Question: Was Larry King Playing the Corpse?

CNN Posts Video of Apparently Faked CPR Attempt on 'Dead' Palestinian Child

"The Most Trusted Name in News," CNN, in its continuing quest to rid itself of any hint of believable objectivity, has posted, withdrawn, and then re-posted a video that purports to show the death and hasty burial of the cameraman's 12 year-old younger "brother," one of two children allegedly killed on the roof of their home in rocket fire from an Israeli drone. Careful analysis of the purported attempt to revive the "victim," however, is causing much skepticism.

Newbusters has the full story here.

[end]




Click here to read rest of entry >>

If only the Ravens could score as high against the Titans today...

Baltimore's Democratic Mayor Indicted on 12 Counts

A grand jury has indicted Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon on 12 counts of theft, perjury and misconduct stemming from her romantic relationship with a Baltimore developer. The prosecutor's office charged Mrs. Dixon with four counts of theft, saying she used gift cards donated for needy families to buy presents for herself around Christmas every year from 2004 to 2007.

Mrs. Dixon, a prominent Democrat who was elected the city's first female mayor in 2007, also was charged with four counts of perjury for not documenting gifts from two developers doing business with the city. The developers are not named in the indictment of Mrs. Dixon, but one is thought to be Ronald H. Lipscomb, who was indicted earlier.

Mrs. Dixon said she would not step down as mayor and defended herself Friday afternoon. A la Blago, Mayor Dixon said, "I am being unfairly accused. Time will prove that I have done nothing wrong, and I am confident that I will be found innocent of these charges."

The Washington Times has more.
[end]



Click here to read rest of entry >>

Again, They Misunderestimated Him...

Bush's "Political" Firings of N. Mex. U.S. Attorney Allows Discovery of Richardson Pay-for-Play Scandal.

December 7, 2006. That's the day the Bush Justice Department dismissed U.S. Attorney David Iglesias of New Mexico. His dismissal, along with that of six other U.S. Attorneys, set the stage for a political firestorm when Democrats claimed the firings were proof that the Bush Administration was "politicizing justice."

Mr. Iglesias put himself at the center of that storm by claiming he was fired because he hadn't pursued voter fraud cases vigorously enough. Democrats eventually ran Attorney General Alberto Gonzales out of town. But the nub of the criticism of Mr. Iglesias -- that he wasn't the right man to root out endemic political corruption in the state -- was never substantially refuted.

After Mr. Iglesias's departure, the U.S. Attorney's office issued indictments in and won two major corruption cases, and the new U.S. Attorney in New Mexico, Greg Fouratt, has picked up the pace. The investigation that derailed Gov. Bill Richardson's nomination to be Obama's Commerce Secretary involves political donations from CDR Financial Products Inc., in 2003 and 2004 that total $100,000. Those donations were given to campaigns Mr. Richardson ran that registered Hispanic and Native American voters, among other things. AND they came at about the same time that CDR won a lucrative contract from New Mexico.

The Wall Street Journal has the full scoop.

[end]





Click here to read rest of entry >>

Know Your Obama Underlings, Part 10

Editor's Note: This is another installment in the Rapier's profiles of Barack Obama's nominees to cabinet or high-level administration posts.
Today's Profile
Secretary of Housing & Urban DevelopmentShaun Donovan
Born January 24, 1966. Donovan is the current head of the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development, a position he has held since 2004. Born in New York, Donovan earned undergraduate and masters degrees from Harvard University, studying public administration at the John F. Kennedy School of Government and architecture at the Graduate School of Design. He is married to Liza Gilbert, a landscape architect. They have two sons, Milo and Lucas.

Before joining the Bloomberg administration in New York City, Mr. Donovan worked at Prudential Mortgage Capital Company as managing director of its FHA lending and "affordable housing" investments. In the affordable housing arena, Prudential Mortgage Capital’s portfolio totaled more than $1.5 billion in debt, including Fannie Mae, FHA and other loan types.

Prior to Prudential, Mr. Donovan was a visiting scholar at New York University, where he researched and wrote about the preservation of federally-assisted housing. He was also a consultant to the Millennial Housing Commission on strategies for increasing the production of multifamily housing. The Commission was created by the United States Congress to recommend ways to expand housing opportunities across the nation.

Until March of 2001, he was Deputy Assistant Secretary for Multifamily Housing at HUD, the primary federal official responsible for privately-owned multifamily housing. At HUD, he ran housing subsidy programs that provided over $9 billion annually to 1.7 million families and oversaw a portfolio of 30,000 multifamily properties with over 2 million housing units.

