By Matthew Day in Warsaw, Daily Telegraph via smh.com, Jan. 11, 2012
A Polish military prosecutor who tried to commit suicide during a press conference claimed on Tuesday that he was a marked man with a $300,000 price on his head stemming from an investigation into corruption.
By Jeffrey Toobin, Daily Comment @ newyorker.com, Jan. 10, 2012
[....] as the debates last weekend in New Hampshire suggested, the G.O.P. appears to have taken a more extreme step in terms of rolling back the Constitutional right to privacy.
By Warren Richey, Christian Science Monitor, Jan 9, 2012
The Supreme Court upheld Monday a long-established provision of campaign finance law that seeks to prevent foreign interests from influencing domestic politics [....]
Vigilante gangs of ultra-conservative Salafi men have been harassing shop owners and female customers in rural towns around Egypt for “indecent behavior,” according to reports in the Egyptian news media. But when they burst into a beauty salon in the Nile delta town of Benha this week and ordered the women inside to stop what they were doing or face physical punishment, the women struck back, whipping them with their own canes before kicking them out to the street in front of an astonished crowd of onlookers [.....]
By Benjy Sarlin, TalkingPointsMemo.com, Jan. 9, 2012
MANCHESTER, NH — “You have to ask the question, is capitalism really about the ability of a handful of rich people to manipulate the lives of thousands of people and then walk off with the money?”
Who said it — Elizabeth Warren? Dennis Kucinich? Noam Chomsky?
Guest op-ed by Lakhdar Boumediene, New York Times, Jan 7/8, 2012
Editor's note: Lakhdar Boumediene was the lead plaintiff in Boumediene v. Bush. He was in military custody at Guantánamo Bay from 2002 to 2009. This essay was translated by Felice Bezri from the Arabic. (Boumediene currently resides with his family in Provence in France.)
By Alexandra Zavis and Ramin Mostaghim, Los Angeles Times, Jan. 9, 2012
REPORTING FROM BEIRUT AND TEHRAN -- A court in Tehran has sentenced to death an Iranian American who was convicted of spying for the Central Intelligence Agency, Iranian media reported on Monday.
The sentencing of Amir Mirzaei Hekmati, 28, is likely to add to the tension between the United States and Iran, which has been escalating over the Islamic Republic’s disputed nuclear program.
A US navy destroyer has rescued an Iranian fishing boat that had been commandeered by suspected pirates just days after Tehran warned America to keep its warships out of the Gulf.
US forces flying off the guided-missile destroyer USS Kidd responded to a distress call from the Iranian vessel, the Al Molai, which had been held captive for more than 40 days, the US navy said Friday. The Kidd was sailing in the Arabian sea, after leaving the Gulf, when it came to the sailors' aid.
[....] PBS only gets, in aggregate, 15 percent of its budget from the federal government -- but it's a percentage that is vital to smaller, poorer, mostly rural stations. "That money can not be made up. We try to leverage it very carefully."
BROWNSVILLE, Texas – Police shot and killed an armed eighth-grader who "engaged" officers in the main hallway of his middle school on Wednesday, the South Texas school district said.
Brownsville school district officials said administrators called police after the student brandished a weapon at about 8 a.m., shortly after classes started at Cummings Middle School. When police arrived, the student "engaged" the officers and was shot, district spokeswoman Drue Brown said in an emailed statement [....]
By Dave Clarke and Matt Spetalnick, Reuters, Jan. 4, 2012
A defiant President Barack Obama said he will bypass Congress and install Richard Cordray as head of the country's new consumer financial watchdog, escalating an election-year fight with Republicans, who questioned the legality of the move. The recess appointment, which Obama announced in a campaign-style rally at a high school gym in a Cleveland suburb, is being cheered by Democrats and liberal advocacy groups who want tougher oversight of Wall Street and other financial players.
[....] Improving from a low base is not the greatest achievement in the world and I'm in no rush to break out the champagne for policymakers who've given us this long grinding recession. But things do seem to be improving.
[....] Lately...twin studies have helped lead scientists to a radical, almost heretical new conclusion: that nature and nurture are not the only elemental forces at work. According to a recent field called epigenetics, there is a third factor also in play, one that in some cases serves as a bridge between the environment and our genes, and in others operates on its own to shape who we are [....]
