Republican Party officials say they will try next month to pass a resolution accusing President Bush and congressional Republican leaders of embracing "socialism," underscoring deep dissension within the party at the end of Mr. Bush's administration.

Those pushing the resolution, which will come before the Republican National Committee at its January meeting, say elected leaders need to be reminded of core principles. They said the RNC must take the dramatic step of wading into policy debates, which traditionally have been left to lawmakers.

Rather contends not only that his report was true - "What the documents stated has never been denied, by the president or anyone around him," he says - but that CBS succumbed to political pressure from conservatives to get the report discredited and to have him fired. He also claims that a panel set up by CBS to investigate the story was packed with conservatives in an effort to placate the White House. Part of the reason for that, he suggests, was that Viacom, a sister company of CBS, knew that it would have important broadcasting regulatory issues to deal with during Bush's second term.

Among those CBS considered for the panel to investigate Rather's report were far-right broadcasters Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter.

"CBS broke with long-standing tradition at CBS News and elsewhere of standing up to political pressure," says Rather. "And, there's no joy in saying it, they caved ... in an effort to placate their regulators in Washington."

Rather's lawsuit makes other serious allegations about CBS succumbing to political pressure in an attempt to suppress important news stories. In particular, he says that his bosses at CBS tried to stop him reporting evidence of torture at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. According to Rather's lawsuit, "for weeks they refused to grant permission to air the story" and "continued to raise the goalposts, insisting on additional substantiation". Rather also claims that General Richard Meyers, then head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the top military official in the US, called him at home and asked him not to broadcast the story, saying that it would "endanger national security".

Rather says that CBS only agreed to allow him to broadcast the story when it found out that Seymour Hersh would be writing about it in the New Yorker magazine. Even then, Rather claims, CBS tried to bury it. "CBS imposed the unusual restrictions that the story would be aired only once, that it would not be preceded by on-air promotion, and that it would not be referenced on the CBS Evening News," he says.

Workers at General Motors' Moraine Assembly plant rang out not just the old year but also a way of life last week when they left work and the plant closed.

It was the Dayton-area's last GM plant...

Much is written these days about the generous wages and benefits GM provided its workers — mainly through collective bargaining — as though these were bad things. In Dayton, Flint and other GM towns, the wages and benefits at the factories had a ripple effect, setting the standard for other employers, public and private.

The lawmakers noted that in testimony to Congress, chief executive officer John Mullen of DHL Express said his company had agreed to provide at least $260 million for severance, retention and health care benefits for the Wilmington-area work force, including $225 million over and above contractual and legal obligations.

Voinovich, Brown and Turner also wrote that they are concerned DHL's planned deep cuts in its U.S. operations in 2009 could burden the U.S. worker pensions system....

..."DHL should understand that its failure to provide the promised mitigation assistance will be viewed as another example of the company's dismissive treatment, which will not be easily forgotten in the United States," the lawmakers wrote.

John Sweeney, of Harvard, Massachusetts, was among the many residents of Eastern Mass without power after a big ice storm hit on December 12th. Sweeney, an electrical engineer, saw his Prius as the answer. Using an inverter, he converted the DC power coming out of the car into AC power for his house. Though he couldn't run his entire house one his one car, they were able to get approximately 17 Kilowatt hours of energy. This was enough to power his refrigerator/freezer, television, lights, wood stove fan and accessories for a few days. Although anyone can use a regular DC power supply, like the battery found in a non-Hybrid car, but a hybrid is ideal.

First, the Prius carries a much larger batter pack than a regular car, allowing someone to power more appliances for longer than the conventional AC Delco found in most cars. Second, unlike some backup battery systems found in homes, the Prius, like other cars, can recharge its batteries with its normal internal combustion engine. And here's the best part — because the Prius automatically turns itself on when the batteries drain to a certain level, Sweeney left the car running and it automatically turned over when it needed to recharge — about once every 30 minutes. If you were trying to do what Sweeney did with a non-hybrid, you'd find yourself spending a lot more time outside in the cold.

