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The House has passed a sweeping overhaul of financial regulations that would govern Wall Street and reconfigure the power of the agencies overseeing the nation's banking system. The vote was 223-202. The legislation is a priority of President Barack Obama's. It is designed to address the shortfalls that led to last year's calamitous financial meltdown. New powers would give the federal government the right to break up big risky companies. It also would create a consumer agency to police lenders.

America Held Hostage- the Obama Files... With a hattip to Rush ( His idea during the Clinton plague upon America ) I am starting a file on “The One,” mostly starting from the election date. Older stuff- links, quotes, quips, and sometimes pointed graphics can be found by scrolling back from these two posts: -Hillary Clinton- archives, comments, and opposition research---Sarah Palin- links, from the beginning--There is some good material in those posts that raises a lot of uncomfortable questions that everyone ought to be asking, and probably will once the “new” wears off, and we are stuck with four...

The Obama Administration desperately wants a strong economic recovery, or so it says, but does it have any idea how to encourage one? It says it wants job growth, but its policies keep raising the cost of creating new jobs. It says it wants small business to take risks, but it keeps reducing the rewards if those risks succeed. And it says it wants banks to lend more money, even as it keeps threatening to punish bankers if they make too many bad loans or make too much money.

Arkansas Ross, Mike Telephone Town Hall Meeting12/14/2009   7:00 PMPhone: 877-269-7289 PIN: 14573NA, NA Indiana Souder, Mark Telephone Town Hall Meeting12/15/2009   7:30 PM888-559-4668NA, NA Maryland Edwards, Donna Coffee/Discussion12/19/2009   8:30 AMMayorga Coffee8040 Georgia Ave, Silver Spring Coffee/Discussion12/19/2009   10:30 AMDigital Beanery10258 Lake Arbor Way, Mitchellville Telephone Town Hall Meeting12/15/2009   7:15 PMSign up on website http://donnaedwards.house.gov/index.htmlNA, NA New York Murphy, Scott Meet and Greet with Constituents12/14/2009   9:20 AMAdirondack General Store899 East Shore Drive, Adirondack (Town of Horicon) South Carolina Spratt, John Telephone Healthcare Town Hall Meeting12/15/2009   7:00 PMCall office to sign up 202-225-5501NA, NA Washington Murray, Patty Telephone Town Hall with AARP12/16/2009   11:30 AMRegister at http://aarpwatelephonemtgwithsenatormurray.eventbrite.com/NA, NA

Last week, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) announced that he was working on yet another version of health reform, incorporating tweaks such as a huge expansion of Medicare, a brand-new version of the so-called "public option" based on the Federal Employees Health Benefit Program plus a possible increase in Medicaid eligibility. Reid's latest vision not only hasn't been debated or scored by the Congressional Budget Office, no one except Sen. Reid even knows for certain what's in it. Even so, Sen. Reid says the Senate must vote on this new package before Christmas.

The former vice president said new research showed that the Arctic could be completely ice-free in five years, but the scientist his estimate was based on denies the timeline. There are many kinds of truth. Al Gore was hit by an inconvenient one yesterday. The former vice president, who became an unlikely figurehead for the green movement after narrating the Oscar-winning documentary "An Inconvenient Truth," became entangled in a new climate change row. Gore, speaking at the Copenhagen climate change summit, stated the latest research showed that the Arctic could be completely ice-free in five years.

Introductory Remarks: On December 7, 1941, U.S. military installations at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii were attacked by the Imperial Japanese Navy. Could this tragic event that resulted in over 3,000 Americans killed and injured in a single two-hour attack have been averted? After 16 years of uncovering documents through the Freedom of Information Act, journalist and historian Robert Stinnett charges in his book, Day of Deceit, that U.S. government leaders at the highest level not only knew that a Japanese attack was imminent, but that they had deliberately engaged in policies intended to provoke the attack, in order to draw...

USA Today is headline and link only. Link to article here.The 'blasphemous' posters and literature can be found at the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights website. They are in PDF formats if someone wants to grab them and post them to the thread.

Now the fourth Democrat to announce his retirement in four weeks, Rep. Bart Gordon (D-Tenn.) said this morning in a released statement that he will not run for re-election next year. Gordon, a moderate Democrat from a Republican-leaning district, follows three other Democratic congressmen in similar political situations -- Brian Baird (WA-3), John Tanner (TN-8), and Dennis Moore (KS-3). President Obama won Moore and Baird's districts in 2008, but both were also won by President Bush in 2004. "Turning 60 has led me to re-evaluate what's next," Gordon said in a statement. "I have an 8-year-old daughter and a wonderful...

