Israeli commandos on Monday stormed six ships carrying hundreds of pro-Palestinian activists on an aid mission to the blockaded Gaza Strip, killing at least 10 people and wounding dozens after encountering unexpected resistance as the forces boarded the vessels.The operation in international waters off the Gaza coast was a nightmare scenario for Israel that looked certain to further damage its international standing, strain already tense relations with Turkey -- the unofficial sponsor of the mission -- and draw unwanted attention to Gaza's plight.
The tough Israeli response drew condemnations from Turkey, France and the U.N.'s Mideast envoy, while Greece suspended a military exercise with Israel and postponed a visit by Israel's air force chief.
This incident occurred hours ago. It's unclear how bad this will be but it looks bad. More coverage here.
Officials estimated that passengers will show slight resistance, and possibly minor violence; for that reason, the operation’s commander decided to bring the helicopter directly above the top deck. The first rope that soldiers used in order to descend down to the ship was wrested away by activists, most of them Turks, and tied to an antenna with the hopes of bringing the chopper down. However, Flotilla 13 fighters decided to carry on.
And here.
Republican Representative, and candidate for the United States Senate, Mark Kirk has overstated his military accolades, claiming that he received the Intelligence Officer of the Year award. In a statement last Saturday, Kirk admitted that he had exaggerated his record.
Kirk says that he recently reviewed the biography on his website and realized that he'd made a mistake. He has been boasting, however, about this award for years, saying that he was awarded for his service in the war in Kosovo, Operation Allied Force.
Kirk used the award in his resume during his first run for Congress. He has also used his military time and accolades as a case for greater experience over his opponent in the race for the Senate, Alexi Giannoulias.
There's been a lot of news recently and so it's unclear just how much effect this will have on the Illinois Senate race. His opponent, Alexi Giannoulias, has plenty of problems of his own.
The White House did not disclose what those options were, but people briefed on the matter said one option was an appointment to the president’s Intelligence Advisory Board, a panel of prominent Americans outside government who provide independent oversight of the nation’s spy apparatus and advise the president. But White House officials discovered that it would not work because Mr. Sestak could not serve on the board while still serving in Congress.
Three attempts to pump mud and 16 tries to stuff solid material into a breached Gulf of Mexico oil well failed to stop the flow, top BP executives said Saturday, and engineers and executives with the oil giant have decided to "move on to the next option."That option: Place a custom-built cap to fit over the "lower marine riser package," BP chief operation officer Doug Suttles said. BP crews were already at work Saturday to ready the materials for that option, he said.
From here, BP is now admitting that it may not be until August until this leak is finally plugged.
A BP executive says a relief well is the "end point" of efforts to stop the Gulf oil spill — which suggests there's little chance of plugging the leak until the new well is completed in August.
With BP declaring failure in its latest attempt to plug the uncontrolled gusher feeding the worst oil spill in U.S. history, the company is turning to yet another mix of risky undersea robot maneuvers and longshot odds to keep crude from flowing into the Gulf.
Meanwhile, everyone watches helplessly as the oil reaches the shore slowly, more and more video of wildlife covered in oil come, and an environmental disa
ster begins. The one that looks most helpless is the President himself. It's unclear what if anything the president can do to make the situation better. What is clear is that in the campaign the president presented himself as herculean. Who can forget this piece of soaring rhetoric.
generations from now we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment” — when, among other wonders, “the rise of the oceans began to slow.”
Obama promised us the dream of post-partisanship—a cuckoo land where party affiliation and factional animosity were forgotten. Turn on cable news or open any newspaper, however, and you’ll quickly discover that the dream has yet to materialize. But there is a way to reach across the aisle without letting principles fall by the wayside. We speak, naturally, of the hate f**k*. We may despise everything these women represent, but goddammit they’re hot. Let the healing begin.* (Note: word editing mine)
I’m sorry to hear about this for Tony, I hope it is all good news for the guy. Tony may be a BushCo whore but nobody deserves to have cancer, it’s a terrible desease that has caused far too much misery to my family and many, many more.
