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By Gil Aegerter msnbc.com

Marissa Alexander, whose case brought allegations that Florida's Stand Your Ground law is being unfairly applied, was sentenced to 20 years in prison Friday after being convicted of three counts of aggravated assault after firing a warning shot during a dispute with her husband.

The case sparked a confrontation between a congresswoman and the prosecutor after the sentencing in Jacksonville, Fla., WJXT-TV reported. Alexander, 31, claimed she fired a shot from a handgun into the wall to protect herself during a confrontation with her husband, who she said had abused her, WJXT reported. Two children were with him when she fired a shot in his direction, and she was charged with three counts of aggravated assault.
Her attorneys claimed self-defense and cited the state's Stand Your Ground law, which gives people some protection from prosecution for using potentially deadly force in cases in which they feel their life is threatened. The law came under nationwide scrutiny during the Trayvon Martin case, when neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman shot an unarmed teen and authorities waited weeks before charging him.


 Allegations of abuse

But a jury agreed with prosecutors that the law didn't apply because she left during the argument, got a gun and returned to confront him, WJXT reported.
Last week, State Attorney Angela Corey, who is also handling the Zimmerman case, said she personally met with Alexander and reviewed the evidence in the case, WJXT reported. She said she offered Alexander a three-year sentence before trial, despite the case qualifying for a 20-year minimum mandatory sentence.
The case has sparked rallies on Alexander's behalf, and WJXT described a heated scene outside the courtroom after the sentencing:
"Three years is not mercy and 20 years is not justice," U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown told Corey in an animated confrontation in the hallway. "If there ever was a stand-your-ground case, it was this one."
... She said she has been in contact with some of the best domestic violence attorneys in the country and will be involved in the appeals process.
"This is the beginning, not the end," Brown said of Alexander case. "Clearly there is institutional racism."
At issue in the case were Alexander's actions leading up to the firing of the shot.
Alexander has said that 36-year-old Rico Gray had physically abused her in a dispute on Aug. 1, 2010. She testified that she fled into a garage and got a gun, but was unable to leave the home because the garage door was stuck. She testified that she went back into the house, where Gray was with his two sons, and fired the shot.
But Corey argued that Stand Your Law did not apply because Alexander acted in anger. The judge agreed, saying that by returning to the house, she showed she was not in fear for her life.
Gray had been arrested twice on domestic battery allegations, but Alexander had been charged with domestic battery four months after the shooting, Jacksonville.com reported.
The 20-year sentence was a mandatory minimum under Florida's "10-20-Life law," which mandates sentences for crimes involving a firearm, the Grio.com reported.
After the hearing, Alexander's attorney, Kevin Cobbin, said the Stand Your Ground law isn't always applied fairly, NBC station WLTV reported.
"The law was made for people like Ms. Alexander," Cobbin said. "They did not make it for people running around on the streets shooting people. They made it for women in their homes trying to defended themselves against abusive mean men."

George Zimmerman just might be the luckiest killer in America. He nearly got off for the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, gets to spend the next few months out of prison while he awaits a trial date, and has received more than $200,000 in donations over the last two weeks. 

According to his lawyer, Mike O'Mara, who created a new website for Zimmerman, nearly $50,000 of the funds raised will cover his living expenses, while the remaining $150,000 was turned over to an independent administrator. 

In total the former neighborhood watch volunteer has raised nearly $500,000.

Additional reporting by Bob Seeley

  
Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
A photo showing fully armed U.S. National Guard troops patrolling a quiet residential street in Crookston, Minnesota has gone viral, once again underscoring concerns that Americans are being conditioned to accept the gradual imposition of martial law.

Although the photo is undated, Guard troops from the local Crookston Armory routinely take part in off-base exercises which train the local population to accept the sight of armed soldiers patrolling their neighborhoods as normal.
One such exercise in February 2011 dubbed “Urban Operations Training” involved military Humvees and 27 armed soldiers conducting a drill around the Bridge Street area of Crookston.
According to “Maggie,” the woman who took the photograph, when she started taking pictures of the troops one of them told her, “Just training Ma’am. Joining up with another patrol at the rally point.”
When Maggie asked why they were training on the streets of a quiet residential area, a younger soldier responded, “To be honest ma’am, I don’t know.”
Members of the same Guard unit shown on the photograph – Minnesota National Guard, Unit 2-136 CAB / B Company – have been deployed to Iraq where their duties would potentially have included rounding up alleged insurgents and taking them to prison camps, a frightening prospect given that the recently passed National Defense Authorization Act allows for American citizens to be similarly kidnapped and detained without trial.
National Guard troops are routinely involved in ‘urban warfare training’ drills but they usually take place within the confines of military bases. Many fear that the increasing presence of armed soldiers patrolling residential neighborhoods is a precursor to martial law.
Indeed, back in 2008 the Washington Post reported how 20,000 U.S. troops returning from Iraq would be stationed inside America under Northcom for purposes of “domestic security” from September 2011 onwards.
Northcom officials were forced to subsequently issue a denial after the Army Times initially reported that the troops would be used to deal “with civil unrest and crowd control".

