The Nightowl Newswrap

Get ready for another round of Free-dumb Fries "A French court on Wednesday turned down a U.S. request for the extradition of an Iranian engineer who is accused of violating an export embargo by purchasing U.S. technology for military firms involved in Iran's nuclear program. ... The United States says Majid Kakavand, 37, bought sensitive American electronics over the Internet and disguised that their final destination was Iran by routing them through Malaysia, where he had set up a front company."

The next time Blue Girl strolls along the Left Bank of the Seine, she won't be breaking the law "French lawmakers may soon repeal a long-standing law that forbids women from wearing pants. The law was amended in 1909 to allow women to wear trousers on bicycles, but it hasn't been changed (or enforced, really) since."

Why don't more manufacturers make bigger bras when the size of American boobs is getting bigger and bigger all the time? It turns out that they are harder to design and manufacture, and manufacturers don't want to bother. They will shun a market of millions rather than stop making cheap, flimsy products in order to sell to customers who won't tolerate cheap, flimsy bras.

Many long-term unemployed brace for the end of unemployed worker benefits Barring any further action by Congress, hundreds of thousands of unemployed workers nationwide who have exhausted their maximum 99 weeks of benefits and face an impending and precarious future with no meaningful income.

Sarah Palin wants Americans to trust oil companies, but only American ones, not foreign ones. Of course, she didn't have any problem trusting the paychecks from BP that Todd cashed for 18 years, until she finally conned enough people into letting her suckle from the teats of the ignorant masses that he could be a HausHerr.

The GOP has devolved into crap-flinging monkeys. So when can we start shooting the worst offenders in the band with tranqhilizer darts? "The Republican National Committee has made a new attempt at producing damaging information about President Obama's nominees to various judicial seats.  Whether by removing appropriate context, using faulty sources, or simply lying about the past judgments of these jurists, the RNC displays a deeply rooted disdain for the truth in [their] newest "research" piece."

U.S. official says Russia should apologize to Poland for the Katyan Massacre "Russia should apologize for the 1940 Katyn massacre of nearly 22,000 Polish prisoners of war, the chairman of the U.S. Helsinki Commission said Wednesday. ...  "Russia needs a clear and unequivocal apology to the Polish people for what was done 70 years ago," said Benjamin Cardin, who is also a Democratic U.S. senator from Maryland. ... Cardin made the remarks at a conference of scholars, experts and analysts from Poland, Russia and the U.S. who met at the Library of Congress to discuss Katyn's significance and the future of Polish-Russian relations. Cardin also called on Russia to fully disclose all of its archives and records about Katyn. "It's important to be able to document exactly what happened 70 years ago" using original documents, Cardin said."

Eric "Post Turtle" Cantor's foreign policy speech was an utter fabrication, totally devoid of any basis in fact and not merely divorced from reality but estranged as well "On May 4, 2010, House Minority Whip Eric Cantor gave a speech on foreign policy at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C.  Rather than offering any clear policy positions, Cantor relied on Republican talking points and false attacks to argue that President Obama is jeopardizing our national security.  However, despite his tough talk (both in his prepared remarks and the Q&A that followed), Cantor's own record shows that he has no idea how to keep America safe."

Please, repugs: believe this is an omen for November, and count all your fetal chickens now. "Early general election results suggest the Conservatives are on course to be the largest party in a hung parliament. The Tories are hopeful of gaining enough seats to govern, although they may fall just short of a majority. The Lib Dem vote is unchanged on 2005 and Labour down 4.1% after 72 results. The Conservatives are up 3.8%. Downing Street says Gordon Brown, re-elected in Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath, could try to form a coalition in the event of a hung Parliament."

Greek Fire spreads to Asia. "Stock markets in Asia have fallen sharply on opening, amid investor fears that Greece's debt crisis could halt the global economic recovery. Japan's benchmark Nikkei index lost 437 points, or 4%, while Australia's S&P shed 132 points, or 2.8%. It comes a day after US markets had their worst day since 1987, with the Dow Jones falling 9%, before rallying. Also on Thursday, Greece approved the hefty cuts to address the country's economic crisis, amid violent protests. The DowJones recovered to end down about 3.2% on Thursday. Losses also hit markets throughout Latin America. The worst were at Buenos Aires' Merval Index, which closed down 5.4%. "The reason for today's fall is what everybody knows - Greece," Hideaki Higashi, of Tokyo-based SMBC Friend Securities, told the news agency AFP on Friday. "The market is factoring in the possibility that this Greek problem will spread to Spain and Portugal." "

Gone for a generation. "Oil from a massive slick in the Gulf of Mexico has started washing ashore on an island chain off the coast of Louisiana, US officials have confirmed. Pelicans and other birds covered in oil have been found on the uninhabited Chandeleur islands, which are part of the Breton National Wildlife Refuge. A federal maritime agency said there was "oiling all over" the islands. Earlier, workers began lowering a giant funnel over the leaking oil well at the bottom of the sea to harvest the spill. Remote-controlled submarines are being used to lower the 90-tonne containment device in an operation expected to take two days. Oil has been leaking unstopped for 18 days from the well, 50 miles (80km) off Louisiana, since an explosion destroyed the Deepwater Horizon rig, operated by Transocean and leased by BP, last month."

