enlarge

Noted terrorist Nicky Wishart, 12, with his mother at home in Witney.

Isn't it interesting, the lengths to which "civilized" Western nations now go to stifle even the least threatening protest? This one really takes the cake:

A schoolboy trying to save his youth club was hauled from class after his plan to protest outside David Cameron's constituency office was spotted - by anti-terror police.

In an astonishing over-reaction, 12-year-old Nicky Wishart was warned he faced arrest.

"I couldn't believe it," he said. "The policeman asked me lots of questions about why we were having a protest and who would be there.

"I said it was simply because we didn't want our youth centre to close - it's a fantastic place to go and there isn't much else for us to do round here."

The full-scale security operation swung into effect days after Nicky made an innocent request on Facebook to "save our youth centre".

The surprised boy was told police were now monitoring his Facebook posts - which are mainly gossip and banter from school about lessons and friends' haircuts.

He was told he would be responsible for any "trouble" at the well-mannered picket on Friday night.

Public-spirited Nicky, one of the PM's constituents in the Oxfordshire seat of Witney, said: "All this is because Mr Cameron is our local MP and it's a bit embarrassing for him."

He said the police arrived during an English lesson on Tuesday afternoon.

"I was taken out of class - and the policeman said, 'Are you aware that the anti-terrorist squad are looking at your Facebook account?' He said that if anything got out of hand, they would arrest people.

"Then he said that I could get arrested for organising it. I was frightened and wished my mum was with me."

Nicky, who describes himself as a "maths geek, not a rebel or rioter", said: "Then the policeman asked, 'Does your mum know about this?' I said, 'Yes, of course, she supports it.' "But the policeman carried on, 'Are you sure your mum wants you out protesting at night?' He was trying to scare me off - but there was no way I wasn't going to go."

In opposition, Mr Cameron often spoke of the need to keep youth clubs open to give youngsters a constructive way to spend their time.
He said in 2007: "Before people break the law, we need strong families, we need youth clubs, we need things to divert people from crime."

But, as part of the Con-Dem cuts, Tory-run Oxfordshire County Council is axing £4million of funding for 20 clubs - including the one in Nicky's home village, Eynsham. The council claims volunteers might take over as part of Mr Cameron's "Big Society".

Here's a video that's a mash-up of reactions from USA soccer fans from around the country watching Landon Donovan's incredible winning goal against Algeria that put the USA into the knock out round of the World Cup. Today's game is going to be very tough because Ghana is a very young and athletic team and they'll have the entire stadium supporting them, but the USA isn't over matched in this game like they were against England.

Raf Naboa y Rivera writes:

Should the U.S. give up an early goal against the Black Stars, as they did in playing England and Slovenia, it'll be phenomenally difficult for them to tally an equalizer. Should the U.S. score once or twice early on, Ghana will be hard-pressed to draw even, thanks to their lack of scoring punch. And that's really the key to the game. I'll say it again - the U.S. has to do two things here:

1. Capitalize on early goal scoring chances. This is absolutely imperative. We can kvetch and moan about getting robbed of goals by the officials, but the fact remains that we wasted about seven different chances on Wednesday. At the minimum, we should've beaten Algeria 3-0 or 4-0, instead of 1-0 on a gasper.

2. Avoid defensive lapses. The U.S. cannot afford a repeat of what happened against England and Slovenia. Depleted as the Ghanian offense is, it's still blindingly fast, aggressive, and strong. That includes play in the penalty area. I fully expect Ghana to try to draw a penalty kick, so the U.S. will have to be more disciplined than usual in order to avoid this.

As wonderful as it would be to see the lone African team make a deep run, I think Ghana are too offensively deficient. As long as the U.S. scores early, or even first, and as long as they avoid defensive mistakes, they'll win.

Since the team is pretty much cut off from everything in South Africa, Youtube and Facebook is how Landon and the team realized how much passion the US had behind the team since soccer isn't a very popular sport nationally. That's pretty cool.

Donoho, a 21-year-old Purdue University senior and avid fan of the men’s national team, collected a montage of clips of USA fans celebrating Donovan’s injury-time winner against Algeria and assembled them into a catchy package, which he put on YouTube.

It didn’t take long for the images to be passed through to the USA’s training camp near Pretoria and onto the laptop of Donovan himself. For all of the praise and plaudits the goal-scoring star received after his moment of glory, it was seeing the reaction sparked by his calm strike into the bottom corner of the Algerian net that touched him the most.

“Not sure if you guys saw this but it brings tears to my eyes every time,” Donovan wrote on his Facebook account, while linking to Donoho’s video. “Thank you all so much … we can do it.”

