The White House is reportedly considering whether to allow the indefinite detention without trial of some of the detainees held at the US prison in Guantanamo Bay.
The Washington Post newspaper reported on Saturday that the Obama administration was "drafting" an executive order that could see some suspects kept in confinement in the US or elsewhere.
An unnamed administration official confirmed to the AFP news agency that internal deliberations were taking place on how to deal with those inmates that they felt could not be released or tried in civilian courts.
In a statement on Friday, Mitch McConnell, the senate Republican leader, said that any plans to transfer prisoners to the US or hold them there would only be approved once details of how they would work had been provided.
"Bipartisan majorities of congress and the American people oppose closing Guantanamo without a plan, and several important questions remain unanswered," he said.
McConnell said Obama had demanded the transfers "before the administration even has a place to put the detainees who are housed there, any plan for military commissions, or any articulated plan for indefinite detention".
There are 229 detainees still being held at Guantanamo, but Eric Holder, the US attorney-general, told congress last week that fewer than 25 per cent, or 60, were likely to be charged, while 50 others have been cleared for transfer or release.
Officials say that some of them cannot be prosecuted because evidence against them is either classified, was provided by foreign intelligence services or was obtained through harsh interrogation techniques.
Civil rights advocates have said that any order permitting indefinite detention would see the Obama administration returning to the harmful policies of George Bush, his predecessor.
"Prolonged imprisonment without trial is exactly the Guantanamo system that the president promised to shut down," Shayana Kadidal, a senior attorney for the Centre for Constitutional Rights, said in a statement.
"If the last eight years have taught us anything, it's that executive overreach, left to continue unchecked for many years, has a tendency to harden into precedent."
Source: Al Jazeera
Kudos for the Obama administration for realizing some of the Gitmo “guests” are dangerous terrorists but closing Gitmo is a mistake.
Since Bernard Madoff is apparently not going to Club Fed, he might went to be sent to Club Gitmo instead. He would have live with his cable TV having the Al Jazeera channel on it.
H. R. 1084
To require the Federal Communications Commission to prescribe a standard to preclude commercials from being broadcast at louder volumes than the program material they accompany. This Act may be cited as the `Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act' .
Within one year after the date of enactment of this Act , the Federal Communications Commission shall prescribe pursuant to the Communications Act of 1934 (47 U.S.C. 151 et seq.) a regulation that provides, in connection with any video programming that is broadcast or that is distributed by any multichannel video programming distributor, that--
(1) advertisements accompanying such video programming shall not be excessively noisy or strident;
(2) such advertisements shall not be presented at modulation levels substantially higher than the program material that such advertisements accompany; and
(3) the average maximum loudness of such advertisements shall not be substantially higher than the average maximum loudness of the program material that such advertisements accompany.
Source: Thomas LOC
For years, people have been complaining that commercials were louder than the regular shows. Some regular shows get pretty loud so how do you set the “correct” volume level?
And until Billy Mays death, this bill was no longer being talked about. For this week, talk shows have brought HR1084 up again.
Since ptichman like Billy Mays yell, will reducing the volume help?
“I once again encourage Gov. Pawlenty to respect the votes of his constituents and the decisions of his state’s highest court,” Reid continued. “He should put politics aside, follow his state’s laws and finally sign the certificate that will bring this episode to an end.”
With the Senate on recess, next week is the earliest that Franken could get sworn in as senator.
“The Minnesota Secretary of state has to certify the election and the governor needs to sign the certification,” said Jim Manley, a spokesman for Reid. “Once the proper papers are received by the Secretary of the senate we can arrange his swearing in.”
In its 32-page decision, the court picked apart Coleman’s legal claims. The decision rejected two key constitutional claims: that Coleman’s due-process rights were violated and that the varying ways that election workers handled absentee ballots violated the Constitution’s equal-protection clause.
Source: Policito
So the Senate gets a new jackass er democrat. Frankestein’s stand-up comedy act wasn’t funny but I expect him to give us a whole bunch of laughs for the next two years.
