By David G. Savage
Reporting from Washington - Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. told law students Tuesday that he found it "very troubling" to be surrounded by loudly cheering critics at President Obama's State of the Union address, saying it was reason enough for the justices not to attend the annual speech to Congress.
"To the extent the State of the Union has degenerated into a political pep rally, I'm not sure why we are there," Roberts said at the University of Alabama School of Law.
By LAURA MECKLER
Lawmakers working to craft a new comprehensive immigration bill have settled on a way to prevent employers from hiring illegal immigrants: a national biometric identification card all American workers would eventually be required to obtain.
Under the potentially controversial plan still taking shape in the Senate, all legal U.S. workers, including citizens and immigrants, would be issued an ID card with embedded information, such as fingerprints, to tie the card to the worker.
US attacks East Jerusalem plans
US Vice-President Joe Biden has condemned Israel's approval of 1,600 new homes for ultra-Orthodox Jews in East Jerusalem.
Mr Biden, in Israel as part of US attempts to kick-start the peace process, said it was "the kind of step that undermines the trust we need".
Palestinian leaders also condemned the controversial move.
Israel insisted it was a procedural step with no connection to Mr Biden's visit.
The National Enquirer really hit a grand slam in 2008 with their Rielle Hunter/John Edwards story: not only did it bring some previously unthought-of prestige to the tabloid (they’re up for a Pulitzer!) for uncovering the affair, but now Edwards may actually be indicted by a grand jury for diverting political campaign funds for both Hunter and hush money. Now we’re talking not just a politician’s love-life, we’re talking federal charges. Enquirer Executive Editor Barry Levine was on Bill O’Reilly tonight to discuss.
WATCH FEATURE VIDEO ABOVE
by Glynnis MacNicol | 9:39 am, March 9th, 2010»
Considering the now years-long deluge of images President Obama has been the subject of you may have missed the fact he has apparently been intentionally avoiding iconic images. Who knew, right? A cynic might suggest that Obama has spent enough time turning himself into a sort of icon that he has no need for back up. Either way, he has no use for the Statue of Liberty as a backup player. From the Daily Caller:
Despite his underdog status, Sen. Harry Reid declared Monday he's confident he'll win re-election, and he welcomed independent candidates -- who could splinter the vote and spoil any GOP effort to retire the most powerful senator in the most watched race in the nation. "They have a right to file," Reid said of third-party contenders, including a Las Vegas man running under the Tea Party of Nevada banner, though members of the movement call him a "Tea Party fraud."
A man shot three people, one fatally, before being gunned down by police in a southeast valley apartment complex Monday afternoon.
A witness to the shooting described a horrific scene. He asked that his name not be used for fear of reprisal.
House Democrats have found a way to address Republicans’ polling advantage on national security: Teach candidates a better way to talk about the issue.
While President Barack Obama still outpolls congressional Republicans on national security, a new Third Way/Greenberg Quinlan Rosner poll out Monday gives the GOP the edge in a generic Republican vs. Democrat matchup on the issue. And the problem is particularly acute for Democratic women: A study to be published in the Journal of Women, Politics & Policy shows support for Democratic women drops 11 percent when public fear of terrorism is high.
"The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they are ignorant, but that they know so much that isn't so." -- Ronald Reagan
One of the reasons liberals tend to do such an incredibly poor job of governing is that they fundamentally misunderstand the nature of the American people. Given that liberals also fundamentally misunderstand Christianity, the Constitution, economics, and human nature, I guess it's no big surprise that they don't get the American people either. Come to think of it, I guess it's pretty much par for the course. I mean, let's face it, without conservatives around to help keep them in check, liberals would utterly destroy everything that is good about America and most of them would be baffled about what they were doing wrong right up until the end. But enough about the Left's general lack of common sense -- let's talk about how they misjudge the American people.
Abraham Lincoln once asked an audience how many legs a dog has, if you called the tail a leg? When the audience said "five," Lincoln corrected them, saying that the answer was four. "The fact that you call a tail a leg does not make it a leg."
That same principle applies today. The fact that politicians call something a "stimulus" does not make it a stimulus. The fact that they call something a "jobs bill" does not mean there will be more jobs.
