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President Obama recently shifted authority for approving sales to China of missile and space technology from the White House to the Commerce Department -- a move critics say will loosen export controls and potentially benefit Chinese missile development. The president issued a little-noticed "presidential determination" Sept. 29 that delegated authority for determining whether missile and space exports should be approved for China to Commerce Secretary Gary Locke.

... [W]e have come together to put forward proposals that address legitimate concerns among Democrats and Republicans and the other constituencies with stakes in this legislation. We’re looking for a new beginning, informed by the work of our colleagues and legislation that is already before Congress. First, we agree that climate change is real and threatens our economy and national security. That is why we are advocating aggressive reductions in our emissions of the carbon gases that cause climate change. We will minimize the impact on major emitters through a market-based system that will provide both flexibility and time for...

Barack Obama has demanded the Pentagon conduct a radical review of US nuclear weapons doctrine to prepare the way for deep cuts in the country's arsenal, the Guardian can reveal. Obama has rejected the Pentagon's first draft of the "nuclear posture review" as being too timid, and has called for a range of more far-reaching options consistent with his goal of eventually abolishing nuclear weapons altogether, according to European officials.

Print Headline: "Patriots or Pinheads? Tea Party movement must contain its extremes" ... For its critics, the tea party was a rabble-rousing mob of right-wing hotheads and religious nuts who lack the education to know the difference between a communist and a Nazi – but who are sure that our black president is both. The truth is surely closer to what Byron York of The Washington Examiner said he saw – a wide variety of people espousing different points of view, united in their fear of the future and bedrock belief that Washington is not to be trusted.

Rep. Loretta Sanchez Among Lawmakers In Spotlight For Taxpayer-Funded Trips The Garden Grove congresswoman has made 20 overseas excursions since 2006, touching down on every continent. Critics say more transparency is needed on government-sponsored travel. By Richard Simon September 13, 2009 Reporting from Washington - At a time when congressional travel is coming under new scrutiny, Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Garden Grove) has the distinction of taking more trips at taxpayer expense than anyone else in the California delegation. In the last 3 1/2 years, she visited the South Pole, snorkeled at Australia's Great Barrier Reef and joined world leaders at...

U.S. actor George Clooney plays a New Age hippie soldier trained for psychic, peaceful combat in a comedy set during the war in Iraq. "The Men Who Stare at Goats" is based on a book by Jon Ronson about a secret unit created by the U.S. army in 1979 which, the author said, believed troops could become invisible, walk through walls and kill goats just by staring at them. Ewan McGregor plays a reporter who stumbles across a member of the unit as he prepares to enter Iraq, and he and Clooney's character Lyn Cassady go on an ill-fated journey...

I’m a Glenn Beck fan. I know that he’s become Fox News Channel’s most notorious gadfly, and that he accused Barack Obama of hating White people and regularly sheds tears on his television show, but that’s why I like him. America needs to hear voices like Glenn Beck, because if he weren’t on the air, he might do something really dangerous, like run for office, or actually create policy and that’s 100 times worse than anything he’s said on the air. Beck’s show is replete with calls for taking over or taking back the government from the evil czars that...

A mysterious YouTube member named, conveniently, “megwhitmanonvanjones,” has uploaded a May 2009 San Francisco Chronicle video of 2010 GOP California gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman, in which the former CEO of eBay and former adviser to Mitt Romney and John McCain gushes about suddenly controversial green jobs czar Van Jones. "There’s a guy over in Oakland, I think his name is Van Jones. And he and I were on a cruise last summer in the Arctic, on climate change. And I got to know him very well. And a lot of the work he’s doing to enfranchise broader communities I’m a...

TNR has a profile of Barack Obama's favorite conservative pundit, David Brooks. The thing to know about Brooks is that he's a nearly man. He wanted to be an Ivy League scholar, but had to settle for the University of Chicago. He wanted to be a hardnosed political reporter but ended up a more sedate political commentator instead. He spent his life like a sort of Dickensian figure with his nose pressed against the window, studying the lives of the people he wanted to be. People like David Axelrod: whose career Brooks kept a close eye on after he graduated...

On a Sunday evening in August four summers ago the NBC Nightly News devoted its “In Depth” segment to how Cindy Sheehan was “single-handedly bringing the Iraq debate to Mr. Bush’s doorstep” with her protest in Crawford, Texas. But Sunday night this year, after Sheehan departed Martha's Vineyard without earning any network media coverage as President Barack Obama's wrapped up his vacation there, NBC's Ron Allen began a story: “Hours before President Obama's vacation ended, he treated his girls to ice cream and candy -- the kind of family time the President said he had in mind for the week...

