Chicago protesters are engaged in marches and rallies against CME Group Inc. at its annual stockholder meeting. They are currently gathering outside the Chicago Board of Trade building and some of the disabled and home-care provider protesters have already been arrested.

Last year CME received Illinois legislative approval for a lower tax rate, which protesters believe is causing cuts to social services. Of course, disabled or senior citizen protesters shouldn’t be exempt from arrest because of their condition and age, but the arrests do serve to demonstrate that tax cuts aren’t just about encouraging business growth, but create adverse effects when social services—the scapegoat in harsh economic times—are cut at the state level.

The CME protest was organized by Action Now, the Albany Park Neighborhood Council, the Chicago Teachers Union, the Lakeview Action Coalition, MoveOn, Southsiders Organized for Unity and Liberation, and SEIU Local 1, amongst various other organizations.

A Planned Parenthood Florida affiliate has really ruffled the doilies of quite a few conservatives this month by supporting “National Masturbation Month,” America’s least known, most celebrated holiday.

The month long recognition was started in 1995 by a San Francisco sex-toy shop called Good Vibrations, and whose celebrations include an annual “Masturbate-a-Thon,” which raises money for sex education and sounds rather painful.

The Planned Parenthood of Southwest and Central Florida tweeted on Friday, “Happy Masturbation Month! We’ve got lots of info on masturbation here,” linking to the Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s page on masturbation. The site discusses the normalcy and healthiness of masturbating, saying masturbation improves sleep and body image, provides sexual pleasure for people without partners, including the elderly, and strengthenss muscle tone in the pelvic and anal regions, reducing chances of leakage.

On paper, masturbation sounds like a dream, but to conservatives like Jim Sedlak of Stop Planned Parenthood, masturbation is a “gateway drug” to sex.

Sedlak says Planned Parenthood is selling the idea of masturbation as “risk-free” sex to children, and that, consequentially, youths will become “hooked on sexual stimulation as a way to escape their problems.”

LifeSiteNews also says of Planned Parenthood’s support of National Masturbation Month, “Especially alarming is how masturbation at an early age has been shown to interfere with a child’s ability to develop compassion and to learn—effects seen in children who regularly masturbate as young as six years old.”

Let me just say I know that many people, including perhaps myself and probably whoever is reading this right now, and even the people who claim masturbation will ruin a child’s ability to love, have all masturbated several times starting at a young age. I graduated college, I cry at sad movies and at cats who have diabetes, and I do not escape my problems by becoming addicted to a vibrator and/or a strange men.

LifeSiteNews also made up some stuff about how “Planned Parenthood’s website tells parents to encourage elementary-age children to experiment with masturbation.” I scoured their website for this. It never happened.

Sedlak says, “Kids begin to want additional sexual experiences, and Planned Parenthood is there to sell them products and to make millions from them.” Oh, like the free condoms and birth control?

Young people, and apparently the elderly, have been masturbating long before there even was a Planned Parenthood or an anti-Planned Parenthood movement. No national holiday or a celebratory tweet or Masturbate-a-Thon whereby people film themselves orgasming — which is has also been happening forever — is going to turn anyone into a child-aborting sex fiend.

What a bunch of jerk-offs.

Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, or SpaceX, became the first commercial space venture as it launched from Cape Canaveral at 3:44 this morning. The space transport company is the first organization, outside of major governments, to launch a vessel to the International Space Station.

Aboard the Falcon 9 rocket is a capsule called “Dragon,” which contains 1,000 pounds of space station provisions. According to CNN, NASA has emphasized that this is only the first of 12 demonstration launches “designed to establish whether SpaceX can deliver cargo to the space station.” The Dragon is scheduled to dock with the ISS on Friday.

As if this breakthrough isn’t fascinating enough, some additional “cargo” was packed on board the Dragon capsule before launch. The ashes of 308 individuals, including Mercury astronaut Gordon Cooper and Star Trek actor James Doohan (Scotty!), are being stored in a canister “which will separate from the Dragon capsule nine minutes into flight. If all goes as planned, the rocket will orbit the Earth for up to a year before it re-enters the atmosphere,” ABC News reports.

