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White House senior adviser David Axelrod said Sunday that the Fox News Channel is "not really a news station" and that much of the programming is "not really news." "I’m not concerned," Axelrod said on ABC's "This Week" when George Stephanopoulos asked about the back-and-forth between the White House and Fox News.

Washington - US President Barack Obama said on Tuesday the war in Afghanistan was not purely an "American battle" but was a broader Nato mission, as he met the western alliance's chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen. "This is not a American battle, this is a Nato mission," Obama told reporters after the Oval Office meeting, which comes as he launches a series of intense talks on whether to send more US soldiers to the Afghan war.

Forget Bipartisanship, Comity or Civility - Schieffer Says Mindless Meanness Has Invaded the Public Commons (CBS) That was not a State of the Union speech we heard the other night, but it had all the trappings - and when that Congressman hollered "You lie!" at the President, we did get a snapshot of the nation's state. It was not a pretty picture. The country is in an angry mood - people are frustrated, tempers are short, congressmen are being shouted down at town hall meetings (where constituents sometimes show up with guns), and at rallies like the one yesterday in...

Breaking News Sen. Finance Chairman Baucus Concedes 'Public Option' Can't Pass the Senate

Just lounging around on a lazy Sunday morning and watching the Travel Channel's "Passport" series. OK Freepers, so question for you as I'm undecided. Samantha Brown, hot/not?

A few months ago, most people assumed former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani's political future was unpromising, to put it nicely. Sure, he might run for governor of New York if Governor Patterson ran for re-election, but his national ship had sailed. After all, if the economy was the big issue, who better to nominate in 2012 than former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney -- who, at Bane Capital, excelled at turning around struggling businesses? Despite getting off to a fast start in the 2008 Republican Primary campaign, Giuliani had faded fast, a victim of poor political strategy and social views...

ALBANY - The numbers released from the state's Labor Department Wednesday indicate that the economic crisis is still not over. The Georgia Department of Labor reported the state's seasonally adjusted unemployment rate to be at 10.1 percent for June - the highest jobless rate Georgia has ever recorded. "We are in tough times," said state Labor Commissioner Michael Thurmond. "We are in the midst of the most severe economic downturn since World War II. Georgians are finding it difficult to get back in the work force." Data was also released Wednesday regarding jobs in the state's metropolitan areas from the...

Do you support Ron Paul? Three categories: President Congressman Governor

Democrats not expected to allow vote on the D.C. recognition of same-sex marriage Move would make homosexual marriage bill law without members of Congress having to vote The District of Columbia Council has voted 12-1 to recognize homosexual "marriages" from states where homosexual marriage is now legal - Massachusetts, Iowa, Vermont and Connecticut. The bill now goes to the U.S. House and U.S. Senate for their approval. If approved by both, it will then go to the president for his signature. If Congress does not act on the bill by June 6, it automatically becomes law. It appears that Democrats...

"I am still a Republican. I'd like to point out that in the course of my 50 years of voting for presidents, I have voted for the person I thought was best qualified at that time to lead the nation. Last year I thought it was President-now Barack Obama."

Can't log on to Hotmail. Really can't. Anyone else having this kind of trouble?

David Axelrod, senior adviser to President Obama, hinted in an interview on Fox News Sunday that the administration does not view the executive pay restrictions in the economic stimulus bill as binding. Obama will sign the restrictions, which are stricter those he announced less than two weeks ago, into law on Tuesday. But Axelrod said the administration will work with Congress to come up with "an appropriate approach" to curbing excessive pay packages on Wall Street.

A blogger at ObamaCitizenshipFacts.org pointed out that West, according to a Hawaiian Pearl Harbor history website, retired in 1956, five years before Obama's birth. But Nelson said that since the doctor was only in his 40s at the time, that probably indicates he simply gave up his obstetrics practice and moved into medical management. The reference to West's retirement is on the Pearl Harbor Stories website. "Hope this is helpful in squelching another convenient remembered memory put out there by the O-Bot crowd to try and substantiate his birth in Hawaii without showing an 'original, long-form, birth certificate known as...

Eligibility battle rages on 3 fronts Court, Congress and college challenged on constitutionality -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted: January 18, 2009 12:05 am Eastern By Bob Unruh © 2009 WorldNetDaily Officials at Occidental College in Los Angeles, Calif., have been served with a demand to produce records concerning Barack Obama's attendance there during the 1980s because they could document whether he was attending as a foreign national – in one of three fronts now established by those contesting the president-elect's constitutional eligibility for the Oval Office.

