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Jan. 30--WASHINGTON -- Sen. Barack Obama said he would vote Monday to filibuster Judge Samuel Alito's confirmation to the Supreme Court, but he conceded the effort would be futile and criticized Democrats for failing to persuade Americans to take notice of the court's changing ideological face.

Flashback: Carville Wanted Bush to Fail The press never reported that Democratic strategist James Carville said he wanted President Bush to fail before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. But a feeding frenzy ensued when radio host Rush Limbaugh recently said he wanted President Obama to fail. On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, just minutes before learning of the terrorist attacks on America, Democratic strategist James Carville was hoping for President Bush to fail, telling a group of Washington reporters: "I certainly hope he doesn't succeed."

RUSH: Miles in Minneapolis, you're next as we go back to the phones here on the EIB Network. Hello. CALLER: Thank you, sir. I appreciate your taking my call. RUSH: You bet. CALLER: Sir, with regard to the article, or the bit you were talking about a while ago about people of color looking at the election and not necessarily believing in it. (sigh) Um, I'm a college professor and I'm a conservative educator which makes me kind of an oddball to start with. (sigh) And just roughly talking to my students, I'm finding out that, yes, there are a...

''This was a sophisticated and lucrative operation with a multitiered management structure,'' the state attorney general, Eliot Spitzer, who oversees the task force, said in a statement. ''It was, however, nothing more than a prostitution ring, and now its owners and operators will be held accountable.'' Investigators with the task force came across the ring while looking into the activities of a Gambino crime family gambling operation, the law enforcement official said. They had wiretapped a Gambino-linked social club on Fingerboard Road in Staten Island as part of that inquiry and saw the prostitution ring's leader, Frank Farella, 44, of...

From newyorker77 1-25-06 post: 2002 POLLS SAID: Arkansas - Dem Lead/Toss Up Colorado - Dem Lead/Toss Up Georgia - Dem Lead/Toss Up Iowa - Dem Win Louisiana - Dem Lead/Toss Up Minnesota - Dem Lead/Toss Up Missouri - GOP Lead/Toss Up New Hampshire - GOP Lead/Toss Up New Jersey - Dem Lead/Toss Up North Carolina - GOP Lead/Toss Up South Carolina - GOP Win South Dakota - GOP Lead/Toss Up Tennessee - GOP Win Texas - GOP Lead/Toss Up REALITY: Arkansas - Dem Win Colorado - GOP Win Georgia - GOP Win Iowa - Dem Win Louisiana - Dem Win...

May 20, 2000 marks the 7th anniversary of President Clinton's signing the National Voter Registration Act, popularly known as Motor Voter. The right to vote means nothing if people are not registered. Motor Voter works by reducing necessary and burdensome bureaucratic obstacles to voter registration. The law requires states to provide uniform registration services through drivers' license agencies, through public assistance and disability agencies and through mail-in registration. In 1995, the first full year of implementation, more than 11 million citizens registered to vote or updated their voting addresses under the law. This figure represents the largest single increase...

POLLS SAID: Arkansas - Dem Lead/Toss Up Colorado - Dem Lead/Toss Up Georgia - Dem Lead/Toss Up Iowa - Dem Win Louisiana - Dem Lead/Toss Up Minnesota - Dem Lead/Toss Up Missouri - GOP Lead/Toss Up New Hampshire - GOP Lead/Toss Up New Jersey - Dem Lead/Toss Up North Carolina - GOP Lead/Toss Up South Carolina - GOP Win South Dakota - GOP Lead/Toss Up Tennessee - GOP Win Texas - GOP Lead/Toss Up REALITY: Arkansas - Dem Win Colorado - GOP Win Georgia - GOP Win Iowa - Dem Win Louisiana - Dem Win Minnesota - GOP Win Missouri...

Perhaps you remember Henry Cisneros. He's the former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development who pleaded guilty in 1999 to lying to FBI investigators during his pre-appointment background check about hush payments to a former mistress, on which it also happens he hadn't paid the requisite taxes. Well, the special counsel report investigating all this still hasn't been made public, thanks largely to procedural roadblocks by Mr. Cisneros's attorneys. And now, all of a sudden, a rash of news stories and editorials are urging Independent Counsel David Barrett to wrap up his investigation forthwith, without releasing his findings.

During the height of the war in the Pacific, at a diplomatic party held in 1944, an American diplomat, though aware that a number of diplomats from unfriendly, to outright hostile countries were in attendance, listening for scraps of intelligence, apparently forgot that the common U.S. Navy man wasn't snacking on canapes. This diplomat later, in his horror, excused himself that too much alcohol was passed his way. Tossing aside implications that the hostile diplomats somehow pried his lips open and forced the bourbon down his throat, we are forced to consider two questions. What did he say, and why...

