Kentucky sheriff, state police clash on cold cases

 
Ray Burnam ran for sheriff on a pledge to do whatever he could to settle three unresolved slayings in this tranquil corner of Kentucky. He even dangled his own money as a reward, pledging $1,000 for information leading to a conviction in any of the cases.

What the sheriff got in return was a court order demanding he turn over his findings in one case and claims he's gone "rogue" as part of a spat with state police. The bad feelings may date back to Burnham's own departure from the state force, have erupted with tense words in open court and, a prosecutor argues, could jeopardize efforts to prosecute one of the cases. It's an unusually public dispute between law enforcement agencies.

Burnam, who was elected Trigg County sheriff in 2010, sounds unapologetic about his efforts, driven by his desire to make sure the killers "get what's coming to them."
"I made a promise that if people elected me I was going to do my job," he said. "I've done my job, I've done what I said I would do, and I'll continue to do my job."
Relatives of the victims say they're grateful for the sheriff's offer. Around Cadiz, a small town in a recreational lake region about 200 miles west of Louisville, residents praise him for putting his money behind his promise.
"He's a man living up to his word," Michael Powell said while tending his mother's downtown antique store.
But his maverick style brought a backlash, creating the unusual drama of a sheriff clashing with another law enforcement agency and a local prosecutor.
Commonwealth's Attorney G.L. Ovey was so concerned that Burnam was doing his own investigation, separate from state police, that he filed a subpoena motion against him.

A judge agreed to order the sheriff to turn over his file in the case of Chantell Humphries. The 33-year-old mother of three was gunned down a decade ago, her body found in a cow pasture. Burnam, then a trooper with state police, was among the first law officers on the scene, and he says he remains haunted by the gruesome scene.

The conflict between the sheriff and prosecutor intensified when Burnam drew gasps from courtroom observers last month by saying the findings might somehow implicate the prosecutor.
Ovey, visibly shaken, called it "the most ridiculous thing" he had ever heard.
When pressed by the judge, the sheriff said he wasn't implicating the local prosecutor in the actual killing but offered no other details.
The sheriff says he will comply with the judge's order and give his file to Ovey.

Burnam has acknowledged he conducted recent interviews in the Humphries case after being contacted by people he wouldn't identify.

His involvement in the case has agitated state police.
State police Lt. Brent White accused his one-time colleague of "rogue behavior" by pursuing his own investigation separate from state police.
"He was taught better than this," said White, who attended police academy with Burnam. "This is not a territorial dispute. This is about doing what is correct procedure."

The sniping comes against the backdrop of a looming murder trial in the Humphries case. Claude Russell, a 36-year-old local farm worker, is set to stand trial for a second time Aug. 19. The trial date was set at the same hearing that took up the subpoena motion.

A mistrial for Russell was declared earlier this year after jurors reported twice they had reached an impasse.

Ovey says Russell and Humphries were lovers but he doesn't have a motive.

Ovey worries that competing police investigations left unchecked could raise due-process problems that could threaten the case.

"I'm not saying that the sheriff wouldn't receive information in his capacity as sheriff," Ovey said. "All I ask is that he turn it over to me or the state police. That's not unreasonable."

Russell's attorney has raised his own concerns, including the sheriff's reward offer.
"Is the sheriff telling us that he's having a reason to believe my client is ... innocent?" asked John W. Stewart, the defense attorney.
Burnam hasn't said publicly what he's found out about any of the unsolved cases. But he told White in an email that he must be getting close to "finding out something that someone doesn't want me to know" because he was getting death threats. The email surfaced during the subpoena fight, exposing the strain between the sheriff and state police.

"You can no longer pull me off a case or tell who I can and cannot investigate," Burnam wrote. Also in the email, he agreed to "back off" leads he claimed to have in the unsolved 2008 slaying of Harvey Choat, then added, "please do not make me regret it."

Burnam said he sent the email, dated Nov. 28, after receiving a call from White.

Burnam resigned from state police in early 2010 to run for sheriff. At the time, state police were transferring him to nearby Livingston County, which would have uprooted him from his home in Trigg County. Burnam said the transfer played a role in his run for sheriff.
He handled road patrols and had an investigative role during his tenure with KSP, which started in 1998 but included absences when he was called up for active duty with the Air Force. But he was not given an investigative role in the Humphries case. That didn't keep him from asking people if they knew anything about the slaying.

"People talked to me and I listened," he said, adding that he passed whatever information he got to his superiors.

Russell was first indicted on a murder charge in 2003 in the Humphries case, but prosecutors dismissed the case citing a lack of evidence. Ovey recalled that Burnam criticized him "almost relentlessly" at the time for the dismissal.

Russell was indicted again in 2011. Ovey said he was subjected to more criticism from Burnam, this time because he would be prosecuting the case.

Relatives of the victims are simply focused on the pursuit of the killers.

"I'd rather have closure than anything else in the world, to have peace of mind," said Michael Ladd, whose brother, Kenneth, was gunned down while working an overnight desk shift at Lake Barkley State Resort Park.

For Ladd's family, the reward offer is more than a gesture — it's a sign that someone with a badge hasn't given up.

"You can't change nothing, but justice ought to be done," said Philip Ladd, another of Kenneth's brothers.

Ladd was three days away from turning 23 when he was shot twice in the head and once in the heart with a rifle. Investigators pointed to theft as the motive and said $1,775 had been taken. He was home from college, holding down a job to scrape together enough money to return to Western Kentucky University, where he was pursuing a business degree.

State police arrested Michael Lee Cunningham, charging him with capital murder and armed robbery. But early in 1981, a local jury acquitted Cunningham of all charges.

In the other unsolved case, the 64-year-old Choat was gunned down in the home he built himself and settled into retirement. No one has been charged in the slaying.

Carrie Baker, Humphries' sister, said she's more concerned about the outcome of her sister's case than the conflicts involving the sheriff, prosecutor and state police.

"I just wish everybody could be in accord," she said. "We just want closure just to put her at peace. Every year it's tougher and tougher."

Chinese man drives car into students, injuring 13

A man angered by a court ruling in the murder of his daughter rammed a car loaded with a gas tank and firecrackers into a group of middle schoolers, injuring 13 in the country's latest attack on students.
The man ran down 23 students at Fengning No. 1 Middle School in northern China's Hebei province on Monday, the official Xinhua News Agency said Tuesday, citing local police.
Xinhua said the man, identified as 48-year-old Yin Tiejun, later lit a bottle of diesel in an attempt to set his car on fire.
Police put out the fire and found the gas tank and firecrackers in the trunk of the car, but Xinhua said Yin told police in an interrogation later that the materials were not meant for an attack.
Yin has been detained on charges of endangering public safety, Xinhua said.
Xinhua described Yin as having been upset for years that a court did not sentence to death all four assailants involved in the murder of his daughter three years ago. The report did not give further details of the murder but said the children hurt in Monday's car crash were not tied to the case.
Xinhua said the man did not act under the influence of alcohol or drugs.
Students were hospitalized with injuries that included skull fractures and crushed feet, Xinhua said.
The local Fengning county government confirmed the incident in a written statement and said Yin was driving a Geely sedan.
Citing eyewitnesses, the Beijing-based state-run Jinghua Times said the accident occurred when students were leaving school for noon break and that the car accelerated and knocked down students, many of whom were on bikes.
On Dec. 14, a Chinese man took a kitchen knife and went on a stabbing spree that left 23 students wounded in an elementary school in Henan province.
China has seen more than a half-dozen school attacks in less than three years, though the death tolls have been mostly in single digits, largely because knives have been the most-used weapon. China largely prohibits private ownership of guns.
Several of the attacks have been sparked by grudges, which some experts say shows that the violence stems from simmering and widespread frustration over the growing wealth gap, corruption and too few legal channels for people who have grievances.

