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Former SS member and German Nobel literature laureate Guenter Grass labeled Israel a threat to world peace in a poem published Wednesday that drew sharp rebukes at home and from Israel. Not only does the AP leaves the SS factoid out of the headline; they don't mention it until the near bottom of their article.........talk about burying the lede. The AP didn't mention the fact that Guenter Grass was a member of "the Waffen-SS, the combat arm of the Nazis' paramilitary organization" until the very end of the article (as were the comments in defense of the tiny Jewish state)....

"I'm going to have to find another way to do this - the AP's been getting away with this” There is a better way, Rush, and here it is. 1 - During the Founding era, and up to the founding of the AP in the middle of the Nineteenth Century, NOBODY THOUGHT JOURNALISM WAS OBJECTIVE. Newspapers were about the opinions of their printers, just lile the EIB Network is about the opinion of Rush Limbaugh. Jefferson famously asserted that advertisements were the only truths to be relied on in newspapers. 2. The telegraph line between Washington and Baltimore was first...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The president just couldn't say no: Mick Jagger held out a mic almost by way of command, and soon Barack Obama was belting out the blues with the best of them. The East Room of the White House was transformed into an intimate blues club on Tuesday night for a concert featuring blues all-stars of the past, present and future - and the president himself.

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The Supreme Court's conservative majority made it harder for people to band together to sue the nation's largest businesses in the two most far-reaching rulings of the term the justices are wrapping up on Monday. The two cases putting new limits on class-action lawsuits were among more than a dozen in which the justices divided 5-4 along familiar ideological lines, with the winning side determined by the vote of Justice Anthony Kennedy. Women made up one-third of the nine-member court for the first time ever this year, but missing from the court's docket was a case that could be called...

President Barack Obama is pivoting from diplomacy on the world stage to the intimate and delicate domestic task of acting as healer-in-chief to a devastated community. The president travels to tornado-wrecked Joplin, Mo., on Sunday, a day after returning from a six-day European tour of Ireland, England, France and Poland. After days of focusing on the U.S. relationship with the rest of the world, he'll turn to an even more critical connection: his own, with the American people. The president will visit with survivors and family members of the worst tornado in decades, a monster storm that tore through Joplin...

EGUCIGALPA, Honduras (AP) — Former President Manuel Zelaya has arrived in Honduras, ending a long political crisis caused by his ouster in a military-backed coup almost two years ago. Zelaya's flight from Nicaragua landed on Saturday at Tegucigalpa's airport where he was greet by thousands of supporters who had set up a tent camp nearby. Zelaya's comeback paves the way for Honduras to re-enter the international community, which rejected the June 2009 coup that forced him from office and out of the country.

The Associated Press says it will change the formula for determining the fees it collects from U.S. newspapers to capture the growing number of readers online and on digital devices. The new formula, which goes into effect in 2012, will be based on the size of a newspaper's print and digital audiences. . . .

TULSA, Okla. (AP) - Dozens of ultra-conservatives plan to gather in Bartlesville Monday night to protest the Legislature's plan to focus more on the economy than on social issues. The more conservative Republicans, including tea party members, want lawmakers to focus on abortion restrictions, immigration and fewer regulations on firearms. Republican leaders who will direct the agenda want to concentrate first on improving Oklahoma's struggling economy. Charlie Meadows, with the Oklahoma Conservative Political Action Committee, said Monday he expects up to 200 protesters. Meadows says Monday's gathering at the Bartlesville Community Center is a way to send a message to...

How much did the left show its keister on O’Donnell’s alleged gaffe? So much so that the AP/WaPo story on the subject was almost completely rewritten last night, and without an official correction. After the break I will have screen caps and a cut and paste of the text of the article, but let’s start with just the first paragraph. Before: WILMINGTON, Del. — Republican Senate nominee Christine O’Donnell of Delaware on Tuesday questioned whether the U.S. Constitution calls for a separation of church and state, appearing to disagree or not know that the First Amendment bars the government from...

