WASHINGTON ? Melody Barnes is leaving as White House chief domestic policy adviser at a time when President Barack Obama's administration is getting little notice for its work on the home front to fix the struggling economy.
Barnes, who will be gone by Tuesday, is quick to point out that there have been many domestic achievements, even though the public is dissatisfied.
"I completely understand what the American public is feeling," she said in an interview in her tidy West Wing office. "Real people are hurting in a significant way. ... At the same time, I'm proud of the things we've been able to accomplish over the last few years."
Her office is wrestling with multiple thorny issues now just as it was when Barnes started as Obama's domestic policy team director in 2009.
Back then, the economy plunged into free-fall and the country was in its worst economic crisis since the 1930s. Jobs were being lost at a rate of about 750,000 a month ? a number Barnes still finds so staggering she said she has to double-check it every time she says it.
Homes were being foreclosed, unemployment was skyrocketing and reaching double the national average in the black community. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan dragged on, an outbreak of H1N1flu virus became a pandemic, and a tsunami that hit Japan crippled a nuclear plant near Tokyo, to name some of the highlights.
Even her chance to play golf with the president, the first time a woman joined him, was a response to what was a public image crisis for Obama. The president was getting flak for playing basketball with men and fostering complaints about a boys' club in the White House.
Just before Christmas, the president and Congress wrangled over a two-month extension of a Social Security payroll tax cut and unemployment benefits. Obama won a victory when the proposal won bipartisan support in the Senate and finally was accepted by House Republicans under extreme pressure.
Barnes, a Richmond, Va., native with a career in government and private sector work, is bowing out of the political arena as Obama struggles with low approval ratings on his handling of the economy.
A majority of Americans do not think the president deserves a second term, according to the most recent Associated Press-GfK poll. But at the same time, the unemployment rate has dropped to 8.6 percent, the lowest level since March 2009. The president's overall approval rating stands at 44 percent, the lowest of his term in AP-GfK surveys.
His strong stance against House Republicans in the payroll tax standoff has caused an uptick in approval ratings in subsequent polls.
Barnes expects the list of legislative victories that she and others pulled off amid the hemorrhaging economy will become more clear in the coming year as the dark clouds of the economy disperse.
She tops that list with the early work to stabilize the economy, 21 months of consistent job growth and the president's long-term investments in education overhaul, an area that became her specialty.
"Our work on education reform, it'll be part of this president's legacy," she said.
Barnes said that with a fraction of what the federal government spends annually on education, about $100 billion, from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the administration tapped into an education reform movement taking place at the grass roots among governors and local communities frustrated with the prescriptive, one-size-fits-all mandates of No Child Left Behind, the Bush administration's education cornerstone.
Congress has yet to approve revisions to No Child Left Behind, states are using up the stimulus money, and Obama's Race to the Top grant program faces spending cuts. But Barnes said Obama has given a boost to education law changes that now allow such things as connecting student performance and teacher evaluations.
Barnes, chief counsel to the late Sen. Edward Kennedy on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Obama also deserves credit for passage of a health care overhaul, legislation that she had worked on for eight years with Kennedy. The Massachusetts senator spent his career trying to restructure health care.
There's also the auto industry bailout, expansion of Pell grants to help fund college education, the end of the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy on gays and work to advance civil rights, she said.
"When you are worried about day to day, it's hard to step back and to take all those other things in," Barnes said. "Although at the same time, I'm literally in the grocery store and people come up to me and say, `Hey, you work for the president. You keep on doing what you are doing.' "
Married a few months into the president's first year, Barnes plans to spend more time with family. She is considering offers in the private sector but hasn't disclosed what those are.
___
Online:
White House Domestic Policy Council: http://www.whitehouse.gov/administration/eop/dpc
El Paso, Texas ? The agreement between the Pac-12 and Big Ten conferences has a target date of 2017 for each Pac-12 team to have a Big Ten team on its non-conference schedule. However, that matchup could come much, much sooner for the Utah Utes, according to Hill.
The only non-conference teams the Utes have on their future schedules is a Sept. 15 game against BYU next year and a three-year agreement with Utah State for the 2012-through-2014 seasons, giving the Utes some wiggle room when it comes to scheduling opponents.
?We left it open by design,? Hill said. ?We were hoping and anticipating the new TV contract might bring some new opportunities that would help us grow some national exposure and this agreement could help us maybe do that sooner rather than later.?
Hill said he has heard some Big Ten teams, including Michigan, are interested in scheduling Pac-12 teams soon but stopped short of saying a deal with the Wolverines might be in the works.
The Utes opened their 2008 season with a 25-23 win over Michigan in the Big House.
?This is a good thing for all our sports,? he said. ?It makes sense to schedule a team like Michigan or a Big Ten team like that because it would be an exciting thing, but it also makes scheduling difficult in some respects, we have to make sure we schedule ourselves to a point where we help our teams too.?
To that point, Hill doesn?t want to create a schedule that would be too challenging for the Utes. That concern could mean the rivalries with Utah State and BYU are in more jeopardy than they already were.
?I haven?t had a chance to talk to [BYU athletic director] Tom Holmoe or [Utah State athletic director] Scott Barnes yet,? Hill said. ?I don?t want to give people the wrong impression but we?ve said all along we don?t know what different opportunities are going to come our way. We have to take a deep breath and look at everything.?
Story continues below
No fans? No worries
Even though the Utes sold just 1,500 tickets to the Sun Bowl, the Utes still won?t lose money on their bowl appearance thanks to a generous allowance from the Pac-12.
