Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Boycott of State of the Union is Disrespectful (ContributorNetwork)
COMMENTARY | According to the National Journal, Rep. Doug Lamborn, R-Colo., has decided to boycott the State of the Union address on Tuesday night. According to his statement, he doesn't support the policies of President Barack Obama and he "believes the president is in full campaign mode and will use the address as an opportunity to bash his political opponents." Lamborn's statement goes on to say he respects the president personally and the office of the president, but he is protesting the president's recess appointments, rejection of the Keystone pipeline and his "draconian" cuts to defense.
As a resident of Colorado who is also very disappointed in many of Obama's recent decisions, I find Rep. Lamborn's decision to boycott the State of the Union disrespectful to the president personally and the office he holds.
By all means, Lamborn, can and should express the disagreements he has with this administration's policies. But stomping his foot and staying home is not an adult, professional or valid way to express those disagreements. One would hope an elected official from my state would have much better ways to show that he is against policies than hiding.
In addition, in spite of disagreements and the rather extreme division in political ideologies that this country faces, it saddens me to think that instead of taking opportunity to interact with his colleagues -- both those who agree with his viewpoints and those who don't -- he is standing back.
How many thousands of times in his life has Mr. Lamborn said the words, "One nation, under God, indivisible?" I would urge the congressman from Colorado go out and prove those words are more than just something we say because we're trained to. Go show us an indivisible country, Mr. Lamborn. Go to the State of the Union address.
Fed to Introduce Game Changing Communications Policies ...
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The Federal Reserve plans to introduce changes to its communications policies to the public on Wednesday, making it easier for the central bank to move ahead with another round of asset purchases later this year by helping to explain the need for additional stimulus.
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However, officials have said that it has no plans for further easing so long as the economy continues to recover. The Fed has lately been able to focus on communication in large part because it no longer must devote all of its energy to crisis management. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke has waited five years to make these improvements.
Central to the new policies is the plan to publish the predictions of senior Fed officials about the level at which they intend to set short-term interest rates over the next three years, including when they expect to end their commitment to keep rates near zero.? The Fed also will describe the expectations for the management of the central bank?s investment portfolio.
After a two-day meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee, which will begin Tuesday, the Fed will publish the first forecast, and may also publish a statement describing the its goals for the pace of inflation and level of unemployment, neither of which has ever been formalized.
By being more transparent, the Fed hopes to garner more public support for its policies. But several Fed officials have said they are hesitant to support new efforts to improve growth because they think monetary policy has exhausted most of its power since the last recession began. They have also expressed concern about inflation.
?Steady even if unspectacular growth accompanied by inflation in the neighborhood of 2 percent justifies some reluctance to change, in either direction, the F.O.M.C.?s accommodative policy,? said Dennis P. Lockhart, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.
However, the persistence of high unemployment requires that the Fed keep thinking about doing more, added Lockhart, though Fed officials have made clear that high unemployment in itself is insufficient cause for additional action, at least as long as inflation remains near 2 percent.
Don?t Miss: France, Germany Will Implement Basel III
To contact the reporter on this story: Emily Knapp at staff.writers@wallstcheatsheet.com
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Damien Hoffman at editors@wallstcheatsheet.com
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Source: http://wallstcheatsheet.com/economy/fed-to-introduce-game-changing-communications-policies.html/
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Hibbert leads Pacers past Lakers, 98-96 (AP)
LOS ANGELES ? Roy Hibbert scored eight of his 18 points in the fourth quarter playing with a broken nose, and five of his teammates also scored in double figures to help the Indiana Pacers beat the Los Angeles Lakers 98-96 on Sunday night.
Kobe Bryant scored 33 points for the Lakers, but missed what would have been a tying 3-pointer from 30 feet from the top of the key with 3.5 seconds to play and the Pacers clinched it at the free throw line.
The Pacers (11-5) are off to their best start since 2003-04, when they won 14 of their first 16, finished the regular season 61-21 and came within two wins of getting to the NBA finals.
The Lakers, coming off road losses to Miami and Orlando, failed to reach 100 points for the 11th straight game ? their longest streak since a 12-game stretch in 2003-04.
Hibbert, the Pacers' second-leading scorer, left the court with the broken nose after fouling Bryant with 6:46 left in the first quarter. Tyler Hansbrough replaced Hibbert and missed all five shots during Hibbert's brief absence, but grabbed seven rebounds.
Hibbert reported back in with 5:12 left in the second quarter after a trainer stuffed cotton up his nose, but he had difficulty keeping it in at times. He also had eight rebounds in 27 minutes.
Bryant beat the third-quarter buzzer with a 16-footer from the right of the key to give the Lakers a 78-77 lead, and former Pacers forward Troy Murphy got his first points of the game on a 3 that made it 82-77.
Hibbert, more than willing to get his nose dirty, scored six consecutive points in the paint to cut the margin to one with 6:15 left, and former UCLA guard Darren Collison's 3-pointer tied it at 86 with 5:32 left.
West ended the first half with a buzzer-beating 3-pointer from the top of the key, capping a 15-6 run and slicing the Lakers' 13-point lead to three at 52-49. He finished the half with 15 points, helping offset 17 by Bryant. Danny Granger's 3-pointer 1:37 into the third quarter gave Indiana a 55-54 lead, its first since Paul George's game-opening dunk.
