April 26, 2007

Congressional probe of student loans widens

From Reuters:

Senate investigators have obtained information indicating lenders may have told a borrower's spouse that the borrower would go to jail if he did not pay, which is "a blatantly false assertion," said Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat.

Investigators are also looking into whether lenders have refused to negotiate with borrowers on payment deferment, called borrowers on the job after being told to stop, harassed borrowers' neighbors, family and co-workers and used profane language to intimidate borrowers.

Kennedy asked Fitzpatrick to provide information about Sallie Mae's collection practices under the federally guaranteed student loan system.

Sallie Mae spokesman Tom Joyce said, "It is a shame that Senator Kennedy's staff is continuing to investigate through press releases ... The media received this letter before we did."

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As a college student, this kind of ruffles my feathers. The quote from the Sallie Mae spokesman kind of gives away that they're organization is pretty douche bagged, "It is a shame that Senator Kennedy's staff is continuing to investigate through press releases." Yeah, didn't give you enough time to cover this stuff? Wish they'd have told you about it and negotiated to keep it quiet instead of getting the bad press?

Okay, maybe nothing happened. I kinda just wanted to blog cuz I haven't done very much lately.

April 25, 2007

Panel votes to subpoena Condoleezza Rice

From AP via Yahoo:

In rapid succession, congressional committees Wednesday ramped up their investigations of the Bush administration by approving a subpoena for Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and granting immunity to a key aide to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

By 21-10, the House oversight committee voted to issue a subpoena to Rice to compel her story on the Bush administration's claim, now discredited, that Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa.

Moments earlier in the committee chamber next door, the House Judiciary Committee voted 32-6 to grant immunity to Monica Goodling, Gonzales' White House liaison, for her testimony on why the administration fired eight federal prosecutors. The panel also unanimously approved — but did not issue — a subpoena to compel her to appear.

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The Democrats are doing a few cool things, but
the Supreme Court is running wild (link courtesy of RealArt).

Now I gotta go to class.

April 24, 2007

From the AP via Yahoo News:

Vice President Dick Cheney accused Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (news, bio, voting record) on Tuesday of pursuing a defeatist strategy in Iraq to win votes in the next election — a charge Reid said did not warrant a response.

here's all of it

I love how the Bush crowd acts like we haven't lost the war already. What is victory anyway, in this situation? Going into Iraq in the first place was a defeatist strategy that was used to win votes in the next election.

We need to cut the White House's Dick off.

April 9, 2007

Unseasonably cold weather does not debunk global warming

When I stepped outside and felt how cold it was the other day, I immediately expected to hear someone at some point in the day say, "So much for global warming, huh?" I didn't hear it until about 1am Sunday morning (my band played Saturday night and it was fucking awesome by the way) from a Denny's hostess.

I've noticed something that many oldish people do when they talk about things that they don't know anything about. They kind of trail off and use sentence fragments and buzzwords to kind of display their point (though it is scarcely a point at all) without taking any definate stance on the subject. The Denny's hostess said something like, "So much for all this global warming--supossedly affected so many people for the last 20 years or so." Granted I may have misquoted, what the hell kind of sentence is that in the first place? My shoulders drooped and I let out a long sigh after I heard this nice oldish ignorant lady try to make a clever comment in defiance to all the smart guy scientists out there who outa just shut up and get over it.

If she had been talking to me, here's what I might have said:

IT DOESN'T MATTER WHETHER THE GLOBE IS ACTUALLY GETTING HOTTER!

POLUTION IS BAD!

PROPONENTS OF GLOBAL WARMING HAVE DONE NOTHING BUT SUGGEST THAT HUMANS STOP POLLUTING THE AIR SO MUCH!

IS THAT SO MUCH TO ASK?

We shouldn't have to argue about whether global warming is actually happening, we need to stop out wasteful and dangerous ways. Let's invest in alternative fuels for automobiles. Let's use environmentally safe prodcuts. Let's make electricity from the several other ways that we can make it that don't involve releasing bad shit. Let's stop farting or something, I don't know, why does this need to be a debate?