Do you believe you can be a good American and not be Christian?
“Yes, I believe you can be a good American and not be Christian.”
Do you believe America has become too secular?
“Yes.”
After Sept. 11, some said the attacks were partly because of this. Because America had become too secular and too sinful, God had lifted a “veil of protection” from our country. Do you believe that?
“I would say that when I read Romans Chapter 1, I see striking resemblances between where Rome was just prior to its fall in comparison to where America is today. There are striking similarities in what we allow in our societies. Rome did not fall from an outside attack, whether it was military or otherwise. It fell from within because it was morally bankrupt.
“And I believe we have been treading in that area for a while and the more that we do not embrace that which honors the Lord, we shouldn’t be surprised if the blessings do not continue on our land ...
“Of course a lot of folks will say it’s not because of that, that you can’t control the stock market, you can’t control finances. There’s storms, earthquakes, pestilences, what have you. But everything is for a reason.”
Article VI, Section 3 of the Constitution says “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any public office or public trust under the United States.” What do you believe this means?
“I think it means what it says. You don’t have a religious test or qualification to seek a public office.”
Do you believe Parvez Ahmed should be appointed to the human rights commission?
“I supported the nomination on April 5. Since that time, I have been inundated with tons of e-mails and calls and have gotten some documents that are outside of just 'oh, please don’t vote,’ or 'please do vote’ for Dr. Ahmed. It has given me cause to have reasonable doubt because of some of the issues that have been raised. I do have some more questions that will be asked Monday in the rules committee. I’m weighing right now what I should do. But I’m very concerned. I will put it that way.”
It has become conventional wisdom, repeated by President Obama at the nuclear summit meeting this week, that the cold war danger of huge strikes by thousands of nuclear missiles has given way to a new threat: terrorists killing tens of thousands of Americans with a stolen or homemade nuclear device. A broad range of security experts agree that nuclear terrorism may well be the most serious danger the United States faces today.
But it is not new. In fact, almost from the invention of the atomic bomb, government officials were alarmed by the threat that compact nukes would be smuggled into the United States by Soviet agents and detonated.
“Officials regard the possibility of atomic sabotage as the gravest threat of subversion that this country, with its virtually unpatrolled borders, has ever faced,” The New York Times reported in 1953, telling readers that the Eisenhower administration was preparing to alert the public to the danger from “valise bombs.”
Hundreds of pages of declassified documents from the 1950s, obtained by The New York Times from the F.B.I. under the Freedom of Information Act, lay out a strikingly familiar story, in which Communist agents played the role of today’s Al Qaeda.
Then, as now, investigators searched for agents they feared were in the United States awaiting orders to attack. Then, too, the government spent millions to install radiation detectors at airports and seaports despite doubts about their effectiveness. (In those days, false nuclear alarms were set off by radium watch dials, once hidden in a woman’s corset.)
Nor is the worry in recent years about nuclear material crossing the permeable Mexican border new. An F.B.I. memo from 1953 warned that “a saboteur could easily pose as a Mexican ‘wetback’ and get into the country without detection, presumably carrying an atomic weapon in his luggage.”
The settlement agreement between Jacksonville and Waste Management would cost taxpayers $37 million more than the proposal the City Council rejected last year, according to a just-released analysis by the Council Auditor's Office.
The settlement would allow Waste Management to continue operating Trail Ridge landfill for roughly 26 years, not including options to renew. The cost is estimated at $459 million, according to the auditor's report.
Last year, the council rejected Mayor John Peyton's proposed contract extension and directed city attorneys to pursue competitive bidding, a decision that led to a Waste Management lawsuit that is set for trial in December.
The court forced both sides into mediation, which resulted in the proposed settlement that was negotiated by city attorneys and the company.
The council must decide by the end of the month whether to accept it.
Council members have said they would be inclined to vote against settling the case unless the proposal would save significantly more money than what the mayor negotiated in 2008.
According to the auditor's analysis, the existing contract would cost taxpayers $488 million over 26 years, which is $29 million more than the proposed settlement. If the city loses the case, it could be forced to keep the existing contract in place until the landfill site reaches capacity, which could be another 35 years or more.
The mayor's proposed contract extension would have cost $422 million.
The report said the cheapest known option would be for the city to run its own landfill, with a price tag of $405 million over 26 years. Neither the mayor's office nor council members have expressed interest in reversing privatization of landfill operations, but Sherman says it should be part of the discussion.
The bill cleared both houses of Congress on Thursday night. The House passed the bill 289-112 just two hours after it emerged from the Senate on a 59-38 vote that capped an unusually partisan debate.
Republicans largely chose to take a stand against the legislation for adding to the $12.8 trillion national despite backing it by wide margins in December and again recently.
People who lost out on the additional weeks of benefits after exhausting their state-paid benefits will now be able to reapply and receive those checks retroactively.
