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U.S. Rep. William Delahunt blew nearly $560,000 in campaign cash last year - much of it on lavish meals and a family-friendly payroll that includes his ex-wife, son-in-law and daughter - stoking speculation the Quincy Democrat is emptying his war chest and won’t seek re-election. -snip- Delahunt told the Herald last week that he was still weighing whether to seek re-election, but Democratic Party sources have privately indicated his departure is anticipated - and expected to draw a host of candidates-in-waiting out of the woodwork.

...possible successors to the [Zarqawi]. One of them, Iraq-based Egyptian terrorist Abu Ayyub al-Masri, was also named by Major-General William Caldwell... The other two are an Iraqi named Abu Aseel and a Syrian named Abu al-Ghadia. Masri (reportedly... born in 1966) is believed to have entered Iraq to join Zarqawi in 2002 and founded a cell for al-Qaeda in Baghdad. ...Masri received his training at military camps in Afghanistan during the Taliban rule and met bin Laden at the Farouk Camp, where Masri was working as an instructor... is also reportedly close to Egyptian Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri... Abu Aseel and...

I was doing research tonight for a paper I am working on and this article popped up deep down in the info chain I was looking in. It is the Progessive Blueprint to take over the government in 1996 and gives talking points on the people helping the cause...this is 13 years ago...some of these names look familiar to you? Thought so. The next campaign - http://www.populist.com/11.96.Edit.html Being of the Irish persuasion, I naturally am attracted to lost causes, like the idea of democracy. Still my response to the recent election was: What were we thinking? The only reasonable answer...

On 9 November, a 38-year old Belgian named Muriel, blew herself to pieces in Baghdad near a group of Iraqi policemen, killing five other people. The woman had converted to Islam after marrying a Belgian of Moroccon origin. Her husband was shot down by American troops. The American authorities informed the Belgian authorities of the woman’s identity a few weeks ago, but Brussels kept it secret. Yesterday evening the Franco-Luxemburgian network RTL announced the news. Last night, the Belgian police arrested 14 people. Nine of them are Belgians, mostly of foreign origin, three are Moroccans and two are Tunisians. They...

Former chief White House political advisor Dick Morris revealed Tuesday that his former boss Bill Clinton cared so little about global terrorism that his own Assistant Secretary of State had trouble getting him to pay attention to a bomb threat against the Khobar Towers Air Force barracks in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. "In 1996, I got a phone call from Dick Holbrooke," Morris told WABC Radio's Sean Hannity. "He said, 'We're getting hard intelligence that terrorists are planning another hit on our guys in Riyadh.... They're in the exact same building they were in when it was hit last time.'" In ...

FORMER FBI Director Louis Freeh writes movingly of his disappointment that Presi dent Bill Clinton did little or nothing to in tervene with the Saudi monarchy to let his agents question the accused perpetrators of the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing. But he is at a loss to understand the president's conduct. In an earlier terror attack, the Saudis had cut off the heads of the suspected terrorists before the FBI could question them. To avoid a repeat, Freeh went to the president and emphasized the importance of intervening with the Saudis to allow questioning. The Saudis, of course, didn't want...

Brig. Gen. Terryl Schwalier was stunned when he read the account of the June 25, 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia that appeared in my recent book, Countdown to Crisis: the Coming Nuclear Showdown with Iran. I was writing many years after the fact, drawing on sources from inside Iranian intelligence but also on published U.S. government reports. It was those U.S. reports that prompted General Schwalier to contact me a few months ago. “You paint a picture of significant government awareness that “Iran was up to something” in the months prior to the Khobar Towers attack,” he wrote...

