Scott Brown Hires Former Christie Aide as Campaign Manager

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Scott Brown Hires Former Christie Aide as Campaign Manager

Fmr. Bush aide Matt Dowd: Arizona anti-gay Christians are like Islamic terrorists

President George W. Bush’s former chief strategist Matthew Dowd on Sunday likened Christians in Arizona who are using religion to discriminate against LGBT people to Islamic terrorists.

Last week, Arizona’s legislature passed a bill that would allow business owners to assert religious beliefs as an excuse to discriminate against gay and lesbian customers.

On Sunday, ABC’s Martha Raddatz asked Dowd to predict if Gov. Jan Brewer (R) would sign the bill into law.

“I think, in the end, Gov. Brewer is probably going to veto this because it seems like an easy veto for her to do because of everything that’s going in the business economy there,” Dowd explained.

“This is one of those problems when people use religion as a way to sort of enforce discriminatory practices,” he continued. “People used religion back in the 1860s when they defended slavery. They used religion to defend slavery.”

“We’ve used religion to go to war. People have criticized Islam because they use religion to fight people and kill people. This is the problem with that [bill].”

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Fmr. Bush aide Matt Dowd: Arizona anti-gay Christians are like Islamic terrorists

Top Cuomo aide granted waiver after repeatedly breaking NY gun law

BizPac Review – by Michael Dorstewitz

A top aide to strict gun-grabbing New York Gov.Andrew Cuomo has been granted a waiver forcarrying a firearm at government offices in violation of state law.

Cuomo appointed Jerome Hauer to take over the state’s Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services in 2011, according to the Albany Times Union.  

The Albany, N.Y.-based newspaper reported in early January that Hauer used his firearm’s laser sight as a pointer device during a meeting with a delegation of Swedish security professionals — with his loaded 9-mm Glock still attached.

People sitting across from Hauer “moved quickly out of the line of the laser when he brought out the gun,” and three of the Swedes “were rattled when the gun’s laser tracked across one of their heads before Hauer found the map of New York, at which he wanted to point,” the Times Union report.

The meeting took place on Oct. 24, but the incident didn’t come to light until last month.

US Army builds 300-acre eerily fake American city to train soldiers

On Wednesday, the Times Union reported:

Cuomo defended Hauer at a news conference Wednesday. The governor said he’s comfortable with commissioners carrying weapons to work as long as they have gun permits. He qualified the response by adding “if they are licensed and in that field of work.”

Hauer is not a law enforcement officer or working in law enforcement, although his official vehicle has emergency lights and sirens.

Despite the lack of a waiver before January, several witnesses said he has been carrying a gun on the job since Cuomo appointed him in 2011.

One of the basic rules of firearm safety is to never draw a weapon unless you intend to use it — as a weapon, not as a pointer. And never point a weapon at anything you don’t intend to destroy.

Cuomo’s crusade against firearms apparently applies to all New Yorkers except those he blesses, and Hauer is one of the blessed.

Now he has a gun and a car with lights and a siren, which makes me feel very safe — because I don’t live in New York.

http://www.bizpacreview.com/2014/02/15/top-cuomo-aide-granted-waiver-after-repeatedly-breaking-ny-gun-law-100788

Top Cuomo aide granted waiver after repeatedly breaking NY gun law

Former Clinton Aide Announces Run For Waxman"s Seat

Matt Miller, a former aide to President Bill Clinton, on Friday announced a run for the House seat being given up by retiring Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), according to Roll Call.

“I’m a proud Democrat; but too often, politicians in both parties care more about winning elections than solving problems,” Miller said in a statement. “We have to tackle huge challenges – from the runaway costs of college and health care, to the threats of climate change, the shortage of good jobs and internationally lagging schools. Getting serious about these challenges means embracing bold ideas – the kind of fresh thinking we aren’t likely to get from career politicians. I’m running for Congress because it’s time to expect more.”

Miller, who currently writes a weekly column for The Washington Post, is the third democrat to announce a bid for Waxman’s seat, in California’s 33rd District.

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Former Clinton Aide Announces Run For Waxman"s Seat

Emails Tie Top Aide to Lane Closings, Despite Denials...

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Not Just The News does use cookies to store information about visitors preferences, record user-specific information on which pages the user access or visit, customize Web page content based on visitors browser type or other information that the visitor sends via their browser.

