Here is an interesting Texas Monthly profile of former first-family bad girl Jenna Bush, who has recently married and has been teaching in a low-income area of Washington, DC for the past two years. She is also the author of a soon-to-be-published book on families dealing with AIDS. Jenna and twin sister Barbara also spend the last week of 2007 volunteering with Habitat for Humanity
in Covington, LA, just outside New Orleans.
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Venezuela's Jews Find Their Voice as Chavez Ramps Up Harassment - this can't be good for the Hugo-Hollywood axis.
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Jose Padilla, the so-called "dirty Bomber," was sentenced to 17 years in a US prison for being part of a domestic cell that recruited terrorists and sent material and financial support to known Islamic terror organizations. As a US citizen, Padilla was subject to US criminal law. But the judge in the case noted, ""There is no evidence that these defendants personally maimed, kidnapped or killed anyone in the United States or elsewhere." Which again raises the question, how do you preemptively arrest or convict someone on terrorism charges, when they have not actually committed a terrorist act?
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Feeling Misled on Home Price, Buyers Sue Agent - this story, which is unfolding in California, illustrates the perils of buying a home in a hyper-inflated home market, which virtually all of California has historically been. It's also worth noting that it is unethical for agents representing buyers and sellers to "deal" with each other over home prices. Unless it can be proved that an agent lied to a buyer outright with regard to the physical condition of a property, it is difficult to prove fraud or bad faith with respect to real estate transactions, simply because at any time, either the buyer or the seller can back out of the deal, and either party is free to hire their own experts to appraise and inspect the property.
In an effort to stimulate the economy, the IRS will give most tax filers extra $600 to $1200 rebates this year, perhaps more for households with children.
Bill Clinton and Arnold Schwartzenegger both agree that the poor would be better off with simple bank account services, rather than using payday loan companies, check cashing companies, pawn shops, and other businesses that extort an estimated $8 billion anually from the poor. Yes, I said extort. I would be happy if these bloodsuckers disappeared en masse from the face of the earth tomorrow. But I also know that many poor do not have bank accounts because they mismanage their money and end up indebted to banks, mainly through credit card misuse or writing hot checks. The financial irresponsibility barrier must be overcome before banking will truly work for the poor. We can do it, but it will be slow and difficult.
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The Mayor of Detroit lied under oath about a sexual relationship, in order to protect himself and discredit a whistle-blower whose lawsuit against the city cost an estimated $9 million. Gee, it's 1998 all over again. See folks, it's not just about the sex -- it's about the lies and the wrongful termination and the lawsuits that result from those lies.
A Judicial Watch investigation has revealed some damning memos from Hillary Clinton's original 1993 Health Care Task Force. One anonymous staffer wrote, "... I have trouble coming up with a precedent in our peacetime history for such broad and centralized control over a sector of the economy."
The big news story yesterday was a photo of Hillary and Bill Clinton shaking hands with disgraced and indicted Chicago businessman Tony Rezko. Hillary attempted to use Barak Obama's relationship with Rezko against him when the photo of the Clintons and Rezko surfaced. Really, has there been any dirty-money political donor that the Clinton's haven't attempted to co-opt? But it also reminded me of this photo of Jack Abramoff and President Bush. Same blue curtains and everything. According to Democrats, the Abramoff photo proved beyond any doubt that President Bush was corrupt and a criminal. Will they say the same thing now about the Clintons?
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How much have things changed in the 20+ years since I graduated from High School? "ALLENTOWN, Pa. - Police faced a difficult if not impossible task Thursday as they tried to stop the spread of pornographic video and photos of two high school girls, images that were transmitted by cell phone to dozens of the girls' classmates and then to the wider world."
When I was in high school, viewing a nude photo of one of my female classmates would have simply felt dirty and wrong, no matter how attractive they were. We eagerly listened to locker-room gossip about which girls would go the farthest on a date, but I can tell you that even back in the dark ages we had Polaroid cameras, and I never saw a Polaroid of a classmate during my entire time in high school or college.
But now, in today's pornified culture that is enabled with camera cell phones, digital cameras, web cams, and the like, snapping nude photos of yourself or your friends, or even photographing them engaging in oral sex or other sexual acts, seems like a harmless game to teenagers. I never dreamed that I'd eventually have to deal with this sort of thing as a parent.
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