What If We're Wrong About the Economy? By Neil Cavuto

Source: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,510610,00.html

March 25, 2009


I'm not here to rain on anyone's parade, but what if we're wrong?

What if all the spending, the bank rescuing — all of it — what if it's just wrong? And worse, just not needed?

What if the clear signs of improvement we're seeing in the economy now are all the proof we need that we don't need more government spending now?

That new home sales are picking up. Existing home sales are picking up. Mortgage applications are picking up. And just today, news that durable goods orders — that's big factory stuff — are picking up.

Smart folks say these are all anomalies. Well, they're getting to be a lot of anomalies, aren’t there?

So what if the smart folks are wrong? What if all this spending is wrong? What if all we've been betting our future on is wrong too?

What if the government is spending hundreds of billions of dollars pushing green technology and it turns out the folks whose dollars it's spending aren't all that keen on green technology?

Hybrid vehicle sales are down. Hybrid vehicle expansion plans are down too.

Now maybe that's just gas prices or maybe that's the government assuming the next big thing and coming up with a big zero.

Just like it assumed more than a century ago that the horse and buggy industry was a vital American staple, completely missing the auto boom that would become an even bigger one. Just like it missed the biotech rage in the 1980s and this thing called the Internet in the 1990s.

Sadly, the government doesn't decide the next big thing. We do.

And no matter how it coaxes and prods, pushes and dictates, it can never get us to do what it thinks we should do.

We decide.

Markets decide.

Free will, not government edict.

The government can choose to ignore reality, but we can't. Because it's our government. And you know what else? It's our money too.

Watch Neil Cavuto weekdays at 4 p.m. ET on "Your World with Cavuto" and send your comments to cavuto@foxnews.com

Rep. Tom Price on How to Tell If Obama is Failing By David Weigel

Source: http://washingtonindependent.com/33782/rep-tom-price-on-how-to-tell-if-obama-is-failing

3/13/09

This week I asked Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.), the head of the Republican Study Committee, two questions about criticisms of President Obama’s policies that get aired out on business shows. First, what benchmarks should people look at to see whether the stimulus package is working?

“The benchmarks to watch are those that show that it’s continuing to be more destructive,” said Price. “When they continue to throw money out there and inflation begins, then that’s a telltale sign that they’re even losing that battle. When the Fed puts out an auction of Treasury notes that they have to fill themselves, that in essence will be a moment of default. That’s something to watch. And that’s coming — that will happen, out of necessity, because you can’t continue to throw money out there.”

I also asked Price when this became the Democrats’ economy: In January 2007? In May 2008? On Inauguration Day?

“Jan. 20, for sure,” said Price. “They owned part of it from the election on, but I think it’s Jan. 20.”

Little Dictators

Source: http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=322782906144146

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Tuesday, March 24, 2009 4:20 AM PT

Congress: The spectacle of the very same people responsible for one of the nation's great financial calamities angling to be given even more control to fix the problem would be funny if it weren't so tragic.

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Read More: Economy

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Rep. Barney Frank, the Democrat who sits atop Congress' efforts to deal with the financial crisis, has enough chutzpah for 100 politicians — which is saying a lot.

In comments before testimony from both Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and Fed chief Ben Bernanke Tuesday, Frank said he wants to regulate pay on Wall Street — even for companies that aren't getting bailouts.

And he called retention bonuses — a time-honored practice on Wall Street and elsewhere in America in which key employees are compensated for their enormous value — "extortion" and "bribes."

Frank, one of the chief architects of the housing mess that's brought us so low, isn't satisfied merely with pretending he and his Democratic pals aren't to blame for all this. No, exploiting voter anger over the now-infamous AIG bonuses, he also wants to dictate to American capitalism what it can earn and what it can't.

This is the kind of thing that normally happens in Third World countries ruled by tinhorn dictators, or in fascist states, where the democratic rule of law has collapsed. Not the U.S.

Yet, that's where we find ourselves today, isn't it? Democrats in Congress, who steadfastly rejected virtually all efforts to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as they went on the wildest, most irresponsible lending binge in the history of finance, now pose themselves as the saviors of fallen capitalism.

The hypocrisy is nothing short of stunning.

Take Frank. As we've written before, he spearheaded congressional Democrats' efforts in 1992, 2000, 2002, 2003 and 2005 to block reform of Fannie and Freddie.

