united

SAO PAULO — A United Airlines pilot was briefly detained at the international airport in Rio de Janeiro after lowering his pants during a security screening, police said Saturday. Pilot Michael D. Slynn, 49, was asked to remove his belt and shoes as part of a routine security screening Friday afternoon. In response, Slynn laughed at security guards and lowered his pants to his ankles, said a police spokesman who was prohibited by departmental rules from giving his name.

Move over death panels. Now Sarah Palin is tweeting comparisons between President Obama and Adolf Hitler: …This is about the rule of law vs. an unconstitutional power grab. Read Thomas Sowell’s article: http://u.nu/… Sowell’s article , noted yesterday by Barbara Morrill, likens the Obama administration to Hitler’s Nazi regime and argues that the $20 billion compensation fund from BP is the latest example.

Fifty years ago, in the midst of a fierce political debate surrounding the United States’ immigration policies, a young senator named John F. Kennedy penned an essay called “A Nation of Immigrants.” It was a groundbreaking book, asserting urgently and poignantly that our nation’s greatness owes much to the immigrants among us. As current headlines make clear, Kennedy’s plea is as timely and necessary as ever. The United States is — and always has been — a nation of immigrants, though we continue to struggle to come to terms with the fact.

“It’s entirely possible that California Attorney General Jerry Brown is the only thing standing between Meg Whitman and the White House.” By Phil Trounstine and Jerry Roberts Calbuzz.com In the middle of a press scrum at the Republican state convention on March 12, Meg Whitman laughed out loud at a radio news reporter who asked her about her national political ambitions: Ms. Whitman, would you commit to serving a full four-year term if you’re elected governor? There’s been talk of you as a national political figure.

Today on “Hardball,” Jack Conway charged that Ron Paul wanted to do away with the Civil Rights Act. In fact, Rand Paul’s words to the Courier-Journal, in their editorial board interview, were even more extreme than the paper’s editorial reveal. The interview that reveals Rand Paul’s views on civil rights was done in April. People have linked to the editorial, but the transcript has not been circulated. Conway’s charge today on “Hardball” sent me searching.

The New York Times Book Review said that Howard Zinn’s bestseller, A People’s History of the United States should be “required reading for a new generation of students.” Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like Arizona’s new law dispensing with ethnic studies programs would permit a teacher in that state to even assign Zinn’s book. You may recall, this past April Arizona foolishly passed a law requiring police officers to inquire about an individual’s immigration status.

If you were never born, you would never die. Therefore birth is not simply the leading cause of death, but the only one. Everything else is a statistical detail of where and when, with each day bringing to us a new set of end-game probabilities. Fortunately, we have the ability to influence those daily odds, however slightly, by how we assess and manage the risk of living. History teaches us that we could do much better, individually and collectively, in a dangerous world of loose nukes, terrorism, massive oil spills, hurricanes, volcanoes and tsunamis.

WASHINGTON, Ill. — Sarah Palin criticized President Barack Obama on Saturday for saying America is a military superpower “whether we like it or not,” saying she was taken aback by his comment. “I would hope that our leaders in Washington, D.C., understand we like to be a dominant superpower,” the former Alaska governor said.

Sarah Palin blasted out another Facebook diatribe Friday, criticizing President Obama for lacking “faith in American exceptionalism” for his positions on foreign policy and the military. “The truth is this: by his actions we see a president who seems to be much more comfortable with an American military that isn’t quite so dominant and who feels the need to apologize for America when he travels overseas,” Palin wrote. “Could it be a lack of faith in American exceptionalism?

Are We On The Road From Ruin Yet? This week, the stock market flirted with the 11,000 mark and the AP reported that “Unemployment rates fell or remained unchanged in two-thirds of the 372 largest U.S. metro areas in February”. From this news, you’d think America has turned the corner and is on the road to recovery. Far from it. There are major, structural deficiencies in our system that point in very negative directions. And by “system” I don’t just mean economic system. I mean our social system, our culture.