KUALA LUMPUR: Police have arrested Wan Min Wan Mat, a key leader of Kumpulan Militant Malaysia (KMM) during an operation in Kota Baru Friday morning. Inspector-general of police Tan Sri Norian Mai said the 42-year-old former Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) lecturer was arrested at about 9.30am. Police are looking for eight suspects who are key KMM members and are offering a RM50,000 reward for information on each leader.

roanoke,va - WASHINGTON (AP) - Now it can be told: The mysterious petty theft that President Barack Obama’s new computer chief committed at age 21 was shoplifting four dress shirts worth $134 from J.C. Penney. A 1996 Montgomery County, Md., police report obtained by The Associated Press on Wednesday under a public records law shows Vivek Kundra was observed by a security guard putting the men’s shirts into a shopping bag and leaving the store without paying. Sgt. Tom Stanton wrote that Kundra was arrested after a brief foot chase and the property was recovered

Irrational Exuberance? We Are Now Below It . . . By Barry Ritholtz - March 2nd, 2009, 8:00PM On December 5, 1996, Alan Greenspan gave his famous Irrational Exuberance speech. At the time, the S&P500 was at 744.38. It blew through that number today, closing at 700. We’re still 350 points above the Dow’s closing price of 6,437.10; The Nasdaq is a stone’s throw (22 points) from its closing price of 1,300.12. In other words, the SPX is now lower than when Greenie gave his infamous speech 3 years ago, and the other indices are just above their levels when...

The Dark Ages : Were They Darker Than We Imagined? By Greg Bryant Published in the September 1999 issue of Universe As we approach the end of the Second Millennium, a review of ancient history is not what you would normally expect to read in the pages of Universe. Indeed, except for reflecting on the AD 837 apparition of Halley's Comet (when it should have been as bright as Venus and would have moved through 60 degrees of sky in one day as it passed just 0.03 AU from Earth - three times closer than Hyakutake in 1996), you may...

Democrats Are Fined $243,000 for Fund-Raising Violations WASHINGTON, Sept. 20 — The Democratic National Committee has agreed to pay civil fines and turn over to the Treasury a total of $243,000 to settle accusations that it took more than $1 million in illegal foreign contributions in 1995 and 1996, according to Federal Election Commission records released today. The documents also state that the election commission's general counsel found in 1999 that there was "reason to believe" that the People's Republic of China "knowingly and willfully" violated federal election law. But the heavily redacted documents also state that the commission voted...

No one in America has catalogued Barack Obama's connections to far left radicals like Stanley Kurtz of the National Review. Today, Kurtz looks at an article written by Obama sycophant Ben Smith of Politico who incredibly, has taken the word of former New Party co-founder Joel Rogers that the radical, Maoist "fusion" party "didn't have any members:" As for Obama's membership? [in the New Party] "We didn’t really have members," said Rogers. They also didn't have a ballot line in Chicago. So he said the line in the party newsletter appeared to refer to the fact that the party had...

I have previously posted about Barack Obama's involvement in the socialist led Illinois New Party here, here and here. Below are scans from New Party News Spring 1996. They prove that Barack Obama was a member of the Illinois New Party and was endorsed by them in his 1996 Illinois State Senate race. Front page-scanned from a photocopy Front page close up-scanned from a photocopy Front page ultra close up-scanned from a photocopy Note that the text refers to Barack Obama as a New Party member, while Willie Delgado is only "NP endorsed" The New Party clearly drew a distinction....

My fellow Americans, my fellow Republicans. I am honored to be with you this evening. I am especially honored to be here with the distinguished Americans that you have just heard from. With President Gerald Ford, a man who at a time of national despair brought dignity and respect back to the presidency. And with President George Bush, who took us through the end of the Cold War and the defeat of communism. George Bush the statesman, George Bush the statesman and my boss who led us to a great victory in the Persian Gulf War. With Mrs. Nancy Reagan,...

In 1985, Barack Obama traveled halfway across the country to take a job that he didn't fully understand. But, while he knew little about his new vocation--community organizer--it still had a romantic ring, at least to his 24-year-old ears. With his old classmates from Columbia, he had talked frequently about political change. Now, he was moving to Chicago to put that talk into action. His 1995 memoir, Dreams from My Father, recounts his idealistic effusions: "Change won't come from the top, I would say. Change will come from a mobilized grass roots. That's what I'll do. I'll organize black folks....

