“While Houston’s service was memorable, it wasn’t without some controversy. As we previously reported, Bobby Brown left the service after just a short time after a disagreement with Whitney’s family. We’re told they objected to Bobby bringing a nine-person entourage with him.”

Read the in depth article at http://www.tmz.com/2012/02/18/whitney-houston-funeral-livestream/#.T0Bhy5gujjQ

“There is a rising up, a welling up if you will, of democracy and justices all over this country right now, and we see it most of all at the Occupy sites, where people are coming together sort of like old-fashioned democracy,” said Stein, a Lexington, Mass., physician. “Like the old-fashioned town meeting where ordinary people just got together and just talked about their needs, their visions, their concerns.”

Occupy Delaware, made up of local supporters of the Occupy Wall Street movement, has been protesting against a number of issues, including social and economic inequality, corporate greed and government inaction.

Stein said protesters with the Occupy Wall Street movement reflect the same deep dissatisfaction with President Barack Obama as members of the Green Party, which she has called the nation’s only viable progressive third party. Stein has been speaking with protesters from different Occupy Wall Street movements as she tries to get on the ballot of about 45 states. As of Thursday, Stein needed about 100 people to register with the Green Party in order to get on Delaware’s ballot.

To read the rest of this article, please refer to http://www.delawareonline.com/article/20120120/NEWS/201200330/1010/RSS0905

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By Todd S. Purdum

In an election year in which the corrosiveness of politics seems to reach a new high every month, and the bitterness of the G.O.P.-nomination fight a new low with each primary and caucus, I thought it might be instructive to spend a moment with the man who has arguably seen more of politics than anyone else still active in Washington, Representative John D. Dingell of Michigan, the Dean of the House.

Dingell, now 85, is not only the senior sitting member of Congress. Having first been elected in 1955 to fill the seat of his father, who had held it since 1933 and died in office, he is also the longest-serving member of the House in all of American history, and is within 17 months of breaking the late Robert Byrd’s record for total combined congressional service in the House and Senate.

So he’s seen a few elections in his day, and seen more than a few politicians come and go. I went to talk to him the other day about his role in the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act because I’m working on a book project about that bill, widely regarded as one of the great high-water marks of bipartisan political achievement in the 20th century. In the face of implacable opposition from segregationist Southern Democrats, the measure passed only because of strong support from Northern Republicans who saw it, in the words of their Senate leader, Everett M. Dirksen of Illinois, as an idea whose time had come.

Read the rest of the post at http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/purdum/2012/02/john-dingell-todd-purdum-michigan-congress-house-robert-byrd

In its contours, Clinton’s life appears to have been crafted by a novelist. He was the small-town Arkansas boy—although he made hay of being from Hope, he was raised in loose-living Hot Springs—who appeared to emerge from the womb running for president. And the cosmos appeared to encourage him: It’s still amazing to see that footage of young Bill shaking hands with his hero, John F. Kennedy, a moment that’s like a modern version of God’s finger touching Adam’s in the Sistine Chapel. Of course, reaching the Oval Office requires years of effort, and Clinton charts Clinton’s progress in its many aspects, from entering his tricky romantic partnership with tough, brainy Hillary Rodham, to his years as governor of Arkansas, where he learned the savor of power and the crushingness of defeat (“What did I do wrong?” he kept asking when, after his first term, he was voted out of office.)

While Clinton’s years in the White House remain fresh in our minds, it’s still startling to be reminded just how regularly Bill and Hillary were smacked with media tsunamis even before Monica—Hairgate, Whitewater, the health-care debacle, the “bimbo eruptions,” and the ascent of feisty, over-reaching Newt Gingrich. It’s the nature of presidencies that most begin in excitement and then, as reality kicks in, start to feel disappointing. The real question is how a president copes with that. Astonishingly resilient, the self-styled Comeback Kid took blow after blow during his first three years—he was the first presidential victim of our crazy 24/7 news cycle— and then turned it around in a way that even Republicans like Trent Lott say they still can’t understand. Helped by an explosion of economic growth, Clinton became so popular that he not only survived the Lewinsky scandal (which Clinton explores in voluminous detail) but, if it were legal, would probably have been reelected to a third term.

Now, PBS presidential portraits tend not to take risks—it’s their job to be centrist—and Clinton sometimes falls into banality. I don’t envy narrator Campbell Scott for having to read lines like, “But beyond America’s shores, a troubled world would wait no longer for America’s attention.” Zzz. That said, writer-director Goodman gives his story more sharp edges than most American Experience portraits. He weaves together nicely chosen images, from revelatory photographs to talismanic footage, and wins pointed words from scads of interviewees: defenders like antiterrorism guru Richard Clarke; wary admirers like journalist Joe Klein; disillusioned liberals like cabinet member Robert Reich; and enemies like Clinton’s personal Javert, Kenneth Starr, whose hounding of the president will go down in history as a shocking abuse of power.

To read the rest of this post go to: http://www.vogue.com/culture/article/hope-springs-eternal-clinton/

You’ve spent much of your career being compared to Sir Laurence Olivier. Did that affect your decision to take the role?

I will be honest, it gave me pause for thought. People have suggested that I have a kind of obsession with Olivier, but really that just tells you what a dominant figure he was in the 20th century when it came to classical acting roles. He had set such a high watermark for what could be achieved.

I liked the fact that My Week With Marilyn wasn’t a biopic. It was a film about a very particular moment in the lives of Olivier and Marilyn Monroe as they tried to make a movie together. Like any artist, he wasn’t as effortlessly successful as he often appeared, particularly in dealing with Marilyn. In the end it felt like a good challenge.

Read more: http://entertainment.time.com/2011/11/23/prosthetic-chins-and-the-bible-kenneth-branagh-on-becoming-sir-laurence-olivier/#ixzz1mgUxdv3s

It’s 1967 in Jackson, Mississippi and he’s 18 years old, riding in the car with my grandfather. For several years the two have had a recurring argument about rock ‘n’ roll, specifically the Beatles. My dad thinks their music is revolutionary while my grandfather says the Fab Four make nothing but noise. Instead, he favors big band music and songs by Irving Berlin.

The car’s radio is tuned “to some Lawrence Welk-type station,” as my dad remembers it, which is playing an upbeat, piano-based instrumental song full of soaring horns and string instruments. They’re well into their Beatles argument when my grandfather gestures to the radio and says, “Now this is a good song. This is real music. If the Beatles wrote something like that, I might like them.” My dad turns to his father. “They did,” he says. “That’s an instrumental version of ‘Good Day Sunshine’.”

“Well, then they should have played it that way to begin with,” my grandpa harrumphs. Forty-five years later, thanks to Paul McCartney’s new album Kisses on the Bottom, my grandpa finally got his wish.

Read more: http://entertainment.time.com/2012/02/16/paul-mccartneys-kisses-on-the-bottom-songs-your-grandparents-should-know/#ixzz1mgUEguQp

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Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2106986,00.html#ixzz1mgSoxO81

Kim Jong Il’s aides were standing around a billiard table in the game room of one of the Dear Leader’s villas outside Pyongyang. It was a formal occasion: they were going to meet Kim’s sons, including the one who would one day succeed him as head of what is probably the world’s most despotic regime. Kim Jong Un was dressed in a military uniform. When his father entered the room, he snapped to attention and, along with his elder brother, gave the old man a crisp salute.
It was 1990. Kim Jong Un, now the new leader of North Korea, was…

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2106986,00.html#ixzz1mgSrDUpB

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To read the rest of the article please go to http://www.cnn.com/2012/02/17/tech/web/computer-virus-syria/index.html