Source: NOLA.com Hearings: Transocean official denies BP pressured them to complete work quickly By David Hammer, The Times-Picayune May 27, 2010, 9:34AM Transocean's top drilling official on the Deepwater Horizon said he was wrapped up with hosting top BP officials in the hours before his rig blew up April 20, but he denied Thursday that his crew was under any pressure from BP to complete its work more quickly. Under tough questioning by Jason Mathews of the federal Minerals Management Serv...

¬snip¬ Methane hydrates are volatile compounds — natural gas compressed into molecular cages of ice. They are stable in the extreme cold and crushing weight of deepwater, but are extremely dangerous when they build up inside the drill column of a well. If destabilized by heat or a decrease in pressure, methane hydrates can quickly expand to 164 times their volume. Survivors of the BP rig explosion told interviewers that right before the April 20 blast, workers had decreased the pressure in the...

Pale Horse Sickles Built Christian Fantasy of Serial Killing posted 29th March 2010 in Media, Religion, Video by jclifford For Khristopher Sickles, who used the Hutaree pseudonym “Pale Horse”, Christianity served as a perfect combination of righteous indignation and an excuse to behave in inexcusable ways. In particular, Sickles found in Christianity an excuse to kill people. The key was the Hutaree (“Christian warrior”) belief that the Hutaree group was receiving direct inspiration from God, ...

¬snip¬ "I'm not that guy," he said to a judge during a pretrial hearing in Hammond, Indiana. "What they're alleging and what I've done are two different things," Piatek said in Hammond federal court according to the Northwest Indiana Times. U.S. Magistrate Judge Paul Cherry ordered a special hearing to figure it out. Piatek did tell the court that he had been “raped” by property taxes so he couldn't afford an attorney, according to the Chicago Tribune, but he had no plans to participate in an...

Last May, about 30 people gathered at a resort in Jekyll Island, Ga., for a series of discussions about "increasing national instability" and President Obama's "socialized" policies. The island was chosen for symbolic reasons — the initial discussions about creating a Federal Reserve were held there in 1910 — and the attendees met to formulate a plan for bringing their own radical organizations together. "One of the interesting things about the meeting is how nondenominational it was," says M...

Judge: School officials must clear ‘webcamgate’ comments with lawyers By Joseph Tanfani and Larry King INQUIRER STAFF WRITERS The unusual order, signed by a federal judge today, means people running the elite Lower Merion School District can't say a word about the laptop cameras or any other issues in the suit without giving the other side a copy of what they want to say - plus six hours' notice. ¬snip¬ The court order also says the district must preserve all computer files - particularly c...

Laptop camera snapped away in one classroom By Dan Hardy, Derrick Nunnally, and John Shiffman Inquirer Staff Writers A laptop security program at Lower Merion schools was, when triggered, set up to snap multiple photos of whoever was using the computer, a district computer employee said in a 2008 webcast. As an example, network technician Mike Perbix said, the system snapped as many as 20 photos of a teacher and some students without their knowledge while they were in a high school classroom...

Source: AFP BAGHDAD — Iraq's pro-Western former prime minister Iyad Allawi has denounced a commission that barred candidates allegedly linked to Saddam Hussein from elections before their disputed reinstatement on appeal. "The integrity and justice committee is actually a secret police," Iyad Allawi, who last month unveiled a broad secular alliance of candidates to contest the war-torn country's March 7 election, told AFP in an interview. "We don't know who these members are and how they have...

Source: Pak Tribune PESHAWAR: The Afghan Taliban on Thursday demanded the release of Dr Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani scientist who has been convicted by the US court on charges of her alleged attempt to murder US soldiers in Afghanistan, and threatened to execute an American soldier they were holding currently. They claimed Aafia Siddiqui’s family had approached the Taliban network through a Jirga of notables, seeking their assistance to put pressure on the US to provide her justice. “Being Mu...

Source: AFP WASHINGTON — Radical Yemeni cleric Anwar Al-Awlaqi has praised a Christmas Day attempt to blow up a US airliner and said the man accused in the attack was his "student," according to an interview published by Al-Jazeera. The militant religious leader, accused of links to Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, said he supported the attack. He described alleged bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who reportedly received training in Yemen, as his "student," but said that he did not direct ...

