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A taxpayer-funded electric vehicle battery company, that is considered in great danger due to its dependency on troubled EV company Fisker Automotive, has awarded its top executives big salary increases despite a steep downward trajectory in its stock price. Massachusetts-based A123 Systems -- whichreceived $279.1 million instimulus money from the Department of Energy, and up to $135 million in incentives from the State of Michigan -- boosted the base salaries of two vice presidents and its chief financial officer on February 8. Chief Financial Officer David Prystash was bumped 27 percent to $380,000; VP of Energy Solutions Robert Johnson’s...

Obama called on lawmakers to pass a bill that would halt "insider trading" by members of Congress. Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown introduced legislation last year to ban members of Congress and their staff from trading stock based on non-public information. Brown championed the cause after watching author Peter Schweizer discuss his book on the subject called "Throw Them All Out" on "60 Minutes." Schweizer’s analysis focused on members of Congress whose stock market profits correlated with legislative matters under their consideration. One of the politicians cited in the book for apparent "insider trading" was Bay State Sen. John Kerry

The Justice Department on Monday charged a former CIA officer with repeatedly leaking classified information, including the identities of agency operatives involved in the capture and interrogation of alleged terrorists. The case against John Kiriakou, who served as a senior Senate aide after ending his CIA career, extends the Obama administration’s unprecedented crackdown on disclosures of national security secrets to journalist. Kiriakou, who was among the first to go public with details about the CIA’s use of water-boarding and other harsh interrogation measures, was charged with disclosing classified information to reporters and lying to the agency about the origin of...

A former staffer for Bay State Sen. John F. Kerry has been charged with leaking the names of CIA operatives, including one who was involved in the interrogation of terror suspects held at the U.S. military base in Guantanamo Bay, according to the U.S. Department of Justice and Kerry’s office.

NHL teams have visited the White House for years after winning the Stanley Cup, but it's a safe bet that never before has a Senator shown up more beaten and broken than the hockey players. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) was part of the ceremony honoring the Boston Bruins 2011 Stanley Cup win, appearing like he had just come from a knock-down, drag-out ruckus. Kerry, 68, suffered two black eyes and a broken nose during a "friendly game of hockey" with family and buddies over the Christmas break, according to TheHill.com. If that's the result of a friendly game, we don't...

Jan 23, 2012 2:26pm Battered Sen. John Kerry Injured in Hockey Game, Honors Bruins at White House Hockey is a rough sport; just ask Senator John Kerry, D-Mass. The senator was attending a ceremony for his hometown hockey team, the Boston Bruins, at the White House today when he publicly debuted the remnants of his own hockey injury. Kerry appeared to have two black eyes and a swollen nose. His senate office said the black and blue was caused by a nose injury during a hockey game the senator participated in recently. “He’s totally fine,” Kerry spokeswoman Whitney Smith told...

Democrats are all in a twitter over the recent revelation that Mitt Romney likely paid an annual average of only 15% of his income in taxes. They ignore the likelihood that he also likely paid an average of 10% of his income in annual tithing to charities as required by his Mormon faith. Democrats are banking on the premise that this sort of class envy rhetoric might help them in a year when the public has become conditioned to blame capitalism for the economic woes that have beset the country these past three years. As a presidential candidate, how does...

An intern from Mitt Romney's 2002 gubernatorial campaign says that his campaign did authorize and pay for the distribution of a Gay Pride Week flier, despite adamant denials from Romney's current staff that the handout was authorized. The flier, printed on pink paper, wishes recipients "a great Pride weekend," and could prove the latest ammunition for Romney's GOP foes seeking to paint the former governor as not sufficiently conservative. "On pride weekend, the campaign sent a contingent of about a half-dozen of us to the post-parade festival on Boston Common to hand out those fliers," Josh Barro, a former Romney...