The use of U.S. troops in law enforcement duties is a complete violation of the Posse Comitatus Act and the Insurrection Act, which substantially limit the powers of the federal government to use the military for law enforcement unless under precise and extreme circumstances.
Section 1385 of the Posse Comitatus Act states, “Whoever, except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress, willfully uses any part of the Army or the Air Force as a posse comitatus or otherwise to execute the laws shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.”
As Alex Jones exposed back in the late 1990’s, U.S. troops have been training to impose martial law for a considerable amount of time. During numerous urban warfare drills that Jones attended and reported on, troops were trained to raid, arrest and imprison U.S. citizens in detention camps as well as taking over public buildings and running checkpoints. During role playing exercises, actors playing prisoners would scream “I’m an American citizen, I have rights” as they were being dragged away by troops.
The fact that such drills are now set to involve Russian soldiers training on U.S. soil to hunt “terrorists” has also caused consternation.
Federal authorities in the United States have clearly been preparing for domestic civil unrest for a number of years. The Department of Homeland Security recently purchased a staggering 450 million rounds of hollow point bullets as well as bullet-proof checkpoint booths that include ‘stop and go’ lights.

(NaturalNews) The concept of vaccinating to immunize began in 1796, when British apothecary (pharmacist) Edward Jenner inserted cowpox pus under the skin of an eight year old boy. Jenner based his experiment on an unsubstantiated rumor that anyone who had experienced cowpox would be immune to smallpox.

Over the next couple of years, Jenner vaccinated others with cowpox to immunize them against smallpox. Without any actual proof of efficacy and safety, Jenner impressed King George III enough with a bogus immunization guarantee that he was awarded the equivalent of today's $500,000.

Thus, Jenner was the first medical professional to administer diseased matter as medication to a healthy person and receive a substantial financial award. He was also the first to constantly denounce vaccination detractors successfully. He was protecting both his ego and large public purse.

Many health professionals throughout the 19th Century knew that there had been several cases of smallpox among those with cowpox histories.Jenner's premise was flawed.

This was actually the beginning of a tradition that is carried on by today's vaccinators. Come up with a bogus solution to prevent a disease, make a bundle of cash, and shut down reasonable arguments from those who know immunization by vaccination doesn't work safely or effectively.

England's incidents of smallpox after vaccination rose steadily from five percent in the beginning to 95% by 1895. There was even a serious epidemic around 1872, one year after smallpox vaccinations were decreed mandatory in the UK. The mortality rate among smallpox victims also shot up five fold around that time.

Despite intelligent protests with obvious facts and figures disproving efficacy, and proving harm from toxic materials and viruses contained in vaccines that endanger natural immunity, the inoculation for immunization premise has been maintained.

Protecting the industry against truth by attacking reasonable dissenters viciously has resulted in vaccine industry revenue of $17 billion annually today. This doesn't include revenue from doctors' visits for vaccinations and resulting ill health from them.

The vaccinators' tactics of suppressing scientific data from concerned professionals has become more mafia like. Sincere medical professionals who register health concerns over vaccines are severely punished and slandered by the medical mafia owned mainstream media.

The truth about vaccines and disease outbreaks -allhidden from public view

A 2012 study led by Dr. David Witt, an infectious disease specialist at the San Rafael, CaliforniaKaiser Permanente Medical Centerconcluded thatwhooping cough occurs more among vaccinated children than children not vaccinated.

In 2010, a mumps outbreak occurred among 1000 children in upper New Jersey and lower New York. Almost 80% of them had been vaccinated with the MMR (measles, mumps & rubella) vaccine.

Throughout the 1980s, official agencies reported several outbreaks of measles occurring among childrenwho had been vaccinatedin various locations including an Illinois junior high and high school, a Massachusetts high school, a region in France, and a rural area near Helisinki, Finland.

Both USA schools had well over 90% vaccinated against measles. The vaccinators claim a 90% vaccination rate among any specific populationguarantees herd immunity for that population. This bogus claim serves to create more revenue while blaming non-vaccinators for endangering humanity.

Meanwhile, despite the fact that only five percent of vaccine adverse events get reported to the "voluntary" FDA's vaccine adverse event reporting system (VAERS), there are manyserious adverse eventsrecorded and many more that seep through the cracks to vaccine concerned internet sites.

