NewsTrust - All Rated Stories

Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s Sexual Assault Case: What Happened

Sat, 21 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Daily Beast - By John Solomon - May. 21 (News Report) - The luxury-hotel maid who alleges she was sexually assaulted by Dominique Strauss-Kahn was found by a supervisor in a hallway where she hid after escaping from the former International Monetary Fund director's room. Hotel workers described her as traumatized, having difficulty speaking, and immediately concerned about pressing charges and losing her job, according to sources familiar with the investigation. The maid also repeatedly spit on the walls and floors of the suite in front of her hotel colleagues as she alleged that Strauss-Kahn locked her in his room and forced her into oral sex acts. That saliva is being tested for DNA markers and could become a crucial piece of evidence in the case, the sources said.

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The Birthers Become 'Deathers'

Fri, 06 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Daily Beast - By Josh Dzieza - May. 06 (News Analysis) - Birthers who claimed President Obama was not born in the U.S. have moved on to another wild conspiracy theory: that Osama bin Laden was not really killed last Sunday—or was killed to shut him up, and then quickly buried at sea.

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Democrats' Disgust With Obama

Fri, 15 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Daily Beast - By Patricia Murphy - Apr. 15 (Opinion) - The budget deal, angrily rejected by Nancy Pelosi as it passed Thursday, was the last straw. Patricia Murphy on why some liberals are now pushing for a primary challenge to the president.

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Obama Libya Speech Fudges the Details

Tue, 29 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Daily Beast - By Howard Kurtz - Mar. 29 (Opinion) - The president’s Libya speech may have been a strong oration, but it fudged a few key elements, from why we responded to Gaddafi to whether we’re at war.

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Right-Wing Talk Is Dying

Wed, 09 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

The Daily Beast - By John Avlon - Feb. 09 (News Analysis) - Here’s another sign that the tide might be turning against the Wingnuts—Glenn Beck’s TV ratings are down 50 percent and major market radio stations are dropping him.

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Should We Blame Sarah Palin for Gabrielle Giffords' Shooting

Sun, 09 Jan 2011 00:00:00 -0800

The Daily Beast - By Howard Kurtz - Jan. 09 (Opinion) - This kind of rhetoric is highly unfortunate. The use of the crosshairs was dumb. But it's a long stretch from such excessive language and symbols to holding a public official accountable for a murderer who opens fire on a political gathering and kills a half-dozen people, including a 9-year-old girl.

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Why the WikiLeaks Drama Is Overblown

Mon, 29 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0800

The Daily Beast - By Peter Beinart - Nov. 29 (Opinion) - When journalists gather information that genuinely changes the way we see some aspect of American foreign policy, or exposes government folly or abuse, they should move heaven and earth to make sure it sees the light of day. But that’s a far cry from publishing documents that sabotage American foreign policy without adding much, if anything, to the public debate.

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Fox News Chief Blasts NPR 'Nazis'

Thu, 18 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0800

The Daily Beast - By Howard Kurtz - Nov. 18 (Interview) - Roger Ailes slams Jon Stewart as a conservative-basher, explains why he rode to Juan Williams’ rescue—and sees NPR as taxpayer-funded propaganda. Part II of Howard Kurtz’s interview.

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Vicious Infighting at NBC News

Mon, 15 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0800

The Daily Beast - By Howard Kurtz - Nov. 15 (News Analysis) - MSNBC’s president vowed to fire Keith Olbermann after he threatened to take his case to other networks. Howard Kurtz on the civil war that has NBC brass—and his own staff—fuming.

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The Day D.C. Went Sane

Sun, 31 Oct 2010 00:00:00 -0700

The Daily Beast - By Howard Kurtz - Oct. 31 (Opinion) - It may not have had the biting edge of its hosts' late-night comedy shows, but Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert's rally drew a huge crowd that went crazy for sanity.

