Mel Gibson
Bruce Willis
Charleton Heston
That guy who made the 9/11 cable movie
Toby Keith
Ted Nugent
Chuck Norris
Gary Busey
Gary Oldman (Dumbledore in the next Harry Potter movie! The authoritative source of wisdom! What a position from which to mold children!)
Bill Paxton
Ben Stein
Heather Locklear
Dennis Miller
Clint Eastwood
Kurt Russell
Paul Sorvino
Hank Williams, Jr.

And the special elected officials auxiliary:
Fred Thompson
Fred Grandy
Virtually every athlete to go into politics (Jim Bunning, Steve Largent, J.C. Watts, etc.)
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Ronald Reagan

A generation after the world proclaimed it would never again tolerate state-sponsored genocide, the international community stood by while extremist politicians in Rwanda systematically hunted down and murdered 800,000 of Rwanda’s ethnic minority, the Tutsis.

Please join us for a special evening commemorating the 10th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide with a preview screening of FRONTLINE’s film, “Ghosts of Rwanda.” Weaving together historical analysis with groundbreaking, eyewitness accounts, the film examines the social, political, and diplomatic forces that converged to enable genocide. A panel discussion follows the excerpts from this film.

Panel:

Ambassador Prudence Bushnell, former deputy assistant secretary for African Affairs, US Department of State

Gregory Alex, former UN humanitarian in Kigali

Bonaventure Niyibizi, genocide survivor

Greg Barker, producer “Ghosts of Rwanda.”

I think I'm going to faint. Yours truly, a published cartoonist?!!! In a book with Keith Knight, Alison Bechdel, David Rees, and Aaron McGruder (of Boondocks fame)!?

The book also includes cartoons by and interviews with Jennifer Berman, Max Cannon, Barry Deutsch, Emily S. Flake, Marian Henley, Justin Jones, Tim Kreider, Kevin Moore, Stephen Notley, Eric Orner, Greg Peters, Mikhaela Blake Reid (yeah, that's me), Neil Swaab, Brian Sendelbach, Tak Toyoshima, Shannon Wheeler and Jason Yungbluth.

Anyway, if you know me personally and/or live in the New York area, please order the book from me (I get a cut that way).

As the nation headed for war last year, President Bush "clamped down" on the media, extending and expanding a controversial policy that banned reporters from photographing flag-draped caskets of soldiers killed in combat. The White House said the policy was enforced to "spare the feelings of military families." Yet, in the very first television advertisement of his 2004 campaign, the president has blanketed the nation's airwaves with an image of "firefighters carrying a flag-draped body" from the 9/11 wreckage at Ground Zero.

This Administration is not satisfied with today’s job creation numbers. Although our economy added jobs for the sixth straight month and the unemployment rate remains at a level below the average of the past three decades, the recent pace of job growth is not as strong as we'd like to see. This is particularly true given the recent rapid rate of economic growth.

The critical issue as we move forward is what must be done to encourage job creation through continued economic growth. One thing we know for certain – raising taxes on millions of American families is not the answer. It is imperative that Congress act to make the tax cuts permanent.

We've been creating jobs (true) and therefore reducing the number of people who can't find work (false), and since there are fewer people out of work than usual (false), we should be able to accelerate the good (false) trend by making permanent the tax cuts that have stimulated (questionable at best) the good (false), if not as good as we'd like (extremely true), results we've been seeing recently.

The clerk first became aware that he could access the files of Democratic staff some time in October or November of 2001. He made this discovery after watching the Committee’s Systems Administrator perform some work on his computer. An admittedly curious person, the clerk attempted to duplicate what the System Administrator had done. In so doing, he was able to observe all of the network’s other users’ home directories. He then clicked on different folders to see which ones he could access; he was able to access some folders, but not others. The folders that he could access, he stated, belonged to both Republican and Democratic staff.

The Nominations Unit clerk reported that he had access to the home directories of other users shortly after beginning his employment in the fall of 2001 until the spring of 2003. Initially he printed approximately 100-200 pages of documents pertaining to Judge Pickering’s nomination and gave them to one of his supervisors. Two days later that supervisor and another admonished him not to use the Democratic documents and those that he had given his supervisor were shredded.

Mr. Miranda joined the staff of the Judiciary Committee in December 2001. A short time after Mr. Miranda was hired, the clerk showed him how he could access Democratic files. The clerk who initially discovered how to access the files told investigators that he was not sure what to look for in the files, so Mr. Miranda would guide him as to what information was helpful. Mr. Miranda would often suggest which directories he should concentrate on and would sometimes tell him that there was something new in a particular folder and ask the clerk to print it for him. Mr. Miranda admitted accessing the computer files of Democratic staff himself on one or two occasions.

The Nominations Unit clerk explained that he frequently searched the folders of some Democratic staff on an almost daily basis while working on the nomination of Judge Priscilla Owen. In fact, over the course of accessing other users’ files for approximately 18 months, the clerk downloaded thousands of documents. Forensics analysis of a compressed zip folder from his workstation where he kept these documents identified 4,670 files, the majority of which appeared to be from folders belonging to Democratic staff. During the approximately 18 months the clerk accessed other users’ files, he stated that he had four or five different computers assigned to him and that regardless of the hardware he used he was able to access this information.

In January 2003, Mr. Miranda left the Judiciary Committee and took a position in the office of Majority Leader Frist. The Nominations Unit clerk and Mr. Miranda both admitted that the clerk continued to provide Democratic - and also Republican - documents to Mr. Miranda after he left the Judiciary Committee. Forensic analysis of the e-mail traffic between the two confirms this. In March or April 2003, the clerk was re-assigned to another Unit in the Judiciary Committee. About the same time (April 2003) the Committee’s server was upgraded and the clerk believed that prevented him from being able to access other users’ files on the server.

[edit]

Members of the press and the Coalitions who had possession of the document at issue declined to be interviewed. Without their cooperation, the investigation faced a significant impediment to identifying the source of the disclosure. Several individuals who were interviewed, both Republicans and Democrats, implicated Mr. Miranda. While there is no definitive evidence pointing to Mr. Miranda as the individual who gave the documents to the press, or a party outside of the Senate, there is circumstantial evidence implicating him.

When the Nomination Unit clerk, who considered Mr. Miranda a friend, was asked how the Democratic documents were disclosed to the press, he identified Mr. Miranda as the likely source. He described a conversation with Mr. Miranda shortly after the documents were excerpted in the press where he understood Mr. Miranda to acknowledge giving the documents to a third party who then gave them to the press.

NBC and its offspring networks out-hustled their rival giants in interviewing selected 9-11 victim family members who called the President's ad "exploitation" of a tragedy. Those carefully chosen by NBC stressed that Democratic candidate Senator John Kerry was not likewise exploitative in his campaign use of 9-11, but that Republican President Bush was.