The posthumous intergalactic space flight is offered by a company called Celestis. The space services company starts their prices around $1000, and runs up to $10,000 for your very own lunar resting place.

I don’t know what’s cooler: having my ashes launched into space like Scotty, or blasted out of a cannon like Hunter S. Thompson? Probably a toss-up

Randy Smith, a 54-year-old convicted felon in Fresno, California, who—under such a conviction is clearly not allowed to possess guns—indeed possessed a water gun turned shotgun and wore it around the neighborhood.

A Fresno gun shop owner says it probably cost about $30 to make and would most likely have exploded in Smith’s hand. But maybe it wouldn’t have. Only the victor could have known for sure.

Police recognized the toy as a lethal weapon because they were told to look out for it. They were told to look out for it. For shotguns. Made out of Super Soakers.

What on earth is happening in Fresno, California that people need shotguns so badly they’re making them out of Super Soakers?

Perhaps it is other people making shotguns out of Super Soakers that is prompting such behavior. What a vicious cycle.

Unfortunately, it appears that being convicted of a felony is not enough to stop the plight either because they don’t give a fuck in Fresno.

They’ll carry around a water gun-shotgun combo of kill like it’s a third grade birthday party, and Super Soak some bitches. Super Soak some bitches with blood.

Look at this little chode go!

I’m not sure who called this tiny fire truck or what fire it could possibly be putting out, but that doesn’t mean it’s not going to save some big lives.

It actually looks like a rogue parade float that’s about to topple at any moment. If it weren’t for the actual firemen inside I’d think this was some practical joke, and fire is nothing to laugh about.

The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case launched by the ACLU against FISA, the warrantless wiretapping law used by the NSA.

The ACLU filed the original lawsuit in 2008 on behalf of a range of “attorneys and human rights, labor, legal and media organizations whose work requires them to engage in sensitive telephone and email communications with people outside the U.S., including colleagues, clients, sources, foreign officials and victims of human rights abuses.” The plaintiffs include Amnesty International USA, Human Rights Watch, PEN American Center, The Nation and the Service Employees International Union.

In 2011, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit rejected the Justice Department’s hilariously above-the-law argument: that the plaintiffs had to show they had been monitored, but also that the government could not be forced to disclose if the plaintiffs had been monitored.

ACLU Deputy Legal Director Jameel Jaffer had this to say of the Supreme Court’s announcement that they would hear the case:

The appeals court properly recognized that our clients have a reasonable basis to fear that the government may be monitoring their conversations, even though it has no reason to suspect them of having engaged in any unlawful activities. The constitutionality of the government’s surveillance powers can and should be tested in court. We are hopeful that the Supreme Court will agree.

“Given the importance of this law, the Supreme Court’s decision to grant review is not surprising. What is disappointing is the Obama administration’s effort to insulate the broadest surveillance program ever enacted by Congress from meaningful judicial review,” said ACLU Legal Director Steven R. Shapiro.

Obama: change, hope, dig it.

An interesting dichotomy exists in the United States right now that stems from a singular, monumental event: 9/11. The attacks, explosions, tower collapses, fear and terrorism were very real. No one is arguing that. But the extent to which we allow that fear to dictate our lives is completely in our control, not (insert terrorist faction here)’s. The “post-9/11″ world has become rife with paranoia and excessive suspicion; some have chosen to deflect it, while others willingly perpetuate the cycle.

That’s why it’s so disturbingly Orwellian to hear about a 50-year-old Japanese-born street artist being arrested in Brooklyn over the weekend over fear of planting bombs. Granted, Takeshi Miyakawa was planting his “devices” at 2 in the morning on lampposts and trees around the city, which might look strange to the neighbors, but that’s hardly a crime if you take 30 seconds for a closer look. That’s all it takes. A quick moment of reason.

Police on the scene observed the artist atop a ladder, hanging “an assembly consisting of a plastic box containing wires which was connected by a wire to a plastic bag containing a battery suspended from a metal rod.”

A scarcely closer inspection could easily show the contraption for what it is: a battery pack plugged into a plastic bag. To make it light up. To make people happy. To coincide with a design festival. You know, because Miyakawa is a design artist, after all. Harmless enough, right?

