Prosecutor Wants to Charge 14-Year-Old Girl with Sexual Exploitation for Taking PG-13 Pictures of Herself

When her parents found out she had sexted, they were horrified. When they saw the actual pictures, they were confused.
By Robby Soave | reason.com | October 4, 2016

A 14-year-old Iowa girl, "Nancy Doe," is facing sexual exploitation charges for taking two sexy pictures of a minor and texting them to a boy at school.

The minor in question is Doe, which means the Marion County prosecutor has essentially threatened to brand her a sex offender for taking and sending pictures of her own body.

Making matters significantly worse, the pictures in question can hardly be described as child pornography, Doe's family argues in its lawsuit against Marion County Attorney Ed Bull. In one photo, she was wearing boy shorts and a sports bra. In the other, she had removed the bra but her hair was fully covering her breasts.

Doe's own parents described the pictures as "less 'racy' than photographs they see in fashion magazines and on television every day." They wonder if she could have been prosecuted for taking a picture of herself in her swimsuit—such a picture would have probably been even more revealing than the alleged 'sexts.'

Doe's not waiting to be prosecuted for something that shouldn't even be a crime, and probably isn't in this specific case. She has filed a lawsuit against the county attorney for threatening to violate her First and Fourteenth Amendment rights.

"It is clearly a violation of the First Amendment for a prosecutor to credibly threaten to bring criminal charges for protected speech and expression," Rita Bettis, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa, told The Des Moines Register. "While courts have held that child pornography is not protected under the First Amendment, in this case, there appears to be a real factual question about whether the image itself was child pornography."

The trouble began last March, when two boys at Knoxville High School were caught using the school printers to print inappropriate photos of their classmates, both male and female, which had been obtained via texts and Snapchat. Some of the teens in the photos were nude, though emojis were covering their private parts, according to the lawsuit. Doe's two photos were among them.

Schools doling out post-retirement bonuses: Same outrageous tune, new verse

By Editorial Board | Chicago Tribune | September 27, 2016

In 2005, Illinois lawmakers tried to rein in school districts that dole out lavish end-of-career pay raises to teachers and administrators in order to jack up their pensions. Springfield set limits and imposed penalties for districts that exceeded them. The aim: to cut pension costs and boost Illinois' dangerously underfunded teachers pension system.

But some school districts still resist. They rely on arcane (read: devious) ways to circumvent the intent of the law and reward outgoing educators with huge bonuses instead.

On Monday, the Tribune's Diane Rado exposed the latest outrage: Some Chicago-area school districts shell out tens of thousands of dollars in bonuses to teachers and administrators who are already retired. Those payouts can come on top of multiple late-career salary hikes handed to educators to boost their pensions as they exit.

For those keeping count at home: That's two ways that districts are spending someone else's money to weave lavish post-retirement golden parachutes for educators.

Why haven't you heard about this before? Because, as Rado writes, these bonuses are "tucked into teacher and administrator contracts, and school officials acknowledge that payouts to individual educators are not always transparent or publicized."

Not always transparent or publicized? Try: Cleverly obscured. The payouts are calculated in various ways — a flat amount, a set figure multiplied by an educator's years of service or a percentage of an educator's annual salary — all of which makes it harder for taxpayers to follow the money out the door and into the retired educator's pocket.

The payouts amount to big money:

•  In the Vernon Hills-based Community High School District 128, one principal reaped 30 percent of her $200,000-plus base salary, a post-retirement bonus of $64,228.

•  Deerfield Public School District 109 spent nearly $1 million in end-of-career "severance" payments in the last two years alone. One longtime teacher took home about $67,000 so far, and a final payment in 2017 will propel her total post-retirement bonus to about $78,000.

•  Libertyville School District 70 has dished out almost $600,000 in bonuses for 38 educators over the last five school years.

Walmart Workers Refuse to Make Cop’s Retirement Cake

By Todd Starnes | officer.com | September 26, 2016

Three Walmart workers in McDonough, Georgia refused to decorate a “thin blue line” cake for a police officer’s retirement party because they said it was racist.