Source: AP WASHINGTON (AP) — al-Qaeda can be expected to attempt an attack on the United States in the next three to six months, senior U.S. intelligence officials told Congress. The terrorist organization is deploying operatives to the United States to carry out new attacks from inside the country, including "clean" recruits with a negligible trail of terrorist contacts, CIA Director Leon Panetta said. The chilling warning comes as Christmas airline attack suspect, Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulm...

this is news to me, but probably already has been posted. ~snip~ In fall 2006, when she was a UCLA freshman, she and fellow conservative activist James O'Keefe came up with the idea to infiltrate clinics. Rose, by e-mail, and O'Keefe, in a phone interview, said they were inspired by the work of Mark Crutcher, a Texas antiabortion activist who in 2002 taped fake calls to hundreds of Planned Parenthood clinics around the country featuring women posing as pregnant minors. They also found an unl...

22 million missing Bush White House e-mails found By PETE YOST (AP) – 17 minutes ago WASHINGTON — Two nonprofit groups say that computer technicians have found 22 million White House e-mails from the administration of President George W. Bush. The two groups say the electronic messages were previously mislabeled and effectively lost. An announcement Monday by the two groups is the latest development in a controversy that surrounded the failure by the Bush White House to install an electronic ...

Right-Bloggers React to Fort Hood Exactly as Expected Posted by Roy Edroso, Alicublog at 10:26 AM on November 6, 2009. Muuuuuuuuslim! FIGHTIN' KEYBOARDERS CALLED BACK INTO ACTION. We'll probably be reading a lot of idiotic stuff about Fort Hood, but it'll be hard to top this from Robert Stacy McCain: The people who want to kill you are not Tea Party protesters or accountants from Saranac Lake, N.Y. They're not Kentucky populists or Belgian radicals. Anyone who wants to distract yo...

Allen's alleged sex crimes still in limbo By Corey Allen-Young, CBS 11 News Reporter Created: 10/28/2009 04:48:50 PM AKDT ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTVA-CBS 11 News) Now that Bill Allen knows his sentence for corruption where does that leave the Anchorage police investigation into the alleged sex crimes Allen committed against minors? According to police, that's the tricky part because they are waiting to see whether or not these allegations were included as part of his federal sentence. The initi...

Source: AP WASHINGTON — Federal investigators are searching for suspicious transactions in the personal bank records of a retired Army colonel who ran the contracting office in Baghdad during the early stages of Iraq's $125 billion reconstruction. The focus on Anthony B. Bell opens a window into the scope of a long-running inquiry of fraud and corruption that's gathering steam even as U.S. forces are beginning to leave the country. While contracting procedures and oversight in Iraq have impro...

Blagojevich Confidant Turned Informant How a Top Advisor Turned on Blagojevich By RUSSELL GOLDMAN and EMMA SCHWARTZ December 12, 2008 For years, John Wyma has been one of Gov. Rod Blagojevich's closest allies. He served as Blagojevich's chief of staff in Congress and was a key advisor in his 2002 campaign for governor. When his former boss took over the statehouse, Wyma remained a central fundraiser and counselor, but also had Blagojevich's ear as a lobbyist. But now this longtime advisor ...

Blagojevich's Fundraising Shakedowns Detailed POSTED: 01:34 PM ET, 12/10/2008 by Derek Kravitz TAGS: Congress, FBI, Rod Blagojevich, federal courts Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, center, leaves his home through a back alley Wednesday, Dec. 10, 2008, a day after being arrested on federal corruption charges. (By Mark Carlson / AP) What ultimately led to federal conspiracy and bribery charges against Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich (aside from well-placed wiretaps)? Federal agents say it wasn't t...

Lies, Half Truths and Contradictions: Chronicle ''Hidden'' Audio on Obama It's not true. But the Drudge Report, the Republican National Committee and apparently even GOP VP candidate Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin fell for completely fabricated news from a shady website called Newsbusters today suggesting the San Francisco Chronicle has ''hidden'' audio with Sen. Barack Obama regarding his statements on coal. ''Barack Obama explained his plan to the San Francisco Chronicle this year,'' she told a ra...

Source: AP WATERLOO, Iowa -- Republican presidential nominee John McCain is dismissing the sour poll numbers that show him trailing in his race for the White House against Democrat Barack Obama and says his campaign is "doing fine." McCain, interviewed Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press, said his campaign has pulled closer to Obama's in the last week. And McCain says he'll continue to be "very competitive" in many of the states the two senators are focusing on. Recent polls have shown McCain t...

