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If you have ever wondered how to learn Tajweed which is the proper pronunciation, when reading the Koran there are numerous ways at a student's disposal these days. Everything from a classroom setting to online courses to YouTube videos to podcasts, so there is a way for almost everyone to conveniently learn Tajweed. However, how to learn Tajweed can be overwhelming. It is suggested that the beginner, start by learning the Arabic alphabet as the only true way to learn the rules of tajweed is in the pure Arabic form. The latest on the Arabic alphabet are just as numerous everything from videos on YouTube to online instructions to interactive CD-ROMs to books. Once you have learned in the Arabic alphabet sufficiently then you can start to learn the manners of the heart, which are the rules that govern the Koran itself. Once you have mastered those, you can then start to learn. The external manners which are the rules that govern the person doing the recitation, and teach that individual how to conduct him or herself while reading the Koran.

The 'Volcker Rule' got fresh support this morning when five former Treasury Secretaries endorsed the key financial regulation in a letter to the Wall Street Journal.

The Wisconsin recall election was the first major test of the new era in American politics. That new era began in January of 2010 when the US Supreme Court ruled in Citizens United v. FEC that the political voice of We The People was no longer as important as the voices of billionaires and transnational corporations. Now we know the result, and it bodes ill for both 2012 and for the tattered future of small-d democracy in our republic. A few of America's most notorious oligarchs - including the Koch and the DeVos (Amway fortune) billionaires - as well as untraceable millions from donors who could as easily be Chinese government-run corporations as giant "American" companies who do most of their business and keep most of their profits outside the US - apparently played big in this election. I say "apparently" because the Supreme Court has ruled that we no longer have the right to know who is really funding our election commercials, or even our candidates themselves. Thanks to an irrational and likely illegal Supreme Court ruling, we have moved into an era of oligarch-run politics. As much as $40 million of our oligarch's money was spent in Wisconsin in a handful of local races - a testing laboratory for strategies that will now be used against Democrats nationwide in 2012. And so now we enter the battle of the oligarchs over the next fifteen or so months. As the old saying goes, when the elephants fight, the mice get trampled. In this case, the mice aren't just the voters. It's democracy itself. America is now - demonstrably, as proven by Wisconsin - just a few years away from the possibility of a totally corrupted, totally billionaire- and corporate-controlled political system. Political scientists call it oligarchy. The Citizens United election experiment is over, and the oligarchs won. Long live the oligarchy.

United States v. Dougherty was a 1972 decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in which the court ruled that members of the D.C. Nine, who had broken into Dow Chemical Company, vandalized office furniture and equipment, and spilled about a bloodlike substance, were not entitled to a new trial on the basis of the judge's failing to allow a jury nullification jury instruction. The Appeals Court ruled, by a 2-1 vote: " The fact that there is widespread existence of the jury's prerogative, and approval of its existence as a "necessary counter to casehardened judges and arbitrary prosecutors," does not establish as an imperative that the jury must be informed by the judge of that power. On the contrary, it is pragmatically useful to structure instructions in such wise that the jury must feel strongly about the values involved in the case, so strongly that it must itself identify the case as establishing a call of high conscience, and must independently initiate and undertake an act in contravention of the established instructions. This requirement of independent jury conception confines the happening of the lawless jury to the occasional instance that does not violate, and viewed as an exception may even enhance, the over-all normative effect of the rule of law. An explicit instruction to a jury conveys an implied approval that runs the risk of degrading the legal structure requisite for true freedom, for an ordered liberty that protects against anarchy as well as tyranny. " Nonetheless, the defendants were given a new trial on the grounds that they had been denied their right of self-representation.[1] The Circuit Judges' assumption that jurors know about their nullification prerogative has since been brought into question by other empirical evidence.[2] According to Irwin Horowitz, "Beyond the empirical issue, lack of nullification instructions maintains a deceit. After all, juries can nullify, but they know this fact only on a so

A gripe site that incorporates a company's entire trademark into its domain is still protected under the First Amendment, a US District Judge has ruled. In the case of Career Agents Network v. careeragentsnetwork.biz, the judge said that the gripe site made no effort to bolster its own business and was noncommercial, therefore protecting it from Career Agents Network's trademark claims and cybersquatting accusations.