A number of my Georgia readers alerted me to the story and on Saturday night I spoke directly with the police officer’s daughter. She asked that I not divulge her name and I’ve agreed to honor her request.

“I was so shocked,” she told me. “I didn’t know what to do or say or anything. I was trying not to lose my temper or make a scene.”

“The baker told me the blue line cake was racist”

— Police Officer's Daughter

For the record, Walmart has confessed that most of her allegations are true. I’ll have more on that a bit later in this column.

The police officer’s daughter went to the Walmart on Willow Drive on Sept. 22 to order a flag for her father’s retirement party. He was leaving the force after 25-years on the job.

She showed the bakers a photograph of the police officer’s flag - the black and white version of Old Glory with a blue line.

“One of the bakers told me the design could be perceived as racist and nobody feels comfortable decorating the cake,” the police officer’s daughter told me.

9 Financial Planning Tips for Responsible Living

By SimplySafeDividends.com | September 21, 2016

If you weren’t born into riches, chances are that you’ve had to grow up and get a job to earn the money you need to survive.

Particularly if you’ve formed a family along the way, it’s important to do what you can to protect the money you’re earning, the money you’re saving, and the people who have come to depend on you and your income.

Let’s take a look at some basic financial planning tips that can help you better secure your finances and build a solid foundation for your family’s future.

1. Build an emergency reserve fund

The first and most basic step toward improving your financial situation also happens to be the one that is most frequently overlooked or, worse, dismissed — establish an emergency reserve fund. This doesn’t have to be a monumental or complex account; an ordinary savings account at your local bank will work perfectly.

Your goal should be to accumulate a minimum of 3-6 months’ worth of expenses in this account. You’ll sleep a lot better at night knowing that, no matter what happens, you’ve got enough cash socked away to continue paying the bills and living in the same style to which you and your family have become accustomed.

Think of your emergency reserve fund as the foundation on which the rest of your investment endeavors will be built. You won’t be using that money to begin investing in bigger and better, more complex vehicles, but the fund’s existence is the cornerstone of a solid economic progression.

Plus, the dedication and discipline you will have to demonstrate in order to consistently set aside a portion of every paycheck will serve to condition your mindset for future opportunities and the rest of your financial planning journey.

2. Pay yourself first

Still on the topic of establishing an emergency reserve fund, there is a right way and wrong way to do it, believe it or not. When considering the generic concept of saving money, most people make the mistake of taking the position that, “I’ll save whatever money I have left over when I get my next paycheck.”

The problem with that, and the reason those people never end up with any real savings, is that there’s never any money left when the next paycheck arrives.

There is a reason why consumer spending accounts for 70% of GDP – Americans are prone to spending practically all of their income no matter how much money they make. A recent Bloomberg article reported that close to half of those making between $100,000 and $150,000 per year have less than $1,000 in their savings accounts.

If you’re serious about saving money, whether it be to continue building your emergency reserve fund, growing a retirement nest egg, or planning for a large purchase, the key is to set that money aside as soon as you get paid. Your savings goal should be a top priority — nay, a requirement — that’s no less important or mandatory than your mortgage payment, utility bills, car notes, and health insurance.

Treat it just like you do the rest of your monthly financial obligations and write out a check to pay the “bill” that is your savings goal. Even if the amount you set aside is small, over time those small deposits equal one big one. So, don’t get caught in the trap of trying to justify skipping out on a payment to your emergency reserve fund just because the amount wouldn’t be significant.

Investing Strategies: Your First Stock

By Motley Fool Staff | fool.com

You can go your whole life without ever buying a single stock. But until you do, you won't really understand the full potential of investing -- and the rewards that come with it.

For beginners, mutual funds give you a great way to get your feet wet. With just a few hundred dollars, you can invest in a mutual fund that will give you instant access to thousands of different stocks. The diversification that comes with broad-based mutual funds brings with it a measure of security. You may still lose a lot if the whole market goes down, but if one particular company gets hurt, it won't have a huge impact on your overall portfolio.

Conversely, though, buying individual stocks can be a lot more rewarding. You can earn far greater returns from individual stocks than you'll ever find from a diversified mutual fund -- if you pick the right stocks.

