Zuckerman Is Said to Be Weighing Bid for Senate

By MICHAEL BARBARO and TIM ARANGO

Published: February 12, 2010

Mortimer B. Zuckerman, the real estate tycoon and publisher of The Daily News, is considering a bid for the Senate seat now held by Kirsten E. Gillibrand, according to two people told of the discussions.

Mr. Zuckerman regards Ms. Gillibrand as vulnerable to a challenge and is hoping that, at a time of economic tumult and political unrest, his background as an outsider to government, and his record as a business executive, will appeal to the state’s electorate, these people said.

He would be the latest boldface name to weigh a run for the seat this fall; a former Tennessee congressman, Harold E. Ford Jr., is mulling a primary run against Ms. Gillibrand, a fellow Democrat, and will make a decision in the next few weeks.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/13/nyregion/13mort.html?hp

Standard of Living: North Dakotans the Most Satisfied

Residents of all states more satisfied than dissatisfied; satisfaction up slightly from 2008

PRINCETON, NJ -- On a state-by-state basis, U.S. adults' average satisfaction in 2009 with their own standard of living -- that is, "all the things you can buy and do" -- fell in a fairly narrow range, from 82.3% in North Dakota at the high end to 69% in Nevada at the low end.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/125834/Standard-Living-North-Dakotans-Satisfied.aspx

HUNTSVILLE, AL (WAFF) - Police said a female member of the UA-Huntsville faculty shot and killed three co-workers on campus.

Huntsville Police, Madison County Sheriff's department and HEMSI responded to a shooting at the UAH campus at 4:00 Friday afternoon.

The shooting happened in the Shelby Center, a math and science classroom building.

Authorities said a female faculty member during a Biology faculty meeting learned she would not receive tenure. She then pulled out a gun and started shooting.

http://www.waff.com/Global/story.asp?S=11978812

• Ian Traynor
• guardian.co.uk, Thursday 11 February 2010 20.39 GMT

Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, mounted stiff resistance tonight to any swift bailout of Greece, as a rift opened up between European capitals over how best to tackle the risks posed to the euro.

Despite a show of Franco-German unity on the crisis and the first statement from EU leaders pledging to safeguard the currency's stability, hopes on the markets of a German-led rescue plan to shore up Greece's critical public finances were dashed by Merkel, who repeatedly emphasised that Athens would need to put its own house in order and brushed aside all questions of financial support.

"Germany is stepping totally on the brakes on financial assistance," said a senior EU diplomat. "On legal grounds, on constitutional grounds and on principle." Another senior diplomat said of the Germans: "They're not waving their chequebooks."

An EU summit of 27 government chiefs in Brussels was the first opportunity to tackle the Greek crisis and also send a strong message to the financial markets, which have been betting against the euro for the last week.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2010/feb/11/germany-greece-merkel-bailout-euro

'Bipartisan' Delegation to Haiti Includes 1 Republican, 11 Democrats

FOXNews.com

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced Friday that she is leading a 12-member "bipartisan" congressional delegation to Haiti. The group includes one Republican -- outmatched by 11 Democrats.

Maybe it was an oversight. Or maybe it was a metaphor for what counts as bipartisanship these days. 

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced Friday that she is leading a 12-member "bipartisan" congressional delegation to Haiti. The group includes one Republican -- outmatched by 11 Democrats. 

Though Pelosi's press release used the word "bipartisan" five times, Florida Sen. George LeMieux is the sole GOP lawmaker in Congress visiting the devastated island nation for what would presumably be a bipartisan cause -- assessing ways to help the country recover from its earthquake.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/02/12/bipartisan-delegation-haiti-includes-republican-democrats/

From CNN Supreme Court Producer Bill Mears

Washington (CNN) - The White House has begun quiet preparations for the possibility of a Supreme Court vacancy in coming months, government sources tell CNN.

Top officials have no specific information that a particular justice will retire after the court's session ends in late June, but want to be ready for a variety of contingencies, those sources emphasized. They requested anonymity because they are not authorized to speak on behalf of the administration.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2010/02/12/white-house-quietly-prepping-for-possible-high-court-vacancy-insiders-say/?fbid=WPgdemsiTge#more-90006

Corker: Willing to Be Sole GOP Vote on Financial Overhaul

By Michael Crittenden

GOP Sen. Bob Corker said he “absolutely” would be willing to buck his party to pass a bill cracking down on financial market abuses and creating new rules to prevent firms from becoming “too big to fail.”

The Tennessean, who is in the middle of his first Senate term, and Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd of Connecticut, announced Thursday that they would negotiate the wide-ranging legislation. The move came after Dodd reached an impasse with the panel’s top Republican.

http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2010/02/12/corker-willing-to-be-sole-gop-vote-on-financial-overhaul/?mod=rss_WSJBlog&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

Report: Iran disrupting satellite transmissions

JPOST.COM STAFF
12/02/2010 10:34

Several international networks have said that Iran is disrupting their Farsi-language satellite transmissions, Israel Radio reported Friday.

