[youtube://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StQr-dlxaBM 450 300]

WASHINGTON – A new report by Republicans on the House Armed Services Committee slams both the Bush and Obama administrations for taking too many risks when releasing prisoners from Guantanamo Bay prison, Fox News has learned.

The 93-page report, which is expected to be approved Thursday, criticizes the evolution of detainee policies over the past decade and claims both the Bush and Obama adminstrations have adhered to “domestic political pressures” to allow the transfer of some detainees. In turn, those transfers have amped up the national security risk to the United States.

The report comes as the Obama administration officials have acknowledged that they are considering whether to release several Afghan Taliban prisoners from Guantanamo and send them to a third country as an incentive to bring the Taliban to peace talks. The step is certain to create an uproar in Congress, especially among Republicans. The 93-page study is likely to be part of the Republican effort to influence the ongoing debate.

Nearly 14 percent of the former detainees re-engaged in terrorist or insurgent activities upon release, and another 12 percent are suspected of doing so, according to the document.

“The Bush and Obama administrations, reacting to domestic political pressures and a desire to earn goodwill abroad, sought to reduce the Guantanamo population by sending detainees elsewhere,” the report said. “Both administrations faced the persistent challenge of ensuring that the potential threat posed by each detainee had been aptly assessed before transfer or release, and that the countries that received the detainees had the capacity and willingness to handle them in a way that sufficiently recognized the dangers involved.”

Read here:

John Edwards’ failed presidential campaign racked up close to $900,000 in expenses in 2011, according to newly filed finance reports, dropping thousands of dollars on airfare and hotels despite a ruling from federal election officials that he still owes taxpayers more than $2.1 million.

The dozens of pages of filings for the year do not go into detail about where the flights were headed or where the hotels were booked. The purpose of the travel expenses was not clear.

But they appeared to criss-cross the country. In January, August and December, the campaign spent $2,268 for tickets on Alaska Airlines, a transcontinental carrier that does not offer flights between East Coast cities such as Raleigh or Washington.

The GAO must cut staff despite a great record…..

A new Homeland Security report released last month classifies terrorism in a whole new way; a way for the NDAA to have a broader net.

Here is a report from the FBI on what communities and commercial owners should look out for; bet you pay for coffee with cash…

(CNN) — Beneath Rick Santorum’s stunning three-state sweep on Tuesday stands another stubborn sign of dissatisfaction with the status quo: Republican turnout is down.

I’m talking embarrassingly, disturbingly, hey-don’t-you-know-it’s-an-election-year bad. It is a sign of a serious enthusiasm gap among the rank and file, and a particularly bad omen for Mitt Romney and the GOP in the general election.

Here’s the tale of the tape, state by state, beginning with Tuesday night: Minnesota had just more than 47,000 people turn out for its caucuses this year — four years ago it was nearly 63,000 — and Romney came in first, not a distant third as he did Tuesday night. In Colorado, more than 70,000 people turned out for its caucus in 2008 — but in 2012 it was 65,000. And Missouri — even making a generous discount for the fact that this was an entirely symbolic contest — had 232,000 people turn out, less than half the number who did four years ago.

Even with months of pre-primary hype and attention solely devoted to the Republican field, turnout in this election cycle essentially flat-lined. In Iowa, a little more than 121,000 people voted, compared with nearly 119,000 four years before, when action in the Democratic caucuses absorbed most of the attention.

John AvlonIn New Hampshire, the same dynamic applied — 245,000 voters turned out in 2012, compared with 241,000 four years before, despite Republicans being the only game in town and independents making up 47% of the total turnout in 2012, according to CNN exit polls. Take out the independent voters and you’ve got a deep net decline.

Always proudly rebellious, South Carolina has been the great outlier in this election cycle. With Newt Gingrich making an all-out push for conservatives in a conservative state, turnout was up almost 150,000 over four years before.

But in Florida, the decline became unmistakable. Maybe it decreased because the Romney and Gingrich campaigns, plus super PACS, spent more than $18 million in the Sunshine State on TV ads, of which 93% were negative in the last week alone, according to the Campaign Media Analysis Group. After all, negative ads depress turnout. But after all the mud was thrown, 1.6 million people turned out in the nation’s fourth largest state, which might sound impressive until you compare it with the nearly 2 million who turned out in 2008.

