New article: Miracles, Episcopalians Have a New Home in the Catholic Church, A Circumsized Christ, and much more! Source: http://twitter.com/NCRegister/statuses/154171428319674368
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ANNONA, Texas?? Texas authorities said Saturday they mistakenly identified the son of the late NWA frontman Eazy-E as one of eight people killed in a two-car collision.
While some people spent 2011 "winning," GTL-ing and marrying (and quickly divorcing), there were events in pop culture hap...
Department of Public Safety Trooper Ryan Case said Eric Wright Jr.'s name was on a rental agreement for one of the cars that collided Friday in East Texas. He says Wright was mistakenly listed as killed but actually was not involved in the wreck.
Wright, who raps under the stage name Lil' Eazy-E, posted on Twitter that close friends died. Those killed in the rental car were: Debra Thompson, Curtis Sanders, Michael Mathis and Lawrence Bridnac III.
Those killed in the other car were 29-year-old Sonia de la Torre and her three young children.
Case said investigators may never know what caused the collision. One of the vehicles crossed the center line, but it's not clear why.
The fiery wreck occurred on a curve about a mile outside of Annona, a town about 150 miles (240 kilometers) northeast of Dallas.
Authorities said there were no witnesses to the crash on a remote stretch of U.S. 82, and everyone in both vehicles were killed. There were no skid marks, and investigators do not know how fast the vehicles were traveling.
The eastbound car with the four California residents crossed a center line and struck de la Torre's westbound car. Her 8-year-old daughter Erica, 6-year-old son Saul Jr. and 10-month-old son Eric were riding with her.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Source: http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/45838790/ns/today-entertainment/
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Military Fears Lost Skills After Iraq Pullout: bit.ly/s95XqH 
FOX5Atlanta Source: http://twitter.com/FOX5Atlanta/statuses/153656241682530304
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FERGUSON, Joyce 79, of Oldsmar passed away Thursday Dec. 29, 2011.
Born in Hershey, PA, Joyce was a longtime resident of New York before moving to Oldsmar in 1995. Joyce was a loving wife, a devoted mother to her 5 children, and a faithful parishioner of Espiritu Santo Catholic Church. She is preceded in death by her daughter, Lisa, and is survived by her husband of 57 years, Don; children Donna (Tango), Joe (Kimberly), Jim (Rosemaria), and Bill (Sue); grandchildren Erica (Jason), Tanya (Kevin), Jimmy, Frankie, Lee, Janelle, Jillian, Brian, and Nina; and great grandchildren Tyler and Adalynn.
The family will receive friends on Tuesday Jan. 3rd from 11:30 to 1:30pm at Sylvan Abbey Funeral Home. A Funeral Mass will be offered following the visitation at Espiritu Santo Catholic Church with services beginning at 2:30pm.
Source: http://abcactionnews.tributes.com/show/Joyce-Ferguson-93018634
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WASHINGTON -- "This is politics," Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney declared Dec. 21, dismissing calls for him to condemn ads attacking former House Speaker Newt Gingrich that were run by an independent group supporting Romney's candidacy.
The ads were part of an unprecedented $3.3 million negative campaign of television spots and direct mail by Restore Our Future, an independent expenditure-only committee or super PAC, which blunted Gingrich's rise and may very well be the main ingredient in an Iowa victory for Romney next Tuesday.
Never before have the Iowa caucuses seen such a campaign by any group other than a candidate committee. And with days to go before Iowans cast their votes, the new political landscape is coming into sharper focus.
Fully aware of the bazooka he had in his back pocket, Romney on Friday jetted off to New Hampshire to campaign for the primary election there, casually planning a return to the Hawkeye State on Saturday afternoon. Calm and assured that his campaign would keep on going past Iowa, he put an op-ed in the State newspaper in South Carolina and spent the morning taking shots at President Barack Obama in a variety of interviews. Opponents were left grappling for third place in Tuesday night's vote.
Gingrich, the target of the pro-Romney super PAC's ammo, was left in a more fetal state. "I can't do modern politics," the former speaker said at one campaign stop. At another, he broke down in tears, as he described memories of his mother.
The 2012 Iowa caucus is, increasingly, not about the individuals running. Campaign finance observers have warned repeatedly that independent groups, enabled by the Supreme Court's January 2010 ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission to raise and spend unlimited sums, would alter the balance of campaigns, once run primarily by candidate committees and party organizations. So far, those warnings are looking prescient.
