However, the legislation was passed yesterday 325-100 via a voice vote, a green light for what Amash describes as “one of the most egregious sections of law I’ve encountered during my time as a representative”.

The bill allows the private communications of Americans to be scooped up without a court order and then transferred to law enforcement for criminal investigations. The legislation effectively codifies and legalizes mass warrantless NSA surveillance on the American people, with barely a whimper of debate.

Levin, who is retiring, maintains that Bush officials used the unconfirmed meeting to link Iraq to 9/11 and Al-Qaeda in order to justify the US invasion in Iraq. "There was a concerted campaign on the part of the Bush administration to connect Iraq in the public mind with the horror of the September 11 attacks. That campaign succeeded," said Levin, who cited opinion polls from that time showing that many Americans believed former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was involved in the attacks. "Of course, connections between Saddam and 9/11 or Al-Qaida were fiction."

Levin has called for the full declassification of the Prague CIA cable and has repeatedly called on the directors of the CIA to make it public. Levin said the war in Iraq was the most significant event in his 36 years as a United States senator, and the cable is an important historical record showcasing why the US went to war in Iraq in 2003.

Levin said he is bringing up the CIA cable from a decade ago because it is about giving the American people a full account of the march to war as new information becomes available. He said it is about trying to hold leaders who misled the public accountable, and about warning future leaders that they must not commit sons and daughters to battle on the basis of false statements.

Carmen Maria Rodriguez of Radio Marti asked the question that sparked Dieng’s direct censure of Iran’s recent waves of calls for Israel’s annihilation. Dieng went on to elaborate that not only are Iran’s genocidal threats to wipe Israel off the map “totally unacceptable,” but also that “Israel is a state, and has the right to exist as a state, and its security has also to be protected.”

The utter simplicity and truth of Dieng’s statements stand in stark contrast to the common diplomatic barrage against Israel heard in the United Nations.

Nearly 240 departing and incoming commercial flights had been canceled at San Francisco International Airport by late morning, and delays for other flights averaged two hours, airport duty manager Bob Ritiski said. A downtown San Francisco subway station serving the financial district was closed through the morning commuter rush because of a power outage, and the city's electrified bus system was halted in many areas, transit officials said.

The storm was expected to provide only a small measure of relief from California's record, multi-year drought that has forced water managers to sharply reduce irrigation supplies to farmers and prompted drastic conservation measures statewide, weather officials said.

As much as 3 feet (1 meter) of snow is predicted this week for the higher elevations of the Sierra Nevada mountain range. But meteorologists said many months of rainfall would be needed to pull the state out of the drought.

In a nearly 15-minute speech from the Senate floor, McCain offered what is arguably the most robust defense so far of the report's release, referencing his own experience as a prisoner of war in Vietnam and rebuking his Republican colleagues by endorsing the study's findings. It is a thorough and thoughtful study of practices that I believe not only failed their purpose — to secure actionable intelligence to prevent further attacks on the US and our allies — but actually damaged our security interests, as well as our reputation as a force for good in the world.

His long time amigo Senator Lindsey Graham was one of many politicians and intelligence officials to say that the report — which contained graphic accounts of physical and psychological abuse — could damage American interests abroad and that the timing of its publication was "politically motivated. The timing of the release is problematic given the growing threats we face," Graham said on Tuesday. "Terrorism is on the rise, and our enemies will seize upon this report at a critical time. Simply put, this is not the time to release the report."

But most poignantly, McCain spoke of his own five-and-a-half-year captivity in Vietnam to argue that torture fails to yield credible information. "I know from personal experience that the abuse of prisoners will produce more bad than good intelligence. I know that victims of torture will offer intentionally misleading information if they think their captors will believe it. I know they will say whatever they think their torturers want them to say if they believe it will stop their suffering."

McCain added (emphatically) that "the use of torture compromises that which most distinguishes us from our enemies, our belief that all people, even captured enemies, possess basic human rights."

[Quoted from ‘atlantic.com’] "Verschärfte Vernehmung" – the Gestapo’s methods of examination.

The phrase "Verschärfte Vernehmung" is German for "enhanced interrogation". Other translations include "intensified interrogation" or "sharpened interrogation". It's a phrase that appears to have been concocted in 1937, to describe a form of torture that would leave no marks, and hence save the embarrassment pre-war Nazi officials were experiencing as their wounded torture victims ended up in court. The methods are indistinguishable from those described as "enhanced interrogation techniques" by the president.

We witnessed this in the summer of 2008 when a crash in commodity prices preceded the financial crisis in the fall by a couple of months. And right now, we are witnessing what may be another major collapse in commodity prices. In recent weeks, the price of copper has declined substantially. So has the price of iron ore. So has the price of nickel. So has the price of aluminum. You get the idea. So this isn’t just about oil. This is a broad-based commodity decline, and if it continues it is really bad news for the US economy.

