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The Transportation Security Administration isn't just in airports anymore. TSA teams are increasingly conducting searches and screenings at train stations, subways, ferry terminals and other mass transit locations around the country... The TSA's 25 "viper" teams — for Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response — have run more than 9,300 unannounced checkpoints and other search operations in the last year. Department of Homeland Security officials have asked Congress for funding to add 12 more teams next year. According to budget documents, the department spent $110 million in fiscal 2011 for "surface transportation security," including the TSA's viper program, and is asking...

BOSTON -- A Peabody woman says a cupcake she tried to take on a flight with her sparked a potential security threat this week. Rebecca Hains says she was going through security at the airport in Las Vegas when a TSA agent pulled her aside and said the cupcake frosting was “gel-like” enough to constitute a security risk. She said she was able to pass through Logan International Airport security with two cupcakes, but she was stopped on the way back when she tried to return with one of them.

In 2010, the Tea Party helped elect legions of solid conservatives to Congress, statehouses and governors' mansions nationwide. With President Obama vulnerable, this raised hopes that in 2012, they could put a conviction conservative in the White House. Though many on the Right were looking for a dream candidate in the mold of new stars such as Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Gov. Scott Walker, R-Wis., with less than two weeks before Iowa, they're stuck with a group of presidential candidates who are retreads from a different era, insufficiently conservative or implausible. Though there are a number of reasons for...

An 85-year-old Long Island grandmother says she plans to sue the TSA after a humiliating strip search on Tuesday by agents at JFK Airport. Lenore Zimmerman, who lives in Long Beach, says she was on her way to a 1 p.m. flight to Fort Lauderdale when security whisked her to a private room and took off her clothes. “I walk with a walker — I really look like a terrorist,” she said sarcastically. “I’m tiny. I weigh 110 pounds, 107 without clothes, and I was strip-searched.” TSA spokeswoman Lisa Farbstein said a review of closed circuit TV footage from the...

World Health: At a star-studded gala Thursday, President Obama drew big praise from AIDS activists and NGOs for expanding AIDS-fighting programs. But the real accomplishment rests with his predecessor, President Bush. After quietly helping to save 30 million lives from the scourge of AIDS across the African continent, it would seem that higher honors would be in store for Bush, whose AIDS initiatives there have been an astonishing success. Obama, to his credit, acknowledged Bush in his World AIDS Day speech Thursday, as have serious-minded Africa advocates including rock singer Bono. But among the garden-variety NGOs, media elites or activist...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Another trading day and another low for Bank of America's stock. Shares of Bank of America dropped more than 3% Tuesday, hitting a new 52-week low of $5.03 -- its lowest level since March 12, 2009. After the close of trading Tuesday, Bank of America was one of 37 financial institutions downgraded by S&P. Beyond the S&P downgrade, trading could become even more complicated in Bank of America's stock, if it falls below $5. Under that threshold, many broker-dealers will not allow investors to buy or short a stock on margin, according to a spokesperson for...

Presidential hopeful Ron Paul says his rivals’ militant stances on “the defense of liberty” would make it difficult for him to support any of them for president should he not get the Republican nomination, because their positions would lead to bigger government. But the Texas congressman also told Fox News’ Neal Cavuto Wednesday that despite these concerns, he probably would not run as a third-party candidate. “I would have trouble with what I heard last night because it is almost opposite of the defense of liberty that I’m talking about,” Paul told Cavuto, referring to Tuesday night’s presidential debate. “I...

DALLAS (AP) — Former President George W. Bush will travel to Africa next month to raise awareness about cervical and breast cancer, an effort he calls a "natural extension" of a program launched during his presidency that helps fight AIDS on the continent. Bush, former first lady Laura Bush and officials with the George W. Bush Institute are heading to Tanzania, Zambia and Ethiopia from Dec. 1 through Dec. 5, where they'll visit clinics and meet with governmental and health care leaders. "We believe it's in our nation's interest to deal with disease and set priorities and save lives," Bush...

12/31/2010 9,390,476,088,043.35 4,634,739,130,665.17 14,025,215,218,708.52

by John HillStand With ArizonaMore than 50,000 Americans have been killed by illegal aliens since 9/11.Think about that. More than 6,000 U.S. troops have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan since that same date. But nearly ten times that number have been killed right here at home as a consequence of the Federal government's failure to secure our borders and protect its citizens, in direct violation of the Constitution's Article IV Section 4: The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application...