I'm hoping for at least one more win, but the USA did what they were supposed to do at this point. If you're not into the World Cup just move on to another post. This only happens once every four years and it's fun watching the sport that the entire world is engaged in.

We have a live chat set for 11am PST today as Blue America welcomes Tarryl Clark, a new challenger we endorsed to take on the half-insane Michele Bachmann. I'm sure you'll want to meet her and support her.

DOWNLOADS: (545)

PLAYS: (2514)

Embed

Thank you Robert Green, England's goalkeeper. He let in a very, very soft goal for the always resourceful Clint Dempsey after we started out poorly and the USA nabs a point and a tie in their first World Cup game. Jozy Altidore almost broke the tie when his shot went of the goalie and hit the inside post in the second half. Tim Howard played another excellent game and is considered one of the top goalkeeper's in the world.

I wish I could hear the Brit announcers after this game. If you've ever watched soccer, the announcers are brutal when a player makes a mistake and this one was a whopper. England's Steve McManaman, who's calling the WC for ABC/ESPN was describing his feelings afterwards:

I was exasperated, I was upset, I was distraught at times and I'm worried...

A tie is still a great outcome for the US against the heavy favorite and now they move on to Friday's game against Slovenia. There's plenty of time for England, it's only the first game, but it's an awesome start for the USA. They need to make it to at least the final 16 for this to not be considered a failure in the 2010 World Cup.
As for the bet, we're all even too. Occam, who took the challenge can breath a little easier.

Here's the guardian, live-blogging the match.

GOAL! ENGLAND 1-1 USA (Green og) Oh my God, that's a horror show from England goalkeeper Rob Green, who spills a soft Clint Dempsey strike from distance over his own line. That's as bad a goalkeeping gaffe as you'll see in this tournament.42 min: "Taibi-esque," says James Richardson and he's not wrong. That was shocking - Dempsey tried his luck from 30 yards, his low shot bounced twice, Green hunkered down to gather it in his hands, somehow palmed it diagonally behind him and then watched in horror as it trickled over the line.

(h/t Raf, who's blogging about the World Cup)

Shakesville: John McCain knows nothing about the economy and has a crooked lobbyist as his advisor - and Americans trust that.

The Aristocrats: Maureen Dowd Theater

Needlenose: An historic figure analogous to President Arbusto is King Philip II of Spain - you know, the guy who launched the massive Armada (30,000 men on 130 warships) against England in a sort of quasi holy war - and got his ass kicked.

Truthdig: A.Q. Khan takes back his nuclear confession.

Excons: In a recent interview with the Washington Post, our CIA Director, Michael Hayden, seems to have taken advantage of every opportunity to tow the party line and spew all of the relevant Bush Administration talking points on foreign policy.

Zaius Nation: The Zaius/Gregarious campaign must keep up with the latest trends!

There was quite a scandal over the weekend when the New England Patriots were caught using sideline video to steal signals during a game against the New York Jets. It didn’t affect the outcome — the spying was discovered early on, and the Patriots won by a wide margin — but this kind of illicit surveillance drew a stiff penalty from the NFL.

The National Football League fined New England Patriots Coach Bill Belichick $500,000 yesterday, and the team will forfeit its first-round draft pick in 2008 if it makes the playoffs, for violating league rules Sunday when a Patriots staff member was discovered videotaping signals by Jets coaches during the season opener at the Meadowlands.

The Patriots will be fined $250,000. If they fail to make the playoffs, they will forfeit their second- and third-round picks in 2008.

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson (D) had a very clever response to all of this.

Democratic Presidential candidate Governor Bill Richardson, campaigning today in Iowa, issued the following statement regarding the recent “spying” incident involving the National Football League’s New England Patriots:

“The President has been allowed to spy on Americans without a warrant, and our U.S. Senate is letting it continue. You know something is wrong when the New England Patriots face stiffer penalties for spying on innocent Americans than Dick Cheney and George Bush.”

Good point.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair will convert to Roman Catholicism as soon as he steps down from his role as head of the British Government next week. Mr. Blair, who has had many in England scratching their heads over his deeply committed relationship to the foreign policy of American president George W. Bush, will discuss his conversion with none other than Pope Benedict XVI when he visits him in Rome. Rumors have circulated for months that Blair would leave the Church of England, but now it is all but official.

Andrew Grice, the political editor of The Independent is reporting that Blair has waited until leaving office to avoid possible legal issues:

Although Britain has never had a Catholic prime minister, the church has said there would be no constitutional bar to Mr Blair joining while he was still in office. But some lawyers believe the 1829 Emancipation Act, which granted civil rights to Roman Catholics, may still prevent a Catholic from becoming Prime Minister. It says that no Catholic adviser to the monarch can hold civil or military office.