The Supreme Court today narrowly ruled in favor of white firefighters in New Haven, Conn., who said they were denied promotions because of their race, reversing a decision by Judge Sonia Sotomayor and others that had come to play a large role in the consideration of her nomination for the high court.
The city had thrown out the results of a promotion test because no African Americans and only two Hispanics would have qualified for promotions. It said it feared a lawsuit from minorities under federal laws that said such "disparate impacts" on test results could be used to show discrimination.
In effect, the court was deciding when avoiding potential discrimination against one group amounted to actual discrimination against another.
The case then went to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, where Sotomayor and judges Robert Sack and Rosemary S. Pooler heard the appeal. Oral arguments lasted an hour, with Sotomayor leading the questioning, as is her reputation. But instead of issuing a detailed and signed opinion, the panel said in a brief summary that, although it was "not unsympathetic" to the plight of the white firefighters, it unanimously affirmed the lower court's decision for "reasons stated in the thorough, thoughtful, and well-reasoned opinion."
Kennedy said the standard for whether an employer may discard a test is whether there is a strong reason to the employer to believe that the test is flawed in a way that discriminates against minorities, not just by looking at the results.
In New Haven's case, "there is no evidence -- let alone the required strong basis in evidence -- that the tests were flawed because they were not job-related or because other, equally valid and less discriminatory tests were available to the city," Kennedy wrote.
Source: Washington Post
Another of Sotomayor flawed rulings had to be overturned. Some say, in this case, her feelings got in the way of applying the law.
While the case had a 5-4 ruling. Sotomayor's ruling was overturned by 9-0. Footnotes of the minority shows that they said Sotomayor's judicial reasoning was flawed.
But as a SCOTUS Justice, there will be nobody to correct her flawed empathic rulings. So what if empathy causes the US Constitution to be destroyed.
As he promised last year, Barack Obama has brought climate change and healthcare reform to the centre of the nation’s attention. As well as evangelising, he is pressing Congress to act. Last week the House of Representatives passed the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill to curb carbon emissions, a measure that, if enacted, would touch every part of the US economy. Both House and Senate have drafted far-reaching healthcare bills, with stunning price tags.
Mr Obama aims to keep his promises, which is admirable. Unfortunately, there is a problem. This is not, as many Republicans argue, that neither issue requires forthright action. Both do. The problem is that the bills emerging from Congress are bad and Mr Obama does not seem to mind.
Source: Financial Times
Instead of Superman call “up, up and away”, some leftist believe Obama’s call is “up, up and nevermind, I need to get out of the Oval Office. Let’s go for burgers”.
The climate change scam bill doesn’t need immediate action. It doesn’t need action ever.
The healthcare issue doesn’t need the socialized medicine solution. It needs things like protecting doctors and hospitals from bogus malpractice suits from greedy lawyers and patients.
The Air Force has successfully launched an unarmed Minuteman 3 intercontinental ballistic missile from the California coast to an area in the Pacific Ocean some 4,200 miles away.
Lt. Raymond Geoffroy says the ICBM was launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base at 3:01 a.m. Monday and carried three unarmed re-entry vehicles to their targets near the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands.
The missile, configured with a National Nuclear Security Administration Test Assembly, was launched under the direction of the 576th Flight Test Squadron.
The Air Force says the launch was an operational test to check the weapon system's reliability and accuracy, and the data will be used by United States Strategic Command planners and Department of Energy laboratories.
Source: CBS 8
The North Korean nutbag said they would test a missile towards Hawaii on the 4th of July. Our nutbag sends a test missile at them first.
H. R. 3030
To establish pilot projects under the Medicare Program to provide incentives for home health agencies to utilize home monitoring and communications technologies. This Act may be cited as the `Fostering Independence Through Technology Act of 2009'.
