By Stephen Dinan
Arizona’s state legislature will open its own investigation into the Obama administration’s disgraced gun-running program, known as “Fast and Furious,” the speaker of the state House said Friday.
Speaker Andy Tobin created the committee, and charged it with looking at whether the program broke any state laws — raising the possibility of state penalties against those responsible for the operation.
Read the rest here.
Comments »By Jim Forsyth
Sat Jan 21, 2012 11:44am EST
(Reuters) – When Patty Tegeler looks out the window of her home overlooking the Appalachian Mountains in southwestern Virginia, she sees trouble on the horizon.
“In an instant, anything can happen,” she told Reuters. “And I firmly believe that you have to be prepared.”
Tegeler is among a growing subculture of Americans who refer to themselves informally as “preppers.” Some are driven by a fear of imminent societal collapse, others are worried about terrorism, and many have a vague concern that an escalating series of natural disasters is leading to some type of environmental cataclysm.
They are following in the footsteps of hippies in the 1960s who set up communes to separate themselves from what they saw as a materialistic society, and the survivalists in the 1990s who were hoping to escape the dictates of what they perceived as an increasingly secular and oppressive government.
Preppers, though are, worried about no government.
Read the rest here.
Comments »Joe Paterno, the man who for decades was synonymous with Penn State football and was known by the college football world as just “JoePa”, has died. Paterno, 85, had been receiving chemotherapy as part of his treatment for lung cancer, and complications from that treatment claimed the longtime Penn State coach’s life on Saturday.
Paterno was the head coach of Penn State for 46 seasons before being fired in November as his role in the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal came under greater scrutiny. Combined with the time he spent as an assistant, Paterno spent a total of 61 years on the Penn State sidelines. He left behind a legacy that, on the field of play, was unparalleled in Division I football. Paterno holds the all-time Division I record for football coaching wins with a 409-136-3 record, and he won two national championships while going undefeated in five different seasons.
[STATS: JoePa’s lifetime coaching record]
Under Paterno, Penn State was a perennial powerhouse, known for decades as “Linebacker U” for its propensity to develop All-American linebackers. Paterno coached such great linebackers as Dennis Onkotz, Jack Ham, Shane Conlan, LaVar Arrington, Paul Posluszny, Dan Connor, and Sean Lee, along with many others.
Additionally, running back John Cappalletti won the Heisman Trophy in 1973 under Paterno, and Cappalletti was one of seven Penn State players to win the Maxwell Award for most outstanding college football player. All in all, 68 players were named first-team All-American by at least one of the major news services under Paterno; 13 of those players were two-year winners.
Paterno’s longtime defensive coordinator and the architect of the defensive schemes that came to typify Penn State football was Jerry Sandusky, who’s now more well-known for the allegations of underaged sexual abuse against him made by men who were involved in Sandusky’s charity, The Second Mile, as boys. Sandusky is still awaiting trial for those allegations, and he pled not guilty to the charges in December 2011.
In an interview with the Washington Post released just a week before Paterno’s death, he expressed remorse for not having done more to stop Sandusky’s alleged crimes, and he also said he was “just sick about” the situation. Investigators did not bring charges against Paterno, and instead mentioned that he had fulfilled his legal obligations by notifying his superiors about an alleged assault when he was first notified in 2002.
After Paterno was fired in 2011, Penn State named Tom Bradley — who, coincidentally, was Sandusky’s replacement at defensive coordinator — interim head coach. Bradley went 1-3, including a loss to Houston in the TicketCity Bowl, and was not retained as a coach when Penn State hired Bill O’Brien in January.
Paterno was well known for encouraging his players to excel in the classroom and earn their undergraduate degrees at Penn State, and his name will live on at Penn State after his firing and death. Paterno and his wife Suewere major financial supporters of Penn State University, as they donated millions of dollars for the Paterno Library on campus, and Paterno helped establish the Paterno Liberal Arts Undergraduate Fellows Program.
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Joe Paterno, the legendary former coach at Penn State University, is on his death bed … this according to several reports.
A spokesman for the family says doctors have “characterized his status as serious.”
Onward State, a student-run newspaper on campus, reported Saturday he had been taken off his respirator. The Citizens Voice, a newspaper in nearby Wilkes-Barre, PA, reported Paterno’s wife Sue summoned close friends and longtime staff members toState College hospital.
TMZ reached out to Paterno’s lawyer, who would only say rumors of JoePa’s death were “not accurate.”
