Gay City

Gay City: While two New York town clerks resigned their jobs rather than violate their religious beliefs by signing marriage licenses for gay and lesbian couples, a third town clerk who also claims to have religious objections to gay marriage will hire a temporary deputy clerk to process marriage licenses in her office and keep her job in an upstate town.

“Most towns this size have a deputy in the budget,” Rose Marie Belforti, the Ledyard town clerk, said at a September 12 town meeting. “They have a line item for the salary of a deputy. I do not. I do all the work myself and I rarely hire a deputy.”

Belforti was quoted in the Citizen, a newspaper serving Cayuga County, which posted the article on auburnpub.com. The paper paraphrased Belforti saying that “the town paid for the services of deputy clerks since 2005 and the highest amount paid out was $200 in 2010.”

A September 27 story about Belforti in the New York Times presented her as a deeply religious person who has moral objections to homosexuality. This unusual hiring of temporary clerks just to handle marriage licenses suggests that Belforti is as concerned with keeping her job as she is with not processing licenses for gay and lesbian couples.

Belforti first informed the town board of her objections at its August 8 meeting, when she gave them a memo prepared by the Alliance Defense Fund, a right-wing legal group that now represents her.

As town clerk, Belforti takes the minutes at town meetings. Her description of her actions is generous.

*
“Town Clerk Rose Marie Belforti gave a memo for Town Clerks who are opposed to processing same-sex marriage applications based on religious beliefs to the Town Board,” she wrote. “The memo was from the Alliance Defense Fund, a nonprofit organization that defends the right to hear and speak the truth through strategy, training, funding, and litigation. She informed the Town Board that she would be compromising her Christian moral conscience if she were to participate in the same-sex marriage licensing procedure.”

The memo was forwarded to Adam Van Buskirk, the Ledyard city attorney, who did not respond to emails and a call seeking comment.

A September 1 story in the Citizen indicated that by then the town had decided to hire temporary clerks to handle marriage licenses. The temporary clerks will work only when a marriage license has to be processed, so those seeking to wed are required to make appointments in advance.

“The clerk, until this matter is resolved, is not doing any marriage licenses,” the Citizen quoted Ledyard Councilman Jim Frisch saying. “At least, that’s what she has agreed to. In the interim, appointed deputy clerks will attend to all marriage licenses, but these deputy clerks are not there at all times.”

Ledyard appears to have gone to great lengths to accommodate Belforti. No other New York municipality or county is known to have made such an arrangement. Aside from the two town clerks who resigned, another who has religious objections to gay marriage stopped presiding at weddings, but still processes marriage licenses.

There are 932 town clerks in New York.

What is not clear is how the town will police Belforti to ensure that she does not issue marriage licenses to heterosexual couples who may come to the office without an appointment.

On August 30, Katie Carmichael and Deirdre DiBiaggio sought a marriage license at the Ledyard town clerk’s office, but were denied one by Belforti.

The couple were accompanied by Arthur J. Bellinzoni, a board member at People For the American Way Foundation (PFAW), a liberal advocacy group. Bellinzoni contacted PFAW on August 15 to alert the organization to Belforti’s position on marriage, according to Debbie Liu, PFAW’s general counsel. Liu said that Bellinzoni and the couple are friends and PFAW and the two women did not plan to challenge Belforti. PFAW is representing the couple.

Belforti may have committed a crime when she denied a license to the couple. It is a misdemeanor in New York for a public official to knowingly refrain “from performing a duty which is imposed upon him by law or is clearly inherent in the nature of his office.”

Jon E. Budelmann, the Cayuga County district attorney, is investigating, but any action hinges on finding that Belforti intended to deprive the couple of a benefit.

“I think they clearly have the right to the license and she had no right to refuse it,” Budelmann told Gay City News. “The issue is does it rise to the level of a crime.”

The matter appears to be at a stand off currently with the couple the pondering a lawsuit. Ledyard officials and Eric M. Schneiderman, the state attorney general, did not respond to requests for comment.

Read more »

Lesbian

Lesbian: Thomas Lobel, who calls himself Tammy, is undergoing controversial hormone-blocking treatment in Berkeley, California, to stop him going through puberty as a boy.

His lesbian mothers, who adopted him aged two, said they had been criticised by friends and family, but insisted they had not forced their son to become a girl.

Debra Lobel and Pauline Moreno said one of the first things Thomas told them when he learnt sign language at three, because of a speech impediment, was, "I am a girl".Tammy, now 11, wears dresses and effectively lives as a girl.

Ms Moreno and Ms Lobel said their son, who they claimed was depressed at a younger age and threatened to


Start of sidebar. Skip to end of sidebar.End of sidebar. Return to start of sidebar.chop off his penis, was now much happier.

The couple were married in 1990 by a rabbi, according to Ms Moreno's Facebook page, and have two older sons and grandchildren.