If women want any rights more than they's got, why don't they just take them, and not be talking about it. - Sojourner Truth

Affluence means influence - Jack London

I am a person who has never used violence himself. My present opinion is that people who have obtained the ballot should use it and solve their problems in that way. In the case of peoples who have not obtained the ballot, and who cannot control their states, I again find in my own mind a division of opinion, which is not logical, but purely a rough practical judgment. My own forefathers got their political freedom by violence; that is to say, they overthrew the British crown and made themselves a free Republic. Also by violence they put an end to the enslavement of the black race on this continent. - Upton Sinclair

...years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it; while there is a criminal element, I am of it; while there is a soul in prison, I am not free. - Eugene V. Debs

When economic interest is seen behind political clauses of the Constitution, then the document becomes not simply the work of wise men trying to establish a decent and orderly society, but the work of certain groups trying to maintain their privileges, while giving just enough rights and liberties to enough of the people to ensure popular support. - Howard Zinn

Democracy is not something you believe in or a place to hang your hat, but it's something you do. You participate. If you stop doing it, democracy crumbles. - Abbie Hoffman

Police later heard from store managers at Whole Foods in Tustin that an elderly woman had come in a few days earlier, hysterical because she had mistakenly returned a box of crackers with her life savings inside. In a mix-up the store restocked the box rather than composting it.

The Lake Forest woman, whose identity was not released, had lost faith in her bank and decided the box would be a safer place for the money.

Luckily for her, the box of Annie's Sour Cream and Onion Cheddar Bunny crackers were bought by the Rogoffs, who discovered the crisp $100 bills in an unmarked white envelope on Oct. 10.

The Rogoffs never heard from the woman and didn't receive a reward, but Rogoff did return to Whole Foods a couple weeks later.

"I asked them if I could have another box of crackers," she said with a laugh. The store obliged.

After years of being embarrassed by lawsuits over its wage practices, the company agreed to settle 63 cases pending in federal and state courts in 42 states.

The workers and their lawyers will receive at least $352 million, and the payments could reach $640 million, depending on how many claims affected workers submit...

...The dozens of wage-and-hour suits against Wal-Mart accused the company and its managers of various illegal tactics. Those included forcing employees to work unpaid off the clock, erasing hours from time cards and preventing workers from taking lunch and other breaks that were promised by the company or guaranteed by state laws.

The total amount given to nearly 600 executives would cover bailout costs for many of the 116 banks that have so far accepted tax dollars to boost their bottom lines.

"We have had before us this whole question of the viability of the American automobile manufacturers. None of us want to see them go down, but very few of us had anything to do with the dilemma that they have created for themselves."

In his 1931 Harper's essay "The Myth of Rugged American Individualism," historian Charles Beard carefully cataloged fifteen instances of the government intervening in the economy for the benefit of big business. Beard wrote, "For forty years or more there has not been a President, Republican or Democrat, who has not talked against government interference and then supported measures adding more interference to the huge collection already accumulated."

"Federal judges are currently under-compensated because Congress has repeatedly failed to adjust judicial salaries in response to inflation," said James C. Duff, director of the Administrative Office of the U.S Courts. "By its failure to do so once again, Congress only exacerbates a long-standing problem it must someday address."

Duff acknowledged that the current economic turmoil makes the judges' case harder. After all, federal trial judges are paid $169,300 a year, have lifetime job security and can retire at full salary at age 65 if they have 15 years in the job. Appellate judges make more, ranging up to Roberts' salary of $217,400.

But those salaries, large as they are, are much smaller than what judges' peers make in private practice. Attorney General-designate Eric Holder said his partnership at the law firm of Covington & Burling earned him $2.1 million this year. Attorney General Michael Mukasey, who retired as a federal judge in 2006 after 18 years, made nearly $2 million in 21 months at a New York law firm.

The Labor Department reported that initial requests for jobless benefits rose to a seasonally adjusted 586,000 in the week ending Dec. 20, from an upwardly revised figure of 556,000 the previous week. That's much more than the 560,000 economists had expected.

That's also the highest level of claims since November 1982, though the work force has grown by about half since then.

It's the second year that local Jews have supplied the feast for their Christian neighbors on one of Christianity's holiest days of the year, said Josh Lader, director of the Jewish Community Relations Council.

The event, which can host hundreds of hungry diners, is becoming a tradition. The food is cooked with the help of Top of the Market Banquet Center, 32 Webster St.

Along with the meal, volunteers hand out gifts such as winter hats, gloves and socks. Visitors also can receive backpacks and fleece blankets....

...Eddie Miller, 41, of Kettering, is thankful for what he has, even though he lost his job Tuesday at GM Truck and Bus Group in Moraine. He was at the House of Bread on Christmas as a volunteer.

"Losing my job at GM makes me want to help," he said.

In our Country...one class of men makes war and leaves another to fight it out. - William Tecumseh Sherman

I'm fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in. - George McGovern

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. - Dwight D. Eisenhower

Is not Life miserable enough, comes not Death soon enough, without resort to the hideous enginery of War? - Horace Greeley

Never has there been a good war or a bad peace. - Benjamin Franklin

One is left with the horrible feeling now that war settles nothing; that to win a war is as disastrous as to lose one. - Agatha Christie

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy? - Mohandas K. Gandhi

If it's natural to kill, why do men have to go into training to learn to do it? - Joan Baez

Oher was the son of a crack-addicted single mom, and as a teen could barely read. His educational record — 11 schools in nine years as he moved from home to home in Memphis — read like an indictment of a failed education system.