Notes: The National Anthem was sung by Kareem Rush, whose seven-year NBA career included stints with the Lakers and Pacers. ... Bryant is 180 points away from overtaking Shaquille O'Neal (28,596) for fifth place on the career scoring list. The two-time NBA scoring champ also is 20 field goals shy of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's Lakers career record of 9,935 and needs to make 11 more free throws to eclipse Jerry West's Lakers career record of 7,160. ... Pacers associate coach Brian Shaw, who won three NBA championship rings playing for the Lakers and two more as an assistant coach under Phil Jackson, made his first trip to Staples Center since leaving Los Angeles. He and most of the Lakers players ? particularly Bryant ? were hoping he'd be hired to replace Jackson as head coach instead of Mike Brown, and Shaw was upset that he had to learn about Brown's hiring from media reports instead of from general manager Mitch Kupchak. ... The last time the Pacers faced the Lakers at Staples Center, they won 95-92 to snap a 14-game road losing streak against them ? including three losses in the 2000 NBA finals. ... The Lakers have a rematch with the Clippers on Wednesday night, trying to even the season series after a 102-94 loss Jan. 14. ... Lakers F Josh McRoberts, who spent the previous three seasons with the Pacers, played 20 scoreless minutes and took two shots in his first game against them.
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UN: Allegations of abuse by UN police in Haiti (AP)
UNITED NATIONS ? The U.N. is investigating two new allegations of U.N. police abuse and "sexual exploitation" of children in Haiti, spokesman Martin Nesirky said Monday.
One case involves U.N. police officers in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince, Nesirky said. They have been removed from duty while under investigation, he added. The second case involves one or more members of a police unit in the northern city of Gonaives.
Nesirky did not release the nationalities of the police or provide any other details.
"The United Nations is outraged by these allegations and takes its responsibilities to deal with them extremely seriously," Nesirky said.
He said the organization's mission in Haiti alerted U.N. headquarters in New York last week about the allegations.
The new charges of abuse come just months after six Uruguayan troops with the U.N. peacekeeping force in the Caribbean country were accused of raping a young Haitian man. That case has been referred to the Uruguayan judicial system.
Nesirky said that while home countries investigate military members of peacekeeping missions, the U.N. investigates police officers.
Allegations of abuse have dogged U.N. peacekeeping missions since their inception over 50 years ago.
The issue was thrust into the spotlight after the United Nations found in early 2005 that peacekeepers in Congo had sex with Congolese women and girls, usually in exchange for food or small sums of money.
The U.N. peacekeeping department instituted a "zero tolerance" policy toward sexual abuse, a new code of conduct for its more than 110,000 peacekeepers deployed around the world, and new training for officers and all U.N. personnel.
Nonetheless, allegations of sexual abuse persist.
Among the key reasons that Ban Ki-moon won U.S. backing to become U.N. Secretary-General in January 2007 was his pledge to restore the U.N.'s reputation ? battered by corruption in purchasing and sexual abuses by peacekeepers ? through effective oversight.
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Monday, January 23, 2012
Scientists Will Halt Research on Avian Flu That Could Kill Half the World's Humans—for Two Months [Science]
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Reid postpones vote on anti-piracy bill (AP)
WASHINGTON ? Yielding to strong opposition from the high tech community, Senate and House leaders said Friday they will put off further action on legislation to combat online piracy.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said he was postponing a test vote set for Tuesday "in light of recent events." Those events included a petition drive by Google that attracted more than 7 million participants and a one-day blackout by the online encyclopedia Wikipedia.
House Judiciary Committee chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas, quickly followed suit, saying consideration of a similar House bill would be postponed "until there is wider agreement on a solution."
The Senate's Protect Intellectual Property Act and the House's Stop Online Piracy Act have strong support from the entertainment industry and other businesses that lose billions of dollars annually to intellectual property theft and online sales of counterfeit products. But they also have strong opposition from Internet-related companies that argue the bill would lead to over-regulation and censorship of the Internet.
Reid has also seen at least a half-dozen senators who sponsored the bill announce they now oppose it.
Reid said counterfeiting and piracy cost the American economy billions of dollars every year and "there is no reason that the legitimate issues raised by many about this bill cannot be resolved." He said he was optimistic about reaching a compromise in the coming weeks.
The main Senate sponsor, Judiciary Committee chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said he respected Reid's decision to postpone the vote but lamented the Senate's unwillingness to debate the bill.
"The day will come when the senators who forced this move will look back and realize they made a knee-jerk reaction to a monumental problem," he said. Criminals in China, Russia and other countries "who do nothing but peddle in counterfeit products and stolen American content are smugly watching how the United States Senate decided" it was not worth debating the bill.
The two bills would allow the Justice Department, and copyright holders, to seek court orders against foreign websites accused of copyright infringement. They would bar online advertising networks and payment facilitators such as credit card companies from doing business with an alleged violator. They also would forbid search engines from linking to such sites.
The Tuesday vote was on whether to move the legislation to the Senate floor for debate. With the recent desertions and a statement Thursday by Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell that it is too early to consider the bill, it appeared supporters lacked the 60 votes needed to advance the measure.
McConnell on Friday applauded Reid's decision, saying it would "prevent a counterproductive rush toward flawed legislation."
In the House, Smith said he had "heard from the critics" and resolved that it was "clear that we need to revisit the approach on how best to address the problem of foreign thieves that steal and sell American inventions and products." Smith had planned on holding further committee votes on his bill next month.
The bill's opponents were relieved it was put on hold.
Markham Erickson, executive director of NetCoalition, commended Congress for "recognizing the serious collateral damage this bill could inflict on the Internet."
The group represents Internet and technology companies including Google, Yahoo! and Amazon.com. Erickson said they would work with Congress "to address the problem of piracy without compromising innovation and free expression."
Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., who has joined Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., in proposing an alternative anti-piracy bill, credited opponents with forcing lawmakers "to back away from an effort to ram through controversial legislation."
But the CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America, former Connecticut Democratic Sen. Chris Dodd, warned that, "as a consequence of failing to act, there will continue to be a safe haven for foreign thieves." The MPAA, which represents such companies as Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation and Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc., is a leading advocate for the anti-piracy legislation.
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