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CARCASSONNE, France (AFP) — President Nicolas Sarkozy promised swift and severe punishment Monday after a soldier shot and wounded 17 people, including a three-year-old boy and both his parents, at an open day at an army barracks. The sergeant opened up with an assault rifle, firing live rounds instead of blanks into a crowd of hundreds of visitors watching a hostage-taking exercise Sunday at the base near the southwestern city of Carcassonne. A man who witnessed the shooting told AFP that "suddenly, people were falling, we thought it was part of the exercise, and then we saw blood."

The 2008 race for the Democratic nomination for the presidency looks like a classic pursuit of the Moron Vote. This seems crude to say, so perhaps we should call it the "mentally challenged vote" or the "clueless vote". Why do I term it so? Consider where the winning Democratic candidate, Barak Obama, stands on issues most Americans care about. In numerous cases he takes positions that seem based on the assumption that voters are idiots, or else those positions show a serious lack of understanding on his part. On second thought - and in the interest of striking a blow...

NBC News Transcripts June 19, 2005 Sunday SHOW: Meet the Press 10:00 AM EST NBC MR. RUSSERT: Let me turn to Guantanamo. In October--excuse me, December of 2003, "John McCain said he is concerned about the failure to move ahead with prisoners' trials at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. ...`These cases have to be disposed of one way or another. After keeping someone two years, a decision should be made.'" That was a year and a half ago. It's now been three and a half years. Should we close it? SEN. McCAIN: I don't think necessarily. But I think the important thing...

WASHINGTON - Record high prices for gasoline probably won't drop before the November election, Republican John McCain said Wednesday.

Dennis Kucinich is currently on the floor of the House presenting his bill to impeach President George W. Bush. C-SPAN, 8:00 PM 9 Jun 2008.

Of course Democrats in Congress support the troops. But that doesn't mean they have to tolerate being in the same building with them. From a letter an enraged Fortney Hillman "Pete" Stark, Jr. (D-CA) recently sent to the Secretary of Defense: Dear Secretary Gates: Yesterday, while voting on the war supplemental spending bill in the House of Representatives, I couldn’t help but notice a contingent of approximately 20 flag rank Army officers sitting in the House Gallery watching the debate and vote for a couple of hours. I was looking from below so I thought they were Army, but there...

The Truth Commission for Water Rights on May 3 heard the experiences of Detroit and Highland Park, Mich., residents who are being denied their human right to water. The Michigan Welfare Rights Organization (MWRO) organized the daylong event of multimedia and firsthand presentations.

WASHINGTON: Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy has a malignant brain tumour, his doctors said last night, of a type considered potentially very dangerous. Kennedy has a glioma and likely will require chemotherapy and radiation therapy, neurologist Dr Lee Schwamm of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, and Dr Larry Ronan, a primary physician there said. Kennedy, 76, has been admitted to hospital since he had a seizure on Saturday. He was airlifted to Massachusetts General Hospital on Saturday morning after being rushed by ambulance to a local hospital near his family's Cape Cod vacation compound.

"Hearing a loud noise and interrupting his speech, Huckabee said: "That was Barack Obama. He just tripped off a chair. He's getting ready to speak and somebody aimed a gun at him and he—he dove for the floor."

WASHINGTON – Sen. John McCain called Monday for reductions in carbon emissions and criticized the Bush administration for failing to lead the fight against climate change. "We have many advantages in the fight against global warming, but time is not one of them. … We stand warned by serious and credible scientists across the world that time is short and the dangers are great," the Arizona Republican said in a speech delivered at a wind-energy facility in Portland, Ore. "The most relevant question is whether our own government is equal to the challenge." McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, proposed...

Yesterday The Ticket broke the stunning news of America's acquisition of seven, maybe eight, new states, according to future president Barack Obama. He was speaking at the start of a two-day swoop through Oregon, which is already a state. In Beaverton, which is not a state yet, the Democrat let it slip that during this marathon 16-month party presidential nomination struggle against a bunch of dropouts and this female political zombie from New York who won't surrender short of a silver stake, he had already visited 57 states with one more to go. That's not counting the existing states of...

One of Barack Obama’s Middle East policy advisers disclosed yesterday that he had held meetings with the militant Palestinian group Hamas – prompting the likely Democratic nominee to sever all links with him. Robert Malley told The Times that he had been in regular contact with Hamas, which controls Gaza and is listed by the US State Department as a terrorist organisation. Such talks, he stressed, were related to his work for a conflict resolution think-tank and had no connection with his position on Mr Obama’s Middle East advisory council. “I’ve never hidden the fact that in my job with...

