Bill Clinton honored at GLADD Awards

Former President Bill Clinton received the first advocate for change award at the annual GLAAD Media Awards, which celebrates inclusive representations of the LGBT community in the media.

By Michael Cidoni Lennox,?AP Entertainment Writer / April 21, 2013

Former US President Bill Clinton speaks on stage after he received the advocate for change award during the 24th Annual GLAAD Media Awards at JW Marriott Los Angeles in L.A.

Jonathan Alcorn/Reuters

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NBC's sitcom "The New Normal," FX's thriller "American Horror Story: Asylum" and NBC's daytime drama "Days of Our Lives" took home top TV honors at the 24th annual GLAAD Media Awards held Saturday night in Los Angeles.

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The GLAAD awards pay tribute to "inclusive representations of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community and the issues that affect their lives."

The event, hosted by actress-producer-director Drew Barrymore, boasted such Hollywood heavyweights as presenters Jennifer Morrison, Charlize Theron, Betty White and Leonardo DiCaprio.

Other winners included "Perks of Being a Wallflower," which was named outstanding film: wide release. Former President?Bill?Clinton?was given the first advocate for change award.

On the arrivals line, longtime?Clinton?friend, Oscar-winner Mary Steenburgen, defended the former president's controversial honor. Under?Clinton's?administration came the Defense of Marriage Act, which bars federal recognition of same-sex marriage, as well as the "don't ask, don't tell" military policy.

"Actually, ("don't ask, don't tell") was a sorrow for him," Steenburgen said. "So, I think he's spent a large part of his life making up for that. But I tell you this: He's never not had his heart in the right place, in terms of the gay community."

Many who walked the press gauntlet shared personal stories. Actor Justin Bartha said a brother's coming out moved him both personally and professionally.

"It was an inspiring moment ? I'm sure for him and definitely me and my whole family," Bartha noted. "So, it was at the forefront of my mind when looking at (the role of half of a gay couple in "The New Normal")."

"Kyle XY" actor Matt Dallas discussed his decision to come out publicly earlier this year. MSNBC news anchor Thomas Roberts talked about the recent marriage to his male partner of 12 years. Entertainment blogger Perez Hilton detailed the challenges of being the single gay parent of newly adopted child.

And transgendered Chaz Bono expressed hopes for the gay lesbian bisexual transgender community's future.

"I mean, I think the goal always has to be equality in all aspects under the law," he said. "You're never going to eradicate discrimination. We see that with other minorities. Racism is still, unfortunately, alive and well. But equal protection under the law makes a huge difference. So, I think, for me, that is the goal, that is the thing to strive for."

Additional 2013 GLAAD Media Awards were presented in New York on March 16. The final awards will be presented in San Francisco May 11.

On the web:?www.glaad.org

Follow Michael Cidoni Lennox at www.twitter.com/MikeCLennox

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/1uOwj4rXuZY/Bill-Clinton-honored-at-GLADD-Awards

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Newtown families: We'll keep fighting for gun law

WASHINGTON (AP) ? Disappointment. Disgust. Grossly unfair.

That's how some families who lost loved ones in December's massacre at a Connecticut elementary school view the Senate's defeat this past week of the most far-reaching gun control legislation in two decades, as they pledged to keep fighting for measures to prevent gun violence.

Neil Heslin, Erica Lafferty and Carlee Soto were among the Newtown, Conn., family members who spent a week on Capitol Hill describing how their loved ones died at Sandy Hook Elementary School on Dec. 14. But their stories of horror and heroism were no match for a threat from the National Rifle Association to rate the vote, and concern from Republicans and a small band of rural-state Democrats.

Lafferty, whose mother, school principal Dawn Hochsprung, lunged unarmed at the gunman to stop him from firing the assault weapon, said she was "honestly disgusted that there were so many senators that are doing nothing about the fact that my mom was gunned down in her elementary school, along with five other educators and 20 6- and 7-year-old children."

The Senate rejected on Wednesday a series of gun control bills that would have tightened background checks for buyers, banned assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines, and loosened restrictions on carrying concealed weapons across state lines, the last measure backed by the NRA.

Within hours of the votes, former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords accused senators who opposed the new regulations of "cowardice" in a piece published in the New York Times' op-ed page. Giffords was among 13 people wounded two years ago when a lone gunman opened fire as she met with constituents in a Tucson, Ariz., shopping mall, killing six others. She and her husband, retired astronaut Mark Kelly, had lobbied for the bills' passage.

On CBS' "Face the Nation," moderator Bob Schieffer asked Heslin, Lafferty and Soto Sunday whether the words "cowardice" and "cowards" were appropriate to describe Wednesday's vote.

