Turkish police used tear gas and water cannons to clear protestors from Istanbul's Taksim Square and Gezi Park on Saturday. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan had issued a warning to the group earlier in the day to leave or face expulsion, saying "If it is not emptied, from now on, this country's security forces will know how to empty that place." The protesters ignored the threat, countering that none of their demands had been fulfilled. The PM has pledged to hold a vote on whether to redevelop the park where the protests started, instead of making an executive decision, but apparently it was too little, too late. Since the unrest started, there have been four deaths and around 5,000 people injured.

Via:

"Thousands of peaceful protesters, choking on the fumes and stumbling among the tents, put up little physical resistance, even as plain-clothes police manhandled many to drive them from the park. Just moments before, the park had been full of protesters young and old, as well as families with children.

Many ran into nearby hotels for shelter. A stand-off developed at one hotel on the edge of the park, where police opened up with water cannon against protesters and journalists outside before throwing tear gas at the entrance, filing the lobby with white smoke. At other hotels, plain-clothes policemen turned up outside, demanding the protesters come out.

Some protesters ran off into nearby streets, setting up makeshift barricades and running from water cannon, tear gas and rubber bullets into the early hours of Sunday. Plumes of white tear gas rose from the streets.

As news of the raid broke, thousands of people from other parts of Istanbul gathered and were attempting to reach Taksim. Television showed footage of riot police firing tear gas on a highway and bridge across the Bosphorus to prevent protesters from heading to the area."

Tayfun Kahraman, a member of Taksim Solidarity, an umbrella group of protest movements, told The Associated Press by phone, "Let them keep the park, we don't care anymore. Let it all be theirs. This crackdown has to stop. The people are in a terrible state."

This is absolutely unconscionable.

Via Bloomberg News:

Based in part on surreptitious tape recordings, an FBI affidavit lays out allegations that a Sacred Heart pulmonologist kept patients too sedated to breathe on their own, then ordered unneeded tracheotomies for them -- enabling the for-profit hospital to reap revenue of as much as $160,000 per case.

The Sacred Heart case is unusual because of the troubling nature of some of the allegations, said Ryan Stumphauzer, a former federal health care fraud prosecutor in Miami who reviewed the affidavit. “A typical indictment might allege phantom billing or improper coding,” he said. “This complaint alleges the hospital and doctors were performing unnecessary invasive surgery to justify false billing.”

...

Continue reading »

Hundreds of people marched to the U.S. consulate in Hong Kong on Saturday in support of Edward Snowden, an American citizen who leaked top-secret information about U.S. surveillance programs.

Via Interoccupy.net:

Brent Betterly, Brian Jacob Church, and Jared Chase (known together as the NATO 3) were brought in front of Judge Thaddeus Wilson on Tuesday, June 11th for another status hearing. They were accompanied by multiple sheriffs deputies and a court full of supporters watching closely over the proceedings. The proceedings provided more information on the Chicago cops failing to preserve their cell phones and text messages from the investigation, which appear to be significant pieces of evidence in the State’s politically motivated prosecution. The defense also introduced a couple more motions to dismiss charges.

Assistant States Attorney Matthew Thrun submitted the prosecution’s response to multiple ongoing discovery issues still standing from the court’s ruling four weeks ago. This response was accompanied by hundreds of photographs stemming from the pre-NATO Summit surveillance program spying on activist groups in Chicago planning protests last spring.

Contained within the prosecution’s answer to discovery was the revelation that officers involved in field intelligence team 7150 (the unit in charge of all pre-NATO surveillance and infiltration) destroyed or disappeared personal cell phones used during the investigation. It seems that multiple officers in the unit used their personal cell phones to exchange information between themselves and different officers as well as their supervisors in the course of the operation. According to the material offered up to the court today by prosecutors, the private cell phone service providers used by the officers did not store their text message data and the officers mysteriously (and conveniently for them) no longer have those phones in their possession. Thus, these crucial pieces of evidence will not be available to the defense.

Additionally, the prosecution failed to hand over the First Amendment worksheet and subsequent re-applications for this worksheet. The court had ruled four weeks ago that these internal police department documents were to be handed over to the defense, and on this issue Judge Wilson was clearly frustrated with the clear stalling tactics. Wilson instructed the prosecution to tell high-level police officials that “this court has a schedule and I intend to stick to it,” adding that he would issue a ruling to show cause if the documents had not been handed over to the defense before the next court date. He went on to say that “the federal court would be appalled to learn that [...these files...] are not in order to be presented.”

Continue reading »

Why can't this guy get it through his thick skull that it's a good thing that more people can take care of their health needs? Rep. Paul Ryan said during a conservative conference Friday that the focus on health-care reform was a big reason why he and Mitt Romney lost the 2012 presidential campaign. “We had to argue against the promise and the rhetoric of President Obama,” Ryan griped. He called the law, which has since been implemented, an “assault” on Americans’ freedom.

Too bad there’s not much he can do about it now.

