Sunil Tripathi, missing since March, was wrongly identified as one of the Boston bomb suspects
According to the following BBC report, this is merely speculation at this time. Yet, if it is true, what does this young man’s murder say about our country and our press?
The body of a man found in a Rhode Island river may be a student mistakenly identified as one of the Boston bombers, authorities say.
The state medical examiner’s office is trying to determine whether the dead man is Sunil Tripathi, 22, who has been missing since March.
Members of a university rowing team found the body on Tuesday evening.
Mr Tripathi has been described as the other victim of the bombings after he was wrongly identified a suspect.
Police Lieutenant Joseph Donnelly told the Boston Globe it was “very possible” that the body is Mr Tripathi.
Brown University’s rowing coach called police after spotting the body floating in the Providence River.
Mr Tripathi, a former Brown University student, was last seen in his apartment in Providence on 16 March.
On Monday social media website Reddit issued a public apology for its coverage of the Boston bombings after it wrongly named specific people as suspects.
Those mistakenly identified as suspects included Mr Tripathi.
Mr. Tripathi’s sister, Sangeeta, told the BBC of her family’s anxiety at how fast “completely unsubstantiated claims were spreading”.
She described how media surrounded their family home after her brother was wrongly named.
President Obama took a final glance at over 800,000 cheering Americans, paused for a moment and said “I want to take a look, one more time…I’m not going to see again.” The United States witnessed history and with his eyes tearing up, the president walked off the stage and was set to start his second term as the president of the United States.
As President Obama continued through his second inaugural address, the tone of his second term became clear. Unlike some other speeches, President Obama used his platform Monday afternoon to address topics that, at times, seemed to linger in the background of his first term agenda. There were many takeaways following the speech, and here are just a few.
1.Climate change will be a major issue over the next four years:
During President Obama’s speech, the president addressed climate change and the adverse effects that ignoring the problem could cause. While many on the far right continue to push false theories that climate change and global warming are “conspiracy theories” from the “liberal” media, the reality is that climate change is very real and action needs to be taken. President Obama made it a point to bring up the controversial topic, laying the foundation for future legislation over the next four years.
“We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations. Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms. The path towards sustainable energy sources will be long and sometimes difficult. But America cannot resist this transition; we must lead it. We cannot cede to other nations the technology that will power new jobs and new industries – we must claim its promise. That is how we will maintain our economic vitality and our national treasure – our forests and waterways; our croplands and snow-capped peaks. That is how we will preserve our planet, commanded to our care by God. That’s what will lend meaning to the creed our fathers once declared.”
2.The push for LGBT equality will only continue:
For the first time in an inaugural address, the LGBT community were brought up by name to the delight of over hundreds of thousands of screaming supporters. President Obama has made progress on LGBT rights over his first term, from repealing Don’t ask, Don’t tell, to openly favoring same-sex marriage. While the majority of Americans now support marriage equality, the push back from the Republican party and the far right shows no sign of slowing down and neither does the president.
“It is now our generation’s task to carry on what those pioneers began. For our journey is not complete until our wives, our mothers, and daughters can earn a living equal to their efforts. Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law – for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well.”
3.President Obama will continue to fight for the “big three”:
One major difference between Democrats and Republicans is their idea of what the proper role of government should be. While Republicans claim to want a small government, they increase the size of its role when it fits their party’s ideology. The GOP push for a reduced role of government when it might limit the profits of large corporation or level the playing field between management and labor, but when they can increase government to attack women’s rights or increase military spending, they jump at the chance. With the economy still struggling, Republicans continue to fight for cuts to necessary programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Knowing the fight will continue, President Obama drew his line in the sand.
“We recognize that no matter how responsibly we live our lives, any one of us, at any time, may face a job loss, or a sudden illness, or a home swept away in a terrible storm. The commitments we make to each other – through Medicare, and Medicaid, and Social Security – these things do not sap our initiative; they strengthen us. They do not make us a nation of takers; they free us to take the risks that make this country great.”
4. Women will have a president who will fight for them:
The phrase “War on Women” was a popular one this past election cycle, with both sides of the argument letting their voice be heard. Whether it’s the Rush Limbaugh/Sandra Fluke feud or the talking heads on Fox News, the fight for women’s rights (pay equality, contraception) will surely continue during the president’s second term and President Obama seems up for the fight.
”It is now our generation’s task to carry on what those pioneers began. For our journey is not complete until our wives, our mothers, and daughters can earn a living equal to their efforts.”