Paterno was the coach at Penn State for 46 years, until he was famously fired by the school last November following the sexual abuse allegations against his former assistant coach, Jerry Sandusky.
Comments »You weren’t the only one who Googled that smoking hot NBA cheerleader from “American Idol” this week — THOUSANDS of other people did too … and TMZ has learned, the massive surge in traffic crashed her manager’s website.
In case you missed Wednesday’s episode, the smokeshow’s name is Brittany Kerr — a cheerleader for the Charlotte Bobcats. J.Lo wasn’t that impressed with her audition, but Steven Tyler and Randy Jackson eagerly handed the girl a ticket to Hollywood.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=I3aloXCc0tU
But the fanfare didn’t end there … a rep for Kerr’s management company — which hosts multiple photos of her on its website — tells TMZ, its site was forced to shut down for hours after a massive surge in traffic crippled its servers.
But Kerr’s management company wasn’t the only thing affected … photographer Jim Merrill — who recently snapped Kerr in a bikini shoot — tells TMZ, he had to scramble to buy additional bandwidth for his website to accommodate all the voyeurs.
Via TMZ
By Scot J. Paltrow
Fri Jan 20, 2012 9:31am EST
(Reuters) – U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Lanny Breuer, head of the Justice Department’s criminal division, were partners for years at a Washington law firm that represented a Who’s Who of big banks and other companies at the center of alleged foreclosure fraud, a Reuters inquiry shows.
The firm, Covington & Burling, is one of Washington’s biggest white shoe law firms. Law professors and other federal ethics experts said that federal conflict of interest rules required Holder and Breuer to recuse themselves from any Justice Department decisions relating to law firm clients they personally had done work for.
Both the Justice Department and Covington declined to say if either official had personally worked on matters for the big mortgage industry clients. Justice Department spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler said Holder and Breuer had complied fully with conflict of interest regulations, but she declined to say if they had recused themselves from any matters related to the former clients.
Reuters reported in December that under Holder and Breuer, the Justice Department hasn’t brought any criminal cases against big banks or other companies involved in mortgage servicing, even though copious evidence has surfaced of apparent criminal violations in foreclosure cases.
The evidence, including records from federal and state courts and local clerks’ offices around the country, shows widespread forgery, perjury, obstruction of justice, and illegal foreclosures on the homes of thousands of active-duty military personnel.
In recent weeks the Justice Department has come under renewed pressure from members of Congress, state and local officials and homeowners’ lawyers to open a wide-ranging criminal investigation of mortgage servicers, the biggest of which have been Covington clients. So far Justice officials haven’t responded publicly to any of the requests.
While Holder and Breuer were partners at Covington, the firm’s clients included the four largest U.S. banks – Bank of America, Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo & Co – as well as at least one other bank that is among the 10 largest mortgage servicers.
Read the rest here.
Comments »WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Congress has the constitutional right to legislate permits for cross-border oil pipelines like TransCanada’s Keystone XL, according to a new legal analysis released late on Friday.
The study by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service could give a boost to Republicans drafting legislation to overturn a decision this week by President Barack Obama to put the $7 billion Alberta-to-Texas project on ice.
Historically, U.S. presidents have made executive decisions on pipelines that cross borders. But Congress had the power all along to weigh in on the permits, said the study, done by four legislative attorneys with the CRS.
“If Congress chose to assert its authority in the area of border-crossing facilities, this would likely be considered within its Constitutionally enumerated authority to regulate foreign commerce,” the study said.
Read the rest here.
Comments »This is a guest post by Chris Cook, former compliance and market supervision director of the International Petroleum Exchange.
Comments »(CNSNews.com) – Health care reform programs that are similar to those promoted by the ObamaCare law do not save the government money or reduce health care costs, according to a new report by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).
The report examined 10 major demonstration projects conducted by Medicare in which managed care programs and value-based payment programs are evaluated. The two types of health care reforms are key features of ObamaCare – the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which became law in March 2010.
In the managed-care programs – where care-management companies were hired to coordinate care between doctors and patients with chronic diseases like diabetes, sending nurses to monitor whether patients were following doctor’s orders – the CBO found that the programs did not reduce costs enough to save the government money.
“The evaluations show that most programs have not reduced Medicare spending: In nearly every program involving disease management and care coordination, spending was either unchanged or increased relative to the spending that would have occurred in the absence of the program,” the report said.
In the case of value-based payment programs – where hospitals are paid based on whether they achieve better outcomes for their patients – the CBO again found that all but one of the programs assessed did not reduce health care costs enough to save Medicare any money.
