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A congressional race with an official Tea Party candidate in the running appears to be good news for Democrats. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of Likely U.S. Voters finds that in a three-way congressional contest with a Tea Party candidate on the ballot, the Democrat picks up 40% of the vote. The Republican earns 21% support, while nearly as many (18%) favor the Tea Party candidate. Twenty-one percent (21%), however, remain undecided. Not surprisingly, Republicans and unaffiliated voters are more likely to be undecided than Democrats. (To see survey question wording, click here.) This is a slightly improved...

The good news: The lunatic minister in Florida has been persuaded (or threatened) into not burning the Koran. Book burning is despicable, cowardly and un-American. The bad news: Would anyone believe, in the days immediately following 9/11, there would come a time in this country, when radical, lunatic Muslims would dictate to the American people and its government, that certain forms of protest would not tolerated- and the President of the United States, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, and an American general would meekly acquiesce? Damn it, the AP said it wouldn't broadcast photos, audio or even...

The real motivation for the Justice Department's lawsuit against Arizona's new immigration statute was the ONLY one not mentioned in the department's brief: The Obama administration has no intention of enforcing the immigration laws against the majority of illegal aliens already in the country. It is that policy alone which conflicts with SB 1070: Arizona wants to enforce the law; the Obama administration does not. Under SB 1070, a law enforcement officer can only make an inquiry about immigration status during a LAWFUL stop for a non-immigration offense. The Justice Department and U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton, in striking down...

Teams of American special forces have been authorised to conduct spying missions intended to pave the way for a military strike on Iran in case President Obama orders one, US government sources have confirmed. The military units would penetrate Iranian territory to reconnoitre potential nuclear targets and make contact with friendly dissident groups, according to a secret directive written by General David Petraeus. The document's existence was disclosed for the first time yesterday. It authorises an expansion in the use of US special forces throughout the Middle East, US officials said. However, it is the possibility of American troops operating...

The U.S. economy is not only shedding jobs at a record rate; it is shedding more jobs than it is supposed to. It’s bad enough that the unemployment rate has doubled in only a year and a half and one out of six construction workers is out of work. What truly troubles President Obama’s economic advisers is that, even adjusting for the recession, the contraction in employment seems way too high. As one administration official said, “This has been a very steep job loss.” One proof, he added, is that the country is deviating from the standard (among economists) jobs...

Pennsylvania lawmakers are considering a bill that would bar welfare recipients from using taxpayer-backed benefit cards to buy alcohol.

Bailing out the banks is going to increase the debt spiral and finally cause the destruction of the world's biggest economy, Rogers said. "I think it's astonishing, they're ruining the US economy, they're ruining the US government, they're ruining the US central bank and they're ruining the US dollar," he said. "You are watching something in front of our eyes, very historically, which is basically the destruction of New York as a financial center and the destruction of America as the world's most powerful country."

Cannot post due to copyright issues: http://www.vanityfair.com/online/politics/2008/07/is-the-media-trying-to-elect-obama.html

ATLANTA -- Alcohol was a factor in the death of a 25-year-old man who fell down a stairwell at Turner Field during a game between the Atlanta Braves and New York Mets. Justin Hayes of Cumming, Ga., suffered head injuries Wednesday night and was taken to Grady Memorial Hospital. He fell about 150 feet from the club level to the landing on the field level during the eighth inning. The investigation is "pointing toward drinking. Alcohol was a factor," said Atlanta police department spokesman Ronald Campbell on Thursday. Campbell said Hayes may have been sliding down the handrails when he...

WASHINGTON, Feb 5 - The United States is worried that Russia, China and OPEC oil-producing countries could use their growing financial clout to advance political goals, the top U.S. spy chief told Congress on Tuesday. Such economic matters joined terrorism, nuclear proliferation and computer-network vulnerabilities as top U.S. security threats described by National Director of Intelligence Michael McConnell in an annual assessment.

Using data from the 1990 and 2000 Census of Population, an analysis of workers and jobs in the central cities and lower- and higher-income suburbs of the largest 150 metropolitan areas indicates that: Roughly 65 percent of all residents and nearly 60 percent of all jobs are now located in the suburbs, with over a third of each in the higher-income suburbs. More individuals now live in the higher-income suburbs than in the central cities, and nearly as many jobs are in the higher-income suburbs as well. Population grew strongly during the 1990s in the lower-income suburbs, while job growth...