Shooter in Afghanistan insider attack is an Iranian national

The female police officer who killed a U.S. contractor in Kabul on Monday is an Iranian national, an Afghan government official said Tuesday.

More

UAE arrests cell planning attacks

Security forces in the United Arab Emirates have arrested a cell of UAE and Saudi Arabian citizens which was planning to carry out militant attacks in both countries and other states, the official news agency WAM said on Wednesday.The U.S.-allied UAE, a federation of seven emirates and a major oil exporter that has supported Western counter-terrorism efforts in the region, has been spared any attack by al Qaeda and other insurgency groups.
But some of its emirates have seen a rise in Islamist sentiment in recent years, and Dubai, a business and tourism hub and cosmopolitan city that attracts many Westerners, could make an attractive target for Islamist militants, analysts say.
Those arrested had acquired materials and equipment for use in what WAM called terrorist operations.
"The security authorities in the UAE, in coordination with the related security parties in Saudi Arabia, announced the arrest of an organized cell from the deviant group that was planning to carry out actions against national security of both countries and some brotherly states," WAM said without elaborating.
The phrase "the deviant group" is often used by authorities in Saudi Arabia to describe al Qaeda members.
Emirati political analyst Abdulkhaleq Abdullah told Reuters he believed it was the first time the UAE had announced a suspected attack plot of regional significance.
It "looks like it is a big one, mainly because it includes Emirati citizens and is not confined to the UAE but also has a regional dimension."
In August, Saudi authorities arrested a group of suspected al Qaeda-linked militants - mostly Yemeni nationals - in Riyadh.
Saudi Arabia has arrested thousands of suspected militants since the 2003-2006 attacks on residential compounds for foreign workers and on Saudi government facilities in which were dozens of people were killed.
The United States has poured aid into Yemen to stem the threat of attacks from al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and to try to prevent any spillover of violence into Saudi Arabia, the world's top oil exporter.
In 2010, AQAP, a merger of al Qaeda's Yemeni and Saudi branches, said it was behind a plot to send two parcel bombs to the United States. The bombs were intercepted in Britain and Dubai.
The UAE has escaped the upheaval that has shaken the Arab world but moved swiftly to stem any sign of political dissent by detaining more than 60 local Islamists this year over alleged threats to state security and links to a foreign group.
Those detainees, who belong to an Islamist group called al-Islah, have confessed to setting up a secret organization with an armed force whose aim was to take power and establish an Islamic state, local media reported in September. Islah denied the accusations.
Many of the detained Islamists come from the more religiously conservative northern emirates such as Sharjah and Ras al-Khaimah, which produced one of the September 11 hijackers.
In May 2002, al Qaeda militants sent a letter to UAE authorities saying continued UAE cooperation with Washington in arresting what it called holy warriors would "bring the country into an arena of conflict," according to al Qaeda documents captured by the U.S. military and published by the Combating Terrorism Center at the U.S. military academy at West point.

Fees undermine fliers' ability to compare fares

For many passengers, air travel is only about finding the cheapest fare.

But as airlines offer a proliferating list of add-on services, from early boarding to premium seating and baggage fees, the ability to comparison-shop for the lowest total fare is eroding.

Global distribution systems that supply flight and fare data to travel agents and online ticketing services like Orbitz and Expedia, accounting for half of all U.S. airline tickets, complain that airlines won't provide fee information in a way that lets them make it handy for consumers trying to find the best deal.

"What other industry can you think of where a person buying a product doesn't know how much it's going to cost even after he's done at the checkout counter?" said Simon Gros, chairman of the Travel Technology Association, which represents the global distribution services and online travel industries.

The harder airlines make it for consumers to compare, "the greater opportunity you have to get to higher prices," said Kevin Mitchell, chairman of the Business Travel Coalition, whose members include corporate travel managers.

Now the Obama administration is wading into the issue. The Department of Transportation is considering whether to require airlines to provide fee information to everyone with whom they have agreements to sell their tickets. A decision originally scheduled for next month has been postponed to May, as regulators struggle with a deluge of information from airlines opposed to regulating fee information, and from the travel industry and consumer groups that support such a requirement.

Meanwhile, Spirit Airlines, Allegiant Air and Southwest Airlines — with backing from industry trade associations — are asking the Supreme Court to reverse an appeals court ruling forcing them to include taxes in their advertised fares. The appeals court upheld a Transportation Department rule that went in effect nearly a year ago that ended airlines' leeway to advertise a base airfare and show the taxes separately, often in smaller print. Airlines say the regulations violate their free-speech rights.

At the heart of the debate is a desire by airlines to move to a new marketing model in which customers don't buy tickets based on price alone. Instead, following the well-worn path of other consumer companies, airlines want to mine personal data about customers in order to sell them tailored services. You like to sit on the aisle and to ski, so how would you like to fly to Aspen with an aisle seat and a movie, no extra baggage charge for your skis, and have a hotel room and a pair of lift tickets waiting for you, all for one price? You're a frequent business traveler. How about priority boarding, extra legroom, Internet access and a rental car when you arrive?

"Technology is changing rapidly. We are going to be part of the change," said Sharon Pinkerton, vice president of Airlines for America, which represents most U.S. carriers. "We want to be able to offer our customers a product that's useful to them, that's customized to meet their needs, and we don't think (the Transportation Department) needs to step in."

If airlines have their way, passengers looking for ticket prices may have to reveal a lot more information about themselves, such as their age, marital status, gender, nationality, travel history and whether they're flying for business or leisure. The International Air Transport Association, whose 240 member airlines cover 84 percent of global airline traffic, adopted standards at a meeting earlier this month in Geneva for such information gathering by airlines as well as by travel agents and ticketing services that would relay the data to airlines and receive customized fares in return.

"Airlines want, and expect, their (ticket) distribution partners to offer passengers helpful contextual information to make well-informed purchase decisions, reducing the number of reservations made based primarily or exclusively on price," said a study commissioned by the association.

Consumer advocates question how airlines would safeguard the personal information they gather, and they worry that comparison shopping for the cheapest air fares will no longer be feasible.

"It's like going to a supermarket where before you get the price, they ask you to swipe your driver's license that shows them you live in a rich zip code, you drive a BMW, et cetera," Mitchell said. "All this personal information on you is going out to all these carriers with no controls over what they do with it, who sees it and so on."