Far more personal information on students than is necessary is being collected by public schools, according to the Fordham Law School Center on Law and Information Policy, which investigated education records in all 50 states. States are failing to safeguard students' privacy and protect them from data misuse.
Some states collect a lot of data that has nothing to do with student test scores, including Social Security numbers, disciplinary records, family wealth indicators, student pregnancies, student mental health, illness and jail sentences. A couple of states record the date of a student's last medical exam and a student's weight.
The Brazilian government has announced trade sanctions against a variety of American goods in retaliation for illegal US subsidies to cotton farmers.
The World Trade Organization (WTO) approved the sanctions in a rare move.
Brazil published a list of 100 US goods that would be subject to import tariffs in 30 days, unless the two governments reached a last-minute accord.
The Obama administration said Monday that Israel and the Palestinians have agreed to indirect peace talks brokered by U.S. special Mideast envoy George Mitchell.
In a statement released as Vice President Joe Biden is visiting Israel, Mitchell, who is also in the region, said he was pleased that the two sides had accepted the proposal for talks that will see him shuttle between Israel and the Palestinian territories over the next several weeks.
South Korea — North Korea's army said Monday it is ready to "blow up" South Korea and the U.S., hours after the allies kicked off annual military drills that Pyongyang has slammed as a rehearsal for attack.
South Korea and the U.S. — which normally dismiss such threats as rhetoric — began 11 days of drills across South Korea on Monday morning to rehearse how the U.S. would deploy in time of emergency on the Korean peninsula.
The U.S. and South Korea argue the drills — which include live firing by U.S. Marines, aerial attack drills and urban warfare training — are purely defensive. North 
The North's People's Army issued a statement Monday, warning the drills created a tense situation and that its troops are "fully ready" to "blow up" the allies once the order is issued.
The North also put all its soldiers and reservists on high alert to "mercilessly crush the aggressors" should they encroach upon the North's territory even slightly, said the statement carried by the official Korean Central News
The communist country has issued similar rhetoric in the days leading up the drills. On Sunday, it said it would bolster its nuclear capability and break off dialogue with the U.S. in response to the drills.
by
"Stop messing with Texas!" That was the message Gov. Rick Perry bellowed on election night as he celebrated his victory over Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison in the Republican primary for governor. In his reference to Texas' anti-littering slogan, Perry was making a point applicable to national as well as Texas politics and addressed to Democratic politicians as well as Republicans.
His point was that the big government policies of the Obama administration and Democratic congressional leaders are resented and fiercely opposed not just because of their dire fiscal effects but also as an intrusion on voters' independence and ability to make decisions for themselves.
Geographically speaking, it made no difference. From the east, west, north, and south, protestations and attempted justifications declared repeatedly that the collective has more responsibility for the individual's happiness than the individual.
And friends if this IS the belief of the nation, we've lost America.
Speaking on ABC's "This Week", House Speaker Nancy Pelosi commented, "I think everybody wants affordable health care for all Americans. They know that this will take courage. It took courage to pass Social Security. It took courage to pass Medicare. And many of the same forces that were at work decades ago are at work again against this bill."
There is that word again. What exactly does affordable mean? The left tosses the word about but never bothers to define exactly what they mean by affordable. It could mean anything and everything and no doubt it will. Affordable is a political term that is unassociated with actual costs, only addresses price and means, "you pay according to the amount of political capital you have." For instance if you belong to the SEIU you pay less than if you didn't. But I digress.
Karl Marx insisted that history repeats itself, first as tragedy and then as farce. It seems that at least some of California’s teachers are determined to prove him right.
Aside from the disturbing specter of children being used as political props by their teachers, the spectacle is ludicrous. Reportedly, the rally’s “big slogan” was supposed to be “save our students, save our teachers, save our schools, save our future.” Ironically, that’s what the spending cuts are designed to do – even as state government employees continue to stand in the way.
Most of us remember the stellar advertising campaign A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Waste designed at giving underprivileged elementary children a bite at the educational apple. This week Senator Joe Lieberman (I-CT) decided to use this concept to become an advocate for middle school and high school students as well. Lieberman and five colleagues weighed in on D.C. politics, filing an amendment to a tax extenders bill to reauthorize the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program.
