WATERTOWN, Mass. -- Friday morning in the Boston area began in a tense silence, as the sprawling manhunt for an alleged teenaged terrorist forced city residents indoors for their own safety. Friday night, however, ended with spontaneous parades celebrating his capture. As 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was pulled wounded from his backyard boat hideout and raced to Beth Israel Hospital in police custody, many Bostonians finally exhaled, after a devastating week that began with the double bombings at Monday’s Boston marathon. The suspect's brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, was killed Friday morning in a shootout with police. "CAPTURED!!!" trumpeted the Boston Police Department on Twitter Friday night. "The hunt is over. The search is done. The terror is over. And justice has won. Suspect in custody." Yet authorities cautioned that the case won't end until prosecutors build a case against a man accused of killing three people at the marathon and an MIT campus police officer three days later and determine whether the brothers plotted with anyone else. There’s also a long healing process ahead for marathon runners and spectators maimed by Monday's pressure cooker bombs -- aluminum pots laden with ball bearings and nails -- and for the Boston transit police officer wounded during Friday's chaotic spree of violence. Despite the gruesome effectiveness of the Tsarnaev brothers' explosives, the revelers who converged Friday night on Watertown's main drag cheered when news reached them that the younger brother had been captured alive during the standoff with police. “I’m happy they caught him. I’m happy he’s alive, [because] I want to know why,” said Watertown resident Jeannette Harvey, who works in Massachusetts General Hospital’s trauma ward. Other celebrants carried homemade signs that said, "Thank You Police," and shouted, "Boston Proud, Boston Strong" until the wee hours of Saturday morning. Less than five hours before the parade, Tsarnaev was discovered by a multi-agency task force, hiding under a boat tarp on Franklin Street. Police said he fired at officers multiple times before he was taken into custody. Prospects for catching Tsarnaev so quickly looked slim just a few hours earlier. Boston officials warned the public that the manhunt could drag on indefinitely, and that military-style security measures -- which shut businesses and kept millions of people at home -- could remain in place. The patrols of heavily armed law enforcement officers had been a frightening sight for some. “It’s pretty creepy to see bomb squads literally outside our window," said 16-year-old Aspasia Krouskas. “I hope it ends soon.” "It’s like a ghost town,” said Juan Araniz, 69, who was home with four relatives. “Nobody’s outside.” As the sun rises on Boston Saturday morning, Tsarnaev will be fighting for his life in the hospital. The case against him is yet to come. No longer a fugitive, he eventually will be a defendant in one of the country's most significant prosecutions.

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama has issued an emergency declaration and pledged disaster relief aid to Texas to help in the recovery efforts following this week's deadly fertilizer plant explosion near Waco. Obama's order Friday night authorizes the Federal Emergency Management Agency to coordinate disaster relief efforts in the town of West. Wednesday's explosion at the West Fertilizer plant killed at least 14 people, injured more than 200 others and demolished buildings for blocks around. After addressing the arrest of the second Boston Marathon bombing suspect Friday night, the president extended his sympathies to the community of West and everyone else affected by the explosion. Obama said he's spoken with Texas Gov. Rick Perry and West's mayor, and he pledged that the community will have the resources it needs to rebuild.

WASHINGTON -- A Justice Department official says the Boston Marathon bombing suspect will not be read his Miranda rights because the government is invoking a public safety exception. That official and a second person briefed on the investigation says 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev will be questioned by a special interrogation team for high-value suspects. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to disclose the information publicly. The public safety exception permits law enforcement officials to engage in a limited and focused unwarned interrogation of a suspect and allows the government to introduce the statement as evidence in court. The public safety exception is triggered when police officers have an objectively reasonable need to protect the police or the public from immediate danger. ___ AP Intelligence Writer Kimberly Dozier contributed to this report.

UPDATE: Authorities captured Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev Friday night, after police surrounded a Watertown, Mass. backyard where he was hiding in a boat. Residents broke into applause when police announced that Tsarnaev had been apprehended. The slideshow below has been updated with pictures from the scene. One of the suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing is the subject of a massive manhunt after, authorities said, he was involved in a firefight with police on Friday morning. Authorities say brothers and bombing suspects 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and 26-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev set off explosives in the direction of officers before the shootout began. Tamerlan Tsarnaev was killed in the incident, while Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is still at large. See photos and raw footage from the firefight, as well as images from the manhunt for 19-year-old suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, below.

