Here are your top stories for this Saturday, February 12, 2012:

- President Obama adjusts contraceptive plan

- Islamic extremist gets life sentence

- GOP hopefuls address CPAC

- Spitting contest in Israel

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“CIA Tango down,” a member of Anonymous tweeted via @YourAnonNews, a Twitter feed used by the group.

“Tango down” is an expression used by U.S. Special Forces when they have eliminated an enemy.

Attempts to access the CIA website at www.cia.gov were unsuccessful.

The CIA has not yet commented on the matter.

Just last month, Anonymous knocked the official websites of the U.S. Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation offline.

Those attacks were in retaliation for the shutdown of file-sharing website Megaupload.

Anonymous has not elaborated on their reasons for taking out the CIA website.

Most Anonymous attacks are distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks in which a large number of computers are commanded to simultaneously visit a website, thus overwhelming its servers.

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Weibo users credited “reliable sources” (almost always a good indicator that a hoax is playing out) and said the incident took place at the North Korean embassy in Beijing.

Here’s one version of the death rumor posted by Gawker, as cleaned up from the crappy Google translation:

According to reliable sources, North Korean leader [Kim Jong-Un was killed] in Beijing in February 10 2012, at 2 o’clock and 45 minutes. Unknown persons broke into his residence shot and were subsequently shot and killed by the bodyguard.

Chinese web users are already speculating that the assassination of Kim Jong-Un was a military coup.

They’ve begun posting fuzzy pictures purporting to show an unusual number of vehicles parked at the North Korean embassy.

ChinaSMACK staff writer Joe Xu suggests that reports of a large number of vehicles at the embassy may have led to the rumor.

The rumor also quickly made its way over to Twitter, even making it into the site’s Trending Topics list this afternoon.

Shortly after this death last year, multiple rumors floated around the internet suggesting that his father Kim Jong-Il was assassinated.

So what do you think?  Is Kim Jong-Un dead or is Kim Jong-Undead?  Spacing is the difference between assassination and zombies!

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The boys were killed when their father, Josh Powell, blew up the house last weekend in a horrific murder-suicide.

Fred Phelps Jr., founder of Kansas-based WBC, tweeted today that hate group had scrapped the protest after getting an interview on a syndicated radio show.

“Just finished interview with @BobbyDshow. Bobby D. was a real gentleman. Washington trip now cancelled.”

Fred’s daughter Margie Phelps also confirmed the cancellation.

Phelps originally said yesterday that the WBC was planning to attend the Powell boys‘ funeral as a protest against the pending legalization of gay marriage in Washington state.

That elicited a fierce backlash among many locals, including members of Occupy Seattle, who vowed to block the Westboro protesters if they showed up.

Alina Powell, Josh Powell’s sister, called the planned protest “a horrible, disdainful act that serves no purpose other than to continue the years-long objectification of those little boys.”

Fred Phelps Jr. later said the group wouldn’t protest if the group was granted an interview with the Bobby D. Show. After the interview, Phelps tweeted that the protest was canceled.

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Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, Oklahoma, and Tennessee no longer will have to meet the 2014 targets established by the law, Obama and other White House officials announced yesterday.

No Child Left Behind, the program that became the cornerstone of President George W. Bush’s education plan, requires all students to be grade-level proficient in reading and math by 2014. Critics say that goal is unrealistic, produces too much teach-to-the-test instruction, and means too many schools are labeled failures.

The ten states getting waivers will get a break on the NCLB goals in exchange for providing detailed plans for preparing their students for college and careers, establishing new goals for improving student achievement, rewarding high-performing schools, and getting aid to those students that are underperforming.

Obama announced the No Child Left Behind waiver plan back in September as part of his “we can’t wait” series of executive orders.

“I said [in September] the goals of No Child Left Behind were the right ones. Standards and accountability — those are the right goals. Closing the achievement gap, that’s a good goal. That’s the right goal. We’ve got to stay focused on those goals,” Obama said Thursday. “But we’ve got to do it in a way that doesn’t force teachers to teach to the test, or encourage schools to lower their standards to avoid being labeled as failures. That doesn’t help anybody. It certainly doesn’t help our children in the classroom.”

Every states had the opportunity to request the waivers, Obama said, and 39 states expressed interest.

More in the video below.

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(UPDATE: WBC has cancelled the protest)

Margie Phelps, daughter WBC founder Fred Phelps, tweeted last night that the church will attend the boys’ memorial service. They say the protest is to “remind” Governor Chris Gregoire “they died because of her rebellion,” an apparent reference to her support of same-sex marriages.

Gregoire is expected to sign into law legislation allowing same-sex couples to marry in the state of Washington. The measure was approved by the state House on Wednesday and by the state Senate last week.

Charlie Powell, 7, and Braden Powell, 5, were killed over the weekend when their father, Josh Powell, blew up his Washington house when the kids were dropped off for a supervised visit.