My impression of these interviews is that NBC and a few Democratic family members were exploiting the tragedy of 9-11 to make partisan attacks against the President.

Let's pull back the camera to see a bigger picture. Those who lost loved ones in the World Trade Center have suffered enormous pain and grief.

Some, doubtless, unconsciously blame themselves for sending loved ones off to work on 9-11 to bring home the bacon for them. Some have tried to bury their pain and guilt by forgetting....or by displacing their guilt and anger onto a President who, they prefer to believe, somehow might have prevented the terrorist attacks.

President Bush rhapsodized Thursday about the possibility that a stock-car firm in this hot, dry community will add two jobs this year, as he refined his campaign message of economic optimism.

[edit]

Prompted by the president, chassis-maker Les DenHerder said the tax cuts Bush backed might allow him to hire two or three more people.

"When he says he's going to hire two more, that's really good news," Bush said. "A lot of people are feeling confident and optimistic about our future so they can say, 'I'm going to hire two more.' They can sit here and tell the president in front of all the cameras, 'I'm going to hire two more people.' That's confidence!"

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak will visit President Bush next month at his Texas ranch, a setting reserved for occasions where the president wants to emphasize close relations.

Bush and his wife, Laura, will welcome Mubarak to Crawford, Texas, on April 12.

The Egyptian government continues to arrest and routinely torture men suspected of consensual homosexual conduct, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. The detention and torture of hundreds of men reveals the fragility of legal protections for individual privacy and due process for all Egyptians.

“The prohibition against torture is absolute and universal, regardless of the victim,” said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. “Accepting torture of unpopular victims—whether for their political opinions or their sexual conduct—makes it easier for the government to use this despicable practice on many others.”

The 144-page report, "In a Time of Torture: The Assault on Justice in Egypt’s Crackdown on Homosexual Conduct," documents the government’s increasing repression of men who have sex with men. The trial of 52 men in 2001 for the “habitual practice of debauchery”—the legal charge used to criminalize homosexual conduct in Egyptian law—was only the most visible point in the ongoing and expanding crackdown.

Today, Egyptian police use wiretaps and a growing web of informers to conduct raids on private homes or seize suspects on the street. Undercover police agents arrange meetings with men through chat rooms and personal advertisements on the Internet—and then arrest them.

Police routinely torture men suspected of homosexual conduct. The report cites testimonies of victims telling how they were bound, suspended in painful positions, burned with cigarettes or submerged in ice-cold water, and subjected to electroshock on their limbs and genitals. Numerous testimonies in the report accuse Taha Embaby, head of Cairo's Vice Squad, of direct participation in torture.

Let’s pull back the camera to see a bigger picture. Those who lost loved ones in the World Trade Center have suffered enormous pain and grief.

Some, doubtless, unconsciously blame themselves for sending loved ones off to work on 9-11 to bring home the bacon for them. Some have tried to bury their pain and guilt by forgetting….or by displacing their guilt and anger onto a President who, they prefer to believe, somehow might have prevented the terrorist attacks.

But their loved ones were not the only Americans attacked on 9-11. We ALL were attacked. Nobody should have a monopoly controlling whether and how this shattering event in our history, this rip in the fabric of our society, can be discussed. It belongs to all of us. And each of us needs to address this unresolved tragedy in our own ways.

A Utah clerk on Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch's Judiciary Committee staff secretly combed the confidential computer files of Democrats "on an almost daily basis," a Senate investigation has concluded.

In a report released Thursday, the Senate Sergeant At Arms (SAA) found that Nominations Unit clerk Jason Lundell covertly gathered 4,670 files from the committee's shared computer server, after getting networkwide access by watching a technical administrator work on his computer and copying his moves. Lundell then relayed information on Democratic strategies for blocking judicial nominees to his superiors, the report said.

The investigation also found "significant security vulnerabilities" existed in the computer network, caused by the administrator's "inexperience, lack of training and oversight."

Although the committee voted to release only a version of the report with names of interviewees deleted, committee staff inadvertently gave all reporters at a Capitol Hill news conference copies of the full report, identifying Lundell as the primary perpetrator.

Manuel Miranda, another former Hatch staffer who resigned as an aide to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist last month, acknowledged he accessed and read "two or three" Democratic files. The SAA report says there is "circumstantial evidence" implicating Miranda as the Senate employee who gave the confidential documents to an activist, who allegedly leaked them to the news media.

Although Miranda denied to investigators that he solicited Lundell for poached documents while he worked for Frist, the report includes March 2003 e-mails in which Miranda asked Lundell to "undertake a discreet mission" to send copies of the Democrats' files to the Committee for Justice so the conservative activist group could "build relationships with the press."

"Of course I would be happy to assist in this covert action," Lundell replied. "The question is: exactly how much should I provide? You know we have loads on[sic] information."

In April 1999, Anthony Sanders, an African-American man, moved into the home of Jacquelette Paige Williams, a Caucasian woman, in Gastonia, North Carolina. Relations between Sanders and his neighbors were poor from the start. On April 11, 1999, Charles Danny Carpenter, who lived next door to the interracial couple, and defendant May, who lived about a half mile away, added the words "ESPECIALLY NIGGERS" to a "NO TRESPASSING" sign located on Carpenter’s property and facing Sanders and Williams’s home.

On May 11, 1999, while Sanders was washing his car in his driveway, May walked to the property line, pointed a handgun at Sanders, and said, "Hey, nigger, I got something for you." In response, Sanders said that he also had something for May.

Later that day, May and Carpenter constructed a wooden cross and erected it at the edge of Carpenter’s property, approximately twenty feet from Sanders and Williams’s home. That evening, May and Carpenter set the cross afire and sat near it in lounge chairs, drinking beer and holding firearms, watching the cross burn. At some point that evening, Williams called the police to report shots being fired from behind Carpenter’s house. When officers arrived and saw the burning cross, May and Carpenter told them that they were burning the cross to "let the nigger know he wasn’t welcomed here."

In the circumstances of this case, some of May’s allegations against Sanders fail to rise to the level of wrongful conduct. First, the fact that a neighbor had a generator stolen and assumed Sanders was the thief is not conduct that can, without some proof, be attributed to Sanders. Similarly, the neighbors’ perception that the neighborhood had changed in some unspecified way since Sanders moved in not only smacks of a racist "there goes the neighborhood" mentality but also defines no wrongful conduct.

[snip]

In our view, the victim’s conduct in this case was not sufficient to provoke a response of this magnitude. First, Sanders’s "gigging" [raising his middle finger] of his neighbors, though crass, hardly constitutes provocation for a cross burning. A crime of intimidation loaded with a history of racial terror is not a proportional response to a gesture — admittedly tasteless — made daily on the highways at rush hour. Sanders’s isolated trespass onto May’s cousin’s property is also insufficient to justify the downward departure....Similarly, even if May had a reasonable basis to believe that Sanders had a questionable past and was a felon in possession of a firearm, such wrongful conduct was not directed at May; law enforcement officials are equipped to handle such matters and do not require self-deputized citizens to act on their own.

