University of Kentucky Library Flash Mob Rave - UK Finals Week(video via YouTube)
April 29, 2009. University of Kentucky William T. Young Library Student Rave During Finals Week
Conservative news, video and comment from the Bluegrass state.
100-Day Lurch to the Left
In the early 1980s, Ronald Reagan's popularity and policies moved American politics firmly to the right. In only 100 days, Barack Obama's politics and policies have shifted America way to the left.
The president is seeking to change the whole relationship between the government and the free-enterprise private sector. He is steering the country away from democratic capitalism and toward his big-government command-and-control vision. We are witnessing a triumph of government bureaucrats over entrepreneurs, investors, and small businesses.
And with Sen. Arlen Specter switching from Republican to Democrat, Obama can now move the nation even further to the left. A filibuster-proof Senate will mean even greater economic restructuring with expanded government control of health care and energy and increased unionization.
This looks very much like a war against investors, businesses, and entrepreneurs. Shareholder rights are being eviscerated. Political decisions are replacing the rule of law, the rule of bankruptcy courts, and free-market principles.
We are witnessing more spending, deficits, and debt-creation than anyone ever imagined. Bailout Nation has run amok. This started under Bush, but Obama is raising the stakes exponentially. (excerpt) read more at RealClearPolitics.com
(CNN) — The White House apologized Thursday "if anybody was unduly alarmed" by Vice President Joe Biden's comments that seemed to suggest Americans should avoid air travel or confined spaces of any kind.
"What the vice president meant to say was the same thing that many members have said in the last few days," White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said. "And that is, if you feel sick, are exhibiting flu-like symptoms….that you should take precautions, that you should limit your travel."

Mexico's president told citizens on Wednesday to stay home for a five-day partial shutdown of the economy, after the World Health Organization raised its alert level and said a swine flu pandemic was imminent.
In his first televised address since the crisis erupted last week, President Felipe Calderon told Mexicans to stay home with their families. The country will suspend non-essential work and services, including some government ministries, from May 1-5.
"There is no safer place than your own home to avoid being infected with the flu virus," Calderon said.
Mexico is taking the drastic step after another 17 deaths were potentially linked to swine flu, bringing the total to as many as 176.
Two years ago, the Congressional Budget Office forecast that if climate legislation were enacted, low-income households would experience a 3.3 percent drop in income from higher prices associated with a 15 percent cut in carbon dioxide emissions, with middle-income households losing 2.8 percent. (The Waxman-Markey climate bill calls for cutting greenhouse-gas emissions by 20 percent by 2020.)
More recently, the CBO estimated that "the price increases resulting from a 15 percent cut in CO2 emissions could cost the average household roughly $1,600 (in 2006 dollars)," with the greatest impact "relative to income, on lower-income households."
For just the second time in more than five years of daily or weekly tracking, Republicans now lead Democrats in the latest edition of the Generic Congressional Ballot.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 41% would vote for their district’s Republican candidate while 38% would choose the Democrat. Thirty-one percent (31%) of conservative Democrats said they would vote for their district’s Republican candidate.
Overall, the GOP gained two points this week, while the Democrats lost a point in support.

WASHINGTON - Former D.C. Mayor Marion Barry owes thousands of dollars in back taxes, but that hasn't stopped him from buying his girlfriend an $800 coat.
Barry tells The Washington Post he bought the opera coat with his own money Saturday at a cancer auction. He says he topped CNN's Wolf Blitzer during the bidding.
An opera coat is an elegant evening wrap, typically made of velvet.
"You see folks waving tea bags around -- let me just remind them I am happy to have a serious conversation about how we are going to cut our health care cuts over the long term, how we are gong to stabilize social security. Lets not play games."
Last Tuesday evening, Rahm Emanuel quietly slipped into an eighth-floor office at the Watergate.
As white-jacketed waiters poured red and white wine and served a three-course salmon and risotto dinner, the White House chief of staff spent two hours chatting with some of Washington's top journalists -- excusing himself to take a call from President Obama and another from Hillary Clinton.
As the journalists hurled questions and argued among themselves, Emanuel said: "This feels a lot like a Jewish family dinner."