Ms Moreno said Thomas was shy and unhappy as a boy compared with his older, outgoing, athletic brothers.

He liked to read Wonder Woman comic books and play with dolls, and shunned baseball hats, preferring rhinestone hair accessories.

At seven, after Thomas threatened genital self-mutilation, therapists and psychiatrists diagnosed him with gender identity disorder.

A year later, his mothers allowed him to start the transition to becoming female by letting him wear bras and dresses.

"As soon as we let him put on a dress, his personality changed from a very sad kid who sat still, didn't do much of anything, to a very happy little girl who was thrilled to be alive," Ms Moreno told CNN.

This year Thomas started taking hormone-blocking drugs to postpone development of broad shoulders, deep voice and facial hair associated with puberty.

The diagnosis has been hard for Ms Moreno and Ms Lobel to accept, but they insisted their sexuality had nothing to do with it.

Ms Moreno said people had thought: "We're pushing her to do this. I'm a lesbian. My partner is a lesbian. That suddenly falls into the fold, 'Oh, you want her to be part of the lifestyle you guys live'."

The mothers said the hormone treatment would give Thomas time to decide whether to make the full transition to a female or go through puberty as a boy.

If he stopped taking the drugs, he would undergo male puberty at a later stage but his future fertility would not be affected.

To become an adult female, he could take female hormones, which would raise his voice, grow breasts and develop other feminine physical characteristics.

Ms Moreno and Ms Lobel have been married since 1990, when they were joined in a commitment ceremony by their rabbi.

San Francisco, right by Berkeley, is one of four cities in the United States with a hospital that has a program for transgender children.

The University of California San Francisco is home to the Center of Excellence for Transgender Health.

Children are seen at length by mental health professionals and then treated by pediatric endocrinologists.

Read more »

Stacey Dash

Stacey Dash: Stacey Dash isn't one of TV's "Single Ladies" anymore, but she's finally a single lady in real life, thanks to a judge's decision to sign off on her divorce from Emmanuel Xuereb.

The 45-year-old actress -- who took her "Clueless" diva Dionne from film to TV in the '90s, and recently decided to walk away from VH1's Atlanta-based "Ladies" -- had filed for divorce from Xuereb in January 2010.

She obtained a restraining order at the same time, alleging that over the two years they were married Xuereb had repeatedly hit her in the face, head and body. The split was official last week, TMZ said Friday.

"I have to be back in L.A. with my children right now and the 'Single Ladies' shooting location makes that impossible," Dash said in August about leaving the show. The one-time Playboy model -- she posed at age 40, but sure as heck didn't look 40 -- has a son and a daughter, both born before her marriage to Xeureb.

The marriage to actor-producer Xeureb was Dash's third, and she's been engaged six times, she told Wendy Williams in March 2010. Why so much action in the weddings-and-engagements department? "You know what happened is I slept with all of my husbands on the first date, they said, 'Marry me' and I said, 'Yes!,' " Dash explained.

Read more »

Anwar Al Awlaki

Anwar Al Awlaki: When President Obama addressed the nation about the death of high-profile al Qaeda cleric Anwar al-Awlaki Anwar al-Awlaki today, he said the drone strike that took out the U.S.-born radical removed the man who "took the lead in planning and directing efforts to murder innocent Americans."

While al-Awlaki was not the trigger-man in any of the 19 terror operations to which he is linked, U.S. officials and terror experts said that his hand was visible in all of them -- whether by simply pushing the attackers over the violent edge or by personally guiding them through operations.

"There's no question that Anwar al-Awlaki was the modern day terrorist," said Seth Jones, a terror analyst at the RAND Corporation and U.S. government consultant. "He used a combination of involvement in operations... and an almost unparalleled use of social media -- YouTube, broader internet sites, Facebook, Twitter -- to get his propaganda messages out."

In one instance in particular, Jones said al-Awlaki was a hands-on player in the attempt by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to blow up Northwest flight 253 with a bomb in his underwear on Christmas Day in 2009 after Abdulmutallab traveled to Yemen and met al-Awlaki.

"Al-Awlaki actually helped get him in a jihadi camp, helped him get access to the underwear bomb and then actually walked him through [it]," Jones said. "He wanted [Abdulmutallab] to wait to explode [the bomb] over American airspace."
PHOTO: Anwar al-Awlaki, Nidal Hasan and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab
Muhammad ud-Deen/AP Photo|Bell County Sheriff's Office via Getty Images|U.S. Marshals Service/AP Photo
Imam Anwar al-Awlaki, U.S. Maj. Nidal Hasan... View Full Size
PHOTO: Anwar al-Awlaki, Nidal Hasan and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab
Muhammad ud-Deen/AP Photo|Bell County Sheriff's Office via Getty Images|U.S. Marshals Service/AP Photo
Imam Anwar al-Awlaki, U.S. Maj. Nidal Hasan and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, left to right, are shown in these file photos.

