Taking Stockman Of His Situation

Texas Republican congressman (and impeachment fanatic) Steve Stockman has an ethics problem and may have broken campaign laws.  Shocking, I know.

Rep. Steve Stockman (R-TX) may have violated federal law and House rules when he accepted campaign donations from two of his congressional staffers, the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) said Wednesday.

OCE announced in a press release that it had sent a referral in March to the House Ethics Committee recommending further investigate a number of allegations, including that Stockman made false statements and "endeavored to impede" OCE's investigation.

According to OCE, Stockman accepted campaign contributions from two congressional staff members in February 2013. The campaign's subsequent campaign finance reports identified the donors as family members of the employees. Stockman also allegedly was paying those two staff members full-time salaries when they were only doing part-time work.

In the end it doesn't matter too much as Stockman lost his bid to primary Sen. John Cornyn earlier this year and is retiring from the House at the end of the year anyway, but it would be nice if Stockman actually faces some fines or worse for breaking the law.

We'll see.

Brat Attack

The more we find out about David Brat, the man who dethroned House GOP majority leader Eric Cantor, the more it becomes clear the Tea Party inmates have taken over the GOP asylum.

A quick review of his public statements reveals a fellow who is about as tea party as can be. He appears to endorse slashing Social Security payouts to seniors by two-thirds. He wants to dissolve the IRS. And he has called for drastic cuts to education funding, explaining, "My hero Socrates trained in Plato on a rock. How much did that cost? So the greatest minds in history became the greatest minds in history without spending a lot of money."

An economics professor at Randolph-Macon College in central Virginia, Brat frequently has repeated the conservative canard that Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae brought down the housing market by handling the vast majority of subprime mortgages. That is, he absolves Big Finance and the banks of responsibility for the financial crisis that triggered the recession, which hammered middle-class and low-income families across the country. (In fact, as the housing bubble grew, Freddie and Fannie shed their subprime holdings, while banks grabbed more.)

In his campaign speeches, Brat has pointed out that he isn't worried about climate change because "rich countries solve their problems".

In other words, this guy is your standard Tea Party whackjob, not a populist, unless you think "populist" means cutting Social Security payments to Grandma.

I'll give you my general answer. And my general answer is you have to do what's fair. Right. So you put together a graph or a chart and you go out to the American people, you go to the podium, and you say, this is what you put in on average, this is what you get out on average. Currently, seniors are getting about three dollars out of all of the programs for every dollar they put in. So, in general, you've got to go to the American people and just be honest with them and say, "Here's what fairness would look like." Right. So, maybe the next ten years we have to grandfather some folks in, but basically we're going to move them in a direct line toward fairness and we have to live within our means.

And of course he hates the United Nations.

 "Common-" anything I'm against. United Nations. Common everything. If you say common, by definition you're saying it's top-down. I'm going to force this on you. That's what dictators do.

And by "dictators", he means President Obama.

The left does not believe in diversity. They believe in top-down, I'm going to force my way onto you. Obama is forcing un-diversity onto everybody. It's not diversity. It's top down, central planning, on everything.

Yep, a college economics professor who thinks liberalism is socialism.  I'm so shocked by the existence of someone so ignorant headed for Congress to make laws.

This guy's just another Randian glibertarian jackass who Republican voters figure won't actually vote to take anything away from them, just from those people who don't deserve it, I mean those people aren't even human, right?

StupidiNews!

• Newly declassified Pentagon information shows that in 1961, a US Air Force B-52 bomber broke up and crashed near Goldsboro, NC, with two live nuclear weapons aboard that could have detonated.
• Th 11th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that cell phone tower location tracking data is subject to Fourth Amendment protections.
• In what's being called a "joint Pakistan-US operation" 10 militants have been killed by US drone strikes in Pakistan in retaliation for last week's deadly Karachi airport raid by the Pakistani Taliban.
• As the FIFA World Cup opens this afternoon in Brazil, the country has turned to drones exported from Israel to help detect and stop violence in Rio's favelas.
• FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler says the Federal Communications Commission is looking to preempt state laws making it difficult for cities to offer broadband internet to residents.

Last Call For More Cantor Buried Tales

After becoming the first House majority leader to lose a primary, newly minted Republican non-entity Eric Cantor agreed to surrender his House GOP leadership post by the end of next month, with elections to replace him next week on the 19th.

