tagged w/ Friday News Dump
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Misfortune. Bad luck. Friday the 13th. How did it all begin? Moses Gloomer goes undercover to reveal the sordid details in this exclusive Gloom Report.
The Gloomers are a new animated series produced by ex Hanna Barbera artists and writers.Misfortune. Bad luck. Friday the 13th. How did it all begin? Moses Gloomer goes... more
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By Kyle Hopkins and Lisa Demer | Anchorage Daily News
ANCHORAGE — An Alaska state judge on Friday ordered Gov. Sarah Palin to preserve e-mails she's sent from or received at private e-mail accounts until a lawsuit demanding that the e-mails be made public is resolved.
Superior Court Judge Craig Stowers issued the order in response to a lawsuit by Alaskan Andree McLeod, who questioned the legality of the governor's use of private e-mail accounts to conduct state business.
Stowers refused McLeod's request that Palin be ordered not to use private e-mail accounts to conduct state business. But he granted her request that the governor and ehr office be ordered to preserve any e-mails and documents attached to them that were sent or received from ehr private e-mail accounts.
"Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and the office of the governor of Alaska … are ordered to preserve all e-mails (including attachments thereto) sent between December 4, 2006, and the resolution of this litigation," Stowers wrote.
Palin's use of private e-mail accounts have been the subject of controversy in Alaska out of concern that the use of such accounts would allow Palin to skirt state laws requiring the preservation and release of the e-mails under state law.
Similar disputes have also embroiled the Bush administration after it was revealed two years ago that White House officials often used private e-mail accounts for conducting public business. Those e-mails were not tracked by software intended to preserve government records.
The state scrambled to comply with the order, which covered not just Palin but all employees of the governor's office. The state was trying to find out which governor's office employees used private e-mails for state business and then try to preserve those e-mails and pull them into the state's e-mail system, he said.
Palin had at least two private Yahoo accounts and used one for state business. A couple of other employees in the governor's office, Ivy Frye and Frank Bailey, also used private e-mail accounts for state work at times.
But it's not clear how widespread the practice has been. Close to 90 people have worked in the governor's office since Palin took office in December 2006, counting those in the Office of Management and Budget and the lieutenant governor's office. Mike Mitchell, an assistant attorney general, said he believed the practice was minimal.
Palin's Yahoo accounts were canceled in September after a Tennessee college student reset her password, got into one of the accounts and posted screen shots of her inbox and a couple of messages on a publicly available Web site.
Separate from the Yahoo accounts, Bailey set up another private e-mail system this spring for Palin and some of her insiders, according to the Washington Post.
Mitchell said he'll have to work with the governor's office and the technical support staff to figure out how to pursue the e-mails that may still be in the possession of Yahoo or other e-mail service providers.
According to Yahoo, once a user deletes an e-mail, "the actual message content may take a couple of days to a couple of months to be completely eliminated from our storage facilities."
Any recovered e-mails will be released in response to requests for public information, if they are not otherwise exempt, Mitchell said. McLeod and others have been seeking Palin's e-mails.
By Kyle Hopkins and Lisa Demer | Anchorage Daily News
ANCHORAGE — An Alaska... more
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A legislative committee investigating Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has found she unlawfully abused her authority in firing the state's public safety commissioner. The investigative report concludes that a family grudge wasn't the sole reason for firing Public Safety Commissioner Walter Monegan but says it likely was a contributing factor.
The Republican vice presidential nominee has been accused of firing a commissioner to settle a family dispute. Palin supporters have called the investigation politically motivated.
Monegan says he was dismissed as retribution for resisting pressure to fire a state trooper involved in a bitter divorce with the governor's sister. Palin says Monegan was fired as part of a legitimate budget dispute.A legislative committee investigating Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has found she unlawfully... more
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I sure would! But apparently the Bush government doesn't think that's neccessary. In fact, it went to court to block a meatpacker from testing its own meat to reassure customers!
Did you know that LESS than 1% of all meat is tested for mad cow in the US?