As evidenced in Iowa, campaigns now operate as political parties of one. Candidates with enough financing can lay their own groundwork for voter mobilization efforts and remain positive, while a supportive super PAC runs negative ads beating off opponents. Voter mobilization and opponent attacks were roles traditionally reserved for the party organizations in the general election, but thanks to Citizens United and the birth of super PACs, each individual candidate can now operate in this fashion.
The Iowa caucuses have always attracted independent groups looking to back their favored candidates. Most of the action in the past has occurred on the Democratic side with labor unions battling for their preferred nominee. In the 2008 election cycle, as reported to the FEC, independent groups, the most important of which were unions, combined to spend $3.4 million on independent expenditures across all primary states in the run-up to the Iowa caucuses. In the 2004 cycle, those groups reported only $1.5 million in spending to the FEC prior to the caucuses.
This time around, independent groups have come to dominate not just the Iowa contest but the entire Republican primary season. According to a Huffington Post analysis of independent expenditures so far this electoral season, super PACs have combined to spend $11 million in the Republican primaries, at least $5.8 million of that in Iowa alone.
Super PACs are a type of political committee that can raise unlimited sums from corporations, unions and individuals and spend unlimited sums on independent expenses. They were authorized by the FEC after the Citizens United decision allowed unlimited independent spending by corporations and unions in elections.
"With the super PACs now you have a different creature," said Colby College professor and campaign finance expert Anthony Corrado. "These are entities who are organized for a particular candidate. They have every incentive to spend all of their money now. These PACs are organized to help candidates get through Iowa, New Hampshire and all of the early states."
Leading the way among the candidate-specific super PACs is the pro-Romney Restore Our Future. Formed in January 2011 by three veterans of Romney's 2008 run for the presidency, the group raised $12.2 million through June 30 (the same amount raised by Rep. Ron Paul through Sept. 30) and remained dormant until the second week of December.
Beginning on Dec. 9, Restore Our Future let loose a negative advertising and direct mail campaign unlike anything in Iowa caucus history. In the weeks preceding the super PAC's barrage, Gingrich had vaulted into the top position in polls in Iowa and many other key primary states. By the time Restore Our Future had aired close to $3 million in attack ads, Gingrich had fallen into a four-way race for third place.
The negative ad coverage was total. According to data provided to The Huffington Post by Kantar Media's Campaign Media Analysis Group, 45 percent of the ads aired in Iowa in the month of December were negative ads targeting Newt Gingrich. A Dec. 29 NBC-Marist poll showed that 35 percent of Republicans in Iowa found Gingrich to be unelectable, a 19 point increase from the previous month.
Restore Our Future's efforts helped to solidify Romney's position atop the field while providing him an arm's length distance from the negativity. It also increased the disparity in spending among the candidates.
"The super PACs have had a great effect in reinforcing Romney's financial advantage," Corrado said. "Not only has he been outraising his opponents, but the super PAC has been raising more than the other super PACs."
That reinforcement can be seen in the ad buy numbers for the areas around Des Moines, Cedar Rapids and Quad City. According to data compiled by IowaPolitics.com and posted by the West Des Moines Patch, Romney spent $411,739 on ads in those three metropolitan areas while Restore Our Future spent $1.1 million.
The Romney campaign has easily outpaced most rivals in the fundraising department by pulling in $32 million through Sept. 30. His campaign is expected to announce an additional $20 million coming in the final three months of 2011.
This has come amidst a more general dearth in campaign financing for the 2012 primary contestants. The candidates combined to raise only $88 million through Sept. 30, the end of the third quarter. That is half of the $176 million the GOP field had raised at the same point in the 2008 election cycle. Ron Paul, alone among the field, is outperforming his 2008 run by raising $4 million more than he had at the same point last time.
The drop in donations has accompanied a remarkable reduction in spending by the candidate campaigns in Iowa up through December, which has left the super PACs to dominate the conversation. As of Sept. 30, the campaigns had barely made any investment in winning Iowa.
"They didn't spend anywhere near the money that they spent in the last time," said David Swenson, an Iowa State University economics professor who has studied the economic impact of the Iowa caucuses. "My conclusion is it's got to be less than half of what we had last time."
