Mood:
d'ohTopic: Lib Loser Stories
Delusions, Desperation and Democrats
Over the last several weeks I have watched in awe as a dominant force in American and world politics has attempted to destroy itself. The Democrat Party, once a juggernaut of seemingly endless power, wealth and influence has become a laughing stock. Liberals around the world must be scratching their heads and wondering what could have happened to the Party of the Almighty Jackass. What has happened is that through their own actions they have exposed themselves better than any conservative commentator could have hoped to do.
Let's review recent events...
The ports issue has demonstrated just how ignorant of our nation the Democrats (and a lot of Republicans) actually are. There stood Hillary and Chucky on their soapbox, blathering on and on about how no country with ties to terrorism should operate a port in America. I wonder how hard the Saudis were laughing at Hillary, given that they operate port terminals in a half-dozen states? Ahem... terrorist ties? Someone give Hillary a hanky so she can wipe the egg off her face.
The McLennan County Ditch Witch is back in the news, too. Cindy Sheehan continues to make a complete fool of herself and any who get near her. Cindy has insulted both her heroic son and the cause for which he so bravely fought and died. I had thought she'd found her limit when she was hauled away in cuffs from the White House. I was wrong. Remember the State of the Union Speech? Cindy Sheehan votes. Shouldn't you?
Democrats were jumping for joy when it looked like the Abramoff scandal might take down a few Republicans. Until, that is, they discovered that Harry Reid and Hillary Clinton might also get their political noses bloodied. Sometimes it's better to just keep your mouth shut. Sure, there are some corrupt Republicans in Washington. A few. Very few. And there are absolutely honest Democrats, too. A few. Very few.
With congressional elections fast approaching, the Dems are desperately seeking any inroad they can find to gain a few seats in the House and Senate. Their problem is that they haven't had a fresh idea in 40 years. Competent, America-loving and God-fearing people are fleeing the Democrat Party in droves. The vast majority of the party's voting base now consists of the lunatic fringe element of the far left and lifelong, uneducated welfare recipients who still swallow the Big Lie that they can't make it on their own. That's not going to win many elections -- assuming that Republicans get off their butts and vote.
A prime example of Democrat desperation is the non-scandal of Dick Cheney's hunting accident. The Dems and their partners in the Antique Media made the most of it, calling for investigations and insinuating that Cheney might have been drinking when the accident occurred. Police conducted an appropriate investigation and found it to be nothing more than a simple accident and closed the case. The air in Washington was thick with disappointment.
And let's not forget the nutty conspiracy theories floating around regarding 9-11. The last time I checked, the dominant delusion was that George W. Bush arranged for explosives to be placed inside the Twin towers to bring them down. The airliners that hit the towers and the Pentagon were nothing more than diversions. It's all about oil, see... and Bush needed an excuse to go conquer the Middle East to make money for his buddies in Big Oil. People like these may have God wondering why He didn't just stick with the dinosaurs.
Speaking of the lunatics... has anyone noticed that as time goes by they are having more and more trouble keeping their clothes on? Events like "Breasts Not Bombs" last July don't win you any credibility. I've also seen aerial photographs of hundreds of naked liberals who align their bodies in the dirt to spell out anti-war messages. Mercifully, most of these aerial shots were from an altitude sufficient to obscure the "details."
Be warned, by the way... there is a link below to a website for Breasts Not Bombs. There are pictures here, too -- taken by a participant. Some people look okay naked. Most don't. If you visit the site, be sure to have a strong nausea medication within arm's reach. I recommend that you spend a moment there simply to get a look at the type of people the Democrats will be pandering to if they regain control of our government.
Any and every Democrat running for election in 2006 will be depending upon the Loony Left for the bulk of his or her votes. That means that elected Democrats will be more obligated than ever to enact the agenda of a group of people who believe that
:
George Bush bombed the Twin Towers
George Bush blew up the levies at New Orleans
God is a myth
The universe, and all life within it, is an accident
Killing convicted murderers is bad, but killing unborn children is a woman's right
Running around naked is a valid form of political expression
Everyone is entitled to a portion of your paycheck, except you
See you at the polls.
