trx242

Bush, Musharraf, Karzai

2006-09-23T13:05:00.000-05:00

“By supporting moderate leaders such as President Abbas, the United States can help Israelis and Palestinians build a more hopeful future and achieve the peace we all want in the Holy Land,” he said.
He described Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and Afghan President Hamid Karzai as two leaders who are “working to defeat the forces of terrorism and extremism,” and said he plans to meet with both of them together at the White House September 27.
An audio link to the president’s remarks is available on the White House Web site. CONTINUED Back To James News

Phillips, made his first court appearances

2006-09-12T09:18:00.000-05:00

CARROLL, N.Y. — A former fugitive suspected of fatally shooting a state trooper and wounding two others made his first court appearances Saturday, a day after surrendering following a five-month manhunt.

Ralph "Bucky" Phillips, who once threatened to "splatter pig meat all over Chautauqua County" in upstate New York, in a reference to police officers, was charged in Chemung County with eight counts, including attempted aggravated murder, first-degree attempted murder and second-degree attempted murder, all in connection with the shooting of a state trooper in June.

Phillips, 44, did not enter a plea.

Dressed in an orange jail jumpsuit, the exhausted and unshaven suspect either looked at the floor or closed his eyes during the 12-minute arraignment. He was shackled at the ankles, with his wrists handcuffed, and was flanked by armed guards.

Phillips, a career thief who has spent 20 of the past 23 years in state prison, surrendered Friday night after five months on the run without firing a shot. The arrest capped New York state's largest manhunt after a frantic day that included troopers firing at Phillips as he hid in woods.

Federal prosecutor Terrance Flynn said he did not know when Phillips would be transferred to Chemung County, near the Pennsylvania line, where trooper Sean Brown was wounded on June 10. Back To James News

Blair may get you arrested

2006-09-07T17:56:00.000-05:00

In the guise of fighting terrorism and maintaining public order, Tony Blair's Government has quietly and systematically taken power from Parliament and the British people. The author charts a nine-year assault on civil liberties that reveals the danger of trading freedom for security - and must have Churchill spinning in his grave
In the shadow of Winston Churchill's statue opposite the House of Commons, a rather odd ritual has developed on Sunday afternoons. A small group of people - mostly young and dressed outlandishly - hold a tea party on the grass of Parliament Square. A woman looking very much like Mary Poppins passes plates of frosted cakes and cookies, while other members of the party flourish blank placards or, as they did on the afternoon I was there, attempt a game of cricket.
Sometimes the police move in and arrest the picnickers, but on this occasion the officers stood at a distance, presumably consulting on the question of whether this was a demonstration or a non-demonstration. It is all rather silly and yet in Blair's Britain there is a kind of nobility in the amateurishness and persistence of the gesture. This collection of oddballs, looking for all the world as if they had stepped out of the Michelangelo Antonioni film Blow-Up, are challenging a new law which says that no one may demonstrate within a kilometre, or a little more than half a mile, of Parliament Square if they have not first acquired written permission from the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. This effectively places the entire centre of British government, Whitehall and Trafalgar Square, off-limits to the protesters and marchers who have traditionally brought their grievances to those in power without ever having to ask a policeman's permission. Blair may get you arrested Back To James News

The Iron Lady

2006-09-05T15:46:00.000-05:00

imagine Condoleezza Rice, recently voted on to Vanity Fair 's Best-Dressed List, with any unnecessary, distracting, feminine flounce; nor Martha Stewart, Hillary Clinton or Barbara Walters. Theirs is strictly the no-frills approach: sleek, sophisticated and savvy. Likewise, Baroness Thatcher: not for just her political acumen was she called the Iron Lady. In her early years in office she often softened the shar
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Condoleezza Rice for President?

Vice President Dick Cheney , left, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice , right, stand in the Oval Office during a meeting between President...

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Hillary May Pull Out

US pop superstar Janet Jackson is seen here promoting her new album at a press conference in Chicago, Illinois in August 2006. Jackson ho

President Bush Updates

2006-09-05T09:22:00.000-05:00

Bush Updates Terror Plan as Extremists Shift Tactics (Update1)Bloomberg - 26 minutes agoPresident George W. Bush issued a third report today updating the US strategy for combating terrorism, citing the evolving nature of extremists who are more independent in expanding networks of violence.America not yet safe from terrorism, says White House Ireland OnlineWhite House claims progress in war against terror but US not yet ... USA TodayWIS - Guardian Unlimited - WTOV9.com - ABC News all 172 news articles Photo Crocodile Hunter Videos Back To James News

Iraq Sun al-Saeedi

2006-09-04T02:11:00.000-05:00

Iraqi officials say the arrest of the number two commander of al-Qaida in Iraq has dealt a severe blow to the terrorist organization, and bodes well for the country's future.
Iraqi officials say high-ranking al-Qaida operative Hamed Jumaa Farid al-Saeedi was taken into custody north of Baghdad late last week, along with several aides and followers.
Speaking on CNN's Late Edition program, Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih noted that Saeedi's capture follows another major defeat for al-Qaida in Iraq: the killing of the group's onetime leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, in an air strike earlier this year.
"It comes in the wake of the killing of al-Zarqawi," said Barham Salih. "Intelligence work by both Iraqi forces and the multi-national forces have dealt a very severe blow to al-Qaida's organization in Iraq. It is also significant because this man [Saeedi] is believed to have been responsible for the attacks on the shrines in Samarra, which led to the sectarian violence that we have seen."
Salih added that no one should doubt the determination of Iraq's new government to confront and defeat terrorists. But the deputy prime minister was quick to add that the battle against terrorism is far from over in his country.
"I do not want to be complacent," he said. "Al-Qaida represents a serious threat, remains a serious threat, and we have to be very vigilant in the way we deal with these threats."
Salih acknowledged Iraq has been battered by a surge in sectarian violence, but described the debate over whether civil war has broken out in Iraq as "academic." He said, despite horrific suffering, most Iraqis are determined to persevere, and build a better future.
"This society has been battered, day in and day out, with car bombs," continued Iraq's deputy prime minister. "Despite all that, and despite these sectarian killings that we have seen, the bulk of society, the mainstream leadership, has stayed away form the conflict, and is still searching for way to overcome our differences, and fight the terrorists. This has not been easy."
The deputy prime minister echoed recent assertions by other Iraqi officials that the country's security forces are approaching a level of readiness and capability that will allow them to take over from coalition forces. Salih said Iraqi troops will have assumed full security responsibilities in seven or eight provinces by year's end.
President Bush has vowed to keep U.S. forces in Iraq for as long as is necessary to safeguard the country's fledgling democracy. Have your say on this story Back To James News

UN John Bolton

2006-09-01T16:03:00.000-05:00

By Peter Heinlein United Nations01 September 2006
The United States is formally asking the UN Security Council to place Burma on its permanent agenda as a threat to international peace and security.
U.S. Ambassador John Bolton Friday submitted a formal request to have Burma included on the Security Council agenda.
Twice before in the past year, Bolton has brought the Council's attention to Burma's human rights violation and internal repression. But each time, efforts to have the issue placed on the Council's permanent agenda have been rebuffed by opposition from Russia, China, and other Asian countries.
This time, Bolton is confident he has sufficient support to force a formal vote on the matter.
"We obviously feel at this point that we will prevail and that Burma will be added, "he said. "It's possible that we would lose. There's no question about that. This is a political matter, but we think it's important that now states declare where they stand on the question."
The United States has been a vocal critic of Burma, and has attempted to pressure the military junta in Rangoon to release detained political leader Aung San Suu Kyi, 61. The Nobel peace laureate has been held at her Rangoon home since May, 2003, and has spent more than 10 of the last 17 years in detention.
Bolton told reporters Friday he has no firm plans for a Security Council resolution on Burma. But he said a strong case can be made that the country constitutes a threat to regional peace and security.
"Looking at the Burmese government's involvement in international drug trafficking, the refugee flows out of Burma and in the region that it's activities have caused, it's violations of human rights, and the consequences that have had international implications, and a range of other activities, including some of its military policies. So all of those are there. We think it's time to formally put it on the agenda, and that's why we're proceeding," he added.
President Bush last month signed a law renewing economic sanctions against the Burmese government for three more years. Washington halted investments to Burma in 1997, and banned financial transactions and imports in 2003.
International human rights groups have repeatedly called on the Security Council to act in response to Burma's deteriorating rights conditions. The United Nations operates a resettlement program for thousands of ethnic Karen in eastern Burma who have fled the country's military dictatorship. Back To James News

News Hurricane John

2006-08-30T17:28:00.000-05:00

Dangerous John Coming Closer to Mexico.
PUERTO VALLARTA, Mexico - Hurricane John lashed tourist resorts with heavy winds and rain Wednesday as the dangerous storm marched up Mexico's Pacific coast, and forecasters predicted its center would brush close to land before nicking the tip of Baja California and heading out to sea. Multiple Photos Forecasters warned the Category 4 hurricane could dump up to a foot of rain along parts of Mexico's southern coast, causing landslides or flooding. The hurricane had maximum sustained winds of 135 mph and stronger gusts capable of ripping roofs off buildings and causing storm surges of up to 18 feet above normal.John was not expected to affect the United States _ cooler Pacific waters tend to diminish the storms before they reach California. But a hurricane warning covered a more than 300-mile stretch of the Mexican coastline from the port city of Lazaro Cardenas north to Cabo Corrientes, the southwestern tip of the bay that holds Puerto Vallarta.The government also issued a hurricane watch for portions of the southern Baja Peninsula, from La Paz south on the east coast and from Sante Fe south on the west coast, an area which includes the resort city of Cabo San Lucas.So far, the most damaging winds have remained offshore, and only tropical storm-force winds have hit the coast.In Puerto Vallarta, skies were clear and tourists relaxed on the beach. But officials postponed the arrival of a Carnival cruise chip and prohibited customary tours of the bay.
William Rousseau, a tourist from Oregon vacationing with his family in Puerto Vallarta, said hotel officials had warned about John, "but we're calm because they say it's not going to hit this city.""We're continuing to enjoy the city," he said. "They just asked us not to go into the ocean or on any bay tours."Other tourists could be seen strolling through the streets visiting craft shops and eating in restaurants.The area south of Lazaro Cardenas to Acapulco was under a tropical storm warning. Tropical storm-force winds were lashing Lazaro Cardenas and the resort of Ixtapa-Zihuatanejo.
Although the center of John was forecast to remain just offshore, hurricane-force winds were likely to begin raking beaches near Puerto Vallarta late Wednesday, the National Hurricane Center in Miami said. The storm was then expected to nick Los Cabos at the tip of the Baja California Peninsula on Friday before heading out to sea.The Mexican army and emergency services were on alert all along the coast. The civil protection agency for the state of Jalisco, which includes Puerto Vallarta, announced it would ask 8,000 residents living in risk-prone coastal areas to evacuate voluntarily to 900 temporary shelters. Those who refused would be moved by police officers, the government agency Notimex reported.Mexican forecasters predicted up to 10 inches of rain on the coast and "torrential downpours" in the Jalisco state capital of Guadalajara, Notimex said. Public schools were canceled in Acapulco and surrounding communities.In the resort cities of Ixtapa and Zijuatanejo, about three hours up the coast from Acapulco, authorities closed the port to small ocean craft and set up temporary shelters. Some students decided to leave school early before any potential flooding.Light rain fell in Ixtapa, where the five-star Emporio Hotel received only minor warnings of rising tides. Receptionist David Gonzalez said none of the hotel's 92 guests had said they would leave early.Pedro Ochoa, reception clerk at the four-star Posada Real Ixtapa Hotel, said neither staff nor guests were making any special preparations for the storm because "we were advised that it was headed elsewhere."The center of the hurricane in late afternoon was about 130 miles south of the resort of Manzanillo, and was moving to the northwest at close to 14 mph.Meanwhile, a second weather system, Tropical Storm Kristy, formed in the Pacific far off the Mexican coast early Wednesday, but was forecast to move farther out to sea with no threat to land, the Hurricane Center said. Kristy had maximum sustained winds of 58 mph and was moving northwest at about 6 mph. Back To James News

News Rep. Katherine Harris

2006-08-29T11:51:00.000-05:00

Katherine Harris is seen in North Reddington Beach, Fla., in this Aug. 4, 2006, file photo. The candidate in Florida's Republican primary for U.S. Senate told a religious journal that separation of church and state is 'a lie' and God and the nation's founding fathers did not intend the country be 'a nation of secular laws.' (AP Photo/Steve Nesius)

MIAMI, Florida (AP) -- U.S. Rep. Katherine Harris told a religious journal that separation of church and state is "a lie" and God and the nation's founding fathers did not intend the country be "a nation of secular laws."
The Republican candidate for U.S. Senate also said that if Christians are not elected, politicians will "legislate sin," including abortion and gay marriage.
Harris made the comments -- which she clarified Saturday -- in the Florida Baptist Witness, the weekly journal of the Florida Baptist State Convention, which interviewed political candidates and asked them about religion and their positions on issues.
Separation of church and state is "a lie we have been told," Harris said in the interview, published Thursday, saying separating religion and politics is "wrong because God is the one who chooses our rulers."
Electing non-Christians allows 'legislating sin'
"If you're not electing Christians, then in essence you are going to legislate sin," Harris said.
Her comments drew criticism, including some from fellow Republicans, who called them offensive and not representative of the party.
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Florida, who is Jewish, told the Orlando Sentinel that she was "disgusted" by the comments.
Harris' campaign released a statement Saturday saying she had been "speaking to a Christian audience, addressing a common misperception that people of faith should not be actively involved in government."
The comments reflected "her deep grounding in Judeo-Christian values," the statement said, adding that Harris had previously supported pro-Israel legislation and legislation recognizing the Holocaust.
Harris' opponents in the GOP primary also gave interviews to the Florida Baptist Witness but made more general statements on their faith.
Harris, 49, faced widespread criticism for her role overseeing the 2000 presidential recount as Florida's secretary of state.
State GOP leaders -- including Gov. Jeb Bush -- don't think she can win against Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson in November. Fundraising has lagged, frustrated campaign workers have defected in droves and the issues have been overshadowed by news of her dealings with a corrupt defense contractor who gave her $32,000 in illegal campaign contributions. Back To James News

new "weak" Israel

2006-08-13T11:12:00.000-05:00

Neighbors Smell Blood in Israeli Cease-Fire AcceptanceArabs and Muslims from Iran, Hizbullah and the PA are celebrating Israel’s acceptance of the UN ceasefire, dubbing it a "surrender" and calling on Arab states to attack the new "weak" Israel.more READ James News Photo

southern Lebanon

2006-08-08T14:49:00.000-05:00

Tyre residents warned to stay indoors
Shells continue to fall around Tyre in southern Lebanon as it awaits its fate. Most of the 100,000 inhabitants have fled, along with many more from villages who earlier had crowded in to Tyre to escape Israeli bombardments.Those who remain now are trapped. The port city is completely cut off from the rest of Lebanon by Israeli air strikes that have destroyed the roads and bridges. The Israelis have warned that cars moving south of the Litani river risk being bombed on suspicion of carrying weapons.Food and water is in critically short supply. Twelve members of the Dhair family are crowded into a house where normally three live. The mother, Tamam, said the adults are used to the sounds of war, but not the children: "I'm not afraid, thank God, but I'm worried about how the children are handing the bombing." Her husband Hussein voiced the thought: "If Israel would just leave us in peace, we could live in peace with them." But peace seems a long way off and the frontlines of Israel5;s ground offensive against the Hizbollah militants are much closer.
Beirut offers to send troops south The AustralianLebanon port city suffers the ravages of war Washington PostChristian Science Monitor - Irish Examiner - Independent Online - Malaysia Star

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NEWS blog 2

2006-08-06T11:15:00.000-05:00

NEWS blog "JAMES NEWS PHOTO" . to find news, current events, the headlines, news photos, analysis & opinion on top stories, world, business, politics, entertainment, technology, and more. ... Get the JAMES NEWS PHOTO. Comments, Once again you better than CNN. READ James News Photo

2006-07-24T15:18:00.000-05:00

Rice in Lebanon as battle continues
Sydney Morning Herald - 0 minute agoUS Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has flown into Beirut to seek a "sustainable" ceasefire in Lebanon, where Hizbollah guerrillas are battling an Israeli tank incursion in the south.

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Israeli soldier

2006-07-18T11:27:00.000-05:00

Israelis Say Offensive Could Last Weeks photo

An Israeli soldier runs to reload an Israeli heavy artillery piece after it fired towards targets in southern Lebanon from a position near Safed, in northern Israel, Tuesday, July 18, 2006. Israeli officials on Tuesday said their military offensive in Lebanon could last several more weeks and possibly involve large numbers of ground forces _ casting doubt on the effectiveness of growing diplomatic efforts to broker a cease-fire. (AP Photo/Ariel Schait)

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Bush Polls Don't

2006-06-18T12:48:00.000-05:00

Photo: In this photo provided by CBS, White House press secretary Tony Snow appears on CBS's "Face the Nation" in Washington, Sunday, June 18, 2006. (AP Photo/CBS Face the Nation, Karin Cooper)
Related Story: Spokesman: Bush Polls Don't Rule Iraq War

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Afghan insurgents toll rises to 85

2006-06-18T10:44:00.000-05:00

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- Taliban militants mounted new attacks Sunday as Afghan and coalition troops pressed on with a major offensive that has killed about 85 suspected insurgents in targeted operations in the past few days, officials said. CNN.com - 1 minute ago
Afghan insurgents toll rises to 85

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Homeland Security

2006-06-16T14:48:00.000-05:00

Shaveta Bansal - All Headline News Contributor
Washington D.C. (AHN) - In a 160-page report reviewing the federal analysis about nations' preparedness for catastrophes, the Homeland Security Department concluded that most American cities and states are unrehearsed for any major disaster.
The AP says, the report which analyzes response and evacuation procedures for all 50 states, the nation's 75 largest cities and six U.S. territories, comes nearly five years after the 9/11 attacks and 10 months after Hurricane Katrina.
Citing the loopholes in the state and city emergency response plans the analysis revealed that although the emergency plans appear to be stronger in 18 states along the nation's "Hurricane Belt," a flawed preparedness was noticed in 131 state and city emergency response plans.
It says the nationwide response plans for major disasters are obsolete and often uncoordinated.
The review found, "Time and again, these factors extract a severe penalty in the midst of a crisis: precious time is consumed in the race to correct the misperceptions of federal, state and local responders about roles, responsibilities and actions."
The review which had been ordered by President Bush in his September 15th speech last year in New Orleans, weeks after Katrina ravaged the city, was delivered to Congress Thursday.
According to the copy of the review obtained by the AP, the report criticized the states and cities for ill planning in areas of mass care, issuance of disaster warnings and designation of a clear chain of command during major disasters.
The report said that the 18 states from Maine to Texas that come under Hurricane belt were more prepared for the disasters than rest of the nation.
The review is the latest in a series of government and expert analyses since Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast last Aug. 29.
The latest report was released as the Senate sent President Bush a $94.5 billion emergency spending bill that included funds for new aid for Gulf Coast hurricane victims.

