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PHOENIX—Arizona's two U.S. senators said Thursday they are concerned about reports of a large number of sex-crime investigations being botched by Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's office during a three-year period ending in 2007. Sens. John McCain and Jon Kyl issued a written statement involving the reopening of 432 sex-crime cases -- including dozens of alleged child molestations -- after the sheriff's office learned the cases hadn't been investigated adequately or weren't examined at all. "Victims of abuse not only deserve the respect of law enforcement, but their rights must also be protected throughout the criminal justice process," the statement...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Weekly jobless claims have jumped back over the 400,000 mark. Why is anybody surprised? "Claims for unemployment insurance unexpectedly rose last week, climbing past the psychologically important 400,000 mark as the jobs market showed signs of more weakness. Weekly applications for unemployment benefits rose 6,000 to a seasonally adjusted 402,000," and this is gonna end up being 410 or 412 thousand by the time they revise this next week. " Applications had been below 400,000 for three straight weeks." Can you imagine...? This is on CNBC, but it's actually AP, but "the psychologically important 400,000"? Stop and...

Hardline Iranian students stormed the British embassy in Tehran this morning, smashing windows and burning the British flag. The students, protesting the latest British sanctions imposed on the Islamic Republic as a result of its nuclear defiance, demanded Tehran break relations with London. Rather than protect the embassy, Iranian security forces charged with its protecting simply stood aside suggesting official endorsement of the act. The attack on the embassy follows the Iranian parliament’s decision on Sunday to downgrade relations with Great Britain and expel the British ambassador. That vote was 179 in favor of downgrading relations, and four against with...

Dozens of Iranian students have stormed the UK embassy in Tehran, chanting “death to England.” Before police intervened, protesters pelted the embassy with stones and petrol bombs, brought down the flag, and destroyed a pile of classified documents. Reports by the Mehr news agency that six UK staff had been taken hostage when students raided a north Tehran diplomatic compound were withdrawn shortly after they were posted. No explanation was given for the report, nor its removal.

So much for euphoria. Having soared just days ago on a pledge by European leaders to prop up euro zone banks and stem the spread of a festering debt crisis, world stock markets and the euro came crashing back to earth this week as Greece's government hovered near collapse. The decision by Greece's prime minister to subject a just-agreed bailout to referendum was the last thing markets wanted to hear. A defeat by Greek voters could see Greece ejected from the euro zone and thrust into default, a scenario investors fear could spark a run on banks that have lent...

Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain and MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell had quite a heated battle on Thursday's "The Last Word." During one segment, after O'Donnell besmirched his guest for not enlisting for military service during the Vietnam War despite having worked for the Department of Navy as a ballistics analyst, Cain marvelously asked, "Do you stay up night to come up with the wording in these questions or do you have someone writing them for you?"

New secret recordings obtained by CBS News correspondent Sharyl Attkisson show ATF agent Hope MacAllister, who we have not yet heard from throughout this investigation, speaking with Lone Wolf Trading Company owner Andre Howard and expressing concern about ATF whistleblower John Dodson, the ATF agent who exposed the scandal by coming forward with information about Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry's death in March. In the recording, MacAllister and Howard sound panicked, not only about Dodson, but about Senator Charles Grassley and about how Attorney General Eric Holder would respond to exposed scandal. The following audio doesn't prove Eric Holder knew...

25 Signs That The Financial World Is About To Hit The Big Red Panic ButtonAugust 30, 2011 Most of the worst financial panics in history have happened in the fall. Just recall what happened in 1929, 1987 and 2008. Well, September 2011 is about to begin and there are all kinds of signs that the financial world is about to hit the big red panic button. Wave after wave of bad economic news has come out of the United States recently, and Europe is embroiled in an absolutely unprecedented debt crisis. At this point there is a very real possibility...

MAP OF THE DAY: New York City Hurricane Evacuation Zones Dina Spector Aug. 25, 2011, 1:44 PM As hurricane Irene barrels toward the east coast, thousands of residents have already been evacuated from the coastal villages off North Carolina. Now New York, New Jersey, and Delaware officials are preparing for the possibility of mass evacuations. New York city officials are still monitoring the storm and won't make any calls until Friday afternoon at the earliest whether to evacuate areas of the city susceptible to flooding, including Battery Park City in Manhattan, Coney Island in Brooklyn and Far Rockaway in Queens....

