Memo gives basis for drone strikes vs US citizens

FILE - This Oct. 2008 file photo by Muhammad ud-Deen shows Imam Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen. A Justice Department document says it is legal for the government to kill U.S. citizens abroad if it believes they are senior al-Qaida leaders continually engaged in operations aimed at killing Americans. (AP Photo/Muhammad ud-Deen, File)

FILE - This Oct. 2008 file photo by Muhammad ud-Deen shows Imam Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen. A Justice Department document says it is legal for the government to kill U.S. citizens abroad if it believes they are senior al-Qaida leaders continually engaged in operations aimed at killing Americans. (AP Photo/Muhammad ud-Deen, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) ? An unclassified Justice Department memo reveals that the Obama administration has had more lenient rules than publicly known for when drone attacks can be launched to kill U.S. citizens working abroad with terrorists.

The government does not need evidence that a specific attack is imminent, the newly disclosed Justice Department white paper says, only that the targeted suspect is involved in ongoing plotting against the United States.

"The threat posed by al-Qaida and its associated forces demands a broader concept of imminence in judging when a person continually planning terror attacks presents an imminent threat," the document says.

The undated document surfaced as Obama administration official John Brennan, who helped manage the drone program, heads to Capitol Hill on Thursday for his confirmation hearing to be CIA director. The hearing is taking place as a growing number of senators are asking to see a still-classified Justice Department legal opinion that justifies the administration's position on drones and is binding on the entire executive branch.

Controversy over U.S. policy for drone attacks mushroomed after a September 2011 drone strike in Yemen killed Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan, both U.S. citizens.

In a speech last March, Attorney General Eric Holder said that in assessing when a targeted killing against a U.S. citizen is legal, the government must determine after careful review that a citizen poses an imminent threat of violent attack against the U.S. Brennan had made a similar speech justifying the strikes as self-defense against imminent threat of attack.

Asked Tuesday about the definition of "imminent threat" at a news conference on an unrelated topic, Holder said that "so many of these things are fact-based" and that "you can't examine the terms without reference to the facts." He said such details can be discussed only in a classified setting.

"Our primary concern is to keep the American people safe, but do so in a way that is consistent with our law and our values," Holder said.

The Justice memo says that delaying action against U.S. citizens who are linked to al-Qaida would create an unacceptably high risk because some al-Qaida leaders are continually plotting attacks on the U.S. and the U.S. may not always be aware of each specific plot as they develop.

This week, a bipartisan group of 11 senators asked President Barack Obama for all legal opinions underlying the authority to kill American citizens. The newly disclosed Justice Department document, first reported by NBC News on Monday night, represents an unclassified summary of those legal opinions and may have been prepared to deflect demands to see the actual classified legal opinions.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Tuesday that her panel received the unclassified document, and others, from the administration in June 2012 on a confidential basis. She said this document, coupled with other documents and closed briefings, "has allowed the Intelligence Committee to conduct appropriate and probing oversight into the use of lethal force."

Noting that she had been calling for public release of the legal basis for using lethal force, particularly against U.S. citizens, for more than a year, Feinstein said with disclosure of the white paper "the American people can review and judge the legality of these operations."

She added, however, that the committee continues to seek the actual legal opinions that provide details not contained in the white paper.

The Justice memo does require that capture of a terrorist suspect not be feasible and that any such lethal operation by the United States targeting a person comply with fundamental law-of-war principles.

"A decision maker determining whether an al-Qaida operational leader presents an imminent threat of violent attack against the United States must take into account that certain members of Al-Qaida ... are continually plotting attacks against the United States" and that "al-Qaida would engage in such attacks regularly to the extent it were able to do so," says the document.

The document also says that a decision maker must take into account that "the U.S. government may not be aware of all al-Qaida plots as they are developing and thus cannot be confident that none is about to occur; and that ... the nation may have a limited window of opportunity within which to strike in a manner that both has a high likelihood of success and reduces the probability of American casualties."

With this understanding, the document added, a high-level official could conclude, for example, that an individual poses an imminent threat of violent attack against the United States where he is an operational leader of al-Qaida or an associated force and is personally and continually involved in planning terrorist attacks against the United States.