GROZNY, Russia – Islamic insurgents attacked Chechnya's parliament Tuesday in a brazen suicide raid that left six people dead and 17 wounded, defying Kremlin claims of stability in the volatile southern region.

TOLEDO, Ohio — A report says a Republican candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives in Ohio dressed up in a German SS uniform to participate in Nazi reenactments. Excerpted per FR posting rules.

WASHINGTON – Senate Republicans on Tuesday blocked legislation that would have repealed the law banning gays from serving openly in the military. The partisan vote was a defeat for Senate Democrats and gay rights advocates, who saw the bill as their last chance before November's elections to overturn the law known as "don't ask, don't tell." With the 56-43 vote, Democrats fell short of the 60 votes needed to advance the legislation. It also would have authorized $726 billion in defense spending including a pay raise for troops.

A judge on Tuesday sentenced former Hartford Mayor Eddie Perez to three years in prison for taking a bribe and attempted extortion, saying he had to be held accountable for his actions despite all his good deeds. Hartford Superior Court Judge Julia Dewey said Perez also must serve three years of probation after the jail time.

NEW YORK (AP) -- A defense lawyer says a student accused of cutting a Muslim taxi driver's neck in New York City has post-traumatic stress disorder and chronic alcoholism. A Manhattan judge said Monday he'll decide at arraignment whether to grant bail for Michael Enright, of Brewster, N.Y.

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) -- The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, President Barack Obama's controversial former pastor, accused people who wrongly believe Obama is Muslim of catering to political enemies during a fiery speech Sunday in Arkansas. In his sermon at New Millennium Church in Little Rock, Wright criticized supporters of the Iraq war and defended former state Court of Appeals Judge Wendell Griffen for speaking out against it. Griffen serves as the church's pastor. Wright's only reference to Obama came when he compared Griffen's opponents to those who incorrectly think Obama is Muslim....

<p>AP Orders Staff: ‘Stop Using the Phrase “Ground Zero Mosque”’ By Alana Goodman Created 08/19/2010 - 16:10 In an unusual move, the Associated Press has publicly released an advisory memo [1] to its reporters on how to cover of the Ground Zero mosque story - and the first rule is that journalists must immediately stop calling it the "Ground Zero mosque" story.</p>

COBLESKILL, N.Y. (AP) -- The mayor of an upstate New York village resigned Tuesday because he was secretly recorded using a racial slur that mocked President Barack Obama's campaign slogan. Mark Nadeau told a meeting filled with protesters that he was not a racist and was stepping down as Cobleskill mayor because the controversy was hurting his family.

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama plans fundraisers for fellow Democrats in Republican-controlled Texas, but his party's nominee for governor said Tuesday he would not join the event scheduled in the city that he used to run. Former Houston Mayor Bill White told The Associated Press that he couldn't block Obama from supporting his campaign .. also suggested that Obama's visit opens the door for Republican Gov. Rick Perry to continue running against Washington insiders — an unwelcomed distraction in the Democrats' best chance to win the governorship in years. ... White is hardly the first candidate to ditch an Obama...

Congress: Charlie Rangel's world The AP takes a long look at the personal side of Charlie Rangel and his relationship with other members of Congress: "His wife, Alma, warns him not to be naive about the glad-handling. 'You know,' she tells him, 'they're putting you on.' ... 'She says it's unseemly,' Rangel says of his wife's advice. 'I say, 'Suppose it's not real. As long as they keep saying these things until I die, what difference does it make?' But he admits, 'It's still painful. It's times like this when I have to reinforce the facts: I'm alive, I'm well,...

The doctors finally let Rosaria Vandenberg go home. For the first time in months, she was able to touch her 2-year-old daughter who had been afraid of the tubes and machines in the hospital. The little girl climbed up onto her mother's bed, surrounded by family photos, toys and the comfort of home. They shared one last tender moment together before Vandenberg slipped back into unconsciousness.

PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- A Boy Scouts chapter in Philadelphia may have ousted just one gay scout in the decade since the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the organization's right to ban gays, but that doesn't mean untold others haven't been shut out, a city lawyer told jurors Tuesday......

