Sam Alito: Next Supreme Court justice is nominated by President Bush (NewsMax.com)
Samuel A. Alito has been a strong conservative jurist on the Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, a court with a reputation for being among the nation's most liberal.  Dubbed "Scalito" or "Scalia-lite," a play not only on his name but his opinions, Alito, 55, brings a hefty legal resume that belies his age. He has served on the federal appeals court for 15 years since President George H.W. Bush nominated him in 1990. 

Bush picks Alito for Supreme Court (AP)
President Bush, stung by the collapse of his previous choice, nominated veteran judge Samuel Alito today in a bid to reshape the Supreme Court and mollify his conservative allies. Ready-to-rumble Democrats warned that Alito may be an extremist who would curb abortion rights.  "Judge Alito .... has more prior judicial experience than any Supreme Court nominee in more than 70 years," Bush said, drawing an unspoken contrast to his recent choice, Harriet Miers.

Again, who cares?: Chuck Schumer doesn't like Alito, either (NewsMax.com)
Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) sloppily tied together Monday’s current events by comparing the Supreme Court nomination of Samuel Alito to the Washington honors bestowed upon late civil rights leader Rosa Parks.  Schumer said "Alito, like Rosa Parks, can make history simply by virtue of where he sits." . . . "It’s sad that the president felt that he had to pick a nominee likely to divide America, instead of picking a nominee like Sandra Day O’Connor that had united America,” Schumer said.

John McCain: "Gang of 14" will wait and see on Alito (NewsMax.com)
Gang of 14 leader, Sen. John McCain declined to offer unqualified support Monday morning for President Bush's new Supreme Court pick, Sam Alito - saying he wanted to wait for confirmation hearings before fully endorsing the conservative judge.  "I've always been favorably disposed towards a president's nominee," McCain told radio host Don Imus. "I voted for Justice Ginsburg and Justice Breyer because I think elections have consequences. I didn't share their judicial philosophy."

So, What?: Harry Reid "disappointed" over Alito pick (NewsMax.com)
Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid issued the following statement regarding the nomination of Judge Samuel Alito to the United States Supreme Court.  "The nomination of Judge Alito requires an especially long hard look by the Senate because of what happened last week to Harriet Miers. Conservative activists forced Miers to withdraw from consideration for this same Supreme Court seat because she was not radical enough for them. Now the Senate needs to find out if the man replacing Miers is too radical for the American people."

Its Sam Alito: Let the savaging begin  (SeanRobins.com)
President Bush is slated to announce his next choice for the Supreme Court at 8:00 o'clock this morning.  According to credible sources, that choice will by U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals judge, Sam Alito.  Alito was appointed by President George H.W. Bush to the Third Circuit in 1990, after serving for three years at the United States Attorney for the District of New Jersey.  Alito was among the top candidates under discussion in recent months, and has emerged as a choice likely to energize and reinvigorate conservates deeply disappointed with the Harriet Miers failed nomination.  Alito, who is considered to be virtually apolitical, has a strong record during his fifteen years on the appellate bench of being a strict constructionist.  With a nominee who is demonstrably conservate in his approach to the Constitution, and who will oppose judicial legislation, Alito will almost certainly ignite a barbaric approach to his confirmation process on the part of Senate Democrats.  As much as finding the right candidate for the job--which Alito certainly appears to be--with this nomination, it is time to take, what is likely to be another Democratic filibuster, head on, and "nuke" any such efforts.  The "gang of 14" does not seem up to the task of preventing this filibuster, and so, let the fireworks begin.  This process itself will strengthen conservative support for President Bush, and will all but obliterate the memory of the Miers debacle.  As they say, "for every problem, there is an opportunity."  For Democrats, the Alito nomination will present an insoluble opportunity.

We need a fence - Jamie Glazov (FrontPageMagazine.com)
(Interview with Colin Hanna, president of WeNeedaFence.com)  Many Americans are rightly concerned about the illegal immigration problem, particularly across our southern border. There are upwards of a million illegals a year that are apprehended attempting to enter our country, and probably three to five times that many who are not caught.  So the problem is clearly out of control.  Alarming as those large numbers are, however, what is most disturbing to me is a much smaller subset of these numbers: the several hundred aliens from terrorism-sponsoring or terrorism-harboring countries like Iran, Syria, Jordan, Yemen, and Sudan. Just ask yourself, what are a bunch of Syrians or Iranians doing in Mexico trying to enter the United States illegally?  Is it so that they can taste a McDonald's burger on its home turf?  I doubt it.  And remember, the 9/11 attack that cost over 3,000 lives was the result of the coordinated acts of only 19 illegal aliens.  So the level of illegal immigration from so-called "special interest" countries ought to be matter of sincere and urgent concern.

U.N. to Syria: Cooperate or. . .we might. . .do. . .something - Edith M. Lederer (AP)
The U.N. Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution Monday demanding Syria's full cooperation with a U.N. investigation into the assassination of Lebanon's former prime minister and warning of possible "further action" if it doesn't.  The United States, France and Britain pressed for the resolution following last week's tough report by the U.N. investigating commission, which implicated top Syrian and Lebanese security officials in the Feb. 14 bombing that killed Rafik Hariri and 20 others. The report also accused Syria of not cooperating fully with the inquiry.

Terrorist appeasement, British style: Prince Charles fronting for Islam - Andrew Alderson (London Daily Telegraph)
Prince Charles will try to convince President Bush of the merits of Islam this week because he thinks the United States has been too intolerant of the religion since September 11, 2001.  The prince, who leaves tomorrow for an eight-day tour of the United States, has voiced private concerns over Washington's "confrontational" approach to Muslim countries and its failure to appreciate what he regards as Islam's strengths.

Massive vote fraud in Detroit - David Josar, Lisa M. Collins & Brad Heath (Detroit News)
A Detroit News investigation raises serious questions about the handling of absentee ballots under Detroit City Clerk Jackie Currie as the city prepares to choose a mayor, City Council and school board Nov. 8.  Currie has been accused of irregular election practices in several lawsuits, and a review of election results, property records and databases of registered voters uncovered procedures that experts and other election officials described as questionable.  Among findings by News reporters were ballots cast by people registered to vote at abandoned and long-demolished buildings; a master voter list with 380,000 incorrect names and addresses -- including people who have died or moved out of the city; and a practice of hand-delivering ballots from senior citizens and disabled voters that were filled out in private meetings with Currie's paid election workers.

Russert is his own news in leak case - Todd S. Purdum (New York Times)
On any given Sunday, the cream of Washington officialdom presents itself for confession before Tim Russert, a big, bluff lawyer-turned-journalist who may be the capital's most intimidating interlocutor outside a courtroom or Congress. Vice President Dick Cheney, not a chatty guy, has been his guest no fewer than 10 times since taking office.  But on this particular Sunday, the news compelled Mr. Russert to turn his trademark attention to an atypical topic: himself.  "Inside the C.I.A. leak indictments, including the role of journalists, including yours truly," Mr. Russert intoned in no-nonsense staccato before a commercial break halfway through "Meet the Press," NBC News's top-rated Sunday morning interview program.

Special Prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, to hold 2:00 p.m. press conference  (SeanRobins.com)
Plamegate special prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, announced this morning through his web site, that he would hold a press conference this afternoon at two o'clock, to update the world on the status of his two-year, multi-million dollar investigation into the leaking of the identity of the now-known-not-to-have-been-undercover CIA agent, Valerie Plame.  According to the latest leaking coming from Mr. Fitzpatrick's office, he will indict I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, chief of staff for the Vice President's office, on allegations that he made "false statements" to investigators, and that he committed perjury in testimony to the grant jury; and that there will be no indictment as against Karl Rove, the President's top political advisor.  More to come . . .

Times-Miller war escalating; Paper must meet her demands, or else - Anna Schneider-Mayerson & Gabriel Sherman (New York Observer)
Reporter Judith Miller and The New York Times are in negotiations over the terms under which she would possibly agree to leave the paper.  According to a source familiar with the discussions, there are three issues on the table. The first is how much severance Miller would receive, the second concerns whether she will be given space on the Op-Ed page to answer critics and the third is whether the Times and Miller will issue a joint statement defining the terms of her departure.

Crossing the Rubicon - Victor Davis Hanson (National Review)
For good or evil, George W. Bush will have to cross the Rubicon on judicial nominations, politicized indictments, Iraq, the greater Middle East, and the constant frenzy of the Howard Dean wing of the Democratic party — and now march on his various adversaries as never before. He can choose either to be nicked and slowly bled to death in his second term, or to bare his fangs and like some cornered carnivore start slashing back.  Before Harriet Miers, conservatives pined for a Chief Justice Antonin Scalia, with a Justice Roberts and someone like a Janice Rogers Brown rounding out a battle-hardened and formidable new conservative triad. They relished the idea of a Scalia frying Joe Biden in a televised cross-examination or another articulate black female nominee once again embarrassing a shrill Barbara Boxer — all as relish to brilliantly crafted opinions scaling back the reach of activist judges. That was not quite to be.  But now, with the Mierss withdrawal, the president might as well go for broke to reclaim his base and redefine his second term as one of principle rather than triangulating politics.

Bush messes up; Dems pay the price - Peter A. Brown (Orlando Sentinel)
It isn't often the president of the United States messes up and his political enemies pay the price for his error.  But that will be the upshot of Harriet Miers' aborted Supreme Court nomination.  It was conceived to avoid alienating Democrats, but took Republicans for granted.  Because President Bush's poll numbers have been low, he wanted to avoid a bruising Senate confirmation fight by picking someone whose lack of a paper trail or enemies would disarm the opposition. . . . Given that Bush will likely now give the Democrats a nominee many of them will hate, a no-holds-barred confirmation fight that the president was hoping to avoid seems in the cards.  Yet, by giving his own troops someone they like, most Republicans will get what they want after a nasty fight that will make Democrats wish instead that Harriet Miers was sitting on the Supreme Court for the next two decades.

Conservatives demand nominee in their image - Ralph Z. Hallow (Washington Times)
Conservative leaders who helped force the withdrawal of Harriet Miers said yesterday that President Bush must now appoint someone whose judicial philosophy matches that of the two most conservative justices on the Supreme Court -- and said they would accept nothing less.  "We want Bush to fulfill his campaign commitment to give us a nominee like Antonin Scalia or Clarence Thomas," said Eagle Forum President Phyllis Schlafly. "Conservatives have this old-fashioned notion that candidates should fulfill the promises they made once they get elected."

Miers may have helped save Bush's presidency - Pat Buchanan (RealClearPolitics.com)
By withdrawing her nomination, Harriet Miers spared herself an agonizing inquisition and probable rejection by the Senate and did George W. Bush the greatest service of her career. She may just have helped him save his presidency. . . . With a single stroke -- the nomination of a Supreme Court justice who will remove the smile from the countenance of Chuck Schumer and unite his unhappy household in praise of Bush and anticipation of battle, as they pull down the rusty old pike-staffs from the wall, President Bush can begin the resurrection of his presidency.  More ==> The speech that ended the Miers nomination

Scowcroft's "realism" - Charles Krauthammer (Washington Post)
Now that Cindy Sheehan turns out to be a disaster for the anti-war movement -- most Americans are not about to follow a left-wing radical who insists that we are in Iraq for reasons of theft, oppression and empire -- a new spokesman is needed. If I were in the opposition camp, I would want a deeply patriotic, highly intelligent, distinguished establishment figure. I would want Brent Scowcroft. Scowcroft has been obliging. This week in The New Yorker he came out strongly against the war and the neocon sorcerers who magically foisted it upon what must have been a hypnotized president and vice president.

Democratic Reaction to Miers withdrawal is predictably hysterial  (SeanRobins.com)
As we could have predicted with every sensory ogran in the body tied behind our backs, the reaction by Democrats to the withdrawal of the Miers nomination, at her request, is predictably hysterical to observe.  Their reactions demonstrate not only a complete lack of consistency and principle, but the utter depths of the stark terror which they are today experiencing, knowing now that conservatives are united in their determination that the next nominee for the Supreme Court be not only a true conservative, but one which will strictly interpret the Constitution.  Not only are they upset about the prospects for the next nominee, but the more the libs learned about Miers' positions on social issues, the more they had begun to salivate at the prospect of her confirmation.  Today is not a good day for Democrats.

Here is just a sampling of what some of the usual suspects have said today--most as posted on their own official web sites:

Withdrawn - Terence Hunt (AP)
Under withering attack from conservatives, President Bush abandoned his push to put loyalist Harriet Miers on the Supreme Court and promised a quick replacement Thursday. Democrats accused him of bowing to the "radical right wing of the Republican Party."  The White House said Miers had withdrawn because of senators' demands to see internal documents related to her role as counsel to the president. But politics played a larger role: Bush's conservative backers had doubts about her ideological purity, and Democrats had little incentive to help the nominee or the embattled GOP president.

Miers Withdrawal Letter - Harriet Miers
Dear Mr. President: I write to withdraw as a nominee to serve as an Associate Justice on the Supreme Court of the United States.  I have been greatly honored and humbled by the confidence that you have shown in me, and have appreciated immensely your support and the support of many others.  However, I am concerned that the confirmation process presents a burden for the White House and our staff that is not in the best interest of the country.

President Bush's acceptance of Mier's withdrawal - George W. Bush
Today, I have reluctantly accepted Harriet Miers decision to withdraw her nomination to the Supreme Court of the United States.  nominated Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court because of her extraordinary legal experience, her character, and her conservative judicial philosophy. Throughout her career, she has gained the respect and admiration of her fellow attorneys. She has earned a reputation for fairness and total integrity. She has been a leader and a pioneer in the American legal profession. She has worked in important positions in state and local government and in the bar. And for the last five years, she has served with distinction and honor in critical positions in the Executive Branch.

Details about U.N. oil-for-food kickbacks coming - Warren Hoge (New York Times)
More than 4,500 companies took part in the United Nations oil-for-food program and more than half of them paid illegal surcharges and kickbacks to Saddam Hussein, according to the independent committee investigating the program.  The country with the most companies involved in the program was Russia, followed by France, the committee says in a report to be released Thursday. The inquiry was led by Paul A. Volcker, former chairman of the Federal Reserve Board.  The findings are in the committee's fifth and final report, a document of more than 500 pages that will detail how outside companies from more than 60 countries were able to evade United Nations controls and make money for themselves as well as for the Hussein government.

Criminal: More than 2,000 of 4,500 firms involved in oil-for-food kickbacks - Edith M. Lederer (AP)
More than 2,000 companies made about $1.8 billion in illicit payments to Saddam Hussein's government through extensive manipulation of the U.N. oil-for-food program in Iraq, according to key findings of a U.N.-backed investigation.  The report--to be released in full Thursday by the committee probing claims of wrongdoing in the $64 billion program--indicates that about half the 4,500 companies doing business with Iraq paid illegal surcharges on oil purchases or kickbacks on contracts to supply humanitarian goods.

More ==> U.N. Oil-for-Food Program web site | U.N. News Centre - contains amazing spin by Kofi Annan & Co. about the U.N. and the scandal | Independent Inquiry Committee web site - official site of the so-called Volcker Committee investigating the scandal

Leakgate law author blasts Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald (NewsMax.com)
The former deputy assistant attorney general who helped draft the 1982 Intelligence Identities Protection Act blasted Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald on Wednesday, saying he may be getting "creative with law" in order to justify questionable indictments.  "If you don't have a clear violation, you should not become what's called 'creative with the law,'" Toensing told ABC Radio host Sean Hannity, after noting that the statute she co-authored was never intended to apply to cases like Leakgate."

Many knew Plame was CIA (NewsMax.com)
Leakgate prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has finally gotten around to asking Valerie Plame's neighbors if they had any idea that she worked at the CIA.  "FBI agents as recently as Monday night interviewed at least two people in her D.C. neighborhood," reports the Washington Post. "The agents were attempting to determine whether the neighbors knew that Plame worked for the CIA before she was unmasked with the help of senior Bush administration officials. Two neighbors said they told the FBI they had been surprised to learn she was a CIA operative."  While Plame's occupation may have surprised her two neighbors, others say the fact that she worked at the CIA was well known.

Israel calls for expulsion of Iran from U.N. (AP)
Israel's vice prime minister said Iran should be expelled from the United Nations after its new president said Israel should be "wiped off the map," and Britain summoned an Iranian diplomat Thursday to protest the remarks.  Italy on Thursday also condemned the words of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, telling the Iranian ambassador the comments were "unacceptable" and that they confirm worries over the political positions - and nuclear intentions - of Iran's new leadership.  Shimon Peres, Israel's vice prime minister and a Nobel peace laureate, said it was "impossible to ignore" Ahmadinejad's comments.  "Since the United Nations was established in 1945, there has never been a head of state that is a U.N. member state that publicly called for the elimination of another U.N. member state," Shimon Peres told Israel Radio.

Hillary proposes massive new gasoline taxes (NewsMax.com)
2008 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said yesterday that she backs a plan to hike gasoline taxes through the roof.  Speaking to a group of alternative energy investors in Washington, D.C., Clinton proposed to sock oil companies with $20 billion in new fees that would be used to fund research on clean energy - driving up costs for oil producers that they would inevitably pass along to consumers.

Iran's President: Israel should be "wiped off the map" - Gareth Smyth (Financial Times)
Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, Iran’s fundamentalist president, on Wednesday declared that Israel should be “wiped off the map” and warned Arab countries against developing economic ties with Israel in response to its withdrawal from Gaza.  His remarks, delivered at a conference in Tehran entitled “A World without Zionism”, led to diplomatic protests by the UK, France and Spain, while Shimon Peres, Israel’s deputy prime minister, said Iran should be expelled from the United Nations.

