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I may catch some flak for this, but I’m prepared. While I very much like Sarah Palin and what she represents, I do believe she made a serious error when answering a question concerning the issue of Barack Obama’s birth certificate.

Patricia Sullivan is daring to go where many women would never have dared to go before Sarah Palin and Barack Obama came on the national political scene. She’s running for Florida’s 8th Congressional District currently held by Democrat Alan Grayson against a trial lawyer and a real estate agent. Palin inspired her; concern for her children’s futures motivated her to leave her current position as a self described Domestic Engineer/School Teacher/Community Organizer. “… and that still wouldn’t come close to covering everything I do,” quips Sullivan. “The first thing I would like to do is repeal the “stimulus” spending bill...

First, expect the major national outlets (NBC, New York Times, etc.) to ignore this evidence of Palin's overwhelming popularity. They've been commissioning polls especially designed to show that Palin is unpopular, and they're not going to let facts get in their way. Second, to the extent that the elite media take notice of the huge crowds at Palin events, expect them to focus obsessively over any tinfoil-hat crackpots who turn up. Time or Newsweek will send reporters out to these book-signings, and the reporters will interview scores of Palin fans until they find one or two conspiracy kooks who think...

a friend has been sending me ecstatic emails about the speech. I just watched it—the speech is every bit as good as the ones candidate Obama gave, as the performance candidate Obama delivered at the HRC/Logo Democratic Primary Debate, as the open letter to the LGBT community that candidate Obama released before last November's election. Imagine all the wonderful things this guy is going to accomplish if he ever actually gets elected president. In other words: sorry, folks, nothing new to see here. Pledges, promises, excuses. Lip service. Other reactions...

A federal judge has ordered the Justice Department to release notes and summaries of former Vice President Dick Cheney's 2004 interview with Special Prosecutor Pat Fitzgerald in the CIA leak case, but is allowing the deletion of what may be some of the most interesting details in the documents. In a ruling issued Thursday morning, Judge Emmet Sullivan flatly rejected claims by both Bush and Obama appointees at DOJ that the entirety of the records should be withheld because their disclosure could discourage White House officials from cooperating in future investigations. The judge said the prospect of such inquiries was...

It seems that Andrew Sullivan’s application for US citizenship hangs in the balance — but not really, and that is the issue. Gawker and other sites report that this past summer, blogger and columnist Sullivan was arrested on national seashore in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, for illegal possession of marijuana, a misdemeanor that would incur a $125 for Sullivan, if he was found guilty. No big deal — it happens a lot in that area of our country. The only stumbling block is Sullivan’s pending U.S. citizenship, which might have been adversely affected should he have been brought to court. Enter...

Note: Photo and videos included. COEUR D'ALENE -- The Aryan Nations is experiencing an unwanted resurgence in North Idaho. SNIPPET: "However, a man named Paul Mullet claims he is going to bring the racist organization back." SNIPPET: "Mullet says he moved here from Ohio five months ago because North Idaho is the "last stand" for the Aryan Nations movement. Mullet says he's in the process of buying a large amount of land in the area." SNIPPET: "Monday's distribution of racist material in Spokane Valley's Trentwood neighborhood was the latest in a series of similar incidents. Aryan Nations literature has also...

WASHINGTON – One of the most influential bloggers, pundits and columnists in America, Andrew Sullivan, has joined the rising chorus of voices across the political spectrum calling for Barack Obama to release his original, long-form birth certificate to put aside growing doubts about his eligibility for the presidency. Sullivan writes that he believes official accounts, such as the recent statement by Dr. Chiyome Fukino, director of the Hawaii State Health Department, that maintain Obama was born there and is a "natural born citizen." Sullivan says, however, Americans should not be expected to accept on blind faith the word of public...