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NPR's Juan Williams Disaster

Fri, 22 Oct 2010 00:00:00 -0700

The Daily Beast - By Howard Kurtz - Oct. 22 (Opinion) - His firing has backfired, handing Fox a victory and making Williams a symbol of liberal intolerance—on the very day NPR announced a grant from George Soros that it never should have accepted. After watching Bill O’Reilly lead an hour of NPR-bashing on Fox News Thursday night, it’s tempting to say that the right’s reaction to the Juan Williams firing is just a tad overblown. But it’s not. This was a blunder of enormous proportions. Even many liberals—Donna Brazile, Joan Walsh, Whoopi Goldberg—are castigating National Public Radio for throwing Williams overboard. NPR Chief Executive Vivian Schiller—dubbed a “pinhead” by O’Reilly—made matters worse by suggesting that Williams needs psychiatric attention. She later apologized.

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A Western Crackdown on WikiLeaks

Tue, 10 Aug 2010 00:00:00 -0700

The Daily Beast - By Philip Shenon - Aug. 10 (News Report) - The Obama administration has asked Britain, Germany, Australia, and other allies to consider criminal charges against Julian Assange for his Afghan war leaks. Philip Shenon reports.

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Harvard vs. Steve Jobs

Sat, 31 Jul 2010 00:00:00 -0700

The Daily Beast - By Emily Bill - Jul. 31 (Investigative Report) - Harvard Law star Jonathan Zittrain is an influential critic of Apple—so why doesn’t he talk about donations to his research center from Steve Jobs’ competitors? Emily Brill investigates.

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Obama’s Winning Streak

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0700

The Daily Beast - By Peter Beinart - Jun. 28 (Opinion) - So he hasn’t plugged the leak, and his poll numbers are sagging. Truth is, Obama has exceeded in 18 months what Clinton and Carter achieved in a combined 12 years.

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Israel's Indefensible Behavior

Tue, 01 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0700

The Daily Beast - By Peter Beinart - Jun. 01 (Opinion) - Don’t blame the commandos for the flotilla disaster. Blame Israel’s leaders, who enforce the cruel and corrupt Gaza embargo, and their supporters in America.

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Shocking BP Memo

Tue, 25 May 2010 00:00:00 -0700

The Daily Beast - By Rick Outzen - May. 25 (News Report) - A document obtained by The Daily Beast shows that BP, in a previous fatal disaster, increased worker risk to save money. Are there parallels with the Gulf explosion? This is a story about the Three Little Pigs. A lot of dead oil workers. And British Petroleum. From the minute the Deepwater Horizon offshore rig exploded, BP has hewed to a party line: it did everything it could to prevent the April 20 accident that killed 11 men and has been spewing millions of gallons of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico ever since. Some critics have questioned the veracity of that position. Now The Daily Beast has obtained a document—displayed below—that goes to the heart of BP procedures, demonstrating that before the company’s previous major disaster—at a moment when the oil giant could choose between cost-savings and absolute safety—it selected cost-savings. And BP chose to illustrate that choice, without irony, by invoking the classic Three Little Pigs fairy tale.

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Wake Up, Tavis Smiley

Sat, 01 May 2010 00:00:00 -0700

The Daily Beast - By Stanley Crouch - May. 01 (Opinion) - With a trailblazing African-American in the White House, why does the PBS host insist on bringing lunatics together to talk about race? There seem to be just as many loons and hustlers among Obama’s chosen ethnic group as among the fatmouthed Republicans who have sold out to the Tea Baggers. One of the best examples of this problem was witnessed last month in the Tavis Smiley rhetorical circus called "We Count! The Black Agenda Is the American Agenda," which was shown on C-SPAN and presented as a serious discussion in the spirit of Smiley’s “State of the Black Union.” With attempted gravity, Smiley once described his symposiums as exercises devoted to “critical thinking.” Not quite. No unsentimental attempt was made in any way profound enough to meet the demands of our time. Had it been, invited panelists like Louis Farrakhan and various hoodoo women no better prepared with insight than astrologers would not have been there to give the lie to the whole convoluted business. Overall, the Smiley forums presented by Smiley always had more than a whiff of minstrel show draped in militant posturing. This is accomplished by turning over the U of a coonskin smile so that it registers as a nearly constant frown. Everyone is seen as a militant. As Martin Luther King once observed, Negroes spent time listening to Malcolm X because they enjoyed hearing someone black give the white man hell. Yet they knew better than to take seriously what he was proposing—like rejecting their Christian identities, their diets, and the music and dance that had helped defined the aesthetics of American fun.

