Everyone knows women can be bitches sometimes, right? Unless they’re cougars, that is, on the prowl — or if they’re a bit younger, they’re more like vixens, kinda foxy. They henpeck when married and go wet and wild when single. They can take out their claws out or put them away. (Who doesn’t love a good catfight?)

Less dangerous are the girls and the young women, softer and fuzzier, who are more like bunnies, or, as the English say, like birds. Either way, diminutive and harmless. Girls like these are more like pets. Chicks or kittens.

Everyone does it, using language that renders women as animals;the list is endless. This culturally ingrained misogyny, as reflected in acceptable language that dehumanizes half the world’s population, is not limited to any one country or religion, or followers of one or another ideology.

But in U.S. politics, a particular trend has emerged among a certain set of conservatives: that of equating a woman with a farm animal. When, last week, Safeway Senior Vice President General Counsel Bob Gordon stood before a shareholders’ meeting telling a quot;jokequot; that portrayed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi as being worth less than a pair of hogs,he clearly had no reservations about publicly making this joke and obviously thought it was funny. After all, he was only elaborating on a meme that’s been evolving among right-wing Republican politicians in state legislatures.

Apple’s filing doesn’t try to defend the five publishers the DOJ has accused of colluding to fix prices. In fact, it basically throws them under the bus, pointing out that if there was a price-fixing conspiracy among its co-defendants — as alleged — they kept it secret from Apple.

Meanwhile, the government’s lawyers are going to have a hard time proving that Apple violated antitrust laws because the company’s market share in the e-book business before the launch of the iPad was essentially zero.

They can’t make a case against Apple for collusion because whatever the publishers may have said to one another, there’s no evidence that Apple conspired with its competitors.

They can’t even use as evidence the blunt quotes taken from the Steve Jobs biography because they are hearsay.

The one element of the government’s case that seemed to give Apple’s lawyers a hard time was the charge that the most-favored-nation provision Steve Jobs added at the last minute was “designed to protect Apple from having to compete on price at all, while still maintaining Apple’s 30% margin.”

In its response, Apple’s legal team can’t even bring itself to name the provision, referring to it repeatedly as MFN. But they manage to shoot some holes in the government’s argument, pointing out, among other things, that the 30% cut Apple takes is hardly pure profit margin. It costs money to run the iBookstore, and while Apple doesn’t claim to lose money on e-book sales, that’s not where it gets the big bucks.

You can get the gist of Apple’s filing in those first six introductory paragraphs. The rest is an item-by-item refutation of the government’s case and a summary of Apple defenses, should it come to that.

A member of the National Labor Relations Board accused of leaking inside information has resigned, the agency announced Sunday.

Terence Flynn had been under pressure to leave since March, when the board’s inspector general found that Flynn committed ethics violations by improperly revealing confidential details on the status of pending cases.

Flynn, a Republican, shared the information with two former board members, including a one-time labor adviser to presidential hopeful Mitt Romney’s campaign. That adviser, Peter Schaumber, left the Romney campaign in December, around the time the investigation into Flynn began.

Flynn submitted a letter to President Obama and to the board’s chairman, Mark Pearce, late Saturday saying he would resign effective July 24, but would recuse himself from all agency business until he departs.

While Flynn did not mention the allegations against him, he had previously denied any wrongdoing. Flynn’s personal lawyer had claimed any discussions about board proceedings were not illegal.

Flynn is one of five members of the board, which oversees union elections and enforces labor laws. It has been the focus of intense partisan wrangling, with Republicans and business groups complaining that it leans too heavily in favor of labor unions.

Obama bypassed the Senate to appoint Flynn and two Democratic nominees to the board in January. Republicans had filibustered the nominations for months.

In two separate reports, the board’s inspector general said Flynn improperly leaked information about the status of cases, how other board members planned to vote, and the board’s internal strategy for handling litigation against it.

In one instance, the inspector general found that Flynn secretly helped Schaumber draft an opinion column denouncing a board decision that favored unions.

The alleged ethical violations occurred in 2010 and 2011, when Flynn was a staff lawyer for the board.

The case has already been referred to the Justice Department for a separate investigation. It also has been forwarded to the U.S. Office of Special Counsel to investigate potential violations of the Hatch Act, which prohibits federal employees from engaging in partisan political activity.

Congressional Democrats and union leaders had been calling on Flynn to resign, saying his disclosures compromised the agency’s integrity.

Don’t like that answer? Try focusing on earnings rather than sales, and you get only a marginally different result. Assuming its profit margin stays constant (instead of falling as it could very well do as it grows), assuming its P/E ratio in five years will be just as high as Google’s is today, and assuming that its stock will produce a five-year return of 11% annualized, Facebook’s stock today should be just $16.66.

How can Facebook investors wriggle out from underneath the awful picture these calculations paint? By assuming that its revenue and profitability will grow faster than the average IPO between 1996 and 2010 — and not just by a little bit, either, but a whole lot faster.

Of course, it’s always possible that Facebook will be able to pull that off.

But, as Professor Ritter pointed out to me earlier this week, “the bigger a company gets, the harder it is to maintain percentage growth.” And Facebook is already huge — larger, in fact, than all but 47 other publicly traded companies in the U.S., by market capitalization.

So my back-of-the-envelope calculations for this column could very well be too optimistic rather than too pessimistic.

Given all this, Ritter said that a market cap “of $63 billion … five years from now seems like a very reasonable scenario.”

China can bypass Wall Street when buying United States government debt in what is the Treasury’s first direct relationship with a foreign government, according to documents viewed by Reuters.

The relationship means the People’s Bank of China can buy United States debt using a different method from any other central bank.

Other central banks, including the Bank of Japan, which has a large appetite for Treasuries, place orders with Wall Street banks designated by the government as primary dealers. Those dealers then bid on their behalf at Treasury auctions.

China, which holds $1.17 trillion in Treasuries, still buys some through primary dealers, but since June 2011 it has been able to bypass them.

The documents viewed by Reuters show that the Treasury Department has given the People’s Bank of China a direct computer link to its auction system, which means that it can participate without placing bids through primary dealers. The Chinese first used the access in late June 2011 to buy two-year notes. China still has to go through the market if it wants to sell.

The change was not announced publicly or in any message to primary dealers.

“Direct bidding is open to a wide range of investors, but as a matter of general policy we do not comment on individual bidders,” said Matt Anderson, a Treasury Department spokesman.

While there is no prohibition on direct bidding by foreign government entities, the Treasury’s accommodation of China is unusual.

The Treasury’s sales of debt to China have become part of a politically charged public debate about China’s role as both the largest exporter to the United States and the country’s largest creditor.

The privilege may help China obtain United States debt for a better price by limiting Wall Street’s knowledge of its orders.

Primary dealers are not allowed to charge customers money to bid on their behalf at Treasury auctions, so China is not saving money by cutting out commission fees. Instead, China is protecting information about its bidding habits.

Democrats have enjoyed trying to keep Republicans on the defensive about women’s issues, and on Tuesday, they tried to keep the debate going by reintroducing a wage gap measure that failed in the Senate in 2010.

Senator Barbara A. Mikulski, Democrat of Maryland, with other female senators and a number of advocacy groups, planned a news conference on Wednesday urging Congress to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act. The legislation, which builds on the Equal Pay Act of 1963, is designed to help close the wage gap between women and men working equivalent jobs.

Ms. Mikulski made the preliminary announcement with a stream of Twitter posts on Tuesday, calling the measure a “down-payment” for ending the pay gap. “It’s outrageous that 49 yrs after Equal Pay Act, women still earn 77 cents to every $1 men make,” she wrote. “Wage gap is real – costing women & families thousands over their career. Women deserve #EqualPay 4 equal work.”

In 2010, when the Paycheck Fairness Act came up for a procedural vote in the Senate, no Republican supported it.

The Paycheck Fairness Act would require employers to demonstrate that wage gaps between men and women doing the same work have a business justification, and it would prohibit employers from retaliating against employees who shared salary information with their co-workers. The measure would also create a competitive grant program to provide training in negotiation for girls and women.

Senator Harry Reid, the Democratic majority leader, is expected to file a motion on Thursday that would end debate on the bill and bring it up for a vote.

CHICAGO — President Obama and the leaders of America’s NATO allies on Monday agreed to end their guiding role in the decade-long war in Afghanistan next summer, saying it is time for the Afghan people to take responsibility for their own security and for the United States-led international troops to go home.

Declaring that “our forces broke the Taliban’s momentum,” Mr. Obama used the summit meeting of NATO leaders here in his adopted hometown to begin an exit from a conflict he embraced during his first campaign for president as America’s good war.

“We’re now unified behind a plan to responsibly wind down the war in Afghanistan,” Mr. Obama said during a news conference after the meeting. He called the decision a “major step” toward the end of the war.

But Mr. Obama acknowledged that “real challenges” remained in dealing with the problems across the border in Pakistan, and that the conference had not resolved the impasse over reopening supply lines or the other tensions about the fight against insurgents operating from safe havens there.

“We think that Pakistan has to be part of the solution in Afghanistan,” he said. “Neither country is going to have the kind of security, stability and prosperity that it needs unless they can resolve some of these outstanding issues.”

Pakistan closed supply lines to Afghanistan after an American airstrike in November that killed 24 Pakistani solders. Mr. Obama has refused to apologize for the strike, as Pakistan has demanded in negotiations with the Americans, and he pointedly exchanged only a few words with the country’s president, Asif Ali Zardari, during the two-day summit meeting — “very brief, as we were walking into the summit,” he said. The two men also stood and spoke briefly with the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, before all three joined the other leaders for a group photograph.

The plans to withdraw from Afghanistan are “irreversible,” Mr. Obama and the world leaders said in their communiqué, a deliberate word choice that underscored the political reality in America and in Europe. After 10 years of war and with the global economy reeling, the nations of the West no longer want to pay, either in treasure or in lives, the costs of their efforts in a place that for centuries has resisted foreign attempts to tame it.

The chart above is from the invaluable people at Voteview, who use data on Congressional voting to measure political positions and polarizations. What it shows is what should be obvious, but much of the Beltway chattering class still refuses to acknowledge: there has been a huge increase in polarization, and it’s because Republicans have moved right, not because Democrats have moved left. (You want to look at the Northern Democrat line; the southern Democrats disappeared or became Republicans).

As I said, this is obvious; yet people who try to say this get frozen out of the discourse, even when — like Mann and Ornstein — they have heretofore been pundits in good standing. Instead, you’re supposed to wring your hands over partisanship in the abstract.

And when the attempt to turn this hand-wringing into actual political effort flops, you blame it on the false equivalency police!

The facts have a well-known anti-centrist bias.

The United States on Thursday announced the imposition of antidumping tariffs of more than 31 percent on solar panels from China.

The move by the Commerce Department is certain to infuriate Chinese officials already upset after recent bilateral frictions over China’s human rights policies and its increasingly confrontational approach toward American allies like the Philippines and Japan.

The antidumping decision is among the biggest in American history, covering one of the largest and fastest-growing categories of imports from China, the world’s largest exporter.

The department said the United States bought $3.1 billion worth of Chinese solar cells last year, giving China more than half the American market for the devices.

Many solar panel installers in the United States have opposed tariffs on Chinese panels, contending that inexpensive imports have helped spur many homeowners and businesses to put solar panels on their rooftops. The new tariffs are likely to mean a substantial increase in the price of solar panels here.

Chinese officials have been indignant at American criticism of their solar power industry, pointing out that the United States has urged China for years to embrace renewable energy as a way to reduce air pollution, combat climate change and limit the need for oil imports from politically volatile countries in the Mideast.

