Continue reading Face and 'effort' controlled iPad game helps you outrun the competition (video)
Face and 'effort' controlled iPad game helps you outrun the competition (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 16 Jan 2012 06:07:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | | Email this | Comments
Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/l-jNzw7zvts/
miami marlins hanley ramirez blago mumia abu jamal mumia abu jamal pearl harbor alec baldwin
WASHINGTON ? The Justice Department is publicly rebutting Republican criticism of the legality of President Barack Obama's recent recess appointments of a national consumer watchdog and other officials.
The department released a 23-page legal opinion Thursday summarizing the advice it gave the White House before the Jan. 4 appointments. GOP leaders have argued the Senate was not technically in recess when Obama acted so the regular Senate confirmation process should have been followed.
Assistant Attorney General Virginia Seitz wrote that the president has authority to make such appointments because the Senate is on a 20-day recess, even though it has held periodic pro forma sessions in which no business is conducted. Seitz argued the pro forma sessions ? some with as few as one member present ? have not been sufficient for the chamber to exercise its constitutional authority to advise and consent to normal presidential nominations.
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell has said Obama has endangered the nation's systems of checks and balances, and Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch says the appointments are a very grave decision by an autocratic White House.
Senate Republicans have been using their ability to block or stall Senate confirmation of some regular nominees as a way to curb agencies they believe have taken or are poised to take actions they disagree with.
On Jan. 4, Obama appointed Richard Cordray, a former attorney general of Ohio, to be the first director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Obama also appointed three members to the National Labor Relations Board that day. There was stiff Republican opposition to creating the new consumer agency, which was authorized in the financial regulation law, and Republicans have argued that the labor board has tilted toward unions under Obama's Democratic administration.
The Justice official who wrote the opinion, Seitz, heads the department's Office of Legal Counsel, which is empowered to provide binding legal opinions to the executive branch.
Her new memo cites a Justice Department legal opinion from President George W. Bush's Republican administration in justifying Obama's recent appointments. The Bush administration opinion from 2004 says that a recess during a session of the Senate can meet constitutional requirements for permitting the president to make recess appointments as long as the recess is of sufficient length. Seitz noted that the last five presidents have made recess appointments during recesses of 14 days or less.
In December, the Senate agreed to adjourn until Jan. 23 but to convene pro forma sessions in which no business was to be conducted every Tuesday and Friday.
The Senate pro forma sessions in which no business was conducted, do not "in our opinion" interrupt the recess "in a manner that would preclude the president" from acting, Seitz wrote in her Jan. 6 opinion.
Beginning in late 2007, the Senate has frequently conducted pro forma sessions that typically last only a few seconds and that "apparently require the presence of only one senator," Seitz wrote. Under a legal framework dating back nearly a century, recess appointments have been permitted when the Senate cannot receive communications from the president or participate as a body in confirming nominees.
In an op-ed article in the Washington Post, Edwin Meese, who served as attorney general under Republican President Ronald Reagan, and Todd Gaziano, a former Office of Legal Counsel attorney who is now a fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, called Obama's actions "a breathtaking violation of the separation of powers."
The GOP's unsuccessful opposition to creating the consumer watchdog agency has turned into opposition to potential nominees to lead the office. Stiff Republican opposition headed Obama off from even nominating Elizabeth Warren, the interim official who helped set up the office, to be its permanent chief.
There is GOP resistance as well to filling slots on the National Labor Relations Board that Republicans feel has become pro-labor under Obama. If Republicans keep enough slots vacant on the labor board, they can prevent it from acting at all.
The pro forma sessions have been used by both Democratic and Republican senators in an effort to stave off recess appointments.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said in 2008 that the pro forma sessions were designed to prevent the president ? at that time Bush ? from exercising his constitutional power to make recess appointments.
