DC transit chief says he will resign; board pledges confidence despite string of accidents

WASHINGTON (AP) — The general manager of the Washington, D.C., transit agency says he is stepping down.




Metro says John Catoe told the agency's board of directors of his decision Thursday. His last day will be April 2.



Catoe says his retirement after three years at the helm would let Metro "move beyond the current distractions."



D.C. Council Member Jim Graham, who chairs the Metro board, says the board regrets Catoe's decision. He says Catoe continues to have the board's "full confidence."



Catoe's announcement comes after a string of accidents, including a crash in June 2009 that killed nine people. It was the deadliest crash in Metro's history.

Source:latimes.com/

Renaissance Learning hires former Washington, D.C., school superintendent

Renaissance Learning has appointed Franklin Smith to its senior vice president of urban accounts, the Wisconsin Rapids-based educational software company announced this week.

Formerly the superintendent of schools in Washington, D.C., and Dayton, Ohio, Smith also served in similar sales roles at several other educational companies, according to a company news release.

The Wisconsin Rapids-based company currently serves more than 74,000 schools and has seven U.S. locations and subsidiaries in Canada and the United Kingdom.

Source:wisconsinrapidstribune.com/

FAMU student selected for prestigious Washington, D.C., internship

Florida A&M student Reamonn Soto, 23, of Tallahassee has been selected to participate in the Congressional Black Caucus’ internship program this spring.

The program in Washington, D.C., is known as the Emerging Leaders Internship Program – a semester-long paid internship in which he will have the opportunity to work on Capitol Hill at federal agencies and for nonprofit organizations.
Soto plans to drive to D.C. this weekend, and the program will officially start Monday.


As a recipient, he will receive housing, a stipend and an all-expenses paid semester at the George Washington University’s Semester in Washington Program.
Source:tallahassee.com/

Gilbert Arenas and his 85 million dollar mistake

Gilbert Arenas is stupid idiot, and in the end his stupidity is going to cost him 85 million dollars. It is not news the Gilbert though it to be wise to bring a bunch of guns to the Washington Wizard’s arena, store them in his locker, and then allegedly brandish one of them at a teammate over a gambling debt. These actions were not only against NBA regulations, but quite possible Washington DC gun laws, which happen to be among the strictest in the country. He followed that up by going out in a NBA game last night and pretending to shoot his teammates.

This guy just doesn’t understand the severity of what he did. Needless to say NBA commissioner David Stern was forced to drop the boom on him, and he is now indefinitely suspended from the NBA without pay. It seems very likely that the league and the team will work to void his contract, for which he has four years and 85 million dollars left on, and if Arenas is really lucky he will avoid going to prison.

Washington DC, or really the sports world in general, was not the place to fool around with guns. It is not the place where guns should be, and Gilbert is a moron for trying to make light on a very serious infraction. Before last night’s sickening display, Stern was willing to wait out the completion of the police investigation. However Arenas was unable to keep his head down, unable to avoid acting a clown and those actions maybe even more so than the original gun infraction are why he should lose his contract.

Inner city gun violence is not a punch line to use to promote you twitter account, guns are serious, and Gilbert cannot find it in himself to understand that. He says, he took the guns out of his house to protect his children, but brought them to an arena full of fans, fans that quite possible have been drinking. That is ignorance of the highest level, and it should cost him his 85 million dollars.

Source:inquisitr.com/

Obama Orders Air Marshal Surge by Feb. 1: 'Race Against Time'

President Barack Obama has ordered a "surge" of federal air marshals to be in place by Feb.1 in what officials said was a "race against time," with other suicide bombers believed to be in the terrorist pipeline, although there is no specific imminent threat, federal officials told ABC News.

A Federal Air Marshal is seen training in this undated Department of Homeland Security photo....
A Federal Air Marshal is seen training in this undated Department of Homeland Security photo. President Obama has authorized the augmentation of the Federal Air Marshal Service from other Federal Law Enforcement Agencies. ALL international flights will have Air Marshals on board.
(Department of Homeland Security)Under a preliminary plan, the officials said the already existing federal air marshal force of more than 3,200 personnel would be deployed almost exclusively to overseas flights flown by U.S. carriers.