Finally — and importantly — we recognize that Sanders was not the only victim of May’s crimes. Ms. Williams, too, was a victim, and May does not allege that she provoked him in any way. Harming innocent victims certainly weighs against a defendant in our proportionality analysis. In light of this discussion, the alleged wrongful conduct on the part of the victim was insufficient provocation for burning a cross.

On February 21, 2002, May tested positive for cocaine. When confronted, he again denied drug use, claiming that he had tested positive because he had "recently been with a female who had cocaine on her tongue and that they had been kissing and that she had performed oral sex on him."

Simple Thoughts and Reflections: Marriage as a male-female union was and is the will of God

By Bishop Thomas L. Dupre, Bishop of Springfield

Springfield Observer, June 9, 2000, at 9

Accompanied by the joint statement of the Bishops of Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont on Vermont’s "Civil Unions" Law.

The question of gay marriage has recently become a civil rights issue for some in our society. It seems that there is an assumption that if you can have a sexual relationship with someone, of either gender, you are entitled to all the benefits of marriage. Sometimes these relationships are not called marriage but domestic partnerships and apply equally to homosexual and heterosexual partnerships.

The distinguishing feature appears to be a sexual relationship, for such benefits are not available to those who share a home because of ties flowing from blood or ties of friendship. Thus the state is put in the position of not only sanctioning but also promoting what were always formerly considered to be illicit sexual relationships outside of marriage.

This concept contravenes what has been the common witness of humanity, with few exceptions, to the nature of marriage and family found in all societies from primitive to civilized, for thousands of years.

[snip]

Statement of the Bishops of the Boston Province:

The Legislature of the State of Vermont, by passing the Civil Unions Bill, has attacked centuries of cultural and religious esteem for marriage between a man and a woman and has prepared the way for an attack on the well-being of society itself. As the Most Reverend Kenneth A. Angell, Bishop of Burlington, pointed out in his opposition to the Vermont legislation, '(The Civil Unions Bill) is just a stepping stone for same-sex marriage.'

We, the Catholic Bishops of Maine, Massachusetts and New Hampshire express our solidarity with Bishop Angell and all people of good will who recognize the sacredness of marriage and the family as ordered by God. We are of one mind with Bishop Angell that such legislation will undermine cultural and religious respect for marriage and will inflict a wound upon society itself. Furthermore, we support Bishop Angell as he encourages the people of Vermont, through their legislators, to rectify the situation brought about by passage of 'The Civil Unions Bill,' if necessary, through committed efforts to pass an Amendment to the Constitution of the State of Vermont.

The obligation of society and the state to support and strengthen marriage as the intimate union of a man and a woman does not infringe upon the civil rights of others. Rather, those seeking to redefine marriage for their own purposes are the ones who are trying to impose their values on the rest of the population.

Gay-marriage opponents rally across state
By Jenn Abelson and Jack Hagel, Globe Staff and Globe Correspondent, 1/26/2004

[snip]

In the Springfield diocese, which covers the four counties in Western Massachusetts, Bishop Thomas Dupre has been traveling to large parishes to reach as many parishioners as possible with the church's message on gay marriage, said Mark E. Dupont, spokesman for the diocese.

Yesterday, Dupre took his message to St. Thomas Parish in Palmer. The diocese has also sent to its 130 parishes announcements to be inserted in weekly bulletins and suggestions that pastors address the issue during Mass, Dupont said.

Former Mass. Bishop Faces Abuse Charges
Mass. County Prosecutor to Present to Grand Jury Sex-Abuse Case Against Retired Bishop

The Associated Press

SPRINGFIELD, Mass. March 4 — A prosecutor said Thursday he will pursue sex-abuse charges against retired Springfield Bishop Thomas Dupre, who is accused of plying two altar boys with alcohol and molesting them while he was a parish priest in the 1970s.

[snip]

Dupre, 70, stepped down Feb. 11, citing health reasons. His retirement came a day after The Republican newspaper of Springfield confronted Dupre with the abuse allegations.

[snip]

One of the bishop's accusers was 12 and a recent immigrant to America when his family was befriended by Dupre, who offered to teach the child English. MacLeish said they had oral and anal sex and bought pornography together. The abuse lasted until the boy began dating a girl in high school, MacLeish said.

That boy introduced Dupre to a friend who also was abused, MacLeish said. He said Dupre plied the two boys with wine and cognac before raping them.

One of the accusers, who is gay, came forward with his claims after hearing Dupre speak out against the legalization of same-sex marriage, MacLeish said.

"It's anarchy," said Rick Forcier of the Washington state chapter of the Christian Coalition. "We seem to have lost the rule of law. It's very frightening when every community decides what laws they will obey."

The World Food Program and UNICEF reported last year that chronic malnutrition had left 42 percent of North Korean children stunted — meaning their growth was seriously impaired, most likely permanently. An earlier report by the U.N. agencies warned that there was strong evidence that physical stunting could be accompanied by intellectual impairment.

South Korean anthropologists who measured North Korean refugees here in Yanji, a city 15 miles from the North Korean border, found that most of the teenage boys stood less than 5 feet tall and weighed less than 100 pounds. In contrast, the average 17-year-old South Korean boy is 5-feet-8, slightly shorter than an American boy of the same age.

[edit]

The North Koreans appear to be sensitive about their stature. In dealings with the outside world, the country likes to present a tall image by sending statuesque (by North Korean standards) athletes to joint sporting events in South Korea and elsewhere and assigning the tallest soldiers to patrol at the demilitarized zone that divides the two countries.

Starting in the mid-1990s, North Korean leader Kim Jong Il (who reportedly wears elevator shoes to enhance his 5-foot-3 height) ordered people to do special exercises designed to make them taller. As a result, it is not uncommon to see students hanging from rings or parallel bars for as long as 30 minutes. Basketball is also promoted as a national sport to instill the yearning for height.

"Grow taller!" instruct banners hung in some schoolyards, defectors and aid workers say.

"It's a slap in the face of the murders of 3,000 people," said Monica Gabrielle, whose husband died in the twin tower attacks. "It is unconscionable."

Gabrielle and several other family members said the injury was compounded by Bush's refusal to testify in open session before the 9/11 commission.

"I would be less offended if he showed a picture of himself in front of the Statue of Liberty," said Tom Roger, whose daughter was a flight attendant on doomed American Airlines Flight 11. "But to show the horror of 9/11 in the background, that's just some advertising agency's attempt to grab people by the throat."

Mindy Kleinberg said she was offended because the White House has not cooperated fully with the commission and because of the sight of remains being lifted out of Ground Zero in one of the spots.