Open borders group demands tuition benefits for illegal aliens in Massachusetts (DiscovertheNetworks.org)
On Tuesday, October 25, a pro-open borders organization called the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy (MIRA) coalition staged a demonstration of "400 supporters to represent the number of Massachusetts high-school graduates every year who are denied access to higher education." "Let's show the legislature that everyone deserves the right to an education," MIRA declared. The unmistakable implication is that a great injustice is being perpetrated against several hundred young adults each year who, for some unjustifiable reason, are barred from the halls of academe.  But what is in fact at issue, behind MIRA's righteous sounding allegations about the denial of "access to higher education," is an In-State Tuition for Immigrant Students in Massachusetts bill that would allow high-school graduates who are illegal aliens residing in Massachusetts to attend public state colleges for the same reduced tuition rates that other Massachusetts residents pay.

The Press: Whose side are you on? - David Horowitz (FrontPageMagazine.com)
In war, the first order of business is to know whose side you are on, and who is on yours. In the case of the war to defeat the terrorists and establish a democratic government in Iraq, the answer is not always easy to come by. Take the American press. Take the Los Angeles Times. On Wednesday, October 26, 2005, the main headline spread across two columns of Times was “U.S. Death Toll In Iraq Hits 2,000.” The sub-headline began “Antiwar protesters plan demonstrations…” Two photos centered at the top of the front page showed President Bush declaring that “Iraq has made incredible political progress from tyranny to liberation to national elections” and an “anti-war” activist lighting 2,000 candles for the dead. Underneath the two photos a three-column story headlined “A Deadly Surge” began, “A year and a half ago, at the first anniversary of the U.S. occupation of Iraq, the death rate for American troops accelerated. Since then, none of the political milestones or military stratregies proclaimed by U.S. officials have succeeded in slowing the death toll.

Where cronies on the left can be found - John Tierney (Austin American-Statesman)
The left has a lock on journalism and law schools.  Journalists and legal scholars have been decrying "cronyism" and calling for "mainstream" values when picking a Supreme Court justice. But how do they go about picking the professors to train the next generation of journalists and lawyers? David Horowitz, the conservative who is president of the Center for the Study of Popular Culture, analyzed the political affiliations of the faculty at 18 elite journalism and law schools. By checking all the party registrations he could find, he found that Democrats outnumber Republicans by 8 to 1 at the law schools, with the ratio ranging from 3 to 1 at Penn to 28 to 1 at Stanford.

Before either shoe drops: The problem with Special Plame Prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald  (SeanRobins.com)
The politically correct directive these days concerning CIA leak-investigating special prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, is to acknowledge repeatedly, that he is a straight shooter, unbiased, fair. . .blah, blah, blah.  I don't know much about his background or his history, and so I'm in no position at the moment to dispute the generalities surrounding these characterizations.  However. . .and there had to be a "however": There is one very huge potential problem surrounding the way he has performed his duties.  The conventional wisdom, as it has been developing over the past two years, is that it is unlikely that Valerie Plame--wife of that good 'ol Bush-Cheney-Rove-hater, Joe Wilson, whose alleged "outing" as a CIA undercover operative formed the basis for the appointment of the Special Prosecutor in 2003--was a "covert" agent, as that term is defined under the law, when the so-called "outing" took place.  More-->

George Galloway: Facist pimp and prostititute - Christopher Hitchens (FrontPageMagazine.com)
Just before my last exchange with George Galloway, which occurred on the set of Bill Maher's show in Los Angeles in mid-September, I was approached by a representative of the program and asked if I planned to repeat my challenge to Galloway on air. That challenge—would he sign an affidavit saying that he had never discussed Oil-for-Food monies with Tariq Aziz?—I had already made on a public stage in New York. Maher's producers had been asked, obviously by a nervous Galloway, to find out whether I had brought such an affidavit along with me. I replied that this was not necessary, since his public denial to me was on the record and had been broadcast, and since it further confirmed the apparent perjury that he had committed in front of the U.S. Senate on May 17, 2005. I added that I wanted no further contact with Galloway until I could have the opportunity of reviewing his prison diaries.  More ==> Explanation of Galloway's involvement (pdf) | Read Galloway's perjurious Senate testimony | Read the Senate's report on his testimony (pdf)

Vintage Galloway as he wheels out his tried and tested retorts - David Blair (U.K. Telegraph)
The wild conspiracy theories and loud denials, articulated in deep Glaswegian brogue, are on our television screens once again. True to form, George Galloway has lashed out in all directions in response to the Senate's report on his dealings with Saddam Hussein's regime.  He has even mentioned me. I must declare an interest here, because I found the documents that began the long-running saga of what Mr Galloway may or may not have been up to when he was a regular visitor at the court of Iraq's ancien regime.

2,000: A bogus number, a bitter cause - Michelle Malkin (TownHall.com)
The anti-war Left couldn't wait for the death of the 2,000th soldier in Iraq. Peace activists have been gearing up for protests, vigils, and other events this week to mark the completely bogus milestone. Why 2,000? Was the 2nd or 555th or 1,678th death not as worth mourning as any other death with nice round numbers?  Cindy Sheehan barely contained her macabre lust for the spotlight in preparation for the artificially constructed, media-hyped occasion. "I'm going to go to Washington, D.C., and I'm going to give a speech at the White House, and after I do, I'm going to tie myself to the fence and refuse to leave until they agree to bring our troops home," Sheehan told a reporter last week as the death count neared her lottery number pick. "And I'll probably get arrested, and when I get out, I'll go back and do the same thing," she vowed.

Sunni arabs to participate in December elections - Sinan Salaheddin (AP)
Three Sunni Arab groups joined forces Wednesday to field candidates in December's elections provided for under the newly ratified constitution which many Sunnis opposed. But a group of hard-line Sunni clerics denounced the constitution and said they will not join the political process.  Those contradictory statements signaled confusion within the minority Sunni Arab community, which forms the core of the insurgency, over how to go forward after it failed to block ratification of the new constitution in the Oct. 15 referendum.  Leaders of the three Sunni groups _ the General Conference for the People of Iraq, the Iraqi Islamic Party and the Iraqi National Dialogue--announced they would field a joint slate of candidates in the Dec. 15 balloting and work together in the new parliament to promote Sunni interests.

Tim Russert's conflict of interest - Cliff Kincaid (AccuracyinMedia.com)
During the September 18 edition of NBC's Meet the Press, host Tim Russert conducted a softball interview with disgraced former President Bill Clinton about his "global initiative" meeting being held in New York. During the conversation Clinton hinted at why Russert had invited him to do the show. "I'm not pandering here to NBC," Clinton said, but he sang the praises of Jeffrey Immelt, the head of General Electric, the parent company of NBC. Clinton said Immelt was one of those business leaders who had accepted the man-made global warming theory and was pursuing a "clean energy future" for his company. It wasn't mentioned that Immelt was a participant in the Clinton conference. Now why didn't Russert tell us that?

What Congress did is disgusting - John Stossel (RealClearPolitics.com)
What Congress did is disgusting.  You heard what the Senate did to Tom Coburn's attempt to impose some sanity on spending.  How do they live with themselves?  Years ago, interviewing economist Walter Williams for a show ABC News called "Greed," I was perplexed when Williams said, "a thief is more moral than a congressman; when a thief steals your money, he doesn't demand you thank him."

Kerry again advocates "cut-and-run" policy for Iraq - Vicki Allen (Reuters)
United States should pull 20,000 troops from Iraq after parliamentary elections there in December, a leading Senate Democrat said on Wednesday, arguing that it would weaken support for an insurgency fueled by resentment of the U.S. presence.  Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, who failed to unseat Republican President George W. Bush last year, said in blistering speech at Georgetown University that the administration must change course in Iraq or there will be "the prospect of indefinite, and even endless conflict."

Ex-Alabama Democratic Gov. Don Siegelman indicted on bribery, racketeering charges (AP)
A federal grand jury has indicted former Gov. Don Siegelman and three others in a "widespread racketeering conspiracy" that included bribery and extortion, prosecutors announced Wednesday.  The prosecutors said Siegelman and former Chief of Staff Paul Hamrick violated racketeering laws during his term from 1999 to 2003.

Somebody should tell the broadcast nets: The Iraqi constitution passed (Media Research Center)
An overwhelming 79 percent of Iraqis, who risked their lives just over a week ago to cast their ballot, voted in favor of the nation's new constitution, but you'd have missed it if you sneezed during Tuesday's CBS Evening News or ABC's World News Tonight. CBS anchor Bob Schieffer delivered only this single sentence -- "Iraq's government announced today that voters did approve the country's new constitution in this month's referendum" . . .

Crackdown on illegal immigrants; Start with Social Security lists - Terence Jeffrey (Townhall.com)
When he signed the Homeland Security funding bill last week, President Bush vowed to track down illegal aliens inside the United States and enforce the law against employers who hire them.  "If somebody's here illegally, we've got to do everything we can to find them," said Bush. "We've got to crack down on employers who flout our laws." Well, I have two pieces of information the president might find useful. The first is that I know where he can get excellent intelligence that could help the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agents simultaneously find a great many illegal aliens and crack down on employers flouting the law.

President's Katrina response: Ammunition for for poverty pimps - Walter Williams (Townhall.com)
In the wake of Hurricane Katrina's destruction of New Orleans, President Bush gave America's poverty pimps and race hustlers new ammunition. The president said, "As all of us saw on television, there is also some deep, persistent poverty in this region as well. And that poverty has roots in a history of racial discrimination, which cut off generations from the opportunity of America. We have a duty to confront this poverty with bold action."  The president's espousing such a vision not only supplies ammunition to poverty pimps and race hustlers, it focuses attention away from the true connection between race and poverty.

Teachers in Washington state school district fire union; Will negotiate on their own (PNW SoapBox)
Objecting to the high cost of union dues, much of which went to funding liberal political causes, and poor representation, teachers in the Sprague-Lamont School District, in Washington state, have voted to "decertify" their union, and break away from the Washington Educational Association, and deal with the school district on their own terms.  More ==> EFF

USA Today: Racist, hate-filled, stupid. . .or what?  (SeanRobins.com)
What would motivate USA Today to take yet another cheap shot on behalf of the mainstream media at Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice?  We don't know precisely, there are a number of choices.  Racism--which has reared its ugly head at successful Republican and conservative African Americans, such as Ms. Rice, Colin Powell and Clarence Thomas, both by other blacks and white liberals.  How about hate--there seems to be a lot of that to go around for anyone associated with President Bush. . .or conservatism.  Or is it just plain 'ol stupidity?  The editors at USA Today evidently haven't learned the lesson that more and more of the mainstream media is slowly, but surely, learning the hard way: That they can't get away with anything they like, with a (now no longer reasonable) hope that no one will catch on.

Today, we catch on pretty quickly.  So the idiots at USA Today should not be surprised that the cheap trick they tried to pull recently on Ms. Rice was discovered.  In two separate October 19th news stories, one from the USA Today web site, and the other, accompanying a different story using the same (although undoctored) AP photo, on Yahoo's Spanish-language news page.  The photo featured on the USA Today web site has been "fooled with" using graphic software--a practice that has become commonplace enough to have its own slang terminology:  Photoshopped.  Ms. Rice's eyes have been altered in the photo to make her look particularly strange, almost as if she was in some sort of demonic trance.

Top-flight yellow journalism brought to you by the fine folks at USA Today.

Photo of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, as it appeared along with a news story in USA Today's October 19, 2005 web edition.  See the original here.	And the same (undoctored) AP photo, as it appeared on Yahoo's Spanish-language web site on the very same day,  Condi with normal eyes.  See the original here.

Update!  Caught with their pants down, at 3:33 p.m. today (October 26, 2005), after word of their "Photoshopped" Condi photo spread, the good people at USA Today evidently decided to cover their tracks, and replaced the altered Rice photo with an unaffected copy, admitting that they had originally posted an edited photo, with a weany explanation that "the editor brightened a portion of Rice's face, giving her eyes an unnatural appearance."  See the replaced version here.

Judith Miller's job in peril; May leave Times - Joe Hagan (Wall Street Journal)
New York Times reporter Judith Miller has begun discussing her future employment options with the newspaper, including the possibility of a severance package, a lawyer familiar with the matter, said yesterday.  The discussion about her future comes several days after the public rupture of the relationship between the Times and Ms. Miller, a 28-year veteran of the paper. Both the editor and the publisher of the Times have expressed regret for their unequivocal support for Ms. Miller when she spent 85 days in jail for refusing to testify before a federal grand jury investigating the unmasking of a Central Intelligence Agency operative.

The crystal ball of bias - L. Brent Bozell (NewsBusters.com)
The news media insist that what conservatives don’t like about their reporting is the unpleasant truths they uncover. If that’s true, how do they explain their fixation on the reporting of unpleasantries which have yet to occur?  Monday morning, October 24, began with great conjuring of clouds and thunder claps about all the bad news about to land on President Bush. The gloom over the breakfast table was impenetrable, perhaps because the soothsayers all had partisan backgrounds. NBC brought on Tim Russert, former Democratic aide (Cuomo and Moynihan). ABC invited George Stephanopoulos, former Democratic aide (the Clintons). CBS offered Amy Walter, former Democratic aide (campaign manager for Congresswoman Marjorie Margolies- Mezvinsky in 1994 – the year she was defeated).

After Supreme Court denies stay, Missouri killer put to death - Robert Patrick (St. Louis-Post Dispatch)
With a sheet covering him to his neck, Marlin Gray was executed by Missouri state employees early this morning for his role in the 1991 murders of two young women on the old Chain of Rocks Bridge. . . . Prosecutors said Gray was the mastermind of the robbery and murder that claimed the lives of Julie and Robin Kerry, who were thrown off the bridge. Robin's body has never been found.

Phila. Council members uncomfortable about Mariano remaining - Mark McDonald (Phila. Daily News)
It was like they were reading from a script. Ask City Council members about Rick Mariano and the pat reply was "Hey, the guy's innocent until proven guilty."  But if you pushed them a little, perhaps raising the spectacle of Council trying to debate ethics legislation this fall with a colleague indicted on federal corruption charges sitting in their midst, the pols started scattering.  One worried about Mariano's mental state, warning darkly: "Rick still has a permit to carry a gun. We don't have to go through the security screening devices, and some of us are a little concerned about that."
 

Iraq's constitution ratified by voters (AP)
Iraq's election commission declared Tuesday that final results from the Oct. 15 referendum show the new constitution was ratified by a huge margin, paving the way for elections. Sunni Arab leaders raised doubts that it would be embraced by those at the heart of the insurgency.  Nearly 79 percent of the 9.8 million voters nationwide supported the charter, the Independent Election Commission announced after a 10-day audit following allegations of fraud. Election official Farid Ayar said the audit turned up no significant fraud, despite allegations by Sunnis opposed to the charter.  More ==> Election results

Phila. City Councilman, Mariano, indicted on federal fraud, bribery charges - Patrick Walters (AP)
A city councilman was indicted on federal fraud and bribery charges Tuesday, five days after he was talked down from the City Hall observation deck.  Rick Mariano, 50, was accused of giving favors to friends and businesses that paid his personal expenses. Prosecutors said he helped one business receive a tax break and gave another help on buying city property.

U.S., France demand Syria detain assassination suspects
The United States and France have issued a demand that Syria detain suspects identified in an investigation as being involved in the assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Hariri.  A U.N. Security Council resolution threatening sanctions against Syria if it fails to cooperate with the investigation into Hariri's assassination is underway.  More ==> AP

BetterJustice.com: Consortium of conservative supporters of the President, speak out against Miers (BetterJustice.com)
A groupinjg of some of the most notable names in conservatism today, have lent their names and voices to a public campaign seeking the withdrawal of the nomincation of Harriet Miers to the U.S. Supreme Court.  An online petition asking for the withdrawal of the Miers nomination, and a 30-second spot slated for broadcast beginning on Wednesday, are featured on the web site that debuted today.

La. Gov. Blanco needs more time to figure out what her role in Katrina response was (AP)
Gov. Kathleen Blanco has asked for more time to deliver documents to congressional committees about her office's role in Hurricane Katrina preparations and emergency response to the storm.  The delay would mean it could be December before internal documents reflecting what was going on behind the scenes are made public.

Cindy: Time to chain yourself to the gates - Robert H. Reid (AP)
[Ed. Note: Psycho Iraq War protestor, Cindy Sheehan, has vowed to chain herself to the gates of the White House after the death of the 2,000th U.S. serviceman is killed in Iraq.  She now has her chance . . .]
A U.S. Army sergeant died of wounds suffered in Iraq, the Pentagon announced Tuesday. The death--along with two others announced Tuesday--brought to 2,000 the number of U.S. military members who have died since the start of the Iraq conflict in 2003.  Staff Sgt. George T. Alexander, Jr., 34, of Killeen, Texas, died Saturday at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas, of wounds suffered Oct. 17, when a bomb exploded near his vehicle in the central Iraqi city of Samarra, the Defense Department said.

Joe Wilson's credibility in doubt, as charges in probe considered - Dana Milbank & Walter Pincus (Washington Post)
To his backers, Joseph C. Wilson IV is a brave whistle-blower wronged by the Bush administration. To his critics, he is a partisan who spouts unreliable information.  But nobody disputes this: Possessed of a flamboyant style and a love for the camera lens, Wilson helped propel the unmasking of his wife's identity as a CIA operative into a sprawling, two-year legal probe that climaxes this week with the possible indictment of key White House officials. He also turned an arcane matter involving the Intelligence Identities Protection Act into a proxy fight over the administration's credibility and its case for war in Iraq.

