Operation Fast And Furious Inquiry

Operation Fast And Furious Inquiry, In a mostly partisan vote Thursday, the U.S. House of Representatives held Attorney General Eric Holder in criminal contempt of Congress for refusing to release records from the 2009 Operation Fast and Furious gun-smuggling probe in Arizona. It was the first time in history that a sitting Cabinet member has been so sanctioned.

Thursday’s action capped 16 months of politically charged congressional inquiry into a Phoenix-based firearms case that allowed an estimated 2,000 weapons to get into the hands of criminals, mostly south of the border.

After months of failed attempts to obtain documents on the operation, the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, led by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., last week recommended a criminal-contempt finding on a party-line vote after settlement negotiations with Holder failed.

President Barack Obama’s administration has argued that the records, about 140,000 pages, are privileged because they are part of the executive branch’s deliberative process and immune to congressional scrutiny under the separation of powers.

Thursday’s 255-67 vote in the Republican-controlled chamber was supported by 17 Democrats after a vitriolic floor debate filled with accusations of politicking. Most Democrats boycotted the decision in protest. Two Republicans opposed the resolution.

The House also authorized civil litigation to seek a court order that would force the Obama administration to release records from the case.

Lance Armstrong Doping Charges

Lance Armstrong Doping Charges, The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency has filed formal charges against Lance Armstrong, accusing the seven-time Tour de France winner of using performance-enhancing drugs throughout the best years of his career. The agency notified Armstrong, former team manager Johan Bruyneel and several other Armstrong team associates of the charges in a letter on Thursday.

The charges came after a USADA review panel examined evidence in the case, which now goes to an arbitration panel to decide. If found guilty, Armstrong could be stripped of the Tour de France titles he won from 1999-2005. This year’s Tour de France begins Saturday.

Armstrong maintains his innocence. Armstrong attorney Robert Luskin called the charges “wrong and baseless.”

Also charged are team doctors Pedro Celaya Lezama and Luis Garcia del Moral; team trainer Pepe Marti, and consulting doctor Michele Ferrari. Because they are so closely linked, USADA rolled all of the charges into a single case.

Armstrong and the others “(have) been part of a doping conspiracy involving team officials, employees, doctors and elite cyclists,” said the USADA letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press.

Tom Cruise Katie Holmes Split

Tom Cruise Katie Holmes Split, Fairytale Hollywood couple Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes announced they were calling it quits after five years of marriage, ending an unexpected love story dogged by tabloid rumors. Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes are pictured during the ‘Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol’ US premiere after-party at the Museum of Modern Art, in December 2011, in New York. Cruise and Holmes announced on Friday they were calling it quits after five years of marriage, ending an unexpected love story dogged by tabloid rumors.

“Kate has filed for divorce and Tom is deeply saddened and is concentrating on his three children,” Amanda Lundberg, Cruise’s representative, told AFP on Friday. “Please allow them their privacy to work this out.”

“This is a personal and private matter for Katie and her family,” said Jonathan Wolfe, the attorney representing Holmes. “Katie’s primary concern remains, as it always has been, her daughter’s best interest.”

Cruise, who turns 50 on Tuesday, wed Holmes, 33, in a storybook Italian castle in November 2006 after declaring his love for the former “Dawson’s Creek” star live on “Oprah” — famously hopping on a couch in the studio.

It was Holmes’s first marriage and Cruise’s third. They have a six-year-old daughter, Suri.

The “TomKat” split comes just 10 days after the “amicable” parting of US actor Johnny Depp and French singer/actress Vanessa Paradis, and will doubtless lead to renewed chatter about the pressures on Hollywood couples.

Springfield, Oregon Most Strip Clubs

Springfield, Oregon Most Strip Clubs, Ah, Portland, Portland, Portland. What is it about Portland? IFC’s new show Portlandia walks the line between ridiculing and paying homage to a city “where young people go to retire” and where the “dream of the ’90s” are still alive. As the New York Times put it recently, “’Nice’ is an adjective that Portland, OR can’t seem to shake.” Portland, it seems, is at least something to everyone.

But more recently, you may have heard the moniker “Pornland” kicking around. This stems from another fact about the city people love to recite: the city has more strip clubs per capita than any other city in the country, including Vegas. Of course, with clubs opening and closing, and a shifting population, that distinction is an estimate at best. A 2009 inquiry by the Portland Mercury found that, at the time, nearby Springfield, OR had the most strip clubs per capita while West Virginia had the most per capita for a state.

Either way it’s a memorable fact that makes some cringe, and others proud. Oregon’s constitution contains a strong free speech clause which, bolstered by a 1987 State Supreme Court case, protects the right to nudity and lap dances in strip clubs. However, efforts over the past decades, including bills in the State House and Senate currently being considered, have continually sought to exclude sexually oriented businesses from enjoying these rights.

In the end, one might wonder, what does this multiplication of strip clubs matter? For starters, it creates a perfect backdrop for some troubling allegations: after a 2009 raid turned up several underage prostitutes, Portland was branded a hub for child sex trafficking. In 2010, Dan Rather Reports and ABC World News with Diane Sawyer both aired in-depth investigative reports based on this trend, with each using the high number of strip clubs in the city to prop up their case. Both reports also perpetuate an alarmist tone about the escalating problem of child sex trafficking which takes advantage of racist and classist assumptions about sex work. They argue, in dramatic voice over, that this is serious because it’s not just “homeless” or “druggie” girls [of color] being lured into prostitution, but white, well-to-do, suburban girls.

The problem with these portrayals is two-fold. First, as Oregonian reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones points out in her January 2011 investigation, the allegations of child sex trafficking that form the crux of both major news reports are based on overblown and erroneous data. Hannah-Jones writes, “While a single case of a child in the sex trade is tragic, little data is kept locally on the depth of the problem, and the figures cited nationally crumble under scrutiny.”

Hannah-Jones traces nationwide alarm back to a 2009 prostitution raid in Portland – in coordination with raids in other cities across the country – that, in fact, turned up fewer underage sex workers than neighboring Seattle. Yet well-meaning and concerned Portland politicians and advocates (and media) took this intel and ran.

Jubilee Sailing Trust Lord Nelson Tenacious

Jubilee Sailing Trust Lord Nelson Tenacious, Jubilee Sailing Trust is a charitable organisation in the United Kingdom which owns and operates two square-rigged three-masted barques, the STS Lord Nelson and the SV Tenacious. The Jubilee Sailing Trust, based in Southampton, is a sail training charity registered with the Charity Commission. Founded in 1978 with money from the Queen’s silver jubilee fund by Christopher Rudd, a keen sailor, its aims are: “To integrate both able bodied and disabled persons through Tall Ship sailing”.

STS Lord Nelson and SV Tenacious are pioneering in the world of tall ships. They are the only two vessels which have been designed and purpose built to allow people of all physical abilities to sail side by side on equal terms. The proportion of people who have sailed on them is over 40 per cent.[clarification needed] Below deck is the accommodation. There are 8 wheelchair cabins with the remaining accommodation being provided by either fixed single bunks on Tenacious and traditional pipe cots on Lord Nelson.

Each year the JST takes around 2,000 adults to sea, both able-bodied and physically disabled. Each ship can sail with up to 40 voyage crew, half of whom may be physically disabled and are guided through each task on board by ten permanent crewmembers. The ships sail around the United Kingdom, Western Europe, the Canary Islands and the Caribbean.

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