So how should you pick?
Investing, like most other things, requires that you have a general philosophy about how to do things in order to avoid careless errors. Would you make a souffle without a recipe? Would you play cello in the London Philharmonic Orchestra without sheet music? Would you aim a shuffleboard disk without figuring out whether you're trying to knock off your own color or your opponent's? We hope not.

So before you dig deeper into some specialized investing strategies, you should first understand the various methods people use to analyze stocks. While investing is not nearly as difficult as these other challenges (especially the souffle), you certainly need a considered plan before investing your hard-earned savings.

Fundamental Analysis -- Buying a Business (Value, Growth, Income, GARP, Quality)
Many people rightly believe that when you buy a share of stock you are buying a proportional share in a business. As a consequence, to figure out how much the stock is worth, you should determine how much the business is worth. Investors generally do this by assessing the company's financials in terms of per-share values in order to calculate how much the proportional share of the business is worth. This is known as "fundamental" analysis by some, and most who use it view it as the only kind of rational stock analysis.

Although analyzing a business might seem like a straightforward activity, there are many flavors of fundamental analysis. Investors often create oppositions and subcategories in order to better understand their specific investing philosophy. In the end, most investors come up with an approach that is a blend of a number of different approaches. Many of the distinctions are more academic inventions than actual practical differences. For instance, value and growth have been codified by economists who study the stock market even though market practitioners do not find these labels to be quite as useful. In the following descriptions, we will focus on what most investors mean when they use these labels, although you always have to be careful to double-check what someone using them really means.

Southern Command Warns Sunni Extremists Infiltrating From South

By Bill Gertz | Washington Free Beacon | August 22, 2016

Islamists freely cross U.S. border with help of S. American alien smugglers

Sunni extremists are infiltrating the United States with the help of alien smugglers in South America and are crossing U.S. borders with ease, according to a U.S. South Command intelligence report.

The Command’s J-2 intelligence directorate reported recently in internal channels that “special interest aliens” are working with a known alien smuggling network in Latin America to reach the United States. The smuggling network was not identified.

Army Col. Lisa A. Garcia, a Southcom spokeswoman, did not address the intelligence report directly but said Sunni terrorist infiltration is a security concern.

“Networks that specialize in smuggling individuals from regions of terrorist concern, mainly from the Afghanistan-Pakistan region, the Middle East, and East Africa, are indeed a concern for Southcom and other interagency security partners who support our country’s national security,” Garcia told theWashington Free Beacon.

“There are major hubs that serve as entry points into the region for migrants from those areas of concern attempting to enter the U.S. along our border with Mexico,” she said.

The infiltrators from terrorist states and unstable regions exploit vulnerabilities in commercial transportation systems and immigration enforcement agencies in some of the countries used for transit, Garcia said.

“In 2015, we saw a total of 331,000 migrants enter the southwestern border between the U.S. and Mexico, of that we estimate more than 30,000 of those were from countries of terrorist concern,” she said.

Another problem in dealing with migrants from the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia is a lack of information among the governments of the countries used by potential terrorists for transit.

The exploitation of alien smuggling networks by terrorists until recently had been dismissed by both American security officials and private security experts as largely an urban myth.

However, the Southcom intelligence report revealed that the threat of Islamist terror infiltration is no longer theoretical. “This makes the case for Trump’s wall,” said one American security official of the Southcom report. “These guys are doing whatever they want to get in the country.”

A Clash of Police Policies

By Dr. Thomas Sewell | Creators Syndicate | August 23, 2016

Amid the rioting in Milwaukee, there is also a clash between two leading lawmen there — Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke and the city of Milwaukee's Chief of Police Edward Flynn. They have very different opinions about how law enforcement should be carried out.

Chief Edward Flynn expresses the view long prevalent among those who emphasize the social "root causes" of crime, such as income disparities and educational disparities, as well as the larger society's neglect of black communities.

Chief Flynn puts less emphasis on aggressive police action and more on community outreach and gun control.