Swenson explained that the limited money spent by the candidates in Iowa has predominantly gone to television ads and, save for the campaigns of Romney and Paul, stayed away from the traditional retail politics and grassroots organizing for which the Iowa caucuses are famous. "What they're doing is trading off door knocking at this stage, or up to this stage, for the massive advertising we've been inundated with," he said.
Television advertising is one of the few areas where the Republicans are spending on par with the 2008 race. In 2008, the Republican presidential hopefuls dropped approximately $9.5 million on TV ads. (The 2008 Democratic race in Iowa featured far more spending on television, in excess of $30 million.) The GOP's 2012 race is on pace to break that mark with super PACs and the campaigns of Gov. Rick Perry and Ron Paul leading the way.
While Perry and Paul are spending the most among the candidates on TV, others have gone without much air support. Rep. Michele Bachmann, once considered a potential winner of the caucuses, has not bought television spots from August to Jan. 1, 2012.
Rick Santorum has visited every county in Iowa, but couldn't afford ads until the tail end of the campaign. Santorum, who is riding a late surge in Iowa, has been aided by a pair of super PACs spending more than $600,000 on television and radio ads and phone banks to contact voters. One of those PACs appears to be working in concert with Iowa evangelicals; it features Bob Vander Plaats, the state's most prominent evangelical who recently endorsed Santorum, in both its TV and radio spots.
That connection could also lift the former Pennsylvania senator in an area he has been unable to properly finance -- his get-out-the-vote efforts. Evangelicals in Iowa have excellent voter mobilization operations that could help Santorum compete with the two well-financed mobilization operations ready to boost Romney and Paul on Jan. 3.
WATCH Restore Our Future's first anti-Gingrich ad:
Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/31/super-pacs-iowa-caucus-mitt-romney_n_1176741.html
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A 17-year-old squirrel monkey named Banana Sam was stolen Friday morning from the San Fransciso Zoo. In the past, zoo thieves have tried to sell stolen zoo animals and even used them to impress girlfriends.
The San Francisco Zoo is offering a $5,000 reward to anyone who can help recover Banana Sam, a two-pound, 17-year-old squirrel monkey nabbed from the zoo overnight Friday. But the audacious heist of the beloved monkey begs a question: Why would anyone steal a monkey, or any other zoo animal for that matter?
Skip to next paragraphIn 2009, Palm Beach, Fla., police arrested several teenagers after the heist of three squirrel monkeys and a Goeldi's monkey ? Simone, Sallie, Dougie and Elsie ? and a Green-Cheeked Amazon parrot with a gimpy leg named Chalupa. Investigators believed the animals may have been bound for sale. Available as pets in the US, the monkeys can sell for as much as $3,000.
The Palm Beach Zoo also had four tamarin monkeys stolen in 1998, three of which were recovered after they apparently escaped from their captor.
``We've seen them surface on the pet market here in Florida, so that's what we think they were taken for,'' curator Randi Meyerson McCormick told the Sun-Sentinel newspaper at the time. ``Actually, though, they're very lousy pets. They bite and scratch and they're loud. We're kind of laughing at the idea that right now someone is trying to have this monkey as a pet.''
Other zoo theft motives have been more mundane. A theft of a mother and daughter pair of Koalas from the San Francisco Zoo in 2000 turned out have been carried out by two teenage boys wanting to impress their girlfriends with exotic Christmas presents.
While zoo thefts are relatively rare in the US, a study in 2006 showed that 40 percent of European zoos had been burglarized, with over 80 monkeys stolen according to the National Theft Register in Britain. One investigator, John Hayward, likened the zoo theft rings to international crime syndicates ?like the gangs that go after art or antiques.?
More common in the US are pet thefts. The percentage of dogs stolen for sale or even for ransom rose by 32 percent from 2010 to 2011, the American Kennel Club reports.
For his part, Banana Sam has been rescued before from dire circumstances. He's one of 20 male squirrel monkeys given to the zoo in 2010 after a local research lab was shuttered. "We are hoping he has nine lives and will be rescued again," Tanya Peterson, the zoo's executive director, told the San Francisco Chronicle.
Meanwhile, someone outside the zoo has set up a Twitter account for Banana Sam, where some 1,500 people are following his imagined exploits. ?Went to monkey bars in Golden Gate Park playground, left disappointed,? @SF_Banana Sam tweeted Friday night.
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