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More than 400 people, including a U.S. senator, witnessed the first same-sex civil union in Delaware on New Year's Day. Lawyers Lisa Goodman and Drewry Fennell were joined in the union by the Rev. Patricia Downing, rector of Trinity Episcopal Church in Wilmington, where the Sunday afternoon ceremony took place. Goodman and Fennell have been partners for 14 years. Goodman is a lawyer who led the advocacy group Equality Delaware's fight for the civil union law. Fennell heads the state Criminal Justice Council and formerly led the ACLU's Delaware chapter. U.S. Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., delivered the sermon and Lt....

Drawing together elements from President Barack Obama’s jobs plan, the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness and ideas from congressional Republicans and Democrats, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio reached out across the aisle Tuesday and teamed up with Democratic U.S. Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware to introduce the American Growth, Recovery, Empowerment and Entrepreneurship Act. The AGREE Act covers a number of areas, including eliminating some taxes on small businesses. The legislation would also extend the research and development tax credit until 2013, make the Alternative Simplified Credit permanent while increasing it from 14 percent to 20 percent, and create a...

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Democrat-controlled Senate on Thursday rejected a Republican attempt to block a regulation intended to curb power plant pollution that blows downwind into other states. By a 56-41 vote, senators defeated a resolution by Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, who said the step was needed to rein in what he called the Obama administration's overzealous job-killing approach to environmental protection. "We are simply asking that the clean air regulations already on the books stay in place and we do not make the regulations so onerous that they put utility plants out of business and we have an...

Federal investigators said Tuesday they uncovered “gross mismanagement” at the Dover Air Force Base mortuary that cares for America’s war dead after whistleblowers reported horror stories of lost body parts, shoddy inventory controls and lax supervision. The former mortuary commander and two other senior officials have been disciplined – but not fired -- in response to separate investigations conducted by the Air Force Inspector General, the Secretary of the Air Force and the Office of Special Counsel, an independent federal agency that also received the whistleblower complaints. The grisly findings at Dover echo a similar scandal at another hallowed repository...

Vice President Joe Biden says there's no question that he'll be in the No. 2 slot on next year's Democratic presidential ticket.

FREE REPUBLIC NASCAR THREAD AAA 400 Welcome to the Chase for the Sprint Cup Race #3 of 10 at (Click on the Pics, Graphics, & Links for related news & info.)

Coauthored with John NicholsDelaware’s political establishment thinks First State electricity consumers should subsidize the manufacturing of super-sized fuel cells, under the auspices of California-based Bloom Energy, to replace natural gas and coal-fired power plants in generating electricity. The politicos want to build a factory in Newark, where rail service is available to ship Bloom’s 10-ton, 100-kilowatt, “eco-friendly” Energy Servers to presumed eager buyers across America. Bloom claims its “revolutionary new design” and “breakthroughs in materials science” make its new solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) technology “clean, reliable and affordable.” Governor Jack Markell, Department of Natural Resources Secretary Colin O’Mara, Department...

Blueblood Killer Tom Capano Found Dead In His CellSeptember 19, 2011SMYRNA, Del. (CBS) — Tom Capano, a once wealthy and politically connected attorney serving life in prison for killing a mistress in 1996, was found dead today in his prison cell. There was no immediate word on a cause of death, but officials say no foul play is suspected. The Capano murder case became the stuff of made-for-TV movies, but it was real-life horror for the family of the 30-year-old woman whose body has never been found. Ann Marie Fahey became involved with Capano in 1994, when she was...

Muslims’ portrayal in the media with covered faces and toting machine guns perhaps perpetuates a violent image that a quarter of Americans maintain. But locally, the decade following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks has led to a period of a curiosity to learn. “They are the most negatively thought about religious group,” Dr. Sanjay Nath, associate dean and director of the Institute for Graduate Clinical Psychology at Widener University, said. “There's a very, very strong bias that Muslims are violent,” he said, adding that the militant subgroup represents less than 1 percent of the religion. “There’s a lot of...

A majority of the Delmarva Peninsula and the Baltimore-Washington Metropolitan area may see tropical-storm force winds, rainfall and coastal surge reaching or exceeding that of Isabel in 2003. Unless the current NHC track changes considerably, it suggests impacts to the Mid-Atlantic will be similar in scope to Hurricane Floyd in 1999 (NOAA), Fran in 1996 (USGS) and Hazel in 1954 (NGS)

The Delaware American Civil Liberties Union has filed court papers to stop sex offenders from being evicted from a safe house that is located near a new day care center. The ACLU, along with an attorney representing the safe house and three sex offenders, has asked a judge to issue a temporary restraining order to prevent the city from evicting the residents. “The state has asked the residents to leave, and if they don’t leave they will be arrested,” attorney Daniel Wolcott, Jr. told Fox News Radio. Wolcott is representing the owner of the safe house and three sex offenders....

