NEW YORK — The New York Knicks have assembled one of the most talented frontcourts in the league and are working on improving their backcourt.
Free-agent point guard Baron Davis will sign a one-year contract Monday with the Knicks for $2.5 million, according to multiple media reports.
Davis, 32, will be sidelined for at least a month because of a problem with his back, but the Knicks felt comfortable in taking a chance on the two-time All-Star.
"I would love to have him," Knicks forward Carmelo Anthony said Sunday. "Everybody knows what he can do when he's healthy and when he's focused. When (Davis) is healthy, he's one of the best."
The Cleveland Cavaliers waived Davis last week through the amnesty provision. He has career averages of 16.5 points and 7.3 assists per game.
"There were times he was the best point guard in the league," Knicks coach Mike D'Antoni said. "I think a lot of it just depends on if he wants to be here and if he's able to do it. If those things are positives, then he can turn into being a good thing for us."
New York has Toney Douglas, 25, and Mike Bibby, 33, at point guard.
Davis, 32, was cut by the Cavaliers under the National Basketball Association’s amnesty clause in order to clear $28.6 million in salary cap space over the next two seasons, SI.com said, adding that he’ll sign a one-year deal worth $2.5 million.
The Knicks have been looking for depth at the point guard position after releasing Chauncey Billups under its amnesty clause to have enough money to sign Tyson Chandler as a free agent. New York signed point guard Mike Bibby to a one-year contract last week at the veteran’s minimum of $1.4 million to join Toney Douglas at the position.
Davis, a two-time All-Star, averaged 13.1 points and 6.7 assists last season while playing in 58 games. Davis may miss eight to 10 weeks with a herniated disc in his back, the New York Post reported last week.
Unbeknownst to most Texans, Gov. Rick Perry officially retired in January so he could draw early pension benefits worth $7,699 a month, in addition to his annual governor's salary of $150,000.
Perry's January retirement - on paper, at least - was revealed Friday when the Federal Elections Commission released the financial disclosure statement the governor was required to file as a candidate for the Republican nomination for president. The annuity brings Perry's total state government-related income to $242,388 a year.
Reaction to news of the unusual arrangement in which Perry retired as a state employee but remains Texas' elected governor was swift and negative.
"If there's a Hall of Fame for hypocrites, he's in it," said Democratic consultant Paul Begala. "It must be part of Perry's plan to starve the government by taking as much money from it as he can."
Mike Gross, head of the 12,000-member Texas State Employees Union, said Perry's pension deal "will sit badly" with other public employees.
"People are acutely aware that there's a very strong criticism and all-out assault by conservatives on public employee pension systems. But he's taking care of himself," Gross said.
Perry spokesman Ray Sullivan said the arrangement is “part of [Perry’s] standard financial planning” and “is consistent with Texas state law and Employee Retirement System rules,” citing what’s known as the “rule of 80,” which allows state employees to start drawing on their retirement if their age plus years of service credit totals at least 80.
“The combination of Governor Perry’s U.S. military service, state service and age exceeded the state-required 80 years and qualified him for the annuity,” Sullivan said. Perry, 61, started receiving the annuity on Jan. 31. He continues to pay a 6.5% withholding from his state salary to the state retirement system, Sullivan said.
Perry has proposed slashing congressional salaries and has repeatedly called Social Security a "Ponzi scheme."
In an interview with ABC News, Perry defended drawing early on his pension: "I think it’d be rather foolish to not access what you’ve earned."
“That’s been in place for decades and I bought my military time and then obviously the 25 years of public service time, so as you reach that age you become eligible for it, so I don’t find that to be, you know, out of the ordinary," he said.
Also in his disclosure report, Perry listed assets, including some land, a life insurance policy and investment funds, worth between $1.16 million and $2.4 million.
His only liability is a 2006 student loan for between $100,000 and $250,000 with an interest rate of 3.875%. A second student loan with a higher interest rate – 8.25% -- was paid in full earlier this year.
Sullivan said the loan was used to send Perry’s son Griffin to Vanderbilt.
Until August, Perry held a number of stocks and municipal bonds in a blind trust. Perry liquidated the trust when he declared his candidacy for president because it did not qualify as a federal blind trust.
The holdings “have been largely liquidated into cash or cash equivalents,” Sullivan said.
Decorah, Ia. – A College student was cut off in mid question by Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who told her that pollution from hydraulic fracturing does not exist and that it was made up as a fear tactic from liberals, a statement that received groans from some people in the audience.
“We can have this conversation but you cannot show me one place – not one — where there is a proven pollution of groundwater by hydraulic fracking,” Perry told 22-year-old Carrie Kauffman.
Fracturing – or fracking – is a term used to describe a process of using pressure to release natural gas and petroleum from the earth. Perry noted that it’s been done in Texas for years.
A draft report released Dec. 8 from the Environmental Protection Agency found that the process polluted groundwater with chemicals in Wyoming, a report picked up by national news organizations, including CNN and the Wall Street Journal.
“Bring me the paper,” Perry, a 2012 Republican candidate for president, told the crowd. “Show me the paper. I am truly offended that the American public would be hoodwinked by stories that do not scientifically holdup. If that was true, it would be on the front page of every newspaper. It would be on ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox News. Everybody would be running that story.”
Perry was unaware that she was bisexual when she approached him with the question.
Rebecka’s father, Todd Green, a Democrat and professor of religion at Luther College, expressed disappointment in Perry’s response to his daughter.
“For a group of women and men to fight for the freedom to run for president, to gather here peacefully and assemble here peacefully in a place like Decorah, but not for them to have the freedom to be open about who they are but he can be free to be open about who he is, to me it seems to be a major contradiction and very hypocritical,” Todd Green said.
“He acknowledged being a sinner as well and then labels an entire group of other people sinners, but now he’s making the same the distinction between certain sinners who can’t serve openly in the military in terms of being gay and others who can,” he said. “To me, this is all a contradiction and I’m very disappointed in this position, and I hope whoever our next president is, GOP or Democratic party, that they will continue along the path allowing people to serve openly lesbian and gays, bisexual, transgender persons in the military.”
The father and daughter attended Perry’s townhall Sunday evening because she was angered by one of Perry’s ads running in Iowa, he said.
