Source: Advocate Dan Choi Back on Active Duty By Michelle Garcia DAN CHOI X390 (BILERICO) | ADVOCATE.COM (Image) Gay military rights advocate Lt. Dan Choi has been reportedly called back into active duty. Photographer Jeff Sheng, who recently turned his lens on active gay and lesbian service members, confirmed the news in a blog posting on Bilerico.com. (Link) Choi was to appear at the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force's Creating Change conference but could not attend due to his being cal...

Source: ABC News Nurse Whistle-Blower Charged for Reporting Doctor Texas Nurse Fired After Sheriff Seizes Computer and Finds Letter of Complaint By SUSAN DONALDSON JAMES Feb. 9, 2010 When veteran nurse Anne Mitchell wrote a confidential letter last year to the Texas Medical Board, complaining about a doctor she thought practiced shoddy medicine, she assumed it would be anonymous. Instead, Dr. Rolando Arafiles Jr. fired her after reporting her to the local sheriff -- a former patient and admi...

Source: Reuters KABUL (Reuters) - Afghan villagers should stay inside and "keep their heads down" when thousands of U.S. Marines launch a massive assault on a densely-populated district in coming days, NATO's civilian representative to Afghanistan said Tuesday. ........... NATO forces have decided to advise civilians in Marjah not to leave their homes, although they say they do not know whether the assault will lead to heavy fighting. HEADS DOWN, STAY INSIDE "The message to the people of th...

Source: Washington Post UK's Iraq inquiry turns focus to Bush officials By DAVID STRINGER The Associated Press Monday, February 8, 2010; 4:18 PM LONDON -- Britain's inquiry into the Iraq war will seek meetings with former members of the Bush administration after taking evidence from Tony Blair and other key British officials, the panel's chairman said Monday. John Chilcot, head of the inquiry, confirmed that he hopes to obtain evidence from officials in the United States, but did not name sp...

Rep. Alan Grayson The story that everyone wants to tell is that the Democratic Party is disheartened and disintegrating. Teabagger Republicans are juiced up and on top. Or so the media says, over and over again. But the House candidate who raised the most money in the entire country during the last FEC reporting period -- $860,000 in three months -- is not a teabagger. He is not boosted relentlessly by Fox News. He's not even a Republican. He doesn't think that the Earth was created 6000 year...

Source: UPI International More Blackwater than cops, Pakistan says Published: Feb. 8, 2010 at 1:10 PM ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Feb. 8 (UPI) -- There are more private security contractors from Xe, formerly Blackwater, operating in Islamabad than capital police, a religious leader said. Maulana Fazal-ur-Rahman, the leader of Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, a Deobandi political party in Pakistan, said there were as many as 9,000 Xe contractors working in Islamabad, compared with just 7,000 capital police, Pak...

Obama, the war president First published: Monday, February 8, 2010 President Barack Obama does have a foreign policy. It's called war. The President has not defined any real difference between his hawkish approach to international issues and that of his predecessor, former President George W. Bush. Where's the change we can believe in? Bush left a legacy of two wars, neither of which was ever fully explained or justified. Obama has merely picked up the sword that Bush left behind in Iraq...

Source: BBC News Page last updated at 01:57 GMT, Monday, 8 February 2010 Obama to hold televised summit on healthcare Obama said healthcare reform was the best way to cut the US deficit - courtesy CBS US President Barack Obama will hold a televised, summit-style meeting to discuss healthcare reform with both Democratic and Republican lawmakers. Speaking on CBS News, he said the discussions would aim to explore the "best ideas", "step-by-step". Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said ...

Backhanded "green" values by: Adam Bink Mon Feb 08, 2010 at 11:19 If you didn't see the "Green Police" Super Bowl ad yesterday, here it is: (Link)

Investigating the roots of the Obama birthplace conspiracy theory, John Avlon—author of Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe Is Hijacking America, available now on Beast Books—uncovers the first Birther and finds she's a Hillary Clinton supporter also implicated in Dan Rather's exit from CBS. "I determined that I was going to start digging up every bit of dirt that I could find on him and…convince the Democratic Party to dump him and make Hillary the nominee." ...................... Wingnuts: H...