Sheriff David Clarke represents an opposite tradition, in which the job of the police is to enforce the law, as forcefully as necessary, not to make excuses for law-breaking or to ease up on enforcing the law, in hopes that this will mollify rioters. Sheriff Clarke would also like to see law-abiding blacks be armed.

Differences of opinion on law enforcement are sharp and unmistakable — and have been for more than 50 years. However, as the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan used to say, "You're entitled to your own opinion, but you're not entitled to your own facts."

Unfortunately, facts seem to play a remarkably small role in clashes over law enforcement policies. And that too has been true for more than 50 years.

In his memoirs, the Supreme Court's Chief Justice Earl Warren declared that "all of us must assume a share of the responsibility" for rising crime rates in the 1960s because "for decades we have swept under the rug" the slum conditions that breed crime.

But the hard fact is that the murder rate in the country as a whole was going down during those very decades when social problems in the slums were supposedly being neglected.

In Eight Words Dr. Gorka Explains Why the DNC Ignores Isis

By S. Noble | Independent Sentinel | July 30, 2016

Isis was barely mentioned during the DNC convention. At the same time, FBI Director Jim Comey said Isis is the greatest threat to Americans. Dr. Gorka explained why Democrats downplay Isis in eight words during an interview last night – it “countermands their one-world moral relativism and multiculturalism.”

Dr. Gorka, author of Defeating Jihad, the Winnable War, was interviewed by Tucker Carlson, and said the DNC is now a radical left-wing machine and it controls part of the Democrat Party.

“I want to be careful here, Tucker,” he continued. “I don’t want to lambaste all Democratic voters in America. The DNC is really a function of the left-wing machine. It’s part of a Party that’s been captured by the radicals.”

Dr. Gorka pointed to the many indications that this is the case, leaving out the fact that the first day of the convention was minus any US flags. The left prefers to burn them and they did so repeatedly outside the venue.

“Just look at what happened. The convocation was booed. The serviceman with a Medal of Honor, trying to read the names of his fellow servicemen killed in combat was booed. The female police officer who asked for a moment of silence for fallen police officers was heckled by the Black Lives Matter. This is unbelievable, and clearly the thing that they’re most concerned about isn’t ISIS, it’s Donald Trump and global warming,” Gorka said.

The reason the left won’t recognize Isis is because it countermands their one-world moral relativism and multiculturalism.

“I think the trouble with ISIS, or with radical Islam, is that its existence, its bare existence, countermands the one-world kumbaya moral relativism and multiculturalism that the Democrat Party has been ramming down our throats for 30 years,” Gorka replied. “If all cultures are equal, if everybody has the same values, then how does this thing called jihadism exist, and why do people shout ‘Allahu akbar’ as they’re running out of the church in Normandy, having beheaded a Catholic priest in front of the altar?”

If these were Christians behaving this way would there be a different reaction, Carlson asked.

“It’s too much of a smoking gun that disproves the whole argument of cultural equivalency and moral relativism,” he said.“None of the narratives we see today, that actually make excuses for the perpetrators, none of those would be permitted if a Caucasian Christian was doing the same kind of horrific acts,” he asserted.

Full List of Hillary’s Planned Tax Hikes

By John Kartch and Alexander Hendrie | Americans for Tax Reform | July 28, 2016

Hillary Clinton has made clear she intends to dramatically raise taxes on the American people if elected. She has proposed an income tax increase, a business tax increase, a death tax increase, a capital gains tax increase, a tax on stock trading, an "Exit Tax" and more (see below). Her planned net tax increase on the American people is at least $1 trillion over ten years, based on her campaign’s own figures.

Hillary has endorsed several tax increases on middle income Americans, despite her pledge not to raise taxes on any American making less than $250,000. She has said she would be fine with a payroll tax hike on all Americans, she has endorsed a steep soda tax, endorsed a 25% national gun tax, and most recently, her campaign manager John Podesta said she would be open to a carbon tax. It’s no wonder that when asked by ABC's George Stephanopoulos if her pledge was a "rock-solid" promise, she slipped and said the pledge was merely a “goal.” In other words, she's going to raise taxes on middle income Americans.

