Cheat Sheet
The Best In Brief
Please register to manage your email preferences and comment on the site.
House leaders say there's no way the health care bill will pass without a public option, even though the Obama administration has seemed to back off the plan, Politico reports. The vote will be pushed back to the end of September, the leaders say, and it will be up to the Senate to drop the controversial public-option from the bill. HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said on Sunday that the public option was “not the essential element” and floated the idea of co-ops, but an administration official tells Marc Ambinder that Sebelius “misspoke,” and that she was simply trying to point out that, in President Obama’s view, the public option is not the most important part of the reform package. Another official, Linda Douglass, says, "Nothing has changed. The President has always said that what is essential that health-insurance reform lower costs, ensure that there are affordable options for all Americans and increase choice and competition in the health insurance market. He believes that the public option is the best way to achieve these goals." Two key senators also called the public option "essential" to the bill on Monday.
A suicide bomber killed 20 people and injured more than 138 in Nazran, Russia on Monday. The bomber ran his truck, which was packed with explosives, through the gate of a busy police station in Ingushetia, a mostly Muslim region in Southern Russia. When the bomb detonated, it mangled cars, stripped balconies off of buildings, and left the police station in piles of rubble. The blast is the latest in a string of attacks on police in Ingushetia. According to Ingush President Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, the cause was rebellion against the “The intensified police operations, including the successful actions on the Ingush-Chechen administrative border.”
Milling about among protesters outside a convention center in Arizona where Barack Obama was speaking on Monday, were about a dozen people carrying guns, the Associated Press reports. One of the protesters had a semi-automatic rifle slung over his shoulder. “In Arizona, I still have some freedoms," the man said when asked why he was carrying the rifle. Increasingly, protesters have been showing up with guns at the president’s speaking events to make a statement about their Second Amendment rights. At Obama's town-hall meeting in New Hampshire, a man carried a gun strapped to his leg while holding a sign that read, "It is time to water the tree of liberty." "It's a political statement," he told The Boston Globe. "If you don't use your rights, then you lose your rights." Arizona is an "open-carry" state, where you don't need a license to carry a gun in public as long as it isn't concealed. The leader of a group against gun violence said bringing a gun to a political event “makes the situation dangerous for everyone.”
Is the Obama administration finally moving on gay rights? “The Obama administration filed court papers Monday arguing that a federal marriage law discriminates against gays, even as government lawyers continue to defend the law,” according to NPR. "The administration believes the Defense of Marriage Act is discriminatory and should be repealed," said Justice Department spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler. The Obama administration is urging the 1996 law’s repeal while insisting that, in the meantime, government lawyers will continue to defend it since it is law. The Defense of Marriage Act prevents same-sex couples from receiving Social Security spousal benefits, filing joint federal taxes, and from receiving other federal rights attached to marriage.
With roughly one-fifth of soldiers returning from Afghanistan and Iraq with mental-health problems like depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, the Army is set to begin emotional training for all of its troops, including the National Guard. The program, based on "techniques that have been tested mainly in middle schools," will be available to civilians, employees, and family members as well. Interestingly, some military officials' primary concern is not how effective the program will be, but instead how it will be accepted in the Army's macho culture. The New York Times reports that at a run-through of the program, the Army's chief of staff asked sergeants if it seemed too "touchy-feely." One replied, "I believe so, sir... All [a young soldier] wants to do is hang out with his buddies and drink beer." Psychologists will be closely watching the program to see if a thick skin can be taught far from the battlefield.
A new poll set to be released Tuesday finds that 26 percent of Republicans still believe that the new health-care overhaul plan includes "death panels" that will determine care for a person by their "level of productivity in society." An additional 31 percent of those polled are not sure whether the dreaded "death panels" are true or not, bringing the grand total of Republicans duped by the rumor to 57 percent. The poll was commissioned by the Daily Kos and carried out by Research 2000, a nonpartisan group. It is notable that the question posed by pollsters replicates words used by Sarah Palin in reference to the panels.
The roller-coaster ride is far from over. The stock market suffered its worst day in over a month Monday, taking a plunge amid worries that consumers aren't keeping up with the global rebound. The Dow fell 186 points, while the Nasdaq dropped 55. "Investors speculated that a rally in riskier assets has outpaced prospects for economic growth," Bloomberg reports. China's stock market also declined substantially, falling 5.8 percent. "It's not going to be a straight line up," an observer said. Just last Thursday, the Dow was at a nine-month high.