The American Civil Liberties Union said the document is "profoundly disturbing."

"It's hard to believe that it was produced in a democracy built on a system of checks and balances," the ACLU said.

The document says that the use of lethal force would not violate the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution when a targeted person is an operational leader of an enemy force and an informed, high-level government official has determined that he poses an imminent threat of violent attack against the U.S.

The document said the courts have no role to play in the matter.

"Under the circumstances described in this paper, there exists no appropriate judicial forum to evaluate these constitutional considerations. It is well established that 'matters intimately related to foreign policy, and national security are rarely proper subjects for judicial intervention,'" the document said.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/89ae8247abe8493fae24405546e9a1aa/Article_2013-02-05-Drone%20Targets/id-01abb17d5fcd4d938060f4f3b5d5fa48

columbus day Stacy Dash Amber Tamblyn Lilit Avagyan Nashville TV Show VP debate drew brees

Scientists find a key element of lupus, suggesting better drug targets

Feb. 4, 2013 ? A team led by scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) has identified specific cellular events that appear key to lupus, a debilitating autoimmune disease that afflicts tens of millions of people worldwide. The findings suggest that blocking this pathway in lupus-triggering cells could be a potent weapon against the disease.

In the new study, described in an online Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the week of February 4, 2013, the researchers determined that the absence of a certain type of immune cell, or of a key signaling molecule within the cell, greatly reduces the development of autoimmunity in mouse models of lupus. Mice with these protective changes showed little impairment of their normal immune functions.

"We are excited about the potential of such an inhibitor as a new kind of treatment for lupus, as well as other autoimmune conditions," said Argyrios N. Theofilopoulos, chair of TSRI's Department of Immunology and Microbial Science and a senior author of the new study.

A Case of Mistaken Identity

While there are therapies for lupus, also known as systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), none of these tightly targets its underlying causes. The condition appears to arise from both genetic and environmental factors, and involves complex autoimmune processes. A key feature is the activity of antibodies -- "autoantibodies" -- that attack the patient's own nucleic acids (DNA, RNA) and other cellular proteins. Lupus's signs and symptoms include rashes, joint pain, anemia and kidney damage. Untreated complications, such as kidney failure and blood clots, can be fatal. Physicians typically treat lupus with broadly immunosuppressive drugs, which raise patients' risks for some infections and cancers.

Theofilopoulos and his laboratory have long been at the forefront of lupus research. In recent years, they and other researchers have found evidence that a powerful class of immune-stimulating chemicals, known as type I interferons, are essential to the vicious cycle of lupus autoimmunity.

The cycle apparently begins when certain immune cells mistakenly detect self-proteins and nucleic acids as "foreign" and begin pumping out type I interferons. This mobilizes other elements of the immune system, including the antibody response, and soon autoantibodies are attacking self-molecules in healthy cells. The autoantibodies in turn present these "foreign" molecules to type I interferon-producing cells, adding fuel to the autoimmune fire.

Lab-dish evidence has suggested that the key producers of type I interferons in lupus are a relatively sparse class of immune cells known as plasmacytoid dendritic cells (pDCs). In the new study, Theofilopoulos and his colleagues sought more conclusive evidence of pDCs' role, using mouse models of lupus.

In Search of Evidence

The experiments were led by first author Roberto Baccala, an associate professor in the TSRI Department of Immunology and Microbial Science who has worked with Theofilopoulos on lupus-related research for the past two decades. To help determine whether lupus can develop in the absence of pDCs, the TSRI scientists collaborated with Keiko Ozato, an expert on immune cell genetics at the National Institutes of Health. Ozato has developed a strain of mice that have no pDCs due to lack of a key gene (IRF8) needed for these cells' development.

The team knocked out this gene in another strain of mice that normally succumbs to a lupus-like autoimmune disease with age. These mice grew up without pDCs and, as a result, were largely protected from the disease.

"When we injected a standard inducer of interferons into these mice, they didn't produce detectable interferons," said Baccala. "And when we watched the animals for the usual development of lupus, we found that autoantibodies were practically non-existent, and all the other lupus-like manifestations were drastically reduced."