A Palestinian Authority military court on Tuesday sentenced a Hevron Arab to death by hanging for the crime of selling land to Jews in Judea and Samaria, the Bethlehem-based Ma'an news agency reported. The three-member judicial panel heard the case last week and handed down its verdict and conviction on Tuesday.
Dozens of Arabs have been executed in the past for collaborating with Israel by selling land to Jews, but the court’s ruling is the first time the PA officially has handed down a guilty verdict of treason for the crime. Previous summary executions with the approval of the PA have been met with outcries from human rights organizations
China and five other countries have banned pork and other meat products from some U.S. states, drawing criticism from U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk since officials say the swine flu is not transmitted by food.
Kirk's office said the bans were imposed because of the swine flu outbreak. The countries imposing those bans are China, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Philippines, Thailand and United Arab Emirates.
Reuters reports that Kirk warned those countries that such bans are not based on science and could disrupt trade.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture says pork is still safe to eat, and that all food-borne germs are killed when pork is cooked to 160 F anyway.

Veteran GOP Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania intends to announce Tuesday he will switch political parties and run in the Democratic primary in 2010.Here is RNC Chairman Michael Steele's response,
Republican voters had sent him to the Senate five times. But faced with the prospect of a strong challenge from conservative Pat Toomey in the GOP primary and the state trending Democratic, Specter jumped ship.
"I deeply regret that I will be disappointing many friends and supporters," Specter said in prepared remarks to be delivered at a news conference on Tuesday.
"I can understand their disappointment," he continued. "I am also disappointed that so many in the party I have worked for for more than four decades do not want me to be their candidate. It is very painful on both sides."
The switch puts Democrats within one vote of a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. Democrats currently hold 56 seats in the Senate, and two independents typically vote with the party. Republicans have 41 seats, and there is one vacancy.
"Some in the Republican Party are happy about this. I am not. Let's be honest-Senator Specter didn't leave the GOP based on principles of any kind. He left to further his personal political interests because he knew that he was going to lose a Republican primary due to his left-wing voting record. Republicans look forward to beating Sen. Specter in 2010, assuming the Democrats don't do it first."
Surprisingly, Obama now stands alongside Bush as a genuine American Jacobin, both of them seeing the world as they want it to be, not as it is. Whereas Bush saw a world of Muslims yearning to betray their God for Western secularism, Obama gazes upon a globe that he regards as largely carnivore-free and believes that remaining threats can be defused by semantic warfare; just stop saying "War on Terror" and give talks in Turkey and on al-Arabiyah television, for example.
Americans should be clear on what Obama has done. In a breathtaking display of self-righteousness and intellectual arrogance, the president told Americans that his personal beliefs are more important than protecting their country, their homes and their families. The interrogation techniques in question, the president asserted, are a sign that Americans have lost their "moral compass," a compliment similar to Attorney General Eric Holder's identifying them as "moral cowards." Mulling Obama's claim, one can wonder what could be more moral for a president than doing all that is needed to defend America and its citizens? Or, asked another way, is it moral for the president of the United States to abandon intelligence tools that have saved the lives and property of Americans and their allies in favor of his own ideological beliefs?
President Obamas speech at the National Academy of Sciences Monday morning hit a brief snag when Obama got ahead of his teleprompter script.
Laying his plan for a Presidents Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, Obama began to name the members of PCAST listed in his prepared remarks before realizing hed already introduced them, earlier in his speech.
“In addition to John – sorry, the – I just noticed I jumped the gun here,” Obama said, pausing for several seconds as he looked at the prompter. “Go ahead. Move it up. I had already introduced all you guys.”
NEW YORK - Mayor Michael Bloomberg said he is furious that the federal government flew a presidential Boeing 747 and a fighter jet near ground zero part of a government photo opportunity and training mission.
The incident on Monday caused a brief panic among workers, who said they were not notified in advance.
Bloomberg said the flyover so near the World Trade Center site showed "poor judgment" and was insensitive. He said he is furious that the New York Police Department and another city agency were notified last week, but did not tell him.

The Obama administration, which has boasted about its efforts to make government more transparent, is rolling back rules requiring labor unions and their leaders to report information about their finances and compensation.
The Labor Department noted in a recent disclosure that "it would not be a good use of resources" to bring enforcement actions against union officials who do not comply with conflict of interest reporting rules passed in 2007. Instead, union officials will now be allowed to file older, less detailed conflict reports.
The regulation, known as the LM-30 rule, was at the heart of a lawsuit that the AFL-CIO filed against the department last year. One of the union attorneys in the case, Deborah Greenfield, is now a high-ranking deputy at Labor, who also worked on the Obama transition team on labor issues.


