The Drug War and GPS tracking.

Police in Delaware may soon be unable to use global positioning systems (GPS) to keep tabs on a suspect unless they have a court-signed warrant, thanks to a recent ruling by a superior court judge who cited famed author George Orwell in her decision.Link

Judge allows Obama to order assassination.

On Dec. 7, the case before U.S. District Court Judge John Bates in Washington, D.C., was described by him as presenting stark and perplexing questions: Can the president order the assassination of a U.S. citizen without first affording him any form of judicial process whatsoever, based on the mere assertion that he is a dangerous member of a terrorist organization? Bates dismissed the case, thereby greatly pleasing defendants President Barack Obama, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and CIA Director Leon Panetta. The plaintiff was Nasser al-Aulaqi, acting on behalf of his son, Anwar al-Aulaqi, who could not bring the lawsuit himself because he is hiding in Yemen, having been placed on a kill list by Obama that is being implemented by Gates and Panetta.Link

How Many Documents Published?

Link

Owned..........

Charges called illegal............

Lawyers and media pundits in Nigeria are accusing the government of acting illegally by agreeing to settle criminal bribery charges against Dick Cheney out of court. Nigeria charged Cheney and applied for an Interpol arrest warrant earlier this month in connection with a $180-million bribery case. Cheney's former employer, Halliburton, reportedly agreed to pay $35 million to see the charges dropped. But Nigeria could see as much as $250 million from the deal, in "the form of a deal to free up Nigerian money that had been locked away in Swiss bank accounts," The Nation's John Nichols reports.Link

Iraq Wants the U.S. Out.

BAGHDAD—Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki ruled out the presence of any U.S. troops in Iraq after the end of 2011, saying his new government and the country's security forces were capable of confronting any remaining threats to Iraq's security, sovereignty and unity.Link

December 2010 Blizzard Timelapse from Michael Black on Vimeo.

Drug decriminalization pays off in Portugal.

These days, Casal Ventoso is an ordinary blue-collar community — mothers push baby strollers, men smoke outside cafes, buses chug up and down the cobbled main street.Link

Peace deal ‘impossible,’ ‘forbidden’.

Israel's foreign minister said Sunday a peace deal with the Palestinians is impossible under current conditions and that Israel should pursue a lesser deal instead — a concept the Palestinians swiftly rejected.Link

Napolitano: Pat-downs are here to stay.

Airline passengers should get used to invasive full body scans and enhanced pat-downs, the Homeland Security secretary suggested Sunday. CNN's Candy Crowley asked Janet Napolitano if she expected changes to the controversial Transportation Security Administration (TSA) screening procedures in the near future. "Not for the foreseeable future," Napolitano replied. "You know we're always looking to improve systems and so forth, but the new technology, the pat-downs -- just objectively safer for our traveling public," she said.Link

WikiLeaks: DEA reach goes global.

WASHINGTON — The US Drug Enforcement Administration has grown into a global intelligence organization whose reach extends far beyond international drug trafficking, The New York Times reported.Link

Merry Christmas.............

Ron Paul on the Thom Hartmann Program.

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Indefinite detention................

The White House is preparing an Executive Order on indefinite detention that will provide periodic reviews of evidence against dozens of prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay, according to several administration officials. The draft order, a version of which was first considered nearly 18 months ago, is expected to be signed by President Obama early in the New Year. The order allows for the possibility that detainees from countries like Yemen might be released if circumstances there change. But the order establishes indefinite detention as a long-term Obama administration policy and makes clear that the White House alone will manage a review process for those it chooses to hold without charge or trial.Link

 

A nearly $1.3T spending bill.

WASHINGTON – Democrats controlling the Senate abandoned on Thursday a huge catchall spending measure combining nearly $1.3 trillion worth of unfinished budget work, including $158 billion for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Facing a midnight Saturday deadline when a stopgap funding measure expires, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he would work with Republican leader Mitch McConnell to produce a bill to keep the federal government running into early next year. The 1,924-page bill collapsed of its own weight after an outcry from conservatives who complained it was stuffed with more than $8 billion in homestate pet projects known as earmarks.Link

Julian Assange freed on bail.......