Majority Leader Eric I. Cantor (R-Va.) will step down from his leadership post at the end of July, ending a swift rise through the ranks of national politics and upending a leadership team that has run the House since Republicans took control after the 2010 tea party wave election.

Less than 24 hours after losing a primary contest to a tea party-backed economist, Cantor announced Wednesday afternoon that he will resign as leader July 31, but keep his seat until his term ends in January. He said that House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) would make an “outstanding” successor.

“While I may have suffered a personal setback last night, I couldn’t be more optimistic about the future of this country,” Cantor told reporters Wednesday afternoon. “I’m honored that I’ve had the privilege of serving the people of Virginia’s 7th District.”

House Republicans plan to hold new leadership elections next Thursday, according to senior aides. In addition to McCarthy, several senior Republicans are mulling bids for top posts, so it wasn’t immediately clear which positions will be open next week.

With rumors that Orange Julius will be giving up his Speaker's gavel at some point and now Cantor toast, the long knives are going to be out this week as the House turns into House of Cards.

Meanwhile, Cantor's replacement, Dave Brat, today showed he's a college professor who knows pretty much nothing about economics in an interview with MSNBC's Chuck Todd.

TODD: Where are you on the minimum wage? Do you believe in it, and would you raise it?

BRAT: Minimum wage, no, I'm a free market guy. Our labor markets right now are already distorted from too many regulations. I think CATO estimates there's $2 trillion of regulatory problems and then throw Obamacare on top of that, the work hours is 30 hours a week. You can only hire 50 people. There's just distortion after distortion after distortion and we wonder why our labor markets are broken.

TODD: So should there be a minimum wage in your opinion?

BRAT: Say it again.

TODD: Should there be a minimum wage in your opinion?

BRAT: I don't have a well-crafted response on that one. All I know is if you take the long-run graph over 200 years of the wage rate, it cannot differ from your nation's productivity. Right? So you can't make up wage rates. Right? I would love for everyone in sub-Saharan Africa, for example -- children of God -- to make $100 an hour. I would love to just assert that that would be the case. But you can't assert that unless you raise their productivity, and then the wage follows.

TODD: Sounds like you're making a case against a federally mandated minimum wage.

BRAT: I'm just making the case I just made that you can't artificially make up wage rates, they have to be related to productivity.

So if there's a positive relationship between productivity and wages, we should easily be able to see it.  Let's take a look at America, for example.



Huh.  Go figure.the productivity of American workers has more than doubled since 1970, but real wages have remained flat.  And that's a 40+ year trend.

It's almost like Dave Brat has no idea what he's talking about.  If wage rates are related to productivity, I sure as hell can't find the evidence.

 

Klash Of The Klans

Repeat after me:  We don't have a right-wing domestic terrorism problem in the US, and racism is over because it simply doesn't exist anymore.  We sure as hell don't have a right-wing domestic terrorism problem involving white supremacists, either.

The Ku Klux Klan plans to begin military-style combat training under the direction of military troops returning home from overseas deployments, according to a Barcroft Media report.

The notorious hate group has been attempting to recruit new members – children, in particular – in recent months, and the Loyal White Knights faction has begun preparations for a long-awaited race war.

“We’re going to do something a little different for probably the next couple of years to try to get our men and women ready for the upcoming battle that we’re about to take upon us, and this is something that no Klan has ever done and we’re going to start it,” said one Klan leader during a rally in Parkersburg, West Virginia. “All our boys are finally coming back home from the military, which is good, and we’re getting a lot more military members to join.”

How nice for you.

Klan members have dropped leaflets and candy in neighborhoods across the United States, and the group has also used social media in hopes of attracting teenage recruits.

Other young people are recruited by their own parents to join the group.

“I enjoy days like today, because I like being around people, not disgusting people, not drug addicts,” said one hooded boy whose parents brought him and his brother to the Parkersburg rally – which drew about 40 people.

Just exercising their Second Amendment rights, folks.  Nothing to be alarmed about, please go about your business.  There are no racists, there are no right-wing militias, there are no problems.

Also, Benghazi.

Yet Another School Shooting

A suspected gunman and a student are dead, one teacher injured at this week's school shooting in the Portland suburb of Troutdale.

According to multiple law enforcement officials, the shooter was a student at the school. The gunman appears to have died from a self-inflicted wound, the sources told CNN.