Sometimes the cars accelerate on their own. Sometimes they stop dead. Drivers of the hybrid Prius have discovered they can be an unexpected adventure.
By Paul Knight
Published on April 21, 2009 at 8:17pm
Bobette Riner publishes an electricity index used to promote renewable energy, and she bought a brand-new Prius last year to shoot the bird at the oil companies
"I felt so smug for a while," she says. "Especially being in Houston."
She had been lucky to score the car from a dealership on Houston's south side, because for nearly a year there had been a three-month wait to get a Prius. The dealership couldn't even keep a model for the showroom.
The car had a "cute little body" that Riner loved, and she reveled in driving like a "nerdy Prius owner," watching the energy-usage display on the car's center console, trying to drain every possible mile from a gallon of gasoline. When she hit 2,000 miles, she could count her trips to a gas station on one hand.
On a rainy night last fall, a couple of months after Riner bought her Prius, she was driving toward the Houston Galleria for a sales meeting. She hated driving in the rain because a car wreck in college catapulted her through the windshield, and doctors almost had to amputate her leg.
Traffic near the mall was congested but moving, and Riner kept the Prius pegged at 60 mph, constantly looking at the console to manage her fuel consumption.
Suddenly she felt the car hydroplaning out of control, and when she glanced at the speedometer she realized the car had shot up to 84 mph. Riner wasn't hydroplaning; quite simply, her Prius had accelerated on its own.
She pushed on the brakes but they were dead. Then just as suddenly as the car had taken off, it shut down. The console lit up with warning lights, leaving Riner fighting a stiff steering wheel as she coasted across four lanes of traffic and down an exit ramp.
Report: Iranian arms ship sunk off Sudan coast
Egyptian weekly says missiles fired by 'unidentified boat which may have been Israeli or American'
Ynet
An Egyptian weekly reported Sunday that an Iranian ship carrying weapons traveling en route to the Gaza Strip has been sunk in the Red Sea, off the coast of Sudan.
Al-Usbua's report quotes sources from Sudan's capitol Khartoum, who say missiles were fired towards the ship from "an unidentified boat, which may be Israeli or American."
The report says the Iranian ship was headed for Sudan in order to unload the weapons, which would then travel by land to the Gaza Strip. But the ship was sunk by the missiles, along with its crew.
Human cases of swine influenza A (H1N1) virus infection have been identified in the United States. Human cases of swine influenza A (H1N1) virus infection also have been identified internationally. The current U.S. case count is provided below.

The nation’s largest left-wing newspaper and the bible for network news producers and bookers may be going under. This past week, The New York Times [NYT] announced more staggering losses: nearly $75 million in the first quarter alone. The New York Post is reporting that the Times Company owes more than $1 billion and has just $34 million in the bank. A few months ago, the company borrowed $250 million from Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim at a reported 14 percent interest rate. With things going south fast (pardon the pun), Slim might want to put in a call to Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr.
The spin from Sulzberger is that the Internet is strangling the newspaper industry, and there is some truth to that. Why read an ideologically crazed paper when you can acquire a variety of information on your computer? But other papers are not suffering nearly as much as the Times, so there must be more to it.
There is no question that the Times has journalistic talent. This week the paper won five Pulitzers. It’s true that the Pulitzer people favor left-wing operations (the past eight Pulitzer Prizes for commentary have gone to liberal writers), but New York Times journalists often do good reporting.
The problem is that under Sulzberger and executive editor Bill Keller, the Times has gone crazy left, attacking those with whom the paper disagrees and demonstrating a hatred for conservatives (particularly President Bush) that is almost pathological. The Times features liberal columnists in every section of the paper, and they hit low, often using personal invective to smear perceived opponents.
1. "Obama criticized pork barrel spending in the form of 'earmarks,' urging changes in the way that Congress adopts the spending proposals. Then he signed a spending bill that contains nearly 9,000 of them, some that members of his own staff shoved in last year when they were still members of Congress. 'Let there be no doubt, this piece of legislation must mark an end to the old way of doing business, and the beginning of a new era of responsibility and accountability,' Obama said." -- McClatchy, 3/11
2. "There is no doubt that we've been living beyond our means and we're going to have to make some adjustments." -- Obama during the campaign.
3. This year's budget deficit: $1.5 trillion.
4. Asks his Cabinet to cut costs in their departments by $100 million -- a whopping .0027%!
5. "The White House says the president is unaware of the tea parties." -- ABC News, 4/15
6. "Mr. Obama is an accomplished orator but is becoming known in America as the 'teleprompt president' over his reliance on the machine when he gives a speech." -- Sky News, 3/18
7. In early February, the 2010 census was moved out of the Department of Commerce and into the White House, politicizing how federal aid is distributed and electoral districts are drawn.
8. Obama taps Nancy Killefer for a new administration job, First Chief Performance Officer -- to police government spending. But it surfaces that Killefer had performance issues of her own -- a tax lien was slapped on her DC home in 2005 for failure to pay unemployment compensation tax on household help. She withdrew.
9. Turkey tried to block the appointment of Anders Fogh Rasmussen as new NATO secretary general because he didn't properly punish the Danish cartoonist who caricatured Mohammed. France's Nicolas Sarkozy and Germany's Angela Merkel were outraged; Obama said he supported Turkey's induction into the European Union.
10. . . . and he never mentioned the Armenian genocide.
11. The picture of Obama and Hugo Chavez shaking hands.
12. Hugo Chavez gave him the anti-American screed "The Open Veins of Latin America." Obama didn't remark upon it. At least it wasn't DVDs.

