Everett, WA – New 747-8 Jet Arrives In Frankfurt O

The business class section of the first Boeing 747-8 Intercontinental is seen before a delivery ceremony Tuesday, May 1, 2012, in Everett, Wash. Lufthansa is the launch customer for the Intercontinental and will start service with the airplane between Frankfurt, Germany and Washington, D.C. The 747-8 Intercontinental is a stretched, updated version of the iconic 747 and is expected to bring double-digit improvements in fuel burn and emissions over its predecessor, the 747-400, and generate 30 percent less noise. Boeing delivered the first 747-8 Intercontinental to a private customer in February, more than a year after originally planned. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson)

Everett, WA – The first Lufthansa Boeing 747-8 plane arrived in Frankfurt Buy Windows 7 Product Key, Germany, Wednesday Windows 7 64 bit key, a day after the airline and the manufacturer celebrated the plane’s delivery and inaugural flyaway from Paine Field Airport in Everett, Wash.

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The plane is an updated version of the iconic 747, with less noise, more space and better fuel efficiency.

The airplane will begin regular commercial service June 1 on a flight from Frankfurt to Washington, D.C.

On board the first flight were Carsten Spohr, chairman of the executive board and CEO of Deutsche Lufthansa; Nico Buchholz, executive vice president, Group Fleet Management, Lufthansa; and Elizabeth Lund, Boeing vice president and general manager of the 747 Program Office Visio Key, along with some 30 passengers and crew.

The 747-8 Intercontinental was designed to improve the fuel efficiency and emissions of its predecessor, the 747-400, while generating 30 percent less noise. The 747-8 Intercontinental’s Dreamliner-inspired interior is also designed to appear more spacious and to provide more room for personal belongings.

A new Boeing 747-8 of Lufthansa AG is rolled into a hangar at Frankfurt Airport in Frankfurt Main, Germany, 02 May 2012. Lufthansa is the first airline worldwide to add the new Boeing to its passenger fleet. The newly developed 747-8 is 5 metres longer than the previous model 747-400 and is supposed to be considerably quieter and more efficient.  EPA/ARNE DEDERT

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Pope’s advice for hard economic times

POPE Benedict XVI is promoting the church's prescription for coping with the economic crisis: share resources and pare lifestyles down to the essentials.

Benedict spoke about economic problems as he made a pastoral visit to the Tuscan town of Arezzo on Sunday.

During his homily at mass, he acknowledged that the complexity of the problems makes it hard to pinpoint "more rapid and efficient” solutions to the eurozone crisis replica watches, which he noted hits the weakest especially hard and is worrying the young replica watches, as they search for hard-to-find jobs.

The Pope says the Catholic Church over the centuries has reacted to such problems by showing concrete solidarity to those in need replica watches, sharing resources and “promoting more essential lifestyles”.
 

Redefining the 5 Stages of Grief

When people ask me what I do and I reveal that I work as a grief counselor Tattoo Supplies, they often recoil in horror, ushering forth a series of well-meaning exclamations.

“Oh, isn’t that hard?”

“That seems so sad!”

“I couldn’t do that.”

The truth is that I don’t find it sad at all. When I talk to grieving people it’s like looking at one of those negative image paintings — the deeper the grief, the more evidence of love I see.

Something else I see on a regular basis is confusion over Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’s The Five Stages of Grief. Everyone seems to know what they are — denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance — but most people find themselves at a loss when it comes to how to actually apply them to their grieving process.

The answer is simple, I tell them: The five stages are fluid. They are meant to be used as guideposts, as a framework, but not necessarily as a strict formula. You may go through some of them simultaneously, and others not at all. You may stay in one stage for years but move through other stages quickly. Everyone’s journey of grief is different.

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross herself says in the opening paragraph of On Grief and Grieving, “The stages have evolved since their introduction, and they have been very misunderstood over the past three decades. They were never meant to tuck messy emotions into neat packages. They are responses to loss that many people have, but there is not a typical response to loss. There is no typical loss.”

I know that when I lost both of my parents within in a seven-year time frame, all before I was age 25, I went through a multitude of emotions and reactions, all encapsulated within the five stages. When I sat down to write about the experience in my memoir, The Rules of Inheritance, I wanted to demonstrate just how malleable the five stages are, and so I used them as a framework for my story.