Related Reading:Washington Post ** US Port management
Peacenik pacifist libtard site ** Naked War ProtestersWARNING: This webpage is filled with photos of nude protestors. It's not a pretty sight. I suggest that you have a trash can handy to barf into. These are not "beautiful people", trust me on this. Popular Mechanics ** Debunking the 911 Myths
*NOTE: There is a website that claims that Bush not only flew the planes into the WTC, but that on impact, he detonated "mini-hydrogen bombs" previously planted, to bring the Towers down. That's right, hydrogen bombs. When I read idiocy like this, it makes think that perhaps a world-wide bird flu pandemic wouldn't be nearly as bad as the insanity pandemic that is currently sweeping around the world. New Media Journal ~ The Rant.us - Alan Burkhart ** Delusions, Desperation and Democrats
Posted by yaahoo_2006iest
at 4:55 PM EST
Updated: Thursday, 9 March 2006 5:30 PM EST
N.O. Public Schools 'Abysmal' Before Katrina
With just one-sixth of its schools capable of operating and the rest deemed unsafe or unready for use as a result of Hurricane Katrina, educators in New Orleans are struggling to get the entire school system up and running in the face of opposition from the City's teacher's union.
Still unprepared for the coming hurricane season, and plagued by numerous other financial and structural problems, New Orleans has managed to get some of its schools in operation, but nowhere near enough as many to satisfy the United Teachers of New Orleans, which represents about 4,000 teachers who have been unable to return to work. USA Today reports that the union has sued to force the city to open more schools.
In an editorial USA Today wrote that "Before Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans was arguably the nation's worst urban school district, but Katrina has given the city and the state "a rare opportunity for a fresh start, one that could produce a model for other struggling systems across the USA."
Working step-by-step, officials insist that undue haste to reopen schools risks a return to a dismal past as described by USA Today:
♠ Only 44 percent of fourth-graders were proficient in reading and 26 percent were proficient in math during the 2004-05 school year. Among eighth-graders, only 26 percent were proficient in reading, 15 percent in math.
♠ Three out of every four schools were declared "academically unacceptable" by the state in the 2003-04 school year.
♠ Deficits and allegations of corruption prompted the state to bring in the same New York turnaround firm hired to rescue schools in St. Louis.
After reviewing the books in New Orleans, the takeover experts declared that New Orleans' situation was worse than the notoriously mismanaged school system in St. Louis.
Says USA Today, only by moving carefully can the district grow and adapt.
According to the newspaper, the state Legislature in November seized control of 102 of the district's schools in recognition of the fact that New Orleans was incapable of running its schools alone. Since then both have followed a carefully designed plan where the governor and the state's schools chief appear to be opening only as many schools as are presently needed and imposing quality controls on those that do open.
According to Louisiana officials New Orleans served 56,000 students before Katrina while today it's handling nearly 10,000 students with a capacity for 2,000 more.
That's not enough to satisfy the union whose leaders argue that by returning soon to a larger school district, ready or not, the city will be able to lure more citizens with a sense of normalcy, ignoring what constituted normalcy before Katrina when the city's schools were among the nation's worst.
One bright spot is the arrival of a highly acclaimed charter school in New Orleans which hopefully marks the beginning of a charter school system in the city. In July a KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program) school, probably the nation's most successful charter school system came to the city and other charter schools with successful track records have been asked to come to New Orleans.
Since they do their own hiring, picking only the best of the former union members, teacher's union opposition is certain. School reformers told the newspaper that the union is pressing to open traditional schools quickly as a way of getting more of its members back on the payroll.
Says USA Today "If state education leaders are allowed to lay out their plan deliberately, in years to come Los Angeles, Detroit and other cities with troubled schools will come to New Orleans to learn valuable lessons. Opening schools for the sake of opening schools, however, would only compromise that dream."
a-ok
I'm sure 60 Minutes and 20/20 will do big stories about this later in the week.
Iraqi Tribes Strike Back at Insurgents
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And now the reported killers of all these men -- al-Qaeda in Iraq, the insurgent group of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi -- have a powerful new enemy.
Tribal chiefs in Iraq's western Anbar province and in an area near the northern city of Kirkuk, two regions teeming with insurgents, are vowing to strike back at al-Qaeda in Iraq, a Sunni Arab-led group that is waging war against Sunni tribal leaders who are cooperating with the Iraqi government and the U.S. military. Anbar tribes have formed a militia that has killed 20 insurgents from al-Qaeda in Iraq, leaders said.
