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from an interview on NPR this morning . . . ZWERDLING: I want to add something else about Hasan at Walter Reed. The psychiatrist I talked to today said that he was the kind of guy who the staff actually stood around in the hallway, saying: Do you think he's a terrorist, or is he just weird? And now, apparently, Walter Reed is in a lockdown mode where they've been instructed - all the staff has been instructed: Do not talk to anybody about this investigation, except military people. Do not talk to the FBI, because they're afraid, potentially, what...

The Marine Corps is moving to ban dogs with aggressive temperaments from Camp Pendleton and other bases under a policy developed after a 3-year-old boy at Camp Lejeune, N.C., was fatally bitten by a pit bull. The banned breeds are pit bulls, Rottweilers and wolf hybrids. Families moving into base housing are no longer allowed to bring those breeds. Families already in housing can keep their dogs until Sept. 30, 2012, but only if they receive a "good-dog" waiver.

Capt. Kirk Black, who trains the Afghan police in this impoverished province, developed a practiced skepticism about claims of innocence during a decade as a Baltimore police officer. But last January, when relatives of an Afghan imprisoned at the Bagram military detention center begged him to look into the case, he agreed to listen. Eventually he became convinced that the detention was a case of mistaken identity and put the family in touch with a lawyer. Soon, Captain Black was facing a potential legal battle of his own.... Captain Black's involvement in the Bagram detainee's case began in January, while...

FAA says low-flying plane over Staten Island is 'pre-planned' flight to take photos by Staten Island Advance Monday April 27, 2009, 10:03 AM A plane, that appears to be a commercial jet tailed by fighter jets, is a "pre-planned" military flight taking photos of the Statue of Liberty, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. Reports indicate it may be Air Force One. "It is pre-planned, pre-coordinated with everyone involved," said FAA spokesman Jim Peters. "It's a military flight over New York to take photos." Peters, who stressed it is not an emergency, said the flight is circling the Statue of...

At the Central Intelligence Agency, it's known as "slow rolling." That's what agency officers sometimes do on politically sensitive assignments. They go through the motions; they pass cables back and forth; they take other jobs out of the danger zone; they cover their backsides...in the words of one veteran officer, "hit the agency like a car bomb in the driveway." President Obama promised CIA officers that they won't be prosecuted for carrying out lawful orders, but the people on the firing line don't believe him. They think the memos have opened a new season of investigation and retribution. The lesson...

President Obama's executive order closing CIA "black sites" contains a little-noticed exception that allows the spy agency to continue to operate temporary detention facilities abroad. The provision illustrates that the president's order to shutter foreign-based prisons, known as black sites, is not airtight and that the Central Intelligence Agency still has options if it wants to hold terrorist suspects for several days at a time. Current and former U.S. officials, who spoke on the condition that they aren't identified because of the sensitivity of the subject, said such temporary facilities around the world will remain open, giving the administration the...

Close to 1.5 million people poured onto the National Mall Tuesday, and the biggest police action appeared to be reuniting parents with their lost children, law enforcement officials said. “We had a crowd stretching from the Capitol to the Lincoln Memorial and for the most part it was an orderly and festive,” said U.S. Park Police Sergeant Robert LaChance. “We couldn’t have asked for a better day.” No arrests were made as of Tuesday afternoon, according to D.C., National Park and U.S. Capitol police.

The bailout of Chrysler and General Motors was a simple case of CYA for the Bush Administration. Bush did not want to go out with the collapse of the auto industry happening on his watch. The $17.4 billion lifeline extended by Bush will not do much in the way of preventing the total collapse of these companies. The viability of the industry is in question and the reckless decisions by management over the course of many years cannot be turned around within a three month period. By March, these guys will have their hands out again, with no significant restructuring...

Bishops of Los Angeles issue letter reassuring gays in the wake of Prop. 8 The bishops of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, led by Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, issued a letter to homosexual Catholics on Friday seeking to ensure them that the Church’s support for Proposition 8 was not meant to diminish their dignity or their membership in the Church. The true aim of the Church’s support, the bishops write, was to “preserve the ordered relationship between man and woman created by God.” The pastoral letter, which was printed in the archdiocesan paper The Tidings, is written to all homosexual...

Interestingly, Dan Morain of the L.A. Times has just discovered that Barack Obama has a pretty thin resume prior to being elevated to the presidency. Between 1993 and '96, Obama, the much-ballyhooed "Constitutional scholar," had only an unusually low 3,723 billable hours of legal work accrued over a four-year stint with his law firm employer Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Gallard. Further, he seems to have worked on but few cases and made little impact commensurate with his reputation. The question I have, of course, is why is the L.A. Times only NOW interested that Obama was "involved in relatively few...

