Post Ofice Privatisation

Last Call
And as Conservatives like Fox News legal analyst Peter Johnson Jr. here call for a "second class of Citizenship" for Children born to undocumented workers, you have to wonder how long it will take before they call for Minorities, gays, women and non-Christians to be given the same second-class status as well, because "that's what the Founders were really saying". Email This BlogThis! Share to Twitter Share to Facebook Share to Google Buzz ...

Turn On The Lights, Watch The Roaches Scatter, Part 55
The possible settlement by all 50 state AGs with the banks on Foreclosuregate may have just run into a concrete barrier in the Bay State. Massachusetts’s highest court is poised to rule on whether Foreclosures in the state should be undone because securitization-industry practices violate real- estate law governing how Mortgages may be transferred. The fight between Homeowners and banks before the Supreme Judicial Court in Boston turns on whether a mortgage can be transferred without namin...

Tidal Forces, How Do They Work? It's A $^@*#* Miracle
Bill-O fails at science again. "I'll tell you why [religion is] not a scam," he said. "In my opinion -- alright? Tide goes in, tide goes out. Never a miscommunication. You can't explain that. You can't explain why the tide goes in." It makes my head hurt sometimes. You know Bill, I know astrophysicists. They're pretty normal guys. One I know is a very spiritual dude (and a hell of a guitar player.) It is possible to combine science and faith without looking an idiot on national television. Try...

Zandar's Thought Of The Day
Paul Volcker's out at the White House. Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker plans to leave his role as head of a panel of experts advising President Barack Obama on The Economy, sources familiar with the decision said on Wednesday. The departure of Volcker, 83, from the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board is among a series of changes Obama is planning to announce soon. The decision to leave the board was Volcker's. A source close to him said he was ready to continue to advise Ob...

Vietnam media: US diplomat shoved local official
HANOI, Vietnam -- Vietnam's state-controlled media are accusing an American diplomat of creating a public disturbance during an incident in which he was reportedly roughed up by Vietnamese police for attempting to visit a prominent Dissident. The U.S. says it has filed a strong Protest over the incident Wednesday in the central city of Hue. The Thanh Nien newspaper on Friday quoted unidentified witnesses as saying U.S. Embassy political officer Christian Marchant shouted curses in English and V...

Egypt Copts mark Christmas under tight security
Armoured cars were to be stationed next to churches in Egypt Friday as Coptic Christians celebrate their Christmas just days after a church bombing that killed 21 people. Drivers were banned from parking in front of churches, which were being tightly monitored by explosives detection teams and police, said a police official. Under the Coptic calendar, Christmas Day falls on January 7. Some Muslims would also show up at churches to act as human shields in a show of solidarity with Egypt's beleagu...

Moderate Muslims Take a Stand
We’ve been waiting for years for “moderate” Muslims to appear and offer a viable alternative to the “Extremists”. I’d all but given up hope, but now they’ve finally appeared — in Pakistan, of all places. I’m talking about the crowds of Pakistani lawyers and other prominent citizens who have been celebrating Malik Mumtaz Qadri, the assassin of the Governor of Punjab. As you may recall, Gov. Salman Taseer was gunned down on Tuesday by his bodyg...

Wiki Rehab
American Diplomacy seems to have survived Wikileaks’s “attack on the international community,” as Hillary Clinton so dramatically characterized it, unscathed. Save for a few diplomatic reshuffles, Foggy Bottom doesn’t seem to be deeply affected by what happened. Certainly, the U.S. government at large has not been paralyzed by the leaks—contrary to what Julian Assange had envisioned in one of his cryptic-cum-visionary essays, penned in 2006. In a fit of technologic...

Russell Pearce Fundraiser To Be Protested Friday
Pearce builds his own trough and goes hog-wild Friday Anti-Russell Pearce Activists are set to Protest both a Friday, January 7 Fundraiser for the state Senate President-elect, and the opening day of business for the Arizona Legislature on Monday, January 10, when Pearce will take his seat as the Dark Lord of Sand Land. The Friday demonstration, which is reportedly being spearheaded by the Phoenix Human Rights' group Puente, will be near a private home in Paradise Valley, where a Fundraiser to...

Was Justice Done in Chicago "Dog-Urination" Murder?
As we stated in our earlier posts, the incident could have been avoided if Funches, when confronted about the placement of his dog's pee, had simply said "sorry" and kept walking. Clements was within his legal rights to request that the dog, and its urine, stay off his property in the future--even if that request might seem over the top to many people, including me. Clements, however, moved off solid legal footing when he decided to follow Funches down the street. Here is how the Chicago Tribu...

Residents want East Village post office kept open
Residents are fighting the closure of a Post Office set for next week in the East Village. A petition began circulating through the community after a notice was distributed before Christmas that the U.S. Postal Service branch at 321 E. Walnut St. would close Jan. 15. Lost revenue and a poor economy are to blame, said Des Moines Postmaster Jackie Cook. Hours at the East Village branch were reduced to four hours a day on weekdays several years ago, and since then there has been a decline in the ...

Man killed in grenade blast in central Afula
Explosion occurred near central Post Office branch in Afula; police suspect attack was criminally-motivated....

Schwarzenegger's post office plans? Hitting slopes with Medvedev
Former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's departure from office sparked much buzz about what the bodybuilder-turned-actor-turned-politician would do next. One thing on his post-office plate? Carving out time to hit the slopes with the Russian president. Schwarzenegger, an avid skier who is often spotted on the slopes in Sun Valley, Idaho, floated the possible plans in a tweet to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. "We agreed - I remember. We'll definitely find the time," Medvedev tweeted back. Tha...