Those two "government-sponsored enterprises" were the nexus of this crisis, holding $5.4 trillion of the $12 trillion in U.S. mortgages, while originating or funding 90% of the subprime market.

Their failures presaged the subsequent financial meltdown from which we're still trying to regain our economic footing.

Then there's Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut, another posturing moralist in the flap over AIG bonuses. He turns out to have inserted the bonuses into the bailout legislation in the first place.

An innocent move? Please note Dodd was No. 1 on the list of recipients of AIG's political contributions. Also that his wife was a former director of IPC Holdings, a company controlled by AIG.

We wish all this tinkering with the private sector was limited to Congress. But it isn't. The Treasury wants what the Washington Post called Tuesday "unprecedented powers to initiate the seizure of non-bank financial companies, such as large insurers, investment firms and hedge funds, whose collapse would damage the broader economy."

Citing the AIG precedent, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs defended this radical move, saying on CNN, "We need resolution authority to go in and be able to change contracts, be able to change the business model, unwind what doesn't work."

Breathtaking. Coupled with the vast expansion of government spending over the next 10 years, this is socialism, pure and simple.

Yes, we know it's unfashionable to use the "S" word. But we're willing to be unhip in the service of the truth.

It's a frightening thing to see a once mighty, and free, capitalist economy placed under the heel of an incompetent government. But that's precisely what's happening now.

Executive pay, the focus of much public fury right now, is only the start. Your pay will be next, rest assured. So hold on to your wallets, sure, but also hold on even tighter to something even more precious that now seems at risk: your freedom.

Taitz to FBI: Investigate 'tampering' at Supremes: '305 million Americans need to know if foreign national is usurping presidency' By Bob Unruh

Source: http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=92393

March 21, 2009

Orly Taitz

A California attorney battling on a number of fronts to obtain documentation of Barack Obama's eligibility to be president is asking the FBI and U.S. Secret Service to investigate suspected "tampering" at the U.S. Supreme Court.

Orly Taitz, who is pursuing nearly half a dozen causes through her Defend Our Freedoms Foundation, says the issue of Obama's eligibility to meet the Constitution's demand for a "natural born" president has been before the Supreme Court at least four times.

But she wonders whether the justices actually were given the pleadings to review.

"I believe … that there was tampering with documents and records by employees of the Supreme Court and the justices never saw those briefs," she alleges in a letter to the FBI's Robert Mueller, the Secret Service's Mark Sullivan and Attorney General Eric Holder.

"Three hundred five million American citizens … need to know whether a foreign national is usurping the position of the president and the commander in chief," she wrote.

Taitz raises questions about "forgery of court records, tampering with court records, cyber crime, erasing of court records from the docket, fraud, mail fraud, wire fraud and other related crimes."

Specifically, she points to the handling of her own case, Lightfoot v. Bowen, which was submitted to the Supreme Court on an emergency basis. Although it was scheduled for a conference, no hearing ever was held.

Join one third of a million people who are seeking the truth on whether Obama meets the Constitution's "natural born" citizenship clause.

Taitz notes that references to the case were erased from the docket of the Supreme Court on Jan. 21, shortly after Obama, the defendant, met with eight of the nine justices behind closed doors.

It happened just two days before her case was scheduled to be reviewed in conference.

Secondly, Taitz notes that in her conversation with Justice Antonin Scalia at a book-signing in Los Angeles several weeks ago, he appeared to have no knowledge of the cases that had been submitted.

She said she mentioned her case and those brought by Cort Wrotnowski, Philip Berg and Leo Donofrio.

"In the presence of several attorneys, law students and Secret Service agents Justice Scalia kept saying that he didn't know anything … even though all of the plaintiffs have received notification that all of those cases were reviewed by all nine justices," she said.

Taitz said she's also concerned that the Supreme Court docket was somehow modified.

"Did somebody from outside break and enter into the computer system of the Supreme Court or was it done by one of the overzealous employees who wanted to keep Obama in the White House?" she asked.

"I demand to see the printout of entries of both internal docket seen by justices and the external docket seen by the public to verify if those were identical at all times, particularly between January 20th and January 23rd," she said.

She also raised the possibility that justices' signatures may have been "stamped" on documentation.

