ASSOCIATED PRESS, SEOUL – North Korea fired artillery rounds toward its disputed sea border with South Korea on Wednesday, prompting a barrage of warning shots from the South’s military and raising tensions on the divided peninsula.  No casualties or damage was reported following the incident.

North Korea fired about 30 artillery rounds into the sea from its western coast and the South immediately responded with 100 shots from a marine base on an island near the sea border, an officer at the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Seoul said. The North said it would continue to fire rounds.  [Read More]

(H/T The Washington Times)

Nearly one year after Barack Obama put the ink down to sign his stimulus (the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, ARRA) into law, the CBO has ‘updated’ its estimate on how much it will cost. The unsurprisingly more expensive new estimate will cost taxpayers another $75 billion.

When ARRA was being considered, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and the staff of the Joint Committee on taxation (JCT) estimated that it would increase budget deficits by a total of $787 billion… it appears that ARRA will have larger effects in later years than originally estimated. All told, CBO now anticipates that the law will increase deficits by $862 billion.  [Read More]

(H/T Townhall)

BOSTON –Yahoo News has reported an epic upset in liberal Massachusetts. Republican Scott Brown rode a wave of voter anger toward President Obama today to defeat Democrat Martha Coakley in a U.S. Senate election that left President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul in doubt and capped off his first year of failures in office.  The response by today’s voters acts as a clear referendum on the President and his Agenda.

Immediately, Brown will become the 41st Republican in the 100-member Senate, which could allow the GOP to block the president’s health care legislation and the rest of Obama’s agenda. Democrats needed Coakley to win for a 60th vote to thwart Republican filibusters.  [Read More]

(H/T The Drudge Report)

BOSTON, Mass.—With the leftist agenda hanging in the balance, President Barack Obama plunged Sunday into the hotly contested Massachusetts Senate race, urging voters to rally around the drowning Democratic candidate Martha Coakley.  Republican candidate Scott Brown, a state senator, said the president’s visit was a result of a “distress call to Washington” by the Coakley campaign.

Mr. Brown is riding a grassroots wave fueled by public discontent, and is appealing to independents, who make up more than 50% of the state’s registered voters, as well as Republicans.   The unexpectedly tight race has raised concern among Democrats that the party may be in for a trouncing this Fall, when all seats in the House and one third of those in the Senate are up for grabs.  Democrats control the Senate with a 60-vote majority, enough to override any Republican veto. A win by Mr. Brown would alter the numbers and throw the White House’s agenda into disarray.

On Sunday the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, which closely follows national campaigns, said the Massachusetts race remains “very much of a toss up,” with Mr. Brown “holding onto a very narrow, single-digit lead.”  The report added, “Given the vagaries of voter turnout, particularly in lower participation level special elections, this race could still go either way, but we put a finger on the scale for Brown.”   [Read More]

According to the Telegraph, Tim Geithner’s Federal Reserve Bank of New York urged AIG (American International Group) to remain silent on $105B paid to banks including Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank.

A series of emails obtained and made public by Congressman Darrell Issa reveal that AIG had planned to inform investors in a regulatory filing published on December 24, 2008.  AIG had paid counter-party banks owed money at a rate of 100 cents on the dollar.

However, according to the emails, an official from the NY Fed crossed out the reference ahead of publication, and there was no mention of the payments, which came to light five months later, in the filing.  “It appears that the New York Fed deliberately pressured AIG to restrict and delay the disclosure of important information,” said Congressman Issa. [Read More]

So much for transparency in Washington during this new age of ‘hope and change.’  It’s about time for our personal tax-cheat Tim Geithner to receive his walking papers as he has done nothing to end the recession, and at the same time has done everything in his power to flourish it.

According to the Washington Post, Senator Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) will announce his retirement from the Senate tomorrow:

Word of Dodd’s retirement plans comes after months of speculation about his political future, his faltering poll numbers and a growing sense among the Democratic establishment that he could not win a sixth term in the Senate.

After 20 years in the Senate it’s about time!  Sadly, Dodd’s departure will likely put his solid blue district in safe Democrat hands. But we can still celebrate the demise of a corrupt Democratic dinosaur, and who knows? we might just have a chance.

Iranian media on Sunday reported Tehran will conduct a large-scale military exercise next month, coinciding with what government officials now say is a deadline for the West to respond to its counteroffer to a nuclear-fuel deal.

The commander of Iran’s ground forces, Brig. Gen. Ahmad-Reza Pourdastan, said the drill will be conducted by Iran’s army, in conjunction with some units of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, to improve “defensive capabilities,” Press TV, the English-language, state-run media outlet reported. [Read More]

(H/T The Drudge Report)

At least a dozen former Guantánamo Bay inmates have rejoined al-Qaeda to fight in Yemen, The Times has learnt, amid growing concern over the ability of the country’s Government to accept almost 100 more former inmates from the detention centre.

The Obama Administration promised to close the Guantánamo facility by January 22, a deadline that it will be unable to meet. The 91 Yemeni prisoners in Guantánamo make up the largest national contingent among the 198 being held.

Six prisoners were returned to Yemen last month. After the Christmas Day bomb plot in Detroit, US officials are increasingly concerned that the country is becoming a hot-bed of terrorism. Eleven of the former inmates known to have rejoined al-Qaeda in Yemen were born in Saudi Arabia. The organisation merged its Saudi and Yemeni offshoots last year.  [Read More]

(H/T The Drudge Report)

Now that our attention is focused on airline security measures thanks to the failed airline attack on Christmas Day, it’s worth mentioning that one senator took money away from aviation security to line the pockets of a constituency that supported his presidential campaign in a big way.

According to the Washington Examiner, back in July, Senator Chris Dodd, D-Conn., proposed an amendment reducing aviation security appropriations by $4.5 million in favor of firefighter grants — a notoriously inneffective program. In fact, the money was specifically “for screening operations and the amount for explosives detection systems.”

The amendment was also sponsored by Sen. Lieberman, D-Conn., and Sen. Carper, D-Del., but Dodd deserves to be singled out here because the firefighters union is a pet constituency of his. In 2007 he campaigned all through Iowa with the firefighters union. It was one of the few distinguishable features of Dodd’s ill-fated presidential bid.  [Read More]

(H/T The Drudge Report)

According to a Wall Street Journal Report, a passenger on a Detroit-bound Northwest Airlines flight tried Friday to detonate an explosive device strapped to his leg and later told investigators he had affiliations with al Qaeda and was trying to blow up the plane, according to a senior U.S. official.

The suspect told investigators he was given the device by al Qaeda operatives in Yemen, along with detonation instructions, the official said.  Rep. Peter King (R., N.Y.) identified the man as a 23-year-old Nigerian named Abdul Mudallad.

Officials said they believed the man boarded a KLM flight in Lagos, Nigeria, and changed planes in Amsterdam.  The suspect’s name didn’t appear on any terrorist watch lists maintained by U.S. authorities, Mr. King said, but it turned up “hot” in other terrorism-related databases maintained by intelligence officials.  [Read More]