"How heinous is that?" Kleinberg asked. "That's somebody's [loved one]."

Firefighter Tommy Fee in Rescue Squad 270 in Queens was appalled.

"It's as sick as people who stole things out of the place. The image of firefighters at Ground Zero should not be used for this stuff, for politics," Fee said.

What basic color are the uniforms the Georgia Bulldogs wear in home games?

a) White
b) Black
c) Red
d) Silver

How many points does a 3-point field goal account for in a basketball game?

a) 1
b) 2
c) 3
d) 4

What is the name of the exam which all high school seniors in the State of Georgia must pass?

a) Eye Exam
b) How Do the Grits Taste Exam
c) Bug Control Exam
d) Georgia Exit Exam

Operating out of his Capitol Hill home, Mr. Miranda dispatches press releases and sends e-mails of newspaper stories, editorials and occasional musings about the Democratic memos he helped discover.

[edit]

Asked if he had violated the rule sometimes taught to children about not reading other people's mail, Mr. Miranda replied: "My parents never taught me not to read other people's mail. They always read my mail."

The content of other memos is so incendiary, he said, "I may go to my grave with it because it would so damage the trust of the American people in their judicial system. I wouldn't reveal it, no matter what the partisan advantage."

He has one other expectation, this one of the senators who have criticized his actions so fiercely.

"At the end of the day," Miranda said, "I suspect that I will be asking certain senators for a public apology to both me and my wife."

Today's news will regrettably leave some Senators with egg on their face but it is not for lack of better counsel than that which they took. Democrat spinmeisters are proven today to be nothing more than rank liars for spinning tales of hacking to mask the gross negligence of their own technology staff. And the two or three news writers that soaked up the lies come out as fools and should be taken to task.

[edit]

If this matter comes down to the golden rule or gentlemen's etiquette, then the American people will consider Republicans lacking in both schmartz and cojones, if they allow Democrats who have abused the Constitution and peoples good names in disgusting ways to get the high ground.

President Bush's re-election campaign on Thursday defended commercials using images from the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, including wreckage of the World Trade Center, as appropriate for an election about public policy and the war on terror.

Some families of the victims of the attacks are angry with Bush for airing the spots, which they called in poor taste and for the president's political gain.

"With all due respect, I just completely disagree, and I believe the vast majority of the American people will as well," Karen Hughes, a Bush campaign adviser, told "The Early Show" on CBS...

[edit]

"I can understand why some Democrats might not want the American people to remember the great leadership and strength the president and first lady Laura Bush brought to our country in the aftermath of that," she said.

Heather Specyalski, 33, was charged with second-degree manslaughter in the crash that killed businessman Neil Esposito. Prosecutors allege that she was driving Esposito's Mercedes-Benz convertible when it veered off the road and hit several trees.

But Specyalski claims that Esposito was driving, and she was performing oral sex on him at the time, said her attorney, Jeremiah Donovan. He noted that Esposito's pants were down when he was thrown from the car.

"His pants could have been down because he was mooning a car he was drag racing," [the prosecutor] said. "His pants could have been down because he was urinating out of a window. His pants could have been down because he wasn't feeling well."

Also Tuesday, [Judge] Holzberg denied Donovan's motion to use gender as grounds to eliminate jurors. Donovan had argued that women would be biased and more likely to convict.

A district attorney was tied up to a bed in a Houston courtroom Wednesday as prosecutors demonstrated how they said a wife stabbed her husband to death.

The couple's bed was brought into the courtroom for a re-enactment of the crime. Prosecutors said Susan Wright seduced her husband and tied him to the bed before she stabbed him nearly 200 times in January 2003.

A male prosecutor was tied to the bed to represent Jeffrey Wright while a female prosecutor posed as Susan during the re-enactment.

"If you isolate sexuality as something solely for one's own personal amusement, and all you want is the most satisfying orgasm you can get- and that is what homosexuality seems to be-then homosexuality seems too powerful to resist. The evidence is that men do a better job on men and women on women, if all you are looking for is orgasm."

Bush must use his profile as president to make Americans understand how crucial staying the course in the war on terror is to our safety. Bush has lost a lot of support among women with the war in Iraq. But he can restore that support by stressing the need to make America safe from terror attacks and to stress how important it is to stick to this task.

Finally, Bush must begin to pull American troops out of Iraq after the handover in June. He should leave a sufficient number there, in safe, secluded bases, to intervene if the bad guys try to come back in power. But the daily drip of casualties must end.

When You Hear the Term ''Civil Unions,'' Think of Czechoslovakia

Well-meaning people who oppose “gay marriage” often float the compromise of “civil unions” as a way to keep everybody happy and to demonstrate their goodwill.

But it won’t work any better than British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s attempt to appease Adolf Hitler by handing over Czechoslovakia in 1938. Shortly after Chamberlain proclaimed that he had negotiated “peace in our time,” Hitler cut a deal with the Soviets and they jointly invaded Poland in 1939. Historians record that Hitler was utterly amazed at Chamberlain’s naiveté.

Before we go further, please understand that I am not comparing homosexual activists to Nazis. I am demonstrating why appeasement doesn’t work...Yesterday, it was Czechoslovakia. Today it is San Francisco, on its way to becoming London, or Stockholm by the Bay. People who believe that all will be well if we appease homosexual activists with “civil unions” had better wake up and smell the smorgasbord.

We must defend the marriage-based moral order in more than name while we still have the freedom to do so.

The Senate Budget Committee unveiled a 2005 tax-and-spending blueprint yesterday that shaves $7 billion from President Bush's defense spending request, pares back domestic spending by $16 billion and orders billions of dollars of reductions in entitlement programs in moves designed to cut the federal deficit in half by 2007.

The blueprint, which is expected to pass the committee today, would also make room for more than $141 billion in additional tax cuts over the next five years.

Among the papers -- contained in more than 1,500 boxes -- are memos Justice Blackmun dictated to himself while preparing to hear arguments, revealing his responses to the cases. He also took notes at the justices' closed-door conferences after arguments and kept an "opinion log" as cases moved through the decision-making process, showing the court at work in real time.

... Justice (Anthony) Kennedy changed his mind midway through another major case in 1992. That case, Lee v. Weisman, challenged the constitutionality of clergy-led prayers at public school graduations.

Assigned by Chief Justice Rehnquist to write the opinion for a 5-to-4 majority upholding the prayers, Justice Kennedy informed Justice Blackmun, who was one of the four dissenters, that after several months "my draft looked quite wrong." His new draft, declaring the prayers unconstitutional, became the opinion for the new 5-to-4 majority.

[Blackmun] even kept notes the justices passed along the bench during arguments -- "V.P. Agnew Just Resigned!! Mets 2 Reds 0."

