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In 2012, Greg Brannon, who is now a North Carolina Republican Senate candidate, wouldn’t say whether he thought the attacks on September 11, 2001 were an inside job—but, he said, “Things like this have to be asked.”

Brannon, an OB-GYN endorsed by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and a leading contender in the GOP primary to challenge Sen. Kay Hagan (D-N.C.), made that comment as a guest on a local conservative talk show.

More: GOP Senate Candidate Takes a 9/11 Truther’s Questions: ‘Things Like This Have to Be Asked’

Supreme Court denies fishing trip to right wing AGW denialist lobby.

Unpublished research by university scientists is exempt from the Virginia Freedom of Information Act, the Virginia Supreme Court ruled Thursday, rejecting an attempt by skeptics of global warming to view the work of a prominent climate researcher during his years at the University of Virginia.

The ruling is the latest turn in the FOIA request filed in 2011 by Del. Robert Marshall (R-Prince William) and the American Tradition Institute to obtain research and e-mails of former U-Va. professor Michael Mann.

Mann left the university in 2005 and now works at Penn State University, where he published his book “The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars” about his theories on global warming and those who would deny it. Lawyers for U-Va. turned over about 1,000 documents to Marshall and ATI, led by former EPA attorney David Schnare, but withheld another 12,000 papers and e-mails, saying that work “of a propriety nature” was exempt under the state’s FOIA law.

More: Va. Supreme Court Rules for U-Va. in Global Warming FOIA Case

For two weeks, the mysteriously well-armed, professional gunmen known as “green men” have seized Ukrainian government sites in town after town, igniting a brush fire of separatist unrest across eastern Ukraine. Strenuous denials from the Kremlin have closely followed each accusation by Ukrainian officials that the world was witnessing a stealthy invasion by Russian forces.

Now, photographs and descriptions from eastern Ukraine endorsed by the Obama administration on Sunday suggest that many of the green men are indeed Russian military and intelligence forces — equipped in the same fashion as Russian special operations troops involved in annexing the Crimea region in February. Some of the men photographed in Ukraine have been identified in other photos clearly taken among Russian troops in other settings.

And Ukraine’s state security service has identified one Russian reported to be active among the green men as Igor Ivanovich Strelkov, a Russian military intelligence operative in his mid- to late 50s. He is said to have a long résumé of undercover service with the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Russian general staff, most recently in Crimea in February and March and now in and around the eastern Ukrainian city of Slovyansk.

Photos at link:
More: Photos Link Masked Men in East Ukraine to Russia

A 16-year-old boy stowed away in the wheel well of a flight from San Jose to Hawaii on Sunday, surviving the trip halfway across the Pacific Ocean unharmed despite frigid temperatures at 38,000 feet and a lack of oxygen, FBI and airline officials said.

FBI spokesman Tom Simon in Honolulu told The Associated Press on Sunday night that the boy was questioned by the FBI after being discovered on the tarmac at the Maui airport with no identification.

“Kid’s lucky to be alive,” Simon said.

More: Santa Clara Teen Survives After Stowing Away on Flight From San Jose to Hawaii - San Jose Mercury News

Vice President Joe Biden is heading to Ukraine to meet with leaders of the turbulent country.

Biden’s visit comes a day after violence erupted in eastern Ukraine, despite an agreement last week aimed at easing tensions. A shootout at a checkpoint in eastern Ukraine manned by pro-Russia insurgents left at least three dead and Ukrainian and Russian officials trading accusations of blame.

More: Biden Heads to Ukraine as Tensions Rise - San Jose Mercury News

If this is true, its utterly shameful and I fear for the future of America! Scott Kaufman reports,

A study published in the latest edition of Evolution: Education and Outreach demonstrated “the average student…completed the Biology I course with increased confidence in their biological evolution knowledge yet with a greater number of biological evolution misconceptions and, therefore, less competency in the subject.”

The study, conducted by Tony Yates and Edmund Marek, tested biology teachers and students in 32 Oklahoma public high schools via a survey the pair called “the Biological Evolution Literacy Survey.” The survey was administered to the teachers first, to get a benchmark of their grasp of evolutionary theory. The survey was then administered twice to the students — once before they took the required Biology I course, and once after they had completed it.