“My daughter Rebecka particularly was very incensed by the ad Governor Perry ran a week or two ago here in Iowa where he complained about the problem of gays serving openly in the military but Christians not being able to celebrate Christmas openly. He seemed to get that backwards,” Todd Green said.
“It takes no courage to come out of the closet to be a Christian and run for president of the United States,” he said. “I’d be more impressed if you were Muslim or an atheist and coming out like that, but to come out as though this was an act of courage for him to proclaim his Christian faith, but he also wants to take the stand against gays in the military. This is someone who’s in the position of power and privilege and he’s abusing it.
There was one moment in that debate, coupled with a short C-Span clip in Arizona, that delivered a new, heretofore unseen, Mitt Romney.
Often a single utterance changes history.
Remember, the “macaca moment” that defeated Sen. George Allen in Virginia? Or the “malaise” speech that still haunts former President Jimmy Carter?
Better, Ronald Reagan’s “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall” demand.
Those utterances not only defined or re-defined the character of the speaker, but also signaled a directional change in history.
Romney had two such moments recently. Together, they portend a quick end to the Republicans’ decision about their nominee and a greater challenge to Barack Obama’s re-election.
The press, however, wants none of this quick end to the primary fights. A well-known “secret” in politics is that all of the invented early brawls mean big money for the local television, radio, magazine, newspaper, hoteliers, restaurateurs, etc.
The early races are shakedown primaries in every sense of the word.
(Who, among us, thinks Iowa or even New Hampshire are representative of the U.S. population?) However, lots of money has now poured into those states.
The shakedown may continue—a Gingrich PAC, founded by the owner of Las Vegas Sands, has pledged $10 million, and the Perry campaign has enough cash to go the distance. But Romney just won the Republican nomination.
And he won with two simple, game-changing utterances.
His team should remove the clips from the archives and start airing them on a non-stop feedback loop—immediately.
The first such utterance occurred in Arizona. There, a routine endorsement from former Vice President Dan Quayle (just as Gingrich was soaring to the lead in every national polls) permitted Romney a space to declare himself.
Almost as a toss off, he said—with genuine passion (something missing thus far in Romney and even more remote in President Obama)—“I love this country. I love the future I see for it.”
Wow. Someone actually sees a “future” for this country.
On Medicare, the two Republicans both back “premium support,” a concept advanced by House Republicans to limit government spending for each beneficiary. Democrats say such a shift would end traditional Medicare.
But Mr. Gingrich would give beneficiaries the option of keeping traditional fee-for-service Medicare. Mr. Romney would also preserve a traditional Medicare option. Mr. Romney has not specified the level of spending per beneficiary or how fast it would grow over time — the critical variables determining how much in higher costs the elderly might face.
To avoid crippling attacks, said Ron Haskins, the top House Republican aide on welfare policy during Mr. Gingrich’s speakership, “You’ve got to be able to say the increases are not going to be that big, you’re protecting poor people, and preserving traditional Medicare.”
Following that formula, the House Budget Committee chairman, Representative Paul D. Ryan, Republican of Wisconsin, last week eased his earlier “premium support” proposal enough to win over Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, a Democrat. Their plan gives the eventual Republican nominee an opening to claim a bipartisan middle ground.
If the revised proposal does not yield the savings Mr. Ryan once cited — and Mr. Obama attacked — Republican strategists will not mind.
“That bravery has to occur after the election, not before it,” said Deborah Steelman Macon, a health policy adviser to President Ronald Reagan and the first President George Bush. “That’s just the way politics is.”
Immigration poses a special danger for Republicans. The fervor of conservatives to get tough on illegal border crossing collides with the need to avoid further erosion among Hispanics, who backed Mr. Obama by two to one in 2008.
Mr. Gingrich proposes what he calls a “humane” approach, allowing many of the 11 million people who immigrated illegally to the United States to remain. Mr. Romney has criticized that as “amnesty,” but he has shied away from proposing to round up and deport illegal immigrants.
To be sure, a presidential nominee’s policy proposals are only part of what determines the breadth of his or her general election appeal.
Mr. Haskins, for instance, has backed Mr. Romney. But he has been disillusioned by what he considers disingenuous rhetoric attacking primary rivals on immigration and Mr. Obama on health care, despite similarities between the administration’s health plan and the one Mr. Romney fashioned in Massachusetts.
“How can you believe anything Romney says about health care?” Mr. Haskins asked. “It’s hard for me to get serious about Romney’s positions.
Former House speaker Newt Gingrich showed no sign Sunday of letting up on his assault on “activist” federal judges. During an appearance on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Gingrich suggested the president could send federal law enforcement authorities to arrest judges who make controversial rulings in order to compel them to justify their decisions before congressional hearings.
When asked by host Bob Schieffer how he would force federal judges to comply with congressional subpoenas, Gingrich said he would send the U.S. Capitol Police or U.S. Marshals to arrest the judges and force them to testify.
Gingrich, who in recent weeks has surged to the front of the pack in the race for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, has come under fire from the left and the right for his attacks on the federal judiciary. Michael Mukasey, former attorney general during the George W. Bush administration, said some of Gingrich’s proposals were “dangerous, ridiculous, totally irresponsible, outrageous, off-the-wall and would reduce the entire judicial system to a spectacle.
You don't need to be a lawyer, politician or scholar to hear the contradictions in Gingrich's latest argument. He's against "elitist" judges but not against the lobbyist-infused Washington insiders who would overrule them. He rails on the 9th Circuit for its Pledge of Allegiance ruling as though it were the law of the land (it is not, as your school-age child is likely to tell you). Similarly, he picks on a federal trial in judge in Texas whose school prayer ruling was almost immediately overturned on appeal. Small beer, indeed, for the monumental remedies Gingrich seeks; it's like destroying the whole house to get rid of a few nagging flies.
"I think part of the advantage I have is that I'm not a lawyer,' Gingrich told Schieffer. "And so as a historian, I look at the context of the judiciary and the constitution in terms of American history." The fact that Gingrich is not a lawyer helps explain why he sounds so ignorant about the law. The fact that he is an historian helps explain why he's hanging much of his theory on some hoary precedent involving Thomas Jefferson, the slave owner, who eliminated 18 of 35 judges back in his day. Never mind the constitutional precedent and practice of the intervening 200 years, Gingrich's argument goes, it happened once so it should happen again.
