The day after his wife was abducted and forced to withdraw cash from a McLean bank, Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) called the branch manager and chastised her for the bank's "stupid" actions during the robbery and soon was refunded the $4,000 that was stolen, three Wachovia employees said.

The branch manager, Parisa Davoudian, said Gregg hung up on her after demanding to speak to a higher-ranking Wachovia Bank official. Davoudian and two of her employees, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that a customer who was robbed of her own money, as Gregg's wife was, typically would not be entitled to a refund. They also said that Wachovia officials had decided before the senator's inquiry that the robbery was a customer loss and not a bank loss.

[edit]

The next morning, five minutes after the bank opened, Judd Gregg called and asked for the branch manager, the manager said. When Gregg asked, "How much money did you give the guy," Davoudian said, she explained that Gregg's wife had written a check for $5,000, and the robber had gotten $4,000 before fleeing.

"You guys are so stupid," Davoudian said Gregg told her, "to give money to this guy who brings my wife into the bank with a knife." Davoudian said she was shocked by Gregg's comments. She thought he was calling to thank the bank. "I was shaking," she said.

Gregg then asked her, "What is the bank's policy about giving us the money back?" Davoudian said. She said she told the senator she would have to speak to her boss.

"He said, 'I want somebody calling me back with an intellectual answer,' and he hung up the phone," Davoudian said.

Three bank employees said that within the hour, the bank had credited the Greggs' account with $4,000. All three said that was unusual, especially after a robbery is classified a "customer loss."

Meanwhile, John Allen Muhammad (Bobby Hosea) and his teenage protégé, John Lee Malvo (Trent Cameron), listen intently to the news on their car radio. The media is in a frenzy, and Malvo is nervous. But Muhammad encourages him to relax as they head towards Kensington, Maryland - and within the hour, a young mother will die while vacuuming her van at a gas station.

[edit]

Muhammad and Malvo spend the night in their car while returning to Virginia, and fatally shoot two men at two separate gas stations over the next four days. Their blue Chevy Caprice slips easily through checkpoints, as officers continue to comb traffic for white trucks. After a tenth victim is killed outside a Virginia Home Depot, there is a report of an alleged eyewitness account. The Chief is tight-lipped on the topic due to his distrust of the press, and his distrust grows when the account ends up merely being a ploy for media attention.

Malvo and Muhammad continue to phone in threats, and then strike again outside a Virginia restaurant, this time leaving a note. Chief Moose appeals to the snipers directly on live television, promising to listen if they communicate further with authorities. Malvo responds with demands for money.

Fans of abstinence had better be sitting down. "Saving yourself" before the big game, the big business deal, the big hoedown or the big bakeoff may indeed confer some moral benefit. But corporeally it does absolutely zip. There's no evidence it sharpens your competitive edge. The best that modern science can say for sexual abstinence is that it's harmless when practiced in moderation. Having regular and enthusiastic sex, by contrast, confers a host of measurable physiological advantages, be you male or female.

New Zealand would be represented at the Madrid Conference and would announce $5 million to support the reconstruction and humanitarian activities of the NZDF engineers, and a further $500,000 to support New Zealand non-governmental organisations working with partners in Iraq, Ms Hobbs said.

New Zealand had already provided $4.3 million for emergency humanitarian relief efforts and had committed a further $1 million for rehabilitation of the Iraq agriculture ministry in Baghdad.

And the worst among worst now is in virtual control of the Right, and that's Tom DeLay, who I think is the single most dangerous man along with John Ashcroft in America. We're going after DeLay. We have people looking into his various money organizations. DeLay is about as forgiving as a cornered rattlesnake, and this boy needs to be cut down to size. The Democrats for some reason are intimidated by DeLay. They let him get away with too much. You know how long that story lasted on DeLay when he let that guy write that piece of legislation for a contribution? Hell, it went away in a day or a day and a half. If that had been Clinton -- they'd have kept it going for weeks.

It's just a matter of time before taking shots at the president ... will seem evasive at best, even obstructionist. Soon, the burning question Democrats must answer will be not what they think is wrong with President Bush's policy, but what they, as members of the anti-war elite, would do in his place.

