The war on terror, George Bush once declared, "will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated". But Barack Obama's administration, it appears, has ended it rather more discreetly - via email.
Susan Whitehorse Johnson had it right. The Kiowa-Otoe American Indian woman had just cooked up a feast of fry bread and stew and was talking about the place of Indians in America.
"We are different. But we are everywhere. We have our own subculture. Everywhere you go there are Indians," she said in a crowded school room in Walters, Oklahoma, where she was helping out with a language class in Comanche.
"Indian country" is a unique place in America. Or rather it often seems like a unique string of places, scattered across the same stretch of continent as the United States but often fundamentally apart from it. To visit Indian country, by going to a reservation or simply spending time with Indians (one rarely hears Indians use the words Native American), is always a fascinating experience.
One guy, in a tuxedo, looked like George Clooney when he was Dr. Doug Ross on “E.R.” I gawked. A blond surfer-boy-type in a white T-shirt, black jacket and very tight black pants looked like an actor on “Gossip Girl.” I peered.
Not a soul, it seemed, was looking at me — including the bartenders who kept walking by my extended $20 bill.
CHICAGO (AP) — The president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops on Saturday called on the White House to end immigration raids that split up families.
"I stand with other faith leaders and all of you gathered here today and with every immigrant family in this nation to call on our government to end immigration raids and the separation of families," said Cardinal Francis George at an immigrants-rights rally at a northwest Chicago church.
In the unlikely surroundings of a cluttered art room in a rural Oklahoma high school, a dying language was being given the kiss of life.
Bud Yackeshi got to his feet in front of 20 or so fellow members of his Comanche tribe and recited a blessing. "We ask you to be here, Lord, for us and the people who speak here tonight," he said in the language of his ancestors. Then the Comanche lesson began.
Here is a case in point. On Tuesday I met my first bona fide billionaire, the oil-man turned wind energy tycoon, T Boone Pickens.
I interviewed him in his Dallas office and, as we chatted afterwards, I mentioned we were heading off to Las Vegas. Boone, being a true Oklahoma gentleman, promptly offered us a lift... on his private plane!
A pair of eyes peers out from underneath the bushes where about 20 people crouch in silence, hiding from men in uniforms waving search lights on the other side of a barbed-wire fence. "We are federal agents and we know you are there," an amplified voice cuts through the night speaking in heavily accented Spanish. "Don't try to cross the river, don't try to cross the desert, it is dangerous. Stay in Mexico."
A figure makes a sudden dash for it but fails. Wrestled to the ground he is grilled for information before being led away for deportation. The rest of the group waits until the coast is deemed clear and then they emerge to crawl under the fence themselves and run into the darkness.
But these are not real migrants and this is not really a remote part of the 2,000-mile (3,218-kilometre) US-Mexican frontier.
$8 billion could help revive travel by train
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PHOENIX (AP) — The nation's largest nuclear power plant has made "substantial improvements" since a number of safety issues led regulators to downgrade its safety rating three years ago, according to a letter released Tuesday by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station, 50 miles west of Phoenix, has had the lowest safety rating of any licensed U.S. reactor since 2006, when inspectors found that an emergency backup generator had been inoperative for 18 days and unreliable for 40 days. Inspectors found several other safety problems in the two years before that.
The scene resembles what you might see in a third world country.
A Navajo couple huddles together on a mattress outside a makeshift home, surrounded by old furniture and a landscape filled with dirt and rocks.
CARTERSVILLE, Ga. — There's mountain man Jim Beckwourth, legendary lawman Bass Reeves and Henry O. Flipper, the first black graduate of West Point.
Here, too, is the slave-turned-explorer, York. And Stagecoach Mary, the cussing, gun-toting driver who delivered mail in Montana into her 70s. And Cathay Williams, who fought as William Cathay in the Army for two years before she was discovered to be a woman.
Now, these black figures and their contemporaries - who date back to the Civil War but were excluded from the American West narrative - are honoured in more than 60 paintings and sculptures at the Booth Western Art Museum. The exhibit, called "The Black West: Buffalo Soldiers, Black Cowboys and Untold Stories," runs through March 22.
First came the imperial marching music and a fiery explosion. "You've watched snippets of them for days, or meant to after your friends sent you the link," a voice boomed with mock gravity. "Tonight, the week-long feud of the century comes to a head."
It was a comically absurd drumroll for what, on the surface, was merely a squabble between TV presenters. In one corner, Jim Cramer, the closest thing to a celebrity in American financial journalism. In the opposite corner, Jon Stewart, the satirist and host of the fake news programme The Daily Show on Comedy Central. But unlike many a big fight, this one more than surpassed the hype. Nothing less than financial reporting itself was put on trial – and found severely wanting.
Few are feeling the change that President Barack Obama has brought to Washington more acutely than Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio.
Not yet two months into the Obama administration, the veteran Republican lawman finds himself under investigation by the Justice Department following complaints that his office employs unconstitutional practices in enforcing immigration laws. On Capitol Hill, a high-profile congressional committee is preparing to hold an investigative hearing into whether Arpaio's operation discriminates against Latinos. And, based at least partly on Arpaio's record, the Homeland Security Department is revising the rules of the federal program, known as 287(g), that gives federal immigration-enforcement authority to Arpaio and other local officials around the country.
The Mexican president has blamed US "corruption" for hampering his nation's efforts to combat violent drug cartels. Felipe Calderon also told the AFP news agency that the main cause of Mexico's drug gang problems was "having the world's biggest consumer [of drugs] next to us".
"Drug trafficking in the United States is fuelled by the phenomenon of corruption on the part of the American authorities," he said on Wednesday.
Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said that next month's hearing will be held jointly with the chairmen of the immigration, crime and Constitution subcommittees.
"We're not trying to persecute or take advantage of anybody," Conyers said Wednesday at a news conference. "Law-enforcement officers have a very important and valuable function. The problem is they can't interpret the law their own way to harass or use racial strategies to determine who they arrest."
Meanwhile, Arpaio received a letter from the Justice Department Wednesday informing him of a probe into allegations of discriminatory and unconstitutional searches and seizures.
Finally, it seems that the abusive Maricopa County lawman could get what's coming to him.
The petition, initiated by America's Voice, a Washington-based group for immigration reform, was delivered to the agencies Wednesday by House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-Min.), Immigration Subcommittee Chairwoman Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), other members of Congress and national immigration advocate leaders.