Del.icio.us Links

links for 2008-11-25

  • California officials are planning to investigate whether the Mormon church gave an accurate accounting of its role in the campaign that succeeded in getting a same-sex marriage ban approved in the state.

    The action by the California Fair Political Practices Commission came in response to a complaint filed two weeks ago by a gay rights activist. Fred Karger, founder of Californians Against Hate, accuses the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints of failing to report the value of the work it did to support Proposition 8.

    Roman Porter, the agency's executive director, said Monday that the decision to open an investigation does not mean staff members have determined there was any wrongdoing, only that Karger's complaint merits further inquiry.
    +++++++
    Payback time……

  • ABC News has learned that Dr. Susan Rice has emerged as the leading candidate to be President-elect Obama's nominee as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.

    Neither Dr. Rice nor the Obama Transition Team had any comment. The usual caveats apply — nothing is yet a done deal, nothing has been officially offered or accepted, national security team announcements will not come until after Thanksgiving.

    Dr. Rice, a member of President Bill Clinton's National Security Council and a former Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, was involved in President-elect Obama's campaign as a senior foreign policy adviser.
    ++++++
    Another Clinton Administration official……

  • Now, the association says the surprising vice presidential nod Palin received is already helped stimulate interest.

    So far responses are up 20 percent from last year.
    +++++++
    Alaska cruises are spectcular I am told.

    (tags: sarah_palin)
  • FOX News Channel’s (FNC) Alan Colmes will relinquish his role as co-host of Hannity & Colmes at the end of the year.

    In announcing his decision, Colmes said, “I approached Bill Shine (FNC’s Senior Vice President of Programming) earlier this year about wanting to move on after 12 years to develop new and challenging ways to contribute to the growth of the network. Although it’s bittersweet to leave one of the longest marriages on cable news, I’m proud that both Sean (Hannity) and I remained unharmed after sitting side by side, night after night for so many years.”

    Colmes will continue to have a presence on FNC as he will serve as a liberal commentator on a variety of FOX News programming, including Foxnews.com’s The Strategy Room and continue hosting his radio program, The Alan Colmes Show on FOX Talk, a division of FOX News Radio. He will also begin developing a weekend program.
    Sorry to see him go…..

  • (tags: twitter)
  • Channeling her inner rock star, attorney Gloria Allred threw her arms into the air to the cheers of more than a thousand who rallied outside the state Capitol on Saturday in hopes of overturning Proposition 8.

    The high-profile lawyer promised she'd help to ensure that same-sex couples have the right to marry by working to invalidate the controversial proposition.

    Allred, who declared that gay rights activists had a "good chance" of persuading the state Supreme Court to invalidate Proposition 8, was among several speakers at the Capitol rally.

    Saturday's rally – three days after the California court announced it would hear the constitutional challenge to Proposition 8 – was the third in Sacramento in as many weeks. It drew between 1,500 and 1,800 people to the Capitol's west steps.
    ++++++
    Another Flop for a gay marriage rally. No support…..

    (tags: gaymarriage)
  • Opponents of Proposition 8 might have to go back to the ballot to reverse the ban on same-sex marriage, speakers told a crowd of about 5,000 at a loud and enthusiastic gay-rights rally in front of the state Capitol on Saturday.
    ++++++++
    Aniother flop. Flap is e-mailed that there were less than 3000 present.
    (tags: gaymarriage)
  • Speaking on ABC's "This Week," David Axelrod, Obama's chief political strategist, said the president-elect is weighing whether to let the cuts for the wealthy expire on Dec. 31, 2010, as provided in current law. Such a delay would permit Obama to avoid raising taxes during a recession.

    If accurate, this is fabulous news for several reasons. For starters, it means Obama will be avoiding the bad decision of taking money out of taxpayers' pockets at the exact moment the U.S. economy needs it the most. Second, if you're going to raise taxes, you want to do it far away from Election Day as possible. Obama and the Democrats, politically, would be best off raising taxes as early as possible. Congressional Republicans can, even from the minority, spend much of the summer and fall of 2010 loudly arguing in favor of extending the tax cuts — in what will be, at best, an economy that just emerged from a recession, or an economy still sluggishly plodding or worse.
    ++++++
    Tax cut for whom?

  • Federal regulators approved a radical plan to stabilize Citigroup in an arrangement in which the government could soak up billions of dollars in losses at the struggling bank, the government announced late Sunday night.
    ++++++++
    Is Bank of America next?
  • Facing an increasingly ominous economic outlook, President-elect Barack Obama and other Democrats are rapidly ratcheting up plans for a massive fiscal stimulus program that could total as much as $700 billion over the next two years.
    That amount, more than the nation has spent over the past six years in Iraq, would rival the sum Congress committed last month to rescuing the country's financial system. It would also be one of the biggest public spending programs aimed at jolting the economy since President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal.
    +++++++
    And, where is the $$$ coming from?