U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts

Her allegations, she said, were part of what she submitted to Chief Justice John Roberts when she met him at the University of Idaho a week ago.

"Due to the … great urgency of the matter in relation to the national security of the United States … I demand immediate investigation of this matter," Taitz wrote.

Taitz also is developing a Quo Warranto case that has been submitted to Holder.

Essentially, the case demands to know what authority Obama is using to act as president. An online constitutional resource says Quo Warranto "affords the only judicial remedy for violations of the Constitution by public officials and agents."

As WND reported, Taitz already has submitted a motion to the Supreme Court for re-hearing of Lightfoot v. Bowen, a case she is working on through Defend Our Freedoms alleging some of her documentation may have been withheld from the justices by a court clerk.

WND has reported on dozens of legal challenges to Obama's status as a "natural born citizen." The Constitution, Article 2, Section 1, states, "No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President."

Some of the lawsuits question whether he was actually born in Hawaii, as he insists. If he was born out of the country, Obama's American mother, some suits contend, was too young at the time of his birth to confer American citizenship to her son under the law at the time.

Other challenges have focused on Obama's citizenship through his father, a Kenyan subject to the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom at the time of his birth, thus making him a dual citizen. The cases contend the framers of the Constitution excluded dual citizens from qualifying as natural born.

Although Obama officials have told WND all such allegations are "garbage," here is a partial listing and status update for some of the cases over Obama's eligibility:

• New Jersey attorney Mario Apuzzo has filed a case on behalf of Charles Kerchner and others alleging Congress didn't properly ascertain that Obama is qualified to hold the office of president.




• Pennsylvania Democrat Philip Berg has three cases pending, including Berg vs. Obama in the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, a separate Berg vs. Obama which is under seal at the U.S. District Court level and Hollister vs. Soetoro a/k/a Obama, (now dismissed) brought on behalf of a retired military member who could be facing recall to active duty by Obama.
  
  
  
  
• Leo Donofrio of New Jersey filed a lawsuit claiming Obama's dual citizenship disqualified him from serving as president. His case was considered in conference by the U.S. Supreme Court but denied a full hearing.




• Cort Wrotnowski filed suit against Connecticut's secretary of state, making a similar argument to Donofrio. His case was considered in conference by the U.S. Supreme Court, but was denied a full hearing.




• Former presidential candidate Alan Keyes headlines a list of people filing a suit in California, in a case handled by the United States Justice Foundation, that asks the secretary of state to refuse to allow the state's 55 Electoral College votes to be cast in the 2008 presidential election until Obama verifies his eligibility to hold the office. The case was dismissed by Judge Michael P. Kenny.
• 
  
  
  
• Chicago attorney Andy Martin sought legal action requiring Hawaii Gov. Linda Lingle to release Obama's vital statistics record. The case was dismissed by Hawaii Circuit Court Judge Bert Ayabe.
  
  
  
  
• Lt. Col. Donald Sullivan sought a temporary restraining order to stop the Electoral College vote in North Carolina until Barack Obama's eligibility could be confirmed, alleging doubt about Obama's citizenship. His case was denied.
  
  
  
  
• In Ohio, David M. Neal sued to force the secretary of state to request documents from the Federal Elections Commission, the Democratic National Committee, the Ohio Democratic Party and Obama to show the presidential candidate was born in Hawaii. The case was denied.
  
  
  
  
• Also in Ohio, there was the Greenberg v. Brunner case which ended when the judge threatened to assess all case costs against the plaintiff.
  
  
  
  
• In Washington state, Steven Marquis sued the secretary of state seeking a determination on Obama's citizenship. The case was denied.
  
  
  
  
• In Georgia, Rev. Tom Terry asked the state Supreme Court to authenticate Obama's birth certificate. His request for an injunction against Georgia's secretary of state was denied by Georgia Superior Court Judge Jerry W. Baxter.




• California attorney Orly Taitz has brought a case, Lightfoot vs. Bowen, on behalf of Gail Lightfoot, the vice presidential candidate on the ballot with Ron Paul, four electors and two registered voters.

In addition, other cases cited on the RightSideofLife blog as raising questions about Obama's eligibility include:

• In Texas, Darrel Hunter vs. Obama later was dismissed.
  
  
  
  
• In Ohio, Gordon Stamper vs. U.S. later was dismissed.
  