Initially I was going to write a more straightforward dissection of the five stages, but it finally occurred to me that the best way to demonstrate how interchangeable the stages are would be using my own experience as an example. Breaking down my story this way helped me to understand the stages even better. Additionally, it led to another often-seen issue during the grieving process: the sense that one isn’t grieving properly.

It seems that not only are people confused over how to use the stages of grief, but also they’re confused about how to grieve in general. Over the years I’ve had people come to me with worries that they haven’t grieved long enough, hard enough Tattoo Machines Kits, that they have cried too much, or too little, or that their grief process is too different from someone who is experiencing a similar loss.

The bottom line is that there just isn’t a right way to grieve, there’s no easy way to heal, and there’s certainly no time frame to adhere to. Yet without fail, the majority of people question the way they’re going about it.

More often than not Tattoo Transfer Paper, this judgment on how to grieve comes not from you but from the people around you.

It’s been six months, a friend might say to you.

After a year you have to move on, another might tell you.

Even the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders only allots two months in its current assessment of grief.

Most of these parameters come from people who have never truly grieved themselves. Sometimes they’re self-imposed. We tend to be hardest on ourselves when we’re vulnerable.

What’s important is that mourners need to work to discover their own journey of grief. Only you know what path you need to take toward healing, and whether you accomplish this using every one of the five stages, shunning books about grief or never missing a session of your bereavement group, the key will consistently be to listen to yourself. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross herself reminds us: “Our grief is as individual as our lives.”

For more by Claire Bidwell Smith, click here.

For more on death and dying, click here.

Greek euro exit would be catastrophe EFSF head

BERLIN (Reuters) – A Greek exit from the euro zone would be catastrophic not just for Greece, the head of the euro zone’s temporary rescue fund said on Monday Tattoo Guns And Kits, a day after pro-bailout ruling parties lost their majority in parliament in Athens.

If Greece exited the euro zone that would “of course have a huge impact not just for other program countries Tattoo Machine Professional, not just for the banks, but also for Greece itself,” Regling said Kuro Sumi Tattoo Ink, adding Greece’s public creditors would also suffer. “It would be a catastrophe for Greece.”

Regling also said it was completely out of the question that the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) would directly recapitalize banks, a proposal by some policymakers to help Spanish banks.

(Reporting by Gernot Heller; Editing by Noah Barkin)

World

Sunday Trading An Olympian Error

It’s finally here. Stratford has changed beyond all recognition. Athletes are honed. Volunteers primed, and the team GB super-streamlined lycra kit is unveiled. I’ve no doubt that will look particularly fetching forced over the rotund populace of nation GB.

I live in an Olympic borough and I’m looking forward to the Games. The 30th Olympiad promises to be exciting. I do wonder, though, what is being done in the name of the Olympics. Laws have passed through parliament aiding development of venues and organisation of the Games, most of which make perfect sense. But next week sees the return of the Sunday Trading (Olympics) Bill to the Commons, and I’m thoroughly unconvinced.

There are three problems I have with this bill:

The effect it will have on workers and their families and communities. Why change the Sunday trading law nationally to support businesses near Olympic venues, a tiny proportion of the country? Despite promises that this legislation is only for the period of the Olympics, is this the ‘thin end of the wedge’ on future changes to Sunday trading laws?

We live in a 24/7 world. Supermarkets are open around the clock most days. If I want to get my groceries at three in the morning, I can. So why shouldn’t I be able to do the same on a Sunday? Big retailers say it is people’s right to have the freedom to shop when they like. What they don’t mention when they talk about your freedom is what that does to the person staffing the tills and stocking the shelves. And not just them, but the extra police officers, bus drivers Cheap Herve Leger v neck, health and catering staff who have to work when retail parks are trading.

Your freedom to go shopping for an hour means those workers are away from family and friends for six hours. Fine, they’ll get another day off instead, but will it be a day when their kids are off school or friends off work?

Relationships are central to a good quality of life, whether relationships with other adults, or time for children to spend with parents. That’s why it’s important that we all get shared time off. Truth is, none of us really need to go shopping on a Sunday. You might have to pop out for milk, but there aren’t restrictions on the small trader running a corner shop under the current laws. Big companies don’t want to increase opening hours for our freedom. Our happiness isn’t their concern. Making more money is.