Nevada was even worse, with 32,894 people turning out to vote in a state with more than 465,000 registered Republicans. Four years before, more than 44,300 participated in the caucus. Turnout was down more than 25% despite the GOP caucuses being the only game in town. Party officials were expecting a turnout of more than 70,000.

Santorum trifecta shakes up GOP race All this should be a wake-up call for the GOP. Despite an enormous amount of national media attention devoted to each of the states to date, the response has been a notable yawn among the Republican rank and file.

The turnout numbers are even worse when you compare them with the number of registered Republicans in each state that has voted to date.

The caucuses in particular bring out an unrepresentative sample of a state’s Republican Party. For all the grass-roots romanticism, there has got to be a better way to pick a presidential nominee.

But the news is worst for Romney, long the presumptive front-runner in a party that tends to reward the man next in line.

“Reluctantly Romney” could be a bumper sticker, even for his supporters. The former Massachusetts governor has found it difficult to climb above 35% in national polls, meaning that a majority of Republicans still support someone else in a notably weak field. His vote margins and totals lag behind those of four years before, when he lost the nomination to John McCain in a crowded and comparatively competent field, although Minnesota is the first state he won in ’08 and lost in 2012.

You reap what you sow, and part of the reason turnout is down is directly related to the problem of polarization. The Republican Party is more ideologically polarized than at any time in recent history. Therefore, it put up more purely right-wing candidates than it did four years before, when center-right leaders such as McCain and Rudy Giuliani were also in the race. A bigger tent inspired bigger turnout.

But the other reason is simple dissatisfaction with the candidates.

Republicans seem united in their anger against the president — like the Democrats in 2004 — but they are uninspired by their options. Draft movements for fantasy candidates ranging from Chris Christie to Mitch Daniels to Paul Ryan and even Jeb Bush have started and failed. Some party leaders show more enthusiasm for a hypothetical 2016 crop of candidates, including Marco Rubio and Bobby Jindal, than they do for the flawed choices before them in this election. Divided and dispirited is an odd place for the Republican Party to be so soon after the enthusiasms of the 2010 tea party-driven election.

The bottom line is that voter turnout matters. And what should be most troubling for Republicans is that this enthusiasm gap among the conservative base is accompanied by a lack of candidates who might appeal to independents and centrist swing voters in the general election. It is a double barrel of bad news for the Republican Party. The numbers can be spun and rationalized by professional partisan operatives all day long, but the fact remains — voters just aren’t turning out to cast their votes for this crop of conservative candidates in 2012.

BEIJING — The former top cop of a major Chinese city has dropped from sight amid unconfirmed reports he is seeking U.S. asylum following a quarrel with one of China’s most powerful local politicians.

Wang Lijun, a crusading lawman who made his name busting crime gangs and inspired a drama on state TV, has taken leave to recover from anxiety and overwork, the city government of Chongqing said in a statement Wednesday.

Wang, who also is a vice mayor of Chongqing, was shifted out of his role as police chief last week, prompting speculation of a falling-out with the city’s powerful Communist Party secretary, Bo Xilai, who is widely believed to be seeking national office.

The police chief may have fallen out of favor because his 2008-2010 crackdown on criminal gangs strayed from standard procedures and clashed with the central government’s current campaign to strengthen the rule of law, Beijing-based political analyst Li Fan said.

Days of speculation about his situation spiked Wednesday with online reports that he sought asylum at the American consulate in the nearby southwestern city of Chengdu on Tuesday after quarelling with Bo.

Employees of businesses near the Chengdu consulate reported large numbers of police vehicles in the area on Tuesday night, but said the area was quiet on Wednesday.

Richard Buangan, a spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, declined to discuss those reports, but said there had been “no threat to the consulate yesterday, and the U.S. government did not request increased security around the compound.”

Buangan said there would be no comment on the reports of an asylum bid. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Weimin told reporters he had no information on the matter.

A city government spokesman, who like many Chinese bureaucrats would give only his surname, Ye, said he could neither deny or confirm the reports of Wang’s asylum bid.

