Judge orders release of Nixon Watergate testimony

A federal judge has ordered the release of decades-old secret grand jury testimony from former President Richard Nixon, related to the Watergate scandal.

It is unclear when the material might be available to the public, since the Justice Department, which believes the transcript should be kept secret, now has the option of asking a federal appeals court in Washington to intervene.

U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth on Friday rejected the department's argument that the privacy interests of witnesses would be compromised by the release.

Source: http://rss.cnn.com/~r/rss/cnn_allpolitics/~3/9zSEsjkLmeE/index.html

al gore bill clinton newt gingrich sarah palin al sharpton

Negotiations On Debt Crisis Run Aground, Again

Your plan is dead. No your plan is dead.

Those were the messages exchanged by the Senate and House over the past 24 hours, and the events of Saturday left the debt crisis no closer to resolution.

In fact, it appeared to be getting further away.

The House met in a rare Saturday session for no reason but to tell the Senate it had no interest in the solution that chamber has been considering since last night. On Friday night, the Senate began a series of procedural moves toward a plan of its own after voting, 59 to 41, to reject the one sent over by the House — a plan Speaker John Boehner had spent 72 hours jamming through his recalcitrant chamber.

On Saturday, the House voted on a hastily drafted bill based on what it believed Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was pushing in the Senate. The House turned thumbs down on that bill, 246 to 173. So there.

House Republicans were clearly stung by the snub the Senate had given their own work, which took Speaker John Boehner three days of extraordinary maneuvering and last-minute rewrites to pass. Even when he did win a bare 218 majority of the 435 members, he had nary a single Democrat on board and 22 of his own party stalwarts said no.

On the Senate side, Boehner's handiwork was nixed by six conservative Republicans who stood with the Tea Party in saying no to raising the debt ceiling.

No one expected any of those six to help Reid and his 53 Democrats (and independents) reach the 60 votes they would need to stop the filibuster of the Democratic plan in the Senate. But Reid clearly hoped some of the other Republicans might come over just to find some kind of way forward.

That hope, too, was dashed on Saturday, when the Senate GOP delivered a letter signed by all but four of their number. The letter told Reid to forget about any help from 43 of the 47 Republicans in the chamber. The leader was at least two votes shy of the minimum to keep his own plan alive.

It should be noted that the plans being pushed by the two parties are not worlds apart. Neither has revenue increases of any kind. Both would cut the deficit by more than $2 trillion over 10 years and raise the debt ceiling by a roughly commensurate amount.

But the Republican plan also included a requirement that both House and Senate adopt an amendment to the Constitution requiring a balanced budget, a feat that would require two-thirds in both chambers. Absent such a feat, the debt ceiling would be reached again in January. The difficulty of passing a constitutional amendment opposed by a majority in the Senate makes it tantamount to a permanent debt ceiling that would be reached by the end of this calendar year.

So the negotiations, if they can be called that, have run aground yet again on an issue no one had expected to be part of the final deal — or even the later rounds of talks. President Obama said in his radio address Saturday that it was time for House Republicans to compromise, rather than continuing to widen the gap between the two sides. The Saturday vote on the House's notion of the Senate plan showed how well that idea was playing in the GOP ranks.

Tonight, Reid had hoped to hold a crucial cloture vote in the wee hours of Sunday to break the logjam and get close to actual consideration of his actual plan. He was ready to alter his plan to lure GOP votes. With that hope appearing to be vain, the need for a cloture vote may be moot. Or Reid may yet proceed with it.

Reid and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi went to the White House at midafternoon on Saturday. Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell were to confer with the president later in the day.

With the prospect of default now just a few days away, most Americans are still averting their eyes from the astonishing spectacle in Washington. But that may not be possible much longer.

Source: http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2011/07/30/138857351/negotiations-on-debt-crisis-run-aground-again?ft=1&f=1014

bill clinton newt gingrich sarah palin al sharpton bill oreilly

'Life In A Day': The World According To YouTube

Produced in partnership with YouTube and distributed by National Geographic Films, the documentary Life in a Day is offspring with the worst genetic traits of both: narcissism on a global scale, speckled with pretty pictures. In a world without books or magazines, this is the movie people would watch in the waiting room at the dentist's office.

Director Kevin Macdonald (State of Play, The Last King of Scotland) and overtaxed editor Joe Walker culled their one-world symphony from a total of 4,500 hours of home video, raw material from 80,000 amateur cinematographers who shot between midnight and midnight on July 24, 2010. With 192 countries represented, the film sets about making the personal universal, one montage at a time. But while it has certain organizing principles — the rituals of waking up, for example, or marriage ceremonies of varying flavor — what it lacks is a compelling point of view.