Senator John Kerry (D., Mass.) is in Egypt, meeting with leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood — the Islamist organization whose goals are to destroy Israel, “conquer Europe” and “conquer America” (to quote its most influential jurist, Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi). The Brotherhood, which operates throughout the world, seeks the imposition by governments of strict sharia law (as outlined in Reliance of the Traveller: A Classic Manual of Islamic Sacred Law) and, eventually, a global caliphate. Naturally, the Obama administration describes it as a “largely secular” and moderate organization — and William Taylor, President Obama’s hand-picked “special coordinator for transitions in the...

CAIRO – Sen. John Kerry has met in Cairo with members of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist group that's set to dominate the new parliament. In a statement, the Muslim Brotherhood says three of its top officials attended the meeting with the Massachusetts Democrat, who was accompanied by U.S. Ambassador Anne Patterson. Brotherhood officials vowed to respect civil rights and international treaties that have been signed in the past. That assurance could be an attempt to calm fears that the group may try to re-examine Egypt's peace treaty with Israel.

Sen. John Kerry (D., Mass.) Monday said a deal to cut the federal deficit fell apart because Republicans refused to raise taxes, and said the issue would be the defining debate for Congress as the country heads toward the 2012 elections. "America is stuck with the absolute rigidity of people who wanted to protect the wealthiest people in the country instead of providing $1.2 trillion of deficit reduction," Kerry said in impassioned remarks hours after the congressional panel announced it had failed to reach a deal. "That's the fight we have to take out to the country over the course...

Yesterday's global-warming debate between John Kerry and Newt Gingrich was, as the moderator put it, "advertised as a smack-down and a prizefight." But those labels were too modest for Kerry. "Welcome to our environmental version of the Lincoln-Douglas debates," the former Democratic presidential nominee told the crowd in the Russell Caucus Room. "We flipped a coin, and I picked Lincoln." But something funny happened on the way to 1858. Gingrich, a former Republican House speaker, refused to play Douglas to Kerry's Lincoln, instead positioning himself as a tree-hugging green. Before Kerry got a word in, Gingrich conceded that global warming...

Have you been following this so-called supercommittee? They're the new superhero group of superfriends from the super-Congress who are going to save America from plummeting over the cliff and into the multitrillion-dollar abyss. There's Spender Woman (Patty Murray), Incumbent Boy (Max Baucus), Kept Man (John Kerry) and many other warriors for truth, justice and the American way of debt. The supercommittee is supposed to report back by the day before Thanksgiving on how to carve out $1.2 trillion dollars of deficit reduction and thereby save the republic. I had cynically assumed that the superfriends would address America's imminent debt catastrophe...

Russell and Patricia Caswell are a hard-working couple who may soon have their American Dream taken from them by the unholy alliance of local and federal law enforcement officials seeking to cash in on the Caswell’s property. The Caswells face this dilemma even though they have broken no law and have spent their entire professional career working to combat crime with the very police force that now seeks to take their property though civil forfeiture. What is happening to Russ and Pat, however, is by no means an isolated instance and local law enforcement’s end-run around state laws designed to...

For twenty years – long before 9/11 – the danger of terrorists armed with surface to air missiles shooting at passenger planes has been the secret fear of many top political leaders. In the late 90s, a terrorist network was nabbed trying to bring them into Newark Airport, but the airline industry and the government have done nothing to equip passenger airplanes with any defense against these always deadly missiles. Now Barack Obama has committed the ultimate sin: He has let 20,000 surface-to-air missiles escape from military depots in Libya. According to ABC News “U.S. officials had once thought there...

JERUSALEM – Is President Obama attempting to unseat Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and replace him with a leftist Israeli leader who largely tows the president’s Mideast line? There are indications the so-called social protests rocking Israel were engineered for that very purpose. According to an investigative report in Israel’s Maariv’s newspaper, the country’s protests were engineered by a group of media strategists directed by prominent Democratic strategist Stanley Greenberg, a former adviser to Bill Clinton, John Kerry and others. Greenberg reportedly is working with Israeli strategists who were behind left-wing leader Ehud Barak’s successful race for prime minister in 1999....