The Utes don?t get any revenue from the league per their agreement with joining the Pac-12 in 2011, but Utah did receive an estimated $750,000 from the league for the bowl appearance.
In addition, the Pac-12 pays for airfare for 500 people traveling to the bowl game. The Utes had no such help in the MWC.
The Pac-12 will also help cover some of the cost of the unsold tickets.
?They have a very generous formula,? Hill said. ?We anticipate we won?t lose any money.?
Hill said he wasn?t concerned his school might make a poor impression with the few tickets sold to the bowl game.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 28th, 2011 at 5:39 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Iranian naval chief?Habibollah Sayyari said Wednesday that?"Closing the Strait of Hormuz for Iran's armed forces is really easy ... or as Iranians say it will be easier than drinking a glass of water."?
Parisa Hafezi of Reuters reports?Sayyari then topped this off by saying that while his forces could do this at any time, there was currently no need, as they control the Sea of Oman and therefore all shipping through the strait.
Iran's threats Tuesday to close the strait sent oil prices up close to 2%, but it won't last.
Oil analyst Thorbjoern bak Jensen, with Global Risk Management told Reuters,?"The threat by Iran to close the Strait of Hormuz supported the oil market yesterday, but the effect is fading today as it will probably be empty threats as they cannot stop the flow for a longer period due to the amount of U.S. hardware in the area."
It's unclear what Sayyari meant by controlling the Sea of Oman, but for its part the U.S. Navy Fifth Fleet announced today that "Any disruption in the Strait of Hormuz will not be tolerated."
Based in Bahrain the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet?fleet consists of an Aircraft Carrier Battle Group, an Amphibious Ready Group, surface combatants, submarines, maritime patrol and surveillance planes, and logistics ships.
The Iranians have long made sport of running at the Fleet's ships in small speedboats and the tactic became such a concern for U.S. forces that the White House requested a direct line be established between the Oval Office and Tehran.
Iran just finished a mine laying exercise and has announced it will begin tests of its most advanced torpedoes and missiles.
Following Governor Chris Christie?s announcement in early October that he would not be running for president, top GOP official and bundler, Georgette Mosbacher told reporters, ?We do not consider Perry a factor? We know who will be our nominee.? Georgette was talking about Mitt ?McRomneycare? Romney, of course. Georgette Mosbacher. HarvardCPL, via flickr (Capital NY)
Maybe Georgette wasn?t kidding. The Virginia GOP effectively eliminated 4 of the top 6 candidates, including Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry, from qualifying for the Republican primary in March this past weekend. Only Mitt Romney and Ron Paul will be on the Virginia GOP primary ballot.
Charles C. Johnson at Big Government today discussed how difficult it was for candidates to qualify for the primary in Virginia.
Candidates are required not only to collect over 10,000 signatures to get on the ballot but have to have at least 400 from each of the state?s eleven congressional districts. Both Perry and Gingrich cleared the first hurdle by at least a thousand signatures, but it appears they may have stumbled on clearing the second. We don?t know this for certain ? the Va. GOP hasn?t explained why Gingrich and Perry failed to qualify? but this seems likely.
Gathering enough signatures from enough of the different districts proved too tricky. In at least one district that?s a tall order. Virginia?s 3rd and 8th congressional district, for example, are among the most Democratic in the country, with a PVI score of D+20 and D+16, respectively. Woody Allen may be right when he said 90% of success is just showing up, but it is hard to show up when there is effectively no Republican party in some congressional districts.
Worse yet, Virginia?s House of Delegates complicated matters further when voters may not know which congressional district they live in thanks to an ongoing state-wide fight over redistricting. Virginia Republicans submitted a map in April 2011, but Virginia Democrats seemed insistent on pushing the matter to January 2012 and then to federal court if they don?t enough black?and therefore Democratic?congressional districts. They would sue the state under the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and toss the matter of redistricting over to the federal courts.
It?s the prerogative of any state party to set up the rules that govern its primary but it sure seems short-sighted to disqualify two candidates that fulfilled the 10,000 signatures requirement, especially given how much Virginia GOP could benefit from a renewed focus and all that earned media attention on the Old Dominion.
If the Republican Party wanted to rig the system for Mitt Romney then you might expect to see something like this pop up. But the Republican Party elites would never do anything like that? Right?
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British troops in Afghanistan have enjoyed a festive treat, tucking into a traditional Christmas dinner: bit.ly/vz5hVLIl y a environ 4 heuresvia ITN News AlertsRetweeted by 1 person
Ironing out the details of the Earth's corePublic release date: 20-Dec-2011 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Lawren Markle lmarkle@caltech.edu 626-395-3226 California Institute of Technology
Caltech researchers obtain highest-pressure vibrational spectrum of iron
PASADENA, Calif. -- Identifying the composition of the earth's core is key to understanding how our planet formed and the current behavior of its interior. While it has been known for many years that iron is the main element in the core, many questions have remained about just how iron behaves under the conditions found deep in the earth. Now, a team led by mineral-physics researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) has honed in on those behaviors by conducting extremely high-pressure experiments on the element.
"Pinpointing the properties of iron is the gold standardor I guess 'iron standard'for how the core behaves," says Jennifer Jackson, assistant professor of mineral physics at Caltech and coauthor of the study, which appears in the December 20 issue of Geophysical Research Letters. "That is where most discussions about the deep interior of the earth begin. The temperature distribution, the formation of the planetit all goes back to the core."