Tension is mounting in a village in Macuata Province after more men were taken in for questioning for the alleged gang rape of a 12-year-old last week. Police spokesman Atunaisa Sokomuri confirmed that a team of police officers in Labasa had been mobilised and sent to Lutukina Village in Dreketi to hunt five other men who are believed to be in hiding. Six others are already in custody at the Labasa Police Station. “At this point in time we are trying to look for five other men who we believe also took part in the gang rape,” Sokomuri said. “Tension...

The Sun Times today gave a major clue that Barack Obama will indeed go down with Tony Rezko, sooner rather than later. It looks as though Rezko is about to turn on Alexi Giannoulias, the 30-year old State Treasurer of Illinois (who was elected only because Obama backed him). Here’s where all the clues are…and then we’ll walk you through the local Chicago politics on how today’s hint by the Sun Times has us convinced, for the first time ever, that prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald could indeed send Barack Obama to jail. We need to repeat that: we never believed, until...

 Facing the Giants

"New Mexico and Sedona"POSTED BY MEGHAN AND PHOTOS BY HEATHER Earlier this week, we traveled to Las Cruces, New Mexico where Dad held a very lively town hall on the campus of New Mexico State University.  From there we flew to Sedona where everyone was able to chill out a bit and Dad grilled dinner for everyone.  More from Sedona soon!  Song of the Day: "Red House" by Jimi Hendrix   Duprey and his summer bumper stickers. Frank is ready for the day. Dad catches up on his reading material. Dad's opening remarks at the town hall. Waiting in the...

RUSH: Have you heard about this? Folks, I'm thinking, and I haven't finalized details. We've been working on the operational plans all morning here at the EIB Network. But it may be time to implement a Phase II of Operation Chaos. Donald Sutherland, who is the father, as you know, of Kiefer Sutherland, who stars in "24," posted something on the Huffington Post, and this is what he wrote. "The Democrat National Committee's Terry McAuliffe mind-set ruined the campaigns of Algore, John Kerry, and Senator Clinton, and now the legions of McAuliffe-ites who have surrounded Barack Obama are doing their...

...I, too, think Wright is digging center stage. But I also suspect he specifically wants to tank Obama's candidacy. I mean, this is a man who has spent a fair portion of his career spreading the message that blacks cannot get a fair shake in this country; that America was, is, and always will be fundamentally racist; that the U.S. government in particular has it in for blacks. So what happens to all that if suddenly a black man--and not just any black man, but one who has been counseled by Wright and so cannot be dismissed as some pathetic...

Craig Venter says success is near, but critics blast efforts to patent synthetic organisms First he succeeded in reading humanity's genetic code. Now gene pioneer J. Craig Venter believes he is within weeks or months of creating the world's first free-living artificial organism in his laboratory. It won't be much to look at—a tiny bacterium with only a few hundred genes. But if it's truly feasible, he says, "it will be one of the bright milestones in human history, changing our conceptual view of life."

Violence is never positive. Violence breeds more violence. Often people get confused about the meaning and use of this word and think they can be violent in order to defend right and so on. But this is not so.

WASHINGTON, Feb. 1, 2007 – The Army faces significant challenges in the years ahead, but it is still the world’s preeminent land power and has not been overly strained by the war on terror, Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr., commander of Multinational Force Iraq, said here today. Casey, who has commanded in Iraq since July 2004, is President Bush’s pick to be the next Army chief of staff. Speaking at his confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Service Committee, Casey expressed confidence in U.S. soldiers. “I see in Iraq every day a splendid Army,” Casey said. “I know...

It turns out you only have to attend a White House Christmas party to find out where President Bush is headed on Iraq. One guest who shook hands with Bush in the receiving line told him, "Don't let the bastards get you down." Bush, slightly startled but cheerful, replied, "Don't worry. I'm not." The guest followed up: "I think we can win in Iraq." The president's reply was emphatic: "We're going to win." Another guest informed Bush he'd given some advice to the Iraq Study Group, and said its report should be ignored. The president chuckled and said he'd made...

