Bill Torpy of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution visited the Six Hills subdivision in tony Milton, Georgia, to get to the bottom of things. "For a decade," Torpy writes, "the owners of a mostly land-locked 24-acre parcel in Six Hills have tried to develop the property and have gotten increasingly frustrated in getting turned down." The latest owner is one Douglas Hay, whose own development proposal was rejected by the city of Milton and who has responded by (reportedly) letting pigs run free on the land, hiring a loud truck to annoy a neighbor, and now renting space to the Loyal White Knights of the KKK.


“We go out there, it’s open for our members to camp out, to target practice, to have our meetings because we’re a religious organization,” a KKK rep said.

Hay bought the land for $900,000 and now says his "feud" with the neighborhood/city will end if he can sell it for $2 million. Just a reasonable regular businessman, this Douglas Hay.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/03/04/milton_georgia_kkk_retreat_results_from_zoning_dispute.html

Stunned bobcat stumbles across hunters and locks them in an epic staring contest before being allowed to flee unharmed





An epic minute-long staring contest then ensues, with neither prey or predator making a move before the bobcat finally trusted that he could turn his back

The blowing wind is the only sound between the two.
After one more look to the left and right, thinking hard about his next move, the bobcat takes a small step back in the incredible footage, posted by HECS Stealthscreen and captured by Switchback Outdoors.



The bobcat stumbled upon the two men, armed with rifles, on a walk
A minute-long staredown ensued, with neither making a sound or move
Bobcat then took a step back, but quickly turned his head to check on them
The hunters let him leave without firing a shot


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3477731/Bobcat-comes-face-face-hunters.html#ixzz421Bpd9Yf
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

_____!!

Video at link. Loooong staring contest

Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi apologized Friday for her controversial moonlighting activities, which had prompted key state lawmakers to call for her resignation and announce legislative hearings on paid outside activities by university officials.

Katehi, who earns $424,360 annually as chancellor at UC Davis, had come under fire for accepting a $70,000-a-year position with the DeVry Education Group, a for-profit firm that offers college degrees online and on 55 campuses nationwide, including 13 in California.

DeVry is being investigated by state and federal authorities on allegations of deceptive advertising about job and income prospects for its graduates. The firm has denied the accusations.

Katehi resigned from the DeVry seat this week after questions were raised by public interest groups and Assemblyman Kevin McCarty (D-Sacramento) who heads the Assembly budget subcommittee on education finance.

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-uc-davis-chancellor-20160304-story.html

McCarty met with Katehi on Thursday but said he was "unsatisfied" with her explanation as to why she accepted the DeVry position. After the Sacramento Bee reported later that day that Katehi also earned $420,000 over three years as a board member for a college textbook publisher, McCarty said he decided to call for her to step down as chancellor
.
Katehi, a Greek-born electrical engineer, became UC Davis chancellor in 2009. The 35,000-student university made headlines in 2011 after a campus police officer pepper sprayed seated, nonviolent student demonstrators in a scene that was captured on videos and went viral on the Internet.

Katehi was forced to apologize for the incident, which sparked worldwide outrage.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2016/03/04/clinton-emails-continue-to-be-non-scandal-disappointing-republicans/
Walker/The Washington Post)

Now let’s be honest. When this story broke, Republicans were desperately hoping that we would learn that some criminal wrongdoing or catastrophic security breach had taken place, so they could then use that against Clinton in her run for the White House. But that turns out not to be the case. So the next best thing from their perspective is that there’s some vaguely-defined “scandal” that the public doesn’t really understand, but that voters will hold against her if you just repeat the words “Clinton email scandal” often enough.

They may have gotten that. I’ve certainly seen plenty of voters quoted in press accounts saying some version of, “I don’t trust Clinton, ’cause you know, that email thing.” I’m sure 99 percent of them couldn’t tell you what they think Clinton actually did that’s so awful, but they know that there was something about emails, and it was, like, a scandal, right?