“We saw that on the Internet, too. I don’t have relevant information now,” Ye said.

In a sign of the sensitivity of the matter, search results for Wang and Bo were blocked on China’s hugely popular Sina Weibo microblogging service and the comments sections attached to online reports about Wang were disabled.

Bo, who sits on the Communist Party’s powerful 25-member Politburo, appointed Wang in 2008 to clean up the force and take on organized crime in a campaign that drew national attention, as well as criticism that it ignored proper legal procedures.

Wang, a 52-year-old martial arts expert, entered law enforcement in 1984 and served more than two decades in northeast Liaoning province, where Bo was once governor. He won a reputation for personal bravery in confronting gangs and was once the subject of a TV drama called “Iron-Blooded Police Spirits.”

His law enforcement success led eventually to high political office and a seat in the national parliament, while his association with Bo gave him countrywide name recognition.

A former commerce minister, Bo is considered a leading “princeling” in the party, a reference to the offspring of communist elders whose connections and degrees from top universities have won them entry into the country’s elite.

Bo garnered huge publicity for his anti-crime campaign and an accompanying drive to revive communist songs and poems from the 1950s and 1960s, spurring talk that he was seeking a promotion. Those campaigns have since fizzled, leading analysts to pull back on speculation that he might be elevated to higher office when the party begins a generational change in leadership later this year.

Chinese political analysts say Bo has been cutting ties with the advisers behind the “red songs” and anti-crime drives in hopes of reviving his political fortunes.

Read here:

You would think members of Congress would realize, on their own, that trading stocks based on inside political information they may possess is wrong. But it turns out they may indeed need a law to telll them so. Ever since 60 Minutes exposed the ways in which some lawmakers, and their staffers, have profited based on privileged insider knowledge, the public has clamored for action.

President Obama heeded those cries in his State of the Union Address in January.

“I’ve talked tonight about the deficit of trust between Main Street and Wall Street. But the divide between this city and the rest of the country is at least as bad — and it seems to get worse every year,” Obama said. “Send me a bill that bans insider trading by Members of Congress, and I will sign it tomorrow. Let’s limit any elected official from owning stocks in industries they impact. Let’s make sure people who bundle campaign contributions for Congress can’t lobby Congress, and vice versa — an idea that has bipartisan support, at least outside of Washington.”

Earmarks are another prime example of how politicians can wield their influence for personal gain. The Washington Post on Tuesday published the results of a comprehensive investigation into pork-barrel spending on infrastructure projects that conveniently took place close to property that Congressional members own.

“Thirty-three members of Congress have directed more than $300 million in earmarks and other spending provisions to dozens of public projects that are next to or within about two miles of the lawmakers’ own property,” reports the Washington Post.

The STOCK Act

In a rare example of Congress responding with alacrity to a call from the president, the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act has been moving its way quickly through Congress. The Senate passed the bill in a sweeping 96 to 3 bipartisan vote last Thursday. The House is working to take up the legislation this week but has pledged to strengthen the version passed by the Senate.

“Members of Congress want to keep their jobs, so that is why I think the vote was so lop-sided,” says Peter Schweizer, author of Throw Them All Out who was featured in the CBS 60 Minutes interview. He joined The Daily Ticker’s Daniel Gross to discuss the bill, which “by no means is perfect.”

In its current form the Senate’s version of law does the following:

#1 Makes insider trading illegal: “It says that it is a federal crime to use congressional inside information to trade on stocks to gain an informational advantage,” says Schweizer, a fellow at the Hoover Institution. “There would be penalties for that for congressmen but also for their staff members.”

#2 Changes financial reporting requirement: “Right now they only have to report their finances — that is their assets and their trades — once a year and they only do it on paper,” he says. “The STOCK Act says they now need to report every 90 days, rather than just once a year.”

#3 Regulates political intelligence: “It would regulate the people who collect political intelligence” and then sell it to the financial community, says Schwiezer.

The three regulations above have Washington spinning, but the last point has caused the most uproar from political insiders. The provision introduced by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) would require those who collect political intelligence to register in a similar manner as lobbyists.

