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Capitol Hill opponents of the proposed Keystone XL oil sands pipeline are attacking the State Department’s finding that the proposed project will cause minimal environmental harm if managed properly.The State Department’s conclusion in an environmental analysis released Friday is a crucial step toward final federal approval of the 1,700-mile pipeline, which would bring crude from Alberta’s oil sands projects to Gulf Coast refineries.But the finding isn’t sitting well with Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.), who called the analysis flawed, alleging the State Department failed to “adequately asses the real environmental impact.” The pipeline would run through Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska and...

The media is still showing the love for Obama. Not only does the fawning coverage continue but media executives are putting their money where their collective mouths are, by showering the Obama campaign with money. Comcast, the nation's largest cable operator and the new owner of NBC (and MSNBC) is the company that tops out the list of executives giving money to the Obama Victory Fund. Abby Phillip writes in Politico: President Obama raised eyebrows this weekend when he visited Comcast CEO Brian Roberts' Martha's Vineyard home on Sunday. Comcast, beyond being a telecommunications giant, is also the parent company...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/rick-perry-should-stop-and-think/2011/08/22/gIQAsF2NXJ_story.html?wprss=rss_opinions Washington Post opinion columnist Richard Cohen wrote Monday, "The Republican Texas governor clings to an ice floe of diminishing credibility, emerging in just about a week’s time as intellectually unqualified to be president." He concludes his column with another similar statement, "It’s not his thinking I fear. It’s the lack of any at all." Cohen's claim about being "intellectually unqualified" to be President would more appropriate for the current President than the candidate from Texas. It is this President who has presided over the largest decline in the workforce. (Regardless of fault, Obama's policies have done nothing to prevent...

Roger Cohen in the NYT: Obama, in a first for an American president, has now said the border between Israel and Palestine should be “based on the 1967 lines.” Yes, it should. Netanyahu still talks of “Judea and Samaria,” a lexicon that, true to his Likud party’s platform, does not acknowledge those lines but sees one land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean..... What is “indefensible” over time for Israel is colonizing another people. That process has continued with settlements expanding in defiance of Obama’s urging. Andrew C. McCarthy in the National review: As the president utters his paeans...

Oakland Mayor Jean Quan is voluntarily giving back 25 percent of her $183,397-a-year salary. Quan will make $137,000 - or about $46,000 a year less than her immediate predecessor, Ron Dellums."We are going into some very, very tough times, and I wanted to lead the way," Quan said. . . . On the home front: San Francisco Supervisor Malia Cohen has joined the ranks of the foreclosed, having lost her $581,178 condo to the bank. The 33-year-old Cohen was a community organizer and ran a social-media business before her election in November from District 10. She says she was the...

U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Memphis, disgraced us all this week when he compared Republicans to Nazis in an almost empty House chamber. With the smell of gunpowder from the Tucson, Ariz., mass killings and President Barack Obama's words of reconciliation still hanging in the air, he derailed any steps toward civility in favor of partisan exaggerations beyond the bounds of decency. Cohen accused the GOP of lying about health care reform and then compared their tactics to those of notorious Nazi propaganda chief Josef Goebbels. He then said, echoing Republican former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, that the GOP was engaged...

The Memphis Democrat has been called out by Jon Stewart of "The Daily Show" for his "wrong" choice of words. He's gone toe-to-toe with Anderson Cooper on CNN, who called him a hypocrite. Rush Limbaugh called him "pathetic." And people across the spectrum have called on him to apologize. His newfound notoriety stems from a Tuesday night speech in which Cohen called Republicans' talking point about "a government takeover of health" the kind of repeated "big lie" Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels perfected.

Fox’s Megyn Kelly talked to Equality Matters’ president Richard Socarides Thursday, discussing the dustup over Rep. Steve Cohen’s recent comments on the floor of the House, when he compared Republicans’ “lies” to the Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels. On America Live, Socarides and Kelly disagreed over whether Cohen’s comments since amounted to an apology or not, and somehow that led to a back-and-forth over Socarides’ belief that Fox News hosts regularly use the same kind of language: “Every night on the very network that we’re on right now, the leading commenters on this network use this kind of language.” Kelly...

"They say it's a government takeover of health care, a big lie just like Goebbels. You say it enough, you repeat the lie, you repeat the lie, and eventually, people believe it. Like blood libel," Cohen said. "The Germans said enough about the Jews and people believed it -- believed it and you have the Holocaust." snip "I don't think there is anything to apologize for… I do regret that people, whether the Jewish people might be offended because of a reference to an infamous Nazi political propagandist or to my Republican colleges who I certainly didn't say anything about....