Their hope isn’t to increase customer spend, but to increase market share by taking business from small traders who can’t compete. The last ten years has seen 30,000 small shops close, changing the look of our streets. That’s eight shops closing every day. Shops that kept money in their local economies and helped raise social capital in their communities, building relationships with the elderly, the disabled, and the otherwise ignored.

In nature, all living things have periods of rest. Zoos ensure even the lowliest animal gets one day a week off. Shouldn’t humans expect the same? Instead, retail workers have to opt out of work on a Sunday, but very few do for fear of harming job security. Usdaw found that 62% of their members have already come under pressure to work on Sundays when they didn’t want to. They also found that 66% of MPs didn’t believe the law as it stands offers enough protection to those who choose to opt out. And that’s before the current changes.

Workers need a regular and shared day off. Just one day out of the week when we can enjoy a rest, spending time with friends and families. If we want to guarantee people that shared day off we must say no to a further extension of Sunday trading.

Osborne has known about these games for the same seven years as us, but he chose to wait until the 2012 budget to announce the fast-track suspension of Sunday trading laws. There was no full public consultation on this. In fact, the only consultation was with big business, whose motives I doubt; while it may be appropriate to consult business, it’s also important to look at the effects on wider society.

If this relaxation in the law is just because of the Olympics, why is it being changed across the entire country? I can see that visitors are going to be in Stratford. But Herve Leger v neck sale, if this is just about the games, I can’t see what benefit it will have in Stroud or Stranraer. Most of the population won’t have the Olympics in their towns, but you can bet your bottom dollar that they’ll have Tesco open. And a year from now, Osborne will come back to parliament arguing “we did it last year and the world didn’t end.” This could very easily be the thin end of that wedge.

This government continues to put the economy before people, assuming that serving the economy will automatically serve the common good. Time and again, that’s been disproved. And time and again, voters have shouted about putting people first. Politicians ignore those shouts at their peril.

By the Numbers – July 2011Aftershocks Edition

Chrysler Climbs, Honda Falls, Cruze Cruises

U.S. auto sales for July 2011 can best be characterized by the resurgence of one company, Chrysler Group (up 20.05 percent), and the continued slide of another, American Honda (down 28.40 percent). Not so long ago, Chrysler was the company continually coming in at the bottom and Honda was flying high. Today, however, Chrysler is free of its government debt and continues to turn over its lineup with new and heavily revised products. Honda, meanwhile, has proven to be the automaker worst hit by the earthquake in Japan last March and seems to draw the ire of critics with its latest new vehicle releases.

Speaking of earthquakes, Toyota is in the same boat as Honda and continues to struggle with restoring output. Last month, sales for Toyota and Lexus in the U.S. were down 22.70 percent as a result. The only Japanese company that escaped the red cell this month was Nissan North America, which eked out a 2.75-percent improvement in sales.

Chrysler Group’s increase in sales volume led the domestics by a large margin, though its raw sales of 112,026 units are still far below that of Ford Motor Company (180,865) and General Motors (214,915). Ford and Lincoln together posted a sales rate increase of 8.89 percent and General Motors improved 7.62 percent.

Turning our attention to individual models, we must point out that the Toyota Camry did regain its title of America’s Best-Selling Car, which it had lost last month to the Chevy Cruze, with sales of 27,016. The Cruze still performed incredibly well, with sales of 24,648, good enough for the No. 2 spot Tattoo Supplies, followed by the Altima (23,340), Sonata (20,884), Malibu (19,529), Fusion (19,318) and Accord (18,308).