What county in Oregon most recently started issuing same gender marriage licenses yesterday?

The 400 wealthiest taxpayers accounted for more than 1 percent of all the income in the United States in the year 2000, more than double their share just eight years earlier, according to new data from the Internal Revenue Service. But their tax burden plummeted over the period.

"Same sex marriage is likely to spread through all 50 states in the coming years," Frist said. "It is becoming increasingly clear that Congress must act."

MR. HOLT: Mr. Vice President, on a social issue, you’ve made statements in the past suggesting the issue of same-sex marriage as one that should be left up to the states. The President has, of course, called for a Federal Constitutional Amendment that would essentially ban same-sex marriage. Where are you today?

VICE PRESIDENT CHENEY: Well, the President’s taken the clear position that he supports a constitutional amendment. His concern has been based primarily on developments in San Francisco and Boston, where in fact legal cases have arisen, and challenges have arisen to existing laws with respect to this issue.

He’s made clear what the administration position is, and I support him.

The Constitution does not prevent Mr. Clinton from running for vice president. The 22nd Amendment, which became effective in 1951, begins: "No person shall be elected to the office of the president more than twice."

No problem. Bill Clinton would be running for vice president, not president. Scholars and judges can debate how loosely constitutional language should be interpreted, but one need not be a strict constructionist to find this language clear beyond dispute. Bill Clinton cannot be elected president, but nothing stops him from being elected vice president.

True, if Mr. Clinton were vice president he would be in line for the presidency. But Mr. Clinton would succeed Mr. Kerry not by election, which the amendment forbids, but through Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution, which provides that if a president dies, resigns or is removed from office, his powers "shall devolve on the vice president." The 22nd Amendment would not prevent this succession. So much for the constitutional obstacles.

"[N]o person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States."

The 12th Am. mention of eligibility refers to the Article 2 requirements of age, natural born citizenship, and residency. It shouldn't be construed to apply to a term-limiting amendment added 144 years later.

As of March 4, I will spend one month reading, listening, and watching only right-wing media. No NY Times, no NPR, no network news, no CNN, no Atrios or other lefty blogs, no novels, no NOTHING. Nothing liberal, nothing mainstream. Nothing that makes up the world I currently inhabit.

Instead, I will subject myself ONLY to FoxNews, TownHall, WorldNetDaily, the Virgin Ben and Paul Gigot, InstaPundit, The Washington Times and the New York Post, Rush Limbaugh, books by Coulter, Goldberg, and O'Reilly. All of them, and all the others. A complete and total conversion to ultra-conservative culture and messaging.

SO AT last it is official: George Bush is in favour of unequal rights, big-government intrusiveness and federal power rather than devolution to the states. That is the implication of his announcement this week that he will support efforts to pass a constitutional amendment in America banning gay marriage. Some have sought to explain this action away simply as cynical politics, an effort to motivate his core conservative supporters to turn out to vote for him in November or to put his likely ?Massachusetts liberal? opponent, John Kerry, in an awkward spot. Yet to call for a constitutional amendment is such a difficult, drastic and draconian move that cynicism is too weak an explanation. No, it must be worse than that: Mr Bush must actually believe in what he is doing.

A 73-year-old man has convinced a Winnipeg judge to increase his jail sentence to allow him to smoke.

Angelo Foti's request came just moments after he was sentenced to 20 months in jail for shooting an intruder in the backyard of his Winnipeg home in May 2000.

Foti was agitated after learning he would be serving his time in a provincial jail where smoking was recently banned under Manitoba legislation.

His defence lawyer requested the sentenced to be changed to 24 months, so Foti can smoke in a Federal prison.

David Kay, the man who led the CIA's postwar effort to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, has called on the Bush administration to "come clean with the American people" and admit it was wrong about the existence of the weapons.

In an interview with the Guardian, Mr Kay said the administration's reluctance to make that admission was delaying essential reforms of US intelligence agencies, and further undermining its credibility at home and abroad.

[edit]

A White House official said it was too early to draw conclusions: "The ISG is still working, and the commission on this has not even started."

However, Mr Kay said that continued evasion would create public cynicism about the administration's motives, which he believes reflected a genuine fear of WMD falling into the hands of terrorists. He also said that if the administration did not confront the Iraq intelligence fiasco head-on it would undermine its credibility with its allies in future crises "for a generation".

The House ethics system has almost stopped functioning because public interest groups no longer can file complaints and party leaders have an informal agreement not to trigger new investigations, several organizations said yesterday. Judicial Watch, a conservative organization joined mostly by liberal groups at a news conference, urged reversal of the prohibition against nongovernment organizations and an end to what the groups called a sweetheart pact to avoid investigations.

In citing examples of stonewalling, the eight organizations said the House ethics committee has not taken action on allegations that majority leader Tom DeLay, Republican of Texas, is using a children's charity for political purposes; or on a reported offer from unnamed Republicans to Representative Nick Smith, Republican of Michigan, to aid the congressional campaign of his son if he voted for the Medicare overhaul last year.

Jonathan Grella, DeLay's spokesman, said: "These Democrat front groups are engaged in dirty campaign politics. Their entire complaint rests on the contention that raising money for abused foster children doesn't reflect credibly on the House. Majority leader DeLay strenuously disagrees."

Georgia's headlong rush to block gay marriages through a constitutional amendment has been stalled, for the moment, by an unlikely group of legislators: black members of the House of Representatives, many of them church deacons and ministers who already support the state's laws banning same-sex marriage.

Last week, they provided 39 of 50 no votes and abstentions that helped the measure fall 3 votes short of the 120 needed for passage.

The bill, which requires a two-thirds majority to appear on the ballot this November, may be reintroduced in the Democratic-controlled House as early as Thursday. The measure has already passed the Senate, which is dominated by Republicans, despite no votes from all 10 black members.

[edit]

"I'm a pastor and I don't support gay marriage, but I resent people playing political football with our religious beliefs," said Representative Ron Sailor Jr., a Democrat whose suburban Atlanta district contains some of the state's largest and most conservative black churches.

Republicans want Sen. Russ Feingold's (D-Wis.) seat so badly that the state party made all three major GOP candidates sign a pledge promising to play nice with one another.

"It's to everyone's benefit to keep it positive," says Chris Lato, Wisconsin Republican Party spokesman. "No Republican wants to see something ugly, expensive and drawn out. It's good not to have a knock-down, drag-out fight," he said.

[edit]

According to a state party announcement, they have agreed "to run issue-oriented campaigns that outline their agendas for the future of Wisconsin, while highlighting the many actions that put liberal Democrat Senator Russ Feingold so far out of step with the views and principles of the vast majority of Wisconsin citizens."

"At the end of the day, all three candidates agree Russ Feingold is poorly serving our great state, and it's time for him to go," GOP Chairman Rick Graber said.

