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Edward Snowden is a patriot By TREVOR TIMM | 8/10/13 9:45 PM EDT Updated: 8/11/13 11:33 AM EDT politico.com Does President Barack Obama think we’re stupid? That’s the only conclusion possible after watching Friday’s bravura performance in which the president announced a set of proposals meant to bring more transparency to the National Security Agency — and claimed he would have done it anyway, even if Edward Snowden had never decided to leak thousands of highly sensitive documents to The Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald. But even as he grudgingly admitted that the timing, at least, of his suggestions was a consequence of Snowden’s actions, the president declared, “I don’t think Mr. Snowden was a patriot.” When you look at what has changed over the past two months, though, it’s hard not to wonder, “What could be more patriotic than what Snowden did?” First, the results: More than a dozen bills have already been introduced to put a stop to the NSA’s mass phone record collection program and to overhaul the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which has reinterpreted the Fourth Amendment in secret, creating a body of privacy law that the public has never read. A half-dozen new privacy lawsuits have been filed against the NSA. The Pentagon is undergoing an unprecedented secrecy audit. U.S. officials have been caught deceiving or lying to Congress. The list goes on. These actions have been accompanied by a sea change in public opinion about surveillance. Poll after poll has shown that for the first time ever, Americans think the government has gone too far in violating their privacy, with vast majorities believing the NSA scooping up a record of every phone call made in the United States invades citizens’ privacy. While the administration certainly doesn’t believe Snowden is patriotic, Americans do. A Quinnipiac poll conducted this month found people agreed, 55 percent to 34 percent, that he is a whistleblower — a large margin that crossed party, gender and age lines. A recent Reuters poll showed only 31 percent of the public thought he should be prosecuted. Obama claimed in his press conference that Snowden stole his thunder, that he was one who tried to initiate a surveillance debate prior to Snowden’s leaks. But, he complained, “rather than an orderly and lawful process to debate these issues and come up with appropriate reforms, repeated leaks of classified information have initiated the debate in a very passionate but not always fully informed way.” That argument just doesn’t comport with reality. In his speech in May on national security, the president did indeed announce a review of surveillance policy. What he failed to mention, though, was that the very same speech was spurred by another leak — of the Justice Department white paper justifying drone strikes on Americans overseas. There’s been no change in transparency surrounding drone strikes since the speech, as Obama himself proved later in the press conference when he refused to confirm a drone strike took place in Yemen last week — there were several. The fact is Obama has had years to initiate a debate about surveillance but instead has actively stifled it. Although, as he acknowledged Friday, he was a huge critic of the PATRIOT Act as a senator, his administration actively opposed privacy and oversight amendments in 2011. Similarly, in December 2012 — just eight months ago — the administration opposed all oversight fixes to the FISA Amendments Act. It passed unchanged with little debate. The FISA Amendments Act is the law that, as The New York Times reported on its front page last week, the NSA has used to “search the contents of vast amounts of Americans’ email and text communications into and out of the country.” Obama didn’t say a word about the Times’ bombshell story Friday, nor did he mention the Guardian story from the same day explaining how another loophole in the FISA Amendments Act allows the NSA to search its databases for Americans without a warrant. Just how much has changed since Snowden went rogue? Two cases tell the tale: In litigation over the administration’s secret legal interpretation of the Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act a few months ago, the government wouldn’t even give a page count of its opinion, let alone what it said. Similarly, a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit for the 2011 FISA court opinion ruling NSA activities unconstitutional led to the release of 30 pages completely redacted. On Friday, the administration released a full white paper of its secret legal interpretation of Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act, which the NSA has used to vacuum up every domestic telephone record in the country without suspicion. The administration also announced that the 2011 FISA court opinion ruling some NSA surveillance unconstitutional will be released nine days after its Aug. 12 deadline. Obama said that if Snowden is truly patriotic, he would come back to the United States and make his arguments in court and leave it up to a jury to decide. Unfortunately, there’s no public interest exception to the Espionage Act. The administration has managed to convince courts in recent years that issues like a leaker’s intent to inform the public, the value of the leaks or the lack of damage that the leaks have caused to national security are inadmissible in court. Obama also boasted that he has enhanced protections for whistleblowers. But as the Center for Public Integrity reported after the speech, the president’s executive order “specifically excluded intelligence contractors like Snowden.” Whoops. As New York Times reporter James Risen — who knows a thing or two about whistleblowers — said on CNN recently, “We wouldn’t be having this discussion if it wasn’t for [snowden]. That’s the thing I don’t understand about the climate in Washington these days is that people want to have debates on television and elsewhere, but then you want to throw the people who start the debates in jail.” But Risen made another, less publicized appearance this week at the annual National Press Club awards dinner. What he said there is even more poignant. “I don’t think there’s any personality that’s more American than a whistleblower,” he said. “The entire personality and DNA of America [is made up] of people who wanted to have their own kind of government and be free of oppression. And I think that is the heart of what a whistleblower is. It’s somebody who believes civil liberties or freedom or corruption are important issues that they need to talk about, and their right as an American is to talk about it with the press.” If Congress passes meaningful NSA reform, Snowden may go down in history as the most influential whistleblower in American history. What could be more patriotic than that? Trevor Timm is executive director of Freedom of the Press Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting and defending public-interest, transparency journalism. http://www.politico.com/story/2013/08/edward-snowden-is-a-patriot-95421.html#ixzz2bggjzsJM

