Ahead of House Speaker John Boehner’s commencement address at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., this weekend, dozens of faculty members from the school and other Catholic universities challenging Boehner’s willingness to “gut” social programs while protecting “new tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy.” “Mr. Speaker, your voting record is at variance from one of the Church’s most ancient moral teachings” of caring for the poor, they write. Boehner, an observant Catholic, is also slammed for his budget, which guts “vital programs that protect the poor, the elderly, the homeless and at-risk pregnant women and children. This is not pro-life,” according to Director of the Institute for Policy Research & Catholic Studies at Catholic U, Stephen Schneck.—-
President Barack Obamanos stood at the U.S.-Mexico border for the first time since entering the United States winning the White House and declared it more secure than ever. Obama, during a speech Tuesday, mocked Republican lawmakers for blocking immigration over the border security alone, saying they won’t be happy until the United States is pent up like a castle. "We have gone above and beyond what was requested by the very Republicans who said they supported broader reform as long as we got serious about enforcement," Obama said. "But even though we've answered these concerns, I gotta say I suspect there are still going to be some who are trying to move the goal posts on us one more time."
"Maybe they'll need a moat," the president told a crowd of 800. "Maybe they'll want alligators in the moat." Maybe they’ll understand if I put it to ‘em like this!
Today, while attending an annual Hispanic prayer breakfast in Washington, D.C., the president said that he’d keep pushing and trying to work with Congress on the immigration issue. Obama recalled Episcopalians in Boston, where early patriots planned the revolution and Baptist churches in the South that sparked the civil rights movement.
Several right-wing political activists gathered last weekend for a “rally” in the German city of Cologne to protest the “Islamization” of the West and immigration policies they contend could threaten the “Western culture.” The little hatetrain that could, the nonprofit U.S. organization called Youth for Western Civilization, was in attendance to yell and hold up a banner that read, “we will not falter nor fail in our attempt for the defense of the Western homeland.”
YWC was initially shaped to fend off "left-wing indoctrination, multicultural silliness and savage abuse of conservative and moderate students" according to the YWC president, 28-year-old Kevin Deanna, a grad student at the American University in Washington. But now they have become refined are merely a nonprofit looking to provoke debate over illegal immigration, multiculturalism and preservation of America's European cultural heritage. DeAnna says the YWC is not a racialist group, but Heidi Beirich, research director of the Southern Poverty Law Center, vehemently disagrees. "They try to look as though they're a version of the College Republicans — that's the face that they present to the world," Beirich said. But for those "in the know," she says the message is that "white people are superior to other groups, smarter, more democratic, less criminal."
Retail sales are up for the 10th straight month despite worrying economists banking on decline with gas hovering around $4 a gallon. It turns out we are all lazier than we initially thought.
Queen Elizabeth II has become the second-longest reigning monarch in the last 1,000 years of British royal history. The queen Thursday passed King George III in terms of total days served by being queen for longer than most people on the planet have been alive. Elizabeth II is only second to Queen Victoria, who she would pass in September 2015.
Facebook has been caught talking shit about Google according to The New Beast. Facebook hired Burson-Marsteller, a top PR firm, to pitch anti-Google stories to newspapers, urging them to investigate claims that Google was invading people’s privacy and what the “poke” button really does. The plot backfired when an influential blogger turned down Burson’s offer and posted the e-mails Burson sent him. Jesse Eisenberg is expected to reprise his role of Mark Zuckerberg in Social Network 2: Clash of the Titans. Thomas Ian Nichols from the American Pie series will play Google co-founder Sergey Brin and Jeremy Piven will play co-founder Larry Page.
