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'Mexican Man' costume offends Latino shoppers, community groups By Sean Maher EMERYVILLE — A costume dubbed "Mexican Man" has offended Latino shoppers and community groups after being discovered at a Halloween chain store. The photo on the costume packaging shows a man with a thick mustache wearing a poncho and a sombrero. Oakland resident Monica Plazola said she discovered the costume last week at the Spirit Halloween store in Emeryville, which she was visiting with her two children, ages 7 and 9. "We were there at the store, with all kinds of costumes, and that was the only one identified...

Specter wants Wilson censured Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Penn.), who's looked at POTUS from both sides now, was just on the Bill Press radio show suggesting the South Carolina firebrand Joe Wilson be censured for his heckle heard round the world. Said the Republican-turned-Dem: "He apologized immediately afterward but I don't think that’s adequate... If an apology is the consequence of an outburst I think we can expect more – that’s not a sufficient penalty that’s not a sufficient price to pay.. I'm not saying the guy should be kicked out of the House… But there ought to be some rebuke,...

"Sleep deprivation, "insult slaps," water dousing and "walling," or slamming a detainee's head against a wall, were techniques used by CIA interrogators to break high-value detainees, according to an agency memo." Holder decision "promises political headaches for President Barack Obama, came after the Justice Department's ethics watchdog recommended considering prosecution of CIA employees or contractors for interrogations in Iraq and Afghanistan that went beyond approved limits." Cheney said ""The people involved deserve our gratitude. They do not deserve to be the targets of political investigations or prosecutions," he said in a statement."

Those words begin this stark, frank, and -- unfortunately -- utterly necessary column by the very fine writer Leonard Pitts, Jr.. The subject is Nazis, who seem to be everywhere these days. Read on: I hope this column makes you sick. See, we'll be talking about Nazis, something many of us are doing lately. Indeed, just this week a fellow named Joseph e-mailed me about a caller he heard on a radio show. The man, vexed over healthcare reform, likened President Obama to Adolf Hitler. Asked why, he said, ``Hitler took over the car companies, then healthcare and then he...

Accusations and responses from Liberal Kook to Rational Conservative:. You didn't get mad when the Supreme Court stopped a legal recount and appointed a President.[ Damn straight! - The US Supreme Court said, "No Cherry Picking Vote Recounts from Democrat Counties....It's UnConstitutional ] You didn't get mad when Cheney allowed Energy company officials to dictate energy policy.[ That's Right - Its like NOT having Politicians pretending to be Health Care Providers ] You didn't get mad when a covert CIA operative got outed.[ Plame was not "covert" -- she was a political HACK that needed to be outed.....her and her...

Here is video of CNN Anchor Tony Harris losing it over the call by Police Officers in Cambridge, Massachusetts for President Obama to apologize for his accusation that they "acted stupidly" in arresting a Harvard Professor. Harris listened to reporter Don Lemon who was at the press conference, and then just lost it, saying "This is incendiary," referring to the call by the police for an Obama apology. He then put reporter Don Lemon on the spot to share a personal experience of profiling, which Lemon did not seem to want to do.. . . . . . (Watch Video)

...they were upset that their 14-month-old brother Trig, who has Down Syndrome, was "mocked and ridiculed by some pretty mean spirited adults." I'd like to know the names of those mean-spirited adults who mocked and ridiculed her special needs child. I don't believe it for a second. I think what she is talking about is that she was criticized for the way she dealt with her pregnancy with Trig and her caregiving of him after his birth. Remember, Sarah Palin is a right-wing, evangelical Christian for whom "family values" and the role of the mother are paramount. Many right-wing Christians...

Stratford (AP) - A Connecticut man has been arrested after he allegedly showed up at a dental office naked. Police said 41-year-old Christopher Hoff of Stratford also was five days late for an appointment Monday when he went to Optimus Dental.SNIPOfficers went to his home, where Hoff told them he'd been sleeping all day. Police took Hoff to the dental office where the receptionist identified him.