We don't want the Boston Marathon bombers to be us. We don't claim them. They can't be Americans. As soon as suspects were identified, we rejected these young men. Even some of their family did. We call them Chechen or Russian or even Muslims as if those identities are more prominent than others. We blame them because of our fear. We hope our geography protects us. If there could be a terrorist living next door in our suburban neighborhood, we open ourselves to becoming something else and terrorism is likely again. More domestic terrorist events occurred in the United States during the 1960s and 1970s than the decade since 9/11, but do we have more fear now? Faisal Shahzad, the Times Square Bomber, became a naturalized American citizen in 2009. His children were born in the U.S. and their mother is American. Shahzad moved to the U.S. in 1998 and earned both an undergraduate degree and an MBA from the University of Bridgeport. Was he not an American simply because he also committed terrorism? His face could have been the face of fear but his bomb did not go off. Timothy McVeigh is as American as apple pie. He was born and raised in the state of New York. He was a decorated soldier in the first Gulf War. And then he built a bomb that blew up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City killing 168 people, including 19 children. Ibrahim Ahmad, a Jordanian American, was first blamed. It had to be foreign terrorists and not homegrown boys from the heartland. In Jihad Joe, J.M. Berger detailed Americans that fight abroad in the name of Islam. One example is Omar Hammami, an Alabama-born Islamic extremist, who joined Somalia's Al Qaeda-linked insurgent group, Al Shabab. Hammami's fellow jihadis call him "the American." Do we claim Americans if they go abroad and commit terrorism? A CBS News/NY Times poll taken 10 years after the 9/11 attack found that one in three Americans believe Muslim Americans are more sympathetic to terrorism than other Americans. A Public Religion Research Institute poll taken around the same time reported that 47 percent of Americans claimed that Islam and American values are incompatible. Forty-six percent report that they are uncomfortable with a Mosque being built near their home. We are afraid of terrorism and those individuals we link with the act. It is an American born fear, both rational and illogical. It is why a concerned citizen tackled a Saudi national, a victim himself, running from the Boston bomb. Violence often happens at our moments of glory. It may happen again. Even with effort, resources, and intelligent people dedicated to countering extremism, we can't ever end terrorism. As Bruce Hoffman outlines in this book, Inside Terrorism, this form of violence can be traced throughout history from Biblical times to the Middle Ages to post WWII anti-colonial conflicts, even today. Sometimes it will come from people that look like McVeigh, and sometimes it will come from people that look like Shahzad. The more we feed into the fear component of terrorism, the further we get from recovery. If we call the Boston Marathon bombers foreigners even though they've been living among us for a decade, then we feel safe once again.

Female Occidental College students, faculty and alumni say in a federal complaint that the Los Angeles school failed to take campus sex crimes seriously by improperly reporting and adjudicating sexual assaults and covering up rapes. The 250-page complaint filed by 37 women Thursday with the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights says the school maintained a hostile environment for sexual assault victims and their advocates and violated federal Title IX laws against sexual discrimination. Even when the school's investigations have found wrongdoing, punishment has been light, the complaint says. One student found responsible for raping a woman was given the punishment of writing a five-page book report, according to the complaint. "I've seen some of the outputs of these so-called 'educational sanctions' like book reports and apology letters and they're abysmal," said Danielle Dirks, a sociology professor who specializes in crime and punishment and one of the women who filed the complaint. "The fact that Occidental has invited rapists back to campus and even told survivors not to worry because 'he's reformed now' after these types of inadequate sanctions is an abomination." Six of the women who signed on to the complaint also retained attorney Gloria Allred. Allred's office did not return emails from The Huffington Post. The filing follows an April 1 complaint against Occidental under the Clery Act by some of the same women, alleging the school underreports campus sexual assaults, discourages victims from reporting attacks and fails to issue timely crime reports. The college was criticized in February by women who said the campus wasn't notified in a timely manner about sexual assaults. "Sexual assault on college campuses is a nationwide problem, from which Occidental College (Oxy) regrettably is not exempt," said Jim Tranquada, the college director of communications. "We take this issue very seriously, and will not tolerate sexual misconduct. "We readily acknowledge that Oxy has more work to do, and are vigilantly ensuring our continual progress," Tranquada said. The women who filed the complaint have been pushing the college for six years to improve sexual assault policies. Lately, the women have been working in a group called the Occidental's Sexual Assault Coalition trying to spark a movement and posting anonymous rape survivor stories on a website. Caroline Heldman, who helped write the complaint and chairs the college politics department, said the complaint describes reports from multiple students who say an administrator disparaged the sexual assault coalition to male athletes, saying, "Fuck 'em." Dirks said that kind of attitude was common. She said when she became vocal about Oxy's sexual violence policies, administrators accused her of "actively seeking to embarrass the college." Heldman said she's seen more engagement from the administration in addressing the problems "in one hour since filing these complaints than we had in the past six years." The college has hired Gina M. Smith and Leslie Gomez of Philadelphia-based Pepper Hamilton to conduct a review of the college's sexual violence policies. Smith recently worked with Amherst College and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, institutions that faced similar allegations of mishandling sexual misconduct complaints.