Julian Assange, founder of secrets website WikiLeaks, was released on bail in London Thursday evening. Authorities had held the former hacker in Wandsworth prison since Dec. 7 when he was detained on sex assault charges. "It's great to smell the fresh air of London again," he told reporters as he left the jail. Assange thanked his supporters around the world, his lawyers and members of the press who were not "all taken in and considered to look deeper in their work.".Link

Bradley Manning's detention.

Bradley Manning, the 22-year-old U.S. Army Private accused of leaking classified documents to WikiLeaks, has never been convicted of that crime, nor of any other crime.Link

Fed ‘monopoly’ could be broken.

As the incoming chairman of the House monetary policy subcommittee, Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) will hold the bully pulpit when it comes to the nation's money woes. He's not wasting any time getting right to the heart of the matter. The libertarian-leaning conservative has long been a critic of the US Federal Reserve and central banking as a whole, but this may be a new one: speaking with CNBC recently, Paul said he views the Fed as a "monopoly" that could benefit from the introduction of competition. "We should start ending the Fed by allowing competition," he said. "I don't like the fact that they have monopoly control. It's a cartel: they print the money. The Constitution really doesn't give them that authority. The Constitution said that only gold and silver can be legal tender. I want to legalize competition and allow individual Americans to use gold and silver in competition, as money. Today if you do that, you can go to jail.Link

Ron Paul rides again................

The Revolution is here! Searching for leadership, congressional Republicans have finally turned to Ron Paul. Well, to chair the House subcommittee on domestic monetary policy, at least. But that does put Congress's leading critic of the Federal Reserve in charge of the panel that oversees the central bank. Ben Bernanke, beware. The 12-term libertarian-leaning congressman from Texas has written a book-length manifesto – titled simply End the Fed – calling for the Federal Reserve's abolition. He will likely call leading Austrian economists affiliated with the Ludwig von Mises Institute to Capitol Hill to testify alongside staid mainstream economists. Fortune magazine recently asked, "Will the Fed be able to survive Ron Paul?".Link

Respect.

During George W. Bush’s presidency, he was out of favor with the reigning neoconservatives who were alarmed at his anti-interventionism. He still gives many conservatives fits with comments like his praise for WikiLeaks.Link

Assange says Pentagon plans prosecution.

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) – WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who angered Washington by releasing secret cables, said in a documentary on Sunday he faced prosecution by the United States and was disappointed with how Swedish justice had been abused. Assange has been remanded in custody in Britain after a European arrest warrant was issued by Sweden, which wants to question Assange about allegations made by two women of sexual crimes. He has denied the allegations. "I came to Sweden as a refugee publisher involved with an extraordinary publishing fight with the Pentagon, where people were being detained and there is an attempt to prosecute me for espionage," Assange said in an interview in the documentary, aired on Swedish public television.Link

Cause of Death in the U.S.

In a study published in the May issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, researchers came to a surprising conclusion: hospitalizations for poisoning by prescription medication has increased by 65 percent from 1999 to 2006. The rates of unintentional poisoning– from prescription opioids, sedatives and tranquilizers in the U.S. has surpassed motor vehicle crashes as the leading cause of unintentional injury death.Link

”A new WikiLeaks”..............

The pressure on WikiLeaks is increasing. DN.se reveals that several key figures behind the website that publishes anonymous submissions and leaks of sensitive governmental, corporate, organizational or religious documents have resigned in protest against the controversial leader Julian Assange only to launch a new service for the so-called whistleblowers. The goal: to leak sensitive information to the public.Link

Dick.

Oilfield services company Halliburton is in negotiations with the Nigerian government to keep its former CEO, Dick Cheney, out of prison, according to a news report. Sources inside Nigeria's Economic and Financial Crimes Commission told GlobalPost this week that a settlement keeping the charges against Cheney out of court could cost as much as $500 million. Nigeria filed charges against Cheney this week in an investigation of alleged bribery estimated at $180 million. Prosecutors named both Halliburton and KBR in the charges, as well as three European oil and engineering companies -- Technip SA, EniSpa, and Saipem Construction.Link

US spying indictment imminent.