The desperate search for an acceptable Republican Party presidential candidate continues. Republican leaders apparently are pushing New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who previously said no, to jump into the race. The GOP's frustration is palpable. Mitt Romney has been running for four years but generates little enthusiasm. Rick Perry was an instant front-runner before losing much of his support after unimpressive debate performances. Michelle Bachmann briefly streaked across the political firmament but now barely registers in the polls. Newt Gingrich committed political seppuku shortly after announcing his candidacy. Ron Paul's support is fervent but limited. However, the real Republican problem...

An internal U.S. Department of Homeland Security document indicates that a controversial program designed to predict whether a person will commit a crime is already being tested on some members of the public voluntarily, CNET has learned. If this sounds a bit like the Tom Cruise movie called "Minority Report," or the CBS drama "Person of Interest," it is. But where "Minority Report" author Philip K. Dick enlisted psychics to predict crimes, DHS is betting on algorithms: it's building a "prototype screening facility" that it hopes will use factors such as ethnicity, gender, breathing, and heart rate to "detect cues...

The next three months in Iraq will look like a veritable fire sale, as 45,000 U.S. forces prepare to leave by the Dec. 31 deadline. Rather than ship home valuable military hardware, incurring excessive shipping costs, the Pentagon is simply going to leave millions of pieces of equipment behind, including everything from vehicles and body armor to trailers and air conditioners. When all is said and done, Pentagon planners estimate 3.47 million pieces of equipment worth $313 million will be handed over to the Iraqi government, which still has not asked U.S. forces to stay beyond the December deadline.

Self-proclaimed "conservatives" love to tout themselves as ardent supporters of the "free enterprise" system. In the name of "capitalism," they support any and every piece of legislation or governmental decision that caters to business — especially Big Business. Favorite policies of these folks include anything and everything that calls itself "free trade." Furthermore, these same "conservatives" will support just about anything and everything that is said to advance the so-called "global economy." Needless to say, in the name of "free trade" millions of American jobs and thousands of American manufacturing plants have been outsourced to foreign countries and interests. And...

Texas Gov. Rick Perry, like most of the other the GOP presidential hopefuls, says his campaign is about undoing the decisions of President Obama. But Perry also presents a stark alternative to the last Republican to occupy the White House, his fellow Texan George W. Bush. In his writings and speeches before he entered the race, Perry shared the view, widely held among conservatives, that Bush’s government spending habits in office were a betrayal of the GOP’s core fiscal principles. But Perry went further, dismissing “compassionate conservatism,” the central tenet of Bush’s domestic policy, as just more overreach by the...

Pat Buchanan regularly serves as Morning Joe's lone conservative in the show's self-described 10:1 ratio of lib to conservative guests. But Buchanan this morning demonstrated that he is anything but a Republican partisan. Sounding more like Barney Frank after a bad night's sleep, Buchanan blasted President George W. Bush, claiming 43 "broke the Republican party and frankly he broke the United States as a superpower." View the video here.

The front page of last Tuesday's Times-Dispatch carried a startling photo: Richmond police officers taking a suspect into custody. What was startling was the display of force. The officers, accompanied by a robot and decked out in full riot gear with shield and combat helmets, could have been mistaken for American soldiers on patrol in Iraq. Yet they were going up against a single man — and they were not even sure was armed. Regrettably, this is not a new development. In recent years police forces across the country have become increasingly militarized. To a small degree, that trend represents...

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush warned the Republican presidential hopefuls against ideological intransigence and knee-jerk opposition to President Barack Obama on Tuesday, saying they risk turning off middle-of-the-road voters. Asked by Fox News host Neil Cavuto if some Republicans go too far in their criticism of Obama, Bush said flatly, “I do. I think when you start ascribing bad motives to the guy, that’s wrong. It turns off people who want solutions.

Government critics deserve their day in court. You wouldn't think Aaron Tobey and Donald Rumsfeld have much in common. Tobey is the guy who stripped down to his shorts at the Richmond, Virginia airport last December. Rumsfeld is the former Defense Secretary under George W. Bush. Tobey, who was protesting the invasive airport screening practices that have outraged a good portion of the traveling public, is a stickler for constitutional rights. Rumsfeld? Not so much. The two of them, however, are united by a common case: Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents. The other day a federal appeals court said...

