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WASHINGTON -- Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia said Monday he doesn't expect Democrats to filibuster the nomination of Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito, but he still chastised Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist for threatening to stop any such effort through a drastic parliamentary effort that has been dubbed the "nuclear option." "If he ever tries to exercise that, he's going to see a real filibuster if I'm living and able to stand on my feet or sit in my seat," Byrd said in a Senate debate with Frist, R-Tenn. "If the senator wants a fight, let him try it,"...

-- If the Bay State senators could hang an ornament on the Pentagon Christmas tree, it would be pink. A pink slip, that is, for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Democratic Senators Edward Kennedy and John Kerry called for Rumsfeld's resignation last week, following a speech at John Hopkins University in which Rumsfeld defended the war in Iraq and critiqued the mainstream media's war coverage. "We've arrived at a strange time in this country where the worst about America and our military seems to so quickly be taken as truth by the press," Rumsfeld said. As an example, Rumsfeld later pointed...

Chris Wallace: Mike Wallace Has 'Lost It' "Fox News Sunday" anchorman Chris Wallace says father Mike Wallace has "lost it" - after the legendary CBS newsman told the Boston Globe last week that the fact George Bush had been elected president shows America is "[expletive]-up." "He's lost it. The man has lost it. What can I say," the younger Wallace lamented to WRKO Boston radio host Howie Carr on Friday. "He's 87-years old and things have set in," the Fox anchor continued. "I mean, we're going to have a competence hearing pretty soon." Wallace Jr. quickly dispelled any notion that...

Let me guess. These words were taken out of context.

The DRUDGE REPORT has learned from a top GOP operative that the Republican National Committee will provide state parties with a web video prior to release tomorrow afternoon that shows a white flag waving over images of Democrat leaders making anti-war remarks. The ad is in response to the controversial comments Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean and 2004 Democratic Presidential nominee John Kerry made earlier in the week. A Democratic strategist who had the web ad described to her said, “This is way over the top but we have no one to blame but Dean, Kerry and others who continue...

Rob Glaser has made his peace with Microsoft's Bill Gates. Now, the RealNetworks chief executive is turning up the rhetoric against another technology icon: Apple Computer CEO Steve Jobs. At the Digital Living Conference here on Monday, Glaser told a packed hotel ballroom that Jobs & Co.'s refusal to make the iPod compatible with music services other than Apple's iTunes was "pig-headedness." Glaser also said that Apple's unwillingness to cooperate with other online music vendors promotes piracy of copyrighted materials and will eventually draw the wrath of consumers. These are heady times for Glaser and his Internet multimedia company, which...

BOSTON -- It has become known as one of the most effective TV presidential campaign commercials ever: President Bush consoling a 9-year-old Ohio girl named Ashley whose mother died in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Mr. Bush hugged Ashley at an appearance in Ohio in 2003, holding her close and telling her, "I know that's hard. Are you all right?" The story of Mr. Bush's hug ran in the Cincinnati Enquirer. In June 2004, a group called Progress For America, a conservative pro-Bush group known as a 527 organization, so named for the part of the federal tax code...

The FBI and Capitol Police are investigating the vicious attack of a top Senate staffer at her home last week amid concerns that the assault might be related to her work on the Finance Committee. Emilia DiSanto, chief investigator for committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), arrived at her suburban Virginia home after work Wednesday about 6:30 p.m. As she was unloading belongings from her car, a 6-foot-1-inch white man dressed in black struck her repeatedly with an unidentified object believed to be a baseball bat. After she screamed to her family inside the house, the assailant fled. DiSanto was transported...

snip....." The four constitutional amendments on Tuesday's ballot in Republican-dominated Ohio would expand voting by mail, limit campaign contributions and create bipartisan boards to draw districts and oversee elections -- jobs now done by politicians. The amendments were proposed by Democratic-leaning groups. Reform Ohio Now, a coalition of union and citizens groups that backs the amendments, has raised $2 million overall in donations and services, including nearly 3,300 contributions of $500 or less from all 50 states. A third of its money, $629,750, came from People for the American Way in Washington. Many of the donations poured in after a...

Five years after the controversial 2000 presidential election, ex-President Jimmy Carter now says he's certain Al Gore defeated George W. Bush. "Well I would say that in the year 2000, the country failed abysmally in the presidential election process," Carter told a panel Monday at American University in Washington, D.C. "There's no doubt in my mind that Al Gore was elected president."