London lawyer, Mark Stephens, told Voice of Russia, the Russian government's international radio broadcasting service, that British officials will not allow him to meet with Julian Assange until the day before a Dec. 14 court hearing. "The one thing that is slightly frustrating is that we have another court hearing on December 14 and I’ve not been permitted a legal visit until December 13, which, of course, gives me less than 24 hours to prepare his case," Stephens said.Link

Parliament triples tuition fees....................

Tens of thousands of angry students rampaged through the streets of London on Thursday, smashing windows of the Supreme Court, pelting police at the Treasury with rocks, and setting fire to a Christmas tree in Trafalgar Square after parliament voted to triple university tuition fees.Link

Hackers strike to support WikiLeaks.

LONDON – Hackers rushed to the defense of WikiLeaks on Wednesday, launching attacks on MasterCard, Swedish prosecutors, a Swiss bank and others who have acted against the site and its jailed founder Julian Assange.Link

The Big Bank Theory

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‘Press Freedom Day’.

On the same day that British authorities arrested WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on an Interpol warrant, the US State Department announced it would be hosting the United Nation's "World Press Freedom Day" next year.Link

Bush job approval rating higher.

George W. Bush’s job approval rating as president has spiked to 47 percent, according to a Gallup poll released Monday. That’s 1 point higher than President Barack Obama’s job approval rating in a poll taken the same week. This is the first time Gallup asked Americans to retrospectively rate Bush’s job performance. And it was a stunning turnaround from his low point of 25 percent in November 2008. The 47 percent number is 13 points higher than the last Gallup poll taken before Bush left office in 2009 and the highest rating for him since before Hurricane Katrina in 2005.Still, Bush’s 51 percent disapproval rating means he’s only one of two U.S. presidents in the past 50 years whose disapproval exceeds approval. The other is Richard Nixon, who resigned in disgrace 36 years ago and whose approval rating stands at 29 percent.Link

The Plot thickens.

WASHINGTON (AFP) – WikiLeaks has divulged a secret list compiled by Washington of key infrastructure sites around the world that could pose a critical danger to US security if they come under terrorist attack.Link

Newt gets Schooled...........

Ron Paul on Mancow.

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Ron Paul stands up for Julian Assange.

Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) is taking a stand as one of Julian Assange’s few defenders in Washington, arguing that the WikiLeaks founder should get the same protections as the media.Link

Dick.

The energy services company Dick Cheney ran prior to becoming Vice President of the United States was atop the tongue of liberals each time it was awarded a contract in Iraq. Now the company's name, Halliburton, is being spoken somewhere else: Nigeria. According to a story filed late Wednesday, Cheney will be indicted in a Nigerian bribery case as part of an investigation into an alleged $180 million bribery scandal. "Last week, Nigeria arrested at least 23 officials from companies including Halliburton, Saipem, Technip and a former subsidiary of Panalpina Welttransport Holding AG in connection with alleged illegal payments to Nigerian officials. Those detained were all freed on bail on Nov. 29," Bloomberg News' Elisha Bala-Gbogbo wrote.Link

$3.3 Trillion in Aid During Crisis.........

The Federal Reserve, under orders from Congress, plans today to identify recipients of $3.3 trillion in emergency aid the central bank provided as it fought the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. The Fed intends to post the data on its website at midday in Washington to comply with a provision in July’s Dodd-Frank law overhauling financial regulation. The information spans six loan programs as well as currency swaps with other central banks, purchases of mortgage-backed securities and the rescues of Bear Stearns Cos. and American International Group Inc.Link

Ron Paul

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Feeling like a man.

Meltdown leaves millions of Aussies without cash.

A freak computer glitch at Australia's biggest bank froze cash machines and left millions of people struggling to access their money.Link

Obama's nice guy image?............

After emerging from a basketball game with a split and swollen lip on Friday, Barack Obama was given 12 stitches by a White House doctor. It was the most serious presidential injury since 2002, when George W. Bush suffered a cut and bruised cheekbone after he choked on a pretzel, fainted and fell off the couch. But Mr Obama's injury, courtesy of the elbow of Rey Decerega, director of programmes for the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute, was superficial and compared to the body blow he is expecting at the hand of Wikileaks.Link

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GOP Support for Israel.

