VIA: Cincinnati.com

For the second straight year, the Bengals have agreed to a deal with what they hope will be their No. 2 receiver on the sixth day of free agency.

And the team hopes Antonio Bryant turns out to be better than Laveranues Coles.

After leaving Cincinnati without a deal Tuesday, Bryant agreed to a four-year deal worth $28 million. The total is the same as the deal for Coles.

The agreement was reached after Terrell Owens concluded his visit.

The Bengals are expected to formally announce the signing today.

“We were talking prior to him coming (to Cincinnati for a visit) and had made substantial progress,” said Lamont Smith, Bryant’s agent. “After he left, that gave both sides sufficient motivation to get closer.”

During his visit Monday and Tuesday, Bryant met with the coaching staff and was quizzed by offensive coordinator Bob Bratkowski about schemes. The Bengals also asked some tough questions about Bryant’s past, including clashes with coaches in Dallas and San Francisco.

Bryant missed the 2007 season after being released by the Niners due to problems with then-coach Mike Nolan and quarterback Alex Smith. He also failed a drug test that summer. The NFL asked him to take a urinalysis in September and threatened to discipline him with a positive result if he didn’t comply. Bryant sued the league for requiring him to take a drug test even though he was not in the league at the time. The issue was settled later that year though details were not disclosed according to ESPN.com.

Tampa Bay signed Bryant in 2008 and he enjoyed a career year with 83 receptions for 1,248 yards and seven touchdowns. That performance made the Bucs give him the franchise tag for 2009.

He struggled last year after being hampered with knee injuries during training camp. He finished with 39 receptions for 600 yards, an average of 15.4 yards per catch, and four touchdowns.

Bryant received a strong recruiting pitch from Bengals quarterback Carson Palmer, who texted him over the weekend. Even though there was talk about Owens and Brandon Marshall, Bryant was the team’s top choice after Kevin Walter re-signed with Houston.

“It was major. It sort of tipped the scale away from another situation to them,” said Smith of Palmer’s effort. “He is excited because for the first time in his career he gets to play with a Pro Bowl-level quarterback and receiver.”

As to what type of receiver Bryant is, Smith described him as “a blue-collar guy who can make the tough and acrobatic catch. He’s not an extremely flamboyant guy and that will surprise you guys.”

Bryant and Chad Ochocinco both grew up in Miami. Even though Ochocinco’s first choice appeared to be T.O., he tweeted on Tuesday: “Congrats to the homie from the 305, Dade County Finest.”

Owens had dinner with the coaching staff Tuesday and toured Paul Brown Stadium Wednesday. Since Super Bowl week, Ochocinco had been on a crusade to bring Owens to Cincinnati.

Said Owens on Twitter: “I wanna thank Mike Brown and the coaching staff for the visit along with the possible opportunity to play with Carson and 85. I enjoyed the visit.”

COATS IS BACK: Tight end Dan Coats has re-signed with the team. He caught 16 passes for 150 yards, but had a number of dropped passes.

SMITH TO CHIEFS: Defensive lineman Shaun Smith has agreed to terms with Kansas City. Smith was signed by the Bengals in December and played four games including the playoffs.

Marion Jones hasn’t lost much of her swagger.

The disgraced sprinter once called the world’s fastest woman was introduced Wednesday as the newest member of the WNBA’s Tulsa Shock and she offered no apologies for her steroids use or her time in federal prison. She was poised and ready for questions about her troubled past.

“The word redemption is not in my vocabulary,” Jones said at a news conference, flanked by team president Steve Swetoha and coach Nolan Richardson. “I’m a competitor, I want to play against the best in the world, and I know that I will be doing that.”

Her bid for a new career comes a decade after she starred at the Sydney Olympics, winning gold in the 100 meters, 200 meters and 1,600-meter relay, and bronze in the long jump and 400-meter relay. She was stripped of all five medals after admitting in 2007 that she was using performance-enhancing drugs — a designer steroid called the “clear” — at the time of the games.

Jones also spent about six months in a Texas prison for lying to federal prosecutors about doping and her role in a check-fraud scam.

The 34-year-old Jones joined the team just four days after working out for Richardson, who is also the team’s general manager. She was signed to at least a one-year contract but terms were not disclosed.

