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WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Senate Democrats have no choice but to change their tone about Roland Burris becoming a U.S. senator because Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich "called our bluff" in appointing someone over their objections, a senior Democratic congressional source conceded Wednesday. "We tried to send a political signal to Blagojevich that we would not seat someone he appointed. He called our bluff, in a reckless way," the Democratic source said. A second senior Democratic source said that the issue had clearly become a "heightened situation" that needed to be dealt with and that Burris' face-to-face meeting with Senate Majority Leader...

Link only - Hackers take down ring of key progressive blogs

CASH-strapped General Motors is auctioning off more than 200 of its historic and most unique cars, including a Cadillac made for Pope John Paul II and a presidential limousine replica used in several films. The auction will free up some space in GM's Heritage Centre, which currently displays about 200 of its collection of 1000 vehicles and is expected to raise around $5 million ($7 million). "We're trying to get the collection to the right size,'' said Heritage Centre manager Tom Freiman. "At the end of the day, I think we're going to end up with a better mix of...

Reid denies Chicago newspaper's racism chargeBy STEVE TETREAULT Stephens Washington Bureau Published on Wednesday, January 07, 2009 WASHINGTON -- Sen. Harry Reid on Sunday denied a report that he pressured Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich on whom to appoint to succeed President-elect Barack Obama in the Senate and a suggestion that race was a factor in their conversation early last month. The Senate majority leader confirmed in a televised interview that he spoke with Blagojevich in early December, but he said the conversation was general in nature and similar to talks he had with governors of New York and Colorado who...

ISPA has formed a coalition of trade associations representing manufacturers, suppliers and retailers in the home furnishings industries to include as part of President-elect Obama's Economic Stimulus package new tax incentives that would boost sales of mattress and other products. "Our effort is designed to implement consumer and commercial tax incentives for the mass scale purchase of home furnishings, thereby stimulating the flow of capital, assisting the housing market, and directly promoting American manufacturing, distribution and retail jobs," noted ISPA President Dick Doyle. In addition to ISPA, the American Home Furnishings Industries Coalition is made up of a dozen associations,...

Like many other protests of Israel's campaign in Gaza, this one ended badly — police had to cool an ugly fight between supporters of Israel and Gaza, breaking up the warring sides as their screaming and chanting threatened to turn into something worse. But some protesters at this rally in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., took their rhetoric a step further, calling for the extermination of Israel — and of Jews. Separated by battle lines and a stream of rush-hour traffic outside a federal courthouse last week, at least 200 pro-Palestinian demonstrators faced off against a smaller crowd of Israel supporters. Most...

House Dems to vote on Obama-favored health planBy KEVIN FREKING – 8 hours ago WASHINGTON (AP) — House Democrats plan to give President-elect Barack Obama an early victory on health care, specifically children's health care, next week. **SNIP** The legislation will look similar to bills the House and Senate twice approved in 2007. President Bush balked at the additional $35 billion in spending in the two bills as well as the method of payment — a tobacco tax. House Democrats could not muster enough support to overcome Bush's two vetoes. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said lawmakers discussed whether to...

OAKLAND -- A protest over the fatal shooting by a BART police officer of an unarmed man mushroomed into a violent confrontation Wednesday evening, with a faction of protesters smashing a police car and blocking streets in downtown Oakland. The protest started peacefully shortly after 3 p.m. at the Fruitvale Station in Oakland, where BART police Officer Johannes Mehserle shot 22-year-old Oscar Grant of Hayward to death early New Year's Day. BART shut down the station well into the evening commute, although the demonstration there was peaceful.] However, shortly after nightfall, a group of roughly 200 protesters split off and...

CHARLESTON, South Carolina (Reuters) – The case of Ali al-Marri, accused of being an al Qaeda "sleeper" agent and held for 5-1/2 years at a U.S. military prison in South Carolina, will be an early test for President-elect Barack Obama. In his first month in office, Obama will have to tell the Supreme Court whether he will abandon his predecessor's claim that anyone the president deems a national security threat can be imprisoned indefinitely without charges in the United States. Marri is the only person still held in the United States as an "enemy combatant." His case is a test...

