Caught red-handed?

This morning on the Fox News website, Fox was running a post-debate story about Kerry with several apparently fabricated quotes meant to disparage the Democratic candidate....

Some examples ...

"Women should like me! I do manicures"

About himself and the president: "I'm metrosexual — he's a cowboy."

Now Fox has pulled the article from the front page without explanation. And on the article itself the passages I quoted in the post below have all been removed -- again, without explanation....

So what's the deal here? Where did the fabricated piece come from? Who made up the quotes? How long did it run? Why did it get taken down? What happened?

Bush - September 29th



Bush - September 30th

9:00 - Jeff Greenfield on CNN: what's important is "who controls the room." Um, OK.
9:03 - There will be green, yellow, and red lights, plus flashing red lights and a backup buzzer! Sheesh.
9:06 - I dunno, Kerry's face doesn't look orange to me. Bush looks a little bronzed, though....
9:20 - Kerry really needs to stop nodding when Bush is saying stuff he disagrees with.
9:24 - Bush actually has the nerve to complain about a "tax gap"? Yes he does.
9:26 - Bush seemed a little unnerved by Kerry's accusation that he wasn't doing everything he could to protect America.
9:34 - Bush: "Of course the UN was invited in." Please. Tell that to Hans Blix.
9:35 - Overall, Bush seems more defensive than usual tonight....
9:37 - Bush: "You forgot Poland." That line could end up as fodder for Leno and Letterman.
9:44 - Bush is just relentlessly on message. The same phrases over and over and over....
9:49 - Kerry: "The president's plan is four words: 'More of the same.'" That's a good line.
9:55 - Bush: "I never wanted to commit troops." Give me a break.
10:02 - Bush just tried to make some hay out of Kerry's phrase about pre-emptive action having to "pass a global test." That was poor wording from Kerry, but Bush couldn't manage to do much with it. I'm surprised. That was sort of a softball.
10:06 - Moo-laws?
10:14 - Bush's stock phrases so far:

Saddam was a threat.
We must spread liberty.
My opponent keeps changing his position
You can't say "wrong war at the wrong time."
Central part of the war on terror.
Solemn duty to protect the American people.
You can't send mixed messages.

I've heard each of these at least half a dozen times so far. It's like a robot talking.
10:16 - Kerry: "You can be certain and be wrong." Yep.

9:03 - Cheney's a dick.
9:05 - Inane observation.
9:09 - Yea!
9:11 - Boo!
9:27 - Good one!
9:33 - Liar!
9:36 - Repeat earlier inane observation.
9:38 - Zing!
9:42 - Hisss!
10:04 - Did Cheney just say "nutsack"?
10:14 - That Ifill is one sexy dame.
10:29 - I'm drunk.

"Crimes against humanity, war crimes and breaches of the laws of war have probably occurred on a large and systematic scale. We do not believe that we have turned a corner on preventing further violations, and we must remain vigilant to this end."

[N]ews reports on Darfur do not provide an accurate sense of the crisis, despite an ongoing stream of reports from humanitarian and human rights groups. In its reporting, the media has used stale and unchanging figures. Current data suggests that far more than 200,000 have already died, though the figures cited in wire reports and news accounts are typically between 30,000 and 50,000. Approximately 2 million have been displaced in Darfur or made refugees in Chad, but news reports continue to speak of "more than 1 million driven from their homes." The World Health Organization found that 10,000 are dying every month in camps to which there is humanitarian access; but elsewhere in Darfur the mortality rate is much higher.

LEHRER: Senator Kerry, you mentioned Darfur, the Darfur region of Sudan. Fifty thousand people have already died in that area. More than a million are homeless. And it's been labeled an act of ongoing genocide. Yet neither one of you or anyone else connected with your campaigns or your administration that I can find has discussed the possibility of sending in troops. Why not?

KERRY: Well, I'll tell you exactly why not, but I first want to say something about those sanctions on Iran.