Jones was the starting point guard on North Carolina’s national championship team in 1994 and she was drafted by Phoenix in 2003 but never played in the WNBA. She said playing for the Shock is not about her past but instead fulfills her dream of playing basketball against the best players in the world.

“I think when I even started to think about this 10 months ago, I know how much the game has grown from the time that I played,” Jones said. “And that became even more of a challenge for me, because I know that although I know certain things and played a certain way, that it’s 10 times faster, that the athletes are 10 times more skilled.”

WNBA president Donna Orender, who attended the news conference, said Jones generates interest in the league because she’s a highly accomplished athlete who has competed on a global stage.

“This is a tremendous, real-life story of a person who made a choice that was not a wise choice, but is saying listen, ‘I’m going to be a role model, I’m going to showcase what I’m going to do with the rest of my life,’” Orender told The Associated Press. “I join the rest of America in wanting to watch this story unfold.”

Jones will join a team that is a work in progress. All-Stars Deanna Nolan and Katie Smith had agreed to contract extensions, but apparently won’t play for Tulsa when the season begins in May.

Richardson said Nolan has indicated she intends to skip the upcoming season to rest instead of relocating with the team, which moved to Tulsa from Detroit in the offseason. And Smith, a six-time All-Star, has already said she doesn’t plan to play in Tulsa and is listed as a free agent by the league.

Also unknown is how much of an initial draw the city’s only major pro sports team will be. Tulsa County has a population of about 592,000 and Tulsa is the second-smallest city with a WNBA franchise, behind Uncasville, Conn.

If nothing else, Jones could be a draw.

“She made some ill-advised decisions in the past, but everyone deserves a second chance to excel at something they love,” Swetoha said. “The city of Tulsa gave a struggling franchise from Detroit a second chance, and …..

The e-mail from a City Hall aide was meant to spur discussion among like-minded conservative friends, but its public airing Wednesday revealed the aide referring to Mayor Mark Mallory as “dainty” and City Manager Milton Dohoney as “overpaid and overfed.”

Brad Beckett, chief of staff for Councilman Chris Monzel, who is running for Hamilton County commission, said he never meant the e-mail, published Wednesday by CityBeat, for public consumption and likened it to a conversation from a private campaign staff meeting. He writes them as agenda items or talking points the night before or morning of each lunch meeting, he said, and intends them to spur conversation among the invitation-only group he says is made up of Republicans, Libertarians and people “right of center.”

He said he tries to model The Vanguard’s lunch meetings, which have been going on for four or five years, after the roundtable McLaughlin Group syndicated pundits show. At the end of each agenda-setting e-mail, Beckett writes, “The fate of the world will be decided.”

He did not know how the e-mail got disseminated beyond the usual recipients and joked about “30 pieces of silver,” referring to the amount of money Judas was paid to betray Jesus. He said someone must’ve sent it to CityBeat in hopes of hurting Monzel in the primary election.

He wouldn’t share the whole e-mail later Wednesday, but said there were also agenda items that weren’t so salacious, such as the fate of the Gamble house in Westwood and whether property rights trump the community’s wishes for preservation.

Monzel said he would feel differently about the e-mail if Beckett had written it on city e-mail or sent it during work hours, which he didn’t.

“I have a different style,” Monzel said. “But it’s his personal time.”

Beckett said while he didn’t mean to hurt anyone’s feelings, he does believe that Mallory and Dohoney “are running the city into the ground,” particularly in the context of the streetcar project, which Beckett and Monzel oppose.

Mallory declined to comment through a spokesman.

Dohoney was out of town and would not have seen the CityBeat story, said Meg Olberding, Dohoney’s spokesman.

Councilwoman Leslie Ghiz, who is running against Monzel, said if one of her aides did something similar, she would fire them.

“It’s completely inappropriate,” she said. “Completely.”

Beckett said he’s merely trying to prompt good discussion and make people laugh.

“It’s good, old-fashioned, one-sided debate,” he said. “We’re there to discuss issues as free Americans.”

via:nypost.com

No matter what the city says, Lori Mason insists the breast milk she supplied her cheese-making husband is more wholesome than anything on the shelves at Whole Foods.

Her milk is 100 percent organic, free range, and foie gras-fed, she told The Post.

