef Nadarkhani from an Iranian prison. Jones said Nadarkhani faces execution. Jones spoke at a podium that was far enough away that he could not be heard by people along 37th Street. The event was streamed live over the Internet. After the speeches, copies of the Islamic holy book and an image depicting Muhammad were burned at about 5:50 p.m. in a portable fire pit. Shortly afterward, officers in two Gainesville Police Department cars drove onto the property. With them was a GFR official, who issued the citation. Fire Chief Gene Prince, contacted by The Sun afterward, said Jones had approval for a burn but did not have the required authorization to burn books. Prince said Gainesville has restrictive fire ordinances, adding that books cannot be burned without authorization because of environmental concerns over the burning of glue and bindings in books. The fine is $271, which includes court costs, Prince said. Several onlookers watched the event from across 37th Street. Some said they wished Jones and Dove World would stop its activities or relocate, while others noted that Jones has a constitutional right to protest. Jones first drew attention in July 2009, when he placed signs reading “Islam is of the Devil” on church property and when students who belong to the church later wore T-shirts with the words to public schools. In September 2010, he drew international focus with a plan to burn Qurans. The U.S. government warned of reprisals against military in Iraq and Afghanistan if the burning took place. President Barack Obama and the Vatican, among others, condemned the plan, which Jones later called off.

Nero Obama Caesar and His Own Colosseum Games to Focus the People’s Attention from the Destruction of the State

Class warfare, war on women, war on corporations, Occupy, Trayvon Martin and black on white attacks, Obama has given the people “the games” in much like Nero Claudius Caesar did to the Romans as Rome burned.  Where each one of these examples is fueled by pure hatred rather then the cause it declares, and shouldn’t be ignored, look to is pulling the strings to cause the society to burn down. During his Tuesday evening broadcast, Glenn Beck took a deeper look at the disturbing trend of violence being perpetrated against whites in the name of “justice for Trayvon.”

Is Justice for Blacks and Whites Different? It is When it Comes to Hate Crimes. Especially if the Crime is Committed as a Mob

Beating of Alabama man not seen as hate crime, despite claim ‘Trayvon’ invoked -From FoxNews A racially charged beating of a white Alabama man by a throng of African-Americans is not being investigated as a hate crime, despite one witness’ claim that she heard an assailant exclaim: “Now that’s justice for Trayvon.” Matthew Owens, of Mobile, Ala., was assaulted with baseball bats, paint cans and other weapons at about 8:30 p.m. Saturday after telling a group of children to stop playing basketball in the middle of Delmar Drive, according to Ashley Rains, public information officer for the Mobile Police Department. After the children left the area, a group of adults armed with weapons returned and confronted Owens, 40, in his front yard, where he was assaulted. Owens’ sister, Ashley Parker, told WKRG she witnessed the attack and that there were as many as 20 assailants. Parker said she overheard one of them say, “Now that’s justice for Trayvon.” Asked if the incident was being investigated as a hate crime, Rains replied: “No, it’s not. It’s being investigated as an assault.” Eugene A. Seidel, first assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Alabama, declined to comment on the case when reached by FoxNews.com. “Our policy is not to comment one way or another about cases,” Seidel said when asked if his office has inquired about the incident. “All I can say is no comment.” The incident occurred in a middle-class neighborhood in Mobile, on a street where residents have often been at odds with teens who block the roadway to play pickup basketball, WKRG reported. Owens has a criminal record that includes arrests for domestic assault, driving under the influence and public intoxication. Trayvon Martin, 17, is the unarmed teenager who was fatally shot Feb. 26 in Sanford, Fla. George Zimmerman, who has been charged with second-degree murder in Martin’s death, went into hiding Monday as he awaits trial. Emotions ran high as six weeks passed before Zimmerman was charged, leading many African-American community leaders to decry what they perceived as racism in the justice system. Rains said Parker’s statement could not be independently corroborated as of Tuesday. Attempts to reach Parker — who reportedly characterized the assault as the “scariest thing” she ever witnessed — were unsuccessful. “We have not been able to find any other witness that can back that statement up,” Rains told FoxNews.com. “It’s unknown right now if that was said.” Owens, who regained consciousness early Tuesday, remains in serious condition at the University of South Alabama Medical Center, Rains said. It remains unclear how many people participated in the assault, but Rains said it involved multiple assailants. The relationship — if any — between the children and the alleged perpetrators is also unclear, Rains said. “We’ve spoken to the victim and we’re doing our best to put together a suspect list and identify any suspects that were in the assault,” she said. Anyone with information regarding this incident is asked to call the Mobile Police Department at (251) 208-7211.