Abandoning reason and thorough investigation at the scene, the NYPD went DEFCON 2 and had Miyakawa arrested, even when no danger was discovered at the scene. Interestingly, the artist’s four companions, also at the scene of the “crime,” were not arrested. Shouldn’t they be accomplices? Co-conspirators? At least make your paranoia consistent, guys.

I can give the police the benefit of the doubt up to the moment of arrest. A figure is seen hanging battery-powered devices from trees and lampposts around New York City. Bomb squad is called in just in case, but luckily, no bombs are discovered. Simply a middle-aged Japanese street artist with an “I love New York” plastic bag in his hand.

That’s it. No harm, no foul. End of discussion.

However, in this “post-9/11″ world we live in, Judge Martin Murphy ordered that he receive a psychological evaluation, extending the artist’s detainment by 30 days. He is being charged with reckless endangerment and placing “a false bomb or hazardous substance,” according to the New York Times.

It should be noted that no one was endangered, nor were any false bombs or hazardous substances found on the scene. In fact, the Gothamist reports that the neighbor who called the police said he didn’t mean to, instead wishing to call 311 to ask about bags hanging in his tree and whether it was his responsibility to clean them up. 311 forwarded his call to 911, and the NYPD took off running from there.

It’s incidents like this that serve to highlight the specific purpose of terrorism and our law enforcement’s unfortunate ability to perpetuate fear, rather than combat it: terrorism’s entire objective. Fear exists. Terrorism will never die. But how we choose to react to its presence will determine its effectiveness, as well as the adhesive fiber of our country. Let’s take two minutes to look inside the “I Love NY” bag before carting a 50 year-old man to jail and having him psychologically evaluated. Maybe all you’ll find is a battery pack and an LED light. Maybe the bomb was a figment of your excessive paranoia.

And isn’t that what the terrorists want?

A “Free Takeshi Miyakawa” Facebook page has been started to offer group support to the detained artist.

Hello boys and… ghouls! We here at DEATH and Taxes have a special affinity. We are sons and daughters of the night. Why, when we aren’t typing away bringing you the latest and greatest in politics, news, and entertainment, we are lighting candles and strapping up our sixteen-hole vinyl boots preparing for a very special day.

That day is World Goth Day. And that day is today.

Throughout the day I’ll be bringing you some screamingly fiendish goth music, news, and dead bodies miscellanea. First up, a slew of goth music videos. Spooky! Stay fiendish, my friends. I shall return later… posthumously(!)… with some special gothic news.

An Anonymous group yesterday breached a US Justice Department server and posted 1.7 gigabytes of data on The Pirate Bay file-sharing site.

As the Pirate Bay statement reads, “Today we are releasing 1.7GB of data that used to belong to the United States Bureau of Justice, until now. Within the booty you may find lots of shiny things such as internal emails, and the entire database dump. We Lulzed as they took the website down after being owned, clearly showing they were scared of what inevitably happened.”

“We do not stand for any government or parties, we stand for freedom of people, freedom of speech and freedom of information,” the statement continues. “We are releasing data to spread information, to allow the people to be heard and to know the corruption in their government. We are releasing it to end the corruption that exists, and truly make those who are being oppressed free.”

“The price we pay very often is our own freedom,” it continues. “The price that governments pay is the exposure of their corruption and the truth being revealed, for the truth will set us free in the end.”

“So once more we call on you. Hackers, activists, and freedom fighters; join us in our struggle against these corporate hypocrites,” states Anonymous in the closing line.

Whether there is anything incendiary in the emails and database dump is yet to be determined.

Tragedy strikes: 8,000 lbs of marijuana adrift in the Pacific Ocean.

Ron Burgundy & Co return in “Anchorman 2″ teaser trailer.

Clint Eastwood in a fuckin’ reality TV show? Say it ain’t so.

Man survives 180-foot fall into Niagara Falls.

Celebrity chef and bon vivant Anthony Bourdain tells a little girl how to cook Unicorn flesh.

Sigur Rós and Walkmen albums streaming.

Rogue state Arizona threatens to ban President Obama from the November ballot.

[Image via imgur.com "ominous birdshit"]