The extension comes after a particularly vitriolic 60-day comment session on the rule that provoked the ire of dozens of trade and lobbyist groups. In an Op-Ed about the issue written to The Hill, Gary Shapiro, the president of the Consumer Electronics Association, said the regulations amount to “criminalizing efforts by government officials — and especially Executive Branch employees — to learn about business trends.” Politico put the clash succinctly, leading an article: “President Barack Obama isn’t finished with K Street.”

The Office of Government Ethics (OGE) has made the new deadline for comments about the rule Dec. 14 — after which the office will proceed with making final determinations. Comments received thus far by leading lobbyist and trade organizations as well as by individuals have been posted to the OGE website and are available for view by the public.

Unhappiness with the rule has centered on it whether it will prevent government officials from learning more about a particular industry or business organization. The Washington Times described it preventing “a representative from the Department of Transportation from attending the Auto Show in Detroit, for example, or a Federal Communications Commission employee from going to the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.”

Craig Holman, government affairs lobbyist for Public Citizen, a good government group that supports the bill, says that assessment is not accurate. “In no way does this prevent members of congress and staffers and others to have communications with trade associations and others,” he said. He says that trade groups would have to charge admittance fees but that federal employees would still be free to attend.

Lobbying groups, though, say concern over gift-giving and comped trade show passes will affect more transactions than paid hotel rooms. They say programs, seminars and other events in which industry experts instruct government officials may become impractical and need to be overhauled.

A precautionary note on a prominent K-Street law firm‘s website describes how the rule might change lobbying culture:

No longer would a federal employee of any kind be able to accept a $15 lunch from a registered lobbyist or go to a [widely-attended gathering] put on (in whole or in part) by a registered lobbying organization. Nor would career executive branch employees any longer be able to accept social invitations from registered lobbyists or lobbying organizations, or enjoy meals or entertainment provided overseas by such individuals or entities.

A representative from another firm was recently quoted in The Hill outlining how government employees day-to-day lives might be jostled. “If you’re a rank-and-file member of the executive branch, and you’re attending a corporate event … you can’t have cheese,” he said. Groups opposed to the law say it will turn casual interactions into potential infractions.

Public Citizen — along with a group of public watchdog organizations that includes the Campaign Legal Center, Common Cause, Democracy 21 and U.S. PIRG — have argued for the rule and against maintaining that coziness between the executive branch and the lobbying industry. In a press release, the groups say current regulations have “allowed people with business pending before an agency from offering free gifts of food, entertainment and travel to agency employees.”

The OGE says the rule is needed to put a stop to “attendance at events, particularly social events, where the nexus to the government’s interest was attenuated.”

Industry groups are also outraged that the regulation makes exclusions for certain types of groups from the regulation, including non-profits, the news media and higher education institutions.

Non-profits in particular have come under the spotlight for being used as funnels for outside organizations to pay for gifts. A recent report found that non-profit spending on traveling junkets has spiked.

Current rules for lobbyist gifts break into two key categories depending on how far from Washington, DC the gift-giving occurs.

Government employees can receive individual gifts from lobbyists or lobbying organizations worth less than $20 up to a maximum of $50 per calendar year. The rule would set that limit to zero dollars.

If an employee is traveling more than 30 miles outside the D.C. area, they are allowed to accept gifts to attend “widely-attended gatherings” (WAGs) sponsored by lobbyist and trade associations. Gifts to attend those events also frequently include paying for  travel expenses, including airfare, hotel accommodations and more. The rule would severely limit that practice.

The issue of lobbyist gifts has come up repeatedly of late as notorious lobbyist Jack Abramoff has taken his case to the public that the lobbying industry is in need of reform. Abramoff served more than three years in a Federal prison after being convicted of crimes made during his tenure as a sought-after lobbyist on Capitol Hill.

A recent special in CBS aired Abramoff’s regulatory proposals. Many of the practices of which he formerly partook would be curbed by the rule.

Abramoff would provide freebies and gifts – looking for favors for his clients in return. He’d lavish certain congressmen and senators with access to private jets and junkets to the world’s great golf destinations like St. Andrews in Scotland. Free meals at his own upscale Washington restaurant and access to the best tickets to all the area’s sporting events; including two skyboxes at Washington Redskins games.

This Saturday, 34 churches in Florida hosted a viewing of “One Nation Under God,” which is being promoted as a “two-hour premiere DVD event featuring top American thinkers and political leaders who will bring the truth about God and America to people gathered in homes and churches across the nation.” The event is a thinly veiled national get-out-the-vote push for the religious right.