WASHINGTON --The family of Katherine Russell, wife of one of the suspected Boston Marathon bombers, issued a short statement Friday evening to reporters outside their North Kingstown, R.I., home. Russell was married to Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who was killed Thursday night in a shootout with police. She had a daughter with Tsarnaev a few years ago. The family, like many who knew the terror suspects, expressed shock and horror at the events of this week. They wrote: "Our daughter has lost her husband today, the father of her child. We cannot begin to comprehend how this horrible tragedy occurred. In the aftermath of the Patriot's Day horror, we know that we never really knew Tamerlane Tsarnaev." The FBI has given the spelling of Tsarnaev's first name as Tamerlan. The family statement continued: "Our hearts are sickened by the knowledge of the horror he has inflicted." They asked to be left alone "in this difficult time." The Russells ended the day with reporters knocking on their door. They began the day with police cars pulling up in front of their house. A neighbor who lives across the street told HuffPost that she saw police cars parked in front of the Russell home early Friday morning, including a state police cruiser. Paula Gillette, 59, said that one of the people on the scene appeared to be an FBI agent wearing a bulletproof vest. Soon after the police left, the Russell family pulled their car into their garage, Gillette said. Another neighbor confirmed seeing law enforcement in the neighborhood. "Today there were unmarked cars over by the house and around the neighborhood," Cailyn Mather, 20, told HuffPost. "There was a police presence." Gillette said Katherine Russell lived with her parents. She said they seemed like a close-knit family. She described them as "waspy types." Neither of the neighbors recalled meeting Tamerlan Tsarnaev.

WATERTOWN, Mass. — Police say the 19-year-old suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings exchanged gunfire with law enforcement for an hour while holed up in a boat before being captured. Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis says the suspect, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (JOH'-kahr tsahr-NY'-ev), was hospitalized late Friday in serious condition. His brother, 26-year-old Tamerlan, was killed earlier Friday in a furious attempt to escape police. The brothers are suspects in Monday's marathon bombings, which killed three people and wounded more than 180 others. The men are also suspected of killing a Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer in his vehicle late Thursday. THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below. A 19-year-old college student wanted in the Boston Marathon bombings was taken into custody Friday evening after a manhunt that left the city virtually paralyzed and his older brother and accomplice dead. Police announced via Twitter that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was in custody. They later wrote, "CAPTURED!!! The hunt is over. The search is done. The terror is over. And justice has won. Suspect in custody." Tsarnaev's brother, 26-year-old Tamerlan, was killed Friday in a furious attempt to escape police. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev had been holed up in a boat in a Watertown neighborhood. The crowd gathered near the scene let out a cheer when spectators saw officers clapping. "Everyone wants him alive," said Kathleen Paolillo, a 27-year-old teacher who lives in Watertown. Boston Mayor Tom Menino tweeted "We got him," along with a photo of the police commissioner speaking to him. Watertown residents poured out of their homes and lined the streets to cheer police vehicles as they rolled away from the scene. During a long night of violence Thursday into Friday, the brothers killed an MIT police officer, severely wounded another lawman and hurled explosives at police in a car chase and gun battle, authorities said. The suspects were identified by law enforcement officials and family members as Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, ethnic Chechen brothers who had lived in Dagestan, which neighbors Chechnya in southern Russia. They had been in the U.S. for about a decade, an uncle said, and were believed to be living in Cambridge, Mass. Tamerlan Tsarnaev, a 26-year-old who had been known to the FBI as Suspect No. 1 and was seen in surveillance footage of the marathon in a black baseball cap, was killed overnight, officials said. His younger brother, who had been dubbed Suspect No. 2 and was seen wearing a white, backward baseball cap in the images from Monday's deadly bombing – escaped and was on the run. Their uncle in Maryland, Ruslan Tsarni, pleaded on live television: "Dzhokhar, if you are alive, turn yourself in and ask for forgiveness." Authorities in Boston suspended all mass transit and warned close to 1 million people in the entire city and some of its suburbs to stay indoors as the hunt for Suspect No. 2 went on. Businesses were asked not to open. People waiting at bus and subway stops were told to go home. The Red Sox and Bruins postponed their games. From Watertown to Cambridge, police SWAT teams, sharpshooters and FBI agents surrounded various buildings as police helicopters buzzed overhead and armored vehicles rumbled through the streets. Authorities also searched trains. "We believe this man to be a terrorist," said Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis. "We believe this to be a man who's come here to kill people." The bombings on Monday killed three people and wounded more than 180 others, tearing off limbs in a spray of shrapnel and instantly raising the specter of another terrorist attack on U.S. soil. Chechnya was the scene of two wars between Russian forces and separatists since 1994, in which tens of thousands were killed in heavy Russian bombing. That spawned an Islamic insurgency that has carried out deadly bombings in Russia and the region, although not in the West. Investigators in the Boston case have shed no light on the motive for the bombing and have said it is unclear whether it was the work of domestic or international terrorists or someone else entirely with an unknown agenda. The endgame – at least for Suspect No. 1 – came just hours after the FBI released photos and video of the two young men at the marathon's finish line and appealed to the public for help in identifying and capturing them. State Police spokesman Dave Procopio said police realized they were dealing with the bombing suspects based on what the two men told a carjacking victim during their getaway attempt overnight. ___ Sullivan and Associated Press writers Stephen Braun and Jack Gillum reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Mike Hill, Katie Zezima, Pat Eaton-Robb and Steve LeBlanc in Boston and Jeff Donn in Cambridge, Mass., contributed to this report.