Rome – Mauro Del Vecchio, former General of Italian Army who led the unit of 7,000 soldiers that entered Kosovo in June of 1999 after end of NATO air strikes on Serbia told Italian ‘Panorama’ weekly that during the first three weeks of the mandate ‘reports on the found bodies of killed Serbs and Romas arrived on his table each morning’, but that was a taboo topic they were not allowed to speak about with journalists. ‘The killing continued later but not so frequently. Those that have not fled Kosovo were under permanent risk to be killed or raped. Deserted...

Chris Matthews, the host of the MSNBC program “Hardball,” told his staff on Wednesday night that he would not run for the Senate in 2010 from Pennsylvania. For much of the last year, Mr. Matthews had been considering entering the Senate race as a Democrat in his home state at the same time he was renegotiating his contract with NBC News. He had attended several meetings that had included Pennsylvania representatives as well as some major fund-raisers in the Democratic Party.

Richmond city leaders are hunting for $1.5 million a year over the next two years to help bail out the West Contra Costa school district from its financial hole and keep Richmond schools from closing. The money would buy the district more time to lobby state and federal officials to forgive its debt, or to persuade voters to pay higher taxes to keep neighborhood schools with low enrollment open, city officials said. City Councilwoman Maria Viramontes said the district must find a long-term solution to its problem, not just apply bandages. With Richmond willing to pitch in, school district officials...

Dodd, NAACP meet on housingTuesday, January 6, 2009 6:01 AM EST By Elizabeth Benton, Register Staff HARTFORD — Sen. Christopher J. Dodd, D-Conn., met with state NAACP members Monday on the housing crisis, where he assured those in attendance he would seek greater “bottom-up” assistance. Citing statistics showing African-Americans were targeted for subprime loans and were significantly more likely to enter into subprime loans, NAACP state conference President Scot X. Esdaile asked that lenders not be permitted to receive federal bailout funds until ending discriminatory lending practices. “My major concern is the ‘bottom-up.’ Main Street instead of Wall Street,” he...

A Hamas official insists that a 'legacy of suffering' under Israel is what fuels Palestinian resistance... From Damascus -- While Americans may believe that the current violence in Gaza began Dec. 27, in fact Palestinians have been dying from bombardments for many weeks. On Nov. 4, when the Israeli-Palestinian truce was still in effect but global attention was turned to the U.S. elections, Israel launched a "preemptive" airstrike on Gaza, alleging intelligence about an imminent operation to capture Israeli soldiers; more assaults took place throughout the month. The truce thus shattered, any incentive by Palestinian leaders to enforce the moratorium...

New Congress opens, pledging to rescue economyBy DAVID ESPO THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Wednesday, January 7, 2009 WASHINGTON -- The Capitol rang loud with vows to fix the crisis-ridden economy Tuesday as Congress opened for business at the dawn of a new Democratic era. "We need action, and we need action now," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Republicans agreed and pledged cooperation in Congress as well as with President-elect Barack Obama -- to a point. **SNIP** "The opportunities for cooperation are numerous," McConnell said, adding that Democrats should avoid a "reckless rush to meet an arbitrary deadline" to pass an economic...

“Pay to Play” keeps getting better everyday: President-elect Barack Obama took big money from a man at the center of a federal probe that has forced one of Obama’s top Cabinet picks to withdraw. Financial records show the Obama campaign got more than $30,000 from California financier David Rubin, the target of an investigation into donations and possible “pay-to-play” deals involving New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, Obama’s pick for commerce secretary. ~~~ In late September, Rubin attended an exclusive Los Angeles fundraiser for Obama, held at the Beverly Hills’ Greystone Mansion.

