That's right, the same people who say government has no business forcing people to buy health insurance, the same people who think a woman's boss should have the final say in her health care, have passed a bill in Virginia that would force woman seeking an abortion to submit to a trans-vaginal ultrasound. The Democrats in Virginia tried to add an amendment that would allow for less invasive forms of ultrasound but the Republicans would have none of it. They want the penetration. Governor Bob McDonell (a contender for the V.P. position) says he will sign the bill when it reaches his desk. It takes Rachel Maddow a couple of minutes to get to the trans-vaginal ultrasound story. First she has to tell us about Republicans trying to ban swearing. I swear.

Conservative MP Blake Richards said he is feeling confident about his bill that would make it a crime to wear a mask during a "riot". - MPs debated the private member's bill in the House of Commons Wednesday evening, the second time it has been debated since it was introduced last fall. MPs will vote on second reading for the bill next Wednesday. "Obviously private member's bills … traditionally there are not a huge number that make it into law, but I'm actually quite confident that this one will," Richards said in an interview Wednesday ahead of the debate.

Millions of computer users across the world could be blocked off from the Internet as early as March 8 if the FBI follows through with plans to yank a series of servers originally installed to combat corruption. - Last year, authorities in Estonia apprehended six men believed responsible for creating a malicious computer script called the DNSChanger Trojan. Once set loose on the Web, the worm corrupted computers in upwards of 100 countries, including an estimated 500,000 in America alone. The US Federal Bureau of Investigation later stepped up by replacing the rogue Trojan with servers of their own in an attempt to remediate the damage, but the fix was only temporary. Now the FBI is expected to end use of those replacement servers as early as next month and, at that point, the Internet for millions could essentially be over.

The killing of two African-American men, one of them a Marine, at the hands of US police forces has sparked a public outcry in the United States with police refusing accountability over the deaths.

The Association of Orange County Deputy Sheriffs defended the killing of Sergeant Manuel Loggins in front of his daughters, saying Marine was shot because he was acting “oddly.”

The association claimed Loggins’ actions were a threat to his daughters who were inside a parked car.

“His daughters, ages 9 and 14, could be heard screaming in the SUV, and when approached by sheriff's personnel reported their father had been acting oddly,” the association said in a statement, adding the officer involved is still under investigation. Loggins, who was enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1998, received multiple medals and commendations from the military.

Meanwhile, New York police are still probing the fatal police shooting of 18-year-old Ramarley Graham. Graham died on February 2 after a police officer chased him to his grandmother’s apartment and shot him in the chest. He was unarmed at the time and police did not have a warrant to enter the house.

Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiko Noda warned Israel against the ramifications of launching a military strike on Iran over Tehran's nuclear program. - Noda told visiting Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak in a meeting that an attack on Iran would be ''extremely dangerous'' and would ''escalate'' the situation in the region. Earlier this month, Barak claimed that if the Western sanctions against Iran fail to stop its nuclear program, military action against the country must be placed on its agenda. The US and its close ally Israel have recently intensified their war rhetoric against Iran. The two arch foes of the Islamic Republic accuse Iran of seeking a nuclear weapon, while they have never presented any corroborative document to substantiate their allegations. Both Washington and Tel Aviv possess advanced weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear warheads. Iran vehemently denies the charges, insisting that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only. Tehran stresses that the country has always pursued a civilian path to provide power to the growing number of Iranian population, whose fossil fuel would eventually run dry.

What was surely meant to be a clever display of media-friendly visuals to illustrate Syrian regime violence in Homs, has instead raised more questions than answers. - US State Department satellite images of the embattled city were posted on Facebook last Friday by US Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford, who complains: “A terrible and tragic development in Syria is the use of heavy weaponry by the Assad regime against residential neighborhoods.” The “satellite photos,” says Ford, “have captured both the carnage and those causing it -- the artillery is clearly there, it is clearly bombing entire neighborhoods…We are intent on exposing the regime's brutal tactics for the world to see.” But within 24 hours, the blog Moon of Alabama had taken a hammer to the ambassador’s claims. A detailed examination of satellite imagery by the bloggers revealed numerous discrepancies in Washington’s allegations. Mainly, their investigations point to the fact that Ford’s satellite images were “of guns training within military barracks or well known training areas and not in active deployment.” Moon of Alabama posts its own satellite images, graphics and diagrams to bolster its argument – and these are well worth a look.

WikiLeaks denounces UNESCO after WikiLeaks banned from UNESCO conference on WikiLeaks.

