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Purveyor's JournalHagel Wants Military Brass Stripped Of Ability To Overturn Convictions, Officials Say
Source: Associated Press
U.S. officials say Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel is recommending that military commanders be stripped of their ability to reverse criminal convictions of service members in response to a congressional uproar over an Air Force officer's decision to overturn a guilty verdict in a sexual assault case.
Officials say Hagel will seek legislation requiring that cases go through the U.S. Court of Military Appeals. The furor involves a decision by Lt. Gen. Craig Franklin, commander of the 3rd Air Force, to overturn the sexual assault conviction against Lt. Col. James Wilkerson, a former inspector general at Aviano Air Base in Italy. Hagel ordered a review but lacks sole authority to change the law or the case's outcome.
Officials weren't authorized to speak publicly about the change, so they requested anonymity.
Read more: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57578482/hagel-wants-military-brass-stripped-of-ability-to-overturn-convictions-officials-say/
Pakistan’s Top Court Summons Musharraf for Treason Hearing
Pakistan’s top court ordered former military ruler Pervez Musharraf to appear before judges tomorrow as they consider petitions seeking to prosecute the ex-general for treason, just weeks before he attempts a political comeback at a general election.
A two-member bench headed by Supreme Court Justice Jawwad S. Khawaja ordered Musharraf be summoned, Hamid Khan, a lawyer representing one of the petitioners, told reporters after today’s proceedings. The pleas aim to put Musharraf on trial over his decision to impose emergency rule in 2007. Pakistan’s Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry was deposed and kept under house arrest after Musharraf suspended the constitution.
A trial may reignite tension between the judiciary and the army in a country where generals behind three coups have never been punished before the law.
“Musharraf’s acts of 2007 have already been declared unconstitutional by the courts,” Taufiq Asif, a lawyer who has filed one of the petitions, said by phone yesterday. “He is guilty of high treason and must be arrested.”
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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-08/pakistan-s-supreme-court-to-consider-musharraf-treason-petitions.html
He is a fool for going back to Pakistan...
Why The Modern Republican Party Would Reject Margaret Thatcher
By Annie-Rose Strasser on Apr 8, 2013 at 10:13 am
Margaret Thatcher, the first female prime minister of the United Kingdom, died on Monday, leaving behind her a legacy of conservative values that American politicians still cite to this day. Upon learning of her death, Republican House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) said she was the “greatest peacetime prime minister in British history.”
But while Thatcher stands as a role model for modern conservativism here in the United States, her policies likely wouldn’t hold up under the scrutiny of a modern-day GOP:
She supported socialized medicine. The modern-day GOP is so obsessed with trying to repeal Obamacare that they’ve held nearly 40 votes to do so. But Obamacare is actually a much more conservative health care policy than the socialized National Health Service, which Thatcher lauded as an accomplishment of the United Kingdom. “I believed that the NHS was a service of which we could genuinely be proud,” she wrote in her book, “It delivered a high quality of care — especially when it came to acute illnesses — and at a reasonably modest unit cost, at least compared with some insurance-based systems.”
She increased taxes. Spending actually rose during Thatcher’s first seven years in office, as the New York Times reports, and taxes took up a larger percentage as share of gross domestic product. Indeed, even by the end of her time in office taxes were still a higher percentage of GDP than they were when she arrived:
Thatcher also increased the Value Added Tax (VAT), which Newt Gingrich described as “European socialism” during the 2012 election cycle.
She believed in climate change. Thatcher was an early adherent to climate science, and once warned, “The danger of global warming is as yet unseen but real enough for us to make changes and sacrifices so that we do not live at the expense of future generations.”
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http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2013/04/08/1832551/thatcher-dies/?mobile=nc
Fisker Struggles Mark Blow to Obama’s Electric-Car Goal
By Angela Greiling Keane and Alan Ohnsman - Apr 8, 2013
The possible bankruptcy of Fisker Automotive Inc., which last week fired three-quarters of its workforce, is the latest blow to President Barack Obama’s goal of having 1 million electric vehicles on U.S. roads by 2015.
Fisker’s downfall after receiving $193 million in U.S. taxpayer money and producing 2,500 cars may complete the U.S. government’s transformation from electric-vehicle promoter and financier to debt collector, two years after it approved its last loan.
Obama’s goal was “misguided” in the first place, putting the administration’s eagerness to rush out loans and grants while money was available ahead of due diligence, said Menahem Anderman, president of Total Battery Consulting Inc., in Oregon House, California.
“The timing was based on the government’s spending schedule rather than the schedule of the market and the readiness of the technology,” Anderman said. “You had a very complex vehicle to produce, a questionable market, in terms of demand, with a team that hadn’t proven it could build it or sell it.”
While Fisker’s luxury vehicles weren’t one of the largest drivers of Obama’s goal, the company had planned to make its second model more affordable to broaden the market. Its failure to manufacture any cars in the U.S. after being promised more than a half-billion dollars of taxpayer financing may add to criticism of the loan program and plug-in vehicles.
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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-08/fisker-struggles-mark-blow-to-obama-s-electric-car-goal.html
Fed Faces Risk of Fourth Summer Slump While Pushing QE
By Joshua Zumbrun - Apr 8, 2013
This time, Federal Reserve policy makers are prepared for the summertime slump.
During the past three years, the Fed planned to cut accommodation early in the year only to boost it after economic growth lagged behind its forecasts. Determined not to repeat the error, the Fed will probably push on with $85 billion in monthly bond purchases through the summer, said Drew Matus, a former Federal Reserve Bank of New York economist.