Government support for solar energy is an important feature of China’s current Five-Year Plan, which runs through 2015, although Premier Wen Jiabao publicly cautioned in March that he was becoming concerned about overcapacity in the sector.

Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng - who was at the centre of a diplomatic crisis with Washington - is on his way to the United States.

The blind activist and his family boarded a flight to Newark, near New York, after being taken from a Beijing hospital to the capital’s airport.

Mr Chen recently spent six days in the US embassy in Beijing after escaping house arrest in north-east China.

He has been offered a fellowship at New York university.

Chen Guangcheng, a self-taught lawyer who campaigned against forced abortions under China’s one-child policy, was jailed for four years in 2006 for disrupting traffic and damaging property, and placed under house arrest after his release in 2010.

Former President George W. Bush jumped back into presidential politics this week, endorsing presumptive 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney. He also, according to the New York Times, plans to release a book in two months that will lay out his advice on boosting economic growth:

Gingerly, the 43rd president is beginning to add his voice back into the national dialogue. A month ago, he spoke publicly in favor of one of his defining domestic legacies, the tax cuts that still divide the country. Two months from now, he plans to publish a book outlining strategies for economic growth. And on Tuesday, he made a rare return to Washington to promote freedom overseas.

That Bush believes the country needs his thoughts on how to create economic growth is laughable. After all, under his watch, “growth in investment, GDP, and employment all posted their worst performance of any post-war expansion,” while “overall monthly job growth was the worst of any cycle since at least February 1945, and household income growth was negative for the first cycle since tracking began in 1967.” As the Economic Policy Institute found, “between the end of the 2001 recession (2001Q4) and the peak of that expansion (2007Q4), the U.S. economy experienced the worst economic expansion of the post-war era.”

As this chart shows, the only economic indicator on which Bush exceeded the average is corporate profits:

D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton announced today that she will not be given the opportunity to testify during a congressional hearing on a bill that would prohibit abortions in D.C. after 20 weeks.

This Thursday the House Subcommittee on the Constitution will consider the bill introduced by Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) in January. (A companion bill was introduced in the Senate by Republican Utah Sen. Mike Lee.) Last week Norton requested the right to speak—which could have been granted by Franks, who is also the committee’s chair—as she has for other hearings in which legislation directly targeting D.C. is considered. Her request was denied.

“The post-20-week D.C. abortion ban bill targets an entire group of individuals, women who live in the District of Columbia, and their constitutional rights. Using the women of one congressional district to reach for extreme encroachments on women’s reproductive rights has become a pattern of the House Republican majority, but also reflected nationwide. We will vigorously fight the bullying tactics of the Republican majority against the District’s women, and in standing up for ourselves, we recognize that we are also in the larger fight to protect the reproductive rights of women everywhere,” said Norton in a statement.

Norton announced that she would participate in a press conference before the hearing with Mayor Vince Gray and Christy Zink, a professor at the George Washington University who had an abortion after 20 weeks due to the malformation of the fetus. Zink will be testifying against the bill.

In response to Franks’ bill, DC Vote is encouraging D.C. residents to bring their constituent problems to “Mayor” Franks’ D.C. Constituent Services Day on May 23. In March a small group of pro-choice and pro-D.C. activists protested outside Franks’ district office in Glendale, Arizona against the bill.

The Virginia legislature considered a similar restriction this year and rejected it. The 20-week restrictions have been passed in Alabama, Idaho, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Kansas.

Federal spending is lower now than it was when President Obama took office. I’ll pause to let you absorb the news.

In January 2009, before President Obama had even taken the oath of office, annual spending was set to total 24.9 percent of gross domestic product. Total spending this year, fiscal year 2012, is expected to top out at 23.4 percent of GDP.

Here’s another interesting fact. Taxes today are lower than they were on inauguration day 2009. Back in January 2009, the CBO projected that total federal tax revenue that year would amount to 16.5 percent of GDP. This year? 15.8 percent.

One last nugget. The deficit this year is going to be lower than what it was on the day President Obama took office. Back then, the CBO said the 2009 deficit would be 8.3 percent of GDP. This year’s deficit is expected to come in at 7.6 percent.

The Federal Reserve is worried about the impact on the US economy if government spending is cut sharply.

“The possibility of a sharp fiscal tightening in the United States was also considered a sizable risk,” the US central bank said in the minutes of its April meeting.

Automatic budget cuts that will slash $1.2bn (£754m) will happen at the end of this year if a budget deal is not reached.

The Fed held rates at a record low.

“If agreement is not reached on a plan for the federal budget, a sharp fiscal tightening could occur at the start of 2013,” the minutes said.

“Uncertainty about the trajectory of future fiscal policy could lead businesses to defer hiring and investment.”

After a fierce political debate that saw budget talks go to the wire, Republican and Democratic leaders reached an agreement in August 2011 on raising the US debt limit and avoiding a first default.

Under the the agreement, the US deficit will be reduced by at least $2.1tn over 10 years.

The House of Representatives Republican leader, John Boehner, has indicated he is again prepared to battle President Barack Obama over the budget.

The Fed has vowed to keep rates at “exceptionally low levels” all the way to late 2014.

“Several members” of the Fed also said, the minutes showed, that additional support could be needed if the economic recovery lost momentum.

Congress also bears substantial responsibility for the anti-scientific, anti-empirical aspects of American drug policy. If Mitt Romney and Barack Obama are able to define the terms of the upcoming presidential election, this issue won’t come up. But voters have consistently shown interest in the subject when permitted to directly question politicians, and Gary Johnson, the Libertarian Party nominee, is eager to challenge Obama and Romney on this issue given the chance. When opportunities for these challenges arise, the classification of marijuana is one of the most vulnerable parts of the status quo to attack.12 states have pending medical marijuana legislation.

In any other rich country, Nikki probably would have been fine, notes T. R. Reid in his important and powerful new book, “The Healing of America.” Some 80 percent of lupus patients in the United States live a normal life span. Under a doctor’s care, lupus should be manageable. Indeed, if Nikki had been a felon, the problem could have been averted, because courts have ruled that prisoners are entitled to medical care.

As Mr. Reid recounts, Nikki tried everything to get medical care, but no insurance company would accept someone with her pre-existing condition. She spent months painfully writing letters to anyone she thought might be able to help. She fought tenaciously for her life.

Finally, Nikki collapsed at her home in Tennessee and was rushed to a hospital emergency room, which was then required to treat her without payment until her condition stabilized. Since money was no longer an issue, the hospital performed 25 emergency surgeries on Nikki, and she spent six months in critical care.

“When Nikki showed up at the emergency room, she received the best of care, and the hospital spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on her,” her step-father, Tony Deal, told me. “But that’s not when she needed the care.”

By then it was too late. In 2006, Nikki White died at age 32. “Nikki didn’t die from lupus,” her doctor, Amylyn Crawford, told Mr. Reid. “Nikki died from complications of the failing American health care system.”

“She fell through the cracks,” Nikki’s mother, Gail Deal, told me grimly. “When you bury a child, it’s the worst thing in the world. You never recover.”

We now have a chance to reform this cruel and capricious system. If we let that chance slip away, there will be another Nikki dying every half-hour.

That’s how often someone dies in America because of a lack of insurance, according to a study by a branch of the National Academy of Sciences. Over a year, that amounts to 18,000 American deaths.

Hundreds of millions of dollars meant to provide a little relief to the nation’s struggling homeowners is being diverted to plug state budget gaps.

In a budget proposed this week, California joined more than a dozen states that want to help close gaping shortfalls using money paid by the nation’s biggest banks and earmarked for foreclosure prevention, investigations of financial fraud and blunting the ill effects of the housing crisis. California was awarded more than $400 million from the banks, and Gov. Jerry Brown has proposed using the bulk of that sum to pay the state’s debts.

The money was part of a national settlement valued at $25 billion and negotiated with five big banks over abuses in their mortgage and foreclosure processes.

The settlement, reached in February after a year of talks and intervention by the Obama administration, was the second-largest in history involving the states, trailing the tobacco industry settlement, and represented the first large-scale commitment by banks to provide direct aid to borrowers.

As part of the settlement, the banks agreed to pay the states $2.5 billion, money intended to help homeowners and mitigate the effects of the foreclosure surge. But critics complained that this was the only cash the banks were required to pay — the rest comes in the form of “credits” for reducing mortgage debt and other activities. Even that relatively small amount has proved too great a temptation for lawmakers.

Only 27 states have devoted all their funds from the banks to housing programs, according to a report by Enterprise Community Partners, a national affordable housing group. So far about 15 states have said they will use all or most of the money for other purposes.

In Texas, $125 million went straight to the general fund. Missouri will use its $40 million to soften cuts to higher education. Indiana is spending more than half its allotment to pay energy bills for low-income families, while Virginia will use most of its $67 million to help revenue-starved local governments.

Like California, some other states with outsize problems from the housing bust are spending the money for something other than homeowner relief. Georgia, where home prices are still falling, will use its $99 million to lure companies to the state.

Now, none of this is to discount Saverin’s own contributions to Facebook’s success. Though he was only there at the beginning—and although he had some pretty terrible ideas for Facebook, including his plan to show interstitial ads when you went to add a friend—let’s assume that he did in fact add $4 billion of value to the world.

The question is, what’s fair for him to keep?

As an immigrant myself, I’ve got no patience for the argument that he should keep all of it. Pretty much everything in my life that I enjoy wouldn’t have happened without my being in the United States. My education, my job, my wife and family, the fact that I’m not persecuted for my race or religion (I was born in South Africa), the fact that I can sometimes forget to lock my doors at night and not end up killed by marauding bands —I hate paying taxes as much as the next guy, but when I think about all the ways that the United States has been integral to everything in my life, taxes seem like a tiny price.

Now, remember that the tax rate on long-term capital gains is only 15 percent. In other words, Saverin gets to keep 85 percent of everything he’s making from Facebook’s IPO. Given how much of his wealth depends on the government, that’s more than fair.

FORT WORTH - The U.S. government didn’t offer a reward for the capture of Houston grandmother Elisa Castillo, nor did it accuse her of touching drugs, ordering killings, or getting rich off crime.

But three years after a jury convicted her in a conspiracy to smuggle at least a ton of cocaine on tour buses from Mexico to Houston, the 56-year-old first-time offender is locked up for life - without parole.

“It is ridiculous,” said Castillo, who is a generation older than her cell mates, and is known as “grandma” at the prison here. “I am no one.”

Convicted of being a manager in the conspiracy, she is serving a longer sentence than some of the hemisphere’s most notorious crime bosses - men who had multimillion-dollar prices on their heads before their capture.

The drug capos had something to trade: the secrets of criminal organizations. The biggest drug lords have pleaded guilty in exchange for more lenient sentences.

Castillo said she has nothing to offer in a system rife with inconsistencies and behind-the-scenes scrambling that amounts to a judicial game of Let’s Make A Deal.

“Our criminal justice system is broke; it needs to be completely revamped,” declared Terry Nelson, who was a federal agent for over 30 years and is on the executive board of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. “They have the power, and if you don’t play the game, they’ll throw the book at you.”

Castillo maintains her innocence, saying she was tricked into unknowingly helping transport drugs and money for a big trafficker in Mexico. But she refused to plead guilty and went to trial.

In 2010, of 1,766 defendants prosecuted for federal drug offenses in the Southern District of Texas - a region that reaches from Houston to the border - 93.2 percent pleaded guilty rather than face trial, according to the U.S. government. Of the defendants who didn’t plead not guilty, 10 defendants were acquitted at trial. Also, 82 saw their cases dismissed.