Just remember what happened back in 2008. A lot of middle class families were living on the financial edge every month, and because they didn’t have any cushion to fall back on, millions of those families ended up losing their homes when their jobs disappeared. You need to have an emergency fund that can cover at least six months of expenses. You don’t want a job loss or a major emergency to put you into a situation where your family could be put out into the street.

And for those that still have lots of money invested in the stock market – I really hope that you know what you are doing.

The market giveth, and the market taketh away. And when the market taketh away, the consequences can often be exceedingly cruel.

Revolutionary changes sweeping the world’s energy industry will drive down the price of liquefied natural gas (LNG), creating a “multi-year” glut and a much cheaper source of gas for Europe. Francisco Blanch, the bank’s commodity chief, said Opec is “effectively dissolved” after it failed to stabilize prices at its last meeting. “The consequences are profound and long-lasting,” he said.

The free market will now set the global cost of oil, leading to a new era of wild price swings and disorderly trading that benefits only the Mid-East petro-states with deepest pockets such as Saudi Arabia. If so, the weaker peripheral members such as Venezuela and Nigeria are being thrown to the wolves.

The bank said in its year-end report that at least 15 percent of US shale producers are losing money at current prices, and more than half will be under water if US crude falls below $55.

Towed nets were used to scoop up plastic from five sub-tropical 'gyres' - huge areas of circulating ocean currents - as well as coastal Australia, the Bay of Bengal and the Mediterranean Sea. Albatrosses on remote pacific islands have been found to be ingesting so much plastic that their stomachs become full and they die. The sharp foreign objects also lacerate their gut walls.

Elsewhere, the bodies of sea turtles are being found with stomachs full of plastic, because they are prone to mistaking bags for jellyfish. The plastic can block the digestive tract, leading to a slow death from starvation. It was recently estimated that 90 per cent of seabirds found dead on beaches have ingested plastic.

The US has gone from fear of operating with big-deck aviation ships in the Persian Gulf to a casual “they have to be there” attitude today. It reflects a malaise in thinking when it comes to sea power today which places America’s Navy and its sailors in the Gulf at greater risk than is necessary. America should remove its carrier strike group from the Persian Gulf and station it in the Mediterranean Sea.

Why are they there? There is no shortage of land-based bases in the Middle East region. Iraq, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia allow the United States overflight rights. America has a NATO partner in Turkey and today has smaller bases throughout Africa from where it stages many of its unmanned strike and reconnaissance missions. America has enough land bases, capabilities and partners in the region and close by to conduct its operations without a carrier being permanently based in the Persian Gulf.

“Things have changed a lot,” Michael Herdmann, a 54-year-old retired public works employee from Fairview Park, Ohio, said in a follow-up interview. “The decks have been stacked against not only the lower class but also the lower middle class.”

“The modern-day politician has lost track of why the welfare programs were put in place,” he added. “They don’t understand that part of the reason we help the poor to buy food was also to help fund the farmers. They have systemically reduced most of what was there to help the poor.”

In addition to his biblical misquote, Obama also tied his immigration policy to the Christmas story, saying, "If we're serious about the Christmas season, now is the time to reflect on those who are strangers in our midst and remember what it was like to be a stranger." This analogy drew conservative ire as opponents of the president's immigration reform noted that Mary and Joseph were actually visiting Joseph's ancestral home.

The UK is experiencing rapid or explosive cyclogenesis, or as it's colloquially known, a 'weather bomb'. According to the Met Office, during a storm, the central pressure will drop rapidly causing violent winds from the system known as 'bombs'. Scotland will be especially affected, and the Scottish Environment Protection Agency issued 15 flood warnings and 12 flood alerts. Here's a more detailed explanation from the Met Office:

The 'weather bomb' is defined as an intense low pressure system with a central pressure that falls 24 millibars in a 24-hour period. A better description can be more directly linked to the meteorological phenomena known as rapid or explosive cyclogenesis. This is where dry air from the stratosphere flows into an area of low pressure.

Here’s why that’s important: Far-left party Syriza currently is leading the early polls and it seems likely they would win a snap election. This is how to think about Syriza:

-The party has been calling for an end to austerity in Greece.

-Has been campaigning for market-unfriendly measures

-Is firmly against the international bailout program that helped the country avoid a default during the depths of its financial crisis.

How bad is Greece’s Tuesday collapse? It’s worse than the 9.7% drop the market saw October 24, 2010, at the peak of Greek debt worries. The drop also eclipses the 10% fall Greek markets saw in 1989 during a bout of political turmoil.