American Current Affairs. USA Climate & Agriculture. Republicans. Democrats. USA Security & Defence Issues. Anti-Intellectualism in the USA. USA: 2016 Presidential Election. The most terrifying graph on democracy is a flat line. The Fast and Furious scandal is turning into President Obama's Watergate. Reuters: A new wave of U.S. mortgage trouble threatens. The liberal minority is the real fringe element in American politics - Mail Online - James Lucier's Blog. Governor Scott Walker's historic re-election was a kick in the teeth for hysterical union bosses. By Donal Blaney PUBLISHED: 16:44 GMT, 7 June 2012 | UPDATED: 16:44 GMT, 7 June 2012 You may have missed this week's big political news from the United States where conservative Republican Governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker, was re-elected by a landslide in the teeth of hysterical and well-funded opposition from public sector unions who had sought his early removal from office through a recall ballot.
How do I know it was a landslide? Wisconsin voters reject Democrats' trickle-down democracy. By James Lucier PUBLISHED: 09:17 GMT, 8 June 2012 | UPDATED: 09:17 GMT, 8 June 2012.
The memo Bush tried to destroy - Torture. In February of 2006, Philip Zelikow, counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, authored a memo opposing the Bush administration’s torture practices (though he employed the infamous obfuscation of “enhanced interrogation techniques”).
The White House tried to collect and destroy all copies of the memo, but one survived in the State Department’s bowels and was declassified yesterday in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by the National Security Archive. The memo argues that the Convention Against Torture, and the Constitution’s prohibitions against cruel and unusual punishment, do indeed apply to the CIA’s use of “waterboard[ing], walling, dousing, stress positions, and cramped confinement.” Chillingly, the memo notes that “corrective techniques, such as slaps,” may be legally sustained, as might be “[C]ontrol conditions, such as nudity, sleep deprivation, and liquid diets…depending on the circumstances and details of how these techniques are used.” FAA To Ease Rules For Police Agencies To Fly Unmanned Drones. LOS ANGELES (CBS) — Surveillance aircraft used by the U.S. military overseas could soon be coming to the skies above Los Angeles County.
KNX 1070′s Charles Feldman reports the Federal Aviation Administration is making it easier for local law enforcement agencies to fly unmanned drones. The FAA has streamlined the process that would allow agencies to fly smaller, unarmed versions of the drones that hunt down terrorists in places such as Pakistan and Afghanistan. While the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department has not yet applied for an application to fly drones over our skies, its Homeland Security chief Bob Osborne said drones could be in the department’s future — with some caveats. “We have so much congestion in the skies that I would anticipate that there would be some pretty rigid safety standards,” said Osborne. “Mountain rescue, where you have a car over the side that’s a thousand feet down the cliff, oftentimes our aircraft can’t fly that low,” he said. Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The ACA was enacted with the goals of increasing the quality and affordability of health insurance, lowering the uninsured rate by expanding public and private insurance coverage, and reducing the costs of healthcare for individuals and the government.
It introduced a number of mechanisms—including mandates, subsidies, and insurance exchanges—meant to increase coverage and affordability.[6][7] The law also requires insurance companies to cover all applicants within new minimum standards and offer the same rates regardless of pre-existing conditions or sex.[8] Additional reforms aimed to reduce costs and improve healthcare outcomes by shifting the system towards quality over quantity through increased competition, regulation, and incentives to streamline the delivery of healthcare. The Congressional Budget Office projected that the ACA will lower both future deficits[9] and Medicare spending.[10] Overview of provisions Legislative history. Vitter amendment is total BS. Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images.
The Geopolitics of Oil. Oil is one of the most useful substances on this earth, a fact that hasn’t gone unrecognised by world leaders.
Billions of pounds and thousands of lives have been spent protecting or seizing oil assets across the globe. If a country is going to go to war, it seems that many people think large oil supplies are a decent enough reason to do so. It is impossible to ignore the historical legacy of what happens to poorly defended countries that are unfortunate enough to have oil and decide they want to keep it. It’s not so much about expanding power, as it about managing an inevitable decline.
American Exception - Unlike Others, U.S. Defends Freedom to Offend in Speech - Series. Do Nothings and Know Nothings. Bc video: Santorum caught tilting at Dutch windmills. One Per Cent: Occupy vs Tea Party: what their Twitter networks reveal. Peter Aldhous, San Francisco bureau chief According to some political commentators, Occupy Wall Street is the left's answer to the Tea Party - driven by a similar anger towards elites.
The $7 trillion secret loan program: The government and big banks should be punished for deceiving the public about their hush-hush bailout scheme. Photograph by Jupiterimages/ Getty Images.
Imagine you walked into a bank, applied for a personal line of credit, and filled out all the paperwork claiming to have no debts and an income of $200,000 per year. The bank, based on these representations, extended you the line of credit. Then, three years later, after fighting disclosure all the way, you were forced by a court to tell the truth: At the time you made the statements to the bank, you actually were unemployed, you had a $1 million mortgage on your house on which you had failed to make payments for six months, and you hadn’t paid even the minimum on your credit-card bills for three months. Hispanics: the rising power in the United States. Newseum: Today's Front Pages from 800 publications.