Prior to joining HUD, he worked at the Community Preservation Corporation (CPC) in New York City, a non-profit lender and developer of affordable housing. He also researched and wrote about housing policy at the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University and worked as an architect in New York and Italy. He holds Masters degrees in Public Administration and Architecture from Harvard University.

During the 2008 United States Presidential campaign, Donovan worked for the Obama campaign.


Click here to read rest of entry >>

Media Debates Infallibility of "The One"

Obama's 'first mistakes' mount

Team Obama has made its first mistake — again.

When Gov. Bill Richardson withdrew his nomination as commerce secretary earlier this week, NBC’s Andrea Mitchell declared it “the Obama team’s first misstep.”

But Mitchell had been scooped.

On Nov. 7 — just three days after the election — Los Angeles’ KNBC said Obama’s flubbed joke about Nancy Reagan and séances was his “first misstep.”

On Nov. 14, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban wrote a Huffington Post piece on Obama’s economic advisory team titled “President-Elect Obama’s First Big Mistake.”

And on Nov. 19, Michael Goodwin of the New York Daily News said Obama’s secretary of state dealings with Hillary Clinton might just have been “his first big mistake.”

Politico has the full story.

[end]




Click here to read rest of entry >>

Know Your Obama Underlings, Part 9

Editor's Note: This is another installment in the Rapier's daily profiles of one of Barack Obama's nominees to a cabinet or high-level administration post.
Today's Profile
Secretary of LaborHilda L. Solis
Born October 20, 1957. Solis has been a Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives since 2001, representing the 31st and 32nd congressional districts of California that include East Los Angeles and the San Gabriel Valley. Solis was raised in La Puente, California by immigrant parents from Nicaragua and Mexico. Her father was a Teamsters shop steward in Mexico and after coming to the U.S. worked at a battery recycling plant in the San Gabriel Valley, where he again organized for the Teamsters. Her mother worked for 22 years on the assembly line of Mattel Inc. and belonged to the United Rubber Workers.

Solis graduated from California State Polytechnic University, Pomona in 1979 with a Bachelor of Arts in political science. She then earned a Master of Public Administration degree at the University of Southern California in 1981. She was elected to the California State Assembly in 1992 and to the California State Senate in 1994. She is married to Sam H. Sayyad, who owns an automobile repair center in Irwindale, California.

She was the first Hispanic woman to serve in the State Senate, and was re-elected there in 1998. She became known for her work toward "environmental justice." Solis defeated a long-time Democratic incumbent on the way to gaining election to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2000. There she was known for her commitment to labor causes and continuing environmental work. She was re-elected easily to four additional terms in 2002 through 2008.

Solis also served near the end of the Carter administration in the Office of Hispanic Affairs, where she was editor-in-chief of a newsletter during a 1980–1981 internship, At the start of the Reagan administration in 1981, she became a management analyst with the Office of Management and Budget's civil rights division, but her dislike for Reagan's undoing of Carter's policies caused her to leave during that year.

In the California legislature, Solis became well known for authoring bills to prevent domestic violence, and champion labor, education, and health care issues. She described herself as “a big believer that government, if done right, can do a lot to improve the quality of people’s lives.” In 1995, she sponsored a bill to raise the minimum wage; when Governor Pete Wilson vetoed it, she organized a successful drive to force the issue to ballot initiative the next year, using some of her own campaign funds to gain victory for that initiative.

In her runs for Congress, Solis was able to obtain the support of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, Emily's List, Handgun Control Inc., the Sierra Club and the California League of Conservation Voters.,

Solis was also a champion of the Employee Free Choice Act -- the "card check" law that would permit unionizing without secret ballot.

Solis was a strong supporter of Hillary Rodham Clinton's 2008 presidential bid; when that fell short, Barack Obama aggressively sought her support, as part of strengthening to his appeal to Hispanic voters.




Click here to read rest of entry >>

And you think you want Government to manage HEALTH CARE?...

Army Addresses Letters to Dead Soldiers' Survivors "Dear John Doe"

The U.S. Army said Wednesday that it had mistakenly sent 7,000 letters with the salutation “Dear John Doe” to family members of soldiers who have died in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The letters, which were sent to provide information about private groups that offer assistance to families of soldiers killed in the wars, were supposed to have carried personal greetings. The Army said that the mistake was the fault of a subcontractor that printed the letters, but that the service bore ultimate responsibility because it did not check the letters before they were mailed.