To learn more about how iron behaves under the extreme conditions that exist in the earth's core, the team used diamond anvil cells (DAC) to compress tiny samples of the element. The DACs use two small diamonds to squeeze the iron, reproducing the types of pressures felt in the earth's core. These particular samples were pressurized to 171 Gigapascals, which is 1.7 million times the pressure we feel on the surface of the earth.
To complete the experiments, the team took the DACs to the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois, where they were able to use powerful X-rays to measure the vibrational density of states of compressed iron. This information allows the researchers to determine how quickly sound waves move through iron and compare the results to seismic observations of the core.
"The vibrational properties that we were able to measure at extraordinarily high pressures are unprecedented," says Jackson. "These pressures exist in the earth's outer core, and are very difficult to reproduce experimentally."
Caitlin Murphy, a graduate student in Jackson's group and first author of the paper, says the group was happy to find that their data set on the vibrational properties of iron evolved smoothly over a very wide pressure range, suggesting that their pressure-dependent analysis was robust, and that iron did not encounter any phase changes over this pressure range. To help achieve these successful measurements at high pressures, the group used some innovative techniques to keep the iron from thinning out in the DACs, such as preparing an insert to stabilize the sample chamber during compression. Additionally, they measured the volume of the compressed iron sample in situ and hydrostatically loaded the iron sample with neon into the sample chamber.
"These techniques allowed us to get the very high statistical quality we wanted in a reasonable amount of time, thus allowing us to obtain accurate vibrational properties of compressed iron, such as its Grneisen parameter," says Jackson. "The Grneisen parameter of a material describes how its total energy changes with compression and informs us on how iron may behave in the earth's core. It is an extremely difficult quantity to measure accurately."
The team was also able to get a closer estimate of the melting point of iron from their experimentswhich they report to be around 5800 Kelvin at the boundary between the earth's solid inner core and liquid outer core. This information, combined with the other vibrational properties they found, gives the group important clues for estimating the amount of light elements, or impurities, in the core. By comparing the density of iron at the relevant pressure and temperature conditions with seismic observations of the core's density, they found that iron is 5.5 percent more dense than the solid inner core at this boundary.
"With our new data on iron, we can discuss several aspects of the earth's core with more certainty and narrow down the amount of light elements that may be needed to help power the geodynamothe process responsible for maintaining the earth's magnetic field, which originates in the core," says Jackson.
According to Murphy, the next step is to perform similar experiments alloying iron with nickel and various light elements to determine how the density and, in particular, the vibrational properties of pure iron are affected. In turn, they will be able to evaluate the amount of light elements that produce a closer match to seismic observations of the core.
"There are a few candidate light elements for the core that everyone is always talking aboutsulfur, silicon, oxygen, carbon, and hydrogen, for instance," says Murphy. "Silicon and oxygen are a few of the more popular, but they have not been studied in this great of detail yet. So that's where we will begin to expand our study."
###
The study, "Grneisen parameter of hcp-Fe to 171 GPa," was funded by the California Institute of Technology, the National Science Foundation, and the U.S. Department of Energy. Bin Chen, a former postdoctoral scholar in Jackson's lab, and Wolfgang Sturhahn, senior technologist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and visiting associate at Caltech, were also coauthors on the paper.
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?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Ironing out the details of the Earth's corePublic release date: 20-Dec-2011 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Lawren Markle lmarkle@caltech.edu 626-395-3226 California Institute of Technology
Caltech researchers obtain highest-pressure vibrational spectrum of iron
PASADENA, Calif. -- Identifying the composition of the earth's core is key to understanding how our planet formed and the current behavior of its interior. While it has been known for many years that iron is the main element in the core, many questions have remained about just how iron behaves under the conditions found deep in the earth. Now, a team led by mineral-physics researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) has honed in on those behaviors by conducting extremely high-pressure experiments on the element.
"Pinpointing the properties of iron is the gold standardor I guess 'iron standard'for how the core behaves," says Jennifer Jackson, assistant professor of mineral physics at Caltech and coauthor of the study, which appears in the December 20 issue of Geophysical Research Letters. "That is where most discussions about the deep interior of the earth begin. The temperature distribution, the formation of the planetit all goes back to the core."
To learn more about how iron behaves under the extreme conditions that exist in the earth's core, the team used diamond anvil cells (DAC) to compress tiny samples of the element. The DACs use two small diamonds to squeeze the iron, reproducing the types of pressures felt in the earth's core. These particular samples were pressurized to 171 Gigapascals, which is 1.7 million times the pressure we feel on the surface of the earth.
To complete the experiments, the team took the DACs to the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois, where they were able to use powerful X-rays to measure the vibrational density of states of compressed iron. This information allows the researchers to determine how quickly sound waves move through iron and compare the results to seismic observations of the core.
"The vibrational properties that we were able to measure at extraordinarily high pressures are unprecedented," says Jackson. "These pressures exist in the earth's outer core, and are very difficult to reproduce experimentally."
Caitlin Murphy, a graduate student in Jackson's group and first author of the paper, says the group was happy to find that their data set on the vibrational properties of iron evolved smoothly over a very wide pressure range, suggesting that their pressure-dependent analysis was robust, and that iron did not encounter any phase changes over this pressure range. To help achieve these successful measurements at high pressures, the group used some innovative techniques to keep the iron from thinning out in the DACs, such as preparing an insert to stabilize the sample chamber during compression. Additionally, they measured the volume of the compressed iron sample in situ and hydrostatically loaded the iron sample with neon into the sample chamber.