Hillary’s formally proposed $1 trillion net tax increase consists of the following:

Income Tax Increase – $350 Billion: Clinton has proposed a $350 billion income tax hike in the form of a 28 percent cap on itemized deductions.

Business Tax Increase -- $275 Billion: Clinton has called for a tax hike of at least $275 billion through undefined business tax reform, as described in a Clinton campaign document.

“Fairness” Tax Increase -- $400 Billion: According to her published plan, Clinton has called for a tax increase of “between $400 and $500 billion” by “restoring basic fairness to our tax code.” These proposals include a “fair share surcharge,” the taxing of carried interest capital gains as ordinary income, and a hike in the Death Tax.

But there are even more Clinton tax hike proposals not included in the tally above. Her campaign has failed to release specific details for many of her proposals. The true Clinton net tax hike figure is likely much higher than $1 trillion.

For instance:

Capital Gains Tax Increase -- Clinton has proposed an increase in the capital gains tax to counter the “tyranny of today’s earnings report.” Her plan calls for a byzantine capital gains tax regime with six rates. Her campaign has not put a dollar amount on this tax increase.

Tax on Stock Trading -- Clinton has proposed a new tax on stock trading. Costs associated with this new tax will be borne by millions of American families that hold 401(k)s, IRAs and other savings accounts. The tax increase would only further burden markets by discouraging trading and investment. Again, no dollar figure for this tax hike has been released by the Clinton campaign.

“Exit Tax” – Rather than reduce the extremely high, uncompetitive corporate tax rate, Clinton has proposed a series of measures aimed at inversions including an “exit tax” on income earned overseas. The term “exit tax” is used by the campaign itself. Her campaign document describing this proposal says it will raise $80 billion in tax revenue, but claims some of the $80 billion will be plowed into tax relief. How much? The campaign doesn't say.

This proposal completely fails to address the underlying causes behind inversions: The U.S. 39% corporate tax rate (35% federal rate plus an average state rate of 4%) and our "worldwide" system of taxation, which imposes tax on all American earnings worldwide. The average corporate rate in the developed world is 25%. Thirty-one of thirty-four developed countries have cut their corporate tax rate since 2000. The U.S. has not. Hillary's plan moves in the wrong direction.

ATR is tracking Clinton’s full tax record at its dedicated website, HighTaxHillary.com

Users Accuse Twitter Of Censoring WikiLeaks DNC Emails Leak

By Chsrlie Nash | Brietbart | July 23, 2016

“#DNCLeaks” was one of the top trending topics on Twitter this Friday with over 250,000 tweets reported to have been made under the hashtag since WikiLeaks released over 19,000 leaked emails from the Democratic National Committee.

Later on in the day, the hashtag was reported to have gone missing from the trending bar completely for around 20 minutes, before returning under the less popular hashtag “#DNCleak”. The change meant that those investigating the new trending hashtag would not see all of the other posts tagged under the previous version, effectively hiding over 250,000 tweets from the public.

“Twitter is still trying to censor this trend! Now #DNCleak is trending instead of original #DNCLeaks! Keep talking guys, expose corruption” commented one user on the change. “It seems @Twitter is now trying to push #DNCLeak instead of #DNCleaks in an effort to keep this from trending” posted another.

@wikileaks It seems @Twitter is now trying to push #DNCLeak instead of #DNCleaks in an effort to keep this from trending.
— KENT GUTSCHKE (@martiandeathray) July 23, 2016

twitter is trending #DNCLeak instead of#DNCLeaks
wow. i’m totally speechless at all this mass corruption
— sarah bellum (@zzzanthropology) July 23, 2016

Oh, right, now we’re supposed to hashtag#DNCLeak haha instead of #DNCLeaks — our bad, right? #feeltheBern
— Marie Myung-Ok Lee (@MarieMyungOkLee) July 23, 2016

Wary users have also brought up the fact that Twitter is now refusing people the ability to post links from “WikiLeaks.com”, only allowing those from “WikiLeaks.org” in what appears to be a further attempt to clamp down on WikiLeaks’ traffic flow during the DNC email leaks.