Gov. Haley Barbour (R-Miss.) predicted Wednesday that despite his current popularity in the polls, President Barack Obama will eventually suffer the same reversal of political fortune that befell President Bill Clinton in 1994.
“What they have in common is that everything for them is political. They wage a perpetual campaign. They are both extraordinary politicians. Either one of them could charm the skin off a snake,” Barbour told reporters at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast.
Barbour, who was handily reelected to a second term in 2007, served as chairman of the Republican National Committee from 1993 to 1997. Barbour linked Clinton’s unpopular efforts to raise taxes and to reform health policy in 1993 to the GOP’s capture of both the Senate and House in 1994 for the first time in 40 years.
LAWRENCE, Kan. — A University of Kansas professor who is a former astronaut shared what it was like to be at the controls when the Hubble telescope went into space 19 years ago.Dr. Steve Hawley was a member of the crew that blasted into space in April 1990 to deploy the space telescope.”It was very exciting and we had great anticipation for the science Hubble would be able to do,” Hawley told KMBC’s Marcus Moore. “I remember very clearly when we had it in orbit, and we were just getting ready to release it. I remember thinking about all of the people who devoted their careers to this moment, and it was finally here. ‘Hubble’s going to be a reality.’”
A Kansas University attorney on Tuesday morning told a judge that KU officials acted properly in 2004 when they fired the longtime director the Spencer Museum of Art.
But a defense attorney for former director Andrea Norris argued to Douglas County District Judge Sally Pokorny that KU officials did not follow proper policy during the firing.
Sure, KU won the men’s basketball championship again, but Bill Self’s team was in rarefied air compared to the other sports. Take a guess about the second-highest finish by the Jayhawks against the rest of the league.
It’s fifth place.
Actually, KU rowing wound up in third place at the Big 12 Championships, but that was in a field of three. And Kansas’ women’s swimming and diving team was fourth in a field of six.
KU’s fifth-place finishers were baseball and women’s golf and, on paper anyway, the golfers were better because they competed against a full boat, whereas only 10 league schools have baseball.
D.C. Councilmember Tommy Wells (D-Ward 6) says he’s been getting lots of complaints.
“For the first time in anyone’s memory,” Wells says. “People are starting to get ticketed in their own driveways. This is ridiculous and we’re going to get to the bottom of it.”
To that end, Wells called the Director of the Department of Public Works, Bill Howland, to find out why his agency was issuing these tickets.
“I asked him what’s going on,” Wells said, “Is this some kind of revenue raising or policy change? He said he’d get back to me.”
Wells said he asked Howland if his department would start issuing warnings for first time offenders.
“He said “No, we don’t do that’,” Wells said. “If the government is going to be unreasonable about this then we’re going to have to look at changing the law.”
So what does the law say?
“Any area between the property line and the building restriction line shall be considered as private property set aside and treated as public space under the care and maintenance of the property owner.”
Basically what that means is most property owners in the District don’t own the land between their front door and the sidewalk, but they are responsible for taking care of it. It’s why you can get a ticket for drinking beer on your front porch in the Nation’s Capital. You’re technically on public space. It’s also why the city can ticket you for parking in your own driveway if you don’t pull your car deep enough into the driveway beyond the façade of your house or building.
WASHINGTON (AP) - Contending that U.S. borders are more secure than ever, Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer said today it’s time for the White House and Congress to overhaul immigration laws to stem the number of people coming into and living illegally in the U.S.
“We can pass strong, fair, practical and effective immigration reform this year,” said Schumer.
President Barack Obama plans next month to meet with a small bipartisan group of Senate and House leaders to discuss immigration with the intention of beginning debate on the issue later this year, according to an administration official who requested anonymity because the White House was not ready to announce the meeting. Schumer was expected to be among those attending.
In a nutshell: Since 1982, utility customers have been paying for a nuclear-waste repository that has never come to pass, and which now looks increasingly unlikely. Utilities have been storing their spent fuel in pools near their reactors-a temporary solution that is turning permanent. They want their money back.
