Boehner wants new bill cutting payroll tax

House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio, second from left, briefs reporters after lawmakers from both political parties came together on an 11th-hour deal to keep the government from shutting down, Friday, Dec. 16, 2011, on Capitol Hill in Washington. From left are, Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, Boehner, House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy of Calif., and Rep. Peter Roskam, R-Ill. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio, second from left, briefs reporters after lawmakers from both political parties came together on an 11th-hour deal to keep the government from shutting down, Friday, Dec. 16, 2011, on Capitol Hill in Washington. From left are, Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, Boehner, House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy of Calif., and Rep. Peter Roskam, R-Ill. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

President Barack Obama delivers a statement in the Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House in Washington, Saturday, Dec. 17, 2011 following the Senate vote to approve legislation extending a Social Security payroll tax cut and long-term jobless benefits for two months. Obama says it would be "inexcusable" for Congress not to extend a payroll tax cut for the rest of 2012 when lawmakers return from their holiday break. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky leaves the floor after the Senate passed legislation extending a Social Security payroll tax cut and jobless benefits for just two months, at the Capitol in Washington, Saturday, Dec. 17, 2011. The action also extends long-term unemployment benefits for another two months. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

President Barack Obama delivers a statement in the Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House in Washington, Saturday, Dec. 17, 2011 following the Senate vote to approve legislation extending a Social Security payroll tax cut and long-term jobless benefits for two months. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

President Barack Obama pauses while making a statement at the White House in Washington, on Saturday, Dec. 17, 2011. Obama says it would be "inexcusable" for Congress not to extend a payroll tax cut for the rest of 2012 when lawmakers return from their holiday break. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

WASHINGTON (AP) ? House Speaker John Boehner said Sunday that he opposes a Senate-approved bill that extends a payroll tax cut and jobless benefits for just two months and said congressional bargainers need to write a new version that would last an entire year.

As if to suggest other changes he would like in the legislation, the Ohio Republican mentioned a provision that would block Obama administration anti-pollution rules and "reasonable reductions in spending" that were in a House-passed version of the payroll tax bill that the Senate ignored.

Boehner's comments came a day after House Republicans used a conference call to complain bitterly about the Senate bill, putting House passage in serious jeopardy.

House Republicans dislike the Senate bill for many reasons, including its lack of what they consider real spending cuts and its removal of restrictions on Obama administration rules. Others are unhappy about extending unemployment benefits or oppose cutting the payroll tax, which is used to finance the Social Security system.

"It's pretty clear I and our members oppose the Senate bill," Boehner said on "Meet the Press" on NBC. He added, "I believe two months is just kicking the can down the road."

House leaders have scheduled a vote on the bill for Monday.

The bill would force President Barack Obama to make a decision in the next two months on whether to build the proposed Keystone XL pipeline. The president had initially said he would postpone a decision on the 1,700-mile-long pipeline until after next year's elections and threatened to kill the payroll tax bill if it included the pipeline provision. But he backed off this week as the Senate payroll compromise took shape.

Republicans strongly support the pipeline, which is supposed to pump oil from Alberta, Canada, to Texas, for the thousands of jobs it is expected to create. Unions favor the plan but environmentalists oppose it, forcing Obama to choose between two Democratic constituencies.

The Senate bill says Obama can reject the pipeline only if he decides building it would not be in the national interest.

Congressional leaders had hoped that approval of the tax measure would end their work and let them send lawmakers home for the year. It is unclear how long it would take House and Senate leaders to work out any new compromise on the legislation, but Boehner suggested it could done in the next two weeks.

The bill would extend this year's 4.2 payroll tax rate through February. Without congressional action, that rate would return to 6.2 percent on Jan. 1, costing 160 million workers a two-month tax break worth nearly $170.

The bill would continue extra unemployment benefits for the long-term unemployed, which would also expire Jan. 1. It would also prevent a 27 percent in doctors' Medicare reimbursements from occurring on New Year's Day, a cut that could discourage some physicians from treating Medicare-covered patients.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2011-12-18-US-Congress-Rdp/id-b276ab57d7f743e0ac0fbc090378d129

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Video: Seven miners safe after rock collapse

>>> averted overnight at the lucky friday silver mine in idaho after a rock burst trapped and injured seven workers, all of them rescued safely. nbc's miguel almaguer is in mul mulmu mullan , idaho with more.