WASHINGTON, Dec 14 (Reuters) - The U.S. government must craft a plan next year to get its ballooning debt under control or face possible panic in financial markets, a bipartisan panel of budget experts said in a report on Monday. Though the government should hold off on immediate tax hikes and spending cuts to avoid harming the fragile economic recovery, it will need to make such painful changes by 2012 in order to keep debt at a manageable 60 percent of GDP by 2018, according to the Peterson-Pew Commission on Budget Reform. Without action, investors could lose confidence in the...

Airbus/Northrop Threat Revealing by George Landrith Human Events, 12/04/2009 The Air Force has issued a preliminary Request for Proposal (RFP) specifying how companies can bid on the $35 billion contract to build the next fleet of air refueling tankers. A final RFP is due out soon. The two bidders reviewing the preliminary RFP are Chicago-based Boeing, and a team made up of Airbus, based in Toulouse France, and Northrop Grumman, based in Los Angeles. Boeing has proposed building a tanker on its medium-sized B-767 commercial jetliner platform, while Airbus and Northrop have proposed building a tanker on Airbus’s larger A-330...

The U.S. Postal Service has more tax delinquents in its ranks than any other federal agency or department, according to Internal Revenue Service data. Maybe their tax payments got lost in the mail. The U.S. Postal Service turns out to have more tax delinquents in its ranks than any other federal agency or department, according to the Internal Revenue Service. IRS statistics from 2008 detailing the amount of money federal workers failed to pay the government in taxes showed postal service employees owed $297.93 million -- nearly 10 percent of the $3.04 billion owed by federal employees and retirees from...

The dispute between the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and the Justice Department is starting to look like the legal equivalent of World War II's Anzio campaign, which represented a major escalation late in the war. The battleground is the controversy about the department's decision to drop voter-intimidation cases against members of the New Black Panther Party. The commission is mounting a massive legal assault; Justice is refusing to be budged; and the casualties could be high. The shame of it is that the department itself would be well-served if it would merely cooperate. That's what it would do if...

Tiger Woods's multiple infidelities have been dismissed as a "minor blip" by the chairman of Nike, the golfer's biggest commercial sponsor. Phil Knight, the co-founder of the sports footwear and clothing giant, said the scandal surrounding Woods's private life was "part of the game" in endorsement deals. But he acknowledged that his company's checks on the sports star's suitability had failed to uncover evidence of serial philandering.

U.S. taxpayers could ultimately see a profit of $13 billion to $14 billion from Citigroup's payback of bailout investments, including dividends paid, a U.S. Treasury official said on Monday. That amount includes the gain on the government's 34 percent stake in Citi common shares , which was close to $5.8 billion as of Friday's close, as well as trust preferred securities with a $5.2 billion face value, received in a loss-sharing agreement backing a pool of Citigroup assets. The official also said the total also includes estimates of nearly $3 billion in dividends paid on the government's investments in the...

President Obama is the one who still doesn’t get it. In an administration fiendishly adroit at stagecraft, he chose an exclusive interview on “60 Minutes” last night to bash bankers with the “f” word — “fatcats,” he called them — just 16 hours before his scheduled sitdown with the chiefs of J.P. Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs and other banking giants. What an icebreaker! That impolite precursor on “60 Minutes,” especially when it comes from a guy who most times is charming and almost too ingratiating, shows a President torn between pious populism and prosperous capitalism. Obama needs...

Weekend vandalism at the UC Berkeley chancellor's home has complicated a philosophical battle over the best way to protest student-fee hikes and budget cuts. UC police arrested eight people Friday night after demonstrators broke windows and other property at the campus home of Chancellor Robert Birgeneau while he and his wife were inside. At least six of those people are expected to be charged with multiple felonies for what Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger called "terrorism." The incident has further roiled an already uneasy campus that has been hit by budget cuts and tuition hikes this year. The arrests were the latest...

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine, who leaves office in January, today encouraged people with nonviolent felony convictions who have paid their debt to society to apply to have their voting rights restored. Speaking on his monthly call-in radio show on WTOP in Washington, Kaine noted that both he and his predecessor as governor, Mark R. Warner, have restored the rights of more Virginians than any of the previous governors of the commonwealth combined. Virginia and Kentucky are the only states that require people who have lost their rights through felony convictions to apply for reinstatement. In addition to voting rights, convicted...

GLENN BECK, the most listened to Talk Show Host among White House Peeps (4 out of 5 Marxists agree)! Welcome Sick Twisted Freaks! It’s a morning thread, so bring your coffee and doughnuts! FRink Phrases: “Blow your mind” “Fatty fat fatso” “Having an ADD moment” “That’s FANSTASTIC!” And of course anytime Pat does his Arlen Specter voice is cause to FRink! Feel free to FReepmail any suggestions to add to the list! ENJOY!