Only the United States put the sanctions on alone, and that's exactly what I'm talking about.

In order for the sanctions to be effective, we should have been working with the British, French and Germans and other countries. And that's the difference between the president and me.

And there, again, he sort of slid by the question.

Now, with respect to Darfur, yes, it is a genocide. And months ago, many of us were pressing for action.

I think the reason that we're not saying send American troops in at this point is severalfold.

Number one, we can do this through the African Union, providing we give them the logistical support. Right now all the president is providing is humanitarian support. We need to do more than that. They've got to have the logistical capacity to go in and stop the killing. And that's going to require more than is on the table today.

I also believe that it is -- one of the reasons we can't do it is we're overextended.

Ask the people in the armed forces today. We've got Guards and Reserves who are doing double duties. We've got a backdoor draft taking place in America today: people with stop-loss programs where they're told you can't get out of the military; nine out of our 10 active duty divisions committed to Iraq one way or the other, either going, coming or preparing.

So this is the way the president has overextended the United States.

That's why, in my plan, I add two active duty divisions to the United States Army, not for Iraq, but for our general demands across the globe.

I also intend to double the number of special forces so that we can do the job we need to do with respect fighting the terrorists around the world. And if we do that, then we have the ability to be able to respond more rapidly.

But I'll tell you this, as president, if it took American forces to some degree to coalesce the African Union, I'd be prepared to do it because we could never allow another Rwanda.

It's the moral responsibility for us and the world.

BUSH: Back to Iran, just for a second.

It was not my administration that put the sanctions on Iran. That happened long before I arrived in Washington, D.C.

In terms of Darfur, I agree it's genocide. And Colin Powell so stated.

We have committed $200 million worth of aid. We're the leading donor in the world to help the suffering people there. We will commit more over time to help.

We were very much involved at the U.N. on the sanction policy of the Bashir government in the Sudan. Prior to Darfur, Ambassador Jack Danforth had been negotiating a north-south agreement that we would have hoped would have brought peace to the Sudan.

I agree with my opponent that we shouldn't be committing troops. We ought to be working with the African Union to do so -- precisely what we did in Liberia. We helped stabilize the situation with some troops, and when the African Union came, we moved them out.

My hope is that the African Union moves rapidly to help save lives. And fortunately the rainy season will be ending shortly, which will make it easier to get aid there and help the long-suffering people there.

But to say that there's only one focus on the war on terror doesn't really understand the nature of the war of terror. Of course we're after Saddam Hussein - I mean bin Laden.

I don't see how you can lead this country to succeed in Iraq if you say wrong war, wrong time, wrong place. What message does that send our troops?

No, the way to win this is to be steadfast and resolved and to follow through on the plan that I just outlined.

I can't go grocery shopping any more, can't eat in restaurants, can't strike a conversation with strangers, can't look for stories, can't drive in any thing but a full armored car, can't go to scenes of breaking news stories, can't be stuck in traffic, can't speak English outside, can't take a road trip, can't say I'm an American, can't linger at checkpoints, can't be curious about what people are saying, doing, feeling. And can't and can't. There has been one too many close calls, including a car bomb so near our house that it blew out all the windows. So now my most pressing concern every day is not to write a kick-ass story but to stay alive and make sure our Iraqi employees stay alive. In Baghdad I am a security personnel first, a reporter second.

We're making steady progress in implementing our five-step plan toward the goal we all want, completing the mission so that Iraq is stable and self-governing, and American troops can come home with the honor they have earned.

"I think the prime minister is, obviously, contradicting his own statement of a few days ago, where he said the terrorists are pouring into the country," Kerry said. "The prime minister and the president are here obviously to put their best face on the policy, but the fact is that the CIA estimates, the reporting, the ground operations and the troops all tell a different story."

"Prime Minister Allawi is a very brave man. Some years ago, Saddam Hussein sent killers after him with axes. They tried to hack him to death in his bed. He's a brave and a determined leader, and I was appalled at the complete lack of respect Senator Kerry showed for this man."