[edit]

[The GOP nominees won't be chosen until the Sept. 14 primary].

That gives the three candidates lots of time to hammer away at Feingold and bring his numbers down while the media lavish attention on the primary, he said.

Dan Allen, spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said the nominee will come out mostly unscathed and with momentum, because the focus will be on Feingold thanks to the pledge.

"It bodes well for us," he said.

Participants in the meeting said that one teacher, Elspeth Corrigan Moore, a librarian at Memorial High School in West New York, N.J., wept as she discussed Dr. Paige's comparison of the teachers union to terrorists. Ms. Moore said after the meeting that because her school had a direct line of sight to downtown Manhattan, she and many students could see the destruction of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.

"I watched it burn, and I smelled it burn, so I take the word terrorist personally," she said.

"If you isolate sexuality as something solely for one's own personal amusement, and all you want is the most satisfying orgasm you can get- and that is what homosexuality seems to be-then homosexuality seems too powerful to resist. The evidence is that men do a better job on men and women on women, if all you are looking for is orgasm."

"The results of more than a century of anthropological research on households, kinship relationships, and families, across cultures and through time, provide no support whatsoever for the view that either civilization or viable social orders depend upon marriage as an exclusively heterosexual institution. Rather, anthropological research supports the conclusion that a vast array of family types, including families built upon same-sex partnerships, can contribute to stable and humane societies.

The AAP recommends that pediatricians become familiar with professional literature regarding gay and lesbian parents and their children; support the right of every child and family to the financial, psychological and legal security that results from having both parents legally recognized; and advocate for initiatives that establish permanency through coparent or second-parent adoption for children of same-sex partners.

Ignoring snide comments and stopping yourself from rolling your eyes at the stupidity of your partner are, mathematically speaking, the best way to stay solid in your relationship.

[edit]

He also has bad news for the defenders of traditional family values: gay and lesbian couples, as well as heterosexual couples that do not marry, hold on to the positive value of courtship better than straight partners who get hitched, he says.

President Bush is making an unprecedented request to use up to $1 million budgeted for a possible presidential transition to train top officials who would join his administration if he should win a second term.

Congress routinely provides money every four years for office expenses, briefings and other potential costs incurred by a president-elect and his or her aides waiting to move into the White House and other federal offices.

Bush has proposed $7.7 million for a possible transition. He also asked Congress to amend the Presidential Transition Act to allow using up to $1 million from that amount "for training and briefings for incoming appointees associated with the second term of an incumbent president."

"No public money or property shall be appropriated for or applied to any religious worship, exercise or instruction, or the support of any religious establishment ..."

"Blaine Amendments are provisions in many state constitutions that prohibit the use of state funds at 'sectarian' schools."

It may be that Washington's original purpose in excluding the clergy from public benefits was benign … But those singled out for disfavor can be forgiven for suspecting more invidious forces at work. Let there be no doubt: This case is about discrimination against a religious minority.

The White House branded as "nonsense" allegations U.S. personnel kidnapped Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and forced him into exile.

"That's nonsense," spokesman Scott McClellan said. "Conspiracy theories do nothing to help the Haitian people move forward to a better, more free and more prosperous future."

McClellan's denial, echoed at the Pentagon and State Department, followed reports Aristide had called a number of people in Washington and claimed he had not resigned but had been abducted by U.S. troops.

The Bush Administration today denied allegations by Panama's Gen. Manuel A. Noriega that the United States paid $1 million to rebel officers to launch last week's failed coup attempt.

"That's nonsense," Pentagon spokesman Pete Williams said.

"Absurd," State Department spokeswoman Margaret Tutwiler said.

White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater told reporters in Gulfport, Miss., that he would check the report out, but added, "I don't believe anything Noriega says."

African leaders signed a sweeping defense and security agreement Saturday that allows the fledgling African Union to send forces to intervene in civil wars, international conflicts and coup attempts across the continent.

[edit]

The defense and security agreement aims to prevent tragedies like the 1994 Rwandan genocide, in which more than 500,000 people were massacred while the African Union's predecessor, the Organization of African Unity, did nothing. The 39-year-old OAU was disbanded in 2002 because it was so ineffective.

But with funding short and the African Union already $40 million in debt, the joint force is not likely to form soon, delegates said. A Zimbabwe official said it would not be ready before 2010.

[edit]

Saturday's agreement does not obligate African states to act but provides standards for them to uphold, including protecting democratically elected governments from coups. The standby force could be deployed to enforce disarmament programs and provide humanitarian aid.

Shortly after its creation in 2002, the African Union deployed several thousand peacekeepers from South Africa, Ethiopia and Mozambique to Burundi, but that country remains mired in a civil war that has killed more than 200,000 people.

The interim constitution's bill of rights is "something that is unheard-of, unprecedented in this part of the world," said Adnan Pachachi, a leader of the U.S.-appointed Governing Council.

... Pachachi was asked by reporters to list some of the liberties enshrined in the bill of rights. Reading from the final draft, he said it included the freedom of expression, assembly, demonstration, privacy, thought, conscience and religious belief, among others.

He also said it contains a broad social contract that appears far more extensive than some in the Bush administration favor. The document guarantees all Iraqis health care, education and the right to strike, he said. But one right the document does not endorse, he said, is the freedom to bear arms.

Shortly after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, however, Leung concocted an elaborate scheme to avoid prosecution for the frauds. Pretending to be his own fictional brother, “Jeffrey Leung,” Leung falsely reported to his attorney that Steven Leung had died in the attacks, a report that his attorney unwittingly relayed to the District Court. Shortly thereafter, Leung again posed as another fictional brother, “William Leung,” in an attempt to obtain a death certificate for Steven Leung from the New York City Law Department World Trade Center Unit (“Law Department”). In this effort, he telephoned the Law Department to report that Steven Leung had worked at the brokerage firm Cantor Fitzgerald in the World Trade Center and had died in the attacks. After his initial request for a death certificate was denied for lack of documentation, Leung followed up by faxing a letter from “William Leung” to the Law Department that included a fabricated email exchange between Steven Leung and Scott Schertzer, a deceased human resources manager at Cantor Fitzgerald whose name Leung found by searching the Internet. The phoney email exchange purported to show that Steven Leung had begun working at Cantor Fitzgerald a week before the attacks to establish the inference that hehad died on September 11.

[snip]

The U.S. Marshals Service expended a substantial amount of time and effort investigating the claim by Leung’s purported brothers that Leung had died in the attacks. At least two Deputy Marshals worked on the investigation for three to four hours each business day for over a month. Working with the New York City Police Missing Persons Unit, the Law Department, and Cantor Fitzgerald’s insurance company, the Deputy Marshals interviewed family members, former employers, Cantor Fitzgerald employees, Leung’s former landlords and neighbors, and others. They also obtained hundreds of documents from companies, including United Airlines and the Bellagio Casino in Las Vegas, concerning Leung’s travel. Various teams of Deputy Marshals additionally conducted surveillance on eight different days. After eventually determining that Leung was still alive, the Marshals finally found and arrested Leung in February 2002.