Not later than 9 months after the date of enactment of this Act, the Secretary of Health and Human Services (in this section referred to as the `Secretary') shall conduct pilot projects under title XVIII of the Social Security Act for the purpose of providing incentives to home health agencies to utilize home monitoring and communications technologies that--
(A) enhance health outcomes for Medicare beneficiaries; and
(B) reduce expenditures under such title.
Source: Thomas LOC
They know Obama’s socialized healthcare is going to cost BIG bucks so they are already looking for ways to cut costs. And keeping Medicare patients out of the hospital and treating people remotely saves money.
Or the Medicare patient is already home but you don’t actually have to have a live person check to see if the patient is okay.
For rural areas and if monitored 24/7, it might give better service.
The US state department has appointed its first special representative to Muslim communities to help carry out President Barack Obama's strategy of reaching out to the Muslim world. The choice of Farah Pandith was disclosed in an internal memo to state department employees on Saturday.
Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, said Pandith would play a leading role in US efforts to "engage Muslims around the world" and to combat negative views of the United States abroad.
The state department said Pandith, who is a Muslim, would be responsible for helping US efforts to "engage with Muslims around the world on a people-to-people and organisational level".
Source: Al Jazeera
I checked some Islamic forums for their response. They say it will make no difference. Some say Obama is just the next term of the Bush Jr. Presidency.
The Islamic extremists most likely see this as a sign of weakness. And since they concider women as second class citizens, will they see Panith as an insult?
At least, Pandith seems to be against the extremists and not one of them.
Detroit's Big Three auto makers are struggling through their worst collective crisis in more than 70 years. What better time to bring out cars that evoke a happier past -- before Japanese competition, oil-price shocks and the federal government spoiled everything?
For the first time in nearly 40 years, all three of Detroit's auto makers are offering serious muscle cars: big, high-powered, rear-wheel-drive coupes priced to sell in volume.
In May, the Camaro outsold Honda Motor Co.'s new hybrid, the Insight, by roughly two to one, and Chevy dealers had just 28 days' worth on the lots at the end of the month, according to Autodata Corp. By Chevy standards, that's a sellout. Meanwhile, GM last week said it would kill the slow-selling hybrid version of its Chevy Malibu sedan. These are cautionary signals for the Obama administration's efforts to shift GM's product mix toward smaller, more-efficient vehicles.
Wall Street Journal
The article talks about going with smaller engines and using a sound tube to amplify engine sounds in the cockpit so it sounds more powerful than it is. This is wrong but what do expect from the Obama regime.
In addition to SUVs and big Pickup Trucks, America still wants to buy muscle cars not Obama’s microcars.
Over the coming days a curiously revealing event will be taking place in Copenhagen. Top of the agenda at a meeting of the Polar Bear Specialist Group (set up under the International Union for the Conservation of Nature/Species Survival Commission) will be the need to produce a suitably scary report on how polar bears are being threatened with extinction by man-made global warming.
This is one of a steady drizzle of events planned to stoke up alarm in the run-up to the UN's major conference on climate change in Copenhagen next December. But one of the world's leading experts on polar bears has been told to stay away from this week's meeting, specifically because his views on global warming do not accord with those of the rest of the group.
Mitchell Taylor has been researching the status and management of polar bears in Canada and around the Arctic Circle for 30 years, as both an academic and a government employee. More than once since 2006 he has made headlines by insisting that polar bear numbers, far from decreasing, are much higher than they were 30 years ago. Of the 19 different bear populations, almost all are increasing or at optimum levels, only two have for local reasons modestly declined.
Dr Taylor agrees that the Arctic has been warming over the last 30 years. But he ascribes this not to rising levels of CO2 – as is dictated by the computer models of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and believed by his PBSG colleagues – but to currents bringing warm water into the Arctic from the Pacific and the effect of winds blowing in from the Bering Sea.