Domestic high-risk flights will be covered by agents from other federal law enforcement agencies who were trained as air marshals in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacksA Federal Air Marshal is seen training in this undated Department of Homeland Security photo....
A Federal Air Marshal is seen training in this undated Department of Homeland Security photo. President Obama has authorized the augmentation of the Federal Air Marshal Service from other Federal Law Enforcement Agencies. ALL international flights will have Air Marshals on board.
(Department of Homeland Security)

Source:abcnews.go.com/

Fight Club

While the political parties duke it out over divisive social issues, the majority of Americans remain steadfastly in the middle.

Presidents have been trying, without success, to get Congress to pass sweeping national health-care reform since the administration of Harry Truman. So one might have expected some celebration, at least a moment of recognition for a difficult achievement, when the U.S. Senate voted on Christmas Eve to approve a bill that will extend health-care insurance to 30 million Americans. Instead, the public reaction was ho-hum. Most polls registered a divided or disinterested electorate, and some surveys have suggested considerable confusion over what was actually in the bill. A Washington Post–ABC poll the week before Christmas showed that less than half—44 percent—approved of President Obama's handling of health care, while even fewer—39 percent—thought the Republicans would do a better job. In effect, the American people seemed to be throwing up their hands and scorning the ability of the politicians to govern on such an important matter.

It's not hard to see why. Compromise is often painful, but the push to get a bill out of the Senate verged on the squalid. Senators joked bitterly about the "Cornhusker kickback," the generous concessions made to Sen. Ben Nelson, Democrat of Nebraska, to win his 60th and deciding vote. The atmosphere on the Senate floor was at times poisonous as the parties postured and squabbled. "This body prides itself on being the world's greatest deliberative body," said Sen. Arlen Specter, Democrat (formerly Republican) of Pennsylvania. "That designation has been destroyed with what has occurred here the past few days." The low point may have come when Sen. Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, declared, "What the American people ought to pray is that somebody can't make the vote." At the time, there was some question whether the ailing Sen. Robert Byrd, 92, would live long enough to give the Democrats their filibuster-proof majority. "This statement goes too far," responded Sen. Dick Durbin, the Illinois Democrat. "We are becoming more coarse and divided here."



More divided, that's for sure. Congress has always had its cruder elements—during the late 1950s and early 1960s, senators from both parties patronized prostitutes at the Quorum Club at the Carroll Arms Hotel, just across the street from the Capitol. The bar was run by Bobby Baker, the Democratic secretary of the Senate. But lawmakers in that era more often reached across the aisle to vote together as well as to play together. The congressional culture of the 1950s and early 1960s—"where Democrats and Republicans generally treated each other with civility during working hours and many drank, played poker, and golfed together after hours—is long gone," writes Morris Fiorina, a scholar of political science at Stanford University. In his new book, Disconnect: The Breakdown of Representation in American Politics, Fiorina argues that while the political class—the pols and their partisans in interest groups and in the media—has grown increasingly contentious over social issues like abortion and immigration, the vast majority of voters are more moderate. They are turned off by the rigid, angry battles between the politicians of the right and the left, and their cheering sections and hangers-on in Washington.

Fierce partisanship is hardly new, unexpected, or, for that matter, unwelcome on Capitol Hill, and at earlier times in our history elected representatives have, in the heat of debate, attacked each other with their fists. But as the rancorous and seemingly endless health-care debate dragged on, Congress appeared ever-more polarized. Lawmakers fought bitterly over whether to fund abortions—a question that inspired passion, but was only marginally relevant to overall health-care reform—and they drew lines in the sand that seemed baffling to many Americans, at least those who aren't glued to the perpetual shouting matches on Fox or MSNBC. Left-wing supporters of the much-contested "public option" deemed it essential to reform, while those on the right cried "Socialism!" Actually, the Congressional Budget Office found that the public option would make little difference to the number of people covered or to the cost of premiums. Its importance was far more symbolic than real.

Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine is one of the last two moderate Republicans in the Northeast, once a thriving tribe (the other is the state's junior senator, Susan Collins). Snowe was the one Republican who might have voted for the health-reform bill, though in the end even she did not. But in a speech on the Senate floor in early December, Snowe pointed out a disturbing historical fact: health-care reform is the only piece of major social-welfare legislation ever to pass the Senate on a straight party-line vote. When Social Security was enacted during the New Deal, significant majorities of Republicans in both the House and Senate voted for the measure, even though Democrats controlled Congress. Likewise for the passage of civil-rights legislation in the 1960s. Significant numbers of Republicans (41 percent in the Senate, 50 percent in the House) voted for Medicare in 1965. "Policies that will affect more than 300 million people simply should not be decided by partisan, one-vote-margin strategies," said Snowe.