Authorities are working to notify the relatives of both the shooter and the student, neither of whom has been identified.

Officials believe they know who the gunman was, but they are "not confident enough" to reveal details yet, Troutdale Police Chief Scott Anderson told reporters midday Tuesday.

"Today is a very tragic day for the city of Troutdale and Reynolds School District," he said. "I'm very, very sorry for the family, and for all the students, and everybody who will be impacted by this tragic incident."

Steve M. reminds us that where the shooting took place, the Multnomah County, Oregon GOP has regularly raffled off AR-15 rifles to protest gun safety measures.

This year, the party planned to give away an AR-15 at a dinner honoring Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King -- two men who were shot to death. Portland's KATU reported that this was "the third time in less than a year that the group [had] raffled off an AR-15." Bad publicity led Portland's Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Cathedral to rescind its offer to host the dinner, which was subsequently held at a Portland hotel; the featured speaker was Ted Cruz's father, the Reverend Rafael Cruz, who's said he wants to send President Obama "back to Kenya" and compared him to Fidel Castro.

And now two are dead in another neighborhood.  This would be school shooting number 74 since the massacre at Newtown Elementary in Sandy Hook, New Jersey., and Republicans will make sure that nothing happens to prevent the deaths coming at number 75.

StupidiNews!

• International relief groups are saying that as many as half a million Iraqis have fled the country's second largest city, Mosul, after Al Qaeda forces overtook the town this week.
• A California judge has ruled that the state's laws governing teacher hiring and job protections are unconstitutional as they put minority students at a disadvantage.
• Ukraine officials have rejected a Russian deal over natural gas imports, saying they will hold out for better terms, but the move could lead to a supply crunch across Europe.
• Employment numbers are improving in the UK as the jobless rate there dropped to 6.6%, a 5-year low, and a 345,000 increase in jobs, the best monthly number since 1971.
• Electronics retailer Radio Shack rang up its ninth consecutive quarter in the red as the company lost nearly $100 million in the first quarter of this year.

Last Call For Eric Cantor

GOP House majority leader and conservative pain in the ass Eric Cantor just lost his primary in Virginia to Tea Party upstart David Brat.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor's (R-VA) lost to tea party primary challenger David Brat in the Republican primary on Tuesday.

The race was called at about 8:05 p.m. Cantor lost to primary challenger David Brat.

Who is Brat? He is an economics professor at Randolph-Macon College. Brat was regarded as a long shot candidate but Cantor's campaign still spent over $1 million on advertising to stress that the top House Republican is a "strong conservative."

Cantor's campaign also sent out mailers arguing that he's largely responsible for blocking immigration reform, signs, perhaps, that Brat seemed like more of a threat than he appeared publicly.

Cantor and his advisers gave dual messages going into Tuesday's primary night.

"I'm just not worried," Cantor adviser Ray Allen told The Hill.

Well Eric, you should have been, because you lost 56-44.  The good news?  Cantor is toast.  The bad news?  David Brat is a lunatic.

Mr. Brat, an economics professor at Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, Va., had support from radio host Laura Ingraham, who hosted a rally with him in a Richmond suburb last week that centered upon Mr. Brat’s opposition to immigration reform.

Mr. Brat appeared more interested in campaigning to make a point than in winning. The Washington Post reported last month that he no-showed meetings with key conservative activists in the capital. His excuse: He had final exams to grade.

There are clues to Mr. Brat’s ideology in his academic CV. His current book project is titled “Ethics as Leading Economic Indicator? What went Wrong? Notes on the Judeo-Christian Tradition and Human Reason.”

His other published works include the titles “God and Advanced Mammon – Can Theological Types Handle Usury and Capitalism?” and “An Analysis of the Moral Foundations in Ayn Rand.”

The worst news?  Unless Cantor pulls a Lisa Murkowski and runs as an independent, it's over for him and Brat could win big.

If there is a saving grace, Republicans will now get pulled so far to the right that the Dems may end up keeping the Senate.

And how are Democrats taking this?

Guess.

Wake me when movement progs unseat our own leadership. Mock the tea partiers all you want. They get it done. We don't.
— David Atkins (@DavidOAtkins) June 11, 2014

See A Need, Fill A Need

All that FREEDOM and stuff we have when it comes to guns being everywhere in America has a price, but don't worry, we can raise our kids safely in schools where there will have to be guns (because that's what the Founding Fathers wanted, schools full of people with guns) by giving little Johnny and Susie training with bulletproof cover blankets.