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Katherine Harris

2006-06-15T18:57:00.000-05:00

June 15, 2006 7:30 p.m. EST
Matthew Borghese - All Headline News Staff Writer
Miami, FL (AHN) - Florida Rep. Katherine Harris may be having a bit of trouble coming up with the cash she promised to spend on her campaign for U.S. Senate.
Harris has told reporters that she plans to use $10 million of her own money to finance her attempt at claiming Bill Nelson's (D) seat.
However, according to her financial disclosure report released by law, she only has assets valued at between $1.25 million and $5.7 million.
According to the Palm Beach Post, Harris' report did not list any assets Harris may have received or could receive from the estate of her father, George W. Harris Jr., who was chief executive officer and chairman of the board of Citrus and Chemical Bank in Polk County when he died in January. Most of Harris' wealth comes from a trust from the estate of her grandfather, cattle and real estate magnate Ben Hill Griffin Jr.

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NEWS blog

2006-06-15T12:02:00.000-05:00

South Carolina veto

2006-06-15T09:47:00.000-05:00

South Carolina Lawmakers Override Governor's VetoJune 15, 2006 9:41 a.m. EST
Richard Rittierodt - All Headline News Contributor
Columbia, SC (AHN) - Stating that Governor Mark Sanford's veto would have shut down the state government, the South Carolina Legislature overrode his veto.
Sanford stated that he vetoed the budget because he would have had to cut $400 million from the $6.6 billion budget and he urged the lawmakers to pass a leaner bill.
However, the House overrode the veto with a 99-13 vote and the Senate did the same with a 34-7 vote.
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Tech News

2006-05-14T06:43:00.000-05:00

Tech News
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MySpace.com Bragging Leads to Charges
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Video Game 'Console Wars' Enter New Phase
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Nokia to Add Google Talk to Tablet Device
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Major Cities Sue Online Travel Agents

Most Recent Articles From James News Photo May 14

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Winston ChurchillThis Day In History World War II May 13 1940 Churchill announces: "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat." On this day in 1940, as Winston Churchill takes the helm as Great Britai ...

James News Photo

Campbell's Soup 2

2006-05-10T19:14:00.000-05:00

Campbell's Soup
My Warhol: Can It Be Art? A Campbell's Soup can scribbled on by the icon comes out of the closet. What's it worth? Web Extra: Soup Art, 1985 Warhol Interview Rice Downplays Letter From Iranian Presid ......
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Tech News May 9

2006-05-09T04:12:00.000-05:00

Tech News
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Microsoft Preps New Version of Windows CE
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Playstation 3 to Have Two Price Levels
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Warner Bros. to Distribute Films on Web
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Beatles Lose Suit Against Apple Computer

read more Bush's Spy
10 hours ago
Michael Hayden, left, George Bush's choice to replace Porter Goss as director of the CIA. Photo: AP/Ron Edmonds By Mark Tran / USA George Bush today named an air force general, Michael Hayden, as Ame ...... James News Photo

Business News

2006-05-08T18:13:00.000-05:00

Business News
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Wachovia's $25.5 bln Golden West buy criticized
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Dell lowers forecast as it cuts prices
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Stocks flat as crude falls; Fed, Dell in focus
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Teck makes bid for Inco; Falconbridge miffed

read more Bush's Spy
22 minutes ago
Michael Hayden, left, George Bush's choice to replace Porter Goss as director of the CIA. Photo: AP/Ron Edmonds By Mark Tran / USA George Bush today named an air force general, Michael Hayden, as Ame ......

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Sports News May 8

2006-05-08T03:53:00.000-05:00

Headlines May 8

Sports News
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Bonds Hits No. 713, Within One of Ruth
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Pistons Frustrate James, Rip Cavs 113-86
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Duncan, Bowen Lead Spurs Past Mavs 87-85
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Nash Wins Second Straight MVP Award

Sources: AP Reuters NY Times CBS MSNBC USA TODAY FOX

James News Photo

2006-05-06T03:20:00.000-05:00

Headlines May 6
Sports News May 6

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Jones' OT Shot Puts Cavs in Semis
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Derby Winner May Depend on Fast Start
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Bonds Homerless, Phils Rout Giants
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Parker Helps Spurs Oust Kings in a Rout

Sources: AP Reuters NY Times CBS MSNBC USA TODAY FOX
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Sports News

2006-05-05T03:58:00.000-05:00

Headlines May 5

Sports News
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Tim Thomas Helps Suns Force Game 7
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O'Neal Leads Heat Into Second Round
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Nets Beat Pacers, Move on to Semifinals
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Source: Lowe to Take N.C. State Job
Sources: AP Reuters NY Times CBS MSNBC USA TODAY FOX
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Sports News

2006-05-04T03:16:00.000-05:00

Headlines May 4

Sports News
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James' OT Layup With 0.9 Left Lifts Cavs
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Tiger Woods' Father Dies of Cancer
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Pistons Easily Advance, Rip Bucks 122-93
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Derby Favorite Brother Derek at No. 18

James News Photo

Sports News May 3

2006-05-03T06:59:00.000-05:00

Sports News
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Bryant, Bell Ejected as Suns Stay Alive
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Bonds Hits 712th HR, Is Two Shy of Ruth
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Injured Wade Helps Heat Take 3-2 Lead
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Nets Top Pacers 92-86, Lead Series 3-2

Headlines May 3
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Sports News Apr 15

2006-04-15T03:13:00.000-05:00

Headlines Apr 15

Sports News
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Bonds Being Investigated for Perjury
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Police Tried to Interview Duke Players
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Larry Brown May Miss Rest of the Season
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Gordon Lifts Bulls Into 8th in East

James News Photo

sports news Apr 13

2006-04-13T03:45:00.000-05:00

LeBron Sprains Ankle in Loss to Pistons photoAUBURN HILLS, Mich. (AP) - LeBron James hopped on his right foot, sparing his sprained left ankle, and the Cleveland Cavaliers gasped a week before their first playoff appearance since 1998. The Detroit Pistons were routing the Cavs when their...
Mets, Martinez Stifle Nationals 3-1 photoWASHINGTON (AP) - Pedro Martinez vs. Jose Guillen. Bases loaded. One-run game. One who had declared "enough is enough" after the other had hit him twice in one game last week. Both teams playing under a season-long warning to cut out the beanballs....
Memphis' Calipari Agrees to Extension MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) - John Calipari will remain the basketball coach at Memphis after agreeing to a contract extension Wednesday. Calipari had discussions with North Carolina State about its coaching vacancy and negotiated a raise and extension...
Mariners Halt Indians' Win Streak at Six photoCLEVELAND (AP) - The human hitting machine, Ichiro Suzuki has 1,139 hits during five-plus seasons in the majors. Few have have felt as good as one in the fourth inning on Wednesday. "I was just about as happy as when I got my first hit," said...
Thome Homers Again, ChiSox Top Tigers photoDETROIT (AP) - Jim Thome looks like he's headed for a big season - just ask Detroit manager Jim Leyland. Thome homered for the second straight game and Jose Contreras tossed eight strong innings to lift the Chicago White Sox over the Tigers 4-3...
Maddux Gets 320th Win, Cubs Top Reds 4-1 photoCHICAGO (AP) - Greg Maddux's final performance as a 30-something pitcher was like so many others during his long career. Efficient, quick and well-conceived. Now it's time to move on. To his next start in five days and to another decade of life....
Duke Boosters Hire Former Clinton Lawyer DURHAM, N.C. (AP) - A small group of boosters and others close to the Duke University lacrosse team have hired President Clinton's former lawyer as part of an aggressive public relations effort to argue that the players did not rape a woman at...
Iverson's 40 Lift 76ers Past Nets 116-96 photoEAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. (AP) - The Philadelphia 76ers got their groove back, and not a moment too soon. Allen Iverson had 40 points and 10 assists and Chris Webber returned from a back injury to score 18 as Philadelphia remained tied for the final...
Thornton Helps Sharks Into Playoffs photoVANCOUVER, British Columbia (AP) - Coming from behind is nothing new for the San Jose Sharks. Neither is Joe Thornton leading the charge back. Thornton assisted on four goals, including Christian Ehrhoff's winner just 34 seconds into overtime,...
Police: Booster Death Not Homicide Yet MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) - Police backed off calling the death of an Alabama football booster a homicide Wednesday, a day after investigators said he died in a fierce, bloody struggle. A police statement referred to a continuing "death investigation"...
read more Headlines April 13
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Bush Blames Democrats 2

2006-04-12T18:56:00.000-05:00

Bush Blames Democrats
In James News Photo
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush, trying to head off the latest in a string of setbacks, blamed Democratic "blocking tactics" on Saturday for stalling an immigration overhaul and urged an end to ......

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Sports News Apr 12

2006-04-12T07:06:00.000-05:00

Sports News
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D.A. Vows to Press Ahead With Rape Probe
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Jeff Capel Takes Over as Oklahoma Coach
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Indians Extend Winning Streak to Six
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Yankees Rally Past Royals in Home Opener
read more Headlines April 12 James News Photo

Lost Gospel of Judas 2

2006-04-11T16:47:00.000-05:00

Lost Gospel of Judas

In James News Photo
Lost Gospel of Judas more Buddies subversives joezsrepublicanpage retiredthoughts apoliticalnut bookworm snacks mentalhealthrn saito56 wittygal meanderthalis grumpy blog lovelylinda walleyeman Subscribe To This Blog Content Feeds Jamesnews's...

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Carroll Statement

2006-04-04T13:55:00.000-05:00

I also gave a TV interview to the Iraqi Islamic Party shortly after my release. The party had promised me the interview would never be aired on television, and broke their word. At any rate, fearing retribution from my captors, I did not speak freely. Out of fear I said I wasn't threatened. In fact, I was threatened many times. Jill Carroll statement csmonitor.com

Delay to Leave Congress
In James News Photo 1 hour ago
Republican Congressman Tom DeLay plans to resign his Texas seat in the face of mounting political and legal problems. DeLay to Leave Congress DeLay NPR Interview Political Timeline Resignation Statem

Mary Winkler Depression
In James News Photo
While Mary Winkler remains in jail accused of murdering her husband at home in Selmer, Tennessee last month, her lawyers are slowly revealing what may become the basis for her defense – postpartum
James News Photo

Condoleezza Rice

2006-04-02T07:03:00.000-05:00

Rice Says She Looks Forward To Closing Of Guantanamo Bay Prison Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says on Saturday the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba will not stay open "any longer than is needed." The comments are made at a news conference with British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, who is hosting the secretary for a two-day visit.

Taylor
In James News Photo
Prepping Taylor for Trial Desmond de Silva expects to prosecute former Liberian leader Charles Taylor for war crimes. But amid the potential unrest a Taylor trial in Sierra Leone could bring to West ......

Immigration
In James News Photo
Inside the Immigration Debate Millions of illegal immigrants could become citizens under a Senate plan, felons under a House bill. Impact on U.S. Economy Politics & Policies Involved Poll: Americ ......
James News Photo

Politics Is Facing Change

2006-04-01T13:17:00.000-06:00

The transformation of American politics by the Internet is accelerating with the approach of the 2006 Congressional and 2008 White House elections, prompting the rewriting of rules on advertising, fund-raising, mobilizing supporters and even the spreading of negative information. Democrats and Republicans are sharply increasing their use of e-mail, interactive Web sites, candidate and party blogs, and text-messaging to raise money, organize get-out-the-vote efforts and assemble crowds for a rallies. The Internet, they said, appears to be far more efficient, and less costly, than the traditional tools of politics, notably door knocking and telephone banks. Politics Is Facing Sweeping Change via the Internet

Sea Lion - one hour ago
Sea lion C404 is seen in the fish ladder at Bonneville Dam Tuesday, March 21, 2006, in Cascade Locks, Ore. Numerous sea lions head for the dam each spring, but C404 is in a class alone. Extra gates, ...

NPR on James News Photo - 3 hours ago
READ 9/11 Recordings READ 57 Dead 'Inside Man' and Beyond: A Visit with Spike Lee The director talks about making his biggest-budget film ever; his long working relationship with Denzel Washington; a ...

Newspaper April 1, 2006 - 6 hours ago
READ 9/11 Recordings READ 57 Dead The Washington Post leads with (while the New York Times off-leads, the Wall Street Journal fronts and the Los Angeles Times stuffs) the guilty plea of Tony C. Rudy, ...

9/11 Recordings - 16 hours ago
New York Releases One-Sided 911 Recordings Under court order, New York releases police and fire 911 dispatch tapes from Sept. 11, 2001. The tapes contain only one side of the conversations. Police an ...

57 Dead - 16 hours ago
57 Dead, Two Missing After Boat Capsizes A rescue worker stands on the wreckage of a boat after bringing it to shore in Bahrain Friday, March 31, 2006. At least 57 people drowned and 13 were missing ...

James News Photo

A British youth takes on animal rights

2006-03-31T18:09:00.000-06:00

Breakthrough claimed by Microsoft at hearing
OXFORD, England With his baggy, black clothes, his lank, black, center-parted hair and black-framed spectacles offsetting a moon-pale face, Laurie Pycroft knows how he is likely to be described. "You are welcome to use the word geek," he tells an interviewer. "I embrace it as a badge of honor. I am pretty archetypically geeky."

Saffron - 3 hours ago
Saffron is a spice derived from the flower of the saffron crocus, a species of crocus in the family Iridaceae. The flower's three stigmas (the distal ends of the plant's carpels) and parts of its sty ...
Headlines Mar 31, 3:53 Am - 16 hours ago
Bolton Blames New Palestinian Foreign Minister Of "Casual Slander" U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations (UN) John Bolton speaks out against anti-American comments from the newly sworn in Palestinian ...
The Yom Kippur War - 1 day ago
was fought from October 6 (the day of Yom Kippur) to October 26, 1973, between Israel and a coalition of Egypt and Syria. The War began with a surprise joint attack by Egypt and Syria into the Sinai ...
Headlines Mar 30 - 1 day ago
U.S. Senate Passes "Very, Very Weak" Lobbying Bill The U.S. Senate has passed its first lobbying restrictions in 11 years, yet many proponents of the bill say it is far too weak to matter. The bill p ...
Boy Gets Caught - 2 days ago
Two years ago, a boy crawled inside a toy machine at a Piggly Wiggly in Sheboygan, Wis., and was rescued with the help of a locksmith. Last year, a toddler climbed into a toy machine at a Wal-Mart in.
James News Photo

The Yom Kippur War

2006-03-30T06:06:00.000-06:00

James News Photo
was fought from October 6 (the day of Yom Kippur) to October 26, 1973, between Israel and a coalition of Egypt and Syria. The War began with a surprise joint attack by Egypt and Syria into the Sinai and Golan Heights, respectively, which had been captured by Israel six years earlier during the Six-Day War. The Egyptians and Syrians advanced during the first 24–48 hours, after which momentum began to swing in Israel's favor. By the second week of the war, the Syrians had been pushed entirely out of the Golan Heights. In the Sinai to the south, the Israelis had struck at the "hinge" between two invading Egyptian armies, crossed the Suez Canal (where the old cease-fire line had been), and cut off an entire Egyptian army just as a United Nations cease-fire came into effect. The war had far-reaching implications for many nations. The Arab world, which had been humiliated by the lopsided defeat of the Egyptian-Syrian-Jordanian alliance during the Six-Day War, felt psychologically vindicated by its string of victories early in the conflict. This vindication paved the way for the peace process that followed, as well as liberalizations such as Egypt's infitah policy. The Camp David Accords which came soon after led to normalized relations between Egypt and Israel—the first time any Arab country had recognized the Israeli state. Egypt, which had already been drifting away from the Soviet Union, then left the Soviet sphere of influence almost entirely
James News Photo

My Way.com 3

2006-03-26T17:04:00.000-06:00

about My Way My Way offers world-class search powered by the Internet's leading providers, robust content from industry-leading sources, and full-portal personalization - all with no banner ads and no pop-ups. read more My Way.com James News Photo

Little Pieces 2

2006-03-25T09:31:00.000-06:00

The Chicago Tribune is paying attention to Abdul Rahman, the Afghan man facing the death penalty for being a Christian convert. The paper provides background on Rahman's troubled relations with his family, which has spurned him and accused him of mental illness. Jail officials and prosecutors are bloodthirsty. read more Little Pieces James News Photo

A Reply

2006-03-24T22:06:00.000-06:00

This article by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt in the latest LRB has attracted wide notice. Below is the text of a letter to the LRB from Professors Jeffrey Herf and Andrei S. Markovits, in which they respond to the article. I post their letter here with permission.
read more A Reply
James News Photo

Bush Preemptive

2006-03-17T19:43:00.000-06:00

As our ears prick to the drumbeat of Bush v. Iran, a highly respected researcher from the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) warns that Washington is edging toward a policy of nuclear preemption, and Teheran knows it.
Although the post 9/11 doctrine of USA military strategy known as "Global Strike" is often promoted as a post nuclear plan, Hans M. Kristensen finds documentary evidence that a "nuclear option" is included.
READ Rep. Katherine Harris James News Photo
In a timeline released by FAS on March 15, and so far reported only by long-time disarmament activist Sanford Gottlieb's op-ed in the Baltimore Sun, Kristensen concedes that the USA may be reducing the size of its huge nuclear-weapon stockpile.
However, writes Kristensen, "Global Strike is first and foremost offensive and preemptive in nature and deeply rooted in the expectation that deterrence "will" fail sooner or later. Rather than waiting for the mushroom cloud to appear, a phrase used several times by the Bush administration, the Global Strike mission is focused on defeating the threat before it is unleashed."
So while the USA stockpile is down to about 5,000 or 10,000 nuclear warheads, Kristensen argues that planners of the new regime in military strategy, "simultaneously have created a new mission that reaffirms the importance and broadens the role of nuclear weapons further by changing or lowering the perceived threshold or timing for when nuclear weapons may be used in a conflict. That threshold must be different than in the past, otherwise why include a nuclear option in CONPLAN 8022?"
CONPLAN 8022 is the Pentagon's contingency strike plan that Kristensen is tracking through freedom of information requests. He calls CONPLAN 8022, "a new strike plan developed by STRATCOM [the Pentagon's Strategic Command, tasked with taking the lead in matters of weapons of mass destruction] in coordination with the Air Force and Navy to provide a prompt global strike options to the President with nuclear, conventional, space, and information warfare capabilities."
Kristensen could have also mentioned that the language and logic of CONPLAN looks very much like the thing suggested in 1997 by a blue-ribbon National Defense Panel (NDP) that included top-level military brass and the now recently departed Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage.
"Rogue states and terrorists, perhaps armed with weapons of mass destruction, may attempt different kinds of attacks, not only on our forces abroad, but in our homeland, in urban areas and perhaps space," warned the first paragraph of the NDP press release on Dec. 1, 1997. While the NDP report encouraged nuclear disarmament agreements such as SALT III, the framework of diplomacy was presented as a stratagem that would have to make do until the USA achieved technological superiority:
"Given the evolving threat and continued improvement of our missile defense technology, a hedging strategy, rather than immediate deployment of a missile defense system, is a sensible approach," said the NDP report. "But, it is important that we proceed in a way that permits rapid deployment if threats should develop and our technologies mature."
The NDP report encouraged the military to "experiment" with solutions to the "power projection challenge" that would be faced in tough cases of threat by missile, when the USA would not have, in the words of one panelist, "access to forward bases, ports, airfields, facilities." Of course, that was years before 9/11.
Kristensen's timeline marks June 2004 as the point where Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld orders the implementation of CONPLAN 8022 so that the president of the USA could be enabled with, "a prompt, global strike capability." Rumsfeld's order was issued approximately one year before release of the Downing Street Memo alleges that the president of the USA has been fixing his facts to meet the needs of his trigger finger.
Six weeks after Rumsfeld gave the order, writes Kristensen, "on August 17, STRATCOM published Global Strike Interim Capability Operations Order (OPORD) which changed the nature of CONPLAN 8022 from a concept plan to a contingency plan. In response, selected bombers, ICBMs, SSBNs, and information warfare units were tasked against specific high-value targets in adversary countries. Finally, on November 18, 2005, Joint Functional Component Command Space and Global Strike achieved Initial Operational capability after being thoroughly tested in the nuclear strike exercise Global Lightning 06."
What this alphabet soup spells out is a process that brings "Global Strike" into operation through military exercises that confirm the readiness of nuclear missiles launched from land, sea, and air. The next "war game" in this series is scheduled for April.
The release of Kristensen's timeline coincided with a scheduled hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday. But the hearing was postponed at the last minute.
Says Kristensen, "Because the question of the scope of and assumptions about nuclear weapons use in the Global Strike mission has profound implications for U.S. military strategy and international affairs, it is vital that the Congress, the media, and the public in general get better answers."
Thanks to the din of Bush v. Iran, however, Kristensen's plea for sunlight has not yet been answered. Meanwhile, a contract to provide infrastructure for CONPLAN 8022 is scheduled to be awarded in December.