Freight transport: Put that in your pipe and poke it
ENTHUSIASTS of the Digital Economy sometimes forget that bits are not everything. However important information is in transforming business, most of what is actually bought and sold is still physical goods, and those goods need to be delivered to the customer. Unlike information technology, though, freight transport has not evolved much during the past few decades. It takes only a few seconds to choose and buy something from an online store, but several days for it then to reach the purchaser. T...

IRS stops mailing tax booklets; R.I. sending out fewer
PROVIDENCE — Don’t wait for your tax booklets to arrive in the mail — they may never come. Because of cost cuts and an increase in the use of computers to file tax returns electronically, tax officials are either cutting down on printed forms or eliminating them altogether. The Internal Revenue Service, for example, will not do a mass mailing of tax booklets to Taxpayers this year, ending a decades-long practice. The Connecticut Department of Revenue Services said last week tha...

Flaming parcel devices wound 1 at US state office
DANA POINT, Calif. (AP) - What's in a name? For Harold and Martha Smith, it's been bundles of letters, crates of wine, cheese platters, and—once—100 pounds of frozen fish. All have been delivered to their ocean-view home in the ritzy Monarch Beach area. And all of it was supposed to have gone to the St. Regis Resort about 1 1/2 miles away. "This has gotten my dander up," said Mrs. Smith, 75. The trouble began about six years ago when the five-star hotel opened at 1 Monarch Beach Res...

Coming soon to a post office near you: Gift cards
Starting in May, about 2,000 Post Offices will start selling Gift Cards of $25 or more, and another 1,000 location will start doing so in October. The cards will be available for purchase at about 110 locations in the District, Maryland and Virginia, according to USPS. The cash-strapped Postal Service is seeking new ways to generate revenue and increase mail volume. Gift-cards -- often sold at cash registers alongside magazines and candy -- are a popular impulse purchase that should help do both...

Egypt fears Coptic Christmas bombings
Source: CBC Egyptian authorities put up a heavy security cordon early Thursday around the main Coptic cathedral in Cairo hours before Christmas Eve Mass, hoping to prevent another attack like the New Year's Suicide bombing of a church that killed 21 people. Al-Qaeda in Iraq had threatened Christians in Iraq and Egypt in the weeks leading up to the holidays, and Militant websites have even posted online lists of churches in Egypt to target with their addresses. Egypt's Coptic Christian minority, ...

Egypt: Terror alert on Coptic Christmas
Police put up a security cordon around the main Coptic cathedral in Cairo yesterday, hours before their Christmas Eve Mass, using bomb-sniffing dogs, metal detectors and officers to try to prevent another attack like the New Year's Suicide bombing of a church that killed 21 people. Al-Qa'ida threatened Christians in Iraq and Egypt in the weeks before the holidays. Coptic Christians, who make up 10 per cent of the 80 million population, celebrate Christmas today. ...

Housing chief to meet Sinn Fein
A Sinn Fein delegation is due to meet the chief executive of the Housing Executive later over his organisation's response to the water crisis. On Wednesday, Stewart Cuddy admitted that the final bill for repairs to damage could top £10m. Sinn Fein's housing spokesperson Fra McCann said the figure was "staggering" and warranted urgent investigation. The party claims that some social housing tenants have had no heating or electricty since before Christmas. It has called...

Goldman customers get Facebook financials
By Matthew Goldstein and Alexei Oreskovic NEW YORK/San Francisco | Thu Jan 6, 2011 7:08pm EST NEW YORK/San Francisco (Reuters) - Facebook is generating profits at a faster-than-expected rate, and will likely attract so many investors this year that it will have to disclose financial data similar to a publicly traded company by April 2012. The move could set the stage for a much-anticipated Facebook initial public offering in 2012, though there is no guarantee that the Social Networking compan...

Is Gov. Dayton a TEA Party Politician?
One of the things Tea Party Activists insist on is that politicians listen to them. Based on what Scott Wente wrote in this article , it almost sounds like Gov. Dayton is a Tea Party kind of guy, with the key word being almost. Cottage Grove resident Leon Moe is critical of federal Health Care expansion and on Wednesday was given a big platform to express that view. Gov. Mark Dayton yielded his microphone to Moe and other Protesters at a highly unusual ceremony during which the Governor signed ...

Palestinian Protesters Death Throws Spotlight on Movement Against Israeli Wall
The new year opened tragically in the Palestinian Occupied Territories. Jawaher Abu Rahmah died on New Year’s Day morning at a Hospital in Ramallah, where she was admitted after having a severe reaction to Tear Gas that the Israeli forces fired into a crowd in Bilin. Demonstrators had gathered as part of a weekly Protest against the Israeli wall. (Jawaher was reportedly watching with her mother from a distance.) Even Israeli officials are not disputing that the Tear Gas had an adverse effec...

Charges filed in Facebook photos rape case
MAPLE RIDGE, British Columbia -- Canada's federal police force has charged two teenage boys after a girl was gang raped at a party and photos of the incident were put on Facebook. Royal Canadian Mounted Police Sgt. Peter Thiessen said Thursday that 18-year-old Colton Ashton McMorris has been charged with Sexual Assault and 19-year-old Dennis John Allen Warrington has been charged with production and distribution of Child Pornography in the Sept. 10, 2010, incident. The girl was 16 at the time. ...

Four courses under threat at uni
Courses, staff and Students are set to be reduced at the University of Wales Institute, Cardiff, (Uwic) as Higher Education funding cuts and changes take effect. The university will decide whether to close four courses at a meeting on Friday. It is also proposed to cut 35 jobs and "significantly reduce" student numbers at the university's school of art. The courses under threat include the university's BA in interior architecture, BA sociology & criminology/popular cultur...