The airline association said consumers who choose not to supply personal information would still be able to see fares and purchase tickets, though consumer advocates said those fares would probably be at the "rack rate" — the travel industry's term for full price, before any discounts.

It's up to individual airlines whether they price fares differently for travelers who don't provide personal information, said Perry Flint, a spokesman for the international airline association.

The stakes, of course, are enormous. Since 2000, U.S. airlines have lost money for more years than they've made profits. Fee revenue has made a big difference in their bottom lines. Globally, airlines raked in an estimated $36 billion this year in ancillary revenue, which includes baggage fees and other a la carte services as well as sales of frequent flyer points and commissions on hotel bookings, according to a study by Amadeus, a global distribution service, and the IdeaWorksCompany, a U.S. firm that helps airlines raise ancillary revenue. U.S. airlines reported collecting nearly $3.4 billion in baggage fees alone in 2011.

One expense airlines would like to eliminate is the $7 billion a year they pay global distribution systems to supply flight and fare information to travel agents and online booking agents like Expedia. Airlines want to deal more directly with online ticket sellers and travel agents, who dominate the lucrative business travel market. Justice Department officials have acknowledged an investigation is underway into possible anti-trust violations by distribution companies.

Airlines also have been cracking down on websites that help travelers manage their frequent flier accounts. The sites use travelers' frequent flier passwords to obtain balances and mileage expiration dates, and then display the information in a way that makes it easier for travelers to figure out when it makes more sense to buy a ticket or to use miles.

"What the airlines are trying to do right now is reinvent the wheel so they can hold all their information close to their chest," said Charles Leocha, founder of the Consumer Travel Alliance. "As we move forward in a world of IT, the ownership of passenger data is like gold to these people."

By withholding information like fee prices, he said, "we are forced to go see them, and then we are spoon-fed what they want to feed us."

Marijuana as a "pain distracter"

To determine exactly how cannabis relieves pain, a group of Oxford researchers used healthy volunteers, an MRI machine and doses of THC, the active ingredient in marijuana. Their findings, published today in the journal Pain, suggest something counterintuitive: that the drug doesn’t so much reduce pain as make the same level of pain more bearable.

“Cannabis does not seem to act like a conventional pain medicine,” Michael Lee, an Oxford neuroscientist and lead author of the paper, said in a statement. “Brain imaging shows little reduction in the brain regions that code for the sensation of pain, which is what we tend to see with drugs like opiates. Instead, cannabis appears to mainly affect the emotional reaction to pain in a highly variable way.” 

This indicates that marijuana doesn’t function as a pain killer as much as a pain distracter: Objectively, levels of pain remain the same for someone under the influence of THC, but it simply bothers the person less. It’s difficult to draw especially broad conclusions from a study with a sample size of just 12 participants, but the results were still surprising. 

 More

Gout study offers genetic insight into ‘disease of kings’

Scientists have shed light on why some people are more susceptible to gout than others. A study has identified 18 ...

Continue Reading 

Roadside trees can affect traffic speed

Motorists who travel down French-style avenues feel as though they are going faster and are more likely to slow down. 

More than 200 trees were planted on the approach roads to four rural villages in north Norfolk which had a history of speeding problems...

Provisional results found that drivers reduced their speed on the roads into Martham, Horstead, Mundesley and Overstrand by an average of two miles per hour...

By strategically planting trees along the roadside the driver's perception of speed can be altered. As the car approaches the village the trees are planted closer and closer together giving the impression that the vehicle is moving faster. This encourages the motorist to slow down.  

More details at the 2010 Telegraph article.   I have no doubt about the physiology and psychology of the effect, but another consideration I've noticed when driving down avenues of trees is that, depending on time of day and orientation, the trees can generate a stobe-like effect as they block the sun from the driver's eyes.

Random Celebrity Photo

Ava Gardner, 1948

What would it mean to live forever?

 

Infinity has at least two meanings. 

We sometimes forget that the word is used very differently in math and in ...

Continue Reading 

The Bloody Truth About Serbia's Vampire

Last month, we posted a story about the Serbian village of Zarožje, when town officials issued a warning about a vampire that may have been disturbed. To get the lowdown on such superstitions, National Geographic News talked to Mark Collins Jenkins, author of the book Vampire Forensics, and forensic archeologist and anthropologist Matteo Borrini.

Is it crazy that the town council issued a public health warning?

MCJ: Historically speaking, it's not that crazy. In past centuries, outbreaks of vampire hysteria, especially in Central and Eastern Europe, often coincided with outbreaks of tuberculosis and deadly plagues. Peasants had no other way of explaining why everyone was dropping dead but by blaming it on witches and vampires or other supernatural creatures. In 19th-century New England, tuberculosis wasted entire families, one after another. Superstitious people believed that the first to die was somehow feeding on his surviving family members. (Related: "'Vampire of Venice' Unmasked: Plague Victim & Witch?")

Why did people begin believing in vampires?

MB: Especially between the 16th and 18th centuries, little was known about what happens to the body after death. During plagues and epidemics, mass graves were continually reopened to bury new dead. People sometimes exhumed the bodies of the diseased to look for possible causes. Reports about vampires describe exhumations weeks or months after death, during the body's decay.

MCJ: Bodies weren't embalmed back then. They rot, to be quite frank, in grossly different ways. If a bunch of people in the village started dying in mysterious ways, they'd dig up the first one to die, see that his corpse didn't look quite right, assume that was blood flowing down those cheeks (it's called purge fluid in modern forensics, a natural byproduct of decomposition, but it's not blood), and generally burn the body. End of vampire.  

Read the rest at NatGeo .

Awesome Pictures

The wildest alien planets of 2012

From massive bodies that fell just short of becoming stars to the tiniest solar systems known, 2012 has brought an array of intriguing exoplanets to light.
And double-star systems that once seemed unlikely to host planets have produced a wealth of them this year.
Here's a look at some of the most exciting alien planets discovered in 2012:

More

Death By Black Hole Firewall Incineration It Shall Be

A controversial theory is emerging around the idea that a black hole may generate an impenetrable "wall of fire" around its singularity. Read more

 

Random Photo

The bar-tailed godwit can fly 11,000 kilometers.

  Nonstop!

As reported at Science Daily in 2010:

Every autumn the bar-tailed godwit undertakes an eight-day journey from Alaska to New Zealand. The bird flies non-stop, without once breaking the journey to rest or eat. Then when spring comes, the bar-tailed godwit makes the 11,000-kilometre journey back to Alaska...

Professor of Ecology Anders Hedenström from Lund University has pondered over how this species of bird can fly so far without stopping. The distance is twice as far as previously known non-stop distances for migratory birds.

Professor Hedenström emphasises that the bar-tailed godwit is far superior to all aircraft constructed by humans when it comes to the art of flying for a long time without a break. The long-distance flight record for aircraft is held by QiniteQ's Zephyr, an unmanned solar-powered craft. It can remain in the air for 82 hours, around three and a half days, compared with the bar-tailed godwit's eight-day flight.

