'Lion Of Liberty': Patrick Henry's Fiery Life

"As this government stands," Patrick Henry thundered, "I despise and abhor it. . . . I speak as one poor individual — but when I speak, I speak the language of thousands. If I am asked what is to be done when a people feel themselves intolerably oppressed, my answer is . . . 'overturn the government!'"

Henry's roar of exhortation was not aimed at Britain; it was aimed at the United States, as the thirteen former British colonies considered whether to adopt a new constitution. As he had done a decade earlier in his famed cry for "liberty or death," Henry once again roared for the rights of free men to govern themselves with as few restrictions from government as possible. His roar would reverberate through the ages of American history to this very day.

Known to generations of Americans for his stirring call to arms, "Give me liberty or give me death," Patrick Henry is all but forgotten as the first of the Founding Fathers to call for independence, for revolution against Britain, for a bill of rights, and for as much freedom as possible from ­government — American as well as British. If Washington was the "Sword of the Revolution" and Jefferson "the Pen," Patrick Henry more than earned his epithet as "the Trumpet" of the Revolution for rousing Americans to arms in the Revolutionary War.
As first governor of Virginia — then the most important colony in America — Henry became the most important civilian leader of the Revolutionary War, ensuring troops and supplies for Washington's Continental Army and engineering the American victory over British and Indian forces in the West that brought present-day Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Kentucky into the Union. Without Patrick Henry, there might never have been a revolution, independence, or United States of America.
http://www.npr.org/2010/11/19/131444425/-lion-of-liberty-patrick-henry-s-fiery-life

Nuclear Power Plant Future - Diane Rehm Show

http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2010-11-09/nuclear-power-plant-future

The cooling towers of Three Mile Island's Unit 1 Nuclear Power Plant pour steam into the sky in Middletown, Pa., Tuesday, March 17, 2009. Three Mile Island's Unit 2 nuclear power plant was the scene of the nations worst commercial nuclear accident on March 28, 1979. More than three decades later, fears of an atomic catastrophe have been largely supplanted by fears about global warming, easing nuclear energy into the same sentence as wind and solar power. Dogged by price spikes and an environmental assault on carbon dioxide emissions, fossil fuels are the new clean-energy pariah.

AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster

Speakers:

Arjun Makhijani

President of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research.

Matthew Wald

a reporter who covers nuclear power issues for the New York Times.

Scott Peterson

Vice President-Communications, Nuclear Energy Institute

CSPAN - North Korea Nuclear Facility - ( feature Sig Hecker )

http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/296731-1

Siegfried S. Hecker is a professor (research) in the Department of Management Science and Engineering, a senior fellow at FSI, and co-director of CISAC. He is also an emeritus director of Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Hecker's research interests include plutonium science, nuclear weapon policy and international security, nuclear security (including nonproliferation and counter terrorism), and cooperative nuclear threat reduction. Over the past 18 years, he has fostered cooperation with the Russian nuclear laboratories to secure and safeguard the vast stockpile of ex-Soviet fissile materials.
His current interests include the challenges of nuclear India, Pakistan, North Korea, and the nuclear aspirations of Iran. Hecker works closely with the Russian Academy of Sciences and is actively involved with the U.S. National Academies, serving as a member of the National Academies Committee on International Security and Arms Control Nonproliferation Panel.

China Props Up Foreign Students' Numbers in U.S. - the Chronicle of Higher Ed

By Karin Fischer

When Li Zhou visited Washington last month, he didn't take in the sights. He stuffed envelopes, hundreds of them, addressed to college-admissions directors across the country.

The associate director of college counseling at a Beijing high school, Mr. Li needed to make sure his students were on the radar of American colleges. Among his current crop of 10th-grade advisees, 150 out of 500 already are planning to earn their college degree in America.

The students from Beijing No. 4 High School are part of a flood of Chinese students attending American colleges. Enrollments from China shot up 30 percent in the 2009-10 academic year, according to the Institute of International Education's annual "Open Doors" report, which was released this week.

The rapid increase in the number of Chinese students, however, obscures the slowing overall growth in the number of foreign students at American colleges. International enrollments rose only 3 percent, to 690,923, in 2009-10, while first-time-student figures expanded even more anemically, by just 1 percent.
The previous year, by contrast, total enrollments jumped 8 percent, while new-student numbers swelled 16 percent.

Bernanke Christens QE2: Fed "On a Very Dangerous Path," Axel Merk Says

Declaring "progress toward its objectives has been disappointingly slow," the Federal Reserve left rates at "exceptionally low" levels yet again and launched a second round of quantitative easing (QE2).
The FOMC announced plans Wednesday to buy $600 billion of Treasuries by the middle of 2011, at a pace of about $75 billion per month. That's not much in the grand scheme of the bond market, but the Fed will also continue to reinvest payments on its securities holdings; that could bring QE2's total to almost $1 trillion, a.k.a. "real money."
The Fed is on a "very dangerous path," says Axel Merk, president of Merk Mutual Funds. "The best case we can get is inflationary growth, but the downside risks are very high. [Bernanke] thinks a weaker dollar is going to stimulate the economy. Let's hope it's only a gradual decline, not a crash. "
The dollar hit a 9-month low vs. the euro in reaction to the Fed announcement but did rally vs. the Japanese yen.
Officially, the Fed's goal with QE2 is "to promote a stronger pace of economic recovery and to help ensure that inflation, over time, is at levels consistent with its mandate."