Now pro-nuclear politicians are getting on board. Last month, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham introduced “Rebating America’s Deposits Act,” designed to force the administration to fix the waste issue once and for all or return the money. A similar bill was introduced in the House this week. Most of the money would go back to utility customers; 25% would compensate utilities for building temporary storage facilities.
The Department of Energy has the duty to pick up spent nuclear fuel, but utilities have been doing the job-at a cost of tens of millions of dollars each. The Nuclear Waste Fund now totals $29.6 billion dollars, but years of under-funding have left Yucca Mountain no closer to opening than when then the program began.
“He wants to get things done, and he wants to work with people that will get you there,” regardless of party affiliation, she said.
In a short time, Parkinson has made an impression after having served as lieutenant governor in the shadow of his predecessor, Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, who was selected by President Barack Obama to lead the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
After Sebelius was confirmed April 28, Parkinson became the state’s 45th governor.
K-STATE ELEMENTARY EDUCATION STUDENT FROM OLATHE WINS SCHOLARSHIP PROVIDING EDUCATIONAL TOUR OF EUROPE
MANHATTAN — A Kansas State University student has won a scholarship that provides a 10-day, expenses paid educational tour to Europe this summer.
Michele Murphy, senior in elementary education, Olathe, is among the 10 winners of the Kappa Delta Pi/EF Tours Scholarship. The national scholarship encourages members of Kappa Delta Pi, the international honor society in education, to explore the idea of how international travel can impact future classrooms.
Scholarship applicants had to submit six 250-word essays and a letter of recommendation to be considered.
In her essay on why international travel and global awareness is important, Murphy wrote, “Experiencing other cultures and societies tears down barriers and preconceived notions that people often have about others. Traveling overseas helps us realize the common ties that bind us together as a human race.”
Murphy also wrote about how the experience of traveling abroad will impact her future students: “As an influential role model for my students, I hope that they will inherit some of the benefits of a trip overseas through interacting with me in the classroom. These benefits include a passion and interest in various cultures, the curiosity to explore, and the desire to broaden their knowledge.”
Murphy and the other scholarship recipients will leave June 13 from Washington, D.C., and travel to Berlin, Prague and Lucerne.
Murphy plans to graduate in May 2010 and would like to teach in the Kansas City area.
“I would love to teach somewhere between the third and sixth grades,” she said. “I also plan to begin pursuing a master’s degree right away somewhere in the field of education.”
At K-State, Murphy is a member of Kappa Delta Pi, Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority, Phi Kappa Phi honor society, the University Honors Program and the K-State Orchestra. She is the daughter of Robert and Colleen Murphy, Olathe.
The Kappa Delta Pi/EF Tours Scholarship is sponsored by Kappa Delta Pi, which works to sustain an honored community of diverse educators by promoting excellence and advancing scholarship, leadership and service and to help committed educators be leaders in improving education for global citizenship. It also is sponsored by EF Educational Tours, a pioneer in experiential learning, helping students abroad to encounter new cultures and languages firsthand.
BERLIN (AP) - A data protection official for Germany said Wednesday that Google had yet to meet a key request that photos gathered for its panoramic mapping service be erased after they are sent to the United States for processing.
Johannes Caspar, the head of the Hamburg regional office for data protection, said that although Google Inc. made a 13-page response to other requests, the U.S. company didn’t make a guarantee on deleting the raw images after the faces, license plates and other information are scrambled or otherwise rendered unrecognizable.
Joseph Nativo, 47, claims he paid for his ex-colleague’s fake teeth and now he wants them back. He allegedly pulled a gun on 40-year-old Gennario Sibbio and demanded he fork them over.
Nativo, a contractor who lives in Eltingville, is accused with slamming the revolver on an office desk — an intimidating move — and ordering Sibbio to deliver his chompers. The businessman also commanded his toothless victim to hand over $1,200 in cash, two cell phones, his coat and a Bluetooth wireless device, according to The Staten Island Advance.
Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) took the opportunity Wednesday to defend House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who has come under fire in recent weeks over a controversy surrounding when she was told of the use of enhanced interrogation techniques being used by the CIA.
