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Ongoing work by researchers into how aspartame affects the brain has linked the artificial sweetener with learning and memory deficits in mice. The offspring of male mice that consumed aspartame at levels equivalent to much lower doses than those deemed safe by the U.S. FDA demonstrated spatial learning and memory deficits over the course of a controlled 16-week exposure. The most recent research is an extension of a study which linked aspartame consumption to anxiety in mice, with effects extending up to two generations. "The thing we noticed here, unlike the anxiety (research), this went only one generation. It was...

Washington -- Donald Rumsfeld, the two-time secretary of Defense, adviser to presidents and three-term member of Congress, was buried at Arlington National Cemetery on Aug. 23 after a stately ceremony in the cemetery's large chapel. His friends and associates filled the chapel, and I wish I could report on what luminaries were present, but I cannot. Everyone was wearing a mask. The media reported that Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III was there and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark A. Milley, but I did not see them. Possibly, they were seated next to me, but...

<p>Rumsfeld was a true American patriot but also the archetype of disaster in the republic in the modern era, an outstanding tactician and an overmatched strategist.</p><p>It is one of the irritating defects of genius that, particularly when surrounded by crushing mediocrity, the audacity of having ideas becomes a source of recurring controversy. To have the most ideas means you have the most good ideas, but also the most bad ideas. I have had the great fortune to know and meet more than a handful of figures in my life who truly qualify as men of genius, and one of them was certainly Donald Rumsfeld, who passed away yesterday at the ripe age of 88.</p>

Donald Rumsfeld, who charted an impressive Washington career serving under four presidents but whose legacy largely was defined by his controversial tenure as defense secretary during the Iraq war, has died, his family announced Wednesday. He was 88. Rumsfeld, a confident adviser to power with a trenchant style that made him admirers as well as enemies, had a long and winding career in public life that spanned five decades. He had been a congressman and a White House chief of staff, and had a successful corporate career, too. But it was his second term as secretary of Defense from 2001...

'We Are Never Going to Get the U.S. Military Out of Afghanistan' BY ROBERT SPENCER Then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said it: “We are never going to get the U.S. military out of Afghanistan unless we take care to see that there is something going on that will provide the stability that will be necessary for us to leave.” That explains why we haven’t been able to get the U.S. military out of Afghanistan after all these years: there is nothing going on there that will provide any stability, and there will not be, so apparently the State Department establishment...

“Which office do I go to to get my reputation back?” – Raymond Donovan The media had a field day painting Donovan, Reagan’s former Secretary of Labor, as a mafia stooge after he had been indicted on corruption charges in 1985 for his work with a construction company accused of having mob ties. The only problem was the charges didn’t hold up, in fact they spectacularly imploded. Donovan’s attorneys rested their case without ever calling a single witness, contending the prosecution failed to prove Donovan did anything wrong. The jury agreed, and Donovan was acquitted (along with all the...

“There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns — the ones we don't know we don't know.” - Donald Rumsfeld Trenton McKinley of Mobile, Alabama, suffered severe brain trauma from a freak dune buggy accident in March. Doctors told his parents he was braindead. They said that if he survived he’d be in a vegetative state. So they signed the organ donation papers. After days of being brain dead,...

Valerie Plame should be the next Director of Central Intelligence, not Gen. Mike Hayden. Now that the CIA's Praetorian Guard has -- with the connivance of National Intelligence Director John Negroponte -- rid itself of Porter Goss, the CIA is confidently preparing to march back into the intelligence dark ages that preceded 9/11. Gen. Hayden -- former head of the National Intelligence Agency and most famous for his strong defense of the NSA terrorist surveillance program -- is slated to be nominated for the DCI post today. Hayden, now Negroponte's deputy and choice for DCI, will face tough questioning in...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld denied on Thursday that the Iraq war was waged under a false pretext even though U.S. search teams have failed to find the chemical and biological weapons cited as justification for the invasion. During a radio interview, Rumsfeld expressed fresh confidence that such weapons of mass destruction would be found in Iraq, and offered several explanations for why they have not been located. President Bush and other U.S. officials cited Iraq's allegedly large stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and a program to develop nuclear weapons as justification for toppling President Saddam Hussein....

On Thursday’s The View, guest Donald Rumsfeld wouldn’t take the bait when hosts Joy Behar and Sunny Hostin repeatedly pressured the former Secretary of Defense to sentence Donald Trump to impeachment. “Why would you want to engage in hypotheticals?” Rumsfeld pointedly asked the hosts, after they aggressively tried to get Rumsfeld to make a legal judgement on the sitting president. Midway through the show, the hosts welcomed the former Secretary of State under presidents Gerald Ford and George W. Bush, and tried to tie his experience going through Watergate to the current Russia-White House investigation. Host Joy Behar listed what...