Like a lot of other athletes at Ole Miss and elsewhere, Oher got not only tutoring help but a full range of academic support services throughout his career. At Ole Miss, 14 full-time staffers line up tutors for student-athletes, help them choose classes, monitor study halls and check attendance. More than 60 percent of the Rebels' 390 athletes receive at least some tutoring, and together they averaged about 1,000 sessions a week this fall.

The picture formed by the data is one of schools frequently spending more than $1 million annually on academic support, with some spending hundreds of thousands of dollars more in 2008 than they did in 2004, the AP found. Eight BCS schools reported spending increases of more than 70 percent in the last five years. Four — South Florida, Illinois, Georgia and Kansas — more than doubled spending.

Helping athletes graduate has become its own academic profession. A national group for people who work in the field has nearly doubled its membership to around 1,000 in just two years. Many work in new academic centers devoted exclusively to athletes.

"It grates," said Kenneth Holum, a longtime University of Maryland history professor and chair of the faculty senate. "Why are the athletes more deserving than the other students? We try hard to give all the students an equal chance to profit from the material we're providing them, and other students don't have this opportunity."

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a fiscal emergency on Friday to call lawmakers into another special session to tackle the state’s weakening finances, and separately ordered state officials to prepare to furlough and lay off employees to cut costs.

His two actions mark a dramatic escalation in the budget battle waged in recent weeks in Sacramento, the capital of the most populous US state and world’s eighth-largest economy, as its revenues fall harder and faster than expected.

California’s state government now faces a $40 billion budget shortfall over its current and next fiscal years and is on track to run out of cash in February.

Their deployment as a makeshift missile robbed President George Bush of his dignity and landed their owner in jail. But the world's most notorious pair of shoes have yielded an unexpected bonanza for a Turkish shoemaker.

Ramazan Baydan, owner of the Istanbul-based Baydan Shoe Company, has been swamped with orders from across the world, after insisting that his company produced the black leather shoes which the Iraqi journalist Muntazar al-Zaidi threw at Bush during a press conference in Baghdad last Sunday.

Baydan has recruited an extra 100 staff to meet orders for 300,000 pairs of Model 271 - more than four times the shoe's normal annual sale - following an outpouring of support for Zaidi's act, which was intended as a protest, but led to his arrest by Iraqi security forces.

Orders have come mainly from the US and Britain, and from neighbouring Muslim countries, he said.

Around 120,000 pairs have been ordered from Iraq, while a US company has placed a request for 18,000. A British firm is understood to have offered to serve as European distributor for the shoes, which have been on the market since 1999 and sell at around £28 in Turkey. A sharp rise in orders has been recorded in Syria, Egypt and Iran, where the main shoemaker's federation has offered to provide Zaidi and his family with a lifetime's supply of shoes.

To meet the mood of the marketplace, Baydan is planning to rename the model "the Bush Shoe" or "Bye-Bye Bush".

Overall, non-farm wage and salary employment declined by 4,200 over the month, from 5,394,400 in October to 5,390,200.

"Job losses continued in Ohio's labor market during November," Jan Allen, interim ODJFS director, said in a press release. "The unemployment rate remained at 7.3 percent as gains in service-providing jobs were offset by larger losses in goods-producing jobs."

The news meant unemployment has remained above 7 percent in Ohio for four straight months, the first time that's happened since the end of 1992.

Ohio's jobless rate continues to be higher than the national rate. U.S. unemployment in November was 6.7 percent, up from 6.5 percent in October.

In Ohio, the number of unemployed workers in November was 435,000, the same as in October. The number of unemployed has jumped by 95,000 during the past 12 months, from 340,000.

Ohio's 7.3 unemployment rate for November was up from 5.7 percent in November 2007.

In a brief filed with the high court, the state top's lawyer argues for the first time that Proposition 8 should be invalidated, saying it is "inconsistent with the guarantees of individual liberty safeguarded" by the California Constitution. Brown had not taken a position on the measure until now.

"There are certain rights that are not to be subject to popular votes, otherwise they are not fundamental rights," Brown said in an interview. "If every fundamental liberty can be stripped away by a majority vote, then it's not a fundamental liberty."