“The CIA has a very bad record when it comes to - I was about to say ‘candid’; that’s too mild - to honesty,” Specter, a former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a lunch address to the American Law Institute. He cited misleading information about the agency’s involvement in mining harbors in Nicaragua and the Iran-Contra affair.
NFL Network had been carried on a pay sports tier for Comcast’s 24-million subscribers, and the NFL for years has been arguing its channel should be on the regular digital cable package with the ESPNs and CNNs of the cable TV world. Now that is close to happening. The deal would mean that instead of paying about $7 per month for the channel and other pay-TV sports channels, Comcast subscribers will get NFL Network with its regular digital package — and it will increase the number of TV homes the Network is seen in from about 35 million to close to 50 million. More importantly, it could well pave the way for the NFL to make deals with other cable companies similarly chapped at the league’s demand for huge rights fees for a sports channel with only 24 hours of NFL regular-season game programming per year.
How big is this? Well, some of my acquaintances who work for the Network feared that without wider distribution, some owners tired of the five-year fight for wider distribution of the Network would have soon moved to kill the channel in the current bad economy. Comcast and the NFL had been like Pete Rozelle and Al Davis, seemingly destined to never make peace, and some employees felt the channel would never get major traction as long as league insisted that NFL Network charge cable companies more to carry its product than CNN charged for its channel.
Google has considered buying a newspaper or using its charitable arm to support news businesses seeking non-profit status, but is now unlikely to pursue either option, Eric Schmidt, chairman and chief executive, told the Financial Times.
His comments, in an interview with FT.com, will cool speculation that the deep-pocketed search engine operator might save franchises such as the New York Times that are struggling with debts and declining advertising revenue.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate has voted to keep detainees held in the Guantanamo prison from being transferred to the United States, a major setback for President Barack Obama who wants to close the facility by January.
The 90-6 vote came a day before Obama is set to lay out his plan for closing the Guantanamo facility in a speech.
Rightly or wrongly, voters in the special election refused either to extend new tax hikes or to cap state spending. They also declined to unlock funds that they had voted in better financial times to set aside for special purposes.
Nearly a century after the Progressive-era birth of the state’s ballot-measure system, it is clear that voters’ fickle commands, one proposition at a time, are a top contributor to paralysis in Sacramento. And that, in turn, has helped cripple the capacity of the governor and Legislature to provide effective leadership to a state of more than 38 million people.
Clogged freeways, the decline of public schools, an outdated water system and a battered economy are just a few of the challenges demanding action by state leaders. Instead, they are consumed by yet another budget crisis, one that voters worsened Tuesday.
Voters rejected, soundly, the kind of back room, behind closed doors political scheming that led to this group of measures that hikes taxes, expanded state gambling, diverted funding from one source to another, and undid billions of cuts. We saw an unprecedented alliance of politicians, public employee unions, and big business interests all trying to jam it to average taxpaying families - and they were rejected.
Going forward from here, there is an important message being sent to the Governor and to State Legislators of both parties - solve the problem that you have with the money we’re already giving you. We don’t want, and cannot afford to pay more in taxes and fees.
K-STATE SENIOR FROM OAKLEY RESEARCHES SHOPPING HABITS OF OLDER ADULTS
MANHATTAN — A Kansas State University student has been accompanying older adults on their grocery shopping trips to learn more about their shopping habits and decisions. Her research will add information to a neglected subject area. (more…)
When Kansas Secretary of State candidate J.R. (Jeremy Ryan) Claeys is asked to explain his interest in government, he mentions an employer from his youth - Hassman Termite and Pest Control Inc., Salina.
Too often, small business is seen as the bogeyman, Claeys said.
But business owners get up and go to work, despite the challenges, he said.
Claeys, a 31-year-old Salina Republican, is running in the August 2010 GOP primary race for secretary of state. That office’s responsibilities include overseeing business document filings and elections.
Brett would just prefer that Hillman’s most vocal critics be the journalists/broadcasters who spend time at the ballpark confronting Hillman face to face.