Professor Fiorina notes that the political parties are becoming more extreme. The percentage of Republican delegates to nominating conventions who identify themselves as "very conservative" has risen from about 12 percent to more than 30 percent since 1972, and the percentage of "very liberal" Democratic delegates has grown from about 8 percent to nearly 20 percent. By contrast, surveys of the general public show little change in "very conservative" and "very liberal" percentages. Voters tend to be quirkier in their opinions—they don't go down a checklist on "wedge issues," but rather show inconsistency and ambivalence. A self-described conservative who hates big government may nonetheless want government to cut the bonuses of Wall Street financiers.

Fiorina's somewhat sweeping conclusions in Disconnect are questioned by other political experts like Pietro Nivola of the Brookings Institution, who argues that the voters are almost as partisan as their representatives—that the red state–blue state divide is real and growing deeper. But differences between the scholars seem to be questions of degree, and all seem to share the view that Capitol Hill has become disturbingly uncivil and polarized. The politicians are egged on by ever-more powerful interest groups and the attack-mode spirit of radio talk shows and cable TV. President Obama has tried, fitfully and without not-able effect, to inspire lawmakers to rise above petty factionalism. If he wants to get anything more accomplished over the course of his presidency, he will have to try harder. There is no other obvious cure to the problem of political polarization. Fiorina offers none. He suggests only that in time, we will become so weary of our punitive politics that the system will, out of necessity, "outgrow" or "outlive" its current fractiousness. Which is a polite way of saying that things are probably going to get worse before they get better.

Source:newsweek.com/

After passing 2 health bills, Hill must now build bridge

WASHINGTON - -- Even as Senate Democrats celebrated passing landmark health care legislation last week, they knew the arm-twisting and dealmaking wasn't close to being over.

The $871 billion Senate measure, which passed early Christmas Eve in a taut, party-line vote, now must be reconciled with a $1 trillion House version that passed in early November. While the two bills are more alike than different, working out the kinks won't be an entirely smooth process.

What form that process will take also remains unclear. Typically, differences are ironed out in a joint House-Senate conference committee. But last week, sentiments on Capitol Hill were moving away from such a formal structure in favor of a looser negotiating framework that could allow greater flexibility to fashion a compromise.

And because Republicans will play no role in shaping the final product, Democrats are free to do as they see fit -- which could mean a handful of leaders from both houses, along with key committee chairs, will hammer out a deal behind closed doors with the goal of sending a bill to President Barack Obama by early February. Both the House and the Senate will have to vote again on the measure before that happens.

Members of the Obama administration, including the White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, will also be heavily involved in the talks.

"We've got two bills, one in the House, one in the Senate; they're 95 percent similar," White House deputy press secretary Bill Burton said Thursday. "We're going to be actively working to iron out the rest of the differences and get a bill passed and signed."

Regardless of the format, the Senate is expected to have the upper hand in any negotiations, because Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., needs the vote of every one of the 58 members of his caucus along with the two independents in the chamber to ward off a Republican filibuster.

Senators such as Joe Lieberman, an independent from Connecticut, and Ben Nelson, a Democrat from Nebraska, whom Reid courted until the last minute, have already pledged to withdraw their support if the bill deviates too much from the Senate version.

For Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., the challenge will come in keeping Senate moderates on board without triggering defections from House liberals, who are aggrieved that the Senate bill dispensed with cherished provisions such as a government-run insurer -- the "public option" -- that would compete with private companies.

But no one on Capitol Hill seems to believe that the lack of a public option will be a deal-breaker. And Pelosi and other House leaders will have a simple message for intransigent members: Do you want to be the one who keeps a historic health care bill from the president's desk?

It's also possible that the more the final bill begins to resemble the Senate version, the greater the chance that some of the 39 centrist Democrats in the House who voted against the bill could come on board.

Both versions of the bill set up insurance exchanges, where people could buy health policies with the help of federal subsidies. Both expand the reach of the Medicaid program and both impose new rules on insurers, including prohibiting them from rejecting customers based on their medical history.

