News Nuggets 697

 The Knuckles Mountain Range in Sri Lanka.  From National Geographic.

UP-FRONT RETAIL NUGGET!!
Borders Forced to Liquidate, Close All Stores from the Wall Street Journal
"Borders, which employs about 10,700 people, scrapped a bankruptcy-court auction scheduled for Tuesday amid the dearth of bids. It said it would ask a judge Thursday to approve a sale to liquidators led by Hilco Merchant Resources and Gordon Brothers Group."
Sad.  Another casualty of the recession (and its own bad decision-making).  In my recent visits to Borders, I have sensed that they were still in deep trouble.

Inside Al Qaeda’s Hard Drives: A Stash of Data Yields Up Insights about the Business of Terrorism from the Boston Globe
"After combing over this huge pool of data, a task force of analysts has already produced hundreds of intelligence reports geared to a primary goal: hunting down Al Qaeda operatives. Meanwhile, however, there is a second and longer-term task ahead. If studied diligently enough, the captured data is likely to provide an unparalleled look at how Al Qaeda functions. And that information may be as essential to disrupting Al Qaeda’s activities as it was to kill bin Laden."

News of the World Phone-Hacking Whistleblower Found Dead from the Guardian [of the UK]
"Death of Sean Hoare – who was first named journalist to allege Andy Coulson knew of hacking – not being treated as suspicious."

News Corp. Said to Consider Elevating Chase Carey to CEO from Bloomberg News Service
"News Corp. is considering elevating Chief Operating Officer Chase Carey to chief executive officer to succeed Rupert Murdoch, people with knowledge of the situation said. A decision hasn’t been made and a move depends in part on Murdoch’s performance before the U.K. Parliament today, said the people, who weren’t authorized to speak publicly. Murdoch would remain chairman, the people said."

Police Examine Bag Found in Bin Near Rebekah Brooks's Home from the Guardian [of the UK]
"Former NI chief executive's husband denies bag – containing computer, paperwork and phone – belonged to his wife."
Oh good -- some destruction of evidence just to spice things up!  As an aside, the Guardian newspaper's pursuit of this story SO reminds me of what REAL journalism looks like -- and how meager a diet we get of it here in the US.

The Cameron Collapse (Roger Cohen) from the New York Times
"Republican ideologues with no notion of the national interest do their brinkmanship number as the country hovers near an unthinkable default. The only thought in their heads seems to be: How will all this play next year in the election and how can we hurt President Obama without being blamed for it? Is the calculation of these Republicans that different from Cameron’s?"

Murdoch Struggles for Control as Scandal Grows from Bloomberg News Service
"Independent directors of New York-based News Corp. have begun questioning the company’s response to the crisis and whether a leadership change is needed, said two people with direct knowledge of the situation who wouldn’t speak publicly. Rebekah Brooks, the former News International chief who Murdoch backed until last week, was arrested yesterday in London."
A similar sentiment from Bloomberg is HERE.

The Murdochs Head To Parliament As Scandal Shakes News Corp. Empire (VIDEO) from the Huffington Post
"Now speculation centers around the roles of Hinton and Murdoch’s 38-year-old son, James, News Corp.'s deputy chief operating officer."

And the Real Winners Will Be ... (Mary Ann Sieghart) from the Independent [of the UK]
"This scandal – which will run for years – is much better news for Labour and the Lib Dems than it is for the Tories."

Both Sides Confident on Debt Talks Despite Impasse from the New York Times
"Top Republican lawmakers and the Obama administration’s budget director predicted Sunday that an agreement would be reached before the federal government defaults on its debt in early August, but both sides continued to squabble over the details of competing proposals, offering little evidence that a deal was at hand."

As the US Nears the Brink, the Budget Row is Exposing Republican Madness from the Guardian [of the UK]
"It is economically not feasible to cut the deficit without raising taxes. But as Reagan's presumptive heirs resist, default looms."

GOP Has No Backup Plan After Vote from Politico
"There’s a narrative gaining traction in Washington as a debt crisis looms: House Republican hard-liners might soften their stance once they’ve gotten a vote on their Cut, Cap and Balance proposal. But if that’s the case, the conservatives aren’t in on the plan."

GOP Wants Obama's Unconditional Surrender (David Frum) from CNN
"In this debt-ceiling fight, I'm having horrible flashbacks to the Republican debacle over health care. ... With health care, Republicans calculated spectacularly wrong. They pursued an all or nothing strategy and got -- nothing. They neither shaped the bill, nor did they stop it. Will they make the same mistake again on the debt ceiling?"
Frum's projection here sounds right to me.

Blame Republicans for Debt Crisis (Charlie Cook) from the National Journal
"By flinching at the prospect of significant deficit reduction, the GOP will have to deal with the fallout."
One thing that strikes me about the current version of the GOP is how much they resemble political parties in continental Europe or Israel.  Specifically, they operate almost exclusively for THEIR VOTERS.  There is (little exaggeration) zero attempt to reach out to anyone who is not already a hard-core GOP voter.  The goal of the Republican Party seems to be to deliver services, votes, and dramatic theater designed JUST for that constituency. 

Poll: 71% Shun GOP Handling of Debt Crisis from CBS News
"Americans are unimpressed with their political leaders' handling of the debt ceiling crisis, with a new CBS News poll showing a majority disapprove of all the involved parties' conduct, but Republicans in Congress fare the worst, with just 21 percent backing their resistance to raising taxes. "

BREAKING: Senate Confirms First Out Gay Male To Federal Bench (Chris Johnson) from the Washington Blade
"By a vote of 80-13, the Senate confirmed J. Paul Oetken, whom President Obama nominated in January to sit on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. A simple majority was required to confirm Oetken."

Romney Backtracks: ‘I Don’t Think Carbon Is A Pollutant’ from Think Progress
"It’s getting close to impossible to track Mitt Romney’s vacillating position on global warming. Appearing in Derry, New Hampshire, the Republican presidential candidate reversed last month’s stance on fighting greenhouse gases, telling a questioner that he didn’t think carbon emissions should be regulated as a pollutant:"
What IS IT with this guy!?  Is there any issue upon which he has not taken multiple, diametrically opposite positions on?! And here, it took him, what, a month, to do a complete 180 on this?!

Leading the Anti-Bachmann Army (David Graham) from the Daily Beast
"As Michele Bachmann surges, a dedicated band of haters is dishing scoops and drawing eyeballs to an influential blog. David A. Graham on the Minnesota Republican woman dedicated to bringing her down."
I asked about who might be gunning for Bachmann just yesterday in reference to the growing whispering campaign directed against her husband.

Critics Savage Palin Film as Audiences Stay Away in Droves from Raw Story
""The Undefeated", a documentary about former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin opened in some theaters across the country this weekend and, if critics are to be believed, it is truly awful. Politico has a round-up of reviews, many of which feature the word "bombast" and include sentiments like this one, expressed by Time magazine's Richard Corliss, "The movie may tempt even the most ardent conservatives to emulate their idol’s tenure as governor and walk out halfway through.”"
Politico has a round-up of reviews HERE.

WORLD WAR II BOOK NUGGET!!
Dateline Hitler: A Review of The Long Night: William L. Shirer and The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by Steve Wick (Richard J. Evans) from the New Republic
"William L. Shirer, born in 1904, was one of the twentieth century’s great reporters. He witnessed many of the key events of the 1930s in Europe at first hand and wrote and broadcast about them in a graphic and accessible style, making their complexities comprehensible to his readers and listeners back in the United States."
Shirer is one of my FAVORITE writers on this topic!!  His books are STILL models of compelling historical narrative!!