According to the event’s website, speakers included some big names in the Christian right: David Barton, James Dobson and Lila Rose of the anti-abortion group Live Action, to name a few. Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich is listed, as well.

The website calls for people to gather their friends and family in their homes or in churches on Nov. 12 to watch the video.

“Together, you’ll learn how to view history and current events in light of God’s Word, and how to take action that aligns with His truth,” the site says. “You can make a difference – one person, one household, one neighborhood at a time! Tools, tips, and timelines for a successful party will be provided.”

John Stemberger, president of the anti-abortion and anti-gay Florida Family Policy Council, is also listed as a participant in the event. Stemberger recently attended the Florida Renewal Project’s Pastors’ Policy Briefing. The “briefing” was aimed at getting churches and religious leaders involved in elections. Media outlets were barred from the event and a reporter was even escorted away from the meeting between presidential candidates Rick Perry and Gingrich and pastors.

Right Wing Watch reported that Stemberger recently appeared on a conference call for Champion the Vote, a California-based religious voter mobilization effort. During the call, Stemberger reportedly promoted “One Nation Under God” and warned that America is being “fundamentally transformed into a different type of culture, a different country” and said that “we will lose this beautiful thing we call America”:

According to Stemberger, only Christians are capable of creating a free society. “As only the Christian presuppositions of theology created this country,” Stemberger said, “only Christians can save it and unless the church rises up, we’re done.” He went on to say that without the resurgence of the church, “our country’s going to slip away into something we don’t even recognize.”

The Texas Independent’s Mary Tuma reported that this weekend’s event is the next step in a swell of religious voter mobilization efforts leading up to 2012:

Following “The Response,” American Family Association founder Don Wildmon sent a an e-mail message to those who’d registered for the event, encouraging them to become involved in the group’s effort to register 5 million new conservative Christian voters. To achieve the goal, CTV is asking 100,000 “champions” to register 50 people in their community, as the Texas Independent recently reported.

Bill Dallas, head of United in Purpose (UiP), the group leading the CTV initiative, has created a business and carefully crafted voter mobilization model around the event by fusing repackaged media and a detailed data mining project to reach those committed unregistered Christian voters.

Dallas’ crew plans to film the meetings and edit them down to a two-hour session called “One Nation Under God.” The repackaged event will be aired on Nov. 12 and can then be purchased by “host” churches and individuals.

Dallas expects about 1,000 “house parties” and 2-300 churches to take part in the November event. The hosts are not only instructed to air the reformatted briefing but have undergone an intensive eight week voter mobilization training session with CTV that include Webinars, conference calls, newsletters and a training kit. The hosts make up CTV’s base– the ‘champions’ assigned to reach out to the thousands of potential voters.

According to the event website, there are currently only about 100 sites — 34 of those are in Florida churches.

Watch a video promo for “One Nation Under God”:

An ongoing EPA investigation of possible contamination from hydrofracking in Wyoming has found significant amounts of cancer-causing fracking chemicals in a freshwater aquifer in that state.

ProPublica reports:

A pair of environmental monitoring wells drilled deep into an aquifer in Pavillion, Wyo., contain high levels of cancer-causing compounds and at least one chemical commonly used in hydraulic fracturing, according to new water test results released yesterday by the Environmental Protection Agency.

The findings are consistent with water samples the EPA has collected from at least 42 homes in the area since 2008, when ProPublica began reporting on foul water and health concerns in Pavillion and the agency started investigating reports of contamination there.

Last year – after warning residents not to drink or cook with the water and to ventilate their homes when they showered — the EPA drilled the monitoring wells to get a more precise picture of the extent of the contamination.

The Pavillion area has been drilled extensively for natural gas over the last two decades and is home to hundreds of gas wells. Residents have alleged for nearly a decade that the drilling — and hydraulic fracturing in particular — has caused their water to turn black and smell like gasoline. Some residents say they suffer neurological impairment, loss of smell, and nerve pain they associate with exposure to pollutants.

While the EPA has not claimed certainty that the contamination came from fracking at this point, the presence of 2-Butoxyethanol (2-BE), a chemical used in fracking, and the lack of contamination with nitrates and fertilizers that would indicate an agricultural source, suggest a link.

The Nebraska legislature, meeting in a special session to deal specifically with the Keystone XL pipeline that would cross their state, may be on the verge of passing a bill that could give the governor control over the route that pipeline would take.

On Wednesday, the Natural Resources Committee voted 7-1 to send a bill to the full legislature that would require all oil pipeline companies to have the routes of their pipelines certified by a state panel headed by the governor before starting construction.

It is an open legal question whether the passage of such a bill would be legally viable, since the approval of the project is up to the federal government at this point.