In a clip from his interview with WSJ's Simon Constable, Dr. Nouriel Roubini insists that it was the policies of George W. Bush that caused the current U.S. economic crisis.

Link only, per FR posting rules

SHANGHAI — China, the largest foreign holder of United States debt, said Saturday that Washington needed to “cure its addiction to debts” and “live within its means,” just hours after the rating agency Standard & Poor’s downgraded America’s long-term debt. The harshly worded commentary, which was released by China’s official Xinhua news agency, was Beijing’s latest effort to express its displeasure with Washington. (snip) “The U.S. government has to come to terms with the painful fact that the good old days when it could just borrow its way out of messes of its own making are finally gone,” read the...

As federal criminal statutes have ballooned, it has become increasingly easy for Americans to end up on the wrong side of the law. Many of the new federal laws also set a lower bar for conviction than in the past: Prosecutors don't necessarily need to show that the defendant had criminal intent.

(How do you know Rick Perry’s lying? Well, you know the joke. Watch his lips move and see who he remind you of.)  They say first impressions are lasting ones. And if you’ve been following my comments on the potential 2012 Republicans presidential field, you know that my first impression of most of them is that they are either boobs or frauds.There is one contender who does not meet that definition. Texas Congressman Ron Paul is neither a boob nor a fraud. He’s the only Republican in the field who has been a consistent adherent to the constitution during his entire political...

Nearly 4 in 10 Americans say they think the economy is in permanent decline, a new polls shows as deep pessimism about the economy becomes more widespread. Thirty-nine percent of those surveyed for a New York Times/CBS News poll released late Wednesday say they see the economy headed on a downward path - significantly worse than when the question was last asked in October and 28 percent of Americans said the economy was in permanent decline.

June 10, 2011 Mexicans Blast Execution of Criminal Alien Murderer In Texas Jim Kouri, CPP Mexicans on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border are protesting the upcoming execution of a criminal alien rapist and murderer scheduled for July 7, 2011, in Texas. Because the convicted killer is a Mexican citizen, the Calderon government is questioning the procedures that were utilized in sentencing the death row prisoner, Humberto Leal Garcia. The Mexican ambassador to the United States requested this week that Texas Governor Rick Perry delay the execution until a review is completed of the sentencing procedures. The 38-year old Garcia...

MEXICO CITY — Once praised lavishly by the United States for waging a war on drugs, Mexico's last two presidents now say legalizing them may be the best way to end the rising violence the U.S.-backed campaign has unleashed. Ernesto Zedillo and Vicente Fox led efforts to crush drug trafficking gangs in Mexico between 1994 and 2006 but the rapid escalation of violence over the past four years under President Felipe Calderon has convinced them a change of tack is needed. "As a country, we are going through problems due to the fact that the United States consumes too many...

It is a truism of political dynasties that there is a chosen heir - the one who should or would or could have been next. It is certainly apt of the Bush family. Jeb Bush is the son who was groomed for the presidency. He was the one most Republicans expected to succeed his father into the Oval Office. And today, looking at their, let's be frank, lacklustre field, many Republicans still wish he would do just that. "It's very flattering to be asked that regularly," Jeb tells me in his office at the Coral Gables Biltmore Hotel. "I don't...

NEW ORLEANS — Republicans head into 2012 united in their disdain for an unpopular, Big Government-loving, internationalist president. The name of that president: George W. Bush. From Capitol Hill to the statehouses to the presidential primary, Republicans are turning their back on almost every important accomplishment of the Bush administration.

During the 2008 campaign Barack Obama ran more against lame-duck President Bush than against his Republican opponent, John McCain. The campaign is now long over, and yet President Obama still seems haunted by the ghost of his predecessor. Last week, for example, he was railing at the Bush phantom, whom he blamed for his received economic mess. In the world of Barack Obama everything he inherited was someone else’s fault — unless he believes past policies offer him some advantage and thus are to be claimed as entirely his own. The stock market is sliding. Gas and food prices are...

Top congressional leaders agreed Thursday to a four-year extension of the anti-terrorist Patriot Act, the controversial law passed after the Sept. 11 attacks that governs the search for terrorists on American soil. The deal between Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker John Boehner calls for a vote before May 27, when parts of the current act expire. The idea is to pass the extension with as little debate as possible to avoid a protracted and familiar argument over the expanded power the law gives to the government. SNIP "I still have some concerns, and at this point I'm...

Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales chided fellow Republicans on immigration, urging them to work toward comprehensive immigration reform. Gonzales, the first Hispanic attorney general of the U.S., said it was a "failure" by both parties to have not achieved immigration reform yet, and warned against a proposal favored by some Republicans to amend the U.S. Constitution to deny birthright citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants. "My recommendation not just to the Republican Party but also the Democratic Party is that this country, our federal leaders need to pass comprehensive immigration reform," Gonzales said Sunday on Univision's "Al Punto" program....

WASHINGTON -- I in my innocence was, in the aftermath of SEAL Team Six's disruption of Osama bin Laden's bucolic life in posh Abbottabad, reading editorial comment by the great newspapers of this republic. As always, the Wall Street Journal was superb, pausing to congratulate President Barack Obama for "ordering a special forces mission rather than settling for another attack with drones or stand-off weapons from afar." The Washington Post was, likewise, informative and appreciative of the president's prudent decision to let SEAL Team Six do its thing, skirting the laws of a sovereign nation and acting unilaterally to put...

DEVELOPING: Usama bin Laden was given a religious funeral prior to his burial at sea, senior military officials told Fox News. Religious rites were conducted on the deck of the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier at about 1:10 a.m. Monday in the Persian Gulf. In accordance with Islamic practice, bin Laden was washed and wrapped in a white sheet before buried at sea at 2 p.m. local time, senior U.S. military and intelligence officials said.

(snip) What triggered the upswing? In part: ethanol. President George W. Bush "came forward with—what do you call?—the edict that we were going to mandate 36 billion gallons of alternative fuels" by 2022, of which corn-based ethanol is "a substantial part." Companies that blend ethanol into fuel get a $5 billion annual tax credit, and there's a tariff to keep foreign producers out of the U.S. market. Now 40% of the corn crop is "directed to ethanol, which equals the amount that's going into livestock food," Mr. Pope calculates. (snip) Food price inflation isn't a problem confined to America's shores....

In the latest effort to accommodate its cherished trade partner in the south, the U.S. government is paying to upgrade outdated Mexican trucks that hemorrhage illegal amounts of exhaust on their trips north to deliver merchandise.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Persistent Federal Reserve critic Representative Ron Paul plans to hold a hearing on the U.S. central bank's emergency loans to the branches of non-U.S. banks, his spokeswoman said on Saturday. "I was surprised and deeply disturbed ... to learn the staggering amount of money that went to foreign banks," Paul said in a statement. "These lending activities provided no benefit to American taxpayers, the American economy, or even directly to American banks," he said.

(CNN) – Former President George W. Bush is worried the U.S. might pull out of Afghanistan too early to the detriment of that country's women. In an interview with Fox News that aired Thursday, Bush warned that Afghan women will "suffer" should the Obama administration decide to downscale troop levels there. "My concern of course is that the United States gets weary of being in Afghanistan and says 'It's not worth it, let's leave' and Laura and I believe that if that were to happen, women would suffer again," he told Fox's Greta Van Susteren. "And we don't believe that's...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - While Congress brawls over how to shrink a $1.6 trillion budget deficit this year, an even tougher battle has begun over cutting popular Social Security retirement benefits to achieve long-term savings. It's unclear whether Congress will be able to agree on how to reform the massive government pension program, which has provided a social safety net for the elderly since 1935. That in part will depend on whether President Barack Obama throws his weight behind a reform effort that politicians of all stripes fear could be full of political risks. While the president has invited a conversation...

The defector who convinced the White House that Iraq had a secret biological weapons programme has admitted for the first time that he lied about his story, then watched in shock as it was used to justify the war. Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, codenamed Curveball by German and American intelligence officials who dealt with his claims, has told the Guardian that he fabricated tales of mobile bioweapons trucks and clandestine factories in an attempt to bring down the Saddam Hussein regime, from which he had fled in 1995. "Maybe I was right, maybe I was not right," he said. "They...

Two members of a notorious Central American gang face life in federal prison in a murder-for-hire scheme cooked up over bad blood in Honduras that ended in gunfire in West Columbia, a prosecutor said Friday. Josue Benitez, 22, and Martin Teran, 36, were convicted Thursday after a three-week trial of a hit on Jorge Ramos, U.S. prosecutor Jay Richardson said. Ramos was gunned down while he worked on his car Nov. 2, 2008, in Hendrix Mobile Home Park on Leaphart Road. The MS-13 gang members drove from Houston to South Carolina to carry out the contract killing, Richardson said. Jurors...

