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A cry for help goes out from a city beleaguered by violence and fear: A beam of light flashed into the night sky, the dark symbol of a bat projected onto the surface of the racing clouds . . . Oh, wait a minute. That's not a bat, actually. In fact, when you trace the outline with your finger, it looks kind of like . . . a "W." There seems to me no question that the Batman film "The Dark Knight," currently breaking every box office record in history, is at some level a paean of praise to the...

THE DALAI Lama came to town, and I went to see him. After all, how often do you get to see a world figure, a Nobel Peace Prize winner? I saw his holiness at the majestic Kimmel Center, the perfect setting for such a holy man. --snip-- The angry murmur that went through the crowd when His Holiness proclaimed his love for George Bush was the exact opposite reaction you think you'd get from a bunch of peace-loving folk

Is the Bush administration crumbling? Asia experts Liu Kin-ming and June Teufel Dreyer, in postings on the Taiwan Policy Forum listserv today, ask a pertinent question. The answer, unfortunately, is “yes.” An exhausted Dubya is now doing everything he once said he would not. The President, for example, is rewarding North Korea prior to surrender of its nuclear weapons. On Wednesday, the administration agreed to talk with Iran even though the Islamic Republic is continuing to enrich uranium and undoubtedly maintaining a covert bomb program. And on the same day, it was revealed that the Bush White House is undermining...

The first time I encountered Tony Snow was through his columns for the Detroit News in the 1980s, when I was an undergraduate subscribing to a forgotten but quite good publication called Conservative Chronicle. His articles were like his later work for Fox News: a combination of reliable research and lively commentary, with the latter grounded in the former, making his arguments cogent and convincing. When you read Tony Snow’s op-ed pieces, you were engaged and learned something; you came away with the assurance that the case you just heard was rational and reasoned. He advanced his particular point and,...

This piece should really bring out the Calvins, the Dudley Dursleys, the Lucy van Pelts, the Angelica Pickles and all the rest of the spoiled brats and know-nothings of this world who have been having a temper tantrum because President Bush is succeeding in Iraq and defeating the terrorists.

I’m worried about you, George Bush. Mr. President you look — to use a phrase I’m sure you are familiar with — tuckered out. You are certainly looking worse for wear these days. Who can blame you? You are heading into your final months in office with historically low poll numbers, the economy is in the dumps, former pals are ripping on you and you’re almost out of a job. It’s enough to make a former drinker like you head for the Jack Daniels. SNIP Congress? Mr. President, surely you jest! As far as I can tell, the Democratic leadership...

... G-8 meetings follow a familiar script year after year. They begin with leaders issuing lofty statements on a checklist of "global challenges." They continue with TV footage of riot police struggling with the global protester brigade. And they finish with news stories quoting unnamed diplomats sighing that American obstinacy has just lost the world its last chance for some great advance on some issue vital for humanity. The good news is that this week's summit in Japan may be the one in which we finally awake from the G-8 version of "Groundhog Day." And when we do, we will...

It was on page 6 of my daily newspaper that an important reminder of Saddam’s capacity for WMD was published: the movement in secrecy of 550 tons of ‘yellowcake’ uranium from Iraq to Canada on July 5. 550 tons! Can they really continue their lies about no possibility of Weapons of Mass Destruction in Saddam’s Iraq? I know they will try to spin this, but can any honest person now still maintain that Saddam was not able to reconstitute his nuclear weapons’ capability left to his own devices? Can any honest person continue the nonsense of “Bush lied”? Although U.N....

RFFM.org EXCLUSIVE Tel Aviv -- A high-ranking member of the Israeli military says an attack on Iran is imminent. Experts predict Iran may be within six months of creating a nuclear weapon and the nation of Israel is bound and determined to prevent that from happening, according to the source. It has been estimated the government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has produced more than enough weapons-grade plutonium to create a high yield nuclear device and, due to this fact, the attack on Iran ...

We now have incontrovertible proof that the Democratic Party is a party whose leaders are liars and scoundrels. This week the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives passed an Iraq War Funding bill that, for the first time in years, contained no restrictions or pull-out dates. That same House also passed a FISA bill covering the electronic surveillance of suspected foreign terrorists communicating with domestic accomplices.

Despite the total failure of leftist policies in the former Soviet Union, Eastern Germany, formerly communist Poland and other eastern European countries, despite the well-publicized failures of national health care in Canada and Great Britain, despite the catastrophes caused by leftist environmental policies here and around the world, the left wing of the Democratic Party, not only will not own up to these failures, but intends to impose the well-documented policy fiascos of the Carter Administration on us all again. It is no wonder, then, that the coming near-total success of the Bush Doctrine in fighting the jihadists on their...