I've always liked Anderson Cooper. I think he's pretty fair for a CNN anchor and he can be funny. In spite of this I rarely watch his show-Anderson Cooper 360-except for last night. Last night something told me to watch, call it serendipity, call it a total lack of anything interesting to watch on the history channel, whatever, I watched and now Anderson is like my all time favorite CNN anchor. In his Keeping Them Honest segment last night Cooper ripped Representative Steven Cohen (D- Tennessee) a new one in front of a substantial national audience. (see above video) I'm...

Well, the efforts to be “civil” between the Republicans and the Democrats in Washington, D.C. this week did not last too long. Once again, Representative Steve Cohen, (D/TN) calls the tea party movement, which is to be given credit for making a conservative GOP USA House majority possible, “reprehensible”, yet Rep. Cohen has NO PROBLEM with his “nazi” comments. How ironic this is, because it was the same Rep. Cohen who called for more “civility” to tone down the rhetoric not that long ago after the horrible tragic aftermath of the recent Tuscon, AZ, USA, shootings. Could it be that...

The Left and its handmaidens – the gaggle of talking heads on MSNBC/CNN/ABC/CBS/NBC and their allied printed versions, namely the “The Washington Compost,” “Slime” and “Newspeak” magazines, etc. – have been rather harsh on Sarah Palin this past week after she went public in a 7-minute video segment on Facebook, defending herself against the Left’s accusations that she was the actual perpetrator (along with Rush, Beck, Hannity and anyone else who didn’t vote for Obama) behind the cue-ball-headed madman who opened fire on Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and several other innocents on Saturday, 01/08/2011. How dare Sarah Palin defend herself against...

Democratic Representative Steve Cohen Seems to think so. Wasn’t there supposed to be a “toning down” of the rhetoric? Maybe not. Watch the video and decide for yourself. The newfound civility didn’t last long. Political rhetoric in Congress doesn’t get much nastier than the words of one House Democrat during the debate on repealing the health care law. In an extraordinary outburst on the House floor, Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN) invoked the Holocaust to attack Republicans on health care and compared rhetoric on the issue to the work of infamous Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels. “They say it’s a government takeover...

They don’t like the truth, so they summarily dismiss it,” he says. “They say it’s a government takeover of health care — a big lie. Just like Goebbels. You say it enough, you repeat the lie, you repeat the lie, you repeat the lie, and eventually people believe it. Like ‘blood libel,’’’ he said, pounding his fist on the dais. “That’s the same kind of thing. The Germans said enough about the Jews and the people believed it and you had the Holocaust. You tell a lie over and over again. And we’ve heard it on this floor — ‘government...

ABC News Jonathan Karl reports: The newfound civility didn’t last long. Political rhetoric in Congress doesn’t get much nastier than the words of one House Democrat during the debate on repealing the health care law. In an extraordinary outburst on the House floor, Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN) invoked the Holocaust to attack Republicans on health care and compared rhetoric on the issue to the work of infamous Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels. “They say it's a government takeover of health care, a big lie just like Goebbels," Cohen said. "You say it enough, you repeat the lie, you repeat the lie,...

ABC News has learned that Richard Holbrooke, the US Special Representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, has died. On Friday, Holbrooke was rushed to the hospital with a torn aorta. He went through more than 20 hours of surgery. Earlier this evening, speaking at the US State Department, President Obama sang Holbrooke's praises and called him "a tough son of a gun." Holbrooke, 69, was a former ambassador to the United Nations and served as chief negotiator at the Dayton Peace Accords, which ended the war in Bosnia. The New Yorker's George Packer wrote a nice story about Holbrooke last year,...

Palin needs a history lessonRICHARD COHEN Tuesday, November 23, 2010 When I was 11, my father thought it was time to show my sister and me the nation's capital. **SNIP** It's appalling that Palin and too many others fail to understand that fact - indeed so many facts of American history. They don't offer the slightest hint that they can appreciate the history of the Obama family and that in Michelle's case, her ancestors were slaves - Jim Robinson of South Carolina, her paternal great-great grandfather, being one. Even after they were freed they were consigned to peonage, second-class citizens,...