The latest celebrity sex tape has surfaced and it’s a jackpot for Grey’s Anatomy fans. The tape features Eric Dane, aka Dr. McSteamy of Grey's Anatomy, his wife, Rebecca Gayheart, and "beauty-queen-turned-Hollywood-madam" Kari Ann Peniche getting friendly. The trio is obviously partying hard, and at one point Gayheart says she needs to lie down because she's so stoned. Eventually, they wander into a jacuzzi for more good times. Sorry fans, no actual sex occurs; in the words of Dane and Gayheart's lawyer, "At most, it's three people maybe wanting to have sex."
As the Obamas head to Martha's Vineyard to enjoy a bit of leisure time, they may notice that even on the posh island retreat the issues surrounding the immigration debate are on full display. An excellent feature in the Financial Times highlights the strong Brazilian influence on Martha's Vineyard, which began in the 1980s. There are roughly 3,000 Brazilians—both legal and illegal—who fill the need for hard labor on the island. Martha's Vineyard, known for big-name visitors such as Spike Lee, the Kennedys, and the Clintons, also features immigrant communities that amount to a "parallel society"—a phenomenon seen throughout the U.S. The opportunity that awaits Brazilian immigrants on the island is not without its consequences. Many locals who stay on the Vineyard year-round resent the Brazilians who will work for less. "It’s a microcosm of the whole situation," one local said. "Here Brazilians are the target group, just like in California it’s Mexicans."
South Carolina first lady Jenny Sanford broke her (relative) silence in an interview with Vogue after the very public affair of her husband, which had pundits praising her grace under fire as a wronged political wife. Sanford, a former investment banker and millionaire heiress to the Skil Power Tools fortune, talked about the shock she felt when she discovered her husband was cheating last January. “It never occurred to me that he would do something like that," she said. "The person I married was centered on a core of morals. The person who did this is not centered on those morals.” She intimated her husband was having trouble with aging, while for her, it's easier. "I know my legacy is my children," she said. The couple became a professional team when she signed on as Sanford's campaign manager, which proved difficult for their marriage. “Everybody would like an escape sometimes,” Sanford says. “I’d like somebody 5,000 miles away I could email. It’s not exclusive to men, but I know that isn’t realistic.” The first lady, however, isn’t bitter and feels sorry for the woman her husband had an affair with—she Googled her and found her "pretty," according to a friend. For now, Sanford, a Catholic, is leaving revenge up to “the Lord” and as far as her marriage to the governor goes, “the ball is in his court.”
We smell a reality show. An unnamed Tunisian woman is pregnant with 12 babies—six boys and six girls—and is planning to have them all, Britain's Sun newspaper reports. The woman and her husband are said to be thrilled with the startling number, and are committed to a natural birth in spite of doctors' grave warnings about the danger in store for the expecting mother. The brood was conceived through fertility treatment, the Sun reports. Nadya Suleman, aka the Octomom, was the most recent mega-pregnancy in the headlines, and though her mental faculties have been called into question, her children are healthy. However, the risk involved in giving birth to so many children is quite severe: The record-holder is an Australian woman who in 1971 gave birth to nine babies, all of whom died.
Three men were indicted on suspicion of stealing more than 130 million credit and debit card numbers, the New York Times reports, in the largest identity theft case to be tried by federal prosecutors. The numbers were stolen from the payment processors including Heartland Payment Systems, 7-Eleven and Hannaford Brothers, federal authorities said. The men are also are accused of hacking into two unidentified corporations by scanning the web sites of Fortune 500 companies to spot vulnerabilities. The scheme is said to be the largest identity theft case ever prosecuted by the Department of Justice.
Judge Sharon Keller, known as "Sharon Killer" by her critics, began playing the role of defendant Monday, as she stands accused of improperly blocking a request for a stay of execution in Texas. Keller, the highest ranking criminal judge in the state, reportedly rejected lawyers for an inmate on death row who were scrambling to petition late in the afternoon for a delay, telling them, "We close at 5." The inmate was executed later in the evening. Lawyers had sought the stay of execution because the Supreme Court had agreed that same day in 2007 to hear arguments regarding whether lethal injection constituted cruel and unusual punishment. Keller was involved in another infamous execution case in which she denied a retrial for a mentally handicapped man despite claims of new DNA evidence. Keller is a judge for the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.