An examination of published reports reveals that Scott McClellan's kiss-and-smell betrayal of George W. Bush is a far cry from the book McClellan started out to write and was shaped into an offensive tome by a publisher with close ties to George Soros. To understand how McClellan's literary knife-in-the-back evolved, one has to know something about the book industry.

One thing is certain about Scott McClellan’s book: he wouldn’t have sold many copies if it had been about how well President Bush had served his country. Friends and admirers of the President don’t need to read a book like that; only future students of history do. Friends and admirers well realize that, at enormous cost to himself in the nanny-state in which we now live, President Bush has kept us safe against all odds, he steered us through a recovery from the Clinton recession and then through the incredible collapse of the economy after 9/11, and all the while...

Of all the people to call for a "truce" on excessive partisanship . . . Interviewing Scott McClellan tonight, Keith Olbermann sanctimoniously suggested that a "truce" on partisanship "would be nice." But speaking with John Dean just minutes later, the Countdown host—he who has repeatedly called President Bush a liar and a fascist—reverted to form and regretted that it might be too late to impeach him. SCOTT MCCLELLAN: [The 1988] election was very much a turning-point election. I think that George Bush, George Bush 41, George Herbert Walker Bush, is a decent individual, and a man who really believes in...

RFFM.org Commentary Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan recently wrote a book which is highly critical of the George Bush administration. The only reason I know who Scott McClellan is stems from the fact I am insane. I spend too much time watching and analyzing politics. And, if you don't know who McClellan is, I would suggest you use this fact on a resume to prove you care about the people in the world who matter. However, if you had a chance to watch and read comments from the dominant media concerning McClellan and the revelations in his literary...

The Presidency: It takes little courage — or brains — to join the mob vilifying President Bush. But the Democrats (and Republicans, too) depicting him as villain will one day regret it.In the eyes of members of both parties, George W. Bush seems to be the cause of everything from the recent GOP special election losses to a flagging economy to today's bad weather. Barack Obama plans to reach the White House by claiming the presidency of Sen. John McCain would amount to a third Bush term. McCain, meanwhile, seems to think it a wise campaign strategy to highlight his...

On Israel 60th Birthday Bush Tells Iran, Syria, No Appeasement On Terrorism By Joel Leyden Israel News Agency Jerusalem ----- May 17, 2008 ....... US President George W. Bush will leave Saudi Arabia this morning for Egypt after having visited Israel for its 60th birthday celebrations. Upon his historic arrival at Israel's Ben-Gurion Airport, Bush stated: "Israel is our strongest friend and ally in the Middle East. Our two nations both faced great challenges when they were founded. And our two nations have both relied on the same principles to help us succeed. We built strong democracies to protect the...

Is Barack Obama smarter than a 5th grader? Umm.. How about a pre-schooler? We all know how the left-wing media loves to poke fun at Bush's gaffes, but will they play fair when the candidate they dote and fawn over makes a blooper? Roll the tape:

My friends and I have cried in our beer long enough about the awful choices we face in the upcoming Presidential election next fall, and we have made it clear how much we regret having to vote for Senator McCain. What I decided to do was to list the 10 most important issues I have, in order of their importance to me, and see how the three present candidates would stack up with respect to these issues.

Against the backdrop of a stunning Texas sunset, near a lake on the Bush family's 1,600-acre ranch, President Bush walked his daughter, Jenna, down the aisle to her groom, the White House said. Jenna Bush and Henry Hager say "I do" on Saturday. "We're mighty blessed," President Bush said. Jenna, 26, married Henry Hager, the son of a well-connected Virginia Republican. "The wedding was spectacular. It was all we could have hoped for," the president said Sunday before boarding Air Force One. "We're mighty blessed." Wearing a white silk organza Oscar de la Renta gown, the bride stood with the...

Davy Crockett is the patron saint of every politician who ever left Washington with a bruised ego and a broken heart. When he was bounced out of Congress in 1830, Davy told the folks on the banks of the Nolichucky River in Tennessee: "I'm going to Texas, and the rest of you can go to hell." Departing presidents have left town nursing similar sentiments but avoided saying them out loud. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, continuing their endless rassling match today in Indiana and North Carolina, could take Davy Crockett's benediction as a caution. George W. Bush surely feels like...

