• New federally financed drug research reveals a stark disparity: children covered by Medicaid are given powerful antipsychotic medicines at a rate four times higher than children whose parents have private insurance. And the Medicaid children are more likely to receive the drugs for less severe conditions than their middle-class counterparts, the data shows.
• Those findings, by a team from Rutgers and Columbia, are almost certain to add fuel to a long-running debate. Do too many children from poor families receive powerful psychiatric drugs not because they actually need them — but because it is deemed the most efficient and cost-effective way to control problems that may be handled much differently for middle-class children?

(The answer is yes.)

• Voters in Switzerland have approved a ban on the construction of minarets on mosques, official results show.
• Of those who cast votes in Sunday’s poll, 57.5 per cent approved the ban, while only four cantons out of 26 rejected the proposals.
• The result paves the way for a constitutional amendment to be made.
• “The Federal Council [government] respects this decision. Consequently the construction of new minarets in Switzerland is no longer permitted,” the government, which had opposed the ban, said in a statement.

• LIMA - Four people have been arrested in Peru on suspicion of killing some 60 people to sell their fat and other human tissue to Italian co-conspirators for cosmetic use in Europe, authorities said Thursday.
• The suspects were arrested in central Peru this month and a search is underway for seven others — including two Italian citizens whose names were not revealed — lead prosecutor Jorge Sans Quiroz told AFP.
• The fat was purchased “to be commercialized in European (cosmetology) laboratories,” he said.
• The prosecutor’s indictment said the gang allegedly targeted farmers and indigenous people on remote Andean roads, tricking them by offering jobs before killing them.
• Signs of “an international network trafficking human fat” first surfaced about two months ago, according to General Felix Burga, head of the police criminal division.
• Peruvian press cited him as saying the fat can be sold for 15,000 dollars per gallon (3.8 litres) in European countries.
• The alleged plot revived the Andean legend of the “Pishtacos,” white foreigners who were said to suck the fat out of people travelling on lonely roads at night, making fine soaps, lubricants, healing salves and beauty creams out of the tissue.

• PHOENIX (Reuters) – A week after abruptly quitting his longtime job as a CNN television news host and commentator, Lou Dobbs said on Thursday he is considering career options including possible runs for the White House or U.S. Senate.
• “Right now I feel exhilaration at the wide range of choices before me as to what I do next,” Dobbs, whose outspoken views on immigration and other topics often angered liberals, told Reuters in a telephone interview from New York on Thursday.
• Since his departure, some have speculated he might run as a candidate for the U.S. Senate in New Jersey, where he has a home, or even run as a third-party candidate in the 2012 U.S. presidential elections — options he says remain on the table.

• If Palin is indeed a cancer on the GOP, why can’t the Republican establishment retire her to a quiet life of moose hunting in the political wilderness? Why has her appeal only increased in the wake of her catastrophic political expeditions? Why won’t she listen to, or abide by, conventional political wisdom?
• The answer lies beyond the realm of polls and punditry in the political psychology of the movement that animates and, to a great degree, controls, the Republican grassroots — a uniquely evangelical subculture defined by the personal crises of its believers and their perceived persecution at the hands of cosmopolitan elites.
• By emphasizing her own crises and her victimization by the “liberal media,” Palin has established an invisible, indissoluble bond with adherents of that subculture — so visceral it transcends any rational political analysis. As a result, her career has become a vehicle through which the right-wing evangelical movement feels it can express its deepest identity in opposition both to secular society and to its representatives in the Obama White House. Palin is perceived by its leaders — and followers — not as another cynical politician or even as a self-promoting celebrity, but as a kind of magical helper, the God-fearing glamour girl who parachuted into their backwater towns to lift them from the drudgery of everyday life, assuring them that they represented the “Real America.”
• Elevated by yesterday’s man, Palin now represents her Party’s future — and the greatest danger it faces. Her intimate bond with the Republican grassroots has made her the indispensable woman, even if she provokes a visceral sense of revulsion from many independents and moderates. Other Republican frontrunners like former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty have a debilitating problem to face in any race for the presidency: they are viewed as inauthentic candidates by the movement — cardboard men in suits who are only pantomiming appeals to cultural resentment.
• Nor can she be easily criticized. Palin is so well positioned as the darling of the movement that any criticism of her would be experienced by believers as a personal attack on them. In this way, their identification with her through the politics of personal crisis is complete. Any Republican primary challenger assailing Palin will be seen as victimizing her, as channeling the attacks of the liberal elites, and possibly as having a secret liberal agenda. On the other hand, to embrace her is to risk losing the great American center.
• For the 2010 mid-term elections, Palin’s endorsement is already a coveted commodity — as Mark Kirk’s desperate bid to secure it demonstrates. The more she is attacked, the more the Republican base adores her. As she sets out on her book tour, the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune only propel her forward. Her influence on a party largely devoid of leadership is expanding. If she doesn’t prove to be the Party’s future queen, she may have positioned herself to be its future king-maker — and potentially its destroyer. You betcha.
  