Perez & Smith, Wall St. JournalIt's not every day you see the streets of a major U.S. city practically deserted -- and Bostonians took notice of the rare occurance. Many social media users, holed up for Friday's citywide lockdown during the manhunt for Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, shared their photos of the deserted city streets on Instagram.

Fred Kaplan, SlateJust hours after the Boston Marathon bombings, Russian President Vladimir Putin condemned the act as a “disgusting” crime and offered to help in any way he could.Now’s his chance.The Tsarnaev brothers appear to have Chechen roots; the older, now-deceased brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, may have touted radical Islamists on his YouTube site. (The only question is whether the site’s holder is the same Tamerlan Tsarnaev.) There is no doubt, then, that Putin has a big interest in helping out with the FBI’s investigation—a much bigger interest...

Dickey, Lake & Klaidman, The Daily BeastThe Boston Marathon bombing was not another 9/11. Not close. The order of magnitude speaks for itself: three dead in Boston, nearly 3,000 in New York City. Still, in the aftermath of the Boston tragedy with what now appear to be links to conflicts half a world away in the Caucasus, it is impossible not to ask the same questions that came on the heels of 9/11: just how safe are we in our homes, in our workplaces, on our streets, and at our celebrations? Why on earth would the United States be targeted so often by so many people with so many grievances—why do...

And now for a few choice words about the recent Senate vote which scuttled universal background checks on gun purchases. And the first three of those words are... Yellow-Bellied Cowards. Here's a couple more. Gutless Craven Chicken-Hearted Invertebrates. Dastardly Lily-Livered Spineless Jellyfish with the moral compunction of inbred Piranhas crowded into a too-small tank filled with liquid meth. That giant arrogant pimp known as the NRA should be laughing hysterically after its lackeys trashed the ephemeral spirit of compromise that had settled over Washington like a soft dawn mist. 90% of Republicans voted against an issue 90% of the American people support. A bipartisan bill that was so watered down, it was translucent. Leaked moisture all through the Senate chamber to a depth of a half- inch. Would have easily supported 2 schools of guppies. The Senators that deigned to speak before scurrying down their greasy little wormholes to bunk in the nether regions of Hell, whined that pro-gun forces punish politicians for votes, while pro gun-control forces don't. Nobody mentioned the right thing to do or keeping automatic weapons out of the hands of felons or making the country or our schools safer. You know, their job. The NRA, itself worried about being primaried from the right by other gun associations, encouraged its well-compensated hookers to compete among themselves to see who could lie most outrageously. Numerous Senators claimed the bill would lead to a national gun registry even though the very bill they spoke of included provisions to specifically prohibit such a thing. Perhaps it needs to be spelled out in simpler language like: "Gun Registry-Bad. Not Good. No-Go. Not Going to Happen." Besides, exactly what is wrong with a national gun registry? You have to register a car. Most cities mandate bicycles be licensed. You need a card to take a book out of a library for crum's sakes. Proving that some people are much more comfortable with guns than they are books. Which is part of the problem. In what was surely meant as an inside joke, Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn complained the bill would raise taxes. Why stop there? And child pornographers will camp in your back yard practicing Shariah law with uncircumcised goats riddled with Chinese bird flu. This time the NRA may have overreached. Perpetrated an outrage too far. A revulsion too great. Could very well have created its own Frankenstein monster. 90% is a big figure. You'd think even the most casual of voters might tend to remember when someone turns their back on the country, jumps up and down on a litter of new born puppies then parties. And it would only take a committed few to throw their allegiance to candidates who pledge loyalty to the nation rather than a lobby that focuses on weapons of mass destruction. Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal wasn't kidding. The GOP's path is clear. It is doomed to be the rich, white guy, anti-science, pro-gun, stupid Party. Destined to slowly strangle on its own gurgling incoherencies until it is no longer comprehensible or relevant. Couldn't happen soon enough to a nicer bunch of rich white guys. And their grinning gun- toting treacherous minions. 5 time Emmy-nominee Will Durst performs his new one- man show "BoomerAging: From LSD to OMG" every Tuesday at the Marsh, San Francisco. Go to themarsh.org or willdurst.com for more info.