From the Free Republic blog commenters, courtesy of Balloon Juice: What goes around comes around... One less nazi as far as I am concerned. This isn't good, boys and girls ... not good at all. This serial-killer piece of excrement will be held up by every abortionist and every lover of abortionists as the reason why the Secret Service needs to be assigned to guard every abortionist, every abortion mill and every lover of abortions in this country. SNIP

TULSA, OK -- Tulsa Congressman John Sullivan has checked himself into the Betty Ford Center in California to treat an alcohol addiction. "To ensure my success in this fight, I've decided to take a temporary leave of absence from Congress," he said in a statement. "I value my relationship with the citizens of Oklahoma's First Congressional District, whom I am privileged and honored to have served for the past eight years. So, I wanted to be open and honest on this tough situation. "I ask for your continued support and prayers as I face the challenges that lay ahead. I...

In the Sunday Times yesterday Andrew Sullivan claimed, in respect of the controversy over the alleged use of torture by counter-terrorist investigators under the Bush administration, that a senior al Qaeda suspect named abu Zubeydah had given false information under torture that there had been an operational relationship between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda – furthermore, that he had been tortured specifically to get him to make that statement in order to help justify the war in Iraq. Sullivan wrote: This is partly how the entire war was justified: on a tortured lie. And this much we now know for...

A Plan for Defusing the North Korea Crisis October 17, 2006 by John O'Sullivan Everyone agrees China is the key to the North Korean crisis, but most diplomats dealing with the crisis have no idea how to turn that key in the lock. As the nearest great power, China should in principle favor reducing and eventually eliminating the dangerous instability posed by nuclear totalitarian North Korea. Since Pyongyang is utterly dependent on China economically and strategically, the Chinese government in Beijing has the power to change the regime if it chooses. (In practice a few telephone calls to some of...

"Bush and Cheney were, in fact, more brutal in their "enhanced interrogation" than the Gestapo was. And note that I am not engaging in the slightest hyperbole here. I'm not saying that the US is Nazi Germany in any way. I am saying that the torture program used by Bush and Cheney follows exactly the specific methods used by the Gestapo...When the US captured officials who had done to prisoners exactly what the last president did, the US prosecuted them, found them guilty and executed them. The price Cheney pays is a fawning interview on CNN. That's who we are....

Andrew Sullivan has decided that he now knows the truth about neoconservatism: "We patiently listened as neocons told us that the Palestinians are too dysfunctional a people ever to have democratic rights or their own state, but that the the ancient sectarian warfare of Iraq can be transformed in a few years!"

Word from New York informs that, given the absence of the cardinal-archbishop, Gotham's lead vicar-general, Auxiliary Bishop Dennis Sullivan, will celebrate Tuesday's funeral Mass for Fr Richard John Neuhaus. Since his death yesterday, a torrent of tributes have abounded from Neuhaus' horde of devoted friends and admirers, joined by a very grateful press corps who mourn an infinitely supportive colleague, an ever-impeccable source -- and, of course, a ceaseless fountain of great copy. But of all these, the most heartfelt to surface comes from the beloved protege who'll preach at Tuesday's rites: Fr Raymond de Souza of the archdiocese...

Taking Yes For An Answer Dish readers will know my own conflicted feelings about the selection of Rick Warren for the Inaugural Invocation. But feelings must at some point cede to reason. And I sense an understandable but, the more I think about it, misjudged response on the part of my fellow gays and lesbians. ...we may be pushing away from a real opportunity to engage and win hearts and minds...I think Obama is different. ... Do gays and lesbians want to be a part of this - or sit fuming on the sidelines at symbolic slights? I know the...

The president-elect has to take a stand on Bush's dark legacy. A small and largely unnoticed spat among the transition planners for the president-elect, Barack Obama, broke out last week. It was the first genuinely passionate debate among the Obamaites and it centres on a terribly difficult and terribly important decision that will be among the first that Obama has to make. How does he deal with the legacy of criminal actions of his predecessor's administration when it comes to detention, interrogation, abuse and torture of terror suspects? That has long hovered in the back of the minds of those...

I should probably apologize to everyone before showing you this video. But it just the sort of thing that is being embraced in Democratic circles as acceptable behavior. That smug prick Andrew Sullivan posted it on his blog calling it Red, White And MILF. It is so reprehensible that I have no words with which to express my outrage. I am sure some of you won't have that problem. Watch the video here. I don't think anyone wants it on this site.