A senior member of Iran's negotiating team with the United States on Iraqi security demanded a halt to US attacks in Iraq before any new round of talks with Washington, the Fars news agency reported on Saturday. "If US savage attacks against the Iraqi people are stopped, we will examine the US request for a fourth round of talks," the unnamed official said, quoted by Fars. Iran and the United States held three rounds of talks on Iraq last year despite mounting tensions over Tehran's nuclear programme. The talks have been stalled amid controversy over Iran's role in its conflict-torn...

Jimmy is on with Merideth and states that the state dept. never told him not to go to the Middle East. What a loser

CROWN POINT, Ind. - If fans of Hitler held a party, and a candidate for federal office attended, would anybody notice? Apparently, yes. U.S. Congressional candidate Tony Zirkle is facing criticism from one of his primary opponents, and a host of people on the Internet, for speaking at an event over the weekend that celebrated Adolf Hitler's birthday. Zirkle confirmed to The News-Dispatch on Monday he spoke Sunday in Chicago at a meeting of the Nationalist Socialist Workers Party, whose symbol is a swastika. When asked if he was a Nazi or sympathized with Nazis or white supremacists, Zirkle replied...

As I have written in the past, it is testimony to the mettle of the American Republic that it can, from time to time, suffer fools at its helm. It has endured the drunkenness of Ulysses S. Grant, the socialism of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the constitutional violations of Richard M. Nixon and the alley-cat morality of Warren G. Harding, John F. Kennedy and William J. Clinton. We have managed to survive even the naivete of James E. Carter, the peanut farmer turned politician who proved "The Peter Principle" by rising to his own special level of ineptitude and remaining there...

Gun owners insist that they need to carry a concealed weapon that is handguns for self-protection from criminals. Now that is saying that it is not safe for anyone to walk/drive to work at anytime of the day or night without fear of being attacked, robbed, raped, murdered for money etc. I am told that you cannot make any enemies in the United States for fear of being shot. In addition, that the only way of preventing this is to carry with you, a handgun of one form or another. I am also told that a well arm society is...

Barack Obama joined Democratic presidential rival Hillary Rodham Clinton on Wednesday in calling for President Bush to boycott the opening ceremonies for the Olympic Games in Beijing. Clinton had commended British Prime Minister Gordon Brown for announcing that he will skip the August ceremonies in China's capital, and called on Obama and likely Republican presidential nominee John McCain to join her in urging Bush to do the same. Obama did later in the day; his campaign issued a statement in which, for the first time, he urged Bush to boycott the festivities. Activists are urging world leaders to stay away...

West Virginia Democrat Senator Jay Rockefeller was being interviewed the editorial board of the Charleston Gazette. During that interview he uttered this gem: "McCain was a fighter pilot, who dropped laser-guided missiles from 35,000 feet. He was long gone when they hit. What happened when they (the missiles) get to the ground? He doesn't know. You have to care about the lives of people. McCain never gets into those issues." First of all ... I rather seriously doubt that our military was using laser-guided bombs during the Vietnam War. Also, the aircraft that McCain was flying in Vietnam was not...

ARE YOU A COMMUNIST MR. BUSH? YES! I AM!!! This would be the answer if the question had been submitted before the collapse of Soviet Union! That does come out this conclusion for the current Prime Minister of U.S.A.? Simply Mr. Bush today, follows the vision of Stalin and Titos for taking territories from Greece following dance floor their dark drawing! The pseudonym state, nation and the language of Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia was Stalin’s dream. Stalin and Tito they manufacture then in August 1944 this state "in the frames of Yugoslavian Federation. They rename from VARDARSKA in" Macedonia...

Interviewed Tuesday for Charlie Rose's PBS show, CNN founder Ted Turner argued that inaction on global warming “will be catastrophic” and those who don't die “will be cannibals.” He also applied moral equivalence in describing Iraqi insurgents as “patriots” who simply “don't like us because we've invaded their country” and so “if the Iraqis were in Washington, D.C., we'd be doing the same thing.” On not taking drastic action to correct global warming: Not doing it will be catastrophic. We'll be eight degrees hotter in ten, not ten but 30 or 40 years and basically none of the crops will...

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Senator Barack Obama on Thursday blamed the fragile economy on “careless and incompetent execution” of the Iraq war, imploring voters in this swing state to consider the trickle-down economic consequences of the war as they choose a successor to President Bush. “When you’re spending over $50 to fill up your car because the price of oil is four times what it was before Iraq, you’re paying a price for this war,” Mr. Obama said to an audience at the University of Charleston. “When Iraq is costing each household about $100 a month, you’re paying a price for...