Republicans are in a bind. On one hand, some Republican elected officials have finally realized the growing Latino population has reached an electoral "critical mass," and the GOP can no longer win elections by obstructing sensible, comprehensive immigration reform that would finally secure our borders and treat human beings like human beings. As Congress prepares to debate immigration reform, in part because of this Republican electoral epiphany, the unspoken questions are which party potentially 11 million new Americans will support when they eventually step into the voting booth, and whether showing these 11 million new Americans some compassion will earn Republicans a new beginning with the 12 million Latinos who already vote. One thing's for sure, though: the national GOP's existing, self-described strategy of "shamelessly" promoting Latino Republican candidates while ignoring the issues Latino voters care about has been an abject failure so far. Despite allegedly committing "at least $3 million" specifically to elect Latino Republican state legislators last fall, the number of Latino Republicans serving in statehouses actually declined in the 2012 Election, according to statistics from the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials. Latino Democrats, by contrast, increased their numbers by nearly 10 percent. So if Republican messengers are not forthcoming, the message itself must change. But for all the Republican rhetoric of reaching out to the Hispanic community, they will have a difficult time convincing anyone to forget what the GOP has said and done over the past decade. Not while too many Republican officials still hold onto the anti-immigrant rhetoric and public policies that catapulted them into public office in the first place and still earn them support among increasingly White, conservative primary voters. It didn't have to be this way. President Bush, for all his faults, was a consistent supporter of comprehensive immigration reform, and his reward for that stance (at least partially) was 44 percent of the votes of Latino communities in 2004 -- the highest Republican share in the modern era. But it was the Democratic Party, not the Republicans, who embraced the President's example. Democrats provided three times as many votes as Republicans for President Bush's immigration reform effort, flawed though it may have been. Democrats at the state level have since crafted legislation mimicking the DREAM Act, to allow educational opportunities to children who were brought to America illegally and through no fault of their own. Other Democratic bills would allow undocumented immigrants to access drivers' licenses, an important law-enforcement priority that benefits all residents by reducing the number of uninsured drivers. And nationwide, the Democratic Party continues to be the party of comprehensive immigration reform. The Republican Party, however, has chosen a different path. Cowed by anti-immigrant forces within the GOP base, the party's 2008 presidential nominee, Sen. John McCain, disavowed his sponsorship of a previous comprehensive immigration plan. McCain's decision was a true betrayal, and it set the tone for a Republican Party whose rhetoric on immigration would grow even more extreme and less restrained. One Republican state legislator suggested shooting undocumented immigrants from helicopters, like his state already did with "immigrating feral hogs." Another described growing Latino communities as "like importing leper colonies." Republican-backed legislation targeting immigrants became increasingly punitive and vindictive, starting with Arizona's (since replicated in other states) "show me your papers" law and continuing with bills aimed at making it impossible for undocumented immigrants to access emergency care. The 2012 Republican presidential nominee had a one-word immigration plan that embodied the view that some Americans simply aren't welcome, something all vulnerable minority groups can relate to: "Self-Deportation." Republicans today are in a position where they are trying desperately to hold back the tide -- believing the Beltway narrative that all Republicans need to do is support immigration reform kicking and screaming, delivering few votes while declaring publicly (as some have) that "elections" are the only reason Republicans are allowing reform to happen, and suddenly Hispanic and other immigrant communities will forget the rhetoric and actions over the last ten years and reward the GOP with their total allegiance. But that narrative ignores a stark reality in our politics today: America has one major political party which embraces Latino and other minority communities, and one that tells them to self-deport. One party is working to earn their vote, while the other has been working furiously to ensure they can't vote at all. And Latino voters care about much more than just immigration. One party stands with Latinos in supporting a safe environment with clean air and clean water; one party--like them--supports Obamacare; one party stands with a majority of Latinos in support of marriage equality, and one party--like them--supports smart gun safety laws. Democrats have not just embraced immigrants, but the numerous issues that Latino and other immigrant communities care deeply about. Republicans are treating immigration reform like a slot machine they're finally willing to try out, just this once, in hopes of cashing out in future elections. The GOP is hoping these new voters will just conveniently forget that for years, Republicans used them as a lightening rod to scare other Americans. They're hoping their own recent history will just disappear after a single vote. The GOP's strategy is as transparent as it is flawed, and it is no party's ticket to power in a changing America.