But what is it that makes the bar-tailed godwit able to fly 11 000 kilometres without a single break? How can these birds manage without sleep or food for eight whole days? One explanation is that they consume unusually little energy compared with other species of bird. Anders Hedenström has calculated that the bar-tailed godwit consumes 0.41 per cent of its body weight each hour during its long flight.

And this from a subsequent report:

The last leg of E7's journey is the most extraordinary, entailing a non-stop flight of more than eight days and a distance of 7,200 miles, the equivalent of making a roundtrip flight between New York and San Francisco, and then flying back again to San Francisco without ever touching down.

Since they are land birds, godwits like E7 can't stop to eat or drink while flying over open-ocean. The constant flight speeds at which E7 was tracked by satellite indicate that she did not stop on land.

Mangia!

Mangia! Italian Wolves Prefer Ham to Venison

Unlike the deer-devouring wolves of northern Europe, the refined palate of the Italian wolf demands pork.

Wild Dolphins Give Humans Gifts

Wild dolphins are giving precious gifts of food to humans at the Tangalooma Island Resort in Australia. Read more

 

Animal Pictures

The Daily Drift

Va Va Varoom!!

Some of our readers today have been in:

Angeles City, Philippines

Cape Town, South Africa

Bangi, Malaysia

Warsaw, Poland

Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei

Manila, Philippines

Aguadilla, Puerto Rico

Petaling Jaya, Malaysia

Pretoria, South Africa

Waterloo, Canada

Tallinn Estonia

Istanbul, Turkey

George Town, Malaysia

Belgrade, Serbia

Johannesburg, South Africa

Pekanbaru, Indonesia

Bangkok, Thailand

Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia

Del Monte, Philippines

Centurion, South Africa

Samarinda, Indonesia

Ljubljana, Slovenia

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Cainta, Philippines

Lahore, Pakistan

Cairo, Egypt

Tbilisi, Georgia

Kangar, Malaysia

San Jose, Costa Rica

Jakarta, Indonesia

Dumaguete, Philippines

Paris, France

Puchong, Malaysia

Phnom, Penh, Cambodia

Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia

Sampaloc, Philippines

Yogyakarta, Indonesia

Butterworth, Malaysia

Thanh Pho Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam

Today is Boxing Day

(Yes, we know, but it's just an illustration).

Don't forget to visit our sister blog!

Today in History

1776		After crossing the Delaware River into New Jersey, George Washington leads an attack on Hessian mercenaries at Trenton, and takes 900 men prisoner.
1786		Daniel Shay leads a rebellion in Massachusetts to protest the seizure of property for the non-payment of debt.
1806		Napoleon's army is checked by the Russians at the Battle of Pultusk.
1862		38 Santee Sioux are hanged in Mankato, Minnesota for their part in the Sioux Uprising in Minnesota. Little Crow has fled the state.
1866		Brig. Gen. Philip St. George Cooke, head of the Department of the Platte, receives word of the Fetterman Fight in Powder River County in the Dakota territory.
1917		As a wartime measure, President Woodrow Wilson places railroads under government control, with Secretary of War William McAdoo as director general.
1925		Six U.S. destroyers are ordered from Manila to China to protect interests in the civil war that is being waged there.
1932		Over 70,000 people are killed in a massive earthquake in China.
1941		General Douglas MacArthur declares Manila an open city in the face of the onrushing Japanese Army.
1943		The German battleship Scharnhorst is sunk by British ships in an Arctic fight.
1944		Advancing Soviet troops complete their encirclement of Budapest in Hungary.
1945		The United States, Soviet Union and Great Britain, end a 10-day meeting, seeking an atomic rule by the UN Council.
1953		The United States announces the withdrawal of two divisions from Korea.
1962		Eight East Berliners escape to West Berlin, crashing through gates in an armor-plated bus.
1966		Dr. Maulana Karenga celebrates the first Kwanza, a seven-day African-American celebration of family and heritage.
1979		The Soviet Union flies 5,000 troops to intervene in the Afghanistan conflict.
2006		Former U.S. President Gerald R. Ford dies at age 93. Ford was the only unelected president in America's history.

Non Sequitur

Rural tension to reach new high as thousands to hit the trail for Boxing Day hunts

Animosity between fox hunters and their opponents is more heated than at any time since the hunting ban was introduced in Britain eight years ago, and both sides have urged caution ahead of the biggest hunting day of the year. A quarter of a million people are expected to attend a Boxing Day later today, with more than 45,000 on horseback. But as pro-hunters claim that "saboteurs" have "upped the ante" in recent months, their opponents respond that they are having to police a rise in illegal fox hunting themselves.
About 80 per cent of hunts surveyed by the pro-hunting Countryside Alliance say at least as many foxes are being killed now as before the ban came into force. Although the Hunting Act 2004 banned traditional hunting with hounds, exemptions allow landowners to flush out a fox from cover to be shot, using no more than two dogs. There are allegations of illegality and foul play by both camps. The RSPCA's successful prosecution last week of the Oxfordshire-based Heythrop Hunt, with which the Prime Minister David Cameron has ridden, for hunting a wild fox illegally further inflamed antipathy. A group of MPs and peers including Lord Heseltine have accused the animal rescuers of breaching charity regulations.

The League Against Cruel Sports said it had received almost three times as many calls about "suspicious" illegal hunting activity to its Wildlife Crimewatch line this year as it did in 2010. More than 60 per cent of the reports related to crimes against foxes. Joe Duckworth, the chief executive of the League, said: "There is a war in the countryside and we will get more calls than ever on Boxing Day this year." The organisation, which is investing an additional £1m in its operations team, has quadrupled the number of investigators working covertly in the field this season. The League said their data suggests "a heavy leaning towards illegal fox hunting".

The head of investigations at the League, Paul Tillsley, also believes tensions are higher than they have been for a while. Mr Tillsley was hit with a whip by David Bevan, from the West Somerset Vale Foxhounds, who admitted common assault. Mr Tillsley said: "Hunts have become more confident they can get away with things. It's back to the old days for them." The Countryside Alliance denied that illegal hunting was on the rise and stressed that it was still campaigning for the ban to be repealed. A spokesman said: "There are more than 300 registered hunts operating in the UK which carry out a combined total of around 20,000 days' hunting a year. Given the general level of confusion about hunting and the Hunting Act it is no surprise that the LACS receives a few hundred phone calls."

Reality is ...

Why George Bush, Sr resigned his lifetime NRA membership

Here's ex-president George HW Bush's public letter of resignation from the his lifetime membership to NRA, sent after Wayne "Armed guards in schools" LaPierre gave a speech blaming gun laws for the Oklahoma City bombing, implying that the victims were "jack-booted thugs" "wearing Nazi bucket helmets and black storm trooper uniforms."