<p>To my friends who enjoy a glass of wine... And those who don't. As Ben Franklin said: In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is freedom, in water there is bacteria.</p> <p>In a number of carefully controlled trials, scientists have demonstrated that if we drink 1 liter of water each day, at the end of the year we would have absorbed more than 1 kilo of Escherichia coli, (E. Coli) - bacteria found in feces. In other words, we are consuming 1 kilo of poop. However, we do NOT run that risk when drinking wine & beer (or tequila, rum, whiskey or other liquor) because alcohol has to go through a purification process of boiling, filtering and/or fermenting. Remember: Water = Poop, Wine = Health Therefore, it's better to drink wine and talk stupid, than to drink water and be full of shit. There is no need to thank me for this valuable information: I'm doing it as a public service.</p>

WASHINGTON (CNN) – George McGovern, the Democratic Party's 1972 nominee for president, is calling on Congress to impeach President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. And in an editorial in Sunday's Washington Post, McGovern writes the case for impeaching the current president is "far stronger" than the case made against former President Richard Nixon — the man who soundly defeated McGovern in the general election match up."Bush and Cheney are clearly guilty of numerous impeachable offenses," McGovern writes. "They have repeatedly violated the Constitution. They have transgressed national and international law. They have lied to the American people time after...

And so we have a semiofficial celebration of Hanukkah, complete with menorah, to celebrate not the ignition of a light but the imposition of theocratic darkness. Jewish orthodoxy possesses the interesting feature of naming and combating the idea of the apikoros or "Epicurean"—the intellectual renegade who prefers Athens to Jerusalem and the schools of philosophy to the grim old routines of the Torah. About a century and a half before the alleged birth of the supposed Jesus of Nazareth (another event that receives semiofficial recognition at this time of the year), the Greek or Epicurean style had begun to gain...

By Clark BakerSince the LA Times fired Robert Sheer, I have marveled at Paul Krugman’s shameless skill to promote THE LEFT’s hallucinogenic logic. In this week’s column, Krugman juxtaposes Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s urge not to succumb to “nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror� during wartime, against what he calls “the Bushies� imaginary fear of non-existent Islamofascism during peacetime. Krugman writes:In America’s darkest hour, Franklin Delano Roosevelt urged the nation not to succumb to “nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror.� But that was then. Today, many of the men who hope to be the next president — including all of the candidates with a significant...

As cousins Travis and Chuckie Jones stroll off the South Broward High campus on school days, they're "gooned out." Wearing oversized T-shirts and low-riding jeans, they mimic the hard core look that gangsta rappers first popularized in the 1990s. The Jones boys' jean shorts, held up by belts, are hanging around their thighs and sag so low that you can't help but see the gym shorts they wear underneath. "I like saggin'," said Travis, a 15-year-old sophomore. For him, wearing baggy, ill-fitting jeans, is cool — and makes a strong statement. It's all about attitude. "It tells everybody to kiss...

Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) has used $23,000 in campaign funds to pay the top Washington ethics lawyer, Stan Brand, who is fighting his case before the Senate ethics committee, according to Craig’s latest filing with the Federal Election Commission. No additional legal expenses appear in the report, but they eventually will. Craig, according to his office, has decided to use his campaign committee for attorney fees related to his criminal defense in Minnesota as well. “A better read (of the latest report) is that Stan Brand bills more quickly,” Craig’s spokesman, Dan Whiting, wrote in an email. The report covers...

Well, will anybody be interviewed by Charlie Rose? Are we Peggy Nooonans? Do we have friends at Vanity Fair? Is life fair? Is it all vanity? Shirley it means something to somebody.

President Shimon Peres, who is a personal friend and great fan of celebrated singer Barbra Streisand, hopes to persuade her to come to Israel for the country's 60th anniversary celebrations in May 2008. ... Peres revealed that part of the conference would be devoted to a special tribute to the United States of America as an expression of appreciation for its consistent support of Israel. "After sixty years, it's time to say thanks for being on our side," said Peres

A federal judge temporarily delayed construction Wednesday of a 1.5-mile section of a U.S.-Mexico border fence in a wildlife conservation area on the Arizona-Mexico border. The Defenders of Wildlife and the Sierra Club had requested a 10-day delay in a motion alleging the Bureau of Land Management and other agencies failed to conduct a thorough study of the fence's effects on the environment. U.S. District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle said she granted the delay because the federal government did not explain why it hurried through an environmental assessment and quickly began construction of the fence. She repeatedly asked the government's...