Conservatives in America are playing with fire by inciting violence against the country's first black president "Does the sun ever shine during a Democratic administration?" asked Jon Stewart on a recent edition of The Daily Show, in a nod to the rightwing hysteria over the current White House incumbent. "With Obama in office now, when babies laugh do you hear only the sound of kittens drowning?" Stewart is a comedian, but this is no laughing matter. The lies perpetrated against Obama – that he is a foreigner, a Marxist, a Nazi, a racist, intent on interning the elderly and euthanising...

This morning Geraldo Rivera had a small tantrum on the Fox Morning Show as he tried to defend Obamacare to the rest of the guests who weren't having any of it. I was surprised and disappointed to hear Rivera say that he believes in Obamacare and that opposition to it in town hall meetings is being organized by Obama-hating professional right-wing goons. He then raised eyebrows by offering that Obamacare is disintegrating before the Dems' eyes (despite the Libs' bussing-in violent union thugs, whom Obama describes as "grass roots supporters" of Obama).

It has now become an annual ritual, as predictable as an eclipse: Frank Lindh and Marilyn Walker come out before the media to extol the virtues of their son, Suleyman al-Faris, also known as Abdul Hamid. Don’t recognize the names? Perhaps you may remember him by his real name — John Walker Lindh (”Jihad Johnny”), the American Taliban. This year is no exception, and Frank Lindh and Marilyn Walker want to talk again to anyone who’ll listen, in an effort to get their son out of federal prison. This year, the story has been picked up by Amy Goodman and...

Colin Powell appeared on CNN's Larry King Show on Tuesday evening. In the wake of his endorsement of Barack Obama, some conservatives have suggested that he leave the Republican Party. Powell's response to King was defiant, "I decide what party I am going to be in." He then offered advice to the Republican Party for improving its electoral prospects. When one takes to the national airwaves and asserts his allegiance and offers his wisdom to the Party, this assumes both political and moral standing. There must be a perception in the audience of good faith that has been earned and...

In reaction to a propaganda video of the Taliban holding an American soldier hostage in Afghanistan, on Monday’s CBS Early Show, terrorism analyst Jere Van Dyk argued: “What they [the Taliban] are saying is that ‘we can treat American soldiers, we can treat prisoners, better than Americans are treating them.’” Van Dyk went on: “…that’s a signal there. He’s wearing nice clothes, he’s being fed, he has a cup of tea there… what they are saying is that ‘we will protect to the death… a guest in our home.’

When the US President is openly being compared to Miikhail Gorbachev, it's time to reevaluate national policy toward historic enemies. Russia may now have a parliament, an elected President, and a free-market economy, but its global aspirations remain the same. President Obama's response in the face of Russia's saber rattling is to offer unilateral strategic concessions. Let's review recent events: o Russia invades Georgia with no compelling American response. o Russia threatens nuclear war with Poland due to the inclusion of Poland in the new US missile defense shield. o Russia cuts off Ukraine's electricity as penalty for Ukrainian support...

Stateline, Nev. - Former Vice President Dan Quayle gives President Obama high marks for surrounding himself with quality advisers on national security and the economy. But he says the verdict is still out on whether his Democratic administration will govern as liberally as he campaigned. "I think his biggest challenge is to tame the left wing of his party," Quayle said in an interview with The Associated Press at Lake Tahoe. "I guess we'll find out how `left' Obama really is because he's going to have to make some very tough decisions where he is either going to have to...

(CNSNews.com) – Vice President Joe Biden told people attending an AARP town hall meeting that unless the Democrat-supported health care plan becomes law the nation will go bankrupt and that the only way to avoid that fate is for the government to spend more money. “And folks look, AARP knows and the people with me here today know, the president knows, and I know, that the status quo is simply not acceptable,” Biden said at the event on Thursday in Alexandria, Va. “It’s totally unacceptable. And it’s completely unsustainable. Even if we wanted to keep it the way we have...

RESIGNATION: Daughter's ex-fiance says governor also missed family time. BY SEAN COCKERAM Levi Johnston, the former fiance of Gov. Sarah Palin's daughter Bristol, on Thursday joined the crowd offering up potential reasons for Palin's decision to step down. Johnston met with reporters to say that he heard her musing about a better life, one in which she could spend more time at home, reduce her stress, and accept the lucrative offers coming her way. Back in December, a month after her election defeat as John McCain's running mate, Johnston said that Palin "had talked about how nice it would be...