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Dan Gilgoff
USNews.com
Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:31 EST

Introduction

Even before Barack Obama was elected president, religious figures loomed large in his political career. The greatest threat to his presidential campaign came not from another candidate but from his longtime pastor, Jeremiah Wright, whose controversial sermons prompted questions about Obama's judgment in associating with him. After Election Day, the first big controversy of the Obama era was the president-elect's invitation to evangelical preacher Rick Warren, an opponent of abortion rights and gay marriage, to give the opening prayer at his inauguration. And Obama has offered religious leaders an unusually prominent role in his administration by convening an advisory council for the White House faith-based office that's dominated by clergy and heads of religious groups.

John Byrne
Raw Story
Fri, 20 Nov 2009 13:24 EST

Go back to jail.

That's the message from Obama administration lawyers to former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman, whose case became a cause célèbre among Bush administration critics as ground zero of alleged political prosecutions.

The seeming disconnect between Obama's team and numerous Democrats -- including House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, Jr., who's investigated Siegelman's case -- may be because President George W. Bush's US Attorney in Alabama is still in office. Democrats still haven't settled on a replacement, some eleven months after Obama's inauguration.

In advice to the Supreme Court made public early this week, Obama's Justice Department stood firmly behind the position of Bush US Attorneys who won Siegelman's conviction on bribery charges in 2006. The two US Attorneys connected to the case were Bush appointees -- whose numerous conflicts of interest were documented in the Raw Story series, "The Permanent Republican Majority," which received a nomination for best investigative reporting by the Online News Association in 2008.

Anne E. Kornblut
Washington Post
Fri, 20 Nov 2009 12:39 EST

President Obama directly acknowledged for the first time Wednesday that the prison facility at Guantanamo Bay will not close by the January deadline he set, but he said he hoped to still achieve that goal sometime next year.

Obama refused, however, to set a new deadline.

In an interview in the Chinese capital with Major Garrett of Fox News, Obama said he was "not disappointed" that the Guantanamo deadline had slipped, saying he "knew this was going to be hard."

"People, I think understandably, are fearful after a lot of years where they were told that Guantanamo was critical to keep terrorists out," Obama said. Closing the facility, he added, is "also just technically hard."

Obama came to office pledging to shut a detainee facility that had become a symbol for prisoner abuse at the hands of American officials. He signed orders to shut the military prison by January 2010, but White House officials quickly encountered resistance from members of Congress opposed to moving prisoners to U.S. soil and from other countries they had hoped would accept detainees.

Robert C. Koehler
Common Wonders
Fri, 20 Nov 2009 12:11 EST

There's no armor, it turns out, for conscience.

So our men and women are coming home from the killing fields wounded in their heads, used up, greeted only by the military's own meat grinder of inadequate health care and intolerance for "weakness."

"Frankly, in my more than 25 years of clinical practice, I've never seen such immense emotional suffering and psychological brokenness." This is what whistleblower psychiatrist Kernan Manion wrote recently to President Obama about his experience counseling Marines at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, as reported by Salon.

In September, Manion, having been told to "cease and desist all further correspondence with the government," was fired by the Navy for his urgent, outspoken communiqués about the mental-health minefield the military has on its hands. Two months later, of course, the issue of PTSD was blown into the national headlines by the massacre at Fort Hood. And a day after that, according to Salon, the body of a Marine was found at Camp Lejeune and a fellow Marine was arrested for the murder.

The wars we fight keep getting worse, or seem at any rate to back up on us with an ever-intensifying fury. Our war on terror is tightening the psychological vise on our collective insecurity, beginning with the soldiers who are fighting it. Salon, citing official figures, reported that 42 Marines committed suicide in 2008 and 146 attempted to do so.

Lisa de Moraes
Washington Post
Fri, 20 Nov 2009 11:44 EST

Oprah Winfrey, one of the most powerful people in the entertainment industry, will announce Friday that her iconic daytime talk show will wrap at the end of its 25th season.