But the bill overlooks several items Schweizer believes are necessary. “It does not deal with options trading, it does not deal with members of Congress who get these sweetheart IPO deals and it doesn’t deal with land deals and other forms of enrichment,” says Schweizer. It is hard to know how pervasive this issue is “but [the bill] is a first-step forward and I think there are other steps we need to take to make sure this practice ends completely.”

1+1 no longer equals 2 so lets omit it…..

The White House appears to have foot in email disease…..

..and we give them money why ?

Read here:

Could your favorite apps soon be banned in your city?

From the online taxi service Uber — which regulators are trying to keep out of Washington, D.C. — to Zipcar.com, tech startups are facing an unexpected challenge: government regulation.

Uber has expanded from its base in San Francisco to other cities: New York, Chicago, Boston, Seattle, and DC. But sometimes, city governments are less than welcoming.

“They’re operating illegally, and we plan to take steps against them,” D.C. Taxi Commissioner Ron Linton warned at a meeting earlier this month.

“What they’re trying to do is be both a taxi and a limousine,” Linton has said. “Under the way the law is written, it just can’t be done.”

Zipcar: The popular car-sharing service says D.C. tax policies are hitting users hardest.

This month, Linton conducted a sting operation. Using Uber’s app to hail a car, Linton took it for a ride, and arranged for inspectors to greet it at the destination. The inspectors fined the driver $1,650 for various violations and impounded the car.

Uber CEO and founder Travis Kalanick calls it outrageous; D.C. has not told him what law Uber violates, he claims.

“You can go on an endless hunt for the regulation or statue forbidding what we do,” he told FoxNews.com. “We haven’t found it yet.”

Kalanick added that he preferred the technology side of his business.

“I’m a tech dude. I kind of like my life outside of politics,” he said. “It’s been a wild ride in D.C. I’m learning how the political game works, but there’s a learning curve.”

Unlike Kalanick, the established industry players have their own lobbyists and decades of experience with politics.

“You have an established taxi industry, and there’s this new technology that’s competing with them. So they’re going to get folks to regulate,” Kalanick said.

While lawyers work things out, Kalanick has kept Uber’s drivers on the streets by offering to pay any fines the city charges them because they work with Uber.

Every year, thousands of tourists, rather than book a hotel at their destination, find accommodations from locals who have an extra room in their apartment — or who have an empty place because they themselves are going on vacation — at sites like Roomorama.com.

Roomorama ensures security by verifying the identities of the people using the site and allowing renters to rate places they’ve stayed at.

But there’s one catch: Last May, New York State made it illegal for anyone to rent out an apartment for a time period of less than a month. Doing so could land you a fine of $800.

Supporters of the ban call such rental arrangements “illegal hotels” and say the Internet has compounded the problem.

“The Internet has made it easier than ever to advertise illegal hotels,” New York state senator Liz Krueger said in testimony to the NYC Committee on Housing and Buildings.

Krueger has also introduced a bill that would raise the fine to a maximum of $25,000.

“This proliferation of illegal hotel operations has … disrupted the lives of countless permanent residents … and ruined many tourists’ visits in New York,” Krueger explained.

Roomorama.com CEO and founder Jia En Teo says that the ban goes too far.

“By slapping a law like this on, it is not allowing markets to run themselves efficiently. Having more options available for consumers is always a good thing,” she said.

Hotel industry groups — which publicly support the ban — are the real reason for the law, Teo said.

“It is the hotel lobby that has been pushing for these laws, so as to stifle the competition.”

Zipcar
Thousands of college students and city-dwellers have ditched owning a car in the last few years for Zipcar — a “carsharing” service that has cars on streets in 13 U.S. cities and 148 college campuses.

Everything is done through a smartphone app that shows the locations of available cars. After booking one using the app, you can just get in and drive. An hour-long trip to the store can cost $8 for the cheapest Zipcars.

Rob Weisberg, Zipcar’s chief marketing officer, says prices could be lower if not for government policies.

In D.C., Zipcar and other carsharing companies pay $200 to $400 per space, per month, while the price for a resident to park their private car on the street is just $1.25 per month.

“Policies like those … penalize car-sharing providers,” Weisberg said, adding that tax policy is also rigged.