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• Google"s use of the DART cookie enables it to serve ads to users based on their visit to Not Just The News and other sites on the Internet.


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Emails Tie Top Aide to Lane Closings, Despite Denials...

Fired Sen. Alexander Aide Allegedly Had Hundreds Of Child Porn Videos

The former top aide to Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) who was arrested Wednesday had hundreds of videos depicting child pornography on a hard drive, according to new court documents. 

In a criminal complaint filed on Thursday in federal court in Washington, D.C., a U.S. Postal Inspector described how authorities investigating a website that offered DVDs featuring nude young boys identified Ryan Loskarn, Alexander’s former chief of staff, as a customer back in 2010. In October of this year, the document states, investigators identified Loskarn’s residential IP address on the Gnutella peer-to-peer file-sharing network offering files for download with names that suggested child pornography.  

Agents downloaded identical videos from the Gnutella network, and found one that depicted a man performing sexual acts with a prepubescent girl. 

On Wednesday, law enforcement agents descended on Loskarn’s Washington, D.C. residence and executed a search warrant. They retrieved a portable hard drive — which they believe Loskarn had placed on a snowy ledge outside one of the home’s windows when they arrived. On the hard drive, authorities found “hundreds of videos depicting underage boys engaged in sexually explicit conduct,” among other videos containing child pornography. 

Loskarn was expected to appear in court Thursday to face charges of possession and distribution of child pornography. Alexander announced on Wednesday that he had fired Loskarn, and replaced him with a new chief of staff. 

Read the complaint (warning: the document contains explicit descriptions of child pornography):

Ryan Loskarn Complaint

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Fired Sen. Alexander Aide Allegedly Had Hundreds Of Child Porn Videos

Former aide sues San Diego mayor, charging sexual harassment

1 of 6. Attorney Gloria Allred introduces Irene McCormack Jackson, the mayor’s former director of communications and plaintiff in a sexual harassment lawsuit against the City Of San Diego and its mayor Bob Filner, during a press conference in San Diego, California July 22, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Sam Hodgson

By Marty Graham

SAN DIEGO | Mon Jul 22, 2013 8:21pm EDT

SAN DIEGO (Reuters) – San Diego Mayor Bob Filner, facing pressure to resign over allegations of making lewd comments and unwanted advances toward women, was hit with a sexual harassment lawsuit on Monday by a former aide who accused the 70-year-old mayor of asking her to “get naked” and kiss him.

The lawsuit was brought by the mayor’s former press secretary, Irene McCormack Jackson, three days after the county Sheriff’s Department set up a telephone hotline to field complaints of sexual misconduct against him.

McCormack Jackson is the first woman since the scandal broke a week and a half ago to charge publicly that the mayor, a Democrat and former 10-term U.S. congressman from California’s second-largest city, had harassed her.

Filner’s representatives could not immediately be reached for comment on the lawsuit. The mayor has recently admitted to inappropriate behavior toward female staff members but has indicated that he would not step down.

The 11-page suit, filed in San Diego County Superior Court, accuses Filner on one occasion of placing McCormack Jackson in what she described as a virtual “head lock” – drawing her close with an arm gripped around her neck – while he suggested they get married and asked, “Wouldn’t it be great if we consummated the marriage?”

The complaint quotes Filner on a separate occasion, last month in the press secretary’s City Hall office, as telling her, “When are you going to get naked? Come on and give me a kiss.” The lawsuit said she responded by telling him he should leave.

“The past six months turned out to be the worst time of my entire working life,” McCormack Jackson told a news conference. “I had to work and do my job in an atmosphere where women were viewed by Mayor Filner as sexual objects or stupid idiots. I saw him place his hands where they did not belong on numerous women.”

CALLS FOR RESIGNATION

McCormack Jackson was hired by Filner in January but resigned as the mayor’s spokeswoman in June and is now director of communications for another city department.

Calls for Filner’s resignation began on July 11, when former San Diego city councilwoman and fellow Democrat Donna Frye joined two attorneys in leveling allegations that at least one woman, who they did not name, had accused the mayor of harassing her.

Filner responded by acknowledging that he had “failed to fully respect the women who work for me and with me, and that at times I have intimidated them.”

He went on to say he had “reached into my heart and soul and realized I must and will change my behavior,” adding that he was seeking professional help and that he and his staff would undergo sexual-harassment training.