I cited Judge Johnson above not just because his quote is a timely reminder to demagogues like Gingrich that they are often responsible for the very "activism" they decry. Judge Johnson, as a federal trial judge in Alabama from 1955-1979, essentially devoted his entire judicial life to helping to ensure that black citizens would gain the basic civil rights that governors and state legislators and the Congress and the White House would not give them. Imagine how many times Judge Johnson would have been called onto the carpet on Capitol Hill under a Gingrich Administration. On which side of that history would you want to be?
The last word goes to Fein, the proud Reaganite. On Sunday afternoon, he called Gingrich's ideas "more pernicious to liberty than President Franklin Roosevelt's ill-conceived and rebuked court-packing plan." More colloquially, Fein told me in October when Gingrich first went off the rails on this issue: "This is crazy. It would bring us back to the pre-Magna Carta days... The idea that these legislators, who haven't read the Constitution or their own statutes, are going to lecture federal judges about the law is ridiculous. It's juvenile. It's high school stuff." Indeed—and thus perfect for a bumper-sticker: Your Constitution: Rock, Paper, Scissors, Newt.
WASHINGTON — From the House that Newt Gingrich once ran through the Washington establishment to state capitals across the nation, some Republicans are going public with their concerns that Mr. Gingrich would be a weak general election candidate and a drag on the party’s fortunes if he won the presidential nomination.
“Since we don’t know how he got here, I don’t know how he can be stopped,” said Ed Rogers, a longtime Washington lobbyist and party strategist who worked for the first President George Bush.
Mr. Rogers, who has not endorsed anyone, is like many in the party who esteem Mr. Gingrich for his achievement in leading Republicans to the control of Congress in 1994, after 40 years in the House minority, but who recoil from the prospect of him at the top of the ticket given the controversy, scandal and electoral defeats that defined his four years as speaker.
Late Saturday, former Senator Bob Dole, the 1996 Republican nominee, endorsed Mitt Romney, whose campaign is now anticipating a long and hard-fought nominating battle against Mr. Gingrich. Last week, Mr. Romney won the endorsement of Gov. Nikki R. Haley of South Carolinawhich holds the first Southern primary, on Jan. 21.
Mr. Gingrich’s team has dismissed the criticism as coming from Romney supporters, and has pointed to grass-roots support for his candidacy. For all the anxiety about him, from establishment Republicans to Tea Party conservatives, he has surged in polls nationwide and in the early voting states. Many voters say they have been persuaded by his combative, confident and learned performances in 13 Republican debates that Mr. Gingrich could best take on President Obama.
Yet some Republicans on Capitol Hill say that Mr. Gingrich would not only lose to Mr. Obama, but that he could take other Republican candidates down, too, in a year when high unemployment has driven hopes within the party of capturing the White House and the Senate while holding control of the House.
One of the great problems we have had in the Republican Party is that we . . . encourage you to be neat, obedient, and loyal and faithful, and all those Boy Scout words which would be great around the campfire but are lousy in politics. ... You’re fighting a war. It is a war for power. ... Don’t try to educate. That is not your job. What is the primary purpose of a political leader? To build a majority.”
That would be Gingrich in 1978, reported by John M. Barry in his excellent “The Ambition and the Power,” a book about the fall of former House speaker Jim Wright and Gingrich’s role in bringing him down. Again, Gingrich is a thoroughly consistent figure. The guy you see now is the same guy who always preached a scorched-earth approach to politics.
And in truth, the party took his approach to heart. If discrediting John Kerry’s service in Southeast Asia through false attacks in 2004 was what it took to reelect a president who had avoided going to Vietnam, what the heck. Those who believe in Boy Scout virtues don’t belong in politics, right?
Perhaps the establishment will yet manage to block Gingrich. There are certainly enough contradictions in his record, and he carries more baggage than an overburdened hotel porter. When National Review, that keeper of conservative ideological standards, recently criticized Gingrich for “his impulsiveness, his grandiosity, his weakness for half-baked (and not especially conservative) ideas,” its editors were reciting from a catechism that his critics wrote long ago. Meet the new Newt, same as the old Newt.
This quality endows Gingrich with a peculiar integrity, which I realize is a problematic word to apply to such a problematic figure. I use it in a very specific sense: He is who he is and always has been. The base knows this and loves him for it. But for Republican leaders, Gingrich has become inconvenient. He’s the loudmouthed uninvited guest who is trying to rejoin the country club. The effort to blackball Newt Gingrich will be the next drama in this fascinating train wreck of a campaign.
Republican president hopeful Newt Gingrich doubled down on his criticism of federal judges and the Supreme Court on Sunday as chief rival Mitt Romney defended his record against likely Democratic attacks. With close to two weeks before GOP voters start choosing their nominee, Gingrich is courting the conservative primary voters he will need to win in Iowa and sustain his campaign against Romney, whose superior organization and pile of cash has him seeming ever more confident as he looks ahead to the general election.
“There is steady encroachment of secularism through the courts to redefine America as a nonreligious country and the encroachment of the courts on the president’s commander-in-chief powers, which is enormously dangerous,” Gingrich said on CBS’s Face the Nation.
Polls in Iowa and nationally show Gingrich ahead of Romney in the race for the GOP nomination. Gingrich has acknowledged that Romney’s repeated attacks have taken a toll on his campaign and is looking to stay at the top.
To do that, Gingrich is focusing on ideology as he courts the Iowa conservatives he needs to win the caucuses and challenge Romney’s well-organized campaign in what could become a drawn-out primary. He has mounted a broad attack on federal judges and the Supreme Court, arguing that they are legislating from the bench and have more control over the country than they should. It’s an argument that drew sustained applause during a debate last week in Sioux City, Iowa — and one that could have particular resonance in a state where Republicans fought a protracted battle with state Supreme Court judges over gay marriage.
Over the weekend, the Wall Street Journal's editorial page chided the former House speaker for his "lack of candor" about his work for Freddie Mac. When the issue was initially raised during a November debate, for example, Gingrich said Freddie Mac had hired him because he is a historian.