“In car-sharing, the reservation period is generally just a few hours yet these members are being taxed at the full day rate. Car-sharing is taxed like a sin tax, with members paying 40 percent in taxes for a one-hour trip to the store.”

Zipcar has hired a lobbyist in D.C., and Weisberg hopes to convince politicians that the extra tax revenue isn’t worth it.

“Cities looking … to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, reduce traffic congestion and increase the availability of parking spaces should be embracing car-sharing,” he said.

Human rights on the down tick 

Heavy primate population in those states.

Full article

After five years of legislative struggling, 23 stopgap measures and a two-week shutdown of the Federal Aviation Administration, Congress finally has passed a bill aimed at prodding the nation’s aviation system into a new high-tech era in which satellites are central to air traffic control and piloted planes share the skies with unmanned drones.

The bill, which passed the Senate 75-20 Monday, speeds the nation’s switch from radar to an air traffic control system based on GPS technology. It also requires the FAA to open U.S. skies to drone flights within four years.

Final approval of the measure was marked by an unusual degree of bipartisan support despite labor opposition to a deal cut between the Democratic-controlled Senate and the Republican-controlled House on rules governing union organizing elections at airlines and railroads. The House had passed the bill last week, and it now goes to President Barack Obama for his signature.

Read the rest here.

via SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) — A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday that Proposition 8, California’s voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage, is unconstitutional because it violates the 14th Amendment guarantee of equal protection under the law.

But backers of the controversial, voter-approved law quickly signaled that they planned to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The court ruled 2-1 to uphold the decision of a lower court judge, U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker of San Francisco, who determined in Aug. 2010 that Prop. 8 was a violation of the civil rights of gays and lesbians. The panel also rejected claims that Walker, now retired, was biased in his ruling because he is gay and in a long-term relationship with another man.

 
“Although the Constitution permits communities to enact most laws they believe to be desirable, it requires that there be at least a legitimate reason for the passage of a law that treats different classes of people differently. There was no such reason that Proposition 8 could have been enacted,” the ruling stated.

Judge Stephen Reinhardt, the author of the majority opinion, went on to write: “Proposition 8 serves no purpose, and has no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians in California, and to officially reclassify their relationships and families as inferior to those of opposite-sex couples. The Constitution simply does not allow for laws of this sort.”

RELATED CONTENT:
Download The Complete Court Ruling (.pdf)
pDownload A Summary Of The Decision (.pdf)

Reihardt, who was appointed to the appeals court by President Jimmy Carter, was joined in the majority opinion by Judge Michael Hawkins, an appointee of President Bill Clinton.

Judge Randy Smith, who was appointed by President George W. Bush, dissented, saying he disagreed that Prop. 8 served no purpose other than to treat gays and lesbians as second-class citizens.

KCBS’ Doug Sovern Reports:

Tuesday’s ruling did not mean, however, that gay marriages would resume in California anytime soon as the decision of the three judges appeared to pave the way for a likely Supreme Court showdown over the issue.

“No court should presume to redefine marriage. No court should undercut the democratic process by taking the power to preserve marriage out of the hands of the people,” Brian Raum, one of the lawyers hired to defend Prop. 8, said in an e-mail sent to CBS San Francisco.

“We are not surprised that this Hollywood-orchestrated attack on marriage — tried in San Francisco — turned out this way. But we are confident that the expressed will of the American people in favor of marriage will be upheld at the Supreme Court,” Raum added.

 
Margaret Russell, a professor of constitutional law at Santa Clara University School of Law, told CBS San Francisco that the Supreme Court did not need a conflicting circuit-court decision in order to take up the case, but rather just four justices who deem it worthy of review.

Prop. 8 passed with 52 percent of the vote in 2008 and outlawed same-sex marriages just five months after they became legal in California. Two same-sex couples then brought a lawsuit in 2009 seeking to overturn the measure.

PHOTO GALLERY: The Proposition 8 Court Battle

American Foundation for Equal Rights President Chad Griffin, who formed the legal team that waged the court battle on behalf of the two couples, called the three-judge panel’s ruling “a historic victory.”

More than 150 people who gathered outside the federal courthouse at Mission and Seventh streets in downtown San Francisco also greeted ruling with cheers. They held signs and waved rainbow flags.