“I eat healthier than your average cow and I’m not pumped full of steroids!” Mason said.

When Mason’s husband, Daniel Angerer, blogged about making some of his wife’s excess breast milk into cheese, customers at his restaurant, Klee Brasserie on Ninth Avenue in Chelsea, began demanding to have a taste.

But as The Post reported yesterday, even though expressed mother’s-milk cheese is not against health codes, city officials strongly advised Angerer to desist.

The cheese could pose a potential health hazard, the officials said.

That did not stop diners eager to sample the human dairy from showing up at the restaurant yesterday.

“We had some people who ordered the cheese plate and I had to tell them we don’t serve the breast-milk cheese in the restaurant,” maitre d’ Bari Musacchio said. “I told them if they wanted to try it, there is a recipe on the [Klee Brasserie] Web site.”

According to Liz Thorpe, a vice president of Murray’s Cheese shops in Manhattan, who reviewed Angerer’s cheese for The Post, they aren’t missing much.

“It was slippery, slightly crunchy and tasted like pickles,” she said. “I give it a thumbs down.”

But breast-milk cheese isn’t just a matter of bad taste, it’s potentially unsafe, city officials said.

“It’s not intended for adults, or for wide public consumption,” a Health Department spokeswoman said.

Risks would “depend on the health of the lactating woman,” she said. “If the restaurant was found distributing the cheese in the establishment for public consumption, the Health Department could issue a violation.”

Angerer said he has no intention of selling his wife’s cheese in the restaurant, but he insisted it’s actually a healthy food.

“I tried it and I’m still alive. The baby eats it all day long and she’s fine too,” he said.

Even though they’re barred from distributing it to customers, Mason said the couple may hold private tasting parties “at our apartment or in the park in the spring with wine.”

Mason, who has been propositioned by several creepy customers eager to sample her breast milk, offered one caveat.

“We may need security to stop the weird fetish people from coming in.”

The Health Department nixed the cheese-party idea, too.

“He can’t do that either,” the spokeswoman said.

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/human_cheese_ma_don_have_cow_mspd5ZGAOOcFwi48jnErwN#ixzz0hmP0lrYz
Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/human_cheese_ma_don_have_cow_mspd5ZGAOOcFwi48jnErwN#ixzz0hmOfecy0

Someone with the Republican National Committee got a little bit careless down in Florida recently. He – or she – left behind a presentation during a fundraising retreat at a Boca Grande hotel that basically confirmed what many people already know.

The RNC, it seems, believes its best bet for stirring up voters is by stirring up fears of the black man in the White House.

According to Politico, the 72-page presentation lays out a strategy to scare people into believing that President Barack Obama is moving the country toward socialism. It is filled with cartoonish images of President Obama as the Joker, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as Cruella DeVille and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid as … Scooby Doo?

What’s that all about?

And, in a stroke designed to tap into paranoia more than passion, it describes the small donors that the RNC is aiming at as being motivated by “fear,” “extreme negative feelings toward existing Administration,” and “Reactionary.”

They forgot to add “racism.”

Then again, I guess they didn’t need to. Fear is kind of a proxy for that. And the Republicans are banking on riding the ridiculousness that comes with fear to victory this fall.

How else does one explain Liz Cheney, the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, whose organization recently resorted to attacking the patriotism of Justice Department officials who formerly represented terrorist detainees?

As if people don’t understand – or at least, ought to understand – that ensuring that all defendants have an adequate defense is a principle as old as the Constitution that Cheney and the Tea Partiers have discovered a newfound affinity for?

How else does one explain Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, who constantly tells outlandish, verifiable lies designed to vilify Obama?

One of the GOP congresswoman’s lies, according to Politifact.com, was one in which she claimed that the last time swine flu broke out, it was under another Democratic president, Jimmy Carter.

Apparently Bachmann, in her typical wing-nutty way, was trying to imply that the election of Obama had brought a plague upon the land. No matter that when swine flu broke out in 1976, Gerald Ford, a Republican, was president.

Politifact rated that statement as a Pants-on-Fire lie – as well as three other statements out of eight that it rated.
 
The other four were simply rated false.

And how else do you explain conservative talk show host Glenn Beck, who, among other things, once claimed that Obama’s director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy proposed forcing abortions and putting sterilants in the drinking water to control population?