The statistics are similar nationwide.

The latest case in point came this week with the negotiated surrender of a Colombian drug boss Javier Calle Serna, whom the United States accuses of shipping at least 30 tons of cocaine.

While how much time Calle will face is not known publicly, he likely studied other former players, including former Gulf Cartel lord Osiel Cardenas Guillen.

Cardenas once led one of Mexico’s most powerful syndicates and created the Zetas gang. He pleaded guilty in Houston and is to be released by 2025. He’ll be 57.

Then they asked each member of the group how they would handle the defence budget if they were a member of Congress. They found

Presented the base national defense budget for 2012 and given the opportunity to set a level for 2013, three quarters reduced it, including two thirds of Republicans and 9 in 10 Democrats. On average defense spending was lowered 23%. A majority lowered it at least 11%.

When participants were asked to get more specific and propose changes to the levels of spending in nine areas, a majority cut all nine. “All areas combined were cut 18% on average, with Republicans cutting 12% and Democrats 22%,” the study notes. Most participants were surprised by the level of America’s defence spending when it was held up against the rest of the discretionary budget, historical levels of spending, and the defence spending of other nations. A previous poll showed similar results—support for defence cuts—when participants were informed about the comparable size of the 31 largest categories in the federal discretionary budget.

The potential cuts to the Pentagon contained in last year’s budget deal are actually less than those proposed by the PPC study group on average. So it may seem odd that America’s politicians are now scrambling to avoid those reductions. Instead, Republicans have proposed cuts to food stamps, Medicaid, social services and other programmes for poor Americans, while Democrats have proposed raising taxes on the rich. Few have pushed back against the military spendthrifts, who argue that America would swiftly decline were it to return to the level of funding George Bush laboured under at the end of his peaceable presidency.

The US says it will seek an effective treatment for Alzheimer’s by 2025, as it faces an ageing population and spiralling health costs.

Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced the goal as part of the first National Alzheimer’s Plan.

An additional $50m will be added to research funding during 2012.

About 5.4 million Americans have Alzheimer’s or related dementias, a number expected to reach 16 million by 2050, at a cost of $1tn (£625m).

President Barack Obama has earmarked an additional $80m in his 2013 budget plan for Alzheimer’s research in what was described as an effort to “jumpstart” efforts to reach the 2025 goal.

In addition, the plan calls for better training of doctors in a bid to better recognise the symptoms of the disease, increased support for care-givers and public awareness of the disease, as well as better data tracking.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit has ruled that the First Amendment protects the right of private citizens to record the actions of police while they are performing their duties in public places. The decision resulted from a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois against the state’s unusually broad eavesdropping statute. It criminalizes all audio recordings made without the consent of the parties involved, even of public officials in public places.

“The act of making an audio or audiovisual recording is necessarily included within the First Amendment’s guarantee of speech and press rights as a corollary of the right to disseminate the resulting recording,” wrote the two-judge majority in a Tuesday decision. The Illinois statute “interferes with the gathering and dissemination of information about government officials performing their duties in public. Any way you look at it, the eavesdropping statute burdens speech and press rights and is subject to heightened First Amendment scrutiny.”

But Judge Richard Posner disagreed with his colleagues. Posner is the judge who raised concerns in oral arguments that striking down the statute would lead to more “snooping around by reporters and bloggers.”

The majority’s ruling “casts a shadow over electronic privacy statutes of other states,” Posner wrote in his dissent. He worried that crime victims would be hesistant to report crimes to police officers in public out of fear that the conversation might be recorded by a third party’s cell phone and posted to the Internet.

The OpenSecrets blog of the Center for Responsive Politics in Washington says the Supreme Court ruling “allowed non-profit corporations under the Tax Code 501c to spend unlimited amounts of money running … political advertisements while not revealing their donors.” The blog said “conservative non-profit groups [have] spent $121 million without disclosing where the money came from.”

The blog ticks off other results of Citizens United.

“The percentage of spending coming from groups that do not disclose their donors has risen from 1 percent to 47 percent since the 2006 midterm elections.”

Spending by those secretive 501c non-profits “increased from zero percent of total spending by outside groups in 2006 to 42 percent in 2010.”

OpenSecrets said the “amount of independent expenditure and electioneering communication spending by outside groups has quadrupled since 2006.”

Meanwhile, 72 percent of “political advertising spending by outside groups in 2010 came from sources that were prohibited from spending money in 2006.”

The Center for Public Integrity, which is devoted to investigative journalism, reports 62 percent of the money raised by the two conservative groups “associated with former Bush adviser Karl Rove have come from mystery donors, a statistic that shows the increasingly important role being played by non-profits in a post-Citizens United political world.”

The United States is resuming sales of some weapons to Bahrain, but says it will not supply the Gulf state with any crowd control equipment.

The US State Department says the shipment will help Bahrain “maintain its external defence capabilities.”

Arms sales were frozen last year after the Bahraini government suppressed pro-democracy demonstrations.

Amnesty International says 60 people have been killed since the protests began in February 2011.

It is thought a frigate and other coast guard vessels will be supplied, along with upgraded engines for F-16 fighters.

The State Department says an order for Humvee all-terrain vehicles and a new type of wire-guided missile will not be included.

Bahrain is a key US ally in the Gulf, hosting the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet.

Officials in Washington say the Obama administration still has concerns about human rights in Bahrain.

But human rights campaigners have condemned this move, saying it is out of step with the United States’ commitment to reform in Bahrain.

Alas, the Tea Party movement won’t be setting up shop in Zurich anytime soon.

Representative Michele Bachmann has asked the Swiss government to withdraw her dual citizenship, saying she’s all American.

“Today I sent a letter to the Swiss Consulate requesting withdrawal of my dual Swiss citizenship, which was conferred upon me by operation of Swiss law when I married my husband in 1978,” Mrs. Bachmann, Republican of Minnesota, said Thursday in a statement.

“I took this action because I want to make it perfectly clear: I was born in America and I am a proud American citizen. I am, and always have been, 100 percent committed to our United States Constitution and the United States of America. As the daughter of an Air Force veteran, stepdaughter of an Army veteran and sister of a Navy veteran, I am proud of my allegiance to the greatest nation the world has ever known.”

Politico reported late Tuesday that Mrs. Bachmann had become a Swiss citizen in March, a month after her husband, Marcus, the son of Swiss immigrants, registered with the Swiss consulate. (Foreign women who married Swiss men before 1992 received automatic Swiss citizenship.)

Becky Rogness, a spokeswoman for Mrs. Bachmann, said Wednesday that the Bachmanns recently decided to obtain Swiss citizenship as a family because “some of their children wanted to exercise their eligibility for dual-citizenship.”

Her Swiss citizenship didn’t go over well with some conservatives, who expressed their displeasure on Wednesday.

The US Department of Justice has sued an Arizona sheriff accused of racially profiling Latinos, among other alleged civil rights violations.

The lawsuit alleges sloppy police work and a disregard for minority rights by Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

US officials wanted the sheriff to agree to train his officers in how to perform duties such as traffic stops.

But Sheriff Arpaio, who denies the allegations, said the department’s demands would nullify his authority.

The self-styled toughest sherriff in the US, he shot to prominence forcing prisoners to wear pink underwear.

Assistant US Attorney General Thomas Perez told a news conference on Thursday: “We have invariably been able to work collaboratively with law enforcement agencies to build better departments and safer communities.”

He added that Sheriff Arpaio’s Maricopa County office had been “a glaring exception”.

In one case cited by the lawsuit, a sheriff’s officer stopped a Latino woman - a US citizen who was five months pregnant - as she pulled into her driveway and insisted she sit on the hood of her car.

“When she refused, the officer grabbed her arms, pulled them behind her back, and slammed her, stomach first, into the vehicle three times,” the suit said.

The woman failed to show she had motor insurance, but the matter was resolved when she provided such proof to a court, the lawsuit said.

In December, the justice department released a scathing report accusing his office of multiple offences, including punishing Hispanic jail inmates for speaking Spanish.

He previously apologised for his office’s botching of sex-crime investigations, including child abuse allegations. When cases were reopened, 19 arrests were made.

On the eve of the lawsuit, Sheriff Arpaio said: “If they sue, we’ll go to court. And then we’ll find out the real story. They’re telling me how to run my organisation.”

Maricopa County has also been under investigation for criminal abuse-of-power allegations since at least December 2009, an inquiry which has focused on the sheriff’s anti-public corruption squad.

A panel of US health experts has for the first time backed a drug to prevent HIV infection in healthy people.

The panel recommended US regulators approve the daily pill, Truvada, for use by people considered at high risk of contracting the Aids virus.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is not required to follow the panel’s advice, but it usually does.

Correspondents say the move could prove to be a new milestone in the fight against HIV/Aids.

Truvada is already approved by the FDA for people who are HIV-positive, and is taken along with existing anti-retroviral drugs.

Studies from 2010 showed that Truvada, made by California-based Gilead Sciences, reduced the risk of HIV in healthy gay men - and among HIV-negative heterosexual partners of people who are HIV positive - by between 44% and 73%.

Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) has been given the nod to take over a US bank, the first such US approval for a Chinese firm.

The US Federal Reserve approved state-owned ICBC’s plans to acquire the US subsidiary of Bank of East Asia.

This comes just days after high-level economic talks between the US and China in Beijing.

The Fed also gave permission to two other Chinese banks to increase their presence in the US.

“It is a pretty significant step. There has been a lot of backlash about Chinese state-run companies acquiring overseas assets,” Stephen Joske of Australia Super, an institutional investor in Beijing, told the BBC.

“The permission [given] to ICBC is a clear message that things may be returning to normal and that fears about Chinese state-run firms may be moderating.”

Reports from the US say the would-be suicide attacker in a foiled “underwear bomb” plot was in fact a double agent.

US officials are quoted as saying that the person dispatched by Yemen-based al-Qaeda to attack a US-bound plane had infiltrated the group.

In an apparent intelligence coup, the agent left Yemen with the device and delivered it to the CIA.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon says it is sending military trainers back to Yemen to help counter al-Qaeda militants.

US intelligence learned last month that militants with al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) in Yemen planned to attack a plane with a more sophisticated version of a bomb hidden in a passenger’s underwear, similar to one used in a failed 2009 attempt, Associated Press news agency reported.

Officials told US media that the would-be bomber had been recruited by Saudi Arabia’s intelligence agency and sent to Yemen where he infiltrated the militants’ cell.

The BBC’s Steve Kingstone in Washington says the double-agent was reportedly given an ambitious task by Saudi intelligence - to convince AQAP that he wanted to blow up himself and a US-bound aircraft.

The agent was given the device which he then delivered to the CIA and Saudi officials.

The New York Times reports that the double-agent is now safe in Saudi Arabia.

FBI analysts are now studying the device.

The upgraded underwear bomb is described by officials as a “custom-fit” device, that would have been difficult to detect even with careful security checks.

I’ve noticed that a few of my conservative Facebook friends have linked to the recent debate between Paul Krugman and Ron Paul on Bloomberg. Some of them are embarrassed to find that Krugman was the more convincing participant.

I have a theory as to why. In that short interview Ron Paul revealed that his school of Austrian economics is more about assertions and ideology then it is about empirical data.

I’ll give one example that stuck out to me. In Part 1 of the Mediaite video (at 6:00) Ron Paul argues that there was a lot of economic growth after World War Two because:

After World War Two a lot of the debt was liquidated, but guess what else we did. The troops were coming home…big government liberals wanted to have job problems, they weren’t put into place. we cut spending by some 60%, we slashed taxes, finally the depression ended.