But don't panic -- her final appearance as host of The Oprah Winfrey Show is nearly two years away. And it's possible she'll move the whole shebang to the cable network she's setting up, called, naturally, the Oprah Winfrey Network.

"The sun will set on the Oprah show as its 25th season draws to a close on September 9, 2011," Winfrey's Harpo Productions said in an e-mail to TV station executives Thursday evening.

"As we all know, Oprah's personal comments about this on tomorrow's live show will mark a historic television moment that we will all be talking about for years to come."

Nick Turse
AlterNet.org
Fri, 20 Nov 2009 06:31 EST

Despite ever rosier economic predictions and a surging stock market, the body count from the economic crisis is destined only to grow in the weeks and months ahead.

In 2007, Jason Rodriguez was fired from his position at an Orlando, Florida engineering firm and ended up taking a job as a "sandwich artist" at a Subway restaurant. His salary was cut nearly in half and his debts mounted until, last May, he filed for bankruptcy, listing his assets at just over $4,600 and his liabilities at nearly $90,000. Although he lived only 30 minutes away, according to his former mother-in-law, America Holloway, Rodriguez barely saw his son. When the boy asked why his father didn't visit, Holloway said Rodriguez told him: "'Because I don't have any money. I don't have a job. I don't have anything to eat. When things get better, I'll come see you.'"

Things never got better. On November 6th, the 40-year-old Rodriguez went back to the downtown high-rise office building where he had worked and reportedly opened fire, killing one person and wounding five others at his old firm. Asked to comment following the shooting, a local lawyer who represented Rodriguez in his bankruptcy proceedings, said "That's how it is right now. He's a very typical client. Of people that are suffering through the economy right now, there's nothing extraordinary about him... except that."

YouTube
Sat, 10 Oct 2009 05:01 EDT

Guardian
Thu, 19 Nov 2009 04:20 EST

A new report from the US Department of Agriculture highlights the millions of Americans suffering from food insecurity. Find out how they compare from state to state

It may be the world's richest nation, but the US is no stranger to startling poverty. A new report from the US Department of Agriculture says that food insecurity is the highest in America since the survey began.

Food insecurity - defined by the USDA as when "food intake ... was reduced and their eating patterns were disrupted at times during the year because the household lacked money and other resources for food" - afflicted 14.6% of Americans in 2008. Ie, some 50 million people were too poor to guarantee being able to put food on the table.

Agence France-Presse
Wed, 18 Nov 2009 03:33 EST

© Agence France-Presse/Saul Loeb
President Barack Obama's job approval rating has dipped below 50 percent nationally for the first time, as Americans worry about the war in Afghanistan, a new poll released Wednesday found

President Barack Obama's job approval rating has dipped below 50 percent nationally for the first time, as Americans worry about the war in Afghanistan, a new poll released Wednesday found.

The Quinnipiac University poll showed 48 percent of Americans approve of the way Obama is handling his job as president, compared to 42 percent who disapprove.

The president also scored low marks from Americans on his handling of the situation in Afghanistan, with just 38 percent saying they approved of his approach, but a majority did say it was the "right thing" for US troops to be in the country.

Andrew Malcolm
Los Angeles Times
Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:42 EST

Even President Obama himself during his just-concluded trip to Asia admitted that he was surprised to receive the Nobel Peace Prize earlier this year without actually producing any peace.

In fact, the rookie American president ordered his own troop surge, boosting U.S. troops fighting in Afghanistan to 68,000. Now, the Democrat may be preparing to send more.

And a Gallup Poll showed 61% of Americans didn't think he deserved the prize either.

Anyway, there he was in Seoul, the last stop of his journey.

And out of the Seoul sky, President Lee Myung-bak hands over to the American leader a tae kwon do outfit. And then Lee, who practices tae kwon do himself, presents Obama with a coveted black belt. After zero long years of study.

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