Thank goodness for the few MDs and others who dare speak out despite the danger it potentially puts them in. It's up to us to learn from them and just say no to vaccinations.


Learn more:http://www.naturalnews.com/035715_vaccines_history_fraud.html#ixzz1tSYsfptJ

Lewisburg, PA (PRWEB) April 10, 2012Dr.
 DeeAnn Reeder, a professor at Bucknell University, is a leading expert on White-nose Syndrome

More than six million bats are dead, and millions more are expected to fall victim to a disease known as White-nose Syndrome, or WNS. First identified in the northeastern United States, WNS has wiped out an estimated 95% of Pennsylvania’s bat population and is quickly spreading across the country. It was most recently discovered in Missouri, Delaware and Alabama.
“This is like bringing small pox to the New World. It is surely an unprecedented wildlife disaster for North America,” said Bucknell University professor Dr. DeeAnn Reeder. Reeder is one of the country’s leading experts on WNS, and one of the researchers responsible for identifying the cause of the disease in 2011. “We can’t stop this thing. It’s marching across the country and we’re going to see some extinction.”
Reeder has been studying the disease since shortly after it was discovered in a New York cave in 2006. Since then it was been detected in at least 17 other states. Few bats exposed to the fungus that causes WNS survive.
“I was recently in a mine where I should’ve seen 10,000 or so bats. There were 150,” Reeder recalled. “We don’t know if the survivors have some immunity, or are lucky. If they’re just lucky, we’re in trouble.”
While Reeder and other scientists are turning their attention to surviving bats, and the clues they may provide in slowing the spread of WNS, the impact of the devastation to the country’s bat population could be severe. Reeder says for every one million bats that die, 692 tons of insects that would have been eaten by the bats, survive the summer months. That includes mosquitoes and agricultural pests. Recent studies show bats provide billions of dollars worth of agricultural and pest-killing services.

By Becky Krystal, Published: April 18






Dick Clark, a television host and entrepreneur who sold rock-and-roll to Middle America on the dance show “American Bandstand” and counted down the new year with millions of TV viewers as emcee of an annual celebration in New York’s Times Square, died April 18 at a hospital in Santa Monica, Calif., after a heart attack. He was 82.The death was confirmed by his publicist, Paul Shefrin.
From 1952 to 1987, Mr. Clark hosted various incarnations of “American Bandstand,” first over the radio in Philadelphia and later on national television. The program was a sensation because of the prominent role it gave teenagers — who were always shown clean-cut in jackets, ties and sweaters — to vote on their favorite song.

Record industry executives paid attention to the young tastemakers, who were not always perfect in their judgment. The teens in 1963 had given the Beatles a thumbs down for “She Loves You” and their mop-top hairdos.
By the show’s 30th anniversary, almost 600,000 teenagers and 10,000 performers had appeared on the program. Among those to make early national appearances included Buddy Holly, James Brown, Ike and Tina Turner, and Simon and Garfunkel. Dance crazes such as the Twist and the Watusi could be traced to the “Bandstand” studio.

“Dick Clark was significant in transforming the record business into an international industry,” read the citation in 1993 when he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The citation went on to say that “his weekly televised record hops — which predated MTV by 25 years — played an integral role in establishing rock-and-roll, keeping it alive and shaping its future.”
Although the citation called him affable and magnetic, critics were less kind. Washington Post TV writer Lawrence Laurent called him a bland mediocrity, adding that Mr. Clark “was final proof that one need not be handicapped by performing talent to succeed in television.”

After “American Bandstand” ended its run on ABC in 1987, Mr. Clark took it into syndication for two years and then handed it over to a new host, David Hirsch. It went off the air shortly thereafter. Despite his prominence on camera, Mr. Clark said the vast majority of his work was done behind the scenes as a producer. His self-titled production company was a force behind a slew of made-for-TV movies, beauty pageants, game shows and awards shows, including the American Music Awards and the Daytime Emmy and Golden Globe awards ceremonies. The private equity fund of Washington Redskins owner Daniel M. Snyder acquired Dick Clark Productions in 2007 for $175 million.

Dick Clark Productions provided ABC with the “New Year’s Rockin’ Eve” TV spectacular every year since 1972. Mr. Clark had initially pitched the show as a hipper alternative to the long-standing broadcast tradition of airing Guy Lombardo’s big band playing “Auld Lang Syne” from New York’s Waldorf Astoria hotel. Mr. Clark drew in audiences that inaugural year with performances by Three Dog Night, Helen Reddy, Al Green, and Blood, Sweat and Tears.