Throughout 1938, while the Nazi persecution of the Jews in Germany and Austria intensified, Kennedy attempted to arrange a meeting with Adolf Hitler.^[34]  Shortly before the Nazi aerial bombing of British cities began in September 1940, Kennedy once again sought a personal meeting with Hitler, again without the approval of the Department of State, "to bring about a better understanding between the United States and Germany".[35]  It has been surmised that Kennedy also had personal reasons for wanting to avoid war; "He feared for the lives of his three eldest sons, Joe, Jack and Bobby, all of whom were or soon would be eligible to serve."^[36]

Kennedy also argued strongly against giving military and economic aid to the United Kingdom.   "Democracy is finished in England.  It may be here," he stated in the Boston Sunday Globe of November 10, 1940.  With Nazi German troops having overrun Poland, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and France, and with bombs falling daily on Great Britain, Kennedy unambiguously and repeatedly stated his belief that this war was not about saving democracy from National Socialism (Nazism) or from Fascism.

A new book out in Germany reveals how President Kennedy was a secret admirer of the Nazis.
. . .
President Kennedy's travelogues and letters chronicling his wanderings through Germany before WWII, when Adolf Hitler was in power, have been unearthed and show him generally in favour of the movement that was to plunge the world into the greatest war in history

Overall, about 15 percent of Sweden's 9.5 million people were born abroad, compared to 10 percent 10 years ago.  The influx has mostly come from war-torn countries such as Iraq, Somalia, former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Syria.

The riots that have broken out in recent days in the suburbs of Stockholm show that the many immigrants who live there have not been integrated.  The fault lies with the government and the lack of political will to take action on education and employment.

A chunk of Interstate 5 collapsed into the Skagit River near Mount Vernon on Thursday evening, dumping two vehicles into the icy waters and creating a gaping hole in Washington state’s major north-south artery.

Officials said the highway will not be fixed for weeks at the very least.

Rescuers pulled three people with minor injuries from the water after the collapse, which authorities say began when a semitruck with an oversized load struck a steel beam at around 7 p.m.

Iran will chair the United Nations’ most important disarmament negotiating forum during the panel’s May session, which opened today, sparking calls by an independent monitoring group for the U.S., the EU, and UN chief Ban Ki-moon to protest.   Click here for UN website.

“This is like putting Jack the Ripper in charge of a women’s shelter,” said Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, the Geneva based non-governmental organization, which announced it will hold protest events outside the UN hall featuring Iranian dissidents.

As a journalist, I am not supposed to admit this, but: I sympathize with the Obama administration's frustration over national security leaks.  After a spate of leaks last year -- notably, The Associated Press' reporting that national security officials foiled an underwear bomb 2.0 attempt last May -- Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein joined Republicans to denounce the Beltway's proclivity for leaking classified information.  "This has to stop," quoth DiFi.  "When people say they don't want to work with the United States because they can't trust us to keep a secret, that's serious."

In the days since the Internal Revenue Service first disclosed that it had targeted conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status, new information has emerged from both the Treasury inspector general’s report and congressional testimony Friday that calls into question key statements made by Lois G. Lerner, the IRS’s director of the exempt organizations division.

A freak snowstorm in May gave students a surprise day off on Wednesday in the Cascades town of Bickleton.

Ten to 12 inches fell overnight within a 5- or 6-mile radius in the Klickitat County community at an elevation of about 3,000 feet.

Ireland seems to have been very clever.  It offers the benefit of "stateless subsidiaries" only to companies that have actual operations in Ireland.  Apple has its European headquarters there, and employs a lot of people.  In effect, Ireland pays companies to come to Ireland by offering to let them avoid taxes in their home countries.

You can sense the same thing happening today.  President Obama’s second term feels basically over.  And he’s got 44 months to go!

Now I say that as someone who has not seen any evidence, so far, that Obama has done anything wrong, let alone illegal.  At worst in these “scandals,” he is guilty of too much message massaging (Benghazi) or of obliviousness to a hyperaggressive bureaucracy (the IRS).  If those were high crimes or misdemeanors, every president would have been impeached.

Venezuelan opposition congressman Ismael García reported on Monday during a press conference along with other members of the Unified Democratic Panel on a taped conversation between Mario Silva, a hardcore government supporter and anchorman of "La Hojilla" a TV show aired on state-run TV channel VTV, and Aramis Palacios, a lieutenant colonel of Cuban G2.

He explained that a "very serious situation" was mirrored in the talk. The material, García said, "would be handed over to Raúl Castro, he, who leads and directs the policy of this country."

Based on the tape, Silva said: "Speaking of devaluation, the problem is the flight of capital in some enterprises owned by (Congress Speaker) Diosdado Cabello."

The Congress Speaker might "corrupt, together with the '85 generation" the army."

Lois Lerner, an IRS official who led the agency’s tax exemption division, will invoke her Fifth Amendment right to remain silent at a scheduled House Oversight and Government Reform committee hearing Wednesday.  Chairman Darrell Issa has issued a subpoena for Lerner to testify, but it is not clear whether she will make her plea in person.

Lerner’s refusal to speak raises questions about whether her testimony would have implicated the White House, or exposed criminal activity or misrepresentations on her part.  She has exchanged correspondence with the oversight committee about the IRS matter but did not disclose her knowledge of the agency’s targeting of conservative groups, according to a letter Issa wrote to Lerner last week.