  
  
  
• In Texas, Brockhausen vs. Andrade.
  
  
  
  
• In Washington, L. Charles Cohen vs. Obama.
  
  
  
  
• In Hawaii, Keyes vs. Lingle, dismissed.

Why South Carolina Doesn't Want 'Stimulus' By MARK SANFORD

Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123759827524401409.html

America's states are laboratories of democracy. They are both affected by, and relevant to, the larger national debate. What we've found in our own corner of the country is that carrying a substantial debt load limits our options when it comes to running government.

A recent report by the American Legislative Exchange Council ranked us 47th worst in the nation for annual debt service as a percentage of tax revenue. Our state dedicates nearly 11% of its annual tax revenue to paying debt. On top of that, South Carolina has another $20 billion in unfunded, long-term political promises for pensions and other liabilities. The state budget has already been cut four times in recent months as the national economic downturn has impacted South Carolina and driven down tax revenue.

President Barack Obama recently signed a "stimulus" bill that will spend about $2 billion through "programmatic means" in South Carolina. In other words, the federal government will put this money directly into existing funding formulas and programs such as Medicaid. But there is an additional $700 million that I as governor have influence over, and it is the disposition of this money that has drawn the national spotlight to South Carolina.

Here's the background: Before the stimulus bill passed, I asked for states not to be bailed out. After it was signed into law, I said that a state bailout would create more problems than it solved, and that we shouldn't spend money we don't have. That debate was lost, so I looked for a reasonable middle ground. I asked the president for his support in using the $700 million to pay down state debt.

If we're going to spend money we don't have at the federal level, it becomes all the more important that our state balance sheet is in good order -- particularly if this is a protracted downturn. But many people do not realize that the stimulus money runs out in 24 months -- at which point South Carolina will be forced to find a new source of funding to sustain the new level of spending, or to make sharp cuts. Sure, I could kick the can down the road; in two years, I'll be safely out of office. But it would be irresponsible.

If South Carolina could use stimulus money to pay down debt, in two years we will be able to spend, cut taxes or invest even if the federal government can no longer provide more money -- not a remote possibility. In fact, paying debt related to education would free up over $162 million in debt service in the first two years and save roughly $125 million in interest payments over the next 13 years -- just as paying off a family's mortgage early frees up money for other uses.

When you're in a hole, the first order of business is stop digging. South Carolina is in a hole, and it's not a shallow one. Spending stimulus money on ongoing programs would mean 10% of our entire state budget would be paid for with one-time federal funds -- the largest recorded level in state history.

Also, spending stimulus money will delay needed state restructuring. General Motors recently found itself in a similar spot. It needs to be restructured if it is to prosper, but a federal bailout enabled it to put off hard decisions. Likewise, taking federal stimulus money will only postpone changes essential to South Carolina's prosperity. Though well-intended, it forestalls hard choices we must make.

One of Mr. Obama's central campaign themes was his pledge to do away with politics of the past. In his inaugural address, he proclaimed "an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics."

This idea connected with millions of voters, myself included. I've always believed ideas should rise and fall on their merits. In fact, I saw such historical significance in his candidacy and the change he spoke of that I published an op-ed on it before South Carolina's presidential primary last year. It was not an endorsement, but it did note the historic nature of his candidacy and the potential positive change in tone it represented. That potential may now be disappearing.

Last week I reached out to the president, asking for a federal waiver from restrictions on stimulus money. I got a most unusual response. Before I even received an acknowledgment of the request from the White House, I got word that the Democratic National Committee was launching campaign-style TV attack-ads against me for making it.

Is this the new brand of politics we were promised? Instead of engaging with me and other governors on the merits of our dissent, I am to be attacked in television ads? In the end, I just don't believe a problem created by too much debt will be solved by piling on more debt. This doesn't strike me as an unreasonable or extremist position.

Nevertheless, the White House declined my request for a waiver yesterday afternoon. That's unfortunate. But in coming months we'll continue advancing the debate at the state level about the merits of debt repayment. The fact remains that while we'd all like to spend unlimited dollars on the very real needs that exist in our state, we must spend in the context of what is sustainable.

Mr. Sanford, a Republican, is the governor of South Carolina.