• NEW YORK – Federal prosecutors took steps Thursday to seize four U.S. mosques and a Fifth Avenue skyscraper owned by a nonprofit Muslim organization long suspected of being secretly controlled by the Iranian government.
• In what could prove to be one of the biggest counterterrorism seizures in U.S. history, prosecutors filed a civil complaint in federal court against the Alavi Foundation, seeking the forfeiture of more than $500 million in assets.
• The assets include bank accounts; Islamic centers consisting of schools and mosques in New York City, Maryland, California and Houston; more than 100 acres in Virginia; and a 36-story glass office tower in New York.
• Confiscating the properties would be a sharp blow against Iran, which has been accused by the U.S. government of bankrolling terrorism and trying to build a nuclear bomb.
• A telephone call and e-mail to Iran’s U.N. Mission seeking comment were not immediately answered. Nor was a call to the Alavi Foundation.
• It is extremely rare for U.S. law enforcement authorities to seize a house of worship, a step fraught with questions about the First Amendment right to freedom of religion.
• The skyscraper, known as the Piaget building, was erected in the 1970s under the shah of Iran, who was overthrown in 1979. The tenants include law and investment firms and other businesses.
• The sleek, modern building, last valued at $570 million to $650 million in 2007, has served as an important source of income for the foundation over the past 36 years. The most recent tax records show the foundation earned $4.5 million from rents in 2007.
• Rents collected from the building help fund the centers and other ventures, such as sending educational literature to imprisoned Muslims in the U.S. The foundation has also invested in dozens of mosques around the country and supported Iranian academics at prominent universities.
• If federal prosecutors seize the skyscraper, the Alavi Foundation would have almost no way to continue supporting the Islamic centers, which house schools and mosques. That could leave a major void in Shiite communities, and hard feelings toward the FBI, which played a big role in the investigation.

(OH DAMN. The blowback from taking away the money might be very bad.)

• TAMPA - The priest was lost in the Channel District and needed directions to Interstate 275, so he tapped a U.S. Marines reservist on the arm and, in a thick Greek accent, asked for help.
• That’s how police say the incident began.
• But Lance Cpl. Jasen Bruce said the man, who was wearing a robe, sandals and a long beard, propositioned him in English and grabbed his genitals.
• Both versions of events end the same way – with the priest recovering from a beating with a tire iron, the Marine reservist under arrest and police investigating a possible hate crime.
• The Rev. Alexios Marakis, visiting from Greece, had performed a blessing of a retired Greek priest in the West Shore area before accidentally exiting I-275 into downtown Monday evening, police said. Marakis followed cars into the Seaport Channelside Apartments on Twiggs Street and got out to ask for help.
• Bruce, a reservist with a West Palm Beach unit since March, had his trunk open so he could get dry cleaning out, police said. Bruce, who lives in the apartment building, was not in uniform.
• Bruce grabbed a tire iron from the trunk, hit Marakis four times over the head and chased him about three blocks before pinning the priest, police said.
• In a 911 call, Bruce made a derogatory comment about a man he said was a terrorist and was trying to rob him and had grabbed him in a sexual manner, police spokeswoman Laura McElroy said.
• When officers arrived, police say, Bruce told them he heard the man say “Allahu Akbar” – Arabic for “God is great.”
• “That’s what they say before they blow you up,” Bruce said, according to police.

