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TORONTO (Reuters) – Former U.S. Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton traded jokes about life after the Oval Office and took turns defending each other as they shared a stage in Toronto on Friday to discuss global affairs. In a sold-out event billed as their first conversation on stage since they left office, Bush and Clinton disagreed politely about a couple of issues, backed each other on others and refused to criticize anything current President Barack Obama was doing. Bush's vice president, Dick Cheney, has emerged as one of Obama's toughest critics and the staunchest defender of the Bush...

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama's top economic officials on Tuesday vigorously defended tax hikes in the administration's $3.6 trillion budget against Republican claims that they would affect nearly all Americans. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and White House Budget Director Peter Orszag, in separate appearances on Capitol Hill, stuck to the administration line that the president's budget would benefit 95 percent of working Americans. Higher taxes for affluent Americans would not come until 2011 once "we are safely into recovery," Geithner told the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee. "I'm confident this is the right path for the country," Geithner said.

40 Days for Life consists of 40 days of prayer and fasting for an end to abortion, 40 days of constant, peaceful vigil outside abortion centers and Planned Parenthood offices and 40 days of active pro-life community outreach. Your community may be participating in this prayerful vigil. If so, please join others in your area or unite with thousands across America during the 40 days of Lent in praying for an end to abortion in this nation.

Our late colleague Jim Boulet last year unearthed the facts here and here and here on how the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) ‘localism' schemes could shut down or inhibit talk radio. Last Thursday, Ishmael Jones, nom de plume of a former officer in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) clandestine service, gave his take on the danger radio ‘localism' poses to free political speech in his American Thinker article "What the CIA's Censors Can Teach Us about Plans to Muzzle Talk Radio" here. Here is Ishmael Jones on this Administration and their possible ‘localism' approach to shutting down political speech on...

WASHINGTON - Senators told oil executives Wednesday that high oil prices cannot be explained by supply and demand and the oil industry's concentration — and OPEC price collusion — is contributing to the costs facing consumers. ADVERTISEMENT Executives of the five largest oil companies were appearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said there's an unexplained "disconnect" between prices — at nearly $130 a barrel — and legitimate supply and demand. "We need to get prices under control.... We can only conclude that the oil markets have failed," said Sen. Herbert Kohl, D-Wis. But Shell Oil...

On November 18, in solidarity with the School of the Americas Watch vigil and protest at Ft. Benning Georgia, hundreds of people from around the country will gather at Fort Huachuca to continue the nonviolent witness against U.S. policy sanctioning torture. These are the supporters and followers of-- Fr. Louis Vitale, OFM, (75) and Fr. Stephen Kelly, SJ (54) were sentenced on Wednesday, October 17 to five months in prison for attempting to deliver a letter to then-commander Major General Barbara Fast at Fort Huachuca, Arizona, denouncing torture and the Military Commissions Act of 2006. October 17th is the first...

CHICAGO - Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is running for president on her husband's White House record, and it's a strategy that cuts both ways. The New York senator and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, constantly remind voters of the nation's economic prosperity in the 1990s and his record on the environment, college aid and family medial leave. Press releases from the campaign often include sentences that start , "Under the Clinton administration ..." "Yesterday's news was pretty good," Bill Clinton said last month in Iowa while campaigning with his wife. But yesterdays' news isn't always easy to explain today....

HAVANA (Reuters) - Cuba will continue to build up its defenses against the United States and Cubans should be prepared to make more sacrifices to remain independent, Cuban leader Fidel Castro said in an editorial published on Monday. In his commentary in the ruling Communist Party newspaper Granma, the first time in a series of such articles that he has turned his attention directly to Cuban affairs, Castro called on Cubans to safeguard the island's socialist system against Havana's long-time ideological foe the United States. Castro, 80, has not been seen in public since undergoing emergency intestinal surgery in July...

WASHINGTON - Three of the five Supreme Court justices who handed the presidency to George W. Bush in 2000 say they had no choice but to intervene in the Florida recount. Comments from Justice Anthony Kennedy and retired Justice Sandra Day O'Connor are in a new book that was published this week. Justice Antonin Scalia made his remarks Tuesday at Iona College in New York. Scalia, answering questions after a speech, also said that critics of the 5-4 ruling in Bush v. Gore need to move on six years after the electoral drama of December 2000, when it seemed the...

WASHINGTON - President Bush's State of the Union address on Tuesday gives him a second chance to defend his new Iraq strategy to a nation soured on the war and a Congress poised to vote against the plan. It will be the president's last major opportunity to shape America's legislative agenda before the fast-moving 2008 presidential campaign begins to drown out his message. Bush is expected to strike a conciliatory tone on some domestic issues where he believes he can work with the first Democratic Congress in 12 years. On Iraq, he is expected to stand firm. The nationally televised...

