ESPN drops Hank Williams Jr. from Monday night’s football opening after singer compares Obama to Hitler
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on October 4th, 2011 4:35 am by HL
Hours after country singer Hank Williams Jr. went on a morning talk show and likened President Barack Obama to Adolf Hitler, ESPN announced it had dropped the singer as the opening of this week’s “Monday Night Football.”
“While Hank Williams Jr. is not an ESPN employee, we recognize he is closely linked to our company through the opening to ‘Monday Night Football,’” the Disney-owned sports cable network said Monday afternoon its statement.
Panetta: U.S. seeking release of Israeli-American Ilan Grapel
TEL AVIV — Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said Monday that U.S. officials have been trying to broker the release of an alleged Israeli spy held by Egypt, and he raised hopes that he could win the prisoner’s release during a visit to Cairo this week.
Ilan Grapel, 27, a dual U.S.-Israeli citizen and a law student at Emory University in Atlanta, was arrested in June in Cairo on suspicion of espionage. Egyptian authorities accused him of gathering intelligence for Israel and trying to sabotage the popular revolution that toppled Egypt’s longtime president, Hosni Mubarak.
A nostalgia party for Clinton gang
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — “You haven’t changed a bit!” Kirk Hanlin, an advance man for Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign, told Stanley Greenberg, the campaign’s pollster, as they stood in an airy room at the Clinton Library here on Friday. “Well, maybe your hair. I kept looking for the hair, for the afro, for the mustache.”
Obama was advised against visiting Solyndra after financial warnings
Administration officials and outside advisers warned that President Obama should consider dropping plans to visit a solar startup company in 2010 because its mounting financial problems might ultimately embarrass the White House.
“A number of us are concerned that the president is visiting Solyndra,” California investor and Obama fundraiser Steve Westly wrote to Obama senior adviser Valerie Jarrett in May 2010. “Many of us believe the company’s cost structure will make it difficult for them to survive long term. .?.?. I just want to help protect the president from anything that could result in negative or unfair press.”
Supreme Court opens term with Medicaid cut case
The Supreme Court began its new term Monday with a complicated case about whether those who provide care and receive benefits under the Medicaid program for the poor can go to court when a state tries to cut spending on the program.
California, which for budget reasons reduced its reimbursement rate for the program by 10 percent, and the Obama administration say individuals do not have a right to go to court. They say only the federal government may determine whether the rates paid to doctors and other providers are proper under the federal Medicaid law.
