American Security Council Foundation (ASCF)

An 844-foot-long U.S. Navy assault ship collided with a refueling tanker Wednesday about 120 miles off the coast of California in the Pacific Ocean.

The USS Essex, a helicopter carrier, was pulling alongside the supply ship Yukon for a routine replenishment at sea when the Essex suffered an apparent "steering malfunction" and the two ships collided. 

President Barack Obama welcomes NATO leaders to his home town of Chicago this coming weekend for a summit focused on Afghanistan, burden-sharing and other challenges facing the alliance.

The U.S. and NATO are withdrawing from Afghanistan under a timetable that will have all foreign combat forces out by 2014.

 

A key Syrian activist group has threatened to pull out of the country's already fractured opposition bloc because of complaints that it has strayed from the spirit of the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad

The Local Coordination Committees said in a statement Thursday that the Syrian National Council, was acting with "political incompetence." The LCC, a network of activists in Syria, accused the SNC leadership of marginalizing council members, monopolizing power, and not coordinating closely enough with activists on the ground.

 

New satellite images show North Korea has resumed construction on a new nuclear reactor, despite international criticism.

The U.S.-Korea Institute, operated by Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies, says images taken by a commercial satellite on April 30 show Pyongyang has made progress on a light water reactor at its main nuclear complex at Yongbyon.

Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng says he and his family will be issued passports to leave the country within the next two weeks.

The blind activist told Western reporters Thursday that Shangdong provincial security officials brought visa applications for him and his family to fill out the day before, and that passport photos were taken. On Wednesday, Chen discussed the issue in an interview with VOA

Liberals are invoking the framers of the Constitution in their latest attempt to employ judges to subvert the institutions of government. At issue is the Senate’s cloture rule, the requirement for three-fifths of voting members to vote to end debate and vote on a bill. Supporters of the Dream Act, which passed the House but couldn’t get to cloture in the Senate, are suing to have the practice overturned as an unconstitutional imposition on majority rule.

The argument in Common Cause et al. v. Joseph Biden et al. centers on essays by Alexander Hamilton and James Madison in the Federalist Papers that opposed requirements for supermajority votes in the legislature. The six exceptions - which include ratifying treaties, impeachment, expulsion from the legislature and amending the Constitution - are by this logic the only intended examples of permitted supermajority voting. Cloture imposes a de facto supermajority requirement and, in the words of Hamilton, substitutes “the pleasure, caprice or artifices of an insignificant, turbulent or corrupt junta, to the regular deliberations and decisions of a respectable majority.”