“The fact they’ve been fooled multiple times by slumps in the U.S. economy means they’re going to be a little gun-shy on the exit strategy,” said Matus, deputy chief U.S. economist at UBS Securities LLC in Stamford, Connecticut.
Last week’s Labor Department report showing the economy generated just 88,000 jobs in March, the fewest in nine months, confirmed the concerns of William C. Dudley, president of the New York Fed, that the job market was weaker than it appeared. The April 5 report followed six months of payroll growth averaging 197,000.
“The recent improvement in payroll employment growth, which gets much of the attention, is out-sized relative to the growth rate of economic activity that supports it,” Dudley, vice chairman of the policy setting Federal Open Market Committee, said in a March 25 speech in New York. “We have seen this movie before. When this happened in 2011 and 2012, employment growth subsequently slowed.”
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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-08/fed-faces-risk-of-fourth-summer-slump-while-pushing-qe.html
Netanyahu: Israel Will Not ‘Abandon Our Fate’ To U.S. Strategic Interests
Source: Agence France-Presse
AFP – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that Israel cannot rely on any other country, even an ally, when it comes to facing up to the perceived nuclear threat from Iran.
“We appreciate the efforts of the international community to halt Iran’s nuclear programme,” Netanyahu said in a speech on the eve of Holocaust Day.
“But at no stage will we abandon our fate into the hands of other countries, even our best friends,” he said, in an apparent reference to the United States whose Secretary of State John Kerry flew in to Israel on Sunday.
Read more: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/04/07/netanyahu-israel-will-not-abandon-our-fate-to-u-s-strategic-interests/
Moscow Slams UN ‘Maneuvering’ on Syria Chemical Attack Probe
MOSCOW, April 6 (RIA Novosti) – Moscow believes the United Nations is disrupting an investigation into the alleged use of chemical weapons in Syria under pressure of “certain states,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Saturday.
“We cannot but make a conclusion that under the pressure of certain states the UN Secretariat has adopted an unconstructive and inconsistent stance and is basically disrupting the investigation into particular reports of the possible use of chemical weapons in Syria on March 19, which could be verified at this stage,” the statement said.
The Russian Foreign Ministry has criticized the UN move as “unacceptable and intolerable” and called on the organization to act on the principles of “impartiality.”
Syria’s authorities accused opposition militants of deploying chemical weapons in an attack near the northern city of Aleppo on March 19 that state media reports claimed at least 25 lives and seriously injured more than 100.
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http://en.rian.ru/russia/20130406/180484258/Moscow-Slams-UN-Maneuvering-on-Syria-Chemical-Attack-Probe.html
Israel: Iran Must Face Nuclear Ultimatum
JERUSALEM (AFP) -- Israel's strategic affairs minister on Sunday called on the international community to slap Iran with a firm ultimatum of "a few weeks, a month" to stop enriching uranium or face a possible military strike.
Speaking to army radio, Yuval Steinitz, who also holds the intelligence portfolio, said the latest inconclusive round of nuclear talks between Iran and world powers proved that Iran was stalling.
"The Iranians are playing games and laughing all the way to the bomb," he said.
"It is time to present the Iranians with a military threat or some kind of red line, an unequivocal ultimatum from the entire world, (which must be delivered) by the United States and the West," Steinitz said.
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http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=583231
Pamela Geller 'Sharia' Event In Great Neck Spurs Activists On Both Sides
Shortly after it was announced that Pamela Geller, an outspoken critic of radical Islam, would be appearing at Great Neck Synagogue April 14 to discuss the “Imposition of Sharia in America,” an e-mail and phone campaign sought to get the talk canceled.
In response, a counter protest was launched to support her appearance and that of Greg Buckley, Sr., whose 21-year-old son, Lance Cpl. Greg Buckley of Oceanside, L.I., was killed last August by a policeman in Afghanistan.
The event, according to one e-mail, was planned to enable Buckley to tell of his son’s murder and “to shine the spotlight on the plight of our brave young soldiers and military families and their demand for respect and justice from our government, which has so far been denied.”
But those questioning the event have focused on Geller’s appearance.
“She is very much anti-Syrian and anti-Muslim and has said she would use our holy book, the Koran, as a door stopper,” said Habeeb Ahmed, who is one of 14 Nassau County Human Rights Commissioners and the first vice president of the Islamic Center of Long Island.
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http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/breaking-news/pamela-geller-sharia-event-great-neck-spurs-activists-both-sides
Obama Budget Proposal Cuts Are 'Unconscionable,' Says AFL-CIO
WASHINGTON -- President Obama hasn't formally proposed his "compromise" budget plan yet, but the White House can already see cracks forming among its trusted progressive coalition over cutbacks to cherished safety net programs.
On Saturday, organized labor quickly made good on its promise to oppose a White House budget that includes cuts to Social Security and Medicare, with the AFL-CIO labor federation ripping the president's expected proposal with unusually tough language in an email blast to activists.
The email (below) came with the subject heading, "Obama's really bad idea."
"From all reports I’ve seen, President Obama is going to propose a budget plan next week that is unprecedented for a Democratic president," said the email from Damon Silvers, the AFL-CIO's policy director. "It will propose a cut to Social Security benefits for seniors, veterans and people with disabilities."
"It is unconscionable to ask seniors, people with disabilities and veterans who are barely making it to be squeezed even tighter at a time when corporations and the wealthiest 2% are not paying their fair share of taxes, despite soaring profits."
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/06/obama-budget-proposal-cut_n_3029598.html?ref=topbar
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