If you want to start worrying about the presidential election this year, you can look at the comparison between 1996 and 2008. John McCain is a similar candidate to Bob Dole--a war hero, running on his experience, but also somewhat past his political prime. The Democrats had the advantage of incumbency in 1996, but of course Bill Clinton had been rebuked by voters in 1994. In July 1996, Democrats only enjoyed a 5.1 percent advantage in generic congressional polls. Yet in late July, Clinton was ahead of Dole in one Harris poll by 22 percent and in a Gallup poll...

The day after New Year's 1996, operatives for Barack Obama filed into a barren hearing room of the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners. There they began the tedious process of challenging hundreds of signatures on the nominating petitions of state Sen. Alice Palmer, the longtime progressive activist from the city's South Side. And they kept challenging petitions until every one of Obama's four Democratic primary rivals was forced off the ballot. Fresh from his work as a civil rights lawyer and head of a voter registration project that expanded access to the ballot box, Obama launched his first campaign for...

It seems that Senator Obama's Old party was called the New Party. The party was a Marxist Political coalition. This was not a guilt by association thing. Senator Obama sought out their nomination. He was successful in obtaining that endorsement, and he used a number of New Party volunteers as campaign workers. Read more on the Marxist endorsement that Barack Obama sought out: Co-founded in 1992 by Daniel Cantor (a former staffer for Jesse Jackson's 1988 presidential campaign) and Joel Rogers (a sociology and law professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison), the New Party was a Marxist political coalition whose...

Clinton's records vanished after warning May 12, 2008 By Jerry Seper - Hillary Rodham Clinton's Rose Law Firm billing records, found in the White House residence in January 1996 two years after they had been subpoenaed by government regulators, disappeared shortly after the first lady was warned that the firm's billing problems were "very serious" and the then-ongoing Whitewater investigation could result in criminal charges, newly obtained records show. More than 1,100 pages of grand jury testimony, investigative reports, memos, charging documents, chronologies, narratives and draft indictments, previously undisclosed but now being "processed" at the Library of Congress, say Mrs....

Bill Clinton Retells Hillary's 1996 Bosnia Story April 10, 2008 7:10 PM ABC News' Sarah Amos and Eloise Harper Report: After a trip to Puerto Rico and two days entirely off the campaign trail, former President Bill Clinton eagerly discussed myriad topics with the crowd that awaited him in Boonville, Ind., and what he said of a trip his wife made to Bosnia in 1996 seemed a bit misleading. "I am so glad to be here. And I'm glad that Indiana is gonna have a say in who the nominee of the Democratic Party is and the next president of...

WASHINGTON - A great old war hero - arms man gled by battle and known as an acerbic straight shooter - is picked by Republicans to be their nominee to make darned certain that a Clinton doesn't get back into the White House. John McCain? No, Bob Dole in 1996. And it didn't work out very well for Republicans. Dole lost after a campaign vexed by senior moments such as when the nominee fell off a stage, or when he referred to the Los Angeles Dodgers as the Brooklyn Dodgers. All along, President Bill Clinton showed extreme deference to Dole,...

April 3, 1996 Ronald H. Brown, the U.S. secretary of commerce, is killed along with 32 other Americans when their U.S. Air Force plane crashes into a mountain near Dubrovnik, Croatia. Brown was leading a delegation of business executives to the former Yugoslavia to explore business opportunities that might help rebuild the war-torn region.

Accused Saddam Agent Says He Met With Hillary at White House By IRA STOLL, STAFF REPORTER OF THE SUN | March 27, 2008 A Michigan man facing federal criminal charges of illegally working for Saddam Hussein's Iraqi Intelligence Service says he met with Hillary Clinton at the White House in May 1996. In a 1997 interview with this reporter, Muthanna Hanooti said that at the meeting, Mrs. Clinton was "very receptive" to his request for an easing of the American sanctions on Iraq that were in place at the time. He said Mrs. Clinton "passed a message to the State...

Sen. Hillary Clinton has used a story of arriving in Bosnia under sniper fire to bolster her foreign policy bona fides, but the Washington Post retrieved a photo showing that upon landing, she actually was greeted in a customary tarmac ceremony, complete with a kiss for a native child. Hillary Clinton arriving in Bosnia in 1996 Clinton has declared on the campaign trail that a welcoming ceremony for the March 25, 1996, arrival in Tuzla was canceled, and she had to run from the airplane into an airport building for safety. The then-first lady's traveling party included 15-year-old daughter Chelsea,...