Yates and Marek found that prior to instruction, students possessed 4,812 misconceptions about evolutionary theory; after they completed the Biology I course, they possessed 5,072. Of the 475 students surveyed, only 216 decreased the number of misconceptions they believed, as opposed to 259 who had more of them when they finished the course than before they took it.

Read more at Raw Story

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More: Cardinal Defending Hobby Lobby Tells Female Reporter: Women Can Get Birth Control at 7-11

Cardinal Timothy Dolan says that Christian businesses like Hobby Lobby should not be forced to obey government rules that require all health care insurance plans provide access to contraceptives because women can already buy birth control at 7-11.

In a interview that aired Sunday on CBS, host Norah O’Donnell asked Dolan where he stood on the Hobby Lobby Supreme Court case.

“I would be inspired by the Hobby Lobby [owners],” Dolan said. “I think they’re just true Americans. They’re saying, look, the genius of America is that religious convictions affect the way we act… They sure have my admiration.”

“But doesn’t that set a dangerous precedent?” O’Donnell wondered. “If a private company can use religion to deny benefits to its employees?”

Dolan acknowledged that it could be dangerous in extreme circumstances, but he doubted that the Hobby Lobby argument was a detriment to the common good.

“Is the ability to buy contraceptives, that are now widely available — my Lord, all you have to do is walk into a 7-11 or any shop on any street in America and have access to them — is that right to access those and have them paid for, is that such a towering good that it would suffocate the rights of conscience?”

More at Raw Story.

What is this…I just can’t even…

Here is MOAR TIMOTHY DOLAN.

In July 2013, documents made public during bankruptcy proceedings showed that Dolan had sought permission to move $57 million in church funds to protect the assets from victims of clerical abuse. In a letter to the Vatican requesting permission to move the funds, Dolan wrote “By transferring these assets to the trust, I foresee an improved protection of these funds from any legal claim and liability.” Dolan had previously denied that he tried to conceal assets from child sex abuse victims claiming compensation calling the accusations “old and discredited” and “malarkey.”

The trick is going to be allowing this technology and regulating it against abuse. by anyone, law officers or commercial enterprise.

For almost a month, Kansas Citians lived through what amounted to a horror movie without an ending.

According to the narrative described in court documents, it would take cutting-edge and occasionally controversial law enforcement technology, including license-plate readers, to put an end to the horror show.

The story of this very 21st century hunt began playing out on the tangle of freeways just south of Kansas City, Mo., where, starting in March, one driver after another reported being shot at by a mystery gunman — nobody they knew, for reasons nobody could fathom.

The suspect would later be identified as a driver wearing a black hoodie, a black mask and black sunglasses. His strikes came unpredictably, police discovered, often right before his victims drove onto highway splits and exits. That’s when drivers would hear a bang, or suddenly feel a sharp sting.

More: How Technology Helped Crack the Kansas City Highway Shooter Case

More: Glenn Greenwald Reacts to Pulitzer Prize

Pullet Surprise

Glenn Greenwald told CNN’s Brian Stelter on Sunday that receiving the Pulitzer Prize for public service was “really gratifying.”

On Monday, Greenwald and other journalists at The Guardian and The Washington Post were awarded the Pulitzer for their reporting on the National Security Agency. The big question as the awards approached was whether the Pulitzer Prize committee would recognize their work, and they did just that.

On Sunday’s “Reliable Sources,” Greenwald told Stelter that he was having lunch with his phone on the table when the announcement came, and described his reaction.

“I think there was an expectation that the committee had to recognize the reporting in one way or another, and the question was going to be how,” said Greenwald. “To learn that it was the public service award and that it was given to The Guardian and to The Washington Post for the work that we had done was really gratifying, because I think that is the ideal that we always tried to fulfill, which is doing the reporting in public service.”

Congressman Peter King, like other critics of Greenwald, reacted to the news less kindly, calling the win a “disgrace.” When asked about King’s condemnation of the award, Greenwald said it was “an enormous badge of honor.” He compared it to the reactions of those who called for prosecuting Daniel Ellsberg and The New York Times for releasing the Pentagon Papers.

More at HuffPo.