WASHINGTON - Sales of previously occupied homes dipped 2.2 percent in May, suggesting that a boost from government home-buying incentives is winding down earlier than expected.

There are glimmers of hope for Democrats battling to retain control of Congress in this fall's elections, with the party holding a slender edge in public trust for shepherding the economy and small gains in those saying their finances are healthy, according to a new poll. The reeling economy remains the American public's top concern, according to an Associated Press-GfK Poll conducted earlier this month, making public attitudes about it crucial for both parties' hopes in November. The good news for Democrats: By a slim margin (47% to 42%), people trust them more than Republicans to guide the economy. And...

Amidst the general public discontent with ObamaCare, the Associated Press is spinning that it is not repeal that is favored but merely a bunch of revisions. Left unsaid is if all these revisions are necessary, why did Congress pass such a flawed bill in the first place? Let the AP spin cycle begin: WASHINGTON — Toss it or fix it?Anxious backers of President Barack Obama's health care overhaul law are starting to see a flicker of hope.While polls show Americans remain sharply divided over the Democrats' landmark legislation, they aren't clamoring for its repeal. Really? A few paragraphs later AP...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Conservative lawyers and academics are voicing support for Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan, praise that could soften criticism from the right and provide cover for any Republican senators inclined to vote for her nomination. The essence of their take on Kagan, the former Harvard Law School dean who now serves as solicitor general, is that she clearly has the smarts to be a justice and has shown an ability to work with all sides on thorny issues.

How much stupid can you squeeze into one liberal’s head? Three weeks ago American veterans won their long hard court battle to save their memorial cross honoring American soldiers killed in World War I. The case went to the Supreme Court and was finally won by a slim 5 to 4 majority. Anthony Kennedy wrote: “Here one Latin cross in the desert evokes far more than religion. It evokes thousands of small crosses in foreign fields marking the graves of Americans who fell in battles, battles whose tragedies are compounded if the fallen are forgotten.” This week we heard the...

...Beaverton Middle School teacher Jason Levin's group wants to infiltrate the Tea Party to discredit the organization. But since Levin's name has been associated with the "Crash the Tea Party" Web site, he has been harassed by people who say they belong to that group. Levin told KATU-TV that his phone has been ringing around the clock and his answering machine is recording threats...

Aha! ...Aha! Aha! Aha!Associated Press writer Jesse Washington has investigated the March 20 incident in Washington, D.C. at which members of the Tea Party supposedly hurled the N-word at black Congressmen. Well, no recording of that word being used could be found but that hasn't stopped Washington from blaming the Tea Partiers...for posting the "wrong" video of that incident on YouTube. I kid you not: Three Democratic congressmen — all black — say they heard racial slurs as they walked through thousands of angry protesters outside the U.S. Capitol. A white lawmaker says he heard the epithets too. Conservative activists...

The Associated Press has a famous book on grammar and style that its news writers use to govern their work, a book that is also popular with the whole American news industry. It has served as a standard for many years. The AP, however, seems to have no style or rule for reporting history. Or rather, perhaps it does and the rule is to purposefully garble American history, always skewing it. The APs recent report on a re-creation of the famous 19th century, two-masted schooner La Amistad, famous for its connection to America's slave trade history, is a case in...

WASHINGTON -- Democrats facing strong headwinds this election season have at least one reason for optimism, according to polling that found the party's large African-American voting bloc eager to stay involved even without Barack Obama on the ballot. About two-thirds of black adults in four states say they are closely following news about the upcoming midterm elections, and between 74 percent and 80 percent say they are very likely to vote, according to the poll, conducted by the nonpartisan Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. The organization surveyed 500 African-Americans in each state -- Missouri, Indiana, Arkansas and South...

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin said she cut short her Hawaii vacation because of paparazzi, who photographed her wearing a sun visor with the name of John McCain blacked out. The pictures were circulated widely on the Internet with speculation the redaction was a slight against McCain, but Palin said she meant no disrespect to her former GOP running mate. "In an attempt to 'go incognito,' I Sharpied the logo out on my sun visor so photographers would be less likely to recognize me and bother my kids or other vacationers," Palin said in a statement.

