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Watch video: http://www.butasforme.com/2009/07/07/obama-downplays-us-role-in-cold-war-victory-after-hour-long-lecture-by-putin/

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) — A federal jury has seen video of a former Louisiana congressman accepting a suitcase filled with $100,000 in cash outside a northern Virginia hotel.

It is a start. The honesty, dignity and respect shown by the President of the United States of America was a refreshing change to the arrogance, boorishness and callousness of the Bush regime and provides a scenario for a reset in relations and a genuine spirit of partnership for the future. An excellent example for the wider world. Barack Obama comes away from Moscow with a handful of documents, which could be summarised in a nutshell as no more than the beginning of a process to reduce the nucear arsenals of the greatest nuclear power, the Russian Federation, and the...

She's wowed crowds in London and Paris but the trademark flamboyance of Michelle Obama, wife of the US president, was nowhere to be seen this week in Moscow, where leaders' spouses get little attention. After descending from Air Force One on Monday behind her husband and with their two daughters, Michelle Obama virtually disappeared from the public eye as Barack Obama filled Russian television screens, websites and newspapers. "Russian protocol apparently sought to contain news about Barack Obama's wife so as not to break with Russian political tradition," said Olga Kryshtanovskaya, a social and political commentator. "In contrast with the...

A former FBI special agent told law enforcement and Homeland Security personnel that a network of Islamic organizations are working to incrementally implement Islamic law in the United States. During a presentation at the Bedford County Emergency Management Agency, former FBI agent John Guandolo briefed members about groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood, which he claims is working with other Islamic groups to slowly implement Shariah, also known as Islamic law, which encompasses all areas of life. Guandolo worked in the FBI since 1996, including nine years as a member of its SWAT team. After 9/11, he worked in the...

I am struggling with a very selfish grief. I am loosing it really. Everybody seems to be going on. But I am still in the middle of my grief. It is just a month ago. But I miss my mother so much. I know she would want me to be happy . But I am not there yet. I am in this selfish grief of why why why. I cant accept it. I miss her so much. I am sitting on her grave every day. I am crying and I am grieving. I talk to her. I look at her...

How long will it be before motorcycles run without gas? It’s a question for the ages, or the engineers. Now that cars and trucks are scaling back fuel usage and converting to electric power, don’t kid yourself, motorcycles won’t be far behind. There will always be a place for the classics, mind you, just the same as there’ll always be a place for classic cars – though perhaps alternative fuels will allow us to retain the internal-combustion engine without using fossil fuels. For the moment, there’s a heavy emphasis on electric power, and what can be accomplished with the new...

Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, 86, discusses the painful lessons of the Treaty of Versailles, idealism in politics and Obama's opportunity to forge a peaceful American foreign policy.

ROME: Fresh evidence of continued collusion of Pakistan's official agencies with terrorist groups plotting attacks on India has cast a shadow on resumption of full-scale talks between the estranged neighbours. According to sources, state actors in Pakistan were seeking to help terrorist groups using Thuraya satellite phones to plot attacks on India by camouflaging the location of the phones. The deception game, spoofing in intelligence parlance, involves setting up transmitters near the terrorist bases to block the signals from Thuraya sets which can help pinpoint location of the users. The transmitters cannot be set up or remain hidden to Pakistan's...

Some clerics have come out strongly in favour of the protesters and reformists The focus of the Iran crisis has shifted from the street to the seminary. Clerics are having to choose whether to align themselves with the conservatives or the reformists - or maintain an awkward silence. More than three weeks after the elections of 12 June, a troika of senior reformists form the core of the opposition to an outcome they regard as fraudulent. These are the two main defeated candidates, Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karoubi, and their close ally, the former President Mohammed Khatami. Hard-liners are...

Wouldn’t it be ironic if the first military intervention of the Obama administration were to occur in, of all places, Honduras? Unlikely, I admit, but not impossible. Young Democratic presidents with scant foreign-policy experience usually feel a need to demonstrate their willingness to use force early on. Think of JFK and the Bay of Bigs. Or, more to the point, recall Clinton and Haiti. In 1994, Cinton sent in troops to restore president Jean-Bertrand Aristide to power after he had been ousted by a military coup.