This is a tough question. It forces members of the anti-war elite to admit they would have left Saddam Hussein and his murderous regime in place .

[edit]

Opponents of the war necessarily supported the continued reign of the Iraqi despot. The opposite of "regime change" is the status quo — or worse.

Ashley Snee, a spokesman for Mr. Gonzales, said he believed the delay was acceptable because no one in the White House had any idea there was an investigation. But The New York Times and The Washington Post had reported the day before that the C.I.A. had forwarded the matter to the Justice Department for possible investigation.

PRESIDENT BUSH: "I have great respect for the media. I mean, our society is a good, solid democracy because of a good, solid media. But I also understand that a lot of times there's [sic] opinions mixed in with news."

BRIT HUME: "I won't disagree with that, sir."

PRESIDENT BUSH: "I appreciate people's opinions, but I'm more interested in news. And the best way to get the news is from objective sources. And the most objective sources I have are people on my staff who tell me what's happening in the world."

"Bush is spoon-fed the relevant news from his staff. Top aides usually know the buttons not to push when it comes to bad news. More often they will tell the president what he wants to hear -- the good news if there is any .... Bush is missing a lot by getting the news filtered by his staff. If he read a newspaper every day he would be sharing an experience with most Americans. Otherwise, he's just out of the loop."

The web sites of nine of the co-sponsoring organizations have a total of 2,369 documents containing the word "homosexual," but only 1,423 that contain the word "divorce", 952 with "health care," 832 with "poverty," 207 with "health insurance," 190 with "domestic violence," and 85 with "child support."...contrary to President Bush's October 3, 2003 proclamation, there is no focus at all in the week's planned activities on building strong and healthy marriages. (italics mine)

The O'Reilly Factor - 336 Reviews

5 Star Reviews - 143 (42% of reviews)
4 Star Reviews - 76 (23%)
3 Star Reviews - 49 (15%)
2 Star Reviews - 17 (5%)
1 Star Reviews - 51 (15%)

Total Score = 1251
(divided by 336 reviews)
Average Review = 3.72

The No-Spin Zone - 253 Reviews

5 Star Reviews - 110 (43% of reviews)
4 Star Reviews - 53 (21%)
3 Star Reviews - 31 (12%)
2 Star Reviews - 15 (6%)
1 Star Reviews - 44 (17%)

Total Score = 929
(divided by 253 reviews)
Average Review = 3.67

Who's Looking Out For You?- 265 Reviews

5 Star Reviews - 90 (34% of reviews)
4 Star Reviews - 19 (7%)
3 Star Reviews - 8 (3%)
2 Star Reviews - 16 (6%)
1 Star Reviews - 132 (50%)

Total Score = 714
(divided by 265 reviews)
Average Review = 2.69

In the most extensive analysis yet available, Larry Bartels, a political scientist at Princeton University, gives a simple but persuasive explanation: "unenlightened self-interest." Middle- and lower-income Americans supported tax cuts they suspected went largely to the rich because they thought they, too, would benefit, if only by a small amount, and because they failed to connect the tax cuts to rising inequality, their future tax burden, or the availability of government services.

Professor Bartels analyzed a small battery of questions added to the National Election Survey, a poll of 1,500 people interviewed in the six weeks before the November 2002 election, and again in the month after the election. The survey turned up some remarkable results, which he reports in "Homer Gets a Tax Cut: Inequality and Public Policy in the American Mind."

[edit]

Larry Bartels concludes that "most Americans support tax cuts not because they are indifferent to economic inequality, but because they largely fail to connect inequality and public policy." In this sense, Homer Simpson had it backward when he said, "Just because I don't care doesn't mean that I don't understand."

Interviewer: "If you could portray an historical biography and you had an unlimited budget, unlimited support cast and everything you could ask for, who would it be?"

Asner: "Well, you know something, they've played Hitler, nobody has ever really touched Stalin, it just occurred to me. It's not because I am a liberal or anything like that. Stalin is one big damn mystery, I wonder why nobody has tried it? Many people, you know, speak of the fact that he killed more people than Hitler – why does nobody touch him? It's strange. So, and he was about my size, my height – with a wig I probably could do it."

