Rush Limbaugh Falls
Further Down The Abyss
Of Hate
Ailing, Banks Still Field Strong Lobby at Capitol
BACK TO BUSINESS
By STEPHEN LABATON
Published: June 4, 2009
WASHINGTON – As he often does, President Obama took the opportunity in a bill-signing ceremony last month to remind Congress “to do what we were actually sent here to do – and that is to stand up to the special interests, and stand up for the American people.”
But Mr. Obama did not mention that the measure he was signing, the Helping Families Save Their Homes Act, was missing its centerpiece: a change in bankruptcy law he once championed that would have given judges the power to lower the amount owed on a home loan.It had been stripped out three weeks earlier in a showdown between Senate Democrats and the nation’s banks, including many that are getting big government bailouts.
Sri Lanka doctors ‘to be tried’
A group of doctors who worked in Sri Lanka’s rebel-held war zone are being held on suspicion of collaborating with Tamil rebels, the government says.
The doctors could be in detention for a year or more before being tried.
With journalists banned from the conflict zone, they became an important source of news about the fighting during the final bloody months of war.
There has been no word from the doctors, whose work was praised by the US and UN, since they were detained.
Last month the Sri Lankan government defeated Tamil Tiger rebels fighting for a separate homeland.
Government infuriated
During the final phase of the war, the group of doctors treated wounded and ill patients admitted to the makeshift health posts in the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)-held zone encircled by government forces.
Two of them were senior local health directors and the United States has said they “helped save many lives” while the UN called them “heroic”.
USA
Using New Language, President Shows Understanding for Both Sides in Middle East
ANALYSIS
By Glenn Kessler and Jacqueline L. Salmon
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, June 5, 2009
There was no mention of “terrorists” or “terrorism,” just “violent extremists.” There was the suggestion that Israeli settlements are illegitimate and the assertion that the Palestinians “have suffered in pursuit of a homeland.” There were frequent references to the “Holy Koran” and echoes of Muslim phrases.
President Obama, who aides say spent many hours “holed up” in the past week revising his Cairo speech, clearly believes in the power of his oratory to win people to his point of view. In many ways, he used his address to promote American values, but his efforts to use new language to recast old grievances have already prompted debate and consternation in some quarters.At the same time, he avoided specific complaints about the lack of freedoms in the Muslim world. Instead, he spoke of the need to obtain concrete political goals, such as the fair administration of justice. He made no mention of his host, President Hosni Mubarak, a snub surely noticed by Egypt’s autocratic ruler of nearly three decades.