Next, the researchers sought to highlight specifically how pDCs promote lupus autoimmunity. For this they used a different mouse gene knockout, based on a mouse strain developed in the TSRI laboratory of Bruce Beutler, a long-time collaborator who has since moved to become the director of the Center for Genetics of Host Defense at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.

Beutler's special mice lack a working gene for a protein called SLC15A4, and as a result of this mutation, the pDCs in these mice develop normally, but are largely unable to produce type I interferons in response to the usual stimuli. Such cells normally produce large amounts of interferons after detecting viral or bacterial genetic material. For this detection, they use a class of internal receptors called TLRs (toll-like receptors). Beutler received the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work on TLRs. His SLC15A4-mutant mice specifically lack the ability to respond to stimuli that would normally be detected by two of these receptors, TLR7 and TLR9. These same TLRs have been implicated in lupus -- they apparently mistake self-nucleic acids for viral nucleic acids.

Working with Beutler, the TSRI team applied the SLC15A4 mutation to a strain of lupus mice to see if it would protect them from autoimmunity. And it did. "The usual lupus-like signs significantly decreased, and survival was extended," said Baccala.

A Potential Target

Baccala and Theofilopoulos now see SLC15A4 as a potential target for a lupus drug -- a drug that, in principle, would prevent flare-ups of autoimmunity without suppressing other parts of the immune system as much as current therapies do. "The SLC15A4-mutant mice seem to be otherwise almost normal immunologically," said Baccala. "They can clear common viral infections, for example."

"We are now trying to find pharmacologic inhibitors of type I interferon production, and in particular, inhibitors of SLC15A4," said Theofilopoulos.

Emerging evidence indicates that TLR-based detection of self-molecules and production of interferons contribute to other autoimmune conditions, too. Thus, inhibitors of these specific immune signaling pathways might have use beyond the treatment of lupus. "We think that our findings have implications for rheumatoid arthritis, diabetes, neuroinflammatory diseases and many other diseases in which TLRs appear to play a role," Theofilopoulos said.

Other contributors to the study, "Essential requirement for IRF8 and SLC15A4 implicates plasmacytoid dendritic cells in the pathogenesis of lupus," were TSRI researchers Rosana Gonzalez-Quintial, Amanda L. Blasius, Ivo Rimann and Dwight H. Kono.

The research was supported by the National Institutes of Health (grants AR53228, AR31203, AR39555, 1U19-AI100627-01 and 2P01-AI070167-06A1).

Share this story on Facebook, Twitter, and Google:

Other social bookmarking and sharing tools:

---

Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Scripps Research Institute.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

---

Journal Reference:

1. Roberto Baccala, Rosana Gonzalez-Quintial, Amanda L. Blasius, Ivo Rimann, Keiko Ozato, Dwight H. Kono, Bruce Beutler, and Argyrios N. Theofilopoulos. Essential requirement for IRF8 and SLC15A4 implicates plasmacytoid dendritic cells in the pathogenesis of lupus. PNAS, February 4, 2013 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1222798110

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/mHpHlZ84fto/130204184634.htm

terrell owens neil armstrong little league world series us open tennis us open tennis Empire State Building shooting Republican National Convention

OUYA game console will be in retail stores this June | Android ...

The OUYA game console is going to soon be available in retail stores. The consoles are expected to land with several retailers including some brick-and-mortar and some on the web. The list of stores looks to include Gamestop, Best Buy and Target as well as Amazon. The OUYA should be available with these retailers beginning in June, and pre-orders are already available with several of them.

The price of the OUYA console will be $99.99, which is what we are seeing with the currently available pre-orders direct from OUYA. The extra controllers on the other hand look to be a bit pricier. Current OUYA controller pre-orders are available for $30, however retail availability is expected to be $50. To follow up on a previous report, those who are looking to pre-order direct from OUYA at this point have missed the April delivery timeframe and so far we have yet to see another update in terms of shipping.

In addition to placing a pre-order with OUYA, you can also do so with Amazon, Best Buy and Target. We have yet to see release dates from all the retailers, however Target has the OUYA console listed with a release date of June 4. Aside from already having talked quite a bit about the OUYA due to the Kickstarter and pre-order availability ? the console is expected to officially be unveiled in March.