Ron Paul’s gloss over history has a grain of truth and a giant problem. The truth is that America did take a step down from having a war-time command economy. The problem is that Ron Paul makes it sound as if government then immediately shrunk. He even says taxes were “slashed”.

Here is a chart from the Tax Policy Center showing what the historical highest marginal tax rates were.

During World War Two, the rate is between 81% and 94%. After World War Two, it is cut down to a low of 82% before being raised back to 91%, which is where it stays till the Kennedy years, during which it drops to a slightly lower 70%.

If this is what Ron Paul thinks it looks like when American liberals lose what does it look like when they win?

There are many more examples that have been cited by other writers about how government remained large long after World War Two. Airlines were heavily regulated, the interest on checking accounts was regulated, even the beer industry wasn’t deregulated until 1979, and yes, that was by Jimmy Carter.

After World War Two government was bigger than Ron Paul admits. Krugman was making the point that during the era when taxes on America’s richest were highest and the country was most regulated, the country as a whole was better off. That is a very important question to be able to answer, and it is not clear that Paul has even grappled with the implications of that data at all.

The Canadian firm trying to build an oil pipeline from Alberta to the US Gulf Coast has formally proposed a new route, the US state department says.

The route from the US-Canada border to Steele City, Nebraska is expected to avoid environmentally sensitive land.

The White House previously put the plan on hold, saying it needed more time to assess the environmental impact of the $7bn (£4.3bn) Keystone XL pipeline.

But opponents said it would create jobs and reduce dependence on foreign oil.

The fate of the oil pipeline has been debated as petrol prices have risen - an issue that Republicans are attempting use to attack President Barack Obama during an election year.

But correspondents say the new application by pipeline firm TransCanada could dampen criticism of the Obama administration’s initial rejection.

The new plan includes new routes through the state of Nebraska, where environmentalists had complained of possible damage to a major aquifer.

Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng has telephoned a US Congressional hearing to plead for help in his attempts to leave China with his family.

Mr Chen said he feared for the safety of his family and wanted to meet visiting US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton face-to-face.

The activist is in a Beijing hospital sealed off by Chinese police.

He had spent a week at the US embassy but left after initially accepting China’s assurances of his safety.

Mr Chen said that only after leaving the embassy did he fully realise the threats that had been made against his family members.

US intelligence officials say they have disrupted a plot by al-Qaeda in Yemen to detonate an upgraded version of the failed 2009 “underwear bomb”, according to US media reports.

The device is said to be in US custody, with the FBI reportedly examining the bomb, which was seized by CIA agents.

Reports said no target had been chosen and no plane tickets purchased by the time the alleged plot was foiled.

There is no indication on the status of the would-be bomber.

Activist Chen Guangcheng says he does not know when he will be allowed to leave China despite an offer from a US university.

Mr Chen, who spent six days at the US embassy, said US officials were still being barred from his hospital.

He told the BBC he had asked Chinese officials for help but had not started doing the paperwork for a passport.

On Sunday US Vice-President Joe Biden said a visa was waiting for Mr Chen as soon as he applied.

“[Chinese officials] promised that they would help me process the passports, but I haven’t been given an exact time. I haven’t started filling in the forms,” Mr Chen said.

“I hope they can help me process this because I’m lying in bed and can’t do it myself.”

Mr Chen said he had been able to talk to US officials.

An al-Qaeda leader in Yemen wanted in connection with the 2000 bombing of the American warship USS Cole has been killed in an air raid.

A tribal leader in the east of the country says Fahd al-Quso was killed by two missiles fired from a drone.

His death was confirmed by al-Qaeda and Yemen’s embassy in the US. At least one other man died in the strike.

The US had offered a $5m (£3.1m, 3.8m-euro) reward for information leading to his capture.

A US official welcomed the death of the “senior terrorist operative”. He told AFP news agency that al-Quso had been planning further attacks against the US and Yemen.

The USS Cole was attacked in October 2000 in the Yemeni port of Aden. Militants in a boat packed with explosives blew a hole in the destroyer’s side, killing 17 US sailors and wounding 40.

The US has never formally acknowledged the use of drones against Yemeni al-Qaeda suspects, but is thought to have carried out eight other attacks of this kind so far this year.

In April, The Washington Post newspaper said that the CIA was asking for authorisation to carry out more drone strikes in Yemen.

If you live in the right place in the US, you’re living the developed world.

If you live in the wrong place, it’s similar in some cases to the developing world.

That shocked me when I moved here. I pictured the USA as being fairly uniform. And very wealthy. And it is, very wealthy. In many ways.

But in many ways, when I’m at a gas station in Allen County, Ohio and my attendant has most of their teeth pulled I have to remember I’m not living in ‘THE US-Fucking-A,’ but Allen County, which according to the research done above has an average lifespan of 71.9 years, putting it almost 10 years on average BELOW the US average, and which means I roughly am living in a part of the US with the equivalence of, according to Wikipedia, a place like El Salvador or Armenia (although, unlike those other countries, since Allen County is in the US, I can drive to a better place for opportunities if I can afford a car and transportation).

To understand where the US is the US that outsiders think it is, you need to look to metro areas.

According to the US Mayors report for 2011:

In 2010, U.S. metro economies accounted for 89.8% of the nation’s gross domestic product and wage income and 85.7% of all jobs—slightly down from 2008, but still the overwhelming majority of domestic product and wage and salary disbursements.

The New York metropolitan area ranked first, with 2010 gross metropolitan product (GMP) of $1.28 trillion, followed by Los Angeles ($738 billion), Chicago ($531 billion), Washington ($426 billion), and Houston ($379 billion).

The US economy is $15 trillion, of which NYC, LA, Chicago, DC and Houston are responsible for $3.35 trillion of.

Now, this isn’t an indictment of the county I live in or the US… if things were getting better or holding still.

But sadly, as I pointed out above, counties like Allen County are losing. People are, on average, living fewer years. Meaning something is broken. American progress in those counties that are like the developing world, are slumping, while others are moving forward.

That gap will be, if it continues, a major fissure in a future America.

After a year-long seizure and six more months of secrecy, the court records were finally released concerning the mysterious government takedown of Dajaz1.com – a popular blog dedicated to hip hop music and culture. The records confirm that one of the key reasons the blog remained censored for so long is that the government obtained three secret extensions of time by claiming that it was waiting for “rights holders” and later, the Recording Industry Association of America, to evaluate a “sampling of allegedly infringing content” obtained from the website and respond to other “outstanding questions.”

In other words, having goaded the government into an outrageous and very public seizure of the blog, the RIAA members refused to follow up and answer the government’s questions. In turn, the government acted shamefully, not returning the blog or apologizing for its apparent mistake, but instead secretly asking the court to extend the seizure and deny Dajaz1 the right to seek return of is property or otherwise get due process. The government also refused to answer Congressional questions about the case. ICE finally released the domain name in December of 2011, again with no explanation.

It’s not hard to guess what some of the unanswered “outstanding questions” might have been. Dajaz1.com, was seized with much fanfare by the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) division of the Department of Homeland Security over the 2010 Thanksgiving weekend. It was widely reported at the time that Dajaz1 should never have been targeted, that much of the blog’s content was lawful, and that many of the allegedly infringing links were given to the site’s owner by artists and labels themselves – including Kanye West, Diddy, and a vice president of a major record label. So, at a minimum, we imagine the government was asking the RIAA to provide some evidence that the seizure was justified in the first place.

And so it came to pass that in 2012 — a year after the Arab awakening erupted — the United States made two financial commitments to the Arab world that each began with the numbers 1 and 3.

 It gave Egypt’s military $1.3 billion worth of tanks and fighter jets, and it gave Lebanese public-school students a $13.5 million merit-based college scholarship program that is currently putting 117 Lebanese kids through local American-style colleges that promote tolerance, gender and social equality, and critical thinking. I’ve recently been to Egypt, and I’ve just been to Lebanon, and I can safely report this: The $13.5 million in full scholarships has already bought America so much more friendship and stability than the $1.3 billion in tanks and fighter jets ever will.

So how about we stop being stupid? How about we stop sending planes and tanks to a country where half the women and a quarter of the men can’t read, and start sending scholarships instead?

The Obama administration on Monday offered its first extensive explanation of how American officials decide when to use drones to kill suspected terrorists — a tactic that the government often treats as a classified secret even though it is widely known around the world.

“Yes, in full accordance with the law — and in order to prevent terrorist attacks on the United States and to save American lives — the United States government conducts targeted strikes against specific Al Qaeda terrorists, sometimes using remotely piloted aircraft, often referred to publicly as drones,” John O. Brennan , President Obama ’s top counterterrorism adviser, said before the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

The use of armed drones to strike at suspected militants in places like Pakistan and Yemen has grown dramatically under the Obama administration, and the emergence of the new technology — which has sharply reduced the cost and risk of warfare to its operators, making it easier to engage in sporadic combat in far-flung regions — has led to growing concerns both about civilian casualties and about a future in which other countries also acquire drones.

The United States government has been reluctant to talk openly about its use of drones, apparently in part because foreign governments that granted permission for strikes did so on the condition that the deals would remain secret.

Defending drone strikes as “legal, ethical, and wise,” Mr. Brennan said the president had directed officials to be more open about how they “carefully, deliberately and responsibly” decide to kill terrorism suspects — including what he described as “the rigorous standards and process of review to which we hold ourselves today when considering and authorizing strikes against a specific member of Al Qaeda outside the ‘hot’ battlefield of Afghanistan.”

Merely being a member of Al Qaeda or one of its allies is not enough to be targeted, Mr. Brennan said, because that describes many thousands of people. Rather, policymakers approve the killing of only those who pose a particular threat, he said, like operational leaders who are planning attacks against United States interests, lower-level militants training for such an attack, and those who possess “unique operational skills that are being leveraged in a planned attack.”

Mr. Brennan also said the administration preferred capturing such suspects alive — usually by telling a foreign government where to arrest them — and would authorize a strike only if that was not feasible.

Mitt Romney hasn’t appreciated the fact that President Obama’s campaign released a new video pointing out that Romney said in 2007 that he would not order military action similar to the one Obama ordered that ended up killing Osama bin Laden.

Romney now says that “of course ” he would have done what Obama did. “Even Jimmy Carter would have given that order,” he said yesterday. And this morning during an interview with Charlie Rose on CBS, Romney reiterated that sentiment. “Of course I would have,” he said, “any thinking American would have ordered exactly the same thing.”

Apparently some of Obama’s top advisers don’t fit into the “thinking American” category. Vice President Joe Biden said in January that he advised the president against the raid. “Mr. President, my suggestion is, don’t go. We have to do two more things to see if he’s there,’” Biden recalled. Biden added that “every single person in the room” expressed reservations about going forward with the raid, “except Leon Panetta.”

Obama’s top counterterror adviser John Brennen, in an interview to be aired this Sunday, confirmed Biden’s account . “It was a divided room as far as, you know, some of the principal sentiments on this issue were concerned,” he said.

The New Yorker reported last August that Obama’s “military advisers were divided” and “Robert Gates, the Secretary of Defense, was one of the most outspoken opponents of a helicopter assault,” recalling President Carter’s failed attempt to rescue American hostages in Iran in 1980.

When Charlie Rose pointed this out to Romney this morning, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee stuck to his talking points:

ROMNEY: Well you can look at the different military options but clearly if you’ve identified where Osama bin Laden is , the United States of America is going to take action, capture him or kill him. And that was the right action to be taken, that was the right course to be taken. We haven’t heard all the different military options there were .