In an increasingly urbanized world, earthquakes threaten unprepared cities with mass destruction.Seismic risk mitigation is the greatest urban policy challenge that the world confronts today. If you consider that too strong a claim, try to imagine another way in which bad urban policy could kill a million people in 30 seconds. Yet the politics of earthquakes are rarely discussed, and when discussed, widely misunderstood. Take the Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11, which released 600 million times the energy of the Hiroshima bomb. The ensuing partial meltdown of the Fukushima reactor prompted international hysteria about nuclear power, but few...

I just got off the phone with a source on Capitol Hill who has spent the past few days trying to convince Republicans to vote for a debt ceiling hike. He told me that the biggest obstacle he faces has been "market complacency." "Frankly, a bit of panic would be very helpful right now," he said. As he explained it, lots of people in Washington, D.C. expected that this would be a week marked by panic in the markets. Stocks would tank. Bonds would get clobbered. The dollar would do something dramatic. And all of this would help convince reluctant...

S&P 500 futures fell at the open of electronic trading as investors grew increasingly worried at the lack of progress. The benchmark S&P was down 1 percent, or 14 points, to 1326.00. Early currency trading suggested a move away from the dollar, with the biggest drop in the greenback coming against the Swiss franc. In early Asian trading, the dollar dropped to 0.8121 against the Swiss franc, down 0.7 percent.

...as it stands right now, Obama’s failing to connect and Garrett cited his so-called Twitter town hall meeting as an attempt almost in desperation to resurrect the messaging success the president in his prior election. “[I]f people aren’t listening to you on that core message, it doesn’t matter what you say anymore,” he said.

The 2012 presidential marathon is on, and one mainstream pollster (Rasmussen) says a Republican apparition is opening up a lead on President Obama. (Any Republican 46 percent, Barack Obama 42 percent.) A growing number of Democrats figure that whoever can keep his head in the rattle and bang of unexpected events just doesn’t understand the situation. If the president is not yet in full panic mode, he’s right to be running scared. Class warfare is the Democratic default mode, and Mr. Obama is looking for the panic button earlier than incumbents usually do. He warns darkly of many bad things...

RUSH: The AP: "The economy is tiring again." The press, they're so depressed because Obama had a week of "no negatives." There were no negatives, and then all this rotten economic news hit. This rotten economic news never went away! This rotten economic news has been what has defined this administration since the stimulus bill. There hasn't been any good economic news since this bunch assumed power. One of the biggest lies, one of the biggest myths in the last two-and-a-half years is that there has ever been a recovery. There has not been, statistically or otherwise. In terms of...

MINSK, Belarus (AP) — A sharp devaluation of the Belarusian ruble has spread panic across the country, with people rushing on Wednesday to buy dollars, euros, toasters and canned goods — anything that will not lose its value as quickly as the national currency. Belarusians swept store shelves and queued for entire days at currency exchange offices in a desperate attempt to protect their savings from the country's sinking fortunes. President Alexander Lukashenko promised that the national currency will remain stable following the devaluation ordered a day earlier, but experts warned it will continue its nosedive if Russia doesn't provide...

'Fight the Smears' 2.0 launched, mocks No. 1 best-seller as delusional 'joke' Why is the White House in full defense mode against a book by a small publisher contending Barack Obama is not legally eligible to be president? Today, the Obama re-election campaign launched an all-out attack on a brand new book critical of Obama, "Where's the Birth Certificate," by bestselling author Jerome Corsi, Ph.D., calling it delusional, laughable and a "joke." If this sounds like major déjà vu, it's because the Obama election campaign did exactly the same thing in 2008 when it mobilized a major assault on Corsi's...

Headaches, insomnia, tinnitus, DNA breakdown. . . These are just a few of the myriad problems mentioned when people talk about the constant bombardment of EMFs or electromagnetic frequencies, a huge by-product of the new Smart Meters being installed by public utilities around the country.

Mar 16, 2011 Japan radiation fears spark panic in Russia's Far East VLADIVOSTOK - RESIDENTS of Russia's Far East on Wednesday stocked up on iodine and nervously checked radiation levels despite official reassurances there was no danger from Japan's quake-damaged nuclear plant just 1,000km to the east. Russia's emergencies ministry said that radiation levels remained normal and stressed that there was no risk for human health and that no danger from radiation was expected but many were not convinced. In the regional capital Vladivostok, which is no more than 1,000km west of the Fukushima nuclear plant, pharmacies were sold-out of...

Lufthansa, KLM Cancel Flights to Tokyo's Narita Airport Panicked passengers hoping to flee Japan waited for hours at the country's largest international airport today as concerns about radioactive fallout heightened. The international and domestic terminals at Narita International Airport were crammed with passengers leaving the capital Germany's Lufthansa airline became the first major carrier to cancel flights to irst major carrier to cancel flights to Narita International Airport, which services Tokyo, and will reroute all flights through Nagoya and Osaka, some 300 miles south of the capitol. Dutch carrier KLM followed. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration said, "There is no...