When Michael Rosenblum and Justine Harris met in college and started dating, they were convinced they could never get married. He came from a conservative Jewish household where the family kept kosher. She hadn't been raised in a very religious family, but after years of attending Catholic mass with friends, she joined the church as a young college student. Though they were having a good time together as a couple, "we saw (our different religions) as a big stumbling block," Rosenblum said. Ultimately, they decided that scrapping the relationship because of religion wasn't worth it and ended up marrying. But...

CHICAGO - A teaspoon of honey before bed seems to calm children's coughs and help them sleep better, according to a new study that relied on parents' reports of their children's symptoms. The folk remedy did better than cough medicine or no treatment in a three-way comparison. Honey may work by coating and soothing an irritated throat, the study authors said. "Many families are going to relate to these findings and say that grandma was right," said lead author Dr. Ian Paul of Pennsylvania State University's College of Medicine. The research appears in December's Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine...

WARSAW, Poland (AP) - Poland's conservative prime minister rejected European Union criticism Thursday of a proposal to fire teachers for "homosexual propaganda," saying it was not in the interest of society to have more gay people. Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski said homosexuals did not face discrimination in his country, responding to an EU parliament vote to send a mission to Poland to investigate recent anti-gay comments by senior officials. "Nobody is limiting gay rights in Poland," Kaczynski told reporters hours after the vote. "However, if we're talking about not having homosexual propaganda in Polish schools, I fully agree with those...

DNC: The More The GOP Learns About Rudy, The Less They Like Him Fri, 04/20/2007 - 09:37 — admin April 18, 2007 -- As Rudy Giuliani heads back to New York today for another campaign fundraiser, the reviews are in for his first campaign swing through Iowa, and the results are hardly encouraging. From criticism of his “big-city” politicking, to an “anti-Giuliani” petition circulating in Iowa and a spate of polls showing that the race is tightening, it is clear that the more Hawkeye State Republicans learn about the Rudy they don’t know, the more they’re turning away from his...

Released: March 14, 2007 Zogby Poll: Voters Believe Media Bias is Very Real Institute for Politics, Democracy, and the Internet/Zogby Poll shows American voters are skeptical political motivation may be behind blogs run by mainstream news organizations The vast majority of American voters believe media bias is alive and well – 83% of likely voters said the media is biased in one direction or another, while just 11% believe the media doesn’t take political sides, a recent IPDI/Zogby Interactive poll shows. The Institute for Politics, Democracy, and the Internet is based at George Washington University in Washington D.C. Nearly two-thirds...

WASHINGTON - Democrats have unveiled a massive spending bill combining the budgets of 13 Cabinet agencies with increases in aid for lower-income college students, while cutting President Bush's funding requests for foreign aid and closing military bases. House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, Tuesday slammed Democrats' plans to advance the huge $463.5 billion measure through the House on Wednesday without giving Republicans or rank and file Democrats a chance to offer changes in an Appropriations Committee session or on the floor. Most lawmakers — and the public — were to get their first chances to read the budget tome Tuesday,...

David Paulin writes at The Big Carnival of the degeneration of the Chavez regime into a thug state. It has gotten so bad that some of Chavez's leftist supporters are now disowning him, as they see that socialism is just an excuse for power and riches being grabbed. ".... a remarkable news conference in Caracas [was] given by Luis Miquilena, 87, who guided Chávez to his first landslide election win. A long-time leftist, Miquilena left Chávez's cabinet five years ago, and at the news conference he savaged El Presidente. Miquilena thus joined a long list of former Chávez allies who...

WASHINGTON (Reuters)- When radio host Jerry Klein suggested that all Muslims in the United States should be identified with a crescent-shape tattoo or a distinctive arm band, the phone lines jammed instantly. The first caller to the station in Washington said that Klein must be "off his rocker." The second congratulated him and added: "Not only do you tattoo them in the middle of their forehead but you ship them out of this country ... they are here to kill us." Another said that tattoos, armbands and other identifying markers such as crescent marks on driver's licenses, passports and birth...

Rep. Nancy Pelosi plans to sideline colleagues who are hawkish on national security in the Democratic leadership in the House. Democratic Party sources said as House Speaker, Ms. Pelosi plans to block moves that would place hawks into important chairmanships. The sources said a key casualty would be Rep. Jane Harman, a six-term member of Congress who has cooperated with Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee. "Nancy Pelosi wants total party discipline," a source in the Democratic Party leadership said. "If you played ball with the Republicans during this session, then you're not going to be given an important chair...

