Barack Obama has thwarted one more election opponent. A St. Paul elementary school has voted to officially change its name to “Barack and Michelle Obama Service Learning Elementary,” pending approval of the school board. Webster Magnet Elementary is in its first year of a service learning program, and the school wanted a new name to reflect the shift in focus. The site council, made up of parents and community members, put the Obama name and “Webster Service Learning Elementary” on the ballot.
Fox News gets a little payback from the White House.
Fox News White House correspondent Major Garrett was asked today on the “Brian and the Judge” radio show about the network being snubbed during Obama’s third prime-time presser. “That was retribution for the Fox network, broadcast network, running with its regularly scheduled programming instead of taking the White House press conference,” Garrett said.
The telecast to mark President Barack Obama’s 100th day in office pulled in the smallest number of prime-time viewers since his inauguration, according to Nielsen Ratings reported by THR.com. Audience fascination with Obama’s news conferences is apparently in a downward spiral, with 28.8 million viewers tuning in Wednesday night’s much touted news conference. That figure represents a 29 percent drop from the president’s previous news conference on March 24, and a 42 percent fall from his first, on Feb. 9, according to the Nielson report.
Humans have it. Pigs don’t. At least not yet, and U.S. pork producers are doing everything they can to make sure that the new H1N1 virus, known around the world as the “swine flu,” stays out of their herds. “That is the biggest concern, that your herd could somehow contract this illness from an infected person,” said Kansas hog farmer Ron Suther, who is banning visitors from his sow barns and requiring maintenance workers, delivery men and other strangers to report on recent travels and any illness before they step foot on his property.
Grammy-award winning musician Tony Bennett told CNSNews.com he “loves everything” Barack Obama has done in his first 100 days as president and thinks every American should “give him all-out support for anything he wants to do.” Bennett further said that Americans should imitate the other countries of the world that support Obama. “I really hope that every citizen of the United States would imitate the rest of the world because they’re all for Obama,” said Bennett. “Every other country adores what happened – in our great country – to have him as president.”
Communist Cuba’s Fidel Castro not so thrilled with Dear Reader.
FIDEL Castro has blasted US President Barack Obama in provocative May Day remarks, saying the United States only wanted Cuba to return “to the fold, like slaves”. Mr Castro, 82, who led Cuba for almost 50 years and remains head of the Cuban Communist Party, was not in outreach mode, though Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro, 77, have made remarks aimed at easing Cold War-era tensions.
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Whether due to swine flu concerns, rain or dwindling enthusiasm for street protests, only about 2,000 paraded through the Loop Friday to call for federal Immigration reforms, a crowd about a 10th the size of those in years past. Similar protests in Miami, New York and Los Angeles Friday also were much smaller than before. Where the more grass-roots marches of recent years featured legions of mothers pushing strollers as well as teachers and students, this year’s demonstration in Chicago boiled down mostly to a core constituency of labor unions, church groups and other veteran activists.
Sen. Arlen Specter’s switch to the Democratic Party is prompting his campaign donors large and small to demand their money back, including several Republican senators whose political action committees gave tens of thousands of dollars to the Pennsylvania lawmaker.
Sen. Johnny Isakson didn’t waste any time putting himself at the front of the refund line. The Georgia Republican asked Mr. Specter for a return of his leadership political action committee’s $5,000 contribution Tuesday on the Senate floor – just hours after Mr. Specter announced he was changing his political stripes.
Gov. Paterson, who raised state taxes by $8 billion last month, just cost state taxpayers $300,000 more. The state has secretly settled an embarrassing federal racial-discrimination lawsuit, The Post has learned. The suit accused Paterson, back when he was Senate minority leader in 2003, of firing a white Senate photographer in order to replace him with an African-American.
An 8-year-old Saudi girl has divorced her middle-aged husband after her father forced her to marry him last year in exchange for about $13,000, her lawyer said Thursday. Saudi Arabia has come under increasing criticism at home and abroad for permitting child marriages. The United States, a close ally of the conservative Muslim kingdom, has called child marriage a “clear and unacceptable” violation of human rights. The girl was allowed to divorce the 50-year-old man who she married in August after an out-of-court settlement had been reached in the case, said her lawyer, Abdulla al-Jeteli. The exact date of the divorce was not immediately known.
A third-grader was expelled from a local private school after a “hit list” of students and a teacher was found in his desk. A menacing report was filed Tuesday, April 28, with the Hamilton Police Department indicating that a student at Immanuel Lutheran School, 1285 Main St., had written down names of students and a teacher that he apparently wanted to kill. Michael Mayo, the school’s principal, said he acted on a tip and found the list in the student’s desk. The student has been removed permanently from the school, Mayo said.
President Obama is just average. At least by the standard of approval ratings. Though Obama’s job approval score is strong and has been since he took office, historical polling data shows Obama’s popularity during his first 100 days is right in the middle of the scores other new presidents received from the public over the past 60 years. Obama’s 63 percent average, according to a study released by Gallup last month, is the highest for a new president since Jimmy Carter (he clocked in at 69 percent during his first 100 days).
It’s the most secure distribution version of Windows XP ever produced by Microsoft: More than 600 settings are locked down tight, and critical security patches can be installed in an average of 72 hours instead of 57 days. The only problem is, you have to join the Air Force to get it.
The Air Force persuaded Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to provide it with a secure Windows configuration that saved the service about $100 million in contract costs and countless hours of maintenance. At a congressional hearing this week on cybersecurity, Alan Paller, research director of the Sans Institute, shared the story as a template for how the government could use its massive purchasing power to get companies to produce more secure products. And those could eventually be available to the rest of us. Security experts have been arguing for this “trickle-down” model for years. But rather than wield its buying power for the greater good, the government has long wimped out and taken whatever vendors served them. If the Air Force case is a good judge, however, things might be changing.
Quote of the day.
Here in America we are descended in blood and in spirit from revolutionists and rebels – men and women who dare to dissent from accepted doctrine. As their heirs, may we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.
-Dwight D. Eisenhower