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Sarah Palin has picked a Christian author and magazine journalist to collaborate with her on her forthcoming memoir for HarperCollins. The journalist, Lynn Vincent, has been at World—the nation's best-read Christian newsmagazine—for the last 10 years as a writer and editor. This isn't a surprising choice for Palin, but it's certainly one worth noting. It's more evidence that she's honing a distinctly Christian public image since coming off the campaign trail last year. This seems to be a change from the days when she was a state-level figure, almost entirely unknown outside of Alaska.

GREENVILLE, S.C. -- Just back from Washington, D.C., South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham painted a very bleak picture of what he expects for the country if the bailout plan fails. Graham spoke in front of a foreclosed home on Avondale Drive in Greenville. He said if the plan doesn't pass soon, more banks will fold. Businesses will close and people will lose their jobs. As least twice he mentioned that the economy could be headed for a depression.

The father of John Walker Lindh, who has spent nearly seven years in federal prison for serving in an Afghan army, told a room full of law students at University of San Francisco on Wednesday his son has been used as a scapegoat for the faults of the U.S. government. Frank Lindh of Marin County spoke for the fourth consecutive year about how he believes U.S. troops in northern Afghanistan in 2001 illegitimately captured his son, known as an "American Taliban," for fighting as a Taliban soldier just after the Sept. 11 attacks. Frank Lindh said he believes his son...

Prosecutors say illegal immigrant charged in killing of officer got help to re-enter U.S. The owner of a landscaping firm was arrested Wednesday and faces up to 10 years in federal prison, accused of harboring one of his workers, an illegal immigrant from Mexico charged with the capital murder of a Houston police officer. Court documents show that Robert Lane Camp, 47, went to considerable lengths to help Juan Leonardo Quintero and keep him on the job at his Deer Park landscaping company before the September 2006 killing of officer Rodney Johnson. In August 1998, Camp posted a $10,000 bond...

On the remote chance that Jane Fonda didn't realize how loved she is, her private 70th birthday celebration at the Biltmore in Midtown Thursday night served as a testament to the significant place she holds in the hearts of friends, family and even a certain ex-hubby. Poets, politicos, playwrights, fellow Oscar winners, stepchildren, co-stars and TV execs all flew in for the celebration, an unprecedented $2.4 million fund-raiser for Fonda's Georgia Campaign for Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention.

New Iowa Leader Criticized by for Indecision on Federal Student Aid. Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor who backed in-state tuition for the children of illegal immigrants, hedged Sunday on whether illegal immigrants who have gone to school in the United States should become eligible for federal student aid such as Pell grants and subsidized federal student loans. "I'm not sure that I would support that," Huckabee told ABC News, "it was a different program in Arkansas." Huckabee's failure to take a clear position on federal student aid while appearing on ABC News' "This Week with George...

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Mel Martinez, the reluctant general chairman of the Republican National Committee, is planning to step down as soon as a presidential nominee emerges, party insiders say. Martinez, who was elected to the post in January, couldn't be reached for comment on Saturday. Danny Diaz, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee, said Martinez is ``the elected general chairman of the . . . party and will remain so. . . .'' Word of Martinez's possible departure before the 2008 election surfaced Saturday in a column written by Robert Novak. But Republicans close to Martinez said the freshman...

Being Mike Huckabee By Salena Zito TRIBUNE-REVIEW Sunday, August 19, 2007 Whose yardstick do you use to measure the impact of Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee’s second-place showing in the Iowa Straw Poll? The Democrats’. “If he had money, he would be our worst nightmare,” says Democrat strategist John Lapp. Lapp, who helped bring down Republicans in 2006 as executive director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said “the real threat of Mike Huckabee is that he is a happy warrior, a down-home guy comfortable in his own skin. Right-wing conservatism with a smile.”

Paul faithful flock to Spartanburg appearance A little-known Texas congressman seeking the Republican nomination for president visited Spartanburg on Saturday and seemed to arrive with all the makings of rock-star candidate for his party — despite polling low, little name recognition and a relatively small campaign staff. Supporters call it the “Ron Paul Revolution.” You might’ve seen it on signs or T-shirts. Or MySpace. Paul received no less than 16 standing ovations during his hour-plus speech and question-and-answer session at the Summit Pointe Event Center — first, when he entered the room, a second one when a re-entered after...