High speed rail is a glamorous idea -- it's fun to imagine a train streaking through the cornfields from Chicago to St. Louis in four hours. Less glamorous are some of the fixes that need to be made to Chicago's notoriously slow freight rail system. Talk about projects like "signalize interlocking" and "grade separation," and eyes glaze over. But the promise of faster passenger rail is inextricably linked to the down-and-dirty business of freight. To make passenger and commuter trains move faster, you have to get the boxcars out of the way. And to do that, there needs to be...

TOLEDO, OH (WTOL) - Four Toledo police officers will be off the job for the next few months after they pleaded no contest to internal drug and alcohol charges Monday. Two of the officers were accused of driving their cruisers while intoxicated and another two tested positive for marijuana. The chief said if the officers did not agree to the plea deal, then they would have been terminated. Officers James Breier and Donald Mitchell faced a judge for their OVI charges last week on charges of operating their cruisers without a license. But Monday, they pled to internal charges of...

Look out below! The US housing market could be looking at a second steep decline in 2010 after statistics released last week show how poorly the Obama administration's mortgage modification plan is working. The millions of families hoping for a permanent mortgage modification may never get one -- and with their homes worth less than they owe on their loans, they may decide to walk away from the home voluntarily or be foreclosed upon as their trial modifications expire. The snail's pace of permanent mortgage modifications -- just 31,382 out of 3.3 million eligible loans have been cut -- could...

NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- For over a year, an exclusive NewsChannel 5 investigation has put the spotlight on judges who abuse their position. It turns out, some of those judges could have been in trouble before -- but the public might never know. Judicial officials will tell you that they're doing a good job of keeping Tennessee judges on the straight and narrow, but ethics advocates say they're using a double standard. When they judge the people who elected them, Tennessee judges do it in open court for the whole world to see."Judges are folks just like everybody else," said Rutherford...

On December 14th 1799, America lost her first president. She needs to revisit what made George Washington the great man and the great President that he was. Remembering George... First U.S. President: 1789-1797On April 30, 1789, George Washington, standing on the balcony of Federal Hall on Wall Street in New York, took his oath of office as the first President of the United States. "As the first of every thing, in our situation will serve to establish a Precedent," he wrote James Madison, "it is devoutly wished on my part, that these precedents may be fixed on true principles." Born...

America Under Barack Obama - An Interview with Nat Hentoff - By John W. Whitehead - December 11, 2009 Nat Hentoff has had a life well spent, one chock full of controversy fueled by his passion for the protection of civil liberties and human rights. Hentoff is known as a civil libertarian, free speech activist, anti-death penalty advocate, pro-lifer and not uncommon critic of the ideological left. At 84, Nat Hentoff is an American classic who has never shied away from an issue. For example, he defended a woman rejected from law school because she was Caucasian; called into a...

Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) and Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) sparred sharply on the Senate floor Monday evening, a departure from the usually dormant speeches in the august chamber. Franken said he was struck by a speech in which he said Thune had refused to highlight when benefits to the health care bill would kick in and instead emphasized the negative parts of the bill. “You know, again, we are entitled to our own opinions, we’re not entitled to our own facts,” Franken said, his booming voice rising. And in a reference to a chart Thune held up, Franken said: “If...

President Barack Obama’s approval numbers continue to plummet into the abyss. From Rasmussen Reports: The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Monday shows that 24% of the nation’s voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Forty-two percent (42%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -18. Overall, 44% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the President’s performance. That’s the lowest level yet measured for this president. Previously, his overall approval rating had fallen to 45% twice, once in early September and once in late November....

I'm not a Chiropractor ( but I saw one twice this week). This is Harry Reid in the photo from Drudge.com. Looks like this man is dealing with some stress. Any advice on how poor Mr. Reeeeid can get his posture back? PS (great play on words) Person A: I have a week back.Person B: When did you hurt it?Person A: About a week back.  

Scientific progress depends on accurate and complete data. It also relies on replication. The past couple of days have uncovered some shocking revelations about the baloney practices that pass as sound science about climate change. It was announced Thursday afternoon that computer hackers had obtained 160 megabytes of e-mails from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA) in England. Those e-mails involved communication among many scientific researchers and policy advocates with similar ideological positions all across the world. Those purported authorities were brazenly discussing the destruction and hiding of data that did not support global-warming...