If you want to know why ... John McCain came to pick a total unknown with a Down Syndrome baby as his replacement as war-president, you have to understand the immense importance of the Christianist base. McCain isn't one of them, however much he tries to re-tell his life-story to make it so. They know it, he knows it, and he needed a religious running mate. He might have succeeded with Pawlenty, who is a solid pick that a mature and responsible campaign would have selected in a heartbeat. Instead - partly out of insane cynicism (did he really believe...

I’ve voted a straight Republican ticket every year of my life since 1975, when I first came of voting age, but I was stunned and horrified by McCain’s choice of Palin. I simply cannot even consider voting for McCain after this choice, which speaks loudly of his own selfishness and fundamental frivolousness. So I was shocked when I turned to the conservative blogs looking for others who shared my dismay and found a celebration going on. They really honestly believe that Palin’s “inexperience” and Obama’s “inexperience” are equivalent. I have had no luck at all in the past 24 hours...

CONFER: Protecting property rights By Bob Confer The Tonawanda News When our founding fathers penned the Declaration of Independence they noted we are endowed with unalienable rights which include “…Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” Happiness was used as an all-inclusive term, but it had its basis in the property rights of the individual. This focus was borrowed from the writings of British philosopher John Locke who emphasized life, health, liberty, and property rights in writings that appeared over a century before the Declaration. Recognizing Locke’s influence on our nation’s principles is the key to understanding just exactly what...

A quote from his site: “That’s a shame - because Obama clearly represents, whatever his faults, a different racial politics than that of Jackson, Sharpton and the past.” (that’s Andy’s quote. my response below) and what are those “faults” you speak of? I’d like to know, Andrew. Really, ‘cause I haven’t seen much about that from you. And now you’re giving Democrats advice on how to heal the divide by bringing HILLARY to the VP slot?! Wow, have your priorities changed. I mean, your style hasn’t, but your priorities have. Also, after basically writing off Hillary as the devil (one...

"One loves to possess arms, though they hope never to have occasion for them." -- Thomas Jefferson, to George Washington, June 19, 1796. "After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn't do it." -- William S. Burroughs. Big Tim Sullivan was a notorious Irish gangster whose mob controlled New York City south of 14th Street around the turn of the 20th century. Throwing in his lot with the likes of Monk Eastman, Paul Kelly and Arnold Rothstein, Sullivan became an expert on that dark nexus where organized crime and politics consummate...

WHAT CONSERVATIVES SHOULD LEARN FROM 9/11. Right Turn by Andrew Sullivan These are heady times for conservatism. The last 20 years have seen a decisive shift in the West toward market economics and away from statist intervention. The welfare state as it has historically been understood is an endangered species. Culturally, the importance of family structure, religious faith, and personal responsibility is affirmed by a wider array of people than for a generation. And with September 11, the bedrock conservative insight that the world is an inherently dangerous place has been decisively proved once again. Even the democratic left has ...

WATERLOO --- The first installment of Ken Burns' long awaited seven-part World War II documentary, "The War," which aired on PBS Sunday night, captivated many but contained one error that caught the attention of some Cedar Valley residents. Local viewers noted that the show' first installment, "A Necessary War," mistakenly stated that the five Sullivan Brothers, who enlisted in 1941 and were killed Nov. 13, 1942, were from Fredericksburg, Iowa, and not Waterloo. The confusion probably arose because Bill Ball of Fredericksburg, a good friend of the Sullivans, was killed in the attack on Pearl Harbor. His death, according to...

State Sen. John Sullivan, a Rushville Democrat, won't run for the 18th District Congressional seat that U.S. Rep. Ray LaHood is vacating. Sullivan, who made the announcement this morning in a news release, said he would seek re-election to his 47th State Senate District seat next year. "Right now, I'm where I want and need to be, and I plan to continue working hard to serve the poeple of western Illinois," he said. If Sullivan, a member of the General Assembly since 2003, had opted to run for Congress, he could not also have sought to keep his state Senate...