[D]etails have emerged showing the U.S. government and a representative of President Bush's reelection campaign had been heavily involved in drafting the speech given to Congress last week by interim Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi. Combined, they indicate that the federal government is working assiduously to improve Americans' opinions about the Iraq conflict -- a key element of Bush's reelection message.

[edit]

[A]dministration officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the prime minister was coached and aided by the U.S. government, its allies and friends of the administration. Among them was Dan Senor, former spokesman for the CPA who has more recently represented the Bush campaign in media appearances. Senor, who has denied writing the speech, sent Allawi recommended phrases. He also helped Allawi rehearse in New York last week, officials said. Senor declined to comment.

Three car bombs were set off near an American military convoy in western Baghdad today, killing more than three dozen people and wounding scores, including many children ... The attack was one of several on a particularly bloody day in Iraq that took place just hours before President Bush and Senator John Kerry were to debate American foreign policy in Miami ...

In the car bomb attack, 10 American soldiers were wounded ... Residents told the Reuters news agency that a ceremony to open a new water and sewage plant was taking place when the attack occurred. Officials at the Yarmouk hospital told Reuters that they were inundated with casualties ... The bombs caused the largest death toll of children in any insurgent attack since the conflict began 17 months ago, and it came on the last day of one of the most violent months of the war thus far.

Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld said in a radio interview today that the violence in Iraq was "getting worse" and would probably continue until the Iraqi elections scheduled for January.

"In 15 out of 18 Iraqi provinces, the security situation is good ..."

"Out of these 18 provinces, 14 to 15 are completely safe, there are no problems."

"There are three areas, three provinces where there are pockets of insurgents, pockets of terrorists who are acting there and are moving from there to inflict damage elsewhere in the country."

A 10-month-old boy weighing 4.1 kg is weighed at a health centre in Monrovia. More than half of African children who die before the age of five are malnourished, a top African Health Organisation official said at a west African regional meeting on nutrition.

Michael Scanlon, a public-relations consultant and former aide to House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) now under investigation for his business dealings with Indian tribes, failed to show up to testify before a Senate panel yesterday after federal marshals were unable to serve him with the committee’s subpoena.

“The U.S. marshals tell us Mr. Scanlon is hiding out in his house with the blinds drawn,” said Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell (R-Colo.), chairman of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, after the hearing. “But we’re going to [subpoena] him again. He will be before the committee one way or another. … I want to ask him questions. He is going to have to duck and dodge.”

Susan Rice, assistant Secretary of State for Africa during the Clinton years and an adviser to John Kerry, criticizes the Administration for not "taking action consonant with the magnitude of the catastrophe. At the same time, Rice acknowledges, "I don't think there's a huge difference" between Kerry and Bush on how to handle Sudan.

One other place where Bush appears somewhat popular is Sudan, particularly in the Darfur region.

Some Sudanese say they wish his interventionist policies would extend to their country. "We could use a regime change," said Halima Huessin, a Sudanese aid worker in Darfur, as she looked out over a gaggle of children covered in flies and men sleeping in thatched huts.

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia says he believes "abstract moralizing" has led the American judicial system into a quagmire, and that matters such as abortion and assisted suicide are "too fundamental" to be resolved by judges.

"What I am questioning is the propriety, indeed the sanity, of having value-laden decisions such as these made for the entire society ... by judges," Scalia said on Tuesday during an appearance at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.

On September 17, [Jon] Stewart appeared on Bill O'Reilly's "The O'Reilly Factor" only to be told his viewers are "stoned slackers" and "dopey kids."

"You know what's really frightening?" [Bill] O'Reilly asked [Jon] Stewart. "You actually have an influence on this presidential election. That is scary, but it's true."

