Six In The Morning

The Congressional Garage Sale

Those Sneaky Lobbyists Buying Your Government
Numerous times this year, members of Congress have held fundraisers and collected big checks while they are taking critical steps to write new laws, despite warnings that such actions could create ethics problems. The campaign donations often came from contributors with major stakes riding on the lawmakers' actions.

For three weeks in June, for instance, the members of a joint House and Senate committee worked to draft final rules for regulating the financial industry in the wake of its 2008 meltdown.

What's The Best Way To Silence The Out Spoken?

Use A Law from The British Mandate
The Israeli military is making rare use of an emergency regulation enacted by the British Mandate in 1945 to order the temporary banishment of a Palestinian activist from his home city of Jerusalem.

Adnan Gheith, 35, faces expulsion for four months from the city because of his part in protests at mounting encroachment by Jewish settler groups in the politically ultra-sensitive Silwan neighbourhood of inner-city Arab East Jerusalem.

Silwan is the primary flashpoint in the struggle between the settlers and Palestinians for control of key sectors of East Jerusalem.

Robert Mugabe President Of Zimbabwe?

OK! Its De-facto Dictator
HARARE, Zimbabwe — The warning signs are proliferating. Journalists have been harassed and jailed. Threats of violence are swirling in the countryside. The president’s supposed partner in the government has been virulently attacked in the state-controlled media as a quisling for the West. And the president himself has likened his party to a fast-moving train that will crush anything in its way.
After nearly two years of tenuous stability under a power-sharing government, fears are mounting here that President Robert Mugabe, the autocrat who presided over a bloody, discredited election in 2008, is planning to seize untrammeled control of Zimbabwe during the elections he wants next year.

Somehow All Is Not As It Seems

The Taliban Still Fight On Undeterred

JUMAH KALA, Afghanistan —The villagers gathered on mounds of dirt to watch as the American armored vehicles rolled in. The streets were narrow and banked by high mud walls; the bulky vehicles could barely squeeze through. The villagers had not seen a coalition patrol here in at least two years, they told the American commander as he stepped out to greet them.
“And how long has it been since you’ve seen the governor?” the commander, Capt. Aaron T. Schwengler, asked the villagers as they crowded around him.
“Ten years,” one man said through an interpreter.

When Christians Invade

An Atheist Country
She attended a morning church service, joining in the carol singing led by a cassock-wearing choir, and then watched a nativity play performed by children from the congregation.
But Miss Zhang's Protestant church is an illegal one, and its 1,000-strong members have grown used to worshipping in a variety of office buildings across Beijing in an effort to avoid the scrutiny of the authorities.
A 25-year-old graduate and junior manager in an engineering company, Miss Zhang has been a Christian for four years. She says many people, including her parents who are local government officials and members of the communist party, think she's "crazy" and question both her faith and the wisdom of being a Christian in a communist country.

You Mustn't Investigate Allegations Of Torture

Because It's Against The Law
It was three months into Barack Obama's presidency, and the administration -- under pressure to do something about alleged abuses in Bush-era interrogation policies -- turned to a Florida senator to deliver a sensitive message to Spain:

Don't indict former President George W. Bush's legal brain trust for alleged torture in the treatment of war on terror detainees, warned Mel Martinez on one of his frequent trips to Madrid. Doing so would chill U.S.-Spanish relations.