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Conservatives Use "Snowmageddon" to Mock Global Warming Posted by Stephanie Condon (CBS/ Jill Jackson) Conservative congressmen are using Washington's serious snow storm (known as "snowmageddon" or "snowpocalypse") to mock those who say the government should act to curb global warming, and at least one Democrat says the storm could actually set back progress on an energy and climate bill. Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) took to the social networking site Twitter to mock former Vice President Al Gore over the storm: "It's going to keep snowing in DC until Al Gore cries 'uncle,'" he tweeted yesterday. Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), the...

Is Barack Obama just too complex for voters to figure out? That was the premise behind the New York Times's Sunday Week in Review lead story by Richard Stevenson,“The Muddled Selling of the President.” Stevenson denied Obama was a liberal (despite his push for government-supervised health care and $787 billion in “economic stimulus” spending), suggesting he was too “complex” for such a label. Further, he wondered if Obama's recent political struggles means it's no longer “possible to embrace complexity in a political and media culture that demands simple themes and promotes conflict?” On this much, President Obama’s friends and foes...

Attorney General Martha Coakley, on the losing end of state Sen. Scott Brown’s upset win during Tuesday’s U.S. Senate special election, will ask voters in November to allow her to keep her job. A Coakley aide confirmed Wednesday afternoon that Coakley would seek reelection to a job that many high-ranking elected Democrats had eyed in recent months, expecting Coakley to win the Senate seat. Coakley’s critics say she ran an underwhelming Senate campaign while her defenders say Brown benefited from a political climate that shifted in his favor.

Martha Coakley and her husband, Thomas F. O’Connor, Jr., went to vote this morning in Medford, Massachusetts. Martha Coakley extended her hand to the police officer at the door and he complied rather unenthusiastically. When her husband, who is a former cop, extended his hand and the officer misses and makes no effort to “reconnect”. Fail.

President Obama is both surprised and frustrated by the closeness of the race in Massachusetts, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters Tuesday. Asked by CBS News correspondent Chip Reid whether the president had expressed any surprise or frustration about the closeness of the race in Massachusetts, Gibbs admitted that Obama was not happy with the current state of play in the Bay state. “Yes. He was both surprised and frustrated,” Gibbs told the assembled reporters at the daily White House briefing. Asked if the president was angry, Gibbs replied: “He’s not pleased.” Reporters aimed several questions about the...

Sally Quinn: "Scott Brown is a hunk ... a lot of women will vote for him 'cause he's cute."

As audience members streamed out of Pres. Obama's rally on behalf of AG Martha Coakley (D) here tonight, the consensus was that the fault for Coakley's now-floundering MA SEN bid lies with one person -- George W. Bush. "People are upset because there's so many problems," Rosemary Kverek, 70, a retired Charleston schoolteacher said as tonight's rally wrapped up. "But the problems came from the previous administration. So we're blaming poor Obama, who's working 36 hours a day ... to solve these problems that he inherited." Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-RI), speaking with a gaggle of reporters after the event, said...

Believe it or not, he’s not just spinning here. He’s sincerely criticizing Obama for some of his dopier decisions lately; he just can’t help letting his admiration for The One get in the way and filter it as a matter of excess virtue. None of the problems he cites are necessarily — or actually — the product of too much deep thinkin’. Obama’s bow to Akihito was, in fact, stupid since it had the opposite intended effect. His deliberations on Afghanistan are fine, but should have been conducted six months ago given McChrystal’s warning that the war would be lost...

At the top of Friday’s Hardball on MSNBC, host Chris Matthews discovered the reason for President Obama’s political difficulties in recent months: “President Obama has his chin out on just about every hot issue out there....He’s exposed and vulnerable. His poll numbers are dropping. Is he just too darned intellectual? Too much the egg head?” Later in the show, Matthews talked to Atlantic Media’s Ron Brownstein and USA Today’s Susan Page about Obama’s great flaw. He began by wondering: “I’m not attacking intellectuals because I do appreciate their contribution – but when politicians begin to get a little too intellectual,...

A decorated ex-cop who claimed he tested positive for cocaine because he ingested the drug during oral sex with his girlfriend can't have his job back, a Manhattan judge has ruled. Supreme Court Justice Eileen Rakower last month shot down helicopter pilot Jon Goldin's attempt to overturn his April 2008 dismissal from the NYPD. Goldin, a 15-year veteran, tested positive for cocaine in October 2006 in a random drug test using hairs from his arm. Goldin's lawsuit said the cocaine in his system was the product of "passive ingestion" from performing oral sex on girlfriend Coreen McCarthy, who, once he...