The D.C. OSP was created in 2004 under the Bush administration. These $7,500 scholarships made it possible for students to attend a private school. The students that used these scholarships felt a greater degree of safety as well as made major academic strides. A federally mandated evaluation of the program also showed these private school students received the equivalent of 3.7 months of additional learning than others. This has been done while actually reducing the District’s costs as these students only received half of the city’s $15,000-per-pupil assessment.
With approval ratings south of 20 percent, Congress isn't exactly acing its performance review -- and one congresswoman thinks it's time the American people started docking members' pay.
Posted by Lisa Lerer
Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) says Democrats have failed to pass health care “because of arrogance.”
“They're going back in rooms and then telling the members, take it or leave it,” he said on CNN’s "State of the Union." “You can't do that. It's obvious.”
DeLay, known as “the Hammer” for his enforcement of party disciple, says House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) should have given rank-and-file members a greater role in drafting the legislation.
“Nancy Pelosi writes the bill, hands it to the chairman, says get it out of committee in an hour and we're going to the floor. We're going to debate it and I'll break arms if you vote against me,” he said.
“That will come to haunt you and bring you down.”
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg urged state legislators to levy a tax on soda, saying the money raised would help plug the state's shortfalls in health care and education funding.
The American Beverage Association, whose members include Coca-Cola Co, PepsiCo Inc and Dr Pepper Snapple Group and which has opposed efforts to tax soda, said Bloomberg's proposal would not work and would threaten jobs. "Taxes don't work for making people healthier," said Chris Gindlesperger, an association spokesman. "It puts good New York beverage industry jobs at risk." He estimated the beverage industry employs 160,000 people in New York state.
Posted by Steve Tetreault
WASHINGTON -- Sen. Harry Reid had another "oops" moment this morning when he said that "only 36,000 people lost their jobs today, which is really good."
Reid's comment in context was that it could have been worse, as the nation's unemployment rate for February did not increase as was widely expected. It held at 9.7 percent.
But the quip he delivered in a Senate speech this morning was seized by his political opponents, eager to place it on a list of other Reid-delivered insults and head-scratching remarks that have dotted his recent career.
“Only in Harry Reid’s world is it a good thing that 36,000 more Americans lost their jobs in February,” said Brian Walsh, a spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
By: Politico Staff
March 8, 2010 06:04 AM EST
Rep. Eric Massa (D-N.Y.) says the House ethics committee is investigating him for inappropriate comments he made to a male staffer on New Year's Eve — and that he's the victim of a power play by Democratic leaders who want him out of Congress because he's a "no" vote on health care reform.
"Mine is now the deciding vote on the health care bill," Massa, who on Friday announced his intention to resign, said during a long monologue on radio station WKPQ. "And this administration and this House leadership have said, quote-unquote, they will stop at nothing to pass this health care bill. And now they've gotten rid of me and it will pass. You connect the dots."
By HUBBLE SMITH
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL
After posting small gains over the past few months, the Southern Nevada Index of Leading Economic Indicators tailed off in February to 125.78, indicating that local economic recovery is at least four to six months away, a UNLV economics professor said.
The index fell from 126.38 in January and from 127.23 in February 2009 as six of 10 category series showed negative change from a year ago.
BY DOCTOR ZERO
What made Bunning’s lonely stand “spectacularly bad politics?” After all, the government is painfully broke, and in debt up to its eyeballs. Americans are nervous about the dark mass of unsustainable debt lurking in their future, waiting to devour their children. The public sector has been expanding like mad, hiring armies of lavishly compensated government workers, even as the private sector suffers double-digit unemployment. Why would it be politically unwise for Bunning to take a stand against ten billion dollars in further deficit spending, to retain non-essential government employees?
Apologies to the Washington Post, but I’ve done a bit of creative editing to their report. Bunning was actually said to be standing against a bill to extend unemployment benefits. The payoff for government employees and rural satellite TV was bundled into the bill, as explained by Jed Skillman at the American Thinker. These expensive barnacles are never mentioned in contemptuous media reports of the evil pirate captain Filibuster Bunning, and his brutal seizure of the good ship Unemployment Extension… her hold filled with children starved by a heartless free market that cruelly refuses to employ them.
The EPA, which is threatening to regulate carbon emissions if Congress won’t, is facing legal heat from states that say new regulations will kill jobs at the worst possible time.