...How can an industry survive if it allows other companies, like Google News, to use its content without any compensation? (NYTimes editor) Keller asked him (Google CEO), "When are you going to start paying for our content?" Schmidt stiffened a bit and declared: "We will pay when everyone pays" - everyone with an Internet site, that is. There's an impossible standard... Online sales now provide one-third of his (RIAA VP) industry's income. At best, the music business would be a hollow shell of what it is today... There's another solution. The courthouse. The Associated Press announced last week that it...

Think about it. Has there been a lousier 10 years in American history? OK, the Civil War, granted. And the Great Depression wasn't so hot, either, the pictures suggest. But this one has been close enough to an all-time bad to merit the kind of willful amnesia that I'm proposing. sajohnson@tribune.com

Charitable contributions at Southern California mosques are down by as much as 30% to 50% over the last few years. Blame the climate of fear. That’s what Rafe Husain, a board member for the Islamic Center of Corona Norco, is doing. “People feel tense and uncomfortable,” Husain is quoted as saying in a recent Los Angeles Times article. Just another story about the woeful recession we currently find ourselves in? Mosque-goers are feeling jittery about their dwindling 401k accounts and have decided to fork over less money to the needy? Not quite. What’s got some L.A.-area Muslims in a cold...

If the White House and Pentagon are going to make wise decisions about what to do with the Guantanamo Bay detainees they are going to need accurate information upon which to base their new policies. Yet the single most cited “fact” last week about the terror suspects - that 61 of the men released from Gitmo have returned to fight against us - is simply not true. The number is far lower than that. And the longer “61” is used as a “talking point” by critics of the administration of President No. 44 the longer it will be before a...

At least Dick Cheney, as wrong a guy as we've ever had this close to the presidency, goes out in character, thinking that he and George W. Bush were right about everything. The problem is that Cheney's character now sounds as weird and unhinged as Jack Nicholson's in "A Few Good Men." There was Cheney on the Fox television network Sunday, always more a home to him than Yankee Stadium is to Derek Jeter, defending the last days of a dying administration and a dying Republican empire, defending Bush and Iraq and Donald Rumsfeld, defending Guantanamo and torture and surveillance...

Federal food safety officials yesterday began holding up shipments of food from China that contain milk or milk-derived ingredients in the largest effort to date to keep products tainted with the industrial chemical melamine from reaching U.S. consumers. The Food and Drug Administration is requiring importers of the halted shipments to test for the chemical, which is used to make plastic and fertilizer but has been added to human and animal food to boost protein readings. The types of products likely to be waylaid are cookies, candies, and other goods made with milk or milk powder. If an importer can...

TEN words keep ringing in my ears, long after Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin supposedly redeemed herself and put to rest the nation's worst fears about the bottom of the Republican ticket. "How long have I been at this?" she asked during last week's high-stakes vice presidential debate. "Like, five weeks?" Say it ain't so, Joe, she's right. No question, Palin killed. She's great on television when she's got rehearsed lines to deliver and no follow-up questions to answer. She's brash and disarming, and she makes you want to send her to Washington and give those boys a big whack on...

Allow me to introduce myself. I am a traitor and an idiot. Also, my mother should have aborted me and left me in a Dumpster, but since she didn't, I should "off" myself. Those are just a few nuggets randomly selected from thousands of e-mails written in response to my column suggesting that Sarah Palin is out of her league and should step down. Who says public discourse hasn't deteriorated? The fierce reaction to my column has been both bracing and enlightening. After 20 years of column writing, I'm familiar with angry mail. But the past few days have produced...

From Reuters and the Hollywood Reporter comes news that PBS filmmaker Ken Burns used a New York panel discussion preceding the news and documentary Emmy Awards as a forum to denounce the Republican vice-presidential nominee, Sarah Palin, as proof the selection process devolved "into a high school popularity contest and an American Idol competition" and insisted "in the whole history of the republic there has been no one with as thin a credential" as Palin. The reporter on this story, Paul J. Gough, treated Burns as an eminence and not as a partisan liberal who endorsed Obama in December 2007....