To President Bush, the news is like a cigarette. You can get it filtered or unfiltered. And which way does he prefer it? Well, that depends on the circumstances.

The battle to subdue Azerbaijan's political opposition moved into the streets today and it was as intense, harsh and definitive as the dynastic victory in a presidential election that was held Wednesday.

Once again the chief weapon was the big stick as thousands of well-drilled soldiers, police and special security units charged through the streets, banging on their metal shields and clubbing both protesters and bystanders

[edit]

The central election commission announced preliminary results today that gave Ilham Aliev, 42, about 80 percent of the vote to succeed his ailing father, the country's longtime strongman, Heydar Aliev, 80.

The commission said the chief opposition candidate, Isa Gambarov, had won about 12 percent of the vote in an election that observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe primly said "fell short of international standards."

The observers listed violence; excessive use of force; intimidation of opposition supporters, journalists and others; prohibitive restrictions on political rallies and meetings; severely imbalanced media coverage; and manipulation of the voting, counting and tabulation processes.

Acting through a prominent conservative with friends at the Pentagon, a central figure in the Iran-Contra scandal has passed allegations to the Bush administration that enriched uranium was smuggled from Iraq into Iran five years ago and some may remain hidden in Iraq.

The intermediary, Michael Ledeen, said the CIA failed to aggressively check out the allegations because of its long-held distrust of Manucher Ghorbanifar, the middleman in the Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages deals of the Reagan years.

The CIA agrees it is skeptical of information from Ghorbanifar, saying he has "proven to be a fabricator."

[edit]

The source of Ghorbanifar's information, who would talk only on condition his name not be used for fear of his safety, said he told the CIA it could meet with three people involved in the purported shipment. Those people, including a man formerly in the Iraqi military, could take the Americans to a laboratory in Iraq where unspecified "material" is stored, the source said. If the evidence proved valuable, a reward ranging from thousands to millions of dollars would be paid, he said.

"…the (United Nations) sanctions exist -- not for the purpose of hurting the Iraqi people, but for the purpose of keeping in check Saddam Hussein's ambitions toward developing weapons of mass destruction .... That purpose is every bit as important now as it was ten years ago when we began it. And frankly they have worked. He has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors."
Sec. of State Colin L. Powell, press briefing in Cairo, Egypt, February 24, 2001

"A senior administration official said yesterday that American intelligence agencies have not come up with a smoking gun" -- adding, 'Not yet anyway.' "
"Bush Seeks Backing in Security Council," Baltimore Sun, Sept. 6, 2002

"Saddam Hussein's regime has proven itself a grave and gathering danger ... I also welcome next week's congressional hearings on the threats Saddam Hussein's brutal regime poses to our country and the entire world."
President Bush, weekly radio address, Sept. 14, 2002

"On Thursday, I met with Democratic and Republican members of Congress to discuss the threat posed by the Iraqi regime ... The danger to our country is grave and it is growing. The Iraqi regime possesses biological and chemical weapons … and, according to the British government, could launch a biological or chemical attack in as little as 45 minutes after the order is given."
President Bush, weekly radio address, Sept. 28, 2002

"Information found to date suggests that Iraq's large-scale capability to develop, produce, and fill new CW [chemical weapons] munitions was reduced -- if not entirely destroyed -- during Operations Desert Storm and Desert Fox, 13 years of U.N. inspections.”
Testimony by David Kay, chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq, before Congress
in Sept. 2003, quoted by the Washington Post, Oct. 11, 2003

On Tuesday, cartoonist Aaron McGruder had one of his young characters speculate: "Maybe if there was a man in the world who Condoleezza truly loved, she wouldn't be so hell-bent to destroy it."

A rep for the Post, which won't be resuming the strip until Sunday, said: "We had no way of knowing whether Mr. McGruder's assertion that Condoleezza Rice had no personal relationship was true or not."

