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The Most Happy Fellowes

Vanity Fair, by David Kamp Original Article

Posted By: StormCnter- 11/10/2012 5:42:53 AM Post Reply

To go “belowstairs” at Downton Abbey, one doesn’t actually descend any stairs, but, rather, enters into a drafty, warehouse-like building at Ealing Studios, in West London. This is where many of the interior scenes for Downton Abbey, the TV show, are filmed. On an afternoon last spring, the set in use was the servants’ hall. Gathered at a long, plain dining table familiar to viewers of the series were the dastardly footman Thomas, the glowering lady’s maid O’Brien, the saintly head housemaid Anna, and assorted lesser drudges in the employ of the Crawley family. They were talking over tea—

Who Had the Dirt on Petraeus?

Commentary Magazine, by Alana Goodman Original Article

Posted By: MissMolly- 11/10/2012 5:37:52 AM Post Reply

In a Friday afternoon bombshell, CIA Director David Petraeus resigned, citing an extramarital affair. Petraeus has been under fire recently for the CIA’s response to the Benghazi attack. The Cable’s Josh Rogin posted the letter of resignation: Yesterday afternoon, I went to the White House and asked the President to be allowed, for personal reasons, to resign from my position as D/CIA. After being married for over 37 years, I showed extremely poor judgment by engaging in an extramarital affair. Such behavior is unacceptable,

An Outcast Among Peers Gains
Traction on Alzheimer´s Cure

Wall Street Journal, by Jeanne Whalen Original Article

Posted By: StormCnter- 11/10/2012 5:30:26 AM Post Reply

Some people collect stamps, others vintage cars. As a young Ph.D. student at Cambridge University in the 1980s, Claude Wischik was on a mission to collect brains. It wasn´t easy. At the time, few organ banks kept entire brains. But Dr. Wischik, an Australian in his early 30s at the time, was attempting to answer a riddle still puzzling the scientific community: What causes Alzheimer´s disease? To do that, Dr. Wischik needed to examine brain tissue from Alzheimer´s patients soon after death. That meant getting family approvals and enlisting mortuary technicians to extract the brains, he says,

Don’t Go Wobbly, GOP

National Review Online, by Larry Kudlow Original Article

Posted By: StormCnter- 11/10/2012 5:20:12 AM Post Reply

In the fierce headline debate over the so-called fiscal cliff, our newly reelected president argues that “a majority of Americans agree with [his] approach.” That approach, according to the president, is “to combine spending cuts with revenue — and that means asking the wealthiest Americans to pay a little more in taxes.” Well, that’s not exactly what the exit polls said. To the question “Should taxes be raised to help cut the budget deficit?” only 33 percent answered “yes” while 63 percent responded “no.” Isn’t that interesting? But nobody’s talking about this exit-poll nugget.

Michelle Obama 2016: Why Not?

Atlantic, by Espeth Reeve Original Article

Posted By: StormCnter- 11/10/2012 5:15:16 AM Post Reply

What´s the case against Michelle Obama starting a political career of her own? It starts and ends with the fact that she doesn´t want one. But what if she changes her mind? The first lady has three important things for a future in politics: the popularity, the skills, and the opportunity. (We´ll get to "the will" later.) Here´s the case for her taking her turn on the ballot: People love her. Aside from her husband and Hillary Clinton, the first lady is the biggest rock star in the Democratic Party.

Mitt’s enduring gifts

New York Post, by James Rosen Original Article

Posted By: Pluperfect- 11/10/2012 5:05:31 AM Post Reply

Even before the Republican Party’s convention had gaveled to order last August, The Washington Post was pronouncing Mitt Romney at best “a transitional figure, rather than a transformative one” within the GOP. That he has since lost the election, and in so doing ceded to President Obama virtually all the battleground states, will do nothing to disturb this assessment. But it would be wrong to see Romney’s failed candidacy as a total loss for Republicans, or for the country. For all Romney’s limitations as a candidate — his interpersonal awkwardness and propensity for gaffes,

The party that doomed its nominee

Washington Post, by Kathleen Parker Original Article

Posted By: StormCnter- 11/10/2012 5:00:44 AM Post Reply

The headline was inevitable: “What went wrong?” Seriously? Republicans plan to commence focus groups and voter-based polls to discover the mystery behind their loss. (Snip)The truth is, Romney was better than the GOP deserved. Party nitwits undermined him, and the self-righteous tried to bring him down. The nitwits are well-enough known at this point — those farthest-right social conservatives who couldn’t find it in their hearts to keep their traps shut. No abortion for rape or incest? Sit down. Legitimate rape? Put on your clown suit and go play in the street.