Oklahoma Democratic Party -- fundraising appeal
This letter over the signature of former Democratic Gov. George Nigh was dated Sept. 10, but only arrived in my mail 18 days later. It makes you think that the state party must have been a little slow in getting this mailing out. "Well, I guess 18 days isn't such a huge delay," I thought, until I noticed this sentence in the letter: "Your contribution of $250, $120, $75 or $35 will enable a Democratic victory in November -- now less than five months away!" In other words, this letter was originally written no more recently than June. If Oklahoma's Democratic hierarchy is so inefficient that it takes the party three months to finalize and mail this letter, then how wisely will the party spend my contribution?

Democracy for America (Howard Dean) -- fundraising party
This postcard announcing tonight 's "party honoring Howard Dean" arrived just yesterday. Not exactly ideal for people with busy work and social schedules to manage. I've been "fundraised" to death this year, but I might actually have gone to this event if I'd had a little more lead time to plan.

“Mr. Mollohan’s meetings with Minority Leader Pelosi were inappropriate and warrant his recusal from any investigation of Mr. DeLay. Mr. Mollohan’s actions have tainted the process. At the very least, he must recuse himself from this probe.”

Four of the five Republicans investigating an ethics complaint against House Majority Leader Tom DeLay have received campaign contributions from DeLay's political action committee, records show.

The contributions - $28,504 split among the four over the past seven years - were all delivered before the ethics committee received the DeLay complaint June 15. But it is an example of awkward situations spawned by the U.S. House's decision to police itself on ethics.

[T]he rules for real men have been around for thousands of years, and they've always been simple and good:

You work hard. You provide. You look out for the weak and speak when everyone else is afraid. You make your shoulders available to those who need carrying.

[snip]

But Bush grew up with the trust-fund set, where no one knew the traditional ways. So he adopted the fraudulent version, like the gangbanger who waves a gun and thinks he's big, yet carries no one, provides for no one. This, unfortunately, is the definition of a punk.

[snip]

If Bush was a real man, he would kick his swift-boat lapdogs in the head. It was no sin to stay clear of Vietnam; it wasn't our fight. But a real man never calls out the courage of those who went, and he sure as hell doesn't let his lapdogs do it. He does it himself, face to face.

If Bush was a real man, he wouldn't side with pharmaceutical companies against grandmas who can't afford medicine. There's only one choice in this fight: You go with Grandma. A real man would rather stick his face in an arc welder than abet the suffering of old people.

Rocklin said the documents indicate that Bush used his family's political connections to obtain his job in the executive branch.

"Bush stepped ahead of more qualified candidates to take what he thought would be a cushy job," Rocklin said. "Then, after signing up for a four-year term, he largely abandoned his post in 2004 to go work on a political campaign."

"Our opponents have dredged up this kind of thing every time Bush has run for office," Bush campaign strategist Matthew Dowd said. "We've faced down widely reported, fully researched, carefully documented accounts of Bush's alcoholism, drug use, private-sector business failings, ignorance in matters of state, smug arrogance, and general self-serving lackadaisical behavior. So I'm hardly worried. An overwhelming mass of published information like this has never stopped Americans from voting for him before."

The Catholic Church of Rwanda on Monday said that its priest standing trial for genocide at the UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) was there as an individual and not in any way representative of the Catholic Church.

"Seromba is there as an individual. He will have to answer on his own", Rwandan Archbishop Thaddée Ntihinyurwa told Hirondelle News Agency at his residence in Kigali. "It's up to the court to decide. The Catholic Church never participated in the genocide in any way".

Authorities in Rwanda and some human rights organizations have accused the Catholic Church of having incited, aided and abetted killings of ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus in the 1994 genocide. Several of its clergy have also been accused of direct participation in the genocide. Since the advent of Christianity in Rwanda, the Catholic Church has always been accused of heavy involvement in politics.

Ntihinyurwa also said that the Catholic Church might not owe Catholics or any Rwandans an apology or any explanation even if Seromba were to be convicted. "We may not say anything even if he were to be found guilty", said Ntihinyurwa.

