Poll:

Forty-three percent (43%) of voters say that it’s at least somewhat likely the Central Intelligence Agency misled Pelosi about the use of waterboarding when interrogating suspected terrorists at the Guantanamo prison camp, but 41% say it’s not likely the spy agency did so. (more…)

Column:

Am I concerned, friends ask me quietly, after we all publicly praise President Obama’s monumental Cairo speech. The friends are usually, but not always, Jewish. They are all, like me, strong supporters of the state of Israel.

The answer is that of course I’m concerned. I’m very concerned. But since when has a supporter of the state of Israel not been concerned?

Poll:

The World Health Organization has now declared swine flu a pandemic, its highest global alert status, but Americans are much less concerned about the disease than they were when it first became public two months ago. (more…)

Poll:

Sixty-one percent (61%) ofIllinois voters now say they would definitely vote against Democratic Senator Roland Burris if he runs for a full term in 2010, according to a new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey in the state. (more…)

Source:

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Friday shows that 36% of the nation’s voters now Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Thirty-two percent (32%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of +4 (see trends). (more…)

WSJ:

The Energy Department just resuscitated FutureGen, and it’s also pushing geothermal. In fiscal year 2007, President Bush tried to eliminate funding for DOE’s research in the area altogether. Congress eventually threw it a $5 million life saver. By fiscal 2009, geothermal had clawed its way back to $30 million.

Stimulus funds have increased that investment by an order of magnitude. President Obama announced $350 million in funding when he visited Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada last month. And Energy Secretary Steven Chu tacked on an additional $50 million a week later in Indiana.

WSJ:

Here’s a quick roll call of what is being said:

● U.K. Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling weighed in on the topic Friday, telling the Financial Times that a high and volatile oil price “has the potential to be a huge problem as far as the recovery is concerned.” He also thinks oil-rich Gulf states should recognize that it’s not advantageous to allow high oil prices to damage the recovery. His idea of high prices, say $75 a barrel, is considerably lower than OPEC’s comfort zone. (more…)

WSJ:

The GOP energy plan predictably has drawn a lot of criticism. What’s really interesting is that the critiques aren’t aimed so much at the fact that Republicans presented a big energy plan right as they lost the ability to implement one, but rather on the plan’s emphasis on nuclear power.

The Fix:

10. California’s 44th district (Republican-controlled): Rep. Ken Calvert barely escaped an unknown and underfunded challenge fromBill Hedrick (D) in 2008. Hedrick immediately announced he was running again and will get lots more attention (read: money) from the national party this time around. Democrats also believe that Calvert is vulnerable to attacks on his ethics as a result of a 2006 Los Angeles Times story regarding earmarks. (Previous ranking: 10) (more…)

JIm Geraghty:

CNN’s Peter Hamby reports that Sarah Palin taped an interview with that network and would not commit to running for governor again in 2010.

NRO:

Hard to put it any clearer than this:

If climate-change legislation passes Congress in its current form, Lion Oil Co., an El Dorado refinery, will have to shutter operations within a year and lay off 1,200 workers, a company executive told a congressional panel Tuesday.

Passage of the bill “will make our survival impossible,” Steve Cousins, vice president of refining, testified before the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment.

AP:

WASHINGTON - An inspector general fired by President Barack Obama said Friday he acted “with the highest integrity” in investigating AmeriCorps and other government-funded national service programs. Gerald Walpin said in an interview with The Associated Press that he reported facts and conclusions “in an honest and full way” while serving as inspector general at the Corporation for National and Community Service.

In a letter to Congress on Thursday, Obama said he had lost confidence in Walpin and was removing him from the position.

Walpin defended his work on Friday. “I know that I and my office acted with the highest integrity as an independent inspector general should act,” he said.

Obama’s move follows an investigation by Walpin finding misuse offederal grants by a nonprofit education group led by Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, who is an Obama supporter and former NBA basketball star. Johnson and a nonprofit education academy he founded ultimately agree to repay half of $847,000 in grants it had received from AmeriCorps.