I give Brett credit for taking the time Tuesday to conduct interviews with Twibell and Kietzman. Brett refused to back down. He apologized for his profanity but stood by his message.
He’s too polite to properly translate, so I’ll summarize:
1. Harry is way past his prime with terrible TV ratings.
2. Kietzman is a talented but disingenuous opportunist.
3. Twibell is hoping he can fool Entercom into supporting his golf habit for another year.
TEHRAN (Reuters) - President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Wednesday Iran had tested a missile that defense analysts say could hit Israel and U.S. bases in the Gulf, a move likely to fuel Western concern about Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.
Washington voiced concern after Ahmadinejad announced the test on the same day campaigning for the Iran’s June 12 presidential election officially started.
In the late 15th century, the government of Spain, in defiance of the pope’s call for due process, decided it was time to root out the heretics and subversives in its midst.
And so they contracted with one Tomás de Torquemada, appointed him Grand Inquisitor, and let him loose. (more…)
Twenty-four hours after Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele, the organization passed a resolution condemning the Democratic party’s “march toward socialism”. sought to turn the page on five months of infighting and bad press for the GOP
“Resolved, that we the members of the Republican National Committee recognize that the Democratic Party is dedicated to restructuring American society along socialist ideals,” reads the resolution.
The vote, which has no practical impact, was cast as a victory by allies of Steele who insisted that catastrophe had been averted when an agreement was reached not to bring forward a resolution that would have re-nicknamed the Democratic party as the “Democrat Socialist Party.” Steele had voiced his opposition to the resolution — telling “Meet the Press” moderator David Gregory last Sunday that he didn’t “think that that is an appropriate way to, to express our views on the issues of the day.”
While Republicans and Democrats disagree over most people and issues, they have one low opinion in common - the U.S. Congress.
Consider: When all voters are asked which branch of the federal government they trust the most, 34% say the Supreme Court, while 27% choose the president, or what the Founding Fathers called the Executive Branch.
Only 13% say Congress is the branch of government they trust most, and twice as many voters (27%) are undecided.
For a plurality of Democrats (47%), the president is trusted most. No surprise there with Barack Obama in the White House.
For pluralities of Republicans (41%) and voters not affiliated with either major party (40%), the Supreme Court tops the list.
So what should the Grand Old Party do to resurrect itself enough to mount some semblance of resistance to the advancing Democratic juggernaut? The answer is that it needs intellectual coherence around a powerful idea, and that idea should be liberty. This is a principle that is both strong enough to intellectually moor the party in the way that those who want a “purer” GOP desire–and grand enough to appeal to a broad swath of the population, as those who advocate a more Big Tent approach recommend.
This would be the exact opposite of what Bush did. He, remarkably enough, managed to combine every anti-individual liberty idea from the right with every pro-big government policy from the left. From the right, Bush acquired: a super-hawkish foreign policy; contempt for civil liberties; and religiously informed positions on gay marriage, abortion and end-of-life issues. And from the left he got: high-spending ways, including the massive drug entitlement for seniors; expansive ideas about the federal government’s role in education policy; and the chutzpah, just before leaving, to engineer a massive government bailout of banks and auto companies.
Gov. Mark Sanford is taking the General Assembly to court after lawmakers required him to accept $350 million in disputed federal money by overriding his budget vetoes.
Sanford quickly announced the federal suit after the Senate voted 34-11 on a state budget that forces him to accept the money.
“We know a suit will be filed against us on this issue, and as such we’ve filed a suit tonight in response,” Sanford said in a prepared statement. “We believe the Legislature’s end-around move won’t pass constitutional muster.”
Same-sex marriage hit a snag today in the Granite State, losing in a 188-186 vote in the state House. Not because legislators object to same-sex marriages, but because they apparently object to some priest having the freedom not to perform them:
The legislature had been asked to approve language that would give legal protections, including the right to decline to marry same-sex couples, to clergy and others affiliated with religious organizations. That wording was added by Governor John Lynch, a Democrat who promised to sign the bill if those changes were made…State Representative Steve Vaillancourt, a gay Republican from Manchester, was a leading voice against the amendment securing religious liberties, saying that the House should not be “bullied” by the governor.