"Larger meatpackers have opposed Creekstone's push to allow wider testing out of fear that consumer pressure would force them to begin testing all animals too. Increased testing would raise the price of meat by a few cents per pound."I sure would! But apparently the Bush government doesn't think that's... more
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A cargo ship contracted by the U.S Military Sealift Command has fired at least one shot toward an Iranian boat, a U.S. defense official said on Friday.
"It was an MSC vessel," the official said, confirming the ship had fired on an Iranian boat.
A spokeswoman for the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain did not have any immediate comment. Is this a sign that the friction between the two nations is at boiling point? If you spot any updates on the story then please share them in a comment.A cargo ship contracted by the U.S Military Sealift Command has fired at least one... more
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WASHINGTON — The Bush administration violated federal law last year when it restricted states’ ability to provide health insurance to children of middle-income families, and its new policy is therefore unenforceable, lawyers from the Government Accountability Office said Friday.
The ruling strengthens the hand of at least 22 states, including New York and New Jersey, that already provide such coverage or want to do so. And it significantly reduces the chance that the new policy can be put into effect before President Bush leaves office in nine months.
At issue is the future of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, financed jointly by the federal government and the states. Congress last year twice passed bills to expand the popular program, and Mr. Bush vetoed both.
State officials of both parties say the policy, set forth in a letter to state health officials on Aug. 17, has stymied their efforts to cover more children at a time when the number of uninsured is rising and more families are experiencing economic hardship.
In a formal legal opinion Friday, the accountability office said the new policy “amounts to a marked departure” from a longstanding, settled interpretation of federal law. It is therefore a rule and, under a 1996 law, must be submitted to Congress for review before it can take effect, the opinion said.
By ROBERT PEAR
Published: April 19, 2008
WASHINGTON — The Bush administration violated federal law last year when it... more
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Trust, but verify! Investors who have money invested in companies that change their reporting policies, should question their motivation and react accordingly. What are they hiding from investors? Too many individuals have their retirement tied to the stock market. Can they afford to trust and not verify?
Retailers Get Stingy With Data
J.C. Penney says the tumultuous economy is making it impossible to predict earnings over the next year. Macy’s asserts that providing monthly sales information is too distracting and confusing. And Starbucks argues that annual profit estimates are unnecessary.
In American retailing, less is suddenly more — at least when it comes to giving investors the sort of financial information they have long expected from companies.
Faced with an economic slump, a growing number of national retailers are abandoning the longstanding tradition of reporting monthly store sales and forecasting annual profits.
The stores say that they are eliminating outdated practices that encourage short-term decision-making and can confuse investors.
But many Wall Street analysts and investors, who rely on these numbers to gauge a company’s health and the mood of the American consumer, are crying foul, The New York Times reports. The motive for providing less financial insight, they suspect, is to avoid issuing embarrassing numbers in the middle of a recession, numbers that can drive down a company’s stock price.
So far this year, Starbucks, Macy’s, CVS Caremark and Jos. A. Bank have ditched one or both of the financial reporting practices that were once standard in retailing.
And on Wednesday, J.C. Penney joined the list, saying it would stop offering annual profit estimates, known in the industry as guidance, at least for now. (It will still provide monthly sales and quarterly profit estimates.)
Myron E. Ullman, the chief executive of J.C. Penney, said that with the housing market in turmoil and gas prices surging, “there is not enough visibility to give something meaningful.”
The analysts who track J.C. Penney and the rest of the retail business can barely contain their frustration with all the lip zipping. “Withholding information is not what investors want,” Bill Dreher, a longtime retail analyst at Deutsche Bank Securities, told The Times. “They want clarity.”
A tough economy, Mr. Dreher added, “is a time to be more communicative, not a time to deprive us of guidance or clamp down on information.”
Trust, but verify! Investors who have money invested in companies that change their... more
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Suggests Cheney, Rice, Powell and other White House officials committed war crimes.
In the 1990s, Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University law professor and constitutional expert, was a strong advocate for impeaching Pres. Bill Clinton because Clinton lied about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky while under oath in a deposition for a civil lawsuit.
