A soccer mom who gained national attention when she openly carried a loaded gun to her 5-year-old daughter's game was shot dead Wednesday along with her husband in what appeared to be a murder-suicide, police said.Read More......
Meleanie Hain and Scott Hain were pronounced dead Wednesday night at their home in Lebanon, a small city about 80 miles west of Philadelphia.
As president, Obama hasn't taken any concrete steps urging Congress to rescind the Clinton-era "don't ask, don't tell" policy that allows gays and lesbians to serve in the military as long as they don't disclose their sexual orientation or act on it. Some former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff have acknowledged the policy is flawed....Read More......
Obama also pledged during the campaign to work for repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act, which limits how state, local and federal bodies can recognize partnerships and determine benefits. But lawyers in his administration defended the law in a court brief. White House aides said they were only doing their jobs to back a law that was already on the books....
Obama has expanded some federal benefits to same-sex partners, but not health benefits or pension guarantees. He has allowed State Department employees to include their same-sex partners in certain embassy programs available to opposite-sex spouses.
On Wednesday, Gibbs said the administration was working with the Office of Personnel Management to expand those benefits.
But that remains far short of his campaign rhetoric.
Asked who they trusted to do a better job on the health- care issue, 47 percent said Obama, 31 percent said the Republicans. The president’s overall approval rating was 50 percent, unchanged from a similar survey in late July and early August.Reminds me of a line from the Yeats poem, Leda and the Swan (one of my all-time favs):
"Did she put on his knowledge with his power"Obama has the ability to do great things. The power to truly make a difference. Does he know it? Does he know how? And is he willing? Read More......
"It's really sad they don't understand how inappropriate that is," Pelosi told reporters at her weekly press conference. "I'm in my place: as the first woman Speaker of the House of Representatives. That language is something I hadn't heard in decades."
Dried apples preserved with a cancer-causing chemical.We shouldn't let a drop of food enter this country that's come from China. It's one thing to hope that my tshirt doesn't contain some poison, but food? Read More......
Frozen catfish laden with banned antibiotics.
Scallops and sardines coated with putrefying bacteria.
Mushrooms laced with illegal pesticides.
These were among the 107 food imports from China that the Food and Drug Administration detained at U.S. ports just last month, agency documents reveal, along with more than 1,000 shipments of tainted Chinese dietary supplements, toxic Chinese cosmetics and counterfeit Chinese medicines.
For years, U.S. inspection records show, China has flooded the United States with foods unfit for human consumption. And for years, FDA inspectors have simply returned to Chinese importers the small portion of those products they caught -- many of which turned up at U.S. borders again, making a second or third attempt at entry.
Mary Cheney, the daughter of former vice president Dick Cheney and the sister of go-to Obama critic Liz Cheney, is leaving the political consulting firm Navigators Global to start her own consulting company, and multiple sources familiar with her plans say she will not be going it alone.Read More......
"She told me she is going to be starting a firm with her dad and sister," said one friend of Mary's, with whom she has shared her plans.
For now, the only official word is that Cheney, who is expecting her second child with her partner, Heather Poe, in November, will leave Navigators Global at the end of the month.
President Mohamed Nasheed and his cabinet will sign a document during the 17 October dive, calling for global cuts in carbon emissions.Read More......
An adviser to the president told the BBC the dive was "a bit of fun" but the cabinet intended to send a serious message about rising sea levels.
The low-lying island nation says it faces being wiped out if oceans rise.
A controversial law granting Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi legal immunity has been dramatically thrown out by the country's top court, raising the likelihood that the media mogul will again face prosecution on corruption charges.Read More......
As the political pressure mounted last night, the 73-year-old premier lambasted the Constitutional Court judges as "red toga-wearing tools of the left" and vowed not to quit, despite predictions by opponents that the ruling could force him to resign and hold a snap election. "We must govern for five years, with or without the law," Mr Berlusconi told reporters outside his residence in Rome.
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