There's a lot about Ted Cruz that should worry constitutionalists considering voting for the senator in the presidential election of 2016.Recently, Infogram published brief but illuminating biographies of several of Cruz's key foreign policy advisors. The information disclosed in these revelations could trouble many constitutionalists otherwise keen on the senator and who rely on him to restore the rule of law to the White House.The first person highlighted in the article is the chairman of Cruz's foreign policy team, Chad Sweet.Sweet's professional and political background betrays Cruz's claims of being someone who promises "not to continue going in the same...

At the end of Obama's second term, it is estimated the national debt will be 20 trillion dollars. Most of this money has gone to frivolous spending by the Federal government, as well as been stolen by various government officials, using the excuse that astronomical sums of money are missing. In the computer age, it would be impossible to lose a trillion dollars, unless it was purposely lost to cover the theft of it. In looking at the numbers, we find that most of the 20 trillion debt is accountable in lost funds. Since 9-11, the US has spent 6...

Once thought dead and buried on the battlefields of Iraq, a muscular and militaristic "neoconservative" approach to US foreign policy is making a comeback. For most of the last decade, the "neocons" -- personified by former vice president Dick Cheney and ex-Pentagon boss Donald Rumsfeld -- have been out of office and out of fashion. But the 2016 presidential race has seen Republican candidates embrace ideas and advisors once ostracized for the catastrophes and hubris of George W. Bush's "preemptive war" in Iraq. During last week's Republican presidential debates, 17 candidates tripped over themselves to declare President Barack Obama weak...

by Mark Finkelstein January 3, 2006 - 07:58 Katie Couric's just-completed interview with NY Times Reporter James Risen, who broke the NSA surveillance story and is now publishing his book on the matter, 'State of War,' offered a treasure-trove of insights into the matter. And give Katie a gentlelady's 'C' for her questioning. Couric earned the bulk of her credit by posing this seminal line of questioning: "Did [the leakers] have any sympathy or understanding about this new climate this country finds itself in and the criticism the Bush administration took prior to 9/11 for not putting the pieces together...

There's no official Sen. Ted Cruz presidential team — yet. But the Texas Republican is already surrounding himself with key strategists and advisers that could make his transparent White House ambitions a reality. The tea party firebrand relies on a small circle of advisers to inform his views and amplify his ultraconservative message. The inner circle breaks down into two groups: his chief advisers in the Senate office, and the chiefs of his nationally-focused political operation, which he beefed up in the summer of 2014 by hiring a crop of seasoned Republican campaign operatives. These are the key players that...

Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld filed his taxes on Tuesday with an added twist: a letter telling the IRS that he had no idea whether his return was, in fact, accurate. “Despite the fact that I am a college graduate and I try hard to make sure our tax returns are accurate...I know that I do not know whether or not my tax returns are accurate, which is a sad commentary on governance in our nation's capital," Rumsfeld's letter reads.The letter’s phrasing appears to allude to Rumsfeld’s famous “unknown unknowns” statement in 2002, when he said, in reference to...

The Known Unknown is a documentary that premiered this week about two time Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. On his MSNBC show yesterday, Chris Matthews interviewed documentary maker and producer of the film Errol Morris. Matthews described Morris' work as "mystifying" before going on to describe Rumsfeld as looking like a car bomber. "I found this long documentary mystifying," Matthews said. "Yet it is the Donald Rumsfeld I have always known, that fey, sort of eccentric, sort whimsical face of his, that I swear has the look of a car bomber because he has to smile about the most serious,...

You know it wasn’t a racist comment. You also know it doesn’t matter. MSNBC has their see-what-racists-all-Obama-opponents-are talking point for the next few days. More to the point, though, knowing Donald Rumsfeld he doesn’t care about any of that, which is one of the things I love about him. The far more important point here is the point itself - that the U.S. had a good relationship with Karzai in Afghanistan when the Bush Administration was in office. It was only when Obama and crew came in that we suddenly couldn’t work with him.

Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld told Greta Van Susteren on Monday, “A trained ape can get a status of forces agreement. It does not take a genius.” Rumsfeld was talking about Barack Obama’s failed diplomacy in Iraq and Afghanistan. CNS News reported: Donald Rumsfeld, who served as U.S. Defense Secretary under President George W. Bush, blames poor diplomacy by the Obama administration for the current strained relations with Afghan President Hamid Karzai. “Our relationship with Karzai and with Afghanistan was absolutely first-rate in the Bush administration,” Rumsfeld told Fox News’s Greta Van Susteren on Monday. “It has gone down...

(CNSNews.com) - Donald Rumsfeld, who served as U.S. Defense Secretary under President George W. Bush, blames poor diplomacy by the Obama administration for the current strained relations with Afghan President Hamid Karzai."Our relationship with Karzai and with Afghanistan was absolutely first-rate in the Bush administration," Rumsfeld told Fox News's Greta Van Susteren on Monday. "It has gone down hill like a toboggan ever since the Obama administration came in."