Taking that a step further and we have the Kickstarter backers set to receive their consoles in March with OUYA pre-orders coming in April and an official launch in June when the retail availability begins. The retail availability information came by way of the Wall Street Journal who recently interviewed CEO Julie Uhrman. During that interview Uhrman noted that they currently have more than 68,000 consoles on order and are expecting to have games from every genre and perhaps more important ? games from publishers that you know.

Source: http://androidcommunity.com/ouya-game-console-will-be-in-retail-stores-this-june-20130205/

ronda rousey vs miesha tate lindsay lohan snl lindsay lohan on snl real housewives of disney awakenings phantom of the opera agoraphobia

THE RESET: Gov't slowing economic and job growth

In this Tuesday, Jan. 22, 2013 photo, Fernando Rames answers questions on a job application at the job fair in Sunrise, Fla. U.S. employers added 157,000 jobs in January, and hiring was much stronger at the end of 2012 than previously thought, providing reassurance that the job market held steady even as economic growth stalled, according to Labor Department reports, Friday, Feb. 1, 2013. (AP Photo/J Pat Carter)

In this Tuesday, Jan. 22, 2013 photo, Fernando Rames answers questions on a job application at the job fair in Sunrise, Fla. U.S. employers added 157,000 jobs in January, and hiring was much stronger at the end of 2012 than previously thought, providing reassurance that the job market held steady even as economic growth stalled, according to Labor Department reports, Friday, Feb. 1, 2013. (AP Photo/J Pat Carter)

White House press secretary Jay Carney briefs reporters at the White House in Washington, Thursday, Jan. 31, 2013. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

President Barack Obama declared last June that "the private sector is doing fine." And President Ronald Reagan liked to tell audiences, "Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem." Two major economic reports this week seem to lend some new weight to both provocative assertions.

The government continued to shed jobs in the first month of 2013, while the private sector again posted solid ? if not robust ? gains, the Labor Department reported Friday.

Employers added 157,000 jobs overall. There would have been more if governments hadn't shed 9,000 jobs in January, extending a recent trend.

The Commerce Department reported two days earlier that the economy contracted in the final three months of 2012, with the Gross Domestic Product slipping at a 0.1 percent annual rate.

A 6.6 percent drop in government spending, most of it at the national level, was the big culprit, subtracting about 1.3 percentage points from the GDP and dragging it into negative territory for the first time in over three years.

Yet the report also showed that the main drivers of the private economy ? housing, consumer spending and business investment ? had strengthened.

Obama was widely ridiculed for saying the private sector was "doing fine" compared to the government, and he backtracked a bit. But it turns out he wasn't totally wrong ? just about six months premature.

And present-day Reagan disciples continue to insist a smaller government is a better government ? even if it stokes job losses.

Reagan also declared, "It's morning in America again."

But that's a sentiment Obama is unlikely to be uttering anytime soon, with the jobless rate inching up in January to 7.9 percent from 7.8 percent in December.

"We still have work to do," White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters at Friday's daily briefing.

___

Follow Tom Raum on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/tomraum

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/89ae8247abe8493fae24405546e9a1aa/Article_2013-02-01-US-The-Reset/id-08e7f21d6ca1461b92960d1495ca6621

wheres my refund jennifer lawrence tiger woods lakers Real Madrid iOS 6.1 yahoo finance

S&P expects US lawsuit over its mortgage ratings

WASHINGTON (AP) ? The U.S. government is expected to file civil charges against Standard & Poor's Ratings Services, alleging that it improperly gave high ratings to mortgage debt that later plunged in value and helped fuel the 2008 financial crisis.

The charges would mark the first enforcement action the government has taken against a major rating agency involving the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

S&P said Monday that the Justice Department had informed the rating agency that it intends to file a civil lawsuit focusing on S&P's ratings of mortgage debt in 2007.

The action does not involve any criminal allegations. Critics have long complained about the government's failure to bring criminal charges against any major Wall Street players involved in the financial crisis. Criminal charges would require a higher burden of proof and carry the threat of jail time.