Galloway asks to be charged with perjury (UK Evening Standard)
George Galloway has challenged US senators to charge him with perjury over claims that he solicited money from Saddam Hussein's oil-for-food programme and lied about it under oath.  The US Senate committee investigating the Respect MP's alleged involvement in the saga claims to have discovered £85,000 (150,000 dollars) in Iraqi oil money in his estranged wife's bank account.  And its chairman, Republican Senator Norm Coleman, says this means Mr Galloway lied under oath when giving evidence to the Senate Permanent Sub-committee on Investigations on May 17 this year, when he offered a passionate defence against similar claims.

British MP Galloway accused of lying to Congress; fingered in UN oil-for-food scandal - Rupert Cornwall (UK Independent)
George Galloway, the British MP, was last night accused of lying by a US Congressional committee when he testified earlier this year that he had not received any United Nation food-for-oil allocations from the deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.  In a report issued here, Minnesota Senator Norm Coleman and his colleagues on the Senate Subcommittee for Investigations claim to have evidence showing that Mr Galloway's political organisation and his wife received vouchers worth almost $600,000 (£338,000) from the then Iraqi government.

Galloway could face criminal charges for lying to Congress (DrudgeReport.com)
George Galloway has strongly refuted new allegations that he pocketed money from Saddam Hussein's scandal ridden oil-for-food programme and lied about it under oath.  The US Senate committee investigating the Respect MP's alleged involvement in the saga claims to have discovered £85,000 (150,000 dollars) in Iraqi oil money in his wife's bank account.  Mr Galloway may face criminal charges if found to have given false testimony to the committee when he defended himself against similar claims in a passionate showdown earlier this year.  More==> Read Galloway's testimony | View testimony

Rosa Parks dead at 92 - Bree Fowler (AP)
Rosa Lee Parks, whose refusal to give up her bus seat to a white man sparked the modern civil rights movement, died Monday. She was 92.  Mrs. Parks died at her home of natural causes, said Karen Morgan, a spokeswoman for U.S. Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich.  Mrs. Parks was 42 when she committed an act of defiance in 1955 that was to change the course of American history and earn her the title "mother of the civil rights movement."

Miller's tale: Can the reporter--or the New York Times--be trusted? (Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting)
The New York Times editorial page told readers over and over again that Times reporter Judith Miller went to jail for 85 days for a noble cause--the protection of confidential sources.  But to many outside observers, the principles that Miller went to jail for were far from clear, with many fundamental questions left unanswered.  Readers and media watchers were eager to hear Miller's side of the story, and to see the newspaper devote its considerable journalistic energy to investigating a crucial political story that its reporter was in the middle of: the efforts of Bush administration officials to punish a critic by leaking the covert identity of Valerie Plame Wilson to the media. But neither the October 16 report written by a team of Times reporters, nor the accompanying first-person tale written by Miller herself, answered the questions posed by critics. In fact, those questions have only multiplied.

Fitzgerald doesn't have to indict anyone - William Kristol (The Weekly Standard)
As I write on Friday afternoon October 21, no one outside special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald's office--and perhaps not even Fitzgerald himself--knows what, if any, charges he'll ultimately bring in the Valerie Plame leak inquiry. Public understanding of the events in question--the disclosure of Plame's identity as a CIA operative, and any possible perjury or obstruction of justice that might have ensued--remains radically incomplete. . . . Unless the perjury is clear-cut or the obstruction of justice willful and determined, we hope that the special prosecutor has the courage to end the inquiry without bringing indictments. It is fundamentally inappropriate to allow the criminal law to be used to resolve what is basically a policy and political dispute within the administration, or between the administration and its critics.

Retired Central Texas judge to hear DeLay motion to remove Perkins from case (KWTX-TV)
Former Bell County District Judge C. W. Duncan will decide whether Travis County District Judge Bob Perkins is too much of a Democrat to preside over the case of U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. . . . On Friday Delay’s attorney, Dick DeGuerin, filed a recusal motion, seeking the Perkins’ removal from the case because the judge has supported Democratic causes.

Paramount claims 11-year megahit Frasier lost $200 million - Ciar Byrne (U.K. Independent)
The unlikely scenario of an erudite-but-frustrated radio psychiatrist sharing his Seattle apartment with his ageing father and his Mancunian carer turned out to be pure comedy gold.  But a year after the final episode of Frasier was aired, the award-winning sitcom starring Kelsey Grammer is at the centre of a Hollywood-style dispute over how it failed to turn a net profit.

Indictments would be a grave injustice - Michael Barone (RealClearePolitics.com)
For more than two years, many in the mainstream media have been buzzing about the prospect that White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove or Vice President Chief of Staff Scooter Libby would be indicted for revealing the name of CIA officer Valerie Plame.  The press has been full of righteous indignation that high officials in the Bush administration would endanger the identity of a covert agent. And it has been argued that administration officials did this to punish a fearless truth-teller -- Plame's husband, Joseph Wilson -- a former ambassador who charged that the Bush administration purposefully ignored intelligence and lied about Iraqi attempts to obtain uranium to develop weapons of mass destruction.

Miller attacks Calame, Abramson and Keller over criticisms - Greg Mitchell (Editor & Publisher)
Byron "Barney" Calame, public editor for The New York Times, posted at his Web journal late Sunday a reply from reporter Judith Miller, strenuously taking issue with his critique of her actions in the CIA leak issue published in the newspaper earlier that day.  In it, among other things, she raises the volume in her dispute with Executive Editor Bill Keller, as she now terms Keller's memo to staff on Friday "ugly." Also, for the first time, she names Jill Abramson as the editor she talked to about supposedly writing an article about the Plame outing -- then attacked her version of events.

Miller "dismayed" by Times' criticism - Amy Westfeldt (AP)
New York Times reporter Judith Miller is defending herself against her own paper's criticism of her role in the CIA leak controversy, saying she was proud to serve time in jail to protect a confidential source, "even if he happened to work for the Bush White House.  Miller's response came in a lengthy e-mail to public editor Byron Calame, who recommended in a Sunday column that the Times review Miller's journalistic practices for conduct that raised "clear issues of trust and credibility."

Corzine on finances: Feigns ignorance of his own business - Cynthia Burton (Philadelphia Inquirer)
When Democratic gubernatorial nominee Jon S. Corzine's finances come into question on the campaign trail, he says he doesn't know much about them. "For the life of me, I don't know what's going on," he said in an interview.  Sometimes, however, the see-no-green approach has drawn fire from critics.  The multimillionaire U.S. senator did not know five years ago that some poor people who lived in the 315 trailer parks owned by Affordable Residential Communities Inc. of Denver were unhappy. A former Goldman Sachs chairman, Corzine is an investor in that company, run by two former Goldman subordinates.  Now, as he runs for governor, the residents are still complaining about rents and regulations. When asked about it recently, Corzine said he would have his attorney look into it.

Sympathetic reportage fails to insulate journalists from terrorist attack on hotel - Mariam Fam (AP)
Suicide bombers including one in a cement truck packed with explosives launched a dramatic attack Monday against the Palestine Hotel, where many foreign journalists are based, sending up a giant cloud of smoke and debris over central Baghdad. American troops and journalists escaped without serious injury but at least a half-dozen passers-by were killed.

Miss Run Amok stirs up a storm at America's most famous paper - Francis Harris (U.K. Telegraph)
Civil war erupted at America's most famous newspaper yesterday, with senior staff exchanging public recriminations over the actions of a controversial reporter nicknamed "Miss Run Amok."  The reader representative of The New York Times, a senior figure in the paper's hierarchy, roundly criticised both its editor and its publisher for their "deference" to the reporter, Judith Miller.

Patrick Fitzgerald is really investigating a policy dispute (OpinionJournal.com)
Rampant leaks notwithstanding, no one but Patrick Fitzgerald knows all of the criminal evidence the special prosecutor is considering against senior White House officials. Our hope is that he also understands that the job of a prosecutor is not to settle what at bottom is a political and policy fight over the war in Iraq.  Let's stipulate that the law is the law, and if Bush Administration officials lied to a grand jury in the clear and obvious way that Bill Clinton did, they should be prosecuted. If Mr. Fitzgerald has evidence of a malicious attempt to expose a CIA undercover agent, as defined by the relevant statute, the same applies. But the fact that the prosecutor has waited as long as he has--until the last days of his grand jury--suggests that he considers this a less than obvious case. A close call deserves to be a no call.

Bush holds "red line" on Miers papers (UPI)
President Bush refused Monday to allow senators to review documents on Harriet Miers' work as White House counsel.  "They may ask for paperwork about the decision-making process, what her recommendations were, and that would breach very important confidentiality," he told reporters. "And it's a red line I'm not willing to cross."

N.C. state seeks to distance itself from instructor who called for extermination of white people (AP)
North Carolina State University has distanced itself from comments made by an occasional instructor who recently said blacks must "exterminate white people off the face of the planet."  Kamau Kambon, an author who taught in N.C. State's Africana Studies program as recently as this past spring, made the comments Oct. 14 during a conference at Howard University in Washington, D.C., that was televised nationally by C-SPAN.

WithdrawMiers.org seeks candidates voluntary withdrawal (WithdrawMiers.org)
A new web site opened for business today, and it seeks support from conservatives and Republicans, to ban together to urge the candidate, Harriet Miers, to withdraw her name from contention for a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court.  Such a move may be the best political middle ground achievable under the circumstances, and one which would preserve the political capital expended by President Bush in proferring and supporting the Miers nomination.

Five-year-old censored by NY school to get his day in court (Catholic News Agency)
5-year old Antonio Peck had no idea when he turned in his homework assignment--a poster about protecting the environment--that it would land him in federal court.  Peck, then a kindergarten student at Baldwinsville, NY’s Catherine McNamara Elementary School, originally turned in his poster-assignment to his teacher in 1999. It featured, among other things, a cut out picture of Jesus--something he reportedly thought applicable to the environment, and the assignment.  School officials however, felt otherwise. The rejected a first version of the poster and folded Antonio’s second attempt in half, in order to obscure the image of a kneeling Jesus they thought to be too religious in nature.

How many ACLU lawyers can dance on the head of a pin? - John Leo (RealClearPolitics.com)
The "tiny cross" people at the American Civil Liberties Union are at it again. These are the folks with extra-keen eyes and powerful magnifying glasses who examine the official seals of towns and counties, looking for miniature crosses that ACLU lawyers like to trumpet as grave threats to separation of church and state.  This time around, the folks with the magnifying glasses are leaning on the village of Tijeras, N.M., whose seal contains a conquistador's helmet and sword, a scroll, a desert plant, a fairly large religious symbol (the Native American zia) and a quite small Christian cross. "Tiny cross" inspectors are not permitted to fret about large non-Christian religious symbols, only undersized Christian ones, so the ACLU filed suit to get the cross removed.

Justice Breyer's vision for a progressive revival on the Supreme Court - Jeffrey Toobin (The New Yorker)
In the weeks after the Supreme Court issued its decision in Bush v. Gore, on December 12, 2000, the mood was despondent in the chambers of the Justices on the losing side. The five-to-four ruling ended the recount of the Presidential vote in Florida and assured George W. Bush’s victory in the election. “The clerks were tremendously alienated,” one recalled recently. “A lot of them thought that the Court was a fraud, that the place had sacrificed its legitimacy, and that there really wasn’t much point in taking the whole institution seriously anymore." . . . In September, Breyer published “Active Liberty: Interpreting Our Democratic Constitution,” a manifesto for a progressive revival in American jurisprudence. The book, which is a hundred and sixty-one pages long, was inspired in part by Breyer’s disdain for the method of constitutional interpretation championed by his principal ideological rivals on the Court, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.

Ohio county to begin crackdown on illegal aliens (WLWT-TV)
Butler County officials said they're going to start cracking down on undocumented workers in the area.  Butler County Sheriff Richard Jones, County Commissioner Michael Fox, and State Rep. Courtney Combs held a joint news conference Friday morning to discuss their plans to encourage lawmakers to make it a crime, and possibly a deportable act, for an illegal immigrant to be anywhere in Ohio.

Flooded 9th ward to evolve or vanish - Thomas Korosec (Houston Chronicle)
Harry Williams kicked in the front door of his hulking white clapboard house on St. Maurice Avenue, then shielded his nose from the stench.  "It's bad, man," said Williams, surveying the upside-down furniture that had blocked the entry, the moldy walls and his big-screen TV, which was still holding water. "There's nothing to save in here." . . . [F]ederal officials, academics and others question the wisdom of trying to rebuild once more. They say the ward and other low-lying areas should be returned to their original state as marshland, to act as hurricane buffers protecting a smaller city occupying only the higher ground.

Saudi dollars and jihad - Rachel Ehrenfeld (FrontPageMagazine.com)
Earlier this month, President George W. Bush finally declared that our war is with Radical Islam. He said: “In pursuit of their goals, Islamic Radicals are empowered by helpers and enablers…They are strengthened by front operations – such as corrupted charities – and those who aggressively fund the spread of Radical, intolerant versions of Islam.” Defeating “the murderous ideology of the Islamic Radicals,” he stated, is the “great challenge of our century.” This plague cannot be eliminated by appeasement, dialogue, or negotiated solutions.

Another example of why the Right loves Howard Dean - Josie Huang (Portland Press Herald)
The Bush White House is the most corrupt administration in U.S. history since President Warren G. Harding's, said Howard Dean during his first visit to Maine as chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Dean's comments Saturday came as top White House advisers are being investigated for their roles in the outing of a CIA operative and Tom DeLay, the former second-ranking Republican in the House of Representatives, faces conspiracy and money-laundering charges.  "The first thing we're going to do is we're going to have ethics come back to Washington again," said Dean, the keynote speaker at Saturday night's annual fundraising dinner for the Maine Democratic Party at the Lewiston Armory.

Brits ban piggy banks (AFP)
British banks are banning piggy banks because they may offend some Muslims.  Halifax and NatWest banks have led the move to scrap the time-honoured symbol of saving from being given to children or used in their advertising, the Daily Express/Daily Star group reported today. Muslims do not eat pork, as Islamic culture deems the pig to be an impure animal.

Times' ombudsman suggests review of Miller's "trust and credibility" - Amy Westfeldt (AP)
The New York Times' ombudsman said the newspaper should review reporter Judith Miller's journalism practices to address "clear issues of trust and credibility" in her role in the CIA leak investigation. Miller's attorney called the newspaper's recent criticism of her "shameless."  Times Public Editor Byron Calame also said the paper should consider updating its ethics guidelines on using anonymous sources and quoted publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. as saying "there are new limits" on what Miller can do in the future.

Times' war on Judith Miller - Jonathan Darman (Newsweek)
Judith Miller wanted a restful weekend. Days after her newspaper published a blistering account of her role in the Valerie Plame leak case, The New York Times reporter went home to tony Sag Harbor, N.Y. On the agenda: walks on the beach and playing with her dog. But as she opened up an e-mail last Friday afternoon from Times editor Bill Keller to the paper's employees, all those plans went out the window. Miller, Keller wrote, had "misled" editors about her involvement in a "whispering campaign" against Ambassador Joe Wilson and had perhaps become inappropriately "entangled" with Dick Cheney's chief of staff. The memo, which Miller called "seriously inaccurate," caught her off guard. "I didn't know it was coming," she told Newsweek.

Preliminary report finds numerous flaws in levees - Ralph Vartabedian & Stephen Braun (Los Angeles Times)
The massive failures of levees in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina resulted from flaws at almost every level in the conception, design, construction and maintenance of the region's flood control system, according to investigators' preliminary findings.  The Army Corps of Engineers, local levee boards in Louisiana and other agencies failed to grasp warning signs over the last decade that the levees were not as strong as expected, according to Robert Bea, an engineering professor at the University of California-Berkeley, who is part of a National Science Foundation investigating team.

Corzine, Forrester pick up newspaper endorsements (AP)
Republican Doug Forrester has garnered an endorsement from the Asbury Park Press in his bid for governor, while The Times of Trenton called Democrat Jon Corzine the better man for the job.  In an editorial in its Sunday edition, the Press cited Forrester's appreciation for the paralytic effect of skyrocketing property taxes and how corruption has stymied solutions to New Jersey's troubles.  The newspaper also lauded the sense of urgency Forrester has infused into his campaign, calling it a prerequisite to "attacking the major problems that have been left unsolved by Democrats in Trenton and the political bosses pulling their strings."

Journalist who filmed burning of Taliban bodies says media got it all wrong - Noel Sheppard (NewsBusters.com)
There has been a lot of outrage in the media concerning the burning of a couple of dead, Taliban fighters in Afghanistan in early October. Yet, the Australian journalist who videotaped the proceedings, Stephen Dupont, stated in an interview on National Public Radio yesterday that he believed the bodies were burned purely for reasons of hygiene when the local villagers refused to retrieve them, and that the American soldiers didn't do anything wrong.  “I actually believe that the guys who were involved in the burning did it with honorable, you know, reasons. They did it through their orders, or they did if for hygiene. I had no doubt in my mind that they were telling me the truth. If they were doing something that was problematic or controversial, there’s no way they would have shown me this. There’s no way they would have let me go up there and film this."