Uninsured patients with traumatic injuries, such as car crashes, falls and gunshot wounds, were almost twice as likely to die in the hospital as similarly injured patients with health insurance, according to a troubling new study. The findings by Harvard University researchers surprised doctors and health experts who have believed emergency room care was equitable. "This is another drop in a sea of evidence that the uninsured fare much worse in their health in the United States," said senior author Dr. Atul Gawande, a Harvard surgeon and medical journalist. The study, appearing in the November issue of Archives of Surgery,...

Dan Calabrese notices a scolding tone coming from the Associated Press in reporting its latest polling. It headlines the report by noting that “a grouchy public [is] sticking with Obama,” having seen a 54% job approval rating in its survey — but some bad numbers on the issues. Does the AP report those falling levels of support as a consequence of Barack Obama doing a poor job? No, as emphases from Dan and myself show: The public grew slightly more dispirited on a range of matters over the past month, including war and the economy, continuing the slippage that has...

The proposed resolution of disapproval against Republican Rep. Joe Wilson of South Carolina added to the already-toxic atmosphere of partisanship in the House. Democrats said Wilson's behavior during Obama's speech to Congress last week was an egregious display of disrespect for the president that could not be ignored. Republicans accused the majority party of hypocrisy and wasting the taxpayers' time. "That's a very serious breach of decorum, and if it goes unaddressed then we will probably see other, worse breaches in the future," Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., said before floor debate began. But Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana, a member...

AP Misleads Readers on Abortion, Health Care, and Obama Washington, DC -- The Associated Press is coming under criticism from pro-life advocates who say its recent wrap-up article on the health care debate is misleading. AP writer Charles Babington wrote a "fact check" story attempting to make the case that abortion is not included in the health care bills and that President Barack Obama doesn't want it to be included. But, Douglas Johnson, the legislative director for the National Right to Life Committee, says that's not the case. http://www.LifeNews.com/nat5311.html

Supporters of ousted Honduras' President Manuel Zelaya protest outside the site of talks to resolve the leadership crisis in Honduras in San Jose, Saturday, July 18, 2009. Zelaya, who was forced into exile in a June 28 military coup, gave negotiators meeting in Costa Rica until midnight to restore him to office, threatening to return to Honduras in secret and attempt to retake power on his own if no agreement is reached. He indicated he would reject any power-sharing agreement, a proposal to be discussed at the talks.

The Associated Press is proposing that publishers attach descriptive tags to news articles online in hopes of taming the free-for-all of news and information on the Web and generating more traffic for established media brands. Tags identifying the author, publisher and other information — as well as any usage restrictions publishers hope to place on copyright-protected materials — would be packaged with each news article in a way that search engines can more easily identify. By doing so, the AP hopes to make it easier for readers to find articles from more established news providers amid the ever-expanding pool of...

WASHINGTON – On both economic and national-security fronts, President Barack Obama is giving ground and crossing swords with political allies. Caught in the worst economic downturn in generations, Obama has had to temper his stance on trade and lower his expectations for trimming charitable tax breaks for the wealthy and for taxing greenhouse-gas polluters. He's not the first president to be pulled toward the political center after being elected. But the recession and two wars abroad put him in a particularly tough spot — with smaller margins for error. With the deficit mushrooming, lawmakers in both parties are worrying more...

Have you noticed when reading your local papers, that every article that is national news comes through the Associated Press? That means that whoever controls the Associated Press newsroom controls what the whole nation sees. This is power like the Soviet PRAVDA and TASS had. No wonder so many people don't know what is going on. I have been looking in my local newspaper for stories about the reasons behind the banking crisis which was due to the absurd subprime mortgages. I haven't seen anything explaining how the subprime mortages caused this problem. It has been several months since the...

It didn't take long for Barack Obama — for all his youth and inexperience — to get acclimated to his new role as the calming leader of a country in crisis. "I feel surprisingly comfortable in the job," the nation's 44th president said a mere two weeks after taking the helm. "The challenges are big," a sober Obama added, underscoring the foreign and domestic problems he inherited Jan. 20. "But one thing I'm absolutely convinced about is you want to be president when you've got big problems. If things are going too smoothly, then this is just another nice home...