Last August, Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus revoked a Silver Star medal formerly held by retired Navy Captain Wade R. Sanders. In a short, vague memorandum to the Chief of Naval Personnel, Mabus cited "subsequently determined facts and evidence surrounding both the incident for which the award was made and the processing of the award itself" as the reason. Such an action by the Navy is virtually without precedent. There was no press release and no announcement. Eleven months later, a bare-bones report was finally published by the Navy Times. American Thinker picked up the story from WinterSoldier.com, and...

Together We Can Beat the Deficit We did it in the 1990s and we can do it again today. By PATTY MURRAY, MAX BAUCUS AND JOHN KERRY Our country has long been a beacon of light in the world because the American people always come together when times are tough. Over the past few months, in debating the debt ceiling and deficit reduction, that light of common cause has appeared to flicker at times in our nation's capital. As appointees to the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction—12 members of Congress charged with finding $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction over...

THE FIRE hall next to my in-laws’ house in northern New York State has a siren that can be heard for miles. “Loud’’ doesn’t begin to describe the sound: a shrill, relentless, piercing wail that is impossible to ignore - and can be extremely upsetting for anyone who isn’t used to it. There’s good reason for that. None of the rural towns in the area has a professional fire department, so when a fire breaks out, the siren is needed to summon volunteers. The urgent blast of that siren used to terrify my younger son, who would hide under a...

n the first of what will be a closely watched selection process for a powerful new deficit panel, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced he will appoint Democratic Sens. Patty Murray (Wash.), Max Baucus (Mont.) and John Kerry (Mass.) as his three choices for a super committee charged with finding more than $1 trillion in spending cuts by the end of this year. Murray will serve as co-chair of the 12-member panel. Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) will select her co-chair and two other panelists, as required by the debt limit agreement signed into law by President Barack Obama last week....

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced Tuesday he's naming Sen. Patty Murray to co-chair a powerful "super committee" charged with finding more than $1 trillion in deficit cuts this fall. Murray will be joined by Sens. John Kerry, D-Mass., and Max Baucus, D-Mont., on the panel, which was established last week by hard-fought legislation to increase the national debt.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced Tuesday he's naming Sen. Patty Murray to co-chair a powerful "super committee" charged with finding more than $1 trillion in deficit cuts this fall. Murray will be joined by Sens. John Kerry, D-Mass., and Max Baucus, D-Mont., on the panel, which was established last week by hard-fought legislation to increase the national debt. Murray, who is chairwoman of the committee to elect Democratic senators, is a longtime protector of Democratic priorities such as Medicare, Social Security and veterans' benefits, as are Kerry and Baucus. Reid, D-Nev., said in a statement that Murray has "a...

From page 3: For McConnell, Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) is widely expected to get the nod, given his conservative credentials, ties to McConnell and his work in the Biden group. But if Republicans stay united, they’d need one additional Democrat to break ranks and back a cuts-only approach - so McConnell may want to choose a senator with bipartisan appeal who is loyal to leadership, like either Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) or Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio). At a townhall in Winchester, Ky. on Monday, McConnell told a crowd that he wanted “significant entitlement reform” to be part of...

Pummeled by ghastly economic news, President Obama called Monday for more spending and extended tax cuts that he said would help stimulate the economy — but these also could deepen the deficit problems that helped the federal government earn its first-ever debt downgrade last week. The president made the proposals as world stock market indexes were tumbling, and his remarks seemed designed to help the White House regain its political footing by resetting the congressional agenda next month. Mr. Obama said he wants the 2 percent payroll-tax cut extended into next year, the creation of an infrastructure bank by Congress...