He has also observed, however, how the melting of Arctic ice, supposedly threatening the survival of the bears, has rocketed to the top of the warmists' agenda as their most iconic single cause. The famous photograph of two bears standing forlornly on a melting iceberg was produced thousands of times by Al Gore, the WWF and others as an emblem of how the bears faced extinction – until last year the photographer, Amanda Byrd, revealed that the bears, just off the Alaska coast, were in no danger. Her picture had nothing to do with global warming and was only taken because the wind-sculpted ice they were standing on made such a striking image.
Source: UK Telegraph
Once again non-believers are excluded from meetings sponsored by the Church of Global Warming.
As far as the polar bear go, they can swim 200 miles at a time so it would be hard for them to get stranded.
Past Ice Ages have been associated with the ocean currents stopping and no longer bringing warm water from the equators. The ocean currents have stalled a couple times in the past century. Dr. Taylor mentions changes in the ocean currents. Prepare for the next ice age.
Only four percent (4%) of voters nationwide agree with the federal Food and Drug Administration that the popular breakfast cereal Cheerios should be regulated as a drug. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 87% disagree and oppose such regulation.
Survey participants were told that the FDA made its claim because the cereal is advertised for use in the prevention, mitigation and treatment of disease (see question wording).
A letter from the FDA to General Mills, the makers of Cheerios, said the company's advertising makes "unauthorized health claims" which means the cereal should be regulated as a drug. As a result, the FDA declared that Cheerios "may not be legally marketed with the above claims in the United States without an approved new drug application." The government agency added that "enforcement action may include seizure of violative products and/or injunction against the manufacturers and distributors of violative products."
When told of Cheerios' claim that it can help reduce cholesterol, just three percent (3%) of voters say the cereal should be removed from the grocery shelves and sold only in pharmacies.
Source: Rasmussen Reports
Many foods help reduce cholesterol. Should they all now come under the control of the FDA?
Steve Fielding recently asked the Obama administration to reassure him on the science of man-made global warming. When the administration proved unhelpful, Mr. Fielding decided to vote against climate-change legislation.
If you haven't heard of this politician, it's because he's a member of the Australian Senate. As the U.S. House of Representatives prepares to pass a climate-change bill, the Australian Parliament is preparing to kill its own country's carbon-emissions scheme. Why? A growing number of Australian politicians, scientists and citizens once again doubt the science of human-caused global warming.
Among the many reasons President Barack Obama and the Democratic majority are so intent on quickly jamming a cap-and-trade system through Congress is because the global warming tide is again shifting. It turns out Al Gore and the United Nations (with an assist from the media), did a little too vociferous a job smearing anyone who disagreed with them as "deniers." The backlash has brought the scientific debate roaring back to life in Australia, Europe, Japan and even, if less reported, the U.S.
The number of skeptics, far from shrinking, is swelling. Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe now counts more than 700 scientists who disagree with the U.N. -- 13 times the number who authored the U.N.'s 2007 climate summary for policymakers. Mr. Fielding, a crucial vote on the bill, was so alarmed by the renewed science debate that he made a fact-finding trip to the U.S., attending the Heartland Institute's annual conference for climate skeptics. He also visited with Joseph Aldy, Mr. Obama's special assistant on energy and the environment, where he challenged the Obama team to address his doubts. They apparently didn't.
This week Mr. Fielding issued a statement: He would not be voting for the bill. He would not risk job losses on "unconvincing green science." The bill is set to founder as the Australian parliament breaks for the winter.
Source: Wall Street Journal
House Democrats narrowly won an important test vote Friday on groundbreaking legislation to combat global warming and usher in a new era of cleaner energy. Republican opponents said it included the largest tax increase ever.
The vote was 217-205 to send the White House-backed legislation to the full House. Thirty Democrats defected, reflecting the deep divisions over the plan. Supporters and opponents agree it mean higher energy costs, but they disagree widely on the impact on consumers.
The legislation would impose limits, for the first time, on carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas pollution from power plants, factories and refineries. It would force a shift away from coal and other fossil fuels to renewable and more efficient forms of energy.
