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cloughjacqueline45 · December 22, 2011, 5:33 PM

Ryan J. Reilly December 22, 2011, 5:33 PM

The House Ethics Committee announced Thursday that it was extending its investigation into Florida Republican Rep. Vern Buchanan, who is also under a Justice Department probe for allegations he broke campaign finance laws.

The Ethics Committee investigation began after the matter was transmitted from the Office of Congressional Ethics on Nov. 8. A press release said the Ethics Committee would announce its ?course of action in this matter on or before Monday, February 6, 2012.?

A Federal Election Commission report obtained by TPM on Wednesday found that the evidence ?comes close to supporting a finding that it is more likely than not? that Buchanan broke the law. They also said that Buchanan did ?not seem credible.?

Federal Election Commission, House Ethics Committee, Vern Buchanan

Ryan J. Reilly

Ryan J. Reilly is a D.C.-based reporter for TPM. Prior to joining TPM, he worked for a news website covering the Justice Department and was a researcher for Bloomberg News. His email address is ryan(at)talkingpointsmemo.com.

cloughjacqueline45

Update: Thursday evening, the House Republicans agreed to a deal.

Like most economists, I tend to assume that people act in their own best interests: not in all cases?heavy smokers and chronic gamblers are obvious exceptions?but as a general rule. How then to explain the latest actions of the House Republicans?

In voting down a Senate bill to extend payroll-tax cuts, as well as unemployment benefits for those who have been out of work for more than six months, Speaker Boehner and his colleagues have presented President Obama with an early Christmas present. No wonder he was looking so fired up (by his standards, anyway) in the White House briefing room Thursday, where, surrounded by a dozen or so ordinary Americans, he pointed out that many Republicans in the Senate had agreed to the compromise proposal, and snapped, ?Has this place become so dysfunctional that even when people agree we can?t get things done? Enough is enough.?

Having delayed his Christmas vacation in Hawaii until the stalemate is resolved, the President, for once, is in the catbird seat. If an agreement can?t be reached before the New Year, the typical American family will face a tax increase of about a thousand dollars a year, which is roughly forty dollars for each bi-weekly paycheck. A couple of days ago, somebody in the Administration had the smart idea of asking Americans, via Twitter and Facebook, what forty dollars means to them. According to the White House, more than thirty thousand people responded?you can see some of their comments here?and some of them were standing on the press-room dais with Obama.

It wasn?t immediately clear whether they included ?Joseph from New Jersey,? who said he would have to sacrifice a pizza night with his daughters, or ?Pete from Wisconsin? who said he would have to cancel a car trip to visit his father in a nursing home, but the President, in what was one of the most cleverly orchestrated and blatantly political events of his Presidency, told their stories anyway. For Republicans with any nous at all, it must have made for painful viewing.

Even before Obama?s appearance, some senior Republicans who can spot a disaster in the making were calling on their colleagues in the House to relent. Speaking on the Thursday edition of ?The Early Show,? on CBS, Senator John McCain said the standoff was hurting the Party and its hopes of winning the Presidential election?a point that echoed something Newt Gingrich said on Wednesday: ?Incumbent presidents have enormous advantages. And I think what Republicans ought to do is what?s right for America. They ought to do it calmly and pleasantly and happily.?

Also on Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal?s editorial page, hardly a haven of moderate views, published a despairing comment, which began:

GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell famously said a year ago that his main task in the 112th Congress was to make sure that President Obama would not be re-elected. Given how he and House Speaker John Boehner have handled the payroll tax debate, we wonder if they might end up re-electing the President before the 2012 campaign even begins in earnest.

The headline on the Journal editorial was ?The GOP?s payroll tax fiasco: How did Republicans manage to lose the tax issue to Obama?? But the answer the article provided?political incompetence on the part of McConnell and Boehner?was woefully inadequate. Wary of the dangers they were facing, the two Republican leaders had reportedly agreed on the compromise deal that passed the Senate. This would have extended the tax cuts and unemployment benefits for two months. In return, the White House had provisionally agreed to bring forward its decision on the controversial Keystone XL pipeline.

It wasn?t McConnell and Boehner who formed what the Journal editorial aptly referred to as a ?circular firing squad.? It was the enrag?s in the House who rebelled against the deal, just as they rebelled, during the summer, against Boehner?s efforts to reach a compromise deal on the debt ceiling and the deficit. The stalemate that ensued helped bring Congress?s approval rating down to thirteen per cent in the August Gallup poll. Today, Congress?s approval rating is even lower: eleven per cent?the lowest figure recorded since Gallup started asking the question in 1974.

Sticking with the self-interest theory for a moment, one possible explanation for the Republicans? actions is that most congressional districts are now so uncompetitive, due to gerrymandering or whatever, that incumbents have no fear of losing office. I don?t find this argument persuasive. Many of the Tea Party supporters swept to victory in a midterm election. Such contests almost always see the Party that holds the White House losing seats. Presidential elections are very different. In what is shaping up to be a close race, many members of the Class of 2010 could be voted out.

