Obama team reverses union transparency - Washington Times

Obama team reverses union transparency - Washington Times

The Obama administration, which has boasted about its efforts to make government more transparent, is rolling back rules requiring labor unions and their leaders to report information about their finances and compensation.

The Labor Department noted in a recent disclosure that "it would not be a good use of resources" to bring enforcement actions against union officials who do not comply with conflict of interest reporting rules passed in 2007. Instead, union officials will now be allowed to file older, less detailed conflict reports.

The regulation, known as the LM-30 rule, was at the heart of a lawsuit that the AFL-CIO filed against the department last year. One of the union attorneys in the case, Deborah Greenfield, is now a high-ranking deputy at Labor, who also worked on the Obama transition team on labor issues.

Imagine that...

Democrats Refuse to Allow Skeptic to Testify Alongside Gore At Congressional Hearing

Report: Democrats Refuse to Allow Skeptic to Testify Alongside Gore At Congressional Hearing | Climate Depot

Democrats Refuse to Allow Skeptic to Testify Alongside Gore At Congressional Hearing 

Thursday, April 23, 2009By Marc Morano

Washington, DC -- UK's Lord Christopher Monckton, a former science advisor to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, claimed House Democrats have refused to allow him to appear alongside former Vice President Al Gore at a high profile global warming hearing on Friday April 24, 2009 at 10am in Washington. Monckton told Climate Depot that the Democrats rescinded his scheduled joint appearance at the House Energy and Commerce hearing on Friday. Monckton said he was informed that he would not be allowed to testify alongside Gore when his plane landed from England Thursday afternoon.

What are they afraid of??  If they are so certain that global warming is happening and caused by humans, they should be able to counteract any points made by Lord Monckton with little problem.  Or is it that Mr. Gore's testimony wouldn't stand up to any scrutiny whatsoever??

'Quiet Sun' baffling astronomers

BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | 'Quiet Sun' baffling astronomers

The Sun is the dimmest it has been for nearly a century.

There are no sunspots, very few solar flares - and our nearest star is the quietest it has been for a very long time.

The observations are baffling astronomers...

As usual, the "consensus" hasn't got a clue what's going on.  I love how today's scientists pretend they know what's going on in a universe that they believe has been around for BILLIONS of years after studying it for about a hundred of those years.  Pure arrogance.

The question that flummoxed the great orator

 

John Crace: The question that flummoxed the great orator | World news | The Guardian

Barack Obama, the World's Greatest Orator (™all news organisations), didn't exactly cover himself in glory when the BBC's political editor Nick Robinson asked him a question about who was to blame for the financial crisis. Normally word perfect, Obama ummed, ahed and waffled for the best part of two and a half minutes. Here, John Crace decodes what he was really thinking ...

In France, Obama takes no questions from French

 

Washington Times - CURL: In France, Obama takes no questions from French

President Obama held a much ballyhooed town hall in Strasbourg, France, on Friday, touted by the White House as an outreach to Europeans on the second leg of the president's "listening" tour.

But the first person he called on was an American -- and the third, too. By the end of the hour-long session, not a single French citizen got to ask the U.S. president a question.

In all, Obama took just five questions from the thousands of people packed into a sports arena after delivering a lengthy speech read from a teleprompter. And the query topics were on the light side; one asked about the expected acquisition of a family dog, another about whether "you regret to have run for presidency."