NBC
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‘May Divorce Be With You’: SNL Does Gingrich‘s ’Moon Colony’
Priscilla Frieberger was still alive when she began decomposing in this recliner chair after sitting in it for three weeks. (Image source: WKRC-TV)
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‘She Was Starting to Decompose’: Woman Charged in Death of Morbidly Obese Sister
The outcome wasn’t in doubt. I think the question is what’s up with Newt Gingrich? I’m watching his bizarre election-night press conference right now. I’ll have more on that later. Meanwhile, here’s LAT , ” Mitt Romney cruises to win in Nevada caucuses: Win solidifies standing as overwhelming frontrunner “: Reporting from Las Vegas — Mitt Romney romped to a commanding victory Saturday in Nevada’s Republican presidential caucuses, posting a second consecutive win and laying an impressive marker in a battleground state both parties will vigorously contest in November. The strong showing, on top of Romney’s landslide win Tuesday in Florida, boosted his delegate count and enhanced his standing as the overwhelming frontrunner in the fight for the GOP nomination. Trailing far behind were former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, who were vying for second place. Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, who eked out a win in Iowa but has faded since, was a distant fourth. It takes 1,144 delegates to win the nomination and Romney has staked an early lead in that count. But more meaningful was the momentum he gains from strong back-to-back showings, which will carry him forward to the next round of balloting Tuesday in Minnesota, Colorado and Missouri. Plus, Lonely Conservative has some comments, ” Romney Takes Nevada ” (via Memeorandum ).
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Mitt Romney Wins Nevada Caucuses
Concerns are growing over the safety of a Pakistani doctor who might have played an unwitting yet heroic role in the U.S. take-down of Osama bin Laden. According to Fox News , Dr. Shikal Afridi may be in the custody of Pakistan’s clandestine Inter-Services Intelligence agency after it discovered the doctor’s participation in a fake Hepatitis B vaccination program that attempted to gain DNA samples from those within bin Laden’s Abbottabad compound — including several followers and their families. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta this week questioned the charges against the doctor. “I’m very concerned about what the Pakistanis did with this individual,” he told CBS News. “This was an individual who, in fact, helped provide intelligence on — that was very helpful with regards to this operation. And he was not in any way treasonous towards Pakistan. He was not in any way doing anything that would have undermined Pakistan.” Panetta reminded thst the U.S. and Pakistan “have a common cause here against terrorism.” “And for them to take this kind of action against somebody who was helping to go after terrorism, I just think it’s a real mistake on their part,” said Panetta. Fox reports that Panetta’s comments are the first to publicly acknowledge Afridi’s involvement in the operation. Fox provides some of the background: Afridi was arrested shortly after the raid and is thought to still be in custody despite not formally being charged with a crime. His detention has widened the rift between the U.S. and Pakistan, with Washington until now quietly pressing for his release so Afridi and his family can resettle in the U.S., according to The Guardian newspaper, which first reported on the doctor’s role in the operation last July. Reports suggest that Afridi rang the bell of the bin Laden compound during the vaccination drive, and the nurse who was with him was able to get inside but was ultimately unsuccessful in getting any DNA samples. Reports have also suggested that Afridi may not have even been aware that he was working for the CIA and instead may have been recruited by other Pakistanis to carry out the fake house-to-house vaccination program. Now, lawmakers are coming to Afridi’s aid. Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher introduced legislation to grant U.S. citizenship to Afridi as Pakistan’s Inquiry Commission on the Abbottabad Operation has recommended the doctor be tried for treason. If convicted, Afridi could be executed. An official press release from Rohrabacher’s office stated: “It is shameful and unforgivable that our supposed allies in Pakistan have charged Dr. Afridi, who contributed to the operation that killed Bin Laden, with treason,” said Rohrabacher. “The United States needs to stand with those who help us. We have not forgotten about Dr. Afridi.” “By granting him American citizenship we will send a direct and powerful message to those in the Pakistani government and military who protected the mastermind of 9/11 for all those years and who are now seeking retribution on those who helped to bring Bin Laden to justice,” Rohrabacher continued. “We must assume the obvious and conclude that Pakistan’s leaders have plotted for years to kill Americas.” Panetta also told CBS News that there was no actual evidence of Pakistani involvement in bin Laden’s presence in Pakistan, but suspicions must have been raised. “I personally have always felt that somebody must have had some sense of what was happening at this compound,” Panetta said of Pakistan’s alleged involvement in harboring bin Laden. “Don’t forget, this compound had 18-foot walls around it — 12-foot walls in some areas, 18-foot walls elsewhere, a seven-foot wall on the third balcony of the house. It was the largest compound in the area,” he said. “So you would have thought that somebody would have asked the question, ‘What the hell’s going on there?’