~Favorite City Song~ George Strait - Amarillo By Morning (Terry Stafford/P. Fraser) Amarillo By Mornin' Up from San Antone Everything that I got Is just what I've got on. When that sun is high in that Texas sky, I'll be buckin' at the county fair. Amarillo By Mornin' Amarillo I'll be there. They took my saddle in Houston, Broke my leg in Santa Fe. Lost my wife and a girlfriend, Somewhere along the way. I'll be lookin' for eight When they pull that gate And I hope that judge ain't blind. Amarillo By Mornin' Amarillo's on my mind. Amarillo...

<p>WASHINGTON (CNN) — Another major American industry is asking for assistance as the global financial crisis continues: Hustler publisher Larry Flynt and Girls Gone Wild CEO Joe Francis said Wednesday they will request that Congress allocate $5 billion for a bailout of the adult entertainment industry.</p>

In a bizarre drama, Pakistan's National Security Adviser Maj Gen(retd) Mahmud Ali Durrani was sacked on Wednesday night for having indicated days ago that Mohammad Ajmal Amir, the lone Pakistani terrorist arrested for the Mumbai terror attacks, may have been a Pakistani, a fact ironically confirmed by the government earlier in the day. A brief statement issued by the Prime Minister's House said Yousuf Raza Gilani had sacked Durrani "for his irresponsible behaviour (of) not taking Prime Minister and other stakeholders into confidence and lack of coordination on matters of national security". Gilani was quoted by Geo News channel as...

A fugitive Afghan leader wanted by the United States offered on Wednesday to send fighters to help Hamas against Israel in the Gaza battling in which more than 600 Palestinians have so far died. Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who leads a force separate from the allied Taliban fighting NATO-led troops in Afghanistan, also urged Muslims to unite and wage war against the United States because of its financial and military support for Israel, his spokesman said. "Hezb-i-Islami not only condemns Israel's invasion and barbarity against the Palestinians, but if the situation allows will also send Mujahideen for the defense of Hamas against...

Declaring it was time to "turn the page," Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said today that negotiations over the state's dismal budget mess will have to focus on the "four-legged" proposal his administration unveiled last week."I've had wonderful negotiations (with legislative leaders)," the governor told reporters. "We've worked very hard throughout Christmas and New Years ... we did everything we could, but time ran out and we fell short."Instead of working from the proposal he made early last month to close the state's gaping $40-billion deficit, or the Democratic plan he vetoed Tuesday, Schwarzenegger said he would focus on the budget proposal...

BP names Russia troubleshooter as U.S. boss British oil major BP Plc (BP.L) appointed the man who led negotiations with its oligarch partners in Russian joint venture TNK-BP (TNBPI.RTS) as head of its U.S. unit. BP said on Tuesday Lamar McKay, formerly leader of the company's Special Projects Team, had been appointed chairman and president of BP America. He succeeds Bob Malone, who was appointed to the expanded role in 2006 to repair BP's reputation in the United States which had been battered by an oil spill in Alaska and a refinery explosion in 2005 killing 15 workers. Malone is...

President-elect Barack Obama confirmed to CNBC that he plans to lay out a roughly $775 billion economic stimulus plan on Thursday but indicated that the amount could grow once it gets taken up by Congress. "We've seen ranges from $800 (billion) to 1.3 trillion," he said in an exclusive interview with CNBC's chief Washington correspondent John Harwood. "And our attitude was that given the legislative process, if we start towards the low end of that, we'll see how it develops." Obama plans to propose $310 billion in tax cuts for the middle class and businesses as part of the stimulus...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger gave Democrats the cold shoulder as he grew convinced he can somehow win Republican support for a midyear budget deal that includes tax hikes, Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg said Wednesday. The Democratic Senate leader said he and Assembly Speaker Karen Bass came just shy of closing a budget deal Sunday that would have reduced the state's estimated $40 billion deficit by $17 billion over the next 17-plus months. But Steinberg said in subsequent talks the governor spurned their offer with an eye toward reaching a bipartisan agreement with support from anti-tax Republicans instead of working...