Sexual assault is a reproductive justice issue. The threat of sexual violence affects the way we experience sex, relationships and even our own bodies. Real and effective organizing for reproductive justice requires an understanding of the intersectional impacts of rape culture (how race, class, gender, sexual orientation, ability and myriad other identities affect the way we perceive the perpetrators and victims of rape) and the ways that systems of privilege and oppression work together to make rape acceptable and even normal. April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month, but the reality of sexual assault has been inescapable lately. The long saga in Steubenville and recent tragic suicides of rape victims have shown up in Twitter feeds, blogs, and mainstream media. In a culture with an attention span that seems to max out at 140 characters, it's rare, and telling, that these stories are holding our national attention. The real question, of course, is whether our society is learning anything from these high profile cases -- and whether the conversation around rape and the culture of sexual violence is changing. Campus approaches to rape prevention are slowly evolving -- we're moving on from "girls shouldn't drink/wear short skirts/leave their dorms after dark because you might get raped" to what's commonly known as Bystander Intervention Training. The target of this training is neither the victim nor the perpetrator, but the other people at the party or bar who might see a really drunk girl being assaulted and could, theoretically, intervene to make sure she gets home safely. Bystander intervention and programs raising awareness for women are great steps in the right direction, but the obvious limit to these approaches is that they hold everyone but the rapist responsible for rape. Teaching men about consent and healthy relationships -- how not to rape -- is where we need to go next if we want to bring down the rates of sexual assault. This seems like it should not be a controversial idea, but it is. Ask Zerlina Maxwell, a rape survivor herself, who made this very point on Sean Hannity's show on women and guns in March. Her idea was dismissed by Hannity as ludicrous and she was attacked viciously on social media. The idea that it would be more practical to arm every woman than to teach men about rape is depressing -- and it's insulting to men. It's an extreme manifestation of the classic "boys will be boys" mentality -- and everyone but the "boys" are responsible. That's why two young students in Steubenville saw no problem posting their drunken exploits on social media for all the world to see. So much of our culture tells young boys that those actions are okay, they are natural, they are what makes you a man. That aggression and violence becomes the currency of manhood and anyone weaker is subject to domination and exploitation. These messages can have tragic consequences for women, as seen in Steubenville and so many other places, but these low expectations hurt men too. What effect does it have on young men when they are seen as potential perpetrators when walking at night? Does living under that societal expectation remove some of the shock value when an assault takes place in front of them? What happens when this assumption of violence is amplified by racist stereotypes of men and boys of color? What does it mean to be a man entrenched in rape culture? Men who would never commit assault still live with the weight of these expectations imposed by masculinity. Men deserve better than that. They deserve to be able to call out the actions of their peers without the fear of emasculation. They deserve to be free of the gender policing that limits their actions and emotions -- and can have harsh and sometimes dangerous consequences for trans and gender non-conforming folks. They deserve to have their own victimization of sexual assault taken seriously, whether in church, in prison, or in a frat house. That's why we're launching the Bro-Choice campaign. Because creating healthy visions of masculinity is a reproductive justice issue. Because stopping rape is a reproductive justice issue. Because supporting everyone's gender identity and expression is a reproductive justice issue. And because making men genuine stakeholders in fighting for sexual health, reproductive rights, and the eradication of violence means true justice for everyone. It's not going to be easy. These are big challenges that address ideas so deeply ingrained in our culture that they are invisible to most. But it's time to stop hinting at these problems and start tackling them head on.

