“United States” on The Daily Caller

It’s been described as one of the most telegraphed downgrades in sovereign debt rating history, but did Standard & Poor’s have some sort of ulterior motive when it moved the U.S. debt from AAA to AA+? (more)

AUSTIN — The Texas House on Monday gave preliminary approval to legislation that prohibits invasive pat-downs by federal airport security agents after incorporating changes that led House Speaker Joe Straus to drop his resistance to the bill. (more)

Los Angeles (CNN) — Los Angeles police arrested a suspect early Sunday in connection with the brutal beating of a San Francisco Giants fan at Dodgers Stadium in March, a police spokesman said. (more)

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — The head of Pakistan’s army, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, said Thursday that he would not tolerate a repeat of the American covert operation that killed Osama bin Laden, warning that any similar action would lead to a reconsideration of the relationship with the United States. (more)

BOSTON (MarketWatch) — The International Monetary Fund has just dropped a bombshell, and nobody noticed. (more)

People growing marijuana indoors use 1 percent of the U.S. electricity supply, and they create 17 million metric tons of carbon dioxide every year (not counting the smoke exhaled) according to a report by Evan Mills, an energy analyst at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. (more)

SAN FRANCISCO: Mark Zuckerberg won a legal battle against former Harvard classmates who accuse him of stealing their idea for Facebook, a multimillion-dollar feud made famous on the silver screen. (more)

Are we becoming tasteful tipplers? A new study ranks the U.S. as the top wine-consuming nation in the world. (more)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Terror alerts from the U.S. government will soon have just two levels of warnings — elevated and imminent — and those will be relayed to the public only under certain circumstances. Color codes are out; Facebook and Twitter will sometimes be in, according to a Homeland Security draft obtained by The Associated Press. (more)

It may be helpful, at a time like this — when Congress is threatening to shut down the U.S. government in a dispute over a tiny fraction of the federal budget — to think of legislators like a lost forest tribe. (more)

GATLINBURG, Tenn. — The bodies of two sewage treatment plant workers have been recovered at the site where a plant wall collapsed in Gatlinburg. (more)

Work is quietly underway in the South Bay on a massive 22-story rocket whose power is rivaled in the U.S. only by the mighty Saturn V rocket, which took man to the moon, in a risky private venture that could herald a new era in space flight. (more)

BRUSSELS (AP) — The U.S. military was pulling its warplanes from front-line missions Monday and shifting to a support role in the Libyan conflict, officials said. (more)

Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., raised a combined total of $2.2 million in the first quarter of 2011, outgaining presumed presidential contender Mitt Romney who raised $1.9 million over the same period. (more)

The Obama administration has sent teams of CIA operatives into Libya in a rush to gather intelligence on the identity, goals and progress of rebel forces opposed to Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi, according to U.S. officials. (more)

In the last few weeks, Germany’s Der Spiegel newspaper released a series of grisly photos showing American soldiers murdering Afghan civilians seemingly for the fun of it. (more)

Reporting from Washington— Sprint Nextel Corp. urged federal regulators to block a proposed acquisition that would create the nation’s largest wireless carrier and leave two competitors in control of 75% of all cellphone subscriptions. (more)

NATO has agreed to relieve the United States of responsibility for enforcing the no-fly zone in Libya, a NATO official said today. (more)

Gen. James Jones, President Barack Obama’s former national security advisor, is back at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. (more)

A US Army soldier is to testify against the comrades with whom he allegedly planned and carried out the murders of Afghan civilians. The news comes as Nato forces brace themselves for a backlash in Afghanistan following the publication of graphic photographs of US soldiers posing with the people they allegedly killed. (more)