Al-Awlaki also taught Abdulmutallab to avoid detection while traveling internationally before the doomed plot, Jones said.

"So there was actually direct operational-level and strategic-level guidance to the bomber himself," he said. "This is more than just recruitment."

In their remarks today, both Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton noted al-Awlaki's direct involvement in the Christmas Day plot.

Other times, al-Awlaki appeared to be able to push potential recruits into action from thousands of miles away. A month before Adbulmutallab failed to blow up Northwest flight 253, prosecutors say U.S. Maj. Nidal Hasan opened fire on a Texas Army base, killing 13 people and wounding another 30. Investigators later found Hasan had exchanged several emails with al-Awlaki in which al-Awlaki justified the planned killings.

In some cases, al-Awlaki did not have to speak directly to the recruit at all.

In July 2011, a Brooklyn man was convicted of planning to travel to the Middle East to join the jihad and kill U.S. soldiers there, according to the FBI. In the course of their investigation, federal officials found "the defendant had been radicalized, in part, by Internet speeches by Anwar al-Awlaki..."

"The tone, the subject, then his ability to push it out through multiple media made him really an unprecedented al Qaeda terrorist," Jones said

Yemen analyst Gregory Johnsen agreed, saying it was not in his operational skills, but his rhetoric that made al-Awlaki invaluable to the terror organization.

"What sort of an impact will [al-Awlaki's death] have on the so-called 'lone-wolf' terrorist?" Johnsen said. "That is, those individuals, those often English-speaking individuals living in the West who seem to be inspired, if not encouraged to carry out attacks by al-Awlaki. And that is where al-Awlaki was a unique voice and someone that a group like al Qaeda will have a difficult time replacing."

Read more »

Martyn

Martyn: But having scored his first in City colours at Doncaster in midweek, and partnered Fryatt for the first time at the Tigers, Waghorn is confident more goals will follow.

"Sooner or later a team is going to see what we can do and hopefully it's not too far round the corner," Waghorn told the Mail.

"Matty and I have a good understanding of how we both like to play. We can both go behind, we can both come short, we are both comfortable on the ball, so it looks promising.

"We bonded before at Leicester, where we played well, but it's going to take a bit of time for us to click again here."

City's last goal double in the league came back in April, with a 4-2 loss to Middlesbrough.

That was 12 games ago, and having dropped four points this week by surrendering 1-0 leads against the bottom two clubs, Waghorn admits it has been a concern to the players.

"We do share those frustrations at times because we have a lot of attacking quality," Waghorn said.

"Sometimes, you think let's get the ball forward and create as many chances as we can.

"If we had got the second goal then I think the game would have been dead as we could have gone on to get two or three goals.

"But we can grind out results if we score just the one goal because we have a good defence."

Despite concerns over City's strike rate, a 1-1 draw at Doncaster extended their unbeaten run to five games, leaving them in the promotion race.

And they head into of Saturday's home clash with Cardiff City full of confidence.

"Cardiff will be a different proposition to Doncaster, they will play the ball and they will want to attack more often," Waghorn said.

"This is where me and Matty can hit them on the counter attack and we'll bear that in mind.

"People are disappointed that we dropped two points at Doncaster. But we haven't lost since the last international break.

"We have the positives and we will keep building. Not many teams put a five-game unbeaten run together in this league and if you do you can go places."

MARTYN Waghorn has been called up for England under-21s' Euro 2013 qualifiers against Iceland on October 6 and Norway on October 11.

Read more »

Pawpaw

Pawpaw: Current 2012 GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum apologized Thursday night for a misunderstanding that led the former senator to publicly call for a ban on pawpaw, a mango-like fruit that grows along the banks of the Potomac and across large swaths of Southern,

Southeastern and Midwest states. The fruit was popular throughout the 1700s and 1800s, but has only recently been rediscovered and commercialized. And because food scientists have found an abundance of nutrients in the pawpaw and a high antioxidant count, demand for the produce has been high. The fruit, slightly testicular in appearance, is also referred to as a Hoosier banana.

Today, after an embarrassing PR blunder, Rick Santorum’s campaign issued a written apology from the White House hopeful: “Until this afternoon,

I had never heard of a pawpaw. When I learned that scores of young men were rafting up river through the woods in search of a ‘wonder fruit’ called ‘papa,’ I made a false assumption, though with the best of intentions. Then I saw pictures of a man holding something resembling a giant pair of truck nuts. And I’ll tell you, where I come from,

the phrases ‘Hoosier banana’ and ‘Ohio Papa Festival’ mean something entirely different. To the growers of the pawpaw and those straight Americans interested in exploring the mysteries of this edible fruit, not the kind I thought,

I apologize for calling on Congress to ban the pawpaw as a parasitic menace that could cause men to engage in any variety of aberrant gay sex acts with equally confusing, fruit-related names such as Caramel Apple, Thornberry Prickle Pit, Pear Bottom, Rumpkin Pie ala Moe, Soursop Dew Honey and Prune Tang.”