Nine years ago, a small medical marijuana dispensary opened in San Francisco's Lower Haight. The Vapor Room quickly found its place within the neighborhood and its presence had an interesting, if not counterintuitive, effect: It appears to have reduced crime. "Before the Vapor Room moved in, the neighborhood was riddled with problems: crime, illegal drugs, loitering, graffiti," said Stephanie Tucker, a medical cannabis advocate and former aide to Christina Olauge, who represented the area on the city's Board of Supervisors. "A lot of those issues actually got better because the dispensary had security and worked with other businesses in the neighborhood to build a community." When the Obama administration launched an aggressive crackdown on California's medical cannabis industry nearly two years ago, prosecutors cited the fear of increased crime as a motivating factor in many of their efforts to shutter marijuana-related businesses. But pot advocates argue that dispensaries actually make their neighborhoods safer. "We're actually finding they're having a positive effect by taking up retail and industrial space that would otherwise remain vacant and become a magnet for crime," said Mason Tvert of the Marijuana Policy Project. "These are also businesses with a significant level of security that can deter criminals from the whole area." Marijuana Majority's Tom Angell noted that, in addition to adding both security guards and increased foot traffic to a given area, dispensaries also reduce crime by allowing pot smokers to obtain the plant without turning to the black market. "It's not like marijuana wasn't already being sold in these neighborhoods," said Angell. "It was being sold illegally on the street by gang members, and the cities aren't getting any tax revenue from it." California became the first state to legalize cannabis for medicinal purposes when voters passed Proposition 215 in 1996. In the decade and a half that followed, medical marijuana grew into a thriving industry, generating some $100 million in annual tax revenue for the state. All that changed, however, when Justice Department officials announced in late 2011 that they would begin targeting dispensaries throughout California in an effort to make communities safer and keep marijuana away from parks and schools. Since their crusade began, more than 100 businesses have been forced to shut down, and hundreds more have received threatening letters. One of the earliest targets was the Vapor Room, which closed its doors for good last summer. U.S. Attorney Melinda Haag, whose district includes the Bay Area, detailed her concerns about crime in an interview with KQED last March. "There is a belief, backed by facts, that marijuana operations are often times the victims of criminal activity," she said. "Armed robberies at dispensaries, armed robberies at grow operations, and people who are nearby are at risk as a result of that." Haag then told stories of a dispensary robbed at gunpoint near a preschool in Santa Cruz and a marijuana farmer in Humboldt County who murdered one of his undocumented immigrant employees after the worker asked to be paid. But research suggests that such anecdotes are more the exception than the rule. A 2011 study out of UCLA that examined dispensaries in the Sacramento area found that their presence in a given neighborhood wasn't associated with an uptick in crime. "The density of medical marijuana dispensaries was not associated with violent or property crime rates," read the study, which was funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse. An analysis by the Los Angeles Police Department found that dispensaries in California's largest city weren't outsize targets for crime, either. An internal report, commissioned by LAPD Chief Charlie Beck, determined that in 2009, only 47 robberies took place at the city's 800 marijuana clinics, while there were 71 robberies at Los Angeles' 350 banks that same year. San Francisco Police Department spokesman Officer Albie Esparza told The Huffington Post that SFPD doesn't keep any official statistics relating to dispensaries and crime. Meanwhile, questions about the nature of dispensaries' effect on crime rates have divided the city's residents. When a medical marijuana clinic attempted to open a few years ago in San Francisco's largely residential Sunset District, it provoked a huge uproar among the store's potential neighbors, who worried about their safety. "Nothing personal against the owner, but we don't want that type of business here," Dallas Udovich, president of the Taraval Parkside Merchants Association, told the San Francisco Chronicle at the time. "People want to come to Taraval because it's safe. Well, there's a reason it's safe." Tucker, the medical cannabis advocate, noted that this sort of reaction can be common. "Neighbors who don’t understand medical cannabis will often have a lot of fear-based complaints about crime whenever a new dispensary threatens to move in," she said. On the other hand, Angell pointed to the large positive effect that Oaksterdam University had on its downtown Oakland surroundings before its 30,000 square foot campus was raided by federal agents last year. After the raid, Oakland city leaders gathered outside the building to decry the federal government's actions and tout the effects that businesses like Oaksterdam have had on their surrounding communities. "We have not had crime or violence associated with our dispensaries, and that's because they've been tightly regulated,” Oakland City Councilwoman Rebecca Kaplan told the assembled media. After Oaksterdam's closure, neighborhood residents and businesses flew green flags in support of the institution. The school has since relocated to a significantly smaller building nearby. Despite the high-profile raids and closures that have targeted medical marijuana businesses across the state, a handful of new dispensaries have managed to open over the past few years -- and the owners are determined to keep their neighborhoods safe. Stephen Rechif, the manager at the Bloom Room dispensary, which opened in San Francisco's troubled Mid-Market corridor this past January, has already seen his business have a positive influence on its surroundings. "We have a secure storefront covered by a heavy gate at night, and there's a security guard stationed out front," he said. "Nearby businesses are happy that we're here. We're bringing in more foot traffic to the neighborhood." Carly Schwartz contributed to this story.

