Tom DeLay Convicted; Halt Economic Growth in US for Twenty Years?; We Will Pay 80% of Gov't Pensions; Texas Proposes Dropping Out of Medicaid; Bombs in Dog on Airplanes; Obama Freezes Federal Workers' Pay

The Washington Post reports: Former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay argued throughout his trial that the deck was stacked against him by a politically motivated prosecutor and a jury from the most Democratic city in one of the most Republican states,
But following DeLay's conviction Wednesday on money laundering and conspiracy charges, some legal experts say the edge may now shift to the Republican who represented a conservative Houston suburb for 22 years. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/25/AR2010112500573.html
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The UK Telegraph reports: Cancun climate change summit: scientists call for rationing in developed world

Global warming is now such a serious threat to mankind [so they are saying] that climate change experts are calling for Second World War-style rationing in rich countries to bring down carbon emissions.

In a series of papers published by the Royal Society, physicists and chemists from some of world’s most respected scientific institutions, including Oxford University and the Met Office, agreed that current plans to tackle global warming are not enough. 

In one paper Professor Kevin Anderson, Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, said the only way to reduce global emissions enough, while allowing the poor nations to continue to grow, is to halt economic growth in the rich world over the next twenty years.   http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/copenhagen-climate-change-confe/8165769/Cancun-climate-change-summit-scientists-call-for-rationing-in-developed-world.html
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Taxpayers, according to The Week magazine, are now "on the hook to provide pensions to 80% of the nation's 27 million state and local government workers and retirees.  The combined shortfall in funding those pensions could be as much as 3.4 trillion- more than double this year's federal deficit. In many cities, pension obligations will soon consume a quarter or more of the annual budget - money that will be unavailable for parts, libraries, street maintenance and public safety.  Part of the cause was acceding to public union demands to increase benefits without thinking of the long term."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Republican lawmakers, according to The Week, "proposed that Texas drop out of Medicaid to help close their budget deficit, creating their own insurance program for the state's Medicaid recipients. The Heritage Foundation estimates that Texas could save $60 billion between 2013 and 2019.  Not a good plan, says the chief of Dallas' Parkland Hospital."
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Keeping the current TSA directives in mind, I bring to you information from The Week which states that "Al Qaida in Iraq tried to blow up a U.S. plane by planting bombs inside dogs two years ago.  Since the dogs died prior to their carriers being loaded onto the plane, investigators had time to discover thru autopsy the bombs inside them."  [Now what will we Americans be asked to do in order to fly?]
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The NY Daily News reports: Irate federal workers in New York had a few choice words for President Obama's decision Monday to freeze their wages for the next two years.
"That's why Obama's ratings are below [ex-President George W. Bush's, and that's hard to be unless you're Osama Bin Laden," said Rosemarie Clemmens of Manhattan.
Clemmens, who works for the Social Security Administration, said she voted for Obama but won't again. "I can't wait until I retire," the life-long government worker added.
Even the Secret Service and FBI, among other federal law enforcement agencies, are taking a hit thanks to Obama's decree.  [At last, a sign that this administration gets it. Join the Congress, fed workers. - see below.]
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/2010/11/30/2010-11-30_fed_workers_rage_over_wage_freeze.html#ixzz16llO3YBg

 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 FactCheck.org writes: Congress voted to freeze its own pay for 2010. Any pay raise for 2011 will take place automatically under existing law, unless Congress votes to freeze its pay again before then.
Update, May 17, 2010: There will be no House or Senate raise for 2011 either. Congress passed, and the President signed, H.R. 5146, which eliminates the automatic adjustment in pay for Members of Congress that would have taken place in 2011.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------