>> reporter: the miners were injured during a rock burst , sudden explosion of underground rock . the miners were more than a mile deep when they were installing a safety net to prevent an incident like this one. nearby crews heard their call for help and brought them to safety. the injuries we're told are fairly minor lacerations and a broken leg. the lucky friday mine here in mullan , idaho is owned by the hekla mining company . after two deaths earlier this year the company was cited four times for safety concerns and fined a million dollars. the company says the mine will be shut down pending an investigation. natalie?

>> all right. for those miners though, lucky mine living up to its name. thank you very much, miguel almaguer in mullan , idaho .

Source: http://video.today.msnbc.msn.com/today/45680932/

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Euro under pressure as EU summit optimism fades (AP)

FRANKFURT, Germany ? Investors have soured on the latest attempt to resolve the European debt crisis.

Stocks tumbled around the world Wednesday, the euro slid to an 11-month low and borrowing costs spiked for heavily indebted Italy. The markets' jitters reflect rising doubts about the deal European Union leaders reached at a summit last Friday in Brussels.

The agreement requires the 17 countries that use the euro and nine other EU countries to balance their budgets and gives the International Monetary Fund up to euro200 ($264 billion) to help countries with high debt loads.

But there's growing disappointment that the new EU treaty:

? Doesn't reduce existing government debt levels;

? Doesn't do much to promote the long-term growth that would shrink those burdens;

? Doesn't provide enough money to reassure financial markets that Italy and Spain can keep paying their bills.

"Fiscal discipline is needed in the long term, but it doesn't address today's crisis," says Athanasios Vamvakidis, head European currency strategist at Merrill Lynch-Bank of America. "There isn't enough money to stop the run on sovereign bonds of Italy and Spain. Investors don't want to buy their debt."

It was also unclear how the agreement, which is being written into a treaty, would be enforced and whether some of the countries that signed on might end up dropping out because of resistance to budget cuts back home. Britain has rejected the deal.

"Markets like quick fixes and have no patience with the length of the political processes," says Gianni Toniolo, a professor of economics and history at Duke University.

European Central Bank President Mario Draghi praised the agreement made in Brussels. But so far he has rejected calls for the bank to make large-scale purchases of European bonds, something financial markets are hoping for and that would help put downward pressure on government borrowing costs.

The Dow Jones industrials fell 131 points, or 1.1 percent, to 11,823. The euro traded below $1.30 for the first time since January 12, hitting a low of $1.2973. Some of that is loss of confidence in the assets of the 17 euro nations, but it's also the result of two quarter-point interest rate cuts from the European Central Bank. The cuts lower the return on euro-denominated holdings and can induce investors to move money elsewhere.

European stock markets fell broadly. Germany's DAX dropped 1.7 percent; France's main stock index lost 3.3 percent.

Italy held its last bond auction of the year on Wednesday and it didn't go well. Investors demanded even more money to lend to the eurozone's third-largest economy. Italy paid 6.47 percent interest to borrow euro3 billion ($3.95 billion) for five years, up from 6.30 percent just a month ago.

The higher rates reflected investors' fears over the inadequacy of last week's agreement to keep eurozone governments from piling up more debt in the future. Italy has a staggering euro1.9 trillion ($2.5 trillion) in outstanding debt, and its economy is too large for Europe to bail out. Greece, Ireland and Portugal have been bailed out.

European officials are scheduled to meet Thursday to work out the details of the treaty negotiated in Brussels, according to one European official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the talks are confidential.

The new treaty aims to impose tighter rules on how much money eurozone governments can spend. EU leaders agreed to limit deficits to 0.5 percent of economic output in regular economic times and to better enforce penalties against countries whose deficits rise too high.

The treaty will not be signed until March, at the earliest.

Several knotty issues must be resolved, including how budget rules contained in the new treaty will be reconciled with those in the basic treaty of the European Union, which remains unchanged. Another detail to be sorted out is whether countries signing on to the new treaty can legally rely on EU institutions, such as the European Commission and the European Court of Justice, to enforce its rules.

Governments and national parliaments are also leery of transferring too much sovereignty to Brussels or their fellow euro members.

"The process of negotiating the final deal to suit all will only add to doubts about its relevance in the long run ? meanwhile the immediate crisis continues," said Elisabeth Afseth, an analyst at Evolution Securities.

Meanwhile, European banks are under mounting pressure. The German government announced Wednesday it was reactivating its financial sector rescue fund. And the European Banking Authority said last week that the continent's banks need to raise about euro115 billion ($149 billion) to protect lenders against market turmoil, including bad government debt.

German banks need to raise euro13.1 billion ($17 billion); the country's second-biggest bank, Commerzbank AG, has been told it needs to raise euro5.3 billion ($6.89 billion).