My NARN colleague Michael Brodkorb discovered this nugget of Al Franken’s comedy genius last week, and today the Minnesota GOP has demanded an apology from the Senate hopeful for his sexist and racist routine. Franken reads a chapter from his book Rush Limbaugh Is A Big, Fat Idiot, And Other Observations called “Chickenhawk” and supposedly recounts a sexual fantasy of Newt Gingrich. It goes without saying that this is Not Safe For Work.(Warning: Video Contains Strong Language) The GOP sent out its review of the comedy stylings of Al Franken in a press release today: “The outrageous and offensive ‘comedy’...

The two Independent candidates on this year's ballot for U.S. House of Representatives each expect to draw more votes than Independents traditionally have gleaned in South Dakota, and that could make a difference in how the Democratic and Republican candidates fare. Independent Stacey Nelson said Friday he expects to draw between 15 and 55 percent of the popular vote. Independent Kurt Evans said that he estimated his support at 5 to 8 percent of the vote as of Oct. 24... Democrat Rick Weiland and Republican John Thune are expecting to share most of the votes. Weiland's campaign press secretary Clay...

Reason Magazine has long associated themselves with the Ron Paul campaign, if not officially endorsing him. Their Hit & Run blog has served as the heart of rational Paul apologetics, and in their skilled hands, that has proven essential to his campaign. Now, as the magazine has Paul on its cover, its new editor has the unpleasant task of looking a little more closely at the candidate, and Matt Welch finds it an unpleasant journey. Has Paul really disassociated himself from, and "taken moral responsibility" for, these "Ron Paul" newsletters "for over a decade"? If he has, that history has...

The candidates for South Dakota's lone U.S. House seat debated again Sunday night, and, for the most part, refrained from direct attacks and addressed questions from citizen panelists. The forum, at the South Dakota Public Broadcasting studios in Vermillion, was broadcast on radio and television. It featured five panelists and audience members asking questions of Democrat Rick Weiland, Republican John Thune and independents Stacey Nelson and Kurt Evans. Most of the questions dealt with economic matters. One panelist, noting that the net worth of the three richest people in the nation is three times the value of all of South...

(Editor's note: Following are the answers given by Kurt Evans, an independent candidate from Wessington Springs who is seeking a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. Evans is one of four candidates, including Stacey Nelson, Milbank, an independent affiliated with the Reform party; John Thune, Pierre, a Republican; and Rick Weiland, Madison, a Democrat.) * What are two pieces of legislation that you want to introduce if elected?One of my priorities would be legislation to end U.S. support for the United Nations. The U.N. is, in my opinion, irredeemably corrupt. It is using its worldwide propaganda machine to promote...

If ever there was a candidate who seemed tailor made for talk radio, it is Patrick J. Buchanan... Yet having won in New Hampshire, Mr. Buchanan has suddenly been rebuffed by the nation's most prominent talk-radio hosts ... "I'm amazed at how outspoken a lot of them are," said William Adams, publisher of Talk Daily, a newsletter that reports on the nation's most popular radio hosts... The most dramatic break has been between Mr. Buchanan and Rush Limbaugh ... Now, as radio's archconservative, he is refusing Mr. Buchanan a conservative's label. "Pat Buchanan is not a conservative," he announced on...

Giuliani: I'm really not a Republican. I ran as a Liberal - which really confuses people.

My staff and I agreed that we needed to focus on the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), which appeared to be running out of control. By the time we came to the subject, investigation by the General Accounting Office (GAO) and congressional committees had already indicated that the White House used the INS to further its political agenda. A blatant politicization of the agency took place during the 1996 presidential campaign when the White House pressured the INS into expediting its "Citizenship USA" (CUSA) program to grant citizenship to thousands of aliens that the White House counted as likely Democratic...

