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First lady Laura Bush's show-stealing debut as a comedienne at Saturday night's annual White House Correspondents' Association dinner had the audience hooting with laughter.' I was right there with them, grateful for the humor and appreciative as ever for Mrs. Bush's humanizing effect on the presidency and our nation. But beyond the jokes, my personal mirth was closely tied to another punch line — the one nobody said but that I kept thinking as she delivered one-liners: Good thing she ain't in Saudi Arabia. Or the Taliban's Afghanistan. Or prewar Iraq. Or northern Nigeria today. Or any number of Islamic...

This is actually a running debate. first the strip that offended Ebert and others. http://poynter.org/forum/view_post.asp?id=9440 Title: "B.C." vs. "Doonesbury" Posted By: Jim Romenesko   From ROGER EBERT: I am not suggesting that Johny Hart's "B.C." comic strip today should be censored in any way, but I will be fascinated to see if any editors do spike it, as they sometimes spike "Doonesbury," etc., for political reasons. 5/3/2005 11:48:52 AM http://poynter.org/forum/?id=letters From MATT MENDELSOHN: Thanks to Roger Ebert for the heads up on Johnny Hart's slam on Darwin and evolution. When I Googled "Hart" I expected to find one -- just...

DENVER (AP) - The Air Force said Tuesday it is setting up a task force to investigate the religious climate at the Air Force Academy after reports of intolerance, including incidents of anti-Semitism. The task force will assess Air Force policy and guidance when it comes to religious respect and tolerance, acting Secretary of the Air Force Michael L. Dominguez said in a statement. It will also look into practices by commanders "that either enhance or detract from a climate that respects both the free exercise of religion and the establishment clauses of the First Amendment.

NEW DELHI: Outraged by the rape and killing of a nine-year-old girl, Florida has signed a law imposing a tough penalty on child molesters. Memorial service for Jessica Lunsford. (Photo: Reuters) The measure, signed on Monday, gives Florida one of the toughest child-sex laws in the world. The Jessica Lunsford Act, drafted within two months after Jessica's death in March, was pushed through unanimously by both Houses. The Jessica was raped, bound and buried alive after she was kidnapped from her bed while her grandparents were asleep in another part of the house in Homosassa, Florida. A convicted sex offender,...

I'm looking for a place to put 80k. Stocks..no. Anybody have any good suggestions other than their own pockets?

Who knew? First lady Laura Bush took over the podium from her husband at Saturday night's annual White House Correspondents' Association dinner and knocked 'em dead, keeping Washington's most powerful politicos in stitches as she worked the ballroom like a seasoned stand-up comic. CUT Although Washington's movers and shakers laughed at Mrs. Bush's performance, some in the press woke up with a Sunday morning hangover and began to criticize her monologue as immodest at best and downright bawdy at worst. "Laura Bush cracks risque jokes at the White House Correspondents' dinner," sniffed Agence France-Presse. CNN reporter Elaine Quijano, who attended...

New evidence challenges hypothesis of modern human origins www.chinaview.cn 2005-04-27 17:00:01 WUHAN, April 27 (Xinhuanet) - - Chinese archaeologists said newly found evidence proves that a valley of Qingjiang River, a tributary on the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, might be one of the regions where Homo sapiens, or modern man, originated. The finding challenges the "Out-of-Africa" hypothesis of modern human origins, according to which about 100,000 years ago modern humans originated in Africa, migrated to other continents, and replaced populations of archaic humans across the globe. The finding comes from a large-scale excavation launched in the Qingjiang River...

CNN Chief Trying to Energize a Network Knocked on Its Heels by Fox's Success By David Bauder The Associated Press NEW YORK (AP) - Jonathan Klein wants to bring out the Bronx in CNN. There's a toughness, an aggressiveness imbued in many residents of the new CNN chief's native borough. They have street smarts that residents of posher neighborhoods have rarely needed to get ahead. Stamping that underdog personality on Time Warner Inc.'s CNN requires nothing short of an attitude transplant, a willingness to fight at a complacent organization knocked on its heels by years of executive turmoil and ratings...

TULSA, Oklahoma (AP) -- Eleven-year-old Thomas Adams thought Warner Bros. had gone daffy when he saw the company's plans for a new cartoon called "Loonatics," based on Bugs Bunny and his Looney Tunes pals. The grimacing, hollow-eyed, power-fisted prototypes of a futuristic Bugs, Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner struck the boy as dark and scary. In the words of Daffy Duck, he found them "dethh-picable." Now, nearly two months after starting an Internet petition drive against the TV series' fall debut, Thomas has gotten the company's attention. Warner Bros. Entertainment spokesman Scott Rowe said his company wants the thousands...