Separately, more than 300 tribal chiefs, politicians, clerics, security officials and other community leaders met last week in Hawijah, about 35 miles southwest of Kirkuk, and "declared war" on al-Qaeda in Iraq. In a communique, the participants vowed "the shedding of blood" of anyone involved in "sabotage, killings, kidnappings, targeting police and army, attacking the oil and gas pipelines and their transporters, assassinating the religious and tribal figures, technicians, and doctors."
"Hawijah was never a hideout for terrorists and fugitives," the statement added. "Anyone who provides refuge to terrorists will be considered and dealt with like a criminal and terrorist."
Last month at a briefing in Baghdad, Maj. Gen Rick Lynch, a U.S. military spokesman, said Zarqawi "finds these tribal leaders who have opted to embrace the democratic process ... and he works to assassinate" them.
"What we're finding is indeed the people of al-Anbar -- Fallujah and Ramadi, specifically -- have decided to turn against terrorists and foreign fighters," he said. "The tribal leaders, if you will, said, 'Okay, that's enough, let's take out Zarqawi and his network and get them out of our cities.' " Lynch said "local insurgents" had killed six Zarqawi deputies in Ramadi since September.
Anbar province is a center of the insurgency and the deadliest region of the country outside of Baghdad for Iraqi civilians and U.S. forces. Tribal chiefs there said their militia, the al-Anbar Revolutionaries, has killed 20 foreign fighters from al-Qaeda in Iraq and 33 Iraqi sympathizers who aided the insurgents with arms and money in the past two months.
"Forming the group did not come from nothing," said Khalaf al-Fahdawi, a leader of the Sunni Albu Fahd tribe in Anbar. "It came from a need to destroy al-Qaeda, which we thought the Marines might have been able to do. We were wrong, since these armed men became stronger and raped other cities."
Leaders in Anbar and south of Kirkuk said they opposed both Zarqawi and the American military occupation of Iraq, describing them as feeding off each other to the detriment of the country.
"We are a group of the Anbar people who want to get rid of Zarqawi ... because this is the only way to make the Americans withdraw from Ramadi or Iraq in general," said Ahmed Abu Ilaf, 30, a welder and member of the new Anbar militia from Ramadi, about 60 miles west of the capital.
"We are against Zarqawi and his followers because they aim to extend the presence of the occupation and hurt our forces to make them weak," said Hussein Ali al-Jubouri, a Sunni tribal leader and Hawijah city council member.
Hawijah leaders said they, too, wanted to create a militia to enforce their threats, but that U.S. military officials were opposed to the idea. For the time being, they said, they would intensify their cooperation with Iraqi military and police units.
Members of the Anbar militia said the group comprised about 100 people who have had relatives slain by al-Qaeda in Iraq. The group is led by Ahmed Ftaikhan, a former Iraqi intelligence officer from the now-disbanded Iraqi army who lives in Ramadi.
Fahdawi, the sheik from the Albu Fahd tribe, said the militia was forged in a series of secret meetings among tribal leaders, each of whom was asked to help form the group. Some contributed men, some money, Fahdawi said. U.S. military officers attended some of the meetings, he said, and helped "with "all kinds of financial support."
Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, denied that American forces were funding the militia.
"All military activity is conducted through the legitimate structures of the Iraqi government and security forces," he said in an e-mail. "We are working hard to ensure these structures function properly, and funding a program such as this would only undermine that process."
A fighter in Zarqawi's group, calling himself Abu Azzam, said the al-Anbar Revolutionaries "are collaborators and dogs for America. They kill the mujaheddin to get money from the American crusaders. They are cowards and we have killed a lot of them. ... All the people here support us and our jihad against the Americans and their followers."
Fahdawi said, "I cannot say that all the people in Ramadi support us, but I can say 80 percent of them do."
Ilaf, the militia member and welder from Ramadi, said the group has had real success.
"We have killed a number of the Arabs, including Saudis, Egyptians, Syrians, Kuwaitis, Syrians and Jordanians," he said. "We were also able to foil an attack by Zarqawi's men who were trying to attack an oil pipeline outside Ramadi. We killed four Iraqis trying to plant the bomb under the pipeline."