WASHINGTON, (AP) -- Millions of people jobless. Billions of dollars in bailouts. Trillions of dollars in U.S. debt. And yet, for the first time in years, more Americans than not say the country is on the right track. In a sign that Barack Obama has inspired hopes for a brighter future in the first 100 days of his presidency, an Associated Press-GfK poll shows that 48 percent of Americans believe the United States is headed in the right direction — compared with 44 percent who disagree. The "right direction" number is up 8 points since February and a remarkable 31...

For the first time in years, more Americans than not say the country is headed in the right direction, a sign that Barack Obama has used the first 100 days of his presidency to lift the public's mood and inspire hopes for a brighter future. Intensely worried about their personal finances and medical expenses, Americans nonetheless appear realistic about the time Obama might need to turn things around, according to an Associated Press-GfK poll. It shows most Americans consider their new president to be a strong, ethical and empathetic leader who is working to change Washington. Nobody knows how long...

Taking aim at the way news is spread across the Internet, The Associated Press said on Monday that Web sites that used the work of news organizations must obtain permission and share revenue with them, and that it would take legal action against those that did not. A.P. executives said they were concerned about a variety of news forums around the Web, including major search engines like Google and Yahoo and aggregators like the Drudge Report that link to news articles, smaller sites that sometimes reproduce articles whole, and companies that sell packaged news feeds. They said they did not...

A wide-ranging study on American religious life found that the Roman Catholic population has been shifting out o of the Northeast to the Southwest, the percentage of Christians in the nation has declined and more people say they have no religion at all. Fifteen percent of respondents said they had no religion, an increase from 14.2 percent in 2001 and 8.2 percent in 1990, according to the American Religious Identification Survey. Northern New England surpassed the Pacific Northwest as the least religious region, with Vermont reporting the highest share of those claiming no religion, at 34 percent. Still, the study...

DENVER -- William Ayers, the former Weather Underground radical whose past made him a lightning rod in the 2008 presidential campaign, said Thursday that fired Colorado professor Ward Churchill became the victim of a "witch hunt" after comparing Sept. 11 victims to a Nazi. "There's no doubt in my mind he was persecuted because of his politics," Ayers said before appearing with Churchill at a student rally on academic freedom at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Ayers, Churchill and writer-activist Derrick Jensen were to speak later at an event titled "Forbidden Education and the Rise of Neo-McCarthyism."

A federal judge on Thursday threw out a lawsuit questioning President Barack Obama's citizenship, lambasting the case as a waste of the court's time and suggesting the plaintiff's attorney may have to compensate the president's lawyer. In an argument popular on the Internet and taken seriously practically nowhere else, Obama's critics argue he is ineligible to be president because he is not a "natural-born citizen" as the Constitution requires. In response last summer, Obama's campaign posted his Hawaiian birth certificate on its Web site. But the lawsuit argues it is a fake and that Obama was actually born in his...

STUTTGART, Germany (AP) - German police raided 224 apartments and houses across the country Wednesday, confiscating 45,000 music CDs in a crackdown on the far-right music scene. Stuttgart prosecutors, who led the operation, said 204 people aged 21-45 are being investigated for allegedly distributing the music, which includes xenophobic and anti-Semitic lyrics. There were no immediate arrests. The production and sale of right-wing music that promotes an extremist agenda or racial hatred is against the law in Germany.

Get ready for the geek-in-chief. President-elect Barack Obama used to collect comic books, can't part with his BlackBerry, and once flashed Leonard "Mr. Spock" Nimoy the Vulcan "Live Long and Prosper" sign. That and other evidence has convinced some of Obama's nerdier fans that he'll be the first American president to show distinct signs of geekiness. And that's got them as excited as a Tribble around a Klingon. Obama is good at "repressing his inner geek, but you can tell it's there," especially when he goes into nuanced explanations of technical_matters, said Benjamin Nugent, author of the book "American Nerd:...