Monday, December 14, 2009 A Tale of Two Walls By Joseph Farah Egypt is building a huge metal wall along its border with the Gaza Strip to cut down on smuggling and penetration by terrorists. When it is finished in 18 months, the super-strength steel wall that cannot be cut or melted will be about seven miles long and extend 60 feet below the ground to inhibit tunnel-digging. It is said to be impenetrable – however, no one doubts that smugglers and terrorists won't try to burrow beneath it. But it is a deterrent – a big deterrent. Interestingly, I...

The city’s Department of Education plans to offer a contract renewal to a school bus company that was identified in a federal investigation as having paid bribes to school bus inspectors. Logan Bus Company was one of nine companies identified in the investigation as having paid bribes in exchange for favorable treatment, which in some cases included overlooking safety violations and falsifying records that allowed the companies to overcharge the city. The city takes measures to exclude companies from city contracting that have defrauded it. But the bus companies were not charged with any crimes, and prosecutors have described the...

When I saw the statement repeated online that theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking of the University of Cambridge would be dead by now if he lived in the U.K. and had to depend on the National Health Service (he, of course, is alive and working in the U.K., where he always has), I reflected on something I had written a dozen years ago, in one of my first published commentaries: “The increasingly blatant nature of the nonsense uttered with impunity in public discourse is chilling. Our democratic society is imperiled as much by this as any other single threat, regardless of...

NLPC has filed a shareholder proposal asking Goldman Sachs to report on the science behind its embrace of global warming in the wake of the ‘Climategate’ scandal. Goldman’s ‘climate policy’ is more than corporate public relations. In 2007, Goldman participated in the buyout of energy firm TXU. The transaction resulted in the cancelation of 8 of 11 planned coal-fired power plants after pressure from environmental activists. It might make wealthy financiers in New York City feel good about themselves to scotch electric generation in the name of environmentalism, but it has negative consequences for ordinary people. Electricity is a basic...

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama will meet with Senate Democrats at the White House Tuesday to press for action at a make-or-break moment for his health care overhaul. All 60 members of the Democratic caucus have been invited, according to three Democratic officials. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the announcement was not yet public.

With President Barack Obama attacking "fat cat bankers on Wall Street," left-wing non-governmental organizations (NGOs) see a great opportunity to pass a global tax on financial transactions that could generate at least $700 billion a year from the U.S. and other "rich" countries. They are expecting Obama's support. The banks are a key target because of the "anger" that already exists against them for their roles in the global financial crisis, says a detailed 13-page memorandum from Max Lawson of the foreign aid group Oxfam. Calling the global Financial Transactions Tax (FTT) "an idea whose time has come," Lawson says...

The Government Is Monitoring Facebook And Twitter By Noel Sheppard Created 2009-12-14 11:59 "The government is increasingly monitoring Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites for tax delinquents, copyright infringers and political protesters." So ominously began an editorial [1] in Sunday's New York Times. Those with accounts at such websites should pay attention, for according to the Times, and other sources, Big Brother is watching you: The Wall Street Journal reported this summer that state revenue agents have been searching for tax scofflaws by mining information on MySpace and Facebook. In October, the F.B.I. searched the New York home of...

Radical plan to cut CO2 argues that paying for family planning is developing world is the best bet ___ Consumers in the developed world are to be offered a radical method of offsetting their carbon emissions in an ambitious attempt to tackle climate change - by paying for contraception measures in poorer countries to curb the rapidly growing global population. The scheme - set up by an organisation backed by Sir David Attenborough, the former diplomat Sir Crispin Tickell and green figureheads such as Jonathon Porritt and James Lovelock - argues that family planning is the most effective way to...

Fidel Castro says Obama's smile can't be trustedMon Dec 14, 2009 7:31pm EST HAVANA (Reuters) - Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro warned on Monday that President Barack Obama's "kindly smile" could not be trusted, saying Washington was plotting against leftist Latin American governments including Venezuela's. Castro, 83, who ran Cuba for nearly 50 years before poor health led him to hand the presidency to his younger brother Raul last year, initially welcomed Obama's election but has been increasingly critical. In a letter read by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez at a gathering of leftist leaders in Havana, Castro said the United...

Obama refers to top executives at 'fat-cat bankers' on CBS program WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- President Barack Obama is sitting down Monday with the top executives of the nation's largest banks at the White House, with echoes of "fat cats" ringing in everyone's ears.On the eve of the meeting, Obama slammed bankers on network television, calling them "fat-cat bankers" on CBS's "60 Minutes" program. "I did not run for office to be helping out a bunch of fat-cat bankers on Wall Street," Obama said in an interview on the television show. "They're still puzzled why it is that people are mad...