Other Washington Post staff contributed to this report.
loud
While Clintax slept (around)!!!!:
July 1996 - State Department analysts warn the Clinton administration that OBL move to Afghanistan would give him an even more dangerous haven as he sought to expand radical Islam "well beyond the Middle East," but the government chose not to deter the move.
08/23/1996 - OBL issues Declaration of Jihad (Holy War) against the US.
02/15/1998 - OBL issues joint declaration which states Muslims should kill Americans, including civilians anywhere in the world.
06/08/1998 - US grand jury investigation started in 1996 issues a sealed indictment charging OBL with "conspiracy to attack defense utilities of the US and prosecutors charge OBL heads Al-Qaeda and is a major financier of world wide Islamic terrorists."
2000 - US military counter terrorism unit Able Danger identifies 4 of the 9/11 hijackers, but was unable to give the information to the FBI due to the "wall" created in 1996 by Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick, in the spring of 2000, the "wall" had also prevented the CIA from tipping off the FBI that two additional 9/11 hijackers, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, had entered the country
08/15/2005 - Clinton tells New Yorker magazine says he would have taken out Osama bin Laden before the 9/11 attacks - if only the FBI and CIA had been able to prove the al-Qaida mastermind was behind the attack on the U.S.S. Cole. "I desperately wish that I had been president when the FBI and CIA finally confirmed, officially, that bin Laden was responsible for the attack on the U.S.S. Cole," Despite his failure to launch such an attack, Clinton said he saw the danger posed by bin Laden much more clearly than did President Bush.
08/18/2005 CIA's former bin Laden desk chief Michael Scheuer told MSNBC's "Hardball." "We had at least eight to 10 chances to capture or kill Osama bin Laden in 1998 and 1999. And the government on all occasions decided that the information was not good enough to act,"
Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person charged in the United States in connection with the Sept 11 attacks, is seen in an undated police photo. The U.S. government knew by the 1990s how al Qaeda trained suicide operatives but missed capturing the man who masterminded the September 11 attacks four years before they occured, an FBI agent said on Tuesday. >>>>>
US knew about al Qaeda in 1990s: FBI agent
ALEXANDRIA, Virginia - The U.S. government knew by the 1990s how al Qaeda trained suicide operatives but missed capturing the man who masterminded the September 11 attacks about four years before they occurred, an 
Operatives at the camps were taught how to carry out terrorist operations, including suicide missions, and were trained how to avoid detection, he said.
At that time, the U.S. government was tracking several top al Qaeda members, Anticev said, and between 1996 and 1998 made an attempt to arrest Khalid Sheikh Mohammed -- the man who has been described as the brains behind the September 11 hijackings.
Anticev said the attempt, made "somewhere in the Middle East," failed after Mohammed was apparently tipped off.
Anticev was responding to questions from defense attorney Edward MacMahon, who was trying to refute the government's argument that if Moussaoui had not lied to the FBI in the days before September 11, 2001, the hijackings could have been stopped.
The question of Moussaoui's lies while in custody on immigration charges from August 16, 2001, are at the heart of a sentencing trial to determine if he receives the death penalty for conspiracy in connection with the September 11 attacks.
Moussaoui's lawyers have said the government will be hard-pressed to prove Moussaoui could have told the FBI anything that would have prevented the hijackings.
Another FBI agent said in later testimony that the U.S. government had no evidence Moussaoui had ever had telephone, e-mail or physical contact with any of the 19 hijackers while in the United States.
During cross-examination by MacMahon, agent James Fitzgerald also said the government had never discovered any of the hijackers before September 11 even though they used their real names to get drivers licenses, report crimes, buy insurance and open bank accounts.
Moussaoui, an admitted al Qaeda member, pleaded guilty in April to all six conspiracy charges against him. The sentencing trial is being held to determine if he will be executed for his crimes or sentenced to life in prison.
When he pleaded guilty last year, Moussaoui said he was not meant to be part of the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the 
Republicans question Wilson's past
The congressional candidate was recorded expressing concern over this issue.
The National Republican Congressional Committee is wasting no time targeting Charles A. Wilson Jr. (right), a Democratic write-in candidate for the 6th Congressional District, one of the few open U.S. House seats in the country.