EXCERPT FROM FORBES MAGAZINE: She says she never wanted to make the ad - which was prompted by questions about a statement she had made on a late-night talk show years earlier - and was surprised when it showed up on the Internet. She blames an insistent media consultant but also her own inability to put her foot down. "It was a wrong-headed move, made for all the wrong reasons, but it was mine," O'Donnell writes in "Troublemaker: Let's Do What It Takes to Make America Great Again." The book is scheduled to go on sale Aug. 16. The Associated...

The Return of Christine O'Donnell By Jeffrey Lord on 8.9.11 @ 6:08AM "You think I'm licked. You all think I'm licked! Well I'm not licked! And I'm gonna stay right here and fight for this lost cause… even if this room gets filled with lies like these.… Somebody will listen to me." -- Jimmy Stewart as anti-Establishment Senator Jefferson Smith in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington She's baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack. The woman the Ruling Class spent so much time scorning in 2010 isn't going quietly. As a matter of fact, there's not the slightest sign she's going -- period. And -- among...

President Obama will travel to Dover Air Force base later on Tuesday to honor the 22 Navy SEALs and eight other American troops killed in Afghanistan on Saturday when an insurgent shot down their helicopter, according to an administration official familiar with the matter. Obama will head a delegation of senior administration, Pentagon, and military officials who will salute the flag-draped caskets of the troops who died in a rescue mission this weekend in the worst single-day loss of the long Afghan war. The crash in eastern Afghanistan also marked the largest death toll in the history of the U.S....

Lawyers for the Delaware Republican Party and the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), Michael Toner and Brandis Zehr, now face a complaint before the DC Bar for false statements and a frivolous September 9, 2010, complaint against Christine O'Donnell and the Tea Party Express. The Federal Election Commission is also being asked to update its "First General Counsel Report" with a "SECOND General Counsel Report" correcting the obvious error launched into circulation by Michael Toner and Brandis Zehr. The rules governing attorneys in D.C., the District of Columbia Rules of Professional Conduct, require attorneys to take affirmative action to CORRECT...

Vice President Joe Biden joined House Democrats in lashing tea party Republicans Monday, accusing them of having “acted like terrorists” in the fight over raising the nation’s debt limit. Biden was agreeing with a line of argument made by Rep. Mike Doyle (D-Pa.) at a two-hour, closed-door Democratic Caucus meeting. “We have negotiated with terrorists,” an angry Doyle said, according to sources in the room. “This small group of terrorists have made it impossible to spend any money.” Biden, driven by his Democratic allies’ misgivings about the debt-limit deal, responded: “They have acted like terrorists,” according to several sources in...

John McCain & the Wall Street Journal attacked the tea party and Christine O'Donnell as HOBBITS, who think they are going to vanquish "Mordor" (the evil kingdom) and return to the Shire. McCain (quoting from the Wall Street Journal) went out of his way to target Christine O'Donnell and Sharron Angle as the examples of the tea party movement that veteran Senator John McCain was criticizing. http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/07/28/angle-odonnell-slam-mccain-over-tea-party-hobbits-speech/?test=latestnewsBut apparently this national political uproar of insiders viewing tea party political activists as "the little people" who are like "Hobbits" was no accident. Christine O'Donnell's academic interest in Tolkien's use of imagery from...

In a fit of anti-Tea Party rage, Sen. John McCain tossed a media exposure lifesaver out to former Delaware senatorial candidate Christine O’Donnell, insulting the Tea Party for having launched her to the Republican nomination. O’Donnell graciously accepted the opportunity to make headlines once again, releasing as epic a statement as we haven’t seen since the Homeric tribute to Newt Gingrich last May. Needless to say, being dismissed as a crazy candidate did not sit well with the Senate hopeful known mostly for having to clarify whether or not she was a witch. In a short and sweet statement, she...

Delaware is moving closer to executing its first prisoner since 2005 as time runs out for the legal appeals of a man convicted of killing a woman with an ax. Robert Jackson III is scheduled to die by lethal injection early Friday, between 12:01 a.m. and 3 a.m. On Wednesday, the Delaware Supreme Court and a federal judge in Wilmington both rejected requests by Jackson's lawyers to halt his execution. Now it's up to the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Philadelphia and the U.S. Supreme Court to decide whether to allow the execution to proceed. Jackson was...

SMYRNA, Del - Authorities are searching for five suspects after an armed robbery ended with a shootout in the parking lot of the Fairways Inn bar and strip club in Smyrna early Saturday morning. Delaware State Police say the 52-year-old victim was walking to his car and carrying the night's proceeds from the business when a male suspect fired a shot at him. Police say the victim dropped the money while pulling his own gun and ran for cover behind several parked cars in the lot. They said the victim began shooting back at the male suspect. It was then,...