Steve Cohen, who greeted voters at a Democratic event several blocks away in Midtown, said that he had in fact been a part of historic bills to give people tax breaks, not tax hikes. "We voted on the largest tax breaks in United States history in the 111th Congress. In fact, the stimulus bill was 40 percent tax breaks. There have been more tax breaks for 95 percent of the citizens of the middle class," Cohen said. Cohen is not knocking on doors this weekend, but is still passing out his signature buttons that he said he likes to collect....

oing into the 2010 election cycle, conventional political wisdom held that U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen, the incumbent 9th Congressional District representative from Memphis, would face his toughest test in the Democratic primary before cruising to victory in November. After all, it was former Memphis mayor Willie Herenton challenging Cohen in the primary, and the general election would likely pit him against a Republican candidate embracing tea-party philosophy in a district where 77 percent of the voters went for President Barack Obama in 2008. But that general-election opponent, a rare African-American Republican candidate named Charlotte Bergmann, appears to be galvanizing more...

“Hello, my name is Eco Nomic Illiterate, and I’m voting for Scott Lee Cohen.” Sorry if that seems cruel, but there are some commercials in the current cycle that are really bothering me, and they exemplify a much larger issue: the problem of economic illiteracy across broad swaths of the electorate. For most of our nation’s history, there was general uniformity in the understanding of what created jobs and wealth. The Founding Fathers – Republican and Federalist alike – understood that a small government was good for the economy, and a large government was not. They differed a bit on...

MEMPHIS, Tenn. - For someone who her incumbent opponent has dismissed as a "fringe candidate", 9th District Republican congressional challenger, Charlotte Bergmann, stridently sends a "mainstream message"- granted with a conservative bent. “Success comes with people voting to insure the government stays out of the business of people who are trying to grow their businesses,” said Bergman. “I don't think of her as a maverick in the sense of being a maverick in ideas. But, I know one thing. Her ideas will be for the people. All the people,” said John Willingham, former Shelby County Commissioner. If the variety of...

Charlotte, Charlotte, Charlotte. Where to start with the doomed campaign of Republican Tea Party-backed Charlotte Bergmann, who is challenging incumbent U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen for the Ninth District Congressional seat? Let's start with her campaign signs -- symbols of a political novice and her delusions.

Almost like an apparition, Jimmy Carter stalks Barack Obama. The former president has published yet another book, his 25th, which has been greeted with some scorn and plenty of ridicule. Garry Wills, in the reliably liberal New York Review of Books, writes that "Carter is a better man than his worst enemy would portray him as. And his worst enemy, it turns out is himself." To which a chorus of critics would quickly add, "Not as long as I'm around." Those critics are having a very good time with Carter's latest book, "White House Diary." It turns out that Carter...

WASHINGTON - Former Tennessee Gov. Winfield Dunn will be in Memphis Oct. 9 for a fundraiser breakfast for 9th Congressional District Republican candidate Charlotte Bergmann, he confirmed this afternoon. "She is our nominee and from all that I've been told she's a fine person with excellent credentials, and it's on that basis I agreed to come down and lend what influence I might to her efforts," Dunn said. "She's someone I look forward to meeting." Bergman is running against Democratic incumbent Steve Cohen.

Start unloading on the reporter!Jeff Beimfohr's email JBeimfohr@abc24.com

Yet, even as Steve Cohen's 9th Congressional District opponent prepares a campaign that may include a billboard proclaiming "Charlotte Bergmann can whip Steve Cohen," Memphis' most popular elected Democratic legislator is indicating he will not mount a large campaign aimed at motivating Democratic voters. Snip Cohen wasn't even sure how much effort he would put into a get-out-the-vote operation for his Democratic base.

"Really, it's not him, it's you."Journolist may be gone but the brain-dead mantra generating machine continues its uncritical support of The Lightbringer. Not only do six out of 10 voters "lack faith in the president to make the right decisions for the country," according to a Post-ABC News poll, but Barack Obama does not even get credit for the right decisions he's made. The bank bailout averted a financial crackup and the stimulus package pulled the economy back from the abyss. Along with reform of the financial industry and health care, these are considerable achievements. Only the voters disagree. Stupid...

Cohen responded to a billboard that says Republican challenger Charlotte Bergmann will "whip" Herenton. "She's first got to win her primary," Cohen said, "and she's got two opponents." The winner of the Republican primary goes up against the Democratic primary winner in November. Cohen said it was a waste of campaign money to put up such a billboard without knowing who Bergmann will be up against until the primary election on August 5.

