Canadians Politely Annoyed by Obama’s ‘Buy American’ Plan

Canada is preparing to launch its toughest offensive to date against the Buy-American provision in President Barrack Obama’s $787-billion stimulus package. But protectionist sentiment in the U.S. will make it difficult for Prime Minister Stephen Harper to make much headway when the two leaders meet next week at a North-American summit in Guadalajara, Mexico, even with the help of a new bargaining chip

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Unemployment Falls, but Long-Term Joblessness Remains a Concern

For all the relief over the jobless figures released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics Friday morning — 247,000 jobs were lost in July, far fewer than economists had expected — a dark problem lurks in the numbers: dangerously high levels of long-term unemployment in America.

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Town hall meeting on health care turns ugly

A health care town hall meeting in Florida on Thursday dissolved into bouts of heckling and violent pushing and shoving among attendees. The meeting in Tampa, which featured Democratic Congresswoman Kathy Castor and Florida State Representative Betty Reed, was another example of the tense battle lines that have been created in the passionate health care debate

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Democrats say Republicans staging town hall protests

Democrats are accusing Republicans of organizing "angry mobs" to disrupt town hall meetings across the country, but conservatives say the protests are a sign of the opposition to President Obama’s health care plans. The Democratic National Committee released a Web video Wednesday charging that Republican operatives “have no plan for moving our country forward, so they’ve called out the mob.” The video shows footage of angry constituents and protesters at recent events and then flashes pictures of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, House Minority Leader John Boehner, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele, and even conservative talk radio icon Rush Limbaugh on the screen

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Young and Conservative in the Age of Obama

To be a young person and a conservative is such a rare combination these days it approaches an act of defiance. Voters in their teens and 20s backed President Obama by a 2-to-1 ratio over John McCain last year, amid a flood of support from musicians, movie stars and other youth icons. Late-night TV hosts lampoon Sarah Palin and Dick Cheney as punchlines while MTV throws support to left-leaning causes such as gay marriage

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Obama’s New Gitmo Proposal Draws Wide Range of Critics

Republican politicians and human-rights activists rarely agree on how to treat terrorist suspects, but they are unwitting allies in opposition to the Obama Administration’s latest proposal: the creation of a special facility in the continental U.S.

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If a Health-Care Bill Passes, Nurse Practitioners Could Be Key

As the House and Senate prepare to embark on their summer recess without having passed any health-care-reform bills, President Obama’s dreams of radically restructuring the system have, at least for now, bumped up against the reality of Washington politics. But even if Congress manages to overcome the many obstacles and pass some kind of meaningful reform this fall, the goal of covering some 50 million currently uninsured Americans will encounter a whole new range of hurdles.

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Clean Energy: U.S. Still Lags in Research and Development

When Apollo astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon 40 years ago, it was a triumph of American scientific skill. It was also the result of the government’s willingness to spend over $125 billion, in today’s dollars, to take the country to the moon. The need to remake our energy economy and to replace fossil fuels with renewables like wind and solar is often referred to as the new Apollo Project, a challenge to our scientists — and to the federal checkbook — that will be even greater than the moon race

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