Watch the clip:

It seems that Romney hasn’t been paying much attention to reports on the bin Laden raid. In fact, U.S. intelligence had not “identified” bin Laden, as Romney claimed. “My worry was the level of uncertainty about whether bin Laden was even in the compound,” Gates said in an interview with 60 Minutes. “There wasn`t any direct evidence that he was there. It was all circumstantial.”

Moreover, while it’s possible that “we haven’t heard all the different military options there were” for the bin Laden raid, as Romney also said, various reports have outlined a number of courses of action Obama could have taken. “Most were variations of either a JSOC raid or an airstrike. Some versions included cooperating with the Pakistani military; some did not,” the New Yorker reported .

US President Barack Obama has pledged to “finish the job” and end the Afghan war, addressing the US public live from a military base in Afghanistan.

Speaking on the anniversary of Osama bin Laden’s death, he thanked US troops and hailed plans to combat operations.

Mr Obama arrived in Afghanistan on a surprise visit to sign an agreement on future Afghan-US ties with President Hamid Karzai, ahead of a Nato summit.

At the signing, Mr Obama said it was “a historic moment” for both nations.

Mr Obama’s address comes as correspondents say public patience with the war in Afghanistan is wearing thin.

In the prime-time speech beamed back to the US, the president said that at the upcoming Nato summit, to be held in Chicago, the alliance would “set a goal for Afghan forces to be in the lead for combat operations across the country next year”.

On Monday, the United States Trade Representative published its annual “Special 301 Report,” detailing the state of intellectual property rights around the world with American trading partners. Not surprisingly, Russia and China (which got over seven pages!) sat atop the list, but Argentina, India, and Canada were also given the honor of being on the “priority watch list.”

Canada had the same distinction as part of last year’s report (and the one before that), largely over “long-awaited copyright legislation,” and “whether it fully implements the WIPO Internet Treaties, and whether it fully addresses the challenges of piracy over the Internet. The United States also continues to urge Canada to strengthen its border enforcement efforts, including by providing customs officials with ex officio authority to take action against the importation, exportation, and transshipment of pirated or counterfeit goods.”

As Wikileaks revealed last year, the United States has been exerting diplomatic pressure against Canada for failure to impose stronger intellectual property legislation.

Argentina, meanwhile, was cited specifically for “piracy over the Internet,” while India has faced American criticism over generic knock-offs of pharmaceutical drugs, a case the Indian Supreme Court heard earlier this year.

Or, as the USTR puts it: “The United States continues to encourage India to promote a stable and predictable patent system that can nurture domestic innovation, including by resolving concerns with respect to the prohibition on patents for certain chemical forms absent a showing of increased efficacy.”

In addition to being concerned with Indian pharmaceutical patents, Washington, DC is also “expressing concern” that Finnish law “denies adequate protection to many of the top-selling US pharmaceutical products currently on the Finnish market.”

So who is Uncle Sam happy with? Malaysia, Korea, and, most notably, Spain—which recently passed the “Sinde Law,” again, after pressure from the Feds.

Tea Party favorites such as Stephen Fincher of Tennessee were swept into Congress on a wave of anger over government-funded bailouts of banks.

Now those incumbents are collecting thousands of dollars for re-election campaigns from the same Wall Street firms whose excesses they criticized. They have taken no significant steps to curb them or prevent future taxpayer-financed rescues.

Republican freshmen have made clear their disdain for expanding government, and openly opposed a financial regulatory overhaul enacted by Democrats in 2010 before the newcomers arrived in Washington. Their ranks include 10 Tea Party-backed freshmen on the House Financial Services Committee, part of a force that won election in a populist backlash to government spending that included emergency lending to major banks and bailout of firms including U.S. automakers.

Still, the lawmakers haven’t passed, considered or even introduced legislation to address concerns about “too-big-to- fail” banks voiced by members of both parties and such Federal Reserve bank presidents as Richard Fisher of Dallas and Jeffrey Lacker of Richmond, Virginia.

“I haven’t seen any of them putting forth legislation on breaking up the big banks or on other things that would genuinely prevent a bailout next time,” said Marcus Stanley, policy director of Americans for Financial Reform, a Washington- based umbrella group of organizations that supported the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act and other financial regulations.

Documents from Osama Bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan are to go online later this week, a White House counter-terrorism official has said.

They were gathered by US Navy Seals during the raid on Bin Laden’s hideout in Abbottabad on 2 May 2011.

The papers are said to include communication between the al-Qaeda leader and his associates, and his hand-written diary.

The move comes on the week that marks a year since Bin Laden’s death.

The documents reveal that Bin Laden had considered changing al-Qaeda’s name because so many of its senior operatives had been killed.

In a speech to a Washington DC think tank, White House counter-terrorism chief John Brennan said the documents would be put online by the US Military Academy’s Combating Terrorism Center.

He told the Woodrow Wilson International Center: “With its most skilled and experienced commanders being lost so quickly, al-Qaeda has had trouble replacing them,” AFP news agency reports.

“For example, Bin Laden worried about, and I quote, ‘the rise of lower leaders who are not as experienced and this would lead to the repeat of mistakes,’” he reportedly added.

US President Barack Obama has refused to comment on Chen Guangcheng, the Chinese dissident said to be at the US embassy after fleeing house arrest.

Mr Obama told a news conference he was “aware of press reports” on the issue, but would not make a statement on it.

Activists have claimed Mr Chen entered the US embassy in Beijing earlier this month, after slipping out of his home hundreds of kilometres away.

US and Chinese officials are thought to be in talks on Mr Chen’s fate.

Michelle Obama ’s summer vacation to Spain in 2010 cost taxpayers more than $467,000 in transportation and security expenses, according to a watchdog group that obtained federal records.

The disclosure came at a time when Republicans were already pressing President Obama about billing trips to the government that seem campaign-oriented. Speaker John A. Boehner , Republican of Ohio, called on the president Thursday to reimburse taxpayers for this week’s trip to three battleground states.

The first lady’s trip to Spain caused a stir because it seemed jarring to some in the midst of economic turmoil at home. For the Mediterranean beach getaway, Mrs. Obama took her younger daughter, two friends and four of their daughters. A columnist for The Daily News in New York branded her “a modern-day Marie Antoinette.”

In the US, the loss of landscape and wildlife to hydropower has made the installation of major new dams very unlikely; in fact, the government is seriously considering removing a number of existing ones, and has recently dismantled some smaller ones. But two reports by the Department of the Interior suggest that this doesn’t mean the end of new hydropower in the states. The DOI has gone through its catalog and identified existing dams and canals that could be fitted with generators, and found the potential for up to 1.5 Gigawatt-hours annually.

The Obama administration has decided to take what has been termed a portfolio approach to reducing the country’s reliance on fossil fuels (the DOI calls it “all-of-the-above”), expanding nuclear and hydropower while fostering the wider use of wind, solar, and geothermal power. Hydropower would seem to be the most difficult to expand, given the problems seen with dams on the West Coast (loss of local fisheries) and the rapidly dropping water levels at the dams based in the western interior.

But a 2011 report identified large numbers of dams that are already in place, but not generating their full potential, or aren’t producing electricity at all. Now, the Bureau of Reclamation has gone through its full catalog of canals, drainage sites, and water tunnels. Anything that had a drop of five feet, could generate 50kW or more, and had water for at least four months of the year was considered. These total up to about 350,000 megawatt-hours annually. Add that to the figure from the dams, and you get the 1.5 million megawatt-hours figure. All of that without disrupting the environment any more than it already has been.

Overall, the figure isn’t overwhelming—Glen Canyon dam alone produces more than this, and it’s actually one of the smaller dams in the region. But that’s the advantage of a portfolio approach: every little bit helps.

An investigative report into the nation’s crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) by Sofia Resnick of the American Independent has raised red flags, suggesting that the organizations may be violating separation of church and state in their use of government funds.

That’s actually quite hard to do. In 2002, via two executive orders, President George W. Bush controversially declared that “faith-based” organizations could receive government grants to provide social services. Moreover, he decreed they could administer those services while still using religious names, mission statements, hiring policies and facilities. The only First Amendment stipulation was that they could not use federal funds for “inherently religious activities, such as worship, religious instruction, or proselytization.”

Among the beneficiaries of Bush’s faith-based initiatives programs have been crisis pregnancy centers: “counseling” centers whose main goal is to dissuade women from abortion. They received an estimated $60 million dollars in federal grants for abstinence-only programs between 2001 and 2006. Resnick determined that in 2012, CPCs will receive some level of federal funding, as well as at least 17 million dollars from individual states, which are bound by the same rules.

Resnick’s report, “Jobs for Christians,” reveals that nearly all of these CPCs have an explicitly Christian mission statement and a Christians-only hiring policy (even for volunteers). A spokesperson for the major CPC network Heartbeat International told Resnick, “We hire individuals who support our mission, our vision and our Christian core operational values and beliefs.”

These revelations have caused an uproar in the feminist blogosphere. But of course, thanks to Bush, religious mission statements and hiring practices are perfectly legal for federally funded charities (though some legal and religious groups want to change that). Under the Faith-Based Initiatives program, a taxpayer-funded soup kitchen can hire only Christians. The only line drawn by the law is that worship and religious instruction must remain separate: no gospel with the soup.

Proselytizing is where CPCs may be running afoul of the law. Resnick provides public materials from various centers that give the strong impression of preaching gospel to the women they council, which would violate separation of church and state. Resnick cites one crisis pregnancy center in Tampa, Fla., that tells prospective volunteers:

Our doors are open to women who do not know where else to turn, women searching for answers and help with unexpected pregnancies. Women who need honest information and material items for their baby.

Women who need Jesus!

YOU can be the one to introduce them to Jesus and help them make life-changing decisions. [itals added]

Likewise, CareNet, one of the largest network of CPCs in the country, makes all workers agree to a pledge that describes spreading the gospel as the CPCs’ “primary mission”:

The primary mission of the center is to share the truth and love of Jesus Christ in conjunction with a ministry to those facing pregnancy related issues. The pregnancy center is an outreach ministry of Jesus Christ through His church. Therefore, the pregnancy center, embodied in its volunteers, is committed to presenting the gospel of our Lord to women with crisis pregnancies — both in word and in deed. [itals added]

Much of the slowdown is because of the recession, and thus not unexpected, health experts say. But some of it seems to be attributable to changing behavior by consumers and providers of health care — meaning that the lower rates of growth might persist even as the economy picks up.

Because Medicare and Medicaid are two of the largest contributors to the country’s long-term debts, slower growth in health costs could reduce the pressure for enormous spending cuts or tax increases.

In 2009 and 2010, total nationwide health care spending grew less than 4 percent per year, the slowest annual pace in more than five decades, according to the latest numbers from the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services. After years of taking up a growing share of economic activity, health spending held steady in 2010, at 17.9 percent of the gross domestic product.

Fewer illegal immigrants stopped by police for minor traffic violations would be held for deportation under changes announced Friday to a federal fingerprinting program, Department of Homeland Security officials said.

The policy change on how federal agents will handle illegal immigrants arrested by state and local police for offenses like driving without a license came in the department’s response to a report by a task force on the federal program.

One of the task force’s central recommendations was that the program, called Secure Communities, should avoid deportations of traffic violators.

The sharply critical task force report, issued last September, argued that such deportations were inconsistent with the department’s stated priorities of removing foreigners with serious criminal records. The increase in deportations of minor offenders under Secure Communities, the task force concluded, was undermining vital ties of trust between local police and immigrant neighborhoods.

