Rory

After eight plainclothes police officers were gunned down in a Cairo suburb on Sunday, the Islamic State released a statement taking responsibility for the attack, CNN reports.

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Several extremely disturbing videos uploaded to YouTube Tuesday night and Wednesday morning purport to be audio of a user on the video game website Twitch beating a woman as she screams and pleads for him to stop. The videos are generating a fair amount of online outrage, including on Reddit and Twitter; in the meantime, it remains unclear if the man has been identified and if the woman he can be heard abusing is safe.

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“As his face broke into a grateful smile, I felt a palpable twinge of unease rather than pleasure. In those fleeting seconds, Sri Lanka’s venerable past and bright future came together—and I felt awkwardly, uncomfortably, at the center.” This Thought Catalog essay somehow ended up in the Philadelphia Inquirer?

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[Photo: Preservation Chicago/Ward Miller]

Bronzeville's Pilgrim Baptist Church designed and built in 1890 by Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan won't be rebuilt 3rd Ward Alderman Pat Dowell has confirmed. The building has sat vacant ever since a devastating fire nearly destroyed it in 2006. Despite an outpouring of donations and previous plans to restore the church, it has been surrounded by a nest of steel support beams for several years. Beyond being significant for its architecture, the church is an important cultural landmark for being recognized as the birthplace of gospel music.

Recently, preservationists have suggested that a park space be created from the masonry shell of the church. Preservation Chicago executive director Ward Miller says that turning the shell of the church into a public park space is a simple and cost-effective way to ensure that the landmark structure is saved. In addition, the park plan would finally rid the neighborhood of the steel supports that have blocked sidewalks and become an eyesore. According to DNAinfo, church reps are still in discussions with Ald. Dowell about the future of the church facade.
·Pilgrim Baptist, Birthplace of Gospel Music, Will Not Rebuild: Alderman [DNAinfo]
·Preservationists Hope to Save Historic Pilgrim Baptist Church by Creating New Park [Curbed Chicago]

“‘The home’s craftsmanship and the grounds’ peaceful tranquility were beyond what I’d ever experienced. The frontage on Georgica Pond, with its never-ending pageant of natural beauty, is breathtaking.’ Mr. Rahr is parting with the estate, he said, because he now summers in Europe.”

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Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin is in town touring behind the best album of their career, the recently released 'The High Country.' [ more › ]

Syria's brutal Assad government uses censorware from California's Blue Coat System as part of its systematic suppression of dissent and to help it spy on dissidents; 600GB of 2011 logs from Syria's seven SG-9000 internet proxies were leaked by hacktivist group Telecomix and then analyzed by University College London's Emiliano De Cristofaro. Read the rest

WASHINGTON (AP) — Utah is asking the Supreme Court to stop same-sex marriages in the state, at least temporarily.

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You have to admire the creative thinking of Texas candidate for Lieutenant Governor Jerry Patterson. He doesn’t want Texas to secede from the United States; that’d be dumb. He loves Real America. Instead, how about we get rid of the states what Hate America?

“I get lots of questions all the time, ‘Well, we should secede.’ I say, ‘No, I’ve got a better idea. Instead of secession, I’m a proponent of expulsion,’” he told the AP. “I want to kick about four states out of this union.”

Specifically, that would be California, New York, Massachusetts and Connecticut, because who needs their liberalism and whatever piddling contribution to the GDP they represent? Also, we were not aware that this is the sort of thing that the Texas lieutenant governor has a say in, but apparently the way you become Texas’s Second Lady is to tell people about how you’d tackle stuff that the job has nothing to do with, like impeaching the Preznit.

Mr. Patterson is what you might call “a real character” or caricature or whatever. To prove his allegiance to the Holy Second Amendment, he keeps a .22-caliber Magnum in his boot at all times, and occasionally stuffs a .380 into his waistband for good measure, because “It’s like a smoke detector: You don’t turn it on just for when you think you might get a fire.” Then again, very few people shoot themselves in the nuts with a smoke detector. Your mileage may vary.

He also thinks the Endangered Species Act is a big ol’ waste of time and effort, since it only protects

“critters that probably ought to die anyway. I mean, the blind salamander? How long are we gonna let that little bugger last?”

Hahaha, right. Who needs real bald eagles anyway, when we’ve got the little bastards all over our flagpoles and our 9-11 art already?

Patterson is one of four candidates for Loot Gov, all of them trying hard to out-teabag the others. And he’s just havin’ a little “tongue in cheek” fun with the whole kick-out-the-blue states thing, kinda-sorta:

“Just think about how different our country would be if New York and California weren’t the tail wagging the dog. And those other states? It’s not America.”

Patterson then presumably pulled out two chrome six shooters with mother-of-pearl grips, shouted “Yeee-hah!” and shot at the AP reporter’s feet, telling the lamestream media varmint to dance.

[DallasNews]