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Gingrich Running for President
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich will announce plans on Wednesday to run for the Republican party’s 2012 presidential nomination, his spokesman said. “He continues to be the intellectual leader of the Republican Party,” said Republican strategist Scott Reed.
Late, Late Night FDL: All I Need Is A Miracle
Mike + The Mechanics – All I Need Is A Miracle
Mike + The Mechanics – All I Need Is A Miracle
What’s on your mind tonite…?
By Monte Wolverton, Cagle Cartoons
HuffPost TV: WATCH: Howard Fineman Discusses Obama’s Past Week
HuffPost’s Howard Fineman appeared Monday on MSNBC’s ‘Hardball with Chris Matthews’ to discuss President Obama’s past week. Regarding the death of Osama bin Laden, Fineman…
Mitch Daniels Once ‘Fired’ Trump
Though it may be hard to believe given his mild-mannered demeanor, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels is the only potential Republican presidential candidate who can claim…
Joshua Kors: Q&A With Dan Savage: On Obama, Fox News’ Shepard Smith and Success of ‘It Gets Better’ Project
Savage caught the eye of the nation following a string of suicides by gay youths, when he and husband Terry Miller posted a video telling gay children that if they can hold on, life does get better.
Oregon State Senate Passes Bill Cracking Down On ‘Suicide Kits’
SALEM, Ore. — Oregon senators voted Monday to impose a crackdown on companies that sell so-called “suicide kits,” which contain hoods or other items intended…
Experts: Proposed Ethics Bills Could Withstand Tests
Illinois Sen. Mark Kirk (R) and Rep. Mike Quigley (D) announced Monday that they are working together to tighten federal ethics laws. Ex-prosecutors say that…
Al Qaeda ‘Confirms’ Osama Bin Laden’s Death
Al Qaeda’s leadership has issued a statement confirming the death of Osama bin Laden, the Associated Press reports.
Federal Agents Say Turf Wars Have Negatively Affected Investigations
One-third of federal agents surveyed by a government oversight agency have gotten into turf wars with other federal law enforcement agencies during the course of an investigation during the past five years.
Right-Wing Sock Puppets Pretending to Be Liberals Assault Progressive Websites
Ignorant, peevish, narrow-minded, misinformed, livid, intolerant, they are an army of everything that’s wrong with America, denizens of a weird trickster God who speaks to them with words they don’t completely understand, or tints their natural interior wrath with righteous anger conferred by snake-oil preachers or haughty cable charlatans either crass or crazed, or just […]
Christie Likes Being Asked to Run
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) said he never tires of being asked to run for president, but he insists he’s still not doing it, the AP reports.
Said Christie: “How self-important would one have to be to become tired and annoyed by having people ask you to run for president? I’m a kid from Jersey who has people asking him to run for president. I’m thrilled by it. I just don’t want to do it.”
Gingrich’s Wife to Play Key Role in Campaign
Callista Gingrich, who is “perhaps best remembered for the six-year affair that contributed to her husband’s political downfall,” is now expected to play a key role in her husband’s presidential campaign, the New York Times reports.
It’s “a curious tale of Washington reinvention” in which the onetime Georgia congressman “is counting on the third Mrs. Gingrich for his political redemption.”
“Gingrich is presenting himself as a family man who has embraced Catholicism and found God, with his wife as a kind of character witness. Depending on one’s point of view, she is a reminder of his complicated past, or his secret political weapon.”
Schwarzenegger Splits with Wife
Former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) and his wife, Maria Shriver, “have separated, with Shriver moving out of their Brentwood mansion while the two determine the next step in their 25-year marriage,” the Los Angeles Times reports.
“Over the years, the marriage between the international celebrity and the daughter of the Kennedy dynasty has come under close scrutiny, especially during the 2003 recall of Gov. Gray Davis, when The Times reported on Schwarzenegger’s lengthy history of groping women. At the time, Shriver defended her husband, helping lift him to victory in the free-for-all contest.”