DES MOINES, Iowa — Democratic presidential candidate Bill Richardson said today that if he won the White House, he would name a top-level envoy assigned to rebuilding shattered ties to the Muslim world. Richardson also called for a "multilateral Marshall Plan" to rebuild the Middle East. "Winning the war against al-Qaida has a lot to do with building goodwill," he said. "For a small fraction of the cost of the Iraq war, which has made us so many enemies, we could make many friends." The New Mexico governor spelled out his foreign policy views in a speech in Des Moines...

According to a article in German that was published in the German magazine "Der Spiegel" the ruthless French nazi-collaborator Maurice Papon died in the age of 96 years on February 17, 2007. As secretary general of the prefecture Bordeaux Papon signed orders for the imprisonment and deportation or the jews in that area. Altogether there were 76.000 jews -among them 12.000 kids- arrested in France and displaced into the concentration camps of the nazis. Only 2.500 survived the Holocaust. Papon is definitly responsible for the deportation of 1,560 Jewish men, women and children. The majority were sent directly to detention...

I took a trip by myself in January of 2002 to Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria, and I told each of the heads of state that it was my view that George Bush had already made up his mind to go to war against Iraq – that that was a predetermined set course which had taken shape shortly after 9/11." So spoke Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) on "Fox Sunday" on November 14, 2005, who at the time of his trip was chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and is now its vice chairman. Please read the first paragraph...

NEW YORK -- She's already a grandmother of 14, a cancer survivor and a former civil rights lawyer who took on radical clients others considered toxic. Lynne Stewart will soon find out if she will be forced to assume another role -- prison inmate.

When Daniel Ellsberg, the defense analyst, leaked the Pentagon Papers to the press in 1971, it created one of the most significant newspaper stories -- and battles -- of the century. One thing it did not do was prevent the Vietnam War, although it may have shortened it. Now he is calling on officials within the government to leak "the Pentagon Paper of the Middle East" to modern reporters, to short-circuit another possible war. Ellsberg's challenge is found in the October issue of Harper's magazine, to appear next week. E&P has obtained an advance copy. The article is titled, "The...

This Fourth of July it's right to spend some time thinking about what it means not just to be an American, but to be a patriot -- because the concept of patriotism itself is under assault in ways that remind me of a different time in our history.When we protested the war in Vietnam some would weigh in against us saying: "My country right or wrong." Our response was simple: "Yes, my country right or wrong. When right, keep it right and when wrong, make it right."I feel history repeating itself.

MEXICO CITY - An alleged cohort of imprisoned drug lord Osiel Cardenas was sentenced Thursday to 44 years in prison on drug-related charges, authorities said. Adan Javier Medrano was convicted of smuggling drug money from the United States into Mexico and distributing cocaine north of the border, the federal Attorney General's Office said in a news release. Medrano served as a gunman for Cardenas' Gulf Cartel, which moved tons of cocaine and marijuana into the U.S., and was in charge of drug-related activites in Chiapas state and Guatemala, the release said. Investigators believe Cardenas has continued to run much of...

American reporter Jill Carroll has been released after a three-month hostage ordeal in Iraq and was with US officials inside Baghdad's fortified Green Zone. -snip- Video interview A video posted on the internet, which could not be independently verified, showed Ms Carroll in an interview apparently conducted by her captors before they released her. "Did you think the American army or the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) would save you at any time," a muffled male voice asked Ms Carroll in accented English. "Sometimes I thought maybe that they might come, they might find me, they might find a way to...

Breaking - Jill Carrol released in Iraq - more to come

NETZARIM, Gaza Strip -- The harvest is underway inside a row of greenhouses here on the grounds of a razed Israeli settlement. But most of the tomatoes and sweet peppers, usually shipped to European markets, will rot in a nearby ravine. "We keep getting it, but we don't know what to do with it," said Abdul Fatah al-Eilah, the greenhouse manager, as workers stacked boxes of vegetables in a storage shed while tractors towing flatbeds full of produce lined up to enter. The main trade passage between the Gaza Strip and Israel has been closed for much of the year,...