I assume John McCain chose Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential partner in a fit of pique because the Republican money men refused to let him have the stuffed male shirt he really wanted. She added nothing to the ticket that the Republicans didn't already have sewn up, the white trash vote, the demographic that sullies America's name inside and outside its borders yet has such a curious appeal for the right. So why do it? It's possible that Republican men, sexual inadequates that they are, really believe that women will vote for a woman just because she's a woman. They're...

Obama goes for the rural Missouri vote... One dilly bar at a time. The Missouri Republican Party started questioning the validity of Obama's new field offices on Friday after it was reported one in Sikeston appears to be a Dairy Queen -News-Leader. And, the Obama Campaign staffers are not actually in theri rural Nixa, Missouri offices. In fact, they haven't signed the lease yet. But, they do set up a table and chairs in the parking lot certain hours of the day. The News-Leader reported: Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's winning strategy in Missouri rests on getting votes in rural...

Afew weeks ago, John McCain made a little joke at his wife's expense. Referring to her alma mater -- Cindy McCain is a graduate of the University of Southern California, where she was a cheerleader and sorority sister -- he called it "USC, the University of Spoiled Children." It's not an original joke, of course -- it's been around for ages, possibly even as long as John McCain himself -- but it said a lot about the man who wants to be president. ...Visit any college classroom -- at the University of Spoiled Children, Harvard, Yale, Puget Sound, doesn't matter...

What is it with photographers these days? Are they really all terrorists, or does everyone just think they are? Since 9/11, there has been an increasing war on photography. Photographers have been harrassed, questioned, detained, arrested or worse, and declared to be unwelcome. We've been repeatedly told to watch out for photographers, especially suspicious ones. Clearly any terrorist is going to first photograph his target, so vigilance is required. Except that it's nonsense. The 9/11 terrorists didn't photograph anything. Nor did the London transport bombers, the Madrid subway bombers, or the liquid bombers arrested in 2006. Timothy McVeigh didn't photograph...

Sen. Joe Biden, piling on to Democratic complaints about President Bush’s speech in Israel today: “This is bullshit, this is malarkey. This is outrageous, for the president of the United States to go to a foreign country, to sit in the Knesset . . . and make this kind of ridiculous statement.” Speaking before the Knesset, Bush said that “some people” believe the United States “should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along." "We have heard this foolish delusion before," Bush said. "As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland...

Comedienne Rosie O'Donnell has hit back after she was named the world's most annoying celebrity by insisting all stars are irritating.

During another typically bizarre day for Heather Mills, the former model yesterday urged people to try drinking milk from rats and dogs to help save the planet. Media-shy Heather started off by storming out of a radio interview with London's LBC station. She then drove a gas-guzzling Mercedes 4x4 to Speakers' Corner in Hyde Park to speak about ecological matters - and kept the engine running for part of the morning. Once there she proceeded to launch into an extraordinary ecological rant and exhorted the assembled crowds to try drinking rat's milk instead of cow's milk in a bid to...

President Bush, at podium, speaks to members of the media prior to the ribbon-cutting ceremony ... At this morning's ribbon-cutting for the newly renovated White House Briefing Room, President Bush dropped in just long enough to rub reporters' noses in his cheerful refusal to take them seriously. ... the president was in full frat-boy mode, clowning around during introductory remarks by C-SPAN's Steve Scully. ... Bush apparently felt Scully went on too long. "I like a good, short introduction," Bush jeered as soon as Scully gave up the podium. Here's the transcript. "We missed you -- sort of," Bush...

Coulter is a prime suspect in the theft of the nation's moral compass. (SALEM, Ore.) - When we grow up we are taught the difference between right and wrong. Well before reaching adulthood, we are supposed to have a sound understanding of the bottom line, and a reasonable appreciation for the fact that mistakes carry consequences. But moral decay, divisiveness and polarity are the order of the day in 2007. As a society, it seems like we no longer aspire to be chivalrous. Instead we go for the most outrageous, the most shocking, the most revealing, and the least-clothed. And...