Supplies of potassium iodide, a preventive against radiation poisoning of the thyroid gland, are running low at some manufacturers, as Americans seek protection amid fears that radiation from Japan could head to the U.S., according to the companies. One leading supplier, Anbex Inc., quickly sold out of its supply of more than 10,000 14-tablet packages on Saturday, said Alan Morris, president of the Williamsburg, Va., company. He said the closely held firm was getting about three orders a minute for $10 packages of its Iosat pills, up from as few as three a week normally. "Those who don't get it...

The collective Nuclear Industry is massively failing the people they have so long sought to protect. There is no real, reliable, trustworthy news being reported on the situation in Japan except for vague and conflicting reports. Where is the World Nuclear Association? Where is the International Atomic Energy Group? Where is the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission? There should be press conferences on the situation in Japan, the people of the world should know all of the facts on the ground in "real time" because of the nature of the danger we are dealing with. I am in favor of Nuclear...

Via Eric Bolling of Fox News: The Suez Canal and the Suez Canal pipeline transport about 4.5 million barrels of oil per day between the two, so when oil investors/traders see protesters on tanks in the Suez, it creates panic because they’re concerned about the delicate balance between supply and demand on the world’s oil. Any disruption in oil supply spikes prices, and these events are certainly cause for disruption. Also very important is the geographic location — just across the canal is Saudi Arabia — the world’s largest producer of oil. If this unrest spills over into Saudi Arabia,...

Authorities are urging people to remain calm amid panicked scenes of shoppers stripping the shelves of Brisbane supermarkets as they face record flood levels. Large parts of Brisbane and Ipswich are to be inundated, with flood peaks expected to surpass the 1974 floods. There have been reports of panic buying at grocery stores across south-east Queensland, and some retail outlets are running low on essential items such as bread and milk. Scott Driscoll from the United Retail Federation says many shop owners are reporting busier than usual trade. "Trade today has been akin to holiday levels ... very, very high...

Yesterday in Winnetka, Illinois, a 30-person SWAT team crashed into a middle school to save an employee. His wife had frantically called the police after a garbled phone call led her to believe he had been kidnapped. However, they soon discovered that the man had just accidentally “butt dialed” her while listening to music and was completely fine. Yes, this story is basically what would happen if Clark Griswold had a cell phone. It all started because the employee (who, unsurprisingly, is attempting to avoid the press at this point) was listening to a rap song in his car when...

I know we're rife with vanities right now. This is "news" because it is an eyewitness account. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who is in one of the SAFEST districts in the nation for Demon-rats, is out campaigning at local precincts today. NO JOKE. Saw her hope out of an SUV today (didn't look like it was a hybrid, either)...and, with my "anti-Obama" sign, I told her it was nice seeing her having to get out and campaign. She is in a contest with a lady named Karen Harrington, whose signs are ALL OVER this part of Broward. Debbie says to me...

It's been two years since Lehman Brothers failed (Sept. 15, 2008), and we still can't conclusively answer this question: What if the government had saved Lehman? Its bankruptcy was pivotal. Until then, deteriorating housing and mortgage markets had triggered what seemed a serious -- but not unprecedented -- recession. Once Lehman failed, the economy went into a frenzied free fall. It's hard not to wonder whether some of the ensuing turmoil could have been avoided. Consider what happened after Lehman: -- Credit tightened. Banks wouldn't lend to each other, except at exorbitant interest rates. Rates on high-quality corporate bonds went...

It's been two years since Lehman Bros. failed (Sept. 15, 2008) and we still can't conclusively answer this question: What if the government had saved Lehman? Its bankruptcy was pivotal. Until then, deteriorating housing and mortgage markets had triggered what seemed a serious — but not unprecedented — recession. Once Lehman failed, the economy went into a frenzied free fall. It's hard not to wonder whether some of the ensuing turmoil could have been avoided. Consider what happened after Lehman: • Credit tightened. Banks wouldn't lend to each other, except at exorbitant interest rates. Rates on high-quality corporate bonds went...

Last week, on the very day that the World Health Organisation officially declared the swine flu pandemic over, microbiologists launched a new alert – over multi-drug resistant bacteria. Professor Tim Walsh, co-author of a report in the Lancet Infectious Diseases, strikes the now-familiar note of impending doom: ‘In many ways, this is it. This is potentially the end. There are no antibiotics in the pipeline that have activity against NDM 1-producing Enterobacteriaceae.’ (1) Here we go again. Only 12 months since the great summer alarum of 2009, when England’s chief medical officer Liam Donaldson raised the spectre of 65,000 deaths...

