The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee- the committee tasked with overseeing Democratic Senate races- has narrowly out-raised their Republican counterparts- the National Republican Senatorial Committee- for the first quarter of 2012.

The DSCC reported raising more than $17.7 million in the first three months of 2012. This figure, the committee notes replica watches, marks the most successful first quarter of fundraising ever for the group. The DSCC has $24 million in cash on hand, and reports owing zero in debt.

In a written statement the Executive Director of the DSCC, Guy Cecil, credited the strong fundraising to high enthusiasm about the Democratic candidates running for office replica watches, and the prospect of the Democrats keeping their majority in the Senate (they currently have 53 seats to the Republicans 47.)

“We have spent the cycle aggressively recruiting great candidates in open and Republican-held seats, our incumbents are building well-funded campaigns and now donors are more enthusiastic than ever about the likelihood we will keep the majority” writes Cecil.

The NRSC had a strong first quarter as well. they took in nearly $15 million for the first quarter replica watches, they announced on Thursday. Like their Democratic counterparts, the NRSC also reports having no debt. They currently have $19.6 million cash on hand.

It is worth noting that historically speaking strong fundraising does not necessarily equal victory. The DSCC outraised the NRSC for the 2009-2010 cycle- taking in $82.5 million total as compared to the NRSC’s $78.9 million, according to FEC disclosures. Republicans gained seven seats in that cycle- a fact highlighted by a spokesman for the NRSC today.

“Considering Democrats control the Senate and the White House, it’s surprising that they don’t have an even greater cash advantage” Brian Walsh, communications director for the NRSC wrote to ABC News. ” And coming off the 2010 election cycle where Senate Republicans won seven seats despite being outspent, it has to concern national Democrats that we’re on track to close that financial gap even further in 2012.”

Republicans need a net gain of four seats in order to regain control in the Senate in the fall of 2012.

SHOWS: Nightline This Week World News

Samsung’s been given another wrist-slap by a judge presiding over one of its many patent infringement suits with Apple. In a ruling issued late last week Tattoo Ink Supplies, U.S. Magistrate Judge Paul S. Grewal sanctioned Samsung for failing to obey a court order requiring it to turn over source code to Apple. This is the second time in as many weeks that Samsung has been reprimanded for non-compliance with a discovery order.

Chuck Burton/AP Photo Luos Handmade Machines

Elizabeth Warren is under fire for reports she claimed status as a minority lawyer based on a far-back blood connection to the Cherokee line.

The Boston Globe reported that the Democratic candidate challenger to Scott Brown in the Senate race in Massachusetts self-identified as a minority from 1986 to 1995 Intenze Tattoo Ink, though she has no recent Native American family.

Genealogist at the New England Historic Genealogical Society Chris Child set out to hunt down Warren’s ancestry last Thursday. In less than a week, he discovered documents citing an 1894 marriage record that lists Warren’s great-great-great grandmother, O. C. Sarah Smith as Cherokee, meaning that Warren is 1/32nd Native American.

Child said roots like these can take anywhere from weeks to months to track down, depending on the twists and turns of the family trees.

“Once you go back further than 150 years the records are more complicated to go through,” Child said.

For example, that great-great-great grandma of Warren’s also goes by the name “Neoma” or “Oma” in some records. Child said it’s not unusual to find individuals listed under several different names at that time period.

The story kicked off Friday when the Boston Herald reported on an article that ran in the Harvard Crimson in 1996 about students’ concerns regarding a lack of diversity among the school’s faculty. In the story, Warren, who serves as the Leo Gottlieb Professor of Law at Harvard’s Law School, was cited as Native American. Warren’s identification as Native American pre-dates her time at Harvard.

Law School directories from the Association of American Law Schools from 1986-1995 list Warren as a minority law professor. During this time Warren taught at the University of Texas School of Law and the University of Pennsylvania Law School.

Though Warren reportedly said last week that she was proud of her heritage, she makes no mention of her ancestry during a profile of her childhood made by the Boston Globe. The reporter who wrote that story said he did not remember her mentioning anything about her Native American roots. Though he said in an email it was possible that he had forgotten, he thought it was “unlikely that she brought it up.”

Polling shows Warren is in a tight race with incumbent Republican Sen. Scott Brown. Though hotly contested the campaign has remained relatively civil, thanks in large part to a pledge signed by both candidates to keep attack ads from outside groups out of their race. That pledge continues to be honored, but things are growing increasingly tense.