The attorney for a Woodland dentist told jurors that his client massaged women's chests as part of a medical treatment. Defense attorney Michael Rothschild told the six-man, six-woman Yolo County jury that Mark Anderson was treating his female clients for temporomandibular disorder, or TMD. The attorney says the condition affects the muscles of the upper body.

CHICAGO - On the campaign trail, Barack Obama liked to boast that he was a tough survivor of the bare-knuckled world of Chicago politics. But the president-elect has also steered clear of most of its scandals, navigating a careful middle ground that has left him relatively unscathed in a city synonymous with corruption. Obama's awkward link to the seamier side of Chicago politics was thrust into the spotlight Tuesday when federal prosecutors charged Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich with trying to auction off the president-elect's vacant Senate seat. There was nothing in the 76-page FBI affidavit to suggest that Obama did...

Good evening, and welcome to the new week's thread.We enter the last 3 weeks of the campaign, 1 debate to go, and a reported very large ad-buy by the McCain campaign.Something, something... must happen soon to re-energize the R ranks and the candidate himself, altho NOT his running mate who continues full steam ahead.In Nobama news, ACORN and his Rezko ties continue to draw some scrutiny, and perhaps by Patrick Fitzgerald in Chicago.An oh yes, there's the economy and the markets, both here and worldwide...

Ex-soccer star Maradona tells Chavez he hates U.S. Sun Aug 19, 2007 4:21PM EDT CARACAS (Reuters) - Former Argentine soccer star Diego Maradona on Sunday said he hates the United States "with all my strength" during an appearance on Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's weekly television show. The leftist soccer legend, like the fiercely anti-U.S. Chavez, is a close ally of Cuba's Fidel Castro. "I believe in Chavez, I am Chavista ... . Everything Fidel does, everything Chavez does for me is the best (that can be done)," Maradona said, sitting with Chavez on the set of the president's Sunday talk...

"House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of Calif., left, and Rep. Patrick Murphy take part in a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington after a sharply divided House of Representatives voted to order President Bush to bring combat troops home from Iraq next year."

The same Bush administration review panel that approved a ports deal involving the United Arab Emirates has notified a leading Israeli software company that it faces a rare, full-blown investigation over its plans to buy a smaller rival. The objections by the FBI and Pentagon were partly over specialized intrusion detection software known as "Snort," which guards some classified U.S. military and intelligence computers. Snort's author is a senior executive at Sourcefire Inc., which would be sold to publicly traded Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. in Ramat Gan, Israel. Sourcefire is based in Columbia, Md. more

Bogotá. The supposed assistance given by Colombian guerrillas to the kidnappers of the daughter of the Paraguayan ex-president is further proof of the international tentacles of the rebels who finance themselves through criminal activities, said Colombia’s Minister of Defense, Jorge Alberto Uribe. "This only confirms the fact that Colombian narcoterrorist groups are not merely Colombians, they have roots and presence in every country", warned Uribe, who was visiting Holland, according to AP. "I was just with the people at Europol – the European police- and I saw four or five cases which involved people from these groups, especially" from the...

A PALESTINIAN television journalist was killed today as he was giving a live report to camera on deadly clashes between US forces and insurgents in the heart of the Iraqi capital. Residents of his home town in the West Bank watched in horror as Mazen al-Tomaisi, who worked for Saudi television Akhbariya and for the pan-Arab satellite channel Al-Arabiya, went down. Mr Tomaisi, 28, was killed when a US helicopter fired missiles on a mob which had gathered round a US tank in Baghdad that had been set ablaze in a car bomb attack, one of a string of bombings...

The liberal media see their favored candidate heading towards the dumpsters. Instead of reporting why this is the case, the liberals in the media conspire to ramp up their attack on Bush and any real or perceived Republicans that happen to be handy. Last month they were writing hit-pieces on the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. That is, the media coordinated an attack on the 254 Swifties and supported the two or three who still back Kerry. Even liberals get an opinion. The problem is, they should not publish that opinion as hard news, which they do. Because, the true...

It was just like cocaine -- but without the rehab and the stroke and the painful deviated septum. It was that mad tingling heart-stopping hormone-soaked high school rush you enjoyed when you finally worked up sufficient nerve to pick up the phone and call that insanely delicious guy/girl you had that mad inexplicable unrelenting crush on because, well, you just had to. Remember? And then it happened. You heard the click and her voice uttered this mellifluous "Hello?" and time suddenly stopped and your breath caught in your throat and your stomach leaped into your eternity, and you hung up...