In storm, N.O. wants no one left behind - Number of people without cars makes evacuation difficult Times-Picayune, The (New Orleans, LA) July 24, 2005 Author: Bruce Nolan City, state and federal emergency officials are preparing to give the poorest of New Orleans' poor a historically blunt message: In the event of a major hurricane, you're on your own. In scripted appearances being recorded now, officials such as Mayor Ray Nagin, local Red Cross Executive Director Kay Wilkins and City Council President Oliver Thomas drive home the word that the city does not have the resources to move out of...

New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers faces reductionNew Orleans City Business June 6, 2005 by Deon Roberts In fiscal year 2006, the New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is bracing for a record $71.2 million reduction in federal funding. It would be the largest single-year funding loss ever for the New Orleans district, Corps officials said. I've been here over 30 years and I've never seen this level of reduction, said Al Naomi, project manager for the New Orleans district. I think part of the problem is it's not so much the...

    ~ Flashback Friday ~ Year: 1991   Welcome to Flashback Friday! Each Friday we will take a journey back in time. We will highlight a year and then you'll have the opportunity to give your thoughts, opinions, and stories.This week we're jumping back to 1991.   1991 Questions! We Want To Know 1. Were you in school? 2. Were you in the military? 3. What kind of music were you listening to? 4. What do you recall as the best memory from 1991?   Events that occurred in 1991 - January 16th, Operation Desert Storm begins- February...

In 1939, Stalin began his play for Soviet domination of Europe. Years earlier, in a secret speech to the Communist Party Central Committee in January 1925, Stalin had laid out the strategy from which he never swerved in foreign policy: "But if war breaks out [in Europe] we shall not be able to sit with folded arms. We shall have to take action, but we shall be the last to do so. And we shall do so in order to throw the decisive weight into the scales, the weight that can turn the scales." Stalin's Marxist-Leninist view was that any...

Free Republic 2001http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3a70b8577a8c.htm Clinton's Costly Vietnam Trip -- More than $63.5 MillionSource: Far Eastern Economic Review Published: 2-1-01 Clinton's Costly Vietnam Trip The massive cost of airlifting Bill Clinton and his entourage to Vietnam last year has ruffled some feathers in the U.S. military. The former president paid historic visits to Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, the former South Vietnamese capital Saigon, in November. Informal research conducted by officers and staff of the Strategic Assessment Centre and the School of Advanced Airpower Studies says 74 U.S. Air Force aircraft, including 26 giant C-5 Galaxy transports, were used to ferry...

Sep 21, 1883: Karl Marx's theories on Socialism were expounded at length yesterday before the Senate Committee on Labor and Education by Dr. Adolph Douai of the Volks-Zeitung. Mr. Erastus D. Goodwin, a farmer from Falls Village, Conn. appeared as an advocate of "free trade", or at least a change in the tariff which would permit the importation of raw materials free of duty. Such a change would, in his opinion, be of great benefit to both the agricultural and industrial laborer. At today's hearing, Mr. F.B. Thurber will be heard in advocacy of anti-monopoly principles.

Summary: - Irregularities associated with electronic voting machines may have awarded 130,000 excess votes or more to President George W. Bush in Florida. - Compared to counties with paper ballots, counties with electronic voting machines were significantly more likely to show increases in support for President Bush between 2000 and 2004. This effect cannot be explained by differences between counties in income, number of voters, change in voter turnout, or size of Hispanic/Latino population. - In Broward County alone, President Bush appears to have received approximately 72,000 excess votes. - We can be 99.9% sure that these effects are not...

Arriving home from the hospital after being treated for a heart attack, 84-year-old Carol Barnes inched up the steps into her Sunset District home and headed straight for her absentee ballot. "She said, 'That ... Bush, I can't allow him to be president again,' " said her son, Bo Barnes. " 'I want to vote for Kerry to make the world safe.' " Too exhausted to do more than cast votes for president and two propositions, the widow of an Army major signed the ballot and told her son they'd complete the rest later. Three days later, on Oct. 17,...

Monday October 30 6:47 PM ET Bush Leads in Reuters Poll, But Gore Rises in Key States By Alan Elsner, Political Correspondent WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican George W. Bush (news - web sites) kept his three-point lead over Democrat Al Gore (news - web sites) in Monday's Reuters/MSNBC national daily tracking poll, but separate surveys of nine key battleground states showed Gore making inroads. The state polls showed Gore widening his lead in Florida, overtaking Bush in Pennsylvania and closing the gap in his home state of Tennessee. The national survey of 1,213 likely voters in the Nov. 7 election,...