The Journal pointed out that Gingrich had defended Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae as recently as 2007, when he said he would be "very cautious about fundamentally changing their role or the model itself."
Gingrich told host Bob Schieffer "that we earned that editorial" by failing to give a full accounting of his work for Freddie Mac "from Day One."
"The facts are, I didn't personally get that kind of money; it went to a consulting firm which had offices in three cities and the share I got was relatively small," he said.
Gingrich said the firm offered "consulting advice" to Freddie Mac and that the only public document he wrote for it "basically said as part of it, they need more regulations." He added that when he spoke to congressional Republicans in July 2008, shortly before the federal government prevented the collapse of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, he urged them to reject a bailout.
"I do in fact favor breaking them both up; each of them should probably devolve into probably four or five companies," Gingrich said, "and they should be weaned off the government endorsements."
Late last week, federal officials accused six former Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac executives of misleading investors. Gingrich told Schieffer he was not aware of wrongdoing while his firm advised the company.
In Fort Dodge, Iowa, rival candidate Michele Bachmann slashed at Gingrich, calling on him to return the $1.6 million from Freddie Mac, and castigated him for his past positions on immigration and his willingness to support GOP candidates who did not oppose so-called partial-birth abortion.
"He's trying to sound like a conservative, but actually he sounds more like the 30-year establishment Washington insider that he is," she told reporters.
With the final U.S. troops to leave Iraq due to return home over the next two weeks, Romney and Gingrich briefly addressed the nation's handling of that conflict. Romney criticized the president's decision to withdraw troops by the end of this year in accordance with President Bush's agreement with Iraq.
"We're going to find that this president, by not putting in place a status-of-forces agreement with the Iraqi leadership, has pulled our troops out in a precipitous way, and we should have left 10, 20, 30,000 personnel there to help transition to the Iraqis' own military capabilities," he said.
Romney would not say whether, in hindsight, he would have made the same decision as President Bush to invade Iraq. Gingrich, by contrast, noted that he had said as early as 2003 that the U.S. "had gone off a cliff" by engaging in Iraq.
Mitt Romney, described by some as too stiff and passionless to win the presidency, opened up a bit Sunday, recounting how he and his wife, Ann, learned years ago that she had multiple sclerosis.
In an appearance on Fox News Sunday, the Republican presidential candidate recalled entering the doctor’s office and seeing a pamphlet on various illnesses, including Lou Gehrig’s disease, a fatal disease that he feared she had.
“We could see that she had real balance problems and she didn’t have feeling in places she should have feeling,” Mr. Romney said. “And he (the doctor) stepped out of the room, and we stood up and hugged each other, and I said to her, as long as it’s not something fatal, I’m just fine. Look, I’m happy in life as long as I’ve got my soul mate with me.”
The former Massachusetts governor called the experience “probably the toughest time in my life.”
Ann Romney, who has battled the disease for 13 years, has been able to recover most of her health, Mr. Romney said. But he said the illness has required “dramatic change” in their lives. The Romneys, for example, are preparing to install an elevator in the house, he said.
“Life is all about the people you love,” Mr. Romney said. “We can handle disease. Death, that’s a different matter. Death– I don’t know that I can handle death. Disease and hardship, we can handle as long as we have the people we love around us.
With the 2011 debates now in the books, we'll ask our Sunday panel to handicap the fast-changing Republican race as we enter the homestretch in Iowa.
All right now on "Fox News Sunday."
And hello again from Fox News in Washington.
The Iowa caucuses are now just over two weeks away. But despite months of campaigning and 13 debates, the Republican race for president is still wide open.
We've conducted a series of 2012 one-on-one interviews to help you get to know the candidates better. And today, we round out the field with Mitt Romney, who sits down for his first Sunday show interview in almost two years.
Yesterday, we caught up with him on the campaign trail in South Carolina where he had just won the endorsement of that state's popular, Governor Nikki Haley.
In a wide-ranging interview, we talked about the challenges he faces winning the GOP nomination and possibly running against President Obama.
Oversight committee Chairman Darrell Issa suggested in his report that the discord among members of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission originated with the standoff over the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository.
But no one mentioned Yucca Mountain, except in passing, at this morning’s hearing to examine NRC chairman Greg Jaczko’s conduct. And when asked about it, even the commissioner who Issa said had been strong-armed said the issue hadn't triggered the discord this time.
“That was a big debate last year, there were clearly different views on both sides. But I don’t think that that’s lingering. It didn’t even come up,” said Commissioner William Magwood, a Democrat appointed by President Barack Obama in 2010. “It was an issue, it was a big debate, but I don’t see it as a big debate that broke relationships. I mean after that was done, we moved on to other things and there really was no lasting impact.”
Magwood and three other NRC commissioners wrote a letter to White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley in October complaining that Jaczko’s leadership was “causing serious damage to this institution” and that Jaczko had “intimidated and bullied” staff to the degree that he has created a high level of fear and anxiety resulting in a chilled work environment.”
That fueled discontent in Congress with the NRC’s work and Jaczko’s leadership -- frustrations that in earlier hearings focused primarily on Jaczko’s position on Yucca Mountain.
But while that may be what the lawmakers -- mostly Republicans -- cared about. Based on the hearing today it doesn’t seem to be what motivated the NRC commissioners to take a stand against their chairman: What they were most concerned with was Jaczko’s conduct since March's Fukushima Daichi nuclear meltdown in Japan.
Several factors should put people at ease, Orrell said. While the Obama administration has mothballed Yucca Mountain, no process for selecting another site has been created in federal law. The Yucca license withdrawal also is being challenged in court, which could give a glimmer of hope to the project's supporters.
The nation's only active deep underground waste site is the Waste Isolation Pilot Project near Carlsbad, N.M., which is mainly storing plutonium from bomb-making.
Local officials and residents have welcomed the economic development that has come from hosting the site, and community leaders have indicated they are open to expanding it, Orrell said. That makes the salt beds of southeast New Mexico a likely long-term home for the nation's nuclear waste if Yucca Mountain remains out of the picture.
