What's it all about then?
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Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito argued that contesting
Hobby Lobby’s claim that contraception is the same thing as abortion — an idea that has been refuted time and again by medical providers and associations — “in effect tells the plaintiffs that their beliefs are
flawed.”
This decision concerns only the contraceptive mandate and should not be understood to mean that all insurance mandates, that is for blood transfusions or vaccinations, necessarily fail if they conflict with an employer's religious beliefs.
Two years ago Kansas embarked on a remarkable fiscal experiment: It sharply slashed income taxes without any clear idea of what would replace the lost revenue. Sam Brownback, the governor, proposed the legislation — in percentage terms, the largest tax cut in one year any state has ever enacted — in close consultation with the economist Arthur Laffer. And Mr. Brownback predicted that the cuts would jump-start an economic boom — “Look out, Texas,” he proclaimed.
But Kansas isn’t booming — in fact, its economy is lagging both neighboring states and America as a whole. Meanwhile, the state’s budget has plunged deep into deficit, provoking a Moody’s downgrade of its debt.
WASHINGTON — Just weeks before Blackwater guards fatally shot 17 civilians at Baghdad’s Nisour Square in 2007, the State Department began investigating the security contractor's operations in Iraq. But the inquiry was abandoned after Blackwater's top manager there issued a threat: "that he could kill" the government’s chief investigator and “no one could or would do anything about it as we were in Iraq,” according to department reports
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The shooting was a watershed moment in the American occupation of Iraq, and was a factor in Iraq’s refusal the next year to agree to a treaty allowing United States troops to stay in the country beyond 2011.
In fact, he argues, other levels of government are going to have to find the money required. This is starting to happen. Some states add their own petrol taxes to the federal government’s one.
Not too long ago in this season of California’s massive and extended drought, climate experts saw a small glimmer of hope on the horizon: Predictions for a wet El Niño season coming in the winter that would bring badly needed rain and relief to a parched state.
Now that glimmer is fading fast, and the drought has gotten even worse
The Obama administration, in a dramatic escalation of its border control strategy, will seek $2 billion in emergency funds to help stem an influx of Central American women and children entering the country illegally and new measures to more quickly deport those already here, the White House confirmed Saturday.
A bus rapid transit project for Geary Boulevard has been in planning since the passage of a local ballot measure authorized funding in 2003, yet eleven years later construction hasn’t even begun as a handful of people in the neighborhood fought for years to preserve each and every parking space.
US 460 Mobility Partners received more than $250 million in payments from the state and Route 460 Funding Corp. of Virginia on the project before Gov. Terry McAuliffe shut it down in March. The governor cited the failure to obtain environmental permits from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers before construction could begin. The state spent an additional $41 million for procurement, engineering and environmental studies.
To this day, not a single shovel of dirt had been turned for construction of the roadway.
Many large corporations with a strong incentive to influence public policy award bonuses and other incentive pay to executives if they take jobs within the government. CitiGroup, for instance, provides an executive contract that awards additional retirement pay upon leaving to take a “full time high level position with the U.S. government or regulatory body.” Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase, the Blackstone Group, Fannie Mae, Northern Trust, and Northrop Grumman are among the other firms that offer financial rewards upon retirement for government service.(h/t Gaius Publius)
In a unanimous vote, the county's Metropolitan Transportation Authority board of directors agreed to proceed with further study of a proposed $200-million light-rail station a mile and a half east of LAX's central terminal area. The station would connect Metro's Crenshaw Line, now being built, to a proposed aerial, monorail-like system that will carry passengers to their terminals.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama is asking Congress for $500 million to train and arm vetted members of the Syrian opposition, as the U.S. grapples for a way to stem a civil war that has also fueled the al-Qaida inspired insurgency in neighboring Iraq.
Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them. With Jonah Goldberg it had been all three.
The Commerce Department said on Wednesday gross domestic product fell at a 2.9 percent annual rate, the economy's worst performance in five years, instead of the 1.0 percent pace it had reported last month.
The cover sheet records that the draft text will not be declassified until 5 years after the TISA comes into force or the negotiations are otherwise closed. Presumably this also applies to other documents aside from the final text. This exceeds the 4 years in the super-secretive Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA)! It also contradicts the hard-won transparency at the WTO, which has published documents relating to negotiations online for a number of years.
Secrecy during the negotiation of a binding and enforceable commercial treaty is objectionable and undemocratic, and invites poorly informed and biased decisions. Secrecy after the fact is patently designed to prevent the governments from being held accountable by their legislatures and citizens.
The 300 U.S. advisers authorized to assist the Iraqi security forces will find an army in crisis mode, so lacking in equipment and shaken by desertions that it may not be able to win back significant chunks of territory from al-Qaeda renegades for months or even years, analysts and officials say.
Woinski said he imagines another scenario for the $2.4 billion Revel that would have left Atlantic City better off, ultimately.