A GOP source familiar with the meeting said that the president was extremely sensitive -- even "thin-skinned" -- to the fact that the stimulus bill received no GOP votes in the House. He continually brought it up throughout the meeting.
Obama also offered payback for that goose egg. A major overhaul of the health care system, he told the Republican leadership, would be done using a legislative process known as reconciliation, meaning that the GOP won't be able to filibuster it.

Just read an AP report: the percentage of Americans that think the country is on the right track rose to 48% in March as compared to 40% in February. In light of the unemployment rising, the debacle in foreign affairs etc, I found it unlikely. So I looked into the details of the poll.
73% of the Democrats polled thought we were on the right track
17% of Independents
10% of Republicans
That made it even more suspicious as to how those numbers could result in a 48% overall right track vote.
So digging deeper, it turns out
36% of those polled were Democrats
18% Republican
26% Independent
18% None claimed
In the 2008 election the spread between Democrats and Republicans was 6.5 percentage points not 18 and independents made up 22% of the vote not 26%.
It appears that there have been similar distortions in the various polls measuring Obama's approval ratings.
If conservatives don't want to be seen as bitter people who cling to their guns and religion and anti-immigrant sentiments, they should stop being bitter and clinging to their guns, religion and anti-immigrant sentiments.
It's been a week now, and I still don't know what those "tea bag" protests were about. I saw signs protesting abortion, illegal immigrants, the bank bailout and that gay guy who's going to win "American Idol." But it wasn't tax day that made them crazy; it was election day. Because that's when Republicans became what they fear most: a minority.
The conservative base is absolutely apoplectic because, because ... well, nobody knows. They're mad as hell, and they're not going to take it anymore. Even though they're not quite sure what "it" is. But they know they're fed up with "it," and that "it" has got to stop.
Here are the big issues for normal people: the war, the economy, the environment, mending fences with our enemies and allies, and the rule of law.
And here's the list of Republican obsessions since President Obama took office: that his birth certificate is supposedly fake, he uses a teleprompter too much, he bowed to a Saudi guy, Europeans like him, he gives inappropriate gifts, his wife shamelessly flaunts her upper arms, and he shook hands with Hugo Chavez and slipped him the nuclear launch codes.
Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore left the White House seven years ago with less than $2 million in assets, including a Virginia home and the family farm in Tennessee. Now he's making enough to put $35 million in hedge funds and other private partnerships.
Gore invested the money with Capricorn Investment Group LLC, a Palo Alto, California, firm that selects the private funds for clients and invests in makers of environmentally friendly products, according to a Feb. 1 securities filing. Capricorn was founded by billionaire Jeffrey Skoll, former president of EBay Inc. and an executive producer of Gore's Oscar-winning documentary film on global warming.