WASHINGTON – To approving hoots, hollers and thunderous applause, hundreds of activists Thursday night rated CBS anchorman Dan Rather the Most Outrageously Biased Liberal Reporter for 2001.Of the six Dishonors Awards bestowed at Media Research Center's annual banquet, Rather won hands down in two categories: The Flakiest Comment of the Year and the Sore Losers Award (for Refusing to Concede Bush’s Victory in Florida).The Sore Losers Award, presented by syndicated columnist David Limbaugh, spotlighted Rather’s coverage of Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris’ formal declaration that George W. Bush had indeed carried Florida. Dan Can't Handle the TruthThe news clips...

---Al Hubbard is the executive director of the Vietnam Veterans against the War. I first met him the morning of April 21 at the VVAW "camp-in" on the Capitol Mall in Washington. He was sitting on a flatbed truck, explaining to a circle of six hundred or so members of his group that the Supreme Court had upheld the earlier ruling that the Veterans would not be allowed to sleep on the Mall that night. He was very calm and soft-spoken about it all, at one point interrupting himself to ask that volunteers take down a Vietcong flag someone had...

Former Clinton White House terrorism czar Richard Clarke is preparing to tell the Independent Commission Investigating the Sept. 11 Attacks this week that the Bush administration failed to act on a Clinton administration plan to attack Osama bin Laden. And in a "60 Minutes" interview set to air Sunday night, Clarke blasts Bush for doing "a terrible job on the war against terrorism." But just a year ago Clarke was singing a different tune, telling reporter Richard Miniter, author of the book "Losing bin Laden," that it was the Clinton administration - not team Bush - that had dropped...

We are in a cabin deep down below decks on a Navy ship jam-packed with troops that’s pitching and creaking its way across the Atlantic in a winter gale. There is a man in every bunk. There’s a man wedged into every corner. There’s a man in every chair. The air is dense with cigarette smoke and with the staleness of packed troops and sour wool. “Don’t think I’m sticking up for the Germans,” puts in the lanky young captain in the upper berth, “but…” “To hell with the Germans,” says the broad-shouldered dark lieutenant. “It’s what our boys have...

 Congressional Leaders Tell White House They Are Dismayed At Iraq Policy (August 12, 1999) Congressional leaders Trent Lott, Jesse Helms, Richard Shelby, Benjamin A. Gilman, Joseph I. Lieberman, J. Robert Kerrey, Sam Brownback and Howard L. Berman submitted the following letter to the White House on August 11, 1999: Congress of the United States Washington DC 20515 August 11, 1999 The President The White House Washington, D.C. 20500 Dear Mr. President: As the principal proponents of last year's Iraq Liberation Act, we are writing to express our dismay over the continued drift in U.S. policy toward Iraq. We were greatly...

August 13, 1999 With Little Notice, U.S. Planes Have Been Striking Iraq All Year Related Articles Issue in Depth: Attack on Iraq By STEVEN LEE MYERS ASHINGTON -- It is the year's other war. While the nation's attention has focused on Kosovo, American warplanes have quietly, methodically and with virtually no public discussion been attacking Iraq. Over the past eight months, American and British pilots have fired more than 1,100 missiles against 359 targets. That is more than triple the targets attacked in four furious days of strikes in December that followed Iraq's expulsion of U.N. weapons inspectors, an...

This war...in my opinion is already lost: Ritter Ritter: US will lose war against Iraq Former UN weapons inspector says US does not have military means to take over Baghdad, defeat inevitable. LISBON - The United States does not have the military means to take over Baghdad and will lose the war against Iraq, former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter said. "The United States is going to leave Iraq with its tail between its legs, defeated. It is a war we can not win," he told private radio TSF in an interview broadcast here Tuesday evening. "We do not have...

Former UN weapons inspector says US does not have military means to take over Baghdad, defeat inevitable. LISBON - The United States does not have the military means to take over Baghdad and will lose the war against Iraq, former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter said. "The United States is going to leave Iraq with its tail between its legs, defeated. It is a war we can not win," he told private radio TSF in an interview broadcast here Tuesday evening. "We do not have the military means to take over Baghdad and for this reason I believe the defeat...

When he was President, Richard Nixon, for good or ill, always sought to take charge - of his party, his country, the world. In his final book, the elder statesman sums up a lifetime of involvement in foreign affairs by admonishing his successors to do the same. "If the U.S. is to continue to lead in the world," writes Nixon, "it will have to resolve to do so and then take those steps necessary to turn resolution into execution." Bill Clinton has not got the message. Now, 15 months into his term, the President seems to be approaching a kind...

August 19, 1998 - The full text of the statement made by President Bill Clinton from the Oval Office in Washington on US military strikes in Afghanistan and Sudan. Good afternoon. Today, I ordered our armed forces to strike at terrorist-related facilities in Afghanistan and Sudan because of the imminent threat they presented to our national security. I want to speak with you about the objective of this action and why it was necessary. 'Target was terror'Our target was terror. Our mission was clear - to strike at the network of radical groups affiliated with and funded by Osama Bin...