US Politics // Current

Bill to Audit the Federal Reserve Makes It Over Another Hurdle

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/panel-votes-to-audit-feds-balance-sheet-2009-11-19... more

bbar
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24 hours ago
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Obama declines to set Guantánamo closure date in Fox News interview

Barack Obama has backed away from his pledge to close the US prison at Guantánamo Bay... more

bansheewail
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1 day ago
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Senate unveils health care bill

US Senate Democrats unveiled a historic plan to extend health coverage to more than 30... more

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1 day ago
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GOP senators block effort to freeze credit card interest rates

Republican senators on Wednesday blocked an effort to debate a bill that would prevent... more

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1 day ago
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Landmark: Army Corps. of Engineers responsible for Katrina flooding, District Judge rules

In a groundbreaking decision, a federal judge ruled late Wednesday that the Army Corps... more

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2 days ago
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Swiss Banks to divulge details of US tax cheats

US clients of UBS with more than 250,000 Swiss francs (165,641 euros, 248,040 dollars)... more

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3 days ago
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Obama targets $98 Billion in 'Wasteful, improper' govt payments

Obama is to sign an executive order "boosting transparency, holding agencies... more

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3 days ago
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"The Family's" C Street House No Longer Tax Exempt

Residents of the C Street Christian fellowship house will no longer benefit from a... more

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3 days ago
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An Arkansas 10-year-old says he won't pledge to the flag until gays and lesbians have equal rights

~y2009m11d17-An-Arkansas-10yearold-says-he-wont-pledge-to-the-flag-until-gays-and-lesbi... more

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3 days ago
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Afghanistan: Barack Obama gets ready to make toughest call of presidency

President Barack Obama is expected to make a long-awaited announcement on his Afghan... more

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4 days ago
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Sarah Palin says, " I don't believe in evolution".-Shocker

First, a conspiracy about dollar coins. Now a conspiracy about monkeys and fish.... more

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4 days ago
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Republicans Shocked That Public Is Mad At Them For Voting Against Anti-Rape Amendment

Last month, 30 Republican senators voted against Sen. Al Franken’s (D-MN) amendment that would punish defense contractors “if they restrict their employees from taking workplace sexual assault, battery and discrimination cases to court.” His amendment was inspired by Jamie Leigh Jones, who was gang-raped by her co-workers while working for Halliburton/KBR in Baghdad in 2005, and then had to fight her employer for justice.

The GOP senators who sided with defense contractors at the expense of women — such as John Thune (SD) — have been facing an intense backlash. David Vitter (LA) refused to give a rape victim a straight answer when she confronted him about his vote, claiming that he is “absolutely supportive of any [rape] case like that being prosecuted criminally to the full extent of the law.”

Politico reports that Republicans are now scratching their heads at why the public is so incensed about their “no” votes:

Privately, GOP sources acknowledge that they failed to anticipate the political consequences of a “no” vote on the amendment. And several aides said that Republicans are engaged in an internal blame game about why they agreed to a roll-call vote on the measure, rather than a simple voice vote that would have allowed the opposing senators to duck criticism.

As BarbinMD writes, “Seriously? They voted against an amendment that was prompted by the brutal gang-rape of a young woman by her co-workers while she was working for a company under contract for the United States government, after which she was locked in a shipping container without food or water, threatened if she left to seek medical treatment, and was then prevented from bringing criminal charges against her assailants. And they failed to anticipate the political consequences?”

Thune is also claiming that Franken doesn’t really care about Jones and other rape victims whose employers have blocked them from seeking justice; he and other Democrats just wanted to “create a vote which they could use to attack Republicans.”

So basically, the only lesson they learned is that next time, they have to hide their votes when they decide to screw over women’s rights. That way, they can support their allies in the contracting business and the public will never find out.Last month, 30 Republican senators voted against Sen. Al Franken’s (D-MN) amendment... more

Future_America
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7 days ago
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Former congressman sentenced to 13 years for bribery, racketeering

The former Louisiana congressman who famously hid $90,000 cash in his freezer and was... more

Future_America
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7 days ago
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Fox News declares cyberwar on liberal blogosphere

(From the link)

How do you annoy the maximum number of Liberal blogs with minimal effort? If you're Fox News, all you have to do is shut down the YouTube channel that supplies them with infuriating O'Reilly Factor clips. They did this today!

Spend even a few minutes on a politically-inclined blog that leans to the left, and you'll spot the little red-and-white "News1News" logo (above) attached to the upper-left corner a YouTube clip, usually of Glenn Beck ranting hilariously or otherwise being horrible. News1News specializes in capturing and uploading Fox bloviator's most outrageous statements for all of eternity. And each day, we bloggers—from the Huffington Post, Mediaite, Truthdig, Gawker, etc.—plucked newsworthy clips from News1News' Youtube channel, surrounded them with our words, and put them on our sites. (In fact, Mediaite's feature "Your Moment of Glenn" is all News1News clips.) From all this blog love, News1News videos had more than 20 million cumulative views by the time it was shut down. It was the simple, convenient way to stoke Liberal ire!

But today, it appears that Fox News determined it was time to close this one-stop Liberal blog fodder shop: They sent more than 150 DMCA takedown notices to YouTube regarding Fox News clips on the News1News channel, said the channel's proprietor, John. (John, a doctor living in Washington, DC, didn't want his last name used.) This put the channel well over YouTube's controversial "three-strike" copyright violation limit. News1News was shut down, and John was inundated with emails from caffeine-addled bloggers asking, frantically, "what happened!?"

Because, now, if you try to watch Hannity's infamous apology to Jon Stewart on the Huffington Post, or Michael Jackson's "ghost" on Gawker, or Glenn Beck saying dumb stuff on Truthdig, you will only see "This Video is no longer available due to copyright claim by Fox News LLC". (SPOOKY!!)

Which, granted, these clips did belong to Fox, and they were well in their rights to have them taken down, as specified by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. So how do we know this is a politically-motivated move by Fox to hinder the liberal blogosphere's ability to make fun of them? Because plenty of Fox News clips are still available on YouTube—only on conservative-leaning channels: GlennBeckDailyClips, for example has more than 630 clips of, well, the Glenn Beck Program. And ConservativeNation has 186 stomach-churning videos from the whole spectrum of quality Fox News programing. Also: Duh, Fox News would totally do something like this.

News1News is back up, at a new address—at least until Fox takes it down again. But what's surprising about this whole episode isn't that Fox will use digital copyright law to fight back against its political opponents; it's that the operators of these popular cable news-ripping YouTube channels are actually pretty important players in the blog game. Think about it: They not only get to select which cable news clips have the possibility of "going viral" and becoming news themselves, but if they're taken down, whole swaths of video-based blog posts become a lot of words surrounding a big empty space.

Fox News thought John was important enough to take down, even though he's just some guy whose hobby is clipping videos and putting them on YouTube. And John said that network bigwigs took enough notice when one of his MSNBC clips hit 500,000 views that VP of Digital Media, Mark Lukasiewicz, personally called him to say they had their eye on him. (Mark Lukasiewicz could not be reached for comment because he is important and it is 9:30pm.)

How does John do it? "I DVR things," he said. "I know what people are going to find interesting. You can watch a Bill O'Reilly show and you can pick out the things that are going to make heads explode. Literally, when my head explodes I know it's going to be a good clip."(From the link) How do you annoy the maximum number of Liberal blogs with minimal... more