A tentative date has been set, December 22, for Lynne Stewart's sentencing hearing. This is the third time that the date has been changed AND it may be changed just once more. The reason for the changes stems from the legal team's need for a thorough review of the transcripts and other matters necessary for the best possible arguments for the shortest sentence possible. Liz Fink has taken the major lead in the sentencing aspect of Stewart's case. Liz is the very successful Attica attorney who has more recently joined the defense effort. In short, it may well be the...

SEATTLE -- Former President Jimmy Carter criticized the war in Iraq on Wednesday, urging a troop drawdown as the United States enters its fourth year of conflict in Iraq. "It was a completely unnecessary war. It was an unjust war," said Carter, the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize winner. "It was initiated on the basis of false pretenses. All of those are true, but we can't just pre-emptively withdraw."

(Boston-AP) February 26, 2006 - An ominous deadline in Iraq in the case of kidnapped journalist Jill Carroll, Saturday is the second execution deadline her captors have set. Carroll's kidnappers made the latest threat in a February 10th videotape first aired on a Kuwaiti television station. In that tape, Carroll appeals for her supporters to do whatever it takes to win her release "as quickly as possible." A tape in January included a threat to kill Carroll within 72 hours unless all Iraqi women were released from custody. The February 10th tape did not make that demand. Carroll was working...

In Hamas, former president Jimmy Carter has found yet another murderous Islamist regime in need of his services. In a Washington Post op-ed yesterday entitled “Don’t Punish the Palestinians,” America’s Worst Ex-President declared it was morally and strategically wrong to withhold funds from the Palestinian Authority’s new government, led by Hamas. In his perpetually feckless style, Carter suggests, “top Hamas leaders may choose to concentrate their influence in the parliament and propose moderates or technocrats for prime minister and cabinet posts.” But peace-loving Hamas moderates might be provoked by American “collusion” with Israel, especially if Israel chooses to “withhold funds…Palestinians...

Although freedom of religion and freedom of speech are both fundamental rights, they sometimes come into conflict with each other, as is the case with the caricatures recently published in the Danish newspaper "Jyllands-Posten" depicting the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). This has provoked uproar among Muslims, not just in Denmark, but across the Islamic world as it is widely understood that Islam forbids the depicting of Muhammad. The issue at stake here is not "self-censorship", which Flemming Rose, the newspaper's culture editor, claims has befallen Europe since the murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh. It is whether...

BERLIN (Reuters) - Part of the ransom money alleged to have been paid by the German government to win the freedom of Iraq hostage Susanne Osthoff last month was found on Osthoff after her release, the German magazine Focus said on Saturday. Without citing its sources, Focus said officials at the German embassy in Baghdad had found several thousand U.S. dollars in the 43-year-old German archaeologist's clothes when she took a shower at the embassy shortly after being freed. The serial numbers on the bills matched those used by the government to pay off Osthoff's kidnappers, the magazine said. Efforts...

This is an actual and unmodified picture of former German hostage Susanne Osthoff as she appeared on German TV soon after being released from muslim hostage takers in Iraq. That's right this is a freed hostage. Many have speculated that ransom and/or prisoner swap was done to gain her release.

If former hostage Susanne Osthoff had been better advised, she probably would have opted against appearing on German television entirely covered in a black headscarf. The hijab, which left only a pair of slits for her eyes, made the freed hostage look like a disturbing cross between a Chechen Black Widow suicide bomber and a ninja. ...the presenter explained that Osthoff's choice of dress was suposedly intended to preserve her identity --a bizarre thought considering that Osthoff's face has been all over the front-pages since November and most people in Germany must be quite aware of what she looks like....

A former German hostage who spent 24 days in the hands of captors in Iraq said Monday that her kidnappers were not criminals and had demanded humanitarian aid for Sunni Arab regions. Speaking to Doha, Qatar-based satellite channel Al-Jazeera, Susanne Osthoff said her captors told her not to be afraid as her kidnapping was "politically motivated." "Do not be afraid. We do not harm women or children and you are a Muslim," she quoted them as saying. "I was so happy to know that I had not fallen into the hands of criminals," she said. Osthoff, a Muslim convert who...

