A congressional committee held a hearing on the security failures that led to the killings of four Americans at a US consulate in Benghazi, Libya, on September 11.

It was Rep. Dennis Kucinich, a Democrat from Ohio, who had the fortitude to call attention to the real reasons why US personnel were vulnerable.

The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission hit Southern California Edison’s San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) with a violation for what it called a lapse in plant security, the agency announced late Thursday.

The NRC noted the violation during a four-day inspection in May. SONGS has been completely offline since January, when a radioactive leak led to the discovery of severely degraded heat exchanger tubes in both of the plant’s (nominally) operating reactors. (In July, the NRC released its report on the tube failures, saying that although plant operators had made major design changes that affected the stability of the tubes, they had not violated any laws.)
Regulators said Edison “failed to develop procedures to monitor electronic devices related to security,” but the NRC has withheld most of the details of the violation.

Triple drone attacks in Pakistan reportedly killed more than twelve people who were suspected of being “militants” or terror suspects. Nine were killed in an initial attack on a “militant compound” in Miranshah in North Waziristan. Three more were killed in a second attack while people were trying to “recover dead bodies.” A third strike killed at least one more, according to the Agence France Presse news agency.

The attacks come just as Pakistan and the US are set to meet in Tokyo

A survey reported yesterday indicates opposition to the United States has risen among Pakistanis in the last couple of years. More Pakistanis now view the US as “the enemy” than in past years. This is largely a result of the presence of US personnel in the country and how opposed Pakistanis are to drone strikes. Now The Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ), which has been analyzing the US’s “covert war on terror” extensively, has posted an interview with Democratic Representative Dennis Kucinich, who suggests the objections Pakistanis have toward the US put America at war with Pakistan.

Throughout the three-plus days of panels, training sessions, caucuses and keynotes, attendees quite likely heard no mention of nuclear power, its persistent threats to safety, its drastic drain on the budget, its onerous oppression of workers or its brazen gouging of rate-payers. For, while there were well over 100 panels, and dozens of other training sessions and caucuses, nothing on the schedule even made a passing attempt to address nuclear energy here in the United States or the ongoing (and growing) crisis of radioactive contamination from Fukushima spreading across the globe.

Dennis Kucinich, the eight-term Congressman from Cleveland, lost his bid for re-election last night in a primary to fellow Rep. Marcy Kaptur. Ohio lost two seats after the 2010 reapportionment and eliminated a seat in the Cleveland region, giving Kucinich few options. He decided to try to defeat Kaptur largely on her turf, and came up well short, 56-40. Kaptur is a reliably liberal and even populist vote on economic issues, but she’s also anti-choice and was a major thorn in the party’s side on the Stupak amendment.

Gregory Jaczko, the chairman of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission, made some comments to the press earlier this week. Jaczko, it seems, is worried. He believes, as noted in an Associated Press story, that “U.S. nuclear plant operators have become complacent, just nine months after the nuclear disaster in Japan.” The NRC head thinks that a slew of events at over a dozen domestic nuclear facilities reveal the safety of America’s reactors to be something less than optimal.

To be clear, safety concerns at any kind of plant, be it a soda bottler or a microchip manufacturer, are probably not trivial, but when the safe and secure operation of a nuclear facility comes into question–as the aftermath of Chernobyl or the ongoing crisis in Japan will tell you–it ratchets up concern to a whole different level. So, when the man who more or less serves as the chief safety officer for the entirety of the nation’s nuclear infrastructure says he’s worried, many, many other people should be worried, too.

If you thought that only Republican Administrations would assert broad and sweeping powers when they control the White House, think again.

The House leadership, prior to a closed caucus meeting, will devise a bill to continue US involvement in Libya, as a counterpoint to Dennis Kucinich’s War Powers resolution to end involvement. This comes just as over 60 House Republicans issued their own resolution of disapproval of the war in Libya.

The House Republican leadership, after agreeing to allow a vote on a privileged War Powers resolution from Dennis Kucinich which would end US involvement in the war in Libya, has now yanked that vote from the calendar….In a statement, Kucinich said he was “disappointed that the President and leadership feel the need to buy even more time to shore up support for the War in Libya.