Brand/Company Vol. % July 2011 July 2010 DSR % July 2011 July 2010 Jeep 46.19 38,691 26,466 51.81 1,488.12 980.22 Mitsubishi 41.15 7,972 5,648 46.58 307 209 Lincoln 39.89 7,814 5,586 45.27 301 207 GMC 36.41 37,918 27,798 41.65 1,458 1,030 Volvo 29.54 5,595 4,319 34.53 215 160 Kia 28.47 45,504 35,419 33.41 1,750 1,312 Suzuki 25.36 2,447 1,952 30.18 94 72 Land Rover 22.64 2,811 2,292 27.36 108 85 Volkswagen 21.72 29,066 23,880 26.40 1,118 884 Audi 17.00 9,146 7,817 21.50 352 290 Ford 12.66 173,051 153,603 16.99 6,656 5,689 BMW 12.30 21,409 19,064 16.62 823 706 Hyundai 10.08 59,561 54,106 14.32 2,291 2,004 Mercedes-Benz 9.44 19,006 17,367 13.65 731 643 Mini 8.90 4,711 4,326 13.09 181 160 Dodge 8.85 33,653 30,916 13.04 1,294 1,145 Chevrolet 6.50 149,005 139,916 10.59 5,731 5,182 Nissan 6.36 77,191 72,573 10.45 2,969 2,688 Chrysler 5.00 15,427 14,692 9.04 593 544 Porsche 2.40 2,768 2,703 6.34 106 100 Buick 0.44 16,873 16,799 4.30 649 622 Mazda 0.25 20,783 20,732 4.10 799 768 Ram -0.10 21,217 21,239 3.74 816 787 Subaru -9.39 21,730 23,983 -5.91 836 888 Saab -18.47 384 471 -15.34 15 17 Lexus -21.81 14,539 18,595 -18.81 559 689 Toyota -22.81 116,263 150 Tattoo Supplies,629 -19.85 4,472 5,579 Infiniti -24.11 7,410 9,764 -21.19 285 362 Cadillac -25.47 11,119 14,919 -22.60 428 553 Acura -27.77 9,402 13,017 -24.99 362 482 Honda -28.49 71,100 99,420 -25.73 2,735 3,682 Jaguar -35.09 984 1,516 -32.60 38 56 Smart -41.61 327 560 -39.36 13 21 Fiat NA 3,038 – NA 117 COMPANIES Chrysler Group 20.05 112,026 93,313 24.67 4,309 3,456 BMW Group 11.67 26,120 23,390 15.97 1,005 866 Ford Mo Co 8.89 180,865 166,092 13.08 6,956 6,152 GM 7.62 214,915 199,692 11.76 8,266 7,396 Nissan N. America 2.75 84,601 82,337 6.70 3,254 3,050 Jaguar Land Rover -0.34 3,795 3,808 3.49 146 141 Toyota Mo Co -22.70 130,802 169,224 -19.73 5,031 6,268 American Honda -28.40 80,502 112,437 -25.65 3,096 4,164 *Brands and companies are displayed in descending order according to their percentage change in volume sales. There were 26 selling days in July 2011 versus 27 selling days in July 2010, so the change in monthly sales volume will be different than the change in average daily sales rate (DSR) for each brand/company. Also, brands are combined and reported as companies only if their sales figures are released jointly.

It’s the Oil, Stupid

The Los Angeles Timescontinues to banner and the New York Timesleads with the latest from Southern California Buy Chanel Dresses, where six charred bodies were found yesterday Replica Herve Leger gown, raising the official death toll of the wildfires to seven. Four of the victims were found close to the Mexican border and are thought to have been illegal immigrants, and the two others were inside the remains of a home in northern San Diego. “I imagine we will be finding bodies into next year,” an official said. The fires have become more manageable, but nine are still burning and thousands of homes continue to be at risk. But much of the attention yesterday turned to the recovery and rebuilding efforts as President Bush toured the region and pledged additional federal aid.

The Washington Postleads with a look at how a U.S. military strike on Iran would likely result in an increase in oil prices and general chaos in the industry. “If war breaks out, anticipate that all hell will break loose in the oil markets,” one expert said. That’s hardly surprising, but the Post also notes that experts believe this is the main reason why U.S. military action against Iran is unlikely. Even so, oil prices increased to more than $90 a barrel yesterday, at least partly due to fears of instability in the Middle East. USA Todayand the Wall Street Journal’s world-wide newsboxlead with the new broad sanctions imposed on Iran, which were announced yesterday and target a division of the country’s military as well as a number of Iranian banks, businesses, and officials. Bush administration officials went out of their way to emphasize the sanctions are meant to foster diplomacy and not start a war.

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After visiting some of the areas devastated by the fires, Bush had nothing but praise for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. “It makes a big difference when you have someone in the statehouse willing to take the lead,” Bush said in a statement that the NYT says made “veiled comparisons to local relief efforts” after Hurrican Katrina. Still Buy Herve Leger v neck, Bush avoided answering direct questions that asked him to compare the two disasters. “There’s all kinds of times for historians to compare,” he said.