A memorial service for the two boys is set for 11 a.m. PST Saturday at Life Center Church in Tacoma.

In a later tweet referring to a story about Washington state’s pending legalization of same-sex marriages, Phelps wrote “This is why God’s cursed you w Josh Powells blowing up kids.”

It didn’t take long for word of the planned WBC protest to circulate around the web.  Occupy Seattle immediately rallied the troops for its members to counter-protest Kansas-based church. The group’s Facebook page said the church “has decided to capitalize on these sad events by bringing their unique brand of hate to Washington.”

Occupy Seattle said its members won’t disrupt the funeral, but will serve to “protect it from Westboro’s abhorrent message.”

The WBC has previously protested at several funerals for soldiers and celebrities.  They believe that God punishes the U.S. for its tolerance of sin.

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As the student pumped air into the cannon, the president quipped “the Secret Service isn’t happy about this.”

The president himself then took a turn pumping air into the cannon.

Finally, it was time to fire the cannon.  How did it turn out?

Check it out below.

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I actually LOL’d during this one…shortly after the 1:20 mark.

“Can’t think when you’re f–ing high!”

Watch more Viral Videos here

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On February 1, 2012, Birgitta Jónsdóttir, Margrét Tryggvadóttir, and Þór Saari, all members of the Icelandic Parliament, sent their nominating letter to the Nobel nominating committee.

As you may recall, Manning is set to be court-martialed for allegedly capturing 250,000 Department of State diplomatic cables, Department of Defense gun camera video, and other classified documents onto CD-RWs, spiriting the discs out of the Secure Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF), and sending the information to whistle-blower website Wikileaks.

There are also rumors beginning to surface that Manning may be transgender…but that’s another story for another post.

The nomination letter reads as follows:

We have the great honor of nominating Private First Class Bradley Manning for the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize. Manning is a soldier in the United States army who stands accused of releasing hundreds of thousands of documents to the whistleblower website WikiLeaks. The leaked documents pointed to a long history of corruption, war crimes, and imperialism by the United States government in international dealings. These revelations have fueled democratic uprising around the world, including a democratic revolution in Tunisia. According to journalists, his alleged actions helped motivate the democratic Arab Spring movements, shed light on secret corporate influence on our foreign policies, and most recently contributed to the Obama Administration agreeing to withdraw all U.S.troops from the occupation in Iraq.

Bradley Manning has been incarcerated for well over a year by the U.S. government without a trial. He spent over ten months of that time period in solitary confinement, conditions which experts worldwide have criticized as torturous. Juan Mendez, the United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on Torture and Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment or Punishment, has repeatedly requested and been denied a private meeting with Manning to assess his conditions.

The documents made public by WikiLeaks should never have been kept from public scrutiny. The revelations – including video documentation of an incident in which American soldiers gunned down Reuters journalists in Iraq – have helped to fuel a worldwide discussion about America’s overseas engagements, civilian casualties of war, imperialistic manipulations, and rules of engagement. Citizens worldwide owe a great debt to the WikiLeaks whistleblower for shedding light on these issues, and so I urge the Committee to award this prestigious prize to accused whistleblower Bradley Manning.

Sincerely,
Birgitta Jónsdóttir
Margrét Tryggvadóttir
Þór Saari
Members of the Icelandic Parliament for The Movement

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Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum chipped away at the Mitt Romney juggernaut last night with a “hat trick” of upset victories that shifted the dynamic of the 2012 presidential elections.

Santorum’s wins in the Minnesota and Colorado caucuses and Missouri primary surely dealt a blow to Romney, perceived by many as the the national front-runner.  Romney must now wait three weeks to regroup, when Arizona and Michigan hold what are suddenly looking to be important primaries.

In remarks to supporters in Missouri, Santorum took a jab at Romney’s big advantage in money and the negative ad campaigns he’s used to beat his opponents in other states. He also attacked President Barack Obama, describing him as someone “who thinks he knows better” and doesn’t listen to the American people.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I don’t stand here to claim to be the conservative alternative to Mitt Romney. I stand here to be the conservative alternative to Barack Obama,” Santorum stated, eliciting chants of “We pick Rick!”

More in the video below.

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Not only that, but the court also rejected the argument that U.S. District Court Chief Judge Vaughn Walker should have recused himself from the case due to the fact that he’s gay and has a partner.

The losing party can now appeal the ruling to a larger panel of the 9th Circuit, which would likely delay U.S. Supreme Court review for several months, or go directly to the high court. The sponsors of Prop. 8, ProtectMarriage, have said they want to get to the high court as soon as possible.

“The sub-theme here is that this is the 9th Circuit, which has recently been overturned more often than not by the more conservative U.S. Supreme Court, something that Prop. 8 supporters no doubt will mention if they don’t get the ruling they want from San Francisco,” said CBS News senior legal analyst Andrew Cohen.