Since the story erupted on Friday, Brown has been relatively reserved– on Monday he told reporters that “if there are questions, she should answer them”–avoiding any outright attacks. His campaign manager, Jim Barnett, has said that Warren should “apologize for participating in this hypocritical sham.”

Warren herself has not lodged any accusations at Brown either. Warren’s campaign manager, Mindy Myers, suggested that Brown was trying to gain political points, and insinuated that there was a sexist aspect to these questions about Warren’s ancestry- though she stopped short of lobbing the accusation outright.

“Once again, the qualifications and ability of a woman are being called into question by Scott Brown who did the same thing with the Supreme Court nomination of Elena Kagan. It’s outrageous Tattooing Kits,” Myers said in a statement.

Elizabeth Hartfield contributed to this report.

SHOWS: This Week World News

HOUSTON (Reuters) – A former BP Plc engineer was arrested and charged on Tuesday with intentionally destroying evidence related to how much oil was spilling from the company’s broken well in the Gulf of Mexico in April 2010, the U.S. Justice Department said.

Kurt Mix, 50, was accused of deleting text messages between himself and a supervisor that included “sensitive internal BP information collected in real-time” as BP tried to stop the leak, the Justice Department said.

During his first court appearance in Houston on Tuesday, he told U.S. Magistrate Stephen Smith in a firm voice that he understood the charges against him.

Mix, of Katy Buy Chanel Dresses, Texas, about 25 miles west of Houston, was charged with two counts of obstruction of justice for allegedly deleting records related to the amount of oil flowing from the Macondo well after the blowout. If convicted, he faces a maximum of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine for each count.

He was released on $100,000 bond on Tuesday. His next court appearance was scheduled for May 3 in New Orleans, where the case is filed. He surrendered his passport, and his travel was restricted to Texas and Louisiana.

The spill was found after BP’s troublesome Macondo deepwater well blew out, causing deadly explosions aboard Transocean’s Deepwater Horizon drilling rig that killed 11 men and sank the rig.

The biggest offshore oil spill in U.S. history spewed more than 4 million barrels of oil into the basin before BP capped it in mid-July 2010. The company killed the well two months later.

Mix, a drilling and completions engineer for BP before he resigned in January this year Discount BCBG Dresses, worked on various efforts to stop the leak, including a “top kill” that involved pumping heavy mud into the ruptured well to try to push back the oil.

Prosecutors alleged that when Mix learned his electronic files were going to be collected by a vendor working for BP’s lawyers, he deleted hundreds of text messages to a BP drilling engineering manager and an outside contractor — both unidentified in court papers — about the top kill that indicated it was failing. At the same time, top BP officials said publicly that it was “broadly proceeding according to plan.”

According to an affidavit filed in his case, a team of BP scientists and engineers, including Mix, decided on May 18 that year — nearly a month after the blowout — that a top kill could possibly work if the flow rate of oil was about 5,000 barrels per day, which was BP’s estimate at the time.

Internal BP data suggested that a top kill would fail if the flow rate was 15,000 barrels per day or more.

On May 24, BP announced that it would start the top kill two days later, and then BP CEO Tony Hayward touted that it had a 60 percent to 70 percent chance of success.

But late on May 26, Mix texted a drilling engineering manager, “too much flowrate — over 15,000 and too large an orifice.”

However, BP kept saying publicly that the effort was proceeding according to plan. On May 29, a Saturday, BP stopped the top kill and acknowledged its failure. The next Monday the company’s stock price plunged by 15 percent.

In August of that year, the Justice Department asked BP via subpoena for all flow-related documents. The vendor collected some data from Mix the next month, but a later analysis of his iPhone allegedly showed that he deleted 200 text messages to the drilling manager.

In August 2011, the vendor contacted Mix again seeking data. Another forensic analysis allegedly showed another 100 text messages between Mix and the contractor had been deleted from his iPhone before he met with the vendor.

The Justice Department said Tuesday that BP had “sent numerous notices to Mix requiring him to retain all information concerning Macondo” before he allegedly deleted messages.

BP said in a statement it would not comment on the case. It was cooperating with the Justice Department and other official probes of the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, and has clear policies requiring preservation of evidence.

(Additional reporting by Jeremy Pelofsky in Washington and Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by David Gregorio, Dave Zimmerman and Jim Marshall)

U.S. Gulf Oil Spill Related Quotes and News Company Price Related News

Click here  to read more from Slate’s Fall Fiction Week.

