But the president's famous $87 billion reconstruction package includes a request for more than $900 million to buy petroleum products for Iraqis next year. That's 12 times what the Corps of Engineers says the United States has paid so far, and nearly 20 percent more than the total from all sources.

It is also "substantially more money than is called for by current fuel prices in the Persian Gulf trading area," according to an analysis by the Congressional Research Service. Based on market prices, it's over $200 million more than necessary, the report said.

The money will go to Halliburton. For the record, the Corps of Engineers says the company is getting "the best price possible," and Halliburton says allegations of price-gouging are "inaccurate, misleading and unwarranted."

Regardless, the big oil request came up in Congress last Friday. Friday is Washington's day of choice for controversial actions because weekend news gets comparatively little attention.

Before approving the president's $87 billion package, the House of Representatives rejected an amendment that would have given each member of the armed forces a one-time, $1,500 bonus for their service in Operation Iraqi Freedom or Operation Enduring Freedom.

The bonus money - $265 million - would have come from the account set aside to import oil products under the Iraq Relief and Reconstructions Fund. It would come from the account with "substantially more money than is called for," not from rebuilding money.

Endorsed by a half-dozen military associations, the bonus lost on a tie vote, 213-213. Ten Ohio representatives who voted against it, opting not to modify the White House request, happen to have voted to raise their own pay a month ago.

A $1,500 bonus would not be hitting the lottery. But it would be enough to pay for the two-week home leaves our troops are getting. They have to pay their own way home, believe it or not, after the military gets them to stateside "gateway airports."

And you know something else. Republicans have always been attacked about how they beat up Bill Clinton. Poor Bill Clinton. They never showed him the respect that he deserved. I still haven't had a Democrat tell me when members of the Congress, in the House or the Senate, attacked Bill Clinton on his foreign policy while we were at war. That's something that never used to happen until George Bush became president. And that says more about Democrats than it does about George Bush.

"There are some who say that cutting taxes so hugely and with such a bias towards the rich at a time when the economy was sputtering and the budget was out of whack... well, there are some who say that this was a tad irresponsible. Now I'm not one of those dirty, vegan, bra-burning liberals who's going to come out and say something like this while our nation's at war. Nope. But it is a responsible liberal's duty to politely request that someone takes a look at that, you know, just to be sure that it's the very best thing for the American people. Which it probably is, no doubt. But that's a liberal's job - to ask the hard questions. Politely, quietly, and at the appropriate time, of course, but you gotta ask 'em." ...

"Sean takes a lot of guff for being brusque with me on-air, but it's all in good fun. Off-camera, he's my staunchest defender. In early 2002 there was a memo circulating around Fox suggesting that the show's title be changed to "Hannity and the Sad, Wimpy Little Traitor." I can tell you, that hurt a little. But Sean rushed to my defense. He said, and I quote, "No way. That doesn't tell viewers anything they don't already know." That's the kind of guy Sean is. I'd trust him with my life. In fact, I regularly trust him to safeguard my lunch money, which he collects from me for safekeeping (it can get pretty rough around here!) when I come in each day."

While Clark receives more support than Dean among both men and women, his margin over Dean among women is just three points (16 percent to 13 percent), but an impressive twelve points among men (29 percent to 17 percent). He also beats Dean in every region of the country, but especially in the south (25 percent to 8 percent). Also intriguing is how well he does among low income voters (those earning less than $20,000 a year), clobbering Dean by 26 percent to 5 percent. In fact, Clark bests Dean in every income group up to $75,000. Above $75,000, Dean edges Clark, 26 percent to 25 percent. In terms of ideology, Dean beats Clark among liberals, 24 percent to 18 percent, but Clark wins moderates by 24 percent to 11 percent and conservatives by 23 percent to 7 percent. The general picture, then, is that Clark does especially well, relative to Dean, among the very groups where Democrats have been having the most problems. That suggests to Public Opinion Watch that the emerging Clark candidacy deserves very serious consideration indeed.

Kutcher is scheduled to attend an October 29 fund raiser for Edwards at the Hollywood home of Victoria and Dennis Hopper, along with "West Wing" producer Aaron Sworkin.

