Welcome! "What's Happenin'?" is a casual community diary (a daily series, 8:30 AM Eastern on weekdays, 10 AM on weekends and holidays) where we hang out and talk about the goings on here and everywhere.
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Good Morning!
Longwood Gardens, February, 2012, Photo credit: joanneleon
A Bill of Rights is what the people are entitled to against every government, and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference.
-- Thomas Jefferson
News
Obama apologizes for Quran burning as Afghan protests go on
KABUL, Afghanistan — President Barack Obama apologized Thursday for the accidental burning of Qurans by U.S. forces in Afghanistan as anti-American protests raged for a third consecutive day, leaving two NATO troops and at least five Afghans dead and 26 Afghans wounded nationwide.
At one such demonstration outside a U.S. base in Khogyani, in the eastern province of Nangarhar, a protester who was wearing an Afghan army uniform opened fire, killing the two soldiers with the U.S.-led NATO coalition, officials said.
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While the protests so far have appeared to be spontaneous outpourings of public anger, the Taliban ratcheted up their rhetoric Thursday, issuing a statement that encouraged Afghans to kill foreign troops and not to rely on "mere protests and empty slogans."
"Kill them, beat them, take them as prisoners and teach them such a lesson that they never summon the courage to abuse the holy Quran again," the Taliban statement said.
Sen. Pat Roberts' office is latest to get powder-filled letter
WASHINGTON — The Wichita, Kan., office of Sen. Pat Roberts received one of the threatening letters Thursday containing a "suspicious powdery substance" that showed up in other congressional offices earlier this week.
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The FBI, the Secret Service, the U.S. Capitol Police and the Postal Inspection Service are involved in investigating the letters, which started arriving at the district offices of several members of Congress, as well as some media organizations, on Tuesday.
Peter Orszag, Former Top Obama Adviser, Takes Issue With Portrayal In New Book
In his book, "The Escape Artists," The New Republic's Noam Scheiber depicts the former chairman of the Office of Management and Budget, Peter Orszag, as one of the chief skeptics of additional stimulus spending during the waning months of 2009. When Orszag's position ended up winning the day with the president, the outcome was "especially tragic" for the economy and the administration's political prospects, Scheiber writes.
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His cozy relationship with the press complicated matters, enhancing his image with the public but earning him distrust inside the administration. In his book, Scheiber reported that Obama's top communications hand, David Axelrod, grew convinced by the second half of 2009 that Orszag was regularly leaking material to The New York Times.
ABC News reported on Thursday that Orszag appears to have been the source for one of Scheiber's biggest revelations in the book -- that Christina Romer, the Council of Economic Advisers' chair, outlined the need for $1.8 trillion in stimulus funds in an early transition memo.
Occupy vs Tea Party: The Google Smackdown
In the battle for America's attention, the Occupy movement rocketed past the tea party this fall and remains in the lead, though not by much anymore. Here's a chart from Google Trends comparing the dueling movements' Google hits (top graph) and news mentions (bottom graph):
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So the occupy movement has gradually fallen off the front pages, but what about the political issues it brought to light? The following graphs suggest that "income inequality" continues to rival "federal debt" as a leading point of conversation, especially in the news media:
'Top levels' of Syria regime responsible for war crimes, U.N. says
WASHINGTON — As the city of Homs shuddered Thursday from another day of Syrian army bombardments, U.N. investigators held regime officials and military commanders "at the highest levels" responsible for "crimes against humanity and other gross human rights violations" against civilians and opposition groups.
Although it didn't name individuals, the U.N. Human Rights Council report effectively accused Syrian President Bashar Assad and his top aides of directing as a matter of state policy a "widespread and systematic" campaign of murder, torture and illegal detention aimed at smothering the 11-month-old uprising against more than four decades of Assad family rule.
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The three-member panel of U.N. investigators — which was barred from entering Syria and relied on interviews with witnesses and defectors, as well as examinations of videos, photographs and satellite pictures — was unable to identify a "functioning chain of command" linking local insurgents and Free Syrian Army leaders outside of Syria. That finding raises serious questions about how the rebels could be supplied with arms and ammunition, an option that the United States and its European and Arab allies haven't ruled out.
Foreign ministers meet in Syria to demand ceasefire
Ministers gather in Tunis for first meeting of Friends of Syria group as Homs shelling continues
Update: More News...
Sounds promising. I just hope ACTA isn't tacked onto it as a big freaking poison pill (and a way to distract from ACTA provisions).
Obama Web Privacy Framework May Have Teeth
An Obama administration Internet privacy initiative marks the best chance for setting U.S. standards to shield personal information in the absence of Congressional legislation, consumer groups and lawyers said.
The White House called on companies such as Google Inc. (GOOG) and Facebook Inc. (FB) yesterday to work with privacy advocates to craft voluntary codes of conduct for handling consumer data based on a bill of rights for Web users, an effort that may bring the U.S. closer to European data-protection norms.
Ford Opens Plant in China, Increasing Capacity
Ford Motor Co. (F) opened its third passenger-car factory in China today, increasing the automaker’s manufacturing capacity in the country by a third to more than 600,000 vehicles annually.
The $490 million assembly plant, set up by the Dearborn, Michigan-based company’s venture with Changan Automobile Group Co. (CFORDZ), spans across 1 million square meters in the southwestern Chinese city of Chongqing and will produce the new-generation Focus sedans, Ford said in a statement today.
What Oligarchy Means: Small Groups of Multi-Millionaires Funding Almost All SuperPACs
We know how the super PACs have come to dominate the presidential campaign, but a closer look at financial-disclosure numbers shows how just a tiny handful of billionaires are dominating those super PACs. An analysis of January’s campaign-disclosure filings reveals that 25 percent of all the money raised for the presidential race that month came from just five donors. That select group gave $19 million to various super PACs, often in support of more than one Republican candidate. Those numbers come from both The Washington Post and USA Today, though neither gives a complete list of those five top donors of 2012.
Itty bitty kittehs waking up.