In his efforts to attack Barack Obama, John McCain appears to have turned to the same political consulting firm that was responsible for spreading vicious smears about the Senator during the 2000 South Carolina GOP primary. ~snip~ On Friday, a recipient of one of those calls, Chris Schoff of Minnesota, said that he had tied the origins of the campaign to the St. Paul-based firm FLS-Connect, run by prominent GOP figure Jeff Larson. This past week, Schoff, a Freeborn, Minnesota Democratic Count...

Palin Makes Troopergate Assertions that Are Flatly False October 12, 2008 6:56 PM On Saturday, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin twice spoke to reporters about the so-called "Troopergate" scandal and the investigative report on whether she had abused her power in trying to get her sister's ex-husband Mike Wooten fired as a state trooper, and for firing Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan one year after she, her staffers, and her husband Todd began unsuccessfully pressuring Monegan to let Wooten go. ...

By Michael D. Shear and Perry Bacon Jr. Washington Post Staff Writers Friday, October 10, 2008; Page A04 WAUKESHA, Wis., Oct. 9 -- There were shouts of "Nobama" and "Socialist" at the mention of the Democratic presidential nominee. There were boos, middle fingers turned up and thumbs turned down as a media caravan moved through the crowd Thursday for a midday town hall gathering featuring John McCain and Sarah Palin. "It is absolutely vital that you take it to Obama, that you hit him where ...

Sarah Palin was on the verge of inciting a race riot in northern Florida yesterday. At her rallies, the Republican faithful hurled a racial epitaph at a black sound man, and screamed "kill him" and "treason!" at Barack Obama. "Boy, you guys just get it!" Palin responded. This reaction, presumably, was what Palin had in mind when she urged John McCain to "take the gloves off." The McCain campaign initially took her advice, sending out three emails about Obama and Bill Ayers yesterday and push...

The Town Hall Debate: What Was McCain Up To? Did McCain have a strategy? John McCain’s approach to Tuesday night’s town hall debate seemed at odds with the direction his campaign has taken over the last several days, a point I discuss in my column this morning. I’ve been pondering what McCain might have been up to in focusing more on economics and issue attacks than personal assaults on Barack Obama. Of course, personal attacks would seem out of place at a town hall meeting. But it occurred to...

Palin dishonesty on her Obama queries Posted October 8, 2008 10:30 AM by Frank James When you're questioning someone's honesty you might want to be truthful about what you're doing when you're called on it. It would just seem to be the less hypocritical path. But that's evidently not what happened when Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin came back in her campaign plane last night to take questions from reporters, the first time she's done so in a month. ABC News' "Political Radar" blog reports that ...

Published: October 7, 2008 It is a sorry fact of American political life that campaigns get ugly, often in their final weeks. But Senator John McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin have been running one of the most appalling campaigns we can remember. They have gone far beyond the usual fare of quotes taken out of context and distortions of an opponent’s record — into the dark territory of race-baiting and xenophobia. Senator Barack Obama has taken some cheap shots at Mr. McCain, but there is no compar...

Editorial: Inciting fear, hate disqualifies Palin October 8, 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin introduced a truly ugly tone into the election campaign during the past week, the kind of speech that has no place in the political rhetoric of this nation. Palin's stump speech has used smear and scare in place of any substance on issues that confront this nation, starting with the dismal state of the economy and financial markets that threaten to upend so many lives. Palin'...

American business, typically a reliable Republican cheerleader, is decidedly lukewarm about Senator John McCain’s proposal to overhaul the health care system by revamping the tax treatment of health benefits, officials with leading trade groups say. The officials, with organizations like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable and the National Federation of Independent Business, predicted in recent interviews that the McCain plan, which eliminates the exclusion of health benefits ...

Source: AP Palin criticizes Obama's ties to Wright, Ayers By BETH FOUHY – 1 hour ago CLEARWATER, Fla. (AP) — Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin is criticizing Barack Obama's ties to his incendiary former pastor and a 1960s-era radical. In an interview in The New York Times published Monday, Palin spoke about Obama's relationship with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who made anti-American comments even though John McCain had said talk of Wright was off limits. Palin said, "I don't ...