Wilson's "questionable past" includes his concerns about how the dumping of raw sewage into the Ohio River more than a decade ago would impact his political career, said Ed Patru, an NRCC spokesman.
Wilson, of St. Clairsville, a state senator, is running as a Democratic write-in candidate for the 6th Congressional District after failing to get the required 50 valid signatures from registered voters on his nominating petitions to be on the May Democratic primary ballot.
There are two Democrats whose names will appear on the ballot. But Wilson is expected to spend whatever amount of money it takes to win the primary and has the support of the Ohio Democratic Party.
The nominating petition debacle is no surprise when you consider Wilson's past, Patru said.
"He has a record that sends shivers down the spine of environmentalists and parents," he said.
Specifically, Patru points to Wilson's tenure on the Eastern Ohio Regional Wastewater Authority in his home county of Belmont from 1985 to 1996.
Wilson and others acknowledge that the authority dumped raw sewage into the Ohio River during that time. Until 1964, the county didn't treat its sewage.
What was disputed
Fired in September 1995, Charvat successfully sued the authority, saying he was wrongfully terminated because he discovered the raw sewage problems and other violations, and his concerns fell on deaf ears when he informed the board.
In court documents, Charvat says he discovered that an authority employee cross-connected the sewer plant system with the public water supply, leading to the raw sewage problem. Also, Charvat said in court documents that after Wilson and the rest of the board was informed, the agency didn't report the violation to the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency.
The board contended Charvat was fired over poor job performance. Wilson, who headed the board at the time, abstained from the vote to fire Charvat but couldn't remember why he did so. Court records state Wilson didn't vote because he testified at a hearing to terminate Charvat.
An Ohio Environmental Protection Agency investigation showed that the plant illegally dumped sewage into the river in the early to mid-1990s, according to a Jan. 23, 1996, article in the Dayton Daily News.
A federal administrative law judge ruled in Charvat's favor in July 1998, and the U.S. 6th District Court of Appeals sided with Charvat in a separate matter in April 2001 that his termination was in retaliation for his exercising his free-speech rights. Later in 2001, Charvat and the authority agreed to an out-of-court settlement on both cases. The settlement forbids either side to discuss its provisions.
Charvat, a self-employed engineer in Wheeling, W.Va., recently declined to comment on anything regarding the authority saying the court records "speak for themselves."
What's in decision
Charvat's efforts resulted in a greater reporting of permit violations, court records show.
"Wilson called Charvat and expressed his anger that Charvat's actions had resulted in the reopening of the OEPA investigation," the court of appeals decision reads.
In June 1995, Charvat wrote a letter to Wilson listing a number of concerns about various violations of state laws and requested an investigation. A month later the board denied Charvat's request.
Charvat recorded a conversation he had with Wilson at the time without Wilson's knowledge. Wilson's statement from that conversation is in the administrative law judge's decision and a copy of it used in a radio commercial by a political opponent of Wilson in 1996 was provided to The Vindicator.
On the tape, Wilson, who used a vulgar term twice, says, "This has Pandora's box written all over it. ... I'm gonna take a fall because of this. ... I can't have my future on the line over the sewer authority. I can't do that. I won't do it that way."
When recently asked about the statement, Wilson didn't remember saying it.
Wilson said the tape-recorded statement has been used against him every time he's run for office. He ran and won Ohio House races in 1996, 1998, 2000 and 2002, and was elected to the Ohio Senate in 2004.
Wilson's comments
"It's always been a month before the election," he said.
Patru said the other campaigns using this issue against Wilson were ineffective because they were "Kmart blue-light special, low-budget efforts. National Republicans will drive this message home so [Wilson's] embarrassed to show his face in public. The facts are very difficult to ignore. Politicians who poison public waters and try to cover it up will be held responsible."
Republicans view the 12-county 6th Congressional District that includes all of Columbiana County and a portion of Mahoning County as its best opportunity to win an open U.S. House seat.
David Thomas, the authority's executive director who served as office manager under Charvat, said Wilson was a proactive board member who helped initiate the $6 million worth of improvements made to the facility between 1995 and 2000.
Thomas has worked for the authority for 23 years, and his father, Michael, served as a board trustee with Wilson.
Related:
bright
Note NOT ONE WORD about "global warming" mentioned...