Fifty-eight percent of New Mexico teachers are white, despite minorities constituting an overwhelming majority of the state’s student body.

The findings come out of a set of reports published by a Washington, D.C. think tank that examined the dearth of minority teachers in states having a student body less than 50 percent white.

New Mexico’s student-teacher race disparity ranked in the top 12 nationwide, according to the report. The state’s scored a “29,” meaning the percentage of minority students was 29 percentage points higher than the number of minority teachers.

California scored the highest: 72 percent of the state’s students are of color while only 29 percent of teachers identified as non-white. In Texas, Two-thirds of students are non-white yet only one-third of teachers have similar backgrounds.

Others studies also point to the educational benefits of having more teachers of color.

A 2004 paper  analyzing teacher racial composition and pupil test-results in Tennessee found a small boost in student performance on standardized tests when teachers of the same race taught the class. After four years of receiving instruction from a same-race teacher students improved test scores by a range of 8 to 12 percentage points. Those findings applied to white students as well.

More recently, a 2011 working study by economists focusing on a large community college in California pointed to strong gains by minority students taught by instructors from any minority background.

“Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, and Native Americans are 2.9 percentage points more likely to pass courses with instructors of similar background and 2.8 percentage points more likely to pass courses with underrepresented instructors,” it found.

The authors added: “These effects represent roughly  half of the total gaps in classroom outcomes between white and underrepresented minority students at the college. The effects are particularly large for Blacks. The class dropout rate relative to Whites is 6 percentage points lower for Black students when taught by a Black  instructor.”

Ahead of the debate, Minnesota Independent reporter Andy Birkey and Texas Independent editor Patrick Michels discussed how their home-state candidate is viewed back home, how religion plays a big part in both candidates’ politics and the “outsider” personas they have cultivated on their way to the national stage.

According to a summary of the bill, it would “authorize district school boards to adopt resolutions that allow prayers of invocation or benediction at secondary school events.” The Anti-Defamation League, a group that fights anti-Semitism in public policy, says the amended bill voted for yesterday is actually more problematic than the original.

According to the group’s press release:

“[The bill] blatantly authorizes sectarian and proselytizing prayers – such as prayers to Allah, Adanoi, Buddha, or Jesus at all kinds of public secondary school events,” said David Barkey, ADL’s Religious Freedom Counsel. “We are even more concerned that the bill will be used to impose majority religious beliefs on minority faiths in Florida’s public schools. And, in these difficult budgetary times, one thing we can be certain of is that this divisive and unnecessary legislation, if enacted, will cost the state, local school districts, and the taxpayer needless litigation expenses,” said Barkey.

In its testimony today at the Pre-K-12 Education Committee hearing, ADL affirmed the right of public high school students to engage in voluntary religious expression at school through private prayer in groups or alone during non-curricular time, at lunchtime and non-curricular time student religious clubs, or at after school religious clubs. ADL, however, opposed the measure because it will result in state sponsored religious endorsement or coercion, it will be divisive and harmful to students’ religious freedom rights, and due to its patent unconstitutionality, it will result in costly litigation expenses to the state, local school districts and the Florida taxpayer.

“Regrettably, some Senators continue to misunderstand the critical differences – both legal and policy-wise – between voluntary, private student prayer during non-curricular time,  and state authorized and sponsored prayer at secondary school events like graduation, football games or prom,” said Barkey.

The committee voted in favor of removing lines from the original bill that said “all prayers of invocation or benediction will be nonsectarian and nonproselytizing in nature.”

The bill was introduced by state Sen. Gary Siplin, D-Orlando. Sen. Stephen Wise, R-Jacksonville, introduced the controversial new amendment.

For three decades, the libertarian-leaning Texan has preached limited government, a smaller role not only domestically in the form of lower taxes but also abroad, with a less adventurous foreign policy.

“Right now your biggest threat comes from your own government,” Paul said.

More than 100 people turned out Saturday morning in Carroll to hear Paul speak at Santa Maria Winery. Paul delivered opening remarks and then turned the event into a town-hall-style meeting, fielding audience questions.

Paul finished third at 12 percent behind businessman Herman Cain (23 percent) and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (22 percent) in a Des Moines Register Iowa Poll of likely Republican caucus-goers released Sunday.

U.S. Rep. Ron Paul reiterated his fiscal message in Carroll Saturday and made clear that he would only seek the White House a member of the GOP. (Photo: Douglas Burns) 

On Saturday, Paul, a former Libertarian Party White House candidate, said he’s in a strong position as a Republican in the 2012 field and dismissed any speculation of a third-party candidacy.

“I have no intentions of running in a third party,” Paul said.