Politico:

Ryan said the attendees of the Faith & Freedom conference constitute the political “mainstream” and need to work to “reclaim the center” in American politics.

“The left likes to think that we are the fringe. Guess what? You and I, we are the mainstream,” he said. “When you take a look at what’s happening, the goal we have in front of us is to reclaim the center of our politics.”

I don't recall ever hearing failed former presidential and vice-presidential candidates whine so much and for so long after a loss before in my life. And the loss is never their own fault. Get some therapy, Paul Ryan. People like their Obamacare. Get over it already.

This is absolutely beautiful. Turkish Protesters at Taksim Square singing "Do You Hear The People Sing?" from Les Miz. Stay strong, Turkey!

Your morning open thread begins below.

UPDATE:

(Reuters) - Thousands of people took to the streets of Istanbul overnight on Sunday, erecting barricades and starting bonfires, after riot police firing teargas and water cannon stormed a park at the center of two weeks of anti-government unrest.

Lines of police backed by armored vehicles sealed off Taksim Square in the center of the city as officers raided the adjoining Gezi Park late on Saturday, where protesters had been camped in a ramshackle settlement of tents.

Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan had warned hours earlier that security forces would clear the square, the center of more than two weeks of fierce anti-government protests that spread to cities across the country, unless the demonstrators withdrew before a ruling party rally in Istanbul on Sunday.

"We have our Istanbul rally tomorrow. I say it clearly: Taksim Square must be evacuated, otherwise this country's security forces know how to evacuate it," he told tens of thousands of flag-waving supporters at a rally in Ankara.

Protesters took to the streets in several neighborhoods across Istanbul following the raid on Gezi Park, ripping up metal fences, paving stones and advertising hoardings to build barricades and lighting bonfires of trash in the streets.

Some chanted, "Tayyip, resign."

Local television footage showed groups of demonstrators blocking a main highway to Ataturk airport on the western edge of the city, while to the east, several hundred walked towards a main bridge crossing the Bosphorus waterway towards Taksim.

The average American on food stamps gets just more than $30 a week to shop, but Congress is looking at cutting that budget by 20 percent. Congressman Peter DeFazio is working to prevent those cuts by showing what shopping on food stamps is like.

To protest nutrition assistance cuts this week, twenty-six members of Congress will live off of a food stamp budget this week to draw attention to House Republicans cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Eligibility requirements for the program already leave out 50 million food insecure households, but another 2 million Americans would lose access to food stamps in the proposed changes for the Farm Bill. Currently 47 million Americans receive an average monthly benefit of $133 from the program.

Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) detailed her grocery plans in a Wednesday blog post:

"This morning, I went shopping for the week on the SNAP budget. Getting your budget down to $4.50 a day is complicated. You need to try to make sure you have enough protein, limit your sodium, and find good vegetables. If you have special dietary needs, like diabetes or an allergy, there's even more to think about."
...
"What I'm thinking about most during this trip is that I'm shopping only for myself."

"When I was a young, single mother, I was on public assistance. It was a bridge over troubled water, and without it, I wouldn't be where I am today. I spent hours debating what to buy and what to skip, all the while keeping my sons in my mind. I could go without breakfast; my sons couldn't. I went through the grocery store today thinking about what I wanted, not what my sons would eat, but that wasn't always the case. I would have bought ground beef and white bread for them, not yams, and certainly not tuna."

Unfortunately, while many Americans are still suffering the effects of the economic downturn, a top priority for Republicans is spending less money on food for poor people.

Continue reading »

Officials say that an inspector who checked a Philadelphia building prior to its collapse last week has committed suicide. The Department of Licenses and Inspections employee was found shot in a pickup truck. He had inspected the building about a month before it crumbled—during a controlled demolition—but then the building fell on a Salvation Army next door, killing six people. A crane operator is charged with involuntary manslaughter.

AP:

"The building was being demolished when it collapsed onto a neighboring Salvation Army Thrift Store on June 5, killing two employees and four customers. Police allege a heavy equipment operator was high on marijuana when it happened.

The city's top prosecutor is convening a grand jury to look into the collapse."

The inspector, Ronald Wagenhoffer, was the last city official to check on construction at the doomed building and found no violations during his inspection on May 14.

Continue reading »

"Operation Troll the USA" was launched earlier this week in response to revelations of a vast secret surveillance program operated by the National Security Agency (NSA)made by Edward Snowden.

The plan was to 'test' the system by sending an email full of terrorist buzz words on Wednesday at 7p.m. EST.

The website was set up in response to the accusations at the U.S. government is collecting and looking at data from Internet companies like Google, Facebook and Apple through a secretive program codenamed PRISM.

From the trollthensa.com website:

"If millions of us, all at the same exact time, call or email someone with our keywords-of-terror-filled script, we can give our nation’s impressive surveillance apparatus the kind of test it deserves. They say they don’t read or listen to the contents of our messages. Why not test it out? It’ll be fun."

Continue reading »