Kemp’s Ridley Sea Turtle, Stranded in
Holland, Released on Texas Coast

ABC News, by Ned Potter Original Article

Posted By: StormCnter- 11/10/2012 4:52:42 AM Post Reply

They named her Flip — a Kemp’s Ridley sea turtle found last December, stranded on the coast of Holland. She was injured and stunned by the cold. But the scientists and animal lovers who rescued her took advantage of a key fact about Kemps’ Ridleys — that while they’re endangered, they are also among the world’s great long-distance travelers. Specialists nursed her back to health, and released her into the water today — off the coast of south Texas. “We couldn’t have asked for it to go any better,” said Iain Scouller,

A Setback, Not a Catastrophe

Weekly Standard, by Fred Barnes Original Article

Posted By: StormCnter- 11/10/2012 4:49:04 AM Post Reply

The last thing Republicans need is an identity crisis. The losses in the 2012 election shouldn’t be sugarcoated. President Obama’s reelection does mean Obamacare will go into effect, and another shot at capturing the Senate was squandered. But the election was a setback, not a catastrophe. Contrary to the media’s narrative, Republicans aren’t tumbling into any abyss of permanent minority status. No soul-searching is required. Republicans retain the advantages and strengths they’ve had for decades. The biggest advantage: America is a center-right country. The election reflected a slight tilt to the center,

Voting Rights Act Challenge
Gets U.S. High Court Hearing

Bloomberg News, by Greg Stohr Original Article

Posted By: StormCnter- 11/10/2012 4:41:06 AM Post Reply

The U.S. Supreme Court will consider overturning a signal achievement of the civil rights movement, agreeing to hear a challenge to part of the 1965 Voting Rights Act in a case loaded with racial and political ramifications. Acting three days after minority voters propelled President Barack Obama to re-election, the court yesterday said it will review a provision that requires all or part of 16 mostly Southern states to get federal approval before changing their voting rules. Opponents say that “preclearance” provision is no longer warranted. With the justices already considering whether to roll back university affirmative action, the court’s current term

Gingrich culpability in Romney loss

Fortune, by Dan Primack Original Article

Posted By: StormCnter- 11/10/2012 4:35:21 AM Post Reply

In the aftermath of President Obama´s victory over Mitt Romney, there has been a lot of attention paid to how the Obama campaign successfully defined Romney as an out-of-touch corporate raider. And most of the credit has gone to Obama campaign boss Jim Messina, who made a "grand bet" to saturate the summer airwaves with anti-Romney ads while the GOP nominee was still recovering from a drawn-out primary battle. But this victory narrative misses a very large point: Messina´s gamble was enabled by Newt Gingrich. The Romney campaign was well aware that Bain Capital

David and Bathsheba

PJ Media, by Michael Walsh Original Article

Posted By: StormCnter- 11/10/2012 4:25:47 AM Post Reply

Ever since the September 11 attack on our consulate and CIA station in Benghazi, “the dog in the night-time” of the scandal the media did its best to bury during the election campaign has been David Petraeus, the Iraq War commander turned spook-in-almost-chief. Throughout the orgy of misinformation, disinformation, finger-pointing, blame-shifting and general confusion, Petraeus remained adamantly silent, a hostage to fortune somewhere within the bowels of the CIA building in Langley. The one man who could have cut through the administration’s fog machine said nothing substantive as ambassador Chris Stevens and three others were laid to rest.