State employee says she was ordered to check out Joe the Plumber Friday, October 31, 2008 8:21 PM By Randy Ludlow The Columbus Dispatch Vanessa Niekamp said that when was asked to run a child-support check on Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher on Oct. 16, she thought it routine. A supervisor told her the man had contacted the state agency about his case. Niekamp didn't know she just had checked on "Joe the Plumber," who was elevated the night before to presidential politics prominence as Republican John McCain's example in a debate of an average American. The senior manager would not learn...

Media outlets are preparing for the possibility that their Election Day surveys could be skewed because of overstated support for Barack Obama, largely because of the enthusiasm of his supporters. While exit polling is a notoriously inexact science—early exit poll results suggested John Kerry would be elected president in 2004—the introduction of several new variables, ranging from the zeal of Obama’s supporters to his racial background to widespread early voting, is causing concerns among those who charged with conducting the surveys and the networks that will be reporting them. “It’s in some ways the flip side of non-cooperation,” said one...

Barney Frank: Conservatives trying to blame economic woes on blacks By Jerry Kronenberg | Monday, October 6, 2008 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Business & Markets U.S. Rep. Barney Frank claims conservatives are trying to partly blame the nation’s economic woes on black people. “This is an effort I believe to appeal to a kind of anger in people,” Frank, a Newton Democrat who chairs the House Financial Services Committee, today told a Boston foreclosure-prevention forum. Frank charged that conservatives aim to shift blame for the market meltdown away from Wall Street and toward minority-lending laws like the federal Community Reinvestment Act....

On Friday's "Hardball," Chris Matthews interviewed a number of student members of the group Concerned Youth of America. One of those students -- Caroline -- is his daughter, a student at the University of Pennsylvania. Did Matthews disclose that fact as he interviewed her? Not so much:

The fatal shootings of a father and two sons in San Francisco's Excelsior district June 22 were not road-rage killings and instead were motivated by the killer's belief that his targets were in a rival gang, the head of the police homicide unit said Monday. "We know it is gang related," Lt. Mike Stasko told the Board of Supervisors' Public Safety Committee. Stasko said the victims, Tony Bologna, 48, and his sons, Michael, 20, and Matthew, 16, were attacked because of their appearance. "Apparently, the people in the car were similar to Hispanic males, and they were targeted because of...

An education authority is investigating claims that two school pupils were punished for refusing to kneel down and pray to Allah during a religious education lesson. Parents complained after the boys, Year 7 pupils at Alsager High School in Cheshire, were given detention for being "disrespectful" to the prophet, the Congleton Chronicle reported. Parent Sharon Luinen told the paper: "This isn't right, it's taking things too far. "I understand that they have to learn about other religions, I can live with that, but it is taking it a step too far to be punished because they wouldn't join in Muslim...

The War on the Unexpected We've opened up a new front on the war on terror. It's an attack on the unique, the unorthodox, the unexpected; it's a war on different. If you act different, you might find yourself investigated, questioned, and even arrested -- even if you did nothing wrong, and had no intention of doing anything wrong. The problem is a combination of citizen informants and a CYA attitude among police that results in a knee-jerk escalation of reported threats. This isn't the way counterterrorism is supposed to work, but it's happening everywhere. It's a result of our...

Joe Torre had a hunch it would come to this. And when the New York Yankees offered him a one-year contract with a hefty paycut, performance-based bonuses—and no room to negotiate—he was insulted and figured he had no choice but to walk away. "The fact that somebody is reducing your salary is just telling me they're not satisfied with what you're doing," Torre said Friday at a news conference. "There really was no negotiation involved. I was hoping there would be, but there wasn't. "If somebody wants you to do a job, if it takes them two weeks to figure...

Carol Anne Gotbaum, 45, was on her way to alcohol rehabilitation in Tucson when she was arrested after causing a disturbance during a stopover at Sky Harbor. Authorities said Carol Gotbaum, who had become upset over missing her connecting flight, was shackled and left in an airport holding room and found unconscious minutes later. Noah Gotbaum, a member of a prominent New York City family, had called the airport three times that afternoon, telling officials he was concerned about his wife's whereabouts because she was depressed and suicidal. Gotbaum's Arrest Records of the time of the calls indicate she was...

DURHAM, N.C. -- The Durham City Council will recognize seven athletic teams from Duke University that captured championships or reached the Final Four in 2006-2007. The ceremony will be a part of the council's Monday, October 15 meeting. The seven teams include field hockey, men's soccer, volleyball, women's basketball, women's golf, and men's and women's lacrosse. ... The 2007 men's lacrosse team secured the ACC regular season and tournament championships. The tournament title was the fourth in the program's history. The Blue Devils won 17 games, which tied the NCAA record for victories in a season, and advanced to the...