Sun's next 11-year cycle could be 50 pct stronger
WASHINGTON - Sun-spawned cosmic storms that can play havoc with earthly power grids and orbiting satellites could be 50 percent stronger in the next 11-year solar cycle than in the last one, scientists said on Monday.
Using a new model that takes into account what happens under the sun's surface and data about previous solar cycles, astronomers offered a long-range forecast for solar activity that could start as soon as this year or as late as 2008.
They offered no specific predictions of solar storms, but they hope to formulate early warnings that will give power companies, satellite operators and others on and around Earth a few days to prepare.
"This prediction of an active solar cycle suggests we're potentially looking at more communications disruptions, more satellite failures, possible disruptions of electrical grids and blackouts, more dangerous conditions for astronauts," said Richard Behnke of the Upper Atmosphere Research Section at the National Science Foundation.
"Predicting and understanding space weather will soon be even more vital than ever before," Behnke said at a telephone news briefing.
The prediction, roughly analogous to the early prediction of a severe hurricane season on Earth, involves the number of sunspots on the solar surface, phenomena that have been monitored for more than a century.
TWISTED MAGNETIC FIELDS
Whenever it begins, the new forecasting method shows sunspot activity is likely to be 30 percent to 50 percent stronger than the last active period. The peak of the last cycle was in 2001, the researchers said, but the period of activity can span much of a decade.
The strongest solar cycle in recent memory occurred in the late 1950s, when there were few satellites aloft, no astronauts in orbit and less reliance on electrical power grids than there is now.
If a similarly active period occurred now, the impact would be hard to predict, according to Joseph Kunches of the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration's Space Environment Center in Colorado.
"It's pretty uncertain what would happen, which makes this work more relevant," Kunches said.
"What we have here is a prediction that the cycle is going to be very active, and what we need and what we're of course working on is to be able to predict individual storms with a couple days or hours in advance so the grids can take the action," Behnke said.
surprised
Senators Rockefeller and Durbin May Take Polygraph Tests 
The United States government and its intelligence community are adopting a series of initiatives to discourage government employees from leaking classified information to journalists, The Washington Post reported in its Sunday edition.
The efforts include several FBI probes, a polygraph investigation inside the CIA and a warning from the Justice Department that reporters could be prosecuted under espionage laws, the Post said.
During the Bush Administration, a nexus of politicians, government workers and members of the news media have worked overtime in leaking classified information. From the secret terrorist prisons to the National Security Agency's super-secret surveillance program, intelligence officials and the Bush Administration have had to watch their counterterrorism efforts neutralized for political reasons.
Special agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation recently interviewed dozens of employees at the CIA, the NSA and other intelligence agencies as part of an intense and wide-reaching investigation. Many employees who possess security clearances at the CIA, FBI, the Justice Department and other agencies received letters from the Justice Department forbidding them from discussing even unclassified intelligence programs.
But people such as former deputy-undersecretary of Defense Jed Babbin don't think the Justice Department investigators and prosecutors have the guts to indict a US senator. Babbin said it would cause a battle royal on the Hill, if not a constitutional crisis.
He did say however, that any senator or Congressional staffer that holds a security clearance can be asked at any time to take a polygraph. The individual can of course refuse to take the test, but failure to do so is reason to remove that person's security clearance. Babbin further said that Senators Rockefeller, Durbin, and Wyden, and some on their staffs will soon be requested to take polygraphs.
Even FBI field offices are involved in the leaks investigation. For example, special agents from Los Angeles have already contacted Sacramento Bee reporters about their coverage of a terrorism case that was based on classified court documents. In that case, some suspect that court personnel might have leaked the documents to reporters with whom they may have congenial relations.
At CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, their internal security office has been conducting numerous interviews and performing many polygraph examinations of government employees in an effort to discover whether any of them have had unauthorized contacts with reporters, the Post said.
Some media watchers, lawyers and editors told the Post the incidents perhaps represent the most extensive anti-leak campaign in a generation and that they have worsened the already tense relations between mainstream news organizations and the White House.
The debate over how much classified information the White House should share with lawmakers flared up when Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) defended himself against charges he leaked sensitive information.
Durbin actually took to the Senate floor to deny accusations that he disclosed classified information on Iraq after CIA Director George Tenet briefed the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in 2003, which led many observers to say, "He doth protesteth too much."