"As president, I will set a hard cap on all carbon emissions at a level that scientists say is necessary to curb global warming, an 80 percent reduction by 2050," he said. He proposed a modified "cap and trade" approach to reduce emissions, requiring businesses to buy allowances if they pollute, creating an incentive to reduce energy usage. "No business will be allowed to emit any greenhouse gases for free," he said. "Businesses don't own the sky, the public does, and if we want them to stop polluting it, we have to put a price on all pollution." Sen. Hillary...

Hollywood actor Kevin Costner has squandered more than £20million of his fortune on doomed investments to save the planet, he admits. The Oscar-winning Dances With Wolves star plunged the cash into "green technology", forming two companies to develop his passion. His first venture championed a revolutionary method to clean up major oil spills and the second tried to develop a successful non-chemical battery. But both projects failed and he lost the entire investment. Rough rider: Costner, seen here at his Colorado ranch, is unfazed by his losses He says in an interview in Live magazine: "I've invested enormous amounts in...

In his most detailed comments on the Iraq war, Mayor Bloomberg last night suggested the United States was in the same difficult position as the British in the Revolutionary War - facing a determined band of insurgents. Bloomberg said the comparison occurred to him when he visited his mother recently and was driving through Lexington, Mass., where a scrubby group of farmers rose up against a well-trained militia more than 200 years ago. "We're the British," the mayor said during an interview with Tom Brokaw at Cooper Union, part of a series featuring potential presidential contenders hosted by former Gov....

According to Alan Colmes, since evil dictator Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is not a liberal, but instead a "conservative," then conservatives in America should not be offended because the Iranian leader received better treatment on a college campus than some of America's conservative political figures, some of whom have been met with attacks with pies or other violence. Such was the absurd argument suggested by the liberal FNC host during a discussion on Monday's "Hannity and Colmes." Colmes commented to conservative guest/author David Horowitz: "Ahmadinejad's not a liberal. He's a conservative. He's very right wing. He was welcome at Columbia University. You...

WEEHAWKEN, N.J. -- George Clooney suffered a broken rib and some scrapes on Friday when the motorcycle he and a friend were riding collided with a car as the actor tried to pass the other vehicle, authorities said. Weehawken Police Sgt. Sean Kelly said the collision occurred at 3:30 p.m. as Clooney and friend Sarah Larson were traveling north on Boulevard East and sped up to pass on the right a 1999 Mazda Millenia that was preparing to make a right turn. Kelly said it is not known if the driver of the other vehicle, who has not been identified,...

PHOENIX -- An accidentally fired rifle, a passing tow truck and timing combined to unleash a chain of events that left one man dead and residents in a Phoenix neighborhood shaking their heads in disbelief, KPHO-TV reported. Tow truck driver Cecil Pugh, 59, was transporting a vehicle when he was accidentally shot and killed Monday by a man cleaning his rifle inside his home, investigators said. "He's going to be horribly missed," said Star Pugh, his wife. "It's very hard to be here right now because he's not here," she said. Fire officials said a 50-year-old man was cleaning the...

<p>Q: You disagree with the assessment President Bush and Gen. Petraeus put forth this week. How do you think the course should be changed?</p> <p>A: All you have to do is look at what they said. Nothing has changed since the surge started. Today, now we learn that 1 million Iraqis have been killed since the war started. A million. That's pretty hard to comprehend: 3,800 Americans, 30,000 wounded. More than 2,000 double amputees.</p>

Schumer: “[L]et Me Be Clear. The Violence In Anbar Has Gone Down Despite The Surge, Not Because Of The Surge. The Inability Of American Soldiers To Protect These Tribes From Al-Qaida Said To These Tribes: We Have To Fight Al-Qaida Ourselves.” (Sen. Charles Schumer, Congressional Record, 9/5/07, p. S 11090)

(IsraelNN.com) President Shimon Peres told the Turkish newspaper Today's Zaman that he is "100 per cent" sure that the separation barrier eventually will come down. He added, "We are experts in dismantling walls." He explained, "It is not the age of walls, but it is the age of terror, and I think terror will disappear finally because it does not have a message. It is a violent protest and they don't know where they are going." The newly elected President added, "We don't have any embargo on the Palestinians. We have an embargo on Hamas... What can Israel do if...