In a luncheon round table interview today with a small group of conservative journalists, Vice President Dick Cheney insisted that “we don’t torture” but that “enhanced interrogation techniques” have “produced a wealth of information” that has protected the United States against terrorists – and, on a far more personal level, said that his four decades in public life have been a “helluva ride” that he is “seriously thinking” about recording in memoirs after he leaves office. Cheney refused to comment on whether he has advised President George W. Bush to pardon his former top aide, Lewis “Scooter” Libby or to...

The co-founder of a rocket launch firm has proposed an audacious plan to send astronauts on a one-way trek to Mars using a pair of tethered U.S. space shuttles that would parachute to the Martian surface. Inventor Eric Knight, a co-founder of the rocket firm UP Aerospace, detailed the plan - which he's billed "Mars on a Shoestring" - in a thought exercise designed to encourage unconventional thinking for future human spaceflight. "My thought paper is a mental exercise to encourage new ideas," Knight told SPACE.com in an e-mail interview. "I also hope it spurs a re-evaluation of the timeline...

Many Democrats, including President-elect Barack Obama, maintain staunch support for Israel, despite its military crackdown on Hamas in Gaza over the past two weeks, but a few Minnesotans — including Reps. Keith Ellison and Betty McCollum and Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Norm Coleman — have taken more independent approaches. Discussing the conflict with Al Jazeera’s Shihab Rattansi yesterday, Ellison expanded on his statement of last Friday, which accused the Bush administration of passively ignoring the strikes and ground offensive that have killed nearly 600 people in Gaza and during which he said he supported actively engaging both sides to find...

Sen. Dianne Feinstein said Tuesday that President-elect Barack Obama apologized to her for not notifying her ahead of time that Leon Panetta was his pick for CIA director. His name leaked to the press before Obama informed Feinstein, a California Democrat and incoming Senate Intelligence Committee chairman, who will oversee Panetta's nomination hearing. "I have been contacted by both President-elect Obama and Vice President-elect Biden, and they have explained to me the reasons why they believe Leon Panetta is the best candidate for CIA Director," she said. Feinstein complained Monday she had not been told about Panetta and expressed doubts...

Two days after the suicide of one of Germany's richest men -- who was apparently despondent over financial troubles -- banks agreed to rescue his business holdings, the companies said in a statement. Adolf Merckle, 74, was hit by a train in the southwestern town of Ulm Monday. Details of the incident were unclear, but Ulm police said Merckle was apparently dragged for some time after being struck, as they found blood some distance away from the body. Merckle's family said that he had been "broken" by the global economic crisis. But on Wednesday, Merckle's VEM Group said it had...

BERLIN – A German court ruled Wednesday that an elderly former Nazi hit squad member is medically unfit to stand trial for the World War II reprisal killings of three Dutch civilians. Defense attorney Gordon Christiansen told The Associated Press that Heinrich Boere, 87, suffered a serious heart condition and could not take the stress of a trial. He said Boere had "almost died" twice since being charged in April. "This is absolutely based upon medical facts," Christiansen told The AP. Aachen state court spokesman Georg Winkel said in a statement that the decision was based on a thorough two-day...

WASHINGTON – President-elect Barack Obama hailed a rare Oval Office gathering of all U.S. presidents as extraordinary on Wednesday, while President George W. Bush wished him well and pledged that the office "transcends the individual." "I just want to thank the president for hosting us," the president-elect said, flanked by former President George H.W. Bush on one side and his son on the other. Presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, both smiling broadly, stood with them.

Servers suffer as gratuities, and their incomes, plummet with the economyNobody is sitting at the rack at Mary’s Club on a Friday afternoon. The rack is the counter that lines the stage at Mary’s, an institution among Portland strip clubs, at 129 S.W. Broadway Ave. Customers who sit at the rack, up close to the dancers, are expected to tip dollar bills or more throughout the performances. In fact, there’s a sign in Mary’s Club that reads, “If you’re watching and not tipping, you’re stealing.” But it’s easier to watch and not tip from seats further back or at the...