"I do," said Heslin, who's 6-year-old son Neil Lewis died at Sandy Hook. "I feel they're not standing up for what they should be."

Carlee Soto, recounted her sister Victoria's courage to try to save her students, Neil Lewis among them.

"My sister wasn't a coward that day. My sister pushed the kids up against the wall, out of sight," she said, adding, "She protected her kids. Why aren't they protecting us?" referring to the senators who voted against the gun bills.

The families say the gun legislation would have strengthened laws already in effect rather than undercut the Second Amendment, which provides a constitutional right to bear arms.

"It's beyond me how these congressmen cannot stand up and support something that would prevent ? or help prevent ? something like this from ever occurring again," Heslin said.

"We aren't going to go away. I know I'm not," he added. "We're not going to stop until there are changes that are made."

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/89ae8247abe8493fae24405546e9a1aa/Article_2013-04-21-Gun%20Control-Families/id-25e1b3843970409b8922678e640f9798

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Tax Freedom Day - Bob Beauprez - Townhall Finance Conservative ...

Tax Freedom Day?is the day when the nation as a whole has earned enough money to pay off its total tax bill for the year.? Each Year, the Tax Foundations calculates that date, and for 2013 it's today, April 18.?

Not only do Americans have to work almost 30% of the year just to fund government, but the total amount of federal and state taxes paid will be $4.22 trillion ? and it won't come close to enough.? The federal government will borrow and spend almost a trillion dollars more than that!

From the Tax Foundation:

Tax Freedom Day 2013 is?April 18th. In 2013, Americans will pay $2.76 trillion in federal taxes and $1.45 trillion in state taxes, for a total tax bill of $4.22 trillion, or 29.4 percent of income. April 18 is 29.4 percent into the year.?

Read more

?

Family Small Businesses, the Heart of American Life

Source: http://townhall.com/columnists/bobbeauprez/2013/04/20/tax-freedom-day-n1573525

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In cyber war game, Air Force cadets fend off NSA hackers

Andrea Shalal-Esa , Reuters ? ? ? 7 hrs.

HANOVER, Maryland (Reuters) - A U.S. Air Force Academy team on Friday beat out rivals from other elite military colleges after a three-day simulated cyber "war" against hackers from the National Security Agency that is meant to teach future officers the importance of cybersecurity.

Nearly 60 government experts ? sitting under a black skull and crossbones flag ? worked around the clock this week to break into computer networks built by students at the Air Force, Army, Navy, Coast Guard and Merchant Marine academies. Two military graduate schools also participated.

The annual Cyber Defense Exercise (CDX), now in its 13th year, gives students real world practice in fighting off a increasing barrage of cyber attacks aimed at U.S. computer networks by China, Russia and Iran, among others.

It also allows the NSA's top cyber experts and others from military reserves, National Guard units and other agencies hone their offensive skills at a time when the Pentagon is trying to pump up its arsenal of cyber weapons.

While the students sleep or catch up on other work, some of the NSA's "red cell" attackers use viruses, so-called "Trojan horses" and other malicious software to corrupt student-built networks or steal data ? in this case, long sets of numbers dreamt up by the officials coordinating the exercise.

But the job gets tougher every year, says Raphael Mudge, an Air Force reservist who develops software and training to protect private computer networks.

"It's challenging. The students are hungry to win," said Mudge. "It forces all of us to get better."

Army General Keith Alexander, who heads both the Pentagon's Cyber Command and the NSA, stopped by to see the "red cell" hackers in action at a Lockheed Martin Corp facility near NSA headquarters on Thursday, said spokeswoman Vanee Vines.

Alexander often speaks about the need to get more young people engaged in cybersecurity given the exponential growth in the number and intensity of attacks on U.S. networks.

The Pentagon's budget for cyber operations rose sharply in the fiscal 2014 request sent to Congress, reflecting heightened concerns about an estimated $400 billion in intellectual property stolen from U.S. computer networks in recent years.

Martin Carlisle said his 28-member team fought hard for first place after a hardware failure the first day. It was their fourth win in 13 years.

"Our nation is under attack. We need to train up a new generation of leaders," he said.

Shawn Turskey, a senior NSA official, said the goal was to raise awareness among future military commanders.

"The real payoff of this program is going to be seen 10, 15 years down the road when these individuals are admirals and generals," he said.

Copyright 2013 Thomson Reuters.

Source: http://feeds.nbcnews.com/c/35002/f/653377/s/2af55f23/l/0L0Snbcnews0N0Ctechnology0Ctechnolog0Ccyber0Ewar0Egame0Eair0Eforce0Ecadets0Efend0Ensa0Ehackers0E6C9530A498/story01.htm

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PFT: Steelers-Ravens on Thanksgiving night on NBC

Getty Images

With the NFL Draft approaching, we?re taking a team-by-team look at the needs of each club. Up next is the team with the No. 24 overall selection, the Indianapolis Colts. The Colts are short a second-rounder (from the Vontae Davis trade) and a fifth, and are picking later in the order than many expected after last year?s surprising playoff season.