What Miers must show - Charles Fried (Boston Globe)
Of course, it is not necessary for Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers to have attended an elite law school to be qualified for a seat on the Supreme Court: Neither John Marshall Harlan nor his grandfather (famous for his eloquent dissent in the separate-but-equal decision) did, and Robert Jackson, perhaps the most elegant writer in the court's history, attended no law school at all.  And it certainly is not necessary that she previously have served as a judge on a lower court. Many of the great justices were new to the bench, starting with John Marshall, through Charles Evans Hughes, Earl Warren, and William Rehnquist.  What is indispensable is that she be able to think lucidly and deeply about legal questions and express her thoughts in clear, pointed, understandable prose. A justice without those capabilities -- however generally intelligent, decent, and hardworking -- risks being a calamity for the court, the law, and the country.

Palestinian Authority to integrate Al Aksa Brigades into PA security forces (IMRA.org)
[Ed. Note: Are they kidding? This is like a bunny rabbit climbing down the throat of a python, in hopes that it will improve relations.]  The Palestinian Authority announced on Sunday a security plan aimed at disbanding the armed wing of Fatah and recruiting hundreds of its members to the security forces.  Endorsed by the PA's National Security Council during a meeting in Ramallah, the plan calls for establishing training camps for the militiamen - most of who belong to the ruling Fatah party - as a first step towards incorporating them into the security forces. The meeting was attended by commanders of all the PA security forces.

Zogby: Bush approval bounce? (NewsMax.com)
President Bush, his job approval rating beleaguered by poor marks in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, rebounded from historic lows this summer to 45% in Zogby International's latest poll. The president's job approval numbers bumped back up into the range where they have hovered for most of his second term. The survey also found that, while voters do not give the President passing marks on his handling of the Iraq War, half (50%) believe the recently-passed Iraqi constitution is a major step in the right direction for the strife-torn nation that will lead to peace and democracy.

Battles change, wars don't - Victor Davis Hanson (VictorHanson.com)
Modernists like to believe that we have entered an entirely new era of armed conflict. To some military thinkers, it's the primordial nature of the terrorists' beheadings, suicide bombings and improvised explosive devices that has marked a completely new form of "asymmetrical warfare" in which the two sides are terribly mismatched.  Others have a different argument. They say it is our own high-tech, computer-enhanced munitions that have reinvented the very nature of conflict into something called "4th-generational war."  But neither argument could be further from the truth. War is like water — its fundamental character remains unchanging precisely because the nature of the humans who fight it is constant over the centuries.

Malik Zulu Shabazz: New Black Panther Party leader. . .and racist (DisovertheNetwork.org)
Born Paris Lewis, Malik Zulu Shabazz has become an increasingly well known figure in radical Black Muslim politics since the early 1990s and currently heads the New Black Panther Party (NBPP), whose twin hallmarks are anti-white and anti-Semitic hatred.

Philly Councilman Mariano released after psych eval (Local6.com)
Philadelphia City Councilman Rick Mariano is out of the hospital Saturday after undergoing a psychiatric evaluation, Philadelphia television station WCAU reported.  Mariano is currently staying with family, and he hopes to be back at the City Council by the middle of the week, the station said.  His release comes only days after he had to be talked out of the city hall clock tower by Mayor John Street and Police Commissioner Sylvester Johnson.

Jefferson Parish President Broussard admits disaster plan flawed - Michelle Krupa (Times-Picayune)
After nearly two months of public vitriol against his decision to evacuate pump operators before Hurricane Katrina, Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard has admitted to "flaws" in the parish disaster plan, conceding that workers were sent "too far away" to be able to restart pumps before flooding ruined thousands of homes.  In an advertisement financed with parish money and scheduled to be published in Sunday's Times-Picayune, Broussard again says dispatching 1,100 essential employees, including pump workers, to shelters in Washington Parish was the right call as a "potentially catastrophic Category 5 storm" aimed at Jefferson.

Insiders see hint of Miers pullout - Ralph Z. Hallow & Charles Hurt (Washington Times)
The White House has begun making contingency plans for the withdrawal of Harriet Miers as President Bush's choice to fill a seat on the Supreme Court, conservative sources said yesterday.  "White House senior staff are starting to ask outside people, saying, 'We're not discussing pulling out her nomination, but if we were to, do you have any advice as to how we should do it?' " a conservative Republican with ties to the White House told The Washington Times.

AP no longer finds Cindy Sheehan newsworthy...When she criticizes Hillary - Lyford Beverage (NewsBusters.com)
When Cindy Sheehan showed up outside of President Bush's Crawford, TX ranch in August, it was, to a certain degree, understandable that there would be some press coverage. She was there, the media was there, there wasn't a lot to write about. But the coverage was weak and biased in almost all cases, carrying her message uncritically, with no evaluation of who she was or what she was saying. The attitude seemed to be that she lost her son, she was criticizing the President, so she was credible and newsworthy, no matter what else there was in her views and attitudes. Indeed, I noted at the time how the Associated Press was acting as a PR firm for Sheehan, as opposed to an actual news organization.

Senatorial duties: The White House should withdraw Miers' nomination (NationalReview.com)
Five days into White House “qualifications week” in making the case for Harriet Miers her nomination is looking weaker rather than stronger. No matter how many times Scott McClellan says that she is “extremely well qualified” it doesn't make it so, especially when she makes basic constitutional flubs on her Senate questionnaire and is leaving senators singularly unimpressed during her Capitol Hill visits.  The Miers nomination has already done harm to the president politically by dividing his base, and promises more damage in the weeks ahead. The acrimony among conservatives is likely only to get worse, since this nomination is so rich in embarrassments. And the Senate GOP will be dragged into a bloody fight with Democrats over the nomination. There's nothing wrong, of course, with fighting with Democrats, but it makes little sense to have a knock-down-drag-out over a nominee who has thin qualifications, an uncertain judicial philosophy, and was picked partly to avoid such a fight.

Goofy, even by Democrat standards - David Thibault (CNS News)
If the goofy indictment of Tom DeLay wasn't enough to make you laugh about those poor hapless Democrats and their desperation tactics, then the scene Friday in an Austin, Texas, courtroom had to make you split a gut.  There was Judge Bob Perkins - a contributor to MoveOn.org - presiding over the arraignment of DeLay on conspiracy and money laundering charges. To Perkins' credit, he appeared to agree for the need to recuse himself, but only after a motion by DeLay's attorney, Dick DeGuerin.

DeLay: "I will absolutely be exonerated" (AP)
Rep. Tom DeLay appeared in court Friday for the first time since his indictment, but his arraignment on conspiracy and money laundering charges was delayed pending a hearing on his request for a new judge in the politically charged case.  DeLay, who has stepped aside at least for the time being as House majority leader, did not speak during the brief court session, and was not called on to make a plea. But at a news conference shortly afterward, he attacked the prosecutor in the case as politically motivated, and said, "I will absolutely be exonerated."

DeLay "charged for defeating Democrats," he says - Susan Jones (CNS News)
Rep. Tom DeLay did not speak during his first court hearing on conspiracy and money laundering charges Friday morning. But afterwards, he told reporters gathered outside the Austin, Texas, courthouse that he will be totally exonerated.  DeLay's arraignment was postponed when his attorney, Dick DeGuerin, asked Judge Bob Perkins, an elected Democrat, to recuse himself from the proceedings.

On verge of indictment, Philadelphia Councilman Mariano is talked-down from City Hall tower - Kathy Matheson (AP)
A city councilman who is the target of a federal investigation sought psychiatric care Thursday after being escorted down from City Hall's observation deck by the police commissioner.  Commissioner Sylvester Johnson and Mayor John Street, who was the first to speak with Councilman Rick Mariano near the top of the towering building, would not characterize Mariano as suicidal.

Whose speech is free? - Michael Kinsley (Washington Post)
Here in mediaworld, we're all quite cross at the New York Times and its former star reporter, Judith Miller. She is widely believed to have sought her martyrdom as a career move. And then she gave up after a mere couple of months in jail. What a wuss! And the Times: This great institution let a mere reporter lead it around by its nose, with predictable results. What a super-wuss!! But this latest blow to the reputation of the MSM (mainstream media) cannot be pinned on Miller or the Times. It is the result of a sentimental and self-indulgent view of journalism widely shared in mediaworld -- including by many of the journalists and media institutions now distancing themselves from Miller and the Times.

Questions arise: Did Plame prosecutor continue job after concluding no crime committed (NewsMax.com)
Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has likely decided not to indict top White House aides Karl Rove and Lewis "Scooter" Libby based on allegations they "outed" CIA employee Valerie Plame, lawyers close to Fitzgerald's Leakgate investigation have told the New York Times.  Instead, the paper said, conflicting accounts given by Mr. Rove and Mr. Libby have been the focus of Mr. Fitzgerald's probe "almost from the start" - raising questions about whether the respected prosecutor continued his investigation after determining that no underlying crime had been committed.

NC State U. prof. calls for extermination of white people - Mike Adams (FrontPageMagazine.com)
Columnist Jon Sanders of the John Locke Foundation in Raleigh, NC, has written a blog entry that reveals just how easy it is to get a job teaching Africana Studies at North Carolina State University. It also demonstrates how the diversity movement is bringing people together in the great state of North Carolina.  Sanders’ recent blog directs readers to C-SPAN online, where they can click on the recent archives and scroll down until they find the “Black Media Forum on the Image of Black Americans in Mainstream Media.” This was a program presented on October 14^th at Howard University. Dr. Kamau Kambon makes his appearance about three hours into the four-hour event.

RNC out-fundraises DNC by 2-1 (AP)
The Republican National Committee continued to raise more money than its counterpart on the Democratic side by a 2-1 margin in the third quarter of the year, party officials said Thursday.  The RNC raised just over $19 million in the third quarter of the year, while the Democratic National Committee raised $10.7 million.

DeLay's lawyers seek recusal of trial judge who gave to moveon.org (AFP)
Tom DeLay, a top Republican ally of President George W. Bush, appeared in court for the first time on charges of illegal political financing and demanded a new judge take control of his trial.  The formal arraignment of DeLay, who has stepped down as leader of the Republican majority in the House of Representatives, was delayed because his attorney said Judge Bob Perkins had made contributions to the Democratic Party and other groups that oppose the Republicans.

Syrian, Lebanese leaders implicated in assasination of prime minister Hariri (World Tribune)
A United Nations investigation headed by German prosecutor Detlev Mehlis has identified political and military leaders as suspects in the Hariri assassination, Western diplomatic sources said.  The report, relayed on Thursday to UN secretary-general Kofi Annan, determined that leading Syrian and Lebanese intelligence officers lied to UN investigators and could be subject to prosecution.

Pres. Bush calls for U.N. action in assasination of Lebanese prime minister by Syria (AP)
President Bush on Friday called on the United Nations to convene a session as soon as possible to deal with a U.N. investigative report implicating Syrian officials in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.  "The report strongly suggests that the politically motivated assassination could not have taken place without Syrian involvement," Bush said after helping dedicate a new pavilion at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum in Southern California.  The U.N. investigative report, which Bush called "deeply disturbing," established a link between high-ranking Syrian officials and their Lebanese allies in Hariri's murder Feb. 14 in Beirut.

Bible to be banned at Edinburgh University (WorldNetDaily.com)
Edinburgh University in Scotland will begin banning Holy Bibles from its student halls of residence due to concern they are the source of discrimination against students of other faiths.  The ban was a response to student association protests as well as an agenda to equally support all faiths, a university spokesman told the Times of London.

Aiding and abetting the enemy - Cliff Kincaid (AccuracyinMedia.org)
Senator James Inhofe has made several trips to our troops fighting the war on terrorism and has returned to convey their thoughts about how our own media undermine their mission. But Inhofe has gone farther. His office has compiled research into how America's two leading newspapers, the Washington Post and New York Times, have covered the war in their editorials. The results demonstrate a tendency to emphasize examples of misconduct by U.S. troops and largely ignore the atrocities committed by the enemy.

Who says mug shots are all bad? - Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Tx.), as we all know presently in the midst of a political persecution by arch Texas Democratic nemesis, prosecutor Ronnie Earle, sidestepped one of the key features of Earle's machinations by picking a different county to present himself for processing.  DeLay went to Harris County, rather than the expected Bend County, and posted bond on his own terms.  In doing so, he short-changed Earle by avoiding what might otherwise have been a more "showy" process, with handcuffs and a really bad booking photo.  As things went, the photo taken of DeLay is suitable for framing.  Just not by Ronnie Earle.  It's such a shame that the Dems won't have the mug shot that had hoped for.

Senate balks at cutting pork for Alaskan bridges to nowhere - Jim Abrams (AP)
In a clash of generations and political philosophy, 37-year Senate veteran Ted Stevens of Alaska told a freshman colleague that he would resign and "be taken out of here on a stretcher" if the Senate killed funding for two Alaskan bridges.  "It is an offense, a threat to every person in my state," the 81-year-old Stevens said of the proposal by fellow Republican Tom Coburn of Oklahoma to eliminate some $450 million in federal funds for Alaskan bridges and shift $75 million to a Louisiana bridge damaged by Hurricane Katrina.

Joe Wilson: Admits that he has "taken too many drugs..." - Brian Babcock (SF Tribune)
American troops should be taken out of combat and used in limited ways only, such as training Iraqi troops and giving air support, Joseph Wilson, husband of outed CIA agent Valerie Plame, said Tuesday night at San Francisco State's McKenna Theatre. . . . Some in the audience urged him to run for political office. But Wilson said he'd been a true child of the 1960s and had ``too many wives and taken too many drugs. And, yes, I did inhale."

Muslim-American groups violate tax-exempt status - Lee Kaplan (FranotPageMagazine.com)
FrontPageMag.com and Stop the ISM recently revealed that some organizations affiliated with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) may have repeatedly violated U.S. tax-code requirements for maintaining non-profit status. Specifically, the report pointed out red flags in the tax returns of the Middle East Children’s Alliance, Al Awda, Holy Land Trust and the Electronic Intifada, all fiercely partisan groups that nevertheless affect political neutrality for tax purposes.  These revelations led to further research into the tax returns of other ISM-affiliated groups. The result is an exposure of the links between the PLO and the Palestinian movement in the United States. A close inspection of these groups further revealed seeming violations obscured by their status as a "group" or "political action committee" (PAC). This diversionary status is part and parcel of the ISM’s longtime strategy of dividing its operations into multiple entities in order to prevent government scrutiny.

Toledo's thugfest - Michael Reagan (FrontPageMagazine.com)
Lou Ratajski is 86 years old. Last Saturday Lou lost everything he had when mobs looted and burned his little neighborhood tavern in the LaGrange neighborhood of Toledo, Ohio. The media blamed it on a race riot. It wasn’t - it was a thugfest, an orgy of gang violence and thievery.  Lou owned Jim and Lou’s Sportsmans Club, the building that was broken into, looted, and then set on fire by hordes of gang members and other criminals, as millions of shocked viewers across the nation watched on their television screens.

Fiscal conservatism makes a comeback (OpinionJournal.com)
It's only taken a decade or so, but suddenly there's momentum in Congress for spending restraint. We'll be watching the fine print, but you can tell Republicans are worried about complaints from conservative voters because for a change they're trying to act, well, like Republicans.  In a first good sign, House leaders are rewriting their Fiscal 2006 budget resolution to increase the amount of "savings" to as much as $50 billion over five years. This is far from onerous, but it is better than the $35 billion Congress passed the first time around.

TV's gloomy take on Iraq - Brent Bozell (TownHall.com)
On Saturday, millions of Iraqis walked with determination to the polls to vote for a new constitution. The turnout was high. The violence was down dramatically from the triumphant elections of January. But the network found all this boring. On the night before the historic vote, ABC led with bird-flu panic. CBS imagined Karl Rove in a prison jumpsuit. NBC hyped inflation. They say that news is a man-bites-dog story. In the Middle East, how common is a constitutional referendum? Have they had one in Egypt? Saudi Arabia? Syria? Jordan? Until the last few years, the phrase "Arab constitutional democracy" sounded like a pipe dream or an oxymoron. But today, the reporters can only kvetch.

Gaza's transformation into Islamist bootcamp - P. David Hornik (FrontPageMagazine.com)
Two politically-correct statements:  1. There is no worse fate for Palestinians than to be ruled by Israel; any Palestinian rule is better.  2. There is no worse fate for Israel than to rule Palestinians; any way of leaving the territories, whether by bilateral agreement or unilateral withdrawal, is better.  Regarding the first statement, a moment’s thought reveals that actually it is far from axiomatic. Terrible things can happen to Arabs who live under rule by other Arabs—merely saying the words Iraq, Algeria, or Syria is enough to illustrate this.

A self-imposed Borking - Terence Jeffrey (TownHall.com)
"I am convinced, as I think almost all constitutional scholars are, that Roe v. Wade is an unconstitutional decision, a serious and wholly unjustifiable judicial usurpation of state legislative authority. I also think that Roe v. Wade is by no means the only example of such unconstitutional behavior by the Supreme Court."  This bit of public truth-telling was committed by Robert Bork, then a professor at Yale Law School, when he testified before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee on June 1, 1981.

Cheeseburger bill passes the House (AP)
The House says if you supersize your fries and your waistline follows, don't blame the food sellers.  By a vote of 307-to-119 it easily approved a measure, nicknamed the cheeseburger bill, to prevent people from suing restaurants and food sellers for obesity-related problems.

