Bush and Cheney, Together Again at Groundbreaking - New York Times

In their first public appearance together since leaving office, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney heaped praise on each other, putting behind them the tension of their final days in the White House when they fought over the president’s refusal to pardon the vice president’s ex-chief of staff. In his new memoir, Mr. Bush wrote that he worried that the fight had fractured their friendship.

Addressing a crowd of 2,500 supporters and Bush administration veterans, Mr. Cheney said the response to Mr. Bush’s book showed that the country had begun to re-evaluate him.

“Two years after you left office, judgments are a little more measured than they were,” Mr. Cheney said. “When times have been tough or the critics have been loud, you’ve always said you had faith in history’s judgment, and history is beginning to come around.”

Mr. Bush responded by hailing his No. 2 and recalling the decision to ask him to be the running mate in 2000. “As I stand here,” Mr. Bush said, “there is no doubt in my mind he was the right pick then, he was a great vice president of the United States and I’m proud to call him friend.”

Until this week, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney had seen each other just once in private since President Obama was inaugurated. Mr. Cheney’s attendance was a rare public appearance since his long hospital stay for heart trouble this year. He appeared much thinner in his face and body, more hesitant in his gait, and he used a cane, although he put it aside when it came time to approach the lectern. After the speeches and ceremonial dirt turning, he quickly departed, while other luminaries lingered.

His daughter Liz Cheney said Mr. Cheney, 69, was gaining back his strength. “He lost weight when he was in the hospital this summer, as most people do, but he is feeling great and enjoying working on his book, and hanging out with his grandkids,” she said after the event.

His dry wit seemed intact as he took a poke at Mr. Obama’s recent admission that there were no such things as shovel-ready public works projects. Referring to the groundbreaking, he said, “This may be the only shovel-ready project in America.”

Mr. Bush, on the other hand, left his successor unscathed, as he has since leaving Washington.

“I believe the ultimate responsibility of a leader is to not do what is easy or popular but to do what is necessary and right,” Mr. Bush told the crowd. “The decisions of governing are on another president’s desk, and he deserves to make them without criticism from me. But staying out of current affairs and politics does not mean staying out of policy.”

Mr. Bush plans to use a public policy institute that will be housed at the center along with the traditional presidential library and museum to advance four causes he adopted as his own while in office: human freedom, global health, economic growth and education. He has also started a women’s initiative led by his wife, Laura Bush.

“He’s energized,” Andrew H. Card Jr., his first White House chief of staff, said in an interview. “He’s very much at peace. He’s reliving, but he’s not second-guessing. And he’s not opining. This is not a political event.”

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Move to Ban Earmarks Exposes Both Parties to Divisions in Ideology - New York Times

Given how zealously Mr. McConnell has defended the constitutional prerogative of Congress to control the federal purse, his turnabout was also the surest sign yet that the rightward pressure of Tea Party groups, and an antispending sentiment among voters, have begun to influence the way Washington does business.

At the same time, the renewed push against earmarks highlighted a potential conflict between the calls to eliminate the spending items and demands by many Tea Party supporters for greater fidelity to the Constitution. It is the Constitution, after all, that put Congress in charge of deciding how to spend the taxpayers’ money. In pledging not to let individual lawmakers designate federal money for local purposes, the anti-earmark contingent is in effect ceding more power to the executive branch over how taxpayer dollars are spent, presumably not the outcome desired by the new crop of grass-roots conservatives.

“If Congress does not direct any spending,” said Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, Republican of Texas, who supported the earmark ban, “the president will have 100 percent of the discretion in all federal programs. The failed stimulus is replete with examples of the president’s earmarks that are wasteful.”

The earmark ban is one issue forcing Republicans to navigate among conflicting priorities, like tax cutting and deficit reduction. But it has quickly emerged as a high-profile if somewhat symbolic test of the willingness of Republicans — and some Democrats for that matter — to respond to what they see as a message of the midterm elections.

Both supporters and skeptics of an earmark ban say that it would empower the executive branch, at least initially. While earmarks amount to a trickle in the government’s flood of red ink — slightly more than three-tenths of 1 percent of federal spending — most of that money would still be expended by federal agencies in the absence of earmarks but without specific directions from Congress.