Read more »

Holly Madison

Holly Madison: Holly Madison, reality star of “Holly’s World” is insuring her “money makers.”

According to Ace Show Biz, 31-year-old Madison is insuring her 34DD breasts for a cool million—She’s taken out a $1 million insurance policy on her breasts with Lloyd’s of London insurance company.

She recently told People, ”I’ve heard about people getting bodyparts insured and I thought, why not? Because if anything happened to my boobs, I’d be out for a few months and I’d probably be out a million dollars.”

“I thought I’d cover my assets,” she added. ”I think it’s kind of funny. I think they’re getting the credit they deserve. They’re my primary money makers right now.”

According to Pop Watch, she’s not the first to insure her assets, Dolly Parton has her breasts insured while Adam Lambert’s crotch was covered for $1 million and Celine Dion reportedly had her voice insured.

Holly first made headlines when she starred in reality TV show, “The Girls Next Door,” alongside boyfriend Hugh Hefner and his two other girlfriends, Bridget Marquardt and Kendra Wilkinson.

After her departure from the hit reality show and relationship, she moved to Las Vegas where she began starring in “Peep Show,” a Vegas show in which she appears topless, the main reason for the insurance. She also stars in reality show, “Holly’s World,” that documents her single life in Vegas.

Read more »

Listeria

Listeria: Health officials say as many as 16 people have died from possible listeria illnesses traced to Colorado cantaloupes, the deadliest food outbreak in more than a decade.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said Tuesday that 72 illnesses, including 13 deaths, are linked to the tainted fruit. State and local officials say they are investigating three additional deaths that may be connected.

The death toll released by the CDC Tuesday — including newly confirmed deaths in Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska and Texas — surpassed the number of deaths linked to an outbreak of salmonella in peanuts almost three years ago. Nine people died in that outbreak.

The CDC said Tuesday that they have confirmed two deaths in Texas and one death each in in Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska. Last week the CDC reported two deaths in Colorado, four deaths in New Mexico, one in Oklahoma and one in Maryland.

New Mexico officials said Tuesday they are investigating a fifth death, while health authorities in Kansas and Wyoming said they too are investigating additional deaths possibly linked to the tainted fruit.

Listeria is more deadly than well-known pathogens like salmonella and E. coli, though those outbreaks generally cause many more illnesses. Twenty-one people died in an outbreak of listeria poisoning in 1998 traced to contaminated hot dogs and possibly deli meats made by Bil Mar Foods, a subsidiary of Sara Lee Corp. Another large listeria outbreak in 1985 killed 52 people and was linked to Mexican-style soft cheese.

Listeria generally only sickens the elderly, pregnant women and others with compromised immune systems. The CDC said the median age of those sickened is 78 and that one in five who contract the disease can die.

Dr. Robert Tauxe of the CDC says the number of illnesses and deaths will probably grow in coming weeks because the symptoms of listeria don't always show up right away. It can take four weeks or more for a person to fall ill after eating food contaminated with listeria.

"That long incubation period is a real problem," Tauxe said. "People who ate a contaminated food two weeks ago or even a week ago could still be falling sick weeks later."

Read more »

Andy Rooney

Andy Rooney: On Tuesday, CBS announced that the legendary Andy Rooney would be making his last regular appearance on 60 Minutes this upcoming Sunday. Rooney, who is now 92, has spent 33 years with the venerable newsmagazine.

Rooney has held the time slot at the end of 60 Minutes since 1979. There, he has made a name for himself with his musings on life and the changing times. He is known by many for his sometimes strange delivery and odd choice of topics.

And while some of his rants have seemed ridiculous over the years, Rooney is a powerful figure in American journalism. He has been producing TV essays since 1964 and has written 16 books in his career. He has also won four Emmy awards and various Writers Guild awards.

But to most, he will always be remembered as the Andy Rooney of the last two minutes of 60 Minutes. And while occupying that time slot, Rooney has given us some real masterpiece rants.

I’ve decided to compile a Greatest Hits playlist with the help of YouTube – in no particular order.

Read more »

Herman Cain

Herman Cain: Reporting from Orlando, Fla. -- In a startling embarrassment for the Republican presidential front-runner, Texas Gov. Rick Perry was tripped up by businessman Herman Cain in a straw ballot of Florida Republican activists Saturday that Perry himself had touted as an important measure of the field.

The vote has no bearing on the choice of a 2012 nominee but, along with recent campaign events, is likely to increase the chances that the Republican presidential contest will tighten.  It comes on the heels of a performance by Perry in a Florida debate Thursday night that disappointed conservatives, including delegates who came to Orlando expecting to back the Texas governor.