In a 19-page response released Friday, Homeland Security officials forcefully reasserted their support for the program, which has been the center of fierce controversy since it began in October 2008. The program has put President Obama at odds with governors in Illinois, Massachusetts and New York, who are his political allies, and eroded support for him in Latino communities. Both Democrats and Republicans acknowledge that Latinos will be crucial voters in the presidential election.

US taxpayers are unlikely to get all their money back from a $700bn (£432bn) bailout of the country’s stricken banking and automotive sectors, according to a report.

The Troubled Asset Relief Program calmed markets and underpinned the US economy during the financial crisis.

But despite the US Treasury saying last week that Tarp would make a profit, the latest report suggests otherwise.

The report said it was a “misconception that Tarp will make a profit”.

The Office of the Special Inspector General for Tarp has published its latest report to Congress.

It said: “After three-and-a-half years, the Tarp continues to be an active and significant part of the Government’s response to the financial crisis.

“It is a widely held misconception that Tarp will make a profit. The most recent cost estimate for Tarp is a loss of $60bn. Taxpayers are still owed $118.5bn.”

The US has said it is concerned about reports that the Israeli government has decided to make legal under Israeli law three West Bank settlement outposts.

A state department spokeswoman said diplomats were “seeking clarification”, but stressed they did “not think this is helpful” to the peace process.

The US does not accept the legitimacy of continued settlement activity.

The Palestinians also condemned the decision to “formalise the status” of Bruchin, Rechelim and Sansana.

About 500,000 Jews live in more than 100 settlements built since Israel’s 1967 occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The settlements are considered illegal under international law, though Israel disputes this.

The settler outposts are also illegal under Israeli law and the government agreed to remove them under the 2003 Road Map peace plan.

Airport security staff screen millions of items of luggage each year
Four current and former security screeners at Los Angeles international airport have been arrested and charged with drug-trafficking and bribery.

The four accepted cash to allow large shipments of cocaine, methamphetamine and marijuana through X-ray machines, the US justice department said.

The charges allege 22 separate payments of up to $2,400 ($1,500) allowed drug-runners to bypass airport security.

A prosecutor said they “placed greed above the nation’s security needs”.

“The allegations in this case describe a significant breakdown of the screening system,” Andre Birotte said.

“Airport screeners act as a vital checkpoint for homeland security, and air travellers should believe in the fundamental integrity of security systems at our nation’s airports.”

Two of the four accused are current employees of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), while the other two used to work for the organisation.

The current employees, John Whitfield, 23, and Capeline McKinney, 25, are accused of allowing shipments of more than 20kg (44lb) to pass through a screening area while they were on shift.

Former TSA screener Joy White, 27, is accused of a similar offence, while Naral Richardson, 30, is alleged to have made arrangements for shipments to pass unhindered.

Other individuals named in the indictment are accused of being part of the smuggling ring, several working as drug mules.

Special Agent Briane Greyof the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) said the accused “traded on their positions at one the world’s most crucial airport security checkpoints”.

The TSA, created in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks, is part of the US Department of Homeland Security and has responsibility for screening millions air passengers and huge quantities of luggage and freight each year.

The agency faces frequent criticism from passengers who accuse screeners of over-zealous physical examinations. Over the past week an account posted on Facebook accusing agents of requiring a pat-down of a four-year-old girl has put the TSA back in the spotlight.

A former head of the TSA, Kip Hawley, recently wrote in the Wall Street Journal that the US security system is “broken” and needs root-and-branch reform.

The Federal Reserve’s interest rate setters have raised their forecasts for US economic growth in 2012.

They are predicting growth of between 2.4% and 2.9%, up from their 2.2% to 2.7% projection in January.

They have also lowered their forecast for the unemployment rate to between 7.8% and 8.0% from a range of 8.2% to 8.5% in January.

But they left interest rates unchanged and said they do not expect a rate rise until late 2014.

Seven of the committee members expect to raise rates in 2014 - up from five in January - while none of them expects the first increase to be any later than 2015.

At a news conference, Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke said: “Most committee participants expect economic growth to remain moderate over the coming quarters and then to pick up gradually.

“Among other factors, and notwithstanding some signs of improvement, the ongoing weakness of the housing sector still represents a headwind for recovery.

“Strains in global financial markets, though less pronounced generally than last fall, continue to pose significant risks to outlook.”

A US Marine sergeant who criticised President Barack Obama on Facebook is to be discharged.

Sgt Gary Stein will receive an other-than-honourable discharge for violating a policy that limits speech of military service members, the Marine Corps said.

The action means Sgt Stein, who served nearly 10 years in the Marine Corps, will lose all benefits.

He had argued that his comments were covered by his constitutional right to freedom of speech.

Sgt Stein had put a disclaimer on Facebook that his opinions, which included calling President Obama an enemy, were his own.

He had put Mr Obama’s face on mocked-up film posters, including one for the movie Jackass.

A disciplinary board recommended earlier this month that he be given an “other-than-honourable” discharge.

The panel heard he had said he would not follow orders from the president if it involved violating the rights of US citizens.

Prosecutors said Sgt Stein repeatedly ignored warnings from superior officers, and that the postings were in breach of military regulations.

The US military has a long-standing policy of restricting the free speech of service members, including criticism of the president, who is commander-in-chief of America’s armed forces.

Sgt Stein’s supporters - who include two congressmen, and the American Civil Liberties Union - argued that the defence department’s regulations are vague, and that commanders do not understand them.

The latest ugly (and seemingly needless) partisan fight on Capitol Hill concerns a measure designed to prevent domestic violence against women.

On Wednesday, women from both parties raced to hold news conferences in which they promoted bills (or in the Republicans’ case, a germ of a bill) that would extend the Violence Against Women Act, replete with upsetting personal anecdotes meant to demonstrate the need for reauthorization, if not bipartisanship in seeking it.

The act, first passed by Congress in 1994 and reauthorized, in a bipartisan and unremarkable manner, in 2000 and 2005, gives tools to law enforcement officers, courts and social service agencies to prevent and respond to domestic violence. Its passage is widely credited with reducing domestic violence.

The Senate version of the reauthorization, which passed the Senate Judiciary Committee along partisan lines, would continue existing grant programs that aid local law enforcement agencies and shelters and would strengthen federal stalking laws – measures supported by Republicans, who would also like to consolidate some programs and put caps on Justice Department salaries among other streamlining processes.

The version being offered by Senate Democrats has attracted some Republican resistance because it would give tribal authorities the ability to prosecute non-American Indians in cases of domestic violence on reservations. It would also include gay, bisexual and transgender victims in programs for domestic violence and allow more illegal immigrants who are victims of domestic violence to claim temporary visas.

Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, Republican of Texas, is working on her own version of the bill, which would be offered as an amendment to the Democrats’ version. It features many modifications, including making eligibility for services under the law gender-neutral and maintaining the current cap on visas.

In a news conference Wednesday morning, Senators Patty Murray of Washington, Barbara Boxer of California and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, all Democrats, berated Republicans for resisting their bill – even though its 61 co-sponsors, some of them Republicans, say that the bill will pass their chamber.

WASHINGTON — The Senate on Tuesday defeated a Republican attempt to block a vote on a bill to save the struggling Postal Service. The vote was 62 to 37.

The Senate had hoped to have a final vote on the legislation on Tuesday, but Senator Jeff Sessions, Republican of Alabama, raised a point of order to try to derail the bill.

Now a final vote could come Wednesday on the wide-ranging measure, which would allow the Postal Service to study the elimination of Saturday deliveries and to provide a broader range of potentially lucrative services like delivering beer and wine for retailers.

The bill would also provide retirement incentives for cutting some of the agency’s 547,000 positions and would restructure benefit programs, including stretching out and reducing payments for the health benefits of future retirees over a 40-year period. Mr. Sessions and three other Republican senators — Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, Dan Coats of Indiana and Bob Corker of Tennessee — argued that the bill would add $34 billion to the national debt. The measure would allow the Postal Service to collect $11 billion that the agency overpaid into a pension fund and allow it to defer $23 billion in payments that would go toward its retiree health benefit plan.

The Postal Service said the prepayment to the pension fund had added $20 billion in debt to its balance sheet since 2007. Under the Budget Control Act, passed last year, the Senate is prohibited from bringing legislation to the floor that adds to the deficit.

WASHINGTON — The financial health of the Social Security system deteriorated in the last year, while the outlook for Medicare stabilized somewhat, the government said on Monday.

The annual report by the trustees for the two federal programs estimated that the Social Security trust funds would be exhausted in 2033, three years earlier than the trustees projected a year ago.

But they left unchanged their estimate that Medicare’s hospital insurance trust fund would be exhausted in 2024. That is the same date that was projected a year ago, and is five years earlier than was projected two years ago.

The central message of the new report remains the same: the two entitlement programs are unsustainable without structural changes that have so far eluded Congress and the administration.

A weak labor market already has left half of young college graduates either jobless or underemployed in positions that don’t fully use their skills and knowledge.

Young adults with bachelor’s degrees are increasingly scraping by in lower-wage jobs — waiter or waitress, bartender, retail clerk or receptionist, for example — and that’s confounding their hopes a degree would pay off despite higher tuition and mounting student loans.

An analysis of government data conducted for The Associated Press lays bare the highly uneven prospects for holders of bachelor’s degrees.

The Cafferty case differs from Jacobson in two key ways. First, the government’s initial evidence of interest in child pornography was much stronger—”Sick Room” was far more obviously illegal than anything in Bare Boys at the time. The government wasn’t creating desire here.

But more interesting for our purposes is the amount of effort required in the two cases. To communicate with Jacobson back in the 1980s, investigators had to create documents, corporate logos, brochures, surveys—all bogus and all made without computers. All of this material then had to be mailed, and investigators could wait for weeks hoping their target would mail back a response. Finally, they had no easy way to see what non-government activities Jacobson was up to through the mail without an invasive and expensive search of all his incoming mail.

But with Cafferty, everything had become so much simpler. PayPal had initially turned over the information that gave the feds a juicy 5,000-name digital database of people to run down. The e-mails collected there made targeting simple, and the government could build a single website that it could use for many different people. Everything could be logged and tracked, and responses might be almost immediately compared to the years the government spent mailing Jacobson its surveys and catalogs.

Most importantly, search warrant and subpoenas now give the government access to incredible caches of information. Want to know what else a target is up to online? Search his e-mail. Want to find someone hidden? Use the fake site to log his IP address, then use an ISP to find the account holder. Want to track someone’s movements? Watch the changing IP addresses he uses to log into online services. Need to socially engineer some aspect of your investigation? Find his Facebook and dating site profiles. Need evidence for a trial? Simply search someone’s computer, which contains everything from browser logs to file storage to archived e-mail and instant messaging.

In the Jacobson case, investigators could only obtain their initial list by raiding a bookstore. Followups consisted of direct communications between the government and the suspect. Today, most of the information comes from third parties who are not themselves targets of suspicion: PayPal (money), Yahoo (e-mail), Facebook (social networking), Google (search history, Android phone unlocks, e-mail), Verizon (phone location tracking, text messages), etc. Each of these companies has dedicated units that exist to answer government orders for such information, and they provide it rapidly. In addition, investigators can conduct their searches without tipping off suspects.

While it took them a few years to shift to a digital mindset, cops everywhere now have real savvy about getting the information they need. It doesn’t take some elite federal squad of “cyber” police. In case after case today, we see even local detectives using cell phone tracking, e-mail searches, and more. And when they need the big guns, they know how to call in “tools” like the fake child porn site.

