United States of America
Beginning in 2010, the U.S. Mint will begin producing quarters showing a national site from each of the 50 states plus the District of Columbia and each U.S. territory — Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, the U.S. Virgin Islands and the Northern Mariana Islands. George Washington's image will be on the other side. Governors are being asked to recommend sites for representation on the quarter. The U.S. Treasury will make the final decision on designs, which are to be announced later this month. Last year, the U.S. Mint completed its 10-year state quarter program, which it called the most popular coin program in history. Quarters were issued in the order each state joined the union, with five releases a year at intervals of about 10 weeks.
The Border Patrol plans to poison plant life along a mile stretch of the Rio Grande riverbank in Texas to eliminate the dense foliage used by suspected illegal immigrants and criminals to hide. If successful, the $2.1 million pilot project, which is set to begin this week, could later be duplicated along as many as 130 miles of river in the patrol's Laredo Sector, as well as other parts of the U.S.-Mexico border.... opponents of the action say it harkens to the Vietnam War-era Agent Orange chemical program and could be harmful over the long-term.
A Canadian who demanded courtesy from a U.S. border security guard says he was pepper sprayed and held in custody for three hours for asking the disrespectful officer to "say please" when ordering him to turn his car off during a search.
Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Oklahoma) addressed the recently approved stimulus, the Guantanamo Bay prison and troop withdrawal from Iraq while in Bartlesville on Friday to discuss local water issues. Inhofe, who opposed passage of the $787 billion federal stimulus bill, referred to stimulus funds as "welfare" during his visit, and said Oklahoma will get $1.9 billion in stimulus funds. "It's 7 percent stimulus and 93 percent welfare, that's essentially what we have and it is huge..."
For those who watched the Washington State governor's race recounts in 2004, the ongoing recount drama in Minnesota is just another rehash of the same script -- albeit for a U.S. Senate seat that might put Democrats one vote away from a filibuster-proof majority.
"It's funny when I get recognized on the train. People either say 'I love your show, dude' or 'Hey, where do you buy good weed?'"
The U.S. military expects to have 20,000 uniformed troops inside the United States by 2011 trained to help state and local officials respond to a nuclear terrorist attack or other domestic catastrophe, according to Pentagon officials. The long-planned shift in the Defense Department's role in homeland security was recently backed with funding and troop commitments after years of prodding by Congress and outside experts, defense analysts said. There are critics of the change, in the military and among civil liberties groups and libertarians who express concern that the new homeland emphasis threatens to strain the military and possibly undermine the Posse Comitatus Act, a 130-year-old federal law restricting the military's role in domestic law enforcement.
As the U.S. military garners increasing counterinsurgency experience in America's long-standing war in Afghanistan, soldiers are questioning one military restriction that has long been the norm within the U.S. armed forces: the prohibition against beards.
KJRH.com: The Sapulpa Daily Herald did not report that Barack Obama won the Presidential election in its Wednesday edition. One paragraph on the front page did report the majority of Creek County voted for McCain.
In his Tuesday night acceptance speech, President-elect Barack Obama appropriately offered "thank-yous" to his family, campaign aides and voters who supported the Democratic ticket. Now he may be dashing off thank-you notes to others who helped bring about his electoral college landslide.
Most historical observations about Barack Obama's victory in the US presidential election on Tuesday have focused on his race. But by many measures it would have been a singular political achievement, whatever the colour of his skin. For a start, in terms of the popular vote it was the best performance by a Democratic candidate since Lyndon Johnson in 1964. ... It was also the highest share of the vote by a nonincumbent president or vice-president from either party since Dwight Eisenhower in 1952.
Republican John McCain lost Tuesday's presidential election because he could not overcome a hostile economic environment, distance himself from an unpopular president or convince voters he could lead them out of the crisis.
Now you are thinking that we cannot expect much progressive thought out of a county best known for its cow-chip throwing contest (two tries if you lick your fingers after the first). But I have been to Beaver county and met good people and don't understand how 89.2% decided Sarah Palin should be vice president of the United States. It's not just our friends in Beaver scouring the landscape for aerodynamic cow patties. Twenty-one counties fell below 25 percent for Obama and 39 counties, more than half of the 77, fell below 30 percent.
Republican presidential nominee John McCain got his biggest victory margin in Oklahoma on Tuesday, winning every county in the state in results that mirrored those of 2004.
Mapping the election results county-by-county across America, most states reveal a quilted pattern of red and blue, with a few solid blue patches in the Northeast. Only one state turns solid red. "Inside the room, the noise was all positive" at the Republican watch party on election night in Oklahoma City, state GOP chairman Gary Jones said Wednesday. "Outside of Oklahoma, things were different."
With its creation of the U.S. Bureau of Efficiency in 1916, Congress sought to bring the principles of "scientific management" to the federal government. Although this first staff agency in the executive branch lasted only a relatively short time, it was the first central agency in the federal government dedicated to improving the management of the executive branch. Mordecai Lee offers both a chronological history of the agency and a thematic treatment of the structure, staffing, and work processes of the bureau; its substantive activities; and its effects on the development of both the executive and the legislative branches.