Gov. Lynch has promised a veto unless his language is adopted.
Barack Obama inherited a set of national-security policies that he rejected during the campaign but now embraces as president. This is a stunning and welcome about-face.
For example, President Obama kept George W. Bush’s military tribunals for terror detainees after calling them an “enormous failure” and a “legal black hole.” His campaign claimed last summer that “court systems . . . are capable of convicting terrorists.” Upon entering office, he found out they aren’t.
He insisted in an interview with NBC in 2007 that Congress mandate “consequences” for “a failure to meet various benchmarks and milestones” on aid to Iraq. Earlier this month he fought off legislatively mandated benchmarks in the $97 billion funding bill for Iraq and Afghanistan.
Mr. Obama agreed on April 23 to American Civil Liberties Union demands to release investigative photos of detainee abuse. Now’s he reversed himself. Pentagon officials apparently convinced him that releasing the photos would increase the risk to U.S. troops and civilian personnel.
Throughout his presidential campaign, Mr. Obama excoriated Mr. Bush’s counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq, insisting it could not succeed. Earlier this year, facing increasing violence in Afghanistan, Mr. Obama rejected warnings of a “quagmire” and ordered more troops to that country. He isn’t calling it a “surge” but that’s what it is. He is applying in Afghanistan the counterinsurgency strategy Mr. Bush used in Iraq.
As a candidate, Mr. Obama promised to end the Iraq war by withdrawing all troops by March 2009. As president, he set a slower pace of drawdown. He has also said he will leave as many as 50,000 Americans troops there.
Gov. Charlie Crist, now a U.S. Senate candidate, said Tuesday he would have made the “pragmatic” decision to vote for the $787 billion federal stimulus bill, differentiating himself from fellow-Republican opponent Marco Rubio and the man he is trying to replace - Mel Martinez.
Speaking to a politically mixed crowd in Daytona Beach, Crist emphasized his support for the bill as practical and pragmatic, though it would have meant crossing party lines. Only three Republican senators backed the stimulus bill, and Martinez wasn’t one of them.
Now Florida stands to get about $15 billion over the next two years through different stimulus grants.
“A lot of that $15 billion dollars you sent to Washington, D.C., and my view is we ought to get it back,” Crist told his audience. “Florida deserves her fair share.”
Perhaps it’s that eminent domain abuse so much more clearly, more entirely, and more immediately takes away freedom from an individual private citizen, when compared to the much more complex negative effects of Big Government (which both redistributes and causes opportunity costs for the private economy in ways that are difficult-to-clearly define). (more…)
I was reminded of the Presidents first debate with Senator McCain. After the latter once again spoke about earmarks, then-Senator Obama was breezily dismissive, saying:
Well, Senator McCain is absolutely right that the earmarks process has been abused, which is why I suspended any requests for my home state, whether it was for senior centers or what have you, until we cleaned it up.
And he’s also right that oftentimes lobbyists and special interests are the ones that are introducing these kinds of requests, although that wasn’t the case with me.
But let’s be clear: Earmarks account for $18 billion in last year’s budget. Senator McCain is proposing — and this is a fundamental difference between us — $300 billion in tax cuts to some of the wealthiest corporations and individuals in the country, $300 billion.
Now, $18 billion is important; $300 billion is really important.
And in his tax plan, you would have CEOs of Fortune 500 companies getting an average of $700,000 in reduced taxes, while leaving 100 million Americans out.
So my attitude is, we’ve got to grow the economy from the bottom up. What I’ve called for is a tax cut for 95 percent of working families, 95 percent.
And that means that the ordinary American out there who’s collecting a paycheck every day, they’ve got a little extra money to be able to buy a computer for their kid, to fill up on this gas that is killing them.
And over time, that, I think, is going to be a better recipe for economic growth than the — the policies of President Bush that John McCain wants to — wants to follow.