RICHMOND -- Stephen Murmer is known to his students as a popular art teacher who is always quick to crack a joke. But another side to Mr. Murmer has agitated school officials and resulted in his suspension. A side that focuses, almost entirely, on his backside. Outside of class and under an alter ego, the self-proclaimed "butt-printing artist" creates floral and abstract art by plastering his posterior with paint and pressing it against canvas. His creations sell for up to $900. This has not gone over well with Chesterfield County school officials, who placed Mr. Murmer on administrative leave Friday...

This is on the same page as Rich's screed. Brooks tries to peer into the future by having the NYT outdo the Book of Revelations. "In fall 2007, the United States began to withdraw troops from Iraq, and so began the Second Thirty Years’ War. This war was a bewildering array of small and vast conflicts, which flared and receded and flared again across the entire Middle East, but which were joined by a common theme... The essence of all this disorder was that the Arab nation-states lost control. Subnational groups — like Hezbollah and the Mahdi Army — and...

Robert M. Gates was unanimously approved by a Senate committee yesterday to become President Bush's new defense secretary, after a day-long confirmation hearing in which he bluntly stated that the United States is not winning the war in Iraq. Gates also told the panel that "it's too soon to tell" whether the Bush administration made the right decision in launching the invasion in March 2003 to topple Saddam Hussein.

November 3, 2006 -- SO, we are told, all is lost in Iraq. My colleague Ralph Peters has thrown in the towel, declared the war a failure, and has laid the blame at the feet of the Iraqis for refusing to save themselves from anarchy and tribalism. My friend David Brooks says this was all written into Iraq's DNA - that the amalgamation of Sunnis, Shia and Kurds into a nation by the British in 1920 has ensured there can and will never be anything remotely resembling a civil society there. If Peters and Brooks are right, then the common...

Breast milk 'does not boost IQ' Breastfed babies tend to be brighter Breastfed babies are smarter because their mothers are clever in the first place, not because of any advantage of breastfeeding itself, a study suggests. Researchers found breastfeeding mothers tend to be more intelligent, more highly educated, and likely to provide a more stimulating home environment.However, they stressed that there were still many advantages to breastfeeding. The British Medical Journal study was carried out by the Medical Research Council and University of Edinburgh. Lead researcher Geoff Der said: "This question has been debated ever since a link between the...

The world is recoiling from the recent Israeli display of brutality and militarism in Lebanon and Palestine. It is such behavior on the part of Israel that has destroyed all hopes for peace in the region. Now the nations and organizations of the world are standing up to stop this spiraling madness. The UN was able to force Israel to end its hostilities in Lebanon despite American and British support. There were reports that several European states denied Israeli aircraft the use of their airports. Capt. Etai Regev, chairman of El Al’s union of pilots, said the refusals came from...

LONDON - London's Metropolitan Police pleaded not guilty Tuesday to charges stemming from the death of a Brazilian man who was shot last year after officers mistook him for a suicide bomber. Jean Charles de Menezes, 27, was shot seven times in the head by Scotland Yard anti-terror officers as he sat aboard a train at a subway station in south London on July 22, 2005. Two weeks earlier, four suicide bombers had attacked London's transit system, killing 52 people. The day before de Menezes was shot, four other men attempted similar attacks that were thwarted. No individual officer was...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 8, 2006 – Army leaders are committed to ensuring soldiers have the best force-protection capability possible, but also want to avoid giving soldiers a false sense of security, service officials said here today. Maj. Gen. Jeffrey A, Sorenson, the Army’s deputy for acquisition and systems management, took exception to an NBC News report that said the Army is not buying an Israeli system, called Trophy, that could protect soldiers and their vehicles from rocket-propelled grenades. The report alleges the Army manipulated information in favor of a competing Raytheon system, called Quick Kill. Both the Israeli and Raytheon systems...

WASHINGTON, Aug. 27, 2006 – Despite a recent increase in violence in Baghdad, Iraq is not on a path toward civil war, the commander of U.S. Central Command said yesterday. Army Gen. John Abizaid recently visited Baghdad and talked with Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the highest-ranking military commander in Iraq, as well as Iraqi government officials. He also had the opportunity see the situation in Baghdad firsthand while moving around the city with coalition forces. Abizaid said he left confident that progress is being made on the Baghdad security plan. “It’s still too soon to say how the...