SEARCH NEWS

2006-03-16T18:07:00.000-06:00

SEARCH GOOGLE OR YAHOO FOR "JAMES NEWS PHOTO" . to find news, current events, the headlines, news photos, analysis & opinion on top stories, world, business, politics, entertainment, technology, and more. ... Get the JAMES NEWS PHOTO. Comments, Once again you better than CNN. READ James News Photo

jamesnews. claude allen

2006-03-14T16:30:00.000-06:00

In court documents, Maryland police say Claude Allen made fraudulent returns worth at least five-thousand dollars at Target and other stores in the Washington suburbs on 25 different occasions.

READ Jamesnews. Iraq: Then And Now D.c. James News Photo

Authorities say the former domestic policy adviser to President Bush would buy items, and then return to the store, pick up identical items from store shelves and take them to the return desk, presenting his original receipt.
He's been charged with theft and theft scheme. Allen's lawyer denies the charges, saying they are a result of problems with Allen's credit cards.
Allen resigned from his White house job in February.

jamesnews. sopranos

2006-03-14T14:10:00.000-06:00

I can't believe I posted predictions about the new season and did not post what I've told a few people was my hope for the show: Kill Tony in the first episode and tell the entire story in flashback. That way we get over the "What happens to Tony?" question, which is always up to the semi-arbitrary whim of the writers, and can focus on how and why it happens. Now that looks like a real possibility for the show.
read more Joho the Blog
READ Jamesnews. Iraq: Then And Now D.c. James News Photo

jamesnews. Civil War Iraq

2006-03-13T18:31:00.000-06:00

Democrats charged that Bush was focusing on the same old rhetoric defending policies that Americans oppose instead of a real strategy for victory in Iraq. Both sides of the political debate have their eye on midterm elections in eight months.

READ Milosevic Found Dead D.c. James News Photo
"Rather than leading a White House public relations blitz, the president should lead by pulling the factions together right away in a summit to develop a unified plan for Iraq's future," said Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (news, bio, voting record), D-Mass.
Bush urged patience among Americans and coalition allies as Iraqis work to form a new government. He said the Feb. 22 bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra "was a clear attempt to ignite a civil war."
"I wish I could tell you that the violence is waning and that the road ahead will be smooth," Bush said. "It will not. There will be more tough fighting and more days of struggle, and we will see more images of chaos and carnage in the days and months to come."
read more Bush: Iraq Insurgency Wants Civil War

Iran bbc Female frustrations

2006-03-12T17:27:00.000-06:00

The crowd threw stones and the odd petrol bomb and then managed to wrest the name plaque off the wall of the embassy.
Increasingly there seems to be a desire on the part of zealous officials here to separate male and female journalists A female photographer I knew suddenly rushed out of the focus of activity, shouting. It turned out one of the bearded Islamic vigilantes had pinched her bum.
There is no doubt being female sometimes gives you a different perspective on a story.
Like the time we were invited to celebrate the founding of the basij - an Islamic vigilante force. read more Female frustrations of Iran reporting - news.bbc.co.uk

READ D.c. James News Photo

D.C. Democrats

2006-03-11T10:10:00.000-06:00

Mah fellow progressives, now is the time for all good men and women to come to the aid of the party. I don’t know about you, but I have had it with the D.C. Democrats, had it with the DLC Democrats, had it with every calculating, equivocating, triangulating, straddling, hair-splitting son of a "B" up there, and that includes Hillary Rodham Clinton.
I will not be supporting Senator Clinton because: a) she has no clear stand on the war and b) Terri Schiavo and flag-burning are not issues where you reach out to the other side and try to split the difference. You want to talk about lowering abortion rates through cooperation on sex education and contraception, fine, but don’t jack with stuff that is pure rightwing firewater. read more

READ James News No Title Available James News Photo

Bush desperate and dangerous

2006-03-10T21:41:00.000-06:00

The crimes of the Bush Administration are so many and varied that none of us should be surprised by anything that might happen in the coming weeks and months: Bin Laden captured or reported killed, a U.S.-Israeli air assault on Iran's nuclear facilities, a major terrorist attack inside the U.S. to be followed by martial law, the announcement of a bird-flu outbreak with the military placed in charge. I'm pretty level-headed and don't usually think in these dire terms, but these guys have backed themselves into a tight political corner and are desperate -- and dangerous.

READ James News No Title Available James News Photo

I'm more and more convinced that it will be Republicans, many of them of the true conservative and realist kind, who effectively will do in the Bush Administration.
In this, I am reminded of the behavior of Richard Nixon when he realized that he was fast losing his middle-class, bourgeois base: He called it quits on the Vietnam War, and likewise on his presidency after his crimes were exposed.
But unlike Nixon's crew, Bush&Co. seem willing to take the country down with them, so desperate are they to hold onto power, deplete the treasury, pay off their corporate friends, carry out their ideological revolution -- and keep themselves out of the federal slammer.

furry lobster 2

2006-03-08T22:25:00.000-06:00

Scientists said the animal, which they named Kiwa hirsuta, was so distinct from other species that they created a new family and genus for it.
A team of American-led divers found the animal in waters 2,300 meters (7,540 feet) deep at a site 1,500 kilometers (900 miles) south of Easter Island last year, according to Michel Segonzac of the French Institute for Sea Exploration.

READ Furry Lobster James News Photo

The new crustacean is described in the journal of the National Museum of Natural History in Paris.
The animal is white and 15 centimeters (5.9 inches) long -- about the size of a salad plate.
In what Segonzac described as a "surprising characteristic," the animal's pincers are covered with sinuous, hair-like strands.
It's also blind. The researchers found it had only "the vestige of a membrane" in place of eyes, Segonzac said.
The researchers said that while legions of new ocean species are discovered each year, it is quite rare to find one that merits a new family.
New animal resembles furry lobster - cnn.com

Democracy is Hard

2006-03-07T22:54:00.000-06:00

Luzerne County Election Bureau Director Leonard Piazza said he’ll work seven-day weeks starting Monday to prepare the county for electronic voting on May 16.
“We’re taking what normally is a four- to six-month roll-out and compressing it into 10 weeks. It will require a lot more work on our part and the vendor’s part to make sure it’s successful.”
READ John Murtha And Cheney James News Photo
READ Simpsons James News Photo
County officials got the go-ahead Thursday to use the machines in the primary when the state Supreme Court overturned a previous court ruling that said counties could not switch from lever machines without a referendum.
County Commissioner Greg Skrepenak said the county must receive a signed contract by Wednesday from Election Systems & Software, manufacturer of the ATM-like iVotronic machine the county agreed to purchase. He said he has no reason to believe that deadline won’t be met.

moral high ground

2006-03-07T16:45:00.000-06:00

What strikes most Americans as a perfectly normal evolving national character looks increasingly ugly to the 1.2 billion Muslims who claim the moral high ground. This year's Oscars reflected the loss of an ethos that once attracted average people the world over. In the perpetual struggle between good and evil, the two camps appear to have merged, at least as seen in America when viewed from abroad.
READ Simpsons
READ Bush White House Leaks

Pity the now down-on-her-luck Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy Karen Hughes. Her principal mission is to explain to Muslim countries in general and Middle Eastern states in particular that Judeo-Christian America stands for the same fundamental values as Islam. This week, the Oscar brouhaha in Los Angeles and the arrival in Iraq of Spooky, the Pentagon's deadliest anti-personnel weapons system, erected new barriers of misunderstanding.

Simpsons

2006-03-07T07:19:00.000-06:00

Someone went through a lot of trouble to very accurately depict the Simpsons intro with real life actors. Simpsons

jamesnews. driver biting policeman

2006-03-06T21:19:00.000-06:00

A drunken hearse driver has been arrested in the western German town of Krefeld after biting a police officer taking him in for an alcohol test, police said on Monday.
Police had called for a hearse at a funeral home to transport a body to the cemetery.
"The hearse driver nearly fell over when he got out of the car. Then he had to hold onto everything he could find as he stumbled to the house," said police spokesman Dietmar Greger.
READ Bush White House Leaks James News Photo
READ A New Town James News Photo
Police decided to take the man to the station to test his blood alcohol level, but when they tried to get him out of their car he started a fight and bit an officer several times in the hand.
The man was confined to a cell until he sobered up and has been charged with civil disorder and drunk driving.

jamesnews. Cindy Sheehan arrested

2006-03-06T18:34:00.000-06:00

About 20 protesters went to the U.S. mission to the United Nations to deliver a petition with 60,000 signatures seeking an end to the war. Nobody from the mission received them so Sheehan and three other American women sat down in front of the building, refused to leave, and were arrested.
A police spokesman said they were expected to be released later on Monday.
READ Bush White House Leaks James News Photo
READ A New Town James News Photo
The Iraqi women plan to deliver a petition to the White House on Wednesday. Earlier they held a news conference at U.N. headquarters calling for the United States to withdraw its forces.
Entisar Mohammad Ariabi, a pharmacist at Baghdad's Yarmook Teaching Hospital, wept as she told reporters of the hardships experienced by Iraqi women.
"U.S. occupation has destroyed our country, made it into a prison," she said. "Schools are bombed, hospitals are bombed."
"We thank you, Mr. Bush, for liberating our country from Saddam. But now, go out! Please go out!" she said.
Cindy Sheehan, the anti-war activist whose son was killed in the Iraq war, was arrested with three other protesters in New York on Monday after a rally with women from Iraq.
Sheehan became a central figure in the U.S. anti-war movement last summer after she camped outside President George W. Bush's Texas ranch and has been arrested at least two other times at protests.
On Monday, she had joined a delegation of women from Iraq at the rally at the United Nations, urging the United Nations to help prevent civil war in Iraq.

jamesnews. Riot Several People Hurt

2006-03-05T06:56:00.000-06:00

The rioting began when police responded to a report of a stabbing at the National Orange Show Events Center concert. When officers arrived, the crowd became agitated and several fights broke out, forcing the officers to back off, Lindsey said.
After backup arrived, the officers went in again and extracted the stabbing victim and another person who was beaten, Lindsey said. But the violent crowd forced officers to withdraw again.

A New Town Worst. Preznit. Ever James News Photo

With additional backup, including Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies and Fontana police, officers lined up in phalanx formation to clear the streets and they fired pepper balls and tear gas to move the crowd, Lindsey said.
As the crowd dispersed they destroyed two police cars and vandalized area businesses, Lindsey said. A trash bin was set on fire and storefront windows were smashed.
The all-day concert was scheduled to feature 22 punk rock bands, including G.B.H. and the Adicts.
Rioting broke out Saturday night at British punk band concert, injuring several people and destroying two police cars, officials said.
Some in the crowd of about 1,500 at the "British Invasion 2K6" show pelted police with rocks and bottles, forcing the officers to withdraw, police spokesman Sgt. Rick Lindsey said.
Two concertgoers were hospitalized with serious injuries, and two officers suffered minor injuries, he said.

jamesnews. Wall St

2006-03-04T13:04:00.000-06:00

On Monday, reports on U.S. factory orders for January and revised January data for durable goods orders are set for release. Factory orders are expected to have dropped 5.3 percent in January, according to the Reuters poll.

Worst. Preznit. Ever Cheney Ports And Katrina James News Photo

On Thursday, the U.S. international trade deficit for January is due from the Commerce Department. The trade gap is likely to have widened to $66.5 billion in January from $65.68 billion in December, according to the Reuters poll.
On the earnings calendar, results are on tap next week from the Kroger Co. , the largest U.S. grocer, and Albertson's Inc. , another grocery chain. (Wall St Week Ahead runs every week. Questions or comments on this column may be e-mailed to: emily.chasan(at)reuters.com) (Additional reporting by Caroline Valetkevitch)

jamesnews. Worst. Preznit. Ever 2

2006-03-03T16:56:00.000-06:00

Hat tip David Edwards. FEMA Brown is telling everyone that this is the "BIG ONE!" Bush says in the video that he's "fully prepared." He sure didn't act like he was now did he? Bush is busted for lying about the fact that nobody knew the levee's would possibly have been breached.
Here's the video of this breaking story. Worst. Preznit. Ever

jamesnews. Bush talks

2006-03-03T11:04:00.000-06:00

President George W. Bush arrived in Pakistan on Friday where he is expected to urge greater efforts against Islamist militants from a crucial U.S. ally in a global war on terrorism.
Bush arrived aboard Air Force One at a military airbase near Islamabad

Cheney Ports And Katrina Bush Poll 34 Percent James News Photo

from Pakistan's old rival India, where he called for the South Asian neighbors to settle their decades old dispute over the Kashmir region.
Bush is due to meet Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf, who took power in a military coup nearly seven years ago, for talks on Saturday.
Security in the capital, Islamabad, is tight a day after a suicide bomber killed himself and three other people, including a U.S. diplomat outside the U.S. consulate in the city of Karachi.
Bush's visit has sparked protests across the predominantly Muslim country by Islamists opposed to the U.S.-led war on terrorism and Musharraf's support for the campaign. Home > News

jamesnews. new $10 bill

2006-03-03T07:32:00.000-06:00

It has a more subdued hue, not to mention state-of-the-art security features, but the new $10 bill being issued today won't be mistaken for anything but the legendary sawbuck.
The U.S. government is distributing the new bill in hopes of foiling ever-improving counterfeiting techniques. The note boasts color-shifting ink, a sophisticated security thread and a new watermark.

Cheney Ports And Katrina Bush Poll 34 Percent James News Photo

Among the more noticeable changes are background colors of orange, yellow and red, a faint "We the People" inscription and small, yellow tens dotting the bill. The note also features images of the Statue of Liberty's torch and a slightly different portrait of Alexander Hamilton, one of the founding fathers, who no longer peers from an oval frame.
Despite the changes, the bill's promoters say it retains an "American look and feel." The new ten is the third note to be revamped in as many years, following the $20 and $50 bills. The U.S. Government also plans to release a revamped $100 bill.

jamesnews On. Patriot Act

2006-03-02T23:38:00.000-06:00

Capping months of partisan wrangling, the U.S. Senate gave final congressional approval on Thursday to renewing the USA Patriot Act, which expanded the government's power to track down foes in the war on terrorism.
A day after passing a related bill to better protect civil liberties under the act, the Senate endorsed the overall measure 89-10. It next goes to President George W. Bush to sign into law. The House of Representatives passed it in December.

Cheney Ports And Katrina Bush Poll 34 Percent James News Photo

First enacted shortly after the September 11 attacks, the Patriot Act broadened the ability of the U.S. government to obtain private records, conduct wiretaps and searches and share information.
Fierce debate over the act's renewal has pitted critics who say its provisions have infringed too much on basic rights against backers who say such measures are essential to safeguard America against further attacks.
With 16 provisions of the act set to expire next week, the bill would make 14 of them permanent and extend two others by four years.
The bill would also provide fresh tools to combat terrorist financing, protect mass transit, secure ports and curb abuse of methamphetamines, a highly addictive drug.
The version approved by the House included a number of changes to better safeguard privacy. But Senate Democrats, joined by a handful of Republicans, demanded more.
"I applaud the Senate for voting to renew the Patriot Act and overcoming the partisan attempts to block its passage," Bush said in a statement issued during his trip to South Asia. Continued...

Jamesnews. Iraq blasts kill 26

2006-03-01T21:00:00.000-06:00

Two bombs killed at least 26 people and wounded dozens of others Wednesday in Baghdad as former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein called for unity against the United States during his trial.
A week after the bombing of a revered Shiite Muslim shrine in Samarra sparked nationwide sectarian violence, a car bomb struck a crowded area in east Baghdad, killing 23 people and wounding 58 others, police said. A roadside blast also killed three people elsewhere in the capital.
The latest violence came as Hussein returned to court for a second day of hearings this week at his trial for alleged crimes against humanity in 1982.

Bush Poll 34 Percent Don Knotts Dies At 81 James News Photo

Before adjourning until March 12, prosecutors presented documents they said linked the former Iraqi leader and his co-defendants to the deaths of more than 140 Shiite men in Dujail.

Hussein -- a Sunni Muslim -- said Iraqis should be united against the U.S. invasion.
Hussein reportedly learned of the sectarian fighting during a seven-hour meeting earlier this week with a lawyer. On Tuesday, in Hussein's ancestral homeland of Tikrit, bombers damaged a mosque named for his late father.
More than 400 Iraqis have been killed -- at least 350 in Baghdad alone -- in sectarian fighting that ripped through the country after Samarra's Al-Askariya Mosque was bombed February 22, setting off reprisals against Sunnis and then retaliation against Shiites. The tit-for-tat bloodshed has raised fears of a civil war.

1,300 killed in Iraq Deadly Surge

2006-03-01T17:04:00.000-06:00

BAGHDAD, Grisly attacks and other sectarian violence unleashed by last week's bombing of a Shiite Muslim shrine have killed more than 1,300 Iraqis, making the past few days the deadliest of the war outside of major U.S. offensives, according to Baghdad's main morgue. The toll was more than three times higher than the figure previously reported by the U.S.

Bush Poll 34 Percent Don Knotts Dies At 81

Obesity James News Photo

military and the news media.
Hundreds of unclaimed dead lay at the morgue at midday Monday -- blood-caked men who had been shot, knifed, garroted or apparently suffocated by the plastic bags still over their heads. Many of the bodies were sprawled with their hands still bound -- and many of them had wound up at the morgue after what their families said was their abduction by the Mahdi Army, the Shiite militia of cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.
"After he came back from the evening prayer, the Mahdi Army broke into his house and asked him, 'Are you Khalid the Sunni infidel?' " one man at the morgue said, relating what were the last hours of his cousin, according to other relatives. "He replied yes and then they took him away."
Aides to Sadr denied the allegations, calling them part of a smear campaign by unspecified political rivals.
By Monday, violence between Sunni Arabs and Shiites appeared to have eased. As Iraqi security forces patrolled, American troops offered measured support, in hopes of allowing the Iraqis to take charge and prevent further carnage.
But at the morgue, where the floor was crusted with dried blood, the evidence of the damage already done was clear. Iraqis arrived throughout the day, seeking family members and neighbors among the contorted bodies.
"And they say there is no sectarian war?" demanded one man. "What do you call this?"
The brothers of one missing man arrived, searching for a body. Their hunt ended on the concrete floor, provoking sobs of mourning: "Why did you kill him?" "He was unarmed!" "Oh, my brother! Oh, my brother!"
Morgue officials said they had logged more than 1,300 dead since Wednesday -- the day the Shiites' gold-domed Askariya shrine was bombed -- photographing, numbering and tagging the bodies as they came in over the nights and days of retaliatory raids.
The Statistics Department of the Iraqi police put the nationwide toll at 1,020 since Wednesday, but that figure was based on paperwork that is sometimes delayed before reaching police headquarters. The majority of the dead had been killed after being taken away by armed men, police said.
The disclosure of the death tolls followed accusations by the U.S. military and later Iraqi officials that the news media had exaggerated the violence between Shiites and Sunnis over the past few days.
The bulk of the previously known deaths were caused by bombings and other large-scale attacks. But the scene at the morgue and accounts related by relatives indicated that most of the bloodletting came at the hands of self-styled executioners.