It happens every time a president leaves town to make an Earth Day speech. Reporters scramble to point out how much fuel was expended so the President could talk about conserving energy and using alternative fuels.
In flying to and from Iowa today, President Obama took two flights on Air Force One and four on Marine One.
The press office at Andrews AFB wouldn’t give me the fuel consumption numbers for the 747 that serves as Air Force One without the approval of the White House Press Office, which as I write this has yet to be given.
But Boeing says its 747 burns about 5 gallons of fuel per mile. It’s 895 miles from Washington to Des Moines, so a round trip brings the fuel consumption for the fixed-wing portion of the President’s trip to 8,950 gallons.
Three cheers for President Obama's decision, announced quietly on Monday, to repudiate a campaign promise and not press for new labor and environmental regulations in the North American Free Trade Agreement. The last thing the Western Hemisphere needs are more trade barriers that would snarl supply chains and damage commerce.
Perhaps we should call this Austan Goolsbee's revenge. Recall that last year the Obama economic adviser had told a Canadian diplomat to ignore Mr. Obama's Nafta campaign rhetoric; the candidate was merely pandering to Big Labor. When that disclosure became news, Mr. Goolsbee was banished to the campaign's isolation ward for imperfect spinners. Now we know Mr. Goolsbee -- not the candidate -- was the one telling the truth.
Mr. Obama got an earful on trade from his counterparts at the Summit of the Americas over the weekend and that might have something to do with his Nafta walkback. But three other trade issues to watch are the unilateral U.S. ban on Mexican long-haul trucks, which has sparked a trade war with that country, the U.S. failure to ratify a free trade agreement with Colombia, and the 54-cent per gallon U.S. import duty on Brazilian ethanol. Mr. Obama has promised to discuss each one. But the real test will be his willingness to spend political capital to defeat protectionists in Congress.
The president's approval is nearly identical to the job rating George W. Bush received at the same point in his first term, as 63 percent of Americans approved and 22 percent disapproved (April 18-19, 2001). One noticeable difference is that approval of Obama is much more divided along partisan lines today than Bush's ratings were eight years ago.
Gallup reports that 56% of the public believes that Obama is doing an excellent/good job. Gallup reported 62% approved of George W. Bush's job performance after the first 100 days. MSM tells us how popular Barack Obama is but the numbers tell a different story especially when used comparatively. Comparing the Gallup poll taken following the first 100 day of George W. Bush and Barack Obama is rather informative especially given the highly contentious nature of the 2000 election.
Here are the numbers for other presidents:
April approval ratings in first year in office
Bush now 62%
Clinton, 1993 55
Bush, 1989 58
Reagan, 1981 67
Carter, 1977 63
Nixon, 1969 61
Sampling error: +/-3% pts
Now justify these headlines:
Gallup: First-100-Days-Obama-Meets-Exceeds-Expectations. By the way, the wording of the question is most suspect as many (including me) expected him to do just as poorly as he is doing. But Gallup is going even further. It uses his daily tracking poll to cover up the results of the 100 day poll.
USAToday:Poll: Public thinks highly of Obama
Chicago Tribune: Obama riding high in polls

President Obama's pick to head the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration raises a few red flags. If confirmed by the Senate, Chuck Hurley, CEO of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, will drive motorists over the cliff with regulation.
The nation's traffic-safety czar has broad powers to control the roads and road-going habits of Americans. Mr. Hurley has a history of pushing laws that harass millions of law-abiding citizens to ensnare a few lawbreakers. He supports returning the 55 mph speed limit to our highways as well as roadblocks and random pullovers to make sure drivers aren't doing anything wrong. This methodology is based on a presumption of guilt - not innocence - of the average driver who is doing nothing wrong.
Mr. Hurley has promoted a mania of overregulation at MADD. Absent from his advocacies is the principle that a punishment should fit the crime, or that a crime even needs to be committed to incur a penalty. Under this influence, MADD has been lobbying to lower the allowable blood-alcohol content (BAC) for drivers to .04 - which means one glass of Pinot can land anyone behind bars. The constant lowering of BAC limits has separated what is punishable from what is actually dangerous.