The next four years will prove to be a major fork in the road for the United States and President Obama is driving the car. With a divided congress in front of him, President Obama will have to decide which way the country is going and mold his own legacy.
To read the full transcript of President Obama’s inaugural address, visit the Boston Globe.
As we already know, Pat Buchanan has been out there pushing a new book of his Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025? Buchanan showed up on Hannity’s show earlier this week where he was treated to the softball interview I posted about here – Pat Buchanan: America is Disintegrating Because White America is an Endangered Species.
Needless to say, he didn’t get quite the same treatment when he appeared as a guest on Thom Hartmann’s radio show this Thursday. The relevant portion of the interview starts at just over three and a half minutes into the video above and the portion quoted below is about eight and a half minutes in.
Yesterday, radio host Thom Hartmann challenged guest Pat Buchanan over his recent writingabout minorities and test scores. Hartmann said that “a lot of people are taking what you’re saying as code for inferior genes” and twice pressed Buchanan to disavow that theory. Buchanan did not, instead claiming that he doesn’t “know anything” about the topic.
From The Thom Hartmann Program:
HARTMANN: A lot of people are taking what you’re saying as code for inferior genes. Please tell me that’s not what you’re talking about.
BUCHANAN: Well look, I’m not — don’t know anything about what genetics or something like that. What I’m saying is, is these are the test scores and we haven’t been able to –
HARTMANN: So do you disavow that?
BUCHANAN: Pardon?
HARTMANN: Do you disavow that idea, that concept –
BUCHANAN: Well, I don’t know anything about being — look. The Coleman Report –
HARTMANN: I mean, you’re being quoted over on –
BUCHANAN: The Coleman Report, and I think I’ve got in my book, the Coleman Report said what a child brings to school is far more important than what he finds in schools, in other words, heredity and home environment, nature and nurture. Do I know the differences, or what percentages, or this and that, of course not. I’m not going to get into that. I’m saying is here’s the test scores now, and this is the problem, and in our future, quite frankly, Hispanic Americans, and African Americans, because of test scores, because of the dropout rate is fifty percent, they’re going to be in the service economy and the rest of us are going to be up there in the knowledge industry and that doesn’t make for a united America.
Much, much more that in the Media Matters post with details following this statement up so go read the entire post, but as they noted, Buchanan is actually fully aware of what Hartmann was asking him about, so his denial that he doesn’t “know anything about what genetics or something like that” is just flatly false.
While Buchanan didn’t disavow the idea, he’s written about the matter throughout his career and was forced to clarify a controversial memo regarding the subject he wrote to President Nixon.
The Boston Globereported in a January 1992 article that as a White House aide, Buchanan “suggested in a memo to President Nixon that efforts to integrate the U.S. might only result in ‘perpetual friction’ because blacks and the poor may be genetically inferior to middle-class whites.”
At the time of the report, Buchanan was running for president and under criticism for his history of controversial racial statements. The Globe reported that “Buchanan said yesterday he does not believe blacks are genetically inferior to whites and did not have that belief in the past. Buchanan said he sent the memo to Nixon as a routine matter of intellectual curiosity.”
They wrapped the post up by noting Buchanan’s praise for some of the writings of white supremacist Sam Francis on the same topic he denied knowing anything about to Hartmann here:
Near the conclusion of his section on race and education, on page 224, Buchanan quotes the writing of white supremacist Sam Francis, in which Francis writes that “the doctrine of equality is unimportant, because no one save perhaps Pol Pot and Ben Wattenberg really believes in it, and no one, least of all those who profess it most loudly, is seriously motivated by it…. The real meaning of the doctrine of equality is that it serves as a political weapon.”
Buchanan eulogized Francis in a May 2005 column, writing, “When God created him, He endowed Sam with a great gift – one of the finest minds of his generation. Sam did not waste it.” In Buchanan’s book State Of Emergency, as noted by Think Progress’ Judd Legum, Buchanan lamented that Francis was fired after he suggested that only whites have the appropriate “genetic endowments” to keep America from collapsing.
Republican Senator Scott Brown of Massachusetts has a so-called “sock puppet” Twitter account that has been impersonating and mocking his Democratic challenger, Alan Khazei, for nearly a month.
A “sock puppet” is an online persona used for deceptive purposes.
“I promise to devote all my time in office to making gay videos. Shame on Scott Brown for focusing on jobs!” said a July 31 tweet from the fake account, @crazykhazei.