In recent weeks, I’ve had a couple of liberal friends and relatives ask me, with something approaching panic, “I just heard that Clinton is about to be indicted. Is that true?!?” The answer is no, but they heard that because it’s something conservatives say constantly. Tune to to talk radio or surf through conservative web sites, and before long you’ll hear someone say that the Clinton indictment is coming any day now. Donald Trump, with his characteristically tenuous relationship to reality, frequently says that she’s about to be indicted or that she won’t be permitted to run for president because she’ll be on trial. It hasn’t happened and it won’t happen, but that isn’t going to stop them from saying it.


Finally, there’s a phrase you should watch out for when you see this issue discussed: “Drip, drip, drip.” Sometimes it’ll be a Republican partisan using it, but more often it will be some pundit explaining why the issue is important. What “drip, drip drip” means is that despite the fact that there was no crime and no security breach, the media will keep discussing the story as the investigations continue, and that will cause political difficulty for Clinton. “Drip, drip, drip” is this controversy’s version of, “it’s out there,” meaning, “there isn’t anything scandalous about the substance of this matter, but here’s how we’ll justify talking about it as though it actually were something scandalous.”

I don’t say that to justify Clinton’s original decision to set up the private server. She shouldn’t have done that, not only because it was against department policy, but also because she should have been extra careful, knowing her history, to make sure she minded her Ps and Qs on everything like this. She should have known that once she started running for president there were going to be FOIA requests and lawsuits and investigations of everything she did as Secretary of State. So yes, that was an error in judgment. But it wasn’t a crime — and it appears that no bad consequences for the country came of it — so we shouldn’t treat it like it was.

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-court-louisiana-abortion-20160304-story.html
Supreme Court blocks Louisiana law that would restrict abortion providers

:22
Story highlights
A lawyer for young man who was assaulted says he's a student at the school
Actions of Baltimore school police officer subject of a criminal investigation
Video shows officer slapping and cursing at young man
The chief of school police and two other officers have been placed on leave


(CNN)The Baltimore school system's top cop and two other officers have been placed on administrative leave after the release of a cell phone video showing one of the officers slapping and kicking a young man, officials said Wednesday.

The five-second video was posted online this week. It shows the uniformed officer slapping a young man three times -- one slap loud enough to hear a pop -- and then kicking him while yelling profanities.

The incident happened Tuesday on the grounds of Reach! Partnership School in Baltimore, school officials said.

The officer seen striking the youth and a female officer standing behind him have been placed on paid administrative leave, said Karen Parks, spokeswoman for the Baltimore public school system.

The officer is under investigation for assault and misconduct, officials said.
http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/02/us/baltimore-slap-video/

Marco Rubio’s terrible, horrible, not-at-all-super Tuesday

---
this isn’t how it was supposed to be! Jeb Bush is gone and Chris Christie is gone, and all the other establishment and moderate and moderate establishment guys are gone and their voters were supposed to come to Marco Rubio, right? This was the argument? Rubio was on fire over the weekend, blasting Donald Trump and having fun. He crushed Trump at the debate. And here he is, in third in most states, in second in at least one and maybe — maybe! — winning the largest share of Minnesota’s 28 delegates. Perhaps



https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/03/01/marco-rubios-horrible-terrible-not-at-all-super-tuesday/?tid=pm_politics_pop_b

https://s.yimg.com/uu/api/res/1.2/YOoEJpH5zZAOy9lE_SankA--/aD01MDA7cT05NTt3PTMzMTtzbT0xO2FwcGlkPXl0YWNoeW9u/.cf.webp
Back YahooTRAVEL Share
FASHION
9
Gun-Shaped Accessories Do Not Travel Well

Jihan Forbes
March 1, 2016

The shoes that caused one woman to stay at BWI airport longer than she expected. Lara Croft, next time maybe pack some L.K. Bennetts and be done with it. (Photo: @TSAmedia_LisaF)

If there’s anything Americans love, it’s firearms, but try taking your piece – or something that looks like it – to the airport. Yeah … good luck getting through a TSA checkpoint with that. A woman going through the Baltimore-Washington International airport learned this the hard way when she had to sacrifice fashion in order to get to her final destination on time.

The woman in question was traveling with a pair of very heavy, metallic-finish platform pumps in her carry-on that boasted a replica of a gun barrel as the heel, with bullet-shaped flourishes decorating the platform.