Eric "Post Turtle" Cantor's foreign policy speech was an utter fabrication, totally devoid of any basis in fact and not merely divorced from reality but estranged as well "On May 4, 2010, House Minority Whip Eric Cantor gave a speech on foreign policy at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C.  Rather than offering any clear policy positions, Cantor relied on Republican talking points and false attacks to argue that President Obama is jeopardizing our national security.  However, despite his tough talk (both in his prepared remarks and the Q&A that followed), Cantor's own record shows that he has no idea how to keep America safe."

Orrin Hatch pisses his pants and throws out the Constitution. "On Fox News last night, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) slammed law enforcement's handling of the failed Times Square car bombing, saying it was "stupid" to read suspect Faisal Shahzad his Miranda rights and that it was "pretty doggone abysmal" that he was able to board an international flight before being taken into custody. ... "They Mirandized him, which I always find stupid on the part of our people," Hatch said."  -- as if an American citizen's Constitutional rights go away because the suspect isn't warned. So why the fuck does Orrin Hatch want evidence and perhaps even confessions from terrorism suspects

Attention Democrats: You're DEMOCRATS Start manning up and growing a pair and getting tough with people who have desperately needed to be kicked in the nuts for thirty years. Democrats will win in November if they cowgirl up and get behind the most liberal person in the Senate and the only elected Socialist in the entire 545 member congress, Bernie Sanders and regulate the fuck out of Wall Street and make them squeal like gelded piggies. Sanders is pushing a measure that is similar to a proposal included in the House's financial reform legislation, which passed last December, that would audit the Fed. In order to break White House opposition, Sanders agreed to limit the scope of the Fed audit to the Fed's emergency lending activities--excluding some of the transactions the Fed engaged in to limit the scope of the 2008 financial crisis."

The Senate rejected GOP efforts to gut consumer safeguards in financial regulation legislation. "The Senate, with a strong push from the White House, rejected 61-38 on Thursday a Republican-led effort to dilute strong new protections for consumers who face problems with mortgages and other forms of credit. ... The bill to overhaul U.S. financial regulation, written largely by Democrats, would create a new consumer finance protection agency. Republicans argued that the agency would have broad, dangerous power to dictate how small businesses operate. ... "This is a massive new grant of authority that should give every American pause," contended Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, the top Republican on the Senate Banking Committee."

Guatemalan immigrant arrested for 1982 massacre during Guatemala's civil war "On Wednesday, federal agents assigned by a specialized unit whose mission is to track down war-criminal suspects went to Palm Beach County and arrested Gilberto Jordan, of Delray Beach, one of three former kaibil unit soldiers that authorities say helped carry out the 1982 massacre. ... In a chilling interview Tuesday with ICE special agents, Jordan, now 54, "readily admitted that he threw a baby into the well and participated in killing people at Dos Erres, as well as bringing them to the well where they were killed," according to an affidavit filed with the criminal complaint. ... Said U.S. Attorney Wifredo A. Ferrer: "The massacre at Dos Erres was a dark moment for the Guatemalan people, and we will not allow suspected perpetrators to escape justice by taking refuge in our cities and towns.""

And finally...

If we had known this was going to go down, we would have been there with lawnchairs and a cooler and plenty of sunscreen. Right-wing extremists who question the legitimacy of Barack Obama's presidency tried to take on local law enforcement recently -- and they seem to have come out on the losing end. ... First, a Tennessee man was arrested after walking into his local county courthouse to try to effect a citizen's arrest of a grand jury foreman who had refused to investigate President Obama's legitimacy to serve -- an encounter partially caught on video. That enraged one Georgia-based member of the far-right OathKeepers group. Responding to a call from an extremist leader, he drove to Tennessee with an AK-47 in a bid to get his comrade released -- only to wind up getting arrested himself."


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ightowl-newswrap

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White House not thrilled with Lieberman's
citizenship-stripping proposal

Well that's good news. I just feel like these are "feel good" vengeance proposals that do nothing to make us safer. I mean, really, how many lives is it going to save because a potential terrorist says, "hey, if they catch me, I'm fine with being executed, but I really don't want them to take away my citizenship too, so maybe I shouldn't go through with this." It's a dumb idea that won't accomplish anything other than making people FEEL like they've done something to make us safer, when they haven't.

From Jake Tapper:

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs today indicated no one in the White House supports the legislation introduced today by Sens. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., that would give the State Department the power to revoke the citizenship of American terrorism suspects.

?I have not heard anybody inside the administration that's been supportive of that idea,? Gibbs said.

Gibbs said he had ?not heard large enumerations on why, except that I don't think anybody would find that to be such an effective way.?

Lieberman offered the legislation today along with Sen. Scott Brown, R-Mass., and Reps. Jason Altmire, D-Penn., and Charlie Dent, R-Penn, which would add to the existing federal statute, 8 U.S.C. § 1481, which identifies seven categories of actions for which U.S. citizens lose their citizenship. The legislation, called the Terrorist Expatriation Act, would authorize the State Department to revoke the citizenship of any U.S. national who provides material support or resources to a Foreign Terrorist Organization or who engages in or supports hostilities against the United States or its allies.

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290,000 new jobs added in April. Unemployment
rate up to 9.9%

More jobs in the U.S. economy, but higher unemployment:

The American economy added an unexpected strong 290,000 jobs in April, while the unemployment rate rose to 9.9 percent, the government said Friday.

Analysts had expected a gain of about 190,000 in the month.

With revisions on Friday, April was the fourth consecutive month that the economy added workers (a revised 230,000 jobs were added in March instead of 162,000), the job market still has a long way to go before it can be counted on to provide a base for a sustained economic recovery. More than 15.3 million were unemployed last month.

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