(Pa. Governor Ed Rendell)
· Pennsylvania Governor Rendell Offers Coverage to 29,000 People and Calls for Health Care for All
· Catholic teachers union takes case to Rome. Bruised by the Union-Busting Scranton Diocese’s decision to deny recognition of their organization, the teachers union is planning to appeal their case to the Vatican.
· Public Outcry Keeps Hormone Milk Labels in PA
· Voters in SC Encouraged to Print Out Their Own Ballots Before Going to Polls
· According to the Gloucester Times Daily ES&S has told its customers in MA that "the firm's software 'will not meet federal standards and can't be modified to meet those standards.'"
· A representative of Republican Albert Howard's New Hampshire hand count called this morning to say that, without giving any specific details, the NH SoS office informed them today that "We're gonna have to stop the recount for a couple of days" next week. No reason, other than "legislative business" was given.
· Bloody Reality and the Delusions of Bush, Robert Fisk, Independent UK. ForeignPolicy: Is this how lame-duck American presidents are supposed to behave?
· Dramatic Voices of Dissent: Celebrities Film. The actors in this four-part TV series are more of a social movement than a cast.
· Egypt takes new tack to send Palestinians back to Gaza. At least 36 Egyptian security forces have been injured, some of them critically, in clashes at the chaotic border with the Gaza Strip, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit told journalists here today.
· Polls point to a Barack Obama victory in South Carolina's primary Saturday, but the Rev. Larry McCutcheon isn't so sure. The pastor of Orangeburg's Trinity United Methodist Church finds "most of the people I talk to are trying to choose" between Obama and Hillary Clinton.
· Following 9/11, President Bush and seven top officials of his administration waged a carefully orchestrated campaign of misinformation about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq. President George W. Bush and seven of his administration's top officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, made at least 935 false statements in the two years following September 11, 2001, about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Nearly five years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, an exhaustive examination of the record shows that the statements were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses.
· Never in history has a story been so slanted as that of Palestine and Israel. Never has the victim been so squarely blamed for his own misfortunes as the Palestinian. This is not an arrogant counter-narrative to Israel's concoctions. It's a glaring truth that continues to be either ignored or misunderstood.
· The military adventurers of the Bush administration have much in common with the corporate leaders of the defunct energy company Enron. Both groups of men thought that they were the "smartest guys in the room," the title of Alex Gibney's prize-winning film on what went wrong at Enron. The neoconservatives in the White House and the Pentagon outsmarted themselves. They failed even to address the problem of how to finance their schemes of imperialist wars and global domination.
· Busted: NY Times fudges its stance on Iraq war
· Firefighters tell Florida Security Moms: Rudy hired 'unqualified yes men'
· President Hugo Chavez on Friday accused neighboring Colombia and the United States of plotting a military "aggression" against Venezuela.
· Campus newspaper writes editorial urging the school to reject Rove speech.
· Three New York agencies sued Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Citigroup Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and 23 more underwriters for allegedly helping Countrywide Financial Corp. to defraud investors.
· Little in Jerome Kerviel's background suggested he would become possibly the biggest rogue trader of all time. And the big question remains: What led him to orchestrate what France's second-largest bank describes as massive, fraudulent trades that cost it more than $7 billion?
· Stocks end volatile week with sharp decline
Wall Street ended a tumultuous week with a sharp decline Friday, backtracking following two days of stunning gains as investors turned cautious and cashed in some of their gains.
· State of Union: Economy is key. Bush will lobby for stimulus plan and may call for more measures to ease housing crunch and cut corporate tax rates. On Saturday he reiterated his hope that the bill will pass swiftly.