If S&P is eventually found guilty of civil violations, it could face fines and limits on how it does business.

S&P denies any wrongdoing and says any lawsuit would be without merit.

A federal lawsuit would "disregard" the fact that S&P reviewed the same data on risky mortgages as U.S. government officials, who said publicly in 2007 that the problems in the subprime mortgage market appeared to be limited, the company said in a statement.

In the statement, S&P said it "deeply regrets" that its ratings on some securities "failed to fully anticipate the rapidly deteriorating conditions in the U.S. mortgage market during that tumultuous time."

Justice Department spokeswoman Nanda Chitre declined to comment on the matter.

Judges have previously thrown out claims brought by investors against the rating agencies, on the grounds that their ratings amount to free speech protected by the First Amendment.

But that argument hasn't always succeeded in cases involving investments like those in the expected S&P suit, according to research by The Brattle Group, a consulting firm. That's because those ratings weren't published widely, as most bond ratings are. As a result, several courts have ruled that those ratings do not enjoy free-speech protection.

S&P is a unit of New York-based McGraw-Hill Cos. McGraw-Hill's stock plunged nearly 14 percent Monday after reports surfaced about the government's expected lawsuit.

Moody's Corp., the parent of Moody's Investors Service, another rating agency, closed down nearly 11 percent. The two companies' stocks suffered the biggest percentage drops in the S&P 500 index, which finished down slightly more than 1 percent.

According to a report in the New York Times, the lawsuit will likely be brought this week after settlement talks between the Justice Department and S&P broke down last week. The talks collapsed over federal authorities' insistence that a settlement involve at least $1 billion, the Times reported.

S&P, Moody's, and Fitch Ratings, the third major rating agency, have been blamed for helping fuel the financial crisis by assigning AAA ratings to trillions of dollars in risky securities backed by subprime mortgages. The securities collapsed once the housing bubble burst and home-loan delinquencies soared. Major U.S. banks absorbed tens of billions in losses.

The rating agencies are important arbiters of the creditworthiness of securities traded around the world. The grades they assign can affect a company's ability to raise or borrow money and how much investors will pay for securities it issues.

The securities in the anticipated federal lawsuit are collateralized debt offerings. CDOs are investment vehicles that contain many underlying mortgage loans.

A CDO generally gains in value if borrowers repay. But a wave of defaults can cause them to tumble in value. Soured CDOs contributed to, and intensified, the financial crisis.

Critics have long argued that rating agencies have an inherent conflict of interest: They're paid by the same companies whose products and credit they rate. The agencies have been accused of issuing unduly high ratings before the crisis, in part because of pressure from banks they desired as clients.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2013-02-04-Standard%20and%20Poor's-Lawsuit/id-56663336a9614a119815a2d686c915e2

BlackBerry 10 Ron Jeremy Rudy Gay PlayStation 4 Jim Nabors The Americans bank of america online banking

BlackBerry searching high and low in India, Indonesia

NEW DELHI/JAKARTA (Reuters) - Research in Motion Ltd must chart a tough course in its two key emerging markets of India and Indonesia: quickly launch cheaper handsets to woo lower-end subscribers while restoring its tattered brand among the countries' status-conscious.

The company, which is rebranding itself BlackBerry after its best-known smartphone, has won millions of followers in these two Asian countries, mostly by selling cheaper handsets and offering service packages as low as $2 a month. So it's unlikely that the Z10 model introduced last week, which operators in India expect to sell for around $750, will appeal to the users it must reach if it is to build market share.

"It's clear that not only are India and Indonesia among the largest markets but in terms of future smartphone growth, they're amongst the ones with the most potential," said Melissa Chau, senior research manager at technology research group IDC in Singapore. "But the two devices that have been launched are not well aligned to the needs of these two markets."

While the company does not break down its sales by country, data from IDC shows that Indonesia was BlackBerry's biggest market outside the United States and Britain last year, while India was ninth.

ABI Research said that BlackBerry accounted for nearly half of Indonesia's smartphone shipments in 2012. Compare this with a global share of just 5.3 percent. In India, the world's second-largest mobile phone market, BlackBerry ranks third after Samsung Electronics Co Ltd and Nokia.