Father Athanase Seromba, 38, was the lead priest of Nyange Parish in the West Rwanda province of Kibuye at the time of the genocide. He is accused of assembling ethnic Tutsis in Nyange church before ordering a bulldozer to tear down the church on the refugees. An estimated 2,000 people were killed in the attack.

After the 2001 conviction of two Rwandan Benedictine nuns by a Belgian court, the Catholic Church in Rwanda remained silent. Sisters Maria Kizito Mukabutera and Gertrude Mukangango were found guilty of supplying the gasoline that Hutu attackers used to burn down a garage sheltering 500 Tutsi refugees during the 1994 genocide. They were sentenced to 12 and 15 year prison terms, respectively.

In 1999, George W. Bush said we needed to cut taxes because the economy was doing so well that the U.S. Treasury was taking in too much money, and we could afford to give some back to the people who earned it. In 2001, Bush said we needed the same tax cuts because the economy was doing poorly, and we had to return the money so that people would spend and invest it.

Bush's arguments made the wisdom of cutting taxes unfalsifiable. In good times, tax cuts were affordable. In bad times, they were necessary. Whatever happened proved that tax cuts were good policy. When Congress approved the tax cuts, Bush said they would revive the economy. You'd know that the tax cuts had worked, because more people would be working. Three years later, more people aren't working. But in Bush's view, that, too, proves he was right. If more people aren't working, we just need more tax cuts.

Both children and their parents need to read this book and talk about it. Studies show the best way to help your kid cope with this dangerous world is to talk with him or her. And children like that. They like it when you ask them their opinion on something.

Today's financial problems in state governments -- gaps of billions of dollars between what they want to spend and the taxes they take in -- are as much a political crisis as a financial one.

Polls show that voters want what they cannot have: more spending and lower taxes simultaneously. Elected officials who deviate from this view have been punished harshly whether they support spending cuts, tax increases or both.

... Polls show that voters want to cut state spending in theory, but not in practice. In a USA Today/CNN/Gallup Poll, 79% said they preferred spending cuts to tax increases to balance state budgets. Those who favored spending cuts were asked whether they were willing to cut education funding: 77% said no. On health care funding, 78% said no.

Education and health care make up about two-thirds of state spending, so balancing budgets by cutting spending is nearly impossible if those programs are off limits.

Yes, the political urban legend that black voters in Florida were harassed and intimidated on Election Day four years ago is making a comeback....[T]his is all election-year demagoguery. Democrats and their acolytes are raising this myth from the dead to scare up black turnout and lay the groundwork for challenges in court if John Kerry loses.

... the Dukakis campaign was also scrambling to deal with a shadowy wave of rumors that seemed intended to raise doubts ... One damaging rumor, that Mr. Dukakis had undergone psychiatric treatment, was pushed onto the front page when President Ronald Reagan was asked about it and joked that he didn't want to pick on "an invalid." Mr. Dukakis' advisers said later that he dropped 8 points in the polls after that report.

He is, indeed, an African paradox, who as leader of sub-Saharan Africa’s longest running civil war, continues to perplex and shame many of his own co-conspirators. Savimbi is widely seen as responsible for a nearly nonstop war that has taken nearly one million lives and as the principal spoiler of the Angolan elections and United Nations-backed peace plans in the early 1990s. As the Namibian government said in announcing his death, “Savimbi chose the way of terrorism and turned Angola into a land of many killing fields.” When news of Savimbi’s death reached the Angolan capital of Luanda, people took to the streets chanting, “The terrorist is gone.”

The National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), a rebel group led by Jonas Savimbi, killed, abducted, and terrorized civilians with impunity. Government forces abused civilians during forced relocations and beat or killed civilians displaced in the course of looting, extortion, and forced recruitment of boys and men.

Those (policy) divisions are longstanding, going back at least to the spring of 2001 when the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act (ILSA) was soon set to expire.