That too, was rated as a Pants-on-Fire lie.

The explanation for Liz Cheney and her father, as well as Bachmann and Beck, is woven in the GOP strategy that someone left behind in Boca Grande. Make Obama scary. Make him look psychotic and cartoonish, and intertwine his image with fears of disease, death and dictatorship.

And hope that his blackness and otherness invokes more skepticism than their claims.
 
Unfortunately, that strategy might work for the some of the small donors that the RNC is trying to reach. Some of the large GOP donors, however, are already appalled – the strategy suggests that they can be reached by appeals to their egotism – and are distancing themselves from it.
 
Good for them.

But the Democrats ought to see an opportunity in that leaked document – an opportunity to craft a strategy to persuade voters who may be leaning Republican to feel insulted instead of wooed by the RNC’s plan.

They ought to find a way to appeal to people’s pride; to get them to feel offended that …..

Blacks spend more time in bed without sleeping than any other ethnic group, according to a poll released Monday by the National Sleep Foundation.

The survey also found that blacks and Hispanics are 10 times more likely to report having sex every night than Asians or whites.

The NSF conducts polls each year on various topics that relate to sleep behaviors, said Tom Balkin, chairman of the Washington, D.C.–based organization. This year’s report reveals significant differences in the sleep habits and attitudes of Asians, blacks, Hispanics and whites.

It is the first poll to examine sleep among these four ethnic groups, Balkin told BlackAmericaWeb.com.

“As the leading voice of sleep health, we are committed to better understanding people’s sleep needs,” says David Cloud, CEO of the National Sleep Foundation. “By exploring ethnic and family sleep practices, we have gained new insight into why we sleep the way we do.”

Blacks spend 54 minutes on weekdays/workdays and 71 minutes on non-workdays/weekends in bed without sleeping. Among the other ethnic groups, Hispanics reported spending 42 minutes in bed without sleeping, 36 minutes for Asians and 25 minutes for whites.

On weekends, time in bed without sleeping ranged from 71 minutes for blacks to 57 minutes for Hispanics, 43 minutes for whites and 41 minutes for Asians, according to the survey.

When it comes to sex, 10 percent of blacks and Hispanics report having sex every night, compared with four percent of whites and one percent of Asians.

Balkin said the survey included questions about sex because of the impact it can have on sleep.
“Sex is relaxing, and it enhances sleep onset,” Balkin said. “Reading also helps people relax before going to sleep.”

The survey did find that among married people or couples living together, all ethnic groups report being too tired for sex frequently21 to 26 percent of the time.

Balkin said the average person needs to get seven to nine hours of sleep each night. “Most don’t get the recommended amount of sleep,” he said, maintaining that most sleep just over seven hours.

A large percentage of blacks in the survey said they don’t need as much sleep as people in other ethnic groups.

Blacks reported getting the least amount of sleep on workdays/weekdays – six hours and 14 minutes. They also say that they need only seven hours and five minutes of sleep each night to perform at their best during the day, which is significantly less sleep than Asians and Hispanics – seven hours and 29 minutes each.

One theory is that people sometimes condition themselves to survive on less sleep, so it becomes a habit, Balkin said.

“The brain can forget how it feels to be optimally alert,” he said, adding that this can be especially true for people with sleep apnea or those conditioned by their work shifts.

“The finding that blacks/African-Americans say they need less sleep and get less sleep is instructive for public health professionals,” says Jose S. Loredo, MD, MPH, professor of medicine at the University of California, San Diego. “Their total sleep time and attitudes regarding sleep may be associated with blacks/African-Americans’ higher rates of sleep apnea, hypertension and diabetes and provide sleep-related insight into how to improve awareness and education programs and, very importantly, how to improve therapy compliance rates.”

The survey also reported:

- Most blacks, 71 percent, report praying every night. That’s more than four times the reported frequency of Asians at 18 percent, twice the rate of whites at 32 ….. ….. percent and 1.5 times the rate of Hispanics at 45 percent.

- Blacks and Asians are more likely than whites and Hispanics to report doing job-related work in the hour before bed. Among those employed, 17 percent of blacks and 16 percent of Asians reported doing work before bed, while 13 percent of Hispanics and nine percent of whites reported doing the same.