By PHILIP MESSING April 24, 2008 -- A man heckling First Lady Laura Bush and daughter Jenna outside the 92nd Street Y was arrested after he punched a wheelchair-bound girl whose parents had told him to shut up, authorities said yesterday.

Script asks: 'How did an alcoholic bum become most powerful leader in world?' How different the world might look now if the US president and his advisers had settled on the phrase Axis of Unbearably Odious, or Axis of Hatred. But they rejected that and instead plumped for Axis of Evil, and the rest is history. So begins the script to Oliver Stone's new movie, W, on the life of George W Bush, which begins filming this month and will be produced at speed. Stone, a director with a keen eye for publicity, is thought to want to get the...

A shadow legal body was set up by the Defense Department to manipulate the prosecutions of U.S. Marines accused of massacring Iraqi civilians in Haditha in 2005. That’s the bombshell disclosure from the Thomas More Law Center, a national public interest law firm that is representing one of the accused Marines, Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani. And it could prove to be the most damning piece of evidence showing the political motivations behind the ongoing prosecutions of the Haditha Marines. “The hysteria and media firestorm over Abu Ghraib and the Pat Tillman investigations led to fear of a similar media reaction...

Cindy Sheehan barely fits into her "campaign limo," her sister's blue Hyundai Tiburon. She ducks low to avoid hitting her head on the way in, and her knees are nearly at her chest when she sits, even with the seat rolled all the way back. Traveling over the Oakland Bay Bridge, her campaign manager at the wheel--steering with one hand and scrolling through e-mails with the other--the 6-foot-tall antiwar activist turned congressional hopeful tries in vain to stretch out in the passenger seat. It's raining when they pull into a parking spot near Berkeley City College, where Sheehan is about...

Hello, Hillary? Hate to wake you, but it's 3 o'clock in the morning, and we have a real crisis. It's your campaign, senator. It's Hail Mary time. You've lost the bid for a revote in Florida and, it seems, in Michigan, which means your prospects for prevailing over Barack Obama in the primary popular vote by June are vanishing fast. The Illinois senator, meanwhile, has just delivered a JFK-like speech on race in America--a savvy move that may well have stanched the hemorrhaging of his campaign over the controversial remarks made by his pastor, Jeremiah Wright. The mood could be...

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Vice President Dick Cheney, starting a visit on Saturday to try to push forward Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, said Washington would never pressure Israel to take steps that threaten its security. Palestinians accuse Israel of undermining the U.S.-sponsored peace talks by expanding Jewish settlements, refusing to remove West Bank roadblocks and mounting offensives against militants in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip who fire cross-border rockets into the Jewish state. "America's commitment to Israel's security is enduring and unshakable, as is Israel's right to protect itself always against terrorism, rocket attacks and other attacks from forces dedicated to Israel's destruction,"...

A few months ago, a day before one of the occasional marches the Capital sees demanding an end to the Iraq War, I began the descent into the Metro stop near my office, looked up, and saw a number of representatives of Code Pink standing at the railing overlooking the escalator. Or rather, I heard them first. They were screaming at the parade of commuters, at the top of their lungs and in a tone somewhere between simple frustration and righteous anger, "End the war!!!" Well, I thought, that ought to take care of things. Good work, hippies! I kid...

The Whig era of 1832-56 ended when the party of the same name split over extending slavery to new U.S. territories. It left behind the golden years of Presidents William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor and Millard Fillmore. Since Harrison died a month into his term, and Taylor a year-and a-half into his, call it the golden years of Fillmore. The latest and perhaps last Republican ascendancy of the period 1980-2006 ends with the party incoherent over opposition to big government, illegal immigration and how to win the war against Islamic imperialism. Its legacy is the golden years of Presidents Reagan...

Earlier this year I published a post (What Is Bush Thinking? Ask Fred on 2nd Amend. Rights) that revealed that the Justice Department of the Bush Administration had applied a “friend of the court” request to the Washington, DC gun control case that had been taken up by the Supreme Court. For years, DC had banned gun ownership (leading to its position as the murder capitol of the USA), but a federal appeals court finally threw out the ban. The case was appealed by DC to the Supreme Court, and gun owners have been hoping and expecting that our 2nd...

Mexican truck drivers allowed to travel throughout the U.S. under a Bush administration demonstration project may not be proficient in English, despite Department of Transportation assurances to the contrary. A brochure on the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration's website instructs Mexican truck drivers, "Did you know … You MUST be able to read and speak English to drive trucks in the United States." Still, at the Senate Commerce Committee oversight hearing Tuesday, Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters and DOT Inspector General Calvin L. Scovel III reluctantly admitted under intense questioning from Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., that Mexican drivers were being...

