Summary: The Southern Poverty Law Center released its annual hate group report, titled “The Year in Hate.” The study found the number of hate groups has grown by 54 percent since 2000. The SPLC identified 926 hate groups — defined as groups with beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people — active in 2008.
Summary: President Barack Obama has won crucial backing for his Iraq military withdrawal plan from leading Congressional Republicans, including Senator John McCain and Ohio Rep. John A. Boehner, the House minority leader.
Summary: “The DCCC is after me again!” read a fund-raising e-mail Rep. Michele Bachmann has sent to supporters. Its the first time Bachmann has acknowledged — at least implicitly — the uproar her comments on KTLK two weeks earlier caused among progressive, and even a few conservative, blogs and media outlets.
Summary: Four U.S. soldiers and an Afghan civilian working for them were killed in southern Afghanistan when their vehicle struck a roadside bomb. … In the fourth such incident in the Mosul area in just over a year, two Iraqi policemen opened fire on U.S. soldiers visiting a police station, killing an American soldier and an Iraqi interpreter, wounding three Americans, and raising concerns about insurgent infiltration among the ranks of Iraqi police.
Summary: Although the worst of the sectarian bloodshed and loss of American lives have ebbed in Iraq, U.S. service members continue to die in the 5-year war.
Summary: Live coverage of the trial to decide the winner of the Coleman-Franken contest for U.S. Senate, courtesy of The UpTake.
Summary: U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), criticizing the economic stimulus plan on KTLK radio in the Twin Cities with her trademark gloom-and-doom histrionics, foresees a “national rationing board,” claims “your doctor will no longer be able to make your health care decisions with you,” and catastrophizes that “we’re running out of rich people in this country.”
Summary: Sarah Moore and Angela Rodgers, students at the College of Saint Benedict in St. Joseph, Minn., presented their research on “The Personality Profile of President Barack Obama: Leadership Implications” at the 6th annual Minnesota Private Colleges Scholars at the Capitol event, Feb. 19, 2009 in the State Capitol rotunda, St. Paul, Minn. Their research was conducted in the Unit for the Study of Personality in Politics, directed by College of St. Benedict / St. John’s University associate professor of psychology Aubrey Immelman, Ph.D.
Summary: Muntadhar al-Zeidi, the Iraqi reporter who hurled his shoes at George W. Bush, said at his trial that President Bush’s smile as he talked about achievements in Iraq had made him think of “the killing of more than a million Iraqis, the disrespect for the sanctity of the mosques and houses, the rapes of women,” and enraged him. Al-Zeidi added: “After more than a million Iraqis killed, after all the economic and social destruction … I felt that this person is the killer of the people, the prime murderer. I was enraged and threw my shoes at him.”
Summary: Some Republican politicians are taking credit in their home districts for stimulus money coming their way, even though they voted against it, but U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann is going the extra mile by claiming the stimulus bill is nothing but a payoff for those who supported President Barack Obama during his election campaign.