As AIG Proves, The Gov't Can't Run Anything

Source: http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=322266568179023

By LAWRENCE KUDLOW | Posted Wednesday, March 18, 2009 4:20 PM PT

This whole AIG fiasco — where the entire political class is suddenly screaming over bonuses paid to derivative traders in AIG's financial products division — is just a complete farce.

What it really shows is how the government has completely bungled the AIG takeover. Blame the Bush administration and the Obama administration. It also shows, once again, why the government shouldn't run anything, because it cannot run anything.

AIG should have been placed in bankruptcy last fall under some sort of government sponsorship. While in bankruptcy, all the salary contracts (and every other AIG contract) would have been nullified and voided. At the same time, there would have been an orderly liquidation and sale of AIG's assets and separate divisions.

But as things stand now, there still is no clear road map for the dissolution of AIG. There are ideas, but nothing is set in concrete.

And as for the $165 million or so in AIG bonus payments, the Obama administration — including the president, Treasury man Tim Geithner and economic adviser Larry Summers — knew all about them many months ago. They were undoubtedly informed of this during the White House transition.

So there's no big surprise. Nobody should be shocked. But President Obama is doing his best play-acting ever. He knows full well that the nationwide outcry against federal bailouts and takeovers is only going to get worse on his watch. His poll numbers are already falling, and this AIG episode is going to pull them down more.

Incidentally, has anybody asked Team Obama why it is more than willing to break mortgage contracts with a bankruptcy-judge cramdown, but won't cram down compensation agreements for AIG, despite the fact that the U.S. government owns the company? Kind of odd, don't you think?

The Wall Street Journal editors get it right when they ask: Who's in charge, and what's the game plan? The whole AIG story is an outrage.

What's more, AIG is acting as a conduit for taxpayer money that is being sent to dozens of derivative counterparties, including foreign banks and American banks like Goldman Sachs. If we're going to bail out all these other firms, why not bail them out in full taxpayer view? Why is the money being laundered furtively through AIG? And where exactly is the end game for AIG? How are the taxpayers going to be repaid?

And what is Treasury man Geithner's role in all this? He appears to be the biggest bungler in what has become a massive bungling. My CNBC friend and colleague Charlie Gasparino thinks Geithner can't survive this. I am inclined to agree.

Nevertheless, behind the furor over AIG, there is some good news to report on the banking front. This week's decision by the Federal Accounting Standards Board (FASB) to allow cash-flow accounting rather than distressed last-trade mark-to-market accounting will go a long way toward solving the banking and toxic-asset problem.

Many experts believe mortgage-backed securities and other toxic assets are being serviced in a timely cash-flow manner for at least 70 cents on the dollar. This is so important.

Under mark-to-market, many of these assets were written down to 20 cents on the dollar, destroying bank profits and capital. But now banks can value these assets in economic terms based on positive cash flows, rather than in distressed markets that have virtually no meaning.

Actually, when the FASB rules are adopted in the next few weeks, it will be interesting to see if a pro forma re-estimate of the last year reveals that banks have been far more profitable and have much more capital than this crazy mark-to-market accounting would have us believe.

Sharp-eyed banking analyst Dick Bove has argued that most bank losses have been non-cash — i.e., mark-to-market write-downs. Take those fictitious write-downs away and you are left with a much healthier banking picture. This is huge in terms of solving the credit crisis.

I recently suggested that not one more dime of government money is necessary for the banks. Instead, the marriage of the cash-flow valuation of bank assets and the upward-sloping Treasury yield curve will do the trick.

Net interest margins are rising as banks purchase money for near-zero interest and loan it out at profitable rates. And the new mark-to-market reform will allow banks to hold their toxic assets for several more years and work them out — just as they did back in the 1990s.

We don't need more TARP. We don't need to take over more big banks. And we don't need to have the government run things it simply isn't capable of running.

Our New Terror Policy: Safety Last?

Source: http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=322267557541055

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Wednesday, March 18, 2009 4:20 PM PT

Homeland Security: Are you safer now than you were two months ago? From the handling of captured terrorists to airborne security, the U.S. government has quietly relaxed post-9/11 protections.

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Read More: Global War On Terror

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For years, liberal Democratic politicians and the establishment media have worked to paint a picture of former Vice President Dick Cheney as a demon with godlike powers. The Washington Post, in a Pulitzer-winning series of articles, called him "the most influential and powerful man ever to hold the office of vice president."

