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    links for 2010-02-18

    • The United Nations' nuclear watchdog for the first time Thursday explicitly voiced concern that Iran is trying to make a nuclear bomb, amid signs of fraying relations between the agency's inspectors and authorities in the Islamic Republic.

      The International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed that Iran last week produced its first batch of 20% enriched uranium, based on scientific data it was given by Iranian officials who plan to use the more highly purified nuclear fuel at a Tehran medical reactor.

      The IAEA also said it had not yet resolved questions about documents that suggest Iran was engaged in experiments consistent with a clandestine nuclear program. Iran has called the documents forgeries.

      "The information . . . raises concerns about the possible existence in Iran of past or current undisclosed activities related to the development of a nuclear payload for a missile," the report said.
      ++++++++
      Well, no shit Sherlock – Iran ha been developing a nuclear weapon for years

      (tags: iran IAEA)
    • Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina may now be running against a former congressman in the California Senate GOP primary, but she's still the one receiving the active backing of some high-powered Republicans back in Washington.

      Fiorina is heading back to D.C. for a Feb. 25 fundraiser hosted by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Assistant Minority Leader Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) and Conference Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), according to an invitation obtained by CQ-Roll Call. Also on the host committee for the cocktail reception at Johnny's Half Shell are longtime GOP strategist and lobbyist Charlie Black and wife Judy; and leading Washington lobbyists Kirk Blalock, Phil Anderson and Wayne Berman.

    • A welter of Bay Area lawmakers led by Rep. George Miller, D-Martinez, and others from Oregon and Washington state wrote Sen. Dianne Feinstein today to urge her to back off her controversial plan to increase water deliveries to farms in the San Joaquin Valley, citing plummeting salmon populations.

      "The Feinstein plan will put thousands of families out of work from the fishing industry and local economies of the Pacific Coast," Miller charged. He accused Feinstein of trying to "legislatively override" endangered species protections and "legislate the salmon into extinction."

      The Sacramento River's Chinook salmon population has dropped from 750,000 in 2002 to 40,000 last year and North Coast commercial fishing has been shut down for three years.

      Bay Area Democrats arrayed against Feinstein are: Napa's Mike Thompson, San Jose's Zoe Lofgren, Marin's Lynn Woolsey, and Walnut Creek's John Garamendi.

    • Rasmussen
      2/16-17/10; 500 likely voters, 4.5% margin of error
      Mode: Automated phone
      (Rasmussen release)

      Indiana

      2010 Senate
      48% Coats (R). 32% Hill (D)
      49% Hostettler (R), 31% Hill (D)
      41% Stutzman (R), 33% Hill (D)
      46% Coats (R), 32% Ellsworth (D)
      46% Hostettler (R), 27% Ellsworth (D)
      40% Stutzman (R), 30% Ellsworth (D)

      Favorable / Unfavorable
      Dan Coats: 54 / 27
      Baron Hill: 39 / 35
      Marlin Stutzman: 35 / 25
      John Hostettler: 48 / 22
      Brad Ellsworth: 35 / 29
      +++++++
      Dan Coats should be able to handle any Dem candidates

      (tags: dan_coats)
    • Fourteen and counting.

      Senators Barbara Boxer, Jack Reed and Tom Udall have all now signed the letter pushing for a reconcilation vote on the public option, the group organizing the push confirms, bringing the total of Senators now pushing for the vote to roughly a fourth of the Dem caucus.

      That means the number of signatories to the letter, which calls on Harry Reid to allow a vote on the public option under reconcilation rules, has more than tripled in two days.

      “Going from 0 to 4 to 14 senators on the record in 2 days?” Adam Green, a spokesman for the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, emails. “This is what momentum looks like.”
      +++++++
      Jam it through…….

    • The society had been founded in 1958 by an earnest and capable entrepreneur named Robert Welch, a candy man, who brought together little clusters of American conservatives, most of them businessmen. He demanded two undistracted days in exchange for his willingness to give his seminar on the Communist menace to the United States, which he believed was more thoroughgoing and far-reaching than anyone else in America could have conceived. His influence was near-hypnotic, and his ideas wild. He said Dwight D. Eisenhower was a “dedicated, conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy,” and that the government of the United States was “under operational control of the Communist party.” It was, he said in the summer of 1961, “50-70 percent” Communist-controlled.
      +++++++
      Read it all.
      CPAC should NOT have allowed a remade JBS to be a co-sponsor.
    • Since Richard Nixon was president, the Conservative Political Action Conference has provided the American Right with an annual occasion for self-evaluation. On Thursday, when some 10,000 activists gather in Washington for this year’s conference, they will find themselves part of a conservative movement significantly different than it was during the Bush administration, or even in 2009.

      A jolt of anti-Obama populist energy has upended the movement’s traditional hierarchy, lifting some new or previously low profile groups to unprecedented heights while leaving traditional powers struggling to adapt.

    • Seizing on a roiling national security debate, Republican U.S. Senate candidate Carly Fiorina on Tuesday called on the Obama administration to try suspects in the Sept. 11 terror attacks in military tribunals rather than civilian courts.

      At a news conference at San Francisco International Airport, the former Hewlett-Packard CEO appeared with Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who has spearheaded a Republican effort to bar terrorism suspects from federal courts, where they generally are afforded more legal rights than before military commissions.

      Attorney General Eric Holder had proposed trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, one of the alleged co-conspirators in the 9/11 attacks, in federal court in Manhattan.

      But President Barack Obama is now looking for another trial venue after facing resistance from New York City officials and Republican critics.

      Graham in November proposed a measure to bar federal funding for civilian trials of Sept. 11 terror suspects, but it was shelved by Dems

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