Did a right-wing election observer falsify election forms? The Columbus Free Press has learned that the Franklin County Board of Elections will consider referring an election observer affiliated with the voter suppression organization True the Vote for criminal prosecution. The special meeting is scheduled Thursday, June 6, 2013.

Prior to the 2012 presidential election in Columbus, True the Vote filed an application with the Franklin County Board of Elections to monitor polling places in the inner city. This application required signatures from local candidates on the ballot in the county or county political party officials to be valid.

The Franklin County Board of Elections determined that up to six of the signatures on the True the Vote application were probably forged. This type of political forgery is a fourth degree felony under Ohio law and carrying a penalty of up to 18 months of jail.

Part I
The President’s recent address concerning the War on Terror as it relates to drone warfare has supposedly set the stage for a revitalized American foreign policy. Whereas drone strikes merely described the previous administration’s handling of terrorist threats to the United States, this surreptitious war tactic has actually defined and illuminated the current Obama administration’s congruent pursuit. While acknowledging four American casualties, President Obama stridently defended the drone program as effective, moral, and legal. In his address’ most profound and chilling moment, the President reflected on the drones’ tendencies to cause civilian casualties. “For me, and those in my chain of command, these deaths will haunt us as long as we live," he said. Needless to emphasize further, the drone program is a serious matter that raises questions and requires a proper examination and understanding.

Recent events at Sandy Hook, the Boston Marathon bombing, and the Oklahoma tornado have brought forth some outlandish conspiracy theories. Alex Jones called the Boston bombings a "false flag" operation without offering a motive beyond the general motive of pushing America farther down the road of "fascism". Jones again weighed in on the Oklahoma tornado , claiming it was an exercise in weather control. Even more outlandish were the people, including Alex Jones, who believed that Sandy Hook never happened , that it was a staged event which would then allow the government to take your guns away.

But not all Conspiracies are created equal, as I have argued before.

Darwin observed that conscience is what most distinguishes humans from other animals. If so, grief isn’t far behind. Realms of anguish are deeply personal -- yet prone to expropriation for public use, especially in this era of media hyper-spin. Narratives often thresh personal sorrow into political hay. More than ever, with grief marketed as a civic commodity, the personal is the politicized.

The politicizing of grief exploded in the wake of 9/11. When so much pain, rage and fear set the U.S. cauldron to boil, national leaders promised their alchemy would bring unalloyed security. The fool’s gold standard included degrading civil liberties and pursuing a global war effort that promised to be ceaseless. From the political outset, some of the dead and bereaved were vastly important, others insignificant. Such routine assumptions have remained implicit and intact.

The “war on terror” was built on two tiers of grief. Momentous and meaningless. Ours and theirs. The domestic politics of grief settled in for a very long haul, while perpetual war required the leaders of both major parties to keep affirming and reinforcing the two tiers of grief.

BANGKOK, Thailand -- Buddhists and Muslims are clashing with increasing ferocity in Myanmar, Thailand and Sri Lanka where minority Islamic ethnic groups blame racism by majority Buddhists more than religious intolerance.

"It is like the K.K.K. (Klu Klux Klan) in America during the period of the civil rights movement," said Myo Win, a Muslim activist based in Yangon, Myanmar, comparing recent deadly attacks by Buddhists in his Southeast Asian country with white U.S. mobs lynching blacks during the 1960s.

"We are really afraid," Myo Win said on May 9 addressing a Bangkok conference titled, "Violence in the Name of Buddhism."

In Myanmar, also known as Burma, the powerful military and its civilian government representatives refuse to accept 800,000 minority Muslims as citizens.

Myanmar insists they are illegal ethnic Bengali immigrants from impoverished Muslim-majority Bangladesh, who describe themselves as indigenous ethnic Rohingya in western Rakhine state.

"There is some kind of internally racist, Orientalist," propaganda voiced against "darker-skinned" Muslims by politicians and other