By Tuesday, Day 11 of Operation Cast Lead, Hamas was described as “desperate for a lull,” its leadership in underground bunkers and Gaza in near-anarchy. The terror organization was both boxed in and isolated as apprehensions of Hezbollah opening a second front to Israel’s north failed to materialize—inviting plausible speculation that the war was a ploy by Iran to distract attention from its progress toward the bomb. Still Hamas operatives above ground in Gaza were able once again to fire a few dozen rockets at Israel, one of which injured a three-month-old girl in Gedera 45 kilometers from the...

Leading Hamas terrorist Mousa Abu Marzook, deported from the United States in 1997, gets back into the US via a column in the Los Angeles Times: Hamas speaks. Vile. Evil. Disgusting. Foul. Take your pick. There is something deeply wrong with our mainstream media. Contact the Los Angeles Times and tell them what you think about giving a voice to genocidal mass murderers.

A rally held here on Tuesday in solidarity with the Gaza Strip drew about 150 protesters. Similar demonstrations in other parts of the West Bank over the past 11 days have also attracted small numbers of Palestinians. As the demonstrators in this city's central Manara Square chanted slogans condemning Israel as a "Nazi state" and calling on the Arabs to severe their ties with Israel and on Fatah and Hamas to join forces, shopkeepers did not shut their businesses to participate in the rally. Nor did many passersby heed the protesters' appeal to join the rally. At the Stars &...

Billions of dollars collected from motorists from gasoline taxes, tolls, and registration fees are being diverted by state and local governments into uses that have nothing to do with roads and highways. According to the latest figures from the Federal Highway Administration, motorists gave state and local government $40.3 billion in 2005 for the ability to drive and own a vehicle. Gasoline taxes accounted for $20.5 billion in revenue while registration fees and miscellaneous taxes generated $13.5 billion. State and local toll roads also collected $6.4 billion from motorists. After accounting for administration and overhead, $28.5 billion remained for all...

ATLANTA – Mississippi now has the nation's highest teen pregnancy rate, displacing Texas and New Mexico for that lamentable title, according to a new federal report released Wednesday. Mississippi's rate was more than 60 percent higher than the national average in 2006, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. The teen pregnancy rate in Texas and New Mexico was more than 50 percent higher. ------------- Snip

A new study from the National Academy of Sciences outlines grim possibilities on Earth for a worst-case scenario solar storm. Damage to power grids and other communications systems could be catastrophic, the scientists conclude, with effects leading to a potential loss of governmental control of the situation. The prediction is based in part on major solar storm in 1859 caused telegraph wires to short out in the United States and Europe, igniting widespread fires. It was perhaps the worst in the past 200 years, according to the new study, and with the advent of modern power grids and satellites, much...

The rising civilian death toll in Israel's campaign in Gaza highlights the pitfalls of Israel's powerful army using lethal force against often invisible Hamas guerrillas taking cover among civilians. On Tuesday, only five of 75 people killed were confirmed militants and the United Nations called for an investigation into the growing civilian casualties. An Israeli defense official confirmed that the military has adopted tougher tactics to prevent the killing or capture of soldiers. One concern is that troops could be lured toward booby-trapped houses, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss...

Next automotive must-have: the coconut husk interior. Eco-minded engineers develop a way to do it commercially - and increase the annual incomes of 11 million poor coconut farmers.

Could one man operate an alleged $50-billion Ponzi scheme for more than a decade without help from anyone else? As investigators comb through books on the 18th floor of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, they are turning their attention to the middlemen who channeled billions of dollars to Madoff, reports the Wall Street Journal. The middlemen are the “feeders” who helped the Ponzi scheme flourish by funneling larger and larger sums Madoff’s way. They extracted fees from that cash stream, and many of them became enormously wealthy as a result. To date, none has been accused of being complicit in...

A judgment against Turner Broadcasting System in December following a trial related to the 2004 sale of its winter sports teams, resulting in an aggregate charge of approximately $280 million... The restructuring of a lease for space in the Time & Life Building, held by a lessee who recently declared bankruptcy, that will require a charge of $50 million to $60 million. An increase of approximately $40 million in reserves for potential credit losses related to several customers of Time Warner who have recently declared bankruptcy. The economic environment has proved somewhat more challenging than the Company previously expected, particularly...

