By DEB RIECHMANN,
Associated Press

WASHINGTON - President Bush has settled on Michael B. Mukasey, a retired federal judge from New York, to replace Alberto Gonzales as attorney general and will announce his selection Monday, a person familiar with the president’s decision said Sunday evening.

Mukasey, who has handled terrorist cases in the U.S. legal system for more than a decade, would become the nation’s top law enforcement officer if confirmed by the Senate. Mukasey has the support of some key Democrats, and it appeared Bush was trying to avoid a bruising confirmation battle.

The 66-year-old New York native, who is a judicial adviser to GOP presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani, would take charge of a Justice Department where morale is low following months of investigations into the firings of nine U.S. attorneys and Gonzales’ sworn testimony on the Bush administration’s terrorist surveillance program.

Key lawmakers, Democrats and Republicans alike, had questioned Gonzales’ credibility and competency after he repeatedly testified that he could not recall key events.

The White House refused to comment Sunday. The person familiar with Bush’s decision refused to be identified by name because the nomination had not been officially announced.

read more HERE

Leave a ReplyToggle Meta

By RYAN NAKASHIMA
The Associated Press

LAS VEGAS - Police arrested O.J. Simpson on Sunday, saying he was part of an armed group who burst into a Las Vegas hotel room and snatched memorabilia that documented his own sports career, long ago eclipsed by scandal.

The arrest starts a new legal odyssey for the fallen football star who more than a decade ago was acquitted of the slayings of his ex-wife and a friend, and opens the possibility he could spend decades behind bars.

Simpson was taken away from The Palms casino-hotel by plainclothes officers a day after the arrest of a golfing buddy who police say accompanied him with a gun in the Thursday night holdup. Handcuffed and wearing a golf shirt and jeans, Simpson was placed in an SUV. He was later ordered by a judge to be held without bail, police said.

“He was very cooperative, there were no issues,” Capt. James Dillon said.

Simpson was at the Clark County Detention Center on Sunday night for booking on two counts of robbery with a deadly weapon, two counts of assault with a deadly weapon, conspiracy to commit a crime and burglary with a firearm, police said. The district attorney, meanwhile, said he expected Simpson to ultimately be charged with seven felonies and one gross misdemeanor.

If convicted of the booking charges, Simpson would face up to 30 years in state prison on each robbery count alone.

read more and laugh HERE

1 CommentToggle Meta

Ella Fitzgerald
“April in Paris”

It’s not April and I’m not in Paris, but I sure love this song!

The travelling American jazz organisation called Jazz At The Philharmonic under the leadership of Norman Granz would travel the world. For a concert in the Netherlands a concert was planned in the Amsterdam Concertgebouw on May 5 1957, Liberation Day.
In this clip we see a performance of Ella Fitzgerald singing “April in Paris”.
For this she used her house pianist Don Abney as well as probably one of the most swinging rhythm groups to be found. We see and hear Herb Ellis on guitar, Ray Brown bass and Jo Jones drums.

Video by ibofilms. If you like jazz,check out this guys videos at Youtube!

Leave a ReplyToggle Meta

We didn’t get the NFL ticket this year, so we don’t get to see Da Bears play today. Who are you cheering for?

4 CommentsToggle Meta

I was disappointed when he lost the 06 election. I liked this guy.

Lincoln D. Chafee, who lost his Senate seat in the wave of anti-Republican sentiment in last November’s election, said yesterday that he has left the party.

Chafee said he disaffiliated with the party he had helped lead, and his father had led before him, because the national Republican Party has gone too far away from his stance on too many critical issues, from war to economics to the environment.

“It’s not my party any more,” he said.

Chafee’s departure is another step in the waning of the strain of moderate Republicanism that was once a winning political philosophy from Rhode Island and Connecticut to the Canadian border. For the first time since the Civil War, the six New England states combined now have only one Republican U.S. House member, Connecticut’s Christopher Shays.

More at The Providence Journal

Leave a ReplyToggle Meta

17 U.S. troops died in Iraq this week.

Security developments in Iraq today, 9/16/07

A US unit is trying a new way of training Iraqi soldiers. For years, U.S. training and combat teams have been separate, but Army Lt. Col Morschauser has taken a new approach. Every patrol and assault in this region that used to be known as the Triangle of Death is now a joint operation between U.S. and Iraqi forces _ and a training opportunity.