Meanwhile, officials were stepping up efforts to try to find the arsonists that are believed to have started some of the fires. The NYT spends time explaining that it’s common for arsonists to start fires in this type of situation. Some are started by children out of curiosity but no great desire to cause harm Herve leger strapless sale, while “adults’ motivations are more complex.” An expert tells the NYT that some adults just want attention while others may “actually derive sexual pleasure from committing the act.”

The NYT tries to put the area that has been consumed by the fires in perspective by saying that it’s “a little more than twice the size of New York City,” while the LAT says it’s “roughly two-thirds the size of Rhode Island.” (After the 2003 wildfires, Slate’s “Explainer” looked into why Rhode Island “is the nation’s yardstick.”) The LAT also takes an interesting look at how the fire along the Mexico border has created both “opportunities and deadly traps for migrants.”

The NYT and WP go inside with new satellite photos that show Syria has done a very quick cleanup job of the site that Israel is thought to have bombed last month. In fact Discount Hale Bob Dresses, the building that experts believed to be a nuclear reactor in progress “has been dismantled down to the last brick,” says the Post. Everyone notes this makes the whole thing even more suspicious. “They are clearly trying to hide the evidence,” an expert said.  Syria once again denied it is cooperating with North Korea on a nuclear program. Yesterday, Republicans on the House foreign affairs committee called on the administration to release any evidence that North Korea was helping Syria develop a nuclear reactor.

The LAT fronts a look at how insurgents and militias get much of their money from “Mafia-style rackets” that involve a wide range of businesses. Although it was once thought that militants got most of their money from foreign sources as well as kidnappings, it’s now clear that wide-spread corruption and criminal enterprises play a large role as well. These rackets, which involve millions of dollars, take many forms, including charging “taxes” to those who drive through a certain area and phony real estate deals. There are even suspicions that insurgents might be using U.S. reconstruction money to fund their operations.

The NYT fronts word that the Merrill Lynch chairman and chief executive, E. Stanley O’Neal, brought up the idea of a merger with his counterpart at Wachovia without discussing it with the board first. The board got so angry that the move could cause O’Neal to lose his job. Although it’s unlikely there will be a merger in the near future Buy Bandage dresses, the fact that the conversation even took place “underscores how much the subprime mortgage crisis has rocked Merrill,” says the Times.

The WP fronts and the NYT goes inside with the testimony of a Burmese monk who was the leader in the recent protests and has become a refugee in Thailand. Ashin Kovida described to the papers how the protests began peacefully with the government’s tacit authorization but then the crackdown began when the marches took on a political tone and more people joined. During the ensuing crackdown of the protesters, “blood was like a stream of water,” Kovida said.

The Post’s Charles Krauthammer is tired of Republicans complaining that the GOP candidates vying for the White House are all flawed. Since Republicans often ask, “Where is Ronald Reagan?” Krauthammer decides to remind them that the former president was “renowned for his naps, granted amnesty to 3 million illegal immigrants” and was a flip-flopper who first “signed the most liberal abortion legalization bill in America” only to oppose the practice later on in his career. Krauthammer isn’t putting Reagan down, of course, he just wants to emphasize that “we have, by any reasonable historical standard, a fine Republican field.”

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Bullet Holes in the Bumper, Threats in the Mail

Truck drivers stand near their fuel tankers on the outskirts of Herat

From a distance, there’s nothing unusual about the trucks in Karachi’s Shiren Jinnah rest terminal. Lines of empty fuel tankers are parked on the side of a main road, waiting their turn to be filled up near the harbor. Huddled outside the trucks, jovial drivers drink tea, chat, and kill time. It’s only on closer inspection that the scars of war become evident. Bullet holes riddle the bumpers Buy DKNY Clothing, and parked between the mammoth carriers are the charred skeletal remains of burnt truck carcasses awaiting repair.

These are no ordinary fuel tankers. The trucks parked in this rest stop are bound for Afghanistan Herve Leger sale, ferrying supplies to U.S. and NATO forces. And all the drivers know someone who has been killed on the clock—burnt alive in the cab or shot by militants bent on disrupting Western lines of supply for America’s longest war.

Nowhere is the war in Afghanistan less popular than in neighboring Pakistan, and the local drivers hired to ferry supplies and fuel to troops are the ones paying the highest price. Men who risk their lives on the perilous roads from Karachi to Kabul or Kandahar are caught in a tangle of poverty, rhetoric, and the imminent threat of death.