“The major issue dividing me from Scott Brown is higher taxes. He’s against them, I’m for them,” said a tweet from August 3.
“Apparently, there’s a fake twitter account out there called @AlanKhazei. Please do not follow that imposter,” said another from August 1.
The Blue Mass Group noticed that Sen. Brown and Mitt Romney aide Eric Fehrnstrom accidentally sent out a tweet from his personal Twitter account that was intended for the fake account on Tuesday.
“I just googled @ericfehrn and that guy is a loser,” he tweeted on the fake account after being discovered.
By Wednesday night, Fehrnstrom had admitted to being behind the fake account, but did not apologize.
“It was my Twitter account,” he said in an email to the Boston Globe. “Sometimes we take our politics too seriously and this was my way of lightening things up. As they say in politics, if you can’t stand the tweet, get out of the kitchen.”
Khazei’s campaign has called for Brown to denounce the “dirty” political tactics, immediately close the fake Twitter account and apologize.
“Instead of launching anonymous personal attacks against Alan Khazei, Sen. Scott Brown and his team should focus their time and energy on growing our economy and putting Massachusetts citizens back to work,” said Khazei’s Chief of Staff Emily Cherniack.
“Voters are cynical about the political process because politicians in Washington have spent more time on name-calling and tearing each other down, than they’ve spent working together to move the country forward.”
Just a two weeks ago he said, “…the citizenship test has been passed” when he referred to the POTUS birth certificate issue. What the hell is that supposed to mean? That there is a mandatory citizenship test for candidates who are “other than” the standard version?
In New Hampshire Friday, Mitt Romney stumbled over a line about pinning the nation’s melancholy on President Obama that found him scrambling to back away from a quote suggesting Republicans are going to “hang” Obama with America’s problems in 2012.
“Uh, so to speak — metaphorically,” Romney quickly corrected, before adding, “you have to be careful these days, I’ve learned that.”
It was a standout gaffe from the first major candidate forum of the 2012 cycle in the Granite State, where Romney joined four other presidential hopefuls at an event sponsored by the tea party-fueling Americans For Prosperity group.
Blogger Kombiz Lavasany quickly picked up on the line, posting a truncated video of the moment to the Americablog site:
The Boston Globe also picked up on the line, as did Joshua Green at the Atlantic.
The moment came after Romney was asked about how to deal with the nation’s high energy prices. Here’s the full quote, transcribed from C-SPAN’s coverage of the forum:
Do you remember that during the Ronald Reagan-Jimmy Carter debates, that Ronald Reagan came up with this great thing about the Misery Index? And he hung that around Jimmy Carter’s neck and that had a lot to do with Jimmy Carter losing. Well we’re going to have to hang the Obama Misery Index around his neck. And I’ll tell you, the fact that you’ve got people in this country really squeezed with gasoline getting so expensive, with commodities getting so expensive, families are having a hard time making ends meet. So we’re going to have to do talk about that, and housing foreclosures and bankruptcies and and hire taxation. We’re going to hang him with that — uh, so to speak, metaphorically, with, uh, you have to be careful these days, I learned that — with an Obama Misery Index.
Captured NY Times journalists released from Libya, cross into Tunisia 6 days after capture
“The whole family is overjoyed and thrilled and appreciate all the support and love that the whole country has shown,” Shadid father said, adding that his son would fly to Beirut to be reunited with his wife, also a New York Times journalist.
He said his son was not at liberty to discuss details of his capture.
Hicks’ father, Portis Hicks of Manhattan, said he, too, was “delighted.”
“The story is Tyler’s to tell and the others to tell. I don’t know all about what they went through during the period they were in custody. The best part of the story is that they’re free,” he said by telephone.
Portis Hicks said he had spoken to his son around 6 a.m. and “he sounded fine. He said he was OK.” Hicks said he was grateful to the Turkish government.
Keller urged New York Times journalists to exercise caution: “This is a reminder that real, boots-on-the-ground journalism is hard and sometimes dangerous work.”
It was the second time that Farrell had been held captive. In 2009, he was captured by the Taliban in Afghanistan and was rescued by British commandos.
Shadid worked previously for The Associated Press, Washington Post and Boston Globe. He won the Pulitzer Prize for international reporting in 2004 and 2010 for his coverage of Iraq.
Hicks, a former photographer for The Wilmington Star-News in North Carolina and the Troy Daily News in Ohio, was named Newspaper Photographer of the Year in 2007 by Pictures of the Year International and won an Infinity award from the International Center of Photography in 2001. More…