President Obama's proposed budget would add more than $9.7 trillion to the national debt over the next decade, congressional budget analysts said Friday. Proposed tax cuts for the middle class account for nearly a third of that shortfall.
The 10-year outlook released by the nonpartisanCongressional Budget Office is somewhat gloomier than White House projections, which found that Obama's budget request would produce deficits that would add about $8.5 trillion to the national debt by 2020.
Greg Sargent
Senior Senate GOP leadership aides have settled on a new strategy that, they hope, will stall or kill the Dem health reform push: They are going to use the arcane “Byrd rule” to try to bleed the reconciliation fix to death and ensure that it never passes.
Senior GOP aides have been studying the rule book in recent days, and they think they have a game plan. Here’s how they hope it will work.
(Reuters) - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Saturday called the September 11 attacks on the United States a "big fabrication" that was used to justify the U.S. war on terrorism, the official IRNA news agency reported.
By Shawn Tully
(Fortune Magazine) -- On the eve of President Barack Obama's winter health-care summit, Rep. Paul Ryan is dining at Talay Thai, a no-frills restaurant with metal chairs and Formica tables. On this frigid evening, Ryan strolled coatless to Talay -- "I'm from Wisconsin!" he says -- from his cramped Capitol Hill office, where tonight, as on most nights, he'll sleep on a cot.
Such frugality is fitting for a politician who, as he sips ice water, frets that America is "sleep-walking toward a debt crisis." Ryan tells me: "Within a few years a sale of government bonds will fail. The capital markets will go crazy, and the Fed and Treasury will run to Capitol Hill demanding a giant bailout. Adding Obamacare would make the crisis go deeper and arrive faster."
PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan said his country had been accused of a crime it did not commit, adding the resolution would harm Turkish-US relations. Ankara has recalled its ambassador to Washington for consultations and says it is considering other responses. The White House had urged against the vote. Armenia welcomed the outcome.
by
In my entire career, I have never been as confounded as I am over President Obama and the Democratic leadership's obsession with a piece of legislation that not one major national poll has shown to be popular. A quick glance at this week's surveys shows about a 10 percent spread between those who favor the latest health care legislation and those who oppose it.
In the world of politics, that's a blowout. So I have to ask, why are the president and the leaders of Congress willing to see their entire party and a multitude of other policy proposals go down in flames over something that the public can't stand?
By Rex Nutting, MarketWatch
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- U.S. nonfarm payrolls declined for the 25th time in the past 26 months, falling by 36,000 in February to a seasonally adjusted 129.5 million, the Labor Department estimated Friday.
The nation's jobless rate was steady at 9.7% as the number of people employed rose by 308,000, according to the household survey.
Rather than a post-partisan olive branch to congressional Republicans and the American public, President Obama’s latest health-care speech was a declaration of war. He’s more than willing to use a 51-vote reconciliation majority to jam through a roughly $2 trillion health-care plan that amounts to a government takeover of nearly one-fifth of the economy. He’s prepared to stick Uncle Sam right in the middle of the age-old relationship between patients and doctors, and doctors and hospitals, all while subjugating the private health-care insurance system to the status of a government-run utility -- without bending the cost curve downward.
(CNN) -- Several people were ejected from a bus when it crashed on an Arizona interstate Friday, killing six passengers, the Arizona Department of Public Safety said.
The wreck occurred at 5:27 a.m. on Interstate 10 south of Phoenix when the commercial bus rear-ended a pickup truck, according to Arizona Department of Public Safety spokesman Bart Graves.
The bus driver lost control and veered to the left, then to the right and off the road, rolling over at least once while several people were ejected from the bus, another Public Safety spokesman, Robert Bailey, told CNN sister network HLN.
Two men and four women died, the spokesmen said.
Watch KPHO-TV's slide show from the scene
A study released Tuesday by the American Consumer Institute contains some bad news for proponents of net neutrality. Whereas advocates of “open internet” rules often argue that the institution of the policy is necessary to preserve innovation and would benefit consumers, the study finds that “new Internet regulations, including those now under consideration by the FCC, would restrict technology advances, innovation and job growth.”
By JAMES HAUG
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL
Student performance on first-semester math tests is still cause for embarrassment for the Clark County School District, but officials are pleased to see some progress since the disastrous results of 2007-08, when high school students achieved pass rates of just 9 percent in Algebra 1 and 12 percent in Geometry.