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“Pakistan is more dangerous than Afghanistan now. I’m more scared here than there. There are forces helping us on the Afghan side. Here, we don’t have help from anyone,” explains Dilshad, a young Pashtun driver who has been carting fuel for NATO forces for the last three years. “The Taliban are saying we’re not supposed to help the West. Before, they used to warn us to stop, now they just kill us.”

The reward for their labor is around $300 a month and assault from all directions. Drivers say they must lie to their wives, they can’t face their neighbors, and they live in fear of the escalating threats from the Taliban, who have stepped up their assault on the supply line in Pakistan in recent years. More than 60 percent of the Pakistani population lives on less than $2 per day, so $300 a month can seem like a lot Cheap Herve Leger v neck, but these drivers are generally supporting large families.

Pakistan’s overland route is integral to the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan—40 percent of NATO supplies are trucked in through two of the country’s border crossings. The United States and NATO contract Pakistani companies to ferry fuel, cargo, and food from the port of Karachi into Afghanistan, leaving day-to-day management Discount Hale Bob Dresses, insurance, and compensation up to their local operators. An average of 2,500 to 3,000 cargo trucks and 450 to 500 fuel carriers are plying Pakistan’s roads on any given day. A typical journey, drivers say, takes 20 days there and back.

Each year has become more terrifying than the last, Dilshad tells me. Last month, a friend of his was killed when the Taliban set his truck ablaze on the Pakistani side of the route. On Feb. 7, gunmen torched five trucks. On Jan. 30, three trucks were attacked. On Jan. 21,  three separate attacks in Pakistan  left three trucks torched and one driver shot. On Jan. 19, Pakistan’s  local press reported  the bodies of three kidnapped drivers were found peppered with bullets. Everyone gathered here has at least one tale of surviving a brush with death.

Drivers say the trucks’ “for export” signs and their special license numbers make them easy targets. Defense analyst Hasan Askari Rizvi explains that long stretches of lonely roads snaking through restive provinces, like Baluchistan, provide a broad area for militants to target, and lax security around rest stops doesn’t help. “When they are parked in a large number in truck depots, these trucks are like sitting ducks, anybody can do anything,” Rizvi said. Some attacks, Rizvi says, are not perpetrated by the Taliban, but by criminal looters who siphon off fuel or commandeer the battle gear and then torch the trucks. But aside from beefing up security around the depots, he thinks there’s little the Pakistani government can do to prevent attacks.

Although the truckers don’t pay for any damage the trucks suffer if they are attacked, they also don’t get compensated if they’re injured on the job. “If we die Replica Herve leger strapless, our families don’t even get a coffee,” Dilshad says, chuckling ruefully. He describes letters arriving at his house in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province (formerly known as the North-West Frontier province), warning him that he is a marked man and commanding him to halt his work. The dozen other drivers gathered around us nod in agreement. They have all received the same letters.

As U.S. drone attacks against militants in North Waziristan intensify, truckers say the perception of being associated with the West has become even more hazardous. In 2010, 118 drone strikes pounded Pakistan’s tribal regions, according to  a study by the New America Foundation—that’s roughly one bombing every three days, double the number of strikes the year before.

Drone attacks are touted as one of America’s most effective weapons against insurgents, who hit troops in Afghanistan before seeking refuge across the porous border. But most Pakistanis believe that the targeted strikes kill more civilians than militants and are an affront to national sovereignty, though their government appears to allow them. Nearly 800 people were killed by drone strikes last year Replica Herve leger strapless, and as of mid-February, there have already been nine strikes in 2011.

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The Pardon Pander

The House of Representatives is perched to equal or better the instruction of  President George W. Bush and Vice President Richard Cheney in sneering at the Constitution’s separation of powers. In an amendment to the pending an appropriations bill for commerce, justice, and science * that passed last night on a voice vote, the House usurped the president’s pardon authority by commuting the sentences of the two former Border Patrol agents convicted in 2005 of federal firearms violations and obstructing justice in connection with shooting an illegal-alien smuggler. Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean were sentenced to 11 and 12 years, respectively. Their case has become a cause célèbre on the right. And now, Congress has responded to the outcry by subordinating the Constitution in defiance of the congressional oath of office.