Hugo Chavez Says Venezuelan Socialism Has Begun to Reach U.S. under Obama
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
By Edwin Mora
(CNSNews.com) - Inspired by his meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama at the Americas Summit, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez declared on Sunday that Venezuelan socialism has begun to reach the United States under the Obama administration.
“I am coming back from Trinidad and Tobago, from the Americas Summit where, without a doubt, the position that Venezuela and its government has always defended, especially starting 10 years ago, of resistance, dignity, sovereignty and independence has obtained in Port of Spain, one of the biggest victories of our history,” Chavez said.
“It would seem that the changes that started in Venezuela in the last decade of the 20th century have begun to reach North America,” he added. (excerpt) read more at CNSNews.com
HERO Colour Sergeant Alan Dennis is the man the Taliban just can’t kill — after surviving being blown up for a SECOND time.
Two years ago the career soldier escaped from the wreckage of his Land Rover in a roadside bomb attack that claimed the life of a comrade.
Now he has cheated death again in Afghanistan following a grenade attack.
Once again miracle man Alan,35, was hurled into the air — landing under rubble in a trench.
But despite arm injures he recovered to return fire on the enemy and lead his men to safety.[...]
A rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) blew up in front of him sending him flying through the air and slamming him down into a trench buried under rubble.
Undeterred by what he thought was a broken arm, and under a constant hail of bullets, he grabbed his rifle and returned fire until his men were safe.
(CNN) -- Details emerged Wednesday from the first government-to-government talks between the two Koreas in more than a year.
Tuesday's talks ended quickly -- after 22 minutes -- South Korea's Unification Ministry said.
The two sides were to discuss business deals tied to the Kaesung Industrial Complex in North Korea, which is run by both nations. The talks broke off after the North Korean delegation refused to discuss the release of a detained South Korean worker, saying he was not on the agenda, according to South Korean officials.
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - A cartel engaged in Mexico's deadly drug wars has told its members to avoid heavy drinking and using narcotics and live a clean family life as it tries to build a well-run criminal organization, police say.
Rafael Cedeno, a leader of "The Family" cartel based in the western state of Michoacan, told police after he was arrested at the weekend he had trained several thousand cartel members with courses in ethics and personal improvement.
"The indoctrination of this group consisted of courses they considered to be for personal improvement, values, ethical and moral principles of the criminal gang. The objective was for the subordinates to avoid drugs, hard drinking and maintain family unity," the federal police said in a statement.
Cedeno, 47, was picked up at a family baptism on Saturday with 43 others after a raid by police in helicopters. Accusations against him include ordering the murder of rivals and running prostitution rings of young girls.

Specifically, interrogation with enhanced techniques "led to the discovery of a KSM plot, the 'Second Wave,' 'to use East Asian operatives to crash a hijacked airliner into' a building in Los Angeles." KSM later acknowledged before a military commission at Guantanamo Bay that the target was the Library Tower, the tallest building on the West Coast. The memo explains that "information obtained from KSM also led to the capture of Riduan bin Isomuddin, better known as Hambali, and the discovery of the Guraba Cell, a 17-member Jemmah Islamiyah cell tasked with executing the 'Second Wave.' " In other words, without enhanced interrogations, there could be a hole in the ground in Los Angeles to match the one in New York.

Steve Lonegan's campaign announced the man who became known in the 2008 presidential campaign will appear at a taxpayer rally in Clark on May 5.
Lonegan is seeking the GOP nomination for governor along with former U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie and Assemblyman Rick Merkt.
Lonegan's campaign is charging $1,000 for a private meeting with the one-time plumber and the candidate. General admission is $50.

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama left the door open Tuesday to prosecuting Bush administration officials who devised the legal authority for gruesome terror-suspect interrogations, saying the United States lost "our moral bearings" with use of the tactics.
The question of whether to bring charges against those who devised justification for the methods "is going to be more of a decision for the attorney general within the parameters of various laws and I don't want to prejudge that," Obama said. The president discussed the continuing issue of terrorism-era interrogation tactics with reporters as he finished an Oval Office meeting with visiting King Abdullah II of Jordan.

Barack Obama's election as US president has failed to lift America's status in the Muslim and Arab world, and is a victory for Al-Qaeda, according to a new audio message allegedly from the terror network's second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri. The video was posted on key jihadist websites on Monday.
The authenticity of the tape is yet to be verified. The purported message is in Arabic and, unlike previous ones, contains no English subtitles. The message is edited with extracts from recent Arabic TV interviews with Arab political analysts.
"In our view, America is still the country that kills Muslims in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine. It is the country that steals our assets and occupies our lands, and which props up thieving and corrupt Arab regimes.
"The Islamic nation has opted to revive Islam and refuses to give in to oppression. Killing or capturing people casts the US in an even worse light. The US airstrikes in Pakistan pour oil on the flames and will lead to further defeats for that country," al-Zawahiri says.
DICK CHENEY: “One of the things that I find a little bit disturbing about this recent disclosure is they put out the legal memos, the memos that the CIA got from the Office of Legal Counsel, but they didn't put out the memos that showed the success of the effort. And there are reports that show specifically what we gained as a result of this activity. They have not been declassified.”
“I formally asked that they be declassified now. I haven't announced this up until now, I haven't talked about it, but I know specifically of reports that I read, that I saw that lay out what we learned through the interrogation process and what the consequences were for the country.”
“And I've now formally asked the CIA to take steps to declassify those memos so we can lay them out there and the American people have a chance to see what we obtained and what we learned and how good the intelligence was, as well as to see this debate over the legal opinions.”