First-semester results on the district tests for 2009-10 show 21 percent of high school students passed the Algebra 1 test while 43 percent passed the exam for Geometry.
Freshman Rep. Eric Massa announced Wednesday that he will retire at the end of his term after being diagnosed with cancer but the ethics committee received a referral for "allegations of misconduct" against the New York lawmaker nearly a month ago.
Freshman New York Rep. Eric Massa will retire at the end of his term after being diagnosed with cancer, but is facing "allegations of misconduct" that reportedly involve sexual harassment against a male staffer.
By Richard N. Velotta
For 25 years, UNLV’s Thomas & Mack Center has been home to the NFR. Last year, its 10 nights of competition posted an attendance of 174,000, including an estimated 35,000 out-of-towners, delivering a much-needed economic boost of $50 million during an otherwise slow time of the year.
The Cowboys know the NFR brings in big bucks, of course. They also know “the Super Bowl of rodeos” would be a particularly plum event in a part of the country famous for 10-gallon hats and boots. In fact, the first three NFRs were in Dallas beginning in 1959.
Maybe that's because there were so many flaws in the basic idea. Or maybe it was because strict gun control makes even less sense at the municipal level than it does on a broader scale. At any rate, the policy turned out to be a comprehensive dud.
In the years following its ban, Washington did not generate a decline in gun murders. In fact, the number of killings rose by 156 percent -- at a time when murders nationally increased by just 32 percent. For a while, the city vied regularly for the title of murder capital of America.
Chicago followed a similar course. In the decade after it outlawed handguns, murders jumped by 41 percent, compared to an 18 percent rise in the entire United States.
As more Americans, especially the unemployed, come to rely on government to take care of them, we risk losing our independence.
The Washington Times reports American reliance on government is at an all-time high. This is not our Founders' America. We seem to have declined from a "can-do" spirit, to "can't do" -- at least without government -- and soon, unless we change our ways, "won't do."
As I listened to the same tone-deaf talking points from the congressional Democrats at the White House health care summit last week, I was reminded of the classic excuse politicians use about their comments being taken out of context. In this case, and many others, the Democrats are suffering from the exact opposite problem--their arguments and actions are not taking in the context of the times. Indeed, over the past 14 months they have continually been trying to jam a square political peg into a round historical hole. The result has been a disastrous fit with the public mood and a deepening credibility gap.
Tonight, Barack Obama will host ten House Democrats who voted against the health care bill in November at the White House; he's obviously trying to persuade them to switch their votes to yes. One of the ten is Jim Matheson of Utah. The White House just sent out a press release announcing that today President Obama nominated Matheson's brother Scott M. Matheson, Jr. to the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.
“Scott Matheson is a distinguished candidate for the Tenth Circuit court,” President Obama said. “Both his legal and academic credentials are impressive and his commitment to judicial integrity is unwavering. I am honored to nominate this lifelong Utahn to the federal bench.”
Sen. Jim DeMint
You'd think the Obama administration is busy enough controlling the banks, insurance companies and automakers, but thanks to whistleblowers at the Department of the Interior, we now learn they're planning to increase their control over energy-rich land in the West.
A secret administration memo has surfaced revealing plans for the federal government to seize more than 10 million acres from Montana to New Mexico, halting job- creating activities like ranching, forestry, mining and energy development. Worse, this land grab would dry up tax revenue that's essential for funding schools, firehouses and community centers.
President Obama could enact the plans in this memo with just the stroke of a pen, without any input from the communities affected by it.
At a time when our national unemployment rate is 9.7 percent, it is unbelievable anyone would be looking to stop job-creating energy enterprises, yet that's exactly what's happening.
by Jenny Marlar
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Gallup Daily tracking finds that 19.8% of the U.S. workforce was underemployed in February, on par with January's 19.9%
"Hope for finding a job remained flat in February: 40% of the underemployed were hopeful that they would find a job in the next four weeks, compared to 39% in January."
