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NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- U.S. stocks took another leg down on Wednesday, after a mixed government auction of 10-year Treasury notes, which showed the Treasury had to offer higher yields to attract buyers.

Rush show with Mark Belling

I believe Mark Belling is in today. I'm sure the #1 topic will be todays murders in Pakistan.

Jason Lewis(?) in for the big guy on the day after Christmas.

Yesterday, House Democrats once again showed the electorate why they cannot be entrusted with the nation's national security. Incredibly, the Democrats are insisting that the Intelligence Authorization Act include a provision funding a global warming study. Texas Democrat Silvestre Reyes, Intelligence Committee Chairman preposterously argued that "this is an area we may vulnerable in terms of potential terrorists." I understand many terrorists claim a special hot-line to God, but to date I have yet to see any evidence of a connection. So let me get this straight, Democrats believe there is a link between terrorists and global warming but not...

It would be wrong and regrettable, but it is certainly conceivable that the Supreme Court will eventually find the Bush administration’s National Security Agency's Terrorist Surveillance Program unconstitutional. One thing is certain, though. Such a ruling by the high Court will not rely on the handiwork of Michigan federal district judge Anna Diggs Taylor. Her effort yesterday to invalidate the program is a transparently political screed. Judge Taylor last garnered national attention in 2002 when she was caught trying to rig the outcome of an affirmative-action case. Now, this relic of the Jimmy Carter twilight has fixed her gaze on...

We are once again living in September 10 America. The signs are all around us: Congress's acting to neuter interrogations of terrorist detainees; the Senate's filibustering the reauthorization of the most important piece of counterterrorism legislation since 9/11, the Patriot Act (Sen. John Sununu, who supports the filibuster, responds to our Friday editorial here); and now the controversy over National Security Agency intercepts of conversations between persons in the United States and suspected al Qaeda operatives overseas. The New York Times ignited the firestorm last Friday, of course, with a front-page report on how President Bush has authorized the eavesdropping...

After weeks of delay and debate, the Hillsborough County School Board approved a 2006-07 calendar minus holidays for Yom Kippur, Good Friday or the Muslim holiday Eid Al-Fitr. The 6-1 vote represents a major shift from scheduling days off on religious holidays, a practice School Board Attorney Tom Gonzalez on Tuesday said was wrong. "A school board cannot recognize a religious holiday for the sole purpose of recognizing a religious holiday," Gonzalez said at a meeting packed with dozens of members of the Muslim community, some pleading to have no school on holidays for all religions. So many people celebrate...

The coverage of the internal government memoranda regarding interrogation tactics and the legal parameters of torture continues to provide stark indications of both what is wrong with policymaking in our 24-hour media age and what becomes of the legal profession in an era when facts take a backseat to feelings. Stretching for Scandal Predictably, the New York Times, straight from its anti-Iraq War Room, supplied the latest dose of juvenilia, targeted at a Justice Department memo written in August 2002 by Jay S. Bybee, then an assistant attorney general and now a judge on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals....

JERUSALEM -- I turn on CNN, and I see people being grilled -- Bush and Blair. What did you know, and when did you know it? If you had known then what you know now, would you have done what you did? Or did you already know it, and pull a big hoax on all of us? The War on Terror is barely two years old, and already the two statesmen mainly responsible for waging it are in the dock. The grim media interrogators, our self-appointed "representatives," fire questions at them. The opposition parties sling mud at them. And one...

TAMPA - In the 2000 election, U.S. Muslims voted overwhelmingly to put Texas Gov. George W. Bush in the White House. This time around, four-term Democratic U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, a long- shot White House candidate, is campaigning aggressively for the Muslim vote on a platform built around immediate U.S. withdrawal from Iraq. Kucinich brought his message to Tampa on Tuesday in a tour of the Islamic Society of Tampa Bay Area and a speech to about 100 local Muslims, many of whom said they liked his civil liberties pitch. ``The defining issue for Muslims is the restriction...

At the United Nations on October 16, after a long and intense effort, the Bush administration won the Security Council's unanimous imprimatur for the American occupation and reconstruction of Iraq. The following day, National Public Radio's Mike Shuster portrayed the Security Council's resolution as a diversion from the real story—namely, the administration's determination to go it alone. Shuster: "The compromises the U.S. has been willing to make have been minimal and, although the Security Council voted unanimously yesterday to support another U.S. resolution on Iraq, it appears that little will change." Shuster was unfazed by the administration's insistence on handling...