During President George W. Bush's first term, Cheney was depicted as the real power and brains in the White House, scheming to manipulate the commander in chief to assert bold new executive authorities as a new era of terrorism unfolded.

After Bush's re-election, however, the running mate as puppet-master mantra lost much of its plausibility, and the press focused more on Cheney's hunting mishaps and low poll ratings.

So how surprising to find so much media attention paid to the first post-Bush administration interview of someone they were waving good riddance to less than two months ago.

The explanation may not be the media's usual sensationalist tendencies, but the simple fact that the former vice president knows intimately how and why America has stayed safe for nearly 7 1/2 years after September 11, 2001.

Cheney told CNN that the reversal by the Obama administration of the use of some of the tough interrogation practices approved by the president's predecessor has placed Americans at risk within the homeland. President Obama, he said, is "making some choices that in my mind will raise the risk to the American people of another attack."

He called enhanced interrogation of terrorist detainees "absolutely essential to the success we enjoy, of being able to collect the intelligence that let us defeat all further attempts to launch attacks against the United States since 9/11."

Cheney added: "I think it's a great success story. It was done legally, it was done in accordance with our constitutional practices and principles," he maintained.

It is worth remembering that Cheney's immediate, and apparently instinctive, reaction to 9/11 was that just these kind of powerful tools would be needed in this new kind of war.

Less than a week after the attacks, the vice president was telling NBC that for America to defend itself, the U.S. government would have to "work . . . sort of the dark side, if you will. . . . A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussion, using sources and methods that are available to our intelligence agencies, if we're going to be successful."

The very next day, President Bush gave written authorization for the CIA to establish a "hidden global internment network" to interrogate terrorist prisoners.

The successors of Bush-Cheney seem in some respects to be just as instinctively opposed to such powerful tools. This week, CIA Director Leon Panetta announced that he has tapped former New Hampshire liberal Republican Sen. Warren Rudman to serve as his "special adviser" to help the administration and the Senate Intelligence Committee dredge up details of the Bush interrogation and detention program in what is expected to be a year-long probe.

One of President Obama's first acts was an executive order shutting down the remainder of the CIA terrorist prisons abroad, closing the Guantanamo Bay naval base's detention camp in Cuba — sure to lead to the release of some of the 245 enemy combatants being held there. Even that term — "enemy combatant" — has been renounced by the new administration.

On top of that, as reported by the Washington Times, the president is without fanfare applying gun-control ideology to homeland security by scrapping the federal firearms program, which allows some 12,000 airline pilots to carry guns with them in their cockpit during flight. Pilots say that already the approval process for authorizing pilots to carry guns has slowed considerably.

It is said that in our modern age of dazzling gadgetry and CGI-enhanced movie and TV entertainment, Americans' attention span and collective memory are shorter than ever. Have we, in less than eight years, already forgotten that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty — as well as being the price of safety from Islamist terror for ourselves and our families?

Natasha Richardson dies after fall on ski slope

Natasha Richardson dies after fall on ski slope

By HILLEL ITALIE, AP National Writer Hillel Italie, Ap National Writer – 1 hr 35 mins ago


Slideshow:Actress Natasha Richardson dies at 45 Play Video Video:Actress Natasha Richardson has died AP Play Video Video:Ski Safety: Calls For Mandatory Helmets CBS 2 New York NEW YORK – Natasha Richardson, a gifted and precocious heiress to acting royalty whose career highlights included the film "Patty Hearst" and a Tony-winning performance in a stage revival of "Cabaret," died Wednesday at age 45 after suffering a head injury during a beginners' ski lesson.

Alan Nierob, the Los Angeles-based publicist for Richardson's husband Liam Neeson, confirmed her death in a written statement.

"Liam Neeson, his sons (Micheal, 13, and 12-year-old Daniel), and the entire family are shocked and devastated by the tragic death of their beloved Natasha," the statement said. "They are profoundly grateful for the support, love and prayers of everyone, and ask for privacy during this very difficult time."

The statement did not give details on the cause of death for Richardson, who suffered a head injury and fell on a beginner's trail during a private ski lesson at the luxury Mont Tremblant ski resort in Quebec. Seemingly fine after the fall, about an hour later she complained that she didn't feel well.

She was hospitalized Tuesday in Montreal and later flown to a hospital in New York, where family members had been seen coming and going.