Orrell noted, too, that granite and salt beds are not the only type of environments under study. Sandia teams have launched similar reviews of clay and shale and deeper holes bored into the earth — as far as 3 miles — as potential sites. The studies have been done in part to keep skills sharp among staff who had been working on Yucca Mountain, Orrell said.
But Arnie Gundersen, a former nuclear industry engineer who is now a Vermont-based consultant on nuclear-related issues, called the report on granite sites "ominous." He pointed to factors that he said raise the likelihood of the massive granite outcroppings in rural parts of the Northeast attracting attention as potential waste sites.
Granite would appear to have an advantage over other environments, if the recent development of high-level waste sites in other countries is any guide. Both Finland and Sweden are on track to open waste sites buried deep in granite within the next 14 years.
The Sandia study says that granite's properties as a chemically and physically stable rock, with low permeability, would "strongly inhibit" radiation from reaching the outside environment if waste canisters leaked.
In addition to the Appalachian mountain range and upper Midwest, the study identifies several areas of the West as rich in granite deposits. But the western regions are described as having moderate to high seismic activity.
In contrast, the northern Appalachian and Adirondack region, including upstate New York and New England, as well as the Lake Superior region of Wisconsin and Minnesota, are described as having little to no seismic and volcanic activity.
Vermont is no stranger to the nuclear waste storage debate. It was one of the places Department of Energy surveyed for potential waste sites in the mid-1980s — before Congress targeted Yucca Mountain.
At one public hearing in Wells River, more than 2,000 people turned out to voice their outrage at the idea.
New England has long been a hotbed of opposition to the nuclear industry. Vermont is currently being sued by Entergy Corp. over the state's effort to deny a new 20-year license for the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant.
Madeleine Kunin was governor the last time a nuclear waste storage site search focused on Vermont. The letters she got and wrote in opposition — one resident said the proposal would "use Vermonters as guinea pigs" — fill more than a half-dozen folders in the state archives.
Kunin said recently she doubted the state would be any more welcoming now to the idea.
"Absolutely not," she said. "My gut reaction is this would not be a good place." The waste should go "somewhere really isolated from inhabited land … somewhere in the middle of nowhere.
Blizzard watch was issued near Beaver after a storm system was tracked from southern California across southern Arizona Sunday. It is expected to reach the southern High Plains Region by Monday and will likely produce significant snow and strong north winds across much of west central and southwest Oklahoma.
Forecasters say the watch will remain in effect from Monday to Tuesday morning, and accumulating snow could begin as early as Monday morning.
Snowfall with the storm is expected to reach 6 to 9 inches. Meteorologists say snow up to 12 inches is also likely.
Some isolated locations may see amounts greater than one foot. North winds of 25 to 30 mph will accompany the snow and could strengthen to 45 mph as the storm moves. This could cause blowing snow with strong winds and extremely poor visibility, according to the National Weather Service.
A winter storm watch also remains in effect from Monday morning to Tuesday for portions of northwest and west central Oklahoma. Snow is expected to fall Monday evening and from 10 p.m. to daybreak Tuesday.
The watch includes the cities of Buffalo, Alva, Arnett, Woodward and Cheyenne.
Meteorologists say snowfall amounts between 3 and 6 inches are likely, as well as northerly winds about 25 to 35 mph.
Skies will be mostly cloudy in Oklahoma City Sunday with a high temperature near 60 degrees. Forecasters are calling for isolated sprinkles and south wind between 16 and 22 mph with gusts as high as 31 mph.
There's a 40 percent chance of rain after midnight with a low about 44. Meteorologists say south wind between 15 and 22 mph will accompany the showers with gusts as high as 31 mph.
Here's a look at the Oklahoma City forecast for the rest of the week:
Monday: Rain. Steady temperature around 47. South wind 9 to 14 mph becoming east. Winds could gust as high as 20 mph. Chance of precipitation is 100%.
Monday Night: Rain. Low around 33. North northwest wind between 10 and 16 mph, with gusts as high as 23 mph. Chance of precipitation is 90%.
DENVER - After unusually warm weather on Sunday with lots of sunshine statewide and afternoon temperatures in the mid 60s downtown, two storm systems moving our way will change all that overnight. Meteorologist Kathy Sabine says the first low moving storm across the southwest will track east and stay south of the forecast area. The second front moving in after midnight from the north will bring wind, colder conditions and light snow to Denver for the morning drive.
The forecast for Denver calls for 1-3'' of snow downtown during the day Monday with 3-6'' south and west of the city. The wind will pick up out of the north 10-20 mph during the day providing for a very cold and blustery day for eastern Colorado.
We are anticipating a 20-30 degree temperature drop on Monday versus the above average highs we enjoyed over the weekend. Temperatures will hold downtown in the upper 20s and could drop into the teens by the afternoon.
Blizzard conditions are likely across southeastern Colorado where travel is not advised on Monday. Across Baca and Las Animas counties including the towns of Springfield, La Junta, Lamar and Kim, these areas could see 10-20'' of snow and gusty north winds 25-35 mph sustained with gusts to over 40 mph.
Farther north, the snow looks to be much less of an issue. That means the major metro areas of Pueblo, Canon City, Colorado Springs, Woodland Park, Monument nortward to Denver will only see light snow. Right now, I am not anticipating problems in these areas. The wind and cold will be the biggest story.
Potential Snowfall Monday Afternoon - Early Tuesday Morning:
Trace to 2": Denver, Colorado Springs, Pueblo, Pueblo West, Canon City, Falcon, Ellicott, Fountain. Isolated higher totals possible close to the mountains.
1 to 4": Woodland Park, Cripple Creek, Monument, Palmer Lake, Black Forest, Calhan.
4 to 8": Beulah, Rye, Colorado City, Fowler, Walsenburg, Trinidad, La Junta, Rocky Ford, Ordway, Eads. Isolated higher totals in the higher terrain of the Wets and Sangres.
8-16": Las Animas, Lamar, Holly, Springfield, Walsh, Kim.
Any slight change in the track of the storm will have huge implications for the forecast. Please stay current with the forecast. Plus, be aware that travel will be extremely difficult in northeast New Mexico, the Oklahoma and Texas Panhandles, as well as southwest Kansas.