July 7, 2009 Obama to Russia: stop Iranian nuclear weapon and US will scrap missile defence President Obama today offered to scrap plans for a missile defence shield in Eastern Europe if Russia helped to stop Iran developing a nuclear bomb. He appealed in Moscow for a new era of partnership between Russia and the United States to fight the spread of nuclear weapons to rogue states and terrorist groups. "That is why we should be united in opposing North Korea's efforts to become a nuclear power and preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon," he said. Russia strongly opposes...

This past Friday the CBO released a fuller scoring of HELP’s legislation, and indeed, the overall impact on our nation’s debt is lower: a mere $597 billion would be added to federal budget deficits over the 2010-2019 period. How did HELP lower the bill’s budget busting total? Did they “bend the curve” on health care costs? Did they weed out administrative costs? Eliminate waste? Nope. The Washington Post reports: Committee staffers reworked the bill — and added a new provision requiring most employers to contribute to the cost of health insurance — to arrive at the lower estimate. Under the...

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Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor got a boost on Tuesday in what is expected to be a relatively easy road to Senate confirmation when an influential U.S. lawyer's group gave her its top rating. The American Bar Association's Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary based its unanimous "well qualified" evaluation on a review of the integrity, competence and judicial temperament of Sotomayor, a federal judge for 17 years who seems headed to become the first Hispanic on the highest U.S. court. "When the Judiciary Committee hearings to consider this nomination begin next week, Americans will hear from Judge Sotomayor herself,...

CHARLESTON - In an unusual promotion, the West Virginia Power baseball team is planning to give the first 1,000 fans a commemorative figurine July 4. While giving away bobblehead dolls and other figures has become popular at athletic events, the Power's plan to give away a likeness of United States Senator Robert C. Byrd is thought to be a bit off the beaten path. In fact, according to a Power spokesman, representatives of the West Virginia Democrat were concerned when they heard about the plans. "They were concerned and wanted it done in a classy manner," said Kristin Call, marketing...

It is not without serious reservation that the Tea Parties maintain their theme of being about the American people who are sick and tired of Washington’s overspending. However, with the left controlling the media for so long, we‘ve been smothered by leftists such as this one with the usual “It’s Bush’s fault” rhetoric. This calls for some straightening out of the facts. 1. During the Clinton era, the Republicans controlled the House and Senate from 1995 to 2001. Almost everything that got to Clinton’s desk was written by Republicans. Even though Clinton likes to take credit for the record surplus,...

Henry Waxman is slamming the House GOP — saying their opposition to climate change legislation and the stimulus indicates they're cheering against the USA. "It appears that the Republican party leadership in the Congress has made a decision that they want to deny President Obama success — which means, in my mind, they are rooting against the country as well," the powerful House Energy and Commerce chairman told WAMU-NPR host Diane Rehm this morning in an hourlong appearance promoting his new book, "The Waxman Report." Still, he said that one House Republican leader, speaking to him after the climate-change squeaker,...

LOS ANGELES (MarketWatch) -- California's State Treasurer's Office has laid down ground rules for redeeming promissary notes, or IOUs, sold to third parties through Ebay, Craigslist or other means, demanding supporting documents for such sales, STO spokesman Tom Dresslar said Monday.

The most exciting and underreported news of the past few weeks in Iran has been that the emerging challenger to the increasingly frantic and isolated "Supreme Leader" Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. And Rafsanjani has recently made a visit to the city of Najaf in Iraq to confer with Ayatollah Ali Husaini Sistani, a long-standing opponent of the Khamenei doctrines, as well as meeting in the city of Qum with Jawad al-Shahristani, who is Sistani's representative in Iran. It is this dialectic between Iraqi and Iranian Shiites that underlies the flabbergasting statement issued from Qum...