A French sailor sneezes as colleagues look on in a file photo. Many people carry a potential disease-causing microbe in their nose and new research shows that large amounts of this organism and other bacteria are released into the air with every sneeze. (File/Reuters) Many people carry Staphylococcus aureus, a potential disease-causing microbe, in their nose and now new research shows that large amounts of this organism and other bacteria are released into the air with every sneeze. While the presence of the common cold does not affect this dispersion, allergies seem to increase it. "Our findings suggest that...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - More American Muslims are now supporting the Democratic Party but their votes should not be taken for granted, an Islamic civil rights group said on Tuesday. The Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, released a poll of 1,000 registered Muslim voters in the United States it said showed the community has changed a great deal since supporting Republicans in 2000. The poll found 42 percent of respondents were Democrats and 17 percent Republican, while some 28 percent had no party affiliation, said CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad. "It shows that Muslim community votes should not be taken...

WASHINGTON, Oct. 11, 2006 -- Defeat in Iraq would embolden the enemy and force Americans to confront the terror threat at home rather than overseas, President Bush said in a broad-ranging White House news conference today. Bush said the brutal nature of the enemies of democracy in Iraq has been on display for all to see. Extremists have targeted innocent Iraqis in their quest to impose their twisted ideology on the nation, he said. Bush’s comments came shortly after he met with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld; Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and...

From KTVU in San Francisco, here’s a little bit of information that somehow failed to make it into any of the media reports on yesterday’s hit and run attacks in San Francisco. Watch as reporter Rob Roth says a witness heard the suspect refer to himself as a “terrorist,” then without taking a breath tells us this was not an act of terrorism.

AN Israeli journalist has attacked the western media for biased reporting of the Lebanon conflict during a debate in Hampstead. Sharon Sadeh, formally with Hebrew newspaper Ha'aretz, was at the Everyman Cinema Club with ex-BBC correspondent Rageh Omaar for a talk on Middle East media coverage on Tuesday. Mr Sadeh, who now lives in Britain, said: "It is extremely difficult for me to see the one-sided coverage which portrayed the Lebanese suffering - which was horrendous - but paid lip service to the equal suffering of the Israelis. "Currently there are 29 bloody conflicts around the world. We hear and...

During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union embarked on the most massive military buildups in history. Part of President Reagan's strategy for winning was to entice the Soviets into a competition it could never even hope to win. A communist economy by its very nature is ill-equipped to compete with a free-market, capitalist system whether it's foreign trade or weapons technology. And so, slowly the Soviet economy became a basket case due to the communists desire to exceed America in an enormously expensive arms race. After the Cold War, with the Soviet threat gone and with...

CAIRO, Egypt - Al-Qaida's No. 2 leader issued a worldwide call in a new videotape released Thursday for Muslims to rise up in a holy war against Israel and join the fighting in Lebanon and Gaza until Islam reigns from "Spain to Iraq." In the message broadcast by Al-Jazeera television, Ayman al-Zawahri, second in command to Osama bin Laden, said that al-Qaida now views "all the world as a battlefield open in front of us." The Egyptian-born physician said that the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah and Palestinian militants would not be ended with "cease-fires or agreements." "It is a...

The US military commander in Iraq has accused Iran of providing covert support to Shia extremists in Iraq. Iran equips and trains Shia militia groups, Gen George Casey said, adding that its influence had risen recently. Although the US has no evidence that Iranians were operating directly in Iraq, Gen Casey said "surrogates" regularly attacked US troops. The US has often accused Iran of aiding Shia groups in Iraq, but has previously offered little proof. Speaking alongside Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld at the Pentagon, Gen Casey said intelligence now backed previous previously-held suspicions. "Since January we have seen an upsurge...

U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, told a Liberty University gathering Friday afternoon that the United States cannot afford to lose the war in Iraq. McCain told about 150 invited guests attending a reception in his honor that insurgents in Iraq are trying to destroy America’s will to see the current military mission through to a successful conclusion. McCain came to Lynchburg Friday night and will deliver Liberty University commencement address this morning. McCain said there are signs that Iraq is starting to stabilize. He said some communities in Iraq are peaceful and that the Iraqi economy is starting to improve....

As the war in Iraq grinds into its fourth year, a growing proportion of Americans are expressing unfavorable views of Islam, and a majority now say that Muslims are disproportionately prone to violence, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. The poll found that nearly half of Americans -- 46 percent -- have a negative view of Islam, seven percentage points higher than in the tense months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, when Muslims were often targeted for violence. Conservative and liberal experts said Americans' attitudes about Islam are fueled...