In both countries, young people are drawn by low-cost handsets allowing them to communicate for free on the BlackBerry Messaging Service (BBM). Almost all carriers offer services for the device. Indonesia's XL Axiata Tbk PT, for example, saw a 45 percent jump in BlackBerry subscribers last financial year after offering packages for as little as 20 cents per day.

But this picture is changing rapidly.

The rise of messaging services such as WhatsApp that are not confined to any single operating system and the proliferation of cheap Android devices have diluted the BlackBerry's appeal.

Mickey Nayoan, a 32-year old product designer in Jakarta, swapped his BlackBerry for a Samsung phone six months ago and isn't missing it.

"I survived without BlackBerry because there's WhatsApp," he said. "More and more people use it and so I don't need BBM anymore."

At the same time, higher-end users have deserted what is increasingly seen as a low-end brand.

"When they came up with the cheaper versions, that took the allure off the brand for many Indonesians who are very status-conscious," said Ong Hock Chuan, a Jakarta-based communications consultant.

ANDROID MAKES INROADS

While BlackBerry remained the number one smartphone brand in Indonesia in the second quarter of last year, the most recent period for which rankings were available, Android overtook it as the most popular operating system, according to IDC.

IDC said when it released the data last September that this was partly because of delays in the launch of the BlackBerry 10. The Z10 is likely to launch in the second half of February in India and in late March in Indonesia.

Data from StatCounter, a website which estimates mobile web traffic, shows BlackBerry's share in Indonesia falling from about 20 percent in 2011 to about 5 percent last year.

On the other hand, carriers and users say, glitches with BlackBerry services and a perception that the brand has lost some of its luster mean that it will be hard to sell the Z10 and a keyboard model, the Q10, even to better-off users.

"It really depends on how BlackBerry 10 performs. If it can fix problems of previous BlackBerry (services) it could succeed in the market," said Hasnul Suhaimi, CEO of Indonesia's XL Axiata. But for now, he said, "it will just be about people swapping out existing devices."

To reverse this, BlackBerry must announce cheaper devices quickly, analysts say. BlackBerry launched handsets designed on its old platform for just such users in India and Indonesia last year.

"The Z10... is obviously a high-end product and India is not a market at that price point," said Anshul Gupta, an industry analyst at technology advisory firm Gartner in Mumbai. "We don't know exactly what will be coming here, but I would expect them to launch different models in India which would give them more traction."

(Additional reporting by Henry Foy in Mumbai and Jeremy Wagstaff in Singapore; Writing by Jeremy Wagstaff; Editing by Emily Kaiser)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/blackberry-searching-high-low-india-indonesia-210446845--finance.html

wii u wii u American Music Awards turkey brine Imessage Not Working mc hammer pecan pie recipe

Affleck's 'Argo' wins Directors Guild top honor

LOS ANGELES (AP) ? Ben Affleck has won the top film honor from the Directors Guild of America for his CIA thriller "Argo," further sealing its status as best-picture front-runner at the Academy Awards.

Saturday's prize also normally would make Affleck a near shoo-in to win best-director at the Feb. 24 Oscars, since the Directors Guild recipient nearly always goes on to claim the same prize at Hollywood's biggest night.

But Affleck surprisingly missed out on an Oscar directing nomination, along with several other key favorites, including fellow Directors Guild contenders Kathryn Bigelow for "Zero Dark Thirty" and Tom Hooper for "Les Miserables."

Affleck's Oscar snub has not hurt "Argo" and may even have earned it some favor among awards voters as an underdog favorite. "Argo" has dominated other awards since the Oscar nominations.

"I don't think that this makes me a real director, but I think it means I'm on my way," said Affleck, who won for just his third film behind the camera.

The Directors Guild honors continued Hollywood's strange awards season, which could culminate with a big Oscar win for Affleck's "Argo." The guild's prize for best director typically is a final blessing for the film that goes on to win best-picture and director at the Oscars.

Affleck can go only one-for-two at the Oscars, though. While "Argo" is up for best picture, the director's branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences overlooked him for a directing slot.

Backstage at the Directors Guild honors, Affleck said he had nothing but respect for the academy and that "you're not entitled to anything."