NEW YORK--Answering a question from a reader as to whether a teacher should post a cartoon on his door that disparages President Obama as a socialist, New York Times columnist Randy Cohen writes: [W]hile this teacher does not transgress ethically, he does seem to fall short intellectually, offering not deft political analysis but slogans and clichés... Incidentally...how does it defame a person to call him a “socialist” (outside of nutty far-right circles) — a set of ideas many advanced Western democracies find congenial, what with the accessible health-care, affordable higher education and good public transportation? Cohen, who writes the Times'...

http://freedomisx.blogspot.com/2010/06/press-release-from-desk-of-sist-ceo.html

Chicago - Scott Lee Cohen announced Monday that he plans to run for governor as an independent. He said he was running because he was "tired of waste and mismanagement." Cohen was pressured to drop out of the race for lieutenant governor after embarassing details surfaced about his personal life, including allegations of abuse from his wife and ex-girlfriend and overdue child support. "I am not perfect, but I am honest," Cohen said. "And Illinois needs more honesty than perfection." A spokesman for House Speaker Michael Madigan says Cohen notified party leaders of his plans to run for governor in...

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Capitol Police are investigating an E-mailed threat to U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen's campaign committee, and the FBI in Memphis is aware of the threat and is taking it seriously, spokesmen for both agencies said today. Someone with a Yahoo.com address sent the message to a Cohen for Congress website saying, "If our tea parties had hoods, we would burn your ass on a cross on the White House front lawn." The reference to hoods followed a Cohen interview last week in which he described TEA Party activists using racial epithets "without robes and hoods" of the...

WASHINGTON - A year ago, an activist group from the Seattle area gave Howard Dean (news - web sites) a thin, golden statue of a backbone. The Oscar-like award honored the former Democratic presidential candidate and Vermont governor for standing up against the Iraq (news - web sites) war and other Bush administration policies. Now, as Dean settles into his new role as head of the Democratic Party, that golden spine has come to represent, for many liberal Democrats, Dean's potential to develop a tougher, take-no-prisoners attitude among the party faithful. "There's no gut-check required for Dean. Dean just needs...

The Democratic nominee for Illinois lieutenant governor has dropped out of the race less than a week after winning the nomination amid a political uproar about his past. Scott Lee Cohen announced his decision Sunday night at a Chicago bar. The pawn broker and owner of a cleaning supplies company won the nomination Tuesday. Since then, it has become widely know that he was accused of abusing his ex-wife and holding a knife to the throat of an ex-girlfriend. The girlfriend herself had been charged with prostitution. He also admits using steroids in the past. Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn, who...

Scott Lee Cohen -- a pawnbroker who shocked state Democratic leaders Tuesday night by winning the party's nomination for lieutenant governor -- was arrested about four-and-a-half years ago and accused of holding a knife to a former live-in girlfriend's neck, newly obtained court records show. The misdemeanor charge against Cohen was dropped weeks later when the woman -- who had just been found guilty of prostitution -- failed to show up to testify, according to those records. Scott Lee Cohen had disclosed his domestic violence arrest during his campaign, but the details did not surface until after he won the...

<p>WASHINGTON -- Attorney General John Ashcroft said Wednesday the terrorists behind the attacks on the United States likely received support from foreign governments and that it was too early to tell if surprise arrests in Michigan were a major break in the case.</p>

"RevolutionMuslim.com Calls on Allah to Kill Jews" SNIPPET: "Revolutionmuslim.com, a U.S. Web site registered in Bellvue WA also incites hatred of Sufis, glorifies killings of American soldiers and other acts of terroristic violence"

WASHINGTON -- Reparation for the legacy of slavery and peonage may not come in the form of a check, but it must come, speakers said Friday at a forum sponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation....Others said the apology for slavery that the House passed last year and the Senate passed this year were good first steps, and singled out U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., who was on Friday's panel, for authoring the House resolution... [snip]

TAMPA — Todd Cohen was diagnosed with bone cancer in 1994 when he was 19. The cancer led to the amputation of his right leg. Since then, Cohen has learned to walk with a prosthesis. He got an education, but he has never held a steady job. He's gotten by with Medicaid and monthly Supplemental Security Income, or SSI, checks that have ranged from $271 to $650.

Try this on for size: Palinism. What is it? It is an updated version of McCarthyism, which takes it name from the late Sen. Joseph McCarthy, the Wisconsin liar, demagogue and drunk, and means, according to Wikipedia, "reckless, unsubstantiated accusations, as well as demagogic attacks on the character or patriotism of political adversaries." As far as we know, Sarah Palin is not a drunk. But she certainly shares McCarthy's other attributes -- and this one as well: the ability to drive the debate. In McCarthy's day, it was anti-communism coupled with national security, and it hardly mattered that he frequently...