Byron York:

There are a number of unanswered questions today about President Obama’s abrupt decision to fire the inspector general of the AmeriCorps program, Gerald Walpin.  Obama sent letters to House and Senate leaders yesterday informing them that he was firing Walpin, effective 30 days from the date of the letters. (more…)

WSJ:

Since China has made abundantly clear that economic growth is priority number one, the U.S. has apparently abandoned all hope of curbing Chinese emissions. The new goal? China has to “very considerably” cut the growth rate of its greenhouse-gas emissions, said top climate negotiator Todd Stern.

WSJ:

Just as plastic left in a landfill never seems to go away, neither does the debate over paper versus plastic bags. (more…)

Club for Growth has the details.

Andy Roth: “Explain this one to me.”

Source:

In each case, I will define the test so that “yes” is a good outcome:

Test 1:  The bill does not increase the federal deficit in the short run.

Test 2:  The bill significantly reduces the federal deficit in the long run.

Test 3:  The bill significantly slows the growth of government health care spending in the long run.

Test 4:  The bill significantly slows the growth of private health care spending in the long run.

Source:

Green shoots? Are you serious? This crash isn’t over yet, but the mainstream media is so hungry for a new storyline that it risks detaching from reality. Perhaps the stark reality of this recession can only be understood in pictures, so I created a depression index to make it clear. This index measures not just the weakness of the economy, but the weakness of macro policy capacity as well.

USA Today:

Providing health care coverage to millions more Americans is going to cost money, and lots of it, so perhaps it’s not surprising that some in Congress want people with unhealthy diets to foot part of the bill. But where would the concept stop? (more…)

IBD:

The largest group of doctors in the country has made it clear that it is not comfortable with legislation that would twist the country’s health care system into a Euro-style scheme that “threatens to restrict patient choice.” (more…)

Kudlow:

Did the Federal Reserve’s Ben Bernanke lie about pressuring the Bank of America not to back out of the Merrill Lynch merger? BofA CEO Ken Lewis made this charge to New York AG Andrew Cuomo, and basically repeated it with a bit of sugar-coating in a House hearing today on Capitol Hill. (more…)

Source:

When he voted for the Obama stimulus, Arlen Specter effectively signed the pink slips for 600 jobs in Pennsylvania. From the Canadian Press:

As many as 600 steelworkers in Pennsylvania, whose union lobbied for the Buy America law, are slated to lose their jobs at Duferco Farrell after the company lost orders from its biggest customer because some of its goods are partly produced abroad.

From Club for Growth:

Waxman and Markey Receive Comrade Award
Members recognized for icing the economy to cool the environment

(more…)

MSNBC:

SAN FRANCISCO - Trash collectors in San Francisco will soon be doing more than just gathering garbage: They’ll be keeping an eye out for people who toss food scraps out with their rubbish. (more…)

Bloomberg:

June 12 (Bloomberg) — Health-care overhaul legislation being drafted by House Democrats will include $600 billion in tax increases and $400 billion in cuts to Medicare and Medicaid, Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel said. (more…)

AP:

WASHINGTON (AP) - A White House spokesman says the Obama administration hasn’t decided whether or not to release Guantanamo Bay detainees in the United States. (more…)

Market Watch:

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — Swindlers, con men, and thieves could siphon off as much as $50 billion of the government’s planned stimulus package as the money begins flooding the economy in coming months, according to David Williams, who runs Deloitte Financial Services Advisory and counsels clients on fraud prevention. (more…)

UK Telegraph:

The government looking at expanding a pioneering scheme in Flint, one of the poorest US cities, which involves razing entire districts and returning the land to nature.

Local politicians believe the city must contract by as much as 40 per cent, concentrating the dwindling population and local services into a more viable area.

WND:

Tami Farrell, the newly crowned beauty queen who is replacing the ousted Carrie Prejean as Miss California, apparently holds the same view as her predecessor, Carrie Prejean, and President Obama that marriage should be between a man and a woman.

Fox News host Neil Cavuto asked Farrell, who is Christian, on his show today:

“[Prejean] went out and said that a marriage is between a man and a woman. Do you share that view?”

Farrell responded in the affirmative with a simple, “Uh huh.”

“You do, OK,” said Cavuto.