Last year with Obama in the White House, some Republican senators urged House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, not to pass any resolution that would allow the Senate to recess or adjourn for more than three days. The Constitution provides that neither the House nor the Senate shall adjourn for more than three days without the consent of the other. No concurrent resolution of adjournment has been introduced in either chamber since May of last year.
x factor finale pro bowl voting kindle fire update college board pasco county rooney mara solstice
Intel Semifinalist Samantha Garvey, 17, right, gets a hug from her science research teacher, Rebecca Grella, left, after an announcement by Suffolk County officials, Friday, Jan. 13, 2012, at Brentwood High School in Brentwood, NY. Garvey and her family were offered a rent subsidized home by officials in the Long Island county where she goes to school. Samantha Garvey is one of 61 students who have a chance at the competition's top prize of $100,000. The 17-year-old and her family moved into a homeless shelter on Jan. 1. Suffolk County officials made the housing announcement Friday morning at Brentwood High School, where Garvey is a senior. County official Steve Bellone says Garvey and her family can move into the house in about 10 days. ( AP Photo/John Dunn)
Intel Semifinalist Samantha Garvey, 17, right, gets a hug from her science research teacher, Rebecca Grella, left, after an announcement by Suffolk County officials, Friday, Jan. 13, 2012, at Brentwood High School in Brentwood, NY. Garvey and her family were offered a rent subsidized home by officials in the Long Island county where she goes to school. Samantha Garvey is one of 61 students who have a chance at the competition's top prize of $100,000. The 17-year-old and her family moved into a homeless shelter on Jan. 1. Suffolk County officials made the housing announcement Friday morning at Brentwood High School, where Garvey is a senior. County official Steve Bellone says Garvey and her family can move into the house in about 10 days. ( AP Photo/John Dunn)
Intel Semifinalist Samantha Garvey, 17, right, gets a hug from her science research teacher, Rebecca Grella, left, after an announcement by Suffolk County officials, Friday, Jan. 13, 2012, at Brentwood High School in Brentwood, NY. Garvey and her family were offered a rent subsidized home by officials in the Long Island county where she goes to school. Samantha Garvey is one of 61 students who have a chance at the competition's top prize of $100,000. The 17-year-old and her family moved into a homeless shelter on Jan. 1. Suffolk County officials made the housing announcement Friday morning at Brentwood High School, where Garvey is a senior. County official Steve Bellone says Garvey and her family can move into the house in about 10 days. ( AP Photo/John Dunn)
Intel Semifinalist Samantha Garvey, 17, right, gets a high five from her science research teacher, Rebecca Grella, left, after an announcement by Suffolk County officials, Friday, Jan. 13, 2012, at Brentwood High School in Brentwood, NY. Garvey and her family were offered a rent subsidized home by officials in the Long Island county where she goes to school. Samantha Garvey is one of 61 students who have a chance at the competition's top prize of $100,000. The 17-year-old and her family moved into a homeless shelter on Jan. 1. Suffolk County officials made the housing announcement Friday morning at Brentwood High School, where Garvey is a senior. County official Steve Bellone says Garvey and her family can move into the house in about 10 days. ( AP Photo/John Dunn)
Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone, left, applauds as Intel Semifinalist Samantha Garvey, 17, right, speaks to the media, Friday, Jan. 13, 2012, at Brentwood High School in Brentwood, NY. Garvey and her family were offered a rent subsidized home by officials in the Long Island county where she goes to school. Samantha Garvey is one of 61 students who have a chance at the competition's top prize of $100,000. The 17-year-old and her family moved into a homeless shelter on Jan. 1. Suffolk County officials made the housing announcement Friday morning at Brentwood High School, where Garvey is a senior. Bellone says Garvey and her family can move into the house in about 10 days. ( AP Photo/John Dunn)
Olga Garvey, left, hugs her daughter, Intel Semifinalist Samantha Garvey, 17, right, during an announcement by Suffolk County officials, Friday, Jan. 13, 2012, at Brentwood High School in Brentwood, NY. Garvey and her family were offered a rent subsidized home by officials in the Long Island county where she goes to school. Samantha Garvey is one of 61 students who have a chance at the competition's top prize of $100,000. The 17-year-old and her family moved into a homeless shelter on Jan. 1. Suffolk County officials made the housing announcement Friday morning at Brentwood High School, where Garvey is a senior. County official Steve Bellone says Garvey and her family can move into the house in about 10 days. ( AP Photo/John Dunn)
BRENTWOOD, N.Y. (AP) ? Samantha Garvey and her family had been living in a Long Island shelter for several days when they got word the 17-year-old aspiring marine biologist had made it to the semifinals of the prestigious national Intel science competition.