Preparing to hear oral arguments Tuesday on the extent of gun rights guaranteed by the Constitution's Second Amendment, the U.S. Supreme Court has before it a brief signed by Vice President Cheney opposing the Bush administration's stance. Even more remarkably, Cheney is faithfully reflecting the views of President George W. Bush. The government position filed with the Supreme Court by U.S. Solicitor General Paul Clement stunned gun advocates by opposing the breadth of an appellate court affirmation of individual ownership rights. The Justice Department, not the vice president, is out of order. But if Bush agrees with Cheney, why did...

To see why Tuesday's "retirement" of Navy Adm. William "Fox" Fallon as head of U.S. Central Command is good news, all you have to do is look at the Esquire profile that brought about his downfall. Its author, Thomas P.M. Barnett, a former professor at the Naval War College, presents a fawning portrait of the admiral -- a service he previously performed for Donald Rumsfeld. But evidence of Fallon's supposed "strategic brilliance" is notably lacking. For example, Barnett notes Fallon's attempt to banish the phrase "the Long War" (created by his predecessor) because it "signaled a long haul that Fallon...

Cannot Post due to copyright issues: http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2008/03/17/080317taco_talk_hertzberg

WASHINGTON - Borrowing a theme from the presidential contest, Vice President Dick Cheney said Tuesday that the possibility of a 3 a.m. emergency call to the White House is all the more reason for the next commander in chief to follow through on President Bush's plans for a national missile defense. "It's plain to see that the world around us gives ample reason to continue working on missile defense," Cheney told the conservative Heritage Foundation at a dinner recognizing the 25th anniversary of President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative, a proposed network of rockets capable of shooting down incoming intercontinental ballistic...

Teamsters General President Says U.S. Drivers at Risk to Unsafe Trucks From Mexico Washington, D.C. – Teamsters General President Jim Hoffa blasted the Bush administration today for its reckless indifference to the economic struggles of working Americans who are suffering under the North American Free Trade Agreement with more than a million lost jobs and billions of dollars in lost wages. “No matter how many jobs we lose, no matter how many foreclosures, no matter how many people die on the highways, the Bush administration just doesn’t care about the safety and security of American workers,” Hoffa said. Hoffa’s comments...

There were days, and they were not that long ago, when Zionism was about something different. Days when Zionists could articulate what the purpose of Jewish Statehood was, days when Israelis understood that having a state was about changing the existential condition of the Jew. Not anymore. Hayyim Nachman Bialik, writing in 1905 shortly after the slaughter in Kishinev, understood that the very essence of Jewish existence had to change. What else could he possibly have been saying in his epic poem, "The City of Slaughter" (scroll down to the two paragraphs that begin with the lines "Descend then, to...

MY INVISIBLE FRIEND dropped by the other day, fresh from her poetry group in Berkeley. I'm not sure why she doesn't just move over there because she does something in that city nearly every day. On Mondays, she is on campus to protest the war, on Tuesdays, she marches in front of the Marine recruiting office and on Wednesdays, she pickets the largest employer in town because it is the largest employer in town, so it must be corrupt, polluting and unfair to its workers. And on Fridays, she works the phones in some storefront raising funds for obscure left-wing...

At the outset of Phase I: Palestinian leadership issues unequivocal statement reiterating Israel’s right to exist in peace and security and calling for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire to end armed activity and all acts of violence against Israelis anywhere. All official Palestinian institutions end incitement against Israel. Israeli leadership issues unequivocal statement affirming its commitment to the two-state vision of an independent, viable, sovereign Palestinian state living in peace and security alongside Israel, as expressed by President Bush, and calling for an immediate end to violence against Palestinians everywhere. All official Israeli institutions end incitement against Palestinians.

President Bush attacked a key foreign policy stance of Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), contending heatedly at a news conference Thursday morning that talking to dictators without preconditions can be dangerous and counterproductive. Obama’s argument that the president “should never fear to negotiate” with America’s enemies — including Cuba's new leader, Raul Castro — is one of his clearest differences with his rival for the presidential nomination, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.). At a news conference where Bush showed unusual passion for a president in his waning months, he said “now is not the time” to talk with Castro. “What's lost...

