Click here to view this media Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum hopes that Google will do something to disassociate his name with with a sex act. The top search results on the worlds most popular Internet search engine conflates the former senator’s name with anal sex . MSNBC’s Chuck Todd talked to Santorum about his “Google issue” Thursday. “Do you think google has any responsibility in how its search engine works,” Todd asked. “It comes with the territory,” Santorum explained. “There are foul people out there who do horrible things. It’s unfortunate some people thought it would be a big joke to make fun of my name. That comes with the territory.” “You don’t think google should step in themselves?” Todd prodded. “I don’t know how they’ve treated other circumstances and other situations, whether they treated it differently than mine. I would suggest that if they have treated it differently and have done things stop this kind of this vile activity and filth on the Internet, they should apply it equally to me and everybody else,” Santorum said.
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Backbencher arrested at central London flat where alleged assault of 29-year-old parliamentary researcher took place Andrew Bridgen, the Conservative MP for North West Leicestershire, has been arrested on suspicion of sexual assault of a 29-year-old woman. The assault is alleged to have happened in the early hours of Thursday morning and the 46-year-old MP, elected for the first time last year, was arrested at the scene, a flat in central London. It is understood the women is a parliamentary researcher, but not in Bridgen’s office. The Metropolitan police said: “A 46-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of sexual assault against a 29-year-old woman at an address in SW1 in the early hours of Thursday 9 June. The man has been bailed to return on a date in mid-July.” Bridgen has been an active backbencher with a relatively low profile since he won his Midlands seat in May. He is on the right of the party and campaigned against the alternative vote system in last month’s referendum. He sits on the regulatory reform committee in parliament and holds no other official posts. A father of two and married since 2000, it is understood Bridgen was recently separated from his wife. His most high-profile political intervention came on Tuesday when he defended the government’s NHS reforms, appearing on the BBC’s Newsnight and saying: “If we fail to go through with these reforms, we are caving in to Stalinist protectionist elements.” He originally trained as an officer in the Royal Marines before returning to his family’s successful agricultural business, selling pre-washed vegetables. He is currently the non-executive chairman of that company, AB Produce plc. The register of members financial interests records that he is paid £7,773 monthly for six hours work. He was previously the East Midlands chairman of the Institute of Directors and served on the East Midlands Regional Assembly as a business representative. He opened his maiden speech in the Commons on 3 June last year by saying: “I took advice on what the contents of a maiden speech should be, and I was surprised by some of what I heard. I was told that my speech should have all the attributes of a lady’s well-cut dress, meaning that it should be long enough to cover all the important points but still short enough to be interesting.” He went on to set out his Eurosceptic agenda. “It is not just as a politician but also from a business perspective that my views on Europe have developed over the last 20 years,” he said. “In 1997 we were the fourth most competitive place in the world in which to do business, but now we are a lowly 84th. Much of that is due to regulation from Europe. This cannot continue.” He is a regular in the chamber having attended an above-average 121 debates in the past year and voted in 87% of the House’s votes. Last month in a written question to the justice secretary Kenneth Clarke he asked “what steps he is taking to increase the efficiency of the criminal justice system”. Bridgen, won the North West Leicestershire seat with a 12% swing from Labour at the 2010 election. The seat was previously held by Labour MP David Taylor who died on Boxing Day 2009 after a heart attack. A key marginal, it had been held by Labour since 1997. In 2010 there was also a sizeable Liberal Democrat vote, suggesting that the seat could be winnable for Labour if Bridgen was found guilty and a byelection triggered. On Tuesday Bridgen joined Twitter for the first time, highlighting his Newsnight appearance later that night. The news of his arrest emerged first on the same social networking site. On his parliamentary website he lists business and enterprise, civil liberties, law and order and the armed forces as his interests. A spokesman for the Conservative party said: “At the moment, this is a matter for the police, who are investigating, and it would be inappropriate to comment further until the facts are clear.” Conservatives Crime Polly Curtis guardian.co.uk