• At noon today, five members of the U.S. House of Representatives will hold a press conference at the House Triangle with Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). FAIR has been listed as an anti-immigrant hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center since 2007.
• Stein will discuss “loopholes” in pending health care legislation that he claims will allow benefits to go to “illegal aliens.”
• All five House members meeting with FAIR — Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), Nathan Deal (R-Ga.), Dean Heller (R-Nev.), Sam Johnson (R-Tex.) and Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) — are members of the hard-line House Immigration Reform Caucus (IRC). The IRC is headed by U.S. Rep. Brian Bilbray (R-Calif.), who is a former lobbyist for FAIR. In 2002, Bilbray told a group of anti-immigrant activists, “We are creating a slave class that criminal elements breed in.” He also warned, “We could have a terrorist coming in on a Latin name.”
• FAIR has a decades-long history of anti-immigrant hatred. The group has employed key staff members with ties to white supremacist groups, accepted more than $1 million from a racist foundation dedicated to the study of racial differences in intelligence, and promoted racist conspiracy theories about Mexico’s secretly coveting the American Southwest. In 2006, a top official of FAIR in met with former members of a Belgian political party banned by that country’s highest court for “racism and xenophobia.” For more on FAIR’s long track record of hate, read here.

• In the wake of a shooting rampage at Fort Hood by a military psychiatrist of Middle Eastern lineage, the hosts at Fox News have begun suggesting that all Muslims in the military should be treated as potential threats.
• “Do you think it’s time for the military to have special debriefings of Muslim Army officers — anybody enlisted?” Fox’s Brian Kilmeade asked Geraldo Rivera on Friday morning. “Because if I’m going to be deployed in a foxhole, if I’m going to be sticking in an outpost, I got to know the guy next to me is not going to want to kill me.”

(I knew this crap was coming. Idiocracy to say the least.)

• The CIA relied on intelligence based on torture in prisons in Uzbekistan, a place where widespread torture practices include raping suspects with broken bottles and boiling them alive, says a former British ambassador to the central Asian country.
• Craig Murray, the rector of the University of Dundee in Scotland and until 2004 the UK’s ambassador to Uzbekistan, said the CIA not only relied on confessions gleaned through extreme torture, it sent terror war suspects to Uzbekistan as part of its extraordinary rendition program.
• “I’m talking of people being raped with broken bottles,” he said at a lecture late last month that was re-broadcast by the Real News Network. “I’m talking of people having their children tortured in front of them until they sign a confession. I’m talking of people being boiled alive. And the intelligence from these torture sessions was being received by the CIA, and was being passed on.”
• Murray asserts that the primary motivation for US and British military involvement in central Asia has to do with large natural gas deposits in Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. As evidence, he points to the plans to build a natural gas pipeline through Afghanistan that would allow Western oil companies to avoid Russia and Iran when transporting natural gas out of the region.
• Murray alleged that in the late 1990s the Uzbek ambassador to the US met with then-Texas Governor George W. Bush to discuss a pipeline for the region, and out of that meeting came agreements that would see Texas-based Enron gain the rights to Uzbekistan’s natural gas deposits, while oil company Unocal worked on developing the Trans-Afghanistan pipeline.
• “The consultant who was organizing this for Unocal was a certain Mr. Karzai, who is now president of Afghanistan,” Murray noted.
• Murray said part of the motive in hyping up the threat of Islamic terrorism in Uzbekistan through forced confessions was to ensure the country remained on-side in the war on terror, so that the pipeline could be built.

• Oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens has in recent years been involved in efforts to develop alternative energy. He has even developed his own energy independence plan, dubbed “The Pickens Plan,” which on its website proudly pledges to reduce “our dependence on foreign oil” and enhance our national security. Yet in remarks to Congress yesterday, Pickens revealed that he is just as interested as ever in tying our national security to oil interests in the Middle East, suggesting that American oil companies are “entitled” to Iraq’s oil because we spent blood and treasure invading the Arab country:
• T. Boone Pickens told Congress on Wednesday that U.S. energy companies are “entitled” to some of Iraq’s crude because of the large number of American troops that lost their lives fighting in the country and the U.S. taxpayer money spent in Iraq.
• Boone, speaking to the newly formed Congressional Natural Gas Caucus, complained that the Iraqi government has awarded contracts to foreign companies, particularly Chinese firms, to develop Iraq’s vast reserves while American companies have mostly been shut out.
• “They’re opening them (oil fields) up to other companies all over the world … We’re entitled to it,” Pickens said of Iraq’s oil. “Heck, we even lost 5,000 of our people, 65,000 injured and a trillion, five hundred billion dollars.”

• The real problem is not that popular media figures have gone after the Bushes, it is quite the opposite: that they have stopped well short of sharing the full story with the American people…
• That the bigger picture never emerged is not only the fault of the mainstream, however, but also of the very “liberals” castigated by the elder Bush. Our favorite television talking heads continue to focus on the failings of the George W. Bush Administration without providing the added context from substantive discoveries about the Bush family and their longer-term activities that would shock the nation and the world.
• Here is a little taste of what Family of Secrets reveals about the “very good, very private” lives and thoughts of George Bush, father and son, not brought to you by NBC or Comedy Central:
• -Proof that the senior Bush, far from being the outsider CIA director in 1976 he claimed to be,  had actually worked with the intelligence services in “very private” capacities for his entire adult life.
  -Overwhelming and painstakingly documented evidence that the senior Bush lied when he claimed not to remember where he was on Nov. 22, 1963, the day JFK was shot,  and that, in fact, he was in Dallas, working for the CIA, and closely associated with a small web of figures directly tied to Lee Harvey Oswald, the control of JFK’s motorcade, the Texas School Book Depository, and other crucial aspects of the events of that day.
  -Source interviews and paperwork that show the junior Bush lied when he claimed to have completed his obligatory service during the Vietnam war, and that he was, in effect,  AWOL, a crime with no statute of limitations.
  -Documented assertions from a Bush family adviser suggesting that W. cynically adopted the mantle of Jesus to clean up a spotty past and to win over the crucial fundamentalist vote without which he would have lost badly in 2000.
  -Evidence that the man the junior Bush put in charge of handling the domestic emergency response to attacks and natural disasters, Michael Brown, was even far less qualified than previously understood—and why such a person ended up being in that incredibly important position as Hurricane Katrina descended on the Gulf coast.
  -Testimony that the junior Bush’s principal personal motivation for invading Iraq was not WMDs, or Al Qaeda, or neoconservative aspirations, or geopolitical goals, or even oil, but because he was convinced that a successful presidency requires a war.
  -A body of facts strongly indicating that the same interests, working through the CIA, that removed JFK from power—a group that appears to have included the senior Bush—also took action to cause Richard Nixon to be removed from power. This is of urgent importance because it helps to provide some sense of why Barack Obama has continued to kowtow to major power centers—CIA, military, defense contractors, oil companies, Wall Street—because, simply put, he has absolutely no choice.

• More than half of Republicans either say President Obama doesn’t love America or say they aren’t sure of his feelings toward the country he leads.
• That’s according to a new national poll due out tomorrow from Public Policy Polling. The firm gave TPMDC an early look this afternoon.
• PPP polled 766 registered voters nationwide. Of the GOP respondents, 27% agreed that Obama “loves America,” 48% disagreed and 25% said they weren’t sure.
• “It was the first time we asked that question,” PPP’s Tom Jensen told TPMDC. “But it’s very similar to the birther numbers we’ve seen before.”