Breast milk may not be enough Janet Raloff A new study finds a high incidence of vitamin D deficiency in breast-fed babies, mostly during winter. Such a deficiency limits the body's use of calcium, which is essential for healthy bones and teeth. As part of a trial of iron supplementation, Ekhard E. Ziegler of the University of Iowa in Iowa City and his colleagues regularly took blood samples over 2 years from 84 newborns who were initially breastfed exclusively. The researchers noticed that few infants were getting supplemental vitamin D. The scientists evaluated vitamin D in the infants' blood. They...

...From the first day of his presidency, Truman invoked the Almighty. He believed that America had been called to foster peace in the world, and that it had dodged that responsibility after World War I. He often explained that this duty now extended from U.S. participation in the United Nations to combating the onslaught of communismworldwide. Only in the context of freedom, he believed, could humankind exercise the free will necessary to achieving peace and happiness. Here is the conclusion of his inaugural address in 1949: “But I say to all men, what we have achieved in liberty, we will...

WASHINGTON, Aug. 22, 2006 – Iraq is experiencing some localized sectarian strife, but it’s not embroiled in a full-blown civil war as reported by some news media, a senior coalition officer said here today. “In my judgment, we are not in a situation of civil war,” said British Royal Marine Lt. Gen. Robert Fry, deputy commander of Multinational Force Iraq and the senior British military representative in Iraq. He spoke to Pentagon reporters via a satellite connection from his Baghdad headquarters. Fry acknowledged a “very intense sectarian conflict” in Iraq and said violence is mostly occurring in an area that...

Origin of the Celts - Caucasian, not European The Celts are Circaesir from Circaesya, who lived on the Sea of Grass in what is now west Kazakhstan until late in the second millennium B.C. They were by their own definition a linguistic group, but now they are a culture. Contrary to popular belief, they had nothing to do with European inhabitants known to archaeologists as the 'Beaker folk' and 'Battle Axe people'. The 'Urnfield people' farther east were Circaesir, and obviously related to the Celts. Their descendants integrated with Celts in central Europe. Tradition suggests that the Celts left the...

Tucson Police are trying to track down two men of Middle Eastern descent who, reportedly, bought a number of cell phones within a 36-hour period over the weekend at a Tucson Sam's Club. The incident comes on the heels of other similar incidents across the country. The incidents have prompted terror investigations because, authorities say, those cell phones can be untraceable and used as detonators. Tucson Police issued a news Release Tuesday afternoon regarding the incident that occurred three days ago. Tucson Police were called to Tucson's Sam's Club on Friday just before noon on a 'suspicious activity" call. Apparently,...

WASHINGTON, Aug. 14, 2006 – The ongoing effort to secure Baghdad is an evolution, and solutions must be long-term, the spokesman for Multinational Force Iraq told reporters in Baghdad today. “Abating the extremists in the capital will neither be easy nor rapid,” Army Maj. Gen. William Caldwell said of progress in Operation Together Forward. “Challenges will ensue, but efforts will march forward block by block.” A variety of activities are occurring in Baghdad, with Iraqi and coalition forces working together to help quell violence and build stability, Caldwell said. Caldwell cited some of the statistics that reflect Operation Together Forward’s...

AS Parisians crowd to the beaches in August, tourists are descending on the City of Light in droves, undeterred by a recent survey highlighting complaints that visitors get the cold shoulder from locals. The most visited country in the world, France received 76 million tourists last year, with Asians making up a growing proportion of those who came from non-European countries and 50,000 visitors jetting over every month from China alone. All this despite stereotyped images of rude waiters, bored shop assistants and impatient Parisians all too ready to give nervous tourists the brush off in rapid French. "French hospitality...

Heat Waves Follow Hottest Six Months on Record With record-breaking heat around the country, fish--and the people that love to catch them--are suffering. Not only is the fun of sitting out in the summer sun on a boat, on the shore or standing in a river beginning to lose some of its appeal, but these high temperatures are also stressing out fish, prompting midday fishing bans (in Montana), bass that won't bite (in Florida), and potentially later and smaller salmon runs (in Oregon and Washington). This summer's heat is coming on the heels of an announcement in July from the...