I've got my holiday shopping done!

What a brilliant scam. Pay me $38 for the privilege of filling out a form with which nothing will be done.

Does a radioactive cat have 18 half lives? ...Art Bell. Best regards, RA1

Well, the missing mysterious fourth brother, is really quite missing now. He has semi-moved in with me, about half the nights each week. He is keeping me quite happy and quite occupied and quite satisfied. I thought I was getting to old and past my prime to be having superior-quality relations at 2AM. I thought that was only decades ago during my very wild and crazy daze. Yours IHOP aka FavelaDweller

I can only attest to the one time that we were together at Meio Mundo. He had a tough time staying between "the lines"as it were. But when he got back to where he was supposed to be, his brushstrokes were long, firm, steady and might I add, quite forceful. Yours, IHOP aka FavelaDweller

Although there had been opportunities and a strong attraction with my best friend from years ago, I avoided it as there were too many land mines and a ltr wasn't in the cards. I have to admit that I often wonder about that road not taken though and how it might have turned out. I have to wonder, in the situation you described, if the relationship between your best friend and his partner wouldn't be better served if they would somehow agree to go to couples counseling to see if the situation could be turned around.

...and to keep him where you want him! Yours, IHOP aka FavelaDweller

Over the moon was always one of my most popular sayings. Best regards, RA1

As a gay parent I must flee Russia or lose my childrenDraconian new laws brand homosexuals second-class citizens in Putin's regime Masha Gessen The Observer, Saturday 10 August 2013 Unknown anti-gay demonstrator hits Russia's gay and LGBT rights activist Nikolai Alexeyev (centre) during a gay rights activists rally in cental Moscow on 25 May, 2013. Photograph: Andrey Svitailo/AFP/Getty Images The first time I heard about legislation banning "homosexual propaganda", I thought it was funny. Quaint. I thought the last time anyone had used those words in earnest I had been a kid and my girlfriend hadn't been born yet. Whatever they meant when they enacted laws against "homosexual propaganda" in the small towns of Ryazan or Kostroma, it could not have anything to do with reality, me or the present day. This was a bit less than two years ago. What woke me up was a friend who messaged me on Facebook: "I am worried about how this might impact you and other LGBT people with families." This was enough to get my imagination working. Whatever they meant by "homosexual propaganda", I probably did it. I had two kids and a third on the way (my girlfriend was pregnant), which would mean I probably did it in front of minors. And this, in turn, meant the laws could in fact apply to me. First, I would be hauled in for administrative offences and fined and then, inevitably, social services would get involved. That was enough to get me to read the legislation, which by now had been passed in about 10 towns and was about to become law in St Petersburg, the second-largest city in the country. Here is what I read: homosexual propaganda was defined as "the purposeful and uncontrolled distribution of information that can harm the spiritual or physical health of a minor, including forming the erroneous impression of the social equality of traditional and non-traditional marital relations". Russia has a lot of poorly written laws and regulations that contradict its own constitution, but this one was different. Like other contemporary laws, it was so vaguely worded that it encouraged corruption and extortion (fines for "homosexual propaganda" are backbreaking) and made selective enforcement inevitable. But it also did something that had never been done in Russian law before: it enshrined second-class citizenship for LGBT people. Think about it: it made it an offence to claim social equality. St Petersburg passed the law in March 2012. I no longer thought it was funny. I actually choked up when I saw the news item about the bill being proposed at the federal level. My girlfriend had recently had a baby and this, among other things, meant we needed to sell our tiny cars and trade up to something that accommodated three kids and a pram. I asked her: "Are we doing this or do we just need to get out of the country?" We decided we were doing it. We are fighters, not quitters. So I launched the pink-triangle campaign. I went on TVRain, independent internet and satellite-based television and recorded a segment showing pictures of my family and explaining how the law would make it a crime to say my family was equal to other families. I explained the history of the pink triangle. I called on people who did not want to see fascism in Russia to put on pink triangles. Though I have always been publicly out, I had never done what I did then – talked about my family and asked to be seen as a lesbian rather than a journalist first. It seemed to work beautifully. People wrote to me and came up to me in the street. I had had 6,000 pink triangles printed up and I got rid of most of them within a few weeks. The public chamber, an extraparliamentary body formed by the Kremlin, scheduled a hearing on the legislation. I testified, as did a number of human rights activists I respected. The chair read out a draft resolution. I also received private assurances from highly placed officials present that the legislation would never make it to the parliament's floor. That was a year ago. The public chamber's resolution never materialised. In January 2013, the Duma passed the bill in first reading. The protesters who came to the parliament building that day were beaten up. There had been anti-gay violence in Russia before, most notably when a group of activists had attempted to hold a gay pride celebration in Moscow, but never like this: brutal beatings in broad daylight as the police looked on – and eventually detained the protesters, not the attackers. One of my closest friends took part in the protest at the Duma that day. The following day, he was fired from his job teaching biology at one of the city's better schools. He was eventually reinstated after a public outcry – he was arguably the city's best-known teacher, with his own podcast and television and radio series – but I knew one thing: if he had been a gay man rather than a heterosexual ally, he would never teach in the city again. Oh, and around the same time, Moscow City court banned gay pride celebrations for the next 100 years. In March, the St Petersburg legislator who had become a spokesman for the law started mentioning me and my "perverted family" in his interviews. I contacted an adoption lawyer asking whether I had reason to worry that social services would go after my family and attempt to remove my oldest son, whom I adopted in 2000. The lawyer wrote back telling me to instruct my son to run if he is approached by strangers and concluding: "The answer to your question is at the airport." In June, the "homosexual propaganda" bill became federal law. The Duma passed a ban on adoptions by same-sex couples and by single people living in countries where same-sex marriage is legal. The head of the parliamentary committee on the family pledged to create a mechanism for removing children from same-sex families. Two things happened to me the same month: I was beaten up in front of parliament for the first time and I realised that in all my interactions, including professional ones, I no longer felt I was perceived as a journalist first: I am now a person with a pink triangle. My family is moving to New York. We have the money and documents needed to do that with relative ease – unlike thousands of other LGBT families and individuals in Russia. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/11/anti-gay-laws-russia

