ISIS and Christian fundamentalists can agree: Charles Darwin is bad.

ISIS and Christian fundamentalists can agree on something: Charles Darwin is bad. In Mosul, Iraql, the militants have explicitly banned teaching the theory of evolution in new school curriculums, despite the fact that it wasn't taught in Iraq previously. The terrorists have also cut history, literature, art, music and Christianity classes from schools. Many parents have been keeping their children out of class as a form of resistance to the new academic programs.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2014/09/15/isis-bans-teaching-evolution.html

Doctor Strange: Marvel Studios Filming in Europe Next Year.

With director Scott Derrickson having been announced months ago (with sources saying that he's likely been tied to the project since as early as January), and Joaquin Phoenix rumored for the lead role as well as being reported to have purchased a handful of Doctor Strange comics in person recently, it only seems fitting that the next part of the process would be to begin planning out locations and the film schedule.

According to new reports, Marvel Studios will begin production in May 2015 for the July 16th, 2016 release date, which while the date is not confirmed, connecting the dots between what Studio President Kevin Feige has revealed has lead us to believe so. May 2015 will be a very busy month for Marvel Studios, as Avengers: Age of Ultron and Marvel's Daredevil will be getting their premieres, which one can only expect to have massive repercussions throughout the combined cinematic universe. Earlier this year, Feige stated:

So Strange is very, very important, not just because it’s an amazing character study, and a journey of a man who’s gone from this very arrogant surgeon to somebody who is quite zen and literally keeps all of reality together on a daily basis, but it also is going to open up a whole other side of storytelling for our movies. So we’re about to hire a writer to redo a draft, and we think we’ll be casting probably in the next month or two, and announcing an actor, and then we get into production in the spring of next year.

New governor’s race poll shows Walker leading Parnell by 8 points

Hays Research Group, an Alaska-based polling firm, released a poll which shows that in a head-to-head match up, Bill Walker, the gubernatorial candidate for the “Unity” ticket, is beating Republican Gov. Sean Parnell by 8 percentage points. A whopping 31 percent are still undecided. The poll didn’t include the names of each candidate’s lieutenant governors, and it described Walker as an “Independent.” On the ballot, he will be described as “unaffiliated.” The Alaska AFL-CIO paid for the poll. The umbrella union organization supports the “Unity” ticket and was instrumental in bringing Bill Walker, a Republican, and Democrat Byron Mallott together on one ticket. The poll, conducted between Sep. 13-14, surveyed 500 registered voters in the state of Alaska who had voted in at least two of the last three statewide general elections. The margin of error is plus or minus 4.38 percent.


http://amandacoyne.com/politics/new-governors-race-poll-shows-walker-leading-parnell-by-8-points/

Why is America not nearly outraged at Adrian Peterson as it is with Ray Rice?

Officer Given Paid Leave After Killing Teen, Participates in NRA-Sponsored "Killer Cop Competition"

Around 3am one night in May 2011, 22-year-old Alan Gomez was outside his brother Eric’s house in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Nervous because she believed Gomez was acting erratically, Eric's girlfriend called the police. After about an hour, Albuquerque police officer Sean Wallace arrived.

Wallace saw Alan Gomez leave the house and then turn to go back inside. According to a subsequent Department of Justice report, Gomez was unarmed and did not pose an immediate threat to the officers or anyone inside the house. Sean Wallace, however, fired a shot, striking Gomez in the back. Gomez died on the scene, while Wallace was never punished.

Wallace is a K-9 officer, part of a team that works closely with paramilitary SWAT units. He doesn’t have a reputable record. In 2004, he shot and killed an unarmed man while with the New Mexico State Police. The victim’s family received $235,000 from a wrongful death lawsuit. By 2007, Wallace made a "lateral transfer" to the APD—meaning he wasn’t required to undergo background checks or psychological evaluations. (Last March, the APD officer who shot and killed James Boyd, a homeless man suffering from mental illness, was also a lateral transfer.) In 2010, Wallace wounded another unarmed man.

When Mike Gomez heard Sean Wallace was going to represent the Albuquerque Police Department in an annual National Rifle Association-sponsored tournament this week, he was horrified. The Albuquerque Police Pistol Combat Tournament, which is being held September 10-18, is designed for public and private law enforcement, as well as select U.S. military members, to compete against each other, shooting human silhouette targets in a wide range of scenarios. Past scenarios include “Drunk Buddies,” in which friends of a drunk individual getting arrested approach the cop wielding knives and “shouting ‘kill the cops.’” Another scenario, “School Gang Violence” takes place in a high school. The event also includes a weapons expo show and concludes with an awards ceremony in which officers are given trophies and certificates.


http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/officer-who-killed-my-son-got-3-days-paid-leave-then-he-tried-take-part-killer-cop?paging=off

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand drops f-bomb on video

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand is giving more details, and dropping f-bombs, about her experience with sexist comments she’s received about her weight, saying she couldn’t tell a male colleague “to go f—- himself.”

