The US schools with their own police

The US schools with their own police: "More and more US schools have police patrolling the corridors. Pupils are being arrested for throwing paper planes and failing to pick up crumbs from the canteen floor. Why is the state criminalising normal childhood behaviour?

The charge on the police docket was "disrupting class". But that's not how 12-year-old Sarah Bustamantes saw her arrest for spraying two bursts of perfume on her neck in class because other children were bullying her with taunts of "you smell".

"I'm weird. Other kids don't like me," said Sarah, who has been diagnosed with attention-deficit and bipolar disorders and who is conscious of being overweight. "They were saying a lot of rude things to me. Just picking on me. So I sprayed myself with perfume. Then they said: 'Put that away, that's the most terrible smell I've ever smelled.' Then the teacher called the police."

The policeman didn't have far to come. He patrols the corridors of Sarah's school, Fulmore Middle in Austin, Texas. Like hundreds of schools in the state, and across large parts of the rest of the US, Fulmore Middle has its own police force with officers in uniform who carry guns to keep order in the canteens, playgrounds and lessons. Sarah was taken from class, charged with a criminal misdemeanour and ordered to appear in court...."

Rick Santorum thinks pregnancy through rape is God's gift? Seriously?

Rick Santorum thinks pregnancy through rape is God's gift? Seriously?: "Invoking God's will as a supporting argument to his position on abortion hardly fits with the constitution he claims to uphold

As a lapsed Catholic turned atheist, a staunch feminist and someone who has a strong general aversion to sleazy, disingenuous men, I was shocked yesterday to find myself feeling something like respect for Rick Santorum, Pope Benedict XVI and Piers Morgan all in the space of three minutes.

The three minutes in question are a clip from Morgan's interview with Santorum on the former's CNN talk show. In it, Santorum declares that even if his own daughter were raped – a hypothetical scenario both men manage to discuss with remarkable calm – the Roman Catholic presidential candidate would maintain his adamantly pro-life position regarding abortion.

I sincerely feel a tiny, grudging mote of respect for that degree of consistency. As anti-choice zealots go, those who will take the "baby killer" argument to its extreme appeal to me slightly more than those who can say with a straight face that abortion is murder, except when the woman didn't want to have sex...."

SOPA "explained" by The Guardian

Condemnation of Afghanistan video over the top, says Rick Perry

Condemnation of Afghanistan video over the top, says Rick Perry: "Republican presidential hopeful said that marines purportedly shown urinating on corpses should not be prosecuted

The Republican presidential hopeful Rick Perry has accused the Obama administration of "over-the-top rhetoric" and "disdain for the military" with its condemnation of a video that purportedly shows four US marines urinating on corpses in Afghanistan.

Perry's comments also put him at odds with Senator John McCain, the top Republican on the Senate armed services committee.

Perry said the marines involved should be reprimanded but not prosecuted on criminal charges.

The Texas governor said on CNN's State of the Union programme: "Obviously, 18 and 19-year-old kids make stupid mistakes all too often. And that's what's occurred here...."

The 99% Versus The 1% Explained In 5 Minutes

Occupy Wall Street protest: NYPD accused of heavy-handed tactics

Occupy Wall Street protest: NYPD accused of heavy-handed tactics:Force criticised by protesters, who claim they were deliberately led on to road before being penned in and arrested

The New York police department has come under criticism for heavy-handed tactics during the Occupy Wall Street march over Brooklyn bridge, after more than 700 protesters were held for several hours.

Activists, as well as commentators following the protest against inequality and corporate excess, claim the response of the city's police force to the peaceful event was vastly out of proportion. Almost 1,000 people have been arrested in two weeks – substantially more than the number of financiers who led the world into the 2008 economic meltdown.

As Salman Rushdie put it in a tweet: "The world's economy has been wrecked by these rapacious traders. Yet it is the protesters who are jailed....."

Occupy Wall Street: help us reconstruct the 'pepper spray' incident

Occupy Wall Street: help us reconstruct the 'pepper spray' incident: "Eyewitness accounts, video and photographs posted online tell some of the story of the moment when a police officer used pepper spray on Occupy Wall Street protesters. Help us piece together the rest of what happened.

As my colleague Karen McVeigh has reported, internet activists who support the Occupy Wall Street protests identified the New York police officer who used pepper spray on female protesters by studying video and photographs posted online.

A brief glimpse of the incident, which took place on Saturday near Union Square, was caught on video by one eyewitness – although it was difficult to see exactly what happened until an annotated, slow-motion edit of the same clip was posted on YouTube.

Another eyewitness, who photographed the protest for his blog, then posted what he said was a close-up image of the officer's badge. Using that information, the Hacker collective Anonymous correctly deduced that the officer who had used his small gas canister against four female protesters was Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna, a veteran commander in Manhattan....."

Police crack down on 'Occupy Wall Street' protests

Police crack down on 'Occupy Wall Street' protests: "The anti-capitalist protests that have become something of a fixture in Lower Manhattan over the past week or so have taken on a distinctly ugly turn.

Police have been accused of heavy-handed tactics after making 80 arrests on Saturday when protesters marched uptown from their makeshift camp in a private park in the financial district.

Footage has emerged on YouTube showing stocky police officers coralling a group of young female protesters and then spraying them with mace, despite being surrounded and apparently posing threats of only the verbal kind...."

Occupy Wall Street: the protesters speak

Occupy Wall Street: the protesters speak: "Casey O'Neill had no regrets. He had travelled thousands of miles across the country – and gave up a well-paying job as a data manager in California – to sleep rough in a downtown Manhattan public square, enduring rain and increasingly chilly nights. Police keep a close eye on him every day.

But O'Neill was happy to be part of the "Occupy Wall Street" protests that have transformed New York's Zuccotti Park from a spot where Wall Streeters grab a lunchtime sandwich into an informal camp of revolutionaries, socialists, anarchists and quite a lot of the just-plain-annoyed....."