The Bush administration has violated Americans' basic human rights by blocking access to information and creating more government secrets than at any other time in U.S. history, former President Carter said Wednesday. Carter made the remarks at the start of a three-day conference aimed at helping other countries develop "access to information" laws, drawing participants from nearly 40 nations. To applause, Carter said he looks forward to more freedom after a new U.S. administration takes office in January. The Atlanta-based Carter Center has been working to help other countries with right-to-information laws since 1999, when it piloted a program in...

<p>CARPENTERSVILLE, Ill. - Police say identity theft is the reason the Internal Revenue Service recently warned a seven-year-old boy from the northwestern Chicago suburb of Carpentersville that he owed back taxes on $60,000.</p> <p>Officers said Friday the second-grader's identity has been in use by someone else since 2001 -- not long after his birth.</p>

A woman who identified herself as Alianiss Nunez Morales was driving a van that failed to stop at a stop sign, hitting a school bus, police say. A woman who identified herself as Alianiss Nunez Morales was driving a van that failed to stop at a stop sign, hitting a school bus, police say. MINNEAPOLIS — A woman who authorities say is in the country illegally and using an alias was charged Friday with four counts of criminal vehicular homicide and two lesser charges in a school bus crash that killed four children. A woman who identified herself as Alianiss...

For the benefit of our country, I hope and pray respect for the office of the president returns with the new president in 2009. The abuse the presidency of George Bush was forced to tolerate has been nothing short of obscene. Just last week, someone referred to the president as "that bastard Bush." The former first lady, senator and presidential candidate gently nodded her head in approval and answered the foul mouth with, "Well, there is a lot of truth in that." For years now Mr. Bush has been called a liar, betrayer, dummy, bastard, fear monger, murderer … just...

WASHINGTON – Two more Iraqis with false Bulgarian passports were detained by Mexican officials in Monterrey – bringing the total to four this month. Wisam Gorgies, a 34-year-old man, and Rana Nazar Peyoz, a 26-year-old woman, reportedly flew from Madrid and landed in Monterrey, according to reports in two Mexican newspapers today. Following questioning, the pair admitted they intended to reach the United States. They were taken to Saltillo in the state of Coahuila, for final determination of their status. Mexican officials said the are investigating "a network that could be made up of Mexicans operating in Greece who are...

m they'd never met before, nine people boarded the raft in Niagara Falls, Ont. With a puttering motor dragging the overloaded vessel -- carrying at least twice the 660 pounds for which it was rated -- across the current of the upper Niagara River, with no oars, anchor or even lifejackets to protect them if it failed, they made their way to Grand Island. Where the United States Border Patrol was waiting. Smuggling certainly isn't what it used to be in Niagara Falls. The area's role as one of the busiest crossings for bootleggers during Prohibition remains part of regional...

HOUSE #1 A 20 room mansion (not including 8 bathrooms) heated by natural gas. In ONE MONTH ALONE this mansion consumes more energy than the average American household in ONE YEAR. The average bill for electricity and natural gas runs over $2400.00 per month. In natural gas alone (which last time we checked was a fossil fuel), this property consumes more than 20 times the national average for an American home. This house is not located in a Northern or Midwestern ‘snow belt’ either. It’s in the South.....

"Has there ever been a more repugnant example of political pandering than John McCain’s decision to vote against a bill banning waterboarding, putting hoods on prisoners, forcing them to perform sex acts, subjecting them to mock executions, or depriving them of food, water, and medical treatment? That’s right, John McCain, the former POW who has long been an outspoken critic of the Bush administration’s disturbing embrace of extreme interrogation techniques. But that was before his desperate attempt to win over the lunatic fringe that is running the Grand Old Party. Earlier this week, I showed how outdated the image of...

CNN has fired producer Chez Pazienza after the network brass realized he had been blogging at his own left-wing site and several others over a period of years: In a phone interview this morning, Mr. Pazienza, 38, said he joined CNN as a senior producer in January 2004 and has consistently received positive performance evaluations of his work. He spent his first year at CNN at the network’s headquarters in Atlanta, then moved to New York to work on “CNN Daybreak,” which has since been canceled, then “American Morning,” which is shown Monday through Friday, from 6 to 9 a.m....

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Mexican President Felipe Calderon on Monday decried anti-immigrant perceptions in the United States and argued that Mexican immigrants complement American workers. On his first trip to the U.S. as Mexico's president, Calderon said he is working to combat anti-Americanism in Mexico and to improve job prospects there to reduce migration. He said he hopes that Americans resist anti-Mexican sentiments. "The worst thing that happened in this country is this anti-Mexican or anti-immigrant perception of people. We need to contain this," Calderon said after a speech at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. "I need to change...