Last week's summit did come up with a commitment from EU governments to loan up to euro200 ($264 billion) to the International Monetary Fund, which could help out the eurozone. Yet not all countries have made firm commitments to do this, and some poorer countries in Eastern Europe that do not use the euro are not happy about being asked to help pay for richer countries' mistakes.

Czech Prime Minister Petr Necas said he is personally against contributing the roughly 90 billion koruna (euro3.5 billion; $4.6 billion) that is sought, although his country has not made a final decision. In Slovakia, which uses the euro, the leader of a center-right party in the government said he has an "overall negative" view of the plan.

Leaders did agree to start a new euro500 billion ($659 billion) euro backstop fund, the European Stability Mechanism, a year ahead of time in July. But there are doubts about whether it is enough to soothe markets.

Many economists say the European Central Bank will eventually have to step up its so-far limited purchases of government debt ? because only that will keep borrowing costs down.

ECB President Mario Draghi has said governments shouldn't count on central bank bailouts; instead he said they should cut deficits and take steps to improve growth to win back bond market confidence.

Until recently, the euro had been surprisingly resilient against the dollar, despite the pressures heaped upon it by the debt crisis. That is partly because interest rates in Europe have been so much higher than those in the U.S., where the Federal Reserve has kept its main interest rate near zero percent.

That interest rate differential has helped offset the concerns investors naturally felt as the European debt crisis raged and threatened to undermine Europe's banking system and the currency itself.

But the ECB has cut rates twice since early November, giving investors one less motive to buy euros. That is one reason the euro lost ground Wednesday.

Jacob Funk Kirkegaard, a research fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, says the market's impatience likely will pay off ? by putting pressure on European leaders to find a lasting solution to the crisis. "You need a certain amount of market volatility because otherwise these decisions will never be made," he says.

__

AP Business Writers Paul Wiseman in Washington and Bernard Condon in New York contributed. Steinhauser contributed from Brussels

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/europe/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111214/ap_on_bi_ge/eu_europe_financial_crisis

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Christopher Hitchens, militant pundit, dies at 62 (AP)

Cancer weakened, but did not soften Christopher Hitchens. He did not repent or forgive or ask for pity. As if granted diplomatic immunity, his mind's eye looked plainly upon the attack and counterattack of disease and treatments that robbed him of his hair, his stamina, his speaking voice and eventually his life.

"I love the imagery of struggle," he wrote about his illness in an August 2010 essay in Vanity Fair. "I sometimes wish I were suffering in a good cause, or risking my life for the good of others, instead of just being a gravely endangered patient."

Hitchens, a Washington, D.C.-based author, essayist and polemicist who waged verbal and occasional physical battle on behalf of causes left and right, died Thursday night at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston of pneumonia, a complication of his esophageal cancer, according to a statement from Vanity Fair magazine. He was 62.

"There will never be another like Christopher. A man of ferocious intellect, who was as vibrant on the page as he was at the bar," said Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter. "Those who read him felt they knew him, and those who knew him were profoundly fortunate souls."

He had enjoyed his drink (enough to "to kill or stun the average mule") and cigarettes, until he announced in June 2010 that he was being treated for cancer of the esophagus.

He was a most engaged, prolific and public intellectual who wrote numerous books, was a frequent television commentator and a contributor to Vanity Fair, Slate and other publications. He became a popular author in 2007 thanks to "God is Not Great," a manifesto for atheists.

"Christopher Hitchens was everything a great essayist should be: infuriating, brilliant, highly provocative and yet intensely serious," said Britain's Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg. "I worked as an intern for him years ago. My job was to fact check his articles. Since he had a photographic memory and an encyclopedic mind it was the easiest job I've ever done."

Long after his diagnosis, his columns and essays appeared regularly, savaging the royal family, reveling in the death of Osama bin Laden, or pondering the letters of poet Philip Larkin. He was intolerant of nonsense, including about his own health. In a piece which appeared in the January 2012 issue of Vanity Fair, he dismissed the old saying that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

"So far, I have decided to take whatever my disease can throw at me, and to stay combative even while taking the measure of my inevitable decline. I repeat, this is no more than what a healthy person has to do in slower motion," he wrote. "It is our common fate. In either case, though, one can dispense with facile maxims that don't live up to their apparent billing."

Eloquent and intemperate, bawdy and urbane, Hitchens was an acknowledged contrarian and contradiction ? half-Christian, half-Jewish and fully non-believing; a native of England who settled in America; a former Trotskyite who backed the Iraq war and supported George W. Bush. But his passions remained constant and targets of his youth, from Henry Kissinger to Mother Teresa, remained hated.