The Obamas gave $329,000 to charities. That included $50,000 each to CARE and the United Negro College Fund.
The president also donated his $1.4 million Nobel Peace Prize award to 10 charities.
With the spring legislative session ending in two weeks, the veto likely kills the plan until next year.
Gov. Crist said after listening to an outpouring of feedback on the bill, he became convinced it was not in the best interests of Floridians.
The governor's office received about 120,000 calls, e-mails and letters on the issue, and virtually all of it was opposed.
The governor said the bill was rushed through the Legislature. He compared it to the health care legislation in Washington, which he described as being jammed down people's throats.
Crist also said the bill infringed on the authority of local school boards, did not accommodate the needs of special education students and used arbitrary methods to determine a teacher's effectiveness.
"So let me be clear: I veto Senate Bill 6 because this bill is contrary to my firmly held principle to act in the best interests of the people of Florida. I am confident that my decision today is the right one because I know it is the right thing to do for the people of Florida.
"Senate Bill 6 places teachers in jeopardy of losing their jobs and their reaching certificates without a clear understanding of how gains will be measured and without taking into account circumstances beyond the teacher's control.
"Finally I veto this bill because of the process by which it was passed. This legislation sped through committees without meaningful input of parents, teachers, students, superintendents, and school boards. It was troubling to learn that the bill would not be amended after it passed in the Senate, particularly when more and more concerns were coming to light."
"I would like to applaud Governor Crist for standing up for teachers all over the state of Florida with the veto of Senate Bill 6," said Jacksonville Democrat Rep. Mia L. Jones. "Governor Crist made the right decision today, and sent a clear message that the democratic process still works. To our teachers and students who became actively involved in this process, I commend each of you. To the people of the State of Florida who stood up for what they believed in and made sure their voices were heard, I urge you to remain engaged in the process. I believe that this bill included a number of things that would undermine the success of the public education system resulting in its ultimate demise. It is my hope that now all of the stakeholders can come together to create legislation that will be beneficial to our teachers and children for many years to come."
The analysis, released Tuesday from the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research and the Foundation for Educational Choice, finds that all 59 funds that cover most teachers face shortfalls.
Collectively, the researchers say, the funding gap equals more than $932.5 billion, or about $600 billion more than the funds themselves claim in financial statements. The researchers attribute only $116 billion of the discrepancy to turmoil in the stock market. Much of the difference, they say, is a result of funds lowballing the cost of paying future benefits, under the assumption that stock values will rise "much higher" by the time they have to pay out benefits.Nearly 600 doctors were surveyed for the study to determine how aggressively they treat their patients and whether non-medical issues have influenced their decisions to order invasive heart tests.
Most said they weren't swayed by such things as financial gain or a patient's expectations. But about 24% of the doctors said they had recommended the test in the previous year because they were worried about malpractice lawsuits. About 27% said they did it because they thought their colleagues would do the test.
Doctors who treated their patients aggressively were more likely to be influenced by malpractice worries or peer pressure than those who weren't as aggressive, the study determined.
The joint lawsuit led by Florida and now grouping 18 states was filed on March 23 by mostly Republican attorney generals.
It claims the sweeping reform of the $2.5 trillion U.S. healthcare system, pushed through by Democrats in the Congress after months of bitter partisan fighting, violates state-government rights in the U.S. Constitution and will force massive new spending on hard-pressed state governments.
The Florida-led lawsuit says the health overhaul -- which expands government health plans for the poor, imposes new taxes on the wealthy and requires insurers to cover people with preexisting medical conditions -- violates the Constitution's commerce clause by requiring nearly all Americans to buy health insurance.
"On behalf of the residents in Florida and the states joining our efforts, we are committed to aggressively pursuing this lawsuit to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary to prevent this unprecedented expansion of federal powers, impact upon state sovereignty, and encroachment on our freedom," McCollum said in a statement released by his office.
The federal records catalog the problems at the Upper Big Branch mine, operated by the Performance Coal Company. They show the company was fighting many of the steepest fines, or simply refusing to pay them. Performance is a subsidiary of Massey Energy. Another Massey subsidiary agreed to pay $4.2 million in criminal and civil fines last year and admitted to willfully violating mandatory safety standards that led to the deaths of two miners. The fine was the largest penalty in the history of the coal industry.
The nation's sixth biggest mining company by production, Massey Energy took in $24 million in net income in the fourth quarter of 2009. The company paid what was then the largest financial settlement in the history of the coal industry for the 2006 fire at the Aracoma mine, also in West Virginia. The fire trapped 12 miners. Two suffocated as they looked for a way to escape. Aracoma later admitted in a plea agreement that two permanent ventilation controls had been removed in 2005 and not replaced, according to published reports.
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