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Van Jones, an administration official specializing in environmentally friendly "green jobs," has resigned his position. . .The decision of Van Jones to resign as President Obama's "green jobs" czar is not a victory for Republicans who griped about the White House aide's willingness to call them out on their extreme partisanship. Nor was it a victory for right-wing nuts like Glenn Beck, who waged a bitter campaign against Jones, highlighting his history of activism on behalf of environmental justice, racial reconciliation, global solidarity and an inquiry into events leading up to the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center...

Nowhere is the fallout from Obama’s healthcare proposals more evident than among the elderly, and nothing is more dangerous permanently for the Democratic Party than their increasing disaffection. A Wall Street Journal poll taken last week reflects a gain by Republicans in party identification, closing the gap from 40-33 in April in favor of the Democrats to a Democratic margin of only 35-34. The data reflects that one-third of this six-point closure of the partisan gap comes from a major shift among the elderly — the only demographic group to have moved dramatically. In April, the elderly broke evenly on...

It makes me sad and a little sick that Van Jones, the White House Green Jobs Czar, was forced to resign after being targeted by a vicious smear campaign. The Obama administration lost a brilliant mind who worked day and night to, as Van would say, "get the greenest solutions to the poorest people". Indeed, Van did as much as anyone to put the concept of the Green Collar Economy on the map, including publishing a best-selling book with that title. More than that, he was one of the nation's most pragmatic environmental visionaries, someone who was always thinking up...

Hello All, By now you have probably heard that President Obama came to Montana last Friday. However, there are many things that the major news has not covered. I feel that since Bill and I live here and we were at the airport on Friday I should share some facts with you. Whatever you decide to do with the information is up to you. If you chose to share this email with others I do ask that you DELETE my email address before you forward this on. On Wednesday, August 5th it was announced locally that the President would be...

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Former Comptroller General of the United States David Walker has been sounding the warnings of impending Federal bankruptcy for years. The largest problem is Federal health care entitlements — a factor to be seriously considered as Congress debates yet another proposed health care entitlement bill. [Videos]

Four billboards along Interstate 30 are sparking a debate over whether gays should be welcomed at local churches. A coalition of five churches that are part of a larger congregation of prodominatly gay Christians have put up four billboards on I-30 between Grand Prairie and Fort Worth with messages urging Christians to accept gays. One billboard reads "The early church welcomed a gay man" and another reads, "Would Jesus discriminate." Reverend Colleen Darraugh with the Metropolitan Community Church of Greater Dallas tells CBS-11 exclusively they've been the target of controversy since the billboards went up last week. "There are people...

Reaching for a game-changer, President Barack Obama is beset by conflicting goals in a prime-time address Wednesday expected to detail just how he wants to expand health care coverage and lower medical costs while signaling to a deeply divided Congress that he's ready to deal.

Harvard Law School Professor Alan M. Dershowitz sought to explain why the Jewish-American community should not doubt President Barack Obama’s support for Israel in a debate with his former student that evolved into a discussion of both policy and politics at Harvard Hillel last night. Before an audience of over 100 people—many of them members of the Hillel community—Dershowitz reaffirmed his support for Obama despite mixed rhetoric from the White House on America’s approach to Israel-Palestine relations and the subsequent backlash from the American Jewish community, which voted overwhelmingly for the then-Illinois senator. Taking a more critical stance, Joel B....

When President Obama's special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, was asked last month to define "success" in those countries, he said, "We'll know it when we see it." That comment isn't as flip as it seems (see below). But it illustrates the difficulties of explaining why we should get further involved in Afghanistan. Even as President Obama considers whether to send more troops, public opinion is turning against the Afghan war because Americans can't figure out what we are doing - or where we are headed. So it's not enough for Obama to say, "This is a war...