The US has warned Eritrea it risks American military action for its support for a Somalian terrorist group linked to a plot to attack President Barack Obama.
It champions al-Shabaab, an al-Qaeda-linked group that American intelligence believes has trained a dozen of its own citizens to carry out attacks in the US.
President Obama's January inauguration was hit by FBI warnings about a potential suicide threat from 12 American citizens that had left Africa to infiltrate the US and disappeared.
Subsequently Washington quietly warned Eritrea, a former Italian colony which was occupied by Britain during the Second World War, it could suffer the same fate as Taliban-controlled Afghanistan in the wake of the September 11 attacks, if the plot was carried out.
FAKE BUDGET CUTS? “In our age of trillion-dollar budgets and deficits, $100 million is a rounding error at a Department of Agriculture regional office.”
For all the trumpeting, the effort raised questions about why Obama set the bar so low, considering that $100 million amounts to:
--Less than one-quarter of the budget increase that Congress awarded to itself.
--4 percent of the military aid the United States sends to Israel.
--Less than half the cost of one F-22 fighter plane.
--7 percent of the federal subsidy for the money-losing Amtrak passenger rail system.
--1/10,000th of the government's operating budgets for Cabinet agencies, excluding the Iraq and Afghan wars and the stimulus bill.
"$100 million here, $100 million there, pretty soon even in Washington it adds up to real money."
Report: Antarctic Ice Growing, Not Shrinking
Ice is expanding in much of Antarctica, contrary to the widespread public belief that global warming is melting the continental ice cap.
East Antarctica is four times the size of west Antarctica and parts of it are cooling. The Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research report prepared for last week's meeting of Antarctic Treaty nations in Washington noted the South Pole had shown "significant cooling in recent decades.
Australia Antarctic Division glaciology program head Ian Allison said sea ice losses in west Antarctica over the past 30 years had been more than offset by increases in the Ross Sea region, just one sector of east Antarctica.


WASHINGTON – While Barack Obama is basking in praise for his "decisive" handling of the Somali pirate attack on a merchant
ship in the India Ocean, reliable military sources close to the scene are painting a much different picture of the incident – accusing the president of employing restrictive rules of engagement that actually hampered the rescue of Capt. Richard Phillips and extended the drama at sea for days.
Multiple opportunities to free the captain of the Maersk Alabama from three young pirates were missed, these sources say – all because a Navy SEAL team was not immediately ordered to the scene and then forced to operate under strict, non-lethal rules of engagement.
They say the response duty office at the Pentagon was initially unwilling to grant an order to use lethal force to rescue Phillips. They also report the White House refused to authorize deployment of a Navy SEAL team to the location for 36 hours, despite the recommendation of the on-scene commander.
The White House also turned down two rescue plans offered up by the Seal commander on the scene and the captain of the USS Bainbridge.
The SEAL team operated under rules of engagement that required them to do nothing unless the hostage's life was in "imminent' danger.
PROMISES, PROMISES: Obama keeps some Bush secrets
WASHINGTON (AP) - Despite a pledge to open government, the Obama administration has endorsed a Bush-era decision to keep secret key details of an FBI computer database that allows agents and analysts to search a billion documents with a wealth of personal information about Americans and foreigners.
President Barack Obama's Justice Department quietly told a federal court in Washington last week that it would not second-guess the previous administration's decisions to withhold some information about the bureau's Investigative Data Warehouse.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights advocacy group, had sued under the Freedom of Information Act to get records showing how the FBI protects the privacy of Americans whose personal information winds up in the vast database.
As a result, there is no public list of all the databases the FBI sucks into this computer warehouse; no information on how individuals can correct errors about them in this FBI database; and no public access to assessments the bureau did of the warehouse's impact on Americans' privacy. (excerpt) read more at breitbart.com.