Six people, including at least two Pakistani security guards employed by the State Department, were killed in a suicide bomb and rocket attack against the U.S. consulate in Peshawar this morning. No Americans were killed. The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for the assault and compared it to December’s suicide bombing of a CIA base in Khost, Afghanistan. State has been trying to increase the security of its embassies and consulates since 1998, when al Qaida destroyed American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Despite the loss of life this morning, the Peshawar consulate’s beefed up security measures appear to have helped repel the brunt…
Monthly Archives: April, 2010
Happy Friday! Here’s a few amusing links to take you into the weekend. The Onion breaks the “news” here that the federal government plans to save $300 billion a year by eliminating the wasteful and “100 percent redundant” Senate: Established in 1789 as a means of overseeing the passage of bills into law, the once-promising senator program has reportedly failed to contribute to the governing of the nation in any significant way since 1964. … In fact, the program has gone unchecked for so long that many in Washington are now unable to recall what purpose U.S. senators were originally…
Happy Census Day! April 1 is the day the 2010 Census forms are officially due, but it’s kind of a soft deadline. The Census Bureau will keep accepting forms by mail until mid-April, and will start door-to-door surveys May 1 to collect information from households who haven’t yet responded. Of course, they’d prefer to get as many mail responses as possible. It costs the Census Bureau $57 to visit an average household, versus the 42 cents it costs to mail a survey in. Only 54 percent of the nation’s estimated 134 million households have so far responded to the Census. It’s…