The IRS has just issued an important private letter ruling recognizing community property laws for registered domestic partners.

to be a free citizen is to be truly self-ruled. To rule (wisely) is to be an informed political philosopher.

As Congress this week inches toward a new set of rules to avert another global financial collapse, it is focused on two conflicting goals: reforming the banking system to protect consumers while still giving lenders the freedom to take risks. So far the score looks like: Bankers 1, Consumers 0. More than a year after a wave of risky mortgage bets brought Wall Street to its knees, banks and other financial institutions are still playing by the same rules that got them into the mess.

"IT IS TIME to stop pretending that Europeans and Americans share a common view of the world, or even that they occupy the same world. On the all-important question of power - the efficacy of power, the morality of power, the desirability of power - American and European perspectives are diverging. Europe is turning away from power, or to put it a little differently, it is moving beyond power into a self-contained world of laws and rules and transnational negotiation and cooperation. It is entering a post-historical paradise of peace and relative prosperity, the realization of Kant's "Perpetual Peace." The United States, meanwhile, remains mired in history, exercising power in the anarchic Hobbesian world where international laws and rules are unreliable and where true security and the defense and promotion of a liberal order still depend on the possession and use of military might. That is why on major strategic and international questions today, Americans are from Mars and Europeans are from Venus: They agree on little and understand one another less and less. And this state of affairs is not transitory - the product of one American election or one catastrophic event. The reasons for the transatlantic divide are deep, long in development, and likely to endure. When it comes to setting national priorities, determining threats, defining challenges, and fashioning and implementing foreign and defense policies, the United States and Europe have parted ways."

If you want hits to your blog, girls in bikinis is a good place to start!

It's a coming-of-age story, you see. It's about a representative who has come of age from the voting booths of a town to accept the responsibilities of performing rousing debates on the floors of Congress with the interest of a constituency in mind while adhering to house rules. Don't fear, I'm not describing a remake of the "Cider House Rules" replacing the doctor with a Congressional representative. No, I'm describing the latest shock-and-awe disorderly behavior by a representative of a member of the 111th Congress. Enter Joe Wilson, a Congressional representative from South Carolina. In the aftermath of inappropriate timing, will the enforcement of ethical standards be abdicated in the US while many see that taking precautions in keeping the public trust in Congress is still the responsibility of everyone sitting in that room?

At Fort Hood, the largest military base in the country, it would be assumed that it would have a superior level of security, at least when compared to the streets of New York City, Chicago or some other urban area. People are watched going in and out of the base, they are constantly observed and they are subject to the rules and disciplines of the armed forces. In our cities and towns there is no such surveillance or rules. Malik Nadal Hasan was a known entity, and one whose actions had been under scrutiny. In other words, all of the signs were there if someone wanted to see them...

THIS IS SICK!

* If you torture people or eavesdrop on Americans without the warrants required by the criminal law, you receive Look-Forward Imperial Immunity. * If you shoot and kill unarmed rescuers of the wounded while occupying their country and severely wound their unarmed children sitting in a van -- or if you authorize that conduct -- your actions are commended. * If you help wreck the world economy with fraud and cause hundreds of millions of people untold suffering, you collect tens of millions of dollars in bonuses. * If you disclose to the world evidence of war crimes, government lawbreaking, or serious corruption, or otherwise embarrass the U.S., you will be swiftly prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law and face decades in prison.

Thanks to intrepid twitterers like Sarah Posner and our own Addie Stan, I'm getting a good picture of the utter depravity on display at the "values voters" summit without having to actually listen to it on C-Span. Here are some bits from newly-minted Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell's Palin-esque speech.

Comments regarding the institutional underpinnings of environmental and developmental issues, the "tragedy of the commons", and free market environmentalist approaches to such issues, focussing on clarifying and enforcing property rights and minimizing the hand of government (which results in politi