Gordon has declined to reveal other information about Harper, including her age, how she met Kucinich or how long they have been a couple Wedding guests included Cleveland Mayor Jane Campbell, some of Kucinich's colleagues in Congress and actors Shirley MacLaine (search) and Sean Penn (search). MacLaine and Kucinich are longtime friends, and Penn endorsed Kucinich for president last year.

Canadians can put away those extra welcome mats -- it seems Americans unhappy about the result of last November's presidential election have decided to stay at home after all. In the days after President Bush won a second term, the number of U.S. citizens visiting Canada's main immigration Web site shot up sixfold, prompting speculation that unhappy Democrats would flock north. But official statistics show the number of Americans actually applying to live permanently in Canada fell in the six months after the election. On the face of it this is not good news -- Canada is one of the...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A fired CIA agent, who a newspaper says told superiors in 2001 that Iraq had abandoned part of its nuclear program, is asking the FBI to investigate allegations that the spy agency dismissed him for refusing to falsify intelligence. A July 11 letter to FBI Director Robert Mueller from the former agent's attorney suggests CIA officials may be guilty of criminal violations involving intelligence he produced on weapons of mass destruction in 2000 that contradicted an official agency position. The former agent's attorney, Roy Krieger, said his client initially asked the CIA's inspector general to investigate charges...

The Fallen Hero and the Living Traitor By Lt. Col. Gordon Cucullu FrontPageMagazine.com August 2, 2005 Here is yet another case of the kind of bizarre juxtaposition that continues to characterize the Vietnam War well into the first decade of the new century. I refer on the one hand to the recent loss of Admiral James B. Stockdale, a highly decorated Navy aviator and prisoner of war of the North Vietnamese for seven grueling years. His funeral services were held, appropriately, on the Navy carrier the USS Ronald Reagan with the full military honors the Medal of Honor winner deserved....

XXXXX DRUDGE REPORT XXXXX SUN JULY 31, 2005 19:44:05 ET XXXXX HELEN THOMAS ANGRY AFTER 'KILL SELF' OVER CHENEY COMMENTS PUBLISHED White House press doyenne Helen Thomas is plenty peeved at her longtime friend Albert Eisele, editor of THE HILL newspaper in Washington, D.C. In a column this week headlined "Reporter: Cheney's Not Presidential Material," Eisele quoted Thomas as saying "The day Dick Cheney is going to run for president, I'll kill myself. All we need is one more liar." Thomas also said: "I think he'd like to run, but it would be a sad day for the country if...

Former President Jimmy Carter said today, while in Birmingham, England, the detention of terror suspects at the Guantanamo Bay Naval base was an embarrassment and had given extremists an excuse to attack the U.S. Carter also criticized the U.S.-led war in Iraq as "unnecessary and unjust." "I think what's going on in Guantanamo Bay and other places is a disgrace to the U.S.A.," he told a news conference at the Baptist World Alliance's centenary conference. "I wouldn't say it's the cause of terrorism, but it has given impetus and excuses to potential terrorists to lash out at our country and...

See Dick talk. See Hanoi Jane talk. Mark Malaszczyk July 29, 2005 She is nipped. She is tucked. She is enhanced. And she is BACK. Sixty-seven year old Actress/Activist Jane Fonda has announced that she will launch a cross-country bus tour to protest the war in Iraq, scheduled for March 2006. "I've decided that I'm coming out," she said. Green tea drinking, tofu-eating, Birkenstock-wearing, pale, emaciated vegans with multi-colored ribbons all over their tattered backpacks are rejoicing across America, running to get a second tattoo on their lower back and a ninth piercing in their left ear in tribute to...

Americans have not yet begun to pay the price for the Bush presidency. The global ramifications of his foreign policy, the long-term impact of his budgetary excesses, our depleted military, the ongoing erosion of civil liberties and church/state separation, the unprecedented acquiescence to corporate power…all these factors, and more, will dictate the course of this nation for decades to come. Had Al Gore assumed the presidency in 2001, he would have confronted the same challenges - a nation, and world, simmering in a mix of cultural/religious extremism and declining resources. Realistically speaking, Mr. Gore could probably not have solved any...

Americans tend to believe that we do everything better than anyone else. That belief makes it hard for us to learn from others. For example, I've found that many people refuse to believe that Europe has anything to teach us about health care policy. After all, they say, how can Europeans be good at health care when their economies are such failures? Now, there's no reason a country can't have both an excellent health care system and a troubled economy (or vice versa). But are European economies really doing that badly? The answer is no. Americans are doing a lot...