He was a militant humanist who believed in pluralism and racial justice and freedom of speech, big cities and fine art and the willingness to stand the consequences. He was smacked in the rear by then-British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and beaten up in Beirut. He once submitted to waterboarding to prove that it was indeed torture.

Hitchens was a committed sensualist who abstained from clean living as if it were just another kind of church. In 2005, he would recall a trip to Aspen, Colo., and a brief encounter after stepping off a ski lift.

"I was met by immaculate specimens of young American womanhood, holding silver trays and flashing perfect dentition," he wrote. "What would I like? I thought a gin and tonic would meet the case. `Sir, that would be inappropriate.' In what respect? `At this altitude gin would be very much more toxic than at ground level.' In that case, I said, make it a double."

An emphatic ally and inspired foe, he stood by friends in trouble ("Satanic Verses" novelist Salman Rushdie) and against enemies in power (Iran's Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini). His heroes included George Orwell, Thomas Paine and Gore Vidal (pre-Sept. 11). Among those on the Hitchens list of shame: Michael Moore, Saddam Hussein, Kim Jong Il, Sarah Palin, Gore Vidal (post Sept. 11) and Prince Charles.

"We have known for a long time that Prince Charles' empty sails are so rigged as to be swelled by any passing waft or breeze of crankiness and cant," Hitchens wrote in Slate in 2010 after the heir to the British throne gave a speech criticizing Galileo for the scientist's focus on "the material aspect of reality."

"He fell for the fake anthropologist Laurens van der Post. He was bowled over by the charms of homeopathic medicine. He has been believably reported as saying that plants do better if you talk to them in a soothing and encouraging way. But this latest departure promotes him from an advocate of harmless nonsense to positively sinister nonsense."

Hitchens was born in Portsmouth, England, in 1949. His father, Eric, was a "purse-lipped" Navy veteran known as "The Commander"; his mother, Yvonne, a romantic who later killed herself during an extra-marital rendezvous in Greece. Young Christopher would have rather read a book. He was "a mere weed and weakling and kick-bag" who discovered that "words could function as weapons" and so stockpiled them.

In college, Oxford, he made such longtime friends as authors Martin Amis and Ian McEwan and claimed to be nearby when visiting Rhodes scholar Bill Clinton did or did not inhale marijuana. Radicalized by the 1960s, Hitchens was often arrested at political rallies, was kicked out of Britain's Labour Party over his opposition to the Vietnam War and became a correspondent for the radical magazine International Socialiam. His reputation broadened in the 1970s through his writings for the New Statesman.

Wavy-haired and brooding and aflame with wit and righteous anger, he was a star of the left on paper and on camera, a popular television guest and a columnist for one of the world's oldest liberal publications, The Nation. In friendlier times, Vidal was quoted as citing Hitchens as a worthy heir to his satirical throne.

But Hitchens never could simply nod his head. He feuded with fellow Nation columnist Alexander Cockburn, broke with Vidal and angered freedom of choice supporters by stating that the child's life begins at conception. An essay for Vanity Fair was titled "Why Women Aren't Funny," and Hitchens wasn't kidding.

He had long been unhappy with the left's reluctance to confront enemies or friends. He would note his strong disappointment that Arthur Miller and other leading liberals shied from making public appearances on behalf of Rushdie after the Ayatollah Khomeini called for his death. He advocated intervention in Bosnia and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.

Rushdie posted on his Twitter page early Friday: "Goodbye, my beloved friend. A great voice falls silent. A great heart stops."

No Democrat angered him more than Clinton, whose presidency led to the bitter end of Hitchens' friendship with White House aide Sidney Blumenthal and other Clinton backers. As Hitchens wrote in his memoir, he found Clinton "hateful in his behavior to women, pathological as a liar, and deeply suspect when it came to money in politics."

He wrote the anti-Clinton book, "No One Left to Lie To," at a time when most liberals were supporting the president as he faced impeachment over his affair with Monica Lewinsky. Hitchens also loathed Hillary Rodham Clinton and switched his affiliation from independent to Democrat in 2008 just so he could vote against her in the presidential primary.

The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, completed his exit. He fought with Vidal, Noam Chomsky and others who either suggested that U.S. foreign policy had helped caused the tragedy or that the Bush administration had advanced knowledge. He supported the Iraq war, quit The Nation, backed Bush for re-election in 2004 and repeatedly chastised those whom he believed worried unduly about the feelings of Muslims.

