Bankruptcy lawyers working ’round the clock to keep up with record number of filings.
The number of U.S. businesses and individuals declaring bankruptcy is rising with a vengeance amid the recession, despite a three-year-old federal law that made it much tougher for Americans to escape their debts, an Associated Press analysis found. “There’s no end in sight,” said bankruptcy lawyer Bryan Elliott of Hickory, N.C., who is working seven days a week and scheduling prospective clients a month in advance. “To be doing this well and having this much business, it is depressing. It’s not a laugh-a-minute job.”
Mexico miffed at European Burger King promotion.
Mexico is protesting what it says is a whopper of an insult. An advertisement for Burger King’s Texican Whopper burger that has run in Europe shows a small wrestler dressed in a cape resembling a Mexican flag. The wrestler teams up with a lanky American cowboy almost twice his height to illustrate the cross-border blend of flavors. “The taste of Texas with a little spicy Mexican,” a narrator’s voice says. The taller cowboy boosts the wrestler up to reach high shelves and helps clean tall windows, while the Mexican helps the cowboy open a jar.
President Barack Obama’s health secretary nominee got nearly three times as much political money from a controversial abortion doctor as she told senators. The Health and Human Services Department said Monday that the omission was an oversight that Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius would correct. In a response to questions from the Senate Finance Committee made public last week, Sebelius wrote that she received $12,450 between 1994-2001 from Dr. George Tiller, one of the nation’s few late-term abortion providers.
Obama “Bin Lying”—leftist lawyers start crying. The lovefest is starting to wane.
It’s not just Paul Krugman anymore. A growing chorus on the legal left is cooling toward President Barack Obama as a result of recent actions by the Justice Department vigorously defending the Bush administration in what it termed the war on terror. “Obama Position on Illegal Spying: Worse Than Bush,” a large graphic declared over the weekend on the home page of a respected group advocating freedom on the Internet, Electronic Frontier Foundation. Obama has been pilloried by a liberal TV icon who was one of President George W. Bush’s most vociferous critics, MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann.
Look in any direction from Bianca Bates’ north Flint home, and you’ll see graffiti-covered siding, boarded-up windows and overgrown lots. About half of the homes on her block are burned out or vacant magnets for drug dealers and squatters. It isn’t where she thought she’d end up, but it’s all she can afford to rent. (snip) Temporary Mayor Michael Brown made the off-the-cuff suggestion Friday in response to a question at a Rotary Club of Flint luncheon about the thousands of empty houses in Flint. Brown said that as more people abandon homes, eating away at the city’s tax base and creating more blight, the city might need to examine “shutting down quadrants of the city where we (wouldn’t) provide services.”
Illinois landing lots of “stimulus” cash, snagging over 12% of all the money doled out to date.
Illinois is getting a jump on the federal stimulus program, claiming more than 12% of the road and bridge projects approved so far by the U.S. Department of Transportation. At a televised appearance Monday before about 50 DOT employees, President Barack Obama announced that 2,000 projects nationwide had been approved by the agency since the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act became law Feb. 17.
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Gov. Rick Perry today joined state Rep. Brandon Creighton and sponsors of House Concurrent Resolution (HCR) 50 in support of states’ rights under the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. “I believe that our federal government has become oppressive in its size, its intrusion into the lives of our citizens, and its interference with the affairs of our state,” Gov. Perry said. “That is why I am here today to express my unwavering support for efforts all across our country to reaffirm the states’ rights affirmed by the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. I believe that returning to the letter and spirit of the U.S. Constitution and its essential 10th Amendment will free our state from undue regulations, and ultimately strengthen our Union.”
Did John McCain snub Sarah Palin during an appearance Monday on NBC’s The Tonight Show? That’s what some pro-Palin bloggers and other political observers claim after the former GOP presidential candidate left out his former running mate when naming five governors who he thought were in position to lead the Republican Party. “We have, I’m happy to say, a lot of voices out there,” McCain told host Jay Leno before listing Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, Utah Gov. Jim Huntsman, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, and Florida Gov. Charlie Crist.
Mad Max Mel Gibson, wife of 30 years calling it quits.
The passion of the marriage is over. Mel Gibson — so staunch a Catholic that he favors the Latin Mass — and his wife each filed for divorce yesterday after nearly three decades of marriage. Catholics are strongly discouraged from getting divorced. A divorced Catholic would need to gain an annulment of their first marriage to get re-married in the church in the future.
Missing any socks? Gloves? Hand towels? Maybe you should have your dog checked out.
Bailey the golden retriever had eaten two golf gloves, two rugby gloves, one mitten, one stocking and nine socks. He had been eating the assorted garments for years and the vet who pulled out the items said it was like performing a magic trick. Owner Nicola Perrett had taken her pet to the vet for his annual check-up and later she was called from the surgery to say they thought Bailey had a tumour. Later in the day when she was informed that Bailey had no tumour, but had eaten 17 objects including a piece of towel.
Microsoft patches up nearly two dozen reported vulnerabilities, many in widely used programs.
Microsoft on Tuesday closed security holes in Excel, Windows, and Word that had been exploited in the wild as well as other holes for which exploit code or details exist, all as part of its monthly patch update cycle. The critical Excel hole could allow an attacker to take complete control of an unpatched system if a user opens a specially crafted Excel file. Security firm Symantec said in February that it had discovered malicious files in the wild in Japan that attempt to exploit the Excel Unspecified Remote Code Execution Vulnerability. The patch affects Microsoft Office, 2002, 2003, and 2007, as well as Microsoft Office 2004 and 2008 for the Mac, according to the Microsoft bulletin.