Email service used by Snowden shuts itself down, warns against using US-based companiesEdward Snowden: 'Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo, Apple, and the rest of our internet titans must ask themselves why they aren't fighting for our interests the same way' Glenn Greenwald theguardian.com, Friday 9 August 2013 08.19 EDT The front page of Lavabit announces to its users its decision to shut down rather than comply with ongoing US surveillance orders Photo: Lavabit A Texas-based encrypted email service recently revealed to be used by Edward Snowden - Lavabit - announced yesterday it was shutting itself down in order to avoid complying with what it perceives as unjust secret US court orders to provide government access to its users' content. "After significant soul searching, I have decided to suspend operations," the company's founder, Ladar Levinson, wrote in a statement to users posted on the front page of its website. He said the US directive forced on his company "a difficult decision: to become complicit in crimes against the American people or walk away from nearly ten years of hard work by shutting down Lavabit." He chose the latter. CNET's Declan McCullagh smartly speculates that Lavabit was served "with [a] federal court order to intercept users' (Snowden?) passwords" to allow ongoing monitoring of emails; specifically: "the order can also be to install FedGov-created malware." After challenging the order in district court and losing - all in a secret court proceeding, naturally - Lavabit shut itself down to avoid compliance while it appeals to the Fourth Circuit. This morning, Silent Circle, a US-based secure online communication service, followed suit by shutting its own encrypted email service. Although it said it had not yet been served with any court order, the company, in a statement by its founder, internet security guru Phil Zimmerman, said: "We see the writing on the wall, and we have decided that it is best for us to shut down Silent Mail now." What is particularly creepy about the Lavabit self-shutdown is that the company is gagged by law even from discussing the legal challenges it has mounted and the court proceeding it has engaged. In other words, the American owner of the company believes his Constitutional rights and those of his customers are being violated by the US Government, but he is not allowed to talk about it. Just as is true for people who receive National Security Letters under the Patriot Act, Lavabit has been told that they would face serious criminal sanctions if they publicly discuss what is being done to their company. Thus we get hostage-message-sounding missives like this: I wish that I could legally share with you the events that led to my decision. I cannot. I feel you deserve to know what's going on - the first amendment is supposed to guarantee me the freedom to speak out in situations like this. Unfortunately, Congress has passed laws that say otherwise. As things currently stand, I cannot share my experiences over the last six weeks, even though I have twice made the appropriate requests." Does that sound like a message coming from a citizen of a healthy and free country? Secret courts issuing secret rulings invariably in favor of the US government that those most affected are barred by law from discussing? Is there anyone incapable at this point of seeing what the United States has become? Here's the very sound advice issued by Lavabit's founder: This experience has taught me one very important lesson: without congressional action or a strong judicial precedent, I would _strongly_ recommend against anyone trusting their private data to a company with physical ties to the United States." As security expert Bruce Schneier wrote in a great Bloomberg column last week, this is one of the key aspects of the NSA disclosures: the vast public-private surveillance partnership. That's what makes Lavabit's stance so heroic: as our reporting has demonstrated, most US-based tech and telecom companies (though not all) meekly submit to the US government's dictates and cooperate extensively and enthusiastically with the NSA to ensure access to your communications. Snowden, who told me today that he found Lavabit's stand "inspiring", added: "Ladar Levison and his team suspended the operations of their 10 year old business rather than violate the Constitutional rights of their roughly 400,000 users. The President, Congress, and the Courts have forgotten that the costs of bad policy are always borne by ordinary citizens, and it is our job to remind them that there are limits to what we will pay. "America cannot succeed as a country where individuals like Mr. Levison have to relocate their businesses abroad to be successful. Employees and leaders at Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo, Apple, and the rest of our internet titans must ask themselves why they aren't fighting for our interests the same way small businesses are. The defense they have offered to this point is that they were compelled by laws they do not agree with, but one day of downtime for the coalition of their services could achieve what a hundred Lavabits could