Former US military leaders have called on the Bush administration to make major cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. In a report, they say global warming poses a serious threat to national security, as the US could be drawn into wars over water and other conflicts. They appear to criticise President George W Bush's refusal to join an international treaty to cut emissions. Among the 11 authors are ex-Army chief of staff Gordon Sullivan and Mr Bush's ex-Mid-East peace envoy Anthony Zinni. The report says the US "must become a more constructive partner" with other nations to fight global warming and...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Global warming poses a "serious threat to America's national security" and the U.S. likely will be dragged into fights over water and other shortages, top retired military leaders warn in a new report. The report says that in the next 30 to 40 years there will be wars over water, increased hunger instability from worsening disease and rising sea levels and global warming-induced refugees. "The chaos that results can be an incubator of civil strife, genocide and the growth of terrorism," the 35-page report predicts. "Climate change exacerbates already unstable situations," former U.S. Army chief of staff...

American conservatism is in crisis. ... A Giuliani or Romney candidacy [versus Clinton], could well eke out a victory in 2008. ... The strains are there, all right, and they have been made much more acute in the Bush years under the weight of massive spending increases, evangelical overreach, abuse of executive power, conventional corruption, and (most disastrously) a mismanaged war. ... The crisis, rather, is of a different kind. It is intellectual, and it is deeper than anything captured by the conventional categories. The sole merit of Dinesh D'Souza's new book is that it acknowledges this intellectual collapse, even...

Among my many guilty pleasures — bad reality television, solitary nose excavation, the Fox News Channel — hating Hillary Clinton was once near the top of the list. The senator from New York somehow managed to arouse every one of my love-to-hate zones. She was a self-righteous feminist (boo) who married her way to power (double-plus-boo). She wanted to turn American medicine into the National Health Service (grrr) and all her friends were wealthy lawyers (triple eye-roll). She was Lady Macbeth when she wasn’t some goo-goo liberal ideologue. There were as many ways to despise her as she had hairstyles....

The Christianist Candidate In case you were unaware, it's Mitt Romney. As with most Christianists, the idea of allowing different states to try different solutions to the same problem is dispensable when moral absolutes are involved. In other words, the fundamentalists have no interest in federalism. If federalism means that California can have marriage equality and medical marijuana, today's GOP base wants none of it. Here's Romney's discussion of John McCain's approach: Romney was less charitable to McCain, who on Sunday told ABC News: 'I believe that the issue of gay marriage should be decided by the states.' McCain also...

NEW YORK In a move that no doubt sent a shiver through several candidates in his own party, President Bush, in a special interview with wire service reporters in the White House, today guaranteed a job for his Pentagon chief for two more years, adding that both Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Cheney "are doing fantastic jobs and I strongly support them." But it wasn't only endangered Republicans who have been calling for Rumsfeld's ouster who may have blanched. Andrew Sullivan, the conservative writer who was once a key media supporter for the Iraq war, denounced the latest Bush statement...

MADISON, Wis. -- Sex! The Green Bay Packers! Sex with the Green Bay Packers! The usually ho-hum race for Wisconsin secretary of state is being spiced up by one candidate's naughty tell-all book about her bed-hopping exploits with Green Bay football legends during the team's glory days under Vince Lombardi in the 1960s. Sandy Sullivan, a 65-year-old Republican with no political experience, self-published a gushing memoir in 2004 titled "Green Bay Love Stories and Other Affairs" in which she claims she was the girlfriend of Packers Paul Hornung and Dan Currie, deflected a pass from Hall of Famer Don Hutson...

Powell leads the right in a Bush-whack Andrew Sullivan In my first year in America, as a budding young conservative, my old friend, the writer John O’Sullivan, invited me out to dinner. The dinner, it turned out, was with none other than William F Buckley, a man who remains the undisputed titan of American conservatism. Buckley became famous in America in the 1950s and 1960s for being a conservative intellectual when such a thing was regarded as axiomatically oxymoronic. He founded the National Review, the indispensable magazine for the burgeoning American conservative movement. He was one of the inspirations for...