School shootings are a tragic reality. While much discussion has centered around prevention, ProTecht, a protective and safety products company in Oklahoma, has created a product it hopes kids will use in case such a tragedy strikes their schools. The Bodyguard Blanket is designed to offer a temporary shelter during dangerous situations, particularly school shootings.

While the Bodyguard is also built to help protect children from falling debris during natural disasters like tornadoes, much of the marketing around the product concerns the potential for school shootings. It's the reason the blanket was created in the first place.

Technically, the Bodyguard is bullet-resistant. It's made from the same materials used in military and law enforcement body armor. Instead of having kids put on a flak vest, though, it puts the material in a form that can be folded up and then unfolded to create a body shelter. It has straps that help hold it in place like a backpack. ProTecht posted a video of the blanket undergoing a ballistics test, if you're curious about how it behaves under fire.

English, math, science (well, not so much science if it's Oklahoma) and "duck and cover in case of school shooter".  Boy, classes sure are tough for kids today.

Bullet-resistant materials aren't cheap. The Bodyguard comes with a price tag just shy of $1,000, though ProTecht hopes to partner with schools and nonprofits to make it more affordable to buy in bulk. Even with a substantial discount, it will likely be out of reach for many school districts.

OK, so nice schools will have protection from rampaging shooters.  The poor schools where those kids are at, not so much.

Why try to prevent school shootings when you can design a protect to profit from their inevitability?  If that's not the American way, I don't know what is.

The Privilege Of Being A Sexual Assault Victim

Conservatives really, really think women are all faking sexual assault for the "social benefits" of victimhood or something.  The latest proponent of "those bitches is clearly lying" is George F. Will.

In a column for the Washington Post, Will argues that universities are basing their definition of sexual assault on a "Washington" education, which is leading to inflated statistics.

“They are learning that when they say campus victimizations are ubiquitous ('micro-aggressions,' often not discernible to the untutored eye, are everywhere), and that when they make victimhood a coveted status that confers privileges, victims proliferate," he wrote.

Will offers an anecdote from a student at Swarthmore College, in which a woman reported a rape after a former sexual partner wouldn't take no for an answer. Will implies that because the incident occurred "with a guy with whom she’d been hooking up for three months," she wasn't sexually assaulted.

"I just kind of laid there and didn’t do anything — I had already said no. I was just tired and wanted to go to bed. I let him finish. I pulled my panties back on and went to sleep," the woman wrote about the encounter.

"Six weeks later, the woman reported that she had been raped," Will wrote about the Swarthmore student. "Now the Obama administration is riding to the rescue of 'sexual assault' victims. It vows to excavate equities from the ambiguities of the hookup culture, this cocktail of hormones, alcohol and the faux sophistication of today’s prolonged adolescence of especially privileged young adults."

So, it's not sexual assault because the dirty, skanky whore said yes to the guy earlier.  Just because she said no this time, well, whore.  So it doesn't matter, the privileged bitch.  She'll get hers, right fellas?

The conservative columnist then disputed certain aspects of the definition of sexual assault.

"Combine this with capacious definitions of sexual assault that can include not only forcible sexual penetration but also nonconsensual touching. Then add the doctrine that the consent of a female who has been drinking might not protect a male from being found guilty of rape," he wrote. "Then comes costly litigation against institutions that have denied due process to males they accuse of what society considers serious felonies."

Will then links sexual assault to other attempts to "create victim-free campuses."

"Meanwhile, the newest campus idea for preventing victimizations — an idea certain to multiply claims of them — is 'trigger warnings.' They would be placed on assigned readings or announced before lectures. Otherwise, traumas could be triggered in students whose tender sensibilities would be lacerated by unexpected encounters with racism, sexism, violence (dammit, Hamlet, put down that sword!) or any other facet of reality that might violate a student’s entitlement to serenity," he wrote. "This entitlement has already bred campus speech codes that punish unpopular speech."

Because as we all know, the real victims here are bros who shouldn't have to put up with all this whining about rape while they're busy doing keg stands and trying to bang sorority sluts.  You know, guys like Elliot Rodger.