The large two-day conference, which has 37 speakers listed, is to be held UNESCO Headquarters in Paris. US organizers have stacked the conference with WikiLeaks opponents and blocked all speakers from WikiLeaks, stating that the decision to censor WikiLeaks representation was an exercise in ’freedom of expression... our right to give voice to speakers of our choice’. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange denounced the conference:

’UNESCO has made itself an international human rights joke. To use "freedom of expression" to censor WikiLeaks from a conference about WikiLeaks is an Orwellian absurdity beyond words. This is an intolerable abuse of UNESCO’s Constitution. It’s time to occupy UNESCO.’ WikiLeaks spokesperson Kristinn Hrafnsson expressed consternation in a letter to UNESCO about the exclusion: ’UNESCO has a duty to assure that fairness and balance is secured in important discussions carried out under the banner of the organization. It is obvious that this will hardly be the case, given the selection of speakers. This is both a disgrace to UNESCO and potentially harmful to WikiLeaks.’ Julian Assange calls for an immediate investigation "UNESCO must conduct a full, frank and open investigation as to how its constitution, which tasks it to promote freedom of expression, freedom of information and freedom of communication, has become a blunt instrument of censorship. UNESCO must demonstrate that cold-war style power-plays, by the United States, or indeed any other country, are no longer acceptable."

Constitution Vote Would Allow Rival Political Parties. - With the focus in Syria more on the incipient civil war than any calls for a negotiated settlement, Syrian President Bashar Assad surprised everyone by announcing a nationwide referendum on February 26. The referendum would be for a new constitution that would revise significant sources of tension with the initial pro-democracy protest movement. It would allow political parties other than the Ba’athists to potentially rule and promise a more serious effort at freedom of speech. The US, as is to be expected, angrily condemned the referendum, saying it was “quite laughable” and “makes a mockery” of the ongoing revolution. The State Department insisted that if Assad “really cares” he would resign immediately. In many ways the US rejection is neither here nor there, but it points to international opposition to any reform process on general principle, and means that those pushing the FSA and other armed factions on their conflict will probably keep pushing no matter what the future brings.

Russia Today: UN stalemate over Syria resolution
BBC: Syria crisis: China sends senior envoy
PressTV: China: Foreign middling in Syria leads to "catastrophe" in Middle East

Several small Palestinian villages in the West Bank had been without electricity for decades -- before an Israeli foundation with funding from Europe recently installed solar panels and wind turbines. Now, though, Israel wants to remove the facilities because they are on land under its administration. - The best part is when the lights in the tents go on, one by one, says Elad Orian. Electricity here, in the hills south of Hebron, was long unreliable. Either it was not available or it was too expensive, produced for just a few hours each day by a noisy, diesel-guzzling generator. That changed when Elad Orian and Noam Dotan, two Israeli physicians who had tired of conflict, came along three years ago and installed solar panels and erected wind turbines. Since then, such facilities have been installed in 16 communities, providing 1,500 Palestinians with electricity.

Palestinian hunger striker Khader Adnan petitioned Israel's Supreme Court on Wednesday to appeal his detention without charge, as thousands took to the streets in solidarity with him.

Lawyer Jawad Bulus said he had lodged an urgent appeal with the Supreme Court to lift the administrative detention order in light of the rapidly deteriorating health of his client, Khader Adnan.

"We filed an appeal this morning and requested an immediate hearing in front of the court due to the seriousness of his condition," Bulus told AFP. "We are awaiting an answer."

Activists protested throughout the occupied West Bank on Wednesday against Israel's continued administrative detention of Palestinian Khader Adnan. Adnan, 33, has been on hunger strike for 60 days to protest his detention without trial or charge, with Israel rejecting appeals for his release. [Photo: activestills.org]

PIC: Medical report: Adnan in danger of imminent death
Stephen Lendman: Khader Adnan: Day 60 and Counting
IMEMC: Dozens of Palestinians declare Hunger Strike as Fasting prisoner Khader Adnan is on day 60

Reporters Without Borders on Wednesday condemned violence used by Israel against photojournalists covering demonstrations against Israel’s West Bank barrier. - Reporters Without Borders "deplores the total impunity enjoyed by the soldiers responsible for these abuses," the Paris-based press freedom watchdog said in a statement. The statement referred to incidents in January and February in which soldiers injured photojournalists in Nabi Saleh, near Ramallah, and in Kufr Qaddoum, near Qalqiliya, and others sites in the occupied West Bank. "Reporters Without Borders has on many occasions asked the Israeli army to undertake independent and impartial investigations into such incidents in order to identify and punish those responsible," RSF said.

Agents of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency reportedly are still using foreign passports to conduct undercover operations in other countries. - According to a report Sunday in The Times of London, new evidence shows that foreign nationals residing in Israel are willingly allowing the Mossad to use their passports. Several Israelis interviewed by The Times revealed details of how they were approached by Mossad officials about the possibility of volunteering their passports for the Mossad. In January 2010, it was suspected that Israeli agents used foreign passports to travel undercover into Dubai in order to assassinate Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Mabhouh. Following the assassination, Dubai police officials revealed that British, French, German and Australian passports were used by the assassination team.