Where did the whole idea of sequestration originate? It goes back to 1985. The tax cuts of Ronald’s Reagan early years, combined with his aggressive defense buildup, produced a growing budget deficit that eventually prompted passage of the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Act. GRH set out a series of ambitious deficit reduction targets, and to put teeth into them it specified that if the targets weren’t met, money would automatically be “sequestered,” or held back, by the Treasury …

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Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer on Thursday said it was “wrong” and “appalling” that she was not consulted about a federal decision to release hundreds of immigrant detainees to cut costs ahead of looming sequestration.

“It’s wrong, and it’s outrageous and it is appalling to do something of this magnitude and not contact myself or my homeland security people, is just unbelievable,” Brewer (R-Ariz.), who represents a border state, said on CNN’s “The Situation Room.”

Her comments came …

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Leaving aside issues concerning some fishy doin’s at the Vatican Bank (recounted here by Lynn Parramore), or the sexual harassment scandal that inspired this week’s resignation of Cardinal Keith O’Brien, archbishop of St. Andrews and Edinburgh (in which three priests and one former priest accused the cardinal of making sexual advances toward them*), we focus our gaze here on 10 cardinals who either aided and abetted the priests who abused children, or who served as …

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Helen Becker of Northampton, Pa. has received a hot meal from volunteers with Meals On Wheels of Northampton County every day for the past several years.

“That’s the biggest part of my diet, having the cooked meal,” Becker, 89, said in an interview. On Mondays it might be rotisserie baked chicken with yams, Tuesdays maybe spaghetti with meatballs accompanied by half a cup of applesauce and a dinner roll. And so on, every weekday at lunchtime.

The …

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Many students on St. Lawrence–a remnant of the land bridge that spanned the Bering Strait thousands of years ago with a current population of less than 1,400–say they want to go to college. But half of them drop out of high school, and only 2 percent graduate from college. The benefits of a degree can seem remote here. Families live a subsistence lifestyle, hunting walruses, seals, and whales in the spring, and gathering berries in …

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Without a last-minute deal by lawmakers across-the-board reductions in funding to every federal agency — known as sequestration — will happen Friday. While public schools wouldn’t see most of the cuts take effect until the new fiscal year on July 1, education officials at the local, state and federal levels are warning of dire consequences for programs and services that assist the most vulnerable students.

Talking with reporters last week, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan …

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LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Los Angeles asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday to allow police and city workers to seize or destroy property that homeless people leave unattended on sidewalks, saying Skid Row homeless encampments presented a public-health risk.

The greater Los Angeles area has one of the nation’s largest populations of homeless people, and the city’s legal fight is seen as having implications for how other municipalities deal with transients.

The city had removed or …

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SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) – Puerto Rico’s governor on Tuesday approved turning over the operations of Puerto Rico’s largest airport to a private company as part of an estimated $2.6 billion deal that began under his predecessor and has been fiercely protested.

Gov. Alejandro Garcia Padilla said that while he would have managed things differently, the U.S. territory’s government already had committed to the deal.

“Puerto Rico gave its word and we must be firm and …

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The partner of late internet freedom activist Aaron Swartz has accused the US Department of Justice of “dragging its heels” over an investigation into his prosecution after it emerged that his political beliefs played a role in its case against him.

Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman said she was “angry and really upset” when she learned from congressional staffers from the government oversight committee that a document written by Swartz five years ago was a key element in his …

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More than 40 people have died, many shot by police, and hundreds have been injured amid violence in Bangladesh over the sentencing to death of an Islamist politician by a court investigating the atrocities of the war of independence from Pakistan.

The Bangladesh court sentenced 73-year-old Delwar Hossain Sayedee, vice-president of the Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami, to death on Thursday, finding him guilty of eight charges connected with the 1971 war, including murder, arson, rape and religious …

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