When Savana Redding, now 19, talks of what happened to her in eighth grade, it is clear that the painful memories linger. She speaks of being embarrassed and fearful and of staying away from school for two months. And she recalls the “whispers” and “stares” from others in this small eastern Arizona mining town after she was strip-searched in the nurse’s office because a vice principal suspected she might be hiding extra-strength ibuprofen in her underwear.
U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd appears to have looked everywhere but his home state to fuel what pundits anticipate will be one of the most hotly contested races in the nation in 2010. The five-term incumbent reported raising just $4,250 from five Connecticut residents during the first three months of the year while raking in $604,745 from nearly 400 individuals living outside the state. While incumbents often turn to special interests for early campaign fundraising, Dodd’s out-of-state total seems unusually high and comes at a time when he has been plagued by poor approval ratings among state voters. Massie Ritsch, a spokesman for the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks federal campaign contributions, said Dodd’s low percentage of in-state funding strikes him as unusual.
Five men dead in an apartment. In a county that might see five homicides in an entire year, the call over the sheriff’s radio revealed little about what awaited law enforcement at a sprawling apartment complex. A type of crime, and criminal, once foreign to this landscape of blooming dogwoods had arrived in Shelby County. Sheriff Chris Curry felt it even before he laid eyes on the grisly scene. He called the state. The FBI. The DEA. Anyone he could think of. “I don’t know what I’ve got,” he warned them. “But I’m gonna need help.” The five dead men lay scattered about the living room of one apartment in a complex of hundreds.
Wanted: Computer hackers. Federal authorities aren’t looking to prosecute them, but to pay them to secure the nation’s networks. General Dynamics Information Technology put out an ad last month on behalf of the Homeland Security Department seeking someone who could “think like the bad guy.” Applicants, it said, must understand hackers’ tools and tactics and be able to analyze Internet traffic and identify vulnerabilities in the federal systems. In the Pentagon’s budget request submitted last week, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the Pentagon will increase the number of cyberexperts it can train each year from 80 to 250 by 2011.
Several Republican members of Congress spoke at Tea Party protests around the country this week. Some were applauded. Others heckled. But only one, it appears, was booed relentlessly for the entire duration of his speech: Rep. Gresham Barrett of South Carolina. Barrett, who voted in favor of the $700 billion bailout to stabilize the financial sector, despised by many of the demonstrators, knew what he was getting into.
Joe Biden is a blithering idiot, ’nuff said.
Vice President Joe Biden has been keeping a low profile these days. But last week he popped into headlines when he clashed with aides to former President George W. Bush after claiming to have rebuked Bush in private meetings. Recalling a conversation during an interview with CNN, Biden said he told Bush in the Oval Office: “‘Mr. President, turn and around look behind you. No one is following.'” Karl Rove, Bush’s top political adviser in the White House, called the conversational “fictional.” [actually Rove called him a straight up liar…ed] This isn’t the first time Biden’s comments have made news. From historical blunders and Internet gaffes to offensive jokes, Vice President Joe Biden is never shy a quotable moment.
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Over the past five years, Michael Shires, associate professor in public policy at Pepperdine University, and I have been compiling a list of the best places to do business. The list, based on job growth in regions across the U.S. over the long, middle and short term, has changed over the years–but the employment landscape has never looked like this. In past iterations, we saw many fast-growing economies–some adding jobs at annual rates of 3% to 5%. Meanwhile, some grew more slowly, and others actually lost jobs. This year, however, you can barely find a fast-growing economy anywhere in this vast, diverse country. In 2008, 2% growth made a city a veritable boom town, and anything approaching 1% growth is, oddly, better than merely respectable.
Alaska passes bill exempting the state from federal firearms regulations. State’s rights rule!
The state House has approved a bill exempting guns and ammunition manufactured and kept within Alaska from federal firearms regulation, a measure critics immediately said was unconstitutional. The House Thursday voted 32-7 in favor of the Alaska Firearms Freedom Act sponsored by Fairbanks Republican Mike Kelly and 10 co-sponsors. Kelly says the measure will let Alaska opt out of federal regulation, including interstate commerce law used to regulate firearms, in favor of state law.
Man screwing around with cell phone cost five kids their lives.
Five Houston children died Saturday after their sedan slid into a rain-swollen ditch when the driver lost control while trying to answer a cell phone, authorities said. John Cannon, a Houston police spokesman, told several Houston television stations that the driver of the car was the father of four of the dead children, all 7 or younger. Cannon said the driver was taken for blood-alcohol testing.
What do you do with a Kenyan on an expired visa who just won’t go home? In the curious case of David Kihuha, the government wants to resume a rarely used and controversial practice and sedate him, then put him on a one-way flight to Nairobi. But that has proven to be difficult, at best. Indeed, the case of the 36-year-old Kenyan, a former Olathe resident, has frustrated federal prosecutors, hobbled the government’s deportation system and led to the unusual tactic of indicting Kihuha on federal felonies for, in essence, refusing to leave.
Large numbers of illegal immigrants file tax returns using phony Social Security numbers to cash in on the federal Earned Income Tax Credit, thanks to lax government management, according to the author of a new study. “Technically, only people authorized to work in the U.S. are eligible for the credit, you need a valid Social security number,” said Ed Rubenstein, a financial analyst and economist, speaking at a news conference Tuesday at the National Press Club. “But identity theft, stolen Social Security numbers, and other scams effectively nullify the restriction. As a result, illegal aliens actually receive the EITC at even greater rates than legal immigrants,” Rubenstein said.