With one day to go, the Senate is not expected to get the 60 votes needed to pass a Democrat-backed spending package, meaning cuts will likely go into effect Friday night. GOP leaders have offered a controversial plan to give the White House authority to implement the $85.3 billion in cuts for the fiscal year. It would give President Obama two weeks to bring a plan for the same level of cuts in order to avoid the indiscriminate sequester, but Republican lawmakers haven’t thrown support in for the plan.
For an overview of what the sequester is, please see the following: Overview
Discussion Questions:
Brooklyn Assemblyman Dov Hikind probably should have foreseen his use of blackface would cause outrage. The politician, an Orthodox Jew, apologized Monday for donning the makeup as part of a basketball-player costume for Purim. “In hindsight, I should have picked something else. It never crossed my mind for a split second that I was doing something wrong. It was as innocent as something can be,” he said. “My wife was dressed as the devil. And she’s not a devil. It was to look different on Purim without deep intentions. I just wanted to look different and unrecognizable.”
Rand Paul recently handed $600,000 to the U.S. Treasury. The move, announced Wednesday, was a “symbolic gesture” meant to highlight how easily the government can reduce its spending. Paul says the sizable sum came from a closely monitored office budget. “We watch every purchase ... what computers we buy, what paper we buy, the ink cartridges,” Paul said. “We treat the money like it’s our money, or your money, and we look at every expenditure.” Paul’s donation was coupled by a smaller one from South Carolina Rep. Mick Mulvaney, who pledged to give $160,000 of his budget (12 percent) back to the government. “At a time when Americans are tightening their budgets, I have made an effort to do the same with my congressional office budget,” Mulvaney said.
Americans may not be as keen to ease immigration laws as the Obama administration is. According to a new poll, more than half of U.S. citizens think most or all 11 million illegal immigrants in the country should be deported. The Reuters and Ipsos released Wednesday found a quarter of those polled believe all illegal immigrants should be sent home, and a third said most should be allowed to stay. This fits the trajectory of polls in recent years. "It's not Americans' views that are shifting. It is that the political climate is ripe for this discussion," Ipsos pollster Julia Clark says.
A wide-reaching study released Monday proved that television can improve children’s behavior—but increased television viewing leads to an increase in criminal behavior. Confused? That’s because the study shows that the content of what kids are watching makes a difference: if they are watching aggressive and violent shows, then they are more likely to exhibit those tendencies. But if they watched the same amount of television and instead watched shows that promoted healthy social interactions, their behavior improved. The study looked at 565 families with children ages 3 to 5.
As the following video shows, however, other studies have suggested that television is bad for children.
Chuck Hagel will spend the next week in political limbo, after Senate Republicans delayed the Defense secretary nominee’s confirmation for another week. Senate Dems ultimately didn’t come up with the 60 votes needed to end the Republicans’ filibuster (the final count was 58 to 40). Thursday’s vote marks the first time a Defense secretary nomination has been filibustered, and in a Google hangout Thursday night, President Obama called the filibuster "unprecedented." It looks likely that the nomination will proceed after a 10-day recess, when a simple 51-vote majority will suffice.
State media is reporting that despite U.N. warnings, North Korea successfully detonated a nuclear device. The confirmation comes after suspicious seismic activity was detected in North Korea early Tuesday, sparking speculation and reports that the rogue nation had conducted another nuclear test. The earthquake happened in an area that does not see natural seismic actions, and is near North Korea's nuclear facility. A spokesman for South Korea's defense minister said Tuesday that there was a high possibility of a nuclear detonation, and that Pyongyang had confirmed the activity to Seoul and Washington. The U.S. government did not immediately comment on what it had heard from the North Korean government.
Now that Pope Benedict XVI is opting for an early retirement, the speculation over who will succeed him is bound to last until the announcement. Many hope the next in line will represent the diverse world, now that 42 percent of the world's one billion Catholics come from Latin America and 15 percent are African. Top contendors are Cardinal Angelo Scola, the archbishop of Milan; Cardinal Marc Ouellet, a Canadian favorite of Benedict's; the Ghanaian Cardinal Peter Appiah Turkson; Argentinian Cardinal Leonardo Sandril; and, for the first time, an American hopeful, Cardinal Timothy Dolan.
A new study by the American Psychological Association finds that the millennial generation (18- to 33-year-olds) are more stressed than any other age group. More than 50 percent of millennials reported having their sleep disrupted by “overwhelming worries” in the past month. “Many of these young people have come out of college or graduate school with horrendous student debt into a job market where there are not very many jobs,” the psychological group’s executive director said. “This has put their life plans, probably, on hiatus.”
The U.S. Postal Service announced yesterday that it will suspend Saturday mail delivery starting August 1. Packages will still be delivered on Saturday, which is a profitable part of the business, and post offices will remain open on Saturdays so customers can drop off their mail, buy stamps, and check their post-office boxes—although open hours are likely to be reduced. Suspending Saturday mail delivery is expected to save the USPS $2 billion annually, much-needed savings as the postal service said it has lost $15.9 billion in the last fiscal year—three times the loss recorded just a year earlier.
U.S. regulators inspecting the now grounded Boeing 787 Dreamliner aircraft said Thursday that they would need more time—stoking fears that aircraft’s grounding could be even longer. While the investigators have found “symptoms” of what caused the Jan. 7 battery fire in Boston, the underlying cause still remains a mystery, said Deborah Hersman, the chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board. Calling the Dreamliner mishaps an “unprecedented event,” Hersman refused to answer questions about how long the investigation could take. The 787 has been grounded worldwide since two fires aboard aircraft in Japan and the incident in Boston, all of which occurred earlier this month
At a conference in Munich on Saturday, Vice President Biden announced that the nation is facing “the most robust sanctions in history” to keep its uranium-enrichment effort from developing nuclear weapons. Iran defends the program as a peaceful effort. But there’s a way out: Biden further announced that if the country is “serious,” the United States would be open to bilateral negotiations, saying that “the ball is in the government of Iran’s court.” Hopefully it will stay in play.