JERUSALEM (AFP) - A concerned Israeli has thwarted the army's latest anti-militant initiative by hacking its 'rocket hotline' set up so that Palestinians in Gaza can rat on those firing projectiles at Israel, the Yediot Aharonot daily reported. Following a week of multiple Israeli air strikes targeting rocket-firing militants in northern Gaza, the air force tried a new tactic: dropping leaflets encouraging locals to anonymously snitch on any rocket-toting militants. "You fully understand the damage that the rocket fire beside your homes causes you," the flyer says in Arabic. "Now every resident can help defend himself and his family from...

OSLO, Norway (AP) - The imposing mansion used by the Norwegian Nazi-collaborator Vidkun Quisling during World War II was turned over Tuesday to a research center focusing on the Holocaust and the persecution of minorities. The Center for Studies of Holocaust and Religious Minorities in Norway will use the Villa Grande for displays and research activities focusing on the Nazi-led genocide of millions of Jews. It will also raise awareness about the persecution of other minorities. Quisling was executed at the end of the war for setting up a puppet government that collaborated with German occupation forces. His name remains...

To the editor: One would think that the president of the United States holds the most stressful job ever. Isn't it wonderful that our pompous president is in such excellent condition healthwise? And why not? His eligible daughters aren't in Iraq protecting our country like so many others, more than 1,800 who have given their lives for a war that he started. With a smirk on his face, he says, "We will stay the course." Who is "we?" Not him or his family. Heck no. He's on a month's vacation. If he's so gung-ho about this war, show us some...

Foul-mouthed anti-American hag Cindy Mohammed Shaheen has appeared on a front page story of the Socialist Worker, a magazine whose objective is to "overthrow Capitalism and achieve a revolution." The article lauds Cindy's antics and her hysterical rants against the President. This proves beyond a reasonable doubt that Cindy Sheehan has become a willing tool of the anti-Western and pro-terrorist forces worldwide.

LIKE the Japanese soldier marooned on an island for years after V-J Day, President Bush may be the last person in the country to learn that for Americans, if not Iraqis, the war in Iraq is over. "We will stay the course," he insistently tells us from his Texas ranch. What do you mean we, white man? A president can't stay the course when his own citizens (let alone his own allies) won't stay with him. The approval rate for Mr. Bush's handling of Iraq plunged to 34 percent in last weekend's Newsweek poll - a match for the 32...

Parents of those who have died in Iraq have total moral authority. There's an angry mother of a dead soldier camping outside his Crawford ranch, demanding to see a President who prefers his sympathy to be carefully choreographed. A new CNN-USA Today-Gallup poll shows that a majority of Americans now think that going to war was a mistake and that the war has made the United States more vulnerable to terrorism. So fighting them there means it's more likely we'll have to fight them here? Donald Rumsfeld acknowledged this week that sophisticated bombs were streaming over the border from Iran...

So over my lunch break today, I saw Bianca Jaggar on Fox News talking about the Iraq war. She stated the usual anti-war line that the Iraq war is causing more terrorism than it is preventing...but then she took it a step further. She said that if you look at what's happening in Iraq, it is clear that it's on the brink of a civil war. She also said that if you ask Iraqi women, they will tell you that they have fewer freedoms now than they did under Saddam. I've always thought of myself as a very perceptive person...so...

Based on what you'll read in this report, we can clearly establish that not only Havel was privileged to receive certain favors from the communists [his frequent visits of the capitalist West Germany, Austria and so forth - ordinary people would not be allowed to travel there during the openly communist era], but also Havel was glad to co-operate with these communist criminals...

Al-Jazeera hires ex-Tribune editor Stephen Brook Wednesday May 11, 2005 Arabic satellite television news channel al-Jazeera has hired the former Tribune editor Mark Seddon to be New York correspondent for its new 24-hour English-language station. Mr Seddon, who resigned as the editor of the leftwing weekly newspaper last year, is likely to take up his posting with al-Jazeera International in September with a broad remit, including covering US politics. "He will have a special brief to cover UN stories," an al-Jazeera International spokeswoman said today. He said today it would be crossing a "journalistic boundary" to work for the...