Gordon Lish

A recent article in the New York Times about the desire of Tess Gallagher, Raymond Carver’s widow, to have Carver’s stories published in their original, unedited form, has ignited a controversy over the slash-and-burn handiwork of his first editor, Gordon Lish. This contretemps has brought back memories of my own brief stint as Lish’s editor.

It was Don DeLillo’s fault. I was working for W.W. Norton in 1991 when he gave me a call. I’d had the privilege of being his editor on Libra, and we’d stayed friends. Lish had also been Don’s editor at Esquire, and DeLillo had dedicated one of his novels to him. After some pleasantries, Don came to the point:

Advertisement

“Gordon Lish is looking for a new publisher.”

Uh-huh.

“He’s finished a novel, and I think he’s broken through into new territory.”

Hmmm.

I had reasons to be both intrigued and extremely wary. As a college student all hot for literature I’d had my brain waves rearranged and my taste in fiction formed by the amazingly odd and disturbing stories Gordon Lish had published in Esquire as its fiction editor from 1969 to 1976. I still vividly remember the wave of existential disquiet that swept over me when I read Carver’s “Neighbors” in those pages. What was that?There, and later at Knopf, Lish brought forth a new kind of American fiction—gnomic, stripped-down, psychologically charged but jagged and resistant to explanation—that would come to be known variously as “Minimalism” and “Kmart Realism.” In addition to Raymond Carver, he’d published such striking talents as Barry Hannah, Amy Hempel, Joy Williams, Mary Robison, Cynthia Ozick, and, his maximalist odd man out, Harold Brodkey, while appointing himself “Captain Fiction”—a faintly ridiculous sobriquet that nonetheless captured with some accuracy his standing in the literary world.

Concurrently, Lish had gained notoriety as a teacher of creative writing, one whose classes bore more than a passing resemblance to such ’70s-era phenomena as primal scream therapy (feel the pain!) and EST (no peeing!). In the foreword to his anthology All Our Secrets Are the Same Tattoo Supplies, he defined his taste this way: “My principal concerns are paralysis, death, home, the things people live with, the violence that is in us, flight from all those concerns, a piece of brisk whistling in the long-toothed dark, and God, I just can’t get enough of that wonderful stuff …” In the strict Lishian aesthetic, where silences often spoke more clearly than words, characters gave voice to their traumas with a kind of mute, cracked eloquence and off-slant detailing. “He did like kidneys, that was one thing,” a young divorcee remembers of her ex-husband in a Joy Williams story. “He loved kidneys for the weekend lunch.” Who knew that organ meats could have an emotional valence? This style spread through America’s creative writing programs and literary magazines like measles through an elementary school, sweeping the conventional well-made story into the dustbin of literary history, or so it seemed. And that was all right with me.

Lish had also developed into a fiction writer of note, a calculating provocateur and something of a tummler. His first novel, Dear Mr. Capote (1983), took the form of letters from a serial killer inviting the author of In Cold Blood to write his story next. The book virtually invented a genre of novels featuring hyper-literary mass murderers. And Lish’s short stories, first collected in What I Know So Far (1984), were, well, quite Lishian; one, “To Jerome, With Love and Kisses,” was sheer genius, a hectoring lecture to J.D. Salinger from his estranged father demanding that Salinger stay more in touch Tattoo Supplies, the way Phil Roth and Bernie Malamud did with their fathers.

SINGLE PAGE Page: 1 | 2

Canadian auto outposts Windsor and Essex counties in Ontario have lost thousands of jobs in the recent past. Out of concern for the future of not only their jobs, but their communities and standard of living, nearly 40,000 people took part in a rally organized by the Canadian Auto Workers Union on Sunday BCBG Dresses sale, May 27th. The CAW claims that every single manufacturing job supports 12 non-autobuilding jobs Buy Emilio Pucci Dresses, and with the big goings on down south with the sale of Chrysler and Ford’s Way Forward, the union is understandably concerned. The rally Discount Chanel Dresses, part of the CAW’s wider “Manufacturing Matters” initiative, was held at Ford’s Windsor Buy Bandage dresses, Ontario test track Buy Christian Audigier Clothing, and was intended to demonstrate the gravity of Canada’s loss of manufacturing jobs. There will be pain associated with the domestic automakers scramble to stay alive, and part of that has taken the form of shipping jobs elsewhere. It’s not just the car assembly plants, it’s the multitudes of smaller suppliers that build the subassemblies and components the autoworkers actually assemble. It’s happening in the US, as well Replica Chanel Dresses, and it’s tough to realize that in the jaws of the vice are families that have little recourse. Click the pic above for a slideshow of the Windsor rally with audio.