Al Whicher, who served on my [ United States Secret Service ] detail when I was Vice President and President, was killed in Oklahoma City. He was no Nazi. He was a kind man, a loving parent, a man dedicated to serving his country -- and serve it well he did...
...I am a gun owner and an avid hunter. Over the years I have agreed with most of N.R.A.'s objectives, particularly your educational and training efforts, and your fundamental stance in favor of owning guns.
However, your broadside against Federal agents deeply offends my own sense of decency and honor; and it offends my concept of service to country. It indirectly slanders a wide array of government law enforcement officials, who are out there, day and night, laying their lives on the line for all of us.

Letter of Resignation Sent By Bush to Rifle Association

The truth be told

Unwavering NRA opposes any new gun restrictions

An unwavering National Rifle Association said Sunday that not a single new gun regulation would make children safer, that "a media machine" relishes blaming the gun industry for each new attack like the one that occurred at a Connecticut elementary school, and that a White House task force on gun violence may try to undermine the Second Amendment.

"Look, a gun is a tool. The problem is the criminal," said Wayne LaPierre, the CEO of the nation's largest gun-rights lobby, in a nationally broadcast television interview.

LaPierre hardly backed down from his comments Friday, when the NRA broke its weeklong silence on the shooting rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.

LaPierre's assertion that guns and police officers in all schools are what will stop the next killer drew widespread scorn, and even some NRA supporters in Congress are publicly disagreeing with the proposal. Rep. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., called it "the most revolting, tone deaf statement I've ever seen." A headline from the New York Post summarized LaPierre's initial presentation before reporters with the headline: "Gun Nut! NRA loon in bizarre rant over Newtown."

LaPierre told NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday that only those armed guards and police would make kids safe.
"If it's crazy to call for putting police and armed security in our schools to protect our children, then call me crazy," LaPierre said. "I think the American people think it's crazy not to do it. It's the one thing that would keep people safe."
He asked Congress for money to put a police officer in every school. He also said the NRA would coordinate a national effort to put former military and police officers in schools as volunteer guards.
The NRA leader dismissed efforts to revive the assault weapons ban as a "phony piece of legislation" that's built on lies. He made clear it was highly unlikely that the NRA could support any new gun regulations.
"You want one more law on top of 20,000 laws, when most of the federal gun laws we don't even enforce?" he said.
LaPierre said another focus in preventing shootings is to lock up violent criminals and get the mentally ill the treatment they need.
"The average guy in the country values his freedom, doesn't believe the fact he can own a gun is part of the problem, and doesn't like the media and all these high-profile politicians blaming him," he said.

Some lawmakers were incredulous, yet acknowledged that the political and fundraising might of the NRA would make President Barack Obama's push for gun restrictions a struggle.

"I have found the statements by the NRA over the last couple of days to be really disheartening, because the statements seem to not reflect any understanding about the slaughter of children" in Newtown, said Sen. Joe Lieberman, a Connecticut independent.

He said the NRA is right in some of the points it makes about the causes of gun violence in America.

"But it's obviously also true that the easy availability of guns, including military style assault weapons, is a contributing factor, and you can't keep that off the table. I had hoped they'd come to the table and say, everything is on the table," Lieberman said.

Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said LaPierre was "so extreme and so tone deaf" that he was making it easier to pass gun legislation.

"Look, he blames everything but guns: movies, the media, President Obama, gun-free school zones, you name it. And the video games, he blames them," Schumer said.
But Lieberman didn't seem to be buying it. He said the NRA's stand on new gun rules means passing legislation next year won't happen easily.
"It's going to be a battle. But the president, I think, and vice president, are really ready to lead the fight," he said.
Obama has said he wants proposals on reducing gun violence that he can take to Congress in January, and after the Dec. 14 shootings, he called on the NRA to join the effort. The president has asked Congress to reinstate an assault weapons ban that expired in 2004 and pass legislation that would end a provision that allows people to purchase firearms from private parties without a background check. Obama also has indicated that he wants Congress to pursue the possibility of limiting high-capacity magazines.
If Obama's review is "just going to be made up of a bunch of people that, for the last 20 years, have been trying to destroy the Second Amendment, I'm not interested in sitting on that panel," LaPierre said.

The NRA has tasked former Rep. Asa Hutchinson, R-Ark., to lead a program designed to use volunteers from the group's 4.3 million members to help guard children.

Hutchinson said the NRA's position was a "very reasonable approach" that he compared to the federal air marshal program that places armed guards on flights.
"Are our children less important to protect than our air transportation? I don't think so," said Hutchinson, who served as an undersecretary at the Department of Homeland Security when it was formed.
Hutchinson said schools should not be required to use armed security. LaPierre also argued that local law enforcement should have final say on how the security is put into place, such as where officers would be stationed.
Democratic lawmakers in Congress have become more adamant about the need for stricter gun laws since the shooting. Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California is promising to push for a renewal of expired legislation that banned certain weapons and limited the number of bullets a gun magazine could hold to 10. NRA officials made clear the legislation is a non-starter for them.
"It hasn't worked," LaPierre said. "Dianne Feinstein had her ban and Columbine occurred."
There also has been little indication from Republican leaders that they'll go along with any efforts to curb what kind of guns can be purchased or how much ammunition gun magazines can hold.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., noted that he had an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle in his home. He said America would not be made safer by preventing him from buying another one. As to gun magazine limits, he said he can quickly reload by putting in a new magazine.
"The best way to interrupt a shooter is to keep them out of the school, and if they get into the school, have somebody who can interrupt them through armed force," Graham said.
LaPierre also addressed other factors that he said contribute to gun violence in America, but he would not concede that the types of weapons being used are part of the problem.
He was particularly critical of states, which he said are not placing the names of people into a national database designed to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and the dangerously mentally ill. He said some states are not entering names into the system and 23 others are only putting in a small number of records.
The American Psychiatric Association responded to LaPierre's comments by saying that he seemed to conflate mental illness with evil at several points.
"People who are clearly not mentally ill commit violent crimes and perform terrible acts every day," said Dr. James Scully, chief executive of the trade group. "Unfortunately, Mr. LaPierre's statements serve only to increase the stigma around mental illness and further the misconception that those with mental disorders are likely to be dangerous."

Ahem ...

The NRA’s fallen and it can’t get up

Call him the Six Billion Dollar Man.  Because that’s how much money NRA chief Wayne LaPierre’s nutty plan to put an armed guard in every school in America may cost on an annual basis. And how did the country responds to LaPierre’s proposal?  With a heart laugh.  Even repugicans are staying away:

Rep. Jason Chaffetz, a conservative from Utah, said on NBC he was worried about arming educators since he “had science teachers in high school who can’t negotiate a Bunsen burner for goodness sake.”

It’s rather extraordinary how quickly the NRA’s star has faded. The organization used to be looked at as invincible, and the gun control issue overall, untouchable.
Now, not so much.
It’s hard to know what was more disastrous: NRA executive VP Wayne LaPierre’s disastrous press conference this past Friday morning, in which he suggested that the answer to people with guns mowing down children was to put a whole lot more guns near children, or LaPierre’s Sunday morning appearance on Meet the Press in which numerous commentators noticed that LaPierre was quite literally “foaming at the mouth.”
First, the reaction to Friday’s press conference was swift and vicious.  New York’s two quasi-tabloids, including one that tends to veer right, perhaps said it best:

A vicious piece in the Daily News by Mike Lupica:

So now Wayne LaPierre of the National Rifle Association, who attacks the mental health system in this country even as he sounds like he needs to be in it, goes on “Meet the Press” and continues to double down on his notion that the only way to keep our schools safe is to put armed guards at the front door and the side door and in every home room in America and maybe on every school bus, too.