But don't expect too much to come from these leak investigations. When the leakers are Democrats, they are called whistleblowers; when they're Republicans they're called leakers. Also, no senator has been disciplined for leaking since 1987, when Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) was forced to give up his seat on the powerful Senate Intelligence Committee. It was discovered he leaked classified information to reporters. Now he's on the Senate Judiciary Committee which is currently investigating top secret information regarding the NSA surveillance activities.
ROLLING-IN-DOUGH CLINTON $UFFERS HEART(LAND) FAILURE
WASHINGTON - Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has been gassing up her fund-raising machine across the country - but barely a trickle of cash is coming from the reddest of heartland states.
Clinton has just one campaign donor each in Idaho, South Dakota and North Dakota, and two in Montana, according to a review of federal records by PoliticalMoneyLine, a fund-raising watchdog group.
She has banked $1,000 apiece from her Idaho and South Dakota loyalists, while the lone North Dakotan chipped in $250. The two Montanans ponied up a total of $750.
She has single-digit donors in Alaska, Wyoming and Utah.
Still, those seven states combine for a puny 24 electoral votes - chump change for Clinton, who is way ahead in re-election polls and the early front-runner for the Democrats' 2008 White House nomination.
She's gobbled up $5.6 million from 6,400 New Yorkers - tops on her list - and $1.5 million from 1,600 Californians, second best, since the start of 2005.
The big shots from President Bush's home state of Texas have taken a shine to Clinton, giving her $540,000 - more than the $450,000 that donors in Massachusetts have thrown into her kitty.
And the key presidential swing states of Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio rank among her top 20.
So do Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia - GOP presidential strongholds peppered with big Dem donors.
In Iowa and New Hampshire - home to the first caucus and primary election in the 2008 campaign season - donors have given Clinton a relatively small $21,000 and $15,000, respectively.
Thirty-eight donors from Puerto Rico have given her $71,000 - four times more than she has gotten from her former home state of Arkansas.
Considering that the last election came down to one stste, I'm surprised that anyone will call 24 votes, puny.
chatty
You outta see this. The libtarded Democratic Underground is calling it a right wing takeover, despite the fact the Breyer, Ginsberg, Kennedy, and Souter all voted for it... 
RUSH: The big news this morning is the Supreme Court 
This idiot supervisor in San Francisco who says we gotta get rid of the military. Somebody asked him, "Well, how are we going to defend ourselves?" I have to admit, I seldom laugh at myself. I watched going through that part of the update with the cigar in my mouth just laughing myself silly. His answer was, "Well, cops. It's called the Coast Guard, lots of different things." So they want to get rid of the military and this is just a convenient excuse. But what's ironic about this is that the reason they had no choice here, when the federal government supplies money to anything, it's like the mob, you have to let them operate it, like the seat belt law. The federal government makes the states enforce seat belt laws because of highway funds. The school lunch program allows the feds some say-so in curriculum. And now if you're going to take federal money as a university, then you have to, what the court said -- and this is just the precedent -- the one thing you don't know -- you never know what the courts going to do.
This seemed so predictable to me because there's no choice. But sometimes the court will surprise everybody and not follow precedent or come up with some oddball foreign interpretation that would obviate the proper ruling. But in this case, they really did what was predictable, they had no choice. They upheld past decisions. They do this with the highway funds as I said. It says something, though, but there was some concern about this before the ruling came out. It says something that before the decision, there was some doubt. And that's because you really can not be sure, never really know just what the court will follow, be it the law or its own precedent, or when it won't do that. But I mean the legal professors, law professors that brought this is what I love about it, because it's been the liberals who demanded in the past that if a state or institution takes federal money, including student loans, that they buckle to the will of the federal government. So the court had to uphold this as past practice. And so the left is, in a sense here -- and this is the irony, the delicious part of it -- has been bitten by its own requirement. They love the federal government being involved in everything. They think that's fabulous, so that came back to bite them. Since the federal government has to be involved then military recruiters do get to show up on campus.
END TRANSCRIPT
Read the Background Material...
Also at:
silly
STREISAND: BUSH IS DUMMBE;
"The arrogance of this C student," Streisand says of Bush.
Memories... 