TWA FLIGHT 800 was DOWNED in 1996 by a MISSILE, not the fuel tank! HOW MANY JOBS WERE LOST DUE TO CLINTON COVERUP?? 2002 - The GOVERNMENT COVER-UP is STILL GOING ON! TWA Flight 800 shot down on July 16, 1996. On July 15 a communiqu‚ was issued by Islamic jihad connected to Iraq. It read: "The mujahideen [holy warriors] will deliver the ultimate response to the threats of the foolish American president. Everyone will be amazed at the size of that response. Their time is at the morning-dawn," which corresponded to dusk in New York when TWA Flight 800...

ATLANTA - Richard Jewell, the former security guard who was erroneously linked to the 1996 Olympic bombing, died Wednesday, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said. Jewell, 44, was found dead in his west Georgia home, GBI spokesman John Bankhead said.

Saddam's Shadow Africa Energy & Mining June 18, 1997 Copyright 1997 Indigo Publications Africa Energy & Mining June 18, 1997 SECTION: MINING; DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO; N. 207 LENGTH: 787 words HEADLINE: Saddam's Shadow BODY: It's not only diamonds and base metals that interest big mining companies and the latter are not alone in being interested in Katanga. In the delegation that the United States sent to Kinshasa on June 2 under its ambassador to the United Nations, Bill Richardson, the state department's African affairs department was represented by Marc Baas, director for Central Africa. (Susan Rice, director for African...

Two weeks back, the Chinese military shocked America by shooting one of China's aging satellites out of the sky with a ground-based missile. As it happens, no American played a greater role in the success of that shoot-down than the much-discussed chairman and founder of Stonebridge International, Samuel "Sandy" Berger. I do not know whether the results pleased Berger, but I cannot imagine a better advertisement for his subsidiary, Stonebridge China. Berger knows these circles well. During the Clinton years, according to the New York Times, he served as "the point man for the White House's China policy." That policy,...

My regular readers know that I patrol South-Central Los Angeles. Recently I saw this flyer which, as you can imagine, piqued my curiosity: (click pictures for larger versions) This document was distributed by a group called the Black Riders Liberation Party, an offshoot of the Black Panther Party started by this man: Whom they call Taco: The Black Riders Liberation Party was formed in 1996 by Bloods and Crips in the California Youth Authority college class. As their political understanding grew, especially being inside the belly of the beast, they were able to see up close how oppressive and dehumanizing...

SEOUL, Oct. 12 (Yonhap) -- North Korea has already manufactured several nuclear weapons and is ready to deploy these in the event of a war, a high-ranking North Korean defector claimed on Thursday. Hwang Jang-yop, a former secretary of the Workers Party of Korea and one of the North's top theorists, said the reclusive nation signed a pact with Pakistan in 1996 on the transfer of uranium-based nuclear technology

WASHINGTON - Federal officials are investigating how National Archives documents of interest to Indians suing the Interior Department were found discarded in a trash bin and a wastebasket. The discovery came to light on Sept. 1, when Archives staff noticed federal records in one of the trash bins behind the National Archives Building near the Capitol. They notified the Archives' inspector general, Paul Brachfeld, whose staff recovered the documents. They found at least a portion of the documents were Bureau of Indian Affairs records dating to the 1950s, according to Jason Baron of the Archives' Office of General Counsel, in...

The following text is a fatwa, or declaration of war, by Osama bin Laden first published in Al Quds Al Arabi, a London-based newspaper, in August, 1996. The fatwa is entitled "Declaration of War against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places." ..... But your most disgraceful case was in Somalia; where- after vigorous propaganda about the power of the USA and its post cold war leadership of the new world order- you moved tens of thousands of international force, including twenty eight thousands American solders into Somalia. However, when tens of your solders were killed in...

Revelations in the Peoria Journal Star earlier this week that the Peoria/Champaign area is one of seven in the United States on a terrorist “circuit” were frightening. “Terrorists enter the United States in San Francisco and Los Angeles, then move to Phoenix, then Denver," reported Phil Luciano of the PJS. "From there some head to Peoria and Champaign. Some terrorists remain in those communities, while others head on to New York City" (emphasis added). Luciano was provided this information by Peoria County Sheriff Mike McCoy, who received it at a recent FBI conference held in Springfield. Names of larger cities...

