Feinstein denies NSA abuses...................

The chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee came to the defense of the National Security Agency today, saying that the federal agency didn’t commit flagrant abuses in its program to intercept American’s phone calls and emails — but stopped short of denying that the agency had overstepped its bounds or broken the law. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) responded to comments made by Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ), chair of the House Select Intelligence Oversight Panel, in a New York Times story, that he was ”increasingly troubled by the agency’s handling of domestic communication.”...Link

Wow........what a protest...............

S.604 has 2 cosponsors..............

Title: A bill to amend title 31, United States Code, to reform the manner in which the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System is audited by the Comptroller General of the United States and the manner in which such audits are reported, and for other purposes.

HR 1207 - 234 co-sponsors..................

Title: To amend title 31, United States Code, to reform the manner in which the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System is audited by the Comptroller General of the United States and the manner in which such audits are reported, and for other purposes.

I wonder what happened to my colleagues...

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to this conference report on the War Supplemental Appropriations. I wonder what happened to all of my colleagues who said they were opposed to the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I wonder what happened to my colleagues who voted with me as I opposed every war supplemental request under the previous administration. It seems, with very few exceptions, they have changed their position on the war now that the White House has changed hands. I find this troubling. As I have said while opposing previous war funding requests, a vote to fund the war is a vote in favor of the war. Congress exercises its constitutional prerogatives through the power of the purse. This conference report, being a Washington-style compromise, reflects one thing Congress agrees on: spending money we do not have. So this “compromise” bill spends 15 percent more than the president requested, which is $9 billion more than in the original House bill and $14.6 billion more than the original Senate version. Included in this final version — in addition to the $106 billion to continue the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq — is a $108 billion loan guarantee to the International Monetary Fund, allowing that destructive organization to continue spending taxpayer money to prop up corrupt elites and promote harmful economic policies overseas. As Americans struggle through the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, this emergency supplemental appropriations bill sends billions of dollars overseas as foreign aid. Included in this appropriation is $660 million for Gaza, $555 million for Israel, $310 million for Egypt, $300 million for Jordan, and $420 million for Mexico. Some $889 million will be sent to the United Nations for “peacekeeping” missions. Almost one billion dollars will be sent overseas to address the global financial crisis outside our borders and nearly $8 billion will be spent to address a “potential pandemic flu.”

Mr. Speaker, I continue to believe that the best way to support our troops is to bring them home from Iraq and Afghanistan. If one looks at the original authorization for the use of force in Afghanistan, it is clear that the ongoing and expanding nation-building mission there has nothing to do with our goal of capturing and bringing to justice those who attacked the United States on September 11, 2001. Our continued presence in Iraq and Afghanistan does not make us safer at home, but in fact it undermines our national security. I urge my colleagues to defeat this reckless conference report.

Comparisons to the Bush administration.......

The Obama administration has refused to release a Secret Service list of the names of White House visitors, prompting angry comparisons to the Bush administration. The White House is arguing that it sometimes needs to hold secret meetings on sensitive issues, but a federal judge already dismissed that argument in two Bush administration cases...Link

The Story of 9 Failed Currencies.........

The world’s major economic powers are all suffering from the economic downturn but even the most cynical doomsayer is sure we’ll get ourselves out of this mess—eventually. Rare are those instances in which entire economies are disrupted to the point - typically as a result of rampant inflation, or hyper inflation - that an entire form of currency is discarded, reformed or replaced. But it does happen. There are invariably external issues (military, political, etc) at play, which result in what can generally be referred to the ‘failure of a currency’, and each situation is unique. The following is a list of nine notable examples in which currencies became so devalued that they were eventually replaced:....Link

Obama breaking transparency promises.....

The Obama administration, as evidenced by the court-ordered release of CIA documents on Monday, is breaking campaign promises for increased transparency, ACLU attorney Ben Wizner said Monday night. Instead, he analogized, Obama is merely continuing Bush-era secrecy surrounding the prior administration’s torture program. Holding up two documents before cameras on the set of MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show, Wizner attributed one, almost completely censored in black ink, to the Bush administration. The other, which appeared nearly identical, he attributed to the Obama administration’s disclosures Monday. The only difference between the two, he noted, was a single sentence that had been unredacted...Link

Only $1.6 trillion.....................

WASHINGTON - The latest cost estimates for health care legislation in Congress are around $1.6 trillion over 10 years, two Senate sources said Tuesday as concerns mounted over the price tag for the sweeping overhaul...Link