A surprisingly recent instance of human evolution has been detected among the peoples of East Africa. It is the ability to digest milk in adulthood, conferred by genetic changes that occurred as recently as 3,000 years ago, a team of geneticists has found. The finding is a striking example of a cultural practice — the raising of dairy cattle — feeding back into the human genome. It also seems to be one of the first instances of convergent human evolution to be documented at the genetic level. Convergent evolution refers to two or more populations acquiring the same trait independently....

Democrats Call for New Direction From Rubber Stamp Republican Congress In two years, Republican-controlled 109th Congress has done nothing for American people Washington, D.C.—Yesterday’s release of three pages of the National Intelligence Estimate that state plainly that the Bush Administration’s failed strategy in Iraq has increased the threat of terrorism and made America less safe lays bare the need for a Congress that won’t simply rubber stamp failed White House policies. Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid, House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, and Democratic leaders from House and Senate today joined to call for a new direction. From Iraq to the...

Joe gets up at 6 a.m. and fills his coffeepot with water to prepare his morning coffee. The water is clean and good because some tree-hugging liberal fought for minimum water-quality standards. With his first swallow of coffee, he takes his daily medication. His medications are safe to take because some stupid commie liberal fought to insure their safety and that they work as advertised. All but $10 of his medications are paid for by his employer's medical plan because some liberal union workers fought their employers for paid medical insurance - now Joe gets it too. He prepares his...

LONDON, Sept. 18, 2006 — Three words suddenly have a lot of Westerners worried and, it must be said, likely making some wrong assumptions about modern Islam. "Yaum al Ghadab" is Arabic for "Day of Rage." When the Qatari Islamic scholar Yusuf al-Qaradawi called for a Day of Rage this Friday in response to Pope Benedict XVI's remarks about Muslims, it might have sounded like a call for street violence. But if there is trouble Friday, and there could well be, it will not be because of language but because of what some people choose to do after they have...

The Left-Wing blogosphere is now in an UPROAR over the fact that part 1 of The Path To 9/11 aired last night. Although there were a couple of disclaimers in the movie that it was fictionalized as well as some minor editing changes (primarily the removal of the scene where Sandy Berger hangs up the phone on the team trying to capture Osama bin Laden) the main thrust of the movie is quite clear: the Clintonistas were not serious in their attempts to stop terrorism. As could be be expected, the loony left is OUTRAGED that this movie has...

Barbara Kopple and Cecilia Peck have crafted an insightful and heartfelt look at the experiences of the Dixie Chicks over the last three years, chronicling the often bizarre consequences of singer Natalie Maines' anti-Bush wisecrack on a London stage. Maines' statement is captured in "Dixie Chicks: Shut Up and Sing," as are the meetings where they plot how to circumvent the core country audience and, eventually, how to reroute a tour and cancel shows due to poor ticket sales. It's the rare thorough documentary on a musical act whose dilemmas are faced in the here and now, one that should...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE August 30, 2006 CONTACT: Brendan Daly 202-226-7616 Pelosi Statement on Rumsfeld Remarks Washington, D.C. – House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi released the following statement today in response to Secretary Rumsfeld’s remarks he made yesterday to the American Legion convention in Salt Lake City: "Secretary Rumsfeld's efforts to smear critics of the Bush Administration's Iraq policy are a pathetic attempt to shift the public's attention from his repeated failure to manage the conduct of the war competently. If Mr. Rumsfeld is so concerned with comparisons to World War II, he should explain why our troops have now been...

Just wanted to send a note and say hey and tell you about one of the darnedest things. And I gotta say it is one of the clearest examples of how CONservatives (not to be confused with honest conservatives) have managed to convince so many people so many lies are in fact the truth. This is indeed a rather mind numbing stor ... eh ... no ... actually it's what I'd expect. So here's what happened, Droppings: Somebody with the screen name of "presidio9" picked up my piece Green diets vs. global warming and posted it on the Internet message...