NORTH GREENFIELD, Ind. (The Blaze/AP) — Steven Tyler says he meant to sing the national anthem like that. The Aerosmith frontman and “American Idol” judge endured plenty of jabs after his rendition of the anthem at the AFC Championship game last month, but Tyler says he doesn’t understand what all the fuss was about. “I don’t know. As I said before, I put emphasis on, ‘In the land of the free’ and I went up,” Tyler explained. “Oddly enough I hit the note so I don’t know what they are talking about. I emphasized ‘free’ which was for freedom. It was well thought out prior to. I wasn’t messing with American tradition.” Enduring negative criticism at that football game did not stop Tyler from enjoying pre-Super Bowl festivities with Carrie Underwood. The duo is in Indianapolis for CMT’s “Crossroads,” which brings acts from different genres together to perform. It’s not the first time the two have sung together: They performed a duet at the Academy of Country Music Awards last year. “I just love to sing and I love her stuff. A good friend of mine writes songs with her. When I heard ‘Undo It,’ I said, ‘What is that?’ That is an Aerosmith song, right? I am going to finish recording that with you. He said, ‘No, I wrote that with Carrie, it is coming out in a week,’” he said. “I met her and it was all over after that, once I looked into her eyes. She opened her mouth and sang and she is that good. I loved singing with her.” The two rehearsed Thursday evening in North Greenfield, just outside of Indianapolis, ahead of their scheduled Saturday show (it will air the same night on the network). The former “Idol” champ says she enjoys working with the lively Tyler because he “makes everybody all warm and fuzzy.” While Tyler, closely connected to Boston for years, made clear he was rooting for the New England Patriots in Sunday’s game against the New York Giants, Underwood demurred when asked to name her pick. In her house, she says hockey is the main focus, since husband Mike Fisher is a professional hockey player in Nashville. “He is Canadian so I have had to switch his focus from so much hockey to a little football because we watch a lot of hockey,” she said. “I love watching him and I love watching the Predators.” To refresh, below is Tyler’s rendition:
Jim Moran, racist pig by Michelle Malkin Creators Syndicate Copyright 2012 Congressman Jim Moran is an old white Democrat from Virginia who thinks he can judge whether we minority conservatives are acting sufficiently non-white enough. Moran’s an inveterate bully, a brawler, a crook and a bigot. And not one of his civility-preaching liberal colleagues has the courage to call him out. Responding on cable news to GOP Rep. Allen West’s blunt criticisms of President Obama this week, Moran derided the retired U.S. Army colonel, who is black, as “not representative of the African-American community.” Moran then launched into the kind of tired race-traitor tirade I’ve heard from progressives of pallor for more than 20 years. How dare we “people of color” stray from the left’s ideological plantation? If we choose personal responsibility over entitlement, capitalism over statism or self-determination over identity politics, presumptuous white liberals appoint themselves spokespeople for our forefathers and deciders of our true destinies. To wit: Lt. Col. West “just seems clueless now that he has climbed aboard ship,” Moran fumed. “He’s climbed this ladder of opportunity that was constructed by so many of his ancestors’ sweat, sacrifice, blood, you know, they did everything they could for his generation to be successful. But now that he’s climbed on board ship, instead of reaching down and steadying the ladder, he wants to push it off.” West, his father, his mother and his brother all dedicated their lives to military service; four consecutive generations of his family served in the U.S. armed forces. As a freshman congressman, West’s message has been a compelling agenda of self-empowerment. For this, he is savaged by a House colleague as a racial saboteur? But Moran was just warming up. Next, he contrasted conservative West with big-government savior Barack Obama, who he said acted in proper accordance with his ancestors “by reducing college tuition and training our workers, trying to get a decent job for everybody” and leaving a “constructive legacy.” Er, how’s the savior’s near double-digit unemployment, record food stamp enrollment, re-inflation of the housing and higher-education bubbles, and massive redistribution of wealth from the working class to the Wall Street bundler class working out for you? Moran hailed Obama as “our Lion King” and compared his Republican detractors to the “hyenas in the background trying to cause trouble” for the White House. This bumbling chief of political correctness apparently is unaware that those hyenas in the Disney movie have been criticized for perpetuating negative stereotypes about blacks and Hispanics. Dog-whistle politics, anyone? Do Moran’s constituents in Virginia’s 8th district support his incessant race-baiting? Last year, he accused Tea Party activists of racism for sweeping out entrenched Democrats in the November 2010 midterm elections. It “happened for the same reason the Civil War happened in the United States. It happened because the Southern states, the slaveholding states, didn’t want to see a president who was opposed to slavery,” he ranted to Arabic-language television network Alhurra. “(A) lot of people in the United States don’t want to be governed by an African-American , particularly one who is liberal, who wants to spend money and who wants to reach out to include everyone in our society.” Yet, only two short