Source: New York Times In a Message to Democrats, Wall St. Sends Cash to G.O.P. By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK Published: February 7, 2010 But this year Chase’s political action committee is sending the Democrats a pointed message. While it has contributed to some individual Democrats and state organizations, it has rebuffed solicitations from the national Democratic House and Senate campaign committees. Instead, it gave $30,000 to their Republican counterparts. The shift reflects the hard politica...

Richard Clarke goes there, suggesting GOP national security assaults on Obama are designed to position Republicans for political gain in event of terror attack. GOP terror attack machine: Criticism of Obama is irrational, irresponsible and painfully partisan BY Richard Clarke Read more: (Link) ......... It has been hard to escape the conclusion that the goal of these critics is to discredit the President's handling of terrorism for political advantage, whether or not the administration is...

Source: Talking Points Memo Brennan: GOP-ers Knew Xmas Bomber Was Mirandized, Raised No Objections Rachel Slajda | February 8, 2010, 10:16AM White House counter-terrorism chief John Brennan yesterday struck back at Congressional Republicans who have been attacking the administration for giving the attempted Christmas Day bomber his Miranda rights. Brennan said on Meet the Press that top GOP-ers raised no objections to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab being held in FBI custody. Brennan said he called...

Palin, who slammed Emanuel last week for calling liberal activists "f---ing retards," declined to ask conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh to apologize for using the term "retards" on his nationally syndicated show, saying Limbaugh used the word as satire. "I didn't hear Rush Limbaugh calling a group of people who he did not agree with f---ing retards and we did know that Rahm Emanuel, it's been reported, did say that. There's a big difference there," said Palin, whose youngest son Trig h...

You still have the power by Gov Howard Dean MD Mon Feb 08, 2010 at 07:11:23 AM PST In the face of this frustration, in the face of low Democratic voter turnouts because people are fed up; in the face of friends and allies seemingly giving up; in the face of Democrats losing because they won’t stand up for the values of the Party; I think it's time we took stock of ourselves, our considerable accomplishments, our opportunity to lead, and where we are going with our efforts to change our country...

US citizens are placed on a list to be assassinated. Here’s Hosenball’s fuller explanation. *** …strikes specifically targeting Americans must first be approved by a secret committee made up of senior intel officials and members of the president’s cabinet (it’s not known which ones). The president himself does not have to sign off on kill orders. (Link)/ (Link)

Fox News Military Analyst Endorses DADT Repeal, Criticizes McCain For Flip-Flopping This morning, Fox & Friends Weekend hosted Col. David Hunt, a Fox News military analyst, to discuss whether to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. This morning, however, Hunt sided with progressives who are advocating repeal of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy. Hunt called the discriminatory law “an abject failure” because “we’ve lost somewhere between 11 and 14,000 soldiers.” He continued: Being brave in the battl...

Source: New York Times Testy Conflict With Goldman Helped Push A.I.G. to Edge By GRETCHEN MORGENSON and LOUISE STORY Published: February 6, 2010 Billions of dollars were at stake when 21 executives of Goldman Sachs and the American International Group convened a conference call on Jan. 28, 2008, to try to resolve a rancorous dispute that had been escalating for months. A.I.G. had long insured complex mortgage securities owned by Goldman and other firms against possible defaults. With the hous...

PALIN QUOTE OF THE DAY: ""I think that it would be absurd to not consider what it is that I can potentially do to help our country." (Link) -- Sarah Palin, in an interview on Fox News Sunday, on whether she'll consider running for president in 2012. VIDEO: (Link) (Image) here's the complex information worthy of a hand cheat sheet: Energy Budget Tax cuts Lift American Spirits (Image) (Image) (Image) (Link)

John Yoo Renews Claim That President's Authority to Torture Depends on What Is "Necessary" YOO: OK "If President deems he’s got to torture somebody by crushing the testicles of the person's Friday 05 February 2010 by: Stephen Rohde, t r u t h o u t | Report Challenged for his 2005 statement that whether the president could lawfully torture a person's child depends on "why the President thinks he needs to do that," undaunted, John Yoo repeated his claim that it would depend on whether the pr...