Tuesday will start cloudy, but should end sunny and much quieter. Temperatures will remain chilly, especially for those areas that receive significant snow.
Wednesday will be warmer, but this is ahead of another cold front that will bring much colder temperatures and some light snow for Thursday.
The National Weather Service in Albuquerque says a major wintry storm is headed toward the state.
Blizzard-like conditions are possible in the northeastern plains and along the Interstate 25 corridor beginning late Sunday, with the heaviest activity expected Monday. Travel along Interstate 40 from Albuquerque to Texas could also be impacted. The weather service says travel along both routes could become difficult if not impossible.
Up to 15 inches of snow is expected in northeastern New Mexico, the Oklahoma and Texas panhandles, southwestern Kansas and southeastern Colorado, which were under blizzard watches or warnings Sunday afternoon. The storm is expected to hit at the beginning of a holiday travel week that is one of the busiest of the year.
"We try to reserve these blizzard watches for very intense storm systems," Jones said.
Much of Kansas will be affected, with the heaviest snowfall from southwestern Kansas, south into the Oklahoma panhandle, south toward Amarillo, Texas, and west into the New Mexico plains.
Jones warned people in the region not to be fooled by Sunday's pleasant weather _ the storm is expected to move in quickly and is potentially life-threatening.
The intense low-pressure system was circulating south of Yuma, Ariz., Sunday, but was expected to move into southwestern New Mexico overnight. Rain will develop first, but the system is expected to intensify and turn colder, with snow expected in Albuquerque and Santa Fe, N.M., by midday. Up to 4 inches could fall in the foothills around Albuquerque, and Santa Fe could get up to 5 inches.
Much heavier snow is expected as the storm moves to the northeast along the Great Divide and into the plains, where winds above 40 mph may create near white-out conditions along highways. Clayton, N.M., near the Texas-Oklahoma line, could see the most snow it's measured in five years, estimated at 15 inches or more. One area outside Amarillo could get up to 18 inches.
"Those are tremendous amounts of snow," Jones said. "Add to that the fact that that snow is going to be blowing, and you're going to have winds easily in the 40 mph range if not higher, it's going to be a very ugly, potentially life-threatening situation."
Livestock could be affected, so ranchers in the region should take precautions to protect their cattle.
The storm is a fast-mover and is expected to leave the region by midday Tuesday. But temperatures will stay in the 20s and 30s so the snow won't melt quickly, and a weaker storm that could move into New Mexico Tuesday will likely follow the same general track.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, the mercurial strongman extolled at home as the “Dear Leader” and reviled abroad as a tyrant, has died at 69, North Korean media reported Monday.
Kim’s death was announced by state television from the North Korean capital, Pyongyang. No cause of death was reported, but Kim was believed to have suffered in recent years from diabetes and heart disease.
The diminutive leader was believed to have suffered a stroke in 2008 but nonetheless appeared in numerous photos released by state media as he toured state facilities and in recent months embarked on rare trips outside North Korea -– to China and Russia.
In September 2010, Kim announced that his foreign-educated third son, Kim Jong Eun, would succeed him as the regime’s third leader since its emergence more than a half century ago.
Kim, who came to power in 1994 upon the death of his father, North Korea founder Kim Il Sung, led one of the world’s most enduring dictatorships, a repressive regime that has long defied predictions of its demise. Against the odds, it survived into the 21st century while its people went hungry and its allies drifted away to pursue globalization and reform.
Kim remained to the end an unrepentant communist, refusing to liberalize North Korea’s economy even as his people became some of the world’s poorest, with millions dying of starvation and tens of thousands imprisoned on charges of political crimes. While rival South Korea became one of the world’s wealthiest nations, many in the North have earned less than a dollar a month.
In a news conference after his defection, Hwang warned of a growing possibility that his homeland might launch an attack. "The preparation for war exceeds your imagination," he said.
Many outsiders viewed the flight of Hwang as another sign that the North Korean regime was on its last legs, but once again it weathered the storm, perhaps even benefiting from the fears of war heightened by Hwang's warning.
Despite sending a test missile over Japan in June 1999 and other such incidents, North Korea under Kim Jong Il also sent signals that it is open to new alliances after decades of isolation. Billions of dollars in international aid poured into North Korea during the 1990s, which did little in return.
Many analysts conclude that Kim Jong Il has played a poor hand of cards skillfully.
"I tend to disregard rumors that he's irrational, a man that nobody can do business with," said Alexander Mansourov, a longtime Korea scholar and a former Russian diplomat who was posted in Pyongyang in the late 1980s. "I believe that he is smart. He's pragmatic. And I think he can be ruthless. He's a man who will not loosen his grip in any way on the people around him."
His obsession for movies led to one of the strangest incidents associated with him: The 1978 kidnappings of South Korean actress Choi En-hui and her director husband Shin Sang-ok. The couple's account of their ordeal, given after they escaped North Korea in 1986, sounds like a B-movie script.
They said Kim Jong Il held Choi under house arrest and imprisoned Shin for four years for a failed escape attempt. Kim then forced them to work in the North Korean film industry, paying them handsomely while keeping them in the gilded cage of his artistic and social circles. Although the country was having problems paying its debts, Kim lived extravagantly and spent tens of millions of dollars on their film productions, according to Choi and Shin.
The couple told Washington Post reporter Don Oberdorfer that Kim was a "micro-manager" who made all the major decisions in North Korea because of his father's ailing condition. Shin described Kim as "very bright," but said that he had no sense of guilt about his misdeeds "due to his background and upbringing."
While the Dear Leader is said to have indulged his appetite for the finer things, his people were literally starving to death. The collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s hit North Korea hard when guaranteed trade deals with Moscow came to an end.
And then devastating floods compounded the famine. The North Korean regime admitted almost 250,000 people perished between 1995 and 1998, but some outside groups believe it was more like ten times that figure.
It’s easy to be jaded about the holidays. It’s not unlike the temptation to feel weary and blasé about Saturday Night Live. Both seemed to feel more special when we were younger, didn’t they? But you would have to be a Grinch with a heart (and funny bone) two sizes too small not to have gotten into the spirit of last night’s joyous, hilarious, and often times touching, instant classic episode of Saturday Night Live. It encompassed all the things that make the holidays — and SNL — so wonderful when done right: It reunited old friends, brought back fond memories, and made us believe there was a little bit of magic in the air.
