Former Virginia governor Robert F. McDonnell and his wife, Maureen, were charged Tuesday with illegally accepting gifts, luxury vacations and large loans from a wealthy Richmond area businessman who sought special treatment from state government.

Authorities allege that for nearly two years, the McDonnells repeatedly asked executive Jonnie R. Williams Sr. for loans and gifts of money, clothes, golf fees and equipment, trips, and private plane rides. The gifts and loans totaled at least $165,000.

In exchange, authorities allege, the McDonnells worked in concert to lend the prestige of the governor's office to Williams's struggling company, Star Scientific, a former small cigarette manufacturer that now sells dietary supplements.

McDonnell, 59, is the first governor ever to face criminal charges in Virginia, a state that has prided itself on a history of clean and ethical politics, and the charges will probably accelerate a push for the legislature to tighten state ethics laws.

The criminal prosecution marks a stunning crash for a politician who was considered for the Republican vice presidential nomination in 2012 and who, just a year ago, was considered a credible prospective candidate for president.

The 43-page, 14-count indictment adds new details to a story line of largess that was first recounted by The Washington Post in March. It depicts an elected official in financial trouble who sought help from a businessman with something to gain.

McDonnell and his legal team immediately denounced the charges and said prosecutors overstepped their authority. In an unprecedented televised public appearance Tuesday night, McDonnell said, " I come before you this evening as someone who has been falsely and wrongfully accused and whose public service has been wrongfully attacked."

He went on to insist, "I repeat again, emphatically, that I did nothing illegal for Mr. Williams."

President Obama, who used executive orders during his first term for pay changes, setting up a variety of councils, creating immunity for Bosnia, ensuring abortions through Obamacare, promoting "diversity" and dozens of other things, is explaining that he'll be expanding that activity during his second.

In fact, he's setting a course to do what he wants with or without action from Congress, unleashing the full power of his White House bully pulpit to make America over.

"We're not just going to be waiting for legislation in order to make sure that we're providing Americans the kind of help they need. I've got a pen, and I've got a phone," Obama said, according to a report by CBS.

"And I can use that pen to sign executive orders and take executive actions and administrative actions that move the ball forward in helping to make sure our kids are getting the best education possible, making sure that our businesses are getting the kind of support and help they need to grow and advance, to make sure that people are getting the skills that they need to get those jobs that our businesses are creating."

He continued, "One of the things that I'm going to be talking to my Cabinet about is how do we use all the tools available to us, not just legislation, or order to advance a mission that I think unifies all Americans."

A top legal expert, Judge Andrew Napolitano, says there are few limits on what Obama could include in his orders, and fighting back is a long and hard course.

"There really is no line," the judge told WND in an interview Wednesday. "We have the welfare state, the warfare state, we also have the administrative state."

That, he said, allows a president through his appointees to issues rules and regulations, impose requirements and change America.

The Olympic Games belong to the world. Hosting them is a point of genuine national pride. This February, everyone will be watching the Winter Games, which Russia is hosting -- and that includes "the bad guys."

The past two days saw the latest in a series of deadly terror attacks in Russia by suicide bombers -- following an attack in the same city of Volgograd just two months ago -- which have undoubtedly been intended to spark jitters of Olympic proportions, possibly by a deadly Islamist group promising to disrupt an event being watched by the eyes of the world, though no group has claimed responsibility for the recent attacks.

Major international sporting events have always served as lightning rods for terrorists, of course, with the Boston Marathon bombings being the most recent and tragic example. Just think back to the 1972 Munich Olympics and the impact of Palestinian extremist group Black September's attack on Israel's athletes -- magnified because the kidnappings and murders took place with the whole world watching the gruesome spectacle unfold.

The 2014 Games in Sochi in southern Russia present a symbolic target in a region with a long history of bloody violence. Russian authorities have long battled violent forces in the nearby North Caucasus. The Russian government fought two wars against Chechen separatists in the mid-1990's and early 2000's, radicalizing a generation of Muslim youths in the process.