One bright idea isn’t going to solve the problems of the American newspaper industry, but it’s one bright idea more than the American newspaper industry has had in 40 years. What I propose is “Pre-Obituaries”—official notices that certainpeople aren’t dead yet accompanied by brief summaries of their lives indicating why we wish they were.
The main advantage of the Pre-Obit over the traditional obituary is the knowledge of reader and writer alike that the as-good-as-dead people are still around to have their feelings hurt. It was a travesty of literary justice that we waited until J. D. Salinger finally hit the delete key at 91 before admitting that Catcher in the Rye stinks. The book’s only virtue is that it captures, with annoying accuracy, the maunderings of a twerp. The book’s only pleasure is in slamming the cover shut—simpler than slamming the door shut on a real Holden Caulfield, if less satisfying. The rest of Salinger’s published oeuvre was precious or boring or both. But we felt constrained to delay saying so, perhaps because of an outdated Victorian hope for a death-bed flash of genius.
A Michigan lawmaker wants to license reporters to ensure they’re credible and vet them for “good moral character.”
Senator Bruce Patterson is introducing legislation that will regulate reporters much like the state does with hairdressers, auto mechanics and plumbers. Patterson, who also practices constitutional law, says that the general public is being overwhelmed by an increasing number of media outlets--traditional, online and citizen generated--and an even greater amount misinformation.
Where to start? Let's start with the first amendment which makes our press free. Having the government create a licensing program for journalists would infringe on a free press. Of course, such a program is open to so much potential corruption I wouldn't know where to start.
Let's look at the state of Michigan. It has some of the worst unemployment, budget deficits, and overall economics in the nation. That comes in large part from too much government interference. Michigan has among the largest per capita government officials in the country. In other words, Michigan has far too much government interference as it is. For instance, they often lose automobile plants to the South due to onerous regulations.
Now, Michigan wants to bring that failed formula to news. Of course, we all know what that will do. It will limit news in Michigan. If it's harder to become a reporter in Michigan, there will be less reporters in Michigan. So, along with car companies, newspapers will also have a max exodus from Michigan.
The White House asked former President Bill Clinton to talk to Rep. Joe Sestak about the possibility of obtaining a senior position in the Obama administration if he would drop out of the Democratic primary race against establishment-backed Sen. Arlen Specter, the Obama administration said in a report released Friday morning.
Ironically enough, the committee this would be referred to, Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, include such stalwarts on human rights as Cuba, Venezuela, and Haiti. Furthermore, in order for the commission to issue a challenge there needs to be a specific case in which someone's human rights have been violated. Since the law hasn't taken effect, that's impossible.Aguirre attributes her stands on immigration – a departure from how partisans in Washington tend to line up on the issue – to her “very interesting background.”
“I have a Mexican background,” she says, “I also have a great great father with a last name Hamilton who was here fighting against Mexico in the Mexican American war. I have a Hamilton blood and I have Mexican blood, too.”
Her take on the border fence – tarred as unwelcoming or even racist by many Democrats – may underscore the severity of the immigration crisis for states like Arizona, given the rampant drug war murders south of the state’s borders.
In the second poll taken since the Kentucky primaries and the first since Republican Rand Paul talked openly about his reservations with certain aspects of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Paul leads Democrat Jack Conway by 3 points, according to the DailyKos/Research2000 survey (May 24-26, 600 LV, MoE +/- 4%).
Paul 44
Conway 41
Und 15
People should be dubious of this poll for a number of reasons. First, it's commissioned by the Daily Kos. That's not exactly a bastion of objective polling. Second, here are the internals. 80% of Republicans were voting for Paul. 76% of Democrats were voting for Conway and Paul beat Conway by 43-31 among independents. Now, Kentucky is Republican heavy state. So, getting more of his own party and winning solidly among independents, we're supposed to believe that Paul is only up by 3%. That's misleading but it does appear as though the race has tightened.