Why aren't campaign-finance reformers happy with George W. Bush? As the president raises money for his reelection campaign, he's living the reformers' dream — collecting limited amounts of hard money from real people who want to be a part of the political process. He's not having small, private dinners with fat cats who write $2 million checks. He's having big, public dinners with people who write $2,000 checks. Isn't that what the reformers wanted? Bush's post-reform math is simple. Get 500 people to give $2,000, and you've got $1 million. Get 1,000 people, and you've got $2 million. Find one...

From www.danielpipes.org | Original article available at: www.danielpipes.org/article/1098 Arabia's Civil War by Daniel Pipes Wall Street Journal Europe May 14, 2003 The four bombings in Saudi Arabia Monday, which killed dozens, including 10 Americans, are symptomatic of a deep fissure in that country. The argument is over religion, politics and foreigners—and it goes back a long way. The West must react by helping the Saudi family win this dispute, while putting pressure on it to reform. Saudi Arabia's origins lie in the mid-eighteenth century, when a tribal leader named Muhammad Al Saud joined forces with a religious leader named Muhammad...

The unusual interlacing of his campaign and the teachers group is assailed by the governor as an "umbilical cord." In the small hours of the morning after last week's election, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Bill McBride raised his voice over more than 100 cheering supporters to thank his wife, Alex Sink, and then called another woman to the stage. As cameras flashed, McBride held upraised hands with Maureen Dinnen, the president of the Florida Education Association, the state teachers union. Then he called up Pat Tornillo, the union's boss in Miami-Dade County, to thank him, too. Education has been the centerpiece...

Supervising elections The election blunders can't be blamed on the governor or the secretary of state or the voting machines, but on incompetence that needs to be remedied by November. A botched Florida election has once again embarrassed the state and cast a shadow on the outcome of an important race. On Tuesday, hundreds of voters were turned away from the polls, dozens of machines malfunctioned and some vote totals were delayed until Thursday. This happened after election officials and legislators vowed that the fiasco of the 2000 presidential election would never occur again and after counties spent tens of...

McBride, Reno Court Minority Vote By JACKIE HALLIFAX The Associated Press TALLAHASSEE - A month out from the Sept. 10 primary, Democratic gubernatorial hopefuls Bill McBride and Janet Reno focused their campaigns Sunday on minority voters in churches and at picnics. In Orlando, Reno looked past the primary as she spoke Spanish to a largely Hispanic crowd attending a picnic for Eddie Diaz, a Democratic congressional candidate from Orlando. ``We are able to win in November,'' the former U.S. attorney general said to the crowd of about 50 people. In Tallahassee, McBride - Reno's leading opponent in the Democratic primary...

Tech execs fight against stock-plan tax Tax experts from Microsoft and Texas Instruments are among speakers expected to testify Tuesday at a hearing before the Internal Revenue Service and the U.S. Treasury Department in opposition to proposed taxes on stock incentive programs. Also on the agenda are speakers from computer networking equipment maker Ciena, the American Payroll Association, the National Association of Stock Plan Professionals and the Securities Industry Association. The IRS plans to impose payroll taxes on incentive stock options and employee stock purchase plans (ESPP) beginning Jan. 1, 2003. The taxes already apply to some stock plans, but...

TAMPA - Facing off and shouting over each other, two groups of students dueled Wednesday over the issue that has divided the University of South Florida: the expected firing of a tenured professor. The bustling lunch-hour protests by 60 students near Cooper Hall marked the first student activism scene many observers could remember in years. At issue is President Judy Genshaft's stated intent to fire Sami Al-Arian on grounds he violated his contract through off-campus behavior. His defenders say he is being punished for how others have responded to his suspected support for terrorism. ``We won't feel it's safe on ...

TALLAHASSEE - Using its cash and its clout, Enron Corp. had no trouble flexing enough political muscle to easily kill legislation last year that would have blocked its planned foray into South Florida. But the now-disgraced energy trader's ultimate goal proved elusive - deregulating Florida's $13 billion-a- year electric power market. Despite record levels of campaign contributions, a cadre of respected Tallahassee lobbyists and personal contact with Gov. Jeb Bush, the company failed to sell a wary Legislature on the benefits of speedy deregulation. ``Enron was a particularly impatient client,'' said Bill L. Bryant, a Tallahassee lobbyist who represented the ...