Mainly populated by Muslims but also by over 100 ethnic groups, the North Caucasus has been immersed in endless conflict in the form of an ongoing violent Islamist insurgency, making it one of the most dangerous places on Earth. Between July and October of last year, 133 people were reportedly killed, including 32 police officers, in the conflict between militants and government forces there, mostly in Dagestan.

​The Obama administration has decided that state-sanctioned pot dispensaries should have access to the US banking system, even though marijuana remains illegal under federal law.

Details remain scant at the moment, but Holder said the new rules will help marijuana growers and retailers, in the 20 states that have legalized the drug for recreational or medical use, operate beyond a cash only basis.

Currently, proprietors of pot dispensaries are forced to keep large amounts of cash on hand to purchase inventory, pay employees and make transactions, rendering them optimal targets for robbery.

It also gums up book keeping for state-level tax collection.

"You don't want just huge amounts of cash in these places. [Marijuana sellers] want to be able to use the banking system," Attorney General Eric Holder said on Thursday.

"There's a public safety component to this. Huge amounts of cash - substantial amounts of cash just kind of lying around with no place for it to be appropriately deposited - is something that would worry me, just from a law enforcement perspective."

State Psychology Board Challenged over Refusal to Investigate Alleged Ethical Violations by Dr. Larry James

Today, Toledo-based psychologist Dr. Trudy Bond challenged the Louisiana State Board of Examiners of Psychologists' failure to investigate alleged professional ethics violations by psychologist and retired U.S. Army colonel Dr. Larry C. James. The case centers on Dr. James's conduct as a high-ranking psychologist and interrogations advisor for the U.S. military at Guantanamo Bay. A New Orleans native and former Louisiana State University employee, Dr. James is licensed to practice in Louisiana and Ohio, where he is now Dean of the School of Professional Psychology at Wright State University.

Attorneys argued before the Louisiana First Circuit Court of Appeal in the case Dr. Trudy Bond v. Louisiana State Board of Examiners of Psychologists. 

According to his own statements and government records, Dr. James played an influential role in both the policy and day-to-day operations of interrogations and detention at the prison camps. Publicly-available information shows that while Dr. James was the chief intelligence psychologist at Guantanamo, abuse in interrogations was widespread, and cruel and inhuman treatment was official policy. 

Allegations of abuse during Dr. James's January to May 2003 deployment include beatings, religious and sexual humiliation, rape threats and painful forced body positions. Canadian citizen Omar Khadr, who is currently being tried by military commission at Guantanamo, is one of the prisoners who has alleged brutal treatment in the spring of 2003, when he was only 16 years old. James was also stationed in Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison in 2004 and returned to Guantanamo in 2007.

As Chief Psychologist of the Joint Intelligence Group and a senior member of the Behavioral Science Consultation Team (BSCT) at Guantanamo, Dr. James, operating under his Louisiana license, also had access to the confidential medical records of people he was charged with exploiting for intelligence.

A growing reluctance in an increasingly multicultural Britain to see UK troops deployed on the ground in future operations abroad is influencing the next two strategic defence reviews, according to senior figures at the Ministry of Defence.

As well as a general feeling of war weariness, sources say they have sensed a resistance in an increasingly diverse nation to see British troops deployed in countries from which UK citizens, or their families, once came.

There is also concern that British troops have been seen taking action mainly in Muslim societies.

The MoD is still taking stock of the surprise decision of the House of Commons last summer to reject military intervention to punish President Assad of Syria for the use of chemical weapons against rebel forces.

Senior figures believe the rejection of that action was not just the by-product of a political battle between Labour and the government, but revealed deeper-seated long-term trends in British society.

One of the issues raised is improving the recruitment of British officers from minority ethnic communities.

Two months after they began, the shape of Ukraine's protests is shifting, their mood darkening. Talk of civil war is growing, and the country of 46 million is deeply divided.

Since students came out in Kiev and elsewhere to denounce president Viktor Yanukovich's decision to reject a historic pact with the European Union and turn back towards Russia, a series of government moves to crush the protesters has only made them more resolute and radical.

The following quotes come from French classical liberal, economic journalist and legislator Frédéric Bastiat's 1850 pamphlet, "The Law."