MEMPHIS, Tenn. – Fifty years ago, as Elvis Presley was about to make his first appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” Helen Kreis was staring at the TV screen, barely able to contain her teenage excitement. Then her father pulled the plug. “He was just joking, but before he could get it plugged back in, I was next door at the neighbor’s house. They were watching Elvis, of course, and I wasn’t taking any chances,” said the now-65-year-old Kreis, of Olney, Md. “Everybody was watching Elvis.” Well, maybe not everybody, but nearly everyone in America who had a TV had...

What does the term "Christianist" mean and why is Time peddling it? Time columnist Andrew Sullivan uses the term to describe evangelicals with whom he disagrees. He says his goal is to "take back the word Christian while giving the religious right a new adjective: Christianist. Christianity, in this view, is simply a faith. Christianism is an ideology, politics, an ism. The distinction between Christian and Christianist echoes the distinction we make between Muslim and Islamist." He explains further, "Muslims are those who follow Islam. Islamists are those who want to wield Islam as a political force and conflate state...

If you could save the victims of one of the following four events, which group would you save? 1. The victims of Fidel Castro's "revolution?" 2. The victims of Hezbollah's ambushes, rockets and missiles over the past three weeks? 3. The victims of the Seattle attack on the Jewish federation? 4. The victims of Mel Gibson's repulsive outburst of anti-Semitic venom? If all human life is valued equally, you'd have to save Castro's millions of victims, the Hezbollah's thousands, then the one dead and many injured in Seattle, and then Gibson's offended. As an extraordinary week draws to a close,...

This is response ad from the Ernest Istook campaign to a negative ad made by the Bob Sullivan campaign. Here is the link again: http://www.istook.com/?sectionid=52&sectiontree=20,52 Here is the Istook campaign website: http://www.istook.com/

ATLANTA, Georgia (AP) -- A jury on Friday convicted a millionaire of murder for hiring a hit man to kill his socialite wife 19 years ago to escape a costly divorce. The jury of three men and nine women took a little over four hours to find James Sullivan guilty of arranging the shooting death of Lita Sullivan, his 35-year-old second wife. Except for blinking several times, Sullivan, 64, showed no reaction to the verdict. The victim's mother, state Rep. Jo Ann McClinton, wept. "I'm just happy and elated that finally after 19 years, the person we knew was guilty,...

If the ancient political wisdom is correct that a charge unanswered is a charge agreed to, the Bush White House pleaded guilty yesterday at the Cato Institute to some extraordinary allegations. "We did ask a few members of the Bush economic team to come," explained David Boaz, the think tank's executive vice president, as he moderated a discussion between two prominent conservatives about President Bush. "We didn't get that." Now why would the administration pass up such an invitation? Well, it could have been because of the first speaker, former Reagan aide Bruce Bartlett. Author of the new book "Impostor:...

Rome paid tribute to the barbarians clamoring at her gates. It didn't do any good. Paying ransom only postponed the inevitable sacking, burning, and looting of the empire's capital. The UK's Neville Chamberlain sought to pacify Hitler, only to see Brits hiding in basements from the blitzkrieg a few years later. Instead of remembering history's lessons, the Washington Post today indulges in feel-good, intellectual rationalization of Muslim intolerance and hatred. In a 5-page manifesto entitled, "Anatomy of the Cartoon Protest Movement," authors Anthony Shadid and Kevin Sullivan exercise unlimited poetic license, calling Islamist hooliganism "a rare moment of empowerment among...

SYRACUSE — Ithaca attorney William P. Sullivan, Jr., 62, of 417 North Aurora St., pleaded guilty Thursday to four counts of failing to file his federal income tax returns for the years 1998, 1999, 2000 and 2001, federal officials said. Sullivan's guilty pleas were entered in U.S. District Court, Syracuse, before U.S. Magistrate Judge George H. Lowe. By his plea, Sullivan admitted that he failed to file his federal income tax returns for those four years. By his plea, he also admitted that the total taxes owed to the IRS for those four years was $34,691. Sullivan faces up to...