We've come around to conservatives declaring that trying to protect people from sexual assault on college campuses violates the free speech rights of people who are busy assaulting people on college campuses. 

This is what you get for voting Democrat ladies, or something.  Jesus, Conservatives are broken, broken bastards.

StupidiNews!

• Five US service members were mistakenly killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan when the position they were holding was accidentally bombed by a coalition jet.
• The murder trial for 15 South Korean ferry crew members involved in April's deadly capsize that killed nearly 300 begins this week near Seoul. 
• General Motors has fired 15 so far in connection with faulty ignition switches that led to 13 deaths and recalls of tens of millions of vehicles.
• Senate hearings on high-frequency computerized stock trading will be in the spotlight next week as Wall Street comes before Capitol Hill for answers on possible conflicts of interest.
• A US cyber-security firm has identified a hacker group called "Putter Panda" that specifically targeted US space and satellite companies for the Chinese military.

Last Call For Mission Accomplished

Republicans and the Right Wing Noise Machine have managed to make freeing a POW into a crime prosecutable by the court of public opinion.

Public opposition to the exchange of five Taliban prisoners for captive Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl has less to do with Bergdahl himself and more with how President Obama handled the transfer, according to a new USA TODAY/Pew Research Center poll.

The poll shows 43% of Americans say it was wrong for Obama to make the deal, compared with 34% who say it was the right thing to do.

Thirty percent of those surveyed have a strong opinion of Bergdahl, whose decision to leave his post in 2009 and subsequent capture by the Taliban is under investigation by the Army. Half of respondents say they were sympathetic, and half say they are angry with Bergdahl.

The 128 veterans included in the poll are much more harsh in their assessment of the 28-year-old sergeant. Only 6% of veterans who responded say they sympathized with him, while 33% say they were angry. By 68%-16%, veterans say Obama made the wrong decision.

"If he was a captured prisoner of war, we wouldn't be having this discussion," says Joe Davis, the director of public affairs for the Veterans of Foreign Wars. "He put his teammates in jeopardy, and you absolutely don't do that in a combat zone."

Veterans are worried about the precedent set by the transfer, Davis says. "We have a long history in this country of not negotiating with terrorists," he says. "And we just did."

So a week of smearing Bergdahl and his family in order to attack President Obama has generated some quality poutrage for the right.   But it was fine when Bush released hundreds more prisoner for Guantanamo.  Not a peep from the VFW, no national shame campaign from the GOP, no hatred from the "liberal" media.  Obama does it, it's criminal.

We deserve the country we've allowed the GOP to shape for us, because we're not smart enough to know better.

Virginia's State Senate Flips Out

Just another day in state politics, folks.  Go about your business.

The Washington Post reports that Virginia state Sen. Phillip P. Puckett, a Democrat, “will announce his resignation Monday, effective immediately, paving the way to appoint his daughter to a judgeship and Puckett to the job of deputy director of the state tobacco commission.” Currently, the Virginia senate is evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans, with Democratic Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam holding the balance of power. If Puckett resigns, Republicans will gain control of the body for at least as long as it takes to elect a replacement.

The full details of this arrangement, including whether or not Puckett was explicitly offered the position as deputy director of the tobacco commission in return for his agreement to resign his senate seat, are not yet known. Although the executive director of the commission is appointed by the governor — who is currently Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe — the deputy director is appointed by the commission itself. Both the chair and the vice chair of the commission are Republicans.

Sure, that seems totally ethical and moral to bribe a politician.  It's what we do here in America.  Of course, the only thing that matters is if it's legal or not, but by the time that question gets answered, the damage to Virginia will be done.

In any event, the circumstances of this anticipated resignation — in which a Democratic senator throws control of the state legislature to the GOP, and then immediately receives a job from a commission controlled by a Republican chair and vice-chair — is suspicious. It also could have very serious consequences for Virginia’s least fortunate residents.

Gov. McAuliffe is currently embroiled in a fight with Republicans, who control the state house, over whether Virginia should accept Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act. If Republicans take the state senate, even briefly, they can use their control over the entire legislature to pass a budget that does not include the Medicaid expansion. Though McAuliffe could veto the budget, Republicans could use that veto to try to blame him for an ensuing government shutdown.

So yes, this is how Republicans win the Virginia state Senate with the express goal of blocking health care for the state's poor people.  Either they die or go to another state, either way, problem solved, the GOP way!