"I'm thrilled and honored that the academy nominated me as a producer of the movie," Affleck said. "I know our movie, we're a little bit underdog and a little bit the little engine that could, and you take me out of it maybe helps ... it's just about that picture. I feel like it's OK, I'm really lucky, I'm in a good place."

With 12 Oscar nominations, Steven Spielberg's Civil War saga "Lincoln" initially looked like the Oscar favorite over such other potential favorites as "Argo," ''Les Miserables" and "Zero Dark Thirty," since films generally have little chance of winning best picture if they are not nominated for best director. Only three films have done it in 84 years, most recently 1989's best-picture champ "Driving Miss Daisy," which failed to earn a directing nomination for Bruce Beresford.

But Affleck's "Argo," in which he also stars as a CIA operative who hatches a bold plan to rescue six Americans during the hostage crisis in Iran, has swept up all the major awards since the Oscar nominations. "Argo" won best drama and director at the Golden Globes and top film honors from the Screen Actors Guild and the Producers Guild of America.

Many of the same film professionals who vote in guild awards also cast ballots for the Oscars, so all the wins for "Argo" are a strong sign that the film has the inside track for best picture.

Milos Forman, a two-time Directors Guild and Oscar winner for "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" and "Amadeus," received the group's lifetime-achievement award. Guild President Taylor Hackford let the crowd in a toast to Forman, who was ill and unable to attend.

Malik Bendjelloul won the guild's documentary award for "Searching for Sugar Man," his study of the fate of critically acclaimed but obscure 1970s singer-songwriter Rodriquez. The film also is nominated for best documentary at the Oscars.

Jay Roach won the guild trophy for TV movies and miniseries for "Game Change," his drama starring Julianne Moore as Sarah Palin in her 2008 vice-presidential run.

Roach said that he watched John McCain rush to choose Palin as his running-mate, potentially putting her second in line for the presidency.

"I said, 'We gotta talk about this,'" Roach joked.

"Girls" star Lena Dunham earned the guild honor for TV comedy, while Rian Johnson won for drama series for "Breaking Bad."

Dunham won for directing the pilot of "Girls," which focuses on the lives of a group of women in their 20s.

"It is such an unbelievable honor to be in the company of the people in this room, who have made me want to do this with my life," Dunham said.

Filmmaker Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu ("Babel," ''Amores Perros") won for best commercial for a Procter and Gamble spot he directed.

Among other TV winners:

? Reality program: Brian Smith, "Master Chef."

? Musical variety: Glenn Weiss, "The 66th Annual Tony Awards."

? Daytime serial: Jill Mitwell, "One Life to Live."

? Children's program: Paul Hoen, "Let It Shine."

Affleck's win Saturday nicks the Directors Guild record as a strong forecast for the eventual directing recipient at the Oscars. Only six times in the 64-year history of the guild awards has the winner there failed to follow up with an Oscar. This will be the seventh, since Affleck is not up for the best-director Oscar.

Peer loyalty might play in Affleck's favor at the Oscars. The acting branch in particular, the largest block of the academy's 5,900 members, might really throw its weight behind "Argo" because of Affleck's directing snub. Actors love it when one of their own moves into a successful directing career, and Affleck ? who's rarely earned raves for his dramatic chops ? also delivers one of his best performances in "Argo."

Affleck has had no traction in acting honors this season, and he's joked that no one considered it a snub when he wasn't nominated for best actor. So a best-picture vote for "Argo" might be viewed as making right his omission from the directing lineup and acknowledging what a double-threat talent he's become in front of and behind the camera.

A best-picture prize also would send Affleck home with an Oscar. The award would go to the producers of "Argo": George Clooney, Grant Heslov and Affleck.

But it's not as though Affleck has never gotten his due at Hollywood awards before. He and Matt Damon jump-started their careers with 1997's "Good Will Hunting," for which they shared a screenplay Oscar.

___

AP Entertainment Writer Sandy Cohen contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/afflecks-argo-wins-directors-guild-top-honor-063830435.html

Yash Chopra George McGovern braxton miller braxton miller Whitney Heichel Tippi Hedren Big Tex