"While Miller has supported the Folsom Street Fair for several years, we take exception to the poster the organizing committee developed this year. We understand some individuals may find the imagery offensive and we have asked the organizers to remove our logo from the poster effective immediately. We regret that our failure to adhere to our own policy led to an inappropriate use of our trademark and apologize to anyone who was offended as a result, particularly members of the Christian community who have contacted us to express their concern. We are conducting an immediate audit of our procedures...

Merck Study Shows Partial Protection Against Additional Cancer-Causing Strains A study by the company that makes Gardasil, a vaccine that protects against cervical cancer, suggests it may be even more effective than previously thought. The vaccine, manufactured by Merck, had previously been thought to only protect against 70 percent of cervical cancer caused by viruses. However, the new research indicates that it may also have at least some effect against viral strains that cause the other 30 percent. The new data was presented this week by Merck at the Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy. The finding was an...

Following the immigration fiasco that splintered the party into warring factions, the Republican Party is attempting to transform that bone of contention into an olive branch to appease their base enraged and disgruntled by efforts by some party leaders to ram through a Senate immigration reform bill hated by the GOP grassroots. Party heavyweights such as Senators Lindsey Graham (S.C.), Jon Kyl (Ariz.) and his fellow Arizona senator and presidential candidate John McCain supported the defeated reform initiative. They formed part of the bipartisan group of senators that framed the failed bill. But according to media reports these same men...

The Southern Christian Leadership Conference has backed off its vow to honor accused dogfighter Michael Vick at its convention this week. "There is no award or no honoring of Michael Vick," said SCLC spokesman David Stokes. rights organization would honor and recognize the embattled Falcons quarterback who is under federal indictment on dogfighting charges. "We need to support him no matter what the evidence reveals," Steele said before the convention began, adding that his organization was focusing on Vick's redemption. So far the convention, which began Friday and ends Wednesday, has had no special event for Vick.

The Senate's Churchill?   By Kenneth R. TimmermanFrontPageMagazine.com | 8/2/2007 Arizona Republican Senator Jon Kyl has taken a lot of knocks recently from conservatives for having teamed up with Teddy Kennedy to front for the administration’s failed immigration scheme.But when it comes to the threat from the Islamic Republic of Iran, few members of the U.S. Senate – or of any branch of the U.S. government, for that matter – have understood or articulated the stakes so well.Kyl believes that the United States faces no greater challenge from any single country today than from Iran. And yet, he noted...

The governor of the US state of Arizona, Janet Napolitano, has signed into law legislation designed to deter illegal immigrant workers. The law requires businesses to verify that all their employees are legally entitled to work in the US, or face the prospect of being closed down. The tougher penalties were introduced days after President Bush's immigration reform bill failed in the Senate. Arizona is one of the main gateways for illegal migration into the US. Federal failure Under the new legislation, an employer's first offence would be punished by a temporary licence suspension. Congress finds itself incapable of coping...

Immigration bill's demise not a reason to cheer Our view: Senate's failure to act will not make our borders any safer, or make the 12 million illegal residents go away Tucson, Arizona | Published: 07.01.2007 By the end of last week, every politician who could get to a phone or a computer was eager to let the world know how disappointed he or she was over the death of the immigration bill. Those were the people, like Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., who had made a valiant but unsuccessful effort to create an immigration bill that would lure hard-liners from the...

In a recent Washington Post Op-Ed former DIA analyst Christina Shelton discussed her intelligence work analyzing links between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's Iraq and countered some of the conventional wisdom on the subject while taking issue with the way her background and work were depicted in former CIA director George Tenet's recent book "At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA."Responding to Tenet's charge that she claimed the debate over Iraq - al Qaeda links was "open-and-shut" and in no need of further analysis Shelton wrote: I said the covert nature of the relationship between Iraq...

"Here the Bush administration has a case to make. Border enforcement has dramatically improved. The catch and release program of OTMs (other than Mexicans) was ended last summer, a month ahead of schedule. Substantial miles of the border fence, voted by Congress last September, are being built. Technology provides us with means to seal the border in thinly populated areas in ways impossible in the 1980s and 1990s. Rhetoric aimed at showing a willingness to accept immigrants has concealed these achievements. Rhetoric emphasizing the increasing toughness and shrewdness at protecting the borders could create another impression." For all of the...