"The best thing that could have happened to that property is Hurricane Sandy, instead of nailing Seaside Heights, would have nailed that property. That thing should have wound up in the ocean instead of the roller coaster," Woinski said.
Lost alum Naveen Andrews, Daryl Hannah and Stargate Universe‘s Brian J. Smith are among the 14-memeber international cast of Sense8, Netflix‘s 10-episode sci-fi drama series from the Wachowskis and J. Michael Straczynski. Also cast in the show, expected to debut next year, are British actors Tuppence Middleton, who appears in Wachowskis’ upcoming film Jupiter Ascending; British actors Aml Ameen (Harry’s Law, Lee Daniels’ The Butler) and Freema Agyeman (Doctor Who, Torchwood), Indian actress Tena Desae, South Korean actress Doona Bae, German actor Max Riemelt, Mexican actors Alfonso Herrera and Erendira Ibarra as well as Jamie Clayton, Miguel Silvestri and Terrence Mann.
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — A water main break in South Philadelphia early Friday morning damaged at least one home and created a traffic headache.
The fire department received a call at about 5:40 a.m. about a ruptured water main break at 2nd Street and Oregon Avenue.
There was no sign of a restart to construction activity at the American Dream site Thursday, six weeks after Governor Christie came to the Meadowlands Sports Complex to trumpet the signing of a project labor agreement with North Jersey workers.
The developers say among the next work to be done is finally changing the exterior. The much-mocked multi-color display will become a muted white and gray.
But the project’s developers and state officials say the long-stalled rebirth of the shopping and entertainment attraction remains on target for a fall 2016 opening – and work will be visible at the site soon.
Gerson joined the Bush campaign before 2000 as a speechwriter and went on to head the White House speechwriting team.
"The sign depicted in the photograph is not an official street sign," said Streets Department spokesperson June Cantor, after examining an image of the sign. "We do not have, nor do we post 'no bike parking signs.' No other government authority is authorized to post such a sign."
D'Angelo's manager Michelle DiMatteo said her restaurant put the signs up.
"The purpose of the signs is so people can walk up and down the street," she said. "Bikes would sometimes get in the way of our valet and people parking their cars."
Atlantic City's Revel Casino Hotel warned its staff Thursday that it will shut down this summer if a buyer can't be found for the struggling casino.
The state’s Economic Development Authority granted $261 million in tax incentives to help jump start stalled construction of the project in February 2011. Christie signed legislation at the Revel construction site that created a state tourism district in the city, boosted marketing of the resorts and eased regulations on casino operators.
Philadelphia City Council Wednesday passed a veto-proof bill that makes possession of small amounts of marijuana punishable by a $25 fine.
Prosecutors say Wisconsin Gov. Walker at center of 'criminal scheme' over campaign fundraising.
The sudden collapse of Iraqi forces in the face of lightly armed insurgents has catalyzed an emotional debate within the U.S. military about a war that, just a few years ago, seemed on the brink of going down in history as a success.
ERBIL, Iraq — The American Embassy in Baghdad plans to evacuate a substantial number of its personnel this week in the face of a militant advance that rapidly swept from the north toward the capital, the State Department announced on Sunday.
The embassy, a beige fortress on the banks of the Tigris River within the heavily-secured Green Zone, where Iraqi government buildings are also located, has the largest staff of any United States Embassy.
“I spoke to them approximately four hours on the 10th of June,” Lon Snowden said. Later, the FBI offered to send the elder Snowden to Moscow as part of an effort to deliver a scripted pitch to his son to turn himself in and return home. A former officer in the Coast Guard, Lon Snowden was initially cooperative with the bureau but became angered as his son was depicted by U.S. officials as a traitor.
“I came to know that they were not functioning in good faith” and turned down the trip, Snowden said.
In interviews, U.S. officials acknowledged that they had no specific intelligence that Snowden would be on Morales’s plane. But the Bolivian leader’s remark was enough to set in motion a plan to enlist France, Spain, Italy and Portugal to block the Bolivian president’s flight home.
Sixty years ago, when Phoenix was just embarking on its career of manic growth, nighttime lows never crept above ninety. Today such temperatures are a commonplace, and the vigil has begun for the first night that doesn’t dip below 100.
Bad officiating matters too much. Move the penalty kick spot back 3 meters and generally make it more like hockey. Do a bad thing and you are out for 5 minutes.
As this week’s events unfolded, it was alarming to learn of the swift capitulation of thousands of Iraqi Army troops who surrendered their weapons to the enemy and disappeared. After disbanding Saddam Hussein’s army in 2003 after the invasion by coalition forces and dismantling the government, the United States spent years and many billions of dollars building a new Iraqi Army, apparently for naught. The militants have captured untold quantities of American-supplied weaponry, including helicopters, and looted an estimated $425 million from Mosul’s banks.
It’s true that many Democrats remain reluctant to embrace the proposal. But an increasing number of Dems — including Elizabeth Warren, Tom Harkin, Jeff Merkley and 70 members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus — believe it’s good politics to push for an expansion of a hugely popular program that has been central to the Democratic Party’s identity for many decades.