For now, the court’s decision should have no immediate effect on other states within the 9th Circuit. Even if Prop. 8 is struck down and the stay lifted, marriage bans in other states would most likely continue until challenged.

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Karen Handel, the charity’s vice president for public policy, has just submitted her formal resignation letter.

“I am deeply disappointed by the gross mischaracterizations of the strategy, its rationale, and my involvement in it,” Handel said in the letter. “I openly acknowledge my role in the matter and continue to believe our decision was the best one for Komen’s future and the women we serve.”

Handel admits that she supported last week’s decision to pull funding for Planned Parenthood because the organization was under government investigation.

The charity cited a formal probe that had been launched by a Florida congressman at the urging of several anti-abortion advocates.

Komen backtracked after its decision created a media firestorm of controversy.

Komen affiliates accused the group’s national leadership of caving to pressure from anti-abortion groups. Komen’s CEO, Nancy Brinker, denied that the decision was influenced by and outside pressure from anti-abortion groups.

What do you think? Will Handel’s resignation be enough to quiet the storm?

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Her new tell-all book, “Once Upon a Secret: My Affair with President John F. Kennedy and Its Aftermath” will hit shelves on Wednesday.

Mimi, who at the time was known as Mimi Beardsley, says she never divulged the secret, even to family members, until her name was revealed eight years ago as part of a Kennedy biography.

Alford says she was stunned when the affair hit the tabloids and decided to write her own version of the story to “take control” of matters.

Mimi Alford will be interviewed on NBC‘s Rock Center on Wednesday night.

In an excerpt from that interview with Meredith Viera, Alford says she felt overpowered by the president during their first sexual encounter.

“I think I was overpowered in the sense that he was the president, he was an unbelievably handsome man, 45 years old,” she said. “Overpowered in the fact that he had chosen me and taken me on that tour. That is what I mean by being overpowered by the whole situation, not overpowered physicially… I really think I was willing to do it.”

The affair reportedly started after she was invited by an aide to go for an afternoon swim in the White House pool and the president happened to be there. He then invited her to evening drinks.

Mimi says she was a virgin when she first slept with JFK in the White House bedroom of the first lady, who was away at the time. She says President Kennedy was very matter-of-fact about their initial sexual encounter.

After it was over, he arranged for a White House vehicle to take her back home. On the ride home, Alford writes that it “kept echoing in my head: I’m not a virgin anymore.”

She adds that she always called him “Mr. President” and he always maintained his composure, never once kissing her on the lips.

She also says she was with President Kennedy during the Cuban missile crisis. According to the book, he told her during the infamous standoff with the Soviet Union that “I’d rather my children red than dead.”

More in the video below.

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In all, 17 employees, including Ambassador Robert Ford, left the country. Two employees flew out of Syria last week via commercial flights with the rest, including Ford, traveling by convoy to Jordan this morning.

Most of the staff there had been evacuated earlier this year.

Syria was notified of the decision to extract the staff and close the embassy after the employees were out of the country.

“The recent surge in violence, including bombings in Damascus on December 23 and January 6, has raised serious concerns that our embassy is not sufficiently protected from armed attack,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said in a prepared statement. “We, along with several other diplomatic missions, conveyed our security concerns to the Syrian government but the regime failed to respond adequately.”

Ford remains the U.S. ambassador “to Syria and its people,” the statement continued. “As the president’s representative, he will continue his work and engagement with the Syrian people as head of our Syria team in Washington. Together with other senior U.S. officials, Ambassador Ford will maintain contacts with the Syrian opposition and continue our efforts to support the peaceful political transition which the Syrian people have so bravely sought.”

Assailing “the escalation of violence in Syria caused by the regime’s blatant defiance of its commitments to the action plan it agreed to with the Arab League,” Nuland said the U.S. decision to close its embassy highlights “the dangerous path” that President Bashar al-Assad “has chosen and the regime’s inability to fully control Syria. It also underscores the urgent need for the international community to act without delay to support the Arab League’s transition plan before the regime’s escalating violence puts a political solution out of reach and further jeopardizes regional peace and security.”

Syria has not yet responded to the decision.

More in the video below.

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A group of about 70 Occupy protesters began marching around 9 p.m. PST from City Hall en route to police headquarters, burning an American flag along the way.

A few blocks later, police officers blocked their path.  The demonstrators deviated from their course and started on a winding path through city streets that took them through Chinatown, past City Hall, into the uptown district, and along auto row, which is marked by numerous dealerships.

Following close behind was a caravan of police cars and vans.

They were protesting what they claim was abuse at the hands of police during last Saturday’s protest that ended with authorities firing tear gas into the crowd.

The protest last weekend ended with a break-in at City Hall that left glass cases shattered, graffiti sprayed onto the walls, and finally, an American flag burning.

Oakland Mayor Jean Quan says she has grown tired of the protesters using the city as its “playground.”

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