This is your Moment of Clarity #242: This is the perfect video for anyone who thinks they're behind the NSA spying program news. Give it a chance. This video is for Obama lovers and haters.

Keep fighting,

Lee

When will they learn? Yet another Republican lawmaker has come forward to profess his belief that rape rarely results in pregnancy. “The incidence of rape resulting in pregnancy are very low,” said Arizona Rep. Trent Franks during a committee hearing on Wednesday. Franks introduced a bill to ban abortions after 20 weeks and was reacting to an amendment offered by Democrats that would carve out an exception for rape and incest victims. Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat from California, responded to Franks by saying there was no scientific basis for his claim.

The Washington Post:

“Before, when my friends on the left side of the aisle here tried to make rape and incest the subject — because, you know, the incidence of rape resulting in pregnancy are very low,” Franks said.

Franks continued: “But when you make that exception, there’s usually a requirement to report the rape within 48 hours. And in this case that’s impossible because this is in the sixth month of gestation. And that’s what completely negates and vitiates the purpose for such an amendment.”

Democrats on the committee, including Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), responded by pointing to similar comments made by then-Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.) in his 2012 Senate campaign. Akin suggested that the female body can prevent pregnancy from occurring after a “legitimate rape” — a claim that is not backed up by scientific research and for which Akin apologized.

“I just find it astonishing to hear a phrase repeated that the incidence of pregnancy from rape is low,” Lofgren said. “There’s no scientific basis for that. And the idea that the Republican men on this committee can tell the women of America that they have to carry to term the product of a rape is outrageous.”

At least one Republican was distancing himself from Franks, with Massachusetts special Senate election candidate Gabriel Gomez repeatedly calling Franks a “moron.”

Franks is one of the leading social conservatives in Congress.

Former Texas Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX) voiced concerns on Tuesday that the U.S. government may use a drone missile to kill Edward Snowden, who recently leaked classified information on National Security Administration surveillance programs.

"I'm worried about somebody in our government might kill him with a cruise missile or a drone missile," Paul said during an interview on Fox Business News. "I mean, we live in a bad time where American citizens don't even have rights and that they can be killed. But the gentleman is trying to tell the truth about what's going on."

Paul, an fervent libertarian whose son, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), staged an hours-long Senate filibuster in March in protest of the Obama administration's drone policy.

Paul lamented that Americans are in an age "where people who tell the truth about what the government is doing can get into trouble."

An unusually massive line of storms packing hail, lightning and tree-toppling winds Wednesday could affect more than one in five Americans as it rolls from Iowa to Maryland. AP's Seth Borenstein shows the path of the storm and who is at risk.

The power is already flickering here in Southern Michigan. Batten your hatches, and stay safe, everyone!

Michael Morell announced his retirement as CIA deputy director on Wednesday, according to a statement from the CIA. Morell, who has been with the CIA for 33 years and played a major role in the 2011 Osama bin Laden killing, will be replaced by White House laywer Avril D. Haines. “As much as I would selfishly like to keep Michael right where he is for as long as possible, he has decided to spend more time with his family,” director John O. Brennan said. Morell will leave his position August 9.

Politico:

Morell, 54, ran the day-to-day operations of the CIA under the agency’s high-profile former director, former Army Gen. David Petraeus. While Morell rankled some in the Obama administration for his role in crafting the early talking points about the Benghazi attack, it was him and not Petraeus who was involved in negotiating what Rice said.

Delivering those talking points would eventually derail Rice’s chances to succeed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The White House later released e-mail traffic showing the inter-agency editing of the talking points that showed it was Morell — responding to concerns from the State Department — who eliminated references to al-Qaeda from the talking points.

During the Benghazi talking points discussion, Morell first changed language that assigned blame to al-Qaeda to say that outside the diplomatic post, the “crowd almost certainly was a mix of individuals from across many sectors of Libyan society.”

Later, according to documents released by the White House, Morell crossed out by hand entire sections of the talking points that speculated on who was responsible for the attack, the availability of weapons in Libya and previous attacks and threats in the country. He also eliminated language that referred to prior social media notifications taking place in Egypt.

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Via OccupyWallSt:

Restore the Fourth is a nonviolent grassroots movement protesting indiscriminate government surveillance and the erosion of Fourth Amendment privacy rights. Inspired by recent NSA scandals, Restore the Fourth is planning a series of demonstrations across the U.S to take place this coming July 4th holiday.

In New York City, an organizational meeting will held at 8PM this Wednesday, June 12th, in Washington Square Park (near the Garibaldi statue on the eastern side of the park). Although Restore the Fourth is not formally affiliated with Occupy Wall Street, we encourage occupiers to attend in order to share the lessons we've learned and show our comrades the practices which have been most successful. See below for more information.

Solidarity!

https://www.restorethefourth.net/
http://www.reddit.com/r/restorethefourth/
https://www.facebook.com/RestoreTheFourth
https://twitter.com/Restore_the4th
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Restore-the-Fourth-NYC/311612745638774
https://twitter.com/RestoreThe4thNY

By Nikole Hannah-Jones, ProPublica

The results of Tuesday's U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development national study on the persistence of housing discrimination are unlikely to shock: Racial and ethnic minorities continue to find themselves locked out of many housing opportunities.

No, the more startling thing may be what HUD intends to do with its findings. HUD spent $9 million to contract with the Urban Institute to conduct 8,000 undercover tests in 28 metropolitan areas in order to expose illegal housing discrimination. Yet the federal agency has no plans to use these tests to actually enforce the law and punish the offenders.

Once a decade for the last 40 years, HUD has produced a massive survey to reveal the pervasive discrimination that, year after year, exists in America's housing marketplace. But as ProPublica reported late last year, HUD as a policy refuses to invest the same kinds of time, resources and techniques in prosecuting those guilty of the very discrimination its expensive studies uncover. Instead, HUD outsources testing used to find and punish discriminatory landlords to dozens of small, poorly funded fair housing groups scattered across the country.

And Congress has shown little appetite for forcing HUD to do more meaningful enforcement. A bill that would create a national testing enforcement program at HUD is expected to soon die in committee for the third time.

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Art Shay: The Sporting Life and Times

Art Shay is a photographer and writer who has captured and helped define the American experience for the better part of seven decades. He shot pictures regularly for Sports Illustrated, Time, Life, Fortune, the Saturday Evening Post, Forbes, Business Week, Parade and The New York Times Magazine.

A Bronx native who now resides in Deerfield, Ill., Shay has photographed seven U.S. Presidents and other major influencers of the 20th century including such notable sports figures as Mohammad Ali, Nelson Algren and Marlon Brando. In addition to his remarkable photography, Shay has published more than 70 books on various subjects. He has also written weekly columns for various newspapers and authored several plays.

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Turkish police on Tuesday stormed Istanbul’s Taksim Square, the heart of the two-week-long protests against Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government. The governor of Istanbul wrote on Twitter that the police had only arrived to remove banners, but witnesses reported that police pushed past the protesters’ barricades, blocked all the exits, and fired water cannons. The demonstrators responded by throwing Molotov cocktails, rocks, and fireworks. Meanwhile, Erdogan told his party’s M.P.s that the protests have hurt the country’s image and economy. Protests in Taksim Square started on May 31 as a demonstration against plans to raze Istanbul’s Gezi Park but soon spread across the country as a more widespread call to action against Erdogan’s government.