He may show a brave face in public and on the set of his new television drama “The Beast,” but Patrick Swayze has admitted his day-to-day battle with pancreatic cancer is scary. “There’s a lot of fear here,” Patrick told Barbara Walters during a new sit-down interview with the actor and his wife, Lisa Niemi, airing Wednesday on ABC. “There’s a lot of stuff goin’ on. Yeah, I’m scared. Yeah, I’m angry. Yeah, I’m [like], ‘Why me?’ Yeah, I’m all this stuff.” The star of such Hollywood blockbusters as “Dirty Dancing” and “Ghost” confirmed he is suffering from pancreatic cancer...

The Securities and Exchange Commission's New York watchdog, under fire for failing to uncover Bernard Madoff's alleged $50 billion Ponzi scheme - despite a dead-on tip by a whistleblower - yesterday tearfully defended herself, arguing that she and the agency did the best job possible. "Why are you taking a mid-level staff person and making me responsible for the failure of the American economy?" an upset Meaghan Cheung, with eyes tearing up, told The Post. "I worked very hard for 10 years to make a career, and a reputation, and that has been destroyed in a month," said Cheung, who...

Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda have been rendered ineffective by international anti-terrorism efforts, a Bush administration official said Tuesday. The comments by Dell L. Dailey, the State Department's counterterrorism coordinator, were among the administration's most confident declarations of progress against the terrorist organization.

Sarah Obama, 86, will fly from her native Kenya to attend the inaugural festivities, the Kenyan government announced on Tuesday. Sarah Hussein Onyango Obama isn't actually related to the next president by blood - she was the third wife of Barack Obama's paternal grandfather. The two must speak through an interpreter as she knows only a few words of English. But they formed a close bond when he first visited Kenya in 1988. Sarah Obama will attend a pan-African celebration the night of the inauguration. It's not the first time she's been to Washington: she came in 2004 to celebrate...

It will be years, maybe decades, before something resembling a consensus emerges on the Bush presidency. But if there is one area where Bush has already been given credit even by some of his harshest critics, including Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, it is for his leadership in combating the worldwide devastation inflicted by HIV/AIDS. As the President’s deputy domestic policy adviser when the global AIDS initiative was being developed, I believe the story of this program is eminently worth telling, not only for its intrinsic historical interest but for what it reveals about the character of George W. Bush,...

Bad news travels fast. Though tucked away at a clerical retreat in Nigeria, it took only a flash of electrons for Anglican Bishop Martyn Minns to receive news of the California Supreme Court’s property dispute ruling against St. James parish in the city of Newport Beach, Calif. The court on Monday ruled that the congregation, whose facility overlooks luxury yachts afloat on Lido Channel, must surrender that property to the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles. St. James is one of about 100 U.S. Episcopal congregations that in recent years have split with the national church hierarchy, first over the ordination...

Vice-president-elect Joseph Biden admitted today the Obama transition team made a "mistake" in not notifying top Senate officials of the selection of Leon Panetta as director of the Central Intelligence Agency, defending the former Clinton White House chief of staff as a nominee would take the CIA on "new path." Biden told reporters in the Capitol that the Senate Intelligence Committee should have been consulted in advance of the Panetta nomination, which resulted in criticism from the panel's top Democrats. The incoming chair, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), and outgoing chairman, Sen. John "Jay" Rockefeller III (D-W. Va.), questioned the Panetta...

WASHINGTON — President George W. Bush says every U.S. military mission under his watch has been necessary and part of a just cause. SNIP The president told the gathered troops at Fort Myer in Arlington, Va., that some of his military decisions have been unpopular. But the cause they serve has always been "just and right," he said. Under Bush, the U.S. entered into wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Bush, who leaves office on Jan. 20, told the servicemembers their work has been as courageous and idealistic as that of any generation before them.