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US secretary of state will not be quitting White House next year to replace Robert Zoellick, spokesman says Hillary Clinton has denied reports that she is planning to quit her job next year to become head of the World Bank. The US secretary of state and former first lady has said publicly she did not plan to stay on at the State Department for more than four years. Associates told Reuters that Clinton has told the White House she would be interested in the World Bank job should current president, Robert Zoellick, leave at the end of his term, in the middle of 2012. Such a move would come as America’s top diplomat is dealing with the toughest set of foreign policy challenges yet faced by the Obama administration. Clinton is orchestrating US reaction to the Arab Spring uprisings and the continuing unrest in the middle east and war in Afghanistan. Clinton spokesman Philippe Reines flatly denied the report to The Washington Post. “100% untrue, Reuters is wrong,” Reines wrote in an e-mail to the paper. Alex Slater, managing director of Democratic consultancy SKDK, said he was “surprised” by the reports: “She has done an incredible job at the state department and her approval ratings are extremely high,” he said. Slater said he had no knowledge of her intentions but said she had always made clear that she was going to leave after the first term. Clinton would need the approval of the 187 member countries of the World Bank in order to secure the job. She is widely seen to have done an excellent job at the state department after her unsuccessful attempt to beat president Barack Obama to lead the Democrat’s into the 2008 election. The World Bank has traditionally been headed by an American. The US is currently assessing candidates for the top job at the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank’s sister organisation, and now is a sensitive moement for negotiations over both jobs. The IMF job came free after the resignation of Dominique Strauss-Kahn following allegations of attempted rape. The IMF has traditionally been headed by a European. One leading candidate is France’s finance minister Christine Lagarde, who has yet to secure US approval for her bid. Neither the IMF nor the World Bank have ever been led by a woman. Should Clinton leave, John Kerry, chairman of the senate foreign relations committee and a close Obama ally, is seen as a possible replacement for her. But it will be difficult to match her star power. The World Bank would provide Clinton with a platform for many of her biggest concerns. The organisation provides billions in funds to the world’s poorest countries and Clinton has long been vocal on global development issues. Hillary Clinton Obama administration John Kerry US politics United States World Bank IMF Global economy Dominic Rushe guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …That Atlantic’s “What I Read” feature is typically a straight-forward literary affair, with big names rattling off the newspapers, websites, magazines, and TV shows that keep them informed (with a little Girl With the Dragon Tattoo thrown in ). Ann Coulter’s recitation of her media diet, however, is downright hilarious….
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Archbishop ‘free to express politics views’, but PM profoundly disagrees with his views on debt, welfare and education David Cameron has rejected the archbishop of Canterbury’s claim that the coalition government is forcing through “radical policies for which no one voted”. The prime minister said Rowan Williams was free to express his concerns, but he “profoundly disagreed” with many of his comments. Conservative and Liberal Democrat cabinet ministers joined backbenchers in registering surprise at the sweep and the specifics of the archbishop’s criticisms. Speaking at a press conference on a visit to Northern Ireland, Cameron said: “I think the archbishop of Canterbury is entirely free to express political views. I have never been one to say that the Church should fight shy of making political interventions. “But what I would say is that I profoundly disagree with many of the views that he has expressed, particularly on issues like debt and welfare and education.” Williams is guest editor of this week’s New Statesman and in an editorial he wrote: “With remarkable speed, we are being committed to radical, long-term policies for which no one voted. “At the very least, there is an understandable anxiety about what democracy means in such a context.” He criticised the government for continuing to blame the country’s difficulties entirely on the deficit it inherited from Labour and said there was “bafflement and indignation” over coalition plans to reform the health service and education. Vince Cable, the business secretary, said he was equally baffled by Williams’s comments. “The two parties of the coalition got substantially more than half the total vote at the last election and the public knew that we were going to have to embark on very difficult changes, connected with sorting out the massive budget deficit problem,” he told Sky News. He added: “The point which he seemed to be making was that there wasn’t enough debate around health reform, for example, which I don’t understand because there’s a very big debate. My party has triggered it, we’re having a pause, rethinking the reforms. So he’s obviously had his views