BBC Radio, The Voice of America and the German network Deutsche Welle defined the interference as electronic disturbances from Iran.

http://www.jpost.com/Headlines/Article.aspx?id=168544

This is from Thursday on the Senate floor:

Federal Lobbying Climbs in 2009 as Lawmakers Execute Aggressive Congressional Agenda

Published by Communications on February 12, 2010 10:30 AM

The economy stunk. Corporations slashed jobs. And some firms, once juggernauts of American industry, simply ceased to exist.

But for federal lobbyists, 2009 proved to be a year of riches unlike any other, a Center for Responsive Politics analysis indicates.

In all, federal lobbyists’ clients spent more than $3.47 billion last year, often driven to Washington, D.C.’s power centers and halls of influence by political issues central to the age: health care reform, financial reform, energy policy.

That figure represents a more than 5 percent increase over $3.3 billion worth of federal lobbying recorded in 2008, the previous all-time annual high for lobbying expenditures. And it comes in a year when a recession persisted, the dollar’s value against major foreign currencies declined and joblessness rates increased.

In 2009's 4th quarter, lobbying expenditures increased nearly 16 percent over 4th quarter levels from 2008, whereas spending only increased about 3 percent from the 3rd quarter of 2008 to the same period in 2009.

http://209.190.229.100/news/2010/02/federal-lobbying-soars-in-2009.html

Where the U.S. went wrong on the Christmas Day bomber

By Michael B. Mukasey

Friday, February 12, 2010

It seems to me unlikely that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab will be known to future generations of lawyers for generating any groundbreaking legal principle or issue. But when it comes to illuminating our public discourse about the "global war on terror," he is right up there with Clarence Earl Gideon, Ernesto Miranda or even Jose Padilla. His case presents in one tidy package virtually all the issues that arise from the role intelligence plays in this struggle and compels us to examine what the law requires and what it doesn't.

When Abdulmutallab tried to detonate a bomb concealed in his undershorts, he committed a crime; no doubt about that. He could not have acted alone; no doubt about that either. The bomb was not the sort of infernal device readily produced by someone of his background, and he quickly confirmed that he had been trained and sent by al-Qaeda in Yemen.

What to do and who should do it? It was entirely reasonable for the FBI to be contacted and for that agency to take him into custody. But contrary to what some in government have suggested, that Abdulmutallab was taken into custody by the FBI did not mean, legally or as a matter of policy, that he had to be treated as a criminal defendant at any point. Consider: In 1942, German saboteurs landed on Long Island and in Florida. That they were eventually captured by the FBI did not stop President Franklin Roosevelt from directing that they be treated as unlawful enemy combatants. They were ultimately tried before a military commission in Washington and executed. Their status had nothing to do with who held them, and their treatment was upheld in all respects by the Supreme Court.

If possible, FBI custody is even less relevant today in determining someone's status. In 1942 the FBI was exclusively a crime-fighting organization. After Sept. 11, 2001, the agency's mission was expanded beyond detection of crime and apprehension of criminals to include gathering intelligence, helping to prevent and combat threats to national security, and furthering U.S. foreign policy goals. Guidelines put in place in 2003 and revised in September 2008 "do not require that the FBI's information gathering activities be differentially labeled as 'criminal investigations,' 'national security investigations,' or 'foreign intelligence collections,' or that the categories of FBI personnel who carry out investigations be segregated from each other based on the subject areas in which they operate. Rather, all of the FBI's legal authorities are available for deployment in all cases to which they apply to protect the public from crimes and threats to the national security and to further the United States' foreign intelligence objectives."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/11/AR2010021103331.html

Abstinence and the Left
Why does the New York Times hate teen abstinence?

Alarmed by a recent well-publicized study showing that abstinence education succeeded while “safe sex” and “comprehensive” sex-ed programs failed, the Left has abandoned its “abstinence doesn’t work” claim and drawn up a new line of defense.

Consider what the New York Times had to say. According to its editorialists, the newly evaluated abstinence program succeeded because it was “freed from the moralistic overtones and ideological restrictions” of prior abstinence education.

You can bet that anyone who pontificates about “moralistic overtones” in abstinence education has never held an actual abstinence curriculum in his hands, let alone read one.

Why does abstinence education come under unending, if completely uninformed, attack? In part, because abstinence was strongly associated with the Bush administration — and anything tied to Bush has always been fair game to liberals.

http://article.nationalreview.com/424834/abstinence-and-the-left/robert-rector

From AP twitter:

AP colleague Susan Haigh break news from Hartford: Ned Lamont will announce on Tuesday that he is running for governor.

http://twitter.com/PElliottAP/status/9017482423