Did Bush Leave Us Bankrupt, Corrupt, Ungovernable? The conservatives destroyed the regulatory structure of the government. They removed the inspectors, administrators, regulators and replaced them with corrupt cronies. The conservatives killed off, contracted out or sold off - "privatized" - so much of our in-common resources and heritage of public structures. Water systems, oil and mineral leases, government functions, elements of the military, etc. The conservatives destroyed the rule of...

The "Camp No" deaths: Defense Department's own statements contradict Guantanamo suicide claims Serious doubts have been raised about the three supposed suicides of prisoners at Guantanamo in June 2006. A report from Seton Law Law School had shown that the official Naval Criminal Investigation Service report supporting the suicide claim was not credible. Harpers writer Scott Horton reported the testimony of four tower guards on duty that night outside the camp that contradicted the official ac...

Kucinich Challenges Potential Extrajudicial Killing of Americans Washington, Feb 5 - Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) yesterday wrote to Attorney General Eric Holder following news reports that Americans have been included on targeted assassination lists maintained by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC). The reports indicate that the President has authorized military operations with the express understanding that Americans might be killed und...

John Cornyn: No thanks to President Obama Q & A Senate Republicans don’t have much of an appetite to give President Barack Obama their version of question-and-answer time — not after seeing how Obama handled House Republicans last week. “We’re always happy to hear from the president, but I don’t really feel any compelling need to do it on camera,” Texas Sen. John Cornyn, the Republicans' chief campaign strategist, told POLITICO. Read more: (Link)

What Bill O'Reilly edited out of his interviews with Jon Stewart: Total evisceration! By David Neiwert Saturday Feb 06, 2010 7:00am If you thought, after watching the two segments of Jon Stewart's interview with Bill O'Reilly this week, that Stewart landed some telling observations, but he seemed to pull his punches a bit -- or at least they seemed to have been pulled for him -- you were right. If you also noticed, as I did while making the clip, that the segments were pretty hamhandedly edite...

Source: MSNBC pdated 11:03 a.m. PT, Fri., Feb. 5, 2010 (Image) WELLINGTON, New Zealand - This Scotch has been on the rocks for a century. Five crates of Scotch whisky and two of brandy have been recovered by a team restoring an Antarctic hut used more than 100 years ago by famed polar explorer Ernest Shackleton. Ice cracked some of the bottles that had been left there in 1909, but the restorers said Friday they are confident the five crates contain intact bottles “given liquid can be heard w...

White House Pushes Back, Says Prez Didn’t Concede Reform Might Die White House spokesman Reid Cherlin emails me this: *****“This is a fundamental misinterpretation of the President’s comments. Last week the he stood before the nation and said he ‘will not walk away’ from health insurance reform. That was his position then, it’s his position now, and he’s said as much in stops across the country nearly every day. He used his remarks last night to motivate Democrats to come together and get ...

Weiner calls Lieberman a d*** on TV February 5, 2010, 10:15 am by Christina Wilkie Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) had some fighting words for Connecticut's Independent senator on Thursday night during an appearance on "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart." Stewart praised Weiner for his passionate defense of a medicare buy-in, saying, "Lieberman said because you're so for the medicare buy-in, and he singled you out, then that's why he would vote against it. "My question for you is this: Is he a ...

Richard Shelby, an extortionate thug Sandy Levinson I apologized to Ben Nelson and even, kind of, to Joe Lieberman, for earlier referring them (in a post that I then deleted) as "thugs." But I do think that the word is appropriate for Richard Shelby, who, as Jack (and the Washington Post) described below, is holding up the Senate in order to gain what Chicago-types call "rents" from the national government, i.e., a presumptively unnecessary venture to provide jobs for his constituents in the n...

I have to amend my description of John Fund. He is not only a liar; he is a congenital and habitual liar. Instead of simply acknowledging publicly that he made up a story about me that has not basis in fact, Fund now says that even if I did not literally co-sponsor the fictitious legislation that I really do support the principles behind such a bill if it were to exist. He makes this statement, like his first one, with no evidence whatsoever. Mr. Fund initially claimed that I support a non-exi...