Sumner Redstone, Sleeping with the Fishes. What changed it all, as so often happens, was a woman. At the heart of Redstone's new life, in fact, is an unlikely love story, one he and Paula haven't discussed publicly until now. It began in 2001. Phyllis lived quietly in Boston, while he worked in New York. During the 1990s, Redstone more or less openly dated other women, notably Christine Peters, ex-wife of producer Jon Peters. Nothing, however, appeared to soften his sharp edges; subordinates viewed him as a crabby old man who scoffed at executives who left before seven at night. A number of associates felt steady companionship might make him happier, or at least make his twilight years less lonely. One of Redstone's brokers at Bear Stearns, Steven Sweetwood, who supervises Viacom's stock-buyback plans, was ruminating about the situation with another Bear Stearns executive when the second executive mentioned that his wife had a friend, an elementary-school teacher, who had never married.
Sweetwood, however, would not be denied. Ohio set to pass tough new round of voting restrictions. Ohio Republicans are poised to pass a new round of restrictive voting laws this week. Taken together, the measures could limit access to the ballot in this year’s midterms and the 2016 presidential race, and revive the obscenely long lines at the polls that plagued the Buckeye State a decade ago. No Republican has ever won the White House without winning Ohio, and it remains the single most pivotal state in presidential elections.
That status is giving an added intensity to the battle over voting rights there. The Ohio House could vote as soon as Wednesday on two GOP-backed bills. The Ed Show, 1/30/14, 6:35 PM ET Fighting for voting rights before midterms In “Trenders,” Bieber’s back in trouble, while America gets excited for puppies. A third bill scheduled for a Tuesday hearing and already passed by the Senate would make it harder for provisional ballots to be counted—though a full vote on that measure isn’t expected this week. State Sen. Holder Urges States to Lift Bans on Felons’ Voting. The dictator’s pen. Text smaller Text bigger America has been delivered a serious blow at the hand of our president’s pen. Barack Obama is killing off freedom and liberty by signing one executive order after another without congressional approval.
He routinely bypasses Congress and takes matters into his own collectivist hands, targeting our constitutional rights like a sniper targets its victim. Liberty and freedom is in Obama’s cross-hairs, and with the end of his second term approaching, he’s taking as much of our lawful privileges with him as possible, notwithstanding tightening his noose around our necks even more through unconstitutional actions and stifling regulations. Last I checked, America is a free society and the rule of law aptly applies. In his SOTU address, Obama promised a “year of action” and used, as an excuse, strengthening the middle class, committing to “take steps without legislation.” But wait; there’s more. Holtz-Eakin states, “This is the most regulatory administration in history. The Wages of Cronyism, Big Government, and Corruption - Daniel J. Mitchell. The Bible says that “the wages of sin is death,” but the same can’t be said of Washington, DC.
The bureaucrats, lobbyists, politicians, contractors, insiders, cronyists, and influence peddlers have rigged the system so that they get rich by diverting money from people in the productive sector of the economy. How bad is the disconnect between Washington and real America? Well, according to Gallup’s Economic Confidence Index, people in every state have a negative outlook. But there is one outpost of giddy prosperity, and that’s the District of Columbia, where residents have a 20-point gap compared to the most optimistic (or, to be more accurate, least pessimistic) state and a whopping 35-point gap with the average American.
If you’re a glass-half-full person, there is a tiny sliver of good news in the new Gallup report. It turns out that DC is not as fat and happy as it was one year ago, and the likely reason is that the federal Leviathan got put on a modest diet. It Only Seems That Political Corruption Is Rampant. With the indictment last week of the former Virginia governor Bob McDonnell on fraud and conspiracy charges, one might surmise that high-level political scandal is breaking out all over. And in a way, one would be right: It has been a good year, or perhaps a bad one, for hauling politicians before judges. Three members of the House of Representatives pleaded guilty to, or were convicted of, crimes in 2013, more than any other year since 1981, when the now-cinematized Abscam sting operation put six House members and a senator behind bars. Last year, former mayors of Detroit and New Orleans, among others, were convicted of, or charged with, felonies.
DARPA: 'Vanishing' spy tech will self-destruct in 3,2,1... | Crave. VAPR. It sounds like a nefarious spy agency bent on world domination, doesn't it? Instead, VAPR stands for Vanishing Programmable Resources, and it's a new program created by DARPA -- the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency -- to develop tech that self-destructs either on demand or at a pre-scheduled time. That's not to say it isn't involved in the world of espionage. That's exactly its point. Sophisticated electronics can be made at low cost and are increasingly pervasive throughout the battlefield. That's all another way of saying: "We want to send spy toys over enemy lines that we might not be able to get back, so we want to blow them up before the enemy gets them.
" To help it in this mission, DARPA has given out contracts to major corporations, including ones worth $3.5 million to IBM, $2.5 million to Honeywell Aerospace, and $2.1 million to Xerox. Over at Xerox, according to DARPA, scientists will be focusing on approaching the problem from almost the opposite perspective. The U.S. may be planning to kill another U.S. citizen abroad. Photo by General Atomics/Getty Images “U.S. officials” have told Kimberly Dozier of the Associated Press that the Obama administration is wrestling with a decision over whether to kill a U.S. citizen who is a member of al-Qaida and is reportedly actively planning attacks against U.S. citizens abroad.
Joshua Keating is a staff writer at Slate focusing on international affairs and writes the World blog. Follow him on Twitter. Follow The individual is apparently in a country that refuses U.S. military action on its soil. Two of the officials described the man as an al-Qaida facilitator who has been directly responsible for deadly attacks against U.S. citizens overseas and who continues to plan attacks against them that would use improvised explosive devices. Dozier writes that the Justice Department is “working to build a case for the president to review and decide the man's fate.”
President Obama justified the Awlaki strike in a speech last May: U.S. Debates Drone Strike on American Terrorism Suspect in Pakistan. Iranian warships heading to USA to show reach. Iranian warships headed to the U.S. coast pose little danger to the United States but could be a dry run for the future, according to former U.S. military and security officials. The mission shows the danger Iran would pose if it possessed nuclear weapons, says John Bolton, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under President George W. Bush and an arms negotiator during the Cold War. "It shows they could put a weapon on a boat or freighter, and if (Iran) has ballistic missiles it could put it anywhere on the U.S. coast," Bolton said.
"Down the road it could be a threat. " Chris Harmer, an analyst at the Institute for the Study of War and a former military planner for the U.S. Navy in Persian Gulf, said one of the two ships is a military cargo ship that has visited China in the past and is suspected of delivering Iranian arms shipments to Sudan on multiple visits to that country in the past few years. "It shows the Iranians have worldwide ambitions and capabilities," Harmer said. Moscow bombing: who are the Black Widows. In Changing News Landscape, Even Television is Vulnerable. Trends in News Consumption: 1991-2012 Overview The transformation of the nation’s news landscape has already taken a heavy toll on print news sources, particularly print newspapers. But there are now signs that television news – which so far has held onto its audience through the rise of the internet – also is increasingly vulnerable, as it may be losing its hold on the next generation of news consumers.
Online and digital news consumption, meanwhile, continues to increase, with many more people now getting news on cell phones, tablets or other mobile platforms. And perhaps the most dramatic change in the news environment has been the rise of social networking sites. The percentage of Americans saying they saw news or news headlines on a social networking site yesterday has doubled – from 9% to 19% – since 2010. These are among the principal findings of the Pew Research Center’s biennial news consumption survey, which has tracked patterns in news use for nearly two decades.