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February 09, 2012 | | OVERHEATED Rick Santorum, who has stumped hard on the idea that President Obama has declared war on religious freedom, went even further at a campaign stop in Texas. “When you marginalize faith in America, when you remove the pillar of God-given rights, then what’s left is the French Revolution,” Santorum said in Plano. “What’s left is a government that will tell you who you are, what you’ll do, and when you’ll do it. What’s left in France became the guillotine.” SETTLEMENT The $26 billion settlement that 49 state attorneys general wrested from the big banks Thursday is only a slap on the wrist for the reckless criminal behavior of the banks that screwed Americans out of trillions of dollars. But The Daily Beast’s Gary Rivlin says they were forced into the compromise by a classic case of Obama inaction. COMPROMISE Greek leaders on Thursday reached a deal for deep austerity cuts, a government official has confirmed. By enacting austerity cuts, Greece is now eligible to receive bailout funds from the European Union—and thus will avoid defaulting on its debt. The deal came just hours before Greece's financial backers were set to meet in Brussels to discuss the crisis. The euro and Greek stocks rose Thursday after the news of a deal broke Greece's two major labor unions called for a 48-hour strike on Friday and Saturday against the cuts. Meanwhile, Greek unemployment rose to another new record, of 20.9 percent, in November, up from 18.2 percent in October. The average jobless rate for 17 eurozone countries edged up to 10.4 percent in November from October’s 10.3 percent. Massacre Things are getting worse in Homs, the site of Syria's ongoing resistance to the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. Human-rights activists said that 95 people were killed in the city Thursday by government shelling. The U.N. is expected to consider an Arab League proposal for a joint monitoring mission in Syria, while the U.S., Turkey, and other countries are creating a “Friends of Democratic Syria” as a way to support the opposition. In a more-extreme stance, Sen. John McCain has called for the rebels to be given arms. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called the Security Council's failure to pass a resolution “disastrous." MILITARY Women in the U.S. armed forces have some new job opportunities: the Pentagon is relaxing its restrictions on women in combat to allow females to serve in non-infantry battalion jobs. The positions put women closer to the action in positions like radio operators, intelligence analysts, medics, and tank mechanics, but they will still be barred from front-line infantry and special ops forces. The change is expected to open up about 14,000 jobs to female soldiers. The change came as a result of a Pentagon study of women in combat. | | 
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