Of course, there may be no star better suited to spread that kind of joy to Studio 8H than Jimmy Fallon, who hosted for the first time since leaving the show as a cast member. After all, the Late Night host brings a free-spirited sense of fun to everything he does. Jaded is simply not on the guy’s radar at Christmas or any other time of the year, for that matter.
The night kicked off with the cold open, which checked in on Sully and Denise. Theirs is an eternal love, and they’re still just as passionate for one another as they were back when Fallon and Dratch were regulars on the show. You may have noticed that the politically incorrect phrase "you're retarded," which Denise was once fond of saying, never made it into the sketch, however “flame retardant” was sort of used in its place at one point. You’ll find that video below, along with both of Michael Buble’s performance, as well as the excellent moment during “Weekend Update” when Fallon and Tina Fey joined fellow former Weekend Update team Amy Poehler and Seth Meyers for a good old-fashioned joke-off. As much as I look forward to Seth Meyer’s solo commentary each week, it was great to see these old teams back in action and as quippy as ever.
And if celebrity impersonations are your thing, you may enjoy the Today Show spoof or the Buble Duets.
Here's a statement that will get no argument: Steven Spielberg has directed some of the most thrilling action movies in the history of cinema.
But even the man who's worked with sharks, dinosaurs and Indiana Jones says that he was impressed by the almost limitless possibilities for creating action scenes with performance-capture animation, the medium of his latest project, "The Adventures of Tintin," which opens Wednesday.
"I thought I was a kid and somebody had locked me overnight into Toys R Us and I was allowed to take everything off the shelves and play with them to my heart's content," says Spielberg as he describes working with the technique that transfers the movements of actors to computers to create ultra-realistic animation.
The two-part "The Crab with the Golden Claws" finds Tintin embroiled with drug smugglers, who are using a cargo ship for transport, unbeknownst to its besotted Captain Haddock, who becomes Tintin's best friend and appears in other adventures. Also featured are the bumbling Scotland Yard detectives Thomson and Thompson, who, though unrelated, look virtually alike. "The Secret of the Unicorn," also a two-parter, and "Red Rackham's Treasure" involve Tintin and Haddock trying solve a riddle left by Haddock's 17th-century ancestor that could lead them to a pirate's treasure. There is danger at every turn as criminals race to find the clues left in three model ships. These stories all came out in the 1940s.
VIDEO: Watch the trailer for the upcoming 'Tintin' movie
The set features four stories not touched on in the film — "Cigars of the Pharaoh" and "The Blue Lotus," which tell the story of Tintin's battle with a gang of smugglers; "The Black Island," in which he thwarts a counterfeiting operation; and "The Calculus Affair," in which he keeps spies from stealing a sonic device invented by his genius friend Professor Calculus that shatters glass and china.
The first three stories were published in the 1930s, while "Calculus" was first published in 1954. All of the stories are told in two parts. Shout! Factory will release The Adventures of Tintin: Season Two in February 2012.
Hergé (Georges Remi), who died at age 76 in 1983, first introduced the heroic journalist in French in a children's supplement to the Belgian newspaper in 1929. It was eventually serialized and collected into books, spawned a magazine and adaptations on TV, radio, stage and film. The series has been published in more than 80 languages in 50 countries. Hergé wrote and illustrated 23 The Adventures of Tintin comic books starting in 1929 — the first being Tintin in the Land of the Soviets and the last being Tintin and the Picaros in 1976. An unfinished 24th story, Tintin and Alph-Art, was published posthumously in 1986.
Spielberg, who has said in interviews that he became a fan of the comics in 1981 when a review compared his Raiders of the Lost Ark to Tintin, first acquired the rights to the film from the artist's widow shortly after Remi died in 1983. Depending on how this movie fares at the box office, Spielberg and Jackson could make two more Tintin movies.
1. A crippled veteran, returning to London from Afghanistan and forced to live on a small pension, finds a flatmate who turns out to be a drug addict. They become close friends and this other man eventually tells the ex-soldier that Britain is heading for disaster but will emerge "a cleaner, better, stronger land" and suggests they rush to the bank to cash a cheque before its signatory reneges. The subject of this highly topical story is, as you've probably guessed, Dr John H Watson, narrator of the Sherlock Holmes stories. He's well played by Jude Law in Guy Ritchie's second Holmes movie as a sensible, intelligent, reliable chap, even if he too readily explodes or expostulates when confronted by his flatmate's outrageous behaviour.
The frenzy is actually increased by the device of sudden flashbacks using high-speed editing to explain how the great detective-chessmaster had anticipated, then executed, a succession of clever moves that resulted in the violent triumph we've just witnessed. There is not, however, too much time in this high-octane narrative for the development of character. Naturally, the women don't get their due. Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams), the love of Holmes's life, appears fleetingly. In a major comic coup that makes the audience draw its breath and laugh heartlessly, Holmes throws Watson's wife from a train as it crosses a viaduct at night. Noomi Rapace, the striking heroine from The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, stalks mysteriously through the picture as a fortune teller as if she'd been told to think she's appearing in the gypsy encampment sequence in From Russia With Love. The three Ms – Moriarty, Moran and Mycroft – come out rather better.
The screenwriters, Michele and Kieran Mulroney, have drawn on Conan Doyle's novel The Valley of Fear for Moriarty's character and background, and on the story "The Final Problem" for the film's climactic encounter between Moriarty and Holmes at an anachronistically named "summit conference" beside the Reichenbach Falls. And Jared Harris plays him as a ratty or foxy type, rather different from the gaunt senior undertaker depicted by Sidney Paget in The Strand Magazine. The ex-army marksman turned assassin Colonel Sebastian Moran is a forceful presence as played by Paul Anderson. Stephen Fry has the right portly build and detached manner for Holmes's older brother, the establishment fixer Mycroft (a part in which Christopher Lee was wholly miscast in Billy Wilder's Holmes movie). He is, however, embarrassing when conducting a breakfast-time conversation with Watson's wife while naked, and he introduces an unnecessarily camp element by addressing Holmes as "Sherly", presumably a reference to the famous "and stop calling me Shirley" joke in Airplane!. Hans Zimmer's melodramatic score incorporates arias from Mozart's Don Giovanni and a jaunty Morricone theme from Two Mules for Sister Sara.