Virginia's government is rapidly veering toward a shutdown if neither side budges from its Medicaid position before July 1. McAuliffe says an expansion must be part of the new budget, while Republicans have so far resisted his calls.

Virginia is one of 24 states that has not expanded the Medicaid program under the law known as Obamacare. McAuliffe campaigned on a promise to change that.

The state's Medicaid office estimates that as many as 400,000 Virginians would be eligible for Medicaid coverage under a possible expansion. According to a study from The Commonwealth Institute, a supporter of the expansion, more than 20,000 of those people could come from Puckett's district alone.

Oh well, not his problem anymore, he's resigning.  Oh, and by doing so, that clears the way for Puckett's daughter to get a cushy new judgeship.

Puckett’s daughter, Martha Puckett Ketron, is already on the bench in Southwest Virginia, serving as a Juvenile and Domestic Relations District Court judge. Circuit Court judges in that region gave her a temporary appointment last year while the General Assembly was not in session. The House approved her appointment to a six-year term when it reconvened early this year, but the Senate declined to confirm her. The Senate has a policy against appointing the relatives of active legislators to the bench.

After the legislature concluded its regular session in February, the judges reappointed Ketron to serve until the legislature reconvenes. If Puckett resigns, the legislature plans to appoint her to a full six-year term. “It should pave the way for his daughter,” Kilgore said of Puckett’s resignation. “She’s a good judge. . . . I would say that he wanted to make sure his daughter kept her judgeship. A father’s going do that.”

So Puckett and his daughter get theirs, and all it will cost is health care for 400,000 poor Virginians.  What a great deal.

There Appears To Be An Awful Lot Of Treading Going On

Please continue to ignore America's pesky right-wing white supremacist domestic terrorist problem in favor of whatever outrage President Obama did this news cycle for the much more serious crime of being President while not a Republican.

Two Las Vegas police officers were killed Sunday in what appears to be a politically motivated ambush in a pizza restaurant that spilled over to a nearby Wal-Mart, where the two shooters committed suicide after killing a woman in the store.

Details are sketchy, but Metropolitan Police Department sources close to the investigation say the shooters shouted that “this is the start of a revolution” before opening fire on the officers, and draped their bodies with cloth showing a Revolutionary War-era flag. Investigators have also found paraphernalia associated with white supremacists.

I know, I know, it's really a complex and frightening false flag operation cleverly designed to lead us toward martial law under the Kenyan Usurper and totally not about a bunch of homegrown extremists trying to bring down our government.

The shooters then stripped the officers of their weapons and ammunition and badges, according to a law enforcement official with knowledge of the investigation. They then covered the officers with something that featured the Gadsden flag, a yellow banner with a coiled snake above the words, “Don’t tread on Me.”

The flag is named for Christopher Gadsden a Revolutionary War general who designed it. It has recently come back in vogue as an adopted symbol of the American tea party movement.

Proof that it's clearly a liberal false flag operation as there is no white supremacist militant terrorist problem in the United States, because Chief John Roberts has assured us racism is over, Q.E.D. and stuff. Perhaps more guns would have prevented this.

One unconfirmed report is that the two exchanged gunfire with a citizen who was carrying a concealed weapon, and that one of the shooters was injured.

Well, even more guns then.  Freedom.

Anyway, please go about your business because tens of thousands of black thugs kill each other like animals in our inner cities every day, so stuff like tea party sovereign citizens murdering cops doesn't prove anything other than black people are thugs who kill each other like animals in our inner cities every day, and cops too, so shut up libtards, how much blood is on your hands, yadda yadda DON'T TREAD ON ME.

StupidiNews!

• More than 20 college students in India were swept away when a dam in Himachal Pradesh state opened its floodgates without warning and flooded a river.
• At least 27 are dead after Taliban militants attacked Jinnah international airport in Karachi, Pakistan, pretending to be security forces and storming the airport's gates.
• Embattled LA Clippers owner Donald Sterling's lawsuit against the NBA is the only thing holding up sale of the team, according to NBA Commissioner Adam Silver.
• FIFA corporate sponsors Sony and Adidas are pressing the world football body to investigate allegations of bribery and corruption in awarding Qatar the 2022 World Cup.
• A supercomputer named Eugene revealed at the Royal Society of London may be the first artificial intelligence to pass the Turing Test.