GANJGAL, Afghanistan — We walked into a trap, a killing zone of relentless gunfire and rocket barrages from Afghan insurgents hidden in the mountainsides and in a fortress-like village where women and children were replenishing their ammunition. "We will do to you what we did to the Russians," the insurgent's leader boasted over the radio, referring to the failure of Soviet troops to capture Ganjgal during the 1979-89 Soviet occupation. Dashing from boulder to boulder, diving into trenches and ducking behind stone walls as the insurgents maneuvered to outflank us, we waited more than an hour for U.S. helicopters to...

When contributors hand over money to a trade group that’s lobbying on a bill before Congress, the public has a right to know who’s putting up that cash, a federal appeals panel has ruled. In an opinion issued Tuesday, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld a relatively recent law requiring public donor lists. The National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) had challenged the disclosure provision in the 2007 ethics overhaul law (PL 110-81), arguing that the First Amendment’s guarantee of the right to petition Congress means that financial backers of lobbying...

Obama to Chair UN Security Council Role could have prez crossing paths with Gaddafi Updated 6:45 AM CDT, Wed, Sep 9, 2009 Barack Obama is set to become the first-ever U.S. president to chair the United Nations' 15-member Security Council when it meets later this month. The council, which next meets Sept. 24, deals with a host of global challenges, including nuclear non-proliferation and nuclear disarmament. The Obama administration hopes to use the month-long appointment to emphasise a departure from the Bush administration's strategy of pursuing its own unilateral policies through the council. Obama will join other heads of government...

News is the first draft of history", or so we're told. In truth, the "news" reported by mass media seldom reflects the crucial events of the moment. News reports of the summer of 1914 treated the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand as a trivial Balkan matter, of little interest to anyone in the more civilized areas of Europe. Similarly, you'd look long and hard in the late spring of 1950 for any mention of a place called "Korea" in U.S. papers. "News", as the major media describes it, is almost without exception trivia. Nothing has changed. In the summer of 2009...

SMYRNA, Tenn. -- Two parents have said the juvenile court system treated their son like a killer instead of an honor student who got a traffic ticket. Police arrested, handcuffed, shackled and jailed the teenager because he didn't show up for court. Zachary Dubwe is a Smyrna High School honor student and not a habitual offender. "Our child was leading our subdivision to go to school, and he didn't come to a complete stop at a stop sign in our subdivision," said Steve Townley, the boy's father. The couple told the teen to keep track of his court date. They...

Here is video of White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs yesterday saying "We're not starting over," referring to the Health Care Bill and what President Obama may present in his speech tonight to a Joint Session of Congress. Some have advocated that Obama just start from scratch in developing a bill, but Gibbs says that is not their plan. . . .(VIDEO)

It is clear from his inadvertent 'achievements' so far in the Middle East that the new US president still has a lot to learn. For a president who has been in office for just over seven months, Barack Obama can at last point to some meaningful change that he has brought about in the Middle East. Thanks to his administration's arm-twisting and bullying of Jerusalem over settlements, Obama has unwittingly succeeded in galvanizing the Israeli public like never before. The result is a broad coalition that extends all the way from the moderate left, through the center and over to...

Nowhere is the fallout from Obama's healthcare proposals more evident than among the elderly, and nothing is more dangerous permanently for the Democratic Party than their increasing disaffection. A Wall Street Journal poll taken last week reflects a gain by Republicans in party identification, closing the gap from 40-33 in April in favor of the Democrats to a Democratic margin of only 35-34. The data reflects that one-third of this six-point closure of the partisan gap comes from a major shift among the elderly - the only demographic group to have moved dramatically

Forget the settlements. If the world truly wants to identify an obstacle to peace, it could do much worse than cast its eyes toward Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa. For nearly 18-years Amr Moussa, first as Egypt's foreign minister for a decade, and then for the last eight years as head of the Arab League, has worked mightily to poison the atmosphere against Israel. During the heady Oslo days of the mid 1990s, it was Moussa who obstructed Israel's efforts to broaden ties with the Arab world by spearheading efforts to get Egypt and other Muslim countries to refrain from...