Islamic Jihad members on Saturday killed a Palestinian youth suspected of collaborating with Israeli intelligence, the group said. The body of the 18-year-old youth, identified as Rami al-Malakh, was found outside his village near the West Bank town of Tulkarm. Residents said al-Makh had disappeared last night. He was shot to death. In Tulkarm, the Islamic Jihad issued a leaflet claiming responsibility for the killing, saying they would release a video of the youth confessing to giving Israeli security forces information on the location of Islamic Jihad fugitives. The youth was from the same village where IDF troops killed an...

My Name Is Rachel Thaler is not the title of a play likely to be produced anytime soon in London. Thaler, aged 16, was blown up at a pizzeria in an Israeli shopping mall. She died after an 11-day struggle for life following the February 16, 2002 attack when a suicide bomber approached a crowd of teenagers and blew himself up. She was a British citizen, born in London, where her grandparents still live. Yet I doubt that anyone at London's Royal Court Theatre, or most people in the British media, have heard of her. "Not a single British journalist...

I post on several forums and avidly and sternly denounce the war crimes of the Bush Administration. I received an email yesterday saying I better watch it as the Bush Administration is arresting those critical of them under the Patriot Act stating they are supporting terrorism. I was told I could be detained indefinitely without arraignment. Is this true? What has this country come to.

The Palestinian Authority has decided to resume executions of prisoners on death row for the first time since August 2002, with 15 due to be carried out by the end of the month, a senior PA official in the Gaza Strip announced Thursday. At least half of the inmates were convicted of "collaboration" with Israel, while the others were found guilty of murder in criminally-motivated offences. Saeb al-Kidwa, head of the PA military courts, said 15 prisoners currently on death row "will be executed during this month." He said PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas was expected to approve the executions soon...

I have signed up I used free email When will I be banned? I have logged in With my new screename When will I be banned? Ever since two thousand It’s been the same old thing If you don’t kiss George Bush butt You are history! I am new here I have posted When will I be banned? Nazi mods are watching They’ve nothing better to do If you don’t kiss George Bush butt That’s the end of you! I have signed up I have posted When will I be banned? When will I be banned Tell me, when will...

Conservatives should not take Howard Dean s chair of the DNC lightly. He will remake the Democratic Party in a way that will appeal to moderate and true conservatives who are fed up with Bush fiscal irresponsibility and global empire building.

A liberal - To the Republican community. 1. What are your goals as Republicans? 2. Is your goal to make Liberals to leave America? 3. If you want us to stay, when does this country go too far to the right? 4. If you want us to leave, will the US government pay for our plane tickets?

Kerry slams 'refusal to serve'AP, AFP04sep04 NEW YORK: Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry declared he had taken enough "incoming" yesterday and blasted back at his Republican antagonists by suggesting George W. Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney were draft dodgers. In his toughest counter-punch of the campaign, the decorated war hero said he was not going to have his military qualifications questioned by "those who refused to serve" in the Vietnam War. "For the past week, they attacked my patriotism and my fitness to serve as commander in chief ... well, here's my answer," Senator Kerry said in Ohio. "I'm not...

French President expresses his worry for Iraq's future in face of civil war, says war was mistake. HANOI - French President Jacques Chirac has said the US-led war in Iraq was illegal and expressed his fear for the country's future in the face of a "civil war". In an interview with China Central TV filmed last month ahead of a visit to China this week, Chirac reiterated his strong opposition to Washington's decision to wage war on Saddam Hussein without United Nations backing. "I believe it was a bad solution which didn't conform with legality and with international law, and...

He's going to reply to Bush's UN speech!

Palestinian gunmen on Tuesday kidnapped and killed a suspected Palestinian agent who was accused of spying for the Israeli intelligence apparatus. Palestinian sources said that a number of gunmen kidnapped Rami Yaghmor while Palestinian policemen were escorting him to court and shot him at the head from close range. Sources close to the Fatah Movement said that Yaghmor had joined the Movement’s military wing - al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades - and then delivered information to the Israeli intelligence (Shin Beth) that led to the arrest of a number of activists. They said that Rami moved to Jericho at the pretext...