It is tradition, however, that Bush invokes in the opening sentences of his proclamation. "Marriage is a sacred institution, and its protection is essential to the continued strength of our society. Marriage Protection Week provides an opportunity to focus our efforts on preserving the sanctity of marriage and on building strong and healthy marriages in America."

But if marriage is sacred and sanctified, why are civil authorities regulating it? Town clerks don't issue baptismal certificates. Justices of the peace don't check your name and address before you receive communion. Why should same-sex couples be denied civil marriage licenses?

Bush Orders Officials to Stop Leaks

Concerned about the appearance of disarray and feuding within his administration as well as growing resistance to his policies in Iraq, President Bush - living up to his recent declaration that he is in charge - told his top officials to "stop the leaks" to the media, or else.

News of Bush's order leaked almost immediately.

Bush told his senior aides Tuesday that he "didn't want to see any stories" quoting unnamed administration officials in the media anymore, and that if he did, there would be consequences, said a senior administration official who asked that his name not be used.

There is good reason for this lack of enthusiasm. The resolution essentially changes nothing. Its drafters have paid lip service to accelerating the process of Iraqi self-governance and strengthening the United Nations' role in this process. But a close reading of the resolution indicates that all power remains in American hands, that no real authority is transferred to the United Nations, and that a new Iraqi government remains a long way off.

Those compromises will probably be enough to push the resolution through. They do reflect, albeit to a very limited degree, a realization that the United Nations must be more actively involved in the occupation if a new, democratic Iraq is ever to take hold. James Dobbins, former head of peacekeeping operations in the Bush and Clinton administrations, thinks this will be but the first of several resolutions that move steadily in a more multilateral direction. The other member-states of the Security Council are thinking along these same lines—which is why they will probably approve this resolution, however half-heartedly.

Seventy-four child workers as young as 4 years old — their skin broken and palms callused from months of hauling granite — were receiving food, clothes and medical care in the West African state of Benin on Thursday after being rescued from the traffickers who sold them into heavy labor.

Children told their rescuers that at least 13 of their young companions had died in the past three months — worn out by smashing and carrying rocks and sleeping, without adequate food, in the open, U.N. officials said.

[edit]

The first rescue under the pact came Sept. 27, when authorities brought back 116 children who had been put to work in the granite quarries of southwest Nigeria. Three of the children died later at a camp where Nigerian authorities brought them before repatriation, Lauriano said.

On Thursday, Benin authorities crossed into Nigeria for what Lauriano said would be a six-week mission to find more children and retrieve them.

Child labor and labor-trafficking are common across West Africa, while mass operations to rescue the victims are extremely rare. An estimated 15,000 children from impoverished Benin work in Nigerian granite pits, officials said.

Mr. Ashcroft and Alberto R. Gonzales, the White House counsel, have also been under fire for their initial handling of the case. The Justice Department allowed the White House to wait overnight on Sept. 28 before sending an electronic message ordering White House employees not to destroy records related to the leak.

Ashley Snee, a spokesman for Mr. Gonzales, said he believed the delay was acceptable because no one in the White House had any idea there was an investigation. But The New York Times and The Washington Post had reported the day before that the C.I.A. had forwarded the matter to the Justice Department for possible investigation.

According to the two lawmakers, Halliburton has charged the government $1.62 to $1.70 a gallon for gasoline that could be bought wholesale in the Persian Gulf region for about 71 cents and transported to Iraq for no more than 25 cents. The fuel was sold in Iraq for 4 cents to 15 cents a gallon, the letter said.

[edit]

Based on information that Mr. Waxman's office obtained from the Corps of Engineers, Halliburton received $304,486,577 to import 191,965,150 gallons of gasoline into Iraq as of Sept. 18. That would come to $1.59 a gallon on average, the letter said. Halliburton's contract calls for the government to cover costs and pay a profit margin of 2 percent to 7 percent, which would bring the price of gasoline to $1.62 to $1.70 a gallon.

According to the Congressional Research Service, the letter continued, the average wholesale price of benchmark Arab Gulf gasoline from April through September was about 71 cents a gallon. Industry experts who Mr. Waxman's office spoke to said it should cost no more than 25 cents a gallon for Halliburton to transport gasoline by tanker-trailers from neighboring countries to Baghdad. That would leave at least 66 cents a gallon unaccounted for, based on the Dingell-Waxman letter.

