Senate Democrats sealed a 60-vote majority needed to advance health care legislation Saturday ahead of an evening showdown with Republicans eager to doom the bill and inflict a punishing defeat on President Barack Obama. Two final holdouts, Sens. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, announced in speeches a few hours apart on the Senate floor they would vote to clear the way for what is expected to be a bruising, full-scale health care debate after Thanksgiving. Read More
President Barack Obama's choice for a top job in the Treasury Department did not disclose all of her late tax payments until she was repeatedly prodded by Senate investigators, a congressional report issued Wednesday said. Obama's nominee for undersecretary of the Treasury for international affairs, Lael Brainard, is the fifth presidential nominee to reveal tax issues during the congressional vetting process.
Scientists moved Saturday to prepare the world's largest atom smasher for exploring the depths of matter after successfully restarting the $10 billion machine following more than a year of repairs. Later Saturday the organizers decided to test all the protection equipment while there still is a very low intensity proton beam circulating in the collider at 11,000 times a second. The tests will take 10 days, Gillies said. "We've still got some way to go before physics can begin, but with this milestone we're well on the way," CERN Director General Rolf Heuer said.
After Rush Limbaugh mentioned Alex Jones' fringe news site PrisonPlanet.Com on the air Thursday, his web site has scrubbed the transcript to remove the comment and deleted all links to the site. "What caused Limbaugh to order the material removed?" asks Paul Joseph Watson on InfoWars, another Jones site. "Our guess is that he was probably bombarded with e mails from the legions of virulently retarded Neo-Cons that make up the audience of phony right-wing websites like Free Republic, on which all Alex Jones material is aggressively banned."
A place to discuss the stories that aren't making news, ask questions, complain bitterly about this site and its members, or just screw around. The only rule: Be nice or be funny.
Four North Carolina patients at a single hospital tested positive for a type of swine flu that is resistant to Tamiflu -- and three have died. All four cases were very ill patients in an isolated cancer unit, and it is believed they all caught the flu while at the hospital, said Dr. Daniel Sexton, professor of medicine and director of the Duke Infection Control Outreach Network.
Irvin Rosenfeld, a 56-year-old stockbroker from Fort Lauderdale, Fla. will smoke his 115,000th marijuana cigarette Friday, a possible world record, and he can thank the U.S. government for his supply. "They grow it for me," Rosenfeld said. Read More
A 39-year-old Southern California man has been arrested for misdemeanor child annoyance after allegedly paying a teenager $31 to spit in his face. The Ventura County Sheriff's Department says Charles Hersel was arrested Wednesday in a sting operation at a mall in Thousand Oaks. He's free from jail pending a court hearing. A sheriff's statement says Westlake High School students claimed Hersel paid them to yell profanities, spit and slap him in the face. Several also claimed he offered them cash to urinate and defecate on him. A motive wasn't clear. Read More
It seems that the Brett Favre-Green Bay Packers saga is such a worldwide phenomenon that it's being used by detainees in American military camps. According to a military official, detainees at a Wisconsin National Guard camp in Iraq are using Brett Favre as a manner of getting at the guard troops there. "They know Favre by name," said First Lieutenant Tim Boehnen, who is from New Richmond, Wis. "One of the big words they know now is shenanigan. They'll constantly talk about 'Favre shenanigans,' 'He's so good for the Vikings,' and 'The Packers have got to really feel bad about that one.'"
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."