These results are based on February interviews with more than 19,000 adults in the U.S. workforce, aged 18 and older. Gallup classifies respondents as "employed" if they are employed full time or are employed part time but do not want to work full time. Gallup classifies respondents as "underemployed" if they are employed part time but want to work full time or are unemployed. Unemployed respondents are not employed, looking for work, and available for work. February's 19.8% underemployed estimate includes 10.6% who are unemployed and 9.2% who are working part time but wanting full-time employment (neither estimate is seasonally adjusted, and both are based on adults 18 and older). Both figures are similar to January's estimates.
Wednesday, March 03, 2010
At least 50 same-sex couples were lined up to apply for marriage licenses when city offices opened Wednesday, the day the unions became legal in the nation's capitol.
Cheering erupted from the crowd when the first couple signed in at the city's marriage bureau inside the Moultrie courthouse, just blocks from the U.S. Capitol. Because of a mandatory waiting period of three business days, however, couples won't actually be able to marry in the District of Columbia until March 9.
Court officials have been told to expect up to 200 people They plan to have five people taking applications instead of the usual two.
By: Charles Postel
March 3, 2010 05:24 AM EST
When David Broder praised Sarah Palin’s speech at the National Tea Party Convention as “perfect-pitch populism,” real Populists were surely spinning in their graves.
In the 1890s, American farmers and other activists rocked corporate power in a populist revolt. Now, the Washington Post columnist has passed the populist mantle to Palin. If they could, the Populists would protest this misuse of their name.
But why do political analysts insist on using the word “populism” to describe conservative activism? Why should we care? Because it makes hash of both history and our current political conflicts.
By Jason Horowitz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, March 2, 2010; A01
Rahm Emanuel is officially a Washington caricature. He's the town's resident leviathan, a bullying, bruising White House chief of staff who is a prime target for the failings of the Obama administration.
But a contrarian narrative is emerging: Emanuel is a force of political reason within the White House and could have helped the administration avoid its current bind if the president had heeded his advice on some of the most sensitive subjects of the year: health-care reform, jobs and trying alleged terrorists in civilian courts.
By: Andy Barr and Luke Freedman
March 2, 2010 05:32 PM EST
In his new book, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney accuses President Barack Obama of providing “kindling” to the “anti-American fires burning all across the globe.”
The book “No Apology: The Case for American Greatness” hit shelves Tuesday, and in it Romney focuses much of his time attacking Obama’s foreign policy.
“Never before in American history has its president gone before so many foreign audiences to apologize for so many American misdeeds, both real and imagined,” Romney writes of Obama’s overseas trips. “It is his way of signaling to foreign countries and foreign leaders that their dislike for America is something he understands and that is, at least in part, understandable.”
“There are anti-American fires burning all across the globe; President Obama’s words are like kindling to them,” the former GOP presidential candidate adds.
By: Glenn Thrush and Manu Raju
March 3, 2010 05:06 AM EST
Last March, nervous House Republicans wanted to propose a detailed alternative to President Barack Obama’s budget to prove they didn’t deserve to be called the “party of no.” They hit a genteel brick wall named Mitch McConnell.
The Senate minority leader, quarterback of a GOP resistance movement that has bottled up much of Obama’s legislative agenda, argued against putting out any comprehensive Republican plan, according to several people close to the discussions.
By: Jonathan Martin
March 3, 2010 04:36 AM EST
DRIFTWOOD, Texas – Gov. Rick Perry’s 21-point thrashing of Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison in Tuesday’s GOP gubernatorial primary offers the most vivid illustration yet of the potency of an anti-Washington message in an already volatile political environment.
Perry, who will now run for his third full term against former Houston Mayor Bill White, lashed Hutchison as an earmark-and-bailout-loving Beltway creature while railing against a Democratic president he portrayed as a socialist bent on trampling states’ rights.
Yet the same anti-Washington sentiment that fueled Perry’s success failed to surge down the ballot as every House incumbent on the ballot won re-nomination without even the bother of a runoff.
So just what did the results from Texas’s primary reveal? Here are four key take-aways from the Lone Star State:
Could Rick Perry be the Tea Party standard bearer in 2012?
underscore Perry's message about her ties to Washington.
By ADAM LIPTAK
Published: March 2, 2010
WASHINGTON — An unusually intense Supreme Court argument Tuesday showed that the justices remain bitterly divided about the meaning and scope of the Second Amendment. And it suggested that the five-justice majority in the 2008 decision that first identified an individual right to keep and bear arms was prepared to take another major step in subjecting gun control laws to constitutional scrutiny.