Octavia Butler, 1947-2006: Sci-fi writer

2006-02-28T23:47:00.000-06:00

Octavia Butler, 1947-2006: Sci-fi writer a gifted pioneer in white, male domain
Her father was a shoeshine man who died when she was a child, her mother was a maid who brought her along on jobs, yet Octavia Butler rose from these humble beginnings to become one of the country's leading writers - a female African American pioneer in the white, male domain of science fiction.

Bush Poll 34 Percent Don Knotts Dies At 81 James News Photo

Butler, 58, died after falling and striking her head Friday on a walkway outside her home in Lake Forest Park. The reclusive writer, who moved to Seattle in 1999 from her native Southern California, was a giant in stature (she was 6 feet tall by age 15) and in accomplishment.
She remains the only science fiction writer to receive one of the vaunted "genius grants" from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, a hard-earned $295,000 windfall in 1995 that followed years of poverty and personal struggles with shyness and self-doubt.
"People may call these 'genius grants,' " Butler said in a 2004 interview with the Seattle P-I, "but nobody made me take an IQ test before I got mine. I knew I'm no genius."
Butler's most popular work is "Kindred," a time-travel novel in which a black woman from 1976 Southern California is transported back to the violent days of slavery before the Civil War. The 1979 novel became a popular staple of school and college courses and now has more than a quarter million copies in print, but its birth was agonizing, like so much in Butler's solitary life.
"Kindred" was repeatedly rejected by publishers, many of whom could not understand how a science fiction novel could be set on a plantation in the antebellum South. Butler stuck to her social justice vision - "I think people really need to think what it's like to have all of society arrayed against you" - and finally found a publisher who paid her a $5,000 advance for "Kindred."
"I was living on my writing," Butler said, "and you could live on $5,000 back then. You could live, but not well. I got along by buying food I didn't really like but was nourishing: beans, potatoes. A 10-pound sack of potatoes lasts a long time."
Steven Barnes, another African American writer, knew Butler during her early writing days in Southern California and later in the Washington when he and his writer wife, Tananarive Due, lived for a time in Longview before returning to Los Angeles. Barnes saw Butler's confidence grow along with her reputation.
"Octavia was one of the purest writers I know," Barnes recalled Sunday. "She put everything she had into her work - she was extraordinarily committed to the craft. Yet, despite her shyness, she was also an open, generous and humane human being. I miss her so much already."
Due added, "It is a cliche to say that she was too good a soul, but it's true. What she really conveyed in her writing was the deep pain she felt about the injustices around her. All of it was a metaphor for war, poverty, power struggles and discrimination. All of that hurt her very deeply, but her gift was that she could use words for the pain and make the world better."
Due believed that Butler came to feel deeply at home in the Northwest after she relocated here with 300 boxes of books. The anonymity of her life in Seattle suited both her artistic devotion and temperament ("I always felt a deep loneliness in her," Barnes said). But Butler did become a frequent participant in readings and writers' conferences, especially Clarion West, which played a crucial role in her own start. She also served on the advisory board of Seattle's Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame.
A few friends did get to see the relaxed Butler away from her infrequent moments in the limelight, including Leslie Howle, who took her to see the recent version of "King Kong." Howle describes the writer as "one of the most fun people to be around, with an acerbic sense of humor and a keen observer of human nature."
Butler was a confirmed non-driver who would chat with other bus passengers or with neighbors who gave her rides when she trudged home with bags of groceries, as neighbor Terry Morgan did.
"The first time I picked her up, she took me into her house and autographed a copy of one of her books," Morgan said. "That was a great 'thank you,' especially since I am an African American and we felt a common bond. But it was also obvious to me that writing was her life."
The MacArthur grant brought increasing visibility to Butler and allowed her to buy her first house, where she tended to her ailing mother until her death. (Butler's survivors are two elderly aunts and many cousins in Southern California.)
But the MacArthur grant also brought daunting pressure. Three years later, Butler published "Parable of the Talents," winner of one of her two Nebula Awards in science fiction. Then years passed without another new novel, as projects in Seattle "petered out." Characters and ideas went nowhere and her blood pressure medication left her drowsy and depressed.
The frustrated artist - who first turned to writing at 12 after the sci-fi movie, "Devil Girl from Mars," convinced her that she could write something better - battled worries that "maybe I cannot write anymore."
But at long last, an unlikely vampire novel rekindled her creative fires and brought a burgeoning joy to her craft.
"I can't say I've had much fun in the last few years, what with my version of writer's block," a relieved Butler recalled in 2004. "Writing has been as difficult for me as for people who don't like to write and as little fun. But now the well is filling up again with this vampire novel."
Butler's death means that "Fledgling," published last fall to enthusiastic praise, will likely stand as her final novel, to the great disappointment to Butler's many fans and friends who expected more work.
"The only consolation in losing Octavia so soon," stressed Due, "is that she must have known her place in history."

Bush approval ratings

2006-02-28T19:48:00.000-06:00

WASHINGTON - President George W. Bush, hit by polls showing America's support for the Iraq war at an all-time low, denied on Tuesday Iraq was sliding into civil war, despite the worst sectarian strife since a U.S. invasion. The decline in Bush's public approval ratings came as he told Iraqis they faced a choice between "chaos or unity" amid violence that has dented U.S. hopes for the stability needed to pave the way for a U.S. troop withdrawal.
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New Orleans Mardi Gras

2006-02-28T14:13:00.000-06:00

NEW ORLEANS - The crowds were small and the costumes wickedly satirical as Mardi Gras built toward its boozy climax Tuesday in this hurricane-buckled city that could use a few laughs.The culmination of the eight-day pre-Lenten bash fell nearly six months to the day after the Aug. 29 storm that smashed thousands of homes and killed more than 1,300 people, the vast majority of them in New Orleans."I lost everything," Andrew Hunter, 42, said as he sat on the steps of his ruined home on Jackson Avenue.

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"But what the heck. This helps us keep our spirits up, and we need all the help we can get with that."Even amid the typical debauchery _ including early morning drinking, flashes of bare breasts and skimpy costumes in the French Quarter _ there was no escaping reminders of the storm.Zulu, the 97-year-old Mardi Gras club that lost 10 members to Katrina, paraded amid homes that still bear dirty brown water marks from the floodwaters that covered 80 percent of the city.Kevin and Marie Barre, a husband and wife from New Orleans, wore white plastic coveralls bearing the all-too-familiar spray-painted "X" that denotes a home that has been checked for bodies.
"It's a reminder. A lot of people who are coming down here don't understand what we've been through," Kevin Barre said.Several people draped in blue tarps like those used to cover damaged roofs. One woman appeared in a nun's habit made of a blue tarp. A man with a model of a military helicopter suspended over his head wrapped himself in a white blanket with "2000 lbs" stenciled on it _ he was a giant sandbag, like the ones dropped into one of the breached levees.Another group of French Quarter revelers dressed as blind people with canes and dark glasses. They wore hard hats and T-shirts emblazoned "LEVEE INSPECTOR."Along an Uptown parade route, a family who lost their Lakeview home to flooding poked fun at former FEMA director Michael Brown. Jenny Louis, her husband, Ross, and their three children strolled around in all-brown costumes, similar to the uniforms worn by UPS drivers. Printed on their backs: "What Did Brown Do For You Today?"Despite partly sunny weather and temperatures in the 70s, the crowds were smaller than usual in a city that still has less than half its pre-storm population of almost a half-million. Finding a prime parade-watching spot was not hard."We came out about 5 this morning and had no trouble getting a good spot," said Tammi Harlan, 56, of Metairie. "We've been coming to this spot for about 20 years, but normally the guys come the night before to make sure we get it."Traditions held. About 160 members of clarinetist Pete Fountain's Half Fast Marching club had breakfast at the shuttered Commander's Palace restaurant before heading down the parade route _ but without Fountain, who is ill and missed what would have been his 46th trip with the group. The celebrated musician is 75.New Orleans native Donald Rooney of Denver wore a purple, green and gold fright wig along the parade route.Mardi Gras is about "helping the city rebuild," he said. "It's my hometown. There's still a great soul that lives in the city that 10 feet, 12 feet of water can't kill, and it's coming back."Associated Press writers Hank Ackerman, Cain Burdeau and Janet McConnaughey contributed to this report.

Cool Sites

2006-02-28T07:17:00.000-06:00

This may be old news, but I just saw FlightAware for the first time. It tracks flights in the US that the FAA manages including general aviation. You find a private plane and then drill down to past flights that the plane has made. Quite amazing. I wish they could do this internationally.
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White House press corps

2006-02-27T17:13:00.000-06:00

Katharine Seelye writes this morning in the New York Times about the "mutual distrust" between the White House press corps and the administration:

By its nature, the relationship between the White House and the press has historically held an inherent tension. And many say it has been eroding since the Vietnam War and Watergate, when reporters had reason to distrust everything the White House said and made a scandalous "gate" out of every murky act.
But today, those on both sides say, the relationship has deteriorated further, exacerbated by the live briefings.

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Renana Brooks, a clinical psychologist practicing in Washington who said she had counseled several White House correspondents said the last few years had given rise to "White House reporter syndrome," in which competitive high achievers feel restricted and controlled and become emotionally isolated from others who are not steeped in the same experience.
She said the syndrome was evident in the Cheney case, which she described as an inconsequential event that produced an outsize feeding frenzy. She said some reporters used the occasion to compensate for not having pressed harder before the Iraq war.

White House reporters say they know the public hates them because they regularly receive abusive e-mail messages and read blogs that tell them so.
"This is the punching-bag beat of American journalism," said David E. Sanger, who has covered the Bush administration since its inception for The New York Times. "And the White House itself has been skillful at diverting tough questions by changing the subject to its battles with the media."
This happened in the Cheney case. While the eruption from the White House press finally forced the vice president to discuss his accident on national television, he deftly portrayed the hubbub as a result of jealousy that a small paper in Texas was given the news first; reporters said they were upset because their questions were not being answered.
The message many perceived in Mr. Cheney's response was that the national media were no longer relevant, a point made and reinforced almost daily in certain blogs.
David Gregory, the NBC correspondent who has been among the most ardent questioners in the briefing room, apologized for yelling at Mr. McClellan over the Cheney incident but said the situation had become particularly frustrating.
"There is a desire by some, particularly on the right, to morph these situations into a different kind of debate — it's the vice president against an angry, left-wing, cynical, hate-filled press corps that wants to expose him as a liar," he said. "This is a false debate, stoked by a president and vice president who have made no bones about the fact that they don't have much respect for the press corps as an institution."
I think the reason the President and Vice-President don't have much respect for the press corps as an institution is that it consists largely of "angry, left-wing, cynical, hate-filled" people. It seems odd for reporters to complain that the White House doesn't like them, or that they have a left-wing image. Consider this item about the National Press Foundation awards dinner last Thursday night, courtesy of NRO's Media Blog:
Journalists primarily divided their energy at the National Press Foundation awards dinner Thursday night in Washington between praising their colleagues for their efforts to report on Hurricane Katrina and slamming the administration.
In the latter camp, the Bush administration was lampooned in the cartoons of winner Jimmy Margulies, who narrated a series of wicked jabs. But the hardest hit on the administration came from Jack Germond, winner of the Kiplinger award for Distinguished Contributions to Journalism. Germond, a veteran newspaperman--most recently with the Baltimore Sun--and an analyst for NBC and CNN, was scathing in his assessment.
He talked of the administration's "staggering arrogance" and the "serial comic quality of daily White House briefings," which he called "an embarrassment to us and them."
Citing Plato, Germond said those who are too smart to go into politics are destined to be governed by those who are dumber.

CNN's Ed Henry, who received the Everett Dirksen award for congressional reporting, had a hard time keeping it together as he thanked his colleagues and remembered his mentor and injured ABC journalists Bob Woodruff and Doug Vogt. Henry said it was tough to think of his job as a hard one in the face of their stories.
Henry also emotionally thanked his mentor, the late Jack Anderson, for whom he interned while still in school.
He drew applause with the assertion that "the American people own the news" and that the First Amendment is "under assault."
Long ago, the bulk of the Washington press corps abandoned any pretense of objectivity, neutrality or fairness in its coverage of Republicans. It is therefore hard to take the press corps seriously when it complains about its poor relations with the administration, or alleges that the administration is "secretive" and that the President and Vice-President lack "respect for the press corps as an institution."

Debate Bill O'Reilly

2006-02-26T13:17:00.000-06:00

by sbaradell Our friend Bill O'Reilly has launched a contest for people who want to "let (him) have it" in a live, in-studio debate:
"During the month of February six lucky "Factor" viewers will be flown to New York City or Los Angeles ... with hotel and meals paid for by us. All you have to do is convince us by e-mail (and later by telephone) that you are a good debater and that you can hold your own with O'Reilly on a topic of your choosing."
Instructions for entering the contest, along with the rules, are at Bill's Web site. Don Knotts Dies At 81 James News Photo

Blog News

2006-02-26T10:51:00.000-06:00

For Blog News, James News Photo > Jamesnews's Recent Articles . To Find News, Current Events, The Headlines, News Photos, Analysis & Opinion On Top Stories, World, Business, Politics, Entertainment, Technology, And More. ... Get The James News Photo. Comments, Once Again You Better Than Cnn. Search Google Or Yahoo For "james News Photo"

Ted Koppel

2006-02-25T14:31:00.000-06:00

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NEW YORK In a surprisingly strong Op Ed on Friday, Ted Koppel, the former "NIghtline" host who is now an occasional columnist for The New York Times, argues that when it comes right down to it, the U.S. adventure in Iraq is, as some charge, "about the oil."

He likened the situation to H.L. Mencken's statement that when someone says something is "not about the money" it is indeed "about the money." The same is true in this case relating to oil.

While it's wrong to say that we invaded the country to take over its oil supply, Koppel writes in the Times, "the construction of American military bases inside Iraq, bases that can be maintained long after the bulk of our military forces are ultimately withdrawn, will serve to replace the bases that the United States has lost in Saudi Arabia. There may be other national security reasons that the United States cannot now precipitously withdraw its forces from Iraq, including the danger that the country would become a regional terrorist base; but none is greater than forestalling the ensuing power vacuum and regional instability, and the impact this would have on oil production....

"Perhaps the day will come when the United States is no longer addicted to imported oil; but that day is still many years off. For now, the reason for America's rapt attention to the security of the Persian Gulf is what it has always been. It's about the oil."

Noting arguments for many years about the importance of oil to our economy, Koppel observes, "If those considerations did not enter into the Bush administration's calculations when the president ordered the invasion of Iraq in 2003, it would have been the first time in more than 50 years that the uninterrupted flow of Persian Gulf oil was not a central element of American foreign policy. "
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newspaper 1

2006-02-25T07:12:00.000-06:00

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The New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times lead with continued Iraq tensions in the wake of Wednesday's mosque bombing in Samarra. The Wall Street Journal tops its world-wide news box with, and runs a front-page story on, a foiled attempt to bomb a Saudi oil refinery. (The LAT also fronts this.)

The daytime curfew in many Iraqi provinces was extended to Saturday. All the papers note yesterday's nearly empty streets in many cities. The Post's piece takes the least pessimistic view, stressing a public statement by Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, leader of the largest Shiite political party. Al-Hakim blamed Wednesday's bombing on Al Qaeda in Iraq, which he called "the enemy of Islam and Iraqis." Although 29 new bodies were found in Baghdad, the papers note that the widespread slaughter of Wednesday and Thursday seems to have subsided.

Even so, the NYT notes that, despite all of the diplomatic statements issued by al-Hakim and a few other big-shot imams, many local clerics preached revenge in sermons yesterday, and talks to form a new government have been suspended indefinitely. Moreover, al-Hakim refused to apologize for retaliatory strikes against Sunni mosques. The Times also reports increasing Shiite anger at the U.S. and its ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, an Afghani-born Sunni muslim who had been pressuring Shiite politicians to include Sunnis in the new government.

The Los Angeles Times's report is the most pessimistic; the paper runs a man-in-the-street feature under the headline "A Nation Teeters on the Brink of Civil War." "It is not uncommon to hear Iraqis speaking of civil war as if it has become inevitable," the reporter writes, "as if the only questions worth asking are when it will begin, what will spark it--or whether they will one day look back and realize that this civil war, this ambiguous threat, was already underway when the Golden Mosque in Samarra was blown up."

All the papers note President Bush's address to the American Legion, in which he said the days ahead would be "difficult and exhausting" for the Iraqi people, who now face a "moment of choosing" (presumably between order and disorder). (The LAT says Bush gave a "somber speech" to the veterans group. Somber? Read the speech and judge for yourself.) A "senior U.S. official" tells the LAT that the American military would be useless in a civil war: "When it's a fight of Iraqi Shia on Sunnis, our guys can't get in the middle. It would all be up to the Iraqis." The NYT fronts a piece on the power of Iraq's militias.

Guards at the Abqaiq oil refinery in Saudi Arabia fired on two explosives-filled cars, which blew up prematurely outside the refinery's security perimeter. Al Qaeda claimed responsibility on a web site, the NYT reports. Abqaiq, on the Persian Gulf coast, is "the single most vital cog in the world petroleum system," according to the Journal, responsible for 8 percent of the world's oil consumption. The bombers failed to penetrate the outermost of three electrified fences surrounding the facility. The Journal says that Saudi spending on oil-plant security has risen 50 percent since 2003, to $5.5 billion, and experts tell both papers that terrorists would need either an army or a nuclear weapon to penetrate Abqaiq. The news caused oil prices to rise from about $60 to $62 a barrel.

Alan Greenspan decried the polarization of American politics in a private speech Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal reports (online, at least). According to audience members at his address before an investment company, Greenspan said that both political parties are in thrall to extremists, whereas most voters are centrists. He argued that this current political disconnect leaves an opening for a third-party candidacy. He said he refused to endorse any particular candidate "for now."

Ted Turner has decided to step down from Time Warner's board, the papers report. The move completely severs him from CNN, the network he founded in 1980. Some speculate that he will reenter the media business, but Turner says he will devote himself to philanthropy.

On the NYT op-ed page, Nikita Krushchev biographer William Taubman looks back on the former Soviet leader's famous anti-Stalin speech at the Communist Party Congress fifty years ago today. Krushchev intended to save communism, Taubman notes, not destroy it. Yet his speech provoked revolts in Poland and Hungary, and it set in motion a process that culminated in the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991. Moreover, although the speech was partly self serving, it was also Krushchev's attempt to expiate the guilt he felt for his complicity in Stalin's crimes. In this sense, Taubman writes, the address marked Krushchev as the only one of Stalin's contemporaries to have both survived Stalin and retained his humanity.

The NYT fronts a great feature on the proliferation of traveling teenage basketball teams that pretend to represent real high schools. In fact, these teams--with names like Lutheran Christian Academy, Rise Academy, and Boys to Men Academy—either offer no real coursework or outsource their teaching to online schools. All of the students at these "schools" play basketball. "'There were no classes,'" a former Lutheran Christian student tells the Times. "'We went to basketball practice every single day. What we were told when we first went there was: How you perform on the court, that's what you do for your grades.'"