DENVER -- Democrats pounced on Colorado's Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob Beauprez and his newly chosen running mate Janet Rowland on Tuesday for comments she made five months ago comparing same-sex marriage to bestiality. In a March 17 broadcast of the Rocky Mountain PBS program "Colorado State of Mind," Rowland said homosexuality is an alternative lifestyle, adding, "For some people, the alternative lifestyle is bestiality. Do we allow a man to marry a sheep?" Democrat Bill Ritter's campaign called the remarks "insensitive, close-minded, derogatory and crude" and demanded an apology. "This shows just how far to the right and out-of-touch the...

So L.A - The Chris Ayres Weblog IT BEGINS with a caricature of Al Gore — grossly overweight and dressed like a Victorian industrialist — pointing an umbrella at an overhead screen of climate data. The former vice-president’s audience is made up of cartoon penguins, who — in spite of the increasingly balmy conditions in Antarctica – snore at his global-warming lecture and fantasise about going to see X-Men 3. “What is Al Gore’s new movie, An Inconvenient Truth, all about?” reads the video’s description on YouTube.com, where it was posted. “Global Warming? The Environment? Or something much more BORING?...

DNC Chair Howard Dean: "If Karl Rove had been indicted it would have been for perjury. That does not excuse his real sin which is leaking the name of an intelligence operative during the time of war. He doesn't belong in the White House. If the President valued America more than he valued his connection to Karl Rove then Karl Rove would have been fired a long time ago. So I think this is probably good news for the White House, but its not very good news for America."

The results of the California 50th Congressional District special election have been in for only 8 business hours and ALREADY the DUmmies and the Leftist Blogosphere are crying "VOTE FRAUD" via their favorite culprits---Diebold Voting machines. Apparently the DUmmies were NOT satisfied with their "moral victory" and wanted a REAL victory. And the only way to achieve such a victory in this election is to act like sore losers and WHINE about vote fraud as you can see in this DUmmie THREAD petulantly titled, "Results of Busby/Bilbray U.S. House Special Election in Doubt!" Yes, there is no DOUBT about...

Why Jon Stewart isn't funny By Michael Kalin | March 3, 2006 THE SELECTION of Jon Stewart as the host for Sunday night's 2006 Oscars undoubtedly marks a career milestone for the aspiring king of late-night comedy. Unfortunately, however, the ascension of Stewart and ''The Daily Show" into the public eye is no laughing matter. Stewart's ever-increasing popularity among young viewers directly correlates with the declining influence of progressive thought in America. Coincidence? I think not. Let me explain.

The BEST thing about the defeatism now prevalent among the Left, is the HILARIOUS material such an attitude provides as you can see in this DUmmie THREAD titled, "We are past the point of partisan solutions to our nation's problems!" DUmmie IndianaGreen (recently Tombstoned from DUmmieland for daring to disagree with Pied Piper Pitt but now allowed back in) wrings his hands over the fact that the Left will NEVER get back in power via the ballot box. His solution? Either non-violent mass marches against the EVIL Bush regime ala Gandhi's Salt March in 1930 or exile. Of course,...

No room for a laughingstock It is humor that often drives the final nail in the political coffin. The images of Gerald Ford falling on his face and hitting spectators with golf balls outlived his presidency. Jimmy Carter endured the Iranian hostage crisis and the misery index, but he had no comeback to the million yuks that followed his battle with an attacking rabbit. All of which is to say that Deadeye Dick Cheney is history. He is the Dead Veep Walking, whether he knows it or not. Ridicule is fatal. It's not just late-night comedians declaring open season on...

In this war freedom should come first not after! In New Hampshire the Motto is Live free or Die! I don't need Bush spying on law abiding americans and taking our freedoms. Anyone who surrenders a square inch of freedom to the government in the name of saftey is a traitor and should be treated like one! Let the Bush Fashists all drop dead! Filthy Commys! LET FREEDOM RING!