Related
Tailgating at the Supreme Court, Without the Cars (March 3, 2010)
Times Topic: Gun Control
The case the justices considered Tuesday was a sequel to the blockbuster 2008 decision, District of Columbia v. Heller.
The Heller case placed limits on what the federal government could do to regulate guns, and the issue before the court now was whether the Second Amendment applies to state and local laws as well. It seemed plain that at least the five justices in the Heller majority would say yes without reservation.
How big will abortion become in the final House vote on ObamaCare? Even NPR now reports that it has arguably become the biggest issue in adopting the Senate version of the health-care overhaul. The House version passed with the public option and with the Stupak amendment, giving progressives and moderates an uneasy draw in November. Neither exist in the Senate version, and while both factions in the Democratic caucus are unhappy about that, the abortion problem may be too difficult to surmount.
By Michelle Malkin •
On Friday, SEIU thug-in-chief Andy Stern published a screed titled, “Working Women and Men Will Not Be Silenced by Right Wing Attack Dogs; We Will Win the Change America Needs.” He carped about “an insidious and coordinated effort on the part of the extreme right to target individuals and grassroots community groups as a way to silence the voices of women and men who have suffered the most under 8 years of right wing policies. These extremists will attempt to shut down and shout down anyone with a different point of view.”
I’ve told you before about Stern’s operating philosophy: “[W]e prefer to use the power of persuasion, but if that doesn’t work we use the persuasion of power.” You can find my entire SEIU archives here.
While Stern assails “greedy CEOS,” he groomed his own team of labor management thieves. Here’s a closer look inside Andy Stern’s culture of corruption. Know your enemy:
Excerpted from Culture of Corruption, “Chapter 7: SEIU – Look for the union label”
Andy Stern rallied the Illinois delegation to the 2008 Democratic National Convention in August 2008 with an impassioned salute to the working man Flanking Stern on stage at the Denver celebration: Chicago political machine kingpins Rahm Emanuel and Richard Daley. Stern roared about “rebalancing power between wealth and work” to “make sure everyone shares in the wealth of a growing economy.” Echoing Obama’s 2007 speech to the SEIU political action conference, union boss Stern condemned the old way of doing business and called on American to “turn the page” on behalf of hard-working Americans and their families.
UNLV will offer yet another round of buyouts, will eliminate departments and jobs, and will further reduce support services for students in an effort to trim an estimated $9u2002million more from its budget, the university's president told a huge gathering Tuesday. "We will lose some departments," President Neal Smatresk told more than 500 people at a town hall meeting about state-imposed budget cuts. Many workers in those departments will lose their jobs.
Rep. John Fleming (La.), M.D.
Over 3 million Americans in all 50 states have offered their support for my health care resolution [PDF] which requires any Member of Congress who votes for the government takeover of health care to use the system as well. Americans are adamant about the resolution’s demand for accountability on the part of my fellow Congressional lawmakers. Right now, we’ve got 104 co-sponsors in the House but it hasn’t received a committee hearing or a vote.
By Philip Klein on 2.26.10 @ 1:06PM
President Obama has appointed Andy Stern, chairman of the Service Employees International Union, to serve on the fiscal commision, another example of the administration's efforts to reward its allies in big labor.
Ivan Osorio had a detailed profile on Stern's growing power in Washington in the December issue of Labor Watch.
SEE VIDEO OF CNN INVESTIGATION INTO STERN ILLEGAL ACCESS TO PRESIDENT OBAMA. CLICK THE "MORE INFORMATION LINK" TO VIEW CNN INVESTIGATION
Danny Tarkanian added his name Tuesday to what's becoming a crowded Republican field of candidates hoping to unseat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.
As of Tuesday evening, five Republicans had signed up to chase their party's nomination, but the size of the field didn't bother Tarkanian.
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"Of course not," he said. "It's really, 'Who are the people who are going to take a significant amount of votes?'"
by
Not surprisingly, a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey released last Friday revealed that 56 percent of Americans think the federal government has become so large and powerful that it poses an immediate threat to their rights and freedoms.
Particularly apropos here is the feds' health care violation of the 10th Amendment, which is part of our Bill of Rights and was ratified Dec. 15, 1791. The amendment says, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