“At that moment, if I could have just disappeared, I would have. If I could have just melted in tears, I would have. But I had to just sit there and talk to him. And I switched the subject and I didn’t hear another word he said, but I wasn’t in a place where I could tell him to go f—- himself,” Gillibrand told HuffPost Live in an interview posted Monday.

In her new book released last week, “Off the Sidelines,” the New York Democrat described a slew of remarks her male colleagues and fellow lawmakers made regarding her weight.

“Good thing you’re working out, because you wouldn’t want to get porky!” said one lawmaker to Gillibrand.




http://www.politico.com/story/2014/09/kirsten-gillibrand-colleagues-110972.html#ixzz3DS81Xth8

Calpers, Nation’s Biggest Pension Fund, to End Hedge Fund Investments

The California Public Employees’ Retirement System, the nation’s largest pension fund, will eliminate all of its hedge fund investments over the next year on concerns that investments are too complicated and expensive.

The pension fund, which oversees $300 billion, said on Monday that it would liquidate its positions in 24 hedge funds and six hedge fund-of-funds — investments that total $4 billion and more than 1 percent of its total investments under management.

The decision, after months of deliberation by the pension fund’s investment committee, comes as public pensions across the United States are beginning to assess their exposure to hedge funds. It is likely to reverberate across the investment community in the United States, where large investment funds look to Calpers as a model because of its size and the sophistication of its investments.

“Hedge funds are certainly a viable strategy for some, but at the end of the day, when judged against their complexity, cost and the lack of ability to scale at Calpers’ size,” the hedge fund program “doesn’t merit a continued role,” Ted Eliopoulos, the interim chief investment officer of Calpers, said in a statement.


http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/09/15/nations-biggest-pension-fund-to-end-hedge-fund-investments/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

Adrian Peterson Accused Of Injuring Another 4-Year-Old Son

Just hours after Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson apologized for injuring one 4-year-old son, KHOU-TV in Houston reported that he has also been accused of injuring another 4-year-old son. Both incidents involve Peterson allegedly injuring a young child while administering punishment.

Peterson, who was indicted in a child injury case in Texas on Friday, has also been reported to Child Protective Services over separate child abuse allegations involving another young son by a different mother, reported KHOU-TV in Houston on Monday. Citing text messages and photos allegedly sent by Peterson to the boy's mother, KHOU reported that the child in the second case was left with a scar over his right eye.

Citing unnamed sources described as being close to the investigation, TMZ reported that no charges were filed against Peterson in the alleged incident detailed by KHOU-TV because it was determined that the punishment administered by Peterson was "not impermissible."



http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/15/adrian-peterson-child-abuse-allegation_n_5826318.html

Resigned GOPer: 'Operation Wetback' Wasn't 'Derogatory'

The Arizona Republican who said that women on welfare should be sterilized is not a fan of undocumented immigrants either.

Former Arizona state Sen. Russell Pearce (R), who resigned as first vice chairman of the Arizona Republican Party on Sunday, discussed Operation Wetback and undocumented immigrants with a caller on his radio show in June.

The caller brought up Operation Wetback, a controversial plan carried out by the federal government in 1954 to deport undocumented immigrants back to Mexico. Border patrol officers also deported the children of immigrants who were born in the U.S.

The caller initially referred to the policy as "Operation W-Back," and eventually asked if he could say the word itself.


http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/russell-pearce-operation-wetback

Tucker Carlson suspects school indoctrination plot because children are ‘just learning too much’

Fox News host Tucker Carlson asserted over the weekend that American teachers were assigning less homework because they were lazy union members and wanted to hide the curriculum from parents.

During the Sunday edition of Fox & Friends, Carlson noted that many schools had argued that students should spend time in the evenings with their families.

“But is this really about the kids or could it be a move by teachers unions to get teachers to do less work for, of course, the same pay?” he asked Whitney Neal, a former teacher with the Koch brothers-funded Bill of Rights Institute.

“That’s a great suspicion,” Neal agreed. “As much as we don’t want to look at teachers that way as wanting to eliminate the amount of work they have to do, I almost think this is more of a ploy to keep parents out of the classroom, to limit the involvement parents have on what’s going on with teachers. Because if kids aren’t bringing home homework, the parents don’t really know what’s going on.”


http://www.rawstory.com/rs/blog/2014/09/14/tucker-carlson-suspects-school-indoctrination-plot-because-children-are-just-learning-too-much/