Earle presence during grand jury deliberations could result in dismissal - Janet Elliott (Houston Chronicle)
U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay's chief lawyer says he has no evidence that Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle participated in grand jury deliberations, despite having made that allegation in motions to dismiss DeLay's indictments.  But Houston attorney Dick DeGuerin said there have been enough public comments by grand jurors in news media reports to raise suspicions that Earle may have violated laws in his efforts to indict one of the most powerful Republican politicians in the nation. . . . DeGuerin is asking a judge to allow him to question members of the grand juries. A prosecutor being present when a grand jury was deliberating or voting on an indictment is specific grounds under Texas law for an indictment to be dismissed.

Weldon calls for new Able Danger probe (UPI)
A vocal House Republican is calling for a new probe into what he says is a "witch-hunt" by defense officials against a Sept. 11 intelligence whistleblower.  Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Penn., told United Press International that officials at the Defense Intelligence Agency, or DIA, had "conducted a deliberate campaign of character assassination" against the whistleblower, retired U.S. Army Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer.

Following Chertoff's lead, Bush also vows to expel all illegal aliens - Stephen Dinan and Bill Sammon (Washington Times)
President Bush said yesterday that his goal is eventually to expel "every single" illegal alien from the United States as his administration pressed Congress to pass a guest-worker program.  Although conceding that the administration cannot immediately deport the estimated 11 million illegal aliens who are here, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and Labor Secretary Elaine L. Chao told Congress that a temporary-worker program would give aliens an incentive to come out of hiding and let them work legally for six years before being forced to return home.

Pacers' Stephen Jackson charges racism in dress code - Cliff Brunt (AP)
Indiana guard Stephen Jackson believes the NBA's new ban on bling- bling is racially motivated, but says he will abide by the rules.  The NBA has announced that a dress code will go into effect at the start of the season. Players will be required to wear business-casual attire when involved in team or league business. They can't wear visible chains, pendants or medallions over their clothes.

Rush Limbaugh interview by Sean Hannity (FOXNews.com)
Read the transcript (or access the video) of a rare interview of talk radio host, the one, the only...the greatest...Rush Limbaugh, interviewed by Sean Hannity on Hannity & Colmes.

NBC lets Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard off the hook for the 3rd time - Noel Sheppard (NewsBusters.org)
Does the name “Aaron Broussard” ring a bell? Well, he is the president of Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, who was immortalized on NBC’s “Meet the Press” right after Hurricane Katrina hit when he suggested – with tears in his eyes – that the slow response by the federal government resulted in the unnecessary death of the mother of one of his colleagues.  When it turned out that his claims were disputed by the son of the deceased woman, Tim Russert invited Broussard back on “Meet the Press,” and as was reported by NewsBusters, Russert let him off the hook again.  Last evening, Carl Quintanilla did a report on the “NBC Nightly News” about concerns being addressed by residents of Jefferson Parish that the drainage pump operators responsible for preventing flooding during storms were dismissed by Broussard before Katrina hit, and that this is why so many houses in the parish ended up being destroyed.  These grievances have now become a class-action lawsuit against Broussard, a fact that was downplayed in Quintanilla's report.

Yellow press promotes Red rally (AccuracyinMedia.org)
Ms. Petula Dvorak's Washington Post story about the September 24 "anti-war" rally used a strategy that has been employed in the past by reporters anxious to avoid any mention of how communists run these events. She decided to focus on the dupes in the crowd. Dvorak reported, "The demonstration drew grandmothers in wheelchairs and babies in strollers, military veterans in fatigues and protest veterans in tie-dye." . . . Even the Washington Post's media reporter, Howard Kurtz, admitted after the fact the press did a "poor job" of describing the communists behind the demonstration. But it was worse than poor. It was deliberate deception.

Firearms manufacturer protection act close to passage - Jason Barnes (NewsMax.com)
After six years of trying, Republicans in the House of Representatives are expected to pass the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act this week.  The measure, already passed by the Senate, will protect manufacturers and sellers of firearms from lawsuits arising out of the criminal acts of third-parties.

Sheehan attacks Hillary...again - Joe Kovacs (WorldNetDaily.com)
Cindy Sheehan, the so-called "peace mom" on a crusade to end U.S. involvement in the Iraq war, is publicly blasting Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., for her continued support of the ongoing conflict.  I think she is a political animal who believes she has to be a war hawk to keep up with the big boys," Sheehan writes in an open letter posted on anti-Bush filmmaker Michael Moore's website. "I would love to support Hillary for president if she would come out against the travesty in Iraq. But I don't think she can speak out against the occupation, because she supports it. I will not make the mistake of supporting another pro-war Democrat for president again: As I won't support a pro-war Republican."  More ==> Read Cindy's tirade

Bush shows himself to be indifferent, if not hostile, to conservative values - Robert H. Bork (OpinionJournal.com)
With a single stroke--the nomination of Harriet Miers--the president has damaged the prospects for reform of a left-leaning and imperialistic Supreme Court, taken the heart out of a rising generation of constitutional scholars, and widened the fissures within the conservative movement. That's not a bad day's work--for liberals.  There is, to say the least, a heavy presumption that Ms. Miers, though undoubtedly possessed of many sterling qualities, is not qualified to be on the Supreme Court. It is not just that she has no known experience with constitutional law and no known opinions on judicial philosophy. It is worse than that. As president of the Texas Bar Association, she wrote columns for the association's journal. David Brooks of the New York Times examined those columns. He reports, with supporting examples, that the quality of her thought and writing demonstrates absolutely no "ability to write clearly and argue incisively."

Out of jail and in disrepute - Debra Saunders (TownHall.com)
We have everything to be proud of and nothing to apologize for," New York Times reporter Judith Miller told colleagues preparing a story on Miller's testimony before a federal grand jury probing a White House leak that targeted CIA employee Valerie Plame after her husband, former ambassador Joe Wilson, wrote an op-ed piece critical of the Bush administration.  Sorry, but I wouldn't be proud of everything. For one thing, Miller's explanation -- as to why she agreed to testify, after serving 85 days behind bars for refusing to do so -- is fishy, and late in coming. Her source, Veep Dick Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, had released her and other reporters from their confidentiality agreement earlier. Also, Miller should not have agreed to identify Libby as "a former Hill staffer" when he was a White House staffer. She wouldn't be the first journalist to conspire to mislead, but it was wrong.

Sending in a lawyer to do a judge's job - Dick Morris (The Hill)
My mother used to say: “It’s not enough to be Hungarian. You still need a little talent, too.” To paraphrase her, its not enough to be conservative, you still need to have the brainpower to be a Supreme Court justice. And, if Harriet Miers is confirmed, she likely won’t be in the same league with her colleagues in terms of gray matter.  Fifty years ago, it was OK to name a Supreme Court justice who was a layman. Hugo Black was a senator from Alabama. William Douglas was head of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Earl Warren was governor of California. The court was still dealing with broad and basic issues such as school segregation, reapportionment, the broad outlines of defendant rights, the application of the 14th Amendment to the states and the right of privacy.

Justice DeLayed (Investors Business Daily)
As trial attorneys will tell you, it says something about the weakness of a prosecutor's case when he offers a plea bargain right out of the box. And that's just what Ronnie Earle did to Tom DeLay.  We admit we were pretty alarmed when Tom DeLay was first indicted in late September on conspiracy charges by Earle, the district attorney in Travis County, Texas. It sounded serious. But then we looked at what Earle filed. Shockingly, his indictment contained virtually no evidence of wrongdoing by DeLay. Only Earle's assertions of wrongdoing.

Saddam pleads innocent; death by hanging if convicted - Hamza Hendawi (AP)
Saddam Hussein pleaded innocent to charges of premeditated murder and torture Wednesday, arguing with judges and challenging the legitimacy of the court as his trial opened under heavy security in the former headquarters of his Baath Party.  Saddam and seven former members of his regime could face the death penalty if convicted over the 1982 massacre of nearly 150 Shiites in the town of Dujail.  After presiding judge Rizgar Mohammed Amin read the defendants their rights and the charges against them--which also include forced expulsions and illegal imprisonment _ he asked each for their plea. He started with the ousted dictator, saying "Mr. Saddam, go ahead. Are you guilty or innocent?"

Anthrax libel lawsuit against New York Times to proceed - Michael Felberbaum (AP)
A federal appeals court on Tuesday allowed a former Army scientist to proceed with a libel lawsuit against The New York Times that claims one of the paper's columnists unfairly linked him to the 2001 anthrax killings.  Steven Hatfill sued the Times for a series of columns written in 2002 by Nicholas Kristof that faulted the FBI for failing to thoroughly investigate Hatfill for anthrax mailings that left five people dead.  The initial columns identified Hatfill only as "Mr. Z," but subsequent columns named him after Hatfill stepped forward to deny any role in the killings. Federal authorities labeled Hatfill "a person of interest" in their investigation.

The White House's legal Katrina - Victoria Toensing (Human Events)
There now appears to be consensus that no one violated the 1982 Agent Identities Protection Act in publishing the name of CIA employee Valerie Plame.  It’s a hard law to violate.  Its high threshold requires that the person whose identity is revealed must actually be covert (which requires at the least a foreign assignment within five years of the revelation), that the government must be taking “affirmative measures” to conceal the person’s identity, and that the revealer must know that the government is taking those measures.  So why didn’t Patrick Fitzgerald, the special counsel investigating the “leak,” close up shop long ago?

Dick Morris: Clinton traded gas production for Khobar Towers investigation (NewsMax.com)
Ex-president Bill Clinton didn't press Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah to help with the FBI's investigation into the June 1996 Khobar Towers bombing because he feared Abdullah would hike oil prices and hurt his re-election chances, according to former top Clinton advisor Dick Morris.

Dick Morris: Why Clinton wouldn't call - Dick Morris (New York Post)
Former FBI Director Louis Freeh writes movingly of his disappointment that Presi dent Bill Clinton did little or nothing to in tervene with the Saudi monarchy to let his agents question the accused perpetrators of the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing. But he is at a loss to understand the president's conduct.  In an earlier terror attack, the Saudis had cut off the heads of the suspected terrorists before the FBI could question them. To avoid a repeat, Freeh went to the president and emphasized the importance of intervening with the Saudis to allow questioning.

Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, residents sue Parish President, Aaron Broussard (AP)
Jefferson Parish residents are suing Parish President Aaron Broussard and the parish, claiming their east bank homes flooded after drainage pump operators were sent out of town before Hurricane Katrina hit.  The suit claims that Broussard and the parish "owed a duty to operate the drainage pumps'' and "breached that duty by failing to man and operate'' them.

Broussard on the offensive: Takes out $38,000 ads to defend himself - Michelle Krupa (Times-Picayune)
Facing a steady barrage of criticism and now a lawsuit from owners of flooded property, Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard has launched his most overt -- and possibly most expensive -- public relations venture since Hurricane Katrina, an attempt to explain his decisions during the storm and to lay out plans for the parish's future protection.  In four full-page ads in The Times-Picayune costing $38,000 total, Broussard's administration discusses, in its own words, the steps it took before the Aug. 29 landfall and its plans for how to staff pump stations and fortify Jefferson's drainage system for future hurricanes, said Greg Buisson, a political consultant to Broussard who has been working as an administration spokesman.

Lib talker, Ed Schultz, booted from Armed Forces Radio (NewsMax.com)
Liberal radio talker Ed Schultz is crying foul after being told that Armed Forces Radio will not be carrying his broadcast - saying he's being punished because he blasted the Pentagon last week over its allegedly staged teleconference with President Bush.  "It kind of floored us," said Schultz about the abrupt cancellation.

The abortion debate no one wants to have - Patricia E. Bauer (Washington Post)
If it's unacceptable for William Bennett to link abortion even conversationally with a whole class of people (and, of course, it is), why then do we as a society view abortion as justified and unremarkable in the case of another class of people: children with disabilities?  I have struggled with this question almost since our daughter Margaret was born, since she opened her big blue eyes and we got our first inkling that there was a full-fledged person behind them.

Pork, pelicans and Louisiana - Newt Gingrich & Veronique de Rugy (Wasihington Times)
A month after Hurricane Katrina destroyed much of the Gulf Coast, Louisiana's congressional delegation has presented Washington with a request for $250 billion in federal reconstruction funds for Louisiana alone. That's more than $50,000 per person in the state. And since the entire country will foot the bill, it will cost $1,900 per American household. This money would come on top of the $62 billion that Congress has already appropriated for emergency relief and in addition to payouts from businesses, national charities and insurers. The long-term cost will be even greater because this is adding to the deficit, and our children and grandchildren will pay interest on the debt for years.

On again, off again, Supreme Court allows Missouri inmate abortion - Charles Lane (Washington Post)
Issuing its first abortion-related decision under new Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., the Supreme Court refused yesterday to block the court-ordered transport of a female prison inmate to an outside clinic for an abortion.  The court's two-sentence order capped five tense days of litigation. The woman, now 16 weeks pregnant, was battling a new Missouri policy forbidding prisons to assist women seeking to terminate their pregnancies, as corrections officials had done in seven previous cases during the last eight years.

Democrats at a loss - Sean Higgins (American Spectator)
"Every public survey shows a country ready for a political upheaval in 2006."  So begins the latest memo from Democracy Corps, the heavyweight political strategy group run by Democratic bigwigs James Carville, Stanley Greenberg, and Robert Shrum. It's a revealing glimpse into the thinking of party's top strategists -- though not always in the way they intended.

Myths of the Democratic Party - Tod Lindberg (Washington Times)
William Galston and Elaine Kamarck, two of the keenest observers of American politics and the fortunes of their Democratic Party in it, were co-authors of a 1989 analysis and strategy paper that in certain respects paved the way for Bill Clinton's triumph in 1992 as a "New Democrat," a candidate set apart from the left-liberalism that had come to dominate the party and to which Mr. Galston and Miss Kamarck rose in opposition. The two have just released a new study and strategy paper, "The Politics of Polarization," that hopes to galvanize Democrats' fortunes once again by directing the party back toward the electoral center.

Gov. Blanco promises "open" spending of federal Katrina funds (AP)
Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco promised Congress on Tuesday that the spending of billions of federal tax dollars to help her state recover from Hurricane Katrina will be "transparent and wide open" as never before.  Responding to statements that some lawmakers made noting a history of public corruption in her state, Blanco told a House panel that she intends to hire a national accounting firm to audit all federal recovery spending in Louisiana and has directed the state recovery authority she created this week to set up an audit committee to account for all such spending.

Senate rejects own cost-of-living pay increase (AP)
Senators on Tuesday agreed to give up their annual pay raise, saying they need to do their part to save the government a little money in light of the huge expenses from Hurricane Katrina and the growing budget deficit.  Congress is looking for ways to rein in spending, said Sen. Jon Kyl, who sponsored the pay freeze proposal. "It's hard to argue that this process shouldn't include our own salaries." It passed 92-6.

Farrakhan in his own racist words
In the wake of the latest "Million More (man, woman, child...whoever) March," led by the el supremo of racists who claim to represent the African-American community, Louie Farrakhan, who cannot seem to shut up for one minute about how racist he isn't--it's worth taking a moment to review some of the sayings of Chairman Louie, as documented on the Anti-Defamation League's web site.  A valuable assemblage of Louie's hatred toward not only Jews, but Isreal, the government, gays, and even the NAACP.

New Orleans "corrupt to the bone," former pol charges - Jeff Johnson (CNS News)
A former president of the New Orleans City Council and member of the Orleans Levee Board blames corruption "down to the bone" and "unbelievable ineptness" for the loss of life and injuries during and after Hurricane Katrina. The Republican politician also fears the worst for her city if local officials are allowed to manage the federally funded rebuilding efforts."The corruption in city hall was horrible, and it was the same thing at the levee board," Peggy Wilson told Cybercast News Service. "The corruption in Louisiana and in the City of New Orleans goes down to the bone."

Out of jail and in disrepute: Judith Miller - Debra J. Saunders (San Francisco Chronicle)
We have everything to be proud of and nothing to apologize for," New York Times reporter Judith Miller told colleagues preparing a story on Miller's testimony before a federal grand jury probing a White House leak that targeted CIA employee Valerie Plame after her husband, former ambassador Joe Wilson, wrote an op-ed piece critical of the Bush administration.  Sorry, but I wouldn't be proud of everything. For one thing, Miller's explanation -- as to why she agreed to testify, after serving 85 days behind bars for refusing to do so -- is fishy, and late in coming. Her source, Veep Dick Cheney's chief of staff Lewis "Scooter" Libby, had released her and other reporters from their confidentiality agreement earlier. Also, Miller should not have agreed to identify Libby as "a former Hill staffer" when he was a White House staffer -- she wouldn't be the first journalist to conspire to mislead, but it was wrong.

Judith Miller: Given WMD security clearance - James Ridgeway (Village Voice)
Among the surprising revelations in New York Times reporter Judith Miller's own account Sunday of her activities in the Plame leak case was an admission that she had been given a security clearance while embedded with a military unit searching for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.”During the Iraq war, the Pentagon had given me clearance to see secret information as part of my assignment "embedded" with a special military unit hunting for unconventional weapons."

ABC News rewards Martin Bashir's bad behavior - Roger Friedman (FOX News)
Congratulations, David Westin. You've replaced serious, competent, respected Ted Koppel with the oily, obsequious Martin Bashir on "Nightline." My only question is, was Jerry Springer not available.  Perhaps Westin, the head of ABC News, has not seen the "outtakes" of Bashir's interviews with Michael Jackson from his original "documentary." But I've seen it and so have the many other journalists who were in the Santa Maria courtroom where Jackson was tried for child molestation last spring.