Iraqis pay the equivalent of 4 cents to 15 cents a gallon for gasoline, which means that American taxpayers are footing the bill for bringing oil into Iraq.

The person responsible for analyzing the Iraqi weapons threat for Colin Powell says the Secretary of State misinformed Americans during his speech at the U.N. last winter.

[edit]

“…The main problem was that the senior administration officials have what I call faith-based intelligence,” says Thielmann. “They knew what they wanted the intelligence to show. They were really blind and deaf to any kind of countervailing information the intelligence community would produce. I would assign some blame to the intelligence community and most of the blame to the senior administration officials.”

"Limbaugh is not the first well-known Floridian to land in hot water over prescription-drug abuse. Gov. Jeb Bush's daughter, Noelle, was arrested in 2002 for trying to buy Xanax with a fake prescription. At the time, the Drug Policy Alliance called for privacy for the Bushes, but also pointed out the discrepancy in Florida's treatment of drug abuse among people with less political power and financial means. For the past 10 years, more have been sentenced to Florida state prisons for drug offenses than for any other offense."

"... I hope Limbaugh's life isn't destroyed by unjust, unscientific and uncompassionate drug laws. No one deserves that, friend or foe."

[Richard] Perle, who was honored at the event, commended Israel for striking last week at a Palestinian camp inside Syria in response to a suicide bombing of a cafe in Haifa that killed 20 persons.

The attack, he said, was an appropriate application of a doctrine originated by President Bush that calls for striking not only at terrorists but at any country that harbors or protects them.

"I am happy to see the message was delivered to Syria by the Israeli air force, and I hope it is the first of many such messages," Mr. Perle said to applause.

For crying out loud Jonah, if the left is really making a big deal out of this it shouldn't be too hard to find examples on your own. You've even got access to Google and Nexis, don't you?

The folks over at NRO do this kind of thing constantly, and it bespeaks not only an unflattering laziness but an especially egregious form of political hackdom.

That's B.S. If I had a researcher and asked him or her the same question it wouldn't indicate that I'm a hack, would it? Well, sometimes I rely on Corner readers for the same thing -- especially when I can't catch every TV radio show, let alone every columnist . But more often, I rely on them to tell me when I'm all wet or don't know what I'm talking about. There's no reason to assume that I rely on them to tell me what to write. And, frankly, I resent the charge of hackdom from Calpundit -- a generally intellectually honest guy. I think I deserve a bit more credit and I know our readers do.

"Should force be required to bring Saddam to account, the United States will work with other nations to help the Iraqi people rebuild and form a just government."

President Bush, weekly radio address, Oct. 5, 2002

"[President Bush] again outlined a vision for a broader role in Iraq for the United Nations, though it remains narrower than what France and many other countries seek."

"At U.N., Bush Stands Firm on Iraq, but Also Asks for Help," New York Times, Sept. 24, 2003

"The United States had until now resisted enlisting France and Germany because of their efforts to delay the war."

Barry Schweid, staff writer, Associated Press, Aug. 20, 2003

"With the costs of stabilizing Iraq hovering at $4 billion a month and with American troops being killed at a steady rate, administration officials acknowledge that they are rethinking their strategy and may seek a United Nations resolution for help that would placate other nations, like India, France and Germany."

"After the War: Occupation," New York Times, July 19, 2003

"Secretary of State Colin Powell, in a series of phone consultations with European allies Wednesday, campaigned to enlist more foreign troops to bolster the U.S-led military presence in Iraq."

Barry Schweid, staff writer, Associated Press, Aug. 20, 2003

"At the State Department Wednesday, spokesman Richard Boucher said soliciting other troops (for Iraq) at this point was only a matter of speculation."

Barry Schweid, staff writer, Associated Press, Aug. 20, 2003

"We expect and hope that our friends contribute to the reconstruction of Iraq. It is in your interest that you do so."