Jennifer Palmieri, spokeswoman for the Edwards campaign, said the event will be Edwards' "best Hollywood fund raiser so far."

The Edwards campaign could use the money. Edwards raised just $2 million in the third quarter, beating only Dennis Kucinich, Al Sharpton, and Carol Moseley Braun.

Palmieri said Kutcher, who was born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, is expected to join Edwards on the campaign trail in Iowa soon. The campaign is thinking about calling the Kutcher tour "Dude, Where's my Job," to highlight job losses under President Bush.

The White House is looking for Volunteers one or two days a week. Limited time. Reliability important.

Please contact Anita Homen, Personnel Director at Presidential Correspondence, phone 456-5647 Fax cover letter and resume to 456-2993

Bill O'Reilly still won't let National Public Radio release a transcript of his recent interview. The Fox News star hung up on "Fresh Air" host Terry Gross on Oct. 8, after accusing her of doing a "hatchet job" on him.

He was angry because he felt she had given his new enemy, Al Franken - whose book "Lies, and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right" pokes fun at the right-wing media - "a complete pass" in a previous interview.

Although O'Reilly's spokeswoman wouldn't discuss the issue, you can hear the entire interview at www.whyy.org.

Franken isn't the only one who counts O'Reilly as a muse. Ludacris said his new song, "Blow It Out," is a response to the right-wing talk host. The rapper, who lost a Pepsi endorsement contract after O'Reilly blasted the soda giant over hiring a "thug rapper," called O'Reilly a racist on Howard Stern's show yesterday for giving Pepsi a pass on the personality ikt chose to replace him: recovering drug addict Ozzy Osbourne.

All right, the problem here is not that interview. I should have known better. But it's that I paid for it. And so did you. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (search), which funds NPR, gets a billion dollars a year in taxpayer money. Why is the government allowing a far-left outfit like NPR, which is obviously biased, to operate on taxpayer money?

For instance, in the first session of the 107th Congress (FY 2002 budget cycle), the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) received a $380 million appropriation. Because CPB is advance funded by two years, the appropriation is for public broadcasting in fiscal year 2004. Recently, Congress approved a $390 million funding level for fiscal year 2005.

I read the book in one sitting. It is an amazing book, and -- if you're a decent, honest, hard-working, patriotic, true-blue conservative who listens to Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly and watches Fox News -- an earth-shattering book ...

I believe Franken is telling the truth in his book because it meshes perfectly with what I personally have observed. And I think every decent, honest, hard-working, patriotic, true-blue conservative owes it to himself to read it. Hold your nose if you must -- Franken is as foul-mouthed and crass as his reputation would lead you to believe (and quite mistakenly believes Christians love Israel because it is the center of prophecies that include the fiery deaths of all Jews) -- but read it anyway ...

The leaders we conservatives have trusted have taken advantage of our trust to line the pockets of the wealthy and powerful, and it's time we rose up and drove out these greedy liars. They've hijacked and distorted our belief system for their own gain, and in doing so are destroying our credibility.

And if we decent, honest, hard-working, patriotic, true-blue conservatives of this country neglect the duty we have to our children and grandchildren, we will never be able to work with those decent, honest, hard-working, patriotic, true-blue liberal Americans that these lying creeps have taught us to despise. We will never be safe to debate them or, when warranted, to listen to them and maybe even agree with them. We will never be safe to work out our differences or to work together. And we will never be able to build on the all-American sense of unity that burst forth following 9/11, only to disappear shortly thereafter in a cloud of lying, greedy partisan politics.

I'm still a decent, honest, hard-working, patriotic, true-blue conservative. But Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity and the rest of you lying liars -- I'm through with you! (Read the book, and you'll get that one, too.)

For decades, the New York Times had allowed loose associations between Nazis and Christians to be made in its pages. Statements like these were not uncommon: "Did the Nazi crimes draw on Christian tradition?" ... "the church is 'co-responsible' for the holocaust ..."

The first quote ("Did the Nazi ...") is from a 2001 book review. The Times reviewer, Paul Berman, was framing the question asked by the book he was reviewing, which was about a 400 year old play performed annually in Bavaria that portrays Jews as hateful and evil.

