Sen. Sherrod Brown is citing a recent government report which found a dramatic spike in the number of Americans, including children, going hungry as a reason to approve his Hunger Free Schools Act.

Gordon Brown warned the Afghan government today that he will not continue to risk the lives of British troops to defend a corrupt regime. In a clear policy shift, the Prime Minister cautioned President Karzai that unless he quashes endemic corruption he will have “forfeited” his right to international support. As he tried to shore up faltering public opinion at home by claiming that the conflict was a “necessity, not choice”, Mr Brown appeared to open the way for a possible exit strategy. “I am not prepared to put the lives of British men and women in harm’s way for a government that does not stand up against corruption,” he said.

Gordon Brown will today make clear he will not be "deterred, dissuaded or diverted" from Britain's mission in Afghanistan, despite a new poll showing nearly three-quarters of people believe UK troops should be withdrawn within 12 months. He will use a keynote speech to stress that "we cannot, must not and will not walk away," adding that international efforts "will succeed or fail together".

Jerry Brown is looking for more contributions in his effort to widen his lead over Gavin Newsom in the 2010 California Gubernatorial race. It appears that Brown is taking a page out of the Obama playbook and is asking for small Internet donations.

Gordon Brown has warned there are fewer than 50 days left for world leaders to set a course of action to save the planet from devastating climate change. The Prime Minister said there would be a global "catastrophe" if action to tackle climate change was not agreed at United Nations talks in Copenhagen in December. He also insisted "there is no plan B".

And this jumped out at me. Doubleday edition, Chapter 87, page 327

"It is indeed not a simple matter for me as an Israeli citizen to call on foreign governments, regional authorities, international social movements, faith-based organizations, unions and citizens to suspend cooperation with Israel. But today, as I watch my two boys playing in the yard, I am convinced that it is the only way that Israel can be saved from itself. I say this because Israel has reached a historic crossroads, and times of crisis call for dramatic measures. I say this as a Jew who has chosen to raise his children in Israel, who has been a member of the Israeli peace camp for almost 30 years and who is deeply anxious about the country's future."

Schaeffer is the author of - Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back . .... This is video worth the time. Everyone should be concerned.

In what may be a bit of British understatement or just misplaced optimism, President Barack Obama's very own Brit lapdog Prime Minister Gordan Brown says the war in Afghanistan is going splendidly. Following a spate of in eight combat related deaths in a 24 hour period, United Kingdom armed forces have now sustained more casualties since 2001 in the Afghan theater than during its deployment in Iraq.

Gordon Brown sparked anger from MPs in all parties and relatives of the 179 British servicemen killed in Iraq by announcing that an inquiry into the war would be held in private. The Prime Minister was accused of a "fix" after revealing yesterday that the independent inquiry would not report until July next year - safely after the next general election, which must be held by June 2010. There was criticism that the inquiry team, chaired by former Whitehall mandarin Sir John Chilcot, was composed of the "great and the good" and unlikely to rock the boat.

Tomorrow are local elections in England

It hit me later, when I was reading an interview Mr. Limbaugh did last year for the London Telegraph at his radio studio in Florida, that he is to politics what Richard Pryor was to comedy – an entertainer on the edge who is willing go into the political unknown. If you watch Limbaugh's facial expressions while he's speaking, you quickly see that he has the comedian's instinct for satirical irony, a distinction that some of his listening audience is not always so quick to recognize.

Now we have more dynamite buried in the GIVE Act (H.R. 1388), already passed in a whirlwind by the House and being fast-tracked in the Senate. The GIVE Act reauthorizes the National and Community Service Act of 1990 and the Domestic Volunteer Service Act of 1973, and also includes many more new programs encouraging Americans to volunteer and "give back" to their country. Who could object to this?

"Seven private medical laboratories have defrauded the Medi-Cal program of hundreds of millions of dollars by systematically overcharging the state by as much as 400% for blood, urine and other lab tests, state Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown said Thursday."

When I read the remarks of President Obama and Prime Minister Gordon Brown after their meeting at the Oval Office on March 3, 2009 and the speech of the latter to the Joint Session of Congress on March 4, 2009, I realized that a growing antagonism has emerged between certain factions of the ruling elites. The first warning of the acute differences was sounded by President Obama himself and it was most surprising that the mass media paid hardly attention to it. In his weekly address on February 28, 2009, President Obama said: “I realize that passing this budget won’t be easy. Because it represents real and dramatic change, it also represents a threat to the status quo in Washington. I know that the insurance industry won’t like the idea that they’ll have to bid competitively to continue offering Medicare coverage, but that’s how we’ll help preserve and protect Medicare and lower health care costs for American families. I know that banks and big student lenders won’t like the idea that we’re ending their huge taxpayer subsidies, but that’s how we’ll save taxpayers nearly $50 billion and make college more affordable. I know that oil and gas companies won’t like us ending nearly $30 billion in tax breaks, but that’s how we’ll help fund a renewable energy economy that will create new jobs and new industries...........

as stimulus legislation has progressed through the Congress it has become increasingly clear that the environmental failures in the bill are also economic failures. In making the stimulus dirtier, we're also making it worse. Wrangling over the legislation has produced a bevy of changes that have irked progressives. House leaders bowed to Republican pressure in dropping funding for family planning and adding in tax cuts, only to have the GOP unanimously oppose the final product. But in the Senate, where the legislation has grown to over $900 billion in total, the changes have been most upsetting, particularly where transportation priorities are concerned. It is remarkable that so soon after the high oil prices of last summer sapped consumer spending, outraged the public, and focused attention on our climate and energy crises, we would be willing to double-down on highways, despite a lack of adequate economic justification. If we can't make these easy decisions in the stimulus bill, I fear that we'll also struggle to make them when, or if, climate policy takes center stage.

The major supermarket chains Tescos, Asda and The Continental Lentil are to introduce tough new measures to clamp down on an alarming rise in conscientious shoppers. For decades supermarket retailers have relied on smell generators, convoluted special offers, and fancy colours to lure gormless shoppers into making impulse purchases of things they didn't necessarily need in the first place. But now supermarket bosses are alarmed at recent sales figures which reveal that impulse purchases have plunged to just 15 billion in the last quarter, compared with 43 billion in the previous two months.

The Dalai Lama has been convicted of tax fraud in the Supreme Court in Beijing today, in an unprecedented act of financial karma that will see the Lama being forced to pay all outstanding debt from his previous incarnations. Dalai’s lawyer Yin Guosawi told the court today “It is ludicrous to expect Lama to pay income tax on items he has no recollection of ever buying, and secondly, he has a horrible feeling he’s lost all the receipts”.

Mike Brown, who moved to greener pastures after completely screwing up the government respose to Katrina, has been evacuated from his home near Boulder, CO. No, he was not left to die as so many people were in New Orleans. Evidently FEMA works better nowadays.

Gay-marriage opponents filed legal briefs Monday accusing California Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown of having "invented an entirely new theory," one that "fails at every level," in his quest to find a reason to invalidate Proposition 8, which passed with 52% of the vote in November. "The people have the final word on what the California Constitution says," lawyers for the Protect Marriage Coalition wrote. "The practical result of the attorney general's theory is that the people can never amend the Constitution to overrule judicial interpretations of inalienable rights." The filing, which was co-written by Whitewater prosecutor and Pepperdine Law School Dean Kenneth Starr, came in response to a brief filed two weeks ago by the attorney general in which Brown surprised legal experts with a novel theory to argue that Proposition 8 should be invalidated.