Capitol Police may have dropped charges against antiwar activist Cindy Sheehan and apologized, but that apparently hasn't made her any less angry over her arrest, or how she was treated as it happened. Sheehan was one of two people kicked out of the audience of President Bush's State of the Union address in t-shirt-related incidents Tuesday night, but she was the only one arrested, on unlawful conduct counts. She was wearing a t-shirt that alluded to the number of soldiers killed in Iraq: "2245 Dead. How many more?" Also removed was Beverly Young, wife of Rep. C.W. "Bill" Young, R-Fla.,...

Dear Friends, As most of you have probably heard, I was arrested before the State of the Union Address tonight. I am speechless with fury at what happened and with grief over what we have lost in our country. There have been lies from the police and distortions by the press. (Shocker) So this is what really happened: This afternoon at the People's State of the Union Address in DC where I was joined by Congresspersons Lynn Woolsey and John Conyers, Ann Wright, Malik Rahim and John Cavanagh, Lynn brought me a ticket to the State of the Union Address....

Dear Friends, As most of you have probably heard, I was arrested before the State of the Union Address tonight. I am speechless with fury at what happened and with grief over what we have lost in our country. CindySheehan's diary :: :: There have been lies from the police and distortions by the press. (Shocker) So this is what really happened: This afternoon at the People's State of the Union Address in DC where I was joined by Congresspersons Lynn Woolsey and John Conyers, Ann Wright, Malik Rahim and John Cavanagh, Lynn brought me a ticket to the...

The Wal-Martification of AmericaI don't expect you to shed any tears about Aron's closing. Unless you grew up in L.A. as I did, you've probably never even heard of it. Aron's was this used record and CD store that I discovered 30 years ago. It was a quirky place, an audiophile heaven where there was never any telling what offbeat treasure you might find. More to the point, it was “my” place, a store where I spent endless hours browsing for rarities and oddities you could never find elsewhere. To this day, no trip back to L.A. is complete without...

It must be said that subsequent events have not made life easy for those of us who were so optimistic as to support the war in Iraq. There were those who believed the Government's rubbish about Saddam's Weapons of Mass Destruction. Then the WMD made their historic no-show.Some of us were so innocent as to suppose that the Pentagon had a well-thought-out plan for the removal of the dictator and the introduction of peace. Then we had the insurgency, in which tens of thousands have died.Some of us thought it was about ensuring that chemical weapons could never again be...

Commentary: Also, bloggers -- I want to hear from you NEW YORK (MarketWatch) - Sad to say, at the start of the holiday season, I'm a typical journalist. That means I am one of the many now reeling in the wake of the Judy Miller and Bob Woodward fiascos. And yes, I'm cringing in the corner as Maureen Dowd flexes her columnist's muscles and shamelessly bullies Miller in print. I'm waiting helplessly for columnist Robert Novak to be a mensch and finally do the right thing by going public with his role in the CIA leak investigation. I'm a typical...

Last March, at a workshop aimed at empowering girls to confront bullies, I listened as girls recounted tales of being harassed and intimidated. One girl's voice cracked as she spoke of a student who cursed at her and tried to trip her in the hall of her school. We learned that bullying is "the unjust exercise of power of one individual to humiliate, frighten, denigrate or injure another." That day, a national expert said it's not just victims who have to stop bullies; bystanders need to speak up too; otherwise they're enabling the bullies. So today I'm standing up to...

NEW YORK -- Vice President Dick Cheney's feud with Democratic Rep. Charles Rangel was perpetuated Wednesday when the 75-year-old congressman said Cheney "ought to be ashamed of himself" for a remark about his age. Months of verbal attacks from Rangel turned into a back and forth on Monday when the 64-year-old vice president said Rangel is "losing it," later adding that "Charlie is a lot older than I am, and it shows." After an appearance at City Hall on Wednesday, Rangel was asked when the dispute would die. "I think it ends when he apologizes for attacking me as a...