- A larger percentage of blacks reported losing sleep every night over personal financial and employment concerns. Twelve percent of blacks reported losing sleep over financial concerns, and 10 percent reported losing sleep over employment concerns. Only six percent of whites reported losing sleep over financial concerns, and seven percent reported losing sleep over employment concerns. The numbers were lower for Asians, at one percent and four percent respectively. The percent of sleep loss for Hispanics in this category were similar to blacks, with 11 percent losing sleep over financial concerns and nine percent losing sleep over employment concerns.

- Asians report getting the best sleep, report the least amount of sleep problems and infrequent use of sleep aids.

- Whites are the most likely to report sleeping with their pets and/or their significant other/spouse.

- Among those married or partnered, 14 percent of whites reported sleeping with a pet, compared with two percent in each of the other ethnic groups.

The National Sleep Foundation began surveying sleep health and behaviors in 1991. The 2010 Sleep in America Poll was conducted for NSF by WB&A Market Research, using a random sample of 1,007 adults between the ages of 25-60 and identifying themselves as white, black, Asian or Hispanic.

The mission of NSF, Balkin says is to promote public awareness of sleep disorders and the affects of inadequate sleep.

“If you are experiencing problems sleeping,” says Balkin, “take charge of your own sleep. You should critically examine your bedtime routines and pre-sleep activities and make time to ensure your bedroom is conducive to your sleep comfort.”

The National Sleep Foundation suggests the following to improve your sleep:

· Go to sleep and wake at the same time every day, and avoid spending more time in bed than needed.

· Use bright light to help manage your “body clock.” Avoid bright light in the evening and expose yourself to sunlight in the morning.

· Use your bedroom only for sleep to strengthen the association between your bed and sleep. It may help to remove work materials, computers and televisions from your bedroom.

· Select a relaxing bedtime ritual, like a warm bath or listening to calming music.

· Create an environment that is conducive to sleep that is quiet, dark and cool with a comfortable mattress and pillows.

· Reduce or eliminate your intake of caffeine, nicotine and alcohol.

· Save your worries for the daytime. If concerns come to mind, write them in a “worry book” so you can address those issues the next day.

· If you can’t sleep, go into another room and do something relaxing until you feel tired.

Philadelphia Inquirer sports columnist Stephen A. Smith is citing various NBA sources who claim that fired Philadelphia 76ers guard Allen Iverson is a bona fide alcoholic and has a serious gambling addiction, having already been banned from casinos in Detroit, Memphis and Denver.

“If numerous NBA sources are telling the truth — and there’s no reason to believe they’d do otherwise in a situation of this magnitude — Iverson will either drink himself into oblivion or gamble his life away,” Smith wrote in his Sunday column, titled “Iverson Needs More Than a Prayer.”

This latest news comes after a string of bad breaks for the 35-year-old athlete. In late February, Iverson left Sixers indefinitely to tend to his sick daughter. Two weeks later, it was announced he wouldn’t return to the team. And just as soon as his professional life crumbled, so did his personal life when his wife filed for divorce last week.

But in a report from Smith, who covered Iverson extensively as the Sixers’ former beat writer, Iverson also has serious problems with alcohol and gambling that is causing him to self-destruct.

In calling on Iverson’s former mentor/coaches to step in, Smith writes:

“Where is Pat Croce when you need him? Or Iverson’s coach at Georgetown, John Thompson?”

“Where is the person with the ideal combination of compassion and toughness who would shelter Iverson at the same time he’s holding his feet to the flames? Someone whose vested interest is in Iverson’s well-being, someone who doesn’t need his money or cachet?”“If numerous NBA sources are telling the truth — and there’s no reason to believe they’d do otherwise in a situation of this magnitude — Iverson will either drink himself into oblivion or gamble his life away,” Smith wrote in his Sunday column, titled “Iverson Needs More Than a Prayer.”

This latest news comes after a string of bad breaks for the 35-year-old athlete. In late February, Iverson left Sixers indefinitely to tend to his sick daughter. Two weeks later, it was announced he wouldn’t return to the team. And just as soon as his professional life crumbled, so did his personal life when his wife filed for divorce last week.

But in a report from Smith, who covered Iverson extensively as the Sixers’ former beat writer, Iverson also has serious problems with alcohol and gambling that is causing him to self-destruct.