The new proposal is called the Retirement and Income Security Enhancements Act, or RAISE Act, and it would increase benefits specifically for groups who have seen their retirement security eroded by recent economic trends such as the transition to two-earner families, stagnating wages, declining savings, and the erosion of pensions. It would increase benefits for many divorced spouses, and widows and widowers, and would extend benefit eligibility for some children of retired, disabled or deceased workers – to be paid for by a two-percent payroll tax on earnings over $400,000, which is also designed to shore up the program’s long-term finances.
During the Obama administration, according to Pentagon data, police departments have received tens of thousands of machine guns; nearly 200,000 ammunition magazines; thousands of pieces of camouflage and night-vision equipment; and hundreds of silencers, armored cars and aircraft.
The equipment has been added to the armories of police departments that already look and act like military units. Police SWAT teams are now deployed tens of thousands of times each year, increasingly for routine jobs. Masked, heavily armed police officers in Louisiana raided a nightclub in 2006 as part of a liquor inspection. In Florida in 2010, officers in SWAT gear and with guns drawn carried out raids on barbershops that mostly led only to charges of “barbering without a license.”
A break in a 36-inch water main spilled water down a North Philly street, damaging at least three properties and creating a large hole in the road while spewing water into the air.
A 60-year-old Collin County woman, who asked not to be identified, said she was driving to a mall in March when she saw men with guns on a State Highway 121 overpass. She did not know they were Open Carry members, and she called Plano police.
Several weeks later, an Open Carry supporter posted her name and phone number on YouTube. She began to receive threatening texts and calls, she said.
“They were calling me names I haven’t heard since I was in middle school,” she said. “They were calling me a whore and all kinds of nasty names. … I think there’s some really crazy, unstable people out there.”
"People right now are having trouble getting their arms around what needs to be done. And no one can fathom what it’s going to cost,” said City Councilwoman Theresa Whibley, who represents many pricey waterfront neighborhoods, including the Hague, where the plan calls for floodgates to block the surging tide.
“When we’re talking about floodgates and building bulkheads, then you’re talking about the big bucks that even the feds don’t have. And then you’re competing with New York, Miami — even Hampton.” Whibley paused. “I don’t sound very optimistic, do I?”
In an interview Friday, Allen said he was headed home from work, driving in the left southbound on I-495 shortly after 5 p.m. He looked left as he crossed the river and noticed the northbound lanes were about a foot higher than his.
"I drive over that bridge every day. I've been doing it for 25 years," Allen says in the 911 recording.
"I just noticed on my way home the median strip is separating, like, about a foot difference between the two jersey barriers, in between the center of the road. I tried to get a hold of DelDOT. That's why I'm so long calling you. I can't get a hold of anybody."
But in 2012, the New York Fed reported that for the first time in at least a decade, 30-year-old student borrowers were less likely to take out home mortgages than other young people. Among people around 30 years old, homeownership was plunging fastest for student debtors.
Economists are worried. Last month, former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers said that student loan debt was taking the life out of the housing recovery, and the Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz called the rising debt “an educational crisis” that is “affecting our potential future growth.”
A Democratic convention in Brooklyn, arguably the most liberal redoubt of one of the country’s most liberal cities, would be a stark departure from the recent tradition of political parties hosting their conventions in swing states like Florida and Colorado, which can be critical to clinching a national campaign.
The Globe reported last Sunday that Brown received stock initially worth $1.3 million to join the advisory board of the firm, which has no revenue, no products, no trademarks, no patents, and only a “virtual office.” The stock has since declined by more than half.
Originally founded in 1995 to sell beauty products, Global Digital morphed into a wireless data company before repositioning itself last year as a weapons maker. Accountants who have looked at the company have said it was a risky investment.
Global Digital has announced a series of acquisitions that have not been completed. Among them was an announcement in March that it intended to buy Remington Arms Co. LLC, one of the world’s largest gun manufacturers, for more than $1 billion. That was greeted with derision by Remington and others in the industry. Global Digital has just four employees, and a market value of about $40 million
I only remember afterwards how much writing about something like the Santa Barbara butcher takes out of me. While the writing flows I just channel it, feeling cool, calm and collected (though the research before that stage is another story). But when it's all over, the price must be paid. Thank goddess for migraine medications.
DOVER, Del. (AP) — State transportation officials said Wednesday that they believe a contractor is responsible for dumping a massive mound of dirt suspected of shifting the ground underneath an interstate highway bridge and forcing its closure.
DOVER, Del. (AP) — The emergency closing of an interstate bridge in Delaware because some support columns are tilted could mean major headaches Tuesday for motorists on the heavily traveled Interstate 95 corridor through the Mid-Atlantic region, officials say.
Lewis Katz, 72, co-owner of The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Daily News and Philly.com, died Saturday night in the crash of a private jet at a Massachusetts airfield.