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., will appoint Democratic Sens. Patty Murray of Washington, Max Baucus of Montana, and John Kerry of Massachusetts to the new super committee tasked with finding $1.2 trillion in additional deficit reduction by November 23, according to a senior Democratic aide familiar with Reid’s decision, which is expected to be made public as early as Wednesday. Additionally, Murray is expected to co-chair the committee, officially named the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, along with a still unnamed House Republican. A spokesman for Reid did not respond to a request for comment. Reid’s decision to...

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., will appoint Democratic Sens. Patty Murray of Washington, Max Baucus of Montana, and John Kerry of Massachusetts to the new super committee tasked with finding $1.2 trillion in additional deficit reduction by November 23, according to a senior Democratic aide familiar with Reid’s decision, which is expected to be made public as early as Wednesday. Additionally, Murray is expected to co-chair the committee, officially named the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, along with a still unnamed House Republican. A spokesman for Reid did not respond to a request for comment. Reid’s decision to...

The tea party has John Kerry running scared, and it is not a pretty sight to behold. The senior senator from Massachusetts, who called a nothing-to-announce press conference last Thursday, spent the first 20 to 25 minutes of the presser making a speech defending President Obama and attacking the tea party. Bewildered veteran reporters, used to news coming out of a news conference, fidgeted as Kerry droned on with a recycled Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce speech, pausing now and then to praise the Chinese and bash "traitorous" tea- party Republicans for "holding the nation hostage." Read more: http://www.lowellsun.com/columnists/ci_18644582#ixzz1UXVnTs00

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Does anybody now doubt that this is on purpose? I mean, after all, Barack Obama inherits a AAA credit rating from George W. Bush, and look what he does to it. Obama is always running around complaining and whining and moaning about all that he inherited from George W. Bush. Well, he inherited a AAA credit rating, an unemployment rate of 5.7%. Does anybody doubt that this is on purpose? Well, look, my credit rating doesn't suck. There are a lot of individual Americans whose credit ratings aren't in trouble. The United States has never been in...

While continuing to cast doubt on the credibility of Standard & Poor’s, several Democrats on Sunday said there is an even greater culprit in the downgrade of the nation’s credit rating: the tea party. “I believe this is, without question, the tea party downgrade,” Sen. John F. Kerry, Massachusetts Democrat, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, a day that also saw mounting anxieties in world markets over the downgrade among myriad other economic woes worldwide. Some of the world’s top financial ministers issued a joint statement Sunday night committing themselves to preserve the stability of financial markets and...

Am in DC tonight with old network friends and fiends. The word in DC is that John Kerry is working the media HARD to try to get himself back in headlines. Kerry still wants very much to be Prez. He is promoting the idea that, politically, Obama is a "dead man walking." Kerry claims he can save the Dem party by running in the primaries to the LEFT of Obama.... and be elected in both the primaries and the general! Idiocy... and old political news hands agree!

MoveOn.org drives new liberal catch phrase: ‘Tea party downgrade’ Matthew Boyle - The Daily Caller 43 mins ago The left-wing activist group MoveOn.org picked up the new liberal slogan bashing conservatives for Standard & Poor’s U.S. credit rating downgrade: “Tea Party downgrade.” President Obama’s chief campaign strategist David Axelrod and Massachusetts Democratic Sen. John Kerry both used the phrase on Sunday talk shows. In a Sunday afternoon email to supporters, MoveOn.org accused tea partiers of being responsible for the first-ever credit downgrade in U.S. history. “This ‘tea party downgrade’ is a shameful blow to our nation’s honor and risks throwing...

John Kerry has waded into the media waters and now wants the news to cut out conservatives he doesn’t agree with. During a discussion of the debt deal and the economy on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Friday, the current Massachusetts senator and former presidential candidate lambasted the Tea Party and conservatives and the idea that they should be given “equal time” in the media. According to him, their ideas are so whacky that they don’t deserve air time: “And I have to tell you, I say this to you politely. The media in America has a bigger responsibility than it’s...

