As might be expected, Democratic lawmakers hailed Barack Obama's State of the Union performance while Republicans sharply disagreed.
"I thought it was just terrific," said Senator Barbara Boxer of California. "I think what he did in this speech was to have an adult conversation with the Congress and the American people."
"I did not think it was one of his stronger speeches, and I think this is going to be quickly forgotten," stated Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming.
Democratic Congressman Frank Pallone of New Jersey had high praise for Mr. Obama's economic proposals.
"I think the message of building an economy that lasts is exactly what my constituents want to hear. We want to make sure we create jobs, jobs that last, bringing back manufacturing - that is very important to my constituents," said Pallone. "We have lost a lot of jobs over the last 20 years overseas."
But Republican Congressman Joe Wilson of South Carolina said the president's economic agenda will bring nothing but hardship.
"The vision of higher taxes destroys jobs. And the proposals he had destroy jobs at a time when we have record unemployment," said Wilson. "His prior policies of spending have not been successful."
If domestic politics continue to spawn hyper-partisanship at the Capitol, some of the president's foreign policy pronouncements were well received by Republicans and Democrats alike. Republican Congressman James Lankford of Oklahoma applauded Obama's tough stance on Iran's nuclear ambitions.
"That is the clearest statement he has made on Iran that I have heard, ever, that we are not going to tolerate a nuclear Iran. There was wide bipartisan agreement on that," said Lankford.
"I would imagine that the mullahs [in Iran] and [President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad are trembling as they wake up in Iran this morning," said Missouri Democratic Congressman Emanuel Cleaver.
Many legislators of both parties also endorsed a get-tough policy when it comes to China's trade practices.
"There is not a business I have talked to that does business in or with China that does not have a serious complaint about intellectual theft, whether it is in the retail sector, or the software manufacturing sector, or the manufacturing sector," said Virginia Democratic Congressman Gerry Connolly.
President Obama's call for bipartisanship and a sense of common purpose in confronting America's challenges got a varied response from legislators. One Democratic representative said that members of Congress absolutely must work together, even during an election year like this one, or the nation will suffer. A Republican representative noted Mr. Obama made a similar plea in last year's State of the Union address, adding that, with rare exception, it went unheeded.
A two-time Republican governor says U.S. President Barack Obama has resorted to "extremism" with what he called anti-growth policies and a plan to divide Americans rather than unite them.
In Tuesday's Republican response to the president's State of the Union Address, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels said the Obama administration has sought to win favor with some Americans by castigating others.
He said the president's policies stifle the development of homegrown energy and have canceled plans for what he called a "perfectly sane pipeline", the proposed Keystone XL pipeline from western Canada to the Gulf Coast of Texas, that supporters say would employ tens of thousands of workers.
Mr. Obama has refused approval for the pipeline through the U.S. at least temporarily, while pursuing policies aimed at reducing pollution and climate change.
Daniels also said the move will raise consumer utility bills and fail to improve human health or stabilize world temperatures, calling it a "pro-poverty policy.'
He said Republicans prefer a pro-growth approach that supports private sector jobs that will restore opportunity for all and generate public revenues to pay the nation's bills. He said that during Mr. Obama's three years in office, an "explosion of spending" has added trillions to the national debt. He said the president has put the nation on a course to make things radically worse in the years ahead.
Daniels said Republicans do not accept the view that the nation will be one of "haves and have-nots." Instead, he said, Republicans want a nation of "haves and soon-to-haves." He called for "a dramatically simpler" tax system of fewer loopholes and lower rates. He said the nation should maximize new domestic energy technologies, which he called "the best break our economy has gotten in years."
Former Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain delivered a response for the conservative Tea Party movement operating within the Republican party. He called Mr. Obama's speech " a hodgepodge [collection] of little ideas" and said what the country needs is more comprehensive reform. He criticized the country's rising national debt and called for a balanced budget and a simpler, fairer tax code.
Concluding, he said Washington has forgotten that it works for for the American people and added that the people, in his words, "want our power back."
The last Marine to face a court martial in the deaths of 24 unarmed Iraqi civilians was spared any jail time for his role in the killings that brought international condemnation of American troops.
In the military courtroom at Camp Pendleton, Califorinia, Staff Sergeant Frank Wuterich expressed remorse and his sorrow for the deaths. But he told the military judge that he did not fire at any women or children.
Wuterich pleaded guilty Monday to a charge of negligent dereliction of duty. On Tuesday, he was sentenced to 90 days of confinement, but will not serve them because of a pre-trial deal. He will be demoted to the rank of private, the lowest military rank.
He originally was charged with manslaughter in a case that became known simply by the name of the town - Haditha - where it took place. They were accused of bursting into homes and shooting residents - including children and the elderly, after an insurgent's bomb killed a member of their squad.
Wuterich was the last of eight Marines prosecuted in the case. The other seven were cleared.
Military law experts say it is difficult to bring convictions in such cases, because the Marines believed they were under fire in a hostile environment, and it becomes hard to determine fault for events that happen in the heat of combat.
A Marine Corps spokesman said that in his guilty plea, Wuterich accepted responsibility for the attack, and admitted that he gave an order to his troops to "shoot first, ask questions later."
In an ABC News report from Haditha Tuesday, survivors of the attack were dismayed.