not. "When Congress returns to session in September, let us take note of whether the internet industry's statements and lobbyists - which were invisible in the lead-up to the Conyers-Amash vote - emerge on the side of the Free Internet or the NSA and its Intelligence Committees in Congress." The growing (and accurate) perception that most US-based companies are not to be trusted with the privacy of electronic communications poses a real threat to those companies' financial interests. A report issued this week by the Technology and Innovation Foundation estimated that the US cloud computing industry, by itself, could lose between $21 billion to $35 billion due to reporting about the industry's ties to the NSA. It also notes that other nations' officials have been issuing the same kind of warnings to their citizens about US-based companies as the one issued by Lavabit yesterday: And after the recent PRISM leaks, German Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich declared publicly, 'whoever fears their communication is being intercepted in any way should use services that don't go through American servers.' Similarly, Jörg-Uwe Hahn, a German Justice Minister, called for a boycott of US companies." The US-based internet industry knows that the recent transparency brought to the NSA is a threat to their business interests. This week, several leading Silicon Valley and telecom executives met with President Obama to discuss their "surveillance partnership". But the meeting was - naturally - held in total secrecy. Why shouldn't the agreements and collaborations between these companies and the NSA for access to customer communications not be open and public? Obviously, the Obama administration, telecom giants, and the internet industry are not going to be moved by appeals to transparency, privacy and basic accountability. But perhaps they'll consider the damage being done to the industry's global reputation and business interests by constructing a ubiquitous spying system with the NSA and doing it all in secret. It's well past time to think about what all this reflects about the US. As the New York Times Editorial Page put it today, referencing a front-page report from Charlie Savage enabled by NSA documents we published: "Apparently no espionage tool that Congress gives the National Security Agency is big enough or intrusive enough to satisfy the agency's inexhaustible appetite for delving into the communications of Americans." The NYT added: Time and again, the NSA has pushed past the limits that lawmakers thought they had imposed to prevent it from invading basic privacy, as guaranteed by the Constitution." I know it's much more fun and self-satisfying to talk about Vladimir Putin and depict him as this omnipotent cartoon villain. Talking about the flaws of others is always an effective tactic for avoiding our own, and as a bonus in this case, we get to and re-live Cold War glory by doing it. The best part of all is that we get to punish another country for the Supreme Sin: defying the dictates of the US leader. [Note how a country's human rights problems becomes of interest to the US political and media class only when that country defies the US: hence, all the now-forgotten focus on Ecuador's press freedom record when it granted asylum to Julian Assange and considered doing so for Edward Snowden, while the truly repressive and deeply US-supported Saudi regime barely rates a mention. Americans love to feign sudden concern over a country's human rights abuses as a tool for punishing that country for disobedience to imperial dictates and for being distracted from their own government's abuses: Russia grants asylum to Snowden --> Russia is terrible to gays! But maybe it's more constructive for US media figures and Americans generally to think about what's happening to their own country and the abuses of the own government, the one for which they bear responsibility and over which they can exercise actual influence.] Lavabit has taken an impressive and bold stand against the US government, sacrificing its self-interest for the privacy rights of its users. Those inclined to do so can return that support by helping it with lawyers' fees to fight the US government's orders, via this paypal link provided in the company's statement. One of the most remarkable, and I think enduring, aspects of the NSA stories is how much open defiance there has been of the US government. Numerous countries around the world have waved away threats, from Hong Kong and Russia to multiple Latin American nations. Populations around the world are expressing serious indignation at the NSA and at their own government to the extent they have collaborated. And now Lavabit has shut itself down rather than participate in what it calls "crimes against the American people", and in doing so, has gone to the legal limits in order to tell us all what has happened. There will undoubtedly be more acts inspired by Snowden's initial choice to unravel his own life to make the world aware of what the US government has been doing in the dark. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/09/lavabit-shutdown-snowden-silicon-valley