From Katrina To Sandy, FEMA
Rumors and Failures Keep Swirling

Daily Beast, by Michael Moynihan Original Article

Posted By: StormCnter- 11/10/2012 4:20:31 AM Post Reply

It’s one of those stories that sends you straight to Snopes, that debunker of Internet myths and conspiracy theories. Could it possibly be true that FEMA, the most maligned federal agency after the IRS, asked victims of Hurricane Katrina, Rita, and Wilma to repay millions of dollars in relief funds supposedly transmitted in error? And did they really ask for compensation from Katrina victims more than five years after their checks were cashed? One can be forgiven a certain degree of skepticism: After the tragedy in New Orleans, a series of stubborn myths percolated online—

Attention focuses on author
who resides in Charlotte

Charlotte Observer, by Karen Garloch Original Article

Posted By: ConservativeYankee- 11/10/2012 1:25:16 AM Post Reply

Charlotte is an unlikely home for Paula Broadwell, a counterterrorism expert and world traveler who relished being embedded with combat troops in Afghanistan to research her biography of Gen. David Petraeus. But Broadwell moved here more than three years ago with her husband, Scott, a radiologist, and their two young sons, Landon and Lucien, because it was her husband’s turn to pick. “We made an agreement when we first got married that every other move would be the other person’s,” she told the Observer in an interview earlier this year. While based in Charlotte, she launched a promotional tour

Woman Linked to Petraeus Is a
West Point Graduate and
Lifelong High Achiever

The New York Times, by Michael D. Shear Original Article

Posted By: ConservativeYankee- 11/10/2012 1:14:44 AM Post Reply

Paula Broadwell, whose affair with the nation’s C.I.A. director led to his resignation on Friday, was the valedictorian of her high school class and homecoming queen, a fitness champion at West Point with a graduate degree from Harvard, and a model for a machine gun manufacturer. Paula Broadwell, who wrote a biography of David H. Petraeus, moved into public view on Friday after an affair with Mr. Petraeus was uncovered. It may have been those qualities — and a string of achievements that began in her native North Dakota, where she was state student council president, an all-state

Some in GOP already
cheering on younger Bush

Houston Chronicle, by Peggy Fikac Original Article

Posted By: Dreadnought- 11/10/2012 12:35:00 AM Post Reply

George P. Bush, the product of American political royalty, has filed paperwork with the Texas Ethics Commission to run for office. Bush, 36, is the nephew of former President George W. Bush and grandson of former President George H.W. Bush. His father is former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, and his mother, Columba, is a native of Mexico. The younger Bush´s move comes at a pivotal moment for the GOP, after the party´s lack of success with Latino voters was cited as a primary cause for Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney´s loss to President Barack Obama in Tuesday´s election.

Democrats’ mandate madness

Washington Post, by Ruth Marcus Original Article

Posted By: Dreadnought- 11/10/2012 12:32:30 AM Post Reply

The biggest mistake President Obama could make now is to overinterpret the election results. One of the dumbest things politicians do in the aftermath of elections is to claim a mandate. Even dumber is when they actually believe it. And reelected presidents are especially susceptible to the mandate delusion. At a news conference just after his reelection in 1996, Bill Clinton pointed to this pitfall. Noting he had just read a book about presidential second terms, Clinton observed that “sometimes the president thinks he has more of a mandate than he does and tries

Down from Olympus

National Review Online, by Victor Davis Hanson Original Article

Posted By: Dreadnought- 11/10/2012 12:16:57 AM Post Reply

David Petraeus’s resignation marks the end of one of the great postwar military and government careers — his successful surge in Iraq being analogous to and as impressive as Matthew Ridgway’s salvation of Korea or Sherman’s sudden taking of Atlanta that saved Lincoln’s and the Union cause before the 1864 elections. In a book due out in late spring, The Savior Generals, I argue that his achievements were comparable to those of the best of history’s maverick commanders who were asked to save wars deemed lost — and did. But for now, the explanation

David Petraeus Was
Brought Down by ... Gmail

The Atlantic, by Megan Garber Original Article

Posted By: earlybird- 11/9/2012 11:07:55 PM Post Reply

While David Petraeus was still serving as a four-star general in the U.S. Army, he began exchanging emails with the woman who would eventually write his biography. After Petraeus retired from military service and accepted a new post -- director of the Central Intelligence Agency -- those email exchanges, it´s believed, turned into something else: an affair. The affair might have concluded as so many others do (Snip)were it not for the technology that helped to ignite it in the first place: email. The FBI began to suspect that Petraeus´s personal Gmail account had been hacked -- so it launched