1. It started with "hope and change": "While society is struggling toward liberty, these famous men who put themselves at its head are filled with the spirit of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. They think only of subjecting mankind to the philanthropic tyranny of their own social inventions. Like Rousseau, they desire to force mankind docilely to bear this yoke of the public welfare that they have dreamed up in their own imaginations...

Listen to the ideas of a few of the writers and politicians during that period [the late 1780s]:

SAINT-JUST: The legislator commands the future. It is for him to will the good of mankind. It is for him to make men what he wills them to be.

ROBESPIERRE: The function of government is to direct the physical and moral powers of the nation toward the end for which the commonwealth has come into being.

BILLAUD-VARENNES: A people who are to be returned to liberty must be formed anew. A strong force and vigorous action are necessary to destroy old prejudices, to change old customs, to correct depraved affections, to restrict superfluous wants, and to destroy ingrained vices.... Citizens, the inflexible austerity of Lycurgus created the firm foundation of the Spartan republic. The weak and trusting character of Solon plunged Athens into slavery. This parallel embraces the whole science of government.

LE PELLETIER: Considering the extent of human degradation, I am convinced that it is necessary to effect a total regeneration and, if I may so express myself, of creating a new people."

2. And a social justice agenda: "Now this must be said: When justice is organized by law - that is, by force - this excludes the idea of using law (force) to organize any human activity whatever, whether it be labor, charity, agriculture, commerce, industry, education, art, or religion. The organizing by law of any one of these would inevitably destroy the essential organization - justice. For truly, how can we imagine force being used against the liberty of citizens without it also being used against justice, and thus acting against its proper purpose?"

3. That enabled Obamacare: "But when the law, by means of its necessary agent, force, imposes upon men a regulation of labor, a method or a subject of education, a religious faith or creed - then the law is no longer negative; it acts positively upon people. It substitutes the will of the legislator for their own wills; the initiative of the legislator for their own initiatives. When this happens, the people no longer need to discuss, to compare, to plan ahead; the law does all this for them. Intelligence becomes a useless prop for the people; they cease to be men; they lose their personality, their liberty, their property.

Try to imagine a regulation of labor imposed by force that is not a violation of liberty; a transfer of wealth imposed by force that is not a violation of property. If you cannot reconcile these contradictions, then you must conclude that the law cannot organize labor and industry without organizing injustice."

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel is ordering an independent review of the nation's nuclear force following revelations of misconduct involving officers, the Pentagon said on Thursday.

Top leaders of the force plan to meet with Hagel in coming weeks, Defense Department spokesman Rear Adm. John Kirby said.

The action follows a recent disclosure that nearly three dozen Air Force officers at a nuclear missile base in Montana were involved in cheating on a proficiency test.

Russian security services may be looking for as many as four "black widows" dispatched to carry out terrorist attacks related to the Winter Olympics, including at least one woman believed to be in or near the Olympic city of Sochi, U.S. and Russian sources told NBC News on Monday.

Wanted posters distributed in Sochi, where the games open Feb. 7, describe at least one suspected terrorist - Ruzana Ibragimova, also known as Salima, the 22-year-old widow of an Islamic militant killed by Russian security forces last year.

The notices describe her as having a limp in her right leg, a left arm that does not bend at the elbow and a 4-inch scar on her cheek.

In a video, recorded before their deaths, that has recently surfaced, two suicide bombers suspected of a deadly attack on a Volgograd train station threaten a "surprise" during the Olympics at Sochi.

The notices say that Russian security officials have been informed of her possible departure from Dagestan, a Russian republic in the restive Caucasus area, earlier this month, and that she may be used for an attack inside the Olympic zone.

Militant groups in the Caucasus are known to use "black widows," female terrorists so called because some seek to avenge the deaths of their husbands. They considered by security experts to be harder to pick out in a crowd because they do not fit the stereotype of an Islamic militant and because they can easily alter their appearance with clothing and makeup.

The disclosure Monday added to terror fears as the games approach. On Sunday, a video surfaced in which two men from an Islamist militant group threatened to attack the Olympics, warning that "a surprise" is in store for President Vladimir Putin and tourists attending the games.