Just reported on Rush...no article to go with it yet. Yes, we need to save the media's precious air time for the latest Obama demagogue and dishonesty fest. Kerry apparently thinks its his job to direct what the media covers. Apparently he thinks North Korea has it right, where dissent is a treasonable offense and of course never covered in the state run media. It's obvious the Tea Party has won because they've turned these Democrats from looney to absolutely deranged. From their unamerican and unconscienable calling of Tea Partiers "terrorists" to now demanding the media not cover them, as...

Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" on Friday that the media has the responsibility to ignore the Tea Party and not give any credence to their views. Here's what he said: SEN. JOHN KERRY: "And I have to tell you, I say this to you politely. The media in America has a bigger responsibility than it's exercising today. The media has got to to begin to not give equal time or equal balance to an absolutely absurd notion just because somebody asserts it or simply because somebody says something which everybody knows is not factual. "It doesn't deserve...

Having just read an opinion piece by John Kerry, the Democratic Senator and former presidential candidate from Massachusetts, I can no longer maintain my previous stance on keep the Monitor a strictly news-only, opinion-free service. The continued push to redistribute our nation's wealth around the globe under the misguided name of foreign aid continues unabated in the U.S. Congress, despite growing public opposition. Kerry's powerful position as Foreign Affairs Committee chairman makes his stance on maintaining the status quo all the more troubling to me as a citizen. A little more analysis is needed to put the overall U.S. foreign...

Wade Rowland Sanders used to be this close to Sen. John Forbes Kerry. He and Liveshot were both Vietnam vets, Navy swift boaters, officers and gentlemen. They were awarded Silver Stars for their gallantry. During the 2004 presidential campaign, Sanders accused Republicans of running “vicious public distortions” of his dear friend’s war record. The retired captain would do anything for Lt. John “Reporting for Duty” Kerry, USN (ret.), and vice versa. But that was then, and this is now — and if you ask Liveshot about Wade Sanders today, the answer is, in effect, “Wade who?”

Howie Carr live thread starting off with his Sunday Boston Herald column, "Rank behavior: Liveshot (John Kerry) mum about pal’s disgrace"

Those of us masochistic enough to have watched the 2004 Democratic convention might faintly recall the name Captain Wade Sanders. [snip] While Sanders’s record as a Democratic hack suggested he might have political reasons for supporting Kerry, Sanders also had a stellar military record, having been awarded a Silver Star in 1992, and his credibility wasn’t much in question. That’s why The Scrapbook feels compelled to point out the ignominious denouement of the Wade -Sanders career. Yes, it’s true that Sanders is currently doing time in a federal penitentiary after admitting to being in possession of child pornography. As bad...

<p>John F. Kerry almost became president running on the basis of his alleged heroism in Vietnam. Thanks to the efforts of a group of truth-tellers, the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth, the serious holes in the fantasy narrative propounded by the Kerry campaign came to the attention of enough Americans that John Kerry was not the first faux-Irish President of the United States.</p>

The idea of such a bank has been around since the 1990s but has never gained significant attention until now. In March a bipartisan bill was introduced in the Senate that gained the support of the US Chamber of Commerce, America’s leading business lobby, and the AFL-CIO, the country’s largest labor federation — two groups on opposite sides of most debates. The BUILD Act, proposed by Sens. John Kerry, D-Mass., Kay Hutchinson, R-Texas, and Mark Warner, D-Va., would create a national infrastructure bank that would provide loans and loan guarantees to encourage private investment in upgrading America’s infrastructure. There are...

Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) tells Don Imus this morning he thought ht would have been a "good President." In fact, he added, "a great President." Transcript below: DON IMUS: "I think you would have been a much better President than the guy we have now, don't you agree with that?" SEN. JOHN KERRY: "You've asked me that before. Every time I come on you try to get me to --" IMUS: "-- I'm not trying to get you to do anything. I'm trying to get you to be honest." KERRY: "I'm always honest." IMUS: "Well, you would've been a much...