Guard: It?s tempting to put tackle in the top spot, but picking where they are, it?s not a certainty they could find an upgrade to the acceptable-not-great left tackle Anthony Castonzo in the Draft. And after spending huge free agent money on right tackle Gosder Cherilus, they can?t justify taking someone there.

But they can fix the pass protection from the inside out. Signing Donald Thomas was another early move, but getting some more help up the middle might allow them to improve, even with tackles that are closer to average than great.

Running back: The Colts have gotten by with a bunch of guys in the backfield, and at some point, they?re going to have to give quarterback Andrew Luck a little more help. New offensive coordinator Pep Hamilton is willing to run, and they need a little more personnel in the backfield.

Cornerback: After acquiring Davis last year, the Colts have used the fringes of free agency to check off boxes. They signed Greg Toler during their first-day drunken-sailor act, and he?s been good when he?s been well. But he?s not so good that they can ignore this position.

Outside linebacker: After saying goodbye to Dwight Freeney, the Colts need to add a pass-rusher to complement Robert Mathis. They gave Green Bay?s Erik Walden too much money (but good for him), but need an upgrade there as well. They talked about his ability to set the edge, but they need someone to sack the quarterback.

Wide receiver: Reggie Wayne is still great, and T.Y. Hilton emerged as a playmaker. And though they signed Darrius Heyward-Bey, they need to think of the long-term here, and find someone who will take up the torch when Wayne?s no longer there.

The Colts are in an interesting spot. They have a young quarterback on a cheap rookie contract, which gives them flexibility to do so many things. And credit to general manager Ryan Grigson for knowing what he needed, and moving aggressively to fill needs in free agency so he could draft for talent.

But with a pile of salary cap room, they spent on guys who were fortunate to receive the deals they did. While they filled a lot of lines on the depth chart, not all of the guys they signed this spring are difference-makers.

Luck could prove to be the ultimate deodorant, and keep an ordinary cast of characters competitive. But if they can?t find him some consistent help up front, it?s going to be hard for him to play at a high level, when he?s spending so much time on his back.

Source: http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2013/04/18/packers-lions-raiders-cowboys-steelers-ravens-on-thanksgiving/related/

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Video: China Factor: The Cost of Doing Business

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Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/video/cnbc/51581024/

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Too Many Pets and Not Enough Animals | Mother Jones

[This essay will appear in "Animals," the Spring 2013 issue of Lapham's Quarterly. This slightly adapted version is posted at Tom Dispatch and Mother Jones with the kind permission of that magazine.]

London housewife Barbara Carter won a "grant a wish" charity contest, and said she wanted to kiss and cuddle a lion. Wednesday night she was in a hospital in shock and with throat wounds. Mrs. Carter, forty-six, was taken to the lions' compound of the Safari Park at Bewdley Wednesday. As she bent forward to stroke the lioness, Suki, it pounced and dragged her to the ground. Wardens later said, "We seem to have made a bad error of judgment."

-- British news bulletin, 1976

Having once made a similar error of judgment with an Australian koala, I know it to be the one the textbooks define as the failure to grasp the distinction between an animal as an agent of nature and an animal as a symbol of culture. The koala was supposed to be affectionate, comforting, and cute. Of this I was certain because it was the creature of my own invention that for two weeks in the spring of 1959 I'd been presenting to readers of the San Francisco Examiner prior to its release by the Australian government into the custody of the Fleishacker Zoo.

The Examiner was a Hearst newspaper, the features editor not a man to ignore a chance for sure-fire sentiment, my task that of the reporter assigned to provide the advance billing. Knowing little or nothing about animals other than what I'd read in children's books or seen in Walt Disney cartoons, I cribbed from the Encyclopedia Britannica (Phascolarctos cinereus, ash-colored fur, nocturnal, fond of eucalyptus leaves), but for the most part I relied on A.A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh, the tales of Brer Rabbit, and archival images of President Teddy Roosevelt, the namesake for whom the teddy bear had been created and stuffed, in 1903 by a toy manufacturer in Brooklyn.

Stouthearted, benevolent, and wise, the koala incoming from the Antipodes was the little friend of all the world, and on the day of its arrival at the airport, I was carrying roses wrapped in a cone of newsprint. The features editor had learned his trade in Hollywood in the 1940s, and he had in mind a camera shot of my enfolding a teddy bear in a warm and welcoming embrace. "Lost child found in the wilderness," he had said. "Lassie comes home." The koala didn't follow script. Annoyed by the flashbulbs, clawing furiously at my head and shoulders, it bloodied my shirt and tie, shredded the roses, urinated on my suit and shoes.