“There are no words to adequately apologize for this mistake or for the hurt it may have caused,” Brig. Gen. Reuben D. Jones, the Army adjutant general, said in a statement.

The New York Times has the full story here.




Click here to read rest of entry >>

Know Your Obama Underlings, Part 8

Editor's Note: This is another installment in the Rapier's daily profiles of one of Barack Obama's nominees to a cabinet or high-level administration post.
Today's Profile
Environmental Protection Agency AdministratorLisa P. Jackson

Born February 8, 1962. Ms. Jackson is a member of Governor of New Jersey Jon S. Corzine's cabinet. She currently serves as his Chief of Staff. A native of New Orleans, Jackson earned a master's degree in chemical engineering from Princeton University. She is a also summa cum laude graduate of Tulane University's School of Chemical Engineering. Jackson resides in East Windsor, N.J. with her husband Kenny and their two sons.

Before her nomination by Governor Corzine, Jackson served as the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection's (NJDEP's) Assistant Commissioner for Land Use Management during 2005. Jackson headed numerous programs including Land Use Regulation, Water Supply, Geological Survey, Water Monitoring and Standards, and Watershed Management. Jackson joined the DEP in March 2002 after 16 years with the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), initially at its headquarters in Washington, D.C., and more recently at its regional office in New York City. During her tenure at the EPA, Jackson worked in the federal Superfund site remediation program, developing key hazardous waste cleanup regulations, overseeing hazardous waste cleanup projects throughout central New Jersey and directing multimillion-dollar cleanup operations. She later served as deputy director and acting director of the region’s enforcement division.

While DEP Commissioner, in July 2006, she had to shut down all state parks and beaches due to the state governmental shutdown in relation to the state budget delay. As the state's chief environmental enforcer, Jackson led compliance sweeps in Camden and Paterson, communities in which the effects of pollution on public health had long been neglected. She launched the environmental initiative following "multicultural outreach efforts" to inform and involve community residents and businesses.

Jackson's performance at DEP was criticized by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. DEP employees describe Ms. Jackson as employing an allegedly "highly politicized approach to decision-making that resulted in suppression of scientific information, issuance of gag orders and threats against professional staff members who dared to voice concerns."

On October 24, 2008, Governor Corzine announced that Jackson would take over as his Chief of Staff, effective December 1, 2008. That tenure will likely be short-lived, given that President-Elect Obama has named her to head the EPA under his administration. If confirmed she'll be the first African American to serve as EPA Administrator.


Click here to read rest of entry >>

Whitman for Governor?

Here's how Huffington Post's Chris Kelly greets the news that Meg Whitman is angling to run for governor of California:

"A couple of years ago, someone was trying to sell Vietnamese women on eBay. The auction went on for three days before eBay closed it down. EBay policy strictly forbids the sale or purchase of humans, living or dead. (Sorry, Owners of Ted William's head.) But you can see where the slave trader had gotten the wrong impression. The CEO of eBay, Meg Whitman, had built a career on one job after another exploiting Asian women, the younger and more vulnerable the better."

So he's not a Meg fan, eh?

Kelly points to Whitman's record as an exec at Hasbro, Stride Rite, Disney and eBay, asserting success at each stop hinged on abuse of child labor in Asia to crank out products -- toys, sneakers, books and so on.
Click here to read rest of entry >>

To The Victor Go The Spoils

Al Qaeda No. 2 Blames Obama, Egypt's President for Gaza


CAIRO, Egypt — An intelligence monitoring center reports that Al Qaeda's No. 2 leader is blaming Barack Obama and Egypt's president for the Israeli offensive in Gaza.

The SITE Monitoring Service says the audio statement by Ayman al-Zawahiri was posted on militant Web sites Tuesday.

This is al-Zawahiri's first comment on the crisis since the war began eleven days ago.

In a transcript of the statement released by SITE, he calls the Israeli offensive a "Crusade against Islam and Muslims" and "Obama's gift to Israel" before he takes office.

Al-Zawahiri also calls Egypt's president, Hosni Mubarak, a "traitor" for keeping his borders closed to Palestinians.
Click here to read rest of entry >>

Dr. Oz is reportedly demanding a recount...