Following the collapse of the Senate’s immigration reform bill late last week, Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., said he’s prepared to move onto other issues. “We’ve got the defense authorization bill coming up the week after the recess,” he said Friday. “And we have a lot of work to do on it. So that’s what we’re working on.” No wonder Kyl is preparing to move onto something else when the Senate resumes its schedule after the weeklong Fourth of July recess. The last issue exposed him to new levels of disrespect. Kyl previously enjoyed something akin to protected status in the...

CHAMBLISS: GEORGIANS HAVE SPOKEN, DEMAND BORDER SECURITY FIRST June 28, 2007 WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., today made the following statement regarding defeat of the immigration reform bill being considered by the U.S. Senate. Chambliss voted “no” on a procedural motion requiring 60 votes to cut off debate on the bill. The motion failed by a vote of 46-53. A lot of people have asked me why I became involved in this process initially, and there is a very simple answer: folks in Georgia sent me to Washington to engage in the issues that are important to America,...

Following is my resignation letter from the Roman Catholic Church and from my position as Director of the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults (RCIA), a program designed to teach Catholicism to adults who would like to become Catholics. This letter serves to inform you that I am separating myself from the Roman Catholic Church. This decision has come about after many months of intensive research into the Scriptures, the writings of the Patristic fathers of the church, and church history. During this period of research I have considered the writings and/or oral arguments of such Catholic authors as...

The Corner is reporting that John Kerry will hold a news conference at 2PM to discuss his recent comment.

They're mostly a liberal bunch. Yet the would-be chairmen in a House under Democratic control promise to rule from the center. They'd have little choice, given the likely balance of power they would confront if elected. George W. Bush would still occupy the Oval Office, and no one thinks Democrats could win control of the House by more than a few seats next month. And that would include three dozen or more moderate "blue dog" Democrats. The dynamics ensure that despite the overwhelmingly liberal cast of the chairmen-to-be — as measured by liberal interest groups such as Americans for Democratic...

WASHINGTON - The judge in the CIA leak case ruled Thursday that if Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald feels that admitting certain classified documents at the upcoming trial of I Lewis "Scooter" Libby can jeopardize national security, Fitzgerald can then move to dismiss the perjury charges against Libby. Judge Reggie Walton cannot automatically allow classified materials to be admitted at trial. He first must go through a series of closed hearings under CIPA regulations. CIPA, the Classified Information Procedures Act, protects and restricts the discovery of classified information in a way that does not impair the defendant's right to a fair...

(CBS) Dan Rather is leaving CBS after 44 years with the Tiffany Network. Sean McManus, president of CBS News and Sports, made the announcement. “Of all the famous names associated with CBS News, the biggest and brightest on the marquee are Murrow, Cronkite and Rather,” McManus said. “With the utmost respect, we mark the extraordinary and singular role Dan has played in writing the script of not only CBS News, but of broadcast journalism." CBS News is working on a primetime special on the newsman’s career. It is scheduled to be broadcast sometime this fall. CBS News also will make...

Q: In your new book, "The Mighty and the Almighty: Reflections on America, God and World Affairs," you admit to having underestimated the role that religion would come to play in foreign affairs. People were unprepared for it. I was unprepared for it. What I grew up with was the "rational actor" model of foreign policy — the idea that you're dealing with someone who is going through a rational process and not a spiritual process. One could argue that it's wholly rational to be spiritual. No. Rational is logical, and not faith-based. A rational actor calculates the cost-benefit ratios...

Botched CIA operations may have handed Iran vital information on how to make nuclear weapons and betrayed the identities of America's spies in the country, according to a new book on US intelligence. The latest account of American intelligence failures includes details of how the CIA allegedly tried to slip Teheran some Russian designs for an atomic bomb, which contained hidden flaws that would have made any device inoperable. The Iranians, however, were tipped off by the very agent sent to give them the documents. In a separate incident, the book claims a CIA officer mistakenly sent an Iranian agent...

(CBS/AP) Top Department of Homeland Security officials were told that New Orleans' levees were breached the day that Hurricane Katrina roared ashore, former disaster chief Michael Brown said Friday, contradicting previous statements by agency officials who said they did not know the levees were toppling until the next day. "I find it a little disingenuous," Brown, who at the time headed the Federal Emergency Management Agency, told a Senate oversight committee. "For them to claim that we didn't have awareness of it is just baloney." Brown also told senators that decisions and policies by the parent Homeland Security Department doomed...

The former CIA official who coordinated U.S. intelligence on the Middle East until last year has accused the Bush administration of "cherry-picking" intelligence on Iraq to justify a decision it had already reached to go to war, and of ignoring warnings that the country could easily fall into violence and chaos after an invasion to overthrow Saddam Hussein. Paul R. Pillar, who was the national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005, acknowledges the U.S. intelligence agencies' mistakes in concluding that Hussein's government possessed weapons of mass destruction. But he said those misjudgments did...