Iraqis optimistic, despite American liberal pessimism - Michael Rubin (OpinionJournal.com)
On Oct. 15, Iraqis demonstrated that their desire to determine the future through the ballot box was the rule rather than the exception. Arabs, Kurds and Turkmen; Sunnis, Shiites and Christians--all braved threats of violence to vote. The vast majority voted in favor of the constitution. But whatever their positions, Iraqis considered their decision carefully. The referendum campaign was active. Dueling commercials and newscasts sought to sway the Iraqi vote. Such is the nature of politics in a country no longer subject to state-controlled media.

Class(room) warriors: The left's social and political indoctrination of teachers - John Leo (TownHall.com)
The cultural Left has a new tool for enforcing political conformity in schools of education. It is called dispositions theory, and it was set forth five years ago by the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education: Future teachers should be judged by their "knowledge, skills, and dispositions." What are "dispositions"? NCATE's prose made clear that they are the beliefs and attitudes that guide a teacher toward a moral stance. That sounds harmless enough, but it opened a door to reject teaching candidates on the basis of thoughts and beliefs. In 2002, NCATE said that an education school may require a commitment to social justice. William Damon, a professor of education at Stanford, wrote last month that education schools "have been given unbounded power over what candidates may think and do, what they may believe and value."

Even the Sunnis turn out - Dan Murphy (Christian Science Monitor)
Iraqis streamed to the polls on an unusually peaceful Saturday, and preliminary results indicate that the country's new charter is likely to be approved, clearing the way for the formation of a permanent government.  While Sunnis came out in force to vote "no" in Anbar and Salahuddin provinces, where many claim the charter will lead to the breakup of Iraq, early returns indicated their vote wasn't enough to defeat the constitution.

DeLay offered deal before indictment (AP)
A Texas prosecutor tried to persuade Rep. Tom DeLay to plead guilty to a misdemeanor and save his job as majority leader but DeLay refused, the congressman's attorney said Monday.  Dick DeGuerin described such an effort in a letter to the prosecutor in the case, Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle.  . . . "Before the first indictment you tried to coerce a guilty plea from Tom DeLay for a misdemeanor, stating the alternative was indictment for a felony which would require his stepping down as majority leader of the United States House of Representatives," DeGuerin wrote.

Judge on DeLay case contributed to Kerry, DNC, MoveOn.org (WorldNetDaily.com)
When Rep. Tom DeLay is booked this Friday on charges of money laundering, the presiding judge will be a Democrat Party activist who has contributed money to the presidential campaign of Sen. John Kerry, the Democratic National Committee and the George Soros-backed MoveOn.org.  DeLay will face booking in a Texas county jail before Judge Bob Perkins despite attempts by his attorneys to bypass the fingerprinting and mugshot process.

Poor blacks don't need million more excuses - Star Parker (Boston Herald)
Louis Farrakhan's ``Millions More Movement'' explains online that ``It's time for our leadership to stop acting solely on behalf of our churches, mosques, temples, synagogues, and organizations. It is time for us as leaders to come together and begin to think, plan and act on behalf of the whole of our people."  What it should really say: ``When the Republican president's polls get shaky, it's time for the demagogues to come to Washington,"

There's a crackdown over Miers, not a "crackup" - Rush Limbaugh (OpinionJournal.com)
I love being a conservative. We conservatives are proud of our philosophy. Unlike our liberal friends, who are constantly looking for new words to conceal their true beliefs and are in a perpetual state of reinvention, we conservatives are unapologetic about our ideals. We are confident in our principles and energetic about openly advancing them. We believe in individual liberty, limited government, capitalism, the rule of law, faith, a color-blind society and national security. We support school choice, enterprise zones, tax cuts, welfare reform, faith-based initiatives, political speech, homeowner rights and the war on terrorism. And at our core we embrace and celebrate the most magnificent governing document ever ratified by any nation--the U.S. Constitution. Along with the Declaration of Independence, which recognizes our God-given natural right to be free, it is the foundation on which our government is built and has enabled us to flourish as a people.

Judith Miller exonerates Bush officials - Cliff Kincaid (AccuracyinMedia.org)
The true facts in the CIA-leak case are now becoming astonishingly clear. New York Times reporter Judith Miller's testimony, as she describes it in the Sunday edition of her paper, proves that the wrong people are under investigation. It's not really a story about Bush officials Lewis Libby and Karl Rove and their conversations with the press. Rather, it's a story about a CIA bureaucracy working to undermine the Bush administration through the media and cover up for its own mistakes. 

Miller should be fired for "crimes against journalism" - David B. Caruso (AP)
Reacting to a lengthy self-critique published over the weekend, some journalists have turned on The New York Times and its reporter Judith Miller, who only weeks ago was being lauded for her willingness to go to jail to protect a source.  A few media critics and academics suggested Monday that the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter should be fired - both for her coverage of the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and for failing to explain how she learned the identity of the CIA agent wife of a Bush administration critic.

Freeh raps Clinton, defends FBI probe - Audrey Hudson (Washington Times)
Former FBI Director Louis Freeh yesterday said he had "better things to do" than investigate President Clinton, who he says brought disgrace to the office and mishandled the U.S. response to terrorism.  The president disliked the investigative agency and Mr. Freeh because he felt the FBI had a "personal animus against him because they were always investigating him," the former director-turned-author said yesterday on NBC's "Meet the Press."

Senate asks Nagin, Blanco to detail their Katrina responses - Bruce Alpert (Times-Picayune)
A Senate investigatory committee has asked Gov. Kathleen Blanco and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin for a detailed accounting of their response to Hurricane Katrina.  The Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs has asked Nagin for: "A description of "all actions taken to evacuate or attempt to evacuate individuals without personal transportation and those with medical conditions and special needs."

Reparations still a bad idea - David Horowitz (FrontPageMagazine.com)
Political argument in America is increasingly a dialogue of the deaf. The controversy over reparations for black slavery, in which opponents argue across a Grand Canyon of disagreement where no common ground seems possible is a case in point. A recent book by San Diego Law professor Roy L. Brooks -- Atonement and Forgiveness: A New Model for Black Reparations -- attempts to extricate the two sides from the impasse. His failure illustrates exactly how difficult the task is.

Ohio town reels over violence from Nazi event - John Seewer (AP)
Police began receiving word midweek that gangs were going to descend on a neighborhood where a riot erupted over a planned march by a white supremacist group, but the resulting disturbance was worse than expected, the police chief said today.  The riot broke out Saturday when protesters confronted members of the National Socialist Movement who had gathered at a city park. Rioters threw baseball-sized rocks at police, vandalized vehicles and stores, and set fire to a neighborhood bar, authorities said. More than 100 people were arrested and one officer was seriously injured.

Greg Mitchell: Judith Mitchell should be fired - Greg Mitchell (Editor & Publisher)
It’s not enough that Judith Miller, we learned Saturday, is taking some time off and “hopes” to return to the New York Times newsroom. As the newspaper’s devastating account of her Plame games -- and her own first-person sidebar -- make clear, she should be promptly dismissed for crimes against journalism, and her own newspaper. And Bill Keller, executive editor, who let her get away with it, owes readers, at the minimum, an apology instead of merely hailing his paper’s long-delayed analysis and saying that readers can make of it what they will.

Even the Sunnis turned out - Dan Murphy (Christian Science Monitor)
Iraqis streamed to the polls on an unusually peaceful Saturday, and preliminary results indicate that the country's new charter is likely to be approved, clearing the way for the formation of a permanent government.While Sunnis came out in force to vote "no" in Anbar and Salahuddin provinces, where many claim the charter will lead to the breakup of Iraq, early returns indicated their vote wasn't enough to defeat the constitution.

Chris Wallace: Media bias "astonishing" (NewsMax.com)
Fox News Sunday" host Chris Wallace said Friday that since leaving the mainstream networks behind to join Fox he's noticed an "astonishing" amount of biased reporting on the part of his former colleagues.  "I came from the mainstream media and I didn't used to feel this way," Wallace told WRKO Boston radio host Howie Carr.

White House press corps dishes it out, but can't take it - Howard Kurtz (Washington Post)
When CBS correspondent John Roberts asked about the Supreme Court nomination of Harriet E. Miers at a White House briefing last week, he expected a boilerplate answer.  Instead, press secretary Scott McClellan lectured the reporter: "Let's talk about the way you're approaching things . . . I would encourage you -- I know you don't necessarily want to do this -- but to look at her qualifications and record." Moments later, Roberts accused McClellan of "attacking me."
     

YELLOW JOURNALISM ALERT: ABC News uses false headline for Toledo riot story :: In posting this AP account on its web site of rioting by several hundred black protestors, including warring gang members, ABC News led with the startlingly false headline that the "white supremacists" had engaged in rioting - a conclusion supported neither by the facts, nor the text of the story itself. White supremacists riot in Toledo, Ohio - John Seewer (AP) Protesters at a white supremacists' march threw rocks at police, vandalized vehicles and stores and cursed the mayor for allowing the event.  Mayor Jack Ford said when he and a local minister tried to calm the rioters Saturday, they were cursed and a masked gang member threatened to shoot him. At one point, the crowd reached 600 people, officials said.

Iraq voting; few problems - Mariam Karouny and Hiba Moussa (Reuters)
Millions of Iraqis walked to vote in a historic referendum on Saturday, casting ballots on a new constitution designed to reshape the country after Saddam Hussein, but which many fear may tear it further apart.

Justice Thomas grants stay of Missouri inmate abortion order (AP)
State officials late Friday night won a temporary stay from the U.S. Supreme Court, blocking a federal judge's order requiring Missouri corrections officials to take an inmate to a St. Louis abortion clinic Saturday.  Justice Clarence Thomas, acting alone, granted the stay pending a further decision by himself or by the full court.

Without the Nazis, North Toledo riots anyway (Toledo Blade)
Mayor Jack Ford declared a state of emergency this afternoon following a violent uprising in North Toledo that erupted following an aborted march by a group of Nazis.  He issued a citywide curfew starting at 8 p.m. tonight, tomorrow, and possibly Monday.  Mr. Ford said those protesting were mainly male gang members in their 20s. He said the protests were not triggered by race relations but by gang members with grievances.

White people won't vote for blacks, black Congressman charges - Nathan Burchfiel (CNS News)
The chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus on Friday urged his Capitol Hill colleagues to extend and strengthen the Voting Rights Act in order to "level the playing field" because, U.S. Rep. Melvin Watt said, "white people ... will not consider voting for an African American candidate."

Civil rights groups blasted for role in Farrakhan's march Marc Morano (CNS News)
Conservative African Americans charge that liberal civil rights groups lined up to support and participate in Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan's "Millions More Movement" on Saturday, are getting a free pass in terms of media scrutiny.  "Farrakhan has said some radical things, and yet the media continues to give him a pass," Shelby Steele, a conservative African American from the Hoover Institute, told Cybercast News Service.

Aaron Broussard, Jefferson Parish President, trying to fire chief of levees - Kate Moran (Times-Picayune)
Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard said Friday he is moving to sack the head of the East Jefferson Levee District, who publicly questioned the Broussard administration's decision to evacuate drainage pump workers as Hurricane Katrina hurtled toward the Gulf Coast.  Broussard sent a letter asking Gov. Kathleen Blanco to remove Patrick Bossetta as levee board president and to install Bobby Bourgeois, one of Broussard's deputy chief administrative assistants, as an interim board member. The request was the latest sign that the Aug. 28 evacuation of the pump operators has become a political powder keg for Broussard. Bossetta was among the first to go public second-guessing the administration, but other critics have come forward in Kenner, on the Parish Council and especially among the residents whose homes Katrina flooded.

"Bad News Brigade": Network coverage of Iraq - Randy Hall (CNS News)
An analysis of the three network evening newscasts indicates that when providing coverage of the war in Iraq, ABC, CBS and NBC are "TV's Bad News Brigade." Network reporters are giving the public an inordinately gloomy portrait of the war while downplaying the positive accomplishments of U.S. soldiers and Iraq's new democratic leaders, the Media Research Center (MRC) reported. (The MRC, the parent organization of Cybercast News Service, documents liberal bias in the media.)  More ==>  Report summary | Full report

"No-Speech Zone" outside Los Angeles courthouses  (WorldNetDaily.com)
A judge who declared all public areas of Los Angeles County courthouses "no speech zones" has been hit with a federal civil rights lawsuit.  According to the complaint filed Thursday, a general order issued Sept. 13 by California Superior Court Judge William MacLaughlin "prohibits such free speech activities as picketing, distribution of literature, and demonstration." More==>  Read the complaint

Heavy turnout for vote on Iraqi constitution - Hamza Hendawi (U.K. Guardian)
Iraq's deeply divided Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds voted in large numbers on a new constitution Saturday - a referendum mostly free of insurgent violence and aimed at establishing democracy after decades of Saddam Hussein's repressive rule.In the south, Shiite women in head-to-toe veils and men emerged from the poll stations flashing victory signs with fingers stained with violet ink, apparently responding in mass to the call by their top cleric to support the charter.

Kerry to be challenged for Senate seat by Jerome Corsi (WorldNetDaily.com)
"Unfit For Command" co-author Jerome Corsi, fresh from establishing a committee to explore a run for John Kerry's Senate seat, says he has no illusions about the difficulty of challenging the man he helped defeat in the 2004 presidential election.  Corsi, 59, whose book is widely regarded as a key factor in President Bush's victory, still lives in New Jersey but is prepared to move to Massachusetts if the exploratory panel, announced this week, believes a Bay State campaign is viable.

Federal judge orders state assist with inmate abortion - David Twiddy (AP)
A federal judge ordered Missouri prison officials to drive a pregnant inmate to a clinic and let her get an abortion despite a state law that forbids the spending of tax dollars to facilitate an abortion.

ADA law suit over ferret (AP)
Sarah Sevick says her ferret is more than just a pet - the animal is a medical necessity.  Sevick, 19, has filed an Americans With Disabilities Act complaint against her school because it won't let her keep the animal in her dormitory.

Pataki to endorse Pirro in Hillary challenge (NewsMax.com)
New York Gov. George Pataki was to throw his political muscle on Friday behind Jeanine Pirro's bid for the GOP nomination to challenge Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's re-election campaign next year, Republicans familiar with the situation said.

Charm of a snake: Farrakhan and the NAACP (Investor's Business Daily)
Civil Rights: The Nation of Islam's Louis Farrakhan used Hurricane Katrina to make some of his most bigoted and conspiratorial statements yet. But civil rights groups still can't bring themselves to shun him.  The NAACP, the National Urban League, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Congressional Black Caucus, and the Revs. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton were all expected to join Farrakhan at his "Millions More Movement" march Saturday in Washington, D.C.

The black American condition today - Charles Johnson (OpinionJournal.com)
As Louis Farrakhan, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton prepare for yet another symbolic and substanceless "Million Man March" in Washington, all three have managed to dodge the joke about the first such rally a decade ago (the one in which Mr. Farrakhan dazzled the world with his knowledge of numerology): namely, that black men in America are the only group ever to march in protest of themselves. I'm guessing that the rationale for this weekend's gathering is identical to that of the initial march. It is a lament we have heard in one guise or another for 3 1/2 decades: Our family is in crisis; black men are an endangered species.

Farrakhan: Levee breaks, 9-11 part of government plot - Marc Morano (CNS News)
Forty-eight hours before the Louis Farrakhan-led march of African Americans through the streets of Washington, D.C., the controversial minister Thursday repeated his charge that levees in New Orleans were intentionally blown up on Aug. 29, following Hurricane Katrina. He also implied that the Bush administration may have orchestrated the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the U.S.  More ==> Listen to Farrkhan's comments

Prominent Sunni Arab leaders urge support of constitution - Edward Wong (New York Times)
Sunni Arab leaders who have endorsed the latest draft of the new constitution strongly defended their show of support today, saying recent compromises on the document will spur recalcitrant Sunnis to take part in upcoming elections.  They made their remarks a day after several prominent Sunni Arabs denounced the compromises, and right after a powerful hard-line Sunni group, the Muslim Scholars Association, urged Iraqis to vote down the constitution.

Did Al Gore trade aviation security for campaign contributions? - Jim Kouri (Conservative Voice)
Last Sunday, former FBI director Louis Freeh told 60 Minutes viewers that he believes President Bill Clinton in essence sold out the family members of the American victims who died in the terrorist attack against Saudi Arabia's Khobar Towers.  According to Freeh, during Clinton's talks with Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, Clinton was more interested in soliciting contributions for the Clinton Library project than in seeking justice. But apparently Clinton isn't the only one in his former administration who profited from decisions that placed self-interest ahead of national security.

Another Katrina media myth down the drain: Toxic soup (CaptainsQuartersBlog.com)
Remember the "toxic soup" that flooded New Orleans, the one that the media widely reported was so polluted that mere momentary exposure could burn the skin and create potentially mortal illness for Katrina victims? As with the widespread gunfire, rapes, and murders, the toxic soup turns out to be another media myth. The Washington Post reports that an extensive look at the floodwaters reveals that its composition appears equivalent to floodwaters anywhere else.  More ==> Washington Post

Transcript: President Bush addresses troops in Iraq in video teleconference (whitehouse.gov)
Well, it's good to see you. Thanks. Thanks for taking time out of your busy schedule to allow me to visit with you a little bit. I've got some questions for you here in a minute, but I do want to share some thoughts with you.  First, I want to thank the members of the 42nd Infantry Division and Task Force Liberty for serving our country with such distinction and honor. I want you to know that the mission you are on is vital to achieving peace and to protecting America. One of my most solemn duties, a duty that you have joined me on, is to protect the American people.