The Robert C. Byrd Bridge To Poverty By Ann Coulter FrontPageMagazine.com | February 14, 2002 THE POOR'S SENSEof class superiority over the rich is getting out of hand. At a Senate Budget Committee hearing last week, Sen. Robert Byrd, who was named after a bridge in West Virginia, viciously attacked Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill for having made a success of himself. Claiming to speak for worthless layabouts, Byrd snippily informed O'Neill: "They're not CEOs of multibillion-dollar corporations. ... In time of need, they come to us, the people come to us." Evidently what the people-in-need are asking for is a...

Here is another example of the need to address the imigration issue: A billboard in L.A. for a Mexican TV news program on their channel 62. The billboard says Los Angeles, CA (with the CA struck through), and Mexico written in its place. Rumor has it that Vicente Fox will be in L.A. as he campaigns for re-election later this year. Now, Los Angeles is in which country? See the billboard: http://conservative-thoughts.blog-city.com/read/1235033.htm

ROME (Reuters) - A second hand car once said to be registered in the name of Joseph Kardinal Ratzinger -- the new Pope Benedict - is up for sale on eBay and the sky seems to be the limit when it comes to bidding. The vehicle, a metallic gray 1999 Volkswagen Golf, went up for auction on the German site (www.ebay.de) at a minimum price of 9,900 euros ($12,790) Wednesday and, just over 24 hours and more than 300 bids later, the price had temporarily hit one million euros ($1.3 million). German Web Site n-tv.de identified the seller as Benjamin...

I know a number of you would like to have an update on our Cure-A-Thon last Friday. We set a record. You people came through. I cannot thank you enough. We set an all-time record. Just as of the close of business on Sunday, the whole weekend, we raised a grand total of over a million dollars, a million sixty-two thousand dollars in three hours on Friday. If you add up the total time in those three hours that we were talking about our Cure-A-Thon, we maybe totaled an hour of the three. You folks are amazing out there, simply...

According to a survey by 600 international gluttons, Britain — or rather England — is now by far the best country in the world for restaurant food. There are 14 English restaurants in the world top 50, the same number as provided by those self-appointed custodians of haute and bas cuisine, France and Italy, put together. England has four restaurants in the top 10, France just one, Italy none. The world has had enough of red-checked tablecloths and fat cheerful men called Carlo ladling gloops of choleric ragout atop plates of overcooked pasta. It has wearied very quickly, too, of...

More Americans than ever before have decided that America is no longer their home. They've put down roots abroad, from Cuba (an estimated 2,000 Americans, the latest figures show) to the United Kingdom (224,000). They're in Germany (210,880), in the Philippines (105,000), in Israel (184,195). If they were a U.S. state - call it Expatria - its population, some 4 million Americans, would place it right in the middle, along with Kentucky and South Carolina. Expatriates, citizens of this floating, far-flung state, are changing the very definition of "American." "What does nationality really mean in these days, in these times...

TAE: How and when did the idea for the Swift Boat veterans group come into being? O'NEILL: The one who conceived of this was Admiral Roy Hoffmann. He began contacting many Swift Boat people in January and February last year. At that time, I was in the hospital. I had given my wife a kidney for a transplant. I became a part of it in early to mid March. I was motivated by several things, the first and most important being a genuine fear of what would happen to our country, our national security, and our armed forces if John...

Ted Olson Criticizes GOP Leaders For 'Heated Rhetoric' About Judges Thu Apr 21 2005 09:57:54 ET Former solicitor general Theodore Olson writes in the WALL STREET JOURNAL on Thursday: "A prominent member of the Senate leadership recently described a Supreme Court justice as 'a disgrace.' An equally prominent member of the leadership of the House of Representatives on the other side of the political aisle has characterized another justice's approach to adjudication as 'incredibly outrageous.' These excoriations follow other examples of personalized attacks on members of the judiciary by senior political figures. So it is time to take a deep...

<p>It's been a tough week for Katie. First, an article appears in the press lifting the covers on the vicious infighting she's sparked at Today against the backdrop of their falling ratings.</p> <p>Then this morning, reliably liberal Father Andrew Greeley turned out to be not-so-reliable, hesitating to plunge with the desired enthusiasm into the Benedict-bashing that Katie so clearly was hoping for.</p>

In 2003, after Episocpalian gay bishop Robinson was elected, a group of concerned Episcopalians and Anglicans met in emergency session, in Texas, to strategize how to respond -- through formally breaking away or other strategies.They received this letter from Rome: October 9, 2003 From Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger The Vatican, on behalf of Pope John Paul II I hasten to assure you of my heartfelt prayers for all those taking part in this convocation. The significance of your meeting is sensed far beyond Plano, and even in this City from which Saint Augustine of Canterbury was sent to confirm and strengthen...

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Known as the "Perle des Antilles" at the time of its independence in 1804, Haiti has since experienced several periods of upheaval and terror that have turned a once-promising country into a sad reality. Human-rights violations are widespread, and justice is non-existent in the country. A recent visit in early March showed me how little Haiti has progressed since my first visit in 1993. In the capital city of Port-au-Prince, one feels an atmosphere of violence that can at any moment erupt into actions of tragic consequences. A visit to a hospital in Cité Soleil, a poor...