The issue today is far more serious. According to ABC News, starting in 2002, senior Bush officials, including Vice President Cheney and Sec. of State Condoleezza Rice, who was then the national security adviser, were involved hands-on in drafting torture guidelines for the CIA. Because torture is illegal under U.S. and international law, Jonathan Turley says he believes the drafting of these guidelines was a war crime. (See video above from MSNBC’s “Countdown with Keith Olbermann” on April 10.)
Late Friday afternoon, George Bush confirmed to ABC News that Cheney, Rice and the other officials — including then-Sec. of State Colin Powell, then-Attorney Gen. John Ashcroft, then-Sec. of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, then-CIA Director George Tenet and their aides — were working at his behest.
This new development — the president’s admission that he commissioned alleged war crimes — is being ignored completely on cable news on Saturday. It will be interesting to see if it makes it onto the Sunday political shows, including even ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopolous.”
Suggests Cheney, Rice, Powell and other White House officials committed war crimes.... more
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Can we afford to risk our farm animals? What if they are wrong? They weren't really prepared for a major hurricane and we have seen how that turned out. People are still living in trailers. Many families will never return home.
Foot-and-mouth virus can be carried on a worker's breath or clothes, or vehicles leaving a lab, and is so contagious it has been confined to Plum Island since the research began. The existing lab is 100 miles northeast of New York City in the Long Island Sound. Researchers there who work with the live virus are not permitted to own animals at home that would be susceptible, and they must wait at least one week after work before attending outside events where such animals might perform, such as a circus.
Plum Island Animal Disease Center Building 257, closed in 1995, sits fenced and boarded up on Plum Island off of the east coast of New York's Long Island, in this Feb. 16, 2004 file photo. The Bush administration plans to move its research on one of the most feared animal diseases from an isolated island laboratory to a new facility on the U.S. mainland near herds of livestock, raising concerns about the possibility of an economically catastrophic outbreak. (AP Photo/Ed Betz, File)
WASHINGTON — The only U.S. facility allowed to research the highly contagious foot-and-mouth disease experienced several accidents with the feared virus, the Bush administration acknowledged Friday.
A simulated outbreak of the disease in 2002 _ part of an earlier U.S. government exercise called "Crimson Sky" _ ended with fictional riots in the streets after the simulation's National Guardsmen were ordered to kill tens of millions of farm animals, so many that troops ran out of bullets. In the exercise, the government said it would have been forced to dig a ditch in Kansas 25 miles long to bury carcasses. In the simulation, protests broke out in some cities amid food shortages.
Can we afford to risk our farm animals? What if they are wrong? They weren't... more
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Every Friday I look for the most important Friday News Dump. I think this is it, Bush knew! Will this be 'old news' by Monday?
President Says He Knew His Senior Advisers Discussed Tough Interrogation Methods
By JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG, HOWARD L. ROSENBERG and ARIANE de VOGUE
April 11, 2008
President Bush says he knew his top national security advisers discussed and approved specific details about how high-value al Qaeda suspects would be interrogated by the Central Intelligence Agency, according to an exclusive interview with ABC News Friday.
(ABC News Photo Illustration)"Well, we started to connect the dots in order to protect the American people." Bush told ABC News White House correspondent Martha Raddatz. "And yes, I'm aware our national security team met on this issue. And I approved."
As first reported by ABC News Wednesday, the most senior Bush administration officials repeatedly discussed and approved specific details of exactly how high-value al Qaeda suspects would be interrogated by the CIA.
The high-level discussions about these "enhanced interrogation techniques" were so detailed, these sources said, some of the interrogation sessions were almost choreographed -- down to the number of times CIA agents could use a specific tactic.
These top advisers signed off on how the CIA would interrogate top al Qaeda suspects -- whether they would be slapped, pushed, deprived of sleep or subjected to simulated drowning, called waterboarding, sources told ABC news.
Every Friday I look for the most important Friday News Dump. I think this is it, Bush... more
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