LaPierre is the type who lies to stay in practice, as he continues to pass himself off as the front man for responsible gun owners when he actually is a front for their lunatic fringe. To say that the NRA represents mainstream thinking for gun owners is the same as saying that the Tea Party represents mainstream thinking in the Republican Party.

Then there was the rabies episode on Meet the Press:

Perhaps the chyron should have, “NRA SPITS UP.” 

 Adding to the crazy was NRA head Wayne LaPierre suggesting that most of the American media travels around with bodyguards. Which came as a surprise to most of the American media that has never traveled around with a bodyguard. From Erik Wemple at the Washington Post, who presumably does not have a body guard:

A suitable expert regarding media expenditures on armed protection is Martin Baron. He’s the outgoing top editor of the Boston Globe, the incoming top editor of The Washington Post and the former executive editor of the Miami Herald, among other editing jobs. So what about this armed-protection thing? Writes Baron via e-mail: “Never once heard of this, never authorized it, never paid for it and don’t for a second believe it. The only exception I can recall is, at times, for some security in Afghanistan and Iraq.”
More such sentiment comes from a CBS News source: “I can tell you definitively that the bureau and the CBS Broadcast Center guards are NOT armed. (Trust me, you wouldn’t want guns in the hands of some of those folks!) … I can’t speak for the correspondents who travel in dangerous areas internationally, but my guess is even they aren’t accompanied by armed guards.”

Apparently, the NYT doesn’t have armed guards, even in Kabul.
But, as always, the mass-murder of innocent Americans is always a boon for our country’s fetish with violence: ammo sales are through the roof, lest some sane politician decide that the presence of nearly 300 million guns in America, when that’s a little less than our entire population, might just suffice.

At a Denver gun show this weekend, ammunition for the AR-15 semiautomatic rifle — the style of weapon used in the Newtown attack — sold out within an hour.
“We’re worried we’re not going to be able our guns for our safety and we’re not doing anything wrong,” said one attendee, Crystalin Benedetto.

Yeah, you lost the right to cry about your “safety” when one of your fellow gun nuts decided to mow down 20 children a week before Xtmas.  Your safety is killing us.

Priorities

Did you know ...

How to calculate your fiscal cliff tax bill

That 1 in 3 Americans believe extreme weather is a sign of biblical end times

That atheists suffer discrimination and persecution around the world

That a McDonalds server would have to work 550 years to earn CEO's salary

Let's follow the money behind the New Town massacre

Do armed civilians stop mass shootings? Actually, no

Wal-mart vs. the Huffington Post

Here's understanding the hatred of the poor in America

You know it's bad when even Santa Claus can't get a job

That we could end homelessness for what Americans spend on Xmas decorations 

Principle ... yeah, that's the ticket

Export American natural gas? Not so fast

With the advent of the “shale gas revolution,” the United States has undergone a full-scale natural gas boom. Driven by ...

Continue Reading 

Latin America has the happiest countries

Sure, if you like being happy, I guess it’s all fine and good. 

Gallup has a new poll of happiest countries and the least happy.  Latin America really stole the show, apparently.
From Gallup, here’s the list of top and bottom:

Source: Gallup

More from AP:

“In Guatemala, it’s a culture of friendly people who are always smiling,” said Luz Castillo, a 30-year-old surfing instructor. “Despite all the problems that we’re facing, we’re surrounded by natural beauty that lets us get away from it all.”
Gallup Inc. asked about 1,000 people in each of 148 countries last year if they were well-rested, had been treated with respect, smiled or laughed a lot, learned or did something interesting and felt feelings of enjoyment the previous day.
In Panama and Paraguay, 85 percent of those polled said yes to all five, putting those countries at the top of the list. They were followed closely by El Salvador, Venezuela, Trinidad and Tobago, Thailand, Guatemala, the Philippines, Ecuador and Costa Rica.

Having spent a bit of time in Guatemala ten years ago, I agree, it’s a beautiful country and lovely people. Antigua Guatemala and Tikal are two favorite spots in my travels but there’s plenty more to see there. Somehow I need to find a way to get to a few more of the countries on the list, like the Philippines. Air miles, take me away.

You can see the entire list here.

People Who Pay More Taxes Are Happier

Attention lawmakers scrambling to avoid huge tax increases next month: New research suggests people who pay more taxes are happier. At least German people.

People who pay higher taxes than other people tend to be more satisfied with their lives, according to a new paper written by six economists at the Institute for the Study of Labor in Bonn. The researchers analyzed 26 years of German panel data that asked about 25,000 people the question “How satisfied are you with your life, all things considered?”

After controlling for income, age, education and other variables that could influence someone’s level of well-being, the researchers found that people who paid more in taxes reported higher levels of happiness.

No single reason accounted for why those with a heftier tax bill were happier, but the economists found some evidence supporting several potential factors. One reason could be that people enjoy the public goods and services made possible by taxes. For example, German households who regularly attended cultural events such as concerts and plays, which are at least partially publicly funded in Germany, were happier to pay taxes than “inactive” households.

Other possible factors include a sense that redistributing wealth is necessary, altruism, and a measure of “tax morale,” the sense that there is a “moral obligation to pay taxes and if you don’t do it, you might feel bad about it,” co-author Sebastian Siegloch, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Cologne, said in an interview Wednesday.

Previous neuroscience research has shown that giving to charity, for example, can activate certain parts of the brain linked to “rewards processing” and paying taxes might generate a similar “warm glow motive,” the paper noted.

Motivation might also differ among varying groups of people, or include a combination of reasons, Mr. Siegloch said.

The research doesn’t answer whether people would be happier if their tax rates increase.

“You can’t rule it out, but I think it’s probably not very likely that it’s that direct of an effect,” Mr. Siegloch said.

Americans might also show different results than Germans. “It could be different in the U.S.,” he said.

In the U.S., most households will likely see some form of tax increase next year, regardless of whether the White House and Congress reach a deal to avoid the so-called fiscal cliff, the roughly $500 billion in tax increases and spending cuts scheduled to kick into effect in January. Even with a deal, tax rates are likely to climb for many upper-income households (with the income cut-off yet to be determined) and workers’ payroll tax rate appears likely to rise. Without a deal, individual tax rates will rise for all income groups and the payroll tax rate will rise.

It is far from safe to conclude that Democrats, who tend to support tax increases more often than Republicans, have unlocked the secret to happiness.

Personal happiness has also been linked recently to less regulation, long a rallying cry among Republicans. People living in countries with “less intense” regulation showed more life satisfaction, according to a new paper from the Austrian Institute of Economic Research.