Proposition 8 supporters on Friday further pumped up the wattage of the coming legal confrontation by naming Kenneth W. Starr, the former U.S. solicitor general and independent counsel in the Whitewater investigation against then-President Bill Clinton. Starr, dean of the law school at Pepperdine University, will argue the Yes on 8 case before the Supreme Court, in arguments that could begin as soon as March.

Proposition 8 supporters acknowledge those marriages were legal before Election Day, and say they are not trying to "nullify" them now. They argue that the plain language of Proposition 8 — "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California." — means those marriages can no longer be recognized in California, although they would still be valid in other states where same-sex marriage is legal or recognized.

"We are incredibly encouraged by the Attorney General’s thoughtful and courageous decision to urge the California Supreme Court to stand up for its historic role in protecting minorities against the tyranny of the majority," said Marriage Equality USA (MEUSA) Media Director Molly McKay.

"The lives of thousands of couples and their children hang in the balance. We are hopeful that the outpouring of support from every major civil rights organization and dozens of cities and legislators will encourage the Justices that the right thing to do is to find that Proposition 8 is a revision to our Constitution and not allow it to stand. We have fundamentally altered the checks and balance of our democracy if a prejudiced minority is entitled to only the fundamental rights that they can persuade the majority to extend to them."

"Proposition 8 proponents are trying to strip the 18,000 couples who married of their marriage licenses," said MEUSA Policy Director. "They are like the Grinch attempting to pull every last shred of happiness and hope from same-sex couples. The Court cannot allow the bullies and bigotry to pollute our Constitution that has heretofore stood for equality and justice for all."

Liberalism is, I think, resurgent. One reason is that more and more people are so painfully aware of the alternative. - John Kenneth Galbraith

Become an internationalist and learn to respect all life. Make war on machines. And in particular the sterile machines of corporate death and the robots that guard them. - Abbie Hoffman

I offer my opponents a bargain: if they will stop telling lies about us, I will stop telling the truth about them. - Adlai Stevenson

Our Democracy is but a name. We vote? What does it mean? It means that we choose between two bodies of real, though not avowed, autocrats. We choose between Tweedledum and Tweedledee... - Helen Keller

Politics is the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign funds from the rich, by promising to protect each from the other. - Oscar Ameringer

Wars throughout history have been waged for conquest and plunder... And that is war in a nutshell. The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles... - Eugene V. Debs

Connecticut voters support 52 - 39 percent, with 9 percent undecided, the State Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage in the state, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today.

Given three choices, 43 percent of voters say same-sex couples should be allowed to marry, while 39 percent say they should be allowed to form civil unions but not marry and 12 percent say there should be no legal recognition of same-sex unions, the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University poll finds.

Connecticut voters oppose 61 - 33 percent amending the state constitution to ban same-sex marriage. Republicans support such an amendment 49 - 46 percent, while Democrats oppose it 73 - 23 percent and independent voters oppose it 58 - 34 percent. Men oppose an amendment to ban same-sex marriage 56 - 38 percent while women oppose it 66 - 28 percent.

...In South Carolina, any further appeal goes to the South Carolina House of Representatives. The SC state constitution provides the SC House with the ultimate responsibility of seating their members. The SC House is controlled by a bunch of very partisan Republicans who, in my opinion, don’t always care much for the rule of law.

A week and a day after his protest was rejected, Wallace Scarborough filed an official appeal with the SC House. He is now asking his former GOP colleagues to ignore the election results on November 4th. He’s asking them to put aside the decision made by the voters and void the election results. This is no longer about the law; this is about partisan politics at its worse.

For the first time since welfare was redefined a dozen years ago, weaning millions of poor Americans from monthly government checks, the deteriorating economy is causing a surge in welfare rolls in a growing number of states.

The swelling caseloads pose the first hard test of the premise behind transforming the old system of welfare, once considered an open-ended right, into a finite program built to provide short-term cash assistance and steer people quickly into jobs.

More striking is who is coming onto welfare and why. Here in Florida, as elsewhere, the new face of welfare includes people who have tumbled from the middle class -- and higher -- after losing jobs, savings and self-reliance. And some are returning to welfare years after they thought they had found permanent work and independence. In the county that includes Fort Myers, nearly 40 percent of the 812 people who applied for welfare in October had never before asked for help.

Florida is a hub of the problem, particularly Fort Myers, where the number of people getting cash assistance has soared by 50 percent in the past 1 1/2 years. Across the state, rolls have swollen by 20 percent in the past year, including by 4 percent in October. "Pretty unprecedented," said Don Winstead, deputy secretary of Florida's Department of Children and Families. And adults on welfare are staying longer than they used to, with jobs so hard to find.