Quote by President Bush from: "Bush Insists Iraq Money 'Worth' Investment," Baltimore Sun, Sept. 10, 2003

"Earlier this year, Turkey offered peacekeepers as part of a support package for Iraq that included teams to repair electrical facilities, water purification plants and hospitals, as well as economic aid. But the Pentagon rejected the offer. 'Right now, we're looking to those people who were with us in the coalition,' Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said then."

Barry Schweid, staff writer, Associated Press, Aug. 20, 2003

Retired lieutenant-general Romeo Dallaire sent his ghostwriter home for the weekend, fully expecting to see her again.

Sian Cansfield was 44, a smart, impassioned journalist with a gift, her friends said, for getting into the minds of her subjects. She'd been working for the general for a year, trying to reach into his tortured psyche, to pull out his words as the deadlines pressed.

Dallaire's book had to tell how the peacekeeping mission he had led, the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda, had let 800,000 Rwandan civilians die in the mid-1990s.

His account of UNAMIR was a story of international indifference and political failure, but it was also one of the most profoundly disturbing tales of the century.

Cansfield had to help the general relive the terror of large-scale murder - the friends he would never see again; the leering child soldiers, machetes still red with blood; the sight and stench of mutilated bodies, whole families, entire villages hacked up and stacked at the side of the road. Since returning home, Dallaire had attempted suicide at least twice. Now, the general was worried about the emotional toll on his writer.

Cansfield was burning out.

So at the end of May 2002, she found herself back at her home in west Toronto, ordered to take a weekend of rest. On the morning of Saturday, June 1, she filled her cats' dish to overflowing, then she called a cab.

She travelled east in the taxi. If they took the most direct route, they drove down Bloor St. past the Korean bakeries, through the canyon of concrete towers near Yonge St., and out to the leafy fringes of Rosedale, headed in the early din for the heights of the Bloor St. Viaduct.

Her friends say Cansfield made a final call that morning, leaving a message for the general.

Then Cansfield, not even five feet tall, lifted her tiny frame up over the viaduct's concrete rail and jumped.

"Bush hoped to enhance his image as a 'compassionate' conservative by making this education program one of the first and highest priorities of his administration. But he could find the new law complicating his reelection effort, political strategists from both parties say, as some states report that as many as half or more of schools are failing to make the new grade and lack the money to turn things around promptly.

"The Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup poll of the nation's attitudes toward public schools found that 40 percent of [Americans] knew very little and 36 percent knew nothing at all about the legislation passed nearly two years ago .... 'It is an uninformed public on No Child Left Behind,' Lowell Rose, the poll director for Phi Delta Kappa, said at a press conference ..."

"Under the law, a school's performance is evaluated annually based on the performance of its students, but 84 percent of those surveyed said a better way to judge the job a public school is doing would be to determine whether students show 'reasonable improvement from where they started.' Only 14 percent said the best way to measure a public school's success would be on a 'fixed standard' such as a test."

Every saint has a past, every sinner has a future. … I think a man big enough to run for an office like that is big enough to have the truth told about him. But I don't think it's relevant, and I don't think it bears particularly on the merits now. And I think the three of us would probably agree there's way too much of this in politics. … Look, you take a man in the totality of his actions, and that's the way it should be viewed. And if you look at everything, look at the record of the man as an adult, as a father, as a husband, and as a professional. And I think it comes out pretty well.

And better as a young man than as an older man, not good at any time, some of those things. But given the context in which he lived, he seems to have outgrown all that kid stuff. I have been with him in a situation with his wife and his family. And we have had a couple of dinners together. He's an impressive father and husband. And it is how men grow up, I think, in the end that matters, don't you? That's what women's wish is, is that we will, in the end, all grow up.

Outrage was killed in 1998. The public, having turned its face away from President Clinton's outrages, was not likely to turn its face toward outrage when the two plausible options seemed to be the embrace of a radically less-than-perfect actor-cum-politician or the continued demise of the state of California.

Rebels of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) raided a bar in Lira district in northern Uganda, rounded up bar patrons and gunned them down, killing all 22 of them, an army spokesman said on Wednesday.