These Potemkin high schools are filling a market niche created by the NCAA, the Times notes. In the last few years, the NCAA has changed policy to 1) allow high-school administrators to determine the legitimacy of their own courses, and 2) allow students who flunk standardized tests to compensate with a decent G.P.A. Lutheran Christian told the NCAA that it was accredited by the state (untrue) and listed 35 courses it offers, including Latin 2, chemistry, and physics. The NCAA certified Lutheran's transcripts without question. Last year the "school" sent 11 "students" to Division I teams.

"On second thought, honey, let's use TurboTax this year." … The NYT business section brings word that H&R Block has been forced to restate earnings going back two and a half years. The reason? It made inaccurate estimates of its own tax liability.

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FRIDAY NEWS

2006-02-24T21:04:00.000-06:00

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Brian Maloney has an exclusive report on a reported $8 million George Soros bailout of Air America.

Mark April 22 on your calendar. It's the date of the first annual Milblogger conference in Washington DC. The best and brightest of the blogosphere will be there. Austin Bay will emcee.

Speaking of milbloggers, they are disgusted with Cindy Sheehan's latest stunt -- a protest outside of Landstuhl Army Medical Center in Germany. See Blackfive, Mudville Gazette, HouseholdSix, and Soldiers' Angels.

Pajamas Media has a video interview of Tom Lantos on the Google-China deal. See also the WMD Files.

Jeff Goldstein takes on William F. Buckley on the war.

Zeyad at Healing Iraq reports on Armageddon.

GOP and the Man: Roasting Jane Fonda. By Michelle Malkin
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NEWS

2006-02-24T09:47:00.000-06:00

The Click. Li Datong

2006-02-23T15:31:00.000-06:00

Li Datong

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BEIJING -- The top editors of the China Youth Daily were meeting in a conference room last August when their cell phones started buzzing quietly with text messages. One after another, they discreetly read the notes. Then they traded nervous glances.

Colleagues were informing them that a senior editor in the room, Li Datong, had done something astonishing. Just before the meeting, Li had posted a blistering letter on the newspaper's computer system attacking the Communist Party's propaganda czars and a plan by the editor in chief to dock reporters' pay if their stories upset party officials.

No one told the editor in chief. For 90 minutes, he ran the meeting, oblivious to the political storm that was brewing. Then Li announced what he had done.

The chief editor stammered and rushed back to his office, witnesses recalled. But by then, Li's memo had leaked and was spreading across the Internet in countless e-mails and instant messages. Copies were posted on China's most popular Web forums, and within hours people across the country were sending Li messages of support.

The government's Internet censors scrambled, ordering one Web site after another to delete the letter. But two days later, in an embarrassing retreat, the party bowed to public outrage and scrapped the editor in chief's plan to muzzle his reporters.

The episode illustrated the profound impact of the Internet on political discourse in China, and the challenge that the Web poses to the Communist Party's ability to control news and shape public opinion, key elements to its hold on power. The incident also set the stage for last month's decision to suspend publication of Freezing Point, the pioneering weekly supplement that Li edited for the state-run China Youth Daily.

Eleven years after young Chinese returning from graduate study in the United States persuaded the party to offer Internet access to the public, China is home to one of the largest, fastest-growing and most active populations of Internet users in the world, according to several surveys. With more than 111 million people connected to the Web, China ranks second to the United States.

Although just a fraction of all Chinese go online -- and most who do play games, download music or gossip with friends -- widespread Internet use in the nation's largest cities and among the educated is changing the way Chinese learn about the world and weakening the Communist Party's monopoly on the media. Studies show China's Internet users spend more time online than they do with television and newspapers, and they are increasingly turning to the Web for news instead of traditional state outlets.

The government has sought to control what people read and write on the Web, employing a bureaucracy of censors and one of the world's most technologically sophisticated system of filters. But the success of those measures has been mixed. As a catalyst that amplifies voices and accelerates events, the Internet presents a formidable challenge to China's authoritarian political system. Again and again, ordinary Chinese have used it to challenge the government, force their opinions to be heard and alter political outcomes.

The influence of the Web has grown over the past two years, even as President Hu Jintao has pursued the country's most severe crackdown on the state media in more than a decade. The party said last week that Freezing Point would resume publishing, but Li and a colleague were fired, making them the latest in a series of editors at state publications to lose their jobs.

With newspapers, magazines and television stations coming under tighter control, journalists and their audiences have sought refuge online. The party's censors have followed, but cyberspace in China remains contested terrain, where the rules are uncertain and an eloquent argument can wield surprising power.
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White House Secret

2006-02-23T00:55:00.000-06:00

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WASHINGTON - The Bush administration secretly required a company in the United Arab Emirates to cooperate with future U.S. investigations before approving its takeover of operations at six American ports, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press. It chose not to impose other, routine restrictions.

As part of the $6.8 billion purchase, state-owned Dubai Ports World agreed to reveal records on demand about "foreign operational direction" of its business at U.S. ports, the documents said. Those records broadly include details about the design, maintenance or operation of ports and equipment.

The administration did not require Dubai Ports to keep copies of business records on U.S. soil, where they would be subject to court orders. It also did not require the company to designate an American citizen to accommodate U.S. government requests. Outside legal experts said such obligations are routinely attached to U.S. approvals of foreign sales in other industries.

"They're not lax but they're not draconian," said James Lewis, a former U.S. official who worked on such agreements. If officials had predicted the firestorm of criticism over the deal, Lewis said, "they might have made them sound harder."

The conditions involving the sale of London-based Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Co. were detailed in U.S. documents marked "confidential." Such records are regularly guarded as trade secrets, and it is highly unusual for them to be made public.

The concessions — described previously by the Homeland Security Department as unprecedented among maritime companies — reflect the close relationship between the United States and the United Arab Emirates.

The revelations about the negotiated conditions came as the White House acknowledged President Bush was unaware of the pending sale until the deal had already been approved by his administration.

Bush on Tuesday brushed aside objections by leaders in the Senate and House. He pledged to veto any bill Congress might approve to block the agreement, but some lawmakers said they still were determined to capsize it.

Dubai Port's top American executive, chief operating officer Edward H. Bilkey, said the company will do whatever the Bush administration asks to enhance shipping security and ensure the sale goes through. Bilkey said Wednesday he will work in Washington to persuade skeptical lawmakers they should endorse the deal; Senate oversight hearings already are scheduled.

"We're disappointed," Bilkey told the AP in an interview. "We're going to do our best to persuade them that they jumped the gun. The UAE is a very solid friend, as President Bush has said."

Under the deal, the government asked Dubai Ports to operate American seaports with existing U.S. managers "to the extent possible." It promised to take "all reasonable steps" to assist the Homeland Security Department, and it pledged to continue participating in security programs to stop smuggling and detect illegal shipments of nuclear materials.

The administration required Dubai Ports to designate an executive to handle requests from the U.S. government, but it did not specify this person's citizenship.

It said Dubai Ports must retain paperwork "in the normal course of business" but did not specify a time period or require corporate records to be housed in the United States. Outside experts familiar with such agreements said such provisions are routine in other cases.

Bush faces a potential rebellion from leaders of his own party, as well as a fight from Democrats, over the sale. It puts Dubai Ports in charge of major terminal operations in New York, New Jersey, Baltimore, New Orleans, Miami and Philadelphia.

Senate and House leaders urged the president to delay the takeover, which is set to be finalized in early March. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee said the deal raised "serious questions regarding the safety and security of our homeland." House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., asked the president for a moratorium on the sale until it could be studied further.

In Saudi Arabia, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the agreement was thoroughly vetted. "We have to maintain a principle that it doesn't matter where in the world one of these purchases is coming from," Rice said Wednesday. She described the United Arab Emirates as "a good partner in the war on terrorism."

Bush personally defended the agreement on Tuesday, but the White House said he did not know about it until recently. The AP first reported the U.S. approval of the sale to Dubai Ports on Feb. 11, and many members of Congress have said they learned about it from the AP.

"I think somebody dropped the ball," said Rep. Vito Fossella (news, bio, voting record), R-N.Y. "Information should have flowed more freely and more quickly up into the White House. I think it has been mishandled in terms of coming forward with adequate information."

At the White House, spokesman Scott McClellan said Bush learned about the deal "over the last several days," as congressional criticism escalated. McClellan said it did not rise to the presidential level, but went through a government review and was determined not to pose a threat.

McClellan said Bush afterward asked the head of every U.S. department involved in approving the sale whether there were security concerns. "Each and every one expressed that they were comfortable with this transaction going forward," he said.

Commerce Secretary Carlos Guiterrez told the AP the administration was being thoughtful and deliberate approving the sale.

"We are not reacting emotionally," Guiterrez said in an interview Wednesday. "That's what I believe our partners from around the world would like to see from us is that we be thoughtful. That we be deliberate. That we understand issues before we make a decision."
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kill or injure President Bush

2006-02-21T23:24:00.000-06:00

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Three men from the Middle East have been charged with plotting terrorist attacks against U.S. and coalition troops in Iraq and other countries.

One of the men, a citizen of both the U.S. and Jordan, also was accused of threatening to kill or injure President Bush, according to an indictment released Tuesday.

All three had lived in Toledo within the past year and were arrested over the weekend — two of them in Toledo, the third in Jordan, authorities said.

An unidentified person with a military background helped the U.S. government foil the plot by working with the suspects while secretly gathering evidence, according to the indictment.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales also did not exclude the use of warrantless wiretapping in the investigation, but said prosecutors were careful not to jeopardize the case.

"This case stands as a reminder of the need for continued vigilance in the war on terrorism," he said at a news conference in Washington.

One of the men's lawyers said Tuesday that the government was overzealous in bringing the charges.

"It doesn't help that he's Jordanian," attorney Steve Hartman said of his client. "I think he's caught up in the Justice Department's vigorous work."

The three pleaded not guilty in federal courts in Cleveland and Toledo. The most serious charges could bring life in prison.

Gonzales and other officials refused to say whether an attack was imminent. FBI agents monitored the defendants, all of whom are Muslims, for about a year and a half, Assistant U.S. Attorney Craig Morford said.

"What we can tell you is, from the indictment, it's very clear that their activities and their intentions were to reach beyond our border and were to kill and maim persons overseas," Morford said at a news conference in Cleveland.

Two of the men discussed plans to practice setting off explosives on the Fourth of July in 2005 so that the bombs would not be noticed, the indictment alleges. It was not clear whether the men went through with those plans.

The indictment says the group also traveled together to a shooting range to practice and studied how to make explosives. It alleges that at least one of the men researched and tried to obtain government grants and private funding for the training.

Mohammad Zaki Amawi, a citizen of both the U.S. and Jordan, is accused of threatening in conversations to kill or injure Bush. The 26-year-old also is charged with distributing information about making and using bombs.

The others are Marwan Othman El-Hindi, 42, a U.S. citizen born in Jordan; and Wassim I. Mazloum, 24, who came to the United States from Lebanon in 2000.

El-Hindi is accused of trying to get the U.S. citizen with a military background to travel with him in 2004 to the Middle East as part of a plot to establish a terrorism training center. The indictment identifies the military person only as "the trainer."

Mazloum, a senior majoring in computer science engineering at the University of Toledo, operated two car businesses in Toledo with his family. The indictment accuses him of offering to use his dealership as a cover for traveling to and from Iraq so that he could learn how to build small explosives using household materials.

At the family's home in suburban Toledo, his sister said Mazloum is a conscientious person who could not possibly be caught up in a terrorist conspiracy.

"Whenever he goes out at night, he always calls my mom to let her know where he's at and what he's doing," she said.

His mother, Salwa Elkechen, 44, broke down in tears: "Take my home, take my money, take everything. I just need my son."

All three men are charged with conspiracy to kill, kidnap, maim, or injure people or damage property in a foreign country. They were also charged with conspiracy to kill Americans and harboring or concealing terrorists.

Amawi was assigned a public defender. Mazloum's attorney, Chuck Sallah, said he knew very little about his client or the charges.

Earlier this week, the U.S. government ordered a freeze on the assets of KindHearts, a Toledo-based group suspected of funneling money to the militant organization Hamas. Law enforcement officials, speaking of condition of anonymity, said the arrests of the three men spurred the decision to freeze KindHearts' assets.

"Some aspects of them do overlap," an official said.

KindHearts has denied any terrorist connections and has said it is a humanitarian organization.

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Dick Cheney

2006-02-19T15:49:00.000-06:00

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Playing by His Own Rules

Political tempests in Washington are often all sound and fury, signifying next to nothing. The donnybrook over Dick Cheney's hunting accident is a bit different. It opens a window into the remarkable secret life of the second-most powerful man in the U.S. government.

Cheney has constructed something very unusual for a vice president: a world that is almost beyond public and media scrutiny, with little accountability. He hasn't held a full-fledged news conference for nearly four years. He doesn't talk about his advice to the president, even though his influence is by all reports extraordinary. He travels without letting people outside his orbit know what he's up to. He doesn't even disclose his travel expenses, arguing that the law applies to heads of agencies, and he isn't one.

His penchant for secrecy crystallized in the hunting case as Cheney avoided the normal legal procedures that apply to everyone else. After his accidental shooting of a companion on a private Texas ranch late in the afternoon on February 11, sheriff's deputies had to wait until the next morning to interview Cheney. Would the average Joe have gotten such a pass? Nor did he bother to personally tell the president about the mishap until they met at the White House the following Monday morning. He talked on the phone with White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card but rejected other officials' advice to disclose the shooting immediately. Instead, he authorized the ranch's owner to tip off the local newspaper the next day; he didn't speak out himself until four days later. Cheney considered the incident part of his private life--and nobody else's business.

He has done an amazing thing--creating a "zone of privacy" unique in the modern era. President Bush has adopted many of his ideas, presiding over one of the most secretive White Houses in recent history. It sure makes things easier that way. And since the public doesn't seem to care, future leaders are likely to follow Cheney's example.

USNews.com

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Obesity

2006-02-19T12:53:00.000-06:00

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researcher Barbara Hansen, PhD, says long-term studies show that lifetime calorie restraint to prevent obesity is the most powerful way to reduce age-related health problems such as high blood pressure, high triglycerides and the progression to diabetes.

Dr. Hansen says that the price of leanness is eternal vigilance and losing and keeping off weight requires a lifelong effort.

That she says amounts to maintaining a constant, realistic balance between total calories consumed and total calories expended.

Dr. Hansen is a physiologist and psychologist specializing in obesity, diabetes and their age-related health complications.

She is a professor of medicine and pediatrics, and directs the USF Health's Center for Pre-clinical Research, which combines obesity, diabetes and aging research, and the Diabetes Complications Prevention Center.

In her latest studies with rhesus monkeys she has shown that lifetime calorie restraint to prevent obesity is the most powerful way to reduce age-related health problems such as high blood pressure and high triglycerides and to prevent or delay the progression of insulin resistance toward diabetes.

The monkeys whose food intake was maintained in amounts to assure a constant healthy body weight were not only healthier, but they lived longer than their counterparts who ate as much as they wanted.

Hansen says the studies have unequivocally demonstrated that 'if you prevent excess fat deposits in the body through excess calorie restraint, you will improve health and postpone death'.

Hansen says scientific evidence does not support assertions that the epidemic of obesity is the fault of the obese themselves or a "toxic" environment that seduces people with super-sized menus and convenience food at every corner.

She says an approach that places the 'blame on the patient' is both unfair and inappropriate, as scientists are not clear on the complex interaction of genetic and environmental factors that predispose some individuals to obesity while others seem to eat to their heart's content without packing on the pounds.

Dr. Hansen considers "single cause" hypotheses such as diet composition, inactivity and obesity genes alone as too simplistic, and believes obesity is a continuum that develops early or late, quickly or slowly, along with 'a heavy dose of genetic predisposition'.

Many studies support the concept that each person has an age-related "set" point for weight somehow regulated by physiology and genetics.

Dr. Hansen says this may help explain why more than 95 percent of dieters who shed 35 extra pounds or more eventually regain the weight, which basically means that while your weight may fluctuate throughout life, your body's natural tendency is to return to its individually programmed body composition.

Dr. Hansen's team is working to understand the underlying mechanisms of obesity that might lead to new drugs that more specifically target centers in the brain, liver and muscles that regulate weight.

These include compounds, known as mimetic agents, capable of mimicking the benefits of calorie restriction without leaving a person feeling constantly hungry.

For those who are not clinically obese, but are battling the bulge as they approach middle age and beyond, Dr. Hansen suggests setting realistic goals.

She recommends the bathroom scale model of weight loss, where when you see your weight creeping up, you cut back on your portions.

A 10-percent daily reduction in the total calories consumed may produce a small, but at least sustainable, weight loss, and even a modest approach to calorie restraint can have positive health benefits.

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Brrreeeport.com

2006-02-17T22:58:00.000-06:00

"James News Photo"
It seems that Robert Scoble has started a storm in a teacup by inventing a word "brrreeeport" and asking everyone to blog it.

Its been interesting watching it spread around the 'blogosphere' and beyond (someone even registered brrreeeport.com!) although it hasn't yet reached the 'boardscape' until now at least..

But it has stirred up some debate about how accurate search engine results numbers really are with Google being the obvious first choice to jump on.. it apparently reported over 22k results for brrreeeport.

Scoble is not amused by search engines showing inaccurate results and even David Sifry (of Technorati) has weighed in on the topic and when dealing with small numbers of results they have a point, the numbers should be accurate, but when dealing with large numbers of results does it really matter anymore as long as they are not wildly innacurate? Do you search for the stats or the results themselves? I know some may need the stats more for marketing/biz intelligence purposes but in such a case its better to use tools designed for that task rather than the default/public search mechanism.
"James News Photo"

COOL SITES

2006-02-12T10:11:00.000-06:00

JAMES NEWS PHOTO
This may be old news, but I just saw FlightAware for the first time. It tracks flights in the US that the FAA manages including general aviation. You find a private plane and then drill down to past flights that the plane has made. Quite amazing. I wish they could do this internationally.

JAMES NEWS PHOTO

Newsroom 2/5/06

2006-02-05T10:13:00.000-06:00

James News Photo
The Los Angeles Times leads with, and the New York Times and Washington Post both front, the International Atomic Energy Agency voting 27-3 to report Iran to the U.N. Security Council over its nuclear program. Iran, which now has a month to comply with the IAEA's demands, responded by announcing that it would end its cooperation with the nuclear committee and resume its uranium enrichment activities. The NYT leads with corrupt Iraqi officials in the oil industry enabling the insurgency. In one example, the crooked director of a major oil-storage plant near Kirkuk is accused of orchestrating an attack on his own facility. But fear not, American officials have declared the week starting Feb. 19 to be Anti-Corruption Week. The WP leads with the president's proposed budget, which would increase defense and security spending while eliminating or reducing 141 programs.

The Post calls the referral to the security council "a blow to Iran's prestige," while the NYT says such a move "is deeply humiliating." Humiliating maybe, but does it carry any real significance? The Russians, who voted for the referral, immediately contradicted themselves by saying the problem would be "solved within the framework of the IAEA without additional interference." Similarly, China doesn't want anyone "taking any action that might further complicate or deteriorate the situation." Even the U.S. seems hesitant. The NYT notes that "administration officials have said that no move will be made to impose heavy economic penalties on Iran, like an oil embargo. Instead, the United States would likely seek punitive diplomatic or political steps like suspending travel or freezing assets for top Iranian officials and business leaders in nuclear-related industries."