In combination, the digital techniques available offer incredible customization in investigating a target. While stories about online crime often tell tales of invisible bad guys using their elite skills from some untraceable Batcave, the Internet provides real benefits to law enforcement, too. If it has made it simpler for child pornographers to find each other and to build globe-spanning communities, it has also given creative investigators powerful tools of their own.

During an interview last week on The Fernando Espuelas Show, Alexandra Franceschi, Specialty Media Press Secretary of the Republican National Committee, said that the Republican party’s economic platform in 2012 is going to be the same as it was during the Bush years, “just updated”:
ESPUELAS: What do you mean by economic security? Regardless of who the ultimate nominee is, what’s the general idea that the RNC, or the Republican party in general, has in terms of this message?

FRANCESCHI: Well, it’s a message of being able to attain the American dream. It’s less government spending, which a Tarrance Group poll, came out last week actually, shows that the majority of Hispanics believe that less government spending is the way out of this deficit crisis. It’s lowering taxes so small businesses can grow and they can employ more people, because we understand that the private sector is the engine of the economy. It’s not the government. […]

ESPUELAS: Now, how different is that concept from what were the policies of the Bush administration? And the reason I ask that is because there’s some analysis now that is being published talking about the Bush years being the slowest period of job creation since those statistics were created. Is this a different program or is this that program just updated?

FRANCESCHI: I think it’s that program, just updated.

Listen here:

As a result of the Bush economic platform, “growth in investment, GDP, and employment all posted their worst performance of any post-war expansion,” while “overall monthly job growth was the worst of any cycle since at least February 1945, and household income growth was negative for the first cycle since tracking began in 1967.” Meanwhile, the deficit and debt exploded. It would have to be quite the update for the GOP to make anything better happen this time around.

Remember over-the-air broadcast television? The kind that you can receive on a variety of devices, without scrambling or monthly fees? For decades, the principle that the public airwaves are just that – public property – has been an obstacle to TV studios’ efforts to control when, where, and how we watch their programs – and at what price-point. But that hasn’t stopped them from trying. The latest target is Aereo, a New York City startup that lets users stream local broadcast TV from a dime-sized antenna on a Brooklyn rooftop to their personal devices.

Supported by some of the same organizations that supported the SOPA and PIPA Internet blacklist bills, the TV networks complain that Aereo is “retransmitting” New York TV stations without a license. They insist that while Joe Citizen can put an antenna on his roof and run a wire to his TV, he can’t rent an antenna from Aereo and replace the wire with (oh, no!) the Internet. We’ve seen this before: a new user-empowering television technology emerges, and, almost on auto-pilot, the studios send their lawyers to try to shut it down. Their basic theory? If a new technology creates a new way to access the TV programming that we already have a legal right to view, the studios are entitled to control and profit from that technology.

But as the courts have said time and time again, that’s just not how the law works. A quintessential example: the VCR. Movie studios sued to keep home video recorders off the market, arguing that the ability to tape TV programs to watch later would destroy their industry. (Former Motion Picture Association of America head Jack Valenti famously compared the VCR to the Boston Strangler.) The Supreme Court rejected the studios’ arguments, saying that people have a right to tape from the public airwaves, and VCR manufacturers didn’t need to pay royalties to the studios.

Fast forward to 2008, when a group of TV networks tried to shut down Cablevision’s “remote DVR” service. That service allowed cable subscribers to record shows to which they had already bought access and save them to a hard drive at the cable company’s facility, instead of on a DVR in the subscriber’s living room. Again, the TV networks insisted they should have a right to profit from and control – or stop – this new technology. Again, the court said no, because a customer’s personal recording and viewing of the cable shows she had already paid for doesn’t trespass on any of the rights that the law gives to copyright owners.

The familiar arguments are re-surfacing in the Aereo dispute. Just as they once claimed the right to charge a toll for recording a TV show to watch later, the studios claim that they, and no one else, should control the ability to receive free broadcasts and stream them to Internet-connected devices. Essentially, the networks are saying that simply because Aereo’s technology is valuable to TV watchers, copyright owners have a right to capture that value. The Institute for Policy Innovation repeated that argument in an e-mail blast denouncing Aereo this week, insisting that Aereo is not a “legal business” because “one must pay for the raw materials that go into a product.” – meaning, the television shows being broadcast on the public airwaves.

I guess no one told that to TV manufacturers like Samsung and LG. They don’t pay for the shows that go into their TVs. Radio Shack doesn’t pay ABC for the right to sell TV antennas, even though ABC’s shows make those antennas valuable. Movie theaters that sell popcorn don’t owe a cut of those sales to the studios, even though popcorn enhances the movie-going experience. We understand, intuitively, that just because a product or service adds to the experience of watching TV and movies, or makes it possible in more places and times, doesn’t mean that copyright owners should have control, or charge a toll.

The TV networks are hoping to squash Aereo before it can expand beyond New York City. Hopefully, the court hearing the suits against Aereo will focus on what the law says, not what the networks wish it to be.

President Obama took office in the first quarter of 2009, when median household income was $54,797.63. As of the last quarter of 2011, median household income was $52,377.21.

This was the interval Mr. Zandi suggested using to check Mr. Romney’s statement, and it shows an income drop of $2,420.42. That’s not $3,000, of course, but it’s still pretty bad.

One could also reasonably argue that it might be more appropriate to use the quarter before Mr. Obama took office as the baseline, rather than the quarter in which he was sworn in. In the fourth quarter of 2008, median household income was about $55,380.17.

Starting from that quarter gives us a decline of $3,002.96, almost exactly the number Mr. Romney cited.

Some important caveats: As I (and others) have said before, presidents probably get much too much credit when the economy is doing well and much too much blame when the economy is doing poorly.

Mr. Obama in particular inherited an economy that was really just starting the death spiral set off by the financial crisis, as you can see in the chart above. And as Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff have shown, economies struck by major financial crises generally take 10 years to fully recover.

We’re currently in Year 5 after the crisis first hit. Since median household income hit bottom in the first quarter of 2010, it has risen about $769.36, not nearly enough to cover the ground lost on the way down.

But Mr. Coburn’s amendment, expected to pass by voice vote, will likely be Congress’s first legislative response. It caps spending at any one event at $500,000 and allows outside groups to help pick up part of the tab as long as sponsors are publicly listed and can attest to no conflicts of interest. It also mandates a host of transparency rules, saying government agency Web sites must post an accounting each quarter of all conferences, total cost of attendance and support, sponsorships, locations, and details of non-federal attendees.

Mr. Coburn’s aides have not found anything as flagrant as the G.S.A. spending. But they have found an institutionalized use of conferences that the senator sees as excessive. This year alone, the government and government-supported organizations will hold these events on the issue of AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases: a Ryan White Grantee Meeting at the Marriott Wardman in Washington; a Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration AIDS conference; an International AIDS Conference in July; an XIX International AIDS Conference; a U.S. Conference on AIDS being held at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas; and a National Coalition of STD Directors’ Annual Meeting in Washington.

9:28 p.m. | Updated A new joint fund-raising initiative between Mitt Romney and the Republican National Committee will aim to raise $800 million by November, part of what Mr. Romney’s campaign estimates will be a total of $1 billion spent to defeat President Obama and elect Mr. Romney, a former Massachusetts governor.

Mitt Romney is facing a severe crisis of popularity.

He has the weakest favorability ratings on record for a presumptive presidential nominee at this stage of the campaign, according to new polling by ABC News and The Washington Post . The organizations have been measuring such popularity since 1984.

Mr. Romney is in a situation that pollsters call “underwater”: more people view him negatively than view him positively. His favorable rating is 35 percent, and his unfavorable rating stands at 47 percent.

He was the first nominee to be underwater in the Washington Post/ABC News poll in the eight presidential primary seasons it has been surveying the subject, the poll said. The pollsters attributed the results in part on the Republican primary process, which Americans viewed negatively overall, and on Mr. Romney’s unpopularity among women.

President Obama, by contrast, is more popular than he is unpopular: 56 percent viewed him positively, while 40 percent of those polled viewed him negatively.

Mr. Obama is more popular than he has been for two years, which the pollsters ascribed to the improving economy.

Senate Republicans have blocked the Buffett Rule, President Barack Obama’s proposal to raise tax rates for top earners to at least 30%.

Senators largely voted on party lines and failed to win the 60 votes to move the bill forward for a full debate.

Republicans have resolutely opposed the measure, saying it is a political gimmick that will not create jobs.

The bill is named after tycoon Warren Buffett, who complained his secretary paid a higher rate of tax than he does.

Asking the wealthy to pay their “fair share” is viewed as a core theme of Mr Obama’s re-election campaign.

The Democratic president has argued that raising taxes on Americans earning more than $1m (£628,772) per year would help reduce the deficit and make the US tax code fairer.

After the bill was blocked, Mr Obama said in a statement that Senate Republicans chose “once again to protect tax breaks for the wealthiest few Americans at the expense of the middle class”.

Correspondents say Mr Obama will use this vote to attack Republicans in the upcoming November election.

While Democrats control the majority of the Senate, they were nine votes short of moving the debate forward, at a final tally of 51-45.

So long, flip-flopper. Hello, right-wing extremist.

Mitt Romney may be inclined to start moving to the political center now that he’s practically got the Republican nomination won and done, but the Obama campaign would much rather keep him right where he’s been for the past few months: in the conservative territory he staked out while battling for Republican primary voters.

After months of depicting Mr. Romney as the ultimate squishy, double-talking, no-core soul, Team Obama is shifting gears. Senior administration officials, along with Democratic and campaign officials, all say their strategy now will be to tell the world that Mr. Romney has a core after all — and it’s deep red.

Mr. Romney’s overheard remarks at a fund-raiser in Florida on Sunday night that, if elected, he planned to slash government programs (though he has not spelled that out for the voters) gave Obama backers the perfect opening, and they jumped on it. “Mitt Romney Tells Rich Voters His Secret Plan to Cut Housing Assistance,” said a headline from ThinkProgress , a blog put out by the left-leaning Center for American Progress. Democratic officials followed that up with a call to reporters on Thursday charging that Mr. Romney’s proposal would “cut critical funds for homeless veterans.”

On Tuesday, Mr. Obama’s advisers saw another chance, and they were all over that, too. Hours after Mr. Romney accepted the endorsement of Gov. Tom Corbett of Pennsylvania, the Democratic National Committee was out with an ad “Mitt Romney and Tom Corbett: Too Extreme for Women.” The traditional spooky music accompanies video of Mr. Corbett defending his advocacy of a proposal that could make women undergo ultrasounds before receiving abortions, and saying women could “close their eyes” if they didn’t want to see what was on the screen.

“Did Mitt Romney close his eyes to accept this endorsement?” the D.N.C. said in an e-mail it helpfully sent to reporters trumpeting the advertisement. “Probably not, since Mitt Romney’s positions mirror those of the extreme elements of his party,” the e-mail continued, going on to list a host of conservative Romney positions that Democrats hope will alienate women.

For Mr. Obama, the decision to start going after Mr. Romney from the left is as much a logical evolution as is any attempt by Mr. Romney to move to the center, in particular Mr. Romney’s effort now to try to woo Hispanic and female voters who may have been alienated by some of the talk coming out of the Republican primary.

As the general election heats up, a central battlefield promises to be the fights for suburban women in crucial swing states like Florida, Ohio and Colorado, and both camps are now trying to prove their bona fides with that population. When added to recent data that shows an increase in Hispanic voters in key states, the Obama campaign sees an opening to paint Mr. Romney as out of touch among both women and Hispanics.