The people of Europe have voted for paralysis--and perhaps oblivion - Anatole Kaletsky (U.K. Times)
After this week's creation of a German government in which Angela Merkel will not even control the Finance and Foreign ministries, all three of the great European nations that have dominated the Continent’s history for 2,000 years — Germany, France and Italy — are effectively leaderless. They will almost certainly remain politically paralysed at least until the French presidential election of 2007. The power vacuum now covering the whole of continental Europe is almost unprecedented, at least since the disastrous period between the two world wars.

The ACLU exposed - Bill O'Reilly (FOX News)
Last night, we reported that the Supreme Court of Oregon had ruled 5 to 1 that live sex shows are permitted in that state under the freedom of expression banner. The ACLU and The Oregonian newspaper both filed briefs in favor of that ruling. But why would the ACLU do that? What's in it for them? . . . The Supreme Court realizes the Constitution requires boundaries for what Americans do. If you don't have boundaries, you have chaos. Thus, community standards and public safety trump personal expression.  But the ACLU doesn't believe that. The organization has moved so far left, that now anything goes.

Suing Kerry - Jamie Glazov (FrontPageMagazine.com)
Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Mary Jane McManus, wife of former Vietnam POW, Kevin McManus, who is part of a lawsuit against John Kerry for conspiracy and defamation.

Koran should be banned if U.K. passes religious hate law, group says - Patrick Goodenough (CNS News)
As British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his ministers defend plans to outlaw incitement to religious hatred, a Christian organization has warned that if the law passes, it will seek to have the Koran banned. The controversial Racial and Religious Hatred Bill was debated at length in the House of Lords on Tuesday, before moving to the committee stage of the legislative process.

Letter from al-Zawahiri to al-Zarqawi (pdf) (Office of the Director of National Intelligence)
Today the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a letter between two senior al Qa'ida leaders, Ayman al-Zawahiri and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, that was obtained during counterterrorism operations in Iraq. This lengthy document provides a comprehensive view of al Qa'ida's strategy in Iraq and globally.  The letter from al-Zawahiri to al-Zarqawi is dated July 9, 2005. The contents were released only after assurances that no ongoing intelligence or military operations would be affected by making this document public. Al-Zawahiri's letter offers a strategic vision for al Qa'ida's direction for Iraq and beyond, and portrays al Qa'ida's senior leadership's isolation and dependence.

Seized letter outlines al Qaeda goals in Iraq - Susan B. Glasser and Walter Pincus (Washington Post)
Al Qaeda's top deputy urged the leader of his Iraq branch in July to prepare for the inevitable U.S. withdrawal by carrying out political as well as military actions, and he lectured him that he risked being shunned by an Islamic world angered over his gruesome and not "palatable" killings of fellow Muslims, according to an intercepted letter released yesterday by the U.S. government.

Iraqi lawmakers okay last-minute amendments to draft constitution - Mariam Fam (AP)
Iraqi lawmakers approved a set of last-minute amendments to the constitution without a vote on Wednesday, sealing a compromise designed to win Sunni support and boost chances for the charter's approval in a referendum just three days away.  More ==>  Draft of Iraq Constitution

Nothing to see here.  Move along - Michelle Malkin (TownHall.com)
Oct. 12 marks the fifth anniversary of the bombing of the USS Cole. Seventeen American sailors were murdered in the attack. They were casualties of a war with radical Islamic terror that America hadn't yet declared and which the mainstream media still refuses to acknowledge today.

The pump debacle: Broussard's disaterous decision (Times-Picayune)
Lots of people in Jefferson Parish are furious over Parish President Aaron Broussard's decision to evacuate more than 200 pump station workers as Hurricane Katrina loomed in the Gulf of Mexico. And while Mr. Broussard has vehemently defended that move ever since, residents have ample reason to be upset.  Mr. Broussard's administration suggests that the evacuation probably didn't exacerbate any flooding in the parish. The parish president himself has said that protecting workers' lives is more important than avoiding damage to property.

Times-Picayune undresses a blowhard - Felix Gillette (Columbia Journalism Review)
In the days following Hurricane Katrina, Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard leapt into the white-hot media arena and became one of the most eloquent, savage, and ubiquitous critics of the Bush administration's lackluster, stutter-step response. As we noted earlier, Broussard's gift of gab had quote-hungry reporters lining up for tart samples.  But weeks later, at least one paper has remembered that Broussard is not only a political critic but also a politician -- and one who played a not-insignificant role in the failed evacuation. Unfortunately for Broussard, that paper is the one his constituency reads -- the New Orleans Times-Picayune.

Stop Louisiana's money grab - Terence Jeffrey (TownHall.com)
When I interviewed Mississippi's Republican Gov. Haley Barbour for last week's Human Events, my first question offered him an opportunity to criticize how the government of neighboring Louisiana had responded in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Barbour diplomatically declined to take it. . . . But later in our conversation when I brought up the $250 billion federal aid package proposed for Louisiana by that state's senators, Mary Landrieu, a Democrat, and David Vitter, a Republican, Barbour was incredulous. "I don't know much about their proposal," he said. "However, I don't think the cost of relief, recovery and rebuilding will be anything like that amount. That seems to me very excessive. We are trying to project what the costs would be here, and it is a small fraction of that."

Nobel Peace Prize: El-Baradei for Anti-Americanism - Jacob Laskin (FrontPageMagazine.com)
In keeping with the Nobel committee’s penchant for making a political statement by honoring critics of American foreign policy, this year’s Nobel Peace Prize ridiculously went to Mohamed El-Baradei, the Egyptian barrister-turned-bureaucrat, whose decision to oppose a U.S.-led overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship won him the international Left’s enduring adoration. El-Baradei will share the prize with the organization he runs: the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the hapless UN nuclear watchdog whose successes on the nuclear non-proliferation front have been most conspicuous by their absence.

Dobson: Others on Bush's "short list" asked not to be considered - Charles Hurt (Washington Times)
Harriet Miers, unlike previous Republican nominees, will face hostile questioning from both Democrats and Republicans when she appears before the Senate Judiciary Committee.  . . . Meanwhile yesterday, a leading Christian conservative said the White House told him that some prospective Supreme Court nominees conservatives would have preferred withdrew their names from President Bush's "short list" before the nomination -- raising the possibility that Miss Miers wasn't Mr. Bush's first pick.

Dobson reveals "privy" Miers info - Art Moore (WorldNetDaily.com)
Seeking to avoid a threatened subpoena by the Senate Judiciary Committee, Focus on the Family Chairman James Dobson revealed the contents of his private phone conversation with President Bush's chief adviser Karl Rove regarding Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers – details that largely became public later.

It's time to start talking about differences between groups of people - Charles Murray (OpinionJournal.com)
When the late Richard Herrnstein and I published "The Bell Curve" 11 years ago, the furor over its discussion of ethnic differences in IQ was so intense that most people who have not read the book still think it was about race. Since then, I have deliberately not published anything about group differences in IQ, mostly to give the real topic of "The Bell Curve"--the role of intelligence in reshaping America's class structure--a chance to surface.

Most arabs say their leaders are corrupt (WorldNetDaily.com)
Most Arabs don't trust their leaders and crave political and government reforms, but the brand of democracy practiced by the United States and other Western nations is not universally acceptable to them, according to a new survey.

Zarqawi's losing strategy - Austin Bay (RealClearPolitics.com)
When Al-Qaida's zealots blow up trains in Spain or subways in London, those are attacks of their choosing conducted on "infidel terrain." The genius of the war in Iraq is a brutal but necessary form of strategic judo: It brought the War on Terror into the heart of the Middle East and onto Arab Muslim turf. In Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's theo-fascists have been spilling Arab blood, and Al Jazeera has noticed that, too.

Such brilliant, substantive journalists - Tony Blankley (Washington Times)
What brings this melancholy observation to mind was the grotesque non-reporting of President Bush's arguably historic remarks last week concerning the nature of the enemy in the "War on Terror," that until last week was the enemy of which we dared not mention the name.  For the first time the president of the United States named the enemy: "islamfascist" and "radical, militant Islam." He compared it to the Nazi and communist ideological threat of the previous century.

Al Gore: Unplugged in Sweden - Mattias Karen (AP)
Former Vice President Al Gore said Wednesday he had no intention of ever running for president again, but he said the United States would be "a different country" if he had won the 2000 election, launching into a scathing attack of the Bush administration.

Kennedy to back Kerry, not Hillary, in '08 (NewsMax.com)
Sen. Edward Kennedy said Wednesday that Sen. John Kerry has his backing for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008 -- even if Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton also runs.

U.S. accuses North Korea of of $100 bill counterfeiting - Bill Gertz (Washington Times)
The Bush administration formally has accused North Korea of manufacturing high-quality counterfeit $100 "supernotes" for the first time, according to an indictment made public yesterday as part of a 16-year probe.  "Quantities of the supernote were manufactured in, and under auspices of the government of, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea)," said the indictment of Irish national Sean Garland and six others. "Individuals, including North Korean nationals acting as ostensible government officials, engaged in the worldwide transportation, delivery, and sale of quantities of supernotes."

Iraq Parliament approves compromise constitutional deal - Thomas Wagner (AP)
The speaker of Iraq's parliament said Wednesday that lawmakers had approved a last-minute compromise on the draft constitution aimed at gaining Sunni support just days before a nationwide referendum. . . . The lawmakers gathered for about an hour at a special session of the National Assembly to hear a set of amendments to the constitution that are at the heart of the compromise, which was reached Tuesday night.

Lame attempts to rehabilitate CBS - Brent Bozell (TownHall.com)
One year after the credibility of CBS News collapsed over their use of fake memos against George W. Bush, lame attempts to rehabilitate CBS seem to be everywhere. Dan Rather is now telling anyone who will listen that after defending the report, then apologizing for it, he now thinks it's true again. Al Gore is suggesting Rather was demoted because the all-powerful White House was angry. At a ceremony for the news and documentary Emmy awards, ABC's Ted Koppel and MSNBC boss Rick Kaplan scrambled like the King's men reassembling Humpty Dumpty. But the eggy mess remains.

A look at a law being used against DeLay - Janet Elliott (Houston Chronicle)
Tired of absentee ballot fraud in his races for the Texas House and in his wife's first race for Dallas mayor, then-Rep. Steve Wolens pushed a bill in 2003 making it a crime to mark a mail ballot without a voter's consent. . . . That bill, which made conspiracy to violate state election laws a felony, was made law Sept. 1, 2003. . . . Lawyers for DeLay said that before Wolens' conspiracy bill became law, the alleged crime did not exist, and the charge should be dismissed.

DeLay lawyers subpoena D.A. Ronnie Earle - Larry Margasak (AP)
Lawyers for indicted Rep. Tom DeLay on Tuesday subpoenaed the prosecuting Texas district attorney in an effort to show he acted improperly with grand jurors.  The subpoena for Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle, filed in Austin, asked that the prosecutor and two of his assistants appear in court to explain their conduct.

Iraqis reach deal on the constitution (AP)
Iraqi negotiators reached a breakthrough deal on the constitution Tuesday and at least one Sunni Arab party said it would now urge its followers to approve the charter in this weekend's referendum.  Under the deal, the two sides agreed that a commission would be set up to consider amendments to the charter that would then be put to a vote in parliament and then submitted to a new referendum next year.

How the left harmed America this week - Dennis Prager (TownHall.com)
Not a week goes by that some part of the Left does not hurt America. But in the past two weeks, three examples stood out for the degree of such harm.  The first example involved the ACLU, which has threatened Southwest Airlines with a lawsuit. Southwest ordered a passenger off a flight after she refused to cover her T-shirt on which was printed an expletive -- "Fu--ers" -- referring to President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Corzine holds single-digit lead in in N.J. governor's race - Angela Delli Santi (AP)
U.S. Sen. Jon Corzine retains a slim lead in the New Jersey governor's race, but his Republican opponent, businessman Doug Forrester, is gaining ground on key campaign issues, according to a new poll.

Iowan gets death penalty in drug slayings; First in 40 years - Todd Dvorak (AP)
A drug dealer convicted of killing five people--including two children--to protect his methamphetamine operation was sentenced Tuesday to die by lethal injection, becoming the first person in more than 40 years to receive a death sentence in Iowa.

DeLay appeals to court of public opinion - Suzanne Gamboa (Washington Post)
Long before his criminal case gets a hearing in a court of law, Rep. Tom DeLay is fighting in the court of public opinion. With his trademark zeal, he assails the prosecutor in one sentence and portrays himself as a victim in the next. And the media--often distrusted by fellow conservatives--is his bullhorn.

A new proposal for Iraq - Ed Koch (New York Times)
On October 6th, President Bush delivered a superb speech on international terrorism. It is because our President has been willing to stand up to international terrorism and so many leaders in the Democratic Party have not been willing to do so, that caused me and millions of others to cross party lines and support him in the last presidential election and cheer his victory; notwithstanding that I did not then, nor do I now, agree with him on a single domestic issue, ranging from his proposals to reform Social Security and to changing our tax structure. For me, the single most important issue the world faced in 2001 and now, trumping all other issues, is international terrorism.

Leak case's focus likely shifting - Joseph Curl (Washington Times)
The federal prosecutor in the CIA leak case has still made no decision on charges in the 22-month-old probe, prompting lawyers familiar with the case to speculate that he is shifting his focus toward perjury or obstruction of justice charges.

Soros fingerprints on DeLay frame-up - Richard Poe (FrontPageMagazine.com)
Three separate forces are attacking Congressman Tom DeLay. Outwardly, these forces seem independent. On closer inspection, however, we find that all three have something in common. All have significant links to leftwing billionaire, Democrat kingmaker and convicted insider trader George Soros.

Mark Danner: Blaming America for the global jihad - Robert Spencer (FrontPageMagazine.com)
The New York Times marked the fourth anniversary of 9/11 by publishing in the New York Times Magazine a long and lavish cover story by the  Mark Danner, a journalism professor at the University of California at Berkeley, author of  Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib and the War on Terror, and a longtime opponent of America wars against totalitarian enemies. Danner didn’t write anything for the anniversary that would cancel dinner invitations for him in Berkeley. Instead, he repeated the radical line he has adopted for years: that America is responsible for global terrorism, that Al-Qaeda and other Islamic terror groups are really just reacting to American foreign policy, and so on. But regurgitation of such dogmas, however slickly, doesn’t make them true ­ no matter how ardently Danner and the Times may wish otherwise.

GOP rank and file back Miers - Donald Lambro (Washington Times)
The Republican base across the country looks more favorably on President Bush's nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court than the cluster of conservative critics who are opposing her inside the Beltway, according to a Washington Times survey of state party chairmen.

Newt knows: Support Miers, don't oppose - Michael J. Gaynor (TheConservativeVoice.com)
Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich knows who should and should not be supporting and opposing the confirmation of White House Counsel Harriet Miers to be the next Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court.  If you favor judicial activism and secular extremism, you should be horrified by Harriet. And opposing. Desperately.

President Bush must veer right, embrace conflict - David Limbaugh (DavidLimbaugh.com)
I disagree with right-wingers who profess to be heartened by the rancorous debate among conservatives over the Miers nomination. Unfortunately, in many cases, the disputes have degenerated into personal attacks, which are doubtlessly pleasing liberals to no end.

Wrath of Earle feared in Texas - Hugh Aynesworth (Washington Times)
Ronnie Earle, to many Republicans and especially Tom DeLay and his friends, appears as the devil incarnate: A rotten, mean-spirited Democrat with an ax to grind. Evil, partisan, unfair -- and not too bright. Here in the Texas capital -- where they have elected him as their district attorney ever since 1976 -- it is a bit more complicated when talking of things Earle.

Specter: Miers will be grilled on issues - Hope Yen (AP)
Harriet Miers' qualifications to be a Supreme Court justice and her views on privacy rights will be a focus of her confirmation hearings, Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Arlen Specter says.  Miers must show she can handle complicated legal issues and has not cut deals with the White House to overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized abortion, Specter, R-Pa., said Sunday on ABC's "This Week."

New Orleans cops face charges in beating - Mary Foster (AP)
Three New Orleans police officers are facing battery charges after investigators reviewed a videotape showing two patrolmen repeatedly punching a 64-year-old man accused of public intoxication and a third officer grabbing and shoving an Associated Press Television News producer who helped capture the confrontation on tape.

Cindy: Answer a question about ANSWER - Cliff Kincaid (AccuracyinMedia.org)
One of the few remaining high-class shows on the Fox News channel, Special Report with Brit Hume, explored the sensitive topic of who ran the September 24 demonstration in Washington, D.C.  First there was a report by reporter Jim Angle on how the communist Workers World Party played a key role, and how it supports dictators such as Kim Jong Il and even the Iraqi terrorists. Then Hume led a discussion about the nature of the protest.

U.S. says farewell to Rhein-Main air base (Reuters)
The United States returned the Rhein-Main air base to Germany on Monday, ending a 60-year chapter of Cold War history with a brass band ceremony on the runway that lies opposite continental Europe's busiest airport.

Clinton dispatches document thief to rebut Freeh (NewsMax.com)
Ex-president Bill Clinton has dispatched convicted national security document thief Sandy Berger to rebut bombshell charges from former FBI Director Louis Freeh set to air on CBS's "60 Minutes" tonight.

Did 9/11 panel squelch Freeh bombshell? (NewsMax.com)
Did former FBI director Louis Freeh tell the 9/11 Commission that he knew for a "fact" that ex-president Clinton solicited Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah for a big bucks donation to his presidential library after signaling he'd go easy on the Khobar Towers bombing probe?