... (Iran hawks) thought ... that toppling Saddam Hussein would either inspire Iranians to overthrow their government, intimidate Iran into substantial policy shifts, or possibly even pave the way for a quick march to Teheran. Things didn't work out that way.

While the United States became increasingly bogged down in Iraq, the Iranian position was strengthened as anti-American sentiment rose throughout the region ...

The result has been to stick America with an Iran policy -- unilateral sanctions, no diplomatic relations, and no real push for regime change -- that no one really favors and is becoming increasingly untenable. With American troops fighting counterinsurgency campaigns in two countries -- Afghanistan and Iraq -- that share borders with Iran, a total absence of diplomatic relations is unworkable.

Iran, like the United States, has a deep interest in the future of both countries, an interest that cannot simply be ignored. To succeed in either place we must either talk to Iran, work out a common policy, and cooperate on implementing it -- or, if failing altogether to deal with the current regime, do something to put a new one in its place. A policy of ineffective hostility merely guarantees continued Iranian interference with U.S. policy and continued instability in both countries.

At a time when Iraqi insurgents are targeting local police officers and recruits for attack, the United States has raised by one-third -- to 135,000 -- the size of the Iraqi police force it says will be needed to help secure the country, according to information the administration has provided to Congress.

A senior U.S. official in Iraq said in an interview last week that the new goal for 135,000 officers may not be reached for two more years under the best of circumstances. Officials point, among other things, to a lack of qualified personnel and appropriate training facilities.

Do you approve or disapprove of the way George W. Bush is handling the economy?

Approve 47%
Disapprove 50%

Do you think George W. Bush does or does not have a clear plan for handling the economy?

Does 54%
Does not 43%

Do you think John Kerry does or does not have a clear plan for handling the economy?

Does 51%
Does not 41%

Who do you trust to do a better job handling the economy - George W. Bush or John Kerry?

Bush 48%
Kerry 43%

----

Do you approve or disapprove of the way George W. Bush is handling the situation in Iraq?

Approve 47%
Disapprove 50%

Do you think George W. Bush does or does not have a clear plan for handling the situation in Iraq?

Does 53%
Does not 44%

Do you think John Kerry does or does not have a clear plan for handling the situation in Iraq?

Does 38%
Does not 56%

Who do you trust to do a better job handling the situation in Iraq - George W. Bush or John Kerry?

Bush 53%
Kerry 40%

"Every night you go to sleep thinking, 'I could do more. We could do more with a better mandate,' " said Ruzianda, also a Rwandan, whose family fled to Congo during a civil war in his country in the 1990s. "I hate it, to see people living like this. There are some things that remind me of our country when people were fleeing. It can be a shock to see it all again. This time, the only comfort is that at least we are here. At least there is something."

But the immediate priority is to stop the killing. If the international community pressures only the government side, while giving the rebels a pass, the war will continue, as will the genocide.

In a footnote published with the article, Margolick, a former legal affairs reporter for The New York Times, acknowledges the confidentiality rule and says none of the clerks he spoke to disclosed internal documents or conversations with their justices. But he indicates that the clerks who were willing to give him other details did so because they felt strongly the Court had acted improperly in the election case. "We feel that something illegitimate was done with the Court's power, and such an extraordinary situation justifies breaking an obligation we'd otherwise honor," Margolick quotes one clerk as saying.

This ad is the most egregious example so far in the 2004 campaign of using edited quotes in a way that changes their meaning and misleads voters.

... When Kerry said "the winning of the war was brilliant" he wasn't praising Bush for waging the war, he was praising the military for the way they accomplished the mission. [Kerry] also repeated his criticism of Bush for failing to better plan for what came next.

We knew nothing about our destination, but we went anyway. We never did try to learn much once we were there. We had no idea that most Vietnamese national myths were accounts of long-term wars of national liberation waged against foreign invaders.