10. California’s 44th district (R-controlled) (Obama won 50 percent)/California’s 45th district (R) (Obama won 52 percent): These neighboring California seats — held by Reps. Ken Calvert and Mary Bono Mack, respectively, are major Democratic targets in 2010. Calvert narrowly beat unknown Bill Hedrick (D) in 2008 and Hedrick quickly announced he would seek a rematch. There is also talk of a serious Republican primary challenge to Calvert brewing, which would further complicate his reelection chances. Bono Mack cruised to reelection in 2008 but has already drawn a top-tier opponent in Palm Springs Mayor Steve Pougnet who Democrats believe has the name identification and fundraising base to take advantage of the changing demographics in this Inland Empire seat. (more…)
The new idea from the House is to hand out a lot more free permits than President Obama wanted; like many economists, he wanted to sell 100% of the permits. The House compromise version, if it were passed, raises the obvious question of just where the administration would get the $646 billion it budgeted for clean-energy investment and tax rebates.
Some 69% of the permits would be given away in 2012, the first year the program could start working. That includes 35% for the electricity sector and 9% for natural-gas companies-in both cases to help cushion consumers from higher energy prices. Some 3% would be set aside for the auto industry, to help it develop “advanced automobiles.”
Using the administration’s ballpark estimates of what the permits would be worth, the first-year giveaways amount to about $55 billion.
At least 15% of the permits would be auctioned off every year-that money would “be distributed to low- and moderate-income families to protect them from other energy cost increases,” the Energy and Commerce committee said. That should mean about $12 billion the first year. In the first couple of years of the plan, even more permits would be available for auction and “consumer protection.”
Biofuel defenders are howling about the Obama administration’s new environmental standards, announced earlier this month and which are meant to take into account the “indirect” environmental effects of growing more crops for fuel.
This week, as Tom Philpott at Grist notes, legislation was introduced in the House to roll back the Environmental Protection Agency’s new remit to hold ethanol (and all biofuels) responsible for all their greenhouse-gas emissions.
The thing is, biofuel proponents didn’t even wait. South Dakota Sen. John Thune pre-emptively struck out at the EPA’s new rules last month, introducing legislation that would offer the U.S. biofuel industry all sorts of escape hatches from complying with new environmental rules.
The Thune law would let any renewable-fuels producer ask the EPA to waive environmental rules for biofuel if those onerous new standards threatened to limit biofuel production. Or if the environmental rules “cause economic harm within the biofuels industry.” Or if the environmental rules “directly or indirectly” increase U.S. dependence on foreign oil.
In an e-mail message sent May 4, Paul Harvey, an information-technology official for the Boston office, wrote that security specialists with the U.S. Attorney’s Office at the Department of Justice asked them “to reformat/reimage two computers because the user visited the drudgereport.com site.”
“Please avoid the Drudgereport website from the [United States Attorney's Office] computers,” Harvey wrote.
Harvey said that if employees had a “work-related reason to visit the site,” access could be provided off the government network.
Asked why the conservative-leaning news aggregator and President Barack Obama critic was flagged by Internet security officials, Tracy Schmaler, a Department of Justice spokeswoman, said it was because “a malicious code was found contained in a Web ad on Drudge.”
Schmaler also said the request to stay off Drudge wasn’t politically motivated and said it was sent only to the office in Massachusetts. She also said other popular sites were later found to have potential viruses, including ESPN.com.
Three of Chrysler’s secured creditors are mounting a fresh attempt to thwart the carmaker’s Chapter 11 reorganisation on the grounds that it violates their legal rights and the US government’s authority under the Troubled asset relief programme.
The three - all Indiana state pension funds - are among a group of 46 creditors that had appeared to back away this month from efforts to derail the process under which a “new” Chrysler would emerge from bankruptcy protection by July 1. The new entity would be owned by a union healthcare trust, the US government and Italy’s Fiat.
Andy Roth at Club for Growth: “Via Edward Lopez, here’s a great Simpsons segment that mimicks Ayn Rand’s book, The Fountainhead, which I thought was 20 times better than Atlas Shrugged.”