And those who got a bigger boost of happiness from deregulation included not only free-market supporters, but also “political left-wingers,” according to the research.

“One should consider the possibility that individuals systematically miscalculate the value of certain government policies for their own life satisfaction,” the paper noted.

The truth hurts

Alabama terror case could hinge on relationships

 

The terrorism case against an Alabama man accused of planning to wage Islamic jihad in Africa may hinge on just how well he knew a man on the FBI's most-wanted terrorist list.

Federal prosecutors portrayed Randy Wilson as an Islamic radical who wanted to reunite with Omar Hammami, an American who also grew up in Alabama but has since become one of the most well-known jihadists in Somalia. Wilson and another American who lived in Alabama for the last year, Mohammad Abdul Rahman Abukhdair, are accused of plotting to leave the country to join Islamic radicals fighting in North Africa.

The two men were arrested separately about two weeks ago in Georgia. Abukhdair was taken into custody at a bus station; Wilson was arrested as he was about to board a flight to Morocco.

Wilson's attorney has described him as a devout Muslim who was taking his family to Mauritania to study Islam, not wage jihad. Public defender Domingo Soto also said Wilson didn't live with Hammami, 28, about a decade ago, as the FBI has said, and the attorney questioned how well the two knew each other.

It wasn't clear whether Abukhdair has an attorney yet.
Wilson, 25, has a wife and two young children. He was known around his neighborhood in Mobile, along the Alabama coast, for his big yard sales. He was friendly and outgoing, neighbors said.
Court documents, interviews with acquaintances and a sworn statement by an FBI investigator paint a picture of Wilson's troubled childhood.
Debra Lynn Weaver and Randy Lamar Wilson married in Mobile in 1986 and had Randy Jr. nine months later. Wilson's father was arrested on drug charges in the first of a string of scrapes with the law, and his mother filed for divorce four months later, when he was 1.
Wilson's mother remarried an Egyptian man when he was 5. She converted to Islam with the marriage, and her son eventually became Muslim, too.
Ashfaq Taufique, president of the Birmingham Islamic Society, remembered first meeting Wilson when he was attending an Islamic school.
"I knew him as a Muslim as a young boy," said Taufique. "He went by Randy and Rasheed."
Soto said Wilson client has never been in trouble. While attending a Muslim school in Birmingham, he was offered prestigious scholarships to study abroad at places including Saudi Arabia, Soto said.
Shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, he became roommates with Hammami, who was the president of the Muslim Student Association at the University of South Alabama, the FBI said.
He was quoted in a campus newspaper talking about the attacks.
"Everyone was really shocked. Even now it's difficult to believe a Muslim could have done this," he told The Vanguard.
Hammami later wrote in an online autobiography that he already had turned toward radicalism by that time and privately praised Allah for the attacks.
Wilson and Hammami lived together for about 20 months until December 2004, the FBI said.
Hammami moved to Toronto in early 2005, and it's unclear whether he and Wilson kept in contact. Hammami later went to Egypt and joined Islamic insurgents, becoming a spokesman in videos and blogs.
He has since fallen out of favor with leaders of the Somalian terror group al-Shabab, which issued a statement recently distancing itself from Hammami, whom it accused of "a narcissistic pursuit of fame."
In 2010, Wilson met Abukhdair online, according to the FBI. A native of Syracuse, N.Y., Abukhdair moved to Egypt in February 2007 to study Arabic, the FBI said. He was among a group of people arrested in Egypt in 2010, on suspicion of being involved with a terror group there.
He was put in prison for two months, and then he was deported to the U.S. last year.
He lived in South Carolina and Ohio, before coming to Mobile in late October 2011 according to an FBI agent's sworn statement.
Agents already were watching Abukhdair and Wilson by then. The FBI said Abukhdair moved in with Wilson's family and gave the Friday sermon at a mosque in Mobile about a year ago.

Leaders at the mosque didn't return telephone calls seeking comment, and a worker shooed away a reporter who visited.

The FBI said it kept tabs on the pair through an undercover operative. Wilson "described Hammami as a friend and showed the (undercover operative) an al-Qaeda video on his laptop praising jihad and the downfall of the West," the FBI said.

Wilson and Abukhdair began concocting ways to travel to Africa to join in jihad, an agent wrote.

Wilson, the FBI said, believed he would receive "special treatment" in Somalia because of his connection with Hammami.

"In addition to travel plans, they discussed their joy that Omar Hammami is now on the FBI 'Most Wanted Terrorists' list, and were excited that he is now even more famous," said the FBI statement.

Wilson lived next door to Tom Rothaar for two years. Rothaar said he was a friendly neighbor and who would have frequent yard sales with items he bought in bulk from big-box retail stores.

Rothaar said he was "staggered" by Wilson's arrest and tried to make sense of it during a 5-mile run.

"I couldn't," Rothaar said. "The only thing I can think is all the typical clichés about how I cannot believe he was living next door and seemed so normal."

Dakota Indians mark hangings of 1862 with trek on horseback

 

The day after Xmas will be somber for Dakota Indians marking what they consider a travesty of justice 150 years ago, when 38 of their ancestors were executed in the biggest mass hanging in U.S. history.

Overshadowed by the Civil War raging in the East, the hangings in Mankato, Minnesota, on December 26, 1862, followed the often overlooked six-week U.S.-Dakota war earlier that year -- a war that marked the start of three decades of fighting between Native Americans and the U.S. government across the Plains.

President Abraham Lincoln intervened in the case, demanding a review that reduced the number of death sentences. But he allowed 38 to be executed, including two men historians believe were hanged in error, even as he was preparing the Emancipation Proclamation to free black slaves in the South.
This month, in an annual event that started in 2005, some Dakota are making a 300-mile trek on horseback in frigid winter temperatures to revive the memory of this footnote in U.S. history.
"It was just a terrible trauma that they had to endure, and we continue to have to endure this generational trauma to this very day," said Sheldon Wolfchild, former chairman of the Lower Sioux Indian Community in southwestern Minnesota.

This year's ride began on December 10 in Crow Creek, South Dakota, the reservation the Dakota were exiled to from Minnesota after the executions. It ends on December 26 in Mankato, where riders will attend a ceremony to remember the hangings.

Riders travel east across South Dakota, crossing the border into Minnesota and heading southeast to Mankato. Some ride the entire route, others join as their schedules permit. Support vehicles follow them.
The ride was captured in the documentary film "Dakota 38," which won a special jury award this year at the Minneapolis-St. Paul Film Festival.
"During the ride ... it feels as close to how we might have been in a camp," said Gaby Strong, who has participated in the ride or support for it each year. "That is really what we are doing over the course of the 10 or 15 days that we are all together."
Strong, 49, who lives in Morton, Minnesota, near the site of a key 1862 battle in the U.S.-Dakota war, said the ride has helped form bonds among the Dakota Sioux, especially the young.
"It's about healing, not only just for me, but for my community," said Vanessa Goodthunder, a rider and participant each year. "We are just bringing home our ancestors. You meet a lot of new people, and I get a lot of different perspectives."
Goodthunder, 18, who is majoring in American Indian studies and history at the University of Minnesota, said the rides have helped young Dakota connect with each other and their history.
"It's your identity. It is who you are," she said.