In later years, after the cruelties and barbarities of the Middle Ages had been rivaled and even outrivaled, a delicate but crucially important question arose on the topic of Christianity and its relation to modern barbarism. Did the Nazi crimes draw on Christian tradition? Or did Nazism draw instead, as the Roman Catholic Church has argued, on pagan ideas that were distinctly anti-Christian? Whatever the larger answer might be, Shapiro's investigation shows that in the little village of Oberammergau it was not so easy to tell Nazi paganism from Christian tradition. The village may have been famously pious, but some important Nazis set up headquarters there, even so -- for instance, the man who designed and built the crematoriums at Auschwitz. Hitler himself was famously fond of the play, which he saw twice. And the villagers returned his affection, even if, in later years, they have steadily pleaded innocent on questions of Nazi guilt. In the 1950 and 1960 productions of the play, the village assigned the role of Jesus to someone who had been convicted, after the war, of having been a Nazi. In the 1970 production the ex-Nazi went on to become the artistic director. Still, eventually the village did begin to notice that not everyone was in love with its play. The American Jewish organizations began making a fuss over the play in 1966, and they pushed some of the Jewish intellectuals into mounting a protest, and the point was made. The American Jewish organizations kept at it, too, and are at it even now. But the real pressure on the village, as Shapiro explains, came from the highest ranks of the Catholic Church. It was because in 1965, during the Second Vatican Council, the church officially abandoned its ancient doctrines about the collective guilt of the Jewish people and the eternal divine curse upon Jewish blood. In one fateful stroke, because of the new theological interpretations, the play fell outside of correct doctrine. And the good Catholics of Oberammergau suddenly had to rethink.

Yes, of course, the Times did run an article on December 20 about the controversy using excerpts of Jackson's speech, which was prerecorded.

Copyright 1994 The New York Times Company The New York Times
December 20, 1994, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final
SECTION: Section A; Page 12; Column 1; Foreign Desk
LENGTH: 568 words
HEADLINE: Will Jesse Jackson Beat Queen in British Ratings? Stay Tuned
BYLINE: By WILLIAM E. SCHMIDT, Special to The New York Times
DATELINE: LONDON, December 19

BODY:
One of Britain's most familiar holiday rituals -- the annual Christmas Day television broadcast by Queen Elizabeth II -- will run up against some unexpected and, in some quarters, unwanted foreign competition next Sunday: a pre-recorded, nationwide lecture by the Rev. Jesse Jackson on the sorry state of British race relations.

At the same time the Queen is scheduled to appear delivering her Christmas Day homily, at 3 P.M. on Channel One and Channel Three, the American civil rights campaigner will be making his own 15-minute appearance on Channel Four, one of Britain's four nationwide broadcast television networks.

Billed by the station as an "alternative Queen's speech," Mr. Jackson is appearing at the invitation of station officials, who are promoting his appearance as part of a weeklong schedule of holiday programming devoted to minority affairs and entertainment, built around the theme of celebrating a "Black Christmas."

In The Times of London this morning, Mr. Jackson was quoted as saying he did not mean to undermine the Queen's annual Christmas message, nor did he intend her any disrespect, by agreeing to present his own holiday address.

But some British politicians are already steaming over the timing of the broadcast, and accounts in British newspapers in the last two days quoting excerpts from Mr. Jackson's remarks, including an appeal to blacks and other disadvantaged groups in Britain to engage in what was described as mass political action to bring about change.

"The lives of too many of our young people are going to waste," Mr. Jackson is quoted as saying. "The oppressed must engage in sane, sober, sensitive and disciplined resistance to their oppression."

Among other things, Mr. Jackson blames economic insecurity in Britain for breeding fear, which he says has contributed, in turn, to growing intolerance and racial violence, including several racially motivated killings.

Michael Howard, the Home Secretary, was quoted as dismissing Mr. Jackson's remarks, in an account in The Sunday Times. "We have nothing to learn from Mr. Jesse Jackson on these issues," he said. Sir Ivan Lawrence, a Conservative member of Parliament and chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee, was even sharper.