Now, with donations coming in and the county finding them rent-subsidized housing, she'll again be able to do her homework in a home.
"This is just the most amazing thing you could ask for," the diminutive Garvey said at a news conference Friday, surrounded by her parents, brother, sister and a cadre of politicians and school officials.
"We're all in tears here," she said after Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone announced that the Department of Social Services had located a nearby three-bedroom house where the family could live. "This is what we've always wanted."
Garvey is one of 300 teenagers nationwide named this week as semifinalists in the prestigious Intel science competition; finalists will be announced at the end of January. She spent more than two years researching the effects of the Asian short crab on the mussel population in a Long Island salt marsh.
"What Sam found was that, like after anyone, after being attacked you develop a tough skin of shell," said her science research teacher, Rebecca Grella. "These mussels were able to increase their thickness and protect themselves against their predator."
Grella noted the link between Garvey's challenges and those of the mollusks she studied.
"I do believe that is an amazing metaphor," Grella said, "and I do see Sam as a strong mussel."
The Brentwood High School senior, who has applied to Yale and Brown universities, was evicted along with her family from their home on New Year's Eve. Her mother, Olga, a nurse's assistant, was out of work for eight months following a car accident in February, and her father, Leo, could not keep up with the bills alone on his salary as a cab driver.
Housing prices on Long Island are among the highest in the country, even in Brentwood, which has struggled with gang violence in recent years. A three-bedroom home there recently sold for $291,000, according to Lisa Kennedy, a broker with Eric G. Ramsay Associates. A three-bedroom ranch is renting for $1,800 a month, she said.
The Garveys will pay 30 percent of their monthly income to rent the county-owned property, officials said.
Gregory Blass, the county commissioner of Social Services, said the family was already known to officials because they were staying in a shelter, making them eligible to move into the house. He said the county works to place about 30 to 40 homeless families a month from shelters into apartments or homes. He insisted the Garveys received no preferential treatment because of Samantha's notoriety.
The house is undergoing renovations and should be ready for the Garveys in about 10 days, Bellone said.
Leo Garvey, Samantha's father, said that after the eviction he took his family to a hotel for a week because he did not want them spending New Year's in a homeless shelter. But he finally had to contact Suffolk County Social Services for help last week; they were then placed in a shelter.
This week came the accolades for Samantha's scientific feat, and the offer for the family to live in a home of their own. Her story has gotten coverage nationwide.
Once sponsored by Westinghouse, the Society for Science and the Public has been running the competition since 1942. Over the decades, contest finalists have gone on to some of the greatest achievements in science. Seven have won a Nobel Prize.
Before the eviction, the Garveys had rented a home for six or seven years, Leo Garvey said. Before that, the family had also lived in homeless shelters from time to time; Leo Garvey described himself as a recovering alcoholic.
Samantha said that she had worried for several months before the eviction, knowing that her mother was ailing and money was tight.
"I ordered a senior picture and I said, 'I don't know where to send it. I don't know what's going to happen. What if we move, what if we get evicted,' which we did," she said. "You're out in limbo. You're like, 'What's going to happen to my mail, what's going to happen to my college applications. Where are they all going to go?' It's scary."
In addition to the county housing, officials said the Marriott Corp. is donating "several thousand dollars" of furniture for the family to use. Others have offered to pay kennel fees for the family pit bull.
"It's unbelievable; the outpouring of help that we've had," said Leo Garvey. He made reference to a news conference also held Friday in Suffolk County announcing the latest winner of a Mega Millions lottery jackpot. "I feel richer than that $208 million winner."
___
Associated Press writer David B. Caruso and AP researcher Judith Ausbel in New York contributed to this report.
Associated Pressstephen colbert running for president richard threlkeld moonrise kingdom coachella lineup natalee holloway coachella 2012 lineup school delays
WASHINGTON ? Two veteran House Republicans received discounted mortgage loans from the now-defunct Countrywide Financial Corp. under a VIP program, a congressional official said Friday.
The discounts went to Reps. Howard McKeon and Elton Gallegly of California, said the official, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the loans and requested anonymity. Their identities were first reported by The Wall Street Journal.
The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has been investigating whether members of Congress received VIP discounts. The Associated Press reported previously that four House members had received the discounts. One of the four remains unidentified publicly.