Obama Offers Surgeon General Job to People Magazine's 2003 "Sexiest Man"

America's most famous television surgeon, Sanjay Gupta, is poised to take his black bag and microphone to the White House as President-elect Barack Obama's choice for U.S. surgeon general.

A neurosurgeon who is also a correspondent for CNN and CBS, Gupta was chosen as much for his broadcasting skills as for his medical résumé, suggesting that the incoming administration values visible advisers who can drive a public message. He has also been offered a top post in the new White House Office of Health Reform, twin duties that could make him the most influential surgeon general in history.

The Washington Post has the full story here.

[end]

Click here to read rest of entry >>

Hill Dems Give Panetta Prickly Reception

Bloomberg reports that the current (Rockefeller) and future (Feinstein) chairs of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence were blindsided by Obama's choice for CIA chief, Leon Panetta.

Aside from the slight, both wanted someone with more experience in intelligence -- if not more intelligence, per se.

Panetta's appointment comes after John Brennan took himself out of the running. Brennan had run CIA counterterrorism and advised the Obama campaign. Dems objected to his ties to Bush CIA.
Click here to read rest of entry >>

Know Your Obama Underlings, Part 9

Editor's Note: This is another installment in the Rapier's daily profiles of one of Barack Obama's nominees to a cabinet or high-level administration post.

Today's Profile
Secretary of Agriculture:Tom Vilsack
Born December 12, 1950. Vilsack served as Governor of Iowa for two terms, through 2006. From 2006 to February 2007, he was an announced candidate for the Democratic Party's nomination for President. He then became national co-chair for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign.

Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Tom Vilsack was abandoned at birth and raised by adoptive parents as a Roman Catholic. He received a Bachelor's degree in 1972 from Hamilton College in New York and a law degree in 1975 from Albany Law School. He and his wife, Ann Christine "Christie" Bell then moved to rural Mount Pleasant, Iowa, her hometown, where he joined his father-in-law in law practice. They have two sons.

Tom Vilsack was elected mayor of Mount Pleasant, Iowa in 1987, following the murder of mayor Ed King by a disgruntled citizen. He was elected to the Iowa State Senate in 1992 by a relatively slim margin. He helped pass a law for workers to receive health coverage when changing jobs.

In 1998, Vilsack narrowly won the general election for Governor against a popular GOP congressman – making it the first time in 30 years that a Democrat was elected Governor of Iowa. His second term was noteworthy for his push for a controversal business-incentives fund for the state. Also, in July 2005, Vilsack signed an executive order allowing all felons who had served their sentences to vote again.

Following the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Kelo v. City of New London, Vilsack vetoed but was overridden on Iowa House file 2351, a bill to restrict Iowa's use of eminent domain.

Vilsack was also chair of the Governors Biotechnology Partnership, the Governors Ethanol Coalition, and the Midwest Governors Conference, and has also been chair and vice chair of the National Governors Association's committee on Natural Resources, where he worked to develop the NGA's farm and energy policies. Vilsack has called for replacing the Department of Energy with a new Department of Energy "Security," to oversee and redefine the federal government’s role in energy policy.

On December 17, 2008, President-elect Barack Obama announced his choice of Vilsack as the nominee to be the next U.S. Secretary of Agriculture. Opposition to a Vilsack appointment has come from the Organic Consumers Association, because, among other things, they contend that Vilsack has repeatedly demonstrated a preference for large industrial farms and genetically modified crops. The Washington Post calls Vilsack a "shoo-in" for the job.



Click here to read rest of entry >>

With Malice Toward None: You Can Help Write Obama's Inaguration Speech

Check out the gimmick here at Slate.

Actually, what you're writing is what Slate is calling, for now, "The People's Inagural Address."

When you click and register, you can craft your own speech. Software will guess at what you're trying to say and suggest phrases from some of the previous 55 presidential inagural addresses -- as well as phrases from other participants in the competition. Participants can rate all the speeches submitted.

Before Jan. 20, Slate will publish the speech with the highest rating.
Click here to read rest of entry >>

Talk about 'milking' the taxpayer...

EPA proposes tax of $175 per cow to combat greenhouse gasses...

One of the suggestions offered by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in its "Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR)" for regulating greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act is to levy a tax on livestock.

Read more here.





Click here to read rest of entry >>

I guess they ran out of rocket-propelled grenades...

Hamas votes to bring back cruxifiction in its Palestinian-controlled territories...

National Review has the full story here.