A more compelling argument is that the Republican Party is no longer a mean electoral machine, but an uneasy alliance of potentially competing groups. As long as they are attacking President Obama, these groups get along fine. But when they have to actually govern and make decisions, big problems arise.

Despite all that has happened, the Republican establishment in Washington is still, fundamentally, the agent of corporate America and its most privileged denizens. Folks like McConnell and Boehner, but also strategists like Karl Rove and Stuart Stevens (Mitt Romney?s svengali figure), believe in occupying power, both to keep out the Democrats and to protect the interests of their wealthy supporters. Arrayed beneath this traditional structure is a seething populist movement that contains elements of everything from Know Nothing nativism to Poujadism to Christian fundamentalism to economic Libertarianism.

The representatives of this movement didn?t come to Washington to boost demand in the economy, to preserve tax breaks for the local gentry, or even, necessarily, to preserve their own seats. They came to put the country on a new path, downsize the federal government, and generally make a racket. After a year in the capital, they have succeeded in the third aim but not the first two?hence their frustration.

To Republican congressmen of this ilk, the Senate payroll-tax bill was a typically shoddy Washington compromise, which didn?t resolve any outstanding disputes but merely shooed them away for a bit. As it happens, the insurgents were right about that. Extending important tax and spending legislation for a period of two months is no way to run the world?s largest economy. But given the political realities of the moment, it was all the leaders of the two parties could cobble together.

In registering their protest vote, Eric Cantor and his crew have put themselves in an untenable position, from which, at some point in the next few days, they will surely try to extricate themselves. But don?t expect President Obama to do them any favors. So far the dispute has cost him a few days on the beach. The political benefits he has reaped are incalculable.

Photograph: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images.

Source: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/johncassidy/2011/12/obama-payroll-tax-cuts.html

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Public school girls prepare to dance around a May Pole in Bellamy Park, located on South 17th Street between Dawson and Wooster streets in Wilmington. (Undated photo from the Louis T. Moore Collection at the New Hanover County Public Library)

This question took some serious digging. As it turns out, records for high school football and baseball games in the 1920s and 1930s are pretty sketchy. Legion Stadium was built in the 1930s, but the North Carolina State Athletic Association has records of sanctioned interscholastic events back into the 1910s and 1920s.

From at least the late ?20s until the mid-30s, New Hanover played football and baseball at Bellamy Park, the former home of the Wilmington Pirates. Bellamy Park was along 17th street between Dawson and Wooster streets ? near the current location of the StarNews office at 1003 S. 17th St., Wilmington [Map this]. Prior to the late 1920s, things become more murky as records are hard to come by. There is at least some evidence that the New Hanover High School Wildcats played baseball at Robert Strange Park along Eighth Street between Ann and Castle streets. It?s the current site of the Fit for Fun Center and several softball fields. Again, records are pretty tough to find for this period as the Morning Star?s 10-inch sports column was filled mainly with Major League Baseball standings and box scores.

By that mid-1930s, the Wilmington Morning Star had an extensive sports section and was moving toward more local content. In 1935, excitement was high after the New Hanover Wildcats opened the season with a resounding victory against Whiteville, but local sportswriters said the Wildcats needed to improve their blocking.

Date posted: December 22, 2011

User-contributed question by:
Carey Sasser

Source: http://www.myreporter.com/?p=12259

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U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, center right, with U.S. Ambassador to Libya Gene Crets, center left, and Gen. Carter Ham, Commander U.S. Africa Command, third from left, places a wreath at the grave site of 13 U.S. Navy sailors during a ceremony at the Protestant Cemetery in Tripoli, Libya, Saturday, Dec., 17, 2011. Panetta visited the grave site of the sailors, who where killed on the USS Intrepid in 1804. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, Pool)

U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and Libyan Prime Minister Abd al-Rheem Al-Keeb greet one another during their joint news conference in Tripoli, Libya, Saturday, Dec., 17, 2011. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, Pool)

U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, second from left, leaves the grave site of 13 U.S. Navy sailors at the Protestant Cemetery in Tripoli, Libya, after participating in a wreath laying ceremony Saturday, Dec., 17, 2011. Panetta visited the grave site of the sailors, who where killed on the USS Intrepid in 1804. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, Pool)

U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, center, leaves his challenge coin on the grave stone during the wreath laying ceremony with U.S. Ambassador to Libya Gene Crets, obscured third from left, and Gen. Carter Ham, second from left, Commander U.S. Africa Command, at grave site of 13 U.S. Navy sailors at the Protestant Cemetery in Tripoli, Libya, Saturday, Dec., 17, 2011. Panetta visited the grave site of the sailors, who where killed on the USS Intrepid in 1804. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, Pool)

U.S. Sec. of Defense Leon Panetta, left, is presented with a gift during his meeting with Libyan Minister of Defense Usama al-Jwayli, right, in Tripoli, Libya, Saturday, Dec. 17, 2011. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, Pool)

TRIPOLI, Libya (AP) ? U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said "the torch of freedom" has passed to the Libyan people and he pledged during a historic visit Saturday to Tripoli that the United States will do all it can to help the country move toward democracy.