According to sources close to him, Blair is seeking a role as U.S. Special Envoy to the Middle East and may be named that by President Bush before the end of the latter's term of office ends.

Apparently, Blair met with Pope Benedict on Saturday as his last official act of office and was given a "frank" dressing down by the anti-war Germanic Pope. The Vatican said there had been a 'frank exchange of views.' If Tony Blair was looking towards the Pontiff and the Catholic Church for the absolution of his sins regarding the Iraq War, he was not to find it in Vatican City. Blair, trying to put some spiritual distance between himself and his policies, had no such luck. Not unlike Michael Corleone in Godfather III, Blair 'keeps trying to get out and they keep pulling him back in.'Vatican sources said the Pope was unmoved in his view that Blair had been wrong over Iraq. Ouch! Don't worry, there's still time and a few religions left. Can anyone say "circumcision?"

(Photo courtesy of British Army) CTV:

The head of the British army says he has personally decided Prince Harry will go to Iraq.

Gen. Sir Richard Dannatt told BBC News the decision will be kept under review, but says he hopes his statement will end media speculation on Harry's deployment.

The 22-year-old Prince's regiment, the Blues and Royals, is due to begin a six-month tour of duty in Iraq within weeks. British commanders had reportedly been reconsidering their decision to allow the prince to fight in Iraq.[..]

Meanwhile, the Guardian newspaper is reporting that Shiite militants have set up a special squad targeting Harry should he be posted to Iraq.

The British newspaper quoted a commander in the Mahdi Army -- the militia loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr -- as saying the group had informants inside British army bases who would tip them off about Harry's presence.

Normally, this is one of those quasi-celebrity stories that I could not care less about. But I think it's important to point out one thing: I don't know how the royal family feels about the occupation in Iraq, but it would have been no big thing for them to arrange for Harry to not be deployed. But they didn't.

So I put it out there to all those talking heads who are still cheerleading the war: The man third in line for the throne of England is willing to put his life on the line (with direct threats, I might add). When are we going to see the same sacrifice of those unwilling to question the President? When will Jenna and Barbara land in the Green Zone?

(guest blogged by Logan Murphy)

It's a sign of the times.

Reuters -

More than 30 Vermont towns passed resolutions on Tuesday seeking to impeach President Bush, while at least 16 towns in the tiny New England state called on Washington to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq.

"We're putting impeachment on the table," said James Leas, a Vermont lawyer who helped to draft the resolutions and is tracking the votes. "The people in all these towns are voting to get this process started and bring the troops home now."

After casting votes on budgets and other routine items, citizens of 32 towns in Vermont backed a measure calling on the U.S. Congress to file articles of impeachment against Bush for misleading the nation on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and for engaging in illegal wiretapping, among other charges.

Read the rest of this article

The Daily Background: Thousands march against war...thousands more expected to turn out for May 1 boycott actions
Talk To Action: Episcopal newspaper exposes rightwing agencies.

New England Republican: This pitiful Rethug (held prisoner in Massachusets?) flays Powerline for their bald hypocrisy. The Rather-killers were granted the privilege of hosting streams of Neil Young's new CD after agreeing not to criticize him or the album's the anti-Dubya content. Music hath charms to soothe a savage breast...(thnx to reader mp)

The Democratic Daily Blog: Scott Ritter talks tough with High School students about Iraq, Iran and the future of their country.

The Existentialist Cowboy: Carl Bernstein calls for a Senate investigation of Bush conspiracy...and if you don't believe the liberals, listen to Patrick Buchanan. Actually, Buchanan has been critical of BU$HCO for quite a spell. Take a look at some of the articles in his magazine, The American Conservative.

EdItorial Cartoons from Bob Gieger over at Democrats.com

England pulls the Official Secrets Act against the press.

This story has found legs after the UK pulled a Patriot act on the press. Why isn't Karen Hughes flying over there and doing her job for once? What does she do anyway except get Middle Eastern women mad at her?

Brad Blog has this London story up. A new blog has been created.

Mark Kleiman says that:.."the apparent plot to bomb Al-Jazeera has apparently seriously annoyed the ruling family in Qatar. Not only is Qatar an ally of the U.S., but it has one of the less objectionable regimes in that part of the world: not at all democratic, but not kleptocratic, either, and with a strong liberalizing tendency. (Women were allowed to vote in elections for local councils last year.)...read on"

(Update)- Boris Johnson is a member of the Conservative Party in Britian, a member of Parliament, He says he'll print the memo.

The Moderate Voice has a right/left round up...