Weird and tragic. Alexis Cohen, the ranting, foul-mouthed Idol contestant, was killed by hit-and-run in NJ over the weekend. Read more here. Due to copyright issue, only the link is allowed.

Herenton explains why he wants to run for Congress by Dr. Willie W. Herenton Special to the Tri-State Defender Many people have stopped and asked me that question, why would you want to run for congress and as a beginning to answer their question, simply stated I am better qualified to represent the Ninth Congressional District than the incumbent. I identify more keenly with the needs and issues facing the citizens in the Ninth Congressional District. Let’s keep it real. Many citizens will be concerned with race and representation. There is strength in diversity, but currently the Tennessee Congressional Delegation...

n his latest stunt to promote his sure-to-be-controversial July 10 comedy Bruno, Sacha Baron Cohen appeared dressed as a bull at the historic Las Ventas bullfighting ring in Madrid, according to the Associated Press. "Ich have come to redress the wrong done to the gay community by that Hollywood movie on Harvey Milk which was acted by Sean Penn, who's not even gay," Baron Cohen told the crowd in the accent of the flamboyant-Austrian-fashionista character he plays in the movie. Wearing a furry black bull costume, complete with hooves and prominent genitalia, Baron Cohen, who engaged in similar in-character guerilla...

Collection of stories about the soon to be congressional race between congressman Steve Cohen (compared Obama to Jesus and Sarah Palin to Pontius Pilate) and Memphis Mayor Willie Herenton (currently under FBI investigation). Obama=Jesus link http://briefingroom.thehill.com/2008/09/10/rep-cohen-compares-obama-to-jesus/ Enjoy

James Von Brunn’s writings don’t sound very “right-wing.” On June 10, the nation tragically witnessed a memorial dedicated to commemorating an atrocity become the site of yet more death. Just before 1 p.m., longtime neo-Nazi James Wenneker Von Brunn entered the Holocaust Museum on the National Mall and opened fire in an attempt to complete the Final Solution his hero had left tentative, an omission Von Brunn dubbed “Hitler’s biggest mistake.” As former Defense Secretary Bill Cohen wandered the museum grounds, Von Brunn killed Stephen T. Johns, a black security officer, then was shot himself. As of this writing, the...

Today's attack at the Holocaust Museum was the work of one single Antisemitic nut-job but`make no mistake about it, even in the United States America, hatred of Jews is becoming a widely accepted`bigotry. Sometimes the Antisemitism is in its purest form, like today's killer, but more often the hatred of Jews takes form of Israel hatred. Not that all people who oppose Israel are Jew haters, but make no mistake, when you hear terms like, "the Israel lobby" it is nothing but a polite way of repeating that old stereotype that Jews control the world. Today the left-wing blogisphere came...

NORTH LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — The man accused of fatally shooting a soldier outside a recruiting center begged for FBI agents to free him from a Yemeni jail where he was "radicalized" by Islamic terrorists, his lawyer told The Associated Press on Thursday. Lawyer Jim Hensley described Abdulhakim Muhammad as an impressionable youth driven to public service in an impoverished Middle Eastern country. But teachings by "hardened" terrorists in Yemen and experiences with Afghan child refugees who were missing limbs drove him to become someone his parents didn't recognize, Hensley said. "Here comes the FBI, who may be able...

(LEAD) (Yonhap Interview) N. Korean nuclear test to trigger unprecedented response: Cohen By Sam Kim SINGAPORE, May 29 (Yonhap) -- North Korea made a "big miscalculation" by going ahead with its second nuclear test and should expect an unprecedented response from the international community, a former U.S. defense minister said Friday. North Korea set off an underground nuclear explosion in its northeastern region on Monday despite a slew of international warnings

...How do we account for Cheney’s failure or refusal to acknowledge all that we have learned about the world since 2002? How do we explain the worldview he continues to share with his camp followers both in and out of power? Do we chalk it up to him being a stubborn, venal, self-righteous man incapable of admitting his own mistakes? Is he truly what Andrew Sullivan calls a “dead-ender?” Do we hang it on his ideology? On his Western individualism that eschews the need for consensus and compromise? Or is he, as many people say, just a dick. ...

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...