. . . I don’t believe that emotion is unduly affecting my judgment here. There is no doubt emotion comes into play to some extent. Emotion comes into play in every sentencing decision. Every sentencing decision, to a degree, obviously. Emotion comes into play when the Court downwardly departs or the Court shows compassion and imposes a sentence that is lower than one would expect, and that happens. When you were a prosecutor in a case before me and I sentenced the defendants to what I thought was a relatively high sentence, emotion came into play. Emotion always does. Obviously, however, you can’t let emotion cloud your judgment, and I don’t believe I have done that here.

There are differences in some of those other cases. Of course it’s hard to compare them, but, I think, I would guess that less thought went into some of those others. Those others were not as premeditated as this crime here. Mr. Leung thought this through, he did research, he identified individuals who were killed. I mean, it’s a different kind of a thing, and so I understand your point. I don’t believe I am overreacting from an emotion point of view. I would not be completely frank if I said that emotion had no play, but, again, I don’t think it comes into play any more than in many of the sentences that I impose.

[Sen. Trent] Lott told veteran Republican lobbyist Ed Rogers Republicans needed a group to go "toe to toe with Ralph Neas," according to a person familiar with the situation. The two agreed on Mr. Gray, who, as White House counsel, had bested Mr. Neas during the emotional fight over the Thomas Supreme Court nomination in 1991.

After hearing from Mr. Rogers, Mr. Gray says, in July 2003 he formed the Committee for Justice, a three-person operation that so far has concentrated on shoring up Republican support for Bush nominees. The committee sometimes coordinates with another group on which Mr. Gray serves as co-chairman, Citizens for a Sound Economy, which usually lobbies on economic issues....

Lacking Mr. Neas's troop strength, Mr. Gray works his Republican Party and Bush family connections. The first President Bush has hosted a fund-raiser; so has the current president's nephew. Mr. Gray, who says he has raised about $1 million, has discussed tactics with Karl Rove, the White House's top political strategist. He also meets monthly with Republican senators including Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch.

The memos raise serious and troubling questions about the power which Senate Democrats granted to outside interest groups in the confirmation process.

and

The memos reveal the Democrats and the interest groups to be partners in the effort to defeat Bush nominees — with the Democrats serving as the junior partners.

Turns out one Thorkild Grosboel, pastor of Taarbaek, a town of 51,000 just north of Copenhagen, said in a recent interview that "there is no heavenly God, there is no eternal life, there is no resurrection." According to the Times, this "mystified" church leaders, and Grosboel’s bishop responded by suspending him.

For a week.

That’s right. A Lutheran pastor announced a personal theology that denied the existence of God, resurrection, and eternal life and the response of the church was a one-week suspension.

Wow. Talk about turning the other cheek. That’s some serious tolerance of dissent. If Pope Leo X had been this forgiving, we wouldn’t have Lutherans.

[snip]

My first thought was that Denmark’s Lutherans had been studying the American system of employment dispute resolution. We no longer fire anyone. We suspend them with pay until they die. It’s like a new system of pensions. Every week I pick up the paper and read a story which says something like this:

"County Supervisor Francis Mafuffnick has been arrested for embezzling six million dollars from government coffers. The supervisor, who admits having gambled the money away on last month’s Silver Broom Curling Championships in Winnipeg, Manitoba, also confessed to poisoning puppy dogs at the local pound and importing large quantities of cocaine from Colombia. He has been put on paid administrative leave pending a complete investigation."

PAID ADMINISTRATIVE LEAVE! Every miscreant in the country who has a job gets put on paid administrative leave when he screws up.

And it lasts forever. We put them on paid administrative leave and then forget they’re out there. We had a deputy district attorney here in Orange County whose paid administrative leave lasted longer than FDR’s presidency.

I went to Presiding Justice Sills last week and asked him if he would please initiate an investigation into allegations I was sexually harassing Justice Rylaarsdam. He said he wasn’t aware of such allegations. I said there weren’t any yet, but I was awfully tired and would be happy to make such allegations myself if it would get me a few months of PAID ADMINISTRATIVE LEAVE.

[snip]

But I underestimated the good reverend. Turns out he only got a week’s suspension from the bishop because that’s all she could give. "In Denmark, Lutheran pastors are employed by the state and bishops cannot fire them."

So Pastor Grosboel’s case has been kicked upstairs to one Tove Fergo, Denmark’s Minister of Ecclesiastical Affairs.

About 18,000 National Guard soldiers from four major units have gone on alert for likely deployment to Iraq late this year or in early 2005, the Pentagon said Monday.

The announcement underscores the deepening involvement of Guard and Reserve forces in U.S.-led efforts to quell the insurgency in Iraq and stabilize the country. So far 45 Guard and Reserve members have been killed in action in Iraq and 42 more have died of nonhostile causes.

The White House, Pentagon and State Department on Monday denied allegations Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was kidnapped by U.S. forces eager for him to resign and be spirited into exile.

With U.S. military forces already on the ground in the Caribbean nation and more on the way, chief presidential spokesman Scott McClellan said, "It's nonsense, and conspiracy theories do nothing to help the Haitian people move forward to a better more free, more prosperous future."

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld also vehemently denied that Aristide had been forced out by the United States. And Secretary of State Colin Powell forcefully dismissed the allegation as well, saying Aristide boarded the plane willingly.

[edit]

An African-American activist, Randall Robinson, said Aristide told him on the phone Monday that he had been kidnapped at gunpoint by American soldiers and ousted in a U.S. coup d'etat. Aristide said he was being held prisoner at the Renaissance Palace in Bangui, Central African Republic, Robinson said.

Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., told CNN that when he spoke with Aristide Monday morning, the exiled Haitian leader told him that the international community had let him down — "that he was kidnapped, that he resigned under pressure, that he was taken to a central African country."

Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., told CNN that she talked on the phone with Aristide's wife, Mildred, who said that Aristide was "forced to leave his home." Waters said an embassy official told Aristide that he "had to go now — that if he didn't go he would be killed and a lot of Haitians would be killed."

Powell said flatly, "He was not kidnapped," and criticized U.S. congressmen for saying that Aristide had been, without checking with the Bush administration first to see what the story was.

Gibson took an advance copy of his movie to the Christian Broadcasting Network for a screening in November, Robertson said.

"We all thought it was a magnificent work," he said. "There's really nothing like it. It's true to the Bible. The faith we've all had comes alive."

Robertson is less enamored with the orgy of merchandising connected with film, which includes crowns of thorns, pewter reproductions of the nails that impaled Jesus on the cross and Passion lapel pins.