If Iran wants to see what the U.N. has in store for it, the case of North Korea may provide a good example. The country has been reported twice to the security council over its nuclear activities. It is still waiting for it's punishment. As the WP points out, "In many ways, North Korea has become the disappearing nuclear crisis."

The curious thing about the NYT lead on graft in the Iraqi oil industry is that the WP places a very similar story on page A17. Both stories, the Post's more so, focus on the case of Meshaan al-Juburi (Mishan Jubouri in the WP), an Iraqi lawmaker who is accused of stealing millions from a program aimed at protecting the country's oil pipelines and, possibly, funneling some of that money to the insurgency. But while the Post sticks to the events surrounding al-Juburi, the Times examines the broader "pattern of government corruption enabling the flow of oil money and other funds to the insurgency." Ali Allawi, Iraq's finance minister, estimates that nearly half of all oil-smuggling profits goes to the insurgents.

The WP is a little late to the game in reporting on the president's budget proposal—the NYT led with Bush's proposed $35 billion cut to Medicare yesterday. With the extra time it would have been nice if the Post produced a little more analysis of the president's numbers. But kudos to the Post for pointing out that Bush "continues a pattern of leaving substantial military expenditures out of the budget." Last week the Pentagon said it would ask for an additional $120 billion outside of the budget for its operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. That's over a quarter of the president's proposed defense spending.

The NYT and WP tease new information on the sinking of an Egyptian ferry returning from Saudi Arabia. Survivors say that a fire broke out shortly after leaving shore, but crew members assured them that everything was alright. "All the people rushed to the deck and begged the captain to turn back," said one passenger. "He refused. He contacted no one. He was crazy!" When all hope was lost, the captain apparently did his best Bruce Ismay impression and escaped by lifeboat, abandoning the wet and weary passengers. The ferry operator denies this. The majority of the 1,400 passengers and crew members are presumed dead.

Meanwhile, the furor in the Muslim world continues to grow over cartoons published in European papers satirically depicting the prophet Mohammed. Syrian protesters torched the Danish and Norwegian embassies in Damascus yesterday, while the leader of Hamas called for the death of those responsible for the drawings.

The WP fronts the administration's wiretapping program yielding few potential terrorism suspects. (Didn't the NYT lead with this story three weeks ago?) The Post's convoluted piece focuses on the technical aspects of the program, specifically the role automated filters play in selecting leads. Turns out these filters ain't so good at picking out possible terrorists from innocent bystanders.

For the second day in a row, U.S. and Afghan forces continued to pursue a large group of militants in the mountains of southern Afghanistan. The battle, says the NYT, is "the largest in Afghanistan in months." The Post lets the AP do the reporting.

The NYT has the scoop on a new forward-looking counterterrorism strategy produced by the Pentagon. The plan establishes a review system to determine "whether more terrorists are being captured, killed or persuaded to give up their violent struggle than are being created."

The WP and LAT front the death of feminist icon Betty Friedan, who turned 85 yesterday. The Post says the founder of the National Organization for Women and NARAL "almost single-handedly revived feminism" with her 1963 book "The Feminine Mystique." (Slate's Emily Bazelon, rembers Friedan, a cousin, here.)

Finally, the NYT fronts a story on how schools across the country are trying to improve attendance by offering students rewards. Some schools have offered students with perfect attendance records cars, trips, iPods and cash. This TPer only missed one day of class during his four-year high-school career. His reward: graduating. What a gyp! James News Photo

Mom Accused Of Child Killings

2006-01-29T19:03:00.000-06:00

JAMES NEWS PHOTO
A mother accused of smothering her three young children left notes that officials say could help determine what led to the killings, and her priest said Sunday that she had expressed "tremendous remorse."

Paula Eleazar Mendez, 43, was in a county jail Sunday after being treated at a hospital for swallowing a toxic substance.

She had collapsed as officers arrived at her home Saturday morning in response to a telephone call from the children's father in New York. Inside the home, the officers found the bodies of the children, ages 6 to 8, lying side by side on a bed, said Chris Brackett, an investigator with the Sevier County Sheriff's Office.

"I do not believe there is any dispute as to who killed these three children, and therefore who will be charged," prosecutor Tom Cooper said. "However, we have not determined at this time the particular homicide charge or punishment we will be seeking."

The notes found in the house may help officials better understand what led to the killings, De Queen Police Chief Richard McKinley said, though he declined to disclose their contents.

A family priest who visited Mendez in a hospital Saturday night described a woman experiencing profound sorrow.

"She has tremendous remorse. She is deeply sorry," the Rev. Salvador Marquez-Munoz said Sunday before entering St. Barbara Catholic Church for Mass. "She asked for our prayers and forgiveness because she is realizing how much she has hurt the community, as well."

He identified the children as 8-year-old Elvis and 6-year-old twins, Samanta and her brother Samuel.

Autopsies were planned to determine whether the children had been poisoned or smothered, as their mother told police, Cooper said. The children's faces were not covered when police found them.

Cooper said an emergency room doctor told him Mendez had not ingested enough of the toxic substance to kill herself. Her arraignment is expected Monday, McKinley said.

In the house's yard Sunday was a seven-foot pile of burned papers. A page in a religion book bore the words "vamos a celebrar" — Spanish for "let's celebrate." A child's handwriting was scrawled in blue ink across some papers, and there were charred letters from a labor union in New York City.

The priest said Mendez, who moved to the United States from Mexico 10 years ago, had lived in New York until last summer, when she moved with her children to De Queen because wanted them to live in a safer environment.

He described her as a quiet, devout woman concerned about her children's welfare. She was not working, and her husband was supporting the family with a job in New York, he said. She and the children never missed Sunday services and attended religious education classes.

Mendez seemed "very loving," said M. Rocio Maya, 29, who attended the Mass and said that she had known Mendez for a few months. Maya said that she never saw Mendez strike her children and that she drove them to school, rather than allow them to ride a bus.

The children's father, Arturo Morales, 37, had planned to buy a house in De Queen with Mendez and move there for good, said Maya's husband, Juan Mosqueda.

Morales was to arrive in De Queen before a funeral was to be set. Associated Press
JAMES NEWS PHOTO

JAMES NEWS PHOTO Saddam Removed From Court

2006-01-29T07:59:00.000-06:00

JAMES NEWS PHOTO
Saddam Hussein's trial collapsed into chaos shortly after resuming Sunday, with one defendant dragged out of court and the defense team walking out in protest. The former Iraqi leader was then escorted out after he shouted "down with traitors" and refused his new court-appointed lawyers.

The new chief judge, Raouf Abdel-Rahman, pressed ahead with the proceedings even after the opening drama, hearing three prosecution witness, as he sought to assert tight control over the court.

After 4 1/2 hours, the trial was adjourned until Wednesday, though Abdel-Rahman said if that day turns out to be a public holiday, the trial will resume Thursday. The Islamic new year is approaching, but its exact date depends on the sighting of a new moon to start the lunar month.
Associated Press. JAMES NEWS PHOTO

JAMES NEWS PHOTO Bigfoot

2006-01-28T16:51:00.000-06:00

JAMES NEWS PHOTO
Malaysia plans to send two teams of scientists to scour its southern rainforests and track down a huge ape said to have been spotted there, a government official said Friday.

"Bigfoot" fever has dominated Malaysian newspaper headlines for several weeks now, with several dramatic sightings of a hairy, gorilla-like creature reported in the thick forest in the southern state of Johor.

One local man said he saw a 10-foot (three meter) tall ape standing on two legs beside a river, according to one report.

"Yes, the state government has decided to send teams of scientists to try and track it," said a state official who declined to be named. But he gave no further details.

The country is home to the orang-utan, a large red-haired ape that can grow the size of a small man, but they are not found in peninsular Malaysia -- although monkeys and gibbons are common.

National news agency Bernama has said the Johor state government intends to set up two expedition teams, one to explore the forests and a second to try and study the animal itself.

"We hope the expedition will be able to prove its existence," the agency quoted Chief Minister Abdul Ghani Othman as saying.

Bigfoot sightings across the world have featured mysterious and reclusive animals such as the north American sasquatch or the Himalayan yeti, whose existence has never been proved, but the Malaysian sightings are worth investigating, an environmentalist said.

"The national park is as big as Singapore island," said Vicent Chow, who works in the area and has often lobbied the state government to investigate past sightings. "It's quite possible there is something there."

The Endau-Rompin national park, where the sightings were reported, sprawls over an area of about 49,000 hectares.

"Natives who live in the jungle have seen it for generations and their legends call it the 'snaggle-toothed ghost'," said Chow. "Now we need forays by scientists to find it." KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters)
JAMES NEWS PHOTO

Frey Oprah King

2006-01-28T02:45:00.000-06:00

JAMES NEWS PHOTO
I talked in the previous entry about how our news media is more interested in speculation than facts, and that only people who don't care about the truth believe them and read James Frey (or pay any attention at all to James Frey). That brings me to the amazing saga of Oprah and James Frey.

My oldest daughter, in Cornell Law School, evidently has fallen in love with Oprah. That has worried some members of our family, like me. I have to admit I have seen maybe 15 minutes total of Oprah in my whole life, and that was too much. This latest incident, however, actually tells me why my daughter might like her.

Oprah I merely can't watch. Larry King I despise. I actually saw about 10 minutes of Larry King's "interview" of James Frey (HOW do I see these things when I never watch these programs--as I have said in this Blog I just have an instinct that allows me to know all and see all with almost no actual time spent looking). It was the most embarrassing 10 minutes of interview I have ever seen. You can't ask more softball questions, or be more sycophantic, to an admitted liar than Larry King was to James Frey. I only watched it as long as I did because of the same type of sick fascination there is in watching a spectacular NASCAR wreck. It really is time for Larry King to go. I digress.

This is where Oprah got, sort of, in trouble. She called Larry King to evidently defend James Frey and approve of Larry King's God forgives, so can I, attitude. Remember, this was AFTER Frey had admitted he made up major parts of his book, "A Million Little Pieces".

Then Oprah thought about it. She invited Frey on her show, or maybe he was already invited. She was outraged on her show with righteous indignation. She virtally reamed him out (which he richly deserves--I don't even believe this guff I have seen in headlines about whether Oprah was "too harsh"). Oprah said she felt "duped" (no, I didn't see this, but I saw a CNN report on the "controversy"). So why did Oprah first defend Frey and then "ambush" him.

As I said above, the simplest explanation is that she thought about it. What my oldest daughter likes about Oprah is that she is "honest" about her feelings--and she is willing to candidly share them with her audience. I think that there can be no doubt that she connects with MANY women on a deep, probably emotional, level.

The unkind, and cynical, explanation of Oprah's about face is that she put her finger to the wind and decided her own reputation would suffer if she appeared to condone lying and deception. I tend NOT to believe this, and to be virtually sure that it is more complex than that. My own opinion is that Oprah DOES tend to be honest about her feelings--although I would suspect her feelings have a tendency to be what her audience expects them to be (yes, I am saying people can delude themselves).

I can see where people like my daughter would be impressed that Oprah would be willing to first call and express her feelings to Larry King, and then be willing to get really and honestly angry face to face with the author after she had had time for refection. To me, this has a FEEL of a much more honest emotional response, with real feelings, than Larry King is capable of.

The problem is that what it is NOT is reason. That is my problem with Oprah. To me, she is all emotion and no reason. I know. Maybe that describes women in general (if you are surprised by the sexism of THAT statement, you haven't been reading this Blog). However, if it makes women feel better about themselves to listen to her, who am I to say that she is not valuable?

I do worry about our society being that way, however. James Frey makes things up, and some people are willing to make excuses for him because his book may help addicts (remember Dan Rather's excuse that CBS may have used fabricated facts but the story was still "true"--it is in reality the same "defense"). Meanwhile, lots of people no longer like the Iraq War. Fine. There is certainly a fairly strong argument that the Iraq War was a mistake in judgment. But the people who now don't like the war are ANXIOUS to believe that President Bush LIED to get us into the war, when there is NO evidence to that effect (EVERYONE, including President Clinton, believed Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and the CIA Director guaranteed it to the President). So why are people willing to believe a lie themselves--the lie that President Bush got us into Iraq with a lie. It is an emotional reaction. It is a natural emotion to believe badly of someone who you believe got you into a bad situation, especially if he had previously convinced you he was doing right. If he didn't lie to you, wasn't your own judgment just as bad as his? If the President made a mistake, but you would have made the same mistake with the evidence he had, how can you criticize him? It is all emotion and not reason.

So you have the absolutely strange and wonderful situation where a lot of people are willing to EXUSE lies when they think "good" is being done, and condemn "lies" that were not lies at all--all based on emotion. I am sometimes accused of being too cold. However, I refuse to accept that all of this emotional lying to ourselves, and accepting lies and falsehoods we should not accept--to the point of making people rich--is a good thing. It is a bad and dangerous thing.

I can still remember Roger Ebert's review of Michael Moore's "documentary". He said he was reviewing the "film", and NOT whether what was in it was true. This was supposedly a "documentary". It is supposed to be factually true. It CANNOT be "good" if it is factually false (as it was). James Frey's supposedly "true" book CANNOT be worth reading if it is factually false. I am glad Oprah reached that conclusion in the end, even if I tend to believe she should have used reason before ever calling Larry King.
JAMES NEWS PHOTO
BY The Maverick Conservative

Gaza Strip

2006-01-27T12:39:00.000-06:00

JAMES NEWS PHOTO
Thousands of activists from Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah Party demonstrated across the Gaza Strip on Friday, burning abandoned cars, shooting in the air and demanding corrupt leaders resign after their devastating election loss to the militant Hamas movement.

With Hamas winning a strong majority in parliamentary elections, Abbas said he will ask the Islamic group to form the next Palestinian government, but Fatah rejected a role in the new Cabinet and Israel ruled out peace talks in what could be the first steps to isolate the militant group after its election victory.

Acting Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni asked world leaders not to legitimize a government led by Hamas, saying elections are not a "whitewash" for terrorist groups.

Livni told reporters that Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip last summer opened a window of opportunity in peace efforts, but with the election of Hamas, "the Palestinians slammed it shut."

In the first real violence since the vote, an argument between about 20 Hamas and Fatah loyalists in the Gaza town of Khan Younis degenerated into gunfire and rock- throwing Friday that left three injured. One man was treated for gunshot wounds and two for minor injuries caused by rocks, according to witnesses and hospital officials.

On Friday night, thousands of Fatah activists burned the abandoned cars outside the Palestinian parliament building in Gaza City and shot in the air, demanding the resignation of corrupt party officials and insisting that Fatah form no coalition with Hamas.

About 1,000 angry party activists, including 100 gunmen, drove by Abbas' Gaza residence, although he was not home at the time. The Fatah defeat was seen as a rebuke to veteran — and corrupt — party leaders who have resisted calls for reform by its young guard.

After evening prayers, the protesters went back to Abbas' house, and fired rifles in the air, before marching and driving through the city, waving Palestinian flags, yellow Fatah flags and posters of the late Yasser Arafat.

"We don't want to join the Hamas government. We don't want corrupt leadership. We want reform and we want to fire all the corrupt," one group of thousands chanted at an earlier demonstration outside the parliament building in Gaza City.

"This demonstration is a natural reaction of Fatah supporters and members. We have one demand that the (Fatah) Central Committee and the Revolutionary Council should resign immediately," said Samir Mashrawi, a local Fatah leader who lost in the election. The protesters did not specifically call for Abbas' ouster.

Polls published Friday in Israeli newspapers showed support among Israelis for talks with a Palestinian government led by Hamas.

The United States and some European nations said Hamas must renounce violence and drop its demand to destroy Israel.

But Mahmoud Zahar, an incoming Hamas parliamentarian and one of the group's top leaders in Gaza, said the organization had no immediate plans to change its policy to recognize Israel or to restart peace efforts.

"Israel has nothing to give for the Palestinians. All the time they were wasting our time ... implementing nothing," he said. "If the Israelis have something to fulfill the basic demand of the Palestinian people concerning the occupied territories, detainees, question of Jerusalem, our national interests, we are going to re-evaluate this argument."

U.S. Consul-General Jacob Walles said Washington would halt aid to Palestinians should a Hamas-led government come to power and not renounce terror.

The U.S. gave the Palestinian Authority $400 million in direct aid last year and several million more through U.N. charities, Walles said. Some was given directly to Palestinian ministries.

"I don't see how we would do that if those ministries were controlled by Hamas," he said.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is to meet in London on Monday with U.N., Russian and European leaders as the so-called "Quartet" of would-be international peacemakers evaluates the results and tries to decide how to proceed.

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said he had asked Abbas to meet Sunday to discuss forming a new government. Abbas' office said no appointment has been made yet. Abbas said separately he would ask Hamas to lead the next government.

Israel was unprepared for the Hamas landslide. Foreign and Defense Ministry scenarios had put such a stunning blow to the long-ruling Fatah as a low probability, officials said.

But after the rout, acting Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert quickly ruled out talks.

"The state of Israel will not negotiate with a Palestinian administration if even part of it is an armed terrorist organization calling for the destruction of the state of Israel," Olmert said.

In Syria, a prominent Hamas leader pledged to continue resistance against Israeli occupation, although he did not specify if that meant violent opposition, and he stressed that the group would not yet recognize the Jewish state.

"As long as there is occupation and so long as our people's rights are usurped, our stand will remain as it is. We would resist the (Israeli) occupation to restore our rights," Moussa Abu Marzouk, deputy head of the Hamas movement, said in an interview with The Associated Press.

Hamas ideology does not recognize the presence of a Jewish state in an Islamic Middle East. In recent years, however, some Hamas leaders have grudgingly accepted the idea of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, as long as it is understood to be only a stage toward freeing the rest of Palestine — meaning Israel.

Livni said she spoke to several foreign ministers and told them of the need to send "a very clear, unequivocal message ... that elections are not a whitewash for terror."

"In these talks, I also made clear what was decided in the consultation with the acting prime minister, that Hamas cannot be a partner of Israel and the fact that it will lead the Palestinian Authority, if indeed this is what will happen, this means the Palestinian Authority also cannot be a partner, in the eyes of Israel and the whole world," she said.

Avi Dichter, a former Israeli security services chief, said he didn't expect terrorism to rise once Hamas takes over.

"The moment they become partner to the Palestinian government, reality will become a lot more complicated for them than it was when they were a terror organization alone," Dichter told Army Radio.

Economic constraints are also likely to curb Hamas' extremism. With the Palestinian Authority dependent on foreign aid for its survival and on Israel for day-to-day needs such as electricity, water and the movement of people and goods, Hamas will have a hard time ignoring international calls to renounce violence.

Former President Carter told the AP the United States should increase its donations to U.N. and other aid groups earmarked for the Palestinians to make up for the cut in direct aid "so that the people can still continue to have food and shelter and health care and education."

Carter met Friday with Abbas, who told him that the Palestinian Authority could not pay salaries at the end of the month, even with foreign aid.

If aid is cut off, "it would create an element of chaos unless the money is made up by other sources," he said. "If the Arab countries come through and the European countries continue to help and maybe Japan, they could continue to operate."

Hamas leaders themselves have hinted that despite their hard-line ideology, they will be pragmatic and not disrupt daily life in the territories.

A poll conducted Thursday and published in the Maariv daily said 40 percent of Israelis say Israel should negotiate with Hamas if the group renounces its determination to destroy Israel. Another 27 percent say talks should be held with no conditions, based on the "road map" peace plan.