Orange bike...

I have a few folks that I would propose be added to their list. In fact, I have at least a few multiples of $38 I would contribute to that cause. Are folks so bored with their lives here on earth or so desperate about their chances for a future that they would eagerly embrace a one way trip to Mars? Somehow I see hardly any of the usual rewards from being there that most people seek. This seems to require the "wrong stuff" to qualify. I cannot even agree that someone needs to do it. Best regards, RA1

Well, although NOT a selfie this time, but More Self-love from Perez. The guy truly does LOVE himself, and enjoys showing us all his new Improved SELF..... But a note to Perez: if you Suck it in anymore, you'll be inside-out..... Gurlfriend, we get IT, but GIVE IT A REST ALREADY !

hito..I like your optimism

Great story and great photos!

The other day I mentioned that I had seen two supremely hot and sexy guys at the local Food4Less. This is a store with a large Hispanic patronage, but unfortunately the patrons come from a long line of farmers working hard at making a living in the hard sun. They don't win beauty contests, and they don't pass beauty genes on to their children. Except for the occassional mutation, such as those two hot guys. I had to get in another line that day so sexy was the one that I didn't trust myself. So today I saw yet another hottie. This guy was a teen, I wasn't sure how old, and he wore gym shorts that were full of meat in the rear. The front wasn't so obvious. I thought to myself: "I hope this guy is gay as girls will never appreciate that ass like guys will." And I sure appreciated that ass. I sw him several times in the store, and he noticed, even gving me a slight nod, probably for lack of information on what else he should do when an older white guy seems to notice him. We met up again in the parking lot, and this time I decided not to be shy. I don't live far from the store, and I don't know many young men who couldn't use some extra cash. So I smiled at him and apologized if I took too much notice of him. He smiled back and sort or waited for me to say more. I told him my thought about his hot ass- that gay guys would love it most. He smiled and said "sorry," he would then lose out since he was straight, and he even had a girl friend. Since he had yet to punch me, I asked him if she appreciated his ass like I did. He said he didn't know that I did, but he was quite sure that she liked his ass. "A bit," he said. He would ask her tomorrow night when they had their date. That's when I got bold. I said I could make sure he had some extra cash for that date, and he wouldn't have to do much to earn it. I invited him over, said he could shower privately, and then if he gave me 20 minutes with his ass, I'd give him $75. "No way you're fucking me for any amount of money," he said. "No, no, no," I said. All you have to do is lie on your belly and let me play with that naked butt. I can use my hands, my fingers, and my mouth, but you won't get fucked. You never even turn over." "Okay," he said after some awkward minutes. "I sure can use the money. But any funny business and I'll make you regret it." I replied, "You have no worries." On the five minute ride to my house, I ascertained his age (19), and learned that he had never touched a naked guy and didn't plan on touching me. But I did tell him that if he got turned on and wanted to cum, I'd pay another $25 for him to let me see him shoot. "Nah, that's too private," he said. So we got to the house, made the introductions to the dog, and I gave him a clean towel and showed him where the shower was. When he was done, just go lay on the bed, tummy down. If at any point you want to back out, okay, but no pay if we've started. When I entered the room, there it was- that glorious rump that makes a boy a man. He was brown all over, no tan line, and no hair in the hole. So I used my hands to check it out, felt the nice meaty texture, and yes, I peaked at his balls too. They were kind of hairy for a guy with no ass hair. I was really enjoying the tactile pleasure, but I had seen the moist pinky flesh in his hole and wanted to taste it. I felt the heat as I took a quick nibble or two to see if his definition of clean met mine- it did- and I proceeded to eat his ass in such a way that had him moaning and squirming. My tongue was in heaven and he was saying some words in Spanish that I did not know, but during one of his squirms I saw his hard cock glistening against the sheets. He turned and gave me a huge smile. "God, this feels good!" That's when I started penetrating his hot hole, ever so slightly at first, but he didn't complained, moaned even more, and I was soon entering him all the way. Okay, I was kind for the virgin- just one finger went in all the way! So, I asked him if he wanted that extra $25. I was sure he would say yes. But he didn't. On the way back to the store he told me that it would have been too gay. But he confessed that he came in the shower afterward, and I confessed that I did too. They were just not the same showers! Did you want to meet again, I asked? He said he would leave that to fate. He had never had such fun with his cock and ass, he told me, and he needed to process all that out. One thing I knew, I was sworn to silence. His friends were not to ever hear about this. (Not that I knew any of them!) But, I'll be looking for him everytime I want Food 4 Less. Rump roast is now my favorite.