Records show that Rep. Edolphus Towns, D-N.Y, also received discounts. Towns told the AP previously that he was not aware of receiving any discounts. McKeon and Gallegly told the Journal that they also were not aware of receiving discounted loans and did not know their mortgages were processed by the VIP unit.
The Journal said the 1998 loan to McKean, who is chairman of the Armed Services Committee, totaled $315,000. Gallegly's 2005 loan totaled $77,000 in 2005.
Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., chairman of the oversight committee, informed both lawmakers that documents received from Bank of America ? it bought Countrywide ? showed they went through the special unit.
Issa has sent the information to the House Ethics Committee, which determines whether House members violated standards of conduct. A discounted loan could be considered a gift. Gifts are virtually banned under House rules.
None of the lawmakers has been accused by the ethics panel of any wrongdoing, and may never be if they convince investigators they had no knowledge of the discounts.
Countrywide was the nation's largest mortgage company and played a major role in the U.S. financial crisis by issuing subprime loans. The company also had its VIP program, with some of the favored customers known as "Friends of Angelo" ? a reference to chief executive Angelo Mozilo.
Mozilo in 2010 agreed to more than $67 million in penalties in a settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
new orleans jazz fest new orleans jazz fest dwight howard louis ck michelle duggar heisman cp3
The California Supreme Court, which upholds the vast majority of capital sentences it reviews, decided unanimously Monday to overturn the death penalty for a convicted Long Beach murderer because a prospective juror was improperly removed for having ambivalent views on capital punishment.
In a ruling written by Justice Kathryn Mickle Werdegar, the state high court said that Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Tomson T. Ong erred when he removed the potential juror after she said she was uncertain about her position on the death penalty but would impose it if justified.
"To exclude from a capital jury all those who will not promise to immovably embrace the death penalty in the case before them unconstitutionally biases the selection process," Werdegar wrote.
As long as a juror is capable of considering all sentence alternatives, including the death penalty, he or she is qualified to serve on a death penalty case, the court said.
The ruling requires Los Angeles County prosecutors either to ask another jury to sentence Kevin Darnell Pearson to death or to reduce his sentence to life without the possibility of parole. A spokeswoman for the district attorney's office said it has not yet reviewed the ruling.
Pearson was convicted in the killing of Penny Sigler, also known as Penny Keptra, who was raped, beaten and robbed of $6 in food stamps after leaving her home to go to the store about 11 p.m. on Dec. 19, 1998.
Pearson committed the crime with two other men and left the victim, whose right ear was partially torn off, nude and battered near a freeway embankment, the court said.
The court overturned two other death sentences in a separate case Dec. 4, breaking a pattern in which the justices had upheld nearly 50 capital judgments in a row.
A representative for Atty. Gen. Kamala D. Harris declined to comment on Monday's ruling.
Conrad Petermann, a lawyer for Pearson, said he was pleased with the decision but believes his client is innocent and deserves a new trial for the crimes. Petermann said Pearson will challenge his conviction in a separate proceeding, a habeas corpus, in which evidence can be presented that was not heard by the trial court.
Petermann described his client as "a wonderfully sweet individual, well loved by everybody who has known him" who falsely confessed to the crime.
Pearson's two co-defendants were tried separately and were not affected by Monday's decision. Petermann said Pearson was in his early 20s when he was convicted in 1999.
maura.dolan@latimes.com
Source: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-death-penalty-20120110,0,6291442.story?track=rss
national defense authorization act seven days in utopia seven days in utopia big 10 championship game big 10 championship game state of play the national defense authorization act
AUSTIN, Texas?? An enigmatic object detected five years ago in space may be a ringed alien world comparable to Saturn, the first such world discovered outside our solar system, scientists now say.
The finding, announced here on Wednesday at the 219th meeting of the American Astronomical Society, came from studying an unsteady eclipse of light from a star near the mysterious body.
"After we ruled out the eclipse being due to a spherical star or a circumstellar disk passing in front of the star, I realized that the only plausible explanation was some sort of dust ring system orbiting a smaller companion ? basically a Saturn on steroids," said study co-author Eric Mamajek at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile.