In his remarks Paul said that government reaction to crisis should to be pull back, grow smaller and allow free will and the marketplace to work.

“With each crisis it seems like the government grows,” Paul said.

He added, “It just has led to all this debt and all these problems we’ve had.”

Paul called for the immediate withdrawal of American troops from both Iraq and Afghanistan, noting that the United States has been involved in Afghanistan twice as long as the duration of World War II. The two wars are costing the United States $4 billion a month, he said.

Removal of troops would not only correct an entry into the conflicts on what Paul called “false pretense,” but also spur the American economy.

America’s largest defense concern now should be the nation’s economy, the Texan said.

“If we’re in the wrong places at the wrong time, it doesn’t serve our defense,” Paul said.

Paul also calls for cuts in military spending.

“How many weapons do we need?” he said. “Who is going to invade us?”

Paul said his foreign policy positioning should not be interpreted as isolationism. He would use diplomacy, not force, to advance U.S. interests.

“Using force doesn’t work and it’s very costly,” Paul said.

And Paul said he would be consistent.

“We were on the side of bin Laden,” he said. “We were on the side of Saddam Hussein.”

One audience member questioned Paul about farm subsidies. Paul noted that he has represented farming areas of Texas but opposes subsidies.

“I’ve not supported farm subsidies,” Paul said. “I think it distorts the marketplace.”

He added, “Subsidies tend to make people soft.”

Paul said Americans demonstrating now, either in the tea party movements or Occupy Wall Street groups, appear to break into two categories: people who are scared they won’t get their government handouts and those who are tired of paying for big government.

Paul said he is firmly in the latter category.

“To me, liberty is one clear package,” Paul said.

In the endorsement statement, IFBF President Craig Lang (also recently elevated as an Iowa Regent at the request of Gov. Terry Branstad) said that an increase “is the fairest way to fund” road repairs “because it charges people who actually use the roads whether they live in Iowa or are from out-of-state.”

Here’s the statement:

With rural roads making up nearly 90,000 miles of the state’s 114,000-mile road system, the Iowa Farm Bureau Federation (IFBF) applauds the Governor’s Transportation 2020 Citizen Advisory Commission recommendation for an additional 8 to 10 cents per gallon fuel tax.

“Our roads and bridges have been severely impacted over the years by flooding and neglect, negatively impacting all of Iowa, but especially our rural communities, businesses and farms. Our members believe it’s imperative to repair the roads and bridges to help rural Iowa thrive,” said Craig Lang, IFBF president. “We believe that an increase in the fuel tax is the fairest way to fund those repairs because it charges people who actually use the roads whether they live in Iowa or are from out of state.”

Lang notes that IFBF delegates in 2008 passed policy calling for the fuel tax increase to repair the state’s roads and bridges.

The tax increase recommendation was made to the Iowa Department of Transportation (IDOT) this week after several listening sessions around the state. The recommendations will be submitted to the Iowa Legislature by the IDOT by the end of the year. The IDOT reports that Iowa needs an additional $215 million per year to meet critical roadway needs and the recommended increase will generate $184 million to $230 million per year.

The Advisory Commission was established by Branstad last spring and held a series of seven public input meetings during August and September. Iowa Code requires a complete review by the Iowa Department of Transportation of the current revenue levels of Iowa’s road use tax fund and to determine if the revenues will meet the construction and maintenance needs of Iowa’s roads every five years. The appointed commission members were to provide input into final recommendation and to collaborate on public education.

While the 12-member Commission notes the hike may be troublesome for Iowa families already mired in an economic downturn, they believe the estimated $280 million could be put to good use for Iowa roads and bridges.

The gas tax in Iowa has been stagnant since 1989 at 22 cents per gallon. One cent of the tax goes to underground storage tank clean up and the remainder is used for road work.

The Commission is also recommending an increase in new vehicle registration fees from 5 to 6 percent of the purchase price.

In an incident report filed with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission Thursday evening the utility reports:

ACCIDENTAL DISCHARGE OF FIREARM

“At approximately 1715 EDT on 10/27/11, a Security Officer accidentally discharged his weapon and wounded himself in the foot. An ambulance and Monroe County Sheriff reported to the site. The officer was transported offsite to a local hospital. This is being reported under 10CFR50.72(b)(2)(xi).”

The officer was clearing his weapon following his shift when the accident occurred. No other individuals were hurt.

The NRC Resident Inspector has been notified.

Fermi 2 is a 1,098 megawatt General Electric boiling water reactor that has the same design as those at Fukushima and has been in operation since 1988.

In May an operator at the plant was suspended for duty after testing positive for cocaine during a random drug test.