"These techniques allowed us to get the very high statistical quality we wanted in a reasonable amount of time, thus allowing us to obtain accurate vibrational properties of compressed iron, such as its Grneisen parameter," says Jackson. "The Grneisen parameter of a material describes how its total energy changes with compression and informs us on how iron may behave in the earth's core. It is an extremely difficult quantity to measure accurately."
The team was also able to get a closer estimate of the melting point of iron from their experimentswhich they report to be around 5800 Kelvin at the boundary between the earth's solid inner core and liquid outer core. This information, combined with the other vibrational properties they found, gives the group important clues for estimating the amount of light elements, or impurities, in the core. By comparing the density of iron at the relevant pressure and temperature conditions with seismic observations of the core's density, they found that iron is 5.5 percent more dense than the solid inner core at this boundary.
"With our new data on iron, we can discuss several aspects of the earth's core with more certainty and narrow down the amount of light elements that may be needed to help power the geodynamothe process responsible for maintaining the earth's magnetic field, which originates in the core," says Jackson.
According to Murphy, the next step is to perform similar experiments alloying iron with nickel and various light elements to determine how the density and, in particular, the vibrational properties of pure iron are affected. In turn, they will be able to evaluate the amount of light elements that produce a closer match to seismic observations of the core.
"There are a few candidate light elements for the core that everyone is always talking aboutsulfur, silicon, oxygen, carbon, and hydrogen, for instance," says Murphy. "Silicon and oxygen are a few of the more popular, but they have not been studied in this great of detail yet. So that's where we will begin to expand our study."
###
The study, "Grneisen parameter of hcp-Fe to 171 GPa," was funded by the California Institute of Technology, the National Science Foundation, and the U.S. Department of Energy. Bin Chen, a former postdoctoral scholar in Jackson's lab, and Wolfgang Sturhahn, senior technologist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and visiting associate at Caltech, were also coauthors on the paper.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
A burning double-tanker gasoline truck sends smoke skyward in Montebello, Calif, Wednesday, Dec. 14, 2011. Thousands of motorists were stuck on a 10-mile stretch of freeway near Los Angeles after the big-rig tanker truck burst into flames Wednesday. No one was injured. (AP Photo/Nick Ut)
A burning double-tanker gasoline truck sends smoke skyward in Montebello, Calif, Wednesday, Dec. 14, 2011. Thousands of motorists were stuck on a 10-mile stretch of freeway near Los Angeles after the big-rig tanker truck burst into flames Wednesday. No one was injured. (AP Photo/Nick Ut)
Firefighters discuss how to approach a burning double-tanker truck gasoline fire in Montebello, Calif, Wednesday, Dec. 14, 2011. Thousands of motorists were stuck on a 10-mile stretch of freeway near Los Angeles after the big-rig tanker truck burst into flames Wednesday. No one was injured. (AP Photo/Nick Ut)
Montebello firefighters battle a blaze from a tanker truck on the eastbound 60-freeway underneath the Paramount Boulevard bridge in Montebello, Calif. Wednesday, Dec. 14, 2011. The freeway is closed indefinitely until inspectors can access bridge damage. (AP Photo/Keith Durflinger, San Gabriel Valley Newspapers) MAGS OUT; NO SALES; MANDATORY CREDIT
Montebello firefighters battle a blaze from a tanker truck on the eastbound 60-freeway underneath the Paramount Boulevard bridge in Montebello, Calif. Wednesday, Dec. 14, 2011. The freeway is closed indefinitely until inspectors can access bridge damage. (AP Photo/Keith Durflinger, San Gabriel Valley Newspapers) MAGS OUT; NO SALES; MANDATORY CREDIT
Montebello firefighters battle a blaze from a tanker truck on the eastbound 60-freeway underneath the Paramount Boulevard bridge in Montebello, Calif. Wednesday, Dec. 14, 2011. The freeway is closed indefinitely until inspectors can access bridge damage. (AP Photo/Keith Durflinger, San Gabriel Valley Newspapers) MAGS OUT; NO SALES; MANDATORY CREDIT
LOS ANGELES (AP) ? Officials say half of a Southern California freeway damaged in a tanker truck explosion is open again.
Caltrans and the California Highway Patrol say the westbound lanes of the Pomona Freeway east of Los Angeles were reopened on Saturday, three days after a tanker truck crashed and caught fire beneath an overpass.
It was not clear when both sides of the 10-mile section of freeway in suburban Montebello would be open again, with estimates ranging from later Saturday to late Sunday.
All eastbound lanes remain closed. Workers have demolished the fire-damaged section of the overpass over those lanes, and were working on repairing the freeway concrete Saturday.