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Israel Plays with Fire

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700

The Daily Beast - By Leslie H. Gelb - Mar. 17 (Opinion) - srael’s right-wingers are congratulating themselves on their announcement of new construction in East Jerusalem during Vice President Biden’s visit last week. They think this stance, so unwelcome in Washington, this public and gratuitous insult to America’s negotiating position in the region, will compel President Obama to back down. They reinforced this notion Tuesday through Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s reaffirmation of the building plans—plus the insult of announcing yet additional building plans. They’re very wrong. Israel’s move was stupid, dangerous, and self-defeating. Worst of all, it seriously damaged Israeli-American relations and American power in the Middle East. Israeli leaders will not like the way their little power slap plays out. And it is they who should be figuring out how to make the necessary amends—and soon, before further contamination sets in.

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America's Next Unwinnable War

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Daily Beast - By Theodore Sorensen - Oct. 30 (Opinion) - America’s unwise, unwarranted, and sadly unwinnable war in Afghanistan—hastily initiated and then abandoned for Iraq by President Barack Obama’s ideologically blinded predecessor and dumped into Obama’s lap in the worst possible way—is beginning increasingly to smell like the 1964-68 war in South Vietnam that swallowed up the presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson.

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Prosecutors Fumble Wall Street Probes

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Daily Beast - By Charlie Gasparino - Sep. 17 (Opinion) - It’s hard to imagine that for all the misinformation spread from the senior ranks of Wall Street about the alleged health of the financial business during the run-up to last year’s meltdown, the best our regulators and prosecutors can come up with as “culprits” for this abuse is two measly hedge fund-managers.

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Bogging Down in Kabul

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Daily Beast - By Matthew Yglesias - Sep. 01 (Opinion) - Rather than a limited mission to fight al Qaeda and support the existing Afghan government, we seem increasingly drawn into a hazily defined effort to reconstruct Afghan society so as to create a stable unitary government. If the issue here were simply that Hamid Karzai lacks certain things that the United States has in abundance—money, guns, air support—then this might be a reasonable objective. But in reality, Karzai is missing things we have no clear way to provide—things like political legitimacy and an ability to deliver on the rule of law. Thus, rather than provide a degree of military support to the Afghan government, we're essentially planning to try to govern Afghanistan ourselves while getting into quarrels with Karzai over allegations of election fraud and his new vice president's involvement in drug smuggling.

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Obama's Euthanasia Mistake

Tue, 11 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Daily Beast - By Lee Siegel - Aug. 11 (Opinion) - This is the Big Brother nightmare of oppressive government that the shrewd propagandists on the right are always blathering on about. Except that this time, they could not be more right.

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Ensign's Sex-Scandal Enabler?

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Daily Beast - By Max Blumenthal - Jun. 21 (Opinion) - Senator Tom Coburn knew of John Ensign’s affair 16 months ago—and concealed it from the public. But what, Max Blumenthal asks, did the conservative moral crusader tell his friend in private? Since Republican Senator John Ensign of Nevada has confessed to an extra-marital affair with a female campaign staffer married to one of his top Senate staffers, none of his Republican colleagues have been more supportive of him than his apartment roommate in Washington, Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma. On June 17, a day after Ensign’s revelation, Coburn pled for forgiveness. “If you look at it in the light of everybody makes errors, at least he fessed up and resolved the problem with his family,” Coburn said, “so I think it speaks well of his corrective force.” Coburn also told a crowd of reporters of his 51-year-old roomie, "He is a bright young man Lots of people make mistakes.

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Obama's First Scandal

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Daily Beast - By Benjamin Sarlin - Jun. 19 (News Analysis) - Lost in the flood of Iran-related coverage this week has been the stirrings of what might be President Obama's first scandal since taking office.

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Memo to Obama: Leave Egypt

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Daily Beast - By Reza Aslan - Jun. 03 (Opinion) - Obama should have chosen Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation, a moderate, pluralistic, wildly successful democratic country whose citizens just last month overwhelming voted for secular and moderate Muslim parties over the country’s more radical Islamist groups. Instead, by choosing Cairo as the backdrop to his speech, Obama has in effect rewarded Egypt’s president for life, Hosni Mubarak, for his bloody, blatantly anti-democratic, and dictatorial rule.

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