More on the Bin Laden Story: Pakistan Delivered
According to sources in the US intelligence community, bin Laden was near/in Islamabad, Pakistan. He was with family in a compound. Leads from Pakistan ISI — that’s right — ISI, led US forces and intel to the site. The US…
Job Creation the Old Economic Textbook Way: Reducing the Value of the Dollar
In the wake of the recession brought on by the collapse of the housing bubble many people have called for a new economics. There are certainly grounds for arguing that we need a new economics, but the bigger problem is…
Over 100 Michigan Law Students Walk Out Of Own Graduation To Protest Anti-Gay Speaker Rob Portman
Over 100 newly-minted lawyers walked out of their own graduation at the University of Michigan Law School on Saturday to protest the ceremony’s commencement speaker, anti-gay Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH). As Andrew Selbst, one of the student organizers of the walkout, explains, Portman’s chilly reception is merely the latest sign that the senator’s opposition to marriage equality and other basic human rights no longer has a place is American society:
The walkout was a statement to a broader audience – America. I think this whole episode fits within the thesis of Minnesota Law Professor Dale Carpenter’s recent New York Times Op-Ed about King & Spaulding’s withdrawal from defending DOMA: The legal profession has simply moved past the point where LGBT rights are just another political issue, instead recognizing that discriminating against any group of people based on who they are is simply unacceptable in today’s society. This walkout, like the Op-Ed, like the Justice Department’s refusal to defend DOMA, is another data point for this observation. Here, even more specifically, we were saying that the for the next generation of lawyers, this is not even a debatable issue.
Watch Michigan Law grads walking out of Portman’s speech:
Selbst is correct that Portman and other proponents of discrimination are an increasingly lonely minority. Just seven short years after President George W. Bush wielded anti-gay bigotry as a sword to rally his own presidential campaign, the tide has turned in favor of equal treatment for all Americans. Two recent polls find that a majority of Americans support marriage equality, as opposed to just 36 percent shortly after Bush won the 2004 election.
Even if Portman did not find himself standing athwart history, however, Michigan’s selection of him as a law school graduation speaker is particularly ill considered. It’s unclear why a law school would choose to send off a class of new lawyers with a speech delivered by someone eager to violate the Constitution’s promise that all persons receive “the equal protection of the laws.”
A military study has found that the psychological strain on U.S. troops serving in Afghanistan is at a five-year high. The survey reports the lowest morale since 2005, with the most severe mental health strain existing among veterans that have had three or more deployments. “We’re an Army that’s in uncharted territory here,” says Gen. Peter Chiarelli, Army vice chief of staff.
White House National Security Adviser Tom Donilon said Sunday that he has not “seen any evidence at least to date that the political, military, or intelligence leadership of Pakistan knew about Osama bin Laden.” Nonetheless, Donilon stressed that the United States would be working with Pakistan to investigate how Bin Laden was able to encamp in a major suburb of Islamabad, Pakistan.
Wall Street leaders will pressure House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) tonight “to provide reassurance that Congress will raise the U.S. debt limit” after his speech to the Economic Club of New York. While Boehner will take credit for “forcing Democrats to the table to negotiate spending cuts,” Wall Street wants assurances that “when it comes down to brass tracks they are going to raise that debt ceiling.”
“Senate Democrats say they will move forward this week with a plan that would eliminate tax breaks for big oil companies and divert the savings to offset the deficit.” “Big Oil certainly doesn’t need the collective money of taxpayers in this country,” said Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ).
Tea Party favorite Rep. Allen West (R-FL) voted against a bill scrapping a small piece of health care reform last week, a surprising break from the GOP’s efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act piece by piece. “He questions what the goal is of chipping away like this if it’s almost certain that the Senate is not going to take it up,” a West spokesperson said.
The Department of Transportation will award 15 states with $2 billion in high-speed rail funding that Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) rejected. Despite his predecessor’s approval of the project and a state report indicating “the rail line would be profitable,” Scott passed on the $2.4 billion over concerns of being “locked into years of operating subsidies.”
In the latest efforts to curb union influence, lawmakers in Missouri and New Hampshire are attempting to advance right-to-work laws through legislatures this year. Right-to-work laws exist in 22 states, and they were proposed in 18 states this year. New Hampshire Gov. John Lynch (D) has promised to veto a right-to-work bill if it passes.