FILE - This Sept. 19, 2007, file photo, shows the National Security Agency building at Fort Meade, Md., during a visit by President Bush. The military intelligence complex an hour outside Washington where the WikiLeaks case goes to court this week is known as a cloak-and-dagger sanctum off-limits to the rest of the world. That reputation is only partly true. In many ways, Maryland?s Fort Meade is an ordinary Army post, albeit one with a 5,000-acre complex and a golf course. It?s also home to the super secure compound of the code-breaking National Security Agency. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, file)
FILE - This Sept. 19, 2007, file photo, shows the National Security Agency building at Fort Meade, Md., during a visit by President Bush. The military intelligence complex an hour outside Washington where the WikiLeaks case goes to court this week is known as a cloak-and-dagger sanctum off-limits to the rest of the world. That reputation is only partly true. In many ways, Maryland?s Fort Meade is an ordinary Army post, albeit one with a 5,000-acre complex and a golf course. It?s also home to the super secure compound of the code-breaking National Security Agency. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, file)
FILE - This undated file photo obtained by The Associated Press shows Bradley Manning, the U.S. Army private suspected of being the source of some of the unauthorized classified information disclosed on the WikiLeaks website. As the suspected source for the biggest leak of intelligence material in American history faces his first hearing Friday Dec. 15, 2011, U.S. prosecutors have their eye on another prize: The man who disclosed the documents to the world. When WikiLeaks' spectacular disclosures of U.S. secrets exploded onto the scene last year, much of Washington's anger coalesced around Julian Assange, the silver-haired globe-trotting figure whose outspoken defiance of the Pentagon and the State Department riled politicians on both sides of the aisle. Pfc. Manning, long under lock and key, hasn't attracted the same level of ire. (AP Photo, File)
FILE - This is a Thursday, Dec. 1, 2011 file photo of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange as he talks during a news conference in central London. As the suspected source for the biggest leak of intelligence material in American history faces his first hearing Friday Dec. 15 ,2011, U.S. prosecutors have their eye on another prize: The man who disclosed the documents to the world. When WikiLeaks' spectacular disclosures of U.S. secrets exploded onto the scene last year, much of Washington's anger coalesced around Julian Assange, the silver-haired globe-trotting figure whose outspoken defiance of the Pentagon and the State Department riled politicians on both sides of the aisle. Pfc. Bradley Manning, long under lock and key, hasn't attracted the same level of ire. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis, File)
FORT MEADE, Maryland (AP) ? The U.S. military opened its pretrial hearing for accused leaker Army Pfc. Bradley Manning on Friday in a heavily secured courtroom where Manning, dressed in his Army camouflage fatigues, made his first public appearance.
The hearing, the rough equivalent of a civilian grand jury proceeding, is to determine whether Manning will be court-martialed on charges that he stole an enormous trove of government secrets and caused them to be made public on the Internet.
He is suspected of giving the documents to WikiLeaks, the anti-secrecy website that last year began publishing the materials.
The case has spawned an international movement in support of Manning, who is seen by anti-war activists as a hero who helped expose American mistakes in Iraq and Afghanistan. To others he is a villain, even a traitor, who betrayed his oath of loyalty by deliberately spilling his government's secrets.
If his case goes to trial and he is convicted, Manning could face life in prison. The government has said it would not seek the death penalty.
A U.S. military legal expert told reporters shortly before the proceedings began that the presiding officer is likely to make his recommendation on whether to court-martial Manning within eight days after the hearing ends. The hearing is expected to last over the weekend and possibly well into next week.
Manning, 23, was at the defense table along with his civilian lawyer, David Coombs, and two other Army lawyers.
Manning's lawyer asserts that the documents' release did little actual harm.
The legal expert, who could not be identified under Army ground rules, said Manning is to be present for all proceedings, including sessions closed to the public for consideration of classified material.
Manning's supporters planned to maintain a vigil during the hearing and were organizing a rally for Saturday.
Fort Meade, located between Washington and Baltimore, is, ironically, home to U.S. Cyber Command, the organization whose mission includes protecting computer networks like the one Manning allegedly breached by illegally downloading huge numbers of classified documents in Iraq.
The hearing at Fort Meade is intended to yield a recommendation to Army Maj. Gen. Michael S. Linnington, commander of the Military District of Washington, on whether Manning should be court-martialed. Linnington could choose other courses, including applying an administrative punishment or dismissing some or all of the 22 counts against Manning.
On Thursday, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called Manning's alleged actions damaging and unfortunate.
"I think that in an age where so much information is flying through cyberspace, we all have to be aware of the fact that some information which is sensitive, which does affect the security of individuals and relationships, deserves to be protected and we will continue to take necessary steps to do so," Clinton told reporters at the State Department.
The Manning case has led to a debate over the broader issue of whether the government's system for classifying and shielding information has grown so unwieldy that it is increasingly vulnerable to intrusions.
Absent from the Meade proceedings will be Julian Assange, who runs WikiLeaks from England. He is fighting in British courts to block a Swedish request that he be extradited to face trial over rape allegations.
A U.S. grand jury is weighing whether to indict Assange on espionage charges, and WikiLeaks is straining under an American financial embargo that Assange says has starved it of revenue.
The materials Manning is accused of leaking include hundreds of thousands of sensitive items: Iraq and Afghanistan war logs, State Department cables and a classified military video of a 2007 American helicopter attack in Iraq that killed 11 men, including a Reuters news photographer and his driver.
At the time, Manning was a low-level intelligence analyst in Baghdad.
Manning, who turns 24 on Saturday, was detained in Iraq in May 2010 and moved to a Marine Corps brig at Quantico, Virginia, in July. Nine months later, the Army sent him to the military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, after a series of claims by Manning of unlawful pretrial punishment.
When it filed formal charges against Manning in March 2011, the Army accused him of using unauthorized software on government computers to extract classified information, illegally download it and transmit the data for public release by what the Army termed "the enemy."
The first large publication of the documents by WikiLeaks in July 2010, some 77,000 military records on the war in Afghanistan, made global headlines. But the material provided only limited revelations, including unreported incidents of Afghan civilian killings as well as covert operations against Taliban figures.
In October 2010, WikiLeaks published a batch of nearly 400,000 documents that dated from early 2004 to Jan. 1, 2010. They were written mostly by low-ranking officers in the field cataloging thousands of battles with insurgents and roadside bomb attacks, plus equipment failures and shootings by civilian contractors. The documents did not alter the basic outlines of how the war was fought.
