It's the classic non-answer: At a White House press briefing Friday afternoon, reporters pelted outgoing Press Secretary Robert Gibbs with questions about the revolution in Egypt, but there was one key query he just could not address.
CNBC contributor Erin Burnett said Friday that oil prices would skyrocket if countries in the Middle East broke out from under the rule of brutal dictators.
A former Republican Senator considered to be a candidate for the party's 2012 presidential nomination was recently confronted by a blogger with a perplexing question: Being pro-life, if you found yourself in a fertility clinic that was burning down, and you had a choice between saving a 2-year-old girl or a petri dish of five fertilized eggs, what would you do?
Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele has been called many things during his tenure atop the Republican party. Literary connoisseur was not one of them.
In a confidential communication dated Dec. 14, 2007 and released by WikiLeaks on Sunday, then-US Ambassador to France Craig Roberts Stapleton recommended creating the list if France and the EU continued to ban biotech seeds.
"Mission Paris recommends that that the [United States government] reinforce our negotiating position with the EU on agricultural biotechnology by publishing a retaliation list when the extend 'Reasonable Time Period' expires," Stapleton wrote. "Europe is moving backwards not forwards on this issue with France playing a leading role, along with Austria, Italy and even the [European] Commission."
Stapelton added that the US should create a list "that causes some pain across the EU, since this is a collective responsibility, but that also focuses in part on the worst culprits."
He continued: "The list should be measured rather than vicious and must be sustainable over the long term, since we should not expect an early victory."
The former US official added that France's "High Authority" on agricultural biotech was particularly offensive because it sought to "roll back established science-based decision making." He added that a bill considered by the French National Assembly should be rebuked by the publication "of a registry identifying the cultivation of GMOs at the parcel levels" ... "given the propensity for activists to destroy GMO crops in the field."
The document would appear to expose a high-ranking US official advocating a selective leak of otherwise confidential information to achieve a European political objective on behalf of US private industry.
The law that was considered in France would have made farmers and biotech firms liable for pollen drift of their modified crops -- a move that "could make any biotech planting impossible in practical terms," the Stapleton wrote.
It was essentially the same principle the US employs for environmental pollution: the polluter must pay. GMO firms, however, are given exception to those regulations in North America.
The spread of modified genes into the wild is of particular concern to critics of biotech food crops, who cite studies linking GM seeds to organ damage and infertility in animals. Most Monsanto seeds are modified to resist pesticides such as Roundup, which has been shown to cause cancer and genetic mutations in humans. It is still unclear whether genetically modified foods pose health risks, but they have been adopted in soaring quantities in the United States.
"Soybeans and cotton genetically engineered with herbicide-tolerant traits have been the most widely and rapidly adopted GE crops in the U.S., followed by insect-resistant cotton and corn," according to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA).
Researchers at the University of Arkansas found in August that canola, a modified rapeseed used mainly for oil, had managed to sustain itself in the wilds of North Dakota. Up to 80 percent of the plants they tested had genes that were modified to resist herbicide. It was the first time modified crops had been discovered growing in the wild, the BBC noted.
Monsanto's genetically modified corn, currently banned across the EU, was also found growing in Ireland, the Irish Department of Agriculture said.
Stapleton was appointed Ambassador to France in 2005 by President George W. Bush. His wife is a cousin of President George H.W. Bush. Stapelton was replaced as ambassador in July 2009, when President Barack Obama named Charles Rivkin to the post.
Europe continues biotech resistance
It's not clear from the release if the US went ahead with its plan for the "retaliation list," but Stapelton was certainly right on whether the US should expect an early victory in European public opinion.
In December, more than one million Europeans signed a petition demanding the EU halt the approval of new genetically modified crops. The petition was later dismissed by the EU Commission on procedural grounds.
In the last 12 years only two organisms have been licensed for seeding across Europe, and one of them was a potato that triggered the recent mass petition against the crops. The number one multinational biotech firm in the world, Monsanto, isn't happy about that.
But like other US business interests, Monsanto hasn't been sitting around whining about policy backlash foreign or domestic. The Nation's Jeremy Scahill revealed in September that the world's top producer of genetically modified seeds hired US security contractor Blackwater to "infiltrate activist groups organizing against the multinational biotech firm." The leaked cable makes no mention of Blackwater mercenaries operating in Europe.
Other cables released in recent days showed that, behind the scenes, Spain has been a key ally of the US in defending genetically modified crops.
Spanish Secretary of State and Deputy Minister Josep Puxeu contacted US officials to ask for support after his country came under pressure to ban their Monsanto-developed MON810 corn crop, a cable revealed.
"He asked that the USG maintain pressure on Brussels to keep agricultural biotechnology an option for Member States and requested that the USG work together with Spain in this endeavor."
Another cable sent to the Vatican on Nov. 19, 2009 indicated that Pope Benedict XVI also supports genetically modified crops, but will not admit it in public.
"Vatican officials remain largely supportive of genetically modified crops as a vehicle for protecting the environment while feeding the hungry, but -- at least for now -- are unwilling to challenge bishops who disagree," it explained.
For all the Republicans' bluster during the Bush administration about national security-hating "Defeatocrats," it seems the cards have finally turned.
Next fall, US politics will officially become a reality show.
Groups advocating the repeal of the military's discriminatory "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy are meeting at the White House Tuesday -- but as they've come to find out, some topics are off limits.
The Obama administration wants to keep the discussion off-the-record, and says it would end the meeting outright if the discussion turns to recent court decisions that found the policy to be "unconstitutional."
Gay publication The Advocate obtained a copy of White House Deputy Director Brian Bond's email with details of the meeting, in which he threatens to end the talks.
"Obviously this meeting has gotten out," Bond wrote. "We are expecting the content of the conversation today to be off the record and to help us figure out how to move forward with the lame duck session."
He continued: "Also as previously mentioned, there can be no discussion of current court cases or legal strategy or Counsel’s Office will end the meeting. The focus is repeal and the lame duck session. This is also a non-partisan meeting where we want everyone’s help."
The "Don't Ask" policy was halted earlier this month after a judge ordered the military to stop enforcing the ban. Eight days later, an appeals court agreed to the administration's request to stay of that order.
The lawsuit that succeeded in temporarily halting the policy was brought by a group of gay Republicans. President Obama has promised his administration would bring the policy to an end.
The US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit is expected to rule within days on whether the military will again have to discontinue the policy.
A copy of Bond's email follows:
The donor list for Democratic grassroots campaign group MoveOn.org is actually pretty easy to find. It takes about 15 seconds, if you've got a broadband Internet connection and a familiarity with "the Google."
To Fox News host Bill O'Reilly, if a white person like former governor Jesse Ventura or former senator Mike Gravel questions the government's recounting of the 9/11 attacks, he (or she) is a "pinhead." But if a Muslim person questions the official story, well, that makes them a potentially dangerous "radical".
Fox News personality Sean Hannity is an opinion host, not a reporter: a fact made abundantly clear in last week's fracas over what one CNN host called on Sunday "deceptive" video editing.
Breaking news: something happened a month and a half ago and Rupert Murdoch's favorite news network just now found someone willing to say something outrageous about it.
Update: Swedish authorities will appeal decision