He repeated the administration argument that the enemy is not "terrorism," because terrorism is a "tactic," and not terror, because terror is a "state of mind" -- though Brennan's title, deputy national security adviser for counterterrorism and homeland security, includes the word "terrorism" in it. But then Brennan said that the word "jihad" should not be applied either.
"Nor do we describe our enemy as 'jihadists' or 'Islamists' because jihad is a holy struggle, a legitimate tenet of Islam, meaning to purify oneself or one's community, and there is nothing holy or legitimate or Islamic about murdering innocent men, women and children," Brennan said.
The technical, broadest definition of jihad is a "struggle" in the name of Islam and the term does not connote "holy war" for all Muslims. However, jihad frequently connotes images of military combat or warfare, and some of the world's most wanted terrorists including Usama bin Laden commonly use the word to call for war against the West.
If these folks aren't Islamists, why do most scream Allah Akbar right before executing their deed? Why do they speak of a Jihad and praise Allah at every turn? The administration can't seem to wrap their arms around a basic fact. They are certainly twisting Islam. They aren't the first to twist a religion. They aren't the first to start holy wars by twisting a religion. In fact, Islam isn't the first religion to be twisted and turned into a war.
If Brennan was around during the Crusades, I could imagine him struggling to tell the world that the enemy wasn't Christian. Of course, they were and in much the same way, Christianity was twisted. Are we supposed to ignore that it was Christianity as opposed to all other religions that was twisted during the Crusades.
Religion has been the centerpiece for many struggles and all sorts of deaths. Hitler targeted Jews because they were inferior. Are we supposed to ignore this as well? The center piece of Hamas/Hezbollah's long term war against Israel is that they view Judaism as a wholly inferior religion and all those that practice deserve death. Is that not a holy war?
It's time to call a spade a spade. When a terrorists proclaims they are killing civilians in the name of Allah, Islam, and Jihad, that makes them radical Islamists, radical Jihadists, and it also means this war has a significant religious component. In fact, that's no reflection on Islam itself. The fact that someone twists a religion for evil is a reflection on the person himself and not on the religion. That the administration can't bring itself to recognize all this is troubling to say the least.
As some media outlets and pundits typically allied with the Obama administration seem to take a tougher tone toward the White House, Gibbs is telegraphing the message that on certain issues, they shouldn't ask and on others, he won't tell.
The tension may be reaching new heights. CBS correspondent Chip Reid revealed on air Friday that White House officials called reporters into the West Wing on Friday to scold them for asking too many questions about the Gulf of Mexico spill. One report identified Gibbs as the one doing the scolding.
The dressing-down came after the press secretary faced a barrage of questions about why the administration wasn't doing more to ensure the leak is plugged and mitigate the environmental damage to the coastline. The White House for weeks has battled the narrative that it has not responded forcefully enough to the spill, entrusting too much to the expertise of BP, and at Friday's briefing Gibbs repeatedly swiped at reporters who pressed that button.
It's become cliche, so let me apologize ahead of time. Can you imagine if the Bush administration held a closed door meeting in which reporters were scolded for asking questions the administration didn't like? How long would that meeting be on the front pages of the New York Times?
Can you imagine the moral outrage from pundits and columnists directed at the Bush White House if this situation were reversed? Yet, this story has garnered scant attention. In fact, the White House is brow beating reporters because they dare to do their jobs. This is an outrageous fit of hubris. The White House believes that if they don't like the questions being asked they can scold, privately, the questioners.
What of all the reporters that were in the room? Did any object and ask the White House under what authority they felt entitled to dress them down because the questions were too tough? Why wasn't this meeting the next report from most of them?
The public has a right to know when a White House so overtly bullies those charged with covering them. Yet, this story gets buried. The White House continues its heavy handed tactics and no one seems to care.
Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal still holds a commanding lead in the Senate race, despite more than a week of bad press regarding past misstatements of his military record. Blumenthal, the presumed Democratic nominee, leads Republican Linda McMahon by 25 points, a new Quinnipiac survey finds (May 24-25, 1159 RV, MoE +/- 2.9%).
A new study of insiders who blow the whistle on drug company fraud has found that all of the whistleblowers were primarily motivated by ethics rather than possible financial rewards.
However, the study also found many of the whistleblowers paid a tremendous personal cost for their disclosures and a vast majority experienced retaliation from employers, including being harassed, blackballed, and fired. Many were unable to secure other jobs during and after the investigations and some experienced personal health problems including panic attacks.
What's really disappointing is that articles like this wind up in websites of watchdog groups and not on the front page of the New York Times. Whistleblowers are the first line of defense against corruption. They are almost always mistreated. They are retaliated against, lied about, and often lose their jobs.
In so doing, not only does the initial corruption go on but new whistle blowers are discouraged from coming forward. As a result, it's impossible to quantify just how much corruption goes on. The plight of the whistleblower is rarely documented. There is little motivation for any individual to then become a whistleblower. Media could care less if you take on an entire corrupt entity. Often times, the media sides against you. Meanwhile, you take on an entire corrupt structure on your own. The chances of success are small. The chances of pain are enormous. In two stories I've covered, spouses of whistle blowers have committed suicide. These are the kinds of results that occur.
Yet, the media doesn't take much care in these stories. It's truly unbelievable. The stories are compelling, important, and all sorts of powerful people are involved. Yet, Lindsey Lohan gets front page coverage. Meanwhile, if you uncover medical corruption, you'll likely find that no one cares about your story.
Recent research at Harvard Business School began with the premise that as a state's congressional delegation grew in stature and power in Washington, D.C., local businesses would benefit from the increased federal spending sure to come their way.
It turned out quite the opposite. In fact, professors Lauren Cohen, Joshua Coval, and Christopher Malloy discovered to their surprise that companies experienced lower sales and retrenched by cutting payroll, R&D, and other expenses. Indeed, in the years that followed a congressman's ascendancy to the chairmanship of a powerful committee, the average firm in his state cut back capital expenditures by roughly 15 percent, according to their working paper, "Do Powerful Politicians Cause Corporate Downsizing?"
The study looked at the last forty years and considered the states in which their Representative ascended to chairmanship of powerful committees. First, the study found that earmarks went up 40-50% and discretionary spending went up by 10% in those states. Meanwhile, private investment, R&D, and sales went down over those same periods. That puts serious cold water to Keynesian theories.
President Barack Obama is preparing to send as many as 1,200 National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border, amid growing concern about cross-border criminal activity and a simmering debate over illegal immigration.
Obama plans to submit a request to Congress for $500 million in supplemental funding to secure the border and enforce federal laws, according to an administration official.
Here's some information from the Local Census Office (LCO)
1) Do NOT write the LCO phone number on the NV.
2) Do NOT use email to communicate any PII. This means addresses too.
3) There will be Census Officials in town on Tuesday (tomorrow). They will be canvassing the area. If they approach you, just cooperate and answer their questions. They are just seeing how everything is being run.
4) Also, from the LCO.
Business attire should be worn while enumerating.
Men should wear ties
That's all for now.
Dino Rossi will in fact make a bid for Senate in Washington state, several media outlets are reporting. Rossi has long been rumored to be considering a run and will reportedly make his intentions known publicly as soon as Wednesday.
Rossi is looking to defeat Democratic Sen. Patty Murray, who's represented Washington for three terms and is currently a member of Senate leadership. He's already signed up a senior strategist from Marco Rubio's campaign in Florida and a veteran of Mike McGavick's challenge to Washington's other Democratic senator, Maria Cantwell, in 2006.