Senator Thad Cochran of Mississippi, the senior Republican on the Appropriations Committee, said, “I remain unconvinced that fiscal prudence is effectively advanced by ceding to the Obama administration our constitutional authority.” But he said he would abide by his colleagues’ wishes .

Some critics of earmarks say the tension between the constitutional and antispending prerogatives is overblown. Representative Jeff Flake, Republican of Arizona, said Congress could easily maintain — and even expand — its purview over spending and still not engage in the earmarking process that has led to corruption scandals and is often viewed as a way to generate campaign contributions.

“This notion that earmarks are an expression of our Article 1 authority, that’s a pretty sad tale,” Mr. Flake said in an interview, referring to the part of the Constitution that gives Congress power of the purse.

He said defenders of earmarks often noted that they accounted for a tiny percentage of federal spending, and Mr. Flake said that was the reason Congress should stop paying so much attention to them.

Instead, he argued, Congress should focus on the vast bulk of the budget that it has already ceded to the administration’s control, and should improve the authorization process by which Congressional committees judge the merit of spending items, the appropriations process in which the money is allocated and subsequent oversight.

Ralph Spampanato, an organizer of the Stark County 9-12 Patriots, in Ohio, said that he supported the idea of an earmark ban and that Congress should exercise its constitutional authority by adopting a budget and demanding that agencies stick to it.

“If they give them the money that’s required to get their basic job done, there won’t be any money leftover to spend,” Mr. Spampanato said.

Mr. Flake said: “We need to reinvigorate the authorization process. The problem with earmarking is you do very little authorizing, a lot of appropriating and very little oversight.”

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Google Voice finally debuts in the App Store - Digitaltrends.com

Apple has approved the Google Voice app for its App Store, and the free VoIP is better than ever for its official release.

Sure, iTunes now has the Beatles Anthology available for download, but Apple‘s got bigger news: the Google Voice app is here. It may not have warranted a full-page notice, but there are plenty of iPhone users out there celebrating Google Voice‘s long-coming availability in the App Store.

Prior to today, users were limited to using Google Voice on the Web only, but to fantastic results. It’s been wildly popular, allowing users to make international calls for pennies and send free unlimited texts – and all with Apple’s stiff disapproval. Apple claimed concerns over the app duplicating its own primary function and has allegedly been reviewing it since. This invited some attention from the FCC and FTC, and a year and half of subversive use later, here we are.

The app allows users to bundle multiple phone lines under one number, as well as transcribe voice mails. The dirt cheap international calling and free SMS service remains, and Google is even going to bolster the app with optional push notifications and quicker call connection.

And it is definitely more powerful than its Web-based counterpart, for anyone out there wondering if the app is worth installing (for free, mind you). While we can’t imagine anyone is really wondering that (again, emphasis on free app), the so-far glowing reviews (including this one from SlashGear) say it definitely is.

What’s also encouraging about the addition of the Google Voice app is what it means for the App Store. Apple’s approval process has had its fair share of critics, and it recently implemented some policy changes as a response to user and developer frustrations. Apple claimed it would be relaxing its restrictions for app guidelines, and adding Google Voice is a significant step in that direction.

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Rare Honor for a Living Service Member - New York Times

The young staff sergeant, Salvatore A. Giunta, now 25, of Hiawatha, Iowa, was an Army specialist when he took part in the firefight in eastern Afghanistan three years ago. He is the first living service member to receive the Medal of Honor, the military’s most prestigious award, for action in any war since Vietnam.

Sergeant Giunta and the other soldiers of Company B, Second Battalion (Airborne), 503rd Infantry Regiment, were part of a campaign to provide food, winter clothing and medical care to Afghans in remote villages. They were ambushed in the Korengal Valley in a coordinated attack from three sides.

In a packed ceremony in the East Room before Sergeant Giunta’s family, squad mates and the parents of two soldiers who were killed in the ambush, Mr. Obama recounted the events on the night of Oct. 25, 2007.

“The moon was full; the light it cast was enough to travel by without using their night-vision goggles,” Mr. Obama said, with Sergeant Giunta standing at his side, looking straight ahead. “They hadn’t traveled a quarter-mile before the silence was shattered. It was an ambush so close that the cracks of the guns and the whizzes of the bullets were simultaneous.”

The two lead squad men went down. So did a third who was struck in the helmet. Sergeant Giunta charged into the wall of bullets to pull him to safety, Mr. Obama said. Sergeant Giunta was hit twice, but was protected by his body armor.