years before, this hopelessly racist nation put Obama in the Oval Office with a landslide victory. Logic never was the demagogue’s strong suit. The aptly named Moran, an 11-term incumbent , continues to be rewarded by voters for his extravagant spending habits, self-dealing and diarrhea of the mouth. As I’ve reported previously: – While on the Alexandria (Va.) City Council, he was charged with casting a vote that helped a developer friend win a bid for a lucrative plot of public land. A special prosecutor concluded that Moran had violated the state’s conflict-of-interest law. He sobbed as he pleaded no contest to a felony charge of vote-peddling. He received a year’s probation for a reduced conflict-of-interest misdemeanor charge and was forced to resign. – In 1995, he had to be subdued by Capitol Hill police when he threw a punch at California Republican Rep. Randy Cunningham on the House floor. After the incident, Moran blamed “talk radio” for creating a hostile environment in Washington. That same year, he screamed “I’ll break your nose” at Indiana Republican Rep. Dan Burton during a hearing. – In 2002, Moran revealed in financial disclosure statements that he accepted a $50,000 loan in January 2001 from an “old friend,” billionaire America Online co-founder James Kimsey. The congressman claims to have paid the business mogul back at 15 percent interest over three months, and his spokesman emphasized the loan came with no accompanying quid pro quo. – Kimsey’s gift came on the heels of Moran’s disclosure that he had received another Big Business-tied loan: $25,000 from “old friend” Terry Lierman, a drug industry lobbyist representing Schering-Plough. After getting that unsecured loan at a lower-than-market interest rate, Moran co-sponsored a bill that would extend the patent on Schering-Plough’s allergy medicine Claritin — and prevent generic drug manufacturers from offering inexpensive alternatives. Liberal busybodies are an annoyance. Liberal race-card abusers who lambaste patriotic minority conservatives to cover their own dirty deeds make my brown skin crawl.
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Jim Moran, racist pig
On Wednesday, the Republican-led House of Representatives took a major swipe at President Obama’s health care law, as it voted to repeal the Community Living Assistance Services and Support program (known as the CLASS Act). CLASS is, by all accounts, a financially-troubled and complex portion of the controversial overhaul; it deals with providing affordable, long-term care insurance to Americans in need. This provision in the health care law has been troublesome for some time now. Back in October, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said she wasn’t able to find a way to make the voluntary program financially solvent. But the White House, despite these challenges, hasn’t yet been supportive of repealing it. Under the program, workers would pay a monthly premium during their careers and collect a daily cash benefit if they become disabled later in life. The White House describes the program as follows: The Act provides Americans with a new option to finance long-term services and care in the event of a disability. It is a self-funded and voluntary long-term care insurance choice. Workers will pay in premiums in order to receive a daily cash benefit if they develop a disability. Need will be based on difficulty in performing basic activities such as bathing or dressing. The benefit is flexible: it could be used for a range of community support services, from respite care to home care. No taxpayer funds will be used to pay benefits under this provision. The program will actually reduce Medicaid spending, as people are able to continue working and living in their homes and not enter nursing homes. Safeguards will be put in place to ensure its premiums are enough to cover its costs. The Associated Press further explains the plan: The CLASS Act was supposed to address the crisis in long-term care coverage. Currently some 10 million Americans need long-term care, and that number is expected to hit 15 million by 2020. But only about 8 percent of people buy private long-term care insurance. …monthly premiums would be used to finance benefits of at least $50 a day for those needing long-term care. The money would go for services at home or to help with nursing home bills. But government actuaries determined that unless a large number of healthy people signed up, premiums would have to soar to unaffordable levels to meet the growing needs of the disabled. “House Republicans voted to repeal the entire Affordable Care Act last year, but Democrats stood behind the president in defense of their landmark bill. Now, Republicans are trying to take it apart, piece by piece,” ABC News reported . The vote to strike down the act ended with 267 for and 159 against, as 28 Democrats joined in favor and all 239 voting Republicans showed their support for it. Republicans have targeted the program as part of their overall goal of dismantling the health care overhaul law. Action on the bill in the Democratic-controlled Senate is uncertain. One of the few changes Congress has been able to bring about concerned a requirement for small businesses to file more health care paperwork. “Republicans are committed to repealing and defunding it, piece by piece if necessary,” House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said of the health care bill after the CLASS Act vote. Experts have concluded, said Rep. Phil Gingrey, R-Ga., that “the CLASS program can’t be operated without mandatory participation so as to ensure its solvency.” Unless it is terminated, he said, “it poses a clear danger to the fiscal health of our budget and to the American taxpayer.” The administration finally has come to the conclusion “that we knew even before the bill passed, that this was unsustainable, it was unworkable, it was fatally flawed,” said the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Charles Boustany, R-La. But Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., said the Republican goal was to “tear down and dismantle programs that provide health care in the United States.” He said “the solution is to amend the program to make it work, not just repeal it and leave nothing in its place.” Waxman isn’t alone in his criticism. Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) penned an op-ed for Politico that railed against the Republican action : In the past, lawmakers would have worked together to amend existing law to address a serious national crisis like long-term care. But in our charged partisan environment, too many people would rather score political points than solve problems. They view repealing CLASS as a tactical step toward undermining health care reform – without putting forward any real alternatives for families who have nowhere to turn. Repealing CLASS won’t do anything to solve our nation’s long-term care crisis. Legislation rarely starts out perfectly – indeed, the Republicans’ own Medicare prescription drug bill left a huge coverage gap, forcing seniors to pay thousands of dollars out of pocket. It is only because Democrats rejected the “throw out the baby with the bathwater” approach to legislating, and figured out a solution, that this gap will finally be closed and seniors can save millions on prescription drugs. More evidence that the battle over the American health care system is far from over. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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This Is the Portion of Obamacare That the House Voted to Repeal
Donald Trump officially endorsed Mitt Romney for president, quelling conflicting media reports about which candidate the business mogul would back: Romney or former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. Standing beside the former Massachusetts governor at his luxury Las Vegas hotel Thursday, Trump called it his “honor and privilege to endorse Mitt Romney.” “Mitt is tough, he’s smart, he’s sharp. He’s not going to allow bad things to continue to happen to this country that we love,” Trump said. Earlier in the day, Trump had said it was Romney’s performance during the GOP debates and his tough stance on China that won him over, the Associated Press reported. “Governor Romney? Go out and get ‘em. You can do it,” Trump said. Taking the podium following Trump’s announcement, Romney said, “There are some things that you just can’t imagine happening in your life. This is one of them.” “Being in Donald Trump’s magnificent hotel and having his endorsement is a delight,” he said. “And of course I’m looking forward to the endorsement of the people of Nevada.” In an interview on Fox News Channel immediately following the announcement, Trump told host Neil Cavuto Romney has “really stepped up” on the issues during the campaign. Asked whether his endorsement means there is officially no chance of Trump seeking his own presidential bid, Trump said it depends on whether Romney gets the GOP presidential nomination. Trump has repeatedly toyed with the idea of seeking the presidency himself as a third-party candidate. “If for some reason something happens [and Romney doesn't get the nomination] then it’s open season,” he said. “[But] I don’t see that happening.” This post has been updated since it was first published.
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Donald Trump Officially Endorses Mitt Romney for President
Attorney General Eric Holder castigated an Idaho congressman while testifying before the House Oversight Committee Thursday, accusing him of committing one of the “worst things I think I’ve ever seen in Congress.” Holder was on Capitol Hill to testify in an ongoing congressional probe into the failed Operation Fast and Furious, in which weapons sold to Mexican drug cartels were not tracked, resulting in the deaths of hundreds, including a U.S. Border Patrol agent. According to National Review Online , Holder was responding to a “grandstanding presentation” by Republican Congressman Raul Labrador that “cobbled together testimony from Holder going back ten years to establish a ‘pattern’ of Holder saying, in effect, ‘I don’t know’ in testimony.” “There’s a whole bunch of things that I could say about what you just did, maybe this is the way you do things in Idaho or wherever you’re from,” Holder said. “But understand something — I’m proud of the work that I’ve done as attorney general of the United States, and looked at fairly, I think that I’ve done a pretty good job.” He continued, “Have I been perfect? No. Have I made mistakes? Yes. Do I treat the members of this committee with respect? I always hope that I do. And what you have just done is if nothing else, disrespectful. And if you don’t like me that’s one thing. You should respect the fact that I hold an office that is deserving of respect.” “And you know, maybe you’re new to this committee, I don’t know, I don’t know how long you’ve been here. But my hope would be that we can get beyond that kind of interaction, that kind of treatment of a witness whether it’s me or somebody else because I think what you just did was fundamentally unfair, just not right,” Holder said.
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Holder Berates Rep. During Hearing: ‘Maybe This Is the Way You Do Things in Idaho or Wherever You’re From’