Thanks for the tip, Peter!

[Source: Autonorth]

Fiat has been talking seriously about bringing Alfa Romeo back to these shores since early 2000, making a decade of delays in the brand’s relaunch. Most recently Cheap Missoni Dresses, the company’s debut has been pushed back to sometime in 2013. To commemorate the anniversary of Fiat’s colossal history of setbacks Buy White Herve leger, Car and Driver put together a time table of the promised Alfa Romeo launch.

The story begins on March 27, 2000, when Fiat announced it had partnered with General Motors to bring Alfas to the States by 2003. The first delay came less than a year later, when Fiat and GM announced that Alfas would move through Cadillac and Saab dealers starting in 2005.

Obviously, none of that came even remotely true. In 2002 Cheap DKNY Clothes, the relaunch got pushed back to 2007. In 2004 Cheap Hale Bob Dresses, it was killed altogether. The Italians changed their minds again in 2005, going back to 2007 as the year of the Alfa. Need we go on? The promises, cancellations and delays have carried on this way through two wars Herve Leger gown sale, two presidents, an economic nosedive and the odd oil crisis thrown in for good measure.

At this point, we’d really like to believe that we’ll see an attainable Alfa in the USA by 2013 Cheap Karen Millen Dresses, but history makes the time table hard to believe. Head over to Car and Driver to see a full infographic of Fiat’s waffling.

The February issue of CAR Magazine based in the U.K. isn’t set to go on newsstands until January 3rd. The cover, however Cheap Herve Leger gown, which reveals what appears to be an official shot of the new BMW E92 M3 rear end Cheap Chanel Dresses, is already up on the buff book’s website, while pages of the accompanying article are being hosted on M3Post.com and GermanCarScene (we’ll refrain from posting them here on account of the obvious illegality of scans).

In the issue Buy Herve Leger v neck, the BMW M3 is called The Most Exciting Car of the Year, no doubt due to the anticipation of its release, which has been fueled by a steady stream of spy shots and rumors of a 400+ hp V8 under the car’s long hood. The article inside the issue states that the new M3 will cost £48 Herve Leger gown sale,000 GBP, or about $94,000 USD (!) if you trust exchange rates. It goes on to reveal that the engine is indeed a 4.0-liter V8 producing 420bhp, but that the motor can only propel the M3 to 62mph in 4.9 seconds. The current M3 with “only” a 333-hp, 3.2-liter inline-six can manage that in skilled hands, which casts some doubt on the information provided (an over 100% price increase Buy Chanel Dresses, seriously?). So take the info with a grain of salt, but the scans of CAR Magazine’s February issue sure look like official shots from the manufacturuer to us.
Thanks for the tip Discount Bandage dresses, Disco Stu!

[Source: M3Post.com via GermanCarScene]

Buy Cheap Replica Alain Silberstein Watches
Lincoln MKT Town Car – Click above for high-res image gallery

The Lincoln Town Car is a the ride of choice for limousine companies and car services around the world. One problem, we’re rapidly approaching the official death knell of the panther platform Discount Replica Maurice Lacroix Watches, and that means that soon enough no more new Town Cars are going to be built. Lincoln is ready to fill that upcoming void and is using the 2011 Internation Limousine Hublot Replica Watches, Charter and Tour Show as a platform to debut its MKT Town Car and Limousine.

Comfort is the name of the game with livery operators Replica Perrelet Watches sale, so Lincoln has pushed the rear seats of the MKT further back to add 1.5-inches of legroom. The rear seats can also recline and the right rear can access even more legroom by controlling the front passenger seat.

Cargo room is improved compared to the outgoing Town Car. The MKT Town Car offers 39.6 cubic feet of space How to buy Replica Michele Watches, which means passengers can cram in more luggage, golf clubs or cases of cheap beer for post prom-night activities.

In addition to the MKT Town Car Roger Dubuis Replica Watches, Lincoln has an MKT ready to do serious limo duty thanks to a a heavy-duty chassis that can be streched up to an additional 10 feet in length. The MKT Town Car is available with either front or all-wheel drive while all-wheel drive comes standard on the MKT Limo.

Read more about both versions in the full press release after the jump. You can also check out photos of the MKT Town Car’s interior in the gallery below.

Related GalleryLincoln MKT Town Car
[Source: Lincoln]