Cain received 37% of the vote. Perry, who made by far the most extensive effort, was a distant second with 15%.  He barely edged out Mitt Romney, who did not compete here, at 14%.  He was followed by Rick Santorum, 11%; Ron Paul, 10%; Newt Gingrich, 8% and Jon Huntsman, 2%.

Michele Bachmann, who scored a high-profile straw vote victory in Iowa last month, finished last, with less than 2%. The Minnesota congresswoman, like Romney, chose not to compete in the Florida ballot.

As it became increasingly clear that Perry was faltering, a prominent Perry supporter, state Rep. Matt Gaetz, claimed in a Twitter post that Romney’s campaign had been encouraging its backers to vote for Cain.  A competing rumor, hours earlier, had the Romney camp secretly supporting Ron Paul.

But interviews with delegates indicated that a far more likely reason for Perry’s defeat: a subpar performance in a Florida debate two days earlier—in which he fumbled answers and alienated social conservatives by calling critics of his immigration record “heartless.”

Cain, as he has done at similar activist events around the country, swept the crowd away with an impassioned speech urging the 3,000 delegates to “send Washington a message” that the nation is “ready for a problem solver, not another politician.”  The Atlanta businessman was one of only three candidates to appear in person; Gingrich and Santorum were the others.

Cain’s message struck a chord with delegates like Jeff Lukens, 54, who came to the Orange County Convention Center expecting to vote for Perry but said the Texas governor gave "a disappointing performance in the debate."

The Republican activist said he had recognized that debating "is probably not [Perry's] forte" but still was surprised by the governor's performance Thursday night. Lukens, who also attended the GOP debate in his hometown of Tampa last week, said he gave Perry "a pass" on the immigration issue, because he's a border-state governor.  But he found the Texan’s answer on a question about Pakistan to be "incoherent."

Going into the nonbinding popularity contest, Perry invested far more money and manpower than his GOP presidential rivals.

At a lavish buffet breakfast Saturday, provided free by his campaign to convention delegates, Perry said his rivals were making “a big mistake” to skip the event.

“Ronald Reagan understood how important it was in ’79, and that’s the reason I’m here today,” said the Texas governor, who left town after mingling with hundreds of breakfast guests for about an hour.  The delegates who ate Perry’s scrambled eggs, bacon and  ho gave his eight-minute breakfast speech a rather perfunctory reception.

Perry’s defeat was also a significant blow to the Florida Republican Party.  State GOP officials had heavily promoted what they described as their straw ballot’s predictive power.

“As Florida goes, so goes the nation, and as you go, so goes Florida,” Republican Gov. Rick Scott told the delegates, after pointing out that that the winners of earlier editions—Reagan in 1979, George H.W. Bush in 1987 and Bob Dole in 1995—went on to become the GOP nominee the next year.

Cain, who invested more time than money into the Florida convention, spent three days in and around Orlando, parked his campaign bus outside the convention center and played host to hundreds of delegates at a hotel reception the night before the vote.

However, his lightly funded campaign has virtually no infrastructure, little organization and remains far behind the leaders in the polls. Even those who voted for him Saturday said they don’t expect him to win the Florida primary this winter.

Lukens said he treated the straw ballot like a pre-season football game, rather than an actual primary vote. "I know Cain isn't going to be nominated," he said. "This was an opportunity to vote how you really feel."

Read more »

Rick Santorum

Rick Santorum:  Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum has decided to do something about his Google problem, reportedly calling on the company to eliminate dirty search results connected to his name.

Just type his name into the search browser and you'll see why. Instead of campaign websites and Wikipedia pages, the top two results for "Santorum" link to foul, sex-related definitions of the former Pennsylvania senator's name that were circulated by gay rights activist and prankster columnist Dan Savage.

In response to comments the former Senator made in 2003 equating homosexuality with polygamy and incest, Savage launched an online competition to redefine the word "Santorum."

The winning result is not child-approved, to say the least, and Santorum, 53, is fed up with the "filth," as he calls it. The White House hopeful has reportedly called on Google to filter the unflattering search results, which have topped the list for more than six years.

"I suspect if something was up there like that about Joe Biden, they'd get rid of it," he told Politico. "If you're a responsible business, you don't let things like that happen in your business that have an impact on the country."

The White House hopeful added that "to have a business allow that type of filth to be purveyed through their website or through their system is something that they say they can't handle but I suspect that's not true."

The campaign has yet to return a request for comment.

Google's response: Don't blame the messenger, blame the webmaster.

"Google's search results are a reflection of the content and information that is available on the Web," company spokesman Gabriel Stricker said in a statement. "Users who want content removed from the Internet should contact the webmaster of the page directly.

"Once the webmaster takes the page down from the Web, it will be removed from Google's search results through our usual crawling process."

Stricker added that Google does "not remove content from our search results, except in very limited cases such as illegal content and violations of our webmaster guidelines."

While Santorum has criticized both Savage and Google multiple times for the search results, he also used the issue to raise campaign donations.

