Russia Rearms

Russia’s leaders are getting used to cutting budgets this year. As the country sinks deeper into recession — unemployment, according to some estimates, is as high as 12% and the economy is predicted to shrink by about 4.5% in 2009 — the government is slashing spending at most of its ministries. The Energy Ministry’s budget is down by 33%, and that of the Transport Ministry by 30%

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EPA’s CO2 Finding: Putting a Gun to Congress’s Head

Back in 1973, National Lampoon magazine ran a satirical cover image of a very cute, very worried-looking puppy with a gun pointed at its head. The headline read: “If You Don’t Buy This Magazine, We’ll Kill This Dog”: motivation by emotional blackmail, taken to its absurdist extreme

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CIA bars contractors from doing interrogations

CIA Director Leon Panetta has carried through on his pledge to prohibit independent contractors from conducting interrogations of terror suspects. In a message to agency employees on Thursday, Panetta said he had notified the congressional oversight committees about the current CIA policy regarding interrogations.

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Obama’s Budget Fight Starts With His Own Party

It’s not exactly the can-do, uplifting kind of message that President Barack Obama or Congressional Democrats want to deliver to the voting public. But in the face of soaring deficit projections and growing Republican and moderate Democratic opposition to the Administration’s $3.6 trillion budget plan, it may just be the best they can do.

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