Florida's legislators have been warned that the state will have an $8.6 million welfare deficit for the fiscal year that ends in July and a $33 million shortfall the next year. "We already know those estimates are low," Winstead said.

The job-centric nature of welfare remains popular in principle across the political spectrum -- but harder to put into practice. "If there is no employment out there to get, then what?" asked Shery Bader, employment services manager for Goodwill Industries of Southwest Florida.

Many people coming onto welfare "shouldn't be receiving assistance if there [were] jobs out there," said Kevin McGuire, the Maryland Department of Human Resources' executive director of family investment. "The problem is, what we are seeing here is something that looks more like 1936 than 1996."

Chrysler has 30 facilities in North America. All will close temporarily.

The plant in Windsor, Ontario -- which makes minivans -- and the Detroit/Connor Assembly -- which builds engines and Vipers -- will close through the month of January. The two plants in Toledo will be shut down until January 26.

This will impact 46,000 UAW workers, according to Chrysler. Chrysler says these employees will receive state unemployment benefits as well as supplemental payments from Chrysler during the layoff according to a union negotiated formula.

These workers will not be receiving their regular income. There will be an unknown number of white collar workers who will not be working as well, but the expectation is that they will continue to receive their regular salaries during this time.

"I think people need to take their heads out of the cloud they've been in and start focusing on the future and not on the past," Heath Campbell said Tuesday in an interview conducted in Easton, on the other side of the Delaware River from where the family lives in Hunterdon County, N.J.

"There's a new president and he says it's time for a change; well, then it's time for a change," the 35-year-old continued. "They need to accept a name. A name's a name. The kid isn't going to grow up and do what (Hitler) did."

"Other kids get their cake," Campbell complained. "I get a hard time. It's not fair to my children. How can a name be offensive?"

Wal-Mart spokeswoman Anna Taylor told The Easton Express-Times that the store won't put anything illegal or profane on a cake but thinks it's important to respect the views of customers and employees.

"Our No. 1 priority in decorating cakes is to serve the customer to the best of our ability," Taylor said from Bentonville, Ark.

...while our gross domestic product increased more or less steadily from the 1970s until the onset of the current financial crisis, most of us did not see a rise in our standard of living or our wellbeing. Wages stagnated, while the costs of basic needs -- like homes, medical care, food, and energy -- climbed rapidly. Those in the top 20 percent increased their net worth by 80 percent over the last 25 years, while the bottom 40 percent actually lost ground.

Few families today can make it on a single wage-earner’s income, and a health problem or a job loss can send a middle-class family into poverty or even homelessness.

Government data earlier this month showed the U.S. economy shed 533,000 jobs in November, the most in 34 years, and the weaker-than-expected jobless claims data indicated the bloodletting was not yet over.

"We are experiencing the absolute worst of the economic downturn right now," said T.J. Marta, fixed-income analyst at RBC Capital Markets in New York. "We're in a period of complete freefall in term of economic growth."

The Labor Department said the number of Americans still on the jobless benefit rolls after claiming an initial week of aid jumped by 338,000 to a 26-year high of 4.43 million in the week ended November 29. It was the biggest increase in 34 years.

Broad standards of wellbeing like the Genuine Progress Indicators show that our health, quality of life, economic security, and environment, taken together, stayed flat, although we worked harder. A 20-year study by the OECD found the United States has the highest rate of inequality and poverty among the developed countries, and the income gap has grown steadily since 2000.

...Christoffersen, a devout Mormon, donated $100 in support of Proposition 8, the successful November ballot initiative that banned gay marriage.

She never advertised her politics or religion in the restaurant, but last month her donation showed up on lists of "for" and "against" donors. And El Coyote became a target.

A boycott was organized on the Internet, with activists trashing El Coyote on restaurant review sites. Then came throngs of protesters, some of them shouting "shame on you" at customers. The police arrived in riot gear one night to quell the angry mob.

The mob left, but so did the customers.

Sections of the restaurant have been closed, a manager told me Friday during a very quiet lunch hour. Some of the 89 employees, many of them gay, have had their hours cut, and layoffs are looming. And Christoffersen, who has taken a voluntary leave of absence, is wondering whether she'll ever again be able to work at the restaurant, which opened in 1931 (at 1st and La Brea) and is owned by her 92-year-old mother.

McDonald’s USA President Don Thompson urged 2,400 franchisees to "contact your U.S. senators and representatives to oppose" the Employee Free Choice Act in a Nov. 25 memo obtained by Crain’s. He also wrote that McDonald’s formed a "response team" to help franchisees "actively participate in the opposition to the EFCA."