The number of Iraqi Army and police battalions considered ready to conduct combat operations without help from the United States has declined from 15 at the beginning of the year to 12 this month, and at the same time, Pentagon assessments show that the number of Iraqi battalions considered “not ready” increased from 13 in November 2006 to 43 this past summer. The Petraeus plan, which Bush adopted last week, depends on a sufficient number of capable Iraqi units replacing at least 20,000 US combat troops that are set to return home beginning this month……..so where’s that leave us?

The U.S. claims to have caught the Al Qaeda militant responsible for the assasination of key Sunni tribal leader Abdul Sattar Abu Risha.

The U.S. is expands it’s al Anbar model to the Shiites. Good luck with that. Let’s arm everbody and see what happens, eh?

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s government is falling apart at the seams. Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr movement is withdrawing its 32 MPs from the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA), leaving Maliki’s coalition in control of only about half the seats in parliament.

Pepe Escobar reports on the “Anbar Myth”

Iraq is to start delivery of discounted oil to Jordan this week.

Alan Greenspan tells us the war in Iraq is all about the oil. Ya think? That and the billions and billions of dollars that have been made by military contractors.

Georgia plans on reducing its troops in Iraq in July, from 2,000 to 300.

Concerning Iran…………

The IAEA said a congressional report contained serious distortions of the agency’s own findings on Iran’s nuclear activity. It says the report was wrong to say that Iran had enriched uranium to weapons-grade level when the IAEA had only found small quantities of enrichment at far lower levels. Sound familiar?

2 CommentsToggle Meta

Sunday Talk

* MTP: Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) & Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) on Iraq; WaPo’s Chris Cillizza & NBC’s Chuck Todd on NBC/WSJ poll & 08
* FTN: Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) & Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ); WaPo’s Tom Ricks
* This Week: Def. Sec Robert Gates & Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI) on Iraq & Petreus report; roundtable of NYT’s Thomas Friedman, Newsweek’s Fareed Zakaria, ABC’s Martha Raddatz and George Will
* FNS: Def. Sec. Robert Gates; Gen. David Petraeus; Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE)
* Late Edition: Gen. Wesley Clark; Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT); Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN); Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX); Rep. Tom Lantos (D-CA); roundtable of Candy Crowley, Barbara Starr, and Bill Schneider

TV Alerts

* Chris Matthews Show 9/15-9/16: Dan Rather, Andrea Mitchell, Joe Klein, Katty Kay discuss “The President’s War Without End. Can John McCain come back by embracing Bush’s war?” Quotes here.
* Newsmakers (C-SPAN, 10am, Sunday): Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA) interviewed by LA Times’ Noam Levey and Richmond Times-Dispatch’s Peter Hardin
* Sen. Tom Harkin’s (D-IA) Steak Fry on C-SPAN, live Sun at 3pm, repeated later
* 60 Minutes (CBS, Sunday): Alan Greenspan on memoirs & mortgage crisis; Swimming with sharks
* Primetime Emmy Awards, Sunday, Fox, 8pm
* Q&A (C-SPAN, Sun, 8pm): USA Today founder Al Neuharth
* Today Show (NBC, 7am): Alan Greenspan 9/17; Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) 9/18; Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) 9/18;
* The Daily Show: rerun 9/17; Alan Greenspan 9/18; Gen. Wesley Clark 9/19; ex-Pres Bill Clinton 9/20
* The Colbert Report: rerun 9/17; surprise guest (related to Emmys) 9/18; Susan Sarandon 9/18; Naomi Wolf 9/19; Jeffrey Toobin 9/20
* Letterman: Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE) rerun on 9/20

Source

Leave a ReplyToggle Meta

Who to believe………?

IT was just after midnight when the 69th Squadron of Israeli F15Is crossed the Syrian coast-line. On the ground, Syria’s formidable air defences went dead. An audacious raid on a Syrian target 50 miles from the Iraqi border was under way.

At a rendezvous point on the ground, a Shaldag air force commando team was waiting to direct their laser beams at the target for the approaching jets. The team had arrived a day earlier, taking up position near a large underground depot. Soon the bunkers were in flames.

Ten days after the jets reached home, their mission was the focus of intense speculation this weekend amid claims that Israel believed it had destroyed a cache of nuclear materials from North Korea.

The Israeli government was not saying. “The security sources and IDF [Israeli Defence Forces] soldiers are demonstrating unusual courage,” said Ehud Olmert, the prime minister. “We naturally cannot always show the public our cards.”

Full article at the Times Online

Leave a ReplyToggle Meta