WASHINGTON — When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel came to the United States recently for another round of tense talks with the Obama administration, he got a decidedly warmer welcome from one of the rising Republican stars on Capitol Hill, Representative Eric Cantor, the incoming majority leader of the House.Link

Chickens.....................

covered in urine.............

A retired teacher from Lansing, Michigan, says he had to walk through an airport and board a plane covered in urine after TSA agents tore open his urostomy bag during a pat-down. Thomas Sawyer, a 61-year-old survivor of bladder cancer, was flagged for an enhanced screening at Detroit Metropolitan Airport Nov. 7 after a metal detector picked up the urostomy bag in his pants. The medical device collects urine through an opening in the stomach.Link

Sanford Airport to opt out of TSA screening.

The backlash continues over those new TSA screening measures, and now one Central Florida airport has decided to go with a private security screening firm. Orlando Sanford International Airport has decided to opt out from TSA screening.Link

48 hour to save the Euro.

The entire European Project is now at risk of disintegration, with strategic and economic consequences that are very hard to predict.
In a speech this morning, EU President Herman Van Rompuy (poet, and writer of Japanese and Latin verse) warned that if Europe’s leaders mishandle the current crisis and allow the eurozone to break up, they will destroy the European Union itself. “We’re in a survival crisis. We all have to work together in order to survive with the euro zone, because if we don’t survive with the euro zone we will not survive with the European Union,” he said.Link

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If you won't submit to screening, you won't fly.

Airline passengers who object to any type of physical screening are not going to fly anywhere, the head of the Transportation Security Administration told a congressional committee Tuesday.Link

The American Traveler Dignity Act......

Mr. Speaker, today I introduce legislation to protect Americans from physical and emotional abuse by federal Transportation Security Administration employees conducting screenings at the nation’s airports. We have seen the videos of terrified children being grabbed and probed by airport screeners. We have read the stories of Americans being subjected to humiliating body imaging machines and/or forced to have the most intimate parts of their bodies poked and fondled. We do not know the potentially harmful effects of the radiation emitted by the new millimeter wave machines.Link

Ron Paul's Golden Opportunity.

One of the most exciting features of the new Congress is the prospect that the chairmanship of a House subcommittee that oversees the Federal Reserve will go to Ron Paul. Final assignments are still being worked out, and the leadership may yet shy away from giving the position to a congressman who doesn't believe the Fed should exist. But Dr. Paul, an obstetrician, has been the ranking Republican of the Domestic Monetary Policy and Technology subcommittee, and tradition suggests he will be the next chairman. This couldn't come at a more timely moment, though Dr. Paul has been working his way up to the assignment for more than a generation.Link

Nader unites us all.

The X-ray security machines coming to an airport near you have been called “dick-measuring devices” by seasoned travelers, inspired TSA employees to commit crimes of passion, and eaten up the Transportation Security Administration’s allocation of stimubucks. In short, no one likes them.Link

Bernanke's worst nightmare: Ron Paul.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Ben Bernanke has had his hands full since his first day on the job as Federal Reserve chairman nearly five years ago. It's about to get even tougher. His harshest critic on Capitol Hill, Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, is about to become one of his overseers.Link

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Buried By Debt....................

When Connecticut State University System trustees get together today to consider freezing tuition and fees for the first time in more than a decade, they should also consider this: The U.S. reached a very disturbing threshold this year when the amount of money owed for student loans exceeded the money piled up in credit card debt for the first time ever.Link

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US may break promise to leave Iraq.

The United States is open to the idea of keeping troops in Iraq past a deadline to leave next year if Iraq asks for it, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Tuesday. "We'll stand by," Gates said. "We're ready to have that discussion if and when they want to raise it with us." Gates urged Iraq's squabbling political groups to reconcile after eight months of deadlock. Any request to extend the U.S. military presence in Iraq would have to come from a functioning Iraqi government. It would amend the current agreement under which U.S. troops must leave by the end of 2011.Link

Pushing Cheese.

Domino’s Pizza was hurting early last year. Domestic sales had fallen, and a survey of big pizza chain customers left the company tied for the worst tasting pies.Link

GOP must consider military spending cuts.

