With the Democrats soon to be in charge of the Senate and with today’s confirmation of Scaife’s pal Theodore Olson to be solicitor general, is it possible we may be headed back to the partisan wars of the Clinton era? Both sides are trying to figure out how the new Senate power arrangements will affect partisan retribution and tit-for-tat politics. When will shooting back at the other team be appropriate-and when just payback?...
All have plenty of legislators in their deep pockets. It’s a tough call, but one lobby looms above the rest, scarfing up tens of billions from the public trough. One lobby got itself excluded from the campaign finance-reform bill that will pass Congress later this week. One interest group–and one alone–is capable of defeating mom and apple pie, if it comes to that. Broadcasters. Let’s review in reverse, starting with the apple pie....
A few years back, Rubin accepted an assignment to chronicle her efforts to work out, eat right and lose weight for Shape magazine. From 1999 to 2001, Rubin tracked her progress in a series of monthly columns (with photos) that were as brutally honest as they were funny. “I agreed to do it because I figured that, ‘Oh, no one reads this’,” Rubin says. But in publicly obsessing over food before Shape’s 1....
If any resource is endlessly renewable, it is the tree. Ecology-oriented policy ought to encourage consumers to substitute wood for materials derived from nonrenewable ores and chemicals. Instead, per capita wood use has been declining, partly because wood prices have risen with the spread of environment-friendly logging practices, such as planting more trees than are cut. For all the re cent blather about “sustainable development,” anti-logging sentiment is forcing workers and customers out of one of the few industries that is in every sense sustainable....
Taking a question from Turquoise Parker, a teacher from Durham, North Carolina, about dealing with the issue of race with her students, Biden spoke about meeting with Floyd’s family before his funeral and the earthquake of societal change sparked by his death. “I can’t breathe,” Biden said slowly, echoing the words the unarmed Minnesota man repeated as he died at the hands of police. “Mama, I can’t breathe. What happened was the whole world saw it, they didn’t just hear it, they saw it....
Before his scheduled remarks at Carnegie Mellon University, Biden visited the scene where the structure fell just hours before his arrival in Pittsburgh. He commended first responders, placing his hand on the shoulder of a police officer and saying “these guys deserve an incredible amount of credit.” Biden noted that the city has more bridges than any other in the world. “And we’re going to fix them all,” he said....
There was skepticism from both Democrats and Republicans toward the idea after a group of U.S. officials visited Venezuela in the highest-level trip to the South American country in years, as the White House considers whether to ban oil imports from Russia. The visit comes amid the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine and the imposition of harsh sanctions against the country by the U.S. and its allies. Russia is a major oil and gas exporter....
President Joe Biden will hold a virtual meeting with independent ranchers and farmers on Monday to discuss the initiatives, which are part of a larger action to reduce the high inflation rates that have impacted his approval ratings. Meat prices have risen 16 percent from a year ago, with an especially high jump of 20.9 percent in beef prices. Biden issued an executive order in July instructing the Department of Agriculture to look more forcefully into potential breaches of the 1921 Packers and Stockyards Act aimed at protecting buyers and fair competition....
White House officials said Wednesday the Commerce Department will conduct its own “evidence-based” analysis of the apps to assess any national security risks related to user data collection or Chinese military or intelligence activities, according to the Associated Press. For more reporting from the Associated Press, see below: The department also will make recommendations on how to further protect Americans’ genetic and personal health information and will address the risks of certain software apps connected to China or other adversaries, according to senior administration officials....
Former President Donald Trump worked with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to issue the COVID-era policy, known as Title 42, to quickly deport migrants during the pandemic to limit the spread of the virus in 2020. The decision to end Title 42 has not yet been finalized but a draft report to end the policy on May 23 has been circulating through the federal government, according to Associated Press sources....
