Today American taxpayers in more than 300 locations in all 50 states will hold rallies — dubbed “tea parties” — to protest higher taxes and out-of-control government spending. There is no political party behind these rallies, no grand right-wing conspiracy, not even a 501(c) group like MoveOn.org. So who’s behind the Tax Day tea parties? Ordinary folks who are using the power of the Internet to organize.
List of most wanted Mexican drug cartel members roaming around in the U.S. has been released.
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) for the first time has listed the eleven most-wanted Mexican drug-crime fugitives sought by the United States. The fugitives, all Mexican nationals, are members of Mexican drug cartels that are now considered to be the top organized crime threat to the United States, responsible for murderous violence along the U.S.-Mexico border in recent years.
Here is their front-page mission statement: “A site dedicated for American citizens monitoring and reporting all anti-obama activities taking place on the world wide web. A site dedicated to the preservation of truth, justice and the American way. Where true American citizens can monitor and report all anti-obama activities taking place on the world wide web. This is a place where one can post and report on all activities, web sites and or blogs that would be considered erroneous, slanderous or detrimental to the newly elected President of the United States. There are those who go under the disguise of patriotism who seek to undermine the President by reporting false allegations as truth and there by starting a incendiary viral campaigns based on lies and innuendo. This site is dedicated to exposing all of them. Bringing those guilty of playing with the fire of deceitful comments out of their secret little lairs, the forums where they think they are safe to discuss their hate mongering and racist ways and expose them to the light of day for all the public to see. They are extremely scared of this, so please for the sake of the American way, join our cause and root out these sites and post them for all the world to see.”
A woman was arrested guarding an arsenal that included an anti-aircraft machine gun — the first weapon of its kind seized in Mexico, police said Tuesday. The arsenal belonged to a group linked to the powerful Beltran Leyva drug cartel, federal police coordinator Gen. Rodolfo Cruz said. It also included ammunition, five rifles, a grenade and part of a grenade launcher.
As a deep recession strips Americans of their jobs, homes and investments, the 2009 U.S. tax season promises to see a large uptick in first-time delinquent income taxpayers. “Our calls are up 280 percent,” said Richard Boggs, founder and chief executive of Los Angeles-based Nationwide Tax Relief, a firm that helps delinquent taxpayers resolve tax issues.
Three media veterans plan to bundle the Internet content of newspaper and magazine publishers into a subscription package that will test Web surfers’ willingness to pay for material that has been given away for years. The system won’t be ready until the fall, but the plans were announced late Tuesday because so many publishers already are clamoring to sign up, said Steven Brill, co-chief executive of the new venture, called Journalism Online. “The interest in this came together a lot more quickly than we anticipated,” said Brill, the founder of Court TV and American Lawyer magazine. “We are dancing as fast as we can now.”
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American snipers are already center-of-the-bullseye accurate – just look at the three shots that ended the Somali pirate standoff in the Indian Ocean. But tomorrow’s sharpshooters could be even sharper still, if a slew of Pentagon research projects work out as planned.
U.S. officials, in deciding how to handle the lone surviving pirate from the hostage-taking of an American ship captain, must weigh the violence of the suspect’s actions against his surprisingly young age. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Monday the four pirates were between 17 and 19 years old.
Authorities had previously put the surviving Somali suspect’s age at somewhere from 16 to 20. He surrendered Sunday, leaving a covered lifeboat where he and three other pirates had been holding merchant Capt. Richard Phillips hostage. Shortly after his surrender, the three others were killed by snipers. Phillips was rescued unharmed. “Untrained teenagers with heavy weapons,” Gates told a group of students and faculty at the Marine Corps War College. “Everybody in the room knows the consequences of that.”
Knuckleheads swipe tombstones from veterans’ graves, use them for backyard patio.
Talk about committing a grave offense. Two Nevada state employees are being investigated for taking home 77 gravestones from a veterans cemetery and turning the stones into a new patio, officials said.
An administration official says a former Justice Department law enforcement coordinator has been picked to be the Southwest border czar — a position created by the Obama administration. The official says Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is expected to name Alan Bersin to the position tomorrow during her second border trip. The official would speak only on condition of anonymity ahead of the announcement.
When a Smart Fortwo collided with a Mercedes-Benz C-Class sedan, in new crash tests done by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, the little Smart car went airborne and did what amounted to a pirouette. The news was not much better when the institute crashed a Honda Fit into a Honda Accord, and a Toyota Yaris into a Toyota Camry.
In the wake of a school massacre in March in which 16 died, a courthouse shooting and numerous other gun deaths, all political parties have agreed the rules need to be severely tightened. There are ten million registered guns in the country and an estimated 10 million more illegal ones.
The Liberty Sun, a U.S.-flagged cargo ship bound for Mombasa, Kenya, was attacked Tuesday by Somali pirates, according to a NATO source with direct knowledge of the matter. “The pirates fired rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons at the vessel, which sustained damage,” said a statement from New York-based Liberty Maritime Corporation, which owns the vessel. The ship was carrying U.S. food aid for African nations, the statement said.
Fiat may walk away from deal with Chrysler if UAW refuses to offer concessions.
Automaker Fiat Group SpA will walk away from a deal to take a 20-percent stake in Chrysler LLC if the U.S. automaker’s unions don’t agree to major cost cuts, Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne said in an interview published Wednesday. Fiat and Chrysler are up against an April 30 deadline for Fiat to take a stake in the failing U.S. automaker in exchange for small car technology, but Chrysler first needs concessions from creditors and unions to ink the Fiat deal. If the Fiat alliance isn’t finalized by then, the U.S. government has threatened not to provide any more aid and let Chrysler be sold off in pieces.