The amendment that passed last night, sponsored by Reps. Ted Poe, R-Texas Buy Herve leger strapless, and Duncan Hunter Karen Millen Dresses sale, R-Calif., provides: “None of the funds made available under this Act shall be used by the Bureau of Prisons to incarcerate Ignacio Ramos or Jose Alonso Compean.” But the Constitution entrusts the power to pardon offenses against the United States or to commute sentences exclusively to the president. The enumerated legislative powers do not hint at a concurrent authority in Congress. Pardons or commutations, moreover, have invariably been associated with law enforcement as opposed to law-making. In the 1872 case United States v. Klein, the Supreme Court held unconstitutional an attempt by Congress to subtract from the legal effect of a pardon.

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Contrary to a common assumption, the power of the purse does not give this amendment any greater claim to constitutionality. As Shakespeare might have versified, a legislative abuse by any other name smells as rotten. Thus in 1946, the Supreme Court invalidated a federal appropriations statute that denied salaries to three named State Department officials. (The case is United States v. Lovett.) If the Poe-Hunter amendment were constitutional, the power of the purse could be manipulated to compromise all law enforcement. For example, Congress could prohibit the expenditure of money to prosecute a list of favored individuals, including every member of the House and Senate.

Critics have asserted that Ramos and Compean were made scapegoats to appease the government of Mexico. Defense counsel also moved for a new trial after three jurors in affidavits asserted that their votes to convict had been coerced. But these types of claims are a staple of adjudication from the trial level up to the U.S. Supreme Court, not grounds for a special piece of legislation that makes an end run around the judiciary. No allegation has surfaced insinuating that the judges involved in the case have been compromised. Appeals have not yet been exhausted.       

The squalid motivation for the Poe-Hunter amendment’s defilement of the Constitution is Herve leger strapless sale, of course, appeasement of popular fury over illegal immigration. Members of Congress covet an opportunity to signal anger over lax border control to their constituents. What better way than to vote to pardon Border Patrol agents who themselves became lawbreakers in enforcing the immigration laws Bandage dresses sale, i.e., to champion official lawlessness in the name of an allegedly higher good. Rep. Hunter has lamented that the convictions of Ramos and Compean will demoralize the Border Patrol and will reinforce the problems the United States has in defending its borders. This is the same logic that President Bush and Vice President Cheney use in justifying their violations of law in the name of national security and executive power. The duumvirate likewise believes that kidnappings, torture, indefinite detentions without charge Replica DKNY Clothes, burglaries Chanel Dresses sale, mail openings, and illegal surveillance are justified in the name of a higher public good—countering international terrorism. What’s the Constitution between friends?

The Constitution creates a legitimate avenue for members of Congress to encourage the president to exercise clemency. Committee hearings can be held to cast light on the facts of a case; individual members may write the White House to urge pardons or commutations. Both avenues have been pursued in the Ramos and Compean cases. The Senate judiciary committee scrutinized the prosecution with testimony from U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton of the western district of Texas on July 17. Members of Congress in droves have pleaded for pardons with President Bush.

At present, the White House has resisted. The president could ultimately change his mind. But the point is that it’s his prerogative and no one else’s. The Constitution will run aground unless each branch of government exercises self-restraint by honoring its strictures. Congress will forfeit its moral authority to hold President Bush politically accountable for his crimes against the Constitution if it apes his misbehavior. The law cannot be a collection of political maneuvers that know no bounds.

Correction, July 27, 2007: Because of an editing error, the original sentence wrongly stated that the amendment was to a defense appropriations bill. (Return  to the corrected sentence.)

BMW Announces Megacity hybrid-electric vehicle

BMW Chairman Norbert Reithofer has reportedly confirmed a new eco-friendly machine called the Megacity Vehicle as part of the automaker’s Project i. Beyond the name Buy Cheap Replica Panerai Watches, details are sketchy. According to Reithofer Replica Movado Watches, “Customers will have the choice between a fully electric drive and a high-efficiency combustion engine. Large-scale production could start in the first half of the next decade.”

We’re not entirely sure if that means the vehicle will be some sort of hybrid or if it will be offered with two separate powertrain options. We’re also wondering if the Megacity has anything to do with the rumored small car development with Fiat Replica Seiko Watches, which would supposedly spawn new city cars from both the German and the Italian automaker. BMW is also “pursuing a radical approach toward establishing a truly sustainable value chain-from development to production and sales Replica Audemars Piguet Watches,” said Reithofer.

[Source: Carscoop | Photo: snapsi42]