Days later, Frye and the two lawyers, Marco Gonzalez and Cory Biggs, called again for Filner’s resignation and gave more graphic details of his alleged behavior. Frye said then that the mayor had made unwelcome advances against two constituents and had “jammed his tongue down” the throat of one of them.

Marco and Gonzalez said a client who worked for Filner had alleged he groped her and suggested that she not wear panties.

In recent days, a number of prominent local Democrats have publicly urged Filner to quit, including San Diego-area U.S. Representatives Susan Davis and Scott Peters and San Diego City Council President Todd Gloria.

Filner’s top two aides also have resigned since the scandal emerged.

Before he was elected mayor in 2012, Filner represented the southern portion of San Diego and much of the California-Mexico border area for 20 years in the U.S. House of Representatives, including a stint as chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee.

(Writing by Steve Gorman; Editing by Dan Whitcomb and Lisa Shumaker)

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Reuters: Politics

Former aide sues San Diego mayor, charging sexual harassment

Czech PM in survival struggle after court keeps aide in custody

OSTRAVA, Czech Republic (Reuters) – Coalition partners of Czech Prime Minister Petr Necas said they were considering whether they could stay in government with him on Saturday after a court ordered the detention of his close aide on corruption charges.

Reuters: Top News

Czech PM in survival struggle after court keeps aide in custody

Czech PM in survival struggle after court keeps aide in custody

OSTRAVA, Czech Republic (Reuters) – Coalition partners of Czech Prime Minister Petr Necas said they were considering whether they could stay in government with him on Saturday after a court ordered the detention of his close aide on corruption charges.

Reuters: Top News

Czech PM in survival struggle after court keeps aide in custody

EU not trying to weaken U.S. financial services rules: aide

By Doug Palmer

WASHINGTON | Thu Jun 13, 2013 2:17pm EDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The European Union does not want to use negotiations with the United States on a free trade agreement to weaken recent U.S. financial regulatory reforms, an EU official said on Thursday, responding to concerns raised by U.S. politicians.

But the EU is interested in exploring how financial regulations across the Atlantic can be made more compatible to allow new business opportunities, Peter Kerstens, a counselor at the European Commission’s office in Washington, said at a discussion on the proposed U.S.-EU trade pact.

“We do not want to include financial market regulations to liberalize or to deregulate the sector. We actually want to improve financial market regulation,” Kerstens said.

President Barack Obama and his EU counterparts are expected at the G8 summit next week in Northern Ireland to announce the July date and location for the first round of negotiations on the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Agreement.

Since tariffs on both sides of the Atlantic are relatively low, the main focus of the negotiations will be to reduce regulatory barriers to trade. The talks are expected to take at least one to two years.

Senator Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat, last week said he was concerned that both “Wall Street and industry-friendly European regulators” hoped to use the U.S.-EU negotiations to roll back reforms made by Congress in the 2010 Dodd-Frank bill.

U.S. officials, sensitive to those concerns, say they want to discuss financial regulations in “parallel” talks outside the U.S.-EU pact and note there are several international forums where further reforms are already being discussed.

Kerstens said the EU has also tightened up its own financial regulation in the wake of the 2008-09 crisis.

“Any assertions that … the European Union wants to deconstruct Dodd-Frank, or wants to assist the industry in deconstructing Dodd-Frank, I think is just illusionary. We did not spend more than five years of hard labor reforming the European financial sector to do away will all these reforms in a trade negotiations,” Kerstens said.

At the same time, limiting U.S.-EU talks on financial services to market access issues would be of limited value since U.S. and EU financial services firms already enjoy good access to each other’s market, Kerstens said.

Faryar Shirzad, a former White House official who works for the global investment company Goldman Sachs (GS.N), agreed U.S.-EU financial services talks should deal with regulatory concerns as well as market access issues.

“It’s not an issue of impeding or undermining the strength of the regulations, as much as thinking more strategically about how to make the systems more compatible,” Shirzad said.

Also, drawing a distinction in the negotiations between regulatory issues and market access issues is not easy since differences in regulations can affect the ability of financial services firms to operate in foreign markets, he said.

(Reporting by Doug Palmer)

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Reuters: Business News

EU not trying to weaken U.S. financial services rules: aide