The sergeant could see the other two wounded Americans, Mr. Obama recounted.

By now, the East Room was so silent you could hear a rustle from across the room. One Army officer took out a handkerchief and wiped his eyes.

Sergeant Giunta looked down as the president described how he and his squad mates threw grenades, which they used as cover to run toward the wounded soldiers. All this, they did under constant fire, Mr. Obama said. Finally, they reached one of the men. As other soldiers tended to him, Sergeant Giunta sprinted ahead.

“He crested a hill alone with no cover but the dust kicked up by the storm of bullets still biting into the ground,” Mr. Obama said.

And there Sergeant Giunta saw “a chilling sight” — the silhouettes of two insurgents carrying away the other wounded American — his friend, Sgt. Joshua C. Brennan. Sergeant Giunta leaped forward, and fatally shot one insurgent while wounding the other. Then he rushed to his friend. He dragged him to cover, and stayed with him, trying to stop the bleeding, for 30 minutes, until help arrived.

Sergeant Brennan died later of his wounds. So did Specialist Hugo V. Mendoza, the platoon medic. Five others were wounded.

Speaking to reporters after receiving the award, Sergeant Giunta said the honor was “bittersweet.”

“I lost two dear friends of mine,” he said. “I would give this back in a second to have my friends with me right now.”

The outposts in the Korengal Valley were disbanded this spring after months of patrols that cost the American military dearly. Forces were moved to provide security to larger population centers.

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Facebook CEO has "made every mistake you can make" - CNNMoney

By Julianne Pepitone, staff reporterNovember 16, 2010: 10:14 PM ET

SAN FRANCISCO (CNNMoney.com) -- Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg says he's made "every mistake you can make" in business, but love of the product keeps users faithful.

At the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco on Tuesday night, conference moderator John Battelle pressed Zuckerberg on the social network's past failings.

"The Facebook trait seems to be pushing the envelope so far and then saying, 'Oops,'" Battelle said. "Is that an intentional point of view? That I didn't ask permission, but now I ask forgiveness?"

Zuckerberg, a young CEO at 26 years old, conceded he has "made every mistake you can make. But people allow those mistakes because they love [Facebook]."

Zuckerberg appeared more at ease than he usually is at conferences, and he readily admitted that Facebook is still figuring out the best way to handle issues like data privacy.

"As far as I can tell, Facebook Connect has enabled the greatest portability of data ever created," Zuckerberg said, referring to users' ability to interact on other sites using their Facebook identities.

For other data portability options, users can download their Facebook data into a zip file. Zuckerberg said the idea was to give users control over their information, but he admitted, "I'm not sure we're 100% right on this."

Despite Facebook's imperfection, its users are loyal: Zuckerberg said more than 50% of Facebook's 500 million users visit the site at least once a day. As a result, he said, the idea of social is now woven into the online experience.

"Over the next five years, most industries are going to be rethought to be social," Zuckerberg said. "Social makes any Web application a whole order of magnitude more engaging than anything else."

Gaming developers best embody that philosophy, Zuckerberg said, citing four successful companies that were built around the Facebook platform: Zynga, Playfish, Playdom and Crowdstar.

"All four are really good companies, too," Zuckerberg said. "Zynga's market cap is now bigger than EA's. That's massive disruption.

Audience members laughed when Zuckerberg called Facebook a "small" company in pointing out that the site has "only a few hundred" engineers.

"If something doesn't have to be built by us, we'd rather it wasn't," Zuckerberg said. "Apple and Google will come up with an idea and just build it, but we're more decentralized. Why not mobilize some young entrepreneur to build their own thing, build their own company?"

Moderator Battelle asked whether Zuckerberg is "interested in the business social graph, connections between businesses" -- i.e., a B2B social network. But Zuckerberg looked blank, saying, "I don't know what that means."

Zuckerberg also rehashed Monday's announcement of a Facebook messaging system, which combines messages across Facebook, email and text.

He said a Facebook bug that surfaced earlier Tuesday, which mistakenly deleted legitimate user accounts, was not related to the messaging system.

Battelle asked the question that's constantly buzzing in Silicon Valley: When will Facebook go public?

Zuckerberg said flatly: "Don't hold your breath." 

First Published: November 16, 2010: 10:10 PM ET

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