Kate Mara and Guy Smallman: European governments impose austerity demands in Greece but fund detention centers in Greece for refugees. Xenophobic views expressed even by centrist parties … Read More
Search under way for abducted son of former Pakistan PM
http://www.youtube.com/v/jWRVwSbky7k?version=3&f=videos&app=youtube_gdata See original article here: Search under way for abducted son of former Pakistan PM
At least 14 killed, 50 injured in Pakistan election rally bomb attack
The blast went off during the right-wing religious Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI) party rally for its candidate Munir Orakzai in a Pakistani tribal area.Other reports said the number of victims might be higher, with Al Jazeera reporting 15 people killed.The latest in the series of attacks targeting political parties and their candidates, it raises the number of Pakistani election campaign victims to more than 70, according to an AFP tally. … Read More
Republican’s term limits proposal is dumb, undemocratic
While catching fire in conservative circles this week, a constitutional amendment proposed by Republican Matt Salmon to impose congressional term limits is a terrible solution to a non-problem. Republicans used to love term limits, when they believed that incumbency advantages were depriving them of what they thought was a deserved majority in Congress. Once they won control of the House and Senate in the mid-1990s, most Republicans promptly forgot about the idea. But some die-hards are still pushing it, and this week Salmon called for limiting politicians to a maximum of six years in the House and 12 in the Senate.It’s just as bad an idea now as ever.Just to briefly remind everyone why it’s such a bad idea, it really comes down to this: The federal government is going to develop policies. Liberal policies, conservative policies, whatever: The government will develop and carry out choices about public policy. Each of these choices winds up being a struggle among a whole lot of players: the president; members of the House and the Senate; the political parties; interest groups; the permanent bureaucracy in executive branch departments and agencies.Continue Reading… … Read More
Russians prepare 1.5mn questions for Putin’s annual Q&A call-in
The questions were submitted through the Internet and at specially organized stations. The queries will be asked live at six studios in different locations throughout Russia, which are not disclosed until the call-in show starts.Putin’s 11th Q&A session will be different from previous ones as the questions will be arranged by type, not by where the questioner is from, presidential spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told the press shortly ahead of the session.“Somewhere we will have the representatives of science and intelligentsia, in some places we will have science representatives and students, veterans of WWII and those who search for soldiers’ remains, peasants and families with a lot of adopted children, as this topic is very urgent,” Peskov explained.Some of the questions will also touch upon Russia’s political problems, such as appropriate types of protest, whether the majority party is ready for a dialogue with the opposition, recent corruption scandals in the Defense Ministry, and the ongoing trial of whistleblower Aleksey Navalny.The Russian TV channels that are organizing the event also said that the main studio in Moscow will host representatives of political parties and public movements, as well as several figures from major news events of 2012. … Read More
Mexican teachers set fire in local ruling party office
Teachers angered at education reform stormed the offices of political parties in southwestern Mexico on Wednesday, breaking windows and setting fire inside the ruling party’s local headquarters. Thousands of members of the CETEG teachers’ union, joined by farmers and student groups,…
GOP quits public policy
Are Republicans even trying? There’s good evidence to suggest they are not.While I’ve been saying that the GOP is broken and hopelessly dysfunctional, Rachel Maddow has come up with a new name for part of that dysfunction: Republicans are “post-policy.” To some extent, that’s because they’ll simply oppose whatever Barack Obama proposes, but there’s also an even more interesting aspect of it that they simply have given up on and lost the capacity for developing policy ideas.And, no, it’s not just because they are conservatives and conservatives are inherently less likely to have policy ideas. A look at the evidence will demonstrate this.Here’s the story: Over the last couple of decades, majority parties in the House of Representatives have taken to reserving the very first bill numbers for their party’s agenda. Normally, bills are just numbered in order, when they are introduced: H.R. 637 is usually the bill introduced just after H.R. 636 and just before H.R. 638. But that’s just custom, and at some point a new custom evolved to save H.R. 1 through H.R. 5, and then through H.R. 10, for important party agenda bills.Continue Reading… … Read More