Farrell quickly added: “I don’t think that I have the right or anybody has a right to tell somebody who they can or can’t love. And I think that this is a civil rights issue. And I think that the right thing to do is let the voters decide.”

Bloomberg:

June 13 (Bloomberg) — China warned about the dangers involved in inspecting North Korean cargo under United Nations Security Council sanctions approved yesterday, saying countries intercepting vessels should avoid armed action.

“Under no circumstance should there be the use of force or the threat of use of force” in implementing the sanctions in Resolution 1874, Chinese Ambassador Zhang Yesui said in New York. Inspecting vessels carrying North Korean cargo is “complicated” and “sensitive,” he said.

The Security Council voted 15 to O to punish North Korea for its May nuclear-bomb test and missile launches. The resolution authorizes stepped-up inspection of air or sea cargoes suspected of being destined for the development of nuclear arms or ballistic missiles. The measure also calls for new restrictions on loans and money transfers to North Korea.

Full text at The WSJ.

WSJ:

GM, as part of its restructuring in bankruptcy, is looking to rid itself of its leases on seven corporate jets and its hangar at Detroit Metropolitan Airport, according to a motion filed in court.

The company is asking a judge to let it terminate the leases because it says it doesn’t plan to sell them to the New GM and that “the Debtors have determined that rejecting the Leases and surrendering possession of the property to the relevant lessor is in the best interests of their estates.”

Five of the jets are medium-range Gulfstream G-IVs, leased from AVN Air LLC. Two are longer-range Gulfstream G-Vs, leased from Suntrust Corp.

Lawmakers criticized the CEOs of GM, Ford, and Chrysler when the trio flew to Washington on separate private jets - as Auto Tracker first reported in November - to ask for government support for the auto industry. On a second trip, the executives drove to the capital from Detroit.

Atlantic:

in a legal brief submitted to a federal judge, Obama’s Department of Justice, writing in the name of the United States government, whose CEO is Barack Obama, argues that the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act is appropriate, carefully balanced and justified by reason, and not by animus toward gay people. (more…)

Atlantic:

After this week’s flap between Sarah Palin and David Letterman, which started when Letterman cracked a joke about Palin’s “slutty flight attendant look” and another about her daughter getting “knocked up” by New York Yankee Alex Rodriguez, the National Organization for Women has condemned Letterman’s jokes and is asking its supporters to write to CBS and voice criticism.

“The sexualization of girls and women in the media is reaching new lows these days — it is exploitative and has a negative effect on how all women and girls are perceived and how they view themselves,” the group writes on its website, pointing to Letterman’s jokes as an example.

Washington Post:

“Fuzz alert,” an electronic voice called out from the console of his Cadillac recently as it approached a speed enforcement camera in Montgomery County.

At 300 feet, another warning: “Ding, ding. Ding, ding. Fuzz alert.”

“It helps you conform,” Forage said of the warning system. “If you’ve forgotten where the cameras are, or get distracted, it refocuses you.”

The system, known as PhantomAlert, feeds the locations of speed cameras and red-light cameras into standard Global Positioning System devices and prompts the devices to warn drivers when they are near one. PhantomAlert has subscribers throughout the nation, including more than 2,000 in the Washington region, said the company’s owner, District resident Joseph Scott.

Scott said he expects that number to rise because of a new Maryland law that permits cameras, now allowed only in Montgomery, to be installed in work zones and near schools throughout the state. “It’s going to be very good for us,” he said.

At RedCounty.com, JCCC Trustee Benjamin Hodge writes about one more failing of JCCC President Terry Calaway, this time in support of punishing employees who make remarks that are critical of Islamic countries:

John’s detractors said John was being anti-Muslim; they said had stated verbally that he “hated Muslims.”  John denies saying that, and, with regard to credibility, emphasizes the question, Why did these other employees wait a full two years to complain, if they were so concerned?  Of course, it should be noted that, with respect to the First Amendment rights of government employees (in particular, professors), it’s not all that relevant what John exactly said.

Without much investigation, asst. dean Betty Furtwengler took the side of John’s detractors, and she placed a permanent note in John’s file, reprimanding him for what was alleged. (more…)