Reader's Digest, the world's biggest-selling magazine, according to the Times of London, will file for bankruptcy protection by the end of the month. The reasons for the magazine's financial woes are all too familiar: a decline in circulation and advertising combined with crippling debt. Through bankruptcy, the magazine will substantially cut its debt. Its new owners will include companies that are no stranger to budget crises themselves, such as J.P. Morgan and Merrill Lynch. Reader's Digest will continue publishing, though it recently went from printing 12 issues a year to ten, and also realigned to focus more on "socially conservative values."
Keep your eyes peeled for videos of Tom DeLay's workout routine set to the Rocky soundtrack. A report from Emily Miller, a former staffer for DeLay, strongly asserts that "he can cut a rug" and will shock all of America with his moves on the upcoming season of Dancing With the Stars. A phone conversation with DeLay's wife Christine, who seemed quite thrilled with her husband's new turn in the public eye, revealed that he has already begun training and has lost 12 pounds. "Tom can dance the two-step, polka, waltz, country swing... and disco," DeLay's wife said. The former Republican Majority Leader explained his desire to join the show. "My political enemies aren't going to vote for me, and I'm still indicted," he said. "But this isn't an election. At least (viewers) can't vote against you."
The dawn of Twitter augurs a new age, an age where everyone is connected, exchanging vital information faster than ever before, and...navel-gazing? A study conducted by a market research firm found that 40 percent of all tweets are "pointless babble" of the "I'm eating a sandwich variety," the BBC reports. The firm divided tweets into six categories: "news, spam, self-promotion, pointless babble, conversational and those with pass-along value." Researchers deemed a mere 8.7 percent worthy of being passed along. The study will be conducted again next quarter to see if Twitterers have started putting their social networking tool of choice to more noble use.
Michael Jackson is going to be buried on August 29, his own birthday, according to his father Joe Jackson. In what appears to be an effort to draw more attention to his untimely death, Joe says the King of Pop will be buried at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Hollywood on what would have been his 51st birthday. Jackson has remained frozen in Forrest Lawn since his passing. Joe told the Daily News that the burial plans have been made final in the last few days.
William Golding, author of Lord of the Flies, admitted in his private papers that while he was a teenager, he tried to rape a 15-year-old girl, The Times of London reported Sunday. Just as the characters of Lord of the Flies turned against each other, Golding’s papers also reveal that as a teacher at public school, Golding had experimented with pitting students against each other by dividing them into gangs. John Carey, an emeritus English literature professor at Oxford, was granted access to Golding’s personal journals and an unpublished memoir and will publish his findings in biography of the Nobel-prize winner.
The grueling health care debate hasn’t robbed President Obama of his dry sense of humor: Taking aim at excess military spending, he announced on Monday that he did not need a new presidential helicopter with a nuclear-proof kitchen. “It would let me cook a meal while under nuclear attack,” Obama said. "Now, let me tell you something: If the United States of America is under nuclear attack, the last thing on my mind will be whipping up a snack." Speaking a bit more broadly, he said, “If a project doesn't support our troops, if it does not make America safer, we will not fund it. If a system doesn't perform, we will terminate it. And if Congress sends me a defense bill loaded with a bunch of pork, I will veto it.” Obama also defended the war in Afghanistan in his speech.
Photographer Annie Leibovitz has snapped some of the most iconic images in American culture, from a pregnant nude Demi Moore to Miley Cyrus in nothing but a sheet. So why is she $24 million in debt? According to Andrew Goldman's profile of the celebrity photographer in New York magazine, Leibovitz just couldn't live within her means. She did expensive renovations on her homes and took out $15 million in mortgages on them. Her expenses also included a Range Rover, trips to Paris, a chef and housekeeper, personal yoga instructor, terrace gardener, and live-in nanny. She failed to pay $92,000 in property taxes on one of her houses—and reimbursement payments that Condé Nast gave her to pay for vendors who helped her on shoots never made it out the door. A lighting specialist and clothing stylist sued her for a combined $606,000. In order to pay for it all, Leibovitz essentially pawned her work and some of the rights to her collection to Art Capital for a whopping $24 million—and the one-year term of the loan will be up in September. If she can't pay the bill, the company may go after her homes, and her catalog of past and future copyrights.
Instead of a check from the government, Social Security and Supplemental Security Income recipients may soon get plastic. The U.S. Treasury wants to switch its payments to a Direct Express “debit card,” which would be stocked with a monthly payment. Said one treasury official: “Those paper checks are problematic. They get lost, stolen or aren’t received on time.”