The Service Employee International Union encouraged its 1.8 million members to send letters to McDonald’s in support of the proposed Employee Free Choice Act. The AFL-CIO issued a press release saying it "plans to make sure the 10 million working men and women who make up our membership know that McDonald’s has just announced a whopper of a campaign against their economic interests and against their hopes for an economy that works for all, not just for the CEOs."

A few weeks after we began, a team of psychologists rolled in. They quickly went to work, systematically interrogating each employee in a not-so-subtle attempt to intimidate them out of joining the union.

In the weeks that followed, McDonald’s brought in a high-powered corporate law firm that filed motion after motion to delay the union election that would give these McDonald’s workers an opportunity to unite. As the lawyers buried us in depositions, motions, and labor board charges, they were purposely slowing down the election process and buying McDonald’s more time to run an anti-union campaign built on spreading fear and misinformation among its workers. 

One by one, the strongest pro-union voices in the three franchises were either demoted, forced out, or fired.

Truth is not determined by majority vote. - Doug Gwyn

We have, I fear, confused power with greatness. - Stewart Udall

Is not Life miserable enough, comes not Death soon enough, without resort to the hideous enginery of War? - Horace Greeley

The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. - John Kenneth Galbraith

A conservative is a man who believes that nothing should be done for the first time. - Alfred E. Wiggam

Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made agents of injustice. - Henry David Thoreau

Expedience, not justice, is the rule of contemporary American law. - Abbie Hoffman

A bone to the dog is not charity. Charity is the bone shared with the dog, when you are just as hungry as the dog. - Jack London

Charity begins at home, but should not end there - Thomas Fuller

Pretty rotten thing that happened in Mumbai, huh?

Grand old hotel, in an increasingly progressive and prosperous India: Suddenly, hundreds of innocent, unsuspecting people are hostages, some of them being systematically murdered. Bombs are exploding, people are screaming, military are descending into the chaos, TV crews are coming from everywhere to broadcast the carnage worldwide...

...Thank God, it couldn't happen here. Could it?

Look around. Watch your evening news. Read your newspaper.

Are you unaware of the raging demonstrations in our streets, in front of our churches and synagogues, even spilling into these places of worship, and many of these riots turning defamatory and violent? Have you not seen the angry distorted faces of the rioters, seen their derogatory and threatening placards and signs, heard their vows to overturn the democratically expressed views of voters, no matter what it costs, no matter what was expressed at the polls? Twice?

...let me ask you: Have you not seen the awful similarity between what happened in Mumbai and what's happening right now in our cities?

What troubles me so deeply, and should trouble all thinking Americans, is that there is a real, unbroken line between the jihadist savagery in Mumbai and the hedonistic, irresponsible, blindly selfish goals and tactics of our homegrown sexual jihadists.

...Republicans senators decided they could not agree to a deal. Several blamed the autoworkers’ union.

"It sounds like the U.A.W. blew it up," said Senator David Vitter, Republican of Louisiana

"But we could not accept the effort by the Senate GOP caucus to single out workers and retirees for different treatment and to make them shoulder the entire burden of restructuring," Gettelfinger said.

He emphasized that the UAW had made several concessions since 2003, including last week when he announced the union would push back the automakers’ payments to the retiree trust fund, which helps the companies save billions of dollars in the meantime.

Gettelfigner took aim at criticism over UAW wages and demands that compensation be made the same as foreign auto companies’ U.S. plants. He pointed to research that showed Toyota workers at a plant in Kentucky were making, with bonuses, $30 an hour, compared to the $28.12 an hour paid to UAW workers at the Detroit automakers.

"This was just simply subterfuge on the part of the minority in the Republican party who wanted to tear down any agreement that we came up with," Gettelfinger said.

President Bush and the Treasury Department signaled on Friday that they would consider dipping into the $700 billion bailout program for financial institutions to aid the Big Three car companies, after Republican senators refused to support a compromise proposal to rescue the automakers.

Toyota, GM’s top-selling global rival, which has seen its US sales plummet this year, warned that the failure of a US carmaker would have knock-on effects on its own business.

"The US auto market is shrinking rapidly," Toyota said. "A major bankruptcy would exacerbate an already difficult environment for Toyota and the industry. We hope to avoid this situation."

As Washington deliberated over whether and how to help Detroit, the problems in US carmaking showed signs of becoming a global problem. "The only government not helping right now is the US," GM said.

Sweden and Brazil this week became the latest governments to step in with aid for their car industries, which have been threatened by the general global downturn in car sales this year and the US carmakers’ problems in particular.

The state Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections would eliminate 5,237 jobs, close six prisons, triple bunk inmates, consider emergency release of prisoners, and wipe out education, drug treatment, recreation and other programming.