Vanessa Redgrave, Richardson's mother, arrived in a car with darkened windows and was taken through a garage when she arrived at the Lenox Hill Hospital on Manhattan's Upper East Side about 5 p.m. Wednesday. An hour earlier, Richardson's sister, Joely, arrived alone and was swarmed by the media as she entered through the back of the hospital.

It was a sudden and horrifying loss for her family and friends, for the film and theater communities, for her many fans and for both her native and adoptive countries. Descended from at least three generations of actors, Richardson was a proper Londoner who came to love the noise of New York, an elegant blonde with large, lively eyes, a bright smile and a hearty laugh.

If she never quite attained the acting heights of her Academy Award-winning mother, she still had enjoyed a long and worthy career. As an actress, Richardson was equally adept at passion and restraint, able to portray besieged women both confessional (Tennessee Williams' Blanche DuBois) and confined (the concubine in the futuristic horror of "The Handmaid's Tale").

Like other family members, she divided her time between stage and screen. On Broadway, she won a Tony for her performance as Sally Bowles in a 1998 revival of "Cabaret." She also appeared in New York in a production of Patrick Marber's "Closer" (1999) as well as 2005 revival of Tennessee Williams' "A Streetcar Named Desire," in which she played Blanche opposite John C. Reilly's Stanley Kowalski.

She met Neeson when they made their Broadway debuts in 1993, co-starring in "Anna Christie," Eugene O'Neill's drama about a former prostitute and the sailor who falls in love with her.

"The astonishing Natasha Richardson ... gives what may prove to be the performance of the season as Anna, turning a heroine who has long been portrayed (and reviled) as a whore with a heart of gold into a tough, ruthlessly unsentimental apostle of O'Neill's tragic understanding of life," The New York Times critic Frank Rich wrote. "Miss Richardson, seeming more like a youthful incarnation of her mother, Vanessa Redgrave, than she has before, is riveting from her first entrance through a saloon doorway's ethereal shaft of golden light."

Her most notable film roles came earlier in her career. Richardson played the title character in Paul Schrader's "Patty Hearst," a 1988 biopic about the kidnapped heiress for which the actress became so immersed that even between scenes she wore a blindfold, the better to identify with her real-life counterpart.

"Natasha Richardson ... has been handed a big unwritten role; she feels her way into it, and she fills it," wrote The New Yorker's Pauline Kael. "We feel how alone and paralyzed Patty is — she retreats into being a hidden observer."

Richardson was directed again by Schrader in a 1990 adaptation of Ian McEwan's "The Comfort of Strangers" and, also in 1990, starred in the screen version of Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale."

She later co-starred with Neeson in "Nell," with Mia Farrow in "Widow's Peak" and with a pre-teen Lindsay Lohan in a remake of "The Parent Trap." More recent movies, none of them widely seen, included "Wild Child," "Evening" and "Asylum."

She was born in London in 1963, the performing gene inherited not just from her parents (Vanessa Redgrave and director Tony Richardson), but from her maternal grandparents (Michael Redgrave and Rachel Kempson), an aunt (Lynn Redgrave) and an uncle (Corin Redgrave). Her younger sister, Joely Richardson, also joined the family business.

Friends and family members remembered Natasha as an unusually poised child, perhaps forced to grow up early when her father left her mother in the late '60s for Jeanne Moreau. (Tony Richardson died in 1991).

Interviewed by The Associated Press in 2001, Natasha Richardson said she related well to her family if only because, "We've all been through it in one way or another and so we've had to be strong. Also we embrace life. We are not cynical about life."

Richardson always planned to act, apart from one brief childhood moment when she wanted to be a flight attendant — "wonderful irony now since I hate to fly and have to take a pill in order to get on a plane. I'm so terrified."

Her screen debut came at age 4 when she appeared as a flower girl in "The Charge of the Light Brigade," directed by her father, whose movies included "Tom Jones" and "The Entertainer." The show business wand had already tapped her the year before, when she saw her mother in the 1967 film version of the Broadway show "Camelot."

"She was so beautiful. I still look at that movie and I can't believe it. It still makes me cry, the beauty of it. I could go on and on — in that white fur hooded thing, when she comes through the forest for the first time. You've never seen anything so beautiful!" Richardson said.

