Earlier this year, President Obama pushed for, and actually got, Congress to pass stricter rules about members of Congress using special knowledge to make moves on investments. For just about everyone else, this was already illegal under insider trader regulations, but now there are stricter regulations that apply just to Congresscritters. The bill ( Read more... )

This week, former FBI Louis Freeh concluded his investigation of Penn State complicity in possibly covering up repeated pedophilia by Assistant Coach Jerry Sandusky, who was recently convicted of multiple acts of pedophilia. The results, unlike many other reports, were given to the media and Board of Trustees at the same time, preventing from ( Read more... )

It almost needs to be put as a warning, but this post will cover Jerry Sandusky, the Catholic Church and pedophilia. If you feel these are topics you cannot deal with comfortably, please tune in tomorrow. If you feel you cannot read this because they have been covered too much in the media. . .well, you're probably right. Late Friday night, former ( Read more... )

Last week, News of the World, a popular British tabloid, closed their doors days after it was revealed they had reporters and others hack into people's voicemails and other privacy invading measures. In this specific case, agents of News of the World had broken into the voicemail of a girl who had disappeared and was killed. Her parents held out ( Read more... )

Italy has long been famous for toppling governments. The current government is the 56th government since the end of world war II. There have been premiers who have been associated with the Mafia who were backed solely because they were anti-Communist. There are all kinds of old roman connections to be made, but truly Italy is a political creature ( Read more... )

A little less than a week ago, the government of Tunisia fell apart to the tune of the president feeling the country and the prime minister stepping forward to say there will be new elections in 60 days. The interim president said that he planned a clean break from the past and wanted a revolution based on "dignity and equality" for all. Some have ( Read more... )

Although I wasn't around to comment on it then, about a year ago Haiti had a massive earthquake that left thousands dead and nearly leveled the entire country. Now, a year later, so little aid has flowed in that rebuilding has proven to be next to impossible. Sarah Palin, John Edwards and others have all gone down there to have their moment in the ( Read more... )

Long time fans of MidnightRanter can probably guess what this will be about. There have been a lot of rants over the years (ok one or two) showing a very different view of the Susan G. Komen For the Cure than is presented in the media. There has been a lot of questioning here of their strong arm methods, intimidation tactics and expenditures from ( Read more... )

In what can be described as either as a final death knell or the last punch in a beat down, Alaska Senator Ted Stevens was found guilty in his corruption trial and has vowed to keep running despite his felony conviction. This comes on top of Governor Palin is causing strife in the McCain campaign by going off message at almost every given ( Read more... )

Originally, this was going to feature a take on the song "Life is a Lemon", but apparently, someone already did that. I hate being clever. I was also going to try Rime of Ancient Mariner (the Iron Maiden version, the Samuel Taylor Coleridge original was too damn long) but couldn't get it to work, so here we are playing straight. The McCain/Palin ( Read more... )