Sounds like he hasn't told his partner what he's up to, so you already know there are potential trust issues here. You also know that he thinks the boundaries of friendship haven't been crossed, and you're inclined to think they have. Unless it's just sex you're both after, with no emotional ties beyond your existing friendship, those kinds of warning signs after three months sound like swamp territory to me. Although it may just be that you're a bigger bayou fan than I am.

I am glad you are seeing things in prospective, and staying rational. Emotions are rough, we cant control them BUT we can be Realistic in knowing what the options ARE. I trust you will make the right decisions, because from the question he asked you ast week, the writing seems to be on the wall !

We have discussed this Jos, and its a fine line, especially when your friend has a partner, shutdown or otherwise. You never know when things can turn with your friends relationship, and then YOU become the problem for THEM.... and its often the friend (YOU) that becomes the victim in the situation. Please guard your feelings, as I wouldn't want you to get hurt. you are a great guy, and very sensitive.

A recent article in the Kentucky Post reported that a woman, Anne Maynard, has sued St Luke’s Hospital, saying that after her husband was treated there recently, he had lost all interest in sex. A hospital spokesman replied, "Mr. Maynard was actually admitted in Ophthalmology - all we did was to correct his eyesight."

Well, I should hope so!

You are wrong in everything you say. But, I do not expect you to admit that and that is OK. I grew up in Alabama and experienced gay bashing first hand. Don't sit on your high horse and tell me that I don't know the hurt that these things have. I had a lover burned alive in his car. I had friends burned in their trailer. I saw things that you have never seen. I had things done to me that I do not discuss and will not on any forum. So, while you may have more experience holding hands of victims, I do not think your experiences make you a better judge of what one should understand. We all come to the table with different experiences and while you seem to think yours should have more value than others. They don't. What was said in the ONE poll was the discussion. What other poll did I start a few months later? I referenced the ONE poll on the subject. You will not find another poll as there was not one. There was one poll I started and I used quotes from it. I also said it would not be in my vocabulary in the future and it has not. The article on Porto Alegre has been on the site for a long time. I even re-posted it in the forums and linked to it. I did not edit it or put it up recently. It has been on the site and in the City Guides area. The only thing I changed was the addition to the businesses in that area. I also created a special forum for the city and I placed business listings in that particular city. Nothing else was changed. I did not change the article and I do not have the ability to do that unless the programmers make that change. Why? It is hard coded html with photos in it that are arranged. I don't edit them. Other people make changes to html on the site. You say I had a chance to remove it, I didn't reread it and even realize it was there. But, I refuse to argue with you as facts do not seem relevant to you. Several posters in this thread have summed things up very nicely. I have even stated that I would never use the word again as it is offensive to some even if used in the "campy" way I used it. That is not enough for you. So, I'm done with this discussion with you. If you wish one based on facts as opposed to emotion, let me know. Otherwise, don't expect another comment from me in this thread regarding this.