''The incident occurred just after 7 p.m. local time (1600 GMT) when about 15 rebels rounded up the four women and 18 men and shot them to death,'' army spokesman, Second Lieutenant Chris Magezi told Reuters.

Magezi said the rebels fled into the bushes after the attack on Monday night, which he said took less than 30 minutes.

From a moral standpoint, there’s a difference between people who go out and seek a high and get addicted and the millions of Americans dealing with pain who inadvertently get addicted.

"The major media are in attack mode -- and have eroded the President's public support. Despite claims to the contrary, the U.S. economy is rebounding after a Clinton-inspired recession. And despite Democrat hopes, America is safer and more secure after President Bush's war on terror."

a former worker in Diebold's Georgia warehouse says the company installed patches on its machines before the state's 2002 gubernatorial election that were never certified by independent testing authorities or cleared with Georgia election officials.

If the charges are true, Diebold could be in violation of federal and state election-certification rules. The charges also raise questions about the integrity of the Georgia election results and any other election that uses patched Diebold systems that have not been re-certified.

According to Rob Behler, an engineer hired as a contractor to work in Diebold's Georgia warehouse last year, the Diebold systems had major functioning problems.

Behler said 25 to 30 percent of the machines in one shipment to the warehouse either crashed upon booting or had problems with their real-time clocks, causing the systems to register the date inaccurately then boot improperly or freeze up altogether.

[edit]

the Georgia gubernatorial race...ended in a major upset that defied all polls and put a Republican in the governor's seat for the first time in more than 130 years.

Republican candidate Sonny Perdue managed to unseat Democratic incumbent Roy Barnes with only 51 percent of the vote. It was the first time an incumbent governor had not won his second term since Georgia law allowed back-to-back terms in 1978.

Pundits have attributed the upset to dissatisfaction with the incumbent for altering a Confederate symbol on the state flag and to effective stumping by President George W. Bush on behalf of Perdue.

Harris acknowledged no proof exists that anyone rigged the election systems, but she said, "We'll never know exactly what happened in Georgia because there's no paper trail to verify the votes."

DON’T BUY THIS BOOK! [Rich Lowry]
At least that would be Bill and Hillary's advice. In LEGACY: PAYING THE PRICE FOR THE CLINTON YEARS, I take a scalpel (and occasionally a sledgehammer) to their claims of political and policy mastery in the 1990s, on everything from the economy, to welfare reform, to crime, to health care. I defend Ken Starr and impeachment, and excoriate the Clinton foreign-policy record, which makes Neville Chamberlain look clear-eyed and strong willed in comparison. Sidney Blumenthal and Hillary Clinton have piled massive amounts of manure around the Clinton record. Legacy is your way of digging out. (End of sales pitch.)

What, for example, are we to make of the stereotype of a lazy president, always napping, watching movies rather than preparing for summits when you come across a passage like this: "This president doesn't have a nine to five or nine to three schedule, nor does he have a five day week. I take the elevator up to the living quarters in the White House with reports, briefings, and memorandums for which there is no reading time during the day. I spend my time until 'lights out' trying to absorb all of that. The same is true of the weekends - when I'm not attending a summit conference or making a speech somewhere." Reagan's biographers tend to back him up on this. But Reagan himself used to joke about his own idleness. In fact, it was a standard laugh-line of his. Was it all a ruse? Or is the truth somewhere in between?

Reagan was a creature of habit who required at least eight hours of sleep and rest breaks during the day to perform effectively.

[edit]

A lenient schedule was a necessity for Reagan ... Reagan may have been the one president in history of the republic who saw his election as a chance to get some rest. When he grumbled shortly before the election that he was being roused too early to campaign, Stu Spencer told him cheerfully, "You better get used to it, Governor. When you're president, that fellow from the National Security Council will be there to brief you at seven thirty every morning." Reagan was not impressed. "Well," he said, with a characteristic pause, "He's going to have a helluva long wait." And a long wait it would have been, except that Reagan's national security advisers, whatever their other deficiencies, knew better than to arrive early at the Oval Office. The typical NSC briefing for Reagan began at 9:30 am and was over before 10:00.