The state Department of Youth Services would have to close three juvenile corrections facilities and allow a significant number of the 1,500 kids on parole go without supervision.

The Ohio Board of Regents said colleges would be forced to either lay off faculty and perhaps close campuses or increase tuition by $2,000, which would prompt tens of thousands of students to drop out or take on more debt.

The Ohio Department of Education would lose $2 billion from their annual budget, bumping it back to 2001 levels.

The Ohio Department of Job and Family Services warns that they'd have to cut back on child care subsidies offered to parents on welfare who are required to work or look for jobs. As many as 56,000 children would no longer be served.

The Ohio Department of Mental Health, which just closed two hospitals, said it would have to close another hospital and expects there would be an increase in severely mentally ill people joining the ranks of the homeless.

...families with children are among the fastest growing segments of the homeless population. Roughly 1.35 million children are likely to experience homelessness over the course of a year, statistics show.

The prevailing culture tells us that nothing succeeds like excess, that working 80 hours a week is better than working 70, that being plugged in 24/7 is expected, and that sleeping less and multi-tasking more are an express elevator to the top.

Rendell's paean to workaholism epitomizes this wrong-headed approach to achievement. Indeed, the truth is the exact opposite. It turns out people are not only happier -- they are also much more productive if they are able to get away from work, and renew their passion and focus.

Research done by the University of North Carolina found that couples in a workaholic marriage tended to have twice the divorce rate as those who were in nonworkaholic marriages.

...Further, there is the effect on the children. Research has also found that children of workaholics have a higher rate of depression and anxiety mainly because that workaholic parent has placed severely high expectations on his or her kids, which links back to that desire for perfection.

In Japan, it's called karoshi -- "death by overwork" -- and it's estimated to cause 1,000 deaths per year, nearly 5% of that country's stroke and heart attack deaths in employees under age 60.

In the Netherlands, it's resulted in a new condition known as "leisure illness," estimated to affect 3% of its entire population, according to one study. Workers actually get physically sick on weekends and vacations as they stop working and try, in vain, to relax.

The progress of labor, in any way, either towards better conditions or better wages, demands the elimination of the unemployed. This can be done only by shortening the work day. The normal work day is now about nine hours. Cut it to six. There will still have to be as much product as before. The boss will have to hire some more men.

Immigrants, single mothers and the poor often work the longest hours, forced to take on two or three jobs just to eke out a meager living. Betty Reid Mandell, a founder of the welfare rights organization Survivors Inc., spoke of the implications of the continuing attacks on women forced to turn to the welfare system to support them in the work of caretaking. Ignoring the long hours required to raise children, U.S. government policy is to force these women into the paid workforce, where they find themselves in low-paying jobs, reliant on food pantries and overcrowded homeless shelters to survive.

Mandell contrasted the brutality of this approach with the widespread recognition in the 1970s that the means existed to provide a decent livelihood for all -- embodied not only in French sociologist Andr Gorz's proposal for a universal 20-hour work week, but also in U.S. President Richard Nixon's 1972 proposal for a guaranteed annual wage.

...because the gains in income and wealth went disproportionately to upper-income households, most families could only realize higher spending norms by putting in additional hours and taking on debt. By 1997, the National Survey of the Changing Workforce found that nearly two-thirds of employees were on the job more than they wanted to be.

In July, a Dakota County judge ruled against Wal-Mart in the lawsuit, saying the Bentonville, Ark.-based retailer violated state labor laws 2 million times by cutting worker break time and "willfully" not stopping managers from having employees work off the clock. Court proceedings had been scheduled for next month to determine punitive damages, and Wal-Mart could have faced more than $2 billion in damages. Instead, the settlement announced Tuesday will have a preliminary hearing for approval on Jan. 14.

Justin Perl, a lead attorney for the plaintifffs, said he was "gratified that these hourly workers will now be paid after seven years of litigation."

Wal-Mart charged the tax for people who didn't have receipts as well as some who had credit card statements proving that they had bought the item recently. The taxes were turned over to the state....

...Stores even had posters behind courtesy desks blaming the state for its policy.

"State law PROHIBITS Wal-Mart from refunding SALES TAX to any customer returning or exchanging merchandise without an original purchase receipt," the "tax refund laws" posters said.

However, state tax laws clearly say the opposite, state Consumer Protection Commissioner Jerry Farrell Jr. said Wednesday in an interview explaining the out-of-court settlement he reached with Wal-Mart.

State laws mandate that if a company has an exchange policy, it cannot charge a second sales tax on the new item. Wal-Mart's website clearly says it has such an exchange policy.