Senior officials in Israel confirmed reports on Monday that a British court issued an arrest warrant against opposition chairwoman Tzipi Livni for her role in orchestrating Israel's military offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip nearly a year ago. The request for the warrant was submitted by a pro-Palestinian organization. Livni served as foreign minister alongside Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Ehud Barak during the Israel Defense Forces offensive in Gaza. The three figures comprised the "troika" of top decision-makers who charted the course of the war. A Earlier Monday, Arab-language media reported that Livni canceled her participation...

ohn Williams, who runs the popular counter government data manipulation site Shadowstats, has thrown down the gauntlet to deflationists, and in an extensive report concludes that the probability of a hyperinflationary episode in America over the next year has reached critical levels. While the debate between deflationists and (hyper)inflationists has been a long and painful one, numerous events set off in motion by the Bernanke Fed (as a direct legacy of the Greenspan multi-decade period of cheap and boundless credit) may have well cast America as the unwilling protagonist in the sequel of the failed monetary policy economic experiment better...

Jeffrey Judge of Eagle River has a Sarah Palin superfan in the family: his father. "He took down the family pictures and put her on the wall," said Tammy, Judge's wife. "So now when you go over there, she's like, staring at you," his daughter added.

Major Garrett’s in the hall outside the Democratic caucus room and tweeting the word from Tom Harkin. Can’t really call this good news, as it makes passage much more likely, so let’s call it slightly-better-than-worst-case-scenario news. No more public option: Asked by a reporter if the Medicare buy-in will be pulled out, Harkin said “looks that way,” before praising a Democratic health care bill without the two public option compromises. “There’s enough good in this bill that even without those two, we gotta move,” he said. “All the insurance reforms, all the stuff we wrote so hard for prevention and...

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court has turned away a new challenge to a 2005 law that gives gun manufacturers immunity from lawsuits by shooting victims. The justices on Monday refused to hear an appeal from Hector Adames Jr. to revive his lawsuit against the Beretta U.S.A. Corp. over the accidental shooting death of his 13-year-old son. The justices on Monday refused to hear an appeal from Hector Adames Jr. to revive his lawsuit against the Beretta U.S.A. Corp. over the accidental shooting death of his 13-year-old son. The Illinois Supreme Court threw out the lawsuit, citing the federal 2005 Protection...

New military rules of engagement ostensibly to protect Afghan civilians are putting the lives of U.S. forces in jeopardy, claim Army and Marine sources, as the Taliban learns to game plan based the rules' imposed limits. The rules of engagement, or ROEs, apply to all coalition forces of the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Their enactment is in response to Afghan President Hamid Karzai's complaints over mounting civilian deaths apparently occurring in firefights. Despite the fact that the newly arrived U.S. commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, imposed the more restrictive ROEs to minimize the killing of...

Just because no one is too worried about gate crashers showing up at the White House Hanukkah party doesn't mean the guest list isn't being watched very carefully. The annual celebration has grown in recent years into an important bellwether in American Jewish circles, a sign of which leaders are in good graces and who is losing clout. So the Obama administration's announcement that it was cutting the size of the Dec. 16 party by more than a third has left many wondering who will make the cut, and what some might do to get their name added to the...

Walkout heightens failure fears for climate marathon2009-12-14 COPENHAGEN (AFP) - Negotiators worked through the night Tuesday to prevent a UN climate summit from ending in catastrophic failure after developing nations staged a five-hour walkout and China accused the West of trickery. As the White House said Barack Obama wants a deal that imposes "meaningful steps" to combat global warming, ministers admitted they had to start making giant strides before 120 heads of state arrived for the summit's climax Friday. But their hopes were hit when Africa led a boycott by developing nations of working groups, only returning after securing guarantees...

FOB HASSANABAD, Afghanistan — The young Marines at this outpost could be on a camping trip to Hell. The living conditions in Helmand Province, one of the worst regions for trouble in Afghanistan, are such that most of friends and family in the United States wouldn't consider putting up with them for one day, much less the months these men will be assigned here. It's not even officially winter, yet temperatures routinely fall below freezing at night, and there's no heat in the tents. At night when standing guard in one of the security towers, the Marines put on layer...

It is amazing what one person can do.

In a previous posting, I had pointed out that IPPT v. Chrysler could be a harbinger of things to come with Messrs. Donofrio and Pidgeon now representing numerous Chrysler dealers in to-be-filed petitions, including for quo warranto. Today, with the Supreme Court's decision to grant a writ of certiorari on the Indiana Pension Fund (docket) -- thereby allowing the high Court to issue a summary judgment order both vacated (to render void and not precedent-setting) and remanded (sent back) the case back to the US Court of Appeals, 2nd Circuit and dismissing as moot -- Mr. Leo Donofrio posted the...