"Savage and his perverted sense of humor is the reason why my children cannot Google their father's name," Santorum wrote in a July letter to campaign supporters, according to Politico. "That is why I need your support today, and your contribution of $25, $50, $100 or $250 to my campaign. You can help right now by making a small or large contribution to my campaign. Don't let Dan Savage and the extreme left win."

In the 2003 interview with the Associated Press, Santorum said homosexual acts "undermine the basic tenets of our society and the family."

"If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your home," Santorum said in the interview, "then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything. Does that undermine the fabric of our society? I would argue yes, it does."

Read more »

X Factor Judges

X Factor Judges: Simon Cowell was back at the judges' desk, along with his pal Paula Abdul and music producer L.A. Reid. We also got to see British judge Cheryl Cole in the first hour before she was replaced by former Sing-Off judge and Pussycat Doll Nicole Scherzinger.

Although there had been buzz that Cole's accent was too much for American audiences, Simon told Piers Morgan this week that he axed Cole because she looked "bewildered" on the panel.

As for Scherzinger? She's not faring well with critics. USA TODAY's Brian Mansfield writes in today's Idol Chatter blog, "When she goes into her little-girl act, judge/mentor Nicole Scherzinger makes Paula Abdul look smart."

The New York Times said Nicole is "a downgrade" from Cheryl.

The Chicago Tribune notes "Scherzinger doesn't come off as an obvious improvement in the early going. She's more earnest like Kara DioGuardi than lovable like Jennifer Lopez."

And TV Guide wondered why the change was necessary, saying, "Cheryl was awesome, made total sense and was adorable to boot."

Read more »

Fullerton Police Beating

Fullerton Police Beating: Fullerton police have voided three citations given to motorists who extensively honked their horns in support of the protest last Saturday over Kelly Thomas’ death following a violent altercation with police officers.

As the Orange County district attorney and federal authorities continue to investigate the homeless man's beating on July 5 after he was wrestled to the ground by six Fullerton police officers, protesters have packed downtown on a weekly basis to express their anger at authorities and encouraged motorists to support their cause.

Fullerton Police Sgt. Andrew Goodrich said the department received numerous complaints from residents and businesses in recent weeks and last weekend sought to curtail the excessive honking and began issuing citations.

Goodrich said police spoke to protest organizers on Friday and Saturday about the complaints and asked them to stop encouraging the honking. When they failed to comply, officers cited three drivers.

Those drivers were initially cited for violating a California vehicle code section which state horns can be used "when reasonably necessary to insure safe operation" of a vehicle. In those citations, he said, the drivers leaned on the horns continuously for several blocks. "We are not talking a few seconds of noise here," he said.

Goodrich, however, said the police captain opted to void the first ticket given to a motorist because the individual told the department he did not understand what was acceptable.

"The captain gave him the benefit of the doubt and then chose to void the other two citations," Goodrich said. "We have been trying to be as accommodating as possible to the protesters. We have blocked off streets."

In the aftermath of Saturday’s citations, protesters took to social media questioning whether the officers were targeting department critics, who have gathered near the corner of Commonwealth and South Highland avenues. 

According to witness accounts, officers beat Kelly and shocked him with a Taser multiple times until he was unconscious. He died five days later after being removed from life support.

Last week, Kelly Thomas' father, Ron Thomas, and his attorney Garo Mardirossian released medical records from UC Irvine Medical Center, where Kelly died.

The sheriff-coroner’s office has not determined a cause of death and is awaiting toxicology and other test results, but the medical records released by Thomas show the immediate cause of death was "brain death" due to "head trauma" from the incident.

According to the records Ron Thomas provided, Kelly Thomas suffered brain injuries, a shattered nose, a smashed cheekbone, broken ribs and severe internal bleeding.

District attorney’s officials have said they are awaiting the coroner’s report before concluding their investigation. The FBI is also investigating the incident, and the city of Fullerton has hired an outside consultant to review practices in the Police Department.

Read more »

Troy Davis

Troy Davis: AVANNAH, Ga. (AP) — Did Troy Anthony Davis deserve to be on Georgia's death row? The answer depends on one's faith in the system and its many procedural hoops.

Trial witnesses recanted what they'd sworn to police, and jurors even questioned their verdict. Activists, some of them death-penalty supporters, protested by the thousands that he was innocent — or at least that guilt was hopelessly shrouded in reasonable doubt.

But do those "supposed recantations," asks law professor Michael Mears, constitute a mountain of evidence? Or were they, as prosecutors claim, just a molehill, fabricated by death penalty opponents?

A close review of Davis' two-decade legal odyssey sheds some light, if not a clear-cut resolution.

It suggests that a good deal of the witnesses' hedging on what they'd seen the night of the murder was not new — that jurors had heard it at trial. Davis' attorneys missed "opportunities" that might have changed the outcome of appeals.