Negroes With Guns

Written By : Ann Coulter Liberals have leapt on the shooting death of Trayvon Martin in Florida to push for the repeal of “stand your ground” laws and to demand tighter gun control. (MSNBC’S Karen Finney blamed “the same people who stymied gun regulation at every point.”) This would be like demanding more funding for the General Services Administration after seeing how its employees blew taxpayer money on a party weekend in Las Vegas. We don’t know the facts yet, but let’s assume the conclusion MSNBC is leaping to is accurate: George Zimmerman stalked a small black child and murdered him in cold blood, just because he was black. If that were true, every black person in America should get a gun and join the National Rifle Association, America’s oldest and most august civil rights organization. Apparently this has occurred to no one because our excellent public education system ensures that no American under the age of 60 has the slightest notion of this country’s history. Gun control laws were originally promulgated by Democrats to keep guns out of the hands of blacks. This allowed the Democratic policy of slavery to proceed with fewer bumps and, after the Civil War, allowed the Democratic Ku Klux Klan to menace and murder black Americans with little resistance. (Contrary to what illiterates believe, the KKK was an outgrowth of the Democratic Party, with overlapping membership rolls. The Klan was to the Democrats what the American Civil Liberties Union is today: Not every Democrat is an ACLU’er, but every ACLU’er is a Democrat. Same with the Klan.) In 1640, the very first gun control law ever enacted on these shores was passed in Virginia. It provided that blacks — even freemen — could not own guns. Chief Justice Roger Taney’s infamous opinion in Dred Scott v. Sandford circularly argued that blacks could not be citizens because if they were citizens, they would have the right to own guns: “[I]t would give them the full liberty,” he said, “to keep and carry arms wherever they went.” With logic like that, Republicans eventually had to fight a Civil War to get the Democrats to give up slavery. Alas, they were Democrats, so they cheated. After the war, Democratic legislatures enacted “Black Codes,” denying black Americans the right of citizenship — such as the rather crucial one of bearing arms — while other Democrats (sometimes the same Democrats) founded the Ku Klux Klan. For more than a hundred years, Republicans have aggressively supported arming blacks, so they could defend themselves against Democrats. The original draft of the Anti-Klan Act of 1871 — passed at the urging of Republican president Ulysses S. Grant — made it a federal felony to “deprive any citizen of the United States of any arms or weapons he may have in his house or possession for the defense of his person, family, or property.” This section was deleted from the final bill only because it was deemed both beyond Congress’ authority and superfluous, inasmuch as the rights of citizenship included the right to bear arms. Under authority of the Anti-Klan Act, President Grant deployed the U.S. military to destroy the Klan, and pretty nearly completed the job. But the Klan had a few resurgences in the early and mid-20th century. Curiously, wherever the Klan became a political force, gun control laws would suddenly appear on the books. This will give you an idea of how gun control laws worked. Following the firebombing of his house in 1956, Dr. Martin Luther King, who was, among other things, a Christian minister, applied for a gun permit, but the Alabama authorities found him unsuitable. A decade later, he won a Nobel Peace Prize. How’s that “may issue” gun permit policy working for you? The NRA opposed these discretionary gun permit laws and proceeded to grant NRA charters to blacks who sought to defend themselves from Klan violence — including the great civil rights hero Robert F. Williams. A World War II Marine veteran, Williams returned home to Monroe, N.C., to find the Klan riding high — beating, lynching and murdering blacks at will. No one would join the NAACP for fear of Klan reprisals. Williams became president of the local chapter and increased membership from six to more than 200. But it was not until he got a charter from the NRA in 1957 and founded the Black Armed Guard that the Klan got their comeuppance in Monroe. Williams’ repeated thwarting of violent Klan attacks is described in his stirring book, “Negroes With Guns.” In one crucial battle, the Klan sieged the home of a black physician and his wife, but Williams and his Black Armed Guard stood sentry and repelled the larger, cowardly force. And that was the end of it. As the Klan found out, it’s not so much fun when the rabbit’s got the gun. The NRA’s proud history of fighting the Klan has been airbrushed out of the record by those who were complicit with the KKK, Jim Crow and racial terror, to wit: the Democrats. In the preface to “Negroes With Guns,” Williams writes: “I have asserted the right of Negroes to meet the violence of the Ku Klux Klan by armed self-defense — and have acted on it. It has always been an accepted right of Americans, as the history of our Western states proves, that where the law is unable, or unwilling, to enforce order, the citizens can, and must act in self-defense against lawless violence.” Contrary to MSNBC hosts, I do not believe the shooting in Florida is evidence of a resurgent KKK. But wherever the truth lies in that case, gun control is always a scheme of the powerful to deprive the powerless of the right to self-defense.

Schoolgirls in Afghanistan poisoned in anti-education attack; Taliban laughs at Obama’s charge of GOP War on Women

By Mohammad Hamid KUNDUZ, Afghanistan (Reuters) – About 150 Afghan schoolgirls were poisoned on Tuesday after drinking contaminated water at a high school in the country’s north, officials said, blaming it on conservative radicals opposed to female education. Since the 2001 toppling of the Taliban, which banned education for women and girls, females have returned to schools, especially in Kabul. But periodic attacks still occur against girls, teachers and their school buildings, usually in the more conservative south and east of the country, from where the Taliban insurgency draws most support. “We are 100 percent sure that the water they drunk inside their classes was poisoned. This is either the work of those who are against girls’ education or irresponsible armed individuals,” said Jan Mohammad Nabizada, a spokesman for education department in northern Takhar province. Some of the 150 girls, who suffered from headaches and vomiting, were in critical condition, while others were able to go home after treatment in hospital, the officials said. They said they knew the water had been poisoned because a larger tank used to fill the affected water jugs was not contaminated. “This is not a natural illness. It’s an intentional act to poison schoolgirls,” said Haffizullah Safi, head of Takhar’s public health department. None of the officials blamed any particular group for the attack, fearing retribution from anyone named. The Afghan government said last year that the Taliban, which has been trying to adopt a more moderate face to advance exploratory peace talks, had dropped its opposition to female education. But the insurgency has never stated that explicitly and in the past acid has been thrown in the faces of women and girls by hardline Islamists while walking to school. Education for women was outlawed by the Taliban government from 1996-2001 as un-Islamic.

Oh Hail the Chief of Excuses, Lies and, Dare I say, a Record.

Obama has to use tactics he may have learned from his buddy Hugo Chavez, otherwise a ham sandwich has a better chance of being elected then he has.