A month later, WikiLeaks released hundreds of thousands of State Department documents that revealed a hidden world of backstage international diplomacy. They divulged candid comments from world leaders and detailed occasional U.S. pressure tactics aimed at hot spots in Afghanistan, Iran and North Korea.
Last month, 54 members of the European Parliament signed a letter to the U.S. government raising concerns about Manning's lengthy detention. They questioned whether his right to due process has been violated by keeping him in pretrial confinement for 18 months.
It took months for the Army to reach the conclusion that Manning was competent to stand trial. In the meantime Manning's civilian lawyer, David E. Coombs, has sought to build a case that appears to rest in part on an assertion that the government's own reviews of the leaks concluded that little damage was done.
Indeed, the Pentagon determined in August 2010 that the initial leaks had not compromised intelligence sources or practices, although it said the disclosures could still cause significant damage to U.S. security interests.
___
Associated Press writer Matthew Lee contributed to this report.
___
Robert Burns can be reached on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/robertburnsAP
New York ? Florida's Palm Beach County is cracking down on truancy by punishing parents, and it's hardly the first place in the nation to do so
A Florida county is holding an unusual threat over parents' heads: If your kids miss too much school ? specifically, more than 15 days over a 3-month period ? you could go to jail. And Palm Beach County isn't the first in the nation to resort to jailing parents to crack down on truancy. Four key questions:
What's going on? Florida's Palm Beach County has created a new court specifically focused on truancy cases. While Florida has long had a law that states that parents can face up to two months of jail time if their child (aged 6 to 16) has more than 15 unexcused absences in three months, there was no infrastructure to enforce it ? until now. Schools lacked the personnel to bring the cases to court, and prosecutors were more focused on violent crimes. The new truancy court is currently in a trial period, targeting kids from kindergarten to third grade.
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How big of a problem is truancy in Palm Beach? It's a significant issue. In in the 2009-2010 school year, 6.6 percent of the county's 198,351 students racked up 21 or more unexcused absences.
Is Florida the only state with such a law? No. Earlier this year, nearly a dozen parents in Baltimore City were sent to prison for their kids' truancy. In Orange County, Calif., at least five parents have gone to jail since a tough anti-truancy law went into effect earlier this year. Parents in Alabama, Texas, and North California have also been sent to the slammer for failing to ensure their kids attended classes.
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Is this the right way to deal with truancy? Not everyone thinks so. This "seems extreme and maybe even counterproductive," says Amy Reiter at The Stir. "If the parent is in jail, how will she then help get her kid to school?" Teens especially need to learn to take responsibility for their own actions, not have their parents pay for their crimes. Earlier this year, the NAACP filed suit against a school district in Pennsylvania that had fined a woman $8,000 over her kids' truancy. The organization argued that the kids had stopped going to school because they were being bullied and harassed.
Sources: Baltimore Sun, The Stir, Sun Sentinel, Yahoo
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AUSTIN, Texas ? Chassidy Fussell scored 14 of her 22 points in the first half and No. 24 Texas rolled to a 79-40 victory over Arkansas-Pine Bluff Wednesday.
Fussell was 8 of 12 shooting and had three 3-pointers. Yvonne Anderson scored 14 and Cokie Reed and Ashleigh Fontenette each had 10 for Texas (7-2).
Chigozianyi Okwumabua led Arkansas-Pine Bluff (0-8) with 10 points. The Golden Lions were playing their second ranked opponent in four days after losing at No. 8 Kentucky on Dec. 11.
Kayla Brewer debuted for Texas on Wednesday. The transfer from South Carolina scored five points in 15 minutes.
Arkansas-Pine Bluff connected on 6 of 29 shots in the first half and Texas led 41-17 at intermission.
U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is en route to Iraq, where he will participate in a ceremony to shut down the U.S. military mission there after nearly nine years of war.
Panetta is also scheduled to participate in a question-and-answer session with U.S. troops, and hold a press conference with the top American commander in Iraq, Gen. Lloyd Austin.
All U.S. troops are to be out of Iraq Dec. 31, though President Barack Obama has pledged the U.S. will continue civilian assistance for Iraq as it faces an uncertain future.
On Wednesday, Obama saluted troops who had already returned from Iraq. "The war in Iraq will soon belong to history, and your service belongs to the ages," Obama told troops at Fort Bragg, N.C.
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) ? The newest "Twilight" vampire movie ruled the domestic box office for a third time with $16.9 million in ticket sales over one of the slowest movie-going weekends of the year, studio estimates released on Sunday showed.
"The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn: Part 1" from independent studio Summit Entertainment beat a pack of family films at U.S. and Canadian theaters. The fourth and second-to-last film in one of Hollywood's most lucrative franchises added $40.2 million at international locations.
After three weekends in theaters, "Breaking Dawn" has soaked up $588.3 million in global ticket sales.
The "Twilight" movies are based on best-selling novels by Stephenie Meyer about a human-vampire-werewolf love triangle.
The third domestic win in a row for "Breaking Dawn" came during the post-Thanksgiving weekend, typically one of the bleakest of the year at movie theaters following big releases a week earlier.
This year, total U.S. and Canadian ticket sales rang up at an estimated $82 million for the weekend, making it the year's second slowest, according to Hollywood.com Box Office. Overall sales only slightly edged the $81.5 million take from the September 9 weekend that followed Labor Day.
With no new films released nationwide, sales also slumped 4.8 percent below the same weekend last year.
After "Breaking Dawn," the rest of the weekend's top five belonged to family fare.