Gen. Petraeus Resigns:
A Warrior´s Star Is Tarnished

Investor´s Business Daily, by David Ignatius Original Article

Posted By: earlybird- 11/9/2012 10:53:48 PM Post Reply

David Petraeus achieved genuinely great things in his career, so his fall as CIA director over what he bluntly described in his resignation letter Friday as "extremely poor judgment ... engaging in an extramarital affair" has the poignancy you might find in a novel by Leo Tolstoy or Victor Hugo. Petraeus may have seemed larger than life in uniform, but beneath the ribbons he was a very human story. Petraeus´ 14-month tenure as CIA director was short and, compared to his rocket-like ascent to a four-star rank in the Army, something of a bumpy ride.(snip) It wasn´t an easy fit,

Obama´s Benghazi Scapegoat
Gets Year In Prison

Investor´s Business Daily, by Staff Original Article

Posted By: HollowLeg- 11/9/2012 10:38:40 PM Post Reply

Scandal: The filmmaker blamed for the terrorist attack on our Libyan consulate and the murder of our ambassador goes to jail for an "unrelated" matter. If you believe that, you also believe al-Qaida is on its heels. If the Obama administration had heeded warnings from Ambassador Chris Stevens that, after two previous incidents, the consulate in Benghazi was surrounded by terrorist training camps and couldn´t withstand an organized attack, Mark Basseley Youssef might still be a free man today. If requests for enhanced security had not been repeatedly denied, or if

The Consolations of Denial

National Review Online, by Mark Steyn Original Article

Posted By: supersid- 11/9/2012 10:21:05 PM Post Reply

With respect, the analysis below is wishful thinking. (Snip) That’s the main reason his re-election was so narrow – because he spent his first term concentrating only on things that, whatever their immediate downside, offer his team serious long-term advantage. Our guys might usefully learn from that: Too often Republicans, even when they win, are content to be in office rather than in power. If that’s what he did when he had a re-election to fight, what do you think he’ll do now that he doesn’t?

Republican governors shouldn’t
help implement Obamacare

Washington Examiner, by Philip Klein Original Article

Posted By: KarenJ1- 11/9/2012 10:06:19 PM Post Reply

For several years, opposition to President Obama’s health care law focused on its mandate that forces individuals to purchase government-approved insurance. By upholding the mandate as a constitutional exercise of Congress’s taxing power in June, the U.S. Supreme Court maintained the provision that helped hold the law together. But if the mandate is the cement, the law’s expansion of Medicaid and establishment of subsidized health insurance exchanges is the house itself. It’s these two provisions that will be responsible for $1.7 trillion of spending over the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Florida’s tainted vote

Washington Times, by Editorial Original Article

Posted By: KarenJ1- 11/9/2012 10:02:24 PM Post Reply

Florida just can’t seem to count votes properly. After the embarrassing “hanging chad” debacle of the 2000 presidential election, similar games are now being played in the contest between Republican Rep. Allen West and Democratic challenger Patrick Murphy over the 18th Congressional District seat. Mr. Murphy claims 160,328 votes to Mr. West’s 157,872, but the GOP is questioning the integrity of the vote count, particularly in St. Lucie County. On election night, Mr. West had maintained a district-wide lead of nearly 2,000 votes until the St. Lucie County Supervisor of Elections inexplicably “recounted” thousands of early ballots,

TSA grabs union contract

Washington Times, by Editorial Original Article

Posted By: KarenJ1- 11/9/2012 9:56:10 PM Post Reply

When Congress decided to take over airport security, it was never about safety. That became clear on Friday when Transportation Security Administration (TSA) screeners formally agreed to a contract that will add 45,000 dues-paying members to the ranks of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE). This public-sector union forces members to hand over between $14 and $16 out of each paycheck, meaning the organization stands to collect as much as $16 million each year. This money will help turn out the vote for Democratic candidates and subsidize a number of liberal causes.

Floodgates Open on
New Health Regs

National Journal, by Margot Sanger-Katz Original Article

Posted By: KarenJ1- 11/9/2012 9:51:58 PM Post Reply

After months of regulatory delays, the floodgates have apparently opened. The Health and Human Services Department delivered two major health reform rules to the Office of Management and Budget on Friday, the first in an anticipated stream of health regulation. Many sources close to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services told National Journal that the administration had a number of important health rules ready to go but was holding them back until after the election to avoid a political backlash. Now that President Obama has been reelected, they predicted those rules would start emerging, and fast.

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