The U.S. Coast Guard has scuttled a plan to fire live ammunition into Lake Erie and the other Great Lakes following a tidal wave of protest from environmental groups and others. But the plan is not dead. A Coast Guard spokesman said Monday that officials would re-examine the proposal and look into other ways to allow live-fire training on and off the Great Lakes. The Coast Guard wanted to establish 34 zones on the Great Lakes, four on Lake Erie, where crews could practice machine gun firing two or three times a year, for two to six hours at a...

(2006-11-15) — Sen. Carl Levin, soon to be chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, today said that reducing U.S. troop levels in Iraq is the best way to train Iraqi soldiers, since they’ll have to defend weakened U.S. garrisons from insurgents emboldened by the American retreat. “Iraqi troops need to get more fighting experience,” said Sen. Levin at a hearing on Capitol Hill. “By having them guard U.S. bases as we redeploy our troops from the country, they’ll gain confidence and skill.” The Michigan Democrat said an immediate phased withdrawal of U.S. troops would also bring more insurgents out...

A Video tribute has been created by the SaveTheSoldiers.com honoring our heroic friends. The song is Superman by Five For Fighting... Visit Hero.savethesoldiers.com to view the video!

TEHRAN (AFP) - Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has renewed calls on Muslims to rally to the defence of the Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah in its war against Israel, state television reported. "Today it is the entire Muslim community's duty to defend Hezbollah," Khamenei told a meeting Tuesday to mark the anniversary of the birth of the Shiites' first Imam, Ali. Iran helped to create and arm Hezbollah in 1982 in response to Israel's invasion of Lebanon, and Tehran stands accused by the United States and Israel of fomenting chaos in the region by channelling weapons to the guerrillas....

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration on Saturday defended his proposal requiring drug companies to give discounts to up to five million uninsured, low-income residents within five years or face state sanctions. California Health and Human Services Secretary Kim Belshe said the Republican governor's election-year plan was better than Democratic bills he has vetoed the last two years. Schwarzenegger has unsuccessfully pushed a voluntary plan since taking office, and the one he formally announced Saturday gives drug companies five years to comply on their own terms - with a stick at the end if they don't, Belshe said at a Capitol news...

Top editors from the Los Angeles Times and The New York Times, responding to criticism over publishing stories about a government program that tracked millions of financial records in search of terrorists, on Saturday defended their decisions to publish government secrets. "We weight the merits of publishing against the risks of publishing," wrote Dean Baquet, Los Angeles Times editor, and Bill Keller, New York Times executive editor, in an op-ed piece that ran in both newspapers. "There is no magic formula, no neat metric for either the public's interest or the dangers of publishing sensitive information," the piece continued. "We...

In a public relations push punctuated by a continual stream of roaring jet aircraft, the Marine Corps opened Miramar Air Station yesterday to bolster its campaign against the notion of a civilian airfield. “Joint use is fundamentally incompatible with what we do,” said Maj. Gen. Michael R. Lehnert, commander of Marine Corps Installations West. “It's simply a function of physics, and you cannot repeal the laws of physics.” The air base conducted a guided tour for reporters three days before the expected vote by the San Diego County Regional Airport Authority board on a future replacement for Lindbergh Field. Despite...

AL BASRA OIL TERMINAL, Iraq, May 2, 2006 – It looks like a scene from the movie "Waterworld" here off the Iraqi coast. More than a thousand meters of catwalks tie the Al Basra Oil Terminal together miles off the shore of Iraq in the Northern Arabian Gulf. The Iraqi facility pumps oil into waiting supertankers. U.S. Navy and Iraqi marines guard the facility. Photo by Jim Garamone   (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. Two oil terminals - this one and the Khawr al Amaya a few kilometers away - rise from the sea, miles out of sight...

Rice doctrine advocates 'soft power' to defend US By Alec Russell in Washington (Filed: 17/03/2006) The long-awaited new United States national security strategy unveiled yesterday will almost certainly come to be known as the Condoleezza Rice doctrine. It is assertive yet nuanced, reflecting the shift in US foreign policy since she became secretary of state last year. Condoleezza Rice on board the Port Royal The 49-page document pays homage to its revolutionary September 2002 predecessor which unveiled to a wary world Washington's new- found belief in pre-emption and the abandonment of America's Cold War policy of deterrence. It has a...

In the wake of two especially brutal attacks in Australia, ocean-lovers can try a new invention to ward off the toothy terrors This year got off to a bad start in Australia, which had its first fatality in January when 21-year-old Sarah Whiley died from shock and blood loss after being savaged by up to three bull sharks while swimming off a Queensland beach. A short time after, Bernie Williams was mauled on the elbow by a Great White, diving not far from Perth. The animal then proceeded to stalk him while he hid in a crevice on the ocean...