But he and his Libyan hosts acknowledged the threat of Islamic militants gaining ground in this period of political uncertainty following the ouster and death of longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi.

Panetta and Libyan leaders identified challenges for the government now forming, including how to gain control of the militias that overthrew Gadhafi during an eight-month civil war.

"This will be a long and difficult transition, but I have confidence that you will succeed in realizing the dream of a representative government," Panetta said during a news conference with Prime Minister Abdurrahim el-Keib.

"The torch of freedom that has passed throughout the centuries and now passes from nation to nation in the Middle East and North Africa burns brightly here in Libya. May it light your way to a future of peace, prosperity and freedom," Panetta said.

While his visit was brief, Panetta made history as the first U.S. Pentagon chief to set foot on Libyan soil.

He evoked U.S. history, too, with a visit to the cemetery presumed to hold remains of U.S. sailors killed in Tripoli harbor in 1804. Their deaths were memorialized in the famous "shores of Tripoli" line in the Marine Corps hymn.

Both Panetta and al-Keeb expressed confidence that the fledgling government will be able to reach out to the militias and bring them together.

"We know how serious this issue is," said al-Keeb, "We realize it is not matter of saying 'OK, put down your arms, go back to work or do what you want to do.' We realize that there are lots of things that we need to be organized."

More broadly, Panetta said the revolts across the region represent a quest for sovereignty by the people, but they will all involve different approaches and challenges.

During meetings with the Libyan leaders, Panetta expressed concern about al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb militants gaining a foothold amid the chaos of an unfolding democracy. But they told him that the Libyan people will reject the terrorist group, said a senior defense official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the discussions were private.

Panetta's motorcade from the airport into the city provided views of the nation's violent past and future promise ? lush orange groves, carcasses of bombed buildings and charred and graffiti-covered compound once occupied by Gadhafi. Flying from rooftops were the green, black and red flags, adorned with a star and a crescent, belonging to the new government.

At one point, amid the graffiti splashed across the walls of Gadhafi's former compound was a short comment in English: "Thanx US/UK."

The visit also put the man who has led much of the U.S. terrorism fight over the past several years at the scene of one of the first American wars on terror, more than two centuries ago.

Panetta went to what historians believe is the gravesite of as many as 13 U.S. sailors killed in 1804, when the Navy ship Intrepid exploded while slipping into Tripoli harbor to attack pirate ships that had captured an American frigate.

As the story goes, governments along the Barbary coast had turned to state-sponsored piracy to raise money, attacking and taking over merchant ships, enslaving their crews and stealing their bounties. Unwilling to pay fees to protect its ships, the U.S. sent the Navy frigate Philadelphia to the region but it ran aground just off Tripoli and was captured.

President Thomas Jefferson sent a team to get the Philadelphia back or destroy it. Under cover of darkness, the Intrepid sailed into the harbor, killed about 25 pirates and burned the Philadelphia.

A few months later, Jefferson sent the Intrepid back to destroy as many of the pirate ships as possible. The plan was to pack the ketch with explosives, sail into the harbor and blow her up.

The 13 sailors never got to their destination. The ship exploded prematurely killing all aboard and the next day bodies washed ashore. They were buried outside Tripoli, but in 1949 the remains were moved to The Protestant Cemetery by the Libyan government.

On Saturday, Panetta walked into the small walled cemetery and slowly made his way to a corner where five large but simple white gravestones mark the graves of the American sailors. Markers on four of the stones read, "Here lies an American sailor who gave his life in the explosion of the United States Ship Intrepid in Tripoli Harbour, Sept. 4, 1804."

Panetta placed a wreath at the site and, after a moment of silence, placed one of his U.S. secretary of defense souvenir coins on top of one of the stones.

New life was breathed into the long-ago tale by Congress this year. Lawmakers, prodded by descendants of the sailors, added provisions to the defense bill ordering the Pentagon to study the feasibility of exhuming the bodies and bringing them home to America.

In a statement, Panetta said the recent effort to restore the cemetery is "a symbol of the values we share."

Officials said that Panetta made no specific offers of assistance to the Libyan leaders, and he told reporters that there was no discussion of providing military equipment or weapons.

"They have to determine what their needs are and what kind of assistance is required," he said. "And whatever they need, the United States will be happy to respond."

Ahead of Panetta's visit, the Obama administration announced it had lifted penalties that were imposed on Libya in February to choke off Gadhafi's financial resources while his government was using violence to suppress peaceful protests.

The U.S. at the time blocked some $37 billion in Libyan assets, and a White House statement said Friday's action "unfreezes all government and central bank funds within U.S. jurisdiction, with limited exceptions."

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2011-12-17-US-Libya/id-5739c4ce08b94a6a92e6a26554db480c

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