Bahrain’s rulers, eager to continue to suppress a pro-democracy movement, have been following a policy of systematically bulldozing mosques frequented by Shiite Muslims. Although the government has “bulldozed dozens of mosques,” the “Obama administration has said nothing in public” about the destruction of the country’s mosques, some of which are hundreds of years old.
And finally: Golf Digest magazine is hoping to capitalize on two national leaders’ love of the sport by organizing a golf match between President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH). The publication has even already made about 10,000 Obama-Boehner “Let’s Play Golf!” buttons. Boehner told “60 Minutes” last year that he has talked “several times” with the president about playing golf, “It just hasn’t happened yet.”
For breaking news and updates throughout the day, follow ThinkProgress on Facebook and Twitter.
The battle lines in the fight over raising the country’s $14.3 trillion debt limit could come into focus this week at a series of congressional events.
First up is House Speaker John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) speech Monday night to the Economic Club of New York. In the address, Boehner is expected to sketch out House Republicans’ strategy in the fight over raising the legal limit on federal borrowing, which is expected to be reached in early August. In addition to delivering a speech, Boehner will also engage in a question-and-answer session with financial executives.
At VA, a blogger criticizes from the inside
Back from a 15-month deployment to Iraq, Alex Horton penned a 1,000-word rant against the Department of Veterans Affairs.
“How many obscene scandals, misappropriations and misdiagnoses does it take to see there’s a rotten core at the center?” the 23-year-old soldier wrote on his war blog from Austin in 2009. He was in his fourth semester at community college, and VA was holding up money he needed for rent and schoolbooks under the new GI Bill.
His unsympathetic VA counselor “provides the same level of care you would expect from a Tijuana back alley vasectomy,” Horton wrote, expressing a frustration felt by generations of veterans.
Newt Gingrich: Serious candidate or sideshow?
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has always been a divisive figure — even within the Republican party. So, it’s not all that surprising that Gingrich’s plan to run for president in 2012, which will be formally announced on Wednesday, has quickly divided people into two camps.
On one side are those who believe Newt is an old face in a party hungering for new ones, a man whose political abilities are only exceeded by his belief in those abilities. For that group, Newt is a sideshow — a highly entertaining one, to be sure, but not someone who is a serious candidate for the nomination.
Feds redistribute $2 billion for rail projects
The Obama administration on Monday announced the reallocation of $2 billion in its signature transportation program to create a national high-speed rail network, including $795 million for upgrades that would permit speeds of 160 mph in parts of the Northeast Corridor.
U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood made the money available to other states this year when Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) opted not to accept funds that had been allocated to build high-speed rail between Tampa and Orlando.
LaHood said almost 100 applications came in from 24 states, the District and Amtrak.
A shout-out to the best, but not most popular, ideas in Congress
This column is usually about the Big Issues. Health-care reform. The deficit. The debt ceiling. The grand, Ragnarok-level clashes (you were into Norse mythology when you were younger, too, right?) between the two parties.
But not today. Today I want to introduce the No-Brainer Awards: a roll call honoring some of the best legislative ideas you won’t see leading the evening news. These thoughtful bills and responsible reforms aren’t polarizing or sweeping, which you’d think would make it easier for them to pass. But for many of them, the absence of partisan passion means they never make it to the front of the congressional agenda. So let’s give them a push.
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You are currently browsing the The Hollywood Liberal weblog archives for the day Tuesday, May 10th, 2011.
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Cost Of The Iraq War. $4-6 Billion For a Lie. |
Where's Osama?On Sept. 11th, 2001 George Bush said he would catch bin Laden dead or alive. He never did, we used to run a counter showing how many days it had been, but Obama finally took care of it for him. Just another Bush lie. |
The Hollywood Liberal started in 2004 at the height of the Bush Administration madness in America. We were inspired by the late great Bartcop.com. The very first thing I did when the site started was to get arrested at the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York. My arrest at the start of a march from The World Trade Center was later ruled unconstitutional by a federal judge. On New Years Eve 2014 the case was finally settled, with a judge awarding a class action suit that I was part of over $26 Million. I posted daily on the blog up until the end of The Bush error, and the site is now run as a history of the whole fiasco. Feel free to browse the old postings, pictures, & comics (an HL favorite) It reveals the twisted history of the times. Thanks H.L.
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