The find occurred as astrophysicists investigated the Scorpius-Centaurus association, the nearest region of recent massive star formation to the sun, using the international SuperWASP (Wide Angle Search for Planets) and All Sky Automated Survey (ASAS) projects. Specifically, the researchers analyzed how light from sunlike stars in Scorpius-Centaurus varied over time.???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
One star in particular showed dramatic changes in the intensity of its light during a 54-day period in early 2007, suggesting it was getting eclipsed by an orbiting body.
"I knew we had found a very weird and unique object," Mamajek said. [Photos:? Saturn's Rings & Moons]
Weird star clues
The star in question is technically known as 1SWASP J140747.93-394542.6. It has a mass similar to the sun but, at about 16 million years of age, is much younger, just 1/300th as old as the sun. It lies about 420 light-years away. ?
Whatever is eclipsing it is relatively close to the star, 1.7 times or so the distance from Earth to the sun. The Earth-sun distance is about 93 million miles (150 million kilometers).
If a simple spherical object had passed in front of the star, the intensity of the star's light would have steadily dimmed and reached a low point before gradually increasing. Instead scientists saw a long, complex eclipse with significant on-and-off dimming. At the deepest parts of the eclipse, at least 95 percent of light from the star was getting blocked by dust.
The nature of these shifts in light ? the "light curve" ? was very similar to that of EE Cephei, a hot, giant star occasionally eclipsed by a companion star that is surrounded by a thick protoplanetary disk. However, instead of just one dip in light, as one would expect of a single disk, Mamajek and University of Rochester graduate student Mark Pecaut saw several dips.
More space news from msnbc.com
Science editor Alan Boyle's blog: Even the astronomers on the science team for NASA's Kepler planet-hunting mission are marveling at the new worlds they're finding.
The eclipsing body seems to be an object "with an orbiting disk that has multiple thin rings of dust debris," Mamajek said.
This would be the first system of discrete, thin dust rings detected around a very low-mass object outside our solar system, he noted.
So far Mamajek and his colleagues have discovered one dense inner disk and three tenuous outer disks, respectively named Rochester, Sutherland, Campanas and Tololo, after the sites where the eclipsed star was first detected and analyzed.
"Each of these rings is probably made of thousands and thousands of rings," Mamajek told Space.com.
Alien rings around another world
The outermost ring stretches up to 37 million miles (60 million kilometers) away from the body it encircles. If the rings are similar to Saturn's, their combined mass is probably as much as eight times that of Earth's moon. ?
"Amateur astronomers can really look at this star with a backyard telescope and help us learn more about this system through monitoring it for more eclipses from the ring system," Mamajek said.
Many questions remain about the nature of the ringed body: for instance, whether or not it is a planet, a very low-mass star, or a kind of failed star known as a brown dwarf. [Gallery: The Strangest Alien Planets]
If it is less than 13 times the mass of Jupiter, it would probably be a planet similar to Saturn. If it is between 13 and 75 times Jupiter's mass, it would be a brown dwarf. If larger still, it would have enough mass to sustain nuclear fusion, making it a star.
Future telescope observations can determine how much of a gravitational tug this object exerts on its star, and thus reveal its mass.
Mind the gaps
Just as interesting as the rings themselves are the gaps between the rings; gaps usually are signs that massive bodies are sculpting the ring edges. If this mysterious object is a planet, moons could be carving these rings; if it is a star, it could be newborn planets that are responsible.
"One might imagine rings around the smallest stars, like rings one sees around Saturn," Mamajek said. "Our inner solar system could've looked like this long ago in its first tens of millions of years."
The planet boom
Future all-sky monitoring projects such as the proposed Large Synoptic Survey Telescope being built in Chile could discover even more ringed systems eclipsing stars.
"I think these rings are how we're going to study moon-forming disks around gas giants," Mamajek said.
The findings, detailed by Mamajek, Pecaut and their colleagues, are scheduled for publication in an upcoming issue of the Astronomical Journal.
Follow Space.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
? 2012 Space.com. All rights reserved. More from Space.com.
Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45980916/ns/technology_and_science-space/
lexapro trazodone voting sharon bialek call of duty elite dragonfly courtney stodden
Notifications: While making an offer, you can choose to receive a daily notification if more offers are made on the ad. You can choose to not receive these notifications by un-checking the check box.
bcs games heath bell tiger woods eddie long ncaa bowl schedule ncaa bowl schedule occupy dc