Rossi is within a few points in most polls of Murray and the most recent has him down by four. He was a near winner for Governor a couple years back and he presents the Republicans' best hope to regain that seat in November.
Twin fears of global economic contagion and geopolitical turmoil in the Koreas sent the markets reeling for the second day in a row, sending the Dow below 10,000 and volatility surging.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average last closed below 10,000 on Feb. 10 but the bluechips were well below that level at the open amid widespread damage to US equities.Banks were taking the biggest hit. The SPDR Financial [XLF 14.0405-0.2895 (-2.02%)
] exchange-traded fund was off 3 percent, mirroring Monday's drop of 2.9 percent in the Standard & Poor's 500 financial sector.
Richard Blumenthal went from Senate shoe-in to political punch line after the New York Times reported on his past misstatements of his Vietnam-era service. But in the span of the week, his campaign now argues that he has successfully navigated through the immediate crisis to the point where Democrats can feel confident again that the party will hold his seat come November.
To bolster that argument, the Connecticut attorney general's campaign released results of an internal poll showing that he maintained a substantial advantage over one of his potential general election foes, WWE executive Linda McMahon. The Greenberg Quinlan Rosner survey, conducted May 19-20, found Blumenthal leading 55-40. A Rasmussen poll released last week found the same matchup much tighter.
One poll had Linda McMahon within three points. This has definitely hurt Blumenthal and it's not going away. This is difficult to explain and admitting a lie would end his career. Blumenthal will deal with this for the rest of the campaign and at this point, he'd have to be considered an underdog in the race.
It's worth noting that FNS anchor Neil Cavuto is among Blumenthal's chief defenders.
Education Secretary Arne Duncan is asking lawmakers to put aside “politics and ideology” as they consider a request for $23 billion in “emergency” funding for public schools – a measure Republicans reject as a massive federal bailout for the teachers’ unions.
The Obama administration is supporting the bill, formally titled the Keep Our Educators Working Act and sponsored by Rep. George Miller (D-CA) and Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA). In a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) dated May 13, Duncan warned that if the bill is not enacted, “millions” of school children will be adversely affected and the ensuing damage will “undermine the groundbreaking reform efforts underway in states and districts all across the country.”
In Illinois, there's a similar dynamic. Governor Quinn wants to raise the income tax by 33% in order to save teacher's jobs. States like Illinois have a constitutional duty to balance their budgets and so they can't simply borrow the money. Th problem is that education spending way up since as far back as the 1960's. About $70 billion was earmarked from the stimulus. The funds should be there and the administration just can't seem to spend less money.
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What I think would happen – what I’m saying is, is that I don’t believe in any discrimination. I don’t believe in any private property should discriminate, either. And I wouldn’t attend, wouldn’t support, wouldn’t go to. But what you have to answer when you answer this point of view, which is an abstract, obscure conversation from 1964 that you want to bring up. But if you want to answer, you have to say then that you decide the rules for all restaurants and then you decide that you want to allow them to carry weapons into restaurants.
Not content with just trying to tax soft drinks, New York’s nanny-state politicians are also considering legislation to prohibit the use of salt in the preparation of restaurant food. Assemblyman Felix Ortiz introduced this absurdist bill on March 5. Ortiz is one of New York’s more strident food cops, having already introduced strict restaurant menu labeling proposals in the past. He is also following in the steps of fellow food nanny Mayor Michael Bloomberg who went so far as to compare salt to carcinogenic asbestos.
Outside the GOP rally, about two-dozen protesters held signs rebuking Paul. One read "Rand the Klan's man." Another, held by a black woman, read "Should I not be served?"
One of the protesters, University of Louisville student Perry Green, who is black, called Paul's comments about discrimination disturbing."It's fundamentally un-American to discriminate along the lines of race or gender and these sorts of things," he said.
I felt he was cagey on NPR, but no cagier than a lot of politicians on a lot of subjects. The sum and substance of his position - that he abhors racism (of course) but has misgivings about the government telling private businesses what to do wasn't so surprising given his ideology.