Occupying a no man's land between experimental film and micro-documentary, Life in a Day basically has two different modes: associative montage and minute-long bits of portraiture. The early sequences lean heavily on the former, as dawn finds people prepping for the day — roused by alarm clocks or roosters or small children, putting bare feet on the carpet, brushing teeth and combing hair, and shuffling off to work at a parking garage in Roanoke or paddling down an African river to destinations unknown. There are montages of eggs cracking, babies being born, forms of transportation, celebrations and tragedies, and views from doorsteps (and steppes) around the globe. We may come from different places, the film suggests, but all of us put on our pants one leg at a time.

Though the film tends to make the banal universal and the universal banal, it improves when it slows down — relatively speaking — and gets to know its subjects a little better. A section about love yields a handful of touching and funny vignettes, like a young gay man coming out to his grandmother over the phone or an elderly couple remarrying with naughty handwritten vows. Other fleeting glimpses are potent, too, like witnessing a nimble practitioner of parkour (the art of swiftly scaling obstacles) shoplifting from a grocery store, or an overhead view of the stampede at the Love Parade dance music festival in Duisburg, Germany, which ended with 21 people dead.

Source: http://www.npr.org/2011/07/29/138722900/life-in-a-day-the-world-according-to-youtube?ft=1&f=1057

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Amid Debt Talks, Politicians Continue Fundraising

Despite ongoing debate about the debt ceiling — and an impending August 2nd deadline — politicians are still hosting fundraising events for future campaigns. Michele Norris talks to Wall Street Journal reporter Brody Mullins for more.

Source: http://www.npr.org/2011/07/29/138830610/despite-debt-debate-politicians-host-fundraising-events?ft=1&f=1014

john mccain al gore bill clinton newt gingrich sarah palin

U.S. Economy Slowed Sharply In First Half Of 2011

The economy expanded at meager rate of 1.3 percent annual rate in the spring after scarcely growing at all in the first three months of the year, the Commerce Department said Friday.

The combined growth for the first six months of the year was the weakest since the recession ended. The government revised the January-March figures to show just 0.4 percent growth down sharply from its previous estimate of 1.9 percent.

High gas prices and scant income gains have forced consumers to pull back sharply on spending in the spring.

Source: http://www.npr.org/2011/07/29/138814283/economy-slowed-sharply-during-first-half-of-2011?ft=1&f=1003

barak obama hillary clinton george w bush nancy pelosi harry reid

Flake: Past Spending Limits Haven't Worked

Robert Siegel interviews Rep. Jeff Flake, a Republican from Arizona, about the debt ceiling negotiations. He tells Robert the inclusion of a balanced-budget amendment helped win his support for House Speaker John Boehner's revised debt plan.

Source: http://www.npr.org/2011/07/29/138830606/flake-past-spending-limits-havent-worked?ft=1&f=1014

george w bush nancy pelosi harry reid john mccain al gore

What Will We Watch As Drones Evolve?

Every week it seems there are reports about U.S. drones — unmanned, remote-controlled aerial vehicles — tracking down suspected terrorists in remote, unreachable areas of Yemen, Somalia, Libya or Pakistan. Drone technology is becoming increasingly affordable and accessible, with new potential for everyday use in the United States — and new worries for national security.

Uses At Home

Shane Harris, journalist and author of The Watchers: The Rise of America's Surveillance State, tells Weekend Edition Saturday host Scott Simon there are several potential near-term uses for drones. The Customs and Border Protection unit of Homeland Security, for example, is experimenting with drones the size of small birds for monitoring the border.

Harris says drones have also been used in natural disaster situations, including at the Fukushima plant after the earthquake in Japan. Drones the size of spiders could inspect houses during hostage situations. He says drones are also likely to be used in mass farming to replace crop dusters or even herd cattle — even traffic helicopters could also be replaced.

The technology could theoretically also fly jumbo jets, Harris says, allowing companies like UPS and FedEx to use drones instead of people to fly their planes.

"It could certainly be much more efficient. They could perhaps fly routes that human beings can't fly. They certainly don't have to take breaks the way that humans do," he says. "Then that sort of raises the question ... would we ever feel comfortable — we, people, getting on a Delta or American Airlines flight that didn't have a pilot in it?"

Drones Abroad

Source: http://www.npr.org/2011/07/30/138764202/what-will-we-watch-as-drones-evolve?ft=1&f=1003

bill oreilly fox news hamid karzai barak obama hillary clinton

A Dominatrix Reveals All In 'Whip Smart' Memoir

Melissa Febos graduated from college with straight As and a prestigious internship. She also led a secret life as a dominatrix. Her memoir, Whip Smart, which details her time working in a sex dungeon in midtown Manhattan, is now available in paperback.

Source: http://www.npr.org/2011/07/29/138761734/a-dominatrix-reveals-all-in-whip-smart-memoir?ft=1&f=1057

bill oreilly fox news hamid karzai barak obama hillary clinton