Finally, executive clemency is meant to be a guard against unfair trials and shoddy defense work — but that fail-safe failed here, critics say.

Mears, an associate professor at Atlanta's John Marshall Law School, feels that Davis didn't belong on death row for the 1989 slaying of Savannah police officer Mark MacPhail. But after reading much of the transcript and the "so-called affidavits," he concedes that a reasonable jury could have found him guilty of murder.

"I don't know of any other way that the system could have processed Troy Anthony Davis's case other than the way it has," Mears says.

A review of the case starts at the crime scene.

MacPhail was off-duty but working security at a Greyhound bus station the night of Aug. 19, 1989, when he rushed to the aid of a homeless man who was being beaten. The 27-year-old officer was shot twice — once each in the face and chest — and died in a Burger King parking lot.

Davis, 20, who had dropped out of high school to help care for an ill sibling, turned himself in four days later.

During the trial, Davis testified that he was with Sylvester Coles when his companion got in a scuffle with Larry Young over a beer. He said Coles began beating the man, and that Young's calls for help attracted MacPhail.

Davis testified he started walking away, then began running when he saw a police officer heading toward them.

"I didn't see the shooting, you know," Davis testified. His attorney, Robert Falligant, tried to persuade jurors that Coles was the real killer.

But Coles testified that it was Davis who had been arguing with Young, and that Davis hit the man in the head with a gun. Coles said he ran when he saw a police officer approaching, and then heard gunshots. He told jurors he never saw the shooter.

Coles, who has never been charged in the case, still lives in Savannah. No one answered the door at his apartment when an Associated Press reporter knocked this week. He has not changed his testimony.

There was no DNA evidence implicating Davis. No fingerprints. Not even a gun.

There were casings from bullets of the caliber that killed MacPhail. An expert from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation linked them to shells found at the scene of a non-fatal shooting a few hours earlier.

But firearms examiner Roger Parian could only say that the .38-caliber shell casings appeared to have come from same gun.

"In this particular case, I couldn't unequivocally say it was the same gun," he testified.

Davis was convicted of both shootings. For MacPhail's slaying, he received the death penalty.

Protesters have made much of the notion that several key witnesses in Davis 1991 trial recanted or significantly altered their statements, and that much of that has not been allowed into the record. But a review of the trial transcript supports what prosecutors have long held:

That several of the these "new" statements largely rehash doubts and second thoughts the witnesses had already voiced in front of the trial jury 20 years ago.

Read more »

Dancing With The Stars Results

Dancing With The Stars Results: Army veteran J.R. Martinez and his professional partner Karina Smirnoff learned in the second half of tonight's “Dancing with the Stars” results show that they would be advancing to the second week of the competition. That outcome should not have been in doubt after they landed in a tie for first place with an emotionally expressive Viennese Waltz on Monday night that brought the audience to its feet.

Martinez is an Iraq war veteran and former infantry soldier with Fort Campbell’s Strike Brigade. After being severely injured in the war and leaving the Army, he became a motivational speaker and an actor on the soap opera, “All My Children.”

“Team Martinoff,” as it is known to fans of the show, earned 22 out of 30 points and tied with singer Chynna Phillips and partner Tony Dovolani for that top spot.

The competition resumes next Monday at 7 p.m. on WKRN, channel 2. Between now and then, Martinez and Smirnoff will be busy learning a new dance routine.

The first couple to be eliminated was Meta World Peace (aka NBA star Ron Artest) and his professional partner, Peta Murgatroyd. Final results are based on a combination of the judges’ scores and audience votes.

Prior to the results show, a special on the dancers aired. Host Tom Bergeron remarked on the “really good chemistry” that Martinez and Smirnoff possessed and played a rehearsal clip. J.R.— who was burned over 40 percent of his body when his Humvee hit a land mine in Iraq — joked to his dance partner about his reaction when he came out of his coma and realized he had lost his left ear.

Bergeron asked Martinez how he developed his spirit despite the adversity he had faced. Martinez credited his mother and the example she set of smiling despite the difficulties she faced. “And you know what? Life goes on, and we’re here for a reason. And we must make the best of it every single day.”

Read more »

Facebook Changes

Facebook Changes: Now that Facebook changed its rules, gambling brands and betting shop online services are able to use the social network to promote sites and reach customers.

Now that Facebook relaxed their strict rules, gamers should look for a big influx in gaming brands that use Facebook to build their fan base. Before, gaming and betting shop online companies were not able to reach out to players on Facebook with the freedom that they were looking for.

The new rules, which are in effect in 18 worldwide markets (but not in the US), will let gaming brands reach the audience in a very contemporary way. The companies, which include those in the UK, are now able to launch apps that don’t involve gambling.

This is guaranteed to improve the Facebook experience in order to reach their markets, no matter whether the specialty of the company is bingo, poker, scratch cards, etc., and betting software services are sure that this move could help boost their businesses.