Read the rest here.
(CNSNews.com) – Organized crime-related deaths in one Mexican border state during the first nine months of 2011 exceed the number of Afghan civilians killed in roughly the same period in all of war-torn Afghanistan.
According to the Mexican government, from January through September 2011 2,276 deaths were recorded in the Mexican state of Chihuahua, which borders Texas and New Mexico.
A Nov. 2011 Congressional Research Service (CRS) report states that over nearly the same period – January through October 2011 – 2,177 civilians were killed in Afghanistan, where a U.S.-led war against the Taliban is underway. It did not provide a breakdown of responsibility for that period, but said that in 2010, 75 percent of civilian deaths were attributed to the Taliban and other “anti-government elements.”
Per capita, a person was at least nine times more likely to be murdered in Chihuahua last year than in Afghanistan. (Chihuahua has 3,406,465 inhabitants, according to Mexico’s 2010 census; the CIA World Factbook reports that in July 2011 the estimated population of Afghanistan was 29,835,392.)
Read the rest here.
It was merely a case of bad luck that led to Jay-Z‘s 40/40 Club racking up a slew of health code violations … a rep for the club tells TMZ.
As we previously reported, the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene cited the club big time Thursday night for a litany of violations … which included several different instances of food being stored at improper temperatures.
But Ron Berkowitz, a rep for the club, tells TMZ the motor in one of the refrigeratorsblew just moments before the health inspector arrived … causing the temperature in the fridge to rise. Berkowtiz says the staff identified the problem immediately and had no intention of serving the food from that fridge.
Berkowitz says the fridge was fixed by noon the next day and the club was permitted to re-open.
He adds … the club lost no business as a result of the issue and their health code grade is currently pending review.
Comments »WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Home sales hit an 11-month high in December and the number of properties on the market was the fewest in nearly seven years, pointing to a nascent recovery in the housing sector.
The National Association of Realtors said on Friday existing home sales increased 5 percent to an annual rate of 4.61 million units, with all four of the nation’s regions recording gains.
Sales of both multifamily and single-family homes rose.
“It seems that the housing sector may be slowly picking itself up off of the mat,” said Omair Sharif, an economist at RBS in Stamford, Connecticut.
Read the rest here.
Comments »What do the markets have to do with the election? Not much.
Barry Ritholtz
Washington Post, January 15 2012
~~~
Just about this time every campaign cycle, the pundits get all excited about what Mr. Market is saying about the election: What does this candidate or that mean for the stock market returns? Will an incumbent victory bode well or poorly? Are stock prices telling voters which candidate will be friendlier to future market returns?
Read the rest over at Ritholtz’s Blog.
Comments »Some of President Barack Obama’s biggest labor supporters are fuming over his Keystone XL pipeline verdict, but they may be angrier at their labor brethren than at the president himself.
Unions representing construction workers that would directly benefit from building the pipeline feel stabbed in the back by unions that joined environmental groups to congratulate Obama for killing the project.
“People are pissed,” said one U.S. labor official who supports the proposed TransCanada pipeline. “The emotions are really, really raw right now. This is a big deal.”
“It’s repulsive, it’s disgusting and we’re not going to stand idly by,” Laborers’ International Union of North America General President Terry O’Sullivan told POLITICO. “The rules have changed. So we’ll react accordingly.”
O’Sullivan said the first move will be to pull his union out of the BlueGreen Alliance — a coalition of environmental groups and labor unions that represented nearly all of the groups that signed a joint statement backing Obama. (The BlueGreen Alliance itself did not take a position on the pipeline.)
“Unions and environmental groups that have no equity in the work have kicked our members in the teeth,” O’Sullivan said. “And anger is an understatement as to how we feel about it. We’re not sitting at the same table as people that destroy our members’ lives.”
Read the rest here.
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By Bill Clinton
Charity alone will not solve the world’s problems. Capitalism can help and at the same time put people back to work. There has always been a gap between what the government can provide and what the private sector can produce, a gap charities have long helped to fill. But as our world and economies evolve, we have an opportunity and a responsibility to reconsider how to fill this gap – to rethink the relationship between economic and social challenges, so that benefits and opportunities are available to more people.
Read the rest here.
Comments »From Spaceweather.com :
Active sunspot 1401 erupted yesterday, Jan. 19th around 16:30 UT, producing an M3-class solar flare and a full-halo coronal mass ejection (CME). The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory recorded the cloud expanding almost directly toward Earth:
Read the rest here.
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