The poll showed 29 percent of Israelis favored cutting off all contacts with the Palestinians, freezing talks and resuming targeted killings of Hamas leaders. The poll of 552 people had a 4.2 percentage-point margin of error.

A second poll in the Yediot Ahronot newspaper showed that 48 percent of those questioned by the Dahaf Research Institute said Israel should negotiate with Hamas, while 43 percent said Israel should shun a Hamas-led government. The poll of 500 people had a 4.5 percentage point margin of error and was conducted Wednesday night, before Hamas' victory was announced. JAMES NEWS PHOTO

Seven Children Killed

2006-01-26T02:45:00.000-06:00

LAKE BUTLER, Fla. - Seven adopted children from a single household were killed Wednesday in a fiery crash when their car was crushed between a truck and a stopped school bus in rural northern Florida.

The children, ranging in age from 15 years to 21 months, were alone in the car, headed toward their home about two miles north of the crash site. The truck hit them from behind, pushing their car into the bus and causing the car to burst into flames, police said.

"It's a very chaotic scene," said Lt. Mike Burroughs of the Florida Highway Patrol. "It's just a mangled, charred mess."

Everyone in the car was killed, including the 15-year-old girl who was driving illegally.

It was unclear why the children were unaccompanied. Burroughs identified the adoptive mother as Barbara Mann. He did not have further details about the family.

Evidence from the scene showed that the truck, which was carrying bottled water, did not brake before hitting the car on the two-lane road, Burroughs said.

The bus ended up 200 feet from where the car struck it, and the cab of the truck lay overturned near the scene, Burroughs said. The bus was at an approved bus stop, but it was not immediately clear whether children were getting on or off.

Nine students were on the bus, and three were thrown from the vehicle by the force of the crash.

Officials said three students were hospitalized in serious condition and two were in fair condition. Burroughs said he believed the other four were treated and released.

The drivers of the bus and the truck were also taken to hospitals. Trucker Alvin Wilkerson, 31, suffered minor injuries, and authorities planned to interview him. The bus driver, Lillie Mae Perry, was thrown from the vehicle, and her condition was not immediately known.

Burroughs said charges against Wilkerson were pending the investigation. He added that a blood sample would be tested for alcohol. "We want to know why he didn't see a big, large school bus," the officer said.

The car was driven by 15-year-old Nicki Mann, who was with siblings Elizabeth Mann, 15; Johnny Mann, 13; Heaven Mann, 3; Ashley Kenn, 13; Miranda Finn, 8 or 9 years old; and Anthony Lamb, almost 2 years old. Lamb was in the process of being adopted, Burroughs said.

Joy Clemins, who lives next to the crash site, said she heard the collision and ran out of her house.

"It was horrible. People were screaming, children were wandering around, two were lying the middle of the road," she said. "It is like they were walking around in a dream."

The bus was operated by the Union County school district, which has three schools from pre-kindergarten to 12th grade in the area about 60 miles southwest of Jacksonville.

School Superintendent Carlton Faulk said extra grief and guidance counselors will be on hand Thursday to help children deal with the tragedy.

Meanwhile, the

National Transportation Safety Board said it was sending a team of investigators.

Fatal accidents involving school buses are relatively rare. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reports that 71 passengers and 42 drivers been killed since 1994 in school vehicles — an average of about 10 people per year. Associated Press

NEWSROOM 1/21/06

2006-01-21T06:11:00.000-06:00

JAMES NEWS PHOTO

The Los Angeles Times and the New York Times lead with the final results of last month's Iraqi parliamentary election, in which Shiite religious parties made the strongest showing, as expected. But a coalition alliance—perhaps even with Sunnis—will still be necessary to form a government. The results also top the Wall Street Journal's world-wide newsbox. The Washington Post, by contrast, stuffs the election. (Though it had lots of room above-the-fold for an enormous picture of a whale swimming up the Thames.) The paper's top non-local story reports that a Defense Department analyst was sentenced to 12-and-a-half-years in prison yesterday for passing classified information to lobbyists and the government of Israel.

The Shiite-Kurd coalition that has ruled Iraq since the last election took 181 out of the 275 seats in parliament, leaving it three votes short of the two-thirds majority it needs to set up a new government. The Sunni parties made a solid showing, taking 58 seats, which makes it "the second-largest bloc," the NYT says. (The figures are fuzzy because at least two parties claim to represent Sunni interests; consequently, the LAT gives the Sunnis a slightly smaller take. The NYT has a snazzy online graphic that lays the results out in much more detail.) Now comes the part Iraqi politicians excel at: Weeks of bluster and backroom dealing over jobs and power in the new government. "Some politicians said they were concerned that the wrangling might last into March," says the LAT, "creating a power vacuum that would make it more difficult to fight the insurgency."

Despite the heartening Sunni showing, an LAT analysis says U.S. officials were "disappointed" by the results—they had hoped secular parties would do better—but have now turned their focus toward the "more modest goal" of convincing the religious and nationalist parties who won to play together nicely.

Lawrence Franklin pleaded guilty to passing classified information about Iran, his area of expertise, to a pair of officials at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the powerful lobbying group, and to an Israeli diplomat. He apparently believed that the pro-Israel lobbyists would be in a better position than he was to bring the information, still undisclosed, to the attention of the White House. The judge called Franklin "a loyal American" before issuing his sentence, which "fell at the low end of the federal sentencing guidelines," the WP says.

The Post also gives big play to a dispatch from Bolivia about its newly elected president, the alpaca-clad, Bush-baiting Evo Morales. The story explores whether Morales' lefty radicalism is more than just talk. An early test will be whether he follows through on campaign-trail hints that he will legalize the cultivation of coca, the plant from which cocaine is derived. Morales, a champion of the country's indigenous people and a former head of the coca growers' federation, contends that the plant can be put to uses Kate Moss could hardly imagine, such as making "teas, cakes, energy bars, skin creams, cough medicine and acne remedies." Legalization would mean the end of a $100 million-a-year program the United States sponsors to eradicate coca and while encouraging farmers to shift to other crops.

The LAT and WSJ front news of the Dow's loss of 213 points yesterday, or two percent of its value, the largest such drop since May 2003. The WSJ blames the slump on rising oil prices, while the LAT stresses weak earnings reports that "raised new concerns about the economy's health." The drop comes less than two weeks after the Dow broke 11,000, prompting a front-story in the NYT to trumpet "the renewed confidence of investors."

Only the NYT fronts the indictment of 11 environmentalists for allegedly staging 17 attacks on such targets as lumber interests and a ski resort between 1996 and 2001. No one died in the attacks, but they did an estimated $23 million in damage. At a news conference, FBI director Robert Mueller III said violent environmental groups were among the bureau's "highest domestic terrorism priorities." The WP's inside story arches a rhetorical eyebrow, recounting up high an Dec. 25, 1999 incident in which the group set fire to a wood product company's offices and left behind a note reading: "Early Christmas morning elves left coal in Boise Cascade's stocking."

Karl Rove popped his head above the foxhole he's been hiding in since Lewis Libby's indictment, the WP reports out front. In a feisty speech to the Republican National Committee, he previewed the GOP's attack plan for this year's midterm elections and attacked Democrats for their "ossified" thinking. Rove's fresh ideas: Republicans will fight terrorists and cut taxes.

In more sobering news for Republicans, the LAT fronts a piece that says many GOP members of Congress are worried about a big backlash over the federal government's blundering implementation of the new Medicare prescription drug program. Even conservatives are angry, polls show. The NYT has a well-crafted piece of its own about the Medicare woes, focusing on the plight of the mentally ill.

The NYT wraps into its lead the news that the deadline for the threatened execution of kidnapped American journalist Jill Carroll passed yesterday. There was no word from her captors. The WP has the most extensive coverage in an inside piece, which reports that an influential Sunni politician begged for her release, "In the name of God, in the name of religion, in the name of any word of sympathy that exists in Iraq."

Meanwhile, in Mozambique, a judge sentenced a hit man to 30 years in prison for murdering the muckracking journalist Carlos Cardoso. Prominent figures that are suspected of ordering the killing, including the former president's son, have yet to be charged.

The WSJ fronts a fly-on-the-wall feature about the making of a new television series that's giving a new twist to an old staple: the half-hour sitcom. Even as network sitcoms about bumptious but loving families have gone the way of Dumont, HBO is trying to revive the form with a potty-mouthed new show, starring comedian Louis C.K. Innovation hasn't been easy: Some studio audiences don't know how to react to Sopranos-style cursing and edgy humor, and it turns out that those network commercial breaks "are part of a sitcom's DNA, providing curtain-like intermissions to a story."

The WP "Style" section drops in on a left-wing historian whose Bush-bashing work recently won an endorsement from an influential source: Osama bin Laden. After the Evil One gave a shout-out to William Blum's Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower in the taped message that surfaced Thursday, the book shot from the nether reaches of the Amazon.com's bestseller list to number 26. The unrepentant author tells the Post: "This is almost as good as being an Oprah book."

NEWS ROOM 1/20/06

2006-01-20T13:52:00.000-06:00

The Washington Post, Wall Street Journal world-wide newsbox, and New York Times all lead with the first words from Osama Bin Laden in about a year. In the audio tape, which the CIA said appeared to be authentic and was first broadcast on al-Jazeera, Bin Laden warned of attacks coming against the U.S. and "offered" a vague "long truce." He made a similar gesture to Europe in 2004. The Los Angeles Times fronts Bin Laden but leads with Yahoo, Microsoft and AOL responding to government subpoenas and coughing up (in aggregated and not personally identifiable form) data on millions of users' search terms. The government wants the records—including all search terms used over the course of a week—as part of a suit to revive the anti-porn and constitutionally shaky Child Online Protection Act. Everybody else fronts the case but focuses on Google's decision to fight the subpoena. The search-term subpoenas and Google's opposition against them were first reported in the San Jose Mercury News.

USA Today reefers the tape and leads with the government announcing it will begin its "trusted travelers" program in June: Air passengers who undergo background checks and fork over about $100 annually will get access to express lines and might not have to do things like remove their jackets or shoes. The ACLU is pissed about the program, saying the lines faced by lumpen travelers are "going to be longer."

Bin Laden appears to have made the tape in the last month or so. He referenced reports—first aired in late November—that Bush had talked about bombing al-Jazeera's headquarters.

Amid all the speculation about Bin Laden's motives and objectives only the Journal seems to make the following obvious yet crucial point right up high: "Mr. bin Laden's ability to follow through on the threat is unclear."

Now moving on to that copious conjecture: With his "truce" offer—which was predicated on the U.S. pulling out of Iraq and Afghanistan and ending support for Israel—Bin Laden was probably trying to look like a statesmen and shore up support among moderate Muslims disenchanted with the carnage jihadists have brought particularly against other Muslims. He was also probably hoping to take some spotlight from, and create some distance from, Musab al-Zarqawi, who seems keen on attacking Shiites. And then there's the fact that the tape was released just a few days after the U.S. airstrike that purportedly killed some key AQ men.

The more intriguing speculation: Analysts told the NYT Bin Laden's voice sounded "more labored, lacking the energetic quality typical of earlier recordings." Other told the LAT the same thing.

The WP and NYT front the Justice Department releasing a white paper asserting that the warrantless spying program is plenty legal. The analysis argues that the president simply has the constitutional power to do so. And moreover, the argument goes, the resolution Congress passed after 9/11 authorizing force against Afghanistan and al-Qaida "places the president at the zenith of his powers in authorizing the N.S.A. activities."

The president's snooping order was not obviously unconstitutional. But, as the non-partisan Congressional Research Service has suggested, it does appear to have skirted the law. "It's a pretty straightforward case where the president is acting illegally," one law prof told the NYT. "This is domestic surveillance over American citizens for whom there is no evidence or proof that they are involved in any illegal activity, and it is in contravention of a statute of Congress specifically designed to prevent this."

Everybody mentions yesterday's suicide bombing in Tel Aviv that killed only the bomber and wounded about 20. Islamic Jihad, which unlike Hamas is not taking part in the coming Palestinian elections, claimed responsibility. And two near-simultaneous bombings on one of Baghdad's most popular streets killed about 20 people.

The LAT fronts the Republican National Committee voting on a resolution to condemn President Bush's proposed guest worker program. The RNC is usually not so big on opposing the president's plans.

Along with Slate's John Dickerson, NYT-man Paul Krugman wonders about the White House's insistence on keeping mum about fallen lobbyist Jack Abramoff and Co.'s contacts with the White House. Then Krugman throws a follow-up flame:

So I have a question for my colleagues in the news media: Why isn't the decision by the White House to stonewall on the largest corruption scandal since Warren Harding considered major news?

Don't know about that Harding reference, but Krugman has a point: Apart from the wires, TP has seen two stories on the silence—and they weren't in the LAT, NYT, Journal, or Post.

News Room

2006-01-19T07:25:00.000-06:00

James News Photo

The New York Times leads with Pakistani officials now saying they do believe the recent U.S. airstrike, which killed about a dozen civilians, also in fact killed a handful of "senior" al-Qaida men, including the son-in-law of AQ's number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri. The U.S. had posted a $5 million reward for one of the men. It's unclear how the Pakistanis know about the killings, since the suspected militants' bodies reportedly haven't been found. USA Today leads with federal mine regulators saying they want to pump up max allowable fines nearly four-fold to $220,000. Regulators don't have the power to make the change; only Congress does. Knight Ridder recently had an analysis showing a "dramatic reduction in the dollar amount of large fines for mine safety violations during the Bush administration." The Los Angeles Times leads with evidence Southern California's real estate market is cooling down just a bit: The rate of appreciation (not overall prices) dropped last year, the first time that's happened six years. The Washington Post leads with D.C. becoming the latest locale to offer emergency drug coverage for those getting shafted by snafus in the new Medicare pill program.

The LAT and NYT front the Supreme Court punting on a New Hampshire law requiring parental notifications for minors who want abortions. A lower court had overturned the law as unconstitutional, since it doesn't include a health exemption. Yesterday's ruling, which was unanimous and written by Justice O'Connor sent the law back to the lower court, saying that while a health exemption is required the court "need not have invalidated the law wholesale."

The WP and NYT both stuff the non-partisan Congressional Research Service concluding that the briefings the White House gave Congress about the warrantless spying were so limited as to be, ahem, "inconsistent with the law."

Nobody fronts the violence in Iraq, where about 50 people were reported killed in attacks. The NYT flags the discovery of "bodies of 36 Iraqis killed execution-style"; all appear to have been Sunnis recently hired as police. Two African telecom engineers were kidnapped when their "heavily defended" convoy was ambushed in Baghdad. Ten of their security guards were killed. In the southern city of Basra, two American contractors were reportedly killed by a roadside bomb.

The WP has a remarkable, and remarkably sobering, report from the Iraqi city of Baiji. The town hosts a key refinery and the Post says it's considered a "critical priority for the U.S. military." It has also been "long neglected by American forces and still firmly in the grip of insurgents." One sergeant said insurgents "have the place locked down. We have almost no support from the local people. We talk to 1,000 people and one will come forward." The U.S. unit now on the scene has been taking heavy casualties. "I didn't expect to lose so many friends so soon," said one soldier. (There's a lot more to this story—by Ann Scott Tyson—and it's today's must read.)

The NYT off-leads the special prosecutor investigating former Housing Secretary Henry Cisneros issuing a final report alleging he was stonewalled by Clinton administration officials. The investigation lasted about a decade and cost $21 million. Cisneros pled guilty in 1999 of lying to investigators about tax evasion and then was pardoned by President Clinton. The report is due out today but was "obtained by The New York Times from someone sympathetic to the…investigation who wanted [its] criticism of the Clinton administration to be known."

A USAT Cover Story offers another candidate for Congress' finest: In 2003, California Republican Rep. Jerry Lewis (no jokes, please), was a key player in pushing through a $160 million Navy project that had been much criticized—including the previous year by Lewis himself. Right before the House voted for the program, a hedge fund connected to the project held a fundraiser for Lewis. Total takings: $110,000. Lewis says the money had nothing to do with his about-face, of course. He also acknowledged the dough "played a very significant role" in his winning the chairmanship of the powerful Appropriations Committee.

The WP fronts Democrats unveiling their own "lobbyist reform" plan. It goes farther than the one Republican leaders offered Tuesday and includes rules for sunshine in currently murk-filled last minute negotiations on bills. But apparently, no mention of earmarks.

The Wall Street Journal and NYT both front the tumult in Tokyo's stock market, which dived Tuesday and then had to shut down yesterday because trading overwhelmed the system. The market made a comeback today.

The NYT goes inside with six former heads of the EPA, including five Republicans, getting together and warning that the White House needs to stop fiddling on global warming.

A frontpage piece in the Post flags a study out today showing promise for a once-a-day AIDS treatment pill. Barring the unexpected, it should be out by the end of the year.

The WP off-leads Secretary of State Rice saying she's going to reassign "hundreds" of diplomats from cushy positions in Europe to hotter spots in the Middle East and elsewhere.

It's not about Abramoff…Congress-wonks Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann offer up a NYT op-ed that's dull, lengthy, and nails the deeper troubles of the Capitol:

The problem starts not with lobbyists but inside Congress. Over the past five years, the rules and norms that govern Congressional deliberation, debate and voting—what legislative aficionados call "the regular order"—have routinely been violated, especially in the House of Representatives, and in ways that mark a dramatic break from custom….

Quick and decisive Congressional actions could minimize the damage done by the explosion of scandals related to Mr. Abramoff. But lobbying reform alone is a temporary solution. The real solution is for Congress to behave like the deliberative body it is supposed to be.

Gore AND McClellan PHOTO

2006-01-18T13:22:00.000-06:00

JAMES NEWS PHOTO

Q You kept saying "lawful." It's true the President -- there is a law that permits the President to get a warrant and wiretap. But he has not been doing that; he's been breaking the law. Al Gore said he broke the law. The ACLU is filing a suit. Why does he break the law? I mean, he has the means and the tools to do what --

MR. McCLELLAN: I reject that wholeheartedly, Helen. The legal justification has been spelled out by the Department of Justice.

In terms of Al Gore's comments, I think his hypocrisy knows no bounds. It was the Clinton administration that used warrantless physical searches. An example is what they did in the case of Aldrich Ames. And it was the Deputy Attorney General under the Clinton administration that testified before Congress and said, "First, the Department of Justice believes and the case law supports that the President has inherent authority" -- inherent authority -- "to conduct warrantless physical searches for foreign intelligence purposes and that the President may, as has been done, delegate this authority to the Attorney General." This is testimony, public testimony before the House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

I would also point out that a former associate Attorney General under the Clinton administration said that every President since FISA's passage has asserted that he retained inherent power to go beyond the Act's terms -- under President Clinton -- and he pointed to the Deputy Attorney General's comments that I just referenced. So --

Q Then you welcome a core test on whether this is really legal or not.

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, there's going to be a Judiciary Committee hearing and the Attorney General has indicated he looks forward to going before the Judiciary Committee and discussing the legal justification for this. We have already spelled that legal justification out for people to look at. And he looks forward to talking to the Judiciary Committee and testifying on these matters.

Q Scott, let me just follow on the criticism of Al Gore, who, as Helen notes, called the spying program a dangerous over-reach; said that it should be looked into by a special counsel; said later that this may even be an impeachable offense. At the same time you've got Senator Hilary Clinton calling this administration one of the worst in U.S. history, comparing your Republican-controlled House to a plantation where dissenting voices are squelched.