and it’s welcome that he pitches into political debate but I think he’s actually wrong on the specifics.” The welfare secretary, Iain Duncan Smith, defended himself against an accusation by the archbishop that he brought back “the seductive language of ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor”. Williams criticised “the steady pressure” to increase “punitive responses to alleged abuses of the system”. Duncan Smith said the archbishop should have been more balanced in his comments. The public would have been more anxious about the coalition if they had not tackled benefit dependency, Duncan Smith told the BBC. “With respect to the archbishop of Canterbury, I have never ever spoken about the deserving or undeserving poor. I don’t believe in that concept. All I say is that the system has created an undeserving group, that’s what it has created,” he said. Ministers were also surprised at the archbishop’s suggestion that education reforms had not been well-trailed before and during the election. Nick Boles, the private secretary of the education minister Nick Gibb, suggested that church schools were acting as a producer interest, trying to prevent the spread of academy schools. In the article, Williams accepted that the government’s big society agenda was not a “cynical walking-away from the problem”. But he warned there was confusion about how voluntary organisations would “pick up the responsibilities shed by government”, and said that the big society was seen with “widespread suspicion”. “The uncomfortable truth is that, while grassroots initiatives and local mutualism are to be found flourishing in a great many places, they have been weakened by several decades of cultural fragmentation,” Williams wrote. He also criticised the chancellor, George Osborne, saying: “It isn’t enough to respond with what sounds like a mixture of, ‘this is the last government’s legacy’ and ‘we’d like to do more, but just wait until the economy recovers a bit’.” Williams also singled out Labour for failing to produce fresh ideas since going into opposition. Westminster politics “feels pretty stuck”, he warned, adding that his aim was to stimulate a livelier debate and to challenge the left to develop its own “big idea” as an alternative to the Conservative-Liberal Democrat alliance. Andy Burnham, Labour’s shadow education secretary, ducked this element of the piece and instead said people would share Williams’s concerns about the government’s pursuit of policies for which it has no mandate. Burnham said: “This government has no mandate for cutting too far and too fast, subjecting the NHS to a reckless top-down reorganisation and launching an unprecedented attack on young people by scrapping EMA and trebling tuition fees.” Lord Tebbit, former Conservative chairman and cabinet minister, said it was part of the archbishop of Canterbury’s job to “make comments of a political kind in this area”. Tebbit, a critic of the coalition, told Today that Williams was highlighting a “problem of coalition”. But Gary Streeter, chair of the all-party Christians in Parliament group, said: “I think the people are with us on this and the archbishop, sadly and unusually for him, has ill-judged his attack.” David Cameron Rowan Williams Liberal-Conservative coalition Iain Duncan Smith Vince Cable Andy Burnham Public services policy New Statesman Hélène Mulholland Allegra Stratton guardian.co.uk
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enlarge Damn….I think this might be a little overkill in the collections department : The Department of Education isn’t generally seen as the threatening powerhouse that say the Department of Defense or even public safety offices are. Until now…. Last week a father of 3 had his door broken down by a SWAT team looking for the man’s wife who had defaulted on her student loans. They threw him to the ground, handcuffed him, put him in a patrol car for 6 hours, and traumatized his kids. Holy crap…when did we start sending in SWAT teams for loan defaults? You know, I’ll admit that I got behind on my loan payments after I split up with my ex and I had to move and find a new job and start a new life. The loan people were surprisingly understanding, giving me a year’s amnesty to get my life pulled together. I’m going to give the Dept. of Ed. the benefit of doubt that they at least tried to reach the wife via telephone first, but still…is this the best use of taxpayer dollars?
Continue reading …Greta Van Susteren Brings on Mr. Bastion of Morality Donald Trump to Discuss Weiner Scandal
June 9, 2011 No Comment
Click here to view this media I guess Newt Gingrich wasn’t available to discuss Anthony Weiner’s sexting scandal, so Fox brought in the next best thing, Donald Trump. Who else would I want to hear preach to Fox’s Greta Van Susteren how terrible what Anthony Weiner has done than laughing stock and serial tail chaser for a younger and hotter wife at every opportunity than “the Donald?” I assume John Ensign, Tom Coburn and David Vitter were also too busy to come visit Greta as well. Van Susteren and Trump are apparently unaware of the concept that those in glass houses ought not to be throwing stones. I sincerely hope they both find themselves skewered for this by the late night comics.
