We’re Gonna Control the Insurance Companies!

Today, Army leaders who fight wars with night-vision goggles and aerial drones will find out what they can learn from the ghosts of the Civil War.

Pakistan is refusing to hand over captured Taliban leaders to Afghanistan on the grounds that they could be released or transferred to the US, according to officials familiar with the negotiations.

Protesting the imminent firing of all 74 of the teachers at a failing Rhode Island high school, an instructor hung a doll of President Barack Obama from its feet in his classroom.

CIA Director Leon Panetta said Wednesday an aggressive campaign has driven Usama bin Laden and other leaders deeper into hiding and left Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Pakistan’s tribal regions in disarray.
“Those operations are seriously disrupting Al Qaeda,” Panetta told The Washington Post in an interview. “It’s pretty clear from all the intelligence we are getting that they are having a very difficult time putting together any kind of command and control, that they are scrambling. And that we really do have them on the run.”

Bernard Madoff, who is serving a 150-year sentence in North Carolina for running a fraud scheme that cost investors billions of dollars, was physically assaulted by another inmate in December, according to three people familiar with the matter.

The Obama administration is poised to ban offshore oil drilling on the outer continental shelf until 2012 or beyond. Meanwhile, Russia is making a bold strategic leap to begin drilling for oil in the Gulf of Mexico. While the United States attempts to shift gears to alternative fuels to battle the purported evils of carbon emissions, Russia will erect oil derricks off the Cuban coast.

Last week, rumors that Adam Gadahn had been arrested in Karachi, Pakistan, quickly swept through the global media. When the dust settled, it turned out that the rumors were incorrect; the person arrested was not the American-born al Qaeda spokesman. The excitement generated by the rumors overshadowed a message from Gadahn that the al Qaeda media arm as Sahab had released on March 7, the same day as the reported arrest.

An Al Qaeda leader believed to have played a key role in the bombing of a CIA post in Afghanistan last December was apparently killed by an American missile strike last week, a senior U.S. official said Wednesday.

A Pakistani court charged five young Americans on Wednesday with planning terrorist attacks in the South Asian country and conspiring to wage war against nations allied with Pakistan, their defense lawyer said.

U.K. Police Warned Not to Ask for ‘Christian’ Name to Avoid Offending Other Faiths.
Police officers in Kent, U.K., have been warned not to ask people for their “Christian names” because they might risk offending people of different faiths, the Daily Mail reported.

For the second time in six months, the city has ordered a group of Christian worshippers who meet inside homes to get a permit or shut down.
It’s the latest incident in which religious groups in Southern California have been targeted by cities for home gatherings, though many of those groups were eventually allowed to meet without obtaining permits.

An Al Qaeda leader believed to have played a key role in the bombing of a CIA post in Afghanistan last December was apparently killed by an American missile strike last week, a senior U.S. official said Wednesday.
The counterterrorism official said Hussein al-Yemeni was believed killed in a strike in Miram Shah, the main town in North Waziristan. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information.

President Obama is not worried — and doesn’t think Americans should worry — about the “procedural” debate over whether House Democratic leaders should go ahead with a plan to approve health care reform without a traditional vote, he told Fox News on Wednesday.