US and Afghan negotiators have finalised a partnership agreement for the US role in Afghanistan after its forces withdraw at the end of 2014.

The draft agreement on their long-term relationship was signed in the Afghan capital Kabul after months of talks.

No details were released, with the deal to be reviewed by both presidents.

There have been sharp disagreements over how much financial support the US and Nato will provide after foreign troops leave.

Last week the Afghan President Hamid Karzai called on the US to make a written commitment to pay a minimum of $2bn (£1.2bn) towards the maintenance of Afghan forces.

As long as Newt Gingrich stays in the presidential race, he is still receiving Secret Service protection — at a cost of more than $40,000 a day.

Mr. Gingrich has no intention of dropping out of the race or of asking the Secret Service to drop its detail, his campaign spokesman said on Friday, despite calls from a taxpayer group that the protection is a waste of money.

The issue bubbled up this week after The Daily Caller , an online news site, dug up Congressional testimony from 2008 in which Mark Sullivan, director of the Secret Service, estimated the cost of daily protection for a presidential candidate at $38,000. He said then that he expected the cost to rise to $44,000 a day.

Beginning in 2015, all new cars in the United States will likely need to be fitted with data-recording “black boxes” very similar to the devices currently used in aircraft. The U.S. Senate has already passed a bill that will make the devices a requirement, and the House is expected to approve the bill as well. Section 31406 of Senate Bill 1813 states that mandatory event data recorders must in installed in all cars starting in 2015, and it outlines civil penalties that will be levied against violators, Infowars.com reports. While the primary function of the black box devices would be to record and transmit data that could be used to assist a driver and passengers in the event of an accident, the bill has legislation built in that would give the government access to the data with a court order, and it also gives authorities the ability to access the data as part of an investigation. According to the report, these caveats could potentially lead to Big Brother-like scenarios where citizens are monitored or even actively tracked without their knowledge or consent.

WASHINGTON — The nation’s spies and its military commanders are at odds over the future of America’s spy satellites, a divide that could determine whether the United States government will increasingly rely on its own eyes in the sky or on less costly commercial technology.

The fight is shaping up into the intelligence world’s version of the United States Postal Service versus FedEx — a traditional government institution that must provide comprehensive services versus a more nimble private sector that is cherry-picking the most lucrative business opportunities.

In recent years, advances in commercially available technology have allowed private companies to develop satellites carrying high-resolution sensors and perform many of the surveillance tasks that were once the sole preserve of classified satellites owned and operated by the intelligence community. Two private companies already provide some of America’s spy satellite imagery, at far lower costs than government-owned satellites, according to current and former government and industry officials and outside analysts.

But at the urging of senior intelligence officials, the Obama administration has proposed cutting the contracts for commercial satellite imagery in half next year — to about $250 million from $540 million — to help meet deficit reduction requirements, while bringing back more of the work inside the government, according to administration and Congressional officials and industry experts.

Both Republican and Democratic leaders on the Congressional intelligence committees are resisting the budget cuts and siding with the private companies and the military, which argues that it could not get as much imagery as it needs for combat operations without turning to the less expensive commercial technology.

“The debate is really between the military, which needs a lot of imagery but doesn’t need the highly classified imagery, and the intelligence community, which wants to keep the capability to produce its own imagery,” said Bill Wilt, a senior official with GeoEye, one of the private satellite companies.

The No. 2 House Republican said that if Congress doles out additional money to assist in the aftermath of natural disasters across the country, the spending may need to be offset. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said “if there is support for a supplemental, it would be accompanied by support for having pay-fors to that supplemental.” Finding ways to offset disaster relief funds could be a significant challenge for House Republicans and would put their promise to cut spending to a true test. Roughly 100 people have died in Joplin, Mo., in the last few days after a tornado cut through the town. Joplin, a southwestern Missouri town of roughly 50,000 people, is represented by Rep. Billy Long, a freshman Republican who replaced Roy Blunt when he went to the Senate. Missouri’s Congressional delegation has six Republicans — two were elected in 2010.

An exhaustive new study by media watchdog Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting shows that the Sunday morning talk shows have been dominated over the last eight months by white, Republican men.

Between June 2011 and February of this year, 70 percent of all one-on-one interviewees on the four biggest political talk shows — NBC’s Meet the Press, ABC’s This Week, CBS’s Face the Nation and Fox News Sunday — were Republicans. The numbers were even more lopsided in favor of men and white guests:

Members of the Republican National Committee considered — and rejected — changes to their presidential nominating process for 2016 after a contest this year that some members say was too long and drawn out.

At a meeting here of the R.N.C.’s rules committee, members debated whether to abandon the proportional voting that gave Mitt Romney’s rivals the ability to try and accumulate delegates even as they failed to win the nominating contests.

Sue Everhart, a committee member from Georgia, proposed the change, citing concerns about the length of the competition. She suggested changes that would have allowed states to hold winner-take-all contests in 2016, potentially bringing the contest to a close more quickly.

But several members spoke in opposition to her proposal, saying the current process gives more voters an opportunity to participate in the nomination by creating a lengthier process.

“The thought has been for 20 years to try to create a process which keeps us from having a one-day primary in which you have the man on the white horse winning and then you wake up with buyer’s remorse,” said John Ryder, a committee member from Tennessee.

Morton Blackwell, a member from Virginia, also opposed the change. He said that the longer process, made possible by proportional voting, made it possible for more states to consider the candidates.

“We have had a full vetting as a result of the rules,” Mr. Blackwell said.

A change in the rules at Thursday’s meeting would have been a recommendation only; the power to change the presidential selection process for 2016 rests with the Republican National Convention in Tampa later this year.

But the quick rejection of the proposed change suggests that many in the party are happy with a process that offered many Republican candidates a shot at being the front-runner during a months-long competition.

The European Parliament has adopted a controversial bill that will give the United States access to personal information about airline passengers.

MEPs agreed by 409 votes to 226 to let the US Department of Homeland Security see data on the Passenger Name Record (PNR), under strict controls.

Supporters say this is a vital step in the fight against terrorism.

But some fear information could be used for other unspecified purposes which could affect civil rights.

The information includes names, addresses, credit card and phone numbers, but may also include sensitive data on an individual’s ethnic origin, meal choices, health, political views and sex life.

The US authorities say they will “employ automated systems to filter and mask out sensitive data from PNR”.

The agreement applies to airlines operating flights between EU countries and the US.

It covers not only European airlines but also any carriers that are “incorporated or storing data” in the EU and operating flights to or from the US.

The deal says PNR data will be used exclusively to combat terrorism or fund-raising for terrorism, as well as trans-national crimes that incur a jail sentence of three years or more.

Yesterday, an Alabama Senate panel approved a measure that will require women who take the morning after pill to do so in the presence of a physician. The pill’s available over the counter to women 17 and over and it could not be simpler to take unless you absorbed it by thinking spermy thoughts, so either Alabama state Senators think that women are so stupid that they can’t be trusted to swallow a single pill without accidentally putting it in their eyes or butts, or they’re enacting yet more laws to interfere with a sexually active woman’s right to not be pregnant. I’m not into gambling, but if I was, $10 says it’s the latter.

The measure will now proceed to the full Senate for a vote, and if recent behavior of the Alabama legislature is any indicator of how they’ll handle this, it’ll probably die, but only after they embarrass themselves debating it for awhile. This isn’t even the worst iteration of the Women Can’t Take Their Own Damn Pills bill; an earlier version would have required ladies to undergo a completely unnecessary medical exam before taking the pill.

It’s not rocket science to understand that this measure isn’t designed to promote anyone’s health; it’s just designed to inconvenience women who are already in a stressful Morning After Pill situation and waste precious time, which is of the essence after the condom breaks. Forcing women to make an appointment with a doctor and then wait and then take the pill in front of the doctor isn’t “protecting life,” it’s just “promoting unwanted pregnancy” and “making getting emergency contraception a huge pain in the ass.” And I’m sure doctors don’t appreciate being told what to do by moralizing, votemongering legislators, either.

Questions remain about what stupid pro-life charade legislators want to force doctors to act out this time. Will they have to point a woman in the direction of her own mouth? Tell her how to use her swallowing mechanism? Make her write “I must not let him bust a nut in my hoo-ha” a thousand times? Show pictures of adorable zygotes and tell her scary stories about how the morning after pill causes having your period in front of your crush, a la every entry ever in a teen magazine’s embarrassing moments section?

And if it’s cool to require women to have a doctor supervise her take an over-the-counter medication, what’s next? Tampon insertion assistance? I’m good with tampons, Alabama. I don’t need legislative help with that, too.

The Department of Veterans Affairs will announce on Thursday that it plans to hire about 1,600 additional psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers and other mental health clinicians in an effort to reduce long wait times for services at many veterans medical centers.

The hiring, which would be augmented by the addition of 300 clerical workers, would increase the department’s mental health staff by nearly 10 percent at a time when the veterans health system is being overwhelmed not just by veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, but also by aging veterans from the Vietnam era.

“History shows that the costs of war will continue to grow for a decade or more after the operational missions in Iraq and Afghanistan have ended,” Eric K. Shinseki, the secretary of veterans affairs, said in a statement to be released Thursday. “As more veterans return home, we must ensure that all veterans have access to quality mental health care.”

The announcement comes as the department is facing intensified criticism for delays in providing psychological services to veterans at some of its major medical centers.

The department’s own inspector general is expected to release a report as soon as next week asserting that wait times for mental health services are significantly longer than the department has been willing to acknowledge.

Samsung has finally answered Apple’s second US patent infringement lawsuit with patent infringement counterclaims of its own. On Wednesday, Samsung filed a response to Apple’s lawsuit over the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, claiming that iPhones, iPads, Apple TVs, and Macs infringe one or more of eight patents. Two of those patents have been declared essential to 3G wireless standards, however, which could complicate the European Commission’s investigation of Samsung’s alleged abuse of standards-related patents.

Among the eight patents are three that were recently acquired in 2011, perhaps with the intent to use them against Apple. All of the patents apply to Apple’s lucrative mobile devices, including the iPhone and iPad.

However, Samsung’s continued use of FRAND-pledged patents may only serve to strengthen Apple’s complaint that the company is abusing its position as part of the standards-setting body behind 3G wireless networking. The European Commission is currently investigating Samsung for allegedly reneging on its promise to license 3G-related patents on fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory terms.

WASHINGTON — Oil and gas companies will have to capture toxic and climate-altering gases from wells, storage sites and pipelines under new air quality standards issued on Wednesday by the Environmental Protection Agency.

The rule is the first federal effort to address serious air pollution associated with the natural gas drilling process known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, which releases toxic and cancer-causing chemicals like benzene and hexane, as well as methane, a powerful greenhouse gas.

The standards were proposed last summer in response to complaints from citizens and environmental groups that gases escaping from the 13,000 wells drilled each year by fracking were causing health problems and widespread air pollution.

Industry groups said meeting the proposed standards would cost hundreds of millions of dollars and slow the boom in domestic natural gas production. The original proposal was significantly revised, giving industry more than two years to comply and lowering the cost.

“Because these regulations rely on technologies and practices that are already in use by some companies and required by some states, they are practical, flexible, affordable and achievable,” Gina McCarthy, head of the E.P.A.’s office of air and radiation, said in a conference call. “Natural gas is key to our clean energy future.”

She said the new rule would reduce emissions of volatile organic compounds by 190,000 to 290,000 tons per year and toxic air pollutants by 12,000 to 20,000 tons a year.