"It will be a broadcast surpassing impertinence by someone who doesn't have the faintest idea what he's talking about," Sir Ivan was quoted, in The Times. "He should look to his own country, where racial attacks occur far more frequently than they do in this country."

Earlier this year, Sir Ivan's committee issued a report on race relations in Britain, concluding that "racial attacks and harassment, and the spread of literature which preaches racial hatred, are increasing, and must be stopped."

A week later, Britain's Commission for Racial Equality issued another report saying that the number of racial incidents officially reported to the police have doubled in the last five years to 9,000, with a 20 percent increase last year alone.

Like the Queen's annual message, Mr. Jackson's remarks are also pre-recorded. A spokesman for Channel Four said he taped his remarks in Washington within the last two weeks.

This is the second year that Channel Four has promoted its own alternative to the Queen's speech. Last year, as part of a "Camp Christmas" theme, they broadcast an appearance by Quentin Crisp, an outspoken British homosexual.

Concerned about the appearance of disarray and feuding within his administration as well as growing resistance to his policies in Iraq, President Bush - living up to his recent declaration that he is in charge - told his top officials to "stop the leaks" to the media, or else.

News of Bush's order leaked almost immediately.

Lexis Nexis searches can be manipulated to produce misleading results. It's like a chainsaw, which can be used productively (say, as a prop in a movie like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre), but it can also be used for evil (such as in an actual chainsaw massacre). Throughout this book, I use Lexis Nexis productively. In Slander, Coulter uses it to dismember the truth.

Pat O'Brien, a graduate of the University of South Dakota who also studied international economics at Johns Hopkins University, said he is seriously considering challenging incumbent Republican Mike Rounds in the 2006 election. Word of O'Brien's aspirations first came to light in an interview for GQ magazine, which he said was actually conducted before Schwarzenegger announced his intent to run for governor of California in the state's historic recall election ...

"It's a very serious consideration," he said. "I've talked to Tom Daschle about it, I've talked to Tim Johnson about it," he added, referring to the state's two U.S. senators.

O'Brien, a Democrat, said his desire to run for office predates his broadcasting career.

"I grew up studying politics, I worked for the Kennedys, I worked for George McGovern," he said. In fact, he said, he has been pushed toward public service since his days at the University of South Dakota.

"I had a professor there named Bill Farber who has always pushed Tom Brokaw and me -- we were both his students -- into some kind of public service," O'Brien said.

Leftists have the world's largest and most inclusive support group for their failures and pet perversions. The ruling elite gather at their exclusive and sophisticated dinner parties in Georgetown, where members of government, academia, law firms, media, mainline churches and the left's exclusive foundations and think tanks reassure one another that their failures are not their own, but everyone else's. Old money laments the rise of the middle class, and urges ever-higher taxes to stifle it ...

As a conservative, Rush Limbaugh has none of these previously mentioned support groups. A recent profile in Newsweek described him as "lonely," a man with millions of admirers but few friends. For political conservatives there are no exclusive Georgetown dinner-party invitations, no academics to offer the latest research in support of one's failure or vice, no governmental bureaucrats to shoulder the blame, and no lawyers to explain why it is someone else's fault and they must pay ...

Rush may have started with pain-killers for his back. But he may very well have become addicted to them for the pain in his heart and soul. Can you imagine confronting the exquisitely-subsidized liberal establishment – day after day, year after year – on its home turf, without a support group? Can you imagine enduring the vile hatred of the left on every issue upon which you dare to speak out? Can you imagine the hate mail, the organized campaigns to silence your voice, the personal attacks?

The second exciting incident involved Iowa state director Jeani Murray. (This is a Blog for America scoop. Marc Ambinder of ABC's The Note is trying to be the first to report this incident. Sorry, Marc, I beat you to it). Jeani was sitting in the van that held all of our belongings. The key was in the ignition and the bing, bing sound was driving her crazy so she pulled the keys out and put them on the floor. She then got out of the van and closed the door. Surprise! All the doors were locked and the keys were inside. Needless to say, Jeani was a little panicked! (We told Jeani someone was getting back at her for not baking cookies for us). Lucky for us we were at a meeting right