WASHINGTON, Feb. 14, 2006 — The U.S. military is aggressively capturing and killing Iraqi insurgents and seizing their territory, yet the insurgency continues to wreak untold havoc. According to one analysis, attacks on U.S. soldiers and Iraqi government forces last year increased 29 percent, and recruitment of new insurgents does not appear to be a problem. Officials at the International Crisis Group, an independent conflict-resolution organization, think they know why. They say it is the power of the insurgents' message — and the skill with which they're delivering their propaganda on the Internet. "In this battle for hearts and minds,...

Republican Sen. Larry Craig is citing Hillary Clinton as the reason he opposes renewing the Patriot Act in its current form, saying Mrs. Clinton is likely to abuse the security measure if she becomes president - unless additional safeguards are built in. "There will come a day when there will not be a George W in the White House," Sen. Craig warned, after calling top conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh to explain his position. "And tragically enough, and I hope never, it could be a Hillary Clinton." Craig wondered aloud: "Who will be her attorney general, and what might he...

18-year-old Lakeisha Adams was arrested by Bogalusa Police Tuesdayafter they discovered her 3-month-old son dead in her home.Adams reportedly confessed to putting the infant in the dryer and turning it on. People who know the mother accused of burning her baby to death in a clothes dryer say she has a past that includes violence. But they also say she can turn it off like a switch. 18-year-old Lakeisha Adams was arrested by Bogalusa Police Tuesday after they discovered her 3-month-old son dead in her home. Adams reportedly confessed to putting the infant in the dryer and turning it...

One of China’s most famous democracy advocates says that America has not paid enough attention to the threat of nuclear war with China. Wei Jingsheng, who spent 18 years in confinement in China, spoke at a forum on Chinese leader Hu Jintao at the National Press Club, sketching a disturbing picture of a powerful nation on the march to war. The forum consisted of China expert panelists giving their various perspectives on the underlying meaning behind the visit of Chinese leader Hu Jintao, who has been in power for the last two years. Wei stated that China needs the distraction...

WASHINGTON: A Republican congressman said in a radio interview aired by a Florida station that if a multiple-city attack happened in the United States in the next 90 days, as predicted by an Israeli expert, and was found to be the work of extremist Muslims, then “we should take out their holy sites.” Congressman Thomas G Tancredo, Republican from Colorado, was being interviewed by AM 540 WFLA radio host Pat Campbell, who asked him what the response of the United States should be were terrorist attacks on US cities to take place and were attributable to extremist Muslims. The Congressman...

China's Help Sought on North Korea Talks BEIJING - China is sending a top communist party official to North Korea (news - web sites) this week, the government said Thursday, amid renewed efforts to get Beijing's longtime ally to resume stalled talks on its nuclear weapons program. North Korea has rejected calls to return to the talks, accusing Washington of hostility. Last week, it claimed it has produced nuclear weapons. Washington views North Korea as a formidable threat even without a nuclear capability. The North continues to "develop, produce, deploy and sell ballistic missiles of increasing range and sophistication," CIA...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Democrats paid tepid homage to Ronald Reagan (news - web sites), the man most political observers credit for the steady rise of the rival Republican party during the past two decades. Since Reagan's death Saturday at age 93, Democrats have been in a quandary, needing to pay at least token tribute to the late president, praised by his admirers as one of their country's greatest leaders ever. But Democrats see in Reagan the figure whose social policies contributed to an epidemic of homelessness and the decline in prowess of labor unions, and whose economic policies led to...

Demoralized Teachers, Unruly Students, Bureaucracy Top Concerns About SchoolsBy Siobhan McDonough Associated Press WriterPublished: Apr 23, 2003 WASHINGTON (AP) - Ill-mannered pupils, demoralized teachers, uninvolved parents and bureaucracy in public schools are greater worries for Americans than the standards and accountability that occupy policy makers, a new study says. Teachers, parents and students said they were concerned about the rough-edged atmosphere in many high schools, according to the report released Wednesday by Public Agenda, a research and policy organization in New York City. Only 9 percent of surveyed Americans said the students they see in public are respectful toward adults....

Source: NIH/National Institute On Drug Abuse Date: 2003-03-07 Cocaine Use May Alter Brain Cells, Play Role In Depression A study by researchers from the University of Michigan and the Ann Arbor Veterans Affairs Medical Center suggests that chronic cocaine use may cause damage to brain cells that help produce feelings of pleasure, which may contribute, in part, to the high rates of depression reported among cocaine abusers. It is well-known that cocaine increases levels of the brain chemical dopamine, resulting in the "high" that abusers feel. Prolonged use of the drug, however, may reduce dopamine levels, making it harder for...