Pat Dollard

CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) – A Wyoming man has been charged with counterfeiting money to pay an exotic dancer for a private performance. Rickey A. Kempter, 50, faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted. Prosecutors said Kempter hired the exotic dancer for a private dance at the Lariat Motel, and Kempter and the dancer [...]

AP US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is set Wednesday to outline key steps Washington will take to fulfill President Barack Obama’s vision of a world free of nuclear weapons. In a speech in Washington, Clinton will show how the world will be safer through a new US-Russia nuclear arms reduction treaty as well as [...]

BY STEVE HUNTLEY Have you heard the news? President Obama inherited an economic mess from the Bush administration. You say that’s hardly news? But it’s been the message sounded over and over by the White House. Top Obama adviser David Axelrod said on one of the Sunday news shows, “He walked in the door, we [...]

AP The US government’s 700-billion-dollar financial rescue helped bring the system back from a near-meltdown, but the overall outcome of the program is unclear, a report to Congress said Wednesday. The report also said it is unlikely taxpayers will get all their money back from the massive investments to stabilize the financial system and economy [...]

LOS ANGELES (AP) – Amelia Mendoza’s last words to her husband were that she was afraid she would be fired for reporting that she had been assaulted at her hospital nursing job. Moments later, she had a massive hemorrhagic stroke that has left her in a vegetative state and in a health care limbo because [...]

By E.B. SOLOMONT Charges of espionage against US Defense Department scientist Stewart Nozette reflect “extreme views” against Israel that could harm US-Israel relations, former AIPAC staffer Steve Rosen told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday. Rosen, AIPAC’s former foreign policy chief who was accused, with Keith Weissman, of passing along classified information, said it was revealing [...]

HAVANA (Reuters) – New Orleans hopes to cash in on an improvement in U.S.-Cuba relations by getting direct charter flights between New Orleans and Havana, the U.S. city’s mayor said in Havana on Tuesday. “We see a huge opportunity if President (Barack) Obama continues to go in the direction he’s headed,” Ray Nagin said in [...]

WASHINGTON (AP) – Federal authorities have arrested a State Department employee suspected of taking tens of thousands of dollars in bribes and kickbacks on contracts for Iraq reconstruction work. Court records allege that 52-year-old Richard Lopez Razo began the illicit venture in 2005 when he was working for a company based in California with numerous [...]

The Hill: Rep. Edolphus Towns (D-N.Y.) locked Republicans out of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee room to keep them from meeting when Democrats aren’t present. Towns’ action came after repeated public ridicule from the leading Republican on the committee, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), over Towns’s failure to launch an investigation into Countrywide Mortgage’s [...]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Tuesday new estimates showed a healthcare overhaul drafted by Democrats would reduce the U.S. budget deficit over 10 years and cost less than $900 billion. The preliminary estimates from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office moved Democratic leaders closer to finishing a merger of three [...]

Newsday: No, bigbigbigbig news. Sarah Palin and Oprah Winfrey are meeting. Or. I should say, Sarah’s doing “Oprah.” Just announced. The details: “In a world exclusive, Oprah Winfrey will interview former Alaska governor Sarah Palin for an episode of “The Oprah Winfrey Show” to air Monday, Nov. 16, 2009. Winfrey and Palin will meet for [...]

Pearl Harbor Fox News: Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Tuesday that the Obama administration cannot wait for the Afghan election to be resolved before making a decision on troop levels, appearing to be at odds with White House officials who have tied a decision on U.S. strategy to the resolution of the election and political [...]

Times Online: President Karzai today bowed to international pressure and agreed to take part in a run-off vote in the Afghan presidential election. Mr Karzai accepted the findings of the country’s electoral authorities that widespread fraud had invalidated the results of the first round of voting that awarded him an outright victory with 55 per [...]

Politico: A White House attempt to delegitimize Fox News – which in past times would have drawn howls of censorship from the press corps – has instead been greeted by a collective shrug. That’s true even though the motivations of the White House are clear: Fire up a liberal base disillusioned with Obama by attacking [...]