The unpleasantness didn't make the paper. The photograph was taken before the trouble began, and so the next morning in print, there we were, the koala and I, man and beast glad to see one another, the San Francisco Examiner's very own Christopher Robin framed in the glow of an A-list fairy tale with Brer Rabbit, Teddy Roosevelt, and Winnie-the-Pooh, all for one and one for all as once had been our common lot in Eden.

The Pantomime of Brutes

Rumors and reports of human relations with animals are the world's oldest news stories, headlined in the stars of the zodiac, posted on the walls of prehistoric caves, inscribed in the languages of Egyptian myth, Greek philosophy, Hindu religion, Christian art, our own DNA. Belonging within the circle of humankind's intimate acquaintance until somewhere toward the end of the nineteenth century, animals appeared as both agents of nature and symbols of culture. Constant albeit speechless companions, they supplied energies fit to be harnessed or roasted, but they also were believed to possess qualities inherent in human beings, subject to the close observation of the ways in which man and beast both resembled and differed from one another.

Unable to deliver lectures, the lion and the elephant taught by example; so did the turtle, the wolf, and the ant. Aesop's Fables, composed in the sixth century BC, accorded with the further researches of Aristotle, who, about 200 years later, in his History of Animals, set up the epistemological framework that for the next two millennia incorporated the presence of animals in the center ring of what became known as Western civilization:

"Just as we pointed out resemblances in the physical organs, so in a number of animals we observe gentleness or fierceness, mildness or cross temper, courage or timidity, fear or confidence, high spirits or low cunning... Other qualities in man are represented by analogous and not identical qualities; for instance, just as in man we find knowledge, wisdom, and sagacity, so in certain animals there exists some other natural potentiality akin to these."

Other peoples in other parts of the world developed different sets of relations with animals worshipped as gods, but in the European theaters of operation, they served as teachers of both natural and political science. The more that was learned about their "analogous and not identical qualities," the more fabulous they became. Virgil's keeping of bees on his country estate in 30 BC led him in book four of the Georgics to admire their work ethic?"At dawn they pour forth from the gates?no loitering"; to applaud their sense of a public and common good?"they share the housing of their city,/passing their lives under exalted laws"; to approve of their chastity?"They forebear to indulge/in copulation or to enervate/their bodies in Venus' ways."

The studies of Pliny the Elder in the first century demonstrated to his satisfaction that so exceptional were the wonders of the animal kingdom that man by comparison "is the only animal that knows nothing and can learn nothing without being taught. He can neither speak, nor walk, nor eat, nor do anything without the prompting of nature, but only weep."

To the scientific way of looking at animals adapted by the Greco-Roman poets and philosophers, medieval Christianity added the dimension of science fiction?any and all agents of nature not to be trusted until or unless they had been baptized in the font of a symbol or herded into the cage of an allegory. In the illuminated pages of tenth-century bibles and the rose windows of Gothic cathedrals, the bee became a sign of hope, the crow and the goat both references to Satan, the fly indicative of lust, the lamb and the dove variant embodiments of Christ. Instead of remarking upon the extraordinary talents of certain animals, the holy fathers produced mythical beings, among them the dragon (huge, batwinged, fire breathing, barbed tail) and the unicorn (white body, blue eyes, the single horn on its forehead colored red at the tip).

The resurrection of classical antiquity in fifteenth-century Italy restored the emphasis on the observable correlation between man and beast. The anatomical drawings in Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks (of horses, swans, human cadavers) are works of art of a match with The Last Supper and the Mona Lisa. He saw human beings as organisms among other organisms participant in the great chain of being, the various life forms merging into one another in their various compounds of air, earth, fire, and water. Giuseppe Arcimboldo's 1566 portrait of a man's head anticipates the conclusion reached in 1605 by the English bishop Joseph Hall: "Mankind, therefore, hath within itself his goats, chameleons, salamanders, camels, wolves, dogs, swine, moles, and whatever sorts of beasts: there are but a few men amongst men."

The eighteenth-century naturalists shared with Virgil the looking to the animal kingdom for signs of good government. The Count of Buffon, keeper of the royal botanical garden for King Louis XV, recognized in 1767 the beaver as a master architect capable of building important dams, but he was even more impressed by the engineering of the beaver's civil society, by "some particular method of understanding one another, and of acting in concert? However numerous the republic of beavers may be, peace and good order are uniformly maintained in it."

Source: http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/03/lewis-lapham-animal-conquest

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