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Sarah Palin got in trouble for not making “non-candidacy” announcement on FOX News

Roger Ailes – FOX News chief apparently felt he didn’t get his money’s worth from Sarah Palin, the former half-term governor of Alaska.

Ailes wasn’t mad that she chose not to run. Apparently he was livid that Palin made the October 5 announcement on Mark Levin’s conservative talk-radio program, robbing Fox News of an exclusive and a possible ratings bonanza.

From NY Magazine: Ailes was so mad, he considered pulling her off the air entirely until her $1 million annual contract expires in 2013. After the announcement, he called Fox’s executive vice-president Bill Shine into a meeting. Shine is the network’s principal point of contact with Palin. Ailes told him she had made a big mistake. “I paid her for two years to make this announcement on my network,” Ailes pointedly told Shine.

The next decision for Palin is which GOP candidate she intends to endorse. Folks in FOX New circles say, if she wants to keep her contract intact, she would be wise to make the announcement on FOX.

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McInerney Pleads Guilty to Second-Degree Murder

Brandon McInerney has pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the shooting death of Lawrence King and will be sentenced to 21 years in prison, reports Los Angeles’s ABC 7 news.

In September, Ventura County, Calif., Superior Court judge Charles Campbell declared a mistrial in the two-month-long case against the 17-year-old after a jury was unable to decide between charges of first-degree murder with a hate-crime enhancement or voluntary manslaughter. The former charge would have netted McInerney at least 53 years in prison, the latter only about 20.

The prosecution claimed the killing was premeditated and that McInerney had planned to kill his classmate after King made unwanted sexual advances, while the defense argued that McInerney, who had been the subject of repeated abuse in his home, had snapped over some comments King had made.

McInerney will be officially sentenced December 19.
(via the Advocate)

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Marriage equality under threat in Spain by newly elected Prime Minister

Progressive Spaniards fear for what will happen to marriage equality and other laws under new Prime Minister-elect Mariano Rajoy’s conservative government.

His conservative party has challenged in the Constitutional Court a 2005 law allowing gay marriage. Rajoy has said he supports civil unions for homosexual couples but does not think they should be called marriages.

In Campillo de Ranas, a tiny hamlet in the Ocejon valley 80 miles north of Madrid, there are very real fears of what the future may bring under the new conservative government of Mr Rajoy, 56.

The picturesque village has carved out a reputation for holding the record in Spain for the number of gay weddings since the Socialists legalised same-sex marriages in 2005.

The socialist mayor Francisco Morato has reversed the fortunes of the once-dying community by welcoming gay marriages and bringing a much-needed boost to the local economy, but he now fears the good times are over.
“I get the feeling that there is a lot of concern,” said Mr Morato. “I have been holding marriages every weekend – sometimes as many as three weddings in one day – I simply haven’t stopped.”

“A lot of people tell me they fear that Mariano Rajoy will revoke the law, so there has been a rush to go ahead with their weddings before it is too late,” he said.
Some 20,000 gay couples have wed since the law, which also lets gay couples adopt children, made Spain only the third member of the European Union after Belgium and the Netherlands to allow same-sex weddings.

More at the Telegraph.co.uk

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With failure of Super Committee, where do across the board cuts come from?

With the expected failure of the congressional Super Committee, the questions now are where are the automatic cuts of $1.2 trillion to come from?

The automatic cuts may not be so devastating on the non-defense spending side of the equation. Both Medicaid and Social Security are spared from the funding reductions and Medicare cuts are limited to 2 percent of the entitlement program’s budget.

Budget hawks looking for significant spending reductions herald the automatic cuts as real deficit-reduction. And entitlement program defenders claim the limited cuts — which include exceptions for the poor and disabled — are less damaging than any that are likely to come out of a supercommittee deal.

Under the automatic cuts, or sequestration, Medicare will lose about $123 billion between 2013 and 2021. But that entire amount will come out of the pockets of doctors and hospitals, not grandma and grandpa.

“If there’s a deal, it could be much worse,” said Eric Kingson, the co-director of Social Security Works. “I’m not going to suggest that a 2 percentage point cut focused on providers may not result in tighter payments for certain kinds of procedures, but it is far less onerous than further raising deductibles on people.”

Watch more from ABC News

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UC Davis Chancellor says she won’t resign

Two police officers involved in a pepper-spraying incident at the University of California-Davis have been placed on leave, and over the weekend, the university’s faculty association called for the chancellor’s resignation.

But Chancellor Linda Katehi told ABC’s Good Morning America on Monday that she’s staying put. “I really feel confident at this point the university needs me,” she told GMA (video here). “There are so many critical issues to be addressed and we really need to start the healing process and move forward.”

On Friday, a police officer was captured on video casually pepper spraying a group of sitting protesters. The incident occurred after “Occupy” protesters were asked to take down their tents from the university’s lawn.