Continue reading …Fred Goodwin told by judge details of his affair were in the public interest
June 9, 2011 No Comment
Judge tells former chief executive of RBS he is ‘public figure’, distinguishing him from someone like Ryan Giggs Sir Fred Goodwin, the former chief executive of the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), could not have expected to keep an alleged affair with a colleague concealed by the use of privacy injunctions because the nature of his job meant there was a public interest in his relationships, a judge has said. Mr Justice Tugendhat, ruling for the fourth time on the controversial case, also said it was reasonable to identify the woman’s job description as “an important feature”, but she should not be named because it would “be likely to cause distress to her”. Sir Fred had a “reputation as an exceptionally forceful businessman”, said the judge. He was “chief executive of one of the largest publicly quoted companies in the United Kingdom, doing business on a global scale” which made him “a public figure” whose private life was more likely to be of interest to the public. This public interest, it was said, distinguished Goodwin, under whose stewardship RBS had to be bailed out with £45 billion of taxpayers’ money, from “sportsmen or celebrities” – such as footballer Ryan Giggs – who do not normally carry out “official functions” unless their indiscretions were to impact upon, for example, their football team. Few details of the nature of the alleged relationship between Goodwin and his colleague emerged in court, with neither party prepared to offer details in witness statements. Formally, RBS seems to have been unaware of the relationship until February 2011, more than two years after Goodwin left the bank, and just days before The Sun newspaper first contacted him regarding the allegation. Evidence from the woman stated that an internal investigation had been conducted by RBS, after which she had “not been criticised or disciplined” and it had “not been suggested by anyone at RBS that she was in a position of conflict or in breach of the RBS code [of conduct]“. RBS refused to elaborate, other than to repeat its statement that it was “co-operating fully” with the City regulator, the Financial Services Authority. However, a witness statement from Goodwin in March – when he was still trying to maintain an injunction preventing the publication of his name – said he believed publication of the alleged affair would “lead to considerable, intrusive and disturbing speculation as to my private life and relationships”, and “have a very substantial impact on the way in which friends, colleagues and business contacts relate to me and therefore a serious negative impact on my personal life and career”. The Sun originally began inquiring about a story about Goodwin and the unamed woman on 1 March, and lawyers acting for the bank boss succeeded in obtaining an injunction preventing Goodwin being named via a telephone hearing later that day. However in May, the injunction was altered allowing Goodwin – but not the woman – to be named, hours after Lord Stonenham, speaking on behalf of Lord Oakeshott, used parliamentary privilege to identify Goodwin as somebody who had taken out a privacy injunction. In the ruling Tugendhat also criticised Lord Stoneham, who used parliamentary privilege to name Goodwin publicly for the first time, for deliberately “frustrating” the court order. In reply, Lord Oakeshott said: “Every taxpayer has the right to know all the relevant facts leading up to the collapse of RBS, including failures of corporate governance. Each individual failure of corporate governance might not have been enough to bring down the bank on its own, but every single emergency break had to fail for RBS to crash so disastrously off the Forth Bridge.” Sir Fred Goodwin Privacy Royal Bank of Scotland The Sun Injunctions Privacy & the media Superinjunctions Media law Newspapers & magazines Newspapers Dan Sabbagh James Robinson Jill Treanor guardian.co.uk
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Metropolitan police told to look into dark arts of private investigator Jonathan Rees Lord Mandelson has become the most influential Labour politician to demand the Metropolitan police deepens its investigation into unlawful newspaper practices after it was revealed his bank accounts had been targeted by a private investigator in the pay of tabloid journalists. Mandelson, the former business secretary and one of Tony Blair’s closest confidantes, contacted the Met on Thursday asking to know what information it holds on illegal targeting of his bank accounts, as well as those of his family. Friends of Mandelson noted that Jonathan Rees of Southern Investigations did not just work for News of the World, but also for the Daily Mirror, partly during the editorship of Piers Morgan. Now hosting a chatshow on CNN, Morgan edited the Mirror between 1995 and 2004. Scotland Yard has confirmed that a small team of officers, known as Operation Tuleta, is assessing whether to set up an investigation. They are understood to be examining a mass of material seized from Rees to see whether it contains evidence of lawbreaking on behalf of newspapers. The Met already has 45 detectives working on Operation Weeting, the separate phone hacking inquiry which began in January. In a recent interview in the Financial Times, Morgan declared his sympathy for Andy Coulson, who resigned as News of the World editor over phone hacking and then stood down as David Cameron’s communications chief, saying the allegations made it impossible for him to do his government job. Coulson insists he had no personal knowledge of phone hacking. Morgan said he had edited papers “where you hadn’t got a clue what’s going on half the time”. Last night a spokesman for Trinity Mirror said: “Many years ago some of our journalists used Southern Investigations. They were last used in 1999. Trinity Mirror’s position is clear. Our journalists work within