Then, last night, he was stupid enough to appear on Rachel Maddow's show, for a long segment. She crushed him. You can watch it here, on Joan Walsh's blog. The full segment is 19 minutes. You can skip the first 9:00 and watch the main back-and-forth, or if you want to cut right to the chase go to about 15:00 and watch the last four minutes.
Maddow had something Robert Siegel did not: lots of time. So she really bore down. By the end, he looked ridiculous. She asked point blank if he thought Woolworth's (a private business) should have been able to retain the right to desegregate its lunch counters in the 1960s, yes or no. He wouldn't answer.
All of this is entirely disingeuous and here's why.
For the first time since, May, 2008, House Republicans have won a special election.
Republican Charles Djou topped Democrats Colleen Hanabusa and former Rep. Ed Case (D-HI) to succeed retired Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-HI) in Congress. Before Djou’s victory, Democrats had won 11 consecutive special elections. The stretch included a win last Tuesday by Rep. Mark Critz (D-PA) to succeed the late-Rep. Jack Murtha (D-PA). Many political handicappers expected Republican Tim Burns to win that contest and viewed the race as a barometer for how the political winds may blow this fall.
Djou secured 39.5 percent of the vote. Meantime, the two Democratic candidates, Hanabusa and Case combined to score nearly 60 percent of the vote. But that splintered the Democratic impact and allowed Djou to squeak through.
This was no surprise. The national Democrats had pulled out of this race at the beginning of the month. Furthermore, there were two Democrats running against one Republican and so the dynamic in this race was unique. The next special election will be in Eric Massa's old seat in New York state.
I think the Arizona law has the potential of being applied in a discriminatory fashion. Now, after it was initially passed, the Arizona legislature amended it and said that this should not be carried out in a discriminatory way. But I think a fair reading of the language of the statute indicates that it gives the possibility of individuals who are deemed suspicious of being illegal immigrants from being harassed or arrested. And the judgments that are going to be made in applying this law are troublesome.
Under the new law, the government would be able seize the wobbly firm, fire its executives, and fund its operations until it could sell them off in pieces. The proceeds from these sales would pay the government back; whatever was left would go to bondholders, who would presumably suffer some losses. The shareholders—the people who own common stock—would get wiped out entirely. (If the proceeds weren’t enough to repay the government, it would recoup the rest by levying a fee on the industry.) This is basically a scaled up (and stretched out) version of the way the FDIC handles smaller-bank failures.
The bill authorizes the secretary of the Treasury — a political appointee — to seize any financial company (bank or nonbank) simply because, in his opinion, it is too big to fail and in danger of insolvency.
This power can be used for political retribution, pressure for campaign funding, or any other abuse bureaucratic whim or partisan politics can conceive. It is a power Fidel Castro or Hugo Chavez would love to have!
Lance Armstrong's RadioShack team has struck back at doping allegations made by Floyd Landis, Armstrong's former teammate who this week confessed to having used performance-enhancing substances throughout his career -- including the 2006 Tour de France he won on the road.
The RadioShack team posted a statement on its website and attached a lengthy series of e-mails written by Landis and his personal physician, Dr. Brent Kay, who is also the primary sponsor of his bike team, and sent to Armstrong; Andrew Messick, president of AEG Sports, whose company owns the ongoing Tour of California; and USA Cycling president Steve Johnson and the federation's lawyer, Steven Hess. The only responses included are Messick's. No correspondence from Armstrong was included in the postings.
Let's put to the side the veracity of Landis' charges, and assume, against all evidence, that they are true. Would this make Landis a whistle blower?
I dealt with a similar situation with my reporting on Michelle Malkin, Michael Gaynor, and Anita Moncrief. Anita Moncrief became the main source for the seven most explosive pages in Michelle Malkin's book, Culture of Corruption. In return, Malkin used the pages in her blog, michellemalkin.com, to prop up Moncrief. Included in Malkin's adoring manner toward Moncrief was Malkin's allusion to Anita Moncrief being a whistleblower.