How do you respond to what seem to be --

MR. McCLELLAN: You're combining two things. Let me address the first one --

Q Right, but I mean, they're combined in a sense that they go to how the party is governing, how the President is governing --

MR. McCLELLAN: I think I just talked about Al Gore's comments and I said Al Gore's hypocrisy knows no bounds. If he is going to be the voice of the Democratic Party on national security matters, we welcome it, we look forward to the discussion. I think the American people clearly understand the importance of what we're trying to do to protect them and prevent attacks from happening. And that's why this authorization is so vital.

In terms of the comments you referenced from Senator Clinton, I think that they were out of bounds.

Q Well, what's going on here, do you think?

MR. McCLELLAN: I'm sorry?

Q I mean, where is this coming from? You've got two of the most high-profile Democrats saying these things; what do you think they're up to?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, I think we know one tends to like or enjoy grabbing headlines. The other one sounds like that the political season may be starting early.

Q So you think Gore is going to run again; is that -- (laughter.)

MR. McCLELLAN: I'll let you figure that one out. (Laughter.)

Q WCBS.com in New York quotes Senator Hillary Clinton telling the Reverend Al Sharpton's National Action Network yesterday, "When you look at how the House of Representatives has been run, it's been run like a plantation, and you know what I'm talking about." She went on to say, "I predict to you that this administration will go down in history as one of the worst that has ever governed our country." And my question is, does the White House believe that this, from a Clinton, was more or less offensive than the Al Gore hypocrisy outburst?

MR. McCLELLAN: Yes, they were, and I think they were way out of line. I indicated earlier in response to David Gregory's question. Thank you. END 2:04 P.M. EST

AUTHORIZED BY PRESIDENT BUSH James News Photo

2006-01-17T14:15:00.000-06:00

James News Photo
The White House accused former Vice President Al Gore of hypocrisy Tuesday for his assertion that President Bush broke the law by eavesdropping on Americans without court approval.

"If Al Gore is going to be the voice of the Democrats on national security matters, we welcome it," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said in a swipe at the Democrat, who lost the 2000 election to Bush.

Gore, in a speech Monday, called for an independent investigation of the administration program that he says broke the law by listening in — without warrants — on Americans suspected of talking with terrorists abroad.

Gore called the program, authorized by President Bush, "a threat to the very structure of our government" and charged that the administration acted without congressional authority and made a "direct assault" on a federal court set up to authorize requests to eavesdrop on Americans.

Meanwhile, two civil liberties groups — the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights — filed federal lawsuits Tuesday seeking to block the eavesdropping program, which they called unconstitutional electronic surveillance of American citizens.

McClellan said the Clinton-Gore administration had engaged in warrantless physical searches, and he cited an FBI search of the home of CIA turncoat Aldrich Ames without permission from a judge. He said Clinton's deputy attorney general, Jamie Gorelick, had testified before Congress that the president had the inherent authority to engage in physical searches without warrants.

"I think his hypocrisy knows no bounds," McClellan said of Gore.

But at the time that of the Ames search in 1993 and when Gorelick testified a year later, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act required warrants for electronic surveillance for intelligence purposes, but did not cover physical searches. The law was changed to cover physical searches in 1995 under legislation that Clinton supported and signed.

Gore said Attorney General Alberto Gonzales should name a special counsel to investigate the program, saying Gonzales had an "obvious conflict of interest" as a member of the Bush Cabinet as well as the nation's top law enforcement officer.

Gonzales, who has agreed to testify publicly at a Senate hearing on the program, defended the surveillance on cable news talk shows Monday night.

"This program has been reviewed carefully by lawyers at the Department of Justice and other agencies," Gonzales said on Fox News Channel's "Hannity & Colmes." "We firmly believe that this program is perfectly lawful. The president has the legal authority to authorize these kinds of programs."

On CNN's "Larry King Live," Gonzales said Gore's comments were inconsistent with Clinton administration policy.

"It's my understanding that during the Clinton administration there was activity regarding physical searches without warrants," Gonzales said. "I can also say it's my understanding that the deputy attorney general testified before Congress that the president does have the inherent authority under the Constitution to engage in physical searches without a warrant. And so, those would certainly seem to be inconsistent with what the former vice president was saying today."

Gore said there is still much to learn about the domestic surveillance program, but that he already has drawn a conclusion about its legality.

"What we do know about this pervasive wiretapping virtually compels the conclusion that the president of the United States has been breaking the law repeatedly and insistently," he said.

Bush has pointed to a congressional resolution passed after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that authorized him to use force in the fight against terrorism as allowing him to order the program.

Gore, however, contended that Bush failed to convince Congress to support a domestic spying program, so he "secretly assumed that power anyway, as if congressional authorization was a useless bother."

He said the spying program must be considered along with other administration actions as a constitutional power grab by the president. Gore cited imprisoning American citizens without charges in terrorism cases, mistreatment of prisoners — including torture — and seizure of individuals in foreign countries and delivering them to autocratic regimes "infamous for the cruelty of their techniques."

Shelley Winters James News Photo

2006-01-17T12:49:00.000-06:00

James News Photo
On Saturday, January 14, Hollywood lost one of its greatest actresses. Shelly Winters, two time Oscar-winner, died at the age of 85 in a Southern California nursing home, where she was hospitalized in October after having a heart attack.

Raised in Brooklyn, New York, Winters played every kind of role, from glamorous to trashy, despite her impoverished upbringing forcing her to sell magazines in the street at the age of nine. She later became a salesgirl in the Garment District before getting her big break in an amateur review.

Her first Oscar for supporting actress came in 1959, for her portrayal of a woman hiding from the Nazis in The Diary of Anne Frank. Her second came for playing a blind woman in A Patch of Blue (1965).

In 1980 she released the autobiography, Shelley, Also Known As Shirley, where she gave details about her three marriages, as well as her affairs with high profile stars, such as Marlon Brando, Errol Flynn and Burt Lancaster.

One of her last public appearances was on the Johnny Carson show, where she plugged her second biography, The Best of Times -- The Worst of Times.

Winters leaves behind a daughter, Gina Vittoria, from ber second marriage with Italian actor, Vittorio Gassman.

Ayman al-Zawahri

2006-01-13T23:45:00.000-06:00

JAMES NEWS PHOTO.
An airstrike in a remote Pakistani tribal area killed at least 17 people on Friday, and a senior Pakistani official said the target was a suspected al-Qaida hideout that may have been frequented by high-level operatives, possibly the No. 2 leader Ayman al-Zawahri.

Citing unnamed American intelligence officials, U.S. news networks reported that it was a CIA strike and that al-Zawahri, Osama bin Laden's top lieutenant, could have been at a targeted compound in the Bajur area or about to arrive.

There was no confirmation from either the Pakistani or U.S. government, but a senior Pakistani government official told The Associated Press that "there is 50-50 chance that some al-Qaida personality was at the home" that was hit in the border village of Damadola, about 125 miles northwest of the capital Islamabad.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said Saturday that he had heard that the al-Qaida figure may have been al-Zawahri and that the information would be clearer later Saturday.

In Pakistan, the military only confirmed to The Associated Press that there had been explosions in a remote village near the Afghan border, but could not confirm the cause or casualties. The spokesman for President Gen. Pervez Musharraf said the incident was still being investigated.

"I am not in a position to say yes or no. We know that media is reporting it, but we have no such information, or any details. We are still investigating this matter," Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan told AP Saturday.

In Washington, Pentagon, State Department, National Security Council and intelligence officials all said they had no information on the reports concerning al-Zawahri.

An AP reporter who visited the scene about 12 hours after what villagers said was an airstrike saw three destroyed houses, hundreds of yards apart. Villagers, who denied links to the Taliban or al-Qaida militants, had buried at least 15 people, including women and children, and were digging for more bodies in the rubble. There were no security forces in the area.

U.S. and Pakistani officials told NBC news that U.S. predator drones fired as many as 10 missiles.

Doctors told The Associated Press that at least 17 people died in the attack before dawn on Friday — the second deadly strike in a week near the Afghan border.

Sahibzada Haroon ur Rashid, a local lawmaker from a hard-line Islamic party, claimed it was a U.S. airstrike — opposite a region of Afghanistan where Islamic militants are active. In Kabul, U.S. military spokesman Lt. Mike Cody said he had no reports on Friday's attack.

Residents of Damadola, a hillside hamlet about four miles inside northwestern Pakistan, said they heard aircraft overhead before bombs or missiles crashed through the Pashtun tribal village — blasts that were felt miles away.

The wreckage of the three houses destroyed was scattered in craters some 10 feet deep. Five women were weeping nearby, cursing the attackers. Dozens of others gathered to express condolences.

"My entire family was killed, and I don't know whom should I blame for it," said Sami Ullah, a 17-year old student, as he shifted debris from his ruined home with a hoe. "I only seek justice from God."

He said 24 of his family members were killed — among them his parents, four brothers, three sisters-in-law, three sisters and five nephews. He said his father, Bakht Pur, had been a laborer.

Digging through the cement rubble of his home, Shah Zaman, who lost two sons and a daughter, recounted hearing planes at about 2:40 a.m.

"I ran out and saw planes were dropping bombs," said Zaman, 40. "I saw my home being hit."

"I don't know who carried out this attack and why. We were needlessly attacked. We are law-abiding people. I think we were targeted wrongly," he said.

The attack was the latest in a series of strikes on the Pakistan side of the border with Afghanistan, unexplained by authorities but widely suspected to have targeted terror suspects or Islamic militants. Militant groups like al-Qaida and the Taliban are believed to be active in the border area, but Bajur itself is rarely troubled by violence.

In early 2004 during a major Pakistani counterterrorism operation in neighboring South Waziristan, Pakistani officials said on condition of anonymity that al-Zawahri was believed to be hiding in the area, but the reports were never substantiated.

Al-Zawahri has appeared regularly over the Internet and in Arab media, encouraging Muslims to attack Americans and U.S. interests worldwide.

Like bin Laden, his whereabouts had been unknown since the U.S. military campaign in Afghanistan began following the terror attacks on New York and Washington on Sept. 11, 2001, which killed nearly 3,000 people.

But he has continued to spread his message, including in a videotape broadcast Jan. 6 that said the United States' decision to withdraw some troops from Iraq represented "the victory of Islam."
In September, al-Zawahri said his terror network that was responsible for the bombings in July that killed 52 people on London's transit system. Associated Press.

Jonestown

2006-01-13T21:22:00.000-06:00

JAMES NEWS PHOTO.
Jim Jones. Religious cult leader. Born in 1931 in Lynn, Indiana. An influential Indianapolis preacher, Jones formed the People's Temple in 1955, which he moved to California in the late 1960s. After Jones became the subject of criminal investigations, particularly with regard to his alleged diversion of cult members' donations for his personal use, he and about 1,000 followers relocated to Jonestown, Guyana, in 1977.

In November 1978, cult members killed Congressman Leo J. Ryan as he attempted to leave the People’s Temple compound after an investigatory visit. The following day, Jones orchestrated the mass suicide of more than 900 followers, who were compelled to drink cyanide-laced punch. Jones died the same day of a bullet wound to the head.

Newt Gingrich White Papers

2006-01-13T20:20:00.000-06:00

JAMES NEWS PHOTO

White Papers
Newt on the Abramoff Scandal
Handout to the DC Rotary Club

Wednesday, January 4, 2006
by Newt Gingrich

“Power tends to corrupt, absolute power corrupts absolutely”

Lord Acton

“It will not be denied, that power is of an encroaching nature, and that it ought to be effectually restrained from passing the limits assigned to it.”

Federalist Papers number 48, 1788

Lord Acton understood a principle which lay at the heart of the Founding Fathers development of a Constitution of limited effective government.

The Founding Fathers, having watched the corruption of the British governments of the 18th century, came to believe that power had to be limited, that there was an inherent bias toward corruption among those who had power and that big government was dangerous government.

The Abramoff scandal (and it is a scandal) is only one symptom of the growing profoundly unhealthy nature of power in Washington. Abramoff is the product of the system, not the system is the product of Abramoff. Abramoff did not create the system, but he did use it. It is important to start by stating flatly that this is not a lobbyist scandal. This is a lobbyist-incumbent-staff scandal. Abramoff and every other guilty person should go to jail.

The questions of lobbying should be looked at. But looking only at lobbyists protects the heart of the current system of incumbency protection-big government spending and power-Washington insider domination of the country which as a system is much more dangerous than the Abramoff scandal alone. The Congressional earmarks for pork, the special powers of Senators to blackmail the Executive Branch, the special provisions written into an overly complex tax code late at night in hidden meetings are symptoms of this larger problem of which Abramoff is only the tip of the iceberg. Efforts to focus reforms only on lobbying are efforts that will fail to move beyond the symptoms and look at the entire disease of corrupt power which is slowly engulfing the national government.

Consider these other symptoms:

One person spends $100 million personally to first buy a senate seat and then buy a governorship, and while spending that $100 million, votes for the McCain-Feingold bill to limit every middle class citizen to $2,500 an election per campaign.

Foreign governments and entities increasingly understand they can buy influence in Washington, and from the campaign scandals of 1996 to the recent donation of $20 million by a Saudi Prince to a major University, there has been a flood of foreign money designed to influence the most powerful government in the world.

The election process has turned into an incumbency protection process in which lobbyists attend PAC fundraisers to raise money for incumbents so they can drown potential opponents, thus creating war chests which convince potential candidates not to run and freeing up the incumbents to spend more time at Washington PAC fundraisers. The McCain-Feingold limits create ridiculously low contribution limits which requires more and more time be spent raising money in small amounts to maintain the war chests.

The very wealthy simply go through a loophole in the new campaign law and create irresponsible 527 organizations turning the 2004 Presidential campaign into the most relentlessly negative and harsh in modern times.

Senators abuse their power to blackmail the Executive Branch by allowing individual Senators to hold up Presidential appointments in order to extort things from the Executive Branch in a bazaar of negotiation.

Faced with incumbency protection, lobbyist friends, and huge war chests, House and Senate Members find it impossible to say no and simply keep bloating the federal government into a bigger and bigger engine of spending which attracts even more money into lobbying and interest group activities and makes the system even more vulnerable to corruption.

PRINCIPLES

The American people should be able to hold those to whom they loan power (incumbents) accountable and the bias of the system should be toward power back home rather than power in Washington.

Lobbying is an honorable and legitimate function but it should be transparent and accountable.

Middle class candidates should be able to challenge incumbents and millionaires with adequate resources raised from their own constituency.

Foreign influence buying is potentially fatal to our system of government and has to be tightly scrutinized and monitored.

Americans should expect the majority of the House and Senate to put the country first and to restrain or defeat those efforts at personal aggrandizement and personal power which undermine the effectiveness and the legitimacy of the government.

Members of Congress should apply at least as strong a set of rules to themselves as they have applied to business chief executive officers through the Sarbanes-Oxley legislation

FIRST STEPS TO REFORM

The Congress and the President should take these symptoms of dysfunction and corruption seriously and should look at the entire range of problems in a series of hearings and commissions which go to the very fundamentals of what the American people should expect and how the laws and regulations could be changed to strengthen the American people and weaken both the lobbyists and the incumbent politicians.

There are some practical reforms but they will go against the grain of the Washington elite and the establishment desire for bigger government with more rules and more regulations. Here are some key steps:

Abolish fundraising in Washington. There is no reason for incumbents to raise money in the capitol. Washington should be defined broadly so there are no loopholes for suburban fundraisers. The intent should be clear and decisive. Cut the connection between lobbying and campaign money;

Allow unlimited contributions by citizens in the Congressional District of a House race or in the state of a Senate race. There is no reason the honest working citizens back home should have a restriction on their donation while millionaires buy seats and lobbyists host special interest fundraisers. No single step would shift power toward home and away from Washington faster than allowing citizens unlimited funds to donate to elect their own candidates in their own district. One millionaires’ $100 million purchase of a Senate seat and a Governorship in New Jersey should stand as convincing proof that the average citizen should be allowed to donate to the poorer candidate to offset the big rich ability to buy power;

Require that all lobbying contacts between government officials (elected and unelected) and lobbyists be posted on the internet weekly so people can understand who is doing what. Require that the lobbyist file one report and the member or staff file a parallel report so there is a continuous process of confirming accuracy and honesty in reporting. Make it a felony to deliberately misreport;

Create a foreign travel approval board to certify that any non-government travel is a legitimate educational trip and not a sham event;

All special provisions (earmarks) should be required to have the members name and an explanation attached so people can identify who is putting in special provisions;

All spending bills (including conference reports and continuing resolutions) should be filed and have a mandatory 72 hour posting on Thomas before being voted on. This would allow the bloggers, the media, and citizen activists to identify any outrages before the vote rather than after;

All government grants and contracts should be posted on line so they can be scrutinized immediately. Transparency is the key first step toward accountability;

Any systematic or significant violation of the gift band by staff which shows up in the dual reporting system established in reform 3 should lead to immediate review and dismissal if guilty. There should be a staff violation review board and anyone who encounters violations should be encouraged them to report to the board. Staff arrogance and violation of the rules has become a larger problem than member violations and staffs have so much power in the modern gigantic Washington government that they have to be held to the standards of honesty and public service.

The Senate should review its rules and restrictions and bring them up to the House standard. In many ways the Senate rules are two decades behind the House in transparency, accountability and limitation of influence;

Require all foreign monies being used to influence government to be reported and posted on the internet so there is one center of information about the flow of cash. It will stun people to learn how many foreign entities now seek to influence the United States;

Establish a back home standard of honesty and expectations. If you can’t explain it back home without lying then it is wrong. Service before self is a pretty good standard even in Washington. If you have to pretend something is charitable when it is clearly personal it is wrong. Washington will presently get caught up in sophisticated, complicated self analysis when the facts are pretty simple. People did the wrong things and they should not be allowed to get away with it.

There are two broader measures that are symptomatic of an unhealthy system:

End the Senate hold system on Presidential appointments and eliminate the arrogance of individual Senators blackmailing the President of the United States over extraneous issues with the compliance of their colleagues in what is in effect a mugging of the Executive Branch and a major contribution to the arrogance of power in the Senate;

Shrink the size of the federal government and move power out of Washington and back to the 50 states, the 3300 counties and even more importantly to the American people. As long as government is this big, spends this much, and is this powerful the struggle to control and influence it will overwhelm any legal and regulatory remedy. All real reformers should want smaller government and less power in Washington.

Enforce the existing rules. Many of the problems exist because people have been winking at the rules. Punish the wrong doers. Eliminate from authority those with bad judgment. Set a clear standard of honesty and candor.

2000 election

2006-01-08T17:36:00.000-06:00

After a bitterly contested election, Vice President Al Gore presides over a joint session of Congress that certifies George W. Bush as the winner of the 2000 election.
2000 Elections

Apollo

2005-12-22T00:17:00.000-06:00

1968 Apollo 8 departs for moon's orbitApollo 8, the first manned mission to the moon, is successfully launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, with astronauts Frank Borman, James Lovell, Jr., and William Anders aboard.On Christmas Eve, the astronauts entered into orbit around the moon, the first manned spacecraft ever to do so. During Apollo 8's 10 lunar orbits, television images were sent back home, and spectacular photos were taken of Earth and the moon from the spacecraft. In addition to being the first human beings to view firsthand their home world in its entirety, the three astronauts were also the first to see the dark side of the moon.On Christmas morning, Apollo 8 left its lunar orbit and began its journey back to Earth, landing safely in the Pacific Ocean on December 27. On July 20 of the next year, Neil A. Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin, astronauts of the Apollo 11 mission, became the first men to walk on the moon.