“Our interests will not always converge. … But we have a broad, common, good basis,” Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel cautioned. Her declaration acknowledged a salient truth easily lost in the meeting’s bonhomie: strains in the transatlantic relationship festered long before former President Donald Trump. This is natural. Interests do diverge. But in the Western Balkans, these differences have grown into something contradictory and unsustainable. For over a decade the United States has outsourced its development policy in the region to the European Union....
The Electoral College system has a bias which is set to favor the Republican presidential candidate in 2020 again, but the discrepancy between the popular vote and electoral votes will not be as wide as the “statistical outlier” election of 2016. Columbia University researchers delved into the electoral “inversion” which allows candidates like Al Gore and Hillary Clinton to win the most votes across the country, but still lose the Electoral College which decides U....
In polling, Clinton was ahead right up to election day, while Biden finds himself similarly leading the president this time around. Despite this sense of deja vu, there are differences this time out—Biden’s lead in the polls is stronger than Clinton’s ever was. He also has five times the cash on-hand she did at around the same point, according to his campaign. In July 2016, the Clinton campaign reported it had around $44 million cash on-hand to fund her bid....
According to an ABC News/Washington Post poll, Biden currently has a 54-44 percentage advantage over the president. The poll also notes that Trump remains in the “precarious position” of being the first president in 81 years of modern polling never to achieve majority approval during his time in office. The survey finds that Trump is currently at 44 percent approval rating among all Americans. The poll showed that while more people trust Biden over Trump to handle the coronavirus pandemic by 51-40 percent, this has shrunk from a 20 point lead of 54-34 in mid-July....
Both born to loving families, healthy and at an average weight of seven pounds. However, one child is born into poverty and the other is not. The child born into poverty is more likely to experience toxic stress, suffer from environmental exposure to lead, develop diseases like asthma and experience trauma. Growing up, the child is more likely to live in a school district with low-quality education, and as an adult, more likely to encounter barriers to employment and become entangled with the criminal legal system....
Asked by Israeli news anchor Yonit Levi whether he would be willing to take a stronger stance to ensure Iran does not get a nuclear weapon, Biden said, “As a last resort, yes.” In an interview with Israel’s Channel 12 News that aired on Wednesday, the president doubled down on his efforts to revive the 2015 nuclear deal that he said his predecessor, former President Donald Trump, made the “gigantic mistake” of withdrawing the U....
Biden told reporters it “a big mistake” that some governors are loosening COVID-19 restrictions on Wednesday, adding, “The last thing we need is Neanderthal thinking.” His comments come after Texas Governor Greg Abbott said he would terminate all of the state’s coronavirus measures starting next week, and Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves announced that the state would rescind its mask requirements effective immediately. Some politicians are taking Biden’s words as a personal attack, criticizing the president for insulting those who have decided it’s safe to no longer wear masks as a safety precaution for spreading the virus....
Biden announced that the Department of Homeland Security and Federal Emergency Management Agency can free up federal funds to coordinate a relief effort in alleviating the “hardship and suffering caused” suffering caused by the natural disaster. The emergency declaration was announced prior to the Hurricane reaching Puerto Rico. Fiona has since knocked out all power across the Caribbean island, with torrential rain and the possibility of life-threatening and catastrophic flooding along with mudslides and landslides forecast for Monday....
As with others, paying back student loans has been challenging for me. Faced with financial difficulties amidst the pandemic, millions of us have benefited from the moratorium on student loan interest and postponed loan payments. While former president Trump’s executive order has helped many get through the coronavirus crisis, it’s actually proof of one important thing: the role of incentives in our decision making. It also underscores why President Biden’s student loan forgiveness ideas would be so bad—and why we desperately need a better approach....
Taylor Force was a West Point graduate, U.S. Army veteran and graduate student at Vanderbilt University. He was 28 years old when he was murdered in Israel by a Palestinian terrorist named Bashar Masalha on March 8, 2016. Masalha wounded 10 others in his attack before being killed by Israeli police. His family immediately attained celebrity status among many Palestinians and his “martyrdom” was applauded by major Palestinian groups: Fatah, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad....