Washington is a strange city because, unlike New York, money doesn’t confer status and, unlike Los Angeles, neither does celebrity. The elusive element that structures life and work here is power or the appearance of power. Like electricity, this substance cannot easily be seen. But when it emerges decisively, you feel the atmosphere change in the city. And last week something shifted. Fourteen senators made a deal. All the president of the United States could do was look on. In a finely balanced Senate, a centrist faction of seven Republicans and seven Democrats shelved the notion of abolishing the judicial...

THE WASHINGTON TIMES "New Testament": It's a mighty name for a 70-ton battle tank.     The biblical words are neatly printed on the main gun of an M1A1 Abrams tank rolling along somewhere near Haditha, Iraq. To the Marines of the 4th Tank Battalion, "New Testament" is a fierce beacon and impervious to insurgent mortar fire.     But some critics grumble that an official photo of the tank accompanies a Marine Corps press release about the company's mission with a caption that reads, "The 'New Testament' ... prepares to lead the way during a recent mission." The name of the tank is...

Tin SoldierAn American Vigilante In Afghanistan, Using the Press for Profit and Glory By Mariah Blake In April 2004, a former U.S. Special Forces soldier named Jonathan Keith Idema started shopping a sizzling story to the media. He claimed terrorists in Afghanistan planned to use bomb-laden taxicabs to kill key U.S. and Afghan officials, and that he himself intended to thwart the attack. Shortly thereafter, he headed to Afghanistan, where he spent the next two months conducting a series of raids with his team, which he called Task Force Saber 7. By late June, he claimed to have captured the...

I wonder what Pope Benedict XVI would have thought of John F Kennedy, the first Catholic president of the United States. Kennedy was a proud defender of the West against Soviet communism, while the new pope has equated the godless materialism of western freedom with Nazi and communist dictatorship. Kennedy’s domestic politics, moreover, were based on a simple, remarkable assertion: “I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute — where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be Catholic) how to act … I believe in an America that is officially neither...

The Case for Eliminating Abortions – Mr. Sullivan Take Note          If you have not already read Andrew Sullivan’s article published in the Time Magazine Essay on March 7, 2005 and posted on March 3, 2005 by upchuck, here is the link: The Case for Compromise on Abortion           Let me be clear about my stand on abortion. It is not only immoral but an abomination, and Roe v. Wade must be overturned, and it will be if President Bush is able to appoint three conservative pro-life Justices.  Mr. Sullivan says he is pro-life, but then praises Hillary Clinton for moderating...

Andrew Sullivan has now weighed in on my debate with Ryan Sager. What all of us are grappling with is the expansion of the federal government under President Bush. How should those of us who want a much smaller federal government respond when Bush, for example, imposes steel tariffs? We should denounce the tariffs and bash Bush for imposing them. On this much, I take it, all three of us agree. But Sullivan and Sager write as though the problem were simply that Bush is for big government — as though the problem would go away if Bush would simply...

MY REVIEW of C.A. Tripp's The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln for THE WEEKLY STANDARD has caught the attention of several bloggers--but Andrew Sullivan seems to have been the most irritated. Indeed, his website contains half a dozen angry references to my essay--and that's not counting the drive-by blast he fired off in a column for the New Republic.Perhaps Sullivan deserves some answer, for he insists THE WEEKLY STANDARD must apologize for my calling Tripp's book a hoax and a fraud--although one would have more confidence in Sullivan's complaints if he gave a stronger sense of having actually read my...

IN scandals, chronology can be everything. The facts you find out first, the images that are initially imprinted on your consciousness, the details that then follow: these make the difference between a culture-changing tipping point and a weatherable media flurry. With the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, the photographs, which have become iconic, created the context and the meaning of what took place. We think we know the contours of that story: a few soldiers on the night shift violated established military rules and subjected prisoners to humiliating abuse and terror. Chaos in the line of command, an overstretched military,...