Last June, I told you about the speech-squelching attempt by ACORN/Project Vote to silence one of its most potent critics — former Project Vote official-turned-whistleblower Anita MonCrief.
The most common of the themes, integrity (11 of 26 relators), was linked by some relators to their individual personality traits and strong ethical standards. One relator reasoned, "When I lodged my initial complaint with the company, I believed what we were doing was unethical and only technically illegal. This ethical transgression drove my decision. My peers could live with the implications of `doing 60 in a 55 mph zone' because it did indeed seem trivial. However, my personal betrayal . . . so filled me with shame that I could not live with this seemingly trivial violation" (Relator 25). The relators in this group felt that financial circumstances helped to subvert such ethical standards in their colleagues, saying that most colleagues were unwilling for personal or family reasons to jeopardize their jobs.
A slightly less common theme (7 of 26 relators) involved trying to prevent the fraudulent behavior from posing risks to public health. Most of the relators who described this type of motivation felt they had unique professional experiences or educational backgrounds that gave them a superior grasp of the negative public health implications of the illegal conduct. Some relators (7 of 26) characterized their action in reporting the fraud as emanating from a sense of duty to bring criminals to justice. Many of these relators were new employees who perceived themselves as being outside the fold in their companies.
The legislation passed the Senate 59 to 39 and must now be reconciled with a similar bill passed by the House of Representatives in December, before it can be sent to President Barack Obama to be signed into law.The controversial measure, supported by the Obama administration, sets up new regulatory bodies and restricts the actions of banks and other financial firms. It is designed to try to make order of the cascading regulatory chaos that ensued in 2008 when mammoth banks and some unregulated financial firms collapsed, and public funds were used to save them. Among other things, the legislation would:
The legislation creates a consumer financial protection agency, regulates more stiffly derivatives, manages systemic risk, gives the Fed more power, and allows for the federal government to liquidate very large financial firms.
Frankly, no one, especially those that passed it, understands financial reform. It's completely unclear if this bill will help or hurt. Furthermore, the bill is almost fifteen hundred pages long and so who knows what's in the bill.
REPORTER: Would you have voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1964?PAUL: I like the Civil Rights Act in the sense that it ended discrimination in all public domains and I`m all in favor of that.
REPORTER: But?
PAUL: You had to ask me the "but." I don't like the idea of telling private business owners. I abhor racism. I think it's a bad business decision to ever exclude anybody from your restaurant. But at the same time, I do believe in private ownership. But I think there should be absolutely no discrimination in anything that gets any public funding, and that's mostly what the Civil Rights Act was about, to my mind.
While this will throw Paul off message for a few days, I don't believe this will cost him the election. Paul is a true blue libertarian and he doesn't believe that the government should be telling a private business what to do. Before anyone thinks this is out of the mainstream, remember that the principle to free speech is to protect speech we also abhor.
Dennis Blair, President Barack Obama's national intelligence director, is resigning after a 16-month tenure marked by intelligence failures and turf wars among the country's spy agencies.
Blair, a retired admiral, is the third director of national intelligence, a position created in response public outrage over the failure to prevent the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Blair intends to offer his resignation Friday, one of two government officials said, adding that several candidates have been interviewed for the job. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the announcement had not yet been made.
With two successful and two unsuccessful domestic attacks since Obama took over, intelligence became an issue. A recent Congressional report on the failed Christmas Day bombing pointed out that many intelligence gaps continue to exist that contributed to 9/11. Blair has taken the fall, though this story is far from over.
the same event at that exact moment. At that exact moment, she was riding her brand new bicycle up along the other side of the building with a direct eye line to the balcony. His niece turned around and rode home furiously. Meanwhile, Yost immediately got on his cell phone and called the police.
ken up to the nightmare that had engulfed Yost and his friends and family.