Watching this movie, I was constantly thinking of my friend and colleague, the brilliant wit, critic, novelist, translator and pasticheur Gilbert Adair, who died 10 days ago. Especially his postmodern trilogy of parodic detective stories which conclude at a Sherlock Holmes conference in Meiringen, where Adair himself plunges into the Reichenbach Falls with his own central character. Adair calls non-canonical Watson narratives "Schlock Holmes", but the final book in his series, And Then There Was No One, contains the best Holmes pastiche ever written, a 30-page re-creation of The Giant Rat of Sumatra, a tale referred to by Watson in "The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire" and called "a story for which the world is not yet prepared". I must declare a slight personal interest here, as there's a pretentious movie critic in the book called Philippe Françaix.
2. The Adventure of Red-Headed League: Big movies need minor villains, and there’s none quirkier than the self-appointed Red-Headed League. The villains were a pair of thieves who contrived to invent a special organization for red-headed men, under the guise of defrauding the men who showed up to apply. With a few changes, they could be an actual organization of evil gingers, though that might not play so well in the United Kingdom. It would be just bizarre enough to work, and just inconsequential to allow Holmes to brush them off with relative ease. Jackie Earle Haley could star as the most nefarious red-head!
3. The Five Orange Pips: Similarly speaking, “The Five Orange Pips" finds the Ku Klux Klan terrorizing a local Englishman. In Doyle’s story, the Klan are treated more like a mysterious cult than the historical artifact they’re taught as today. Introducing them as a minor presence would be appropriate for the time period; they’d also automatically register as a villain on account of, y’know, the racism.
4. The Hound of the Baskervilles: This is the granddaddy of all Holmes stories, a full-length novel with the detective’s greatest mystery. It’s a murder story posing as a ghost tale, as Holmes and Watson are called to a small town to investigate some mysterious deaths at the foot of the so-called Hound. With Holmes and Watson weaving their way through tangled family trees and double-talking villagers, they’ve got to deduce whether the Hound is real, which isn’t solved until the story’s climax. It would be a fearsome image on screen, and an excellent source of tension. What’s scarier than a giant ghost dog who eats people?
5. The Adventure of the Speckled Band: This is a fairly conventional mystery -- a death attributed to “the speckled band," which turns out to be a snake after some clever sleuthing. But that revelation only comes after a solid chunk of misdirection and more deaths, and the delivery system -- the snake crawls through a ventilator after being activated by a whistle -- is ingenious enough to work. If you want to visualize a death on screen, they don’t get more jarring than an adder leaping out of a vent onto someone’s throat.
6. The Sign of the Four: Robert Downey Jr.’s had his fair share of trouble with substance abuse, which is why some eagle-eyed pundits pointed to Tony Stark’s alcoholism as a bit of meta-casting on Marvel’s part. That issue might rear its head in “Iron Man 3," or it might not. But Sherlock Holmes is also an addict -- in the original stories, he’s quite verbal about his love of cocaine, which wasn’t quite a universally maligned drug in the 19th century. In “The Sign of the Four," Doyle addresses Holmes’ drug problem quite explicitly as he tries to foil a nefarious plot involving the Indian Rebellion of 1857, stolen treasure, and secret agreements up the wazoo. The movies have completely abandoned Holmes’ addiction, but a third movie might hint at his increasing mania in slightly darker terms than just, “Oh, that Holmes, he so wacky." Of course, that might be a step too serious for these generally light-hearted adaptations. The basic plot of “Four" would serve just as well as the backbone for a third movie, without getting into heady territory.
Far more interesting than anything new ”Sherlock Holmes” offers us are two simple truths to be gleaned about popular culture.
The first is that studio executives and/or director and writers obviously think that after a generation of the violence in video games and blockbuster movies, the old literary institutions like curiosity, innocence, mystery and wonder simply aren’t enough to entertain us anymore.
We saw it last year with ”Alice in Wonderland”, where Disney and Tim Burton turned a jaunty little tale about an adventurous young girl skipping through gardens with fantasy creatures and turned into Lord of the Rings for moppets, complete with a climactic fight scene, giant monster and armies clashing on the battlefield.
Similarly, you’ll wonder if Sir Arthur Conan Doyle might be turning in his grave if he could see how his most beloved creation has been recast for modern audiences. The gentleman who used reason and deduction and whom rarely picked up a gun or threw a fist is portrayed in an action thriller crammed with gigantic explosions and bone crunching fistfights. The news that Guy Ritchie was helming the big screen outing of literature’s most famous detective seemed strange at the time but he was the perfect choice for a period buddy action comedy.
The second interesting aspect is the paradox of our love of violence in movies to begin with. Holmes’ nemesis Moriarty’s (Harris) scheme is to positioning himself to own most of the industrial war-fighting supply when the inevitable happens and Europe descends into chaos. As history’s first global arms dealer, Moriarty is portrayed as the villain because weapons are bad and evil.
The dichotomy is when the very same film invites us to gasp at the thrill of how cool guns and weapons can be. Ritchie’s most visually inventive sequence has Holmes (Downey Jr), Watson (Law), gypsy Simza (Rapace) and her gang running through a forest while German troops unleash everything from rifles to mounted cannons on them.
Holmes and Watson square off against Professor Moriarty (Jared Harris), who has cooked up a scheme to pit various European nations against one another in the hope of profiting from the demand for weapons.
A Gypsy fortuneteller, played by Noomi Rapace, tags along. Rachel McAdams, Holmes' love interest in the first film, makes a brief appearance. Guy Ritchie once again directs, turning Arthur Conan Doyle's classic literary character into just another Hollywood action hero.
This is Sherlock Holmes 2.0—more of the same explosions and Holmes-Watson banter as the first film, just bigger and louder.
Holmes is supposed to be really smart, distinguishing him from every other crime fighter; now, thanks to Hollywood, his brain is secondary. So the flick-o-meter gives Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows three out of five.