"It's not enough that faith claims to be the solution to all problems," he wrote in Slate in 2009 after a Danish newspaper apologized for publishing cartoons of the prophet Muhammad that led Muslim organizations to threaten legal action. "It is now demanded that such a preposterous claim be made immune from any inquiry, any critique, and any ridicule."

His essays were compiled in such books as "For the Sake of Argument" and "Prepared for the Worst." He also wrote short biographies/appreciations of Paine and Thomas Jefferson, a tribute to Orwell and "Letters to a Young Contrarian (Art of Mentoring)," in which he advised that "Only an open conflict of ideas and principles can produce any clarity." A collection of essays, "Arguably," came out in September 2011 and he was planning a "book-length meditation on malady and mortality." He appeared in a 2010 documentary about the topical singer Phil Ochs.

Survived by his second wife, author Carol Blue, and by his three children (Alexander, Sophia and Antonia), Hitchens had quotable ideas about posterity, clarified years ago when he saw himself referred to as "the late" Christopher Hitchens in print. For the May 2010 issue of Vanity Fair, before his illness, Hitchens submitted answers for the Proust Questionnaire, a probing and personal survey for which the famous have revealed everything from their favorite color to their greatest fear.

His vision of earthly bliss: "To be vindicated in my own lifetime."

His ideal way to die: "Fully conscious, and either fighting or reciting (or fooling around)."

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/topstories/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111216/ap_on_re_us/us_obit_hitchens

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UN official tells nations to end gay executions (AP)

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Robert Downey Jr. Talks 'Sherlock Holmes' Expert on 'Kimmel' (VIDEO)

Robert Downey Jr. stopped by "Jimmy Kimmel Live" (Weeknights, 12AM ET on ABC) last night to talk about his new film,"Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows."

He acknowledged the problems inherent in portraying such a beloved figure and said that during shooting he'd run foul of the leading Sherlock Holmes expert, who was advising on accuracy.

Seeing that the guy was very upset about something, Downey asked what he had done wrong.

Turns out that whilst in character as Holmes, Downey called Watson (Jude Law) "John," which is a huge no-no. The disappointed expert told Downey that Holmes would never call his trusty sidekick by his first name: "Only call him 'Watson' or 'Mr. Watson.'"

TV Replay scours the vast television landscape to find the most interesting, amusing, and, on a good day, amazing moments, and delivers them right to your browser.

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/16/robert-downey-jr-talks-sherlock-holmes-expert-jimmy-kimmel-live-video_n_1153029.html

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Watchdogs: Perry team might have violated campaign finance laws ...

Two watchdog groups Thursday called on the Federal Election Commission to look into possible infringements by Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry?s campaign and a pro-Perry super-PAC.
?
Make Us Great Again might have shared videos produced by the political action committee with the Perry campaign for free or might not have charged the correct amount, Campaign Legal Center and Democracy 21 said in a news release.
?

?The Perry campaign is prohibited from accepting such in-kind contributions with a value exceeding the $2,500 contribution limit and, further, Super PACs are prohibited altogether from making contributions to candidates,? Campaign Legal Center attorney Paul Ryan said in the release.
?
?It appears the Perry campaign and Make Us Great Again likely violated these laws and the FEC needs to investigate.?
?
The two groups, which plan to file a complaint urging investigation with the commission, cite Politico reports as evidence that the groups shared campaign footage.?Three portions of footage used in campaign ads created by Make Us Great Again were also used by Perry?s campaign, the release states.
?
The Texas governor?s campaign pulled the footage from the public domain, a spokesman for the campaign told The Hill.
?
Super-PACs, also known as independent expenditure-only committees, are prohibited from donating to or coordinating with candidates.?The gift of video production, valued at more than $2,500, would constitute an in-kind donation and likely break general finance laws as well.
?
?The use by the Perry presidential campaign of the same video footage contained in an ad run by the Super PAC supporting Governor Perry raises serious concerns about whether the Super PAC is really independent from the Perry campaign, as required by law,? Democracy 21 President Fred Wertheimer said in a news release.
?
Make Us Great Again is headed by former Perry Chief of Staff Mike Toomey and filed with the commission to be an independent expenditure-only committee at the end of July. Paul Kilgore is treasurer for the group.
?
Immediate requests for comment from Make Us Great Again were not returned.
?
? Cameron Joseph contributed.

Source: http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/199671-watchdogs-accuse-perry-campaign-super-pac-of-breakign-campaign-finance-laws

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