In calling on Iverson’s former mentor/coaches to step in, Smith writes:

“Where is Pat Croce when you need him? Or Iverson’s coach at Georgetown, John Thompson?”

“Where is the person with the ideal combination of compassion and toughness who would shelter Iverson at the same time he’s holding his feet to the flames? Someone whose vested interest is in Iverson’s well-being, someone who doesn’t need his money or cachet?”

via:foxnews.com

Embattled Rep. Eric Massa used his final hours in office to settle scores with White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and other Democrats he claims are pushing him out of office to clear the way for health care reform. 

It sounds like the kind of bad dream that only congressmen have — White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, stark naked, approaches you in the locker room to give you a piece of his mind for not supporting the president’s budget. 

Only this actually happened, according to Rep. Eric Massa, the embattled New York Democrat who resigned Monday and used his last hours in office to settle some scores with party leaders. 

He reserved his most excoriating stuff for Emanuel, whom he called “son of the devil’s spawn” on his weekly radio show Sunday. 

“He is an individual who would sell his mother to get a vote. He would strap his children to a front end of a steam locomotive,” Massa said. Illustrating his point, he told the story of how he winded up in an argument with the chief of staff while they were both naked in the congressional gym showers. 

Massa said Emanuel came up to him last year, shortly after he entered Congress, while he was trying to clean up to give him grief about a budget vote. 

“I’m sitting there showering, naked as a jaybird, and here comes Rahm Emanuel, not even with a towel wrapped around his tush, poking his finger in my chest, yelling at me because I wasn’t gonna vote for the president’s budget,” Massa said. “Do you know how awkward it is to have a political argument with a naked man? … It’s ridiculous.” 

He continued, “By the way, what the heck is he doing in the congressional gym? He goes there to intimidate members of Congress.” 

Massa, 50, announced last Wednesday that a recurrence of cancer made him decide not to seek re-election in the fall. But two days later, following persistent reports about an Ethics Committee inquiry into inappropriate remarks made to a male staffer, he announced he would resign. 

In what may be his parting shot, he used his 90-minute local radio show on WKPQ-FM to defend himself against criticism, accuse House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of lying and charge the Democratic Party with pushing him out of Congress in order to pass health care reform. 

The Obama administration denied the latter charge. A White House official told Fox News that Massa’s allegation is “ridiculous and there’s no truth to it.” Massa, who supports a robust government health insurance plan, was one of 39 House Democrats who voted against the health care bill last year. 

But on Sunday, the first-term congressman claimed that the “forces that be” orchestrated a character assassination against him to push him out for the sake of the health care bill. 

“Mine is now the deciding vote on the health care bill and this administration and this House leadership have said, quote-unquote, they will stop at nothing to pass this health care bill, and now they’ve gotten rid of me and it will pass. You connect the dots,” Massa said. 

“The future of the Democratic Party rests on passing this health care bill. They can get anyone to say anything about me concerning anything at all and in fact they did.” 

Massa said the incident that got him in trouble, and supposedly gave his rivals leverage against him, occurred at a staff member’s wedding reception on New Year’s Eve. 

“I was with my wife. And in fact we had a great time. She got the stomach flu,” he said. 

Massa said he had just gotten up to sing Auld Lang Syne and had finished dancing with the bride and bridesmaid — in full view of cameras — when he sat back down at a table with male staff members. 

That’s when he made the “inappropriate” remark. 

“One of them looked at me and, as they would do after, I don’t know, 15 gin and tonics, and goodness only knows how many bottles of champagne, a staff member made an intonation to me that maybe I should be chasing after the bridesmaid, and his points were clear and his words were far more colorful than that. 

“And I grabbed the staff member sitting next to me and said, ‘Well, what I really ought to be doing is fracking you,’” he said. 

“And then [I] tousled the guy’s hair and left, went to my room, because I knew the party was getting to a point where it wasn’t right for me to be there. Now was that inappropriate of me? Absolutely. Am I guilty? Yes.” 

But Massa said the staff member “never said to me that he felt uncomfortable” and “never went to anybody.” 

Rather, he said “somebody went to another staff member who was uncomfortable for him. It was a third-party political correctness statement.” 

