Sen. Kit Bond (R-Mo.), Ranking Member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, says retroactive immunity is an essential piece of the Intelligence Committee’s version of the FISA bill.

It’s another sad story for the American public, where a government agency exhibits self-loathing.  The current acting chairman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, Nancy Nord, is marching in lock-step with the pro-business/limited regulation ideologues.  She is following in the footsteps of her recent predecessors, political appointees who basically never believed in the mission of this small agency. They have worked hard to avoid doing their job — which is to protect consumers from dangerous products — choosing instead to protect manufacturers of unsafe household products and toys.

Busy parents and grandparents used to depend on the Consumer Product Safety Commission to test the products, work with the manufacturers to address safety concerns and order a recall if they wouldn’t take action on their own.  In recent years, the once-proud agency has seen its budget and personnel decimated to protect those who would rather make a buck than bother selling safe products. Read the rest of this entry »

We are all too familiar with the miserable human rights conditions in North Korea. Reports by the State Department and NGO’s on North Korea paint a grim picture:

• A total denial of political, civil, and religious liberties; No dissent or criticism of Kim Jong-il is allowed, with the media tightly controlled by the regime;

• Severe physical abuse is meted out to citizens who violate laws and restrictions; NGO’s describe a system of concentration camps akin to the Soviet gulag system, housing an estimated 150,000 to 200,000 inmates;

• Food shortages - as the regime distributes food based on perceived loyalty, favoring the ruling elite and military.

This dismal state has lead a large number of North Koreans — perhaps as many as 300,000 — to cross into China. There, they seek food and work, and resettlement in South Korea. It is thought that nearly 75 percent of these refugees are women; with up to 90 percent ending up as trafficking victims.
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The men and women of state and local law enforcement, both by the strength of their numbers and through their daily contact with the public, are the most likely to be the first to come across the new breed of homegrown violent extremists. That makes this proud blue line of 750,000 law enforcement officers across the nation our first line of defense against homegrown terrorism.

Today the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee held a hearing on the role of local law enforcement in stemming homegrown terrorism, and our witnesses - from a geographic cross section of our nation’s police agencies - talked about their counter-terrorism strategies.
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There are a lot of people who want to see a much stronger diplomatic approach, in a regional sense, to solving the problem in Iraq. That’s one vehicle through which people are expressing their frustration. If I recall, it’s a sense of Congress and it’s not anything other than that. You have to be very careful in practical terms about getting into sovereignty issues with another government. That’s another trade-off. People are just trying to say there ought to be some kind of a diplomatic solution on this.

Timothy Morrison is a student at Boyd County High School in Kentucky. He is a Christian who desires to share the good news of Jesus Christ with his fellow classmates. Nothing surprising about that. But those who do not seem to care as much about Timothy’s free speech rights as they do about political correctness may have been surprised at what the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit had to say in Timothy’s lawsuit Monday.

As a Christian, his worldview means that he–just like many other people–has a perspective on homosexual behavior that is in accord with his faith. However, Timothy was gagged from sharing his point of view at school, even though people with a different view were free to share theirs, all because of the school district’s speech policies. In fact, the speech policies themselves said that if any student violated the policies, he or she would be subjected to discipline, including suspension and possible referral to local and state police. Read the rest of this entry »

Blackwater is hiding behind the Bush Administration to explain why they bilked the taxpayers out of millions of dollars. The SBA letter makes clear the size determination provides no basis for tax decisions. I intend to get to the bottom of this. I’m asking Blackwater to provide documentation for their decision and I am asking the Finance Committee to investigate this matter further.

The United States and the international community have an urgent mandate to prepare the nation for an immense global and domestic threat from tuberculosis (TB), as a very serious gap exists in current systems to protect the public from the spread of TB.

It is critical that we realize that the fight against tuberculosis is both an urgent U.S. issue and a global threat of immense proportions. We also face the emerging appearance of drug-resistant strains of tuberculosis — against which no current drug or combination of drugs can combat.

About 9 million people worldwide contract active tuberculosis each year and about 2 million of those die from the disease. In the U.S., nearly 14,000 cases of active TB were reported in 2006, with an estimated 10 million to 15 million more carrying latent versions of the infection. Read the rest of this entry »

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) launched this ad in Iowa and New Hampshire promoting her record on Social Security shortly after Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) launched his own Social Security ad Monday.

While Obama’s focuses on the need for bipartisan discussion on Social Security reform, Clinton’s attempts to show voters she has been with them on Social Security for many years. Both ads show the candidates talking to seniors.

See Clinton’s ad below.