It's not looking good.

Rep. Charles Rangel hoped a public policy center bearing his name would be his final legacy — and now, in disastrous fashion, it almost certainly will be. Rangel’s obsessive drive to win public and private funding for the institution at the City College of New York is at the center of a 13-count allegation that he broke House ethics rules and federal statutes governing behavior by public officials. The 41-page document offers a sweeping indictment of Rangel, painting the portrait of a legislator who abused his office to burnish his name, repeatedly failed to accurately account for his own income and assets and did not abide by the very tax laws he oversaw as the top Democrat on the powerful Ways and Means Committee.Link

Scott Horton Interviews Julian Assange.

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The rise and fall of Rand Paul..

Rand Paul and I are trying to remember why Harlan, Kentucky, might be famous. That's where Paul is driving me, on a coiling back road through the low green mountains of the state's southeastern corner, in his big black GMC Yukon festooned with RON PAUL 2008 and RAND PAUL 2010 stickers. Something about Harlan has lodged itself in my brain the way a shard of barbecue gets stuck in one's teeth, and I've asked Paul for help. "I don't know," he says in an elusive accent that's not quite southern and not quite not-southern. The town of Hazard is nearby, he notes: "It's famous for, like, The Dukes of Hazzard.".Link

Peter Shiff Million Dollar Money Bomb NOW!

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Nothing better to do.......Go on the View.

3,000 chemical barrels into China river.

BEIJING (AFP) – Authorities were scrambling on Thursday to recover 3,000 barrels full of hazardous chemicals that were washed into a major river in northeastern China by recent flooding. A total of 7,000 barrels were swept into the Songhua river in Jilin province on Wednesday following heavy rains, but most were empty, according to reports.However 2,500 barrels containing 510 tonnes of combustible, colourless chemicals and 500 loaded with solvents were washed into the river from two chemical plants near the city of Jilin, state-run Xinhua news agency said. At least 400 barrels had been recovered on Thursday, city officials told Xinhua.Link

1M gallons of oil may be in Mich. river.

EPA says 1 million gallons of oil may have spilled in Mich. river, governor criticizes cleanup. Federal officials now estimate that more than 1 million gallons of oil may have spilled into a major river in southern Michigan, and the governor is sharply criticizing clean-up efforts as "wholly inadequate." The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released the update Wednesday night, shortly after Gov. Jennifer Granholm lambasted attempts to contain the oil flowing down the Kalamazoo River. She warned of a "tragedy of historic proportions" if the oil reaches Lake Michigan, which is still at least 80 miles downstream from where oil has been seen.Link

The ‘new normal’..........

From the point of view of civil libertarians, the Obama administration has been an exercise in frustration, with every hopeful sign followed by failures to live up to its own promises. The ACLU has just issued a report (pdf), titled "Establishing a New Normal: National Security, Civil Liberties, and Human Rights Under the Obama Administration," which focuses on this pattern of inconsistency. "The administration has displayed a decidedly mixed record," explains ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romaro, "resulting, on a range of issues, in the very real danger that the Obama administration will institutionalize some of the most troublesome policies of the previous administration -- in essence, creating a troubling 'new normal.'".Link