... We thought we could fix anything that was broke and weather any storm that could possibly blow up over a backwater place like this. We though they would love us because we drank Coca-Cola and let them drink it too.

... We were sure the enemy was being decimated because we had the best weapons money could buy. We had only the slightest idea what the enemy was up to, but we were sure that once we killed a few of them, the rest would just roll over. It never occurred to us that these people might hate us and find us ugly and foreign in every sense of the word.

... We thought we could search them out and destroy them. And when it turned out that we couldn't do any of those things, we couldn't even admit it.

... We thought our government would never tell us lies ... We thought what they did to our prisoners was shameful but thought nothing about what we did to theirs. We thought our surrogate government, still with little or no popular support, could resist the (enemy) ...

Despite widespread press coverage of large recent job gains,33 the majority of respondents in a June 7 poll mistakenly believed that there had been a net loss of jobs in 2004. With regard to the most important foreign policy issue in the campaign, a majority mistakenly believed that the Bush administration sees a link between Saddam Hussein and the September 11 attacks (despite the administration’s own repeated disclaimers of any such connection), and most do not know even approximately how many American lives have been lost in the Iraq war.

As far as you know, does the Bush Administration think Saddam Hussein was involved in the Sept. 11th, 2001 attack against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon or doesn't the Bush Administration think that?

Think Hussein was involved: 58%
Does not he was involved: 25%
DK/NA: 17%

.... (Fox host Bill) O'Reilly asked Bush whether he would still do the carrier landing on the USS Abraham Lincoln beneath the "Mission Accomplished" banner. At the time, 16 months ago, Bush referred to Iraq as a "victory" and declared an end to major combat there.

"Absolutely," the president replied in the interview, to air on Monday's "O'Reilly Factor."

O'Reilly, apparently surprised, replied, "You would?"

"Of course," Bush continued. "I'm saying to the troops, on this carrier and elsewhere, 'Thanks for serving America.' Absolutely. And by the way, those sailors and airmen loved seeing the commander in chief ... You bet I'd do it again."

In April, White House senior adviser Karl Rove told an editorial board meeting with the Columbus Dispatch in Ohio that the "Mission Accomplished" sign had been a mistake. "I wish the banner was not up there," Rove said. "I'll acknowledge the fact that it has become one of those convenient symbols."

You can’t appoint good judges unless you have good nominees. President Bush has kept his promise, and sent the Senate highly qualified men and women who indeed know exactly what judges are supposed to do. The Senate has so far confirmed 201 of President Bush’s judicial nominees. This is as many as President Clinton appointed in his first term. Our Republican majority has confirmed more Bush nominees in the 108th Congress than the Democrats confirmed in the 107th.

This has not been easy. Just days after President Bush took the oath of office, Senator Tom Daschle vowed that Democrats would use “whatever means necessary” to oppose judicial nominees they opposed. They began a series of obstruction tactics even while in the minority. Ten judicial nominees in the last 50 years have been confirmed with more than 40 votes against them. Half of them belong to this president.

The Christian Coalition helped us get some of these tough ones over the goal line. With your help, in 2002 we confirmed Judge D. Brooks Smith to the Third Circuit and Dennis Shedd to the Fourth Circuit; in 2003 we confirmed Timothy Tymkovich to the Tenth Circuit and Jeffrey Sutton and Deborah Cook to the Sixth Circuit; and this year I’m proud to say we confirmed James Leon Holmes to the U.S. District Court. The 46 votes against him were the most against a confirmed district court nominees in at least the last half-century. Yet he will be a fine judge and I thank you for your help getting him confirmed.

Second, we have to solve the filibuster crisis. Even as recently as the Clinton administration, every judicial nominee reaching the full Senate received a final confirmation decision.

Catholic teaching calls on us to work to avoid war. Nations must protect the right to life by finding ever more effective ways to prevent conflicts from arising, to resolve them by peaceful means ...

Because financial and economic factors have such an impact on the well-being and stability of families, it is important that just wages be paid to those who work to support their families and that generous efforts be made to aid poor families.