Massa said he didn’t know about the substance of the harassment complaint until after he announced he would not seek re-election — he said he caught wind of an ethics inquiry after the wedding, but assumed it was about a separate matter. 

And he said the accounting provided by Hoyer and his staff is a fabrication. 

Hoyer’s office claims the majority leader’s staff was notified the week of Feb. 8 about the allegations, that Hoyer was “immediately informed” and that he told his staff that Massa should refer the matter to the Ethics Committee within 48 hours, or he would do so himself. According to Hoyer’s office, Hoyer learned “within 48 hours” from the ethics committee staff and Massa’s staff that the Ethics Committee had been contacted. 

“Steny Hoyer has never said a single word to me at all, not ever, not once,” Massa said on Sunday. 

“Not a word. This is a lie. It’s a blatant false statement. And that’s what triggered me to understand what in fact is going on.” 

Hoyer, though, did not claim he spoke directly to Massa. 

“Mr. Hoyer was asked if he knew of the allegations before they were made public, and he answered yes,” Hoyer spokeswoman Katie Grant said Monday when asked about Massa’s radio show. “We then released a statement clarifying his knowledge of the situation.”

A preschooler is caught in the middle of a fight between religion and sexuality. Sacred Heart of Jesus Catholic School, in Boulder, has refused to readmit a preschooler because the child has two moms. Her parents are lesbians.

“God and Jesus would not allow discrimination in that way,” said Joellen Raderstorf, one of about two dozen demonstrators who turned out at Sunday’s church service.

Most of the protesters stood silently, across the street,

Some of them went inside during mass. The priest addressed the situation in his sermon.

“He feels like it’s a calling to be strict with upholding the catholic principles,” said Dave Ensign, president of the Board of Directors of Boulder Pride, a gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender organization.

“People who understand the Catholic teaching will understand why the decision was made,” said Fabien Ardila, a member of the parish.

However, not everyone in the parish agreed with the decision.

“I just feel the Catholic church is a church that should be teaching acceptance and tolerance. I just don’t think this is an example of that,” Juli Aderman-Hagerty told 7NEWS as she was leaving mass. “Father Breslin said it right. We’re all sinners. Why discriminate against this end of sinners?”

Church leaders declined to answer questions from 7NEWS.

However, the Archdiocese of Denver did issue this statement:

“To preserve the mission of our schools, and to respect the faith of wider Catholic community, we expect all families who enroll students to live in accord with Catholic teaching. Parents living in open discord with Catholic teaching in areas of faith and morals unfortunately choose by their actions to disqualify their children from enrollment.”

Raderstorf said it seems there’s a double standard.

“I don’t think they interview to see what parents are divorced or what parents are using birth control or other things that are against the teaching of the Catholic Church,” she said.

Protesters said they’d like to see the decision reversed in this case. At the very least, they’re glad their voices are being heard.

“Perhaps the reaction is a wake up call that we’re at a point in history that we can’t do discrimination like this without negative repercussions,” said Ensign.

VIA: CNN.com

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — If you knew coworkers, former bosses or exes who cheated on their taxes, would you turn them in? The Internal Revenue Service can make it worth your while.

As tax season nears, we all want to get as much money back from the IRS as possible. And while taking advantage of this year’s new tax breaks will put some extra money in your pocket, snitching on a tax cheat could make you rich.
In a recent poll from the IRS Oversight Board, 13% of those surveyed think cheating is acceptable, up from 9% in 2008. As the recession puts the squeeze on household finances, the lure of fudging on a tax return is even greater.

“In a down economy, the temptation to cheat on taxes is much stronger because people are in more desperate situations more often,” said Bill Raabe, a tax expert at Ohio State University’s business school.

More people may be just as desperate to turn in a business, rat out an ex-spouse or report a colleague to collect a reward.

Small-time crooks: The IRS’s informant program has been around for more than 140 years. If you suspect a person is committing tax fraud and report it, you could receive up to 15% of the amount that has been underpaid, with a maximum award of $10 million.

Informants are required to complete a claim and mail it to the IRS. The form is available on the IRS Web site, or you can call the agency’s fraud hotline at 1-800-829-0433 for instructions. While you must reveal your identity to the IRS, your name will not be made public.

Read more…