Recently, Facebook posted this message on the website, letting people know about the changes: “We now allow the promotion of offline casinos or other legal gambling establishments provided the ads are appropriately targeted. We continue to prohibit the promotion of online gambling in the US, but may allow ads for online gambling and games of skill in other countries with our prior authorization.”

Before the changes, betting shop online services needed to have the approval of Facebook to make status and posts changes. Additionally, gaming companies were not able to post more than four times a week.

This freedom given is expected to improve the experience that gamers and other interested individuals will have when they visit the Facebook pages, and gaming brands hope that some of this experience will be able to translate to paid activity on the company’s own site.

However, betting shop online services see that there are still some restrictions. Facebook users under 18 years of age will not be able to gain access to any of the site’s gambling content; additional age limits will also take effect on paid ads and apps. In Facebook, apps are a very popular feature.

Betting software services are very excited by the news, and see Facebook as the perfect way to reach their audiences.

Read more »

Clemency

Clemency: The State Board of Pardons and Paroles in the US state of Georgia must reconsider their decision to deny clemency for a US man facing the death penalty, Amnesty International said today after the ruling cleared the way for his execution on Wednesday.

Troy Davis was sentenced to death in 1991 for the murder of police officer Mark Allen Macphail in Savannah, Georgia.

“This is a huge setback for human rights in the USA, where a man who has been condemned under dubious evidence is to be executed by the state. Even at this late stage, the Board must reconsider its decision,” said Salil Shetty, Amnesty International’s Secretary General.

“The decision by Georgia’s Board of Pardons and Paroles to reject Troy Davis’ appeal for clemency is obviously at odds with their 2007 decision when they counselled against execution if there was “doubt as to the guilt of the accused””, said Salil Shetty.

The case against Troy Davis primarily rested on witness testimony. Since his 1991 trial, seven of key nine witnesses have recanted or changed their testimony, some alleging police coercion.

“Even if members of the Board were convinced that there was no doubt, many other people have not been so persuaded.

“Clearly, the US capital justice system is capable of making mistakes. The persistent doubts that have plagued the Troy Davis case point to a fundamental flaw of the death penalty. It is irrevocable – and in the USA, the death penalty is also marked by arbitrariness, discrimination and error,” Salil Shetty added.

Amnesty International opposes the death penalty in all cases and under all circumstances.

The organization’s activists have campaigned extensively on Troy Davis’ behalf, delivering nearly one million signatures to authorities in Georgia to urge them to commute his death sentence: vigils and events have been held in approximately 300 locations around the world.

Since Troy Davis has been on death row, more than 90 prisoners have been released from death rows around the USA on grounds of innocence. In each case, at trial the defendant had been found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

In the past four years, three states in the USA – New Jersey, New Mexico and Illinois – have legislated to abolish the death penalty. The inability to exclude errors, and the potential for executing the innocent, were major arguments in these processes,  convincing even some previous supporters of the death penalty..

In contrast to the 139 countries worldwide that have abolished the death penalty in law or practice, the USA currently has more than 3,200 people on its death rows, and has executed more than 1,200 prisoners since resuming judicial killing in 1977.  Currently Georgia has over 100 people on its death row and three people have been executed in this state in 2011 already.

Read more »

Kate Walsh

Kate Walsh: The biggest surprise of the Comedy Central Roast of Charlie Sheen was seeing actress Kate Walsh walk onstage. The next biggest surprise was listening to the Private Practice star throw out off-color jokes from the podium.

Could Walsh be unleashing her raunchy side?"I do have a little bit of raunch," Walsh told USA TODAY. "I'm half-Irish after all. So come on."

Walsh admitted it might be a big shock for fans of her show to see her R-rated roast session (which will be broadcast Sept. 19 at 10 p.m. ET/PT). When asked what they should know before tuning in, she replied with a laugh: "Viewer discretion advised. I'd say, take it easy everybody, it's a little bit of a bumpy ride," Walsh said, before using words like "filthy," "naughty" and "dirty" to describe the evening dedicated to bashing Sheen. These are words not normally associated with Walsh.

Throughout the Saturday night roast, roastmaster Seth MacFarlane continually asked Walsh, "What are you doing here?" from the stage. Onstage she explained that she was using her television medical expertise to analyze the outrageous personalities on the stage -- from Sheen to William Shatner to Mike Tyson.

But afterwards Walsh said it was all about comedy, adding that she started her career in improv.

"And it was a good exercise in masochism to come up here," Walsh said. Though she added that she came out "relatively unscathed" by the other comics -- and Sheen -- despite some of the comedy bombs thrown at her during the roast.

Walsh admitted that when she agreed to do the gig she had at least one sleepless night. "I was like, 'Oh my God, what am I doing," she said. "I have never done a roast before."

But at the end, she was all smiles backstage. "No regrets," said Walsh. "You never want to rest on your laurels. You want to keep doing things that terrify you."

Read more »