FORGOTTEN WAR

Over the next three years, Americans will commemorate the 150th anniversary of a host of Civil War battles. Almost forgotten are the conflicts with Native Americans that occurred in the second half of the 19th century as the United States rapidly expanded west.

Few of those conflicts are well known, with the exception of "Custer's Last Stand" -- when flamboyant officer George Armstrong Custer and his men were killed by Sioux leader Crazy Horse and his warriors in 1876 -- and the Battle of Wounded Knee in 1890, which many historians consider a massacre and the end of the Indian wars.

Thousands of Native Americans, white settlers and U.S. soldiers were killed in the Indian wars. Native Americans were coerced to cede their lands and then forced onto reservations.
In the Upper Plains, that included members of the Great Sioux Nation, which comprises Lakota to the west, Nakota in the middle and Dakota to the east around Minnesota.

The seeds of the Dakota war were planted years earlier, in the 1830s, according to historians, when the fur trade that had been the basis of the region's economy since the late 17th century began to fade and land became valuable for settlement.

Under treaties in 1851, the four main Dakota bands ceded about 35 million acres of what is now southern Minnesota, parts of Iowa and South Dakota. In exchange, the U.S. pledged payments and allowed the Dakota a narrow tract of land about 10 miles wide on either side of the Minnesota River. Settlers swarmed onto the newly opened lands.

In 1858, just after Minnesota became a state, Dakota chiefs were summoned to Washington, D.C., and told they would have to give up the northern half of that narrow reserve, said St. Cloud State University historian Mary Wingerd.

By summer 1862, the Dakota, now largely dependent on government treaty payments that were long delayed, were starving. On August 17, young Dakota men out hunting killed five white settlers.
The hunters pressed Chief Taoyateduta, known as Little Crow, to back a war. Some Dakota, but not all, fought soldiers and settlers in the short, bloody war in August and September 1862.
Hundreds of settlers were killed and hundreds more taken hostage in the war during attacks on forts, federal Indian agencies, cities and farms around southwestern Minnesota. Thousands of settlers fled east, fueling a statewide panic, and federal troops marched in to quell the Dakota fighters.
The U.S. was victorious on September 23, 1862, and Little Crow left Minnesota.
Afterward, more than 2,000 Dakota were rounded up, whether they fought or not. Almost 400 men faced military trials, which often lasted just a few minutes, and 303 were sentenced to die.
LINCOLN'S REVIEW
Lincoln demanded a review limiting the death sentences to those Dakota who raped or killed settlers. The number sentenced to hang was reduced to 38, but even in these cases the evidence was scanty, said Dan Stock, history center director at the Minnesota Historical Society.

The 38 condemned men stood on a large square gallows surrounded by soldiers. Thousands watched as a single blow with an ax cut a rope and dropped the scaffolding.

Wingerd said she could understand why the Dakota fought, but the brutal killings of settlers could not be condoned and she could not agree with people who believed that no one should have been hanged.

"We have to understand it as a huge tragedy with victims on both sides," Wingerd said of the deaths of settlers and the forced marches and scattering of most Dakota from Minnesota.

"In fact, the Dakota nation did not go to war and most of the people who were expelled from Minnesota were guilty of nothing," Wingerd said.

About 1,700 Dakota women, children and older men who did not fight were marched to a prison camp at Fort Snelling, Minnesota, where up to 300 died that winter. They were exiled to Crow Creek, South Dakota, in 1863, but some began to return to Minnesota almost immediately.

"They continue to come home and this ride represents that," Strong said of Minnesota. "We continue to come home. This is our homeland."

Wolfchild said he wants authorities to recognize sacred Dakota sites in the area that is now the Twin Cities and its suburbs to help heal the lingering wounds from the broken treaties, Mankato hangings and exile.

"I would like to be buried where our people originated from," he said.

What Is The Most Annoying Sound In The World?

It's so universal that it's become a cliché: nails on a chalkboard! When it comes to noises that bother everyone's ears, it's seemingly a given that scraping fingernails across a slate board is the one that everyone hates most. But when a group of neuroscientists decided to test which sounds most upset the human brain, they discovered that fingernails on a chalkboard isn't number one.

It's not even number two. As part of their research, published last week in the Journal of Neuroscience, they put 16 participants in an MRI machine, played them a range of 74 different sounds and asked them to rate which were most annoying.

What Does Randomness Look Like?

In ancient history, the concepts of chance and randomness were intertwined with that of fate. Many ancient peoples threw dice to determine fate, and this later evolved into games of chance. Most ancient cultures used various methods of divination to attempt to circumvent randomness and fate.

Trying to work out whether a pattern of numbers is random may seem like an arcane mathematical game, but this couldn't be further from the truth. The study of random fluctuations has its roots in nineteenth century French criminal statistics. As France was rapidly urbanizing, population densities in cities began to shoot up, and crime and poverty became pressing social problems.

What Does Randomness Look Like?

A Dozen Of The World's Most Mysterious Monuments And Ruins

Around the world, in places as diverse as Homestead, Florida and Yonaguni, Japan stand monuments and ruins whose origins are shrouded in mystery. Nobody knows exactly why Stonehenge was built, how a set of manmade ruins came to be submerged deep in the ocean or who commissioned a giant carved granite set of post-apocalyptic instructions for rebuilding society on a remote hill in Georgia.

Just what is a cephalophore?

A cephalophore (from the Greek for "head-carrier") is a saint who is generally depicted carrying his or her own head; in art, this was usually meant to signify that the subject in question had been martyred by beheading. Handling the halo in this circumstance offers a unique challenge for the artist. Some put the halo where the head used to be; others have the saint carrying the halo along with the head...

[A]n original, and perhaps the most famous cephalophore is Denis, patron saint of Paris, who, according to the Golden Legend, miraculously preached with his head in his hands while journeying the seven miles from Montmartre to his burying place. Although St Denis is the best known of the saintly head-carriers, there were many others; the folklorist Émile Nourry counted no less than 134 examples of cephalophory in French hagiographic literature alone...

In Dante's Divine Comedy (Canto 28) the poet meets the spectre of the troubadour Bertrand de Born in the eighth circle of the Inferno, carrying his severed head in his hand, slung by its hair, like a lantern; upon seeing Dante and Virgil, the head begins to speak...

Aristotle is at pains to discredit the stories of talking heads and to establish the physical impossibility, with the windpipe severed from the lung. "Moreover," he adds, "among the barbarians, where heads are chopped off with great rapidity, nothing of the kind has ever occurred."

Random Celebrity Photo

Nicole Kidman

The 2012 Doomsday and Other Signs of the End Times

Another doomsday come and gone, and once again, we're all still here. Read more

Apocalypse Never: Asteroid 2011 AG5 Will Miss Earth

This is a bit of cheery post-doomsday news -- the potentially hazardous asteroid 2011 AG5 will not threaten Earth in the year 2040. Read more