Wednesday, Jul 08th
Last update07:44:18 AM GMT
Domestic Glance
Some visitors to the nation's parks and wildlife refuges will be allowed to carry loaded weapons beginning in January under a plan given final approval Friday by the Bush administration.
Under current regulations, firearms in the national parks must be unloaded and inoperable. That means they must have trigger locks or be stored in a car trunk or in a special case.
TVNL Comment: Another gift known as the Bush Legacy.
Earlier this month, a guest took the pulpit at Open Bible Fellowship in Morrison, Ill., a 350-member church surrounded by cornfields. The speaker was an insurance salesman from Colorado named Ted Haggard.
The former superstar pastor, disgraced two years ago in a sex-and-drugs scandal, had returned - this time as a Christian businessman.
An effort by the New York Police Department to get broader latitude to eavesdrop on terrorism suspects has run into sharp resistance from the Justice Department in a bitter struggle that has left the police commissioner and the attorney general accusing each other of putting the public at risk.
In response to the Court of Appeals November 17, 2008 denial of the Wilsons’ petition for rehearing of their civil case against Vice President Cheney, Scooter Libby, Karl Rove, Richard Armitage and other unnamed officials, CREW’s executive director Melanie Sloan stated, “The Wilsons and their counsel are certainly disappointed by the Court of Appeals’ decision, but it is not over yet. Now we will petition the Supreme Court to hear the case."
The Justice Department has agreed to pay for a private lawyer to defend former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales against allegations that he encouraged officials to inject partisan politics into the department's hiring and firing practices.
Dan Metcalfe, a former high-ranking veteran Justice Department official who filed the suit on behalf of eight law students, called the department's decision to pay for a private attorney rather than rely on its civil division "exceptional."
This morning we told you that election officials in Georgia are throwing out ballots cast by new voters who couldn't prove their citizenship, on the orders of the Republican secretary of state, Karen Handel.
And now Handel's office says it can't say how many of those disqualified ballots were actually cast by eligible voters.
The Obama administration can act quickly after taking office in January to reverse the secrecy trend of the last eight years and restore openness in the executive branch, according to a set of new proposals posted online today by the National Security Archive.
More than 60 organizations joined the recommendations, which call on President-elect Obama to restore efficiency and openness to the Freedom of Information Act process, reform the classification system to reduce overclassification and facilitate greater declassification, and ensure that presidential records are handled in accordance with the law and Congress’ intent.
Page 201 of 224