"That cheapens the whole thing," Robertson said. "That sort of turns your stomach."

"Nearly 70% of Haiti is mountainous and the soil is hard to hold in place. Eighty years ago, 60% of the country was covered with trees. Today less than 2% remain. Uncontrolled logging and the conversion of forests into farmland have contributed to an environmental nightmare in Haiti."

DONOHUE: "My God, we finally have a movie that we can feel proud of. And we're not going to be told that we're bigots ..."

SCARBOROUGH: "Are you saying you're being attacked because of this movie?"

DONAHUE: "Absolutely. There's no question about it. .... there's an awful lot of hate out there and a lot is directed toward Christians."

(A few minutes later, Bozell joins the discussion)

BOZELL: "No, it's worse than hostility. Look -- and I think what Bill Donahue said before is correct -- I'm sick and tired of having to defend -- for Christians having to defend themselves from false accusations of anti-Semitism. It's about time that people started talking about the anti-Christian attitude that some people are showing ..."

O'DONNELL: "... most of the discussion in this show so far tonight has been about religion, and it has been about the greatness of Christianity and, for Bill (Donohue), the huge defensiveness he feels about some tremendous, I think imagined, assault on Christianity in the United States.

And Brent has been working that sense of persecution of American Christians for a very long time. It's one that, you know, listen, I grew up Catholic in Boston, where there's an awful lot of Catholics. I've never been in a situation in this country where I sensed the slightest bigotry against Christians. And so this defensiveness to me is unearned and imagined and exaggerated and used as a way of trying to legitimize your enthusiasm for this movie.

If you like the movie, go ahead and like the movie. Don't tell me that this is some sort of vindication of your decades of abuse in the American culture."

DONOHUE: "... You see, Larry said he was raised Catholic. I know what that means. It means he is an ex-Catholic, which means he doesn't really identify when the Catholic Church is under attack by movies and by television. So he has his own blinders on. Let me tell you something. All you need to do is go on our Web site or check out our annual report.

There is more anti-Catholicism in the United States than there is anti-Semitism. We have 37 states in the United States which have a Blaine amendment which is aimed at Roman Catholics. Christians are the ones who are dissed in Hollywood, not Jews. And so if Lawrence O'Donnell doesn't feel it, I understand why, because he has decoupled himself from Christianity."

As the interpreter of federal law and the U.S. Constitution for Georgia, Florida and Alabama, the 11th Circuit regularly hears cases about some of the hottest legal issues affecting society.

Last month a three-judge panel upheld a Florida law that bans homosexuals from adopting children. Panels are currently reviewing a race discrimination suit against Georgia Power and a free-speech challenge of an ordinance passed in the days before last year's protest against the all-male membership of Augusta National Golf Club.

While Pryor likely would have to recuse himself from cases involving the Alabama AG's office, he will take part in the court's other matters -- including the en banc request stemming from the Florida adoption case.

The panel in January wrote that the Supreme Court's recent ruling that struck down laws banning gay sex did not apply to Florida's adoption rule. Last year, Pryor submitted a brief for Alabama asking the high court to uphold states' rights to ban gay sex.

When San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom defied state law by allowing same-sex marriage licenses, a New York Times profile reported him sporting "a wide grin," "describing his motives as pure and principled," and cited his "business acumen, money, good looks and friends in the right places."

But when Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore also defied the law -- by installing a Ten Commandments display in his public building -- a Times profile said that "civil liberties groups accused Justice Moore of turning a courthouse into a church," while allowing that he had also become "an Alabama folk hero."

On the editorial page, the Times criticized Moore, likening him to George Wallace standing in the schoolhouse door, but supports Newsom's protest and gay marriage.

The paper has plenty of company. Hundreds of news accounts have provided an upbeat portrayal of Newsom as a pioneer and the San Francisco weddings as a happy occasion, even as partisan rhetoric hardened last week over President Bush's endorsement of a constitutional amendment to ban such marriages. While those opposed to gay marriage and Newsom's maneuver are certainly quoted, the media spotlight has shone most brightly on the mayor and those (including Rosie O'Donnell) tying the legally disputed knot.

"Call it 'wedded blitz' in San Francisco," reported NBC's Matt Lauer. "As if reliving its glory days as a counter-culture mecca in the 1960s, San Francisco was again the place to be," said Newsweek. A front-page Washington Post story yesterday celebrated the marriage of two elderly women.

[N]ot to teach how Anne suffered at the hands of the German Nazis, but to warn the students how they could suffer at the hands of those they call "American Nazis."

"After reading this book, I had a hatred for the American imperialists,” says one student.

and

“As long as the warmonger Bush and the Nazi Americans live, who are worse than Hitler's fascists, world peace will be impossible to achieve,” says another student.

“Yes, I think such camps still exist. As long as there are American Nazis, there will be secret places where innocent people are murdered,” says one student. “Places like that exist in America. The prisons in America are comparable to concentration camps.”

and

“For world peace, America will have to be destroyed,” adds another student. “Only then, will Anne's wonderful dream of peace come true.”

* 79% of parents are being asked to fund items and needs that have traditionally been covered by school budgets including chalk, paper towels, cleaning supplies, transportation, technology, educational curriculum, and art or music programs.

* 39% of parents are contributing more than $100 to their kids classrooms each year and one out of 10 parents (11%) say they're giving more than $300 a year. Of those parents in this $300+ donor group, the median donor contributes $473 each year.

The United States is scaling up its military presence in Africa as concern mounts over terrorist threats — both immediate and future — on the continent, the deputy head of American forces in Europe said Friday.

[edit]

Africa is a growing strategic interest to the United States because of its terror links and its oil, which is seen as a possible alternative to Middle East fuel.

Johnston: Well, in 1983 Alan Greenspan persuaded the Democrats who were in charge of Congress to overtax us on Social Security, that is to collect taxes in advance rather than on pay as you go system. The promise was that we would use the excess taxes to pay off the federal debt which was then about a trillion dollars. We have now paid 1.8 trillion dollars in excess Social Security taxes. This year the government will collect -- if you make $50,000, about $7,500 from you. It only needs 5,000 to pay current benefits. That other $2,500 wasn't used to pay off the federal debt, which is now 7 trillion dollars, instead it is being used to finance tax cuts for the super rich.

[edit]

And now that money has not been spent to pay off the debt. Now Mr. Greenspan says you are not going to get those benefits but we should not raise taxes on those that make millions of dollars a year. It seems to me what Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan predicted in 1983 has come true. He said this was thievery and the middle class were going to have their pockets picked by the rich.

Both Kerry and Edwards are basically tied with Bush in head-to-head matchups in a CBS News poll released this weekend. But when Kerry-Edwards are matched against Republican Bush-Cheney, the Democrats lead 50 percent to 42 percent. None of the hypothetical matchups included independent candidate Ralph Nader.