The Truth-o-Meter says: Mostly True | Barack Obama says a “wide majority of NRA households" supported gun legislation After the Senate failed to advance an amendment that would expand federal requirements for background checks on gun purchasers, President Barack Obama took to the White House’s Rose Garden to denounce the vote, calling it "a pretty shameful day for Washington." Flanked by relatives of some of the slain children from Newtown, Conn., and assassination survivor Gabby Giffords, Obama emphasized how broadly Americans support expanded background checks for gun purchases. At several points in his remarks, Obama invoked his gun-policy adversary, the National Rifle Association. "To the wide majority of NRA households who supported this ... >> More

Walter Shapiro, Yahoo!Just moments after he raised his right hand to take the oath of office at a time of economic despair in 2009, Barack Obama spoke of the resilience of the American people. In that first inaugural address, Obama paraphrased the lyrics from a 1930s Fred Astaire musical as he declared, “Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.” Thursday afternoon, at a memorial service in Boston’s Cathedral of the Holy Cross, Obama invoked the story of 78-year-old marathoner Bill Iffrig who was knocked off...

Jill Filipovic, The GuardianBy now you've hopefully heard about the trial of Kermit Gosnell, a Pennsylvania doctor who allegedly ran a filthy health clinic where he performed illegal abortion procedures. Gosnell is accused of killing seven premature babies and one woman, among other crimes. Pro-choice and lefty journalists covered Gosnell years ago, when the grand jury report detailing the allegations was initially filed. Now the trial is underway, and anti-abortion activists are insisting there's been a cover-up by ideologues intent on averting honest discussion about the case in order to suit a cynical...

Michelle Malkin, TownhallPlanned Parenthood now says it's "appalled" by the Philadelphia house of horrors run by accused serial baby-killer and pregnant-mom murderer Dr. Kermit Gosnell. Bull.The appalling inaction of the nation's largest abortion provider, along with countless other clinics and "pro-choice" groups in the know, speaks far louder than their belatedly self-serving words.The criminal trial of Gosnell is entering week six. The death doctor faces seven counts of first-degree murder for severing the spinal cords of babies born alive during abortions. That's in addition to...

Jacob Sullum, ReasonFormer Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.), who stood next to President Obama yesterday, nodding as he berated the senators who voted against his gun control proposals for their "shameful" failure to agree with him, continues the tantrum in today's New York Times. As gun controllers tend to do, she opens with an emotion-laden non sequitur:

The Truth-o-Meter says: False | Immigrants would get free cell phones under new proposal, bloggers claim Have you heard of Obamaphones, cellphones for people on welfare? Now there’s a new catchphrase going around conservative circles: Marcophones. It’s a hard jab at U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., who’s supporting immigration legislation put forward by a small group of senators called the Gang of Eight. The group recently released a draft of the legislation. Now bloggers have seized on the bill to make the claim that it gives free cell phones to illegal immigrants. "Move Over ‘Obama Phone,’ Say ‘Hola!’ to the Marco Rubio Immigration Phone, AKA MarcoPhone," said The Shark Tank, ... >> More

Paul Waldman, CNN(CNN) -- When the Manchin-Toomey background check amendment, a modest gun restriction by any reasonable measure, was defeated, President Barack Obama called it a "shameful day in Washington." But as anyone who watches Congress knows, it has more than its share of shameful days.There the deck was stacked against not only this bill, but against any bill that would restrict the proliferation of guns in any way. If those seeking sanity in our gun laws want to succeed, they'd better prepare themselves for a difficult journey.Many people thought that the Newtown massacre changed...

NBC's Pete Williams has emerged as the reporter out in front of all the rest during the coverage of the Boston bombing. Williams famously stuck to his guns when rival reporters--most prominently CNN's John King--said on Wednesday that there had been an arrest in the case. He was proved correct; the suspects in the case were not revealed until a day later. Early Friday morning, as the suspects killed a police officer, stole a car and engaged in a deadly shootout with police, Williams broke news again and again. He was one of the first to say that a suspect had been killed; the first to report that the men may have had overseas connections; the first to report that they told the man whose car they stole that they had carried out the bombing attack; and the first to report that the men were brothers. At one point in the night, "NBC's Pete Williams" was trending overnight on Twitter.