Disney's "The Muppets" starring Jason Segel and Amy Adams alongside Kermit, Miss Piggy and their puppet friends, rang up $11.2 million at North American (U.S. and Canadian) theaters. The movie represents a comeback for the Muppet characters, last seen in movie theaters in 1999. Worldwide sales for the new film have reached $60.1 million through Sunday.
"Hugo," a 3D family movie about an orphaned boy who lives in a 1930s Paris train station, moved up to third place from its fifth place finish last weekend after expanding to more theaters. The film pulled in $7.6 million domestically, bringing its total after two weekends to $25.2 million.
Animated 3D movie "Arthur Christmas," which explains how Santa delivers presents around the world in one night, pulled in $7.4 million domestically to finish in fourth place. To date, the movie has brought in $70.6 million worldwide.
In fifth place, dancing penguin sequel "Happy Feet Two" earned $6.0 million at domestic theaters. Total global sales reached $85.8 million after three weekends of release.
Walt Disney Co released "The Muppets." Privately held Summit Entertainment released "Breaking Dawn - Part 1." "Arthur Christmas" was distributed by Sony, and Hugo was released by Paramount, a unit of Viacom Inc.. Time Warner unit Warner Bros. distributed "Happy Feet Two."
(Reporting by Lisa Richwine; Editing by Sandra Maler)
(Corrects spelling of Meyer's first name to Stephenie from Stephanie in 3rd paragraph)
You will like this hilarious 2-minute British short called School Portrait by filmmaker Nick Scott . Your friends will like it. Your mom will like it. Your grandma will like it. Your sixth grade teacher will like it. Watch it. More »
LSU did its part to make sure both the Tigers and Alabama get into the BCS national title game. Then Oklahoma State gave the voters a reason to rethink the rematch.
The top-ranked Tigers locked up a spot in the championship on Jan. 9 in New Orleans with a 42-10 victory against No. 12 Georgia in the Southeastern Conference title game in Atlanta on Saturday.
Oklahoma State followed that with a 44-10 blowout of rival Oklahoma in Stillwater.
"They had their shot," Oklahoma State coach Mike Gundy said of Alabama. "Give us ours."
LSU (13-0) will be first in the BCS standings when they come out on Sunday. And this latest rout by the Tigers fortified Alabama's chances of holding on to the second spot and holding off Oklahoma State, which was third last week.
"I would certainly understand if college football decides it should be two SEC teams playing for the national championship," LSU coach Les Miles said. "It's a very special conference with very special teams."
The Tigers beat the Tide (11-1) 9-6 in overtime at Tuscaloosa, Ala., a month ago. Alabama is the only team in the country to stay within 13 points of LSU this season. Other than the Alabama game, the Tigers' closest game since September was a 24-point victory against Arkansas.
The Cowboys can claim to have more quality wins than the Tide ? Oklahoma State now has five victories against teams in the BCS top 25, Alabama has two ? but their double-overtime loss at Iowa State (6-6) two weeks ago has been a drag on their resume.
"I don't think there's any question Oklahoma State should play in the big game," Gundy said.
He added: "And if we'd have won this game 17-14, I don't know if I'd have said it. ... When you win by 34 points, we deserve the right."
Oklahoma State was fifth in both the Harris and coaches' polls, while Alabama was an overwhelming No. 2 behind LSU. The Cowboys caught another break when Virginia Tech, which was ahead of them in both those polls last week, was beaten 38-10 by Clemson in the Atlantic Coast Conference title game.
If the voters need any help making their decisions, Oklahoma State provided a mass email titled The Case for Oklahoma State in the BCS Title Game, which hit sports writers' inboxes a little after 1 a.m. EST.
There's no doubt Oklahoma State will move up Sunday, but will it be enough to catch Alabama?
Clemson's surprisingly easy victory in the ACC title game send the Tigers to the Orange Bowl with their first conference title in 20 years.
Oregon locked up its spot in the Rose Bowl by winning the Pac-12 title game Friday night.
The Ducks will face Wisconsin, which beat Michigan State 42-39 in a memorable first Big Ten championship game. The Badgers will be making their second straight trip to the Rose Bowl. The Ducks are in it for the second time in three seasons, with a national championship game trip in between.
Championship Saturday started with an upset.
Case Keenum and No. 7 Houston were pounded 49-28 by Southern Mississippi in the Conference USA championship game, a loss that will cost the Cougars a spot in the BCS and the millions of dollars that goes with it.
The high-scoring Cougars needed to complete their perfect regular season and win the league to become this year's BCS buster, and the first team from C-USA to reach the BCS.
A BCS bid would have netted the league about $7 million dollars.
With Houston out of the picture, it TCU has a shot to go back to the BCS for a third consecutive season.
TCU, which beat lowly UNLV 56-9, would need to move into the top 16 in the final BCS standings on Sunday to earn an automatic bid, because the Big East's conference champion ? West Virginia ? will most likely not jump ahead of the Horned Frogs.
TCU was No. 18 in last week's BCS standings.
The Big East was first to resolve its title race Saturday. When Cincinnati beat Connecticut 35-27, it moved West Virginia into position to earn a BCS bid by winning a three-way tiebreaker between the Mountaineers, Cincinnati and Louisville.
The Mountaineers are likely heading to the Sugar or Orange bowl.
Houston's drop in BCS standings could also affect how the at-large bids shakeout on Saturday.
Stanford seems like a lock for an at-large to the Fiesta Bowl, and speculation was that Michigan would receive an at-large bid to the Sugar. But the idle Wolverines need to move into the top 14 of the final standings. They were 16th coming into the final weekend.