The CIA leak prosecutor refuses to turn over evidence to Lewis Libby. Watchers of the CIA leak investigation are buzzing over a series of letters between prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald and lawyers for former Cheney chief of staff Lewis "Scooter" Libby. In the letters, contained in motions filed recently by Libby's defense team and released by the court, Fitzgerald steadfastly refused to reveal whether he has any evidence that Bush administration officials violated the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, the Espionage Act, or any other law by revealing the identity of CIA employee Valerie Wilson. Libby is charged with perjury and obstruction...

Senator Ted Kennedy, who lambasted Judge Alito on his membership to a Princeton alumni group that once published a satirical editorial that brought on unfounded charges of racism and sexism, was recently caught being a member of a group that did not permit women to become members, exposing his hypocrisy. In a move that can only be described as CYA, Kennedy says he will quit the group. U.S. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy — who ripped Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito for ties to a group that discriminates against women — says he’s going to quit a club notorious for discriminating...

<p>It's been a while since I've been here and I forgot my previous name, so I signed up again to post this.</p> <p>I don't think I'll be back here again. I have nothing against anyone, but there hardly seems to be a point. I've come to realize that concepts like "freedom" and "conservatism" are just illusions -- pipe dreams. The reality is that if you live in Outer Moogooland, then you need to elect somebody who will help Outer Moogooland. Better yet, elect somebody you can count on to help you personally.</p>

NBC's senior diplomatic correspondent Andrea Mitchell is claiming that her comments have been deliberately distorted in reports covering a 2003 interview where she said Valerie Plame's identity had been "widely known" before her name appeared in a Robert Novak column. "The fact is that I did not know did not know [Plame's identity] before the Novak column," she told radio host Don Imus on Thursday. "I said it was widely known that an envoy had gone [to Niger]," she insisted. "I said we did not know who the envoy was until the Novak column." But the actual exchange in question...

Interviews in the Virginia governor's race conducted by SurveyUSA tonight Monday 11/7 (but before President Bush appeared in Richmond) show a swing back towards Republican candidate Jerry Kilgore, causing SurveyUSA to now update its final projection in the Virginia Governor's Contest. This morning, based on interviews conducted Friday, Saturday and Sunday (11/4/05 through 11/6/05), SurveyUSA released data that showed Democrat Tim Kaine 9 points ahead of Kilgore. However, because of intra-day volatility in that data, SurveyUSA continued to poll throughout the afternoon and evening today Monday 11/7. When interviews from the most recent 3 days -- Saturday, Sunday and today...

Can you believe that folks actually donate money to The Free Republic.com censors/cheerleaders, when they could otherwise donate to impoverished kids! I posted the first 3 paragraphs of my home page on 10-7-05 at around 6:30 am, with a fresh identity, using treasury as the link source, at freerepublic.com. The thread was pulled in about 5 minutes and my posting privilages revoked. The first reply suggested that Europe had a debt problem as well, to which I replied that the DX might indicate that they might not be increasing their money supply as fast as we are and included a...

............My notes do not show that Mr. Libby identified Mr. Wilson's wife by name. Nor do they show that he described Valerie Wilson as a covert agent or "operative," as the conservative columnist Robert D. Novak first described her in a syndicated column published on July 14, 2003. (Mr. Novak used her maiden name, Valerie Plame.) This is what I told a federal grand jury and the special counsel investigating whether administration officials committed a crime by leaking Ms. Plame's identity and the nature of her job to reporters. ..

WASHINGTON -- Contrary to recommendations, CIA Director Porter Goss will not order disciplinary reviews for the agency's former director George Tenet and other officials who have come under fire for their performance before the attacks of Sept 11, 2001. In a statement Wednesday, Goss said a report by the agency's independent watchdog did not suggest "that any one person or group of people could have prevented 9/11." "After great consideration of this report and its conclusion, I will not convene an accountability board to judge the performances of any individual CIA officers," he said. Half of those named in the...

In FR News today, the forum formerly known as “Free” Republic went downhill at an amazing speed. Moderators insanely restrict the postings of fellow conservatives and this long time FReeper JesseP will have no more. The $72,000 pledge drive, told to me by Jim Robinson himself is primarily going to fund his personal expenses along with two of the mods. In other words when the wife receives a gift, it is paid for by fellow FRreepers donations. This Ex FReeper will now be calling his bank and canceling the donation made this weekend and it is suggested that others do...