TSA spokesperson Lisa Farbstein called such accessories “less than ideal to wear or bring to a TSA checkpoint,” noting that the traveler was delayed because she wanted to bring this pair of platforms along. “Realistic replica firearms and ammunition are not permitted past TSA checkpoints,” she added. Time magazine says it’s unclear how long the woman was actually delayed, but if we know anything about traveling, waiting even five extra minutes at an airport seems like an eternity. Instead of transferring the shoes to her checked bag, she just left them in order to get to her flight on time. Priorities, man.
https://www.yahoo.com/travel/gun-shaped-accessories-do-not-travel-well-183819737.html

From astronaut to refugee: how the Syrian spaceman fell to Earth
In 1987, Muhammed Faris became a national hero after going into space with the Soviets. Now living in exile in Turkey, he has a new mission – fighting for his fellow refugees

The Neil Armstrong of the Arab world has an office in a ramshackle building in Istanbul’s Fatih or “Little Syria”. Muhammed Faris is a refugee, just like the people milling outside, facing up to the hardest challenge in his life; one that has already seen the roles of fighter pilot, spaceman, military advisor to the Assad regime; protester, rebel and defector.

In Syria, Faris is a national hero, with a school, airport and roads named after him. Medals on the wall of his office honour his achievements as an astronaut (or, strictly speaking, a cosmonaut). Here, hundreds of miles from his birthplace, Aleppo, he campaigns for democratic change in Syria, “through words, not weapons”.

In 1985, he was one of four young Syrian men vying to join the Interkosmos training programme, for allies of the Soviet Union, at Star City just outside Moscow. There had been one Arab in space before, Sultan Bin Salman Al Saud, a member of the Saudi royal family, but never a professional Arab spaceman. Despite the thawing of the cold war, US relations with Iran and its ally Syria were deteriorating. Syrian ties to the Soviet Union were strong: Russia supported Bashar’s father, Hafez Assad, in his rise to power in a coup in 1970. In return, the Soviets were allowed to open a naval base in Tartus, which remains in Russian hands today.

-------
When the violence began, Faris watched as his former students were “brainwashed” into attacking their own people. “They were told if they did not attack they would be killed by the rebels.” Today, some of Faris’s best former students are military leaders, controlling airports and crucial government sites but most have left. “It is mainly just the Alawites who have stayed by Assad’s side,” Faris says.

Soon after, Faris began planning his escape. “Four times, we were ready but I could see it wasn’t going to work. We considered many routes.” With three children and a wife to think about, he left nothing to chance. Eventually, they packed what they could in a car without arousing suspicion and drove over the Turkish border in August 2012. He became, and remains, the highest-ranking defector from the Assad regime.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/01/from-astronaut-to-refugee-how-the-syrian-spaceman-fell-to-earth

Simon Newman, the Mount St. Mary’s University president who astonished many with a brutal remark, inspired some to a new vision for the university, and set off an intense national debate about academic freedom, will step down effective immediately.

Karl Einolf, the dean of the Richard J.Bolte, Sr., School of Business at the university will serve as acting president, the board of trustees announced Monday night.

The change came after weeks of turmoil at the country’s second-oldest Catholic university, which faced questions from its faculty, alumni and national groups — including the organization that provides the crucial accreditation for the university — over its future direction and leadership. Some saw it as a clash between those open to change and those mired in tradition. Others felt it had become a debate over the very soul of the university: Catholic or corporate?

“I am proud of what I have been able to achieve in a relatively short time particularly in helping the University chart a clear course toward a bright future,” Newman said in a statement Monday evening. “I care deeply about the school and the recent publicity relating to my leadership has become too great of a distraction to our mission of educating students. It was a difficult decision but I believe it is the right course of action for the Mount at this time.”

___!


But the real turmoil began this year after the student newspaper, the Mountain Echo, reported that Newman had planned to cull struggling freshmen early in the semester, before a federal reporting deadline, to improve the university’s retention rate.

No students left the school as a result of the survey, but Newman’s remarks after some faculty members expressed concerns about the plan shocked many; he said a professor was thinking of the students as cuddly bunnies but that they had to drown the bunnies, “put a Glock to their heads.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2016/02/29/mount-st-marys-future-direction-on-the-table-as-leaders-meet-today/