A wealthy politician from Massachusetts saddled with accusations of unprincipled flip-flops runs for the Presidency. He touts one salient attribute of his biography as the main underpinning of his campaign to defeat the incumbent President. And he earns his party's nomination due to his perceived electability. John Kerry circa 2004, you say? Try Mitt Romney, ersatz John Kerry for the Republicans in 2012. Despite the media's portrayal, President Obama is ripe to be beaten, as hope and change have transformed into despair and unending unemployment lines. The poll numbers bear this out as only 30% of voters are certain to...

A report that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is interested in becoming the World Bank’s next president could create an opening for Senate Foreign Relations Chairman John Kerry (D-Mass.), who has previously expressed interest in the Cabinet position. A Clinton spokesman denied Reuters’ report Thursday that Clinton is talking with the Obama administration about resigning if World Bank President Robert Zoellick steps down when his term ends in the middle of 2012. Clinton has made clear that she is not interested in a second term as Secretary of State should President Barack Obama be re-elected. Kerry’s office was unavailable...

Candidates lob shots during convention Open season on Scott Brown officially kicked off yesterday with five of the six Democratic candidates seeking to reclaim the “people’s seat” training their sights and barbs squarely on the freshman U.S. senator during speeches at their party’s state convention in Lowell. “When Ted Kennedy went behind closed doors with lawmakers and lobbyists, he always fought for us,” Bob Massie, the nonprofit executive who ran unsuccessfully for lieutenant governor in 1994, told some 3,000 Democratic delegates gathered on the floor of Tsongas Center. “When Scott Brown goes behind closed door with lawmakers and lobbyists and...

The American economy is imploding. But don’t worry. Democrats look after Democrats. In recent legislation news, former big hair pop star Cyndi Lauper has thanked Senator John Kerry for looking after “transgender youth” (aka gender identity disorder teens). Apparently, budgeting for makeup, perms, and heels is a real b***h. Clarification update: Cyndi Lauper, 57, is not homeless. Or young. Thanks for your concerns though.

<p>Breaking: Federal Grand Jury Indicts Former Presidential Candidate John Edwards.</p>

I was struck by the similarity of Todd Palin's new look to John Kerry. Gone is the prominent beard, replaced by a two day stubble. But it's the hair. The hair has all the appearances of a younger John Kerry. This picture from AP was taken at the Rolling Thunder event in Washington DC, where Sarah Palin was an instant draw. It is part of her bus tour of the Northeast (Blue state country) that began in Washington and will end in New Hamshire. And she is driving the media nuts. There are no press releases. No one to tip...

Senator John Kerry will travel to Pakistan in coming days to put relations "on the right track" after the killing of Osama bin Laden in a surprise Navy SEALs raid, but he is likely to face fury from the army over what it sees as a breach of trust. Kerry, a Democrat who is close to the Obama administration, said he expected to see "all the main players" in Pakistan to discuss strains in bilateral ties following the May 2 operation that killed the al Qaeda leader in his Pakistani hideout. "A number of people suggested it would be good...

A federal judge in Houston has thrown out the 20-year-old arms smuggling conviction of a former CIA agent, outlining in scathing terms how federal officials knowingly used a false affidavit at his trial and concealed the act through years of appeals. Edwin Wilson was convicted in Houston in 1983 of smuggling arms to Libya at a time when the threat of Libyan terrorism was major news. Congress was mounting investigations into controversial CIA activities around the globe, and CIA administrators were actively trying to deflect criticism. Wilson, now 75, has been in prison ever since, serving a 52-year sentence. His...

"The international community cannot simply watch from the sidelines as this quest for democracy is met with raw violence," said Kerry, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, in a lengthy policy speech today. The Massachusetts Democrat said the Arab League's endorsement this weekend of a no-fly zone over Libya is unprecedented. "The Security Council should act now, in my judgment, to heed the Arab League's call" and to avert a humanitarian disaster, said Kerry, in remarks to a room packed with foreign journalists at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Washington think tank. Kerry's call for action on a...