Who owns Morefar Back O’Beyond—a private golf course that golfers at the nearby public course claim is always empty? "There has long been a rumor that it is the private playground of executives with American International Group, the embattled insurance giant,” reports The New York Times. Morefar officials refused to comment, but here’s what is known: The course was opened by AIG’s founder in 1964, and is now owned by Staff International, with an AIG spokesperson says “was a sister entity to A.I.G. It is no longer.” Hank Greenberg, who ran AIG for four decades until 2005, keeps a house down the road from the course and is said to have used it to reward clients. “All I’ve heard is that it’s a course for A.I.G. executives and that guys like us will never get to play it,” said a local golfer.
The White House's electronic tip box, flag@whitehouse.gov, which was established to receive tips regarding "fishy" claims about Obama's new health-care reform, is now disabled. Since its introduction two weeks ago, critics have expressed concern about how the tipsters' personal information would be used. Though White House press secretary Robert Gibbs assured the public that "nobody is keeping anybody's names," others, like Sen. John Cornryn, claimed those able to access the "flag" account could obtain the names and emails of those concerned Americans contacting the White House. As the blacklist uproar raged on, Cornryn’s urge to Obama to “cease this program immediately” was apparently heard. Anyone who now tries to email the account is redirected to whitehouse.gov/realitycheck and told the account is “no longer in service.”
Nazis meet gruesome ends in Quentin Tarantino's new WWII film Inglourious Basterds. The New Yorker's David Denby writes that the film is "is not boring, but it’s ridiculous and appallingly insensitive." In it, Joseph Goebbels commissions a propaganda film about combat and shows it to top Nazi brass in 1944's occupied Paris. Groups of European movie people and a dirty dozen of Jewish American soldiers (the titular Basterds) make various plans to disrupt the proceedings and kill off the top Nazis. The Jewish American soldiers like to hit Nazis in the heads with baseball bats, carve swastikas into their heads, and scalp them. Denby writes the film follows in Tarantino's tradition of "moral callousness," and is "skillfully made" but "too silly to be enjoyed, even as a joke."
Another nail in the coffin of the so-called post-partisan era: “Fox's viewership is up 11 percent over last year, according to Nielsen Media Research,” reports the Associated Press. “CNN and MSNBC, which benefited from interest in the campaign last year, are down.” Bill O’Reilly, Glenn Beck, and Sean Hannity are leading the way. "Who's that going to help?" O'Reilly said recently after Robert Gibbs assailed “cable news.” "Us, that's who. Our ratings are already soaring because we don't denigrate the protesters, the way a lot of other TV news organizations do. They're dying. We're on fire." The AP comments, ”The ratings expose as naive anyone who believed that the dawn of a Democratic government in Washington would hurt Fox."
Nothing ruins a trip to the fair like a pipe-wielding attacker. The Associated Press reports that Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett spent Saturday at the Wisconsin State Fair with his family. As they returned to their car, Barrett heard a woman screaming for someone to call 911. Barrett ran to the rescue and discovered a grandmother trying to protect her 1-year-old granddaughter from a 20-year-old man, in what the police said was a domestic dispute. When Barrett tried to call 911, the man hit Barrett in the head and torso with a metal pipe, and Barrett fought back so hard that he fractured his hand while punching the man. The suspect has since been scooped up, and the mayor had cuts on his head and lip stitched up, and underwent successful surgery on his fractured right hand. He was released from the hospital Monday evening.
Citizen journalism, at its best: Though police originally insisted that the murders of Byrd and Melanie Billings—the Florida parents who adopted 13 children—were part of a robbery, blogger and Daily Beast contributor Rick Outzen dug deeper. “A few days after the killings on July 9, someone told him that Mr. Billings used to own a seedy strip club and had a reputation for ruthlessness in the used-car business,” reports The New York Times. “Others, insisting on anonymity, said some of the seven people charged with the murders told the police it was a contract killing.” Outzen’s reporting has brought rebuttals from his competitors and threats of lawsuits from a used-car salesman he linked to the crime, “But six weeks after the killings, Mr. Outzen has not had to retract anything he has written.” The local sheriff said that Outzen has aided the investigation and that his anonymous sources have been right.
This probably doesn’t bode well for voter turnout: “Afghanistan’s top security officials warned they were unable to guarantee the security of this week’s elections, despite efforts to buy off Taliban insurgents,” according to the Financial Times. Abdul Rahim Wardak, the defense minister, said on Sunday, “To be 100 percent sure that you can defend against the type of enemy you are dealing with, which has no respect for human dignity, will be very difficult. There is no doubt that the security forces of the International Security Assistance Forces and those of Afghanistan are not enough to secure this much area.” Wardak’s comment came after a suicide attack on Saturday inside the NATO headquarters in Kabul—the first suicide attack in the capital in eight months.
