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Sen. James Inhofe, a Republican from Oklahoma, argued that there is no comparison between Hurricane Sandy relief, which he voted against last fall, and aid for his state in the wake of Monday’s devastating tornado because the two are “totally different.”

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More: New York - 20K LB. of Kosher Meat Donated to Oklahoma — VosIzNeias.com

Agri Star

New York - In the wake of yesterday’s devastating tornado in Oklahoma, a major kosher meat distributor is donating twelve pallets of meat products to disaster victims.

Agri Star Meat and Poultry has 20,000 pounds of meat and poultry ready to be shipped to Oklahoma City. Agri Star is working in conjunction with Masbia to raise the necessary funds to transport the meat to its intended destination, Chabad of Oklahoma City.

“We are sending a variety of foods as per the request of Rabbi Goldman, the local Chabad rabbi,” Jo-Ann Chadbourne of Agri Star told VIN News. “We are sending rapid prep foods including deli, chicken nuggets, beef patties, hot dogs and other items that can be distributed quickly to tornado victims. Providing some sort of relief is the least we can do and we are privileged to be able to help in any way we can.”

Masbia has undertaken the task of raising the $3,000 needed to transport the donated items from Agri Star’s Postville, Iowa plant to Oklahoma City and is urging the public to contribute funds to defray the cost of transportation. Donations can be made at wepay.com

“Food is most essential to victims of disaster,” explained Alexander Rapaport, Executive Director of Masbia. “We found during our on the ground Sandy relief work that the victims need food, the first responders need food and the volunteers need food. I cannot ever forget those smiles on their faces when we arrived with food.”

While the most urgently needed items at the moment in the tornado ravaged area are water, toiletries, baby items, cash and gift cards to stores such as Walmart, Target and Sam’s Club, the Agri Star donation will be a major boon to area residents, according to Rabbi Ovadia Goldman of Chabad of Oklahoma City, located approximately twenty miles from the devastation, who is working with local officials on the relief effort.

“Right now we are distributing ready to eat meals but down the road there will be a heavy need for protein and as soon as we can assess those needs, we will distribute the meat products,” said Rabbi Goldman. “As of now we are working with local food banks to make sure that we can house the meat properly when it comes in.”

Read more at Vos Iz Neias.

Masbia is the soup kitchen that served meals to thousands of survivors of Hurricane Sandy.

there’s no such thing as Flickr Pro, because today, with cameras as pervasive as they are, there is no such thing really as professional photographers, when there’s everything is professional photographers. Certainly there is varying levels of skills, but we didn’t want to have a Flickr Pro anymore, we wanted everyone to have professional quality photos, space, and sharing.” - Marissa Mayer, Yahoo Event, May 2013

More: RIP ‘Professional Photographers’

WTF did she just say?!

Guitars are all over the place are there no professional musicians?!

Each and every time a high government official needs to invoke the 5th as a result of decisions made on the job it is a very sad day. It is also grist for the conspiracy mill.

WASHINGTON - A top IRS official in the division that reviews nonprofit groups will invoke the Fifth Amendment and refuse to answer questions before a House committee investigating the agency’s improper screening of conservative nonprofit groups.

Lois Lerner, the head of the exempt organizations division of the IRS, won’t answer questions about what she knew about the improper screening - or why she didn’t reveal it to Congress, according to a letter from her defense lawyer, William W. Taylor 3rd.

Lerner was scheduled to appear before the House Oversight committee Wednesday.

More: Top IRS Official Will Invoke 5th Amendment

A federal court Tuesday struck down Arizona’s ban on abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy absent a medical emergency.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the law violated a woman’s constitutionally protected right to terminate a pregnancy before a fetus is able to survive outside the womb. “Viability” of a fetus is generally considered to start at 24 weeks. Normal pregnancies run about 40 weeks.

Nine other states have enacted similar bans starting at 20 weeks or even earlier. Several of those bans had previously been placed on hold or struck down by other courts.

Judge Marsha Berzon, writing for the unanimous three-judge panel on the San Francisco-based court, said such bans before viability violate a long string of U.S. Supreme Court rulings starting with the seminal Roe v. Wade decision in 1973.

The judge wrote that “a woman has a constitutional right to choose to terminate her pregnancy before the fetus is viable.”

More: Court Strikes Down Arizona 20-Week Abortion Ban

Oh joy! Just a couple blocks from my office…

A sinkhole at the intersection of 14th and F streets in Northwest Washington has closed streets around that intersection, and police warn that the closures could remain in place for two days.

Crews are on the scene to repair the sinkhole. As a result, 14th Street is blocked between New York and Pennsylvania Avenues NW and F Street is closed between 13th and 15th streets NW.

More: Sinkhole at 14th and F Closes Downtown D.C. Streets

It has long been part of the Washington game for officials to discredit a news story by playing up errors in a relatively small part of it. Pfeiffer gives the impression that GOP operatives deliberately tried to “smear the president” with false, doctored e-mails.

But the reporters involved have indicated they were told by their sources that these were summaries, taken from notes of e-mails that could not be kept. The fact that slightly different versions of the e-mails were reported by different journalists suggests there were different note-takers as well.

Indeed, Republicans would have been foolish to seriously doctor e-mails that the White House at any moment could have released (and eventually did). Clearly, of course, Republicans would put their own spin on what the e-mails meant, as they did in the House report. Given that the e-mails were almost certain to leak once they were sent to Capitol Hill, it’s a wonder the White House did not proactively release them earlier.

The burden of proof lies with the accuser. Despite Pfeiffer’s claim of political skullduggery, we see little evidence that much was at play here besides imprecise wordsmithing or editing errors by journalists.

More: The White House Claim of ‘Doctored Emails…to Smear the President’

Smh

Our Soldiers are being raped…by our Soldiers.

In the U.S. Military, annually, more men are being raped by men than women are being raped by men. I state this fact, articulating it in this manner, not to diminish what these women are enduring but to raise the level of awareness and discourse to fully include the men; they have been dropping through the cracks in our “system” in alarming and increasing numbers. The assertion is that this problem is as great among men and these men are not being supported. There is virtually no effective system or network of support for male victims of rape in our Military, yet more men are raped than are women.

In 2012, nearly 14,000 active military men were assaulted by men, along with over 12,000 women. All of this is despicable, all of this calls for aggressive and public reprisal and punishment. Yet, virtually no one has been talking about it.

Why is this? Why has this not been dealt with swiftly and cleanly?

More: Men Are Being Sexually Assaulted in the Military, but Nobody Is Talking About It — the Good Men Project