*Germany’s Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble said in today’s Financial Times that an E.U. wide bailout agency and emergency fund isn’t workable under current European law because the supranational organization lacks “coercive means to enforce decisions.”
Good luck getting the British to agree to that. Two ministers in David Cameron’s cabinet recently said that they would vote against remaining in the E.U. if a referendum on the issue was held today.
*U.S. Rep and Iraq War veteran Tammy Duckworth said on CNN’s “State of the Union” today that the military must change the way it investigates accusations of sexual assault.
*Sensational AP story from Iran, where President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad faces the possibility of being whipped or imprisoned for “allegedly violating rules by accompanying his chief adviser to the election registry office the previous day.”
The Council’s members said that public fund rules were broken when Ahmadinejad accompanied Mashaei to the election registration office on Saturday, said [Guardian Council spokesman Abbas Ali] Kadkhodaei.
A conviction could bring a maximum punishment of six months in jail or 74 lashes. Kadkhodaei did not elaborate.
*In an interview that “Face the Nation” aired this morning, former Bush and Obama Defense Secretary Robert Gates defended the military’s response to the September 11, 2012 Benghazi attacks.
“Getting somebody there in a timely way would have been very difficult, if not impossible,” he said.
Gates decried the “cartoonish impression” people have of the military’s capabilities to be dispatched in a moment’s notice, adding that the U.S. does not have a ready force standing by in the Middle East.
*According to a report published by the AP yesterday, a variety of polls show that 9 out of 10 Americans can still agree on a number of issues. Despite the fact that around 90 percent of Americans, apparently, “believe it’s their duty to always vote,” the voter turnout rate in the U.S. is one of the lowest in the world.
Enjoy the rest of your Sunday evening, everyone.