LABOR'S polling nightmare has materialised. After being seen to be the easy frontrunner in national polls for most of the campaign there is a shift in voter sentiment and the danger that a "protest vote" will unseat the Gillard government. Now, within 48 hours of the only poll that counts, Labor is panicking and desperately trying to frighten Labor voters away from protesting about the Rudd government's record of broken promises and misadventures, and the removal of Kevin Rudd himself. The real possibility of the election of Tony Abbott is now central to Labor's last-minute scare campaign to summon up...

NEW YORK (WABC) -- You've probably heard the slogan "See Something, Say Something." Now it appears potential terrorists hope that you do, just to see the response. Suspicious bags, some provoking a cautious response, were checked out in large numbers in the weeks after the failed Times Square bombing attempt. Bomb expert Kevin Barry with 20 years experience in the NYPD says the bags could be filled not with bombs, but with innocuous items like water bottles or socks. The potential terrorists would be watching the response. "After every major incident there will be a spike in calls because people...

/begin my translation N. Korea's Defense Commission Held Unprecedented News Conference over Cheonan's Sinking 05/29/10 (Korea Central News Agency, Pyongyang = Yonhap News) On May 28, at People's Cultural Palace in Pyongyang, Maj. Gen. Pak Rim Su, director of the department of policy at the National Defense Commission, gave news conference to invited diplomatic corps. /end my translation

The euro was weak again early Thursday and, predictably, global stocks followed suit. Japan's Nikkei fell 1.5% overnight, major European bourses were down 1.85% to 3% in recent trading, while U.S. proxies were down 2.5% to 3%. In recent trading, the Dow was below its 200-day moving average of 10,250, while the S&P 500, Dow Transports, Nasdaq and Russell 2000 were each more than 10% below recent highs, or in official "correction" territory. Traders watch such technical indicators closely, and concerns about moving averages and the like can become self-fulfilling and generate more selling. At the same time, the selloff...

Rush Limbaugh might have sounded [to some] as though he was in panic mode yesterday. He's not. Rush is bracing us for an important danger. FRiends, this is not the end of peaceful solutions. Seriously. If a few wackos run out and get themselves locked up or worse, they will find themselves alone. Why? There’s too much common sense out there. Three things, and only three things, should trigger panic between from now to November: 1. If a midnight voter block suddenly pops up. If Team 0bama rushes a midnight illegals-to-vote bill that could virtually erase conservative votes in 2010...

Princess Aiko, the eight-year-old granddaughter of the Japanese Emperor, has become unable to go to school after suffering a series of anxiety attacks and stomach aches. Her problems, said the Imperial Household Agency, arose from her “rough behaviour” at the hands of boys in her age group at the ultra-exclusive Gakushuin school she attends in central Tokyo.

Okay, so I just got back from the store...DC is close to a full-blown panic about the storm heading our way. There's an interesting race-to-the-bottom dynamic that overtakes DC when it snows. People hie to the supermarket as if a billion Chinese zombies with frickn' lasers strapped to their heads are about to invade from outer space and nobody knows the correct translation of "Klaatu burada nikto." When I lived in Adam's Morgan (the most New York City-ish DC neighborhood) I was amazed at how people would buy not just canned goods and, say, chili-fixings, but gallons and gallons of...

For decades, American liberty writers have been warning of an inordinate reaction from public servants in time of crisis. We also know that you don't let a good crisis go to waste, because it is an opportunity to do things the electorate would never let you do otherwise. The Founding Fathers warned that a government which does not trust its people itself cannot be trusted. The acting out of public servants for what they mistakenly believe about the electorate is something they elect to back by force, as in gun control. Public servants are this way tragically mistaken about the...

All the US bank runs and panics of the late 19th century — 1857, 1861, 1866, 1873, 1877, 1890, 1893, 1896 and 1907 — are clearly visible in the chart below of the call money rate — the rate for borrowing collateralised against equities. The call money market was the “shadow money” of its day — and lending terms almost always tightened when the underlying collateral was in a bear market, and usually eased remarkably quickly once it was over. The big difference this time round was that we had a wholesale funding run starting in the shadow banking itself,...

Global markets sank sharply at the end of last week on fears that Dubai World, a subsidiary of the government of Dubai, was on the verge of defaulting on approximately $60 billion of the emirate's $80 billion in total debt held by creditors world-wide. The rush of news stories added to the wildfire of panicky speculation, with headlines ranging from "Dubai Default Risk May be Big US Bank Problem," to "Dubai Shows Limits of Government Rescues." The mini-panic, however, has little to do with Dubai and everything to do with the tenuous psychology of global investors still skittish after the...

