Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, Ranking Member of the Committee on the Judiciary, today made the following comment on President Obama's appointment of Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

"The President is upending years of Senate practice and legal precedent with this move. He's interpreting advice and consent as bypass and appoint.  It's an affront to constitutional checks and balances.  It's also an affront to the principle that every agency should have accountability, which the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau lacks.  The President is ignoring the longstanding advice of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, which has found that an adjournment of '5 or even 10 days' would not be sufficient for a recess appointment.  I'm planning to write to the Attorney General to ask if the President asked for a new Justice Department opinion prior to making this appointment and whether the Attorney General agrees with it.  Regardless, the President needs to make clear why there was a change in position and what rationale the White House counsel used to overturn more than 90 years of Justice Department precedent.  The White House should make the rationale public.  The public's business ought to be public.  And the President promised to run the most transparent administration in history."

With 7 million Americans receiving unemployment benefits, and many counting the years - instead of months - since their layoff, author Darlene Quinn says now is a good time to reinvent yourself.

She cites James Sherk, a senior policy analyst for the Heritage Foundation, who says the jobs people held two or three years ago often simply aren't there anymore.

"People are trying to find jobs similar to what they had previously, when those jobs completely don't exist," he told Reuters recently. "So they will spend a good portion of their period unemployed looking for jobs that they are unlikely to find."

Quinn is a master of personal reinvention. She started her career as a teacher, then became a contractor, developing self-improvement and modeling programs for hospitals and a store. That segued into a position as a top executive at Bullocks Wilshire department store and "retirement" as a freelance journalist.

And now, the 74-year-old is an award-winning novelist. She published her third book, Webs of Fate (www.darlenequinn.net), this fall, continuing her series about deceit and intrigue in the high-end retail industry.

She says she was always a story-teller; she just never thought about putting her stories on paper.

"Being a victim of the short-lived educational phenomenon called sight-reading, which did not include phonics, I had always been intimidated by the written word," she said.

"Somehow none of my teachers appreciated my creativity when it came to spelling.  Therefore, my creative writing efforts were sprinkled with so many red marks, they appeared to have broken out with the measles."

Maybe, she added, she just needed a great story to tell and a passion to tell it that was stronger than her fear.

Quinn became a schoolteacher after earning a bachelor's at San Jose State University. Much later in life, while working as a department store executive during a time of tremendous upheaval in the retail fashion industry, she found her story. But before she tried to tell it, she first sharpened her wit and her pen by writing articles for trade journals, magazines and newspapers.

That led to her being drafted by actor Buddy Ebsen to help him with his first novel, a love story called Kelly's Quest. Ebsen was working on a second, a mystery based on his popular TV persona detective Barnaby Jones, when he died in 2003. His widow asked Quinn to finish the book, Sizzling Cold Case, which was published in 2006.

By now, Quinn was ready for her own tale.

"I felt compelled to tell the story of our vanishing department stores," she said. "Instead of writing a dour tell-all about the business, I decided to chronicle my experiences in one of my fictional worlds and I filled that landscape with the realistic and dynamic characters that inhabited my daily life.

"The age of computers with spell-checking software helped me get over my fear of a red-inked manuscript."

By 2008, Quinn had finished her story of intrigue in the retail fashion business. Webs of Power won a 2009 National Indie Excellence Award the following year.  Twisted Webs followed in 2010.

"One thing I've learned in my life is that things change," Quinn said. "People change and, sometimes, their dreams have to change with them.

"To be releasing my third novel at age 74 is the fulfillment of a dream I never knew I had. Until now."

About Darlene Quinn

Darlene Quinn is an author and journalist from Long Beach, Calif., whose novels about deceit, intrigue and glamour in the retail fashion industry were inspired by her years with Bullocks Wilshire Specialty department stores. Her newest, Webs of Fate, won the 2011 Reader's Favorites Award before it hit the bookshelves.
It provides the back story for the characters in the first two novels in the series: Webs of Power, winner of a 2009 National Indie Excellence Award, and Twisted Webs, winner of 2011 International Book Award for General Fiction and the 011 National Indie Excellence Awards for General Fiction.

CHICAGO - January 4, 2012. Governor Pat Quinn today announced that as part of his efforts to grow the economy and boost exports, Illinois-based civil rights leader Rev. Jesse Jackson will represent the state at the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the founding of the African National Congress (ANC) in South Africa next week.

"Overseas trading with fast-growing nations is a key to expanding Illinois' role in the global marketplace, creating jobs here at home and growing our economy," Governor Quinn said. "Rev. Jackson will serve as a goodwill ambassador to South Africa on behalf of Illinois as the ANC celebrates its long history of fighting for justice and equality."

The ANC was created in 1912 to preserve voting rights for black South Africans, and it later took the lead in the movement to eliminate apartheid. Rev. Jackson visited South Africa in 1979 in the midst of racial apartheid and again on Feb. 11, 1990 when Nelson Mandela was freed after spending 27 years in prison at Robin's Island. At the 1984 Democratic Convention, Rev. Jackson rallied against racial apartheid, calling it a moral disgrace and led several mass marches in the U.S. and U.K. in support of equality. He was also a member of the official U.S. delegation to witness the inauguration of Mandela to the South African Presidency in 1992. The ANC centenary ceremonies will begin a year of celebration throughout the country as it continues its political and economic transition in the 21st century.

South Africa is the top importer of Illinois products in the African region, accounting for $613 million in economic activity in 2010 - a 13 percent increase from 2009. Overall, Illinois ranks third in the U.S. among states exporting goods to South Africa. Following the country's liberation, Illinois established an international trade office that helps Illinois and South African companies to form mutually-beneficial economic partnerships.

Through the third quarter of 2011, exports to South Africa were up an additional 53 percent over 2010 levels. This growth is being driven by an increase in Illinois machinery exports to support the country's growing mining industry and investments in large infrastructure projects. South Africa produces 90 percent of the world's cobalt, 80 percent of its chromium and platinum, 70 percent of its tantalite, 64 percent of its manganese, 40 percent of its gold, 33 percent of its uranium, and at least 10 percent of the world's oil and natural gas reserves.

Today's announcement is one of several business and economic partnerships the Governor has announced as he builds upon his aggressive goal to double state exports by 2014.

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