Government spending is sure to be one of the biggest targets now that Republicans have won back the House, but there have been few details on exactly what programs will see their budgets slashed.Link

That Right moment.

The worst.

Results of Fed Stimulus Could Be 'Horrendous'.

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble has sharply criticized the US Federal Reserve's decision to pump a further $600 billion into the country's ailing economy. He says the move could create problems for the global economy. Others have joined in the condemnation. Germany is not impressed. One day after the United States Federal Reserve announced that it would pump $600 billion (€423 billion) into America's banking system over the next eight months, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble sharply criticized the decision. "I don't think they are going to solve their problems that way," Schäuble told German public broadcaster ZDF in a Thursday evening interview. "They have already pumped an endless amount of money into the economy via taking on extremely high public debt and through a Fed policy that has already pumped a lot of money into the economy. The results are horrendous." In a separate interview on public broadcaster ARD, Schäuble said that the move by Fed Chair Ben Bernanke would "create additional problems for the world." He promised to bring up the issue in talks with the US and said that, by following such a monetary path, the US was violating a pledge that all industrialized countries agreed to at the last G-20 summit in Toronto in June.Link

Federal Reserve oversight...........

Republican Representative Ron Paul on Thursday said he will push to examine the Federal Reserve's monetary policy decisions if he takes control of the congressional subcommittee that oversees the central bank as expected in January. "I think they're way too independent. They just shouldn't have this power," Paul, a longtime Fed critic, said in an interview with Reuters. "Up until recently it has been modest but now it's totally out of control." Paul is currently the top Republican on the House of Representatives subcommittee that oversees domestic monetary policy, and is likely to head the panel when Republicans take control of the chamber in January.Link

Six Americans killed...................

(Reuters) - Gunmen have killed six U.S. citizens in separate attacks since Saturday in the violent border city of Ciudad Juarez, the U.S. consulate said on Thursday, as Mexico struggles to halt surging murders. University of Texas students Manuel Acosta and Eder Diaz, who studied at the El Paso campus just across the border from Ciudad Juarez, became the latest victims when they were gunned down as they drove through the city on Tuesday. The killings followed the deaths of four other Americans, including a woman who died of multiple gunshot wounds inside a tortilla shop in Ciudad Juarez on Saturday. Two U.S. citizens died on Saturday when they came under fire in their vehicle. "Police said shooters fired 50 rounds, ... peppering the black BMW with bullets during an assault Saturday morning," the consulate said in a statement.Link

Close Encounter With Comet Hartley.

Link

Bernanke's Case For Quantitative Easing.

What's amazing about the latest bout of quantitative easing is the total lack of pretense. By that we mean Bernanke isn't even pretending that that QE would actually benefit the real economy. We noted yesterday that buy concentrating buying at the short end of the yield curve, Bernanke was punishing savers (pinning short-term rates to the mat) and bailing out banks (keeping the yield curve steep).Link

Exclusive - Chris Wallace Extended Interview

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‘Damn right’..... I ordered waterboarding.

President George W. Bush admits for the first time in his new memoir that he personally approved the use of waterboarding, a technique in which an interrogator simulates drowning on a suspect. The method, which most describe as torture, has since been banned by the Justice Department. In his book, "Decision Points," Bush asserts that he was asked by the Central Intelligence Agency whether he would support the agency's waterboarding of Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the alleged 9/11 mastermind. "Damn right," Bush says that he said.Link

$100M in Taxpayer Support...............

Freddie Mac said Wednesday that it lost $2.5 billion during the third quarter of this year. Add to that the $1.6 billion dividend payment the GSE had to make to Treasury on stock the company relinquished in exchange for bailout money, and Freddie Mac reported a net loss attributable to common stockholders of $4.1 billion, or $1.25 per common share, for the quarter. The third-quarter results actually represent an improvement from the previous three-month period, when the GSE reported a net loss attributable to common stockholders of $6.0 billion, or $1.85 per common share.
Freddie Mac had a net worth deficit of $58 million at September 30, 2010, that company officials attributed to the quarterly dividend payment to Treasury of $1.6 billion, which exceeded the GSE’s total comprehensive income of $1.4 billion.Link