Stocks down 214 already this morning

Obama bowed to emperor as 'protocol' By: Mike Allen November 14, 2009 11:08 PM EST SINGAPORE – A senior administration official said President Barack Obama was simply observing protocol when he bowed to Japanese Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko upon arriving at the Imperial Palace in Tokyo on Saturday. “I think that those who try to politicize those things are just way, way, way off base,” the official said. “He observes protocol. But I don’t think anybody who was in Japan – who saw his speech and the reaction to it, certainly those who witnesses his bilateral meetings there –...

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Health Officials in Ukraine say the death toll from a suspected swine flu outbreak has reached 144. Almost a million people are thought to be infected, mostly in the west of the country. ~ Over a hundred have died since the outbreak of the virus last week. But it's still unclear exactly what killed those Ukranians. Only some are confirmed as a result of AH1N1, the rest are blamed on respiratory diseases. Even so, talks over imposing a state of emergency in the country are surfacing from the highest levels. Should that happen, the upcoming presidential vote could be shifted...

On a chilly morning, President Obama came to the Rose Garden Friday morning to try to offer reassurance in the wake of both the Fort Hood shootings and dismal economic news, suggesting -- regarding the latter issue -- that he was considering even more economic stimulus measures. (snip) Turning to this morning's news that unemployment has risen to 10.2%, the president also announced that he signed into law a bill that he said "will help grow our economy, save and create new jobs, and provide relief to struggling families and businesses," the need for which was "made clear by the...

Here is a video, released today by the Washington State DOT, of a computer simulation of what is expected to happen if a magnitude 7.0 quake hits the area near downtown Seattle..... YouTube video This video focuses on the effects such a quake would have on the Alaskan Way Viaduct and the seawall on the waterfront. Make no mistake about it...this video is designed to scare the heck out of anyone who uses the viaduct. Why release it? According the the WSDOT, a private citizen, name withheld, made a public disclosure request through the FOIA.

According to the CDC, swine flu infections have already peaked, and the pandemic is on its way out. Peak infection time was the middle of October, where one in five U.S. children experienced the flu, says the CDC. Out of nearly 14,000 suspected flu cases tested during the week ending on October 10, 2009, 99.6% of those were influenza A, and the vast majority of those were confirmed as H1N1 swine flu infections. Even though the H1N1 pandemic appears to have peaked out, U.S. President Barack Obama has now declared a national emergency over swine flu infections. The reasoning behind...

Central banks flush with record reserves are increasingly snubbing dollars in favor of euros and yen. Policy makers boosted foreign currency holdings by $413 billion last quarter, the most since at least 2003, to $7.3 trillion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Nations reporting currency breakdowns put 63 percent of the new cash into euros and yen in April, May and June, the latest Barclays Capital data show. This doesn't put the same pressure on the dollar as panic selling out of the dollar, but it is not a positive. The big question is how will Treasury find funding for...

Health ministers around the globe were sent a warning that “unless we receive £900 million by next Friday millions will die.” The message from a group calling itself the WHO, was composed of letters cut out of a newspaper (likely the New York Times, experts say), and specified that the money “must be in small, unmarked, non-consecutively numbered bills.” The message directed the ministers to await further instructions regarding the “drop location” and warned that “any attempt to contact the police will have dire consequences.” The surprisingly sparse media coverage of the incident was explained by former US UN Ambassador...

Panic over syringe stabbings spreads to Beijing Jane Macartney, China Correspondent The Chinese authorities are anxious that mysterious syringe stabbings that have caused panic in the restive far west have now reached the capital. The threat of such needle attacks comes as an enormous security blanket has been thrown across Beijing to ensure that a huge military parade to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Communist Party rule passes off without a hitch on October 1. Indications that the bizarre attacks may have extended from the mostly Muslim, riot-torn region of Xinjiang to Beijing came in the form of directives from...

The Democratic Party is panicking, lashing out like a cornered animal, all because its effort to take over the health care industry is coming apart like so much wet toilet paper. Nancy Pelosi, who will get her own bound volume in the annals of asininity, has outdone herself. When asked by a reporter whether the protests at various town hall meetings represented legitimate grassroots opposition or were manufactured "Astroturf" stunts, she replied, "I think they're Astroturf. You be the judge. They're carrying swastikas and symbols like that to a town meeting on health care." Now this is a pas de...