DALLAS – After fighting his way across Europe during World War II, John Pistone was among the U.S. soldiers who entered Adolf Hitler’s home nestled in the Bavarian Alps as the war came to a close.

Making his way through the Berghof, Hitler’s home near Berchtesgaden, Germany, Pistone noticed a table with shelves underneath. Exhilarated by the certainty of victory over the Nazis, Pistone took an album filled with photographs of paintings as a souvenir.

“It was really a great feeling to be there and we knew, by that time, he was on his last leg,” Pistone told The Associated Press.

Sixty-four years after Pistone brought the album home to Ohio, the 87-year-old has learned its full significance: It’s part of a series compiled for Hitler featuring art he wanted for his “Fuhrermuseum,” a planned museum in Linz, Austria, Hitler’s hometown.

Pistone’s album is expected to be formally returned to Germany in a ceremony at the U.S. State Department in January. Germany has 19 other albums discovered at the Berchtesgaden complex that are part of a 31-album collection of works either destined for or being considered for the Linz museum.

Pistone’s 3-inch thick, 12-pound album’s journey from obscurity began this fall when a friend became curious about the book sitting on Pistone’s bookshelf.

The friend discovered after some Internet searching that the Dallas-based Monuments Men Foundation for the Preservation of Art was involved in 2007 in the restitution of two other albums that were part of a series documenting art stolen by the Nazis from Jewish families.

Its founder, Robert Edsel, who while living in Italy for a time after selling his oil and gas business became interested in what was done to protect art in World War II, traveled to Ohio this fall to examine Pistone’s album. Seeing it convinced him that Pistone had one of the missing albums of the series on the planned museum.

Stamped on the album’s spine is “Gemaldegalerie Linz” — Gemaldegalerie means picture gallery in German — and the Roman numerals for 13. It still has a sticker from the book’s binder in Dresden.

Birgit Schwarz, a German art historian from Vienna who has written books about Hitler and art, including a book called “Hitler’s Museum” describing the albums in the series, is convinced the album is authentic. She said she recognized paintings in the album along with the volume number and title.

“It’s absolutely clear!” she wrote in an enthusiastic e-mail to the AP after reviewing scanned photographs of the album. “Hans Makart’s ‘Pest in Florenz’ (Plague in Florence), for example, the first picture of album XIII, Hitler got as a gift from Mussolini!”

Souvenir hunting was routine by soldiers during the war, and problems arise when people try to sell rather than return culturally important items, said Thomas R. Kline, a Washington-based lawyer who specializes in art restitution and works for the foundation.

“It’s really important that as people go through their attics and they find the things that grandpa brought home, people are aware that something as simple as a book of pictures could have a cultural significance,” Kline said.

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Fears mount as invaders head north

Fears that giant, voracious species of carp will get into the Great Lakes and wipe out other fish have led to rising demands that the government close the waterway connecting the lakes to the Mississippi River — an unprecedented step that could disrupt the movement of millions of tons of iron ore, coal, grain and other goods.

The dispute could become an epic clash of competing interests: commerce, environmentalists and fishermen.

Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm and five environmental groups threatened Wednesday to sue the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to force it to temporarily shut three shipping locks near Chicago because of evidence that Asian carp may have breached the electrical barrier that is supposed to hold them back from the lakes.

Environmentalists fear the fish, which consume up to 40 percent of their body weight daily in plankton, could starve out smaller and less aggressive competitors and cause the collapse of the $7 billion-a-year Great Lakes sport and commercial fishing industry.

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LOGAN, UTAH —- The director for the Cache Valley Multicultural Center was arrested Tuesday and now faces sex abuse charges.

Police say Leo Bravo was taken into custody after they received a complaint from an alleged victim who said Bravo “took unwanted sexual liberties” with her when she went looking for legal help. Police say the alleged incident took place November 16.

Bravo is a known advocate of the  Latino community in Cache Valley, heading the multicultural center that advocates immigrant issues, such as employment, legal status and community integration. MORE

Controversial phone application aims to help illegal immigrants cross the border.

A new Arizona law aimed at denying public benefits to undocumented immigrants could hurt U.S. citizens as well. HB 2008 requires state, cities and any government employee in Arizona to report to immigration authorities any undocumented immigrants who request a public benefit. Government workers could face up to four months in jail if they fail to make a report. The law also gives taxpayers the right to sue a state or city agency if they believe the law is not enforced properly.

Arizona is considered a testing ground for immigration laws for the rest of the nation. Over the past five, years Republican have enacted legislation that ranges from banning scholarships for undocumented students to denying bail to undocumented people charged with a crime.
The association that represents 90 cities and towns didn’t sue about the content of the law but the way it was created. They said it violated the state constitution because it was part of a state budget package, not a stand-alone bill. And it went beyond the scope of the special session called by the governor intended to address budgetary concerns.