"Something remarkable is beginning to happen," Hendrick Hertzberg writes in his latest New Yorker column. State governments are struggling, and the worst off may be California’s. Hertzberg says the cause for the Golden State’s anemic condition is its referendum-happy system, which has handcuffed legislators from making the kinds of changes needed to right California’s limping economy and beleaguered government. But, according to Hertzberg, the state’s problem may also be its solution. There’s a movement afoot, called Repair California, which is gaining wide support. It's an initiative which would allow randomly chosen delegates to rewrite the state’s leviathan of a constitution and start from scratch. Hertzberg concludes, “If California has the courage and imagination to become a true laboratory of democracy, the experiment will be something to see.”
Some things can't be fixed by a big dance number. The Associated Press reports that U.S. officials detained Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan for questioning at a U.S. airport, because his name was on a computer alert list. U.S. customs said the questioning was part of a routine process and took 66 minutes. In India, where the ability to avoid being frisked at airports is seen as a status symbol, fellow film stars, political leaders, and fans were outraged at the "humiliating" treatment. Ironically, Khan was traveling to the U.S. to promote his new movie My Name is Khan, about racial profiling of Muslims in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
North Korea said on Sunday it will reopen its border with South Korea so that tourism and family reunions can start up again. The country's news service immediately followed that announcement with a warning of "a merciless and prompt annihilating strike" if U.S. and South Korean military operations infringe the country's sovereignty. Kim Jong-Il met Friday with the leader of South Korea's Hyundai Group, who was trying to secure the release of a detained worker. The Hyundai Group runs tourism to the North and operates the Kaesong industrial park just over the border, which brings in money for Pyongyang's leadership. Normal traffic can resume to the Kaesong factory park, though it's unclear whether Hyundai buckled to Kim's demands for a payment hike for operating the park, which offers cheap labor to South Korean companies.
The Santa Barbara, California, blaze that tore through more than 75,000 acres was started at an illegal marijuana farm, authorities say. The fire began in the cooking area of the farm, which is run by a Mexican drug organization, and authorities say the culprits are hiding in the forest somewhere. The fire, which started August 8, is still burning out of control, while 10 other fires are currently blazing in California.
During this year's P.G.A. championship, the underdog triumphed. The New York Times reports that Y.E. Yang, ranked 110th in the world, took on Tiger Woods, No. 1, and won the title. Yang shot a two-under-par 70 during the final round at the Hazeltine National and became the first Korean man to win one of golf's four major championships and the first golfer to overtake Woods in a major championship in which Woods had the lead going into the final round. During the round, Woods missed eight putts inside 10 feet. Yang spoke modestly of his accomplishment. "You never know in life, this might be my last win as a golfer."
It’s not a good sign when movie executives are more talked about than their movies. That’s the case with Universal Pictures chairmen Marc Shmuger and David Linde, who have recently fallen under fire after a dismal season (Fast & Furious was the studio’s only hit of the year.) Their biggest problem, the Los Angeles Times reports, is that they’ve failed to connect with audiences, and the execs are currently being pressured for plans to change. They’re feeling the heat from their parent companies, NBC Universal and General Electric Co., as NBC chief Jeff Zucker has just dispatched his chief financial officer to scour the company’s process for picking and producing movies. And there are rumors that heads might roll: the LA Times writes that an “executive overhaul could soon unseat” Shmuger and Linde, and that Universal chief Ron Meyer knows he’s also accountable. Said Meyer: “ I share a great deal of responsibility, and we are all in this together.” He continued,” We’ve got a bad case of the flu, but by no means is this terminal.”
It appears that grandma is safe: Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley retracted his statement over the weekend that, under President Obama’s health-care reform, the government could “pull the plug on grandma.” Greg Sargent pulls out the relevant passage from The Washington Post: “a spokesman said the senator does not think the House provision would in fact give the government such authority in deciding when and how people die.” Sargent notes, “The big news orgs blared Grassley’s initial assertion at the electorate for days, but almost no one will ever learn that Grassley didn’t really mean it.”
Russia has found the missing merchant ship that disappeared mysteriously two weeks ago. The ship was found near the Cape Verde islands, and the crew, which is alive and well, is being questioned over the circumstances of the disappearance. "Today at one o'clock in the morning Moscow time, the ship was found 300 miles off the Cape Verde islands," said Russian Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov. The missing ship was suspected of having been hijacked by pirates.
