News For America: The Lazy Edition

  While the other blogs and media outlets all cover the Sunday news shows to see who is lying about what in the political world, I'm going off on a different tract today. Today, you are getting brief news snippets from all over that may have some effect on you and your life in good old America. Or, maybe not.

     Heparin Blood Thinner Being Probed By The U.S./China

BEIJING - China and the United States are working together to investigate the blood-thinner heparin, which has been linked to 19 American deaths, China's food and drug administration said Sunday.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has been widening its investigation into the hundreds of adverse reactions -- including difficulty breathing, nausea and falling blood pressure -- linked to U.S. health care company Baxter International's heparin injections.
Heparin is derived from pig intestines, and China is the world's leading supplier.   Full Story

    Georgia Hit by Another Severe Storm

ATLANTA - Two people in rural northwest Georgia are dead and dozens injured after a series of severe storms moved through the state, producing the first-ever tornado to hit downtown Atlanta.
A woman was killed in Polk County early Saturday afternoon when a storm demolished her home and threw her and her husband into a field, while an elderly man in neighboring Floyd County was killed by flying debris as he sat in his home, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. Officials have not released the victims' names.
Calls to the Polk and Floyd County sheriff's departments were not immediately returned.   Full Story

  5 Killed In Ohio Car Wreck

LUCAS, Ohio - Authorities say a car drove off a hilly state highway in northern Ohio, overturned, struck several trees and caught fire -- killing the three men and two women inside.
The Ohio State Highway Patrol says the accident took place just after 4 p.m. Saturday on State Route 603 near Mansfield, about 70 miles northeast of Columbus.   

  What would the day be without a Poll in it?

Nearly nine in 10 Americans say it's important to know presidential and congressional candidates' positions on open government, but three out of four view the federal government as secretive, according to a survey released Sunday.
Scripps Howard News Service and Ohio University conducted the survey in conjunction with Sunshine Week, a nationwide effort by media organizations to draw attention to the public's right to know.
The survey found a significant increase in the percentage of Americans who believe the federal government is very or somewhat secretive, from 62 percent of those surveyed in 2006 to 74 percent in 2008. That's a sobering jump, said David Westphal, Washington editor for McClatchy Newspapers and co-chairman of the American Society of Newspaper Editors' Freedom of Information Committee.

"On the other hand, it's gratifying to see that almost 90 percent believe a candidate's position on open government is an important issue when they make their Election Day choices," he said.  Full Story

  Only 74% believe the government is secretive? Wait a minute. I forgot. The other 26% have to be the followers of our Idiot-In-Chief in the White House. My bad!

Technorati Tags: news, Ameirca, Georgia, Ohio, government

FISA Bill Passes In House

  So the House passed the House Democratic leadership version of FISA, which does not allow amnesty for the telecoms, by a vote of 213-197. The Democrat's bill says that the telecom's can be sued for helping Bush with his illegal warrantless spy program.

   So this bill will now go to the Senate, which, like Bush, not does like a FISA bill without the amnesty provision in it. the House bill will allow the telecoms to make their cases and to show classified evidence to the presiding judge in a closed session without having the plaintiffs in attendance.   Source

   As is usual, the Republican amnesty supporters had a few more fear-mongering statements to make after the bill was passed.

CNN

Democrats "know the risks they are taking on behalf of the American people and they don't care ... and that's what bothers me most," Republican Rep. Heather Wilson of New Mexico said.

Rep. Adam Putnam of Florida blasted Democrats for adjourning Congress for two weeks "without having given every protection available to the American people."  

  These sorry Republican's don't know when to quit with the scare tactics! It's all that they have left to run on, so I guess we'll just have to " suck it up " and listen to it a while longer.

   The Department of Justice had a statement also.

"We are concerned that the proposal would not provide the intelligence community the critical tools needed to protect the country."

The statement also restates the administration's position that immunity protection is necessary so the program can continue.

"Exposing the private sector to continued litigation for assisting in efforts to defend the country understandably makes the private sector much more reluctant to cooperate. Without their cooperation, our efforts to protect the country cannot succeed," it said.

Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, warned Wednesday that the House proposal "would, in essence, shut us down" and sent House Speaker Nancy Pelosi a letter outlining his objections to the legislation.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers took a different angle.

"We are not going to cave into a retroactive immunity situation," the Michigan Democrat said. "There's no law school example in our memory that gives retroactive immunity for something you don't know what you are giving it for. It just doesn't work in the real world or on the Hill either."

Bush called the plan "a partisan bill that would undermine America's security," and White House spokesman Tony Fratto said the Democratic bill "would hamstring the intelligence community."

  I do believe that the Republicans make recordings of their fear-mongering message since it is the same old crap day in and day out. I will most certainly be glad when this group of communist are no longer in office. I'll be more than happy if these lawsuits ever make it into a court of law just so that we have more evidence against Bush and Cheney so that they can rightfully be prosecuted in court for their crimes, which we all know are vast.

Technorati Tags: FISA, Congress, George Bush, Mike McConnell, telecom amnesty, warrantless wiretaps