Awis Fami Hussein, who was shot in the back, said "I was expecting that the American judiciary would sentence this person to life in prison and that he would appear and confess in front of the whole world that he committed this crime, so that America could show itself as democratic and fair.''
FAREWELL SPIT, NEW ZEALAND (BNO NEWS) -- At least 48 pilot whales have died after a group of nearly 100 whales stranded on the coast of New Zealand on late Monday morning, officials said on Wednesday. Dozens remain stranded.
Department of Conservation (DoC) Golden Bay Area manager John Mason said the pod of 99 pilot whales stranded themselves at around 11 a.m. local time on Monday during outgoing tide at the base of Farewell Spit in Golden Bay, located on the northern end of the country's South Island.
By Monday evening, 22 of the pilot whales had died while 16 others managed to refloat and are believed to be safe. As of Wednesday morning, Mason said 35 of the whales remain stranded while a total of 48 others have died.
Around 200 volunteers and DoC workers have been working around the clock to keep the whales wet, covering them with wet sheets to protect them from the sun, and push the survivors back into the sea. "We are trying to encourage them to swim out to sea," Mason said.
Mason said the rescue attempts have so far been unsuccessful. "The whales have been quite directional and haven't wanted to leave the area," he said. "So since the stranding, they've been refloated four times, but they haven't really moved anywhere much. They have moved a few hundred meters (feet) in either direction over each high tide cycle."
Pilot whales work as a close-knit community and need to be in agreement with one another to make a move, making it more difficult for the rescue workers to save them. "The chances [for their survival] certainly diminish each time you try [to refloat them] and are unsuccessful," Mason said. "They are still not showing a lot of exclamation to move off. So, while the whales are in a reasonable condition, we really can't get them to move offshore into deeper water."
Golden Bay is one of New Zealand's most notorious spots for whale strandings. Earlier this month, 18 whales died after a pod of 25 whales beached about 2 kilometers (1.2 mile) from this week's incident.
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Forty years ago, a new women's magazine appeared on American newsstands alongside the periodicals exclusively devoted to housework, motherhood, and catching a man. Ms.Magazine, founded by veteran journalist and feminist Gloria Steinem and backed by glossy New York Magazine, promised to be something more: a place where women could read about real women like themselves, and connect to the nascent women's movement - devoted to equality in the workplace and in all aspects of their lives.
The right to legalized abortion and birth control was just one of many powerful issues embraced by the women's liberation movement of the early 1970s. Like the civil rights movement, equality, justice and community were key ideals for the feminists of that era.
Letty Cottin Pogrebin, a founding editor, says Ms. was a product of that moment and also helped it to coalesce.
"I think it had a double purpose: to say 'this is what's happening' and also 'you're not alone,' and also 'here is what to do if you are already annoyed, angry, upset, or oppressed.' You organize," explained Pogrebin. "You start by having consciousness raising groups, that is, little groups of women who met once a week or a couple times a month to share their commonality, to say 'When were you ever denied your rights?' 'Have you ever done anything about it?'"
Pogrebin says that in the offices of Ms. and on its pages, the conversation about feminism was often lively and probing.
"You say 'why was it foreordained that women will not be able to handle tools? Why was it foreordained that there's something sissy about being able to take care of a baby?" Pogrebin explained.
Suzanne Braun Levine edited the magazine from 1972 to 1988. She says members of Ms.'s staff were discovering for themselves where they stood on various issues - from prostitution to the changing role of men and the meaning of equality itself.
"Although nobody really believes it, we really didn't have an agenda as such," noted Levine. "The agenda was to illuminate women's experience, and to thereby reassure women that they weren't alone and they weren't crazy. Still, that was the political message. But the other aspect of the magazine was to tell the storiesof creative and adventuresome and interesting and funny women and what they were really doing."
Some radical feminists felt Ms. was "watering down" their ideas for mainstream readers. But the magazine did break new ground, says Pogrebin. One issue dealt with domestic violence. It had a woman with a black eye on its cover.
"The idea of putting that on a cover was just beyond imagining for that era," Pogrebin noted. "You couldn't find acknowledgment that the greatest amount of violence that was committed against women was from people they knew and supposedly loved or who supposedly loved them."
Ms. is credited with being among the first to bring the issue of sexual harassment in the workplace to widespread attention. Ms. pointed out what women already knew: that such behavior was more than a personal violation. It forced many women to choose between their dignity and their jobs.
"A secretary would say what her male boss did and a woman executive would say what her male boss did. So it crossed class because masculine power kind of trumped every other kind of class distinction," Pogrebin said.
Ms. was also critical in changing views on abortion, which was illegal in most U.S. states except to save a mother's life. The magazine published a statement signed by thousands of women, admitting they had had abortions.
"It was an exposure, It was dangerous and I thought therefore it was one of the most meaningful things we did," Pogrebin said.
In 2012, American women live in a vastly different world than the one that Gloria Steinem and her staff navigated in 1972.
Suzanne Braun Levine says the fact that her 25-year-old daughter takes the possibilities and accomplishments of women for granted is bittersweet.
"I am so glad she doesn't know how it was," Levine said. "She can't imagine getting anyone's permission to get a credit card. She can't imagine needing a companion to go to a restaurant she likes. The downside is that as, for example, we lose the right to abortion, I am not sure she understands how important it is to fight to hold on to it."
Ms. Magazine is only quarterly now. Other causes and media are filling the niche it once monopolized.
The magazine turns 40 this month.
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