We're not stopping now, say defiant Israelis By Isambard Wilkinson in Jerusalem and Francis Harris in Washington (Filed: 24/07/2006) Israel brushed aside mounting calls yesterday for a ceasefire in Lebanon. Its army made clear that it planned to keep up its assault for at least a week and had not ruled out a ground invasion. Buoyed by support from Washington for rooting out Hizbollah rockets from southern Lebanon, the army treated parts of the border area as a free-fire zone. It hit at least two cars with rockets as they sought the relative safety of the city of Tyre. Israeli...

WASHINGTON, July 10, 2006 – U.S. and Iraqi security forces will go after any rogue band or group that preys on innocent Iraqi citizens, a senior U.S. officer said in Baghdad today. "That is something that we're not going to tolerate," Army Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, a Multinational Force Iraq spokesman, told reporters in Iraq's capital city. Caldwell was responding to a reporter's question about news reports that said rogue gunmen operating in southeastern Baghdad yesterday had used illegal roadblocks to stop and murder innocent Iraqis. The gunmen detained and killed several Iraqi citizens at those checkpoints, according...

June 7, 2006 — A federal judge ordered two attorneys to settle their dispute by using the children's playground game "rock, paper, scissors." The ruling yesterday by Judge Gregory Presnell of the U.S. District Court in Orlando, Fla., stated that he was so dissatisfied with the case's "latest in a series of Gordian knots" that he is fashioning "a new form of alternative dispute resolution." In the dispute at hand, the two attorneys could not agree about where to take the sworn statement of a witness in a case concerning payment of insurance claims. The judge's order states that the...

Evolving genes may not size up brain Bruce Bower Two gene variants previously proposed as contributors to the evolution of human brain size exert no influence on brain volume in people today, a new report indicates. If these particular genes indeed spread quickly by natural selection, that process might have been spurred by the genes' effects on reproductive organs or other tissue outside the brain, say neurologist Roger P. Woods of the University of California, Los Angeles and his colleagues. Prior research had indicated that a now-common variant of a gene called microcephalin originated 37,000 years ago and that a...

SINGAPORE, June 3, 2006 – More nations are freer than ever before, yet freedom is increasingly under assault from violent extremists and rogue nations, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld today told defense ministers of Asian and Pacific nations meeting here this weekend. "In the present security environment, cooperation among free nations is not simply desirable, it is critical," Rumsfeld said in a speech at the International Institute of Strategic Studies' Asia Security Summit, also known as the Shangri-La Dialogue. Rumsfeld said this forum is valuable because it allows countries with like interests to meet and discuss transnational issues. "These gatherings...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Dennis Hastert, is under investigation by the FBI, which is probing corruption in Congress, ABC News reported on Wednesday. ABC, citing high level Justice Department sources, said information implicating Hastert was developed from convicted lobbyists who are now cooperating with the government. Part of the investigation involves a letter Hastert wrote three years ago, urging the Secretary of the Interior to block a casino on an Indian reservation that would have competed with those of other tribes. Hastert's Press Secretary told ABC in a statement: "We are not aware...

Nature, it should be pointed out, always bats last. This is true even in Florida, where, as novelist Carl Hiaasen makes clear, life is more than a little surreal, and where three people were recently attacked and killed by alligators in less than a week. Previously, 17 people had died from alligator attacks in Florida since 1948. There is no record in the United States of three fatal alligator attacks in one year, much less in one week in one state. So something clearly is going on in Florida. Yesterday, as if to emphasize Hiaasen's point, an alligator walked through...

FORT HUACHUCA — Described as a “big goofy, lovable animal” that appears to have a touch of the equine equivalent of attention deficit disorder Big Whiskey is going from training as a race horse to become a cavalry mount. That the thoroughbred is even alive to do something else is a miracle, Chris Zimmerman said. A few years ago, he was in a trailer that overturned and one of the major injuries the horse received was a piece of metal that went through one side of his neck and came out the other, he said. The previous owners decided he...

Minneapolis-St. Paul is a "cosmopolitan gem," according to a new ranking by Kiplinger's Personal Finance magazine. Granted, "the winter weather isn't for wusses," Kiplinger's June issue reports, but the seven-county Twin Cities area has so many good things to brag about: cost of living and housing, quality health care, low crime rate, education, quality of life, cultural amenities, the economy and transportation. St. Paul doesn't get short shrift either in the write-up: The Ordway Center for the Performing Arts and St. Paul Chamber Orchestra are mentioned, among other pluses. Minneapolis is described as "progressive and hip, with a Midwestern sensibility."...