In Noblesville, Ind., Thursday, Sarah Palin left without signing copies of her book for about 300 people who were given wristbands and waited six hours for her. Video showed the crowd chanting "sign our books!" amid cries that she was a quitter as her bus prepared to depart. "She left 300 folks standing in the rain and cold without explanation or even an address at exit," one crowd member posted on Palin's Facebook group. Read More
The U.S. Postal Service is dropping a popular national program begun in 1954 in the small Alaska town of North Pole, where volunteers open and respond to thousands of letters addressed to Santa each year. Replies come with North Pole postmarks.
Jim Comey and Jack Goldsmith: Reasonable minds can disagree about Attorney General Eric Holder's decision to prosecute Khalid Sheik Mohammed and four other alleged Sept. 11 perpetrators in a Manhattan federal court. But some prominent criticisms are exaggerated, and others place undue faith in military commissions as an alternative to civilian trials. Read More
The new national poll from Public Policy Polling (D) has an astonishing number about paranoia among the GOP base: Republicans do not think President Obama actually won the 2008 election -- instead, ACORN stole it. Read More
Influential US lawmakers on Thursday called for levying a new income tax to pay for the war in Afghanistan, warning its costs pose a mortal threat to efforts like a sweeping health care overhaul. "Regardless of whether one favors the war or not, if it is to be fought, it ought to be paid for," the lawmakers, all prominent Democratic allies of President Obama, said in a joint statement on the Share The Sacrifice Act of 2010. Read More
Agents with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service raided Gibson's guitar factory in Nashville Tuesday in connection with an issue involving harvested wood. There are accusations the company has been illegally harvesting endangered species of rosewood and ebony wood from Madagascar, sending it to Germany and then importing it to the United States. Read More
Bruce Bartlett: The human capacity for self-delusion never ceases to amaze me, so it shouldn't surprise me that so many Republicans seem to genuinely believe that they are the party of fiscal responsibility. Perhaps at one time they were, but those days are long gone. This fact became blindingly obvious to me six years ago this month when a Republican president and a Republican Congress enacted the Medicare drug benefit, which former U.S. Comptroller General David Walker has called "the most fiscally irresponsible piece of legislation since the 1960s."
Four people have been arrested in Peru on suspicion of killing dozens of people in order to sell their fat and tissue for cosmetic uses in Europe. The extracted liquidized fat fetched $15,000 a liter and police suspect it was sold on to companies in Europe.
A conservative faction has begun forming a new Lutheran church body separate from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America in response to an August vote allowing sexually active gay and lesbian pastors to serve as clergy.
A woman who claimed she was raped in 2005 while working in Iraq for a former Halliburton subsidiary has been awarded nearly $3 million by an arbitrator to settle her case. Tracy Barker had sued U.S. contractor KBR Inc., its former parent company Halliburton and several affiliates in May 2007, claiming she was sexually attacked by a State Department employee while working as a civilian contractor in the southern Iraqi city of Basra. A federal judge in Houston had dismissed Barker's lawsuit in January 2008, ruling she had to abide by an employment agreement she signed that said any claims she made against the companies would have to be settled through arbitration and not the courts.
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Ten large U.S. companies paid senior executives a total of $350 million in the few years prior to dropping traditional pension plans for employees, a Congressional watchdog said on Thursday. Forty executives in a range of industries received the compensation in base salaries, bonuses, severance and perks in the five years before the pension plans failed, the non-partisan Government Accountability Office said in a new report. Read More
A week after abruptly quitting his longtime job on CNN, Lou Dobbs said on Thursday he is considering career options including possible runs for the White House or U.S. Senate. "I am ruling nothing out," he said.
A week after admitting to running old crowd footage that exaggerated the size of a health reform bill protest, Fox News ran old footage in a report on crowds greeting Sarah Palin on her book tour. The network again claimed a "production error," but critics are asking whether the news organization is intentionally manipulating its audience. Read More
Alexandra Kerry, 36, the daughter of former presidential candidate John Kerry, was arrested in Los Angeles early Thursday after being stopped on suspicion of driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs, police said. Read More
A 15-year-old boy who was killed by his father in an execution style killing spent the last moments of his life pleading, "No, Daddy! No!" Jamar Pinkney Jr. was shot in the head Monday by his 37-year-old father, Jamar Pinkney Sr., who allegedly made the teen strip his clothes off and kneel in a vacant lot before he was killed by a single bullet. The boy's mother, Lazette Cherry, told the Detroit Free Press that Pinkney Sr., showed up at her Highland Park, Mich., home after she told him that their son had made a startling confession. According to Cherry, the 15-year-old had admitted to having "inappropriate contact" with his 3-year-old half-sister.