California Attorney General Kamala Harris hailed the decision too. In a statement sent to CBS San Francisco, she called it “a victory for fairness, a victory for equality and a victory for justice.”

The Attorney General’s Office had declined to defend Prop. 8 in court, leaving it in the hands of proponents of the measure to mount a defense, after concluding that the law could not be defended on constitutional grounds.

Gov. Jerry Brown, who also refused to defend the measure, issued a statement in which he said, “The court has rendered a powerful affirmation of the right of same-sex couples to marry. I applaud the wisdom and courage of this decision.”

via CNN

In a change of position, Barack Obama’s reelection campaign will begin using administration and campaign aides to fundraise for Priorities USA Action, a super PAC backing the president.

Obama has been an outspoken critic of current campaign financing laws, in particular a Supreme Court ruling that allowed the creation of super PACs. Until now he has kept his distance from Priorities USA Action.

Follow the Ticker on Twitter: @PoliticalTicker

But in the wake of the group’s anemic fundraising, made public last week, the campaign decided to change its position, and announced the new stance to members of its national finance committee Monday evening.

Two Obama campaign aides confirmed that senior campaign and administration officials who participate at fundraising events for the president’s campaign will also appear at events for Priorities USA Action, the PAC supporting Obama.

“This decision was not made overnight,” one campaign official said. “ The money raised and spent by Republican super PACs is very telling. We will not unilaterally disarm.”

The president, first lady Michelle Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and Dr. Jill Biden will not appear at super PAC events, the aides said.

In an e-mail to supporters, Obama campaign manager Jim Messina said the decision was a reaction to massive fundraising posted by super PACs supporting GOP presidential candidates.

“The campaign has decided to do what we can, consistent with the law, to support Priorities USA in its effort to counter the weight of the GOP Super PACs,” Messina wrote.

“We will do so only in the knowledge and with the expectation that all of its donations will be fully disclosed as required by law to the Federal Election Commission.”

Messina was careful to point out the president’s opposition to a Supreme Court ruling that sparked the onset of super PACs, noting the administration was still looking for ways to put limits on campaign spending.

“The President opposed the Citizens United decision,” Messina wrote. “He understood that with the dramatic growth in opportunities to raise and spend unlimited special-interest money, we would see new strategies to hide it from public view.

“He continues to support a law to force full disclosure of all funding intended to influence our elections, a reform that was blocked in 2010 by a unanimous Republican filibuster in the U.S. Senate. And the President favors action – by constitutional amendment, if necessary – to place reasonable limits on all such spending.”

Priorities USA Action posted receipts of $4.4 million through December 31, 2011, compared to the more than $30 million reported by Restore our Future, a super PAC supporting former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

In an e-mail blast, Jonathan Collegio, spokesman for the conservative groups American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS, called the Obama campaign’s move a “brazenly cynical” reversal for a president who just two years ago called spending by these outside groups a threat to democracy.

Collegio highlighted a quote from an October 2010 rally in Philadelphia, when the New York Times quoted Obama as saying, “You don’t know, it could be the oil industry, it could be the insurance industry, it could even be foreign-owned corporations. You don’t know because they don’t have to disclose. Now that’s not just a threat to Democrats, that’s a threat to our democracy.”

American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS plan to raise $300 million to help defeat Obama and his agenda in November.

Mitt Romney’s super PAC reported raising $30 million in 2011, the vast majority of which was spent on negative advertising.

On Tuesday, Nov. 6, Americans will head to the polls to elect the next President of the United States. Millions of dollars have already been spent on the election. Super PACs representing both President Obama and the Republican presidential candidates are experiencing a flood of monetary contributions while Americans are witnessing firsthand the effects of unlimited donations on their televisions and radio airwaves.

As the election nears, the records of both President Obama and his Republican Party challenger will be analyzed and scrutinized over and over again. Voters will decide who they think will do a better job not only governing the nation but also of leading it out of economic disaster.

But does the President have as much influence over the nation – and specifically the economy – as the electorate thinks he does?

“The president generally matters so much less than we think,” says journalist and Freakonomics Author Stephen Dubner. “Especially when it comes to the economy.”

Read the rest here (or watch the video).