Laid-off workers at Republic Windows & Doors agreed to leave the closed Illinois plant they've been occupying in protest for six days, accepting a deal Wednesday night that will give each of them about $6,000.

Workers will receive about eight weeks' severance pay, accrued vacation time and two months of healthcare coverage, officials said. About $1.75 million will be put into an escrow account to be supervised by the workers' union.

"The occupation is over. We have achieved victory," said United Electrical Workers President Armando Robles. "We said we will not go until we get justice, and we have it."

The settlement totals $1.75 million. It will provide the workers with:

* Eight weeks of pay they are owed under the federal WARN Act,
* Two months of continued health coverage and,
* Pay for all accrued and unused vacation.

JPMorgan Chase will provide $400,000 of the settlement, with the balance coming from Bank of America.

As a result of the overwhelming evidence presented to the Commission, we unanimously recommend that:

The Legislature and Governor amend the law to allow same-sex couples to marry;

The law be enacted expeditiously because any delay in marriage equality will harm all the people of New Jersey; and

The Domestic Partnership Act should not be repealed, because it provides important protections to committed partners age 62 and older.

The socially sanctioned right of gay marriage which is qualitatively different than civil unions, the right to choose one’s spouse, has a positive impact on self-esteem, sense of being validated in the eyes of the community, and on the internalization of ideas of commitment and responsibility to others, something that is sorely needed in our society currently....

Nothing is more basic from a mental health perspective to happiness and liberty than the right to love another human being with the same privileges and responsibilities as everyone else.

Bank of America, our country's second largest bank, did indeed take $25 billion dollars of "bailout cash", then gave the shaft to that company and its workers by refusing to renew and extend it any operating credit to stay in business through the economic downturn. Just close the doors and throw the workers out onto the street without any notice in freezing temperatures right before the holidays, Bank of America said, and don't bother paying them any vacation or severance pay either. Oh, and just cancel everyone's health insurance while you're at it. Sorry about those pregnant workers, too.

Bank of America has bought out LaSalle Bank and Countrywide, and bank shareholders just approved a $50 billion buyout of Merrill Lynch. B of A has recently settled the largest suit against Countrywide.

The workers in the factory are members of UE Local 1110. The factory shut down at 10:00 am Friday. There was no advanced notice to the workers. They have been denied vacation pay and severance pay, which under Illinois law is 75 days in a union shop. The workers refused to leave.They are currently occuping the factory. Apperently, BOA (Bank of America) wouldn't give Republic a Line of Credit to continue operations.

On the campaign trail, Senator Barack Obama offered a pledge that electrified and motivated his liberal base, vowing to "end the war" in Iraq.

But as he moves closer to the White House, President-elect Obama is making clearer than ever that tens of thousands of American troops will be left behind in Iraq, even if he can make good on his campaign promise to pull all combat forces out within 16 months.

For a Democrat whose opposition to the Iraq war was a campaign centerpiece, President-elect Barack Obama is remarkably in sync with Defense Secretary Robert Gates on many core defense and national security issues — even Iraq.

The list of similarities suggests the early focus of Obama's Pentagon may not change dramatically from President George W. Bush's.

There has seldom, if ever, been a public peep about Obama's residual force plans for Iraq from members of his own party, including from those who describe themselves as "anti-war."

We should pursue those responsible for the attack on the World Trade Centers and the Pentagon, and the other failed flight disasters, as criminals, just like we did on the Lockerbie incident in Scotland.

Those responsible should be pursued and prosecuted as criminals, instead of declaring a war on terrorism, and going after entire countries or cultures.

Their goal is to at least get the compensation that workers are owed; they also seek the resumption of operations at the plant. All 260 members of the local were laid off Friday in a sudden plant closing, brought on by Bank of America cutting off operating credit to the company. The bank even refused to authorize the release of money to Republic needed to pay workers their earned vacation pay, and compensation they are owed under the federal WARN Act because they were not given the legally-required notice that the plant was about to close.

Local 1110, which represents 260 Republic workers, are conducting the contemporary equivalent of the 1930s sit-down strikes that led to the rapid expansion of union recognition nationwide and empowered the Roosevelt administration to enact more equitable labor laws. And, just as in the thirties, they are objecting to policies that put banks ahead of workers; stickers worn by the UE sit-down strikers read: "You got bailed out, we got sold out."

"We're going to stay here until we win justice," says Blanca Funes, 55, of Chicago, who was one of the UE members occupying the Republic factory over the weekend for several hours.

Most of Republic workers are Hispanic and they want answers from the Bank of America and the company.

According to the UE, the workers hope "to force the company and its main creditor to meet their obligations to the workers."