[edit]

Reagan's easy approach to the duties and responsibilities of his office was to a large measure reflected in the White House daily schedule, especially the real schedule that was tucked into the president's packet of homework each evening, rather than the edited and sometimes fake version of this document that was distributed to the media the following morning. The real schedule shows that Reagan typically arrived at the Oval Office after nine and returned to the residence by half past five, often earlier if his presence was required at an evening social event. Usually, he took Wednesday afternoons off. On Fridays, he after left in midafternoon for Camp David. Except in times of crisis, and sometimes even then, his schedule allowed him at least two or three hours during the day for "personal staff time," a phrase that on the 1980 campaign plane had been considered a euphemism for "nap time."

The Bush administration is proposing far-reaching changes to conservation policies that would allow hunters, circuses and the pet industry to kill, capture and import animals on the brink of extinction in other countries.

Giving Americans access to endangered animals, officials said, would feed the gigantic U.S. demand for live animals, skins, parts and trophies, and generate profits that would allow poor nations to pay for conservation of the remaining animals and their habitat.

This and other proposals that pursue conservation through trade would, for example, open the door for American trophy hunters to kill the endangered straight-horned markhor in Pakistan; license the pet industry to import the blue fronted Amazon parrot from Argentina; permit the capture of endangered Asian elephants for U.S. circuses and zoos; and partially resume the trade in African ivory.

Bringing legislation to the floor with only the narrowest prospect for victory has become a hallmark of the leadership of Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.). Time and again, on high-profile bills involving Medicare, education and other programs, Hastert and his lieutenants have calibrated the likely yeas and nays to the thinnest margin possible, enabling them to push legislation as much to their liking as they can in a narrowly divided and bitterly partisan House.

More often than not, that direction is to the political right, and generally in line with President Bush's priorities.

The goal, insiders say, is to start negotiations with the narrowly divided Senate -- which is considerably more moderate than the House -- with a House position that yields as little ground as possible. That makes it more likely that the eventual compromise language will be more to House leaders' liking.

"Congress approved $310 million in April to buy 300,000 more of the bulletproof vests, with 30,000 destined to complete outfitting of the troops in Iraq. Of that money, however, only about $75 million has reached the Army office responsible for overseeing the vests' manufacture and distribution .... Angry members of Congress said as many as 44,000 troops -- significantly more than the Pentagon's figure -- lack the vests due to the sluggish supply chain. Relatives of some soldiers have resorted to buying body armor in the United States and shipping it to their troops, congressional critics said."

should refrain from the ignorant boast that atheism operates on a higher intellectual plane than theism. Rather, as Kant showed, reason must know its limits in order to be truly reasonable. The atheist foolishly presumes that reason is in principle capable of figuring out all that there is, while the theist at least knows that there is a reality greater than, and beyond, that which our senses and our minds can ever apprehend.

And as if the unrelenting nastiness of the five-month squall wasn't enough, a legislative counsel to U.S. Rep. Joe Barton, R-Ennis, sent congressional aides a gloating analysis of the plan.

In the memo, Joby Fortson laughed at Democratic members likely to be ousted; discussed how the map cracks and packs some minority neighborhoods but makes other accommodations to get around the Voting Rights Act; and bragged about the crafting of new Republican strongholds.

"This is the most aggressive map I have ever seen," Fortson wrote, according to The Washington Post. "This has a real national impact that should assure that Republicans keep the House no matter the national mood."

Barton did not embrace the memo publicly, but he defended his aide's First Amendment right to express opinions.

It's good to know that free speech is alive and well in Barton's office. It's distressing to know that good sense apparently isn't.

The Bush administration, displeased with the news coverage of the war in Iraq, has accelerated efforts to bypass the national media by telling the administration's story directly to the American public.

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"I'm mindful of the filter through which some news travels, and somehow you just got to go over the heads of the filter and speak directly to the people."

Bush aides make no apologies for targeting local media -- which, they say, tend to be less cynical. "We believe local media and regional broadcasters are more interested in letting viewers or readers see or hear what the president has to say," said Dan Bartlett, White House communications director. "It's less analytical and more reporting."