A man declared dead 16 years ago was charged with the recent kidnapping of a 12-year-old Lexis Roberts, a Nevada girl whose body was found by hunters in Louisiana. Her mother Suellen Roberts remains missing. (Nov. 5)
Continue reading …That’s my reading on this : With the House now firmly in Republican hands, some on the left have and are voicing concerns that the GOP will attempt to impeach President Barack Obama. While liberals, such as MSNBC’s Ed Schultz, the New Republic’s Jonathan Chait, and various bloggers wring their hands over the sinister hypothetical, the Republican leadership is denying that they have even considered the possibility. “Liberal commentators are simply making things up,” Republican leader John Boehner’s spokesman Michael Steel told The Daily Caller. “We have no plans to [impeach] the President. Our plan is to listen to the American people, who want us to stop the tax hikes, cut spending, repeal and replace ObamaCare, and help create jobs.” Some have pointed to the future head of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, California Republican Rep. Darrell Issa’s plans to investigate the president as an impeachment indicator — something Issa has denied planning to do on Bloomberg’s “Political Capitol” in October. “Not a chance at this point. I don’t see it happening,” Issa said regarding the possibility of impeachment. “Look, disagreeing with the president — the president using his authority, maybe even misusing it — that’s not what impeachment’s for. Do we have disagreements? Yes. Do we want to see that the president strictly adheres to process? Yes.” Despite such assurances, on Election Night Schultz called on Republicans to reject any notion of impeachment — despite the fact that no leading Republican has voiced any such intentions. “Four years ago, in the midst of an avalanche of criticism of the Bush administration, Nancy Pelosi took impeachment off the table,” Schultz sputtered. “I want to ask Mr. Boehner tonight, are you going to take impeachment off the table? Or are we going to go down this road of divide, are we going to go down this road of investigations?” Methinks liberals protesteth too much. Nobody serious on the GOP side has even suggested impeachment. What would we impeach him for? Overspending? Socialist policies? None of that comes up to the standard of “high crimes and misdemeanors” as required by the constitution. Just being a bad president is not an impeachable offense. Nancy Pelosi took impeachment off the table because she had a similar problem – Bush had committed no impeachable offenses and she knew it would create a lot of chaos with voters and wouldn’t accomplish anything.
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Photo: davidsilver , Flickr, Creative Commons On election day , Republican strategist Karl Rove may have let more truth slip than he’s typically comfortable with. At a conference for shale gas drilling companies, he gave a speech about how the incoming Congress “sure as heck” won’t pass legislation that would limit greenhouse gas emissions. “Climate is gone,” he said. It very well may be, Mr. Rove, if you get your way. … Read the full story on TreeHugger
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Okay, we’re no Snake Plissken, but let’s just say that DC has become something of an interesting town lately, with mock-left and faux-right wing pundits holding giant rallies, Wiccan ladies with questionable sanity running for office, and various other signs of the apocalypse happening every day. We were glad to make it out with both eyes and we were glad to be doing so in the car of the future that’s finally a part of the present: Chevrolet’s $41,000 Volt . It’s actually (honestly) in proper production now, being delivered to select dealers soon, one of those production models given to us to drive from our great nation’s capital to the cultural capital of the world: New York City. We easily managed it on a single tank of gas, but what kind of mileage did we get? You’ll just have to read on to find out. Gallery: Chevrolet Volt DC test drive Continue reading Chevy Volt preview: escape from DC in today’s car of tomorrow Chevy Volt preview: escape from DC in today’s car of tomorrow originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 05 Nov 2010 12:04:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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A suicide bomber struck a mosque frequented by anti-Taliban tribal elders in northwestern Pakistan during afternoon prayers, killing at least 50 people in one of the deadliest attacks this year. (Nov. 5)
Continue reading …Netherlands Will Only Use Certified Sustainable Palm Oil by 2015 – First National-Level Commitment
November 5, 2010 No Comment
Oil palm fruit, photo: fitri agung / Creative Commons In a big boost for the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil certification standard, the Netherlands has committed to only using sustainable palm oil by the end of 2015–and becomes the first nation to do so. Dutch businesses are Europe’s largest imp… Read the full story on TreeHugger
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All images credit Shai Gil These days, people don’t build a lot of social housing, and when they do it is usually, as architectural critic John Bentley Mays noted, “architecturally dull and oppressive places, like jails, meant to encourage tenants to move on as quickly as possible”. Three years ago TreeHugger covered the design of Stephen Teeple’s 60 Richmond Street Coop in Toronto and thought it was different; Mark Guslits, then head of the Toronto Community Housing Corp, said “We happen… Read the full story on TreeHugger
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T-Mobile USA has been an oft-rumored darkhorse to help kill off AT&T’s iPhone exclusivity in the country — and for the life of us, we can’t think of a good reason that the carrier’s corporate stores would be carrying iPhone charge / sync cables now other than in preparation for a launch. It’s interesting to note that Deutsche Telekom boss Rene Obermann in part blamed the lack of the iPhone in the States as a driving factor in its third quarter churn rate… a meaningless musing, perhaps, but it could’ve been a little bit of foreshadowing, too. It’s important to note that T-Mobile has carried Nexus One accessories this year, too, so it’s not out of the realm of possibility to think that they’re just trying to cater to the unlockers who are already using iPhones on T-Mobile — but then again, we’d argue that the people savvy enough to do that probably aren’t shopping for overpriced cables in carrier stores. It’s also important to note that T-Mobile literally just took a dig at FaceTime (while blasting AT&T’s network in the same breath), so it’s hard to say what this means, if anything. [Thanks, anonymous tipster] Why is T-Mobile selling an iPhone cable? originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 05 Nov 2010 11:37:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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Michael Sheen won British Actor of the Year and Kevin Spacey got an honorary knighthood for his work restoring London’s Old Vic theater at the annual Britannia Awards presented by BAFTA Los Angeles Thursday night. (Nov. 5)
Continue reading …And thousands of Republicans will replace them : The Great Shellacking of 2010 will throw more than 2,000 Democratic congressional staffers out of their jobs. And it will send thousands of gleeful Republican staffer wannabes into overdrive to get those resumes up to the Hill to fill those vacancies. Here’s a back-of-the-envelope look at the numbers: On the House side, 60 victorious GOP candidates are expected to hire more than 1,000 new aides in their personal offices. The staff allocations on the House committees have yet to be worked out, but they often run 2 to 1 for the majority party, so that could add up to a shift of maybe 800 or so jobs. Then there are the new House leadership staffs and so on. On the Senate side, the six new GOP senators are likely to hire around 150 personal office aides, and more Republican committee staff members will be sitting behind the senators at hearings. Democrats, with a sagging local economy – K Street isn’t hiring the way it used to, foundations and think tanks are pressed, colleges are hurting, corporations are frozen – may well be pounding the pavement for quite a while. Sadly for the newly unemployed MoveOn, ACORN, Media Matters for America, and MSNBC won’t have enough openings to absorb them. GOP aides went through the same routine in 2006 and 2008. That’s the way of Washington. If you hitch yourself to a politician you run that risk.
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