the criminal law and the PCC code of conduct.” The Met has had access to surveillance data detailing Rees’s dealings with Fleet Street titles including the News of the World and the Daily Mirror. Mandelson’s intervention, expected to be followed by other former senior cabinet ministers, raises the seriousness of the phone hacking scandal to another level. He is determined that the police investigation does not focus solely into allegations of phone hacking undertaken on behalf of the News of the World by private investigator Glenn Mulcaire. He said: “It really isn’t acceptable to keep pointing the finger at one newspaper when, clearly, the use of unlawful means of investigating was, or is, widespread. This is a bigger issue than the wrongdoing of one rogue investigator and that’s why this whole issue should be pursued more widely. That is why I have contacted the Met police today to ask them what information they may hold from current or previous investigations.” Lord Prescott, the former deputy prime minister, called for a public inquiry into newspaper ethics, a call Downing Street will resist for as long as the police are conducting inquiries. He said the “criminal activity by our press” had polluted a number of institutions in the country, including the Met, which he said had refused to accept that phone hacking was widespread. “Having told me personally that my phone messages had not been tapped at all, there was no evidence, the new inquiry comes along and tells me there were 44 occasions. “You can’t trust the police if they are producing misleading information, deliberately so.” Tony Blair, named this week as one of the political figures targeted by Rees, said he was not going to contact the police personally. “I assume that if someone’s got something, they will get in touch with me,” he said. Phone hacking Newspapers & magazines National newspapers Newspapers News of the World News International Daily Mirror Trinity Mirror Peter Mandelson Crime Police John Prescott Patrick Wintour James Robinson guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Republican Dirty Tricks With Fake Primary Challengers in WI Recall Elections Could Backfire
June 9, 2011 No Comment
Click here to view this media As was already reported here , the Republicans in Wisconsin got caught planning to recruit fake Democrats to run primary races against the Democrats in the upcoming recall elections. It now appears they have their third candidate — Former GOP lawmaker Otto Junkermann to run as Democrat against Nancy Nusbaum in Rob Cowles recall primary : A former Republican state representative plans to run as a Democrat against Nancy Nusbaum in an attempt to thwart her efforts to unseat Sen. Rob Cowles in a recall race. Otto Junkermann, 82 of Allouez, said he thinks “very highly” of Cowles, a Republican also from Allouez, and will run against Nusbaum as a “conservative Democrat.” “I respect Rob a great deal. I’ve known him, I followed him into the Assembly and took the position he had when he went into the Senate, and I always admired him,” Junkermann said. Junkermann served in the Assembly as a Republican for one term from 1987-88. He was also a Brown County supervisor from 1982-87 and ran again in 2002, 2004 and 2008 but lost. Asked if he was a so-called “spoiler candidate,” Junkermann said: “I don’t know how I could avoid being considered that.” So they don’t even care who knows that they’re willing to win an election by any means necessary. As Rachel pointed out, even the National Review is saying this could backfire on them : If both Hopper and Kapanke lose, that leaves only one more seat Democrats have to pick up to retake the Senate. In order to delay recall elections, the GOP has planned to run fake Democratic primary candidates against the GOP challengers, which would push the elections back another month. That would give Republicans an extra month’s worth of distance from the collective-bargaining imbroglio that got them in this situation, and would allow more time to campaign. Yet this will almost certainly be seen as a “dirty trick” by media and some voters. It certainly appears like an admission that Republicans are struggling. And while it can be argued that the recall elections in themselves are merely dirty tricks, enough of a double standard exists that this ploy could backfire. Here’s more from TPM — Octogenarian Former GOP State Rep To Run As Fake ‘Democrat’ In Wis. Recalls : Don’t let anyone say there isn’t bipartisanship in Wisconsin. The newest example of Wisconsin Republicans recruiting fake Democratic candidates, to force Dem primaries and make trouble in the state Senate recalls: Otto Junkermann, an 82-year old former Republican state representative , who will challenge official Democratic candidate Nancy Nusbaum for the recall against GOP state Sen. Rob Cowles. As the Green Bay Press Gazette reports, Junkermann very openly professes to support Cowles Over in another district, a 25-year old county GOP official has signed up to run as a ringer Democrat in a primary. And in another district, a retiree who has donated to multiple Republicans is running as a fake Dem. The key here is that recalls are now tentatively scheduled for July 12, under the state election officials’ proposed timelines, targeting six Republicans. If there were only one Democrat against each one Republican, then the July 12 date would immediately be held as the general election. But if there were additional Democrats, the July 12 date would then become the primary, giving the incumbents more time to campaign for a general election in August. Also, thanks to Wisconsin’s open primary system in which anybody can vote in a party primary, it would force the Democrats to spend time, money and resources campaigning for their own nominations. The strategy is being officially coordinated by state Republican leaders , and has been endorsed by state Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald.
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