Source: BreitBart
The Obama regime and the Socialist Congress of America used an economic crisis to have the government seize control of the auto and banking industries. They want to socialize more private industries so they need the economic crisis to continue. So they do the “cap and destroy” tax. Some estimate C&T will cause the prices of gasoline to increase 75%.
And the bill is now going to the Senate. Hopefully the people and the wimpy republicans in the Senate can stop this asinine bill.
President Barack Obama on Thursday made his biggest push yet to pass comprehensive immigration reform legislation this year.
During a bipartisan, bicameral meeting at the White House with nearly three dozen lawmakers, Obama told immigration stakeholders that he wants to wrap up the issue by the end of this year, or by early 2010 at the latest.
“There is not by any means consensus across the table,” Obama said after the session. “But what I'm encouraged by is that after all the overheated rhetoric and the occasional demagoguery on all sides around this issue, we've got a responsible set of leaders sitting around the table who want to actively get something done and not put it off until a year, two years, three years, five years from now, but to start working on this thing right now.”
“Pushing this off until next year makes it more difficult” politically, due to mid-term elections in November, said Rep. Joe Crowley (D-N.Y.), who attended the meeting. “The president would like to see it done before the end of the year. … He is pretty cognizant in terms of next year and the issues before us.”
“We have to get this done this year or it’s not going to happen in the president’s first term,” said Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.), who was also at the meeting. “We’ve all banged the table enough. We’ve all shouted at each other on television enough. Now it’s time to get down to work. I think the time politically is ripe.”
The three key parts to any bill, he said, have to be strong border security, a way to ensure that employers follow the law and a path to legalization for the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants.
Obama also emphasized that people need to be thoughtful about the language they use when talking about undocumented workers.
Source: RollCall
We are thoughtful when we call undocumented workers “criminal aliens” because they broke the law getting into this country.
Comprehensive immigration reform legislation can have a larger guest worker programs for those that can prove they are a citizen of Mexico. It should have stronger border security. It should require all federal, state and local officials to report all suspected illegal aliens. And NO amnesty.
Barack Obama is to be given an audience with the Pope when he travels to Italy next month.
White House officials said the US president would meet Benedict on July 10 to discuss a “range of issues”. It will be the first meeting between Obama and the head of the Catholic Church at the Vatican in Rome.
Obama is a committed Christian and despite his differences with the Catholic Church shares some views with the Pope on some international issues. Both have taken steps to improve relations with the Islamic world. And the Vatican gave strong support to Obama's speech this month seeking better ties with Muslims.
Among the likely range of subjects to be discussed will be the president's support for abortion rights and embryonic stem cell research - both topics that puts him at odds with the teachings of the Roman Catholic church.
The highly anticipated meeting with the Pope will be during while Mr Obama is in Italy for the annual G8 summit.
Like many foreign leaders Pope Benedict appears to be a fan of the new US president. He broke Vatican protocol the day after Mr Obama won the election by sending a note of congratulations rather than waiting to send a message on his inauguration.
Vatican officials said that the Pope had agreed to meet with Mr Obama on the afternoon of July 10th. Usually the Pope only receives visitors during the morning, but Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi said the Pope would fit in with the president's schedule.
Source: This is London
Will Obama give the Pope an IPOD filled with the president’s speech and hip hop music? Or will Obama just grab something from the Vatican’s gift shop for the Pope?
And why is the Pope fitting the Messiah’s schedule rather than the other way around? And will Obama kiss the Pope’s ring or will the Pope kiss the Messiah’s hand?
The Daily KOS is convinced that the crazy Christians whackos will object to the meeting with the Pope and Obama like they did about Obama’s speech at Notre Dame Univ. In addition to being head of Catholic faith, the Pope is the head of a country, the Vatican City. Presidents usually meet with heads of state.
The White House is reportedly considering whether to allow the indefinite detention without trial of some of the detainees held at the US prison in Guantanamo Bay.
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