____
AP BCS Projections
BCS championship game ? LSU vs. Alabama
Fiesta Bowl ? Oklahoma State vs. Stanford.
Rose Bowl ? Oregon vs. Wisconsin.
Orange Bowl ? Clemson vs. West Virginia.
Sugar Bowl ? Michigan vs. Kansas State.
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AP Sports Writers Jeff Latzke in Stillwater, Okla., and Paul Newberry in Atlanta contributed to this report.
It could take as little as five years for television as we know it -- broadcast and cable -- to enter its final death throes, according to census statistics and a recent report from analysts at Credit Suisse. The culprit: young people and new households who just aren't interested in signing up for paid cable and satellite TV service.
Credit Suisse analyst Stefan Anninger wrote in a recent report on TV media that 200,000 fewer subscribers will pay for TV services in 2012, and that of 1.8 million new households formed last year only 16.9% of them signed up for pay-TV services. Previously, Anninger had forecast a rise in the number of TV subscribers buoyed by the slowly growing economy.
Traditional TV penetration in the U.S. is still high, at 83.2 percent (down from 84.1 last year). But the fact that Anninger sees a secular decline in TV in the future, unlinked from cyclical recessionary belt-tightening, forces a question for advertisers and other Big Media folk: How long can TV last in the face of iPads, internet TV, web video and other wireless video sources?
One answer is to look at the history of the phone. And by "phone" I mean the hard-wired telephone that used to be plugged into the wall of nearly 100 percent of American households just a few years ago. In 2004, everyone had a plain old telephone and no one measured the percentage of households that survived with only cellphone service. That changed in 2005, according to the U.S. Census and CTIA, a wireless industry body:
2004: Unmeasured
2005: 7.3%
2006: 10.5%
2007: 13.6%
2008: 17.5%
2009: 22.7%
2010: NA
2011: 29.7%
The collapse of the telephone took just five years.
Nearly one in three houses now has no telephone. In houses that retain phones, they're often used only as the number you give businesses you suspect will generated unwanted telemarketing calls; or they're there by default as part of a cheaper wireless bundle.
The TV business has been aware of the "cord-cutters" -- people abandoning TV in favor of Hulu, Netflix and YouTube -- for some time. The scary new demographic, according to Anninger, is the "cord-nevers": young people and students who have never paid for TV and don't see a reason to start now:
"They are growing up in an Internet-based video culture in which the mantras of 'why would I pay for TV?,' 'pay TV is a rip-off' and, 'I can find that for free on the web' are getting louder. We fear that some of these consumers will find pay TV far less relevant to their lives than do today?s adults."
DUBAI?? Amnesty International accused Saudi Arabia of widespread human rights abuses on Thursday and said a proposed anti-terror law would reinforce "draconian and abusive" measures.
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The world's biggest oil exporter has been spared the popular uprisings seen elsewhere in the region but has launched a new wave of repression in the name of security, the rights group said in a report released on Thursday.
Saudi Arabia said the report was based on "inaccurate information" and it was committed to human rights in accordance with Islamic sharia law.
Amnesty said the draft anti-terror law, a copy of which was leaked to the group earlier this year, indicated peaceful acts of dissent could in future be prosecuted as a "terrorist crime."
"The formulation of a new anti-terror law is another apparent sign of the authorities to use the law to silence dissent," said Amnesty.
The law would allow the kingdom to detain security suspects indefinitely and without trial, it said.
Amnesty criticized the kingdom's "vague and broad" definitions of terrorism, ranging from "destabilizing society" to "harming the reputation of the state."
"This opaqueness could be exploited to charge peaceful meetings of a group of people who make political demands or even engage in academic discussions with a 'terrorist crime' under this draft law."
The Saudi embassy in London said in a statement the report was based on "inaccurate information" drawn from a draft law that had been in circulation for several years and which was still subject to changes.
"The kingdom of Saudi Arabia is committed to and respects human rights in accordance with Islamic sharia, which is the foundation of our legal system," Saudi Ambassador Prince Mohammed bin Nawaf Al Saud said in a statement.
"The reality is that the kingdom continues to be targeted by terrorists looking for finance and attempting to recruit Saudi Arabia's young citizens for terrorist operations within the kingdom and internationally. It is our responsibility to do everything we can to combat this evil," he added.
Saudi Arabia, an absolute monarchy, has no written criminal code, which is instead based on an uncodified form of sharia law as interpreted by the country's judges.
Calling on Saudi authorities to immediately release all prisoners of conscience, Amnesty denounced as "extremely weak" the kingdom's institutional framework for protection of human rights.
Detainees are sometimes held for months without trial or access to a lawyer, Amnesty said, with confessions extracted under duress, from beatings with sticks to punching, suspension from the ceiling by the ankles or wrists and sleep deprivation.
Amnesty said when cases were brought to trial, the proceedings were often held behind closed doors and failed to meet international standards of fairness and transparency.
Earlier this year, an unknown group of Saudi activists urged people to take to the streets to demand the release of political prisoners, a fully independent judiciary, a minimum wage and greater freedom of expression.
That was met with a statement from the country's interior ministry, reminding citizens demonstrations were banned and it would take "all necessary measures" against those seeking to "disrupt order."
Only one person, 40-year-old teacher Khaled al-Johani, defied the warning and was quickly arrested. He is still in detention, according to Amnesty.
The group also mentioned protests by Saudi Arabia's Shi'ite Muslim minority in the oil-rich Eastern Province, but said it did not have enough details to conclude whether security forces had used excessive force in response to what appeared to be violent acts on the part of some demonstrators.
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