In a new advocacy ad, one of the daughters of former President George W. Bush endorses gay marriage. “I’m Barbara Bush and I’m a New Yorker for marriage equality. New York is about fairness and equality, and everyone should have the right to marry the person that they love. Join us," the former first daughter says in a Web video by the group Human Rights Campaign (HRC).

It's called "an admission against interest" in legal circles. Example: When the New York Times says something good about George W. Bush. It was George W. Bush's fault, the NYT just confessed, that the Stuxnet computer worm ended up destroying 984 Iranian uranium centrifuges over the last year or so. Bush got the Stuxnet program started in cooperation with Israel and other countries in the last years of his presidency. Of course the Times buries the truth half-way down its long story on Stuxnet computer worm, instantly saying that when Obama found out about it he made the program speed...

I’m going to take the death panel end-of-life planning conundrum down one point at a time to make this very clear for Americans to understand what the Pelosi-led Democrats have done to your healthcare and their attempt to take cover under a Bush-era law–the Medicare Improvement for Patients and Providers Act of 2008. The Hill reported that the Obama White House attempted to calm Americans’ fears of the dreaded death panels: The Medicare policy will pay doctors for holding end-of-life-care discussions with patients, according to the Times. A similar provision was dropped from the new healthcare reform law after Republicans...

Back in 2007, a U.S. senator asked ICE's then-Assistant Secretary Julie Myers to estimate the cost of finding and deporting all of the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. According to the New York Times, Myers pegged the price tag at $94 billion. Now that the illegal immigrant population in the U.S. has declined by about 1 million, the cost has somehow increased significantly, to $135 billion, according a new estimate from the Department of Homeland Security, prepared in response to questions from Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. So DHS is saying essentially that the cost...

On Wednesday, Henrico County Judge Daniel T. Balfour sentenced convicted rapist, Arturo F. Lopez, 18, to 50 years in prison, but suspended 20 of those years. Due to the grievous nature of the illegal alien’s crime, Judge Balfour actually went beyond the sentencing guidelines which ranged from nine years and 10 months to 21 years and one month for abduction and rape convictions. Lopez, who took a bus to Richmond, after entering the country illegally last year, was placed with a foster couple after he was found wandering the streets, homeless. On April 9, just five days after his 18th...

News reports on Saturday reporting that the TSA was announcing warnings to would-be travelers that any "would-be commercial airline passenger who enters an airport checkpoint but refuses to undergo the method of inspection as prescribed by the TSA workers on duty would not be allowed to fly, (but far more importantly)--would not be permitted to leave the airport." But that wasn't all. The TSA also included in it's announcement for the first time the new fine of $11,000 and possible arrest for anyone who refused. TSA worker Sari Koshetz was quoted in one report, "Once a person submits to the...

This annoys the hell out of me, because I'm not some rabid Palinista. Crap like this from Barbara Bush leaves one no alternative but to respond to it. What, does she have another son, or a grand kid lined up for the job of President? Reagan handed your husband his, despite some misgivings, and he blew it, Barbara. And as much as I supported her husband and her son while they were in office, they've hardly gotten us to a great place. Guess what? If not for 9/11, GW may well have been a one-term-er, just like his father. He...

13-year-old Cody Alicea rides with an American flag on the back of his bike. He says he does this to be patriotic and to honor veterans, like his own grandfather, Robert. He's had the flag on his bike for two months but Monday, was asked told to take it down. A school official at Denair Middle School told Cody some students had been complaining about the flag and it was no longer allowed on school property. "In this country we're supposed to be free," said Cody. "And I should be able to wave my flag wherever I want to. And...

**Exclusive** **Must Credit** "It was a simple question, 'Can you remember the last day you didn't have a drink?'" So begins President George W. Bush in the opening chapter ["Quitting"] from the most anticipated book of the season, the DRUDGE REPORT can reveal. With DECISION POINTS, set for release November 9, Bush pulls back the curtain with a strikingly personal work that takes very few shots at his critics. The former president even stays clear of Obama! ** From 911's "Day of Fire" to "Katrina" to "Financial Crisis", Bush explains how he returned to his faith, time and time again....