Click here to read rest of entry >>

Know Your Obama Underlings, Part 8

Editor's Note: This is another installment in the Rapier's daily profiles of one of Barack Obama's nominees to a cabinet or high-level administration post.
Today's Profile
Secretary of Energy:Steven Chu
Born February 28, 1948. Chu is an American experimental physicist. He is known for his research in laser cooling and trapping of atoms, which won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1997.

Chu, a Chinese American, was born in St. Louis, Missouri. He received his bachelor’s degree in 1970 from the University of Rochester, and his doctorate degree from University of California, Berkeley in 1976. He then joined Bell Labs where he and his several co-workers carried out his Nobel Prize-winning laser cooling work. He then left Bell Labs and became a professor of physics at Stanford University in 1987. He was appointed as the director of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in 2004, during which time he also accepted a position as a Professor of Physics at the University of California, Berkeley.

Chu has been a vocal advocate for more research into alternative energy and nuclear power, arguing that a shift away from fossil fuels is essential to combat global warming. He has pushed scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and in industry to develop technologies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. He has joined the Copenhagen Climate Council, an international collaboration between business and science, established to create momentum for the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference.

Chu was instrumental in founding the Energy Biosciences Institute, which brings together biologists, chemists, physicists, and engineers to work together on energy-related molecular research in a rare collaboration between UC Berkeley, the oil major BP, the Lawrence Berkeley Lab and the University of Illinois. This has drawn controversy with some of Berkeley's faculty voicing their concerns that the university was selling out to the industry giant.
He is an early signatory to "Project Steve," an educational campaign supporting the conventional scientific understanding of evolution.

Chu comes from a family of scholars. His father earned an advanced chemical engineering degree at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and taught at Washington University in St. Louis and Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute, while his mother studied economics. His mother's grandfather earned advanced civil engineering degrees at Cornell University and his mother's granduncle studied physics at the Sorbonne before they returned to China. His older brother Gilbert Chu is a professor and researcher of biochemistry and medicine at Stanford University.

Chu married Jean Fetter, a British American and an Oxford-trained physicist, in 1997. He has two sons from a previous marriage.

If confirmed by the U.S. Senate, Chu will be the first Chinese American to hold the office of Energy Secretary and the first person appointed to the Cabinet after having won a Nobel Prize.




Click here to read rest of entry >>

Ebisu-Sama: Sushi order or Japanese financial god?

As Reuters reports, thousands of Japanese business executives visited "a shrine dedicated to commerce" to kick off 2009, praying to the god Ebisu-Sama for financial prosperity.

At the alter of the 1,300-year-old Kanda Myojin shrine, the pilgrims prayed and paid as if Jim and Tammy Bakker were passing the plate.

From Reuters (not Ebisu-Sama): "The economic outlook in export-reliant Japan is gloomy, where industrial output fell at a record pace in November and the job market is shrinking, threatening to crush consumption and depress prices."
Click here to read rest of entry >>

More Change We Can Believe In!

Obama Economic Plan to add 600,000 new government jobs!

Do the math: "The No. 1 goal of my plan ... is to create three million new jobs, more than 80 percent of them in the private sector.”

Read the full report from ABC News here.

[end]




Click here to read rest of entry >>

Another One Bites the Dust (an update to the Obama underling list will be forthcoming)

Bill Richardson Withdraws Nomination as Commerce Secretary


Bill Richardson has withdrawn his nomination to be commerce secretary.

Richardson, who will remain governor of New Mexico, is facing a federal grand jury investigation into whether he exchanged government contracts for contributions to three Richardson political committees.

Richardson denies any wrongdoing but the investigation won't be finished before he has to go to a Senate confirmation hearing.

"Let me say unequivocally that I and my administration have acted properly in all matters and that this investigation will bear out that fact," Richardson said in a statement. "But I have concluded that the ongoing investigation also would have forced an untenable delay in the confirmation process."

Obama said he was accepting Richardson's request to withdraw with "deep regret."

It is a measure of his willingness to put the nation first that he has removed himself as a candidate for the Cabinet in order to avoid any delay in filling this important economic post at this critical time," the president-elect said in a statement. "I look forward to his future service to our country and in my administration."

The Associated Press reported last month that a grand jury is investigating whether the California firm CDR Financial Products paid to push through a contract with the state of New Mexico.

State documents show CDR was paid a total of $1.48 million in 2004 and 2005 for its work on a transportation program.