Dow hits new 2010 high after Fed details stimulus

NEW YORK (AP) -- The Dow Jones industrial average reached a new high for the year after the Federal Reserve announced that it plans to buy $600 billion in Treasurys to stimulate the economy. The aim is to drive interest rates lower in an effort to spark spending and lending.
The Dow Jones industrial average gained 26.41, or 0.2 percent, to 11,215.13, its highest close in two years. Its previous high for 2010 of 11,205 was reached on April 26. The Dow had traded above that level four other times in the past two weeks.
Broader indexes also rose. The Standard and Poor's 500 Index rose 4.39, or 0.4 percent, to 1,197.96, while the Nasdaq composite gained 6.75, or 0.3 percent, to 2,540.27.
The central bank had hinted for two months that it planned to buy bonds in an effort to boost the economy. The Fed made firmer commitments to buy bonds under the new program than many investors had been expecting, which helped push stock indexes and most Treasury prices higher.
Instead of reassessing its bond purchases every month given economic conditions, as many expected, the Fed pledged to buy $75 billion of Treasurys each month through the middle of next year.
Stocks initially swung lower after the announcement as traders absorbed the news but then pushed steadily higher in afternoon trading, giving all three indexes gains of about 0.3 percent on the day.

Retail stocks dip; Fed injects fund to aid growth

By Andria Cheng, MarketWatch

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — Retail stocks turned lower Wednesday afternoon after the U.S. central bank said the economic recovery has been “disappointingly slow.”

While leaving its benchmark interest rate unchanged, the Fed said it will start a new program to buy $600 billion in Treasurys through the end of June 2011 to lift the economic growth. Even though doubts persist about whether the plan will work, economists said they feel the Fed had little choice but to act. See story on the Fed action.
Investors’ worries about the economy and the near-10% jobless rate were not quelled either earlier in the day by the latest ADP report, which showed higher-than-expected private-sector job growth in October. Read more about the ADP data.

The S&P Retail Index /quotes/comstock/10u!i:rlx (RLX 471.42, +6.25, +1.34%)  fell 0.8% to 467.76.

Sector sentiment also was jittery ahead of retailers’ October same-store-sales reports, which will mostly be released Thursday. Halloween sales may not do the trick for retailers.

Retail giant Wal-Mart Stores Inc. /quotes/comstock/13*!wmt/quotes/nls/wmt (WMT 54.67, -0.12, -0.22%)  declined about 0.8%.

Among the gainers, shares of shoe retailer DSW Inc. /quotes/comstock/13*!dsw/quotes/nls/dsw (DSW 34.97, +1.39, +4.14%)   jumped 4.2% after the company raised its outlook for the year after its third-quarter same-store sales jumped 10%.

Shares of Walgreen Co. /quotes/comstock/13*!wag/quotes/nls/wag (WAG 35.20, +0.71, +2.06%)  rose 1.6% after the drugstore chain reported a 1.3% decline in October same-store sales, though its drop in nonpharmacy sales was smaller than Wall Street expected.

Stocks fall after Federal Reserve says it will buy $600 billion in Treasurys

NEW YORK (AP) -- Stocks are falling after the Federal Reserve said it plans to buy $600 billion in Treasurys to stimulate the economy.
Investors had been waiting throughout the day to see exactly how big the bond-buying program would be. The Fed's aim is to drive interest rates lower in an effort to spark spending and lending.
The spending program falls largely inline with analysts' expectations.
Stocks had been rallying over the past two months, in part, due to growing expectations the Fed would provide a lift to the sluggish economy.
The Dow Jones industrial average is down 66, or 0.6 percent, at 11,124. The S&P 500 is down 7, or 0.6 percent, at 1,186, while the Nasdaq composite is down 18, or 0.7 percent, at 2,516.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.
NEW YORK (AP) -- Stocks traded in a tight range Wednesday as investors turned their attention to the Federal Reserve after there were few surprises in the midterm elections.
The Dow Jones industrial average fell 25 points in midday trading, but still near its highest closing level in more than two years. Broader indexes also fell slightly.
By the end of the day, investors will likely know exactly how much the Fed plans to spend to stimulate the economy. The central bank has hinted for two months it plans to buy Treasurys to drive interest rates lower in an attempt to spark lending and spending. However, there was still plenty of debate about the size and length of the program, particularly in the past few days.

Fed takes bold, risky step to bolster economy

By Pedro da Costa and Mark Felsenthal
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Federal Reserve launched a controversial new policy on Wednesday, committing to buy $600 billion more in government bonds by the middle of next year in an attempt to breathe new life into a struggling U.S. economy.
The decision, which takes the Fed into largely uncharted waters, is aimed at further lowering borrowing costs for consumers and businesses still suffering in the aftermath of the worst recession since the Great Depression.
The U.S. central bank said it would buy about $75 billion in longer-term Treasury bonds per month. It said it would regularly review the pace and size of the program and adjust it as needed depending on the path of the recovery.
In its post-meeting statement, the Fed described the economy as "slow", and said employers remained reluctant to add to payrolls. It said measures of inflation were "somewhat low."
"Although the committee anticipates a gradual return to higher levels of resource utilization in a context of price stability, progress toward its objectives has been disappointingly slow," the Fed said.
The central bank repeated its vow to keep the federal funds rate on overnight loans ultra-low for an extended period. Some analysts had speculated the Fed might broaden this commitment.
Kansas City Fed President Thomas Hoenig continued his streak of dissents, saying the risk of additional securities purchases outweighed the benefits.
In a separate statement, the New York Fed said it would temporarily relax a rule limiting ownership of any particular security to 35 percent. It said holdings would be allowed to rise above that threshold "only in modest increments."