This is a reference thread with links to previous FR threads discussing the arrest of a suspect, John Mark Karr, in the decade-old cold case concerning the murder of JonBenet Ramsey, plus case resources for continued commentary on investigation of the crime.

SCATTERED AMONG the loose papers and bound files unearthed last week at the Iraqi Foreign Ministry in Baghdad was "letter no. 140/4/5," labeled "Confidential and Personal" and addressed to "The President's Office--Secretariat." The letter concerns George Galloway, a pro-Saddam member of the British Parliament, who founded a charity known as the Mariam Appeal, ostensibly to aid Iraqi children suffering under U.N. sanctions. The missive, from the Iraqi Intelligence Service, is a request that money be funneled directly to Galloway. It reads in part: His projects and future plans for the benefit of [Iraq] need financial support to become a motive...

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen won't let go of the mystery: Just where did the Cuban government get up to $3.9 billion it funneled through a Swiss bank over seven years. Was Havana simply, as it claims, banking its income from tourism and remittances that Cubans abroad send to their relatives on the island? Or was dirty money involved? Ros-Lehtinen, the Cuban-born Florida Republican, wants to know, and she has been badgering officials of the United Bank of Switzerland (UBS) and the U.S. Federal Reserve for answers. ''That's an awful lot of money,'' Ros-Lehtinen told The Herald. According to the latest answers...

(AP) ATLANTA Richard Jewell's fortunes changed in a split second. The security guard was initially hailed as a hero for spotting a suspicious backpack in a park and moving people out of harm's way just before a bomb exploded during a concert at the 1996 Summer Olympics. Then the media called him a suspect and he became a public spectacle. As the 10th anniversary nears of the July 27 blast that killed one and injured 111 others, the episode is still fresh in Jewell's mind. "The heroes are soon forgotten. The villains last a lifetime," Jewell told The Associated...

Per http://www.sweetness-light.com/ Excerpt: Lest we forget, our good friends in China sold C-802 missiles to Iran in 1996 and subsequently. The Clinton administration announced they wouldn’t call for sanctions, since they didn’t see this as a destabilizing action on the part of China and Iran: Testifying in April, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Robert Einhorn said the law "does provide for a substantial list of actions" against anyone providing Iran or Iraq with destabilizing numbers or types of conventional weapons, or assisting them in the acquisition of weapons of mass destruction. The administration has maintained since March 1996 that China’s...

The next time you do your banking, be sure you don't do anything out of the ordinary. If you do, you may end up caught in the crosshairs of a government program designed to target terrorists and money launderers. According to critics, innocent American bank customers who are doing nothing more than conducting their honest financial transactions are being vicitimized by Suspicious Activity Reports, or SARs. A SAR is a secret filing, triggered by any financial activity the government deems unusual. Specifically, any group of transactions totaling $5,000 or more that "is not the sort in which the particular customer...

President Bush yesterday called for the Senate to send him a bill establishing a legislative line-item veto, saying the tool is important to restrain spending and keep the economy growing. The House has passed a version of the line-item veto that would give the president new powers to strip projects out of spending bills. Mr. Bush, in his weekly radio address, said it is time for the Senate do the same. "This was a victory for the taxpayers and for spending restraint," he said. "I call on the Senate to show a bipartisan commitment to fiscal discipline by passing the...

SADDAM HUSSEIN'S REGIME PROVIDED FINANCIAL support to Abu Sayyaf, the al Qaeda-linked jihadist group founded by Osama bin Laden's brother-in-law in the Philippines in the late 1990s, according to documents captured in postwar Iraq. An eight-page fax dated June 6, 2001, and sent from the Iraqi ambassador in Manila to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Baghdad, provides an update on Abu Sayyaf kidnappings and indicates that the Iraqi regime was providing the group with money to purchase weapons. The Iraqi regime suspended its support--temporarily, it seems--after high-profile kidnappings, including of Americans, focused international attention on the terrorist group. The...