On Tuesday, governor Brewer called the challenge “outrageous and shocking” at a time when Arizona is facing a budget deficit, according to a report from the Associated Press. Brewer’s office didn’t respond to requests for comment.

If the current lawsuit is unsuccessful, “MALDEF [the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund] is prepared to go forward to challenge the law” said attorney Daniel Ortega, who would act as local council and fought against Prop. 200.More from source

Karen Gentry says all five victims have been identified, four by dental records since their home was burned. They are her father Edward Gentry, her brother, Edward Gentry Jr.; his wife, Pam; their son, Jeremy, and his friend Kristyn Warneke. Her grandfather, Edward Gentry Sr., was found in a mobile home on the same property.

A comment posted from this story talks about how one of the victims survived three wars and cancer only to be killed by these animals. He also goes on to say race is not an issue. Well race is an issue when whites are being slaughtered wholesale

“This is not and should not be about race. There are good and bad people of all races. This was about young men who for some reason went down the wrong path in life which included drugs, theft, rape and now arson, and murder of 5 innocent people-one of which served in WWII, Vietnam and Korea and suffered a gun shot wound to his leg requiring bone grafting and years of healing, as well as shrapnel injury to his lungs, which then collapsed his lungs requiring they be surgically attached to his chest wall and for which made his lungs weakened for the rest of his life. He never quit and went on to serve as an LVN and continued to care for his fellow soldiers for 26 years. Upon retiring he cared for a elderly man in a nursing home who had no hope of getting out of the bed. This man helped this man walk again and was able to take him to a new home and care for him until he died. He then cared for his terminally ill wife who died a horrible death from lung cancer. He cared for his elderly father. He cared for his elderly mother in law. He allowed his medically disabled son to come live on his property after he suffered two heart attacks at the age of 50 and couldn’t work any more and for which he couldn’t even qualify for disability because his wife a medical transcriptionist made too much money according to social security disability. He allowed his medically disabled grand son stay there too after he was disabled due to severe anxiety. This man 9 months prior to being killed had a left below knee amputation due to bone cancer of the heal and in 5 months drove himself to Savannah, Ga to go on vacation with his family for the last time. He battled 5 cancers to go on to be beaten, tied up, with his mouth duct taped and then he was shot in the head at the age of 80. No, this man and his family did not deserve any of this. No, this is not a racist issue-this is people in society for some reason, going down the wrong path of destruction and they took innocent people with them.”

The saddest fact about this is that people will continue to go along denying that the elephant in the room is there, this IS a racist crime. It is being done to all of us, our family, wives, children, brothers and sisters, on a daily basis. My best friend was taken from me, his mother, his son, and friends for $6.00. They took him and blew his brains out for $6 lousy pieces of paper! The reason this is so sad is that many will continue to live their lives in fear, not of being a victim of this racist crime wave, but in fear of something that the media moguls have told them is worst of all being labeled a “hater” for being honest about what is happening
If I said there was a race problem and the solution was for Whites and only Whites to move into Africa, out breed, and intermarry with Africans. How long would it take for some smart African to realize this wasn’t a race problem I was trying to solve, its an African problem? This is what is happening in every White country and ONLY White countries. It is GENOCIDE!

So until more of you white people grow a spine and can say enough is enough, just keep moving to areas with “cheaper taxes ” and wait for your turn to star in the obituaries, or the hidden crime log that CNN will never cover.

Source>>>

Obama’s challenge is to ensure that Hispanics pledge allegiance to the Democratic Party for the 2010 elections and keep supporting him through his own likely 2012 re-election race while he tackles the divisive issue of repairing the nation’s patchy immigration system.  Hispanics are the nation’s fastest-growing minority group. The government projects they will account for 30 percent of the population by 2050, doubling in size from today and boosting their political power.
If Democrats build on Obama’s gains, Texas and other traditionally Republican states with huge numbers of Hispanics could be within reach in the future. That would mean deep trouble for a GOP that’s already older, whiter, dwindling in numbers and lacking a standard bearer to make Hispanics a priority the way Bush did.  Yet while the latest Associated Press-GfK poll showed that a strong 68 percent of Hispanics approve of the job Obama’s doing, maintaining such support is far from certain.
Immigration is a galvanizing issue on both the left and the right, with pitfalls for both parties. Republicans could alienate Hispanics if the vocal right again takes control of the debate with angry rhetoric. Democrats risk seriously disillusioning Hispanics by inaction, delay or a piecemeal approach. A fight in Congress is assured.
“Our community will judge him based on how he delivers on the promise he made to see immigration reform early in his administration,” said Janet Murguia, president of the National Council of La Raza, suggesting the issue trumps everything else.More