But there are some significant differences. A key sticking point in the talks may be the issue of abortion coverage and the federal subsidies. The more restrictive House bill prohibits anyone receiving subsidies from buying an individual policy that covers abortion through the new insurance exchange. The Senate bill would only prohibit the use of federal funds for such coverage and would require insurance companies to segregate public and private funds.

Another potential flash point involves how each version is financed. The Senate bill partially relies on taxes on high-end, so-called Cadillac insurance plans -- a tax bitterly opposed by labor unions. The House bill imposes a surcharge on Americans who earn more than $500,000 a year and families earning more than $1 million.

House liberals may seek to extract some other changes to the Senate bill in return for jettisoning the public option, including increasing the amount of the subsidies or moving up the date the new insurance exchanges would take effect one year, to 2013.

How those exchanges would operate is another disparity: House Democrats want that exchange to be a national one, while the Senate bill calls for a state-based system.

The talks could be heated, especially after House leaders have pledged not to "roll over" for the Senate. But it was clear at the end of last week that even the liberals weren't drawing lines in the sand and were ready to deal.

"It doesn't have to be called a public option," said Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Calif., co-chairwoman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. "The main issue for Democrats in the House is affordability."

Janet Hook of the Tribune Newspapers Washington Bureau contributed to this report.

Source:chicagotribune.com

ZooLights Back On at DC's National Zoo

By MYFOXDC STAFF/myfoxdc

WASHINGTON, D.C. - The weekend snowstorm might have been fun for the National Zoo's beloved giant panda, Tai Shan, but it temporarily put a freeze on their annual winter celebration. ZooLights has been postponed since the bad weather hit, but its back on as of Wednesday.

ZooLights features animal sculptures all lit up in LED lights, and the Fujifilm Giant Panda Habitat is also open so that visitors can see Tai Shan before he departs for China in early 2010.

Tickets for the event are $5 for members and $8 for non-members, and they can be purchased at the gate. Tickets for December 19-22 are also being honored for any of the remaining nights.

ZooLights is open on December 23, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, and January 1 and 2 from 6 – 8:30 p.m.

Source:myfoxdc.com/

Obama Disapproval Jumps after Furtive Senate Health Vote

WASHINGTON, D.C., December 23, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Rasmussen Reports' Daily Presidential Tracking Poll has showed a spike in disapproval of President Obama's job performance following Monday's 1 am cloture vote on the Senate health care bill.

On Wednesday 44% of voters said they "strongly disapprove" of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President, while 26% say they "strongly approve," giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -18. On Tuesday, the divide was 46%-25%, giving an index of -21 - the highest strong disapproval and lowest index yet recorded for the President.

55% at least somewhat disapproved of Obama's job performance, the same percentage that disapproved of the health care bill Democrats are currently pushing through the Senate.

In addition, only 29% of U.S. voters now say the country is heading in the right direction, the lowest level measured since early February, according to Rasmussen. 65% believe America is "heading down the wrong track."

Source:lifesitenews.com/

D.C. passes full marriage law

Washington, D.C.--District councilors passed a same-sex marriage bill through its second, and final, vote on December 15, moving it to the desk of Mayor Adrian Fenty.

Fenty was expected to sign it on December 17, which then sends it to Congress, where it faces a 30-day legislative review period.

The bill passed again by a vote of 11 to 2, with only Councilors Yvette M. Alexander and Marion Barry opposing it, as they did in its first vote on December 1.

Congress can nix the bill, as it has legislative oversight over the District of Columbia, but the measure is expected to quietly pass through its congressional review period, as most D.C. legislation does.

With Fenty’s signature, the District will join Massachusetts, Iowa, Vermont, Connecticut and, in January, New Hampshire in offering full marriage.

Source:gaypeopleschronicle.com/

Man Caught At DC Airport With Cocaine-Stuffed Baked Chi

Sometimes people learn the hard way what not to carry on a holiday trip.

That was the case for a Guatemalan man caught at Washington, DC's Dulles International Airport with a baked chicken stuffed with something surprising.

The bird contained 60 grams of cocaine that has a street value of about 43-hundred dollars.

U.S. Customs agents at the airport arrested 32-year-old Wagner Linares Aragon when they discovered the chicken during a random inspection.

Steve Sapp of the Department of Homeland Security says the man arrived at Dulles on a flight from El Salvador just after midnight last Saturday.

Around the holidays, Sapp says agents check agricultural products very carefully to make sure nothing forbidden is entering the country.

Source: mystateline.com/