In the words of Pope John Paul II, care for the Earth and for the environment is a "moral issue." We support policies that protect the land, water, and the air we share ... and (endorse) the development of alternate, renewable, and clean-energy resources.

MS. COURIC: We'll talk more about that resolution in a moment, Mr. Secretary, but first I want to ask you about the violence in Iraq. Many wonder what the naming of this interim government, what impact it will have on the insurgency, and are you fearful it will be seen as a last-ditch effort by those who want to impede any progress being made in Iraq?

SECRETARY POWELL: Yeah, I think that's a reasonable assumption that there are people out there who want to go back to the past; they want to go back to the days of Saddam Hussein; they want to put in place not a democracy, but some sort of tyrannical regime; and they will fight against us and they will fight against this new government.

But I think most Iraqis will look at this new government and say, finally, we have our government back, the occupation has ended. Let there be no doubt about it, when this government takes over, Ambassador Bremer and his people in the Coalition Provisional Authority have finished their job and we will then be represented by an ambassador in the person of John Negroponte. And I hope that that fundamental change will cause the Iraqi people to come together and say let's build up our own security forces, let's gain the strength we need to take care of ourselves, ask the Americans and the other coalition forces to remain until we are able to do it ourselves, and then they can go home as well.

A sampling of daily reports produced [over the past two weeks] by Kroll Security International for the U.S. Agency for International Development shows that such attacks typically number about 70 each day. In contrast, 40 to 50 hostile incidents occurred daily during the weeks preceding the handover of political authority to an interim Iraqi government on June 28, according to military officials.

Kerry Claimed Most Catholics Support Roe, And Blames Bishops For Catholics’ Lack Of Adherence To Faith. ... the senator repeated what former House Speaker Tip O’Neill apparently once said in front of several thousand priests and several thousand nuns, that 68 percent of them ‘support Roe v. Wade.’ ‘If the bishops can’t do and won’t say anything about that, don’t come to me. You know what I’m saying?’ said Kerry."

Twisting Kerry's Words

Republicans have started a new website to target Catholic voters this election: KerryWrongForCatholics.com. The website prominently features a quote (see above) from John Kerry that is deliberately taken out of context.

Kerry's quote is from August 1994 and was made during a speech on the U.S. Senate floor. When Kerry said abortions should be moved "into the mainstream of medical practice," he was talking about moving abortion providers to hospitals and other locations that were safer, making it less likely that patients, physicians, nurses and other clinic workers would be attacked.

In fact, Kerry's speech specifically referred to two people who had been murdered just a few days earlier by a radical anti-abortion activist in Pensacola, Fla. Here's the Kerry quote in its proper context:

"The wrong response to the Pensacola shootings is to segregate abortions even further from those seeking the procedure. The right thing to do is to treat abortions as exactly what they are -- a medical procedure that any doctor is free to provide and any pregnant woman free to obtain.

"Consequently, abortions should not have to be performed in tightly guarded clinics on the edge of town; they should be performed and obtained in the same locations as any other medical procedure. How can we as political leaders teach tolerance to the public when we still treat women who seek abortions as poorly as less civilized societies treated lepers?

"Mr. President, if this Constitutionally protected right is to be preserved, and if women are to be treated decently and with respect, abortions need to be moved out of the fringes of medicine and into the mainstream of medical practice. And by the same token, if our children are to be safe from the danger of fanaticism, tolerance needs to spread out of the mainstream churches, mosques, and synagogues, and into the religious fringes."

If someone is convinced that abortion = murder and, on that basis, decides they won't vote for Kerry, that is his or her right. But to distort Kerry's 1994 words to suggest that he wants to dramatically increase the number of abortions is shamefully dishonest.

The same people who, when discussing abortion, point so quickly to the commandment that says, "Thou shalt not kill," seem to have forgotten that another commandment says you're not supposed to lie.