Republican conservative and longtime Bush supporter Jeffrey Volk found himself stranded in New Orleans with his wife and daughter when Katrina hit on Aug. 29, 2005. Volk called the White House in an attempt to reach FEMA, but five times, he says, he was connected to voice mail, and once to FEMA in Alabama. In desperation, he called Sen. Clinton's office and said he was a New York constituent in need of aid. A Clinton caseworker named Dan Burton helped the Volk family over several days. The banker vowed to thank Clinton when he got home. "I went for a...

U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) today announced that she will introduce a resolution to abolish the Electoral College and provide for the direct popular vote of the President. Senator Feinstein's announcement comes against the backdrop of a bid in California to qualify a ballot initiative that would skew the outcome of Presidential elections. "This proposed California initiative is very dangerous – it is an attempt to tinker with state law in order to influence the outcome of national Presidential elections," Senator Feinstein said. "There is no question that our system of electing a President is outmoded, but this initiative is...

Former House Speaker Newt Ginrich said Thursday that the Bush administration is waging a "phony war" on terrorism, warning that the country is losing ground against the kind of Islamic radicals who attacked the country on Sept. 11, 2001. A more effective approach, said Gingrich, would begin with a national energy strategy aimed at weaning the country from its reliance on imported oil and some of the regimes that petro-dollars support. • More Nation/World news "None of you should believe we are winning this war. There is no evidence that we are winning this war," the ex-Georgian told a group...

Carter: Stop favoring Fatah over Hamas By ASSOCIATED PRESS DUBLIN, Ireland http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1181813074587&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull The United States, Israel and the European Union must end their policy of favoring Fatah over Hamas, or they will doom the Palestinian people to deepening conflict between the rival movements, former US President Jimmy Carter said Tuesday. Carter, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate who was addressing a conference of Irish human rights officials, said the Bush administration's refusal to accept the 2006 election victory of Hamas was "criminal." Carter said Hamas, besides winning a fair and democratic mandate that should have entitled it to lead the Palestinian...

In 1967, a brash young talk show host named Phil Donahue debuted on the small screen with a truly revolutionary idea -- a television program aimed at thinking women. With the 60s counter-culture in full swing, Donahue was the right man at the right time. His progressive politics, passion, and dedication to audience participation made him a daytime mainstay until tabloid talk knocked him off the air in 1996. Donahue returned to television briefly in 2002, but his decidedly anti-war stance made MSNBC execs nervous, and his debate program was unceremoniously dropped seven months later.

WASHINGTON - President Bush challenged lawmakers on Friday to have the political courage to pass an immigration bill amid intense pressure from critics who call it amnesty and advocates who believe the current system is broken. Bush stressed that while voting for the bill might be politically risky, he does not think the measure itself is risky. "This is a difficult issue for a lot of folks," the president said. "I understand that. But because it's difficult probably means we need to work doubly hard to get it done. And now's the time to get it done. "No matter how...

John Edwards hasn't won over any friends at the American Legion for his plan to protest the war on Memorial Day. Paul Morin, national commander of the American Legion, posted an open letter of the group’s website blasting Edwards for what Morin says is an inappropriate political calculation that "blatantly violated the sanctity of this most special day," the Hill reports. Edwards wants people to protest the war at Memorial Day Parades and gatherings, take photos and then he will place those photos on his website. “Buy a bunch of poster-board and markers,” the website says. “At a picnic or...

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nev. waits in a hallway on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, May 16, 2007, for the Democrat's news conference to discuss Iraq. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

OTTAWA–The man arrested for allegedly leaking the Conservative government's environmental plan was a temporary employee, a self-described anarchist and drummer in a punk band that sings an angry screed against the Prime Minister and the "rise of the right." The website for the band, the Suicide Pilots, depicts an airplane flying into the Peace Tower on Parliament Hill. Those are just a few of the details that emerged yesterday about Jeffrey Monaghan, 27, who was taken away from his Environment Canada workplace in handcuffs Wednesday morning by two RCMP officers. He is under investigation for potential breach of trust, an...

ALBANY -- A renowned poet who taught the Virginia Tech killer found his presence so intimidating it felt like he was "controlling my classroom," the professor said in an interview. . . . The evening wasn't all solemn, though. Giovanni's often profane jokes about men, Jesus, and especially the Bush administration kept the crowd in stitches, though most of them can't be printed in a family newspaper. And from this article:But it wasn't what the celebrated poet said about the massacre that provoked one of the loudest reactions from her audience of University at Albany students Thursday. What really got...