CDR and its CEO, David Rubin, have contributed at least $110,000 to three political committees formed by Richardson, according to an AP review of campaign finance records.

The largest donation, $75,000, was made by CDR in June 2004 -- a couple of months after the transportation financing arrangement won state approval -- to a political committee that Richardson established before the Democratic National Convention that year.

Democratic strategist Mary Anne Marsh told FOX News that with the cloud lingering over the Obama transition because of Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich's alleged attempts to sell Obama's vacated Senate seat, the Richardson nomination would have been another unwanted distraction.

Richardson "was going to have a very difficult time getting through this nomination," Marsh said. "People really haven't looked at the Richardson situation and the more they looked at it, the more they realized" confirmation was going to be a problem.

Richardson, who ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic presidential nomination last year and later endorsed Obama, is currently in his second term as governor of New Mexico. He served seven terms as a U.S. representative and was energy secretary and U.S. ambassador to the U.N. during the Clinton administration.



Click here to read rest of entry >>

Know Your Obama Underlings, Part 7

Editor's Note: This is another installment in the Rapier's daily profiles of one of Barack Obama's nominees to a cabinet or high-level administration post.
Today's Profile
Interior Secretary:Ken Salazar
Born March 2, 1955. Salazar has been the junior Senator from Colorado since January 2005. A Democrat of Mexican descent, Salazar was born in the town of Alamosa, Colorado. He attended St. Francis Seminary and Centauri High School in La Jara, graduating in 1973. He later attended Colorado College, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science in 1977, and received his Juris Doctor degree from the University of Michigan Law School in 1981. After graduating, Salazar started private law practice, and in 1986, Salazar became chief legal counsel to then Governor Roy Romer.

In 1990, Romer appointed him Director of the Colorado Department of Natural Resources. In this position, he authored the Great Outdoors Colorado Amendment, which created a massive land conservation program of which he became chairman. In 1994, Salazar returned to private practice. In 1998, he was elected state attorney general; he was reelected in 2002. Police operations were streamlined under Salazar, and serveral new branches of law enforcement were created: the Gang Prosecution Unit, the Environmental Crimes Unit, and the General Fugitive Prosecutive Unit, which targeted murderers.

As Colorado's Attorney General, Salazar actively opposed endangered species listing of the black-tailed prairie dog, which, despite its population declines, is still listed as a "pest" by Colorado. In 2004, Salazar declared his candidacy for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by retiring Republican Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell. Salazar considers himself a moderate and has at times taken positions that are in disagreement with the base of his party — for a number of years he opposed gay adoption, for example. Salazar lost to Mike Miles at the State nominating convention. In spite of this loss, the national Democratic Party backed Salazar with contributions from the DSCC and promotion of Salazar as the only primary candidate. Salazar came back to defeat Miles in the Democratic primary,and he narrowly defeated beer executive Pete Coors to win the general election. Salazar and his wife Esperanza "Hope" Salazar have two daughters.

Soon after arriving in the Senate, Salazar generated controversy within his party by introducing Attorney General nominee Alberto Gonzales and sitting by his side during Gonzales' confirmation hearings. On May 23, 2005, Salazar was among the Gang of 14 moderate senators to forge a compromise on the Democrats' use of the filibuster against judicial appointments, thus blocking the Republican leadership's attempt to implement the so-called "nuclear option". In 2005, Salazar voted against increasing fuel-efficiency standards (CAFE) for cars and trucks. In the same year, Salazar voted against an amendment to repeal tax breaks for ExxonMobil and other major oil companies.

In August 2006, Ken Salazar supported fellow Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman in his primary race against Ned Lamont in Connecticut. In 2006, Salazar voted to end protections that limit off-shore drilling in Florida's Gulf Coast. In 2007, Salazar was one of only a handful of Democrats to vote against a bill that would require the US Army Corps of Engineers to consider global warming when planning water projects.



Click here to read rest of entry >>

So he huffed...and he puffed...and he huffed...

Jimmy Carter & Habitat for Humanity: Celebrity slum lords?
By Michelle Malkin

The road to hell is paved with good intentions — and, apparently, the homes in the neighborhoods along that hellish path are built by Jimmy Carter and Habitat for Humanity. The Times of London reports on one of the celebrity charity’s biggest showcase projects in Jacksonville, Florida, Fairway Oaks, where residents claim their houses are crumbling due to shoddy construction.

Read the rest of Michelle's diatribe here.

[end]




Click here to read rest of entry >>