She studied at London's Central School of Speech and Drama and was an experienced stage actress by her early 20s, appearing in "On the Razzle," "Charley's Aunt" and "The Seagull," for which the London Drama Critics awarded her most promising newcomer.

Although she never shared her mother's fiercely expressed political views, they were close professionally and acted together, most recently on Broadway to play the roles of mother and daughter in a one-night benefit concert version of "A Little Night Music," the Stephen Sondheim-Hugh Wheeler musical.

Before meeting up with Neeson (who called her "Tash") Richardson was married to theater and producer Robert Fox, whose credits include the 1985 staging of "The Seagull" in which his future wife appeared.

She sometimes remarked on the differences between her and her second husband — she from a theatrical dynasty and he from a working-class background in Northern Ireland.

"He's more laid back, happy to see what happens, whereas I'm a doer and I plan ahead," Richardson told The Independent on Sunday newspaper in 2003. "The differences sometimes get in the way but they can be the very things that feed a marriage, too."

She once said that Neeson's serious injury in a 2000 motorcycle accident — he suffered a crushed pelvis after colliding with a deer in upstate New York — had made her really appreciate life.

"I wake up every morning feeling lucky — which is driven by fear, no doubt, since I know it could all go away," she told The Daily Telegraph newspaper in 2003.

___

Associated Press Writer Jill Lawless in London and Drama Writer Michael Kuchwara in New York contributed to this report.

Octuplets' mom brings two of her babies home

Source: http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/03/18/octomom.homecoming/

March 18, 2009

Nadya Suleman walks outside her new house for a video crew in La Habra, California, on March 10.

(CNN) -- Nadya Suleman, who gave birth to octuplets in January, brought two of her babies home from the hospital late Tuesday.

She brought the infants to her new house in La Habra, California. Members of the media and gawkers crowded the cul-de-sac, as news helicopters hovered overhead. Media swarmed the family's vehicle as it slowly made its way through the crowd, into the home's garage.

The babies discharged from the hospital were Noah Angel, known as Baby A, and Isaiah Angel, known as Baby C, according to the Kaiser Permanente Bellflower Medical Center.

The medical team that delivered the babies identified them by letters of the alphabet. On discharge, Noah weighed 5 pounds, 13 ounces, and Isaiah weighed 5 pounds, the hospital said in a news release.

"Both infants are able to bottle feed, are gaining weight and are able to maintain their body temperature," the release said.

"This is a happy moment for everyone -- the family, physicians, nurses and entire NICU (neonatal intensive care unit staff)," the release quoted neonatologist Mandhir Gupta as saying. "It is always rewarding whenever a premature infant goes home as a healthy baby." Watch as crowd welcomes babies home »

The remaining six babies continue to progress well at the hospital, Kaiser said. All continue gaining weight as they get formula or donated breast milk.

Hospital representatives made several home visits before the babies were discharged, to determine whether Suleman could provide safe housing, enough child care support and the supplies needed to care for the first two children, Kaiser said.

Until recently, Suleman had been sharing another home with her parents and her other six young children. But that house ended up at risk of foreclosure, and Suleman moved into her own home.

Last week, she disputed news reports that her father had bought the new house.

"I earned it. ... No, my father did not purchase this house for me. I did it on my own," Suleman told Radar magazine's Web site during a recent video tour of the 2,583-square-foot house.

"It's 1,000-square-footage bigger than the old house," she said on the video. "They [her older children] like it more than Grandma's house." Watch Suleman take other children to theme parks

Showing the new house to Radar, Suleman toured the living room, dining room and kitchen, and a den off the kitchen that she said she planned to turn into a nursery.

All the cribs will be kept in that room and two babies will share each crib, she said at the time, "unless one is sick, because they are so strong and healthy right now. ... Six are ready to come home."

Suleman, 33, added that they would come home two at a time.

"Two are little and they need to gain weight, and that's it. There's no medical problem," she said.

People.com reported that their new home, which was listed for $564,900, has four bedrooms and a large back yard.

"My ultimate goal is not to be a burden on ... taxpayers," she told Radar. "So there have been a couple of offers. ... I selectively picked a couple of opportunities to earn some resources for the kids."

Suleman gave birth to the octuplets through in-vitro fertilization, fueling controversy. News of her collecting public assistance for some of her children also outraged many taxpayers.