Farrakhan stirs racial pot with Katrina claim (NewsMax.com)
Hurricane Katrina thrust racial disparities onto the nation's political agenda and top civil rights leaders, fueled by outrage over the disaster, are heading to Washington. The occasion is the 10th anniversary of Louis Farrakhan's Million Man March, a long-planned event that now is shaping up as a stage for black America to respond to the devastation in New Orleans.

DeLay leads own defense with potent offense - Samantha Levine (Houston Chronicle)
As far as Tom DeLay is concerned, there is only one person suited to the job of defending him outside the courtroom against the criminal indictments that have suddenly thrown his future into doubt: himself.  "He believes this requires a personal defense," spokesman Kevin Madden said. "We go out and make sure he has the proper venues to do that."

Keep your U.N. off my internet - Adam Thierer and Wayne Crews (OpinionJournal.com)
Kofi Annan, Coming to a Computer Near You! The Internet's long run as a global cyberzone of freedom--where governments take a "hands off" approach--is in jeopardy. Preparing for next month's U.N.-sponsored World Summit on the Information Society (or WSIS) in Tunisia, the European Union and others are moving aggressively to set the stage for an as-yet unspecified U.N. body to assert control over Internet operations and policies now largely under the purview of the U.S. In recent meetings, for an example, an EU spokesman asserted that no single country should have final authority over this "global resource."

Bennett defends controversial race comments (AP)
Former Education Secretary William Bennett on Saturday blamed the news media for distorting his remarks about aborting black babies, saying he had intended to make “a bad argument in order to put it down.”

Dean aims to overhaul Democrats  - Ron Fournier (AP)
Howard Dean is no longer screaming - he's scheming. The failed presidential candidate whose howling adieu to the Iowa caucuses helped seal his fate as a presidential candidate is plotting to overhaul the Democratic Party.  Borrowing ideas from President Bush's re-election campaign, Madison Avenue and his own Internet-driven White House bid, the Democratic National Committee chairman hopes to drag the party into the 21st century.

What the Times news staff thinks of you - Byron Calame (New York Times)
If you are reading these words, it means you are one of the millions of readers of The New York Times whose desires and dislikes are never far from the minds of the paper's editors and reporters. How they envision you and your fellow readers can have a significant effect on how well they manage to inform, serve and entertain you.

Alaska town defends "bridge to nowhere" (AP)
Let others sneer at southeast Alaska's so-called "bridge to nowhere." Leaders in Ketchikan, the small port town on the receiving end of the project, call it a bridge to the future.  The $223 million two-bridge project would connect the town's airport to Revillagigedo Island, where most of the 13,000 residents of the Ketchikan Gateway Borough live.

DeLay lawyers: D.A. tried to coerce jurors - Suzanne Gamboa (AP)
A conspiracy charge against former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay should be thrown out because a Texas district attorney tried to "browbeat and coerce" grand jurors into filing criminal charges, the Republican congressman's attorneys say.  DeLay's legal team alleged prosecutorial misconduct in a court filing Friday in Austin, Texas.

White GOPer charges racism at Tennessee black caucus (FOX News)
Tennessee Rep. Stacy Campfield may seem an unlikely candidate for his state's black caucus . But the white Republican said he wants to join the group to serve a segment of his constituency better.

Robert Bork "Borks" Harriet Miers (NewsMax.com)
Legendary conservative jurist Robert Bork is "borking" Bush Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers, trashing her nomination as a complete and total "disaster."

Democrats strongly defend Miers (NewsMax.com)
Some Senate Democrats are jumping in the middle of a Republican fray to defend Harriet Miers from conservative criticism that she isn't qualified to serve on the Supreme Court.

Rudy Giuliani may back Pirro (NewsMax.com)
Riding high in the presidential polls, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani took time off from a golf tournament this week to praise Jeanine Pirro, now seeking the GOP nomination for the Senate seat held by Hillary Clinton, but stopped short of backing the Westchester County district attorney.

Krauthammer: Withdraw Miers nomination (NewsMax.com)
President Bush should withdraw his nomination of Harriet Miers to fill the Supreme Court seat of retiring justice Sandra Day O'Connor, says Washington Post columnist and Fox News commentator Charles Krauthammer.

Saudis funded Clinton after nixing OBL offer (NewsMax.com)
Ex-president Clinton's decision to ask Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah for a high-dollar donation to his presidential library came just months after Saudi leaders rebuffed his request to take custody of Osama bin Laden - when officials in Sudan, where the al Qaeda chief was then living, offered him to the U.S.

Hiding the Cisneros report (OpinionJournal.com)
What don't David Kendall, the law firm of Williams & Connolly, and clients such as Hillary Rodham Clinton want the public to know? We'd have thought that question would be on more Washington lips as the report of Independent Counsel David Barrett languishes under seal at the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. Mr. Barrett is the fellow who began investigating a tax-fraud case involving former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry Cisneros but expanded his probe to include alleged abuses by the Clinton Justice Department and IRS.

DeLay accuses Earle of taking corporate funds - Stephan Dinan (Washington Times)
Rep. Tom DeLay said District Attorney Ronnie Earle, who is prosecuting him for trying to involve corporate money in Texas politics, has taken such contributions himself.  "It's real interesting he has this crusade against corporate funds. He took corporate funds, and he's taken union funds, for his own re-election. That's against the law," Mr. DeLay told The Washington Times yesterday.

David Frost joins Al-Jazeera TV (NewsMax.com)
British broadcaster David Frost, who famously interviewed President Richard M. Nixon during the Watergate controversy, will leave BBC-TV to join an English-language news channel on the al-Jazeera broadcasting network. 

Dan Rather: He's come undone - Roger Aronoff (AccuracyinMedia.org)
Dan Rather is obviously going through a very difficult time in his life, seriously clouding his already-clouded judgment. During a recent appearance he came close to tears and appeared to be on the verge of an emotional breakdown.

Prosecutors accept Rove offer (AP)
Federal prosecutors have accepted an offer from presidential adviser Karl Rove to give 11th-hour testimony in the case of a CIA officer's leaked identity and have warned they cannot guarantee he won't be indicted, according to people familiar with the investigation.

Bush hits "Islamic radicals" - Bill Sammon (Washington Times)
President Bush yesterday gave his most detailed and defiant rationale for the war against terrorism, branding the enemy "Islamic radicals" for the first time and excoriating Syria and Iran.  The president also revealed that plans for numerous terrorist attacks have been foiled, although he declined to give specifics.

The War on Terror - George W. Bush (whitehouse.gov)
The images and experience of September the 11th are unique for Americans. Yet the evil of that morning has reappeared on other days, in other places -- in Mombasa, and Casablanca, and Riyadh, and Jakarta, and Istanbul, and Madrid, and Beslan, and Taba, and Netanya, and Baghdad, and elsewhere. In the past few months, we've seen a new terror offensive with attacks on London, and Sharm el-Sheikh, and a deadly bombing in Bali once again. All these separate images of destruction and suffering that we see on the news can seem like random and isolated acts of madness; innocent men and women and children have died simply because they boarded the wrong train, or worked in the wrong building, or checked into the wrong hotel. Yet while the killers choose their victims indiscriminately, their attacks serve a clear and focused ideology, a set of beliefs and goals that are evil, but not insane.  Some call this evil Islamic radicalism; others, militant Jihadism; still others, Islamo-fascism. Whatever it's called, this ideology is very different from the religion of Islam. This form of radicalism exploits Islam to serve a violent, political vision: the establishment, by terrorism and subversion and insurgency, of a totalitarian empire that denies all political and religious freedom.

Sandy Berger facing new charges (NewsMax.com)
Less than a month after he was sentenced for stealing and destroying top national security documents, former Clinton National Security Advisor Sandy Berger has been charged with violating the terms of his probation.

Democrats have their own ethics test to pass - Josh Marshall (The Hill)
In the current issue of Newsweek, columnist Jon Alter surveys the era of Republican House rule and rightly concludes that “historians will regard [it] as the single most corrupt decade in the long and colorful history of the House of Representatives."  As Alter and others explain, the issue is less the presence of almost laughably corrupt members such as Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham (R-Calif.), who was on the take from various defense contractors and muscled the Pentagon into accepting subpar goods and services in exchange for their gifts of fancy houses and other payoffs. The problem is that Tom DeLay and his chief lieutenants have (with the assistance of virtually every member of the Republican caucus) turned the House into what Alter aptly calls a “ruthless shakedown machine."

Ronnie Earle browbeat grand jury (NewsMax.com)
Travis County prosecutor Ronnie Earle became visibly angry when one of at least six grand juries he convened to investigate House Majority Leader Tom DeLay rejected his claim that the top Republican had engaged in a money laundering conspiracy.

Tom DeLay's righteous prosecutor - Byron York (The Hill)
There’s no doubt that House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) would rather not be the target of zealous prosecutor.  But if he must be such a target, DeLay is probably lucky that the prosecutor in question is Travis County, Texas, District Attorney Ronnie Earle.  In the case so far — the latest news came Monday, when Earle got a grand jury, on its first day, before it had a chance to get a cup of coffee, to indict DeLay on money-laundering charges — Earle has shown a strange enthusiasm in pursuing his case.

Presidential poll: Condoleeza Rice ties Hillary Clinton (NewsMax.com)
A 2008 presidential race between Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and New York Sen. Hillary Clinton would be a dead heat, according to a poll released Wednesday by Fox News Opinion Dynamics.

The sex-offender lobby - Catherine Seipp (OpinionJournal.com)
Did you know that in California, child molesters and rapists are a protected class? It's true. Not only are California landlords banned from using the state's Megan's Law database to decline renting their properties to sex offenders, they're not even allowed to warn other tenants that these paroled criminals are now their neighbors. If they do the first, they can be fined $25,000 for housing discrimination. But if they don't do the second, they can be sued for failing to protect tenants against a known danger.

This is what "advice and consent" means - Ann Coulter (anncoulter.com)
I eagerly await the announcement of President Bush's real nominee to the Supreme Court. If the president meant Harriet Miers seriously, I have to assume Bush wants to go back to Crawford and let Dick Cheney run the country.

Who holds the media accountable? - Cliff Kincaid (AccuracyinMedia.org)
NBC Today Show host Tim Russert says that the media's tough questioning of federal officials about the Katrina disaster reflects the need for government accountability. After all, he says, the federal government is supposed to protect people from things like this. Oh really?  Then why have there been no media demands for accountability from the FBI for not having solved the post-9/11 anthrax attacks? It's been four years and the case is still unsolved.

Playing politics with a disaster - Cliff Kincaid (AccuracyinMedia.org)
The media Bush-bashing on the matter of Hurricane Katrina was somewhat to be expected. But we were shocked to read the "respected" Washington Post columnist David Broder giving readers a history lesson of how other presidents bounced back from disasters. "We have seen this before," said Broder. "Bill Clinton was foundering in his third year in office when the destruction of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City shocked the nation and set the stage for his flawless performance of the symbolic rites of healing and comfort for the victims."

Earle blew more cases against Dems - Rick Casey (Houston Chronicle)
Maybe Travis County DA Ronnie Earle was just being careful when he persuaded a new grand jury to issue another indictment of U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay as its first order of business. Maybe, as he said Tuesday afternoon, new evidence popped up over the weekend.  But even without the heated rhetoric of DeLay's lead attorney, Houston's Dick DeGuerin, it made some Democrats nervous.

The Bennet libel divides the decent left from the indecent left - Dennis Praer (TownHall.com)
A few years ago, when Hillary Clinton was attacked as anti-Semitic, I wrote a piece for The Wall Street Journal defending her against the charge. As a Jew, an author of a book on anti-Semitism and a conservative talk show host, I had credibility to do so.  It is time now for people with integrity on the Left -- and liberal opinion pages -- to show their integrity and defend Bill Bennett against the libel of being a racist who advocated the abortion of all black babies.

Search for property rights - David Keene (The Hill)
Private property, real and intellectual, is under constant attack these days by folks who insist they represent the public good.  The Supreme Court, for example, in its instantly infamous Kelo decision has expanded the power of eminent domain to allow state and local jurisdictions to seize property and turn it over to others simply because the new owners might develop or use it in a way that will increase the jurisdiction’s tax revenues.

A letter from the editor: It all goes on the permanent record  - Gail Collins (New York Times)
Most readers probably presume that those of us who write and edit newspapers hate corrections. That's not entirely true. If an Op-Ed article or an editorial says James Madison died in 1835 and a reader points out that it was 1836, we will run a correction with a certain satisfaction - the same feeling of painless virtue you get when you tell the grocery cashier that yes indeed, your 53 cents in change can be donated to the March Against Diabetes. [Note: After many paragraphs of whining, Collins finally gets to the point that she, Paul Krugman, and the Times had been trying so hard to avoid. . .]

In describing the results of the ballot study by the group led by The Miami Herald in his column of Aug. 26, Paul Krugman relied on the Herald report, which listed only three hypothetical statewide recounts, two of which went to Al Gore. There was, however, a fourth recount, which would have gone to George W. Bush. In this case, the two stricter-standard recounts went to Mr. Bush. A later study, by a group that included The New York Times, used two methods to count ballots: relying on the judgment of a majority of those examining each ballot, or requiring unanimity. Mr. Gore lost one hypothetical recount on the unanimity basis.

A good story and a Goodbye - Michael Getler (Washington Post)
There is a journalistic device that is informative, accurate and protective, but that too often doesn't get used. It is a simple sentence that says: "This account could not be independently verified." It comes to mind in the aftermath of a lengthy and powerful investigative article last Monday in the New Orleans Times-Picayune that said: "As the fog of warlike conditions in Hurricane Katrina's aftermath has cleared, the vast majority of reported atrocities committed by evacuees have turned out to be false, or at least unsupported by any evidence, according to key military, law enforcement, medical and civilian officials in position to know."

Nancy Pelosi's PAC broke the law (NewsMax.com)
Two political action committees linked to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi have been charged with attempting to circumvent to legal limits on campaign giving, the Federal Election Commission has ruled.  According to the March 2004 FEC finding, Pelosi appears to have violated the same kind of arcane campaign finance regulation that spurred the indictment of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay this week.

Katrina takes a toll on truth, news accuracy - Susannah Rosenblatt and James Rainey (Los Angeles Times) Sep. 27, 2005
Maj. Ed Bush recalled how he stood in the bed of a pickup truck in the days after Hurricane Katrina, struggling to help the crowd outside the Louisiana Superdome separate fact from fiction. Armed only with a megaphone and scant information, he might have been shouting into, well, a hurricane.

Rumors of deaths greatly exaggerated - Brian Thevenot and Gordon Russell (Times-Picayune) Sep. 26, 2005
After five days managing near-riots, medical horrors and unspeakable living conditions inside the Superdome, Louisiana National Guard Col. Thomas Beron prepared to hand over the dead to representatives of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Original story by Thevenot:
Mayor says Katrina may have claimed more than 10,000 lives; Bodies found piled in freezer at Convention Center - Brian Thevenot (Times-Picayune) Sep. 6, 2005
Arkansas National Guardsman Mikel Brooks stepped through the food service entrance of the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center Monday, flipped on the light at the end of his machine gun, and started pointing out bodies.

Al Qaeda thanks them - Cliff Kincaid (AccuracyinMedia.org) Sep. 24, 2005
A picture speaks a thousand words. Here are a few taken at the "anti-war" protest (Picture Set #1, Picture Set #2). The U.S. and Israel were the main enemies. The heroes were Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro. There were some dupes in attendance but the leaders know exactly what they are doing. Our media pretend not to understand. What was happening was a classic communist trick – manipulating people through front organizations. The Workers World Party was there, but so was International ANSWER. They had separate tables but are not really separate groups.

At war with an enemy of an unspoken name - Tony Blankley (Washington Times) Sep. 14, 2005
When President Bush declared war on terrorism, he did not, legally, put the country on a war footing.  Up until now, we have never accurately named the enemy or the danger. If the government can't speak the real name and nature of the enemy, it becomes impossible to explain, or even design, a policy for victory. (Part III of III parts)

Needed: Old war spirit in a new war - Tony Blankley (Washington Times) Sep. 13, 2005
American writer and social historian Studs Terkel memorably called World War II "the good war."  Terkel interviewed hundreds of GIs and their families many years after the war. They recalled that the struggle lifted them above their personal lives to fight on behalf of something they believed was greater than themselves.  (Part II of III parts)

Synagogue desecrations: Media outlets rationalize the burning of sacred Jewish sites in Gaza (HonestReporting.com) Sep. 13, 2005
Mere hours after Israel completed its historic withdrawal from Gaza on Sunday (Sept. 11), Palestinian mobs descended on former Jewish settlements, desecrating their synagogues by burning them to the ground and looting anything left.

"An Islamist threat like the Nazis" - Tony Blankley (Washington Times) Sep. 12, 2005
The threat of the radical Islamists taking over Europe is every bit as great to the United States as was the threat of the Nazis taking over Europe in the 1940s.  We cannot afford to lose Europe. We cannot afford to see Europe transformed into a launching pad for Islamist jihad.  (Part I of III parts)

Anti-Christian pogrom in the West Bank (HonestReporting.com) Sep. 6, 2005
For years, media outlets have largely refused to report one of the most troubling aspects of the Mideast conflict ― Muslim intimidation and violence against Christians in Palestinian-controlled areas.  The latest shocking episode again made its way to very few news consumers: Late Saturday night (Sept. 3), hundreds of armed Palestinian Muslims crying 'Allahu Akbar' descended on the West Bank Christian city of Taibe. For the next few hours, the mob terrorized the community, setting sixteen homes and multiple businesses on fire, looting valuables from both, and destroying a statue of the Virgin Mary.