Except the Washington Post didn’t let him off the hook. GOP gubernatorial nominee Robert F. McDonnell in Virginia thinks moms who work ruin families. Really. He does.

At age 34, two years before his first election and two decades before he would run for governor of Virginia, Robert F. McDonnell submitted a master’s thesis to the evangelical school he was attending in Virginia Beach in which he described working women and feminists as “detrimental” to the family. He said government policy should favor married couples over “cohabitators, homosexuals or fornicators.” He described as “illogical” a 1972 Supreme Court decision legalizing the use of contraception by unmarried couples.
[…] Continue reading

Remembering Senator Kennedy.

Obama cozy with the CEO of UBS…too cozy?

[Obama] spent five hours golfing with Robert Wolf, president of UBS Investment Bank and chairman and CEO of UBS Group Americas. Wolf, an early financial backer of Obama’s presidential campaign, raised $250,000 for him back in 2006, and in February was appointed by the president to the White House’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board. Economic recovery for whom?

Interestingly, Wolf’s appointment came in the same month that UBS agreed to pay the U.S. $780 million to settle civil and criminal charges related to helping people in the U.S. avoid taxes. Not to worry. UBS, an ailing bank with a pre-existing condition, had great insurance coverage. It was actually receiving $2.5 billion in a backdoor bailout from bailed-out insurance giant AIG.

via Who is Obama Playing Ball With?.

Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, a son of one of the most storied families in American politics, a man who knew triumph and tragedy in near-equal measure and who will be remembered as one of the most effective lawmakers in the history of the Senate, died Tuesday night. He was 77 .

via Edward Kennedy, Senate Stalwart, Dies – Obituary (Obit) – NYTimes.com.

Isn’t splitting cost a benefit to getting married? or are there a lack of subsidies and/or tax incentives in Japan for married couples?

Mr Aso was asked whether poverty was making people marry later, contributing to Japan’s low birth rate.

His response was: ”Young people had better not get married with little money.”

He added it was difficult for him to see how someone without pay could be seen as an object of respect.

via BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Japan PM in gaffe on poor couples.

Administration reactions to the Office Of The Inspector General’s report on CIA Counterterrorism Detention and Interrogation Activities:

[The Obama Administration] wrested control of future interrogations of suspected senior al-Qaeda members away from the CIA and handed it to an interagency group that will be housed at the FBI — whose agents had not only objected to the CIA’s techniques but also refused to stay in the rooms where they were practiced.

[…]

Obama and his aides, in contrast, have concluded that the benefits of the harsh interrogation program were unproven or slight, and that the costs to America’s standing in the world exceed any potential gains from allowing it to persist.

via Analysis: Bush, Obama Administrations Drew Different Lessons From CIA Report.

Accoording to the report FBI agents refused to partake in torture. It is fairly safe to conclude that the CIA agents tortured because they felt they were covered by permission slips from Jay Bybee and John Yoo and they were “just following orders”. CIA interrogators were effectively ordered to operate as if they were above the law.

The new interagency interrogation team, overseen by the National Security Council and housed at the FBI, seems to be organized to empower the professionals who honored the rule of law and signal Obama’s distrust of the current CIA’s ability to do the same.

Lawmakers, investor and we, the taxpayers, will get to know the term of our loans to banks. Zero Hedge summarizes the news:

This is in relation to a lawsuit filed by Bloomberg LP against the Federal Reserve on November 7, 2008, in Southern District of New York (08-09595), in which Bloomberg sought material loan and collateral data in relation to emergency loans released by the Fed, and which were previously claimed to be non-FOIAble.

This is a large blow against the Fed and specifically against organizations using FOIA loopholes from providing critical information, particularly in cases involving trillions of taxpayer dollars bailing out huge, systematically and politically embedded financial organizations (which lately is pretty much all of them).

via Federal Reserve Loses Bloomberg FOIA Lawsuit, Sensitive Disclosures Forthcoming | zero hedge.

FOIA is such a valueable tool for citizens.

Robert Reich wants to know what’s up with this Gang of Six foolishness. I’m with him. Why is the Obama Administration and/or Harry Reid comfortable with this “bi-partisan” kabuki

So, I repeat: Why has it come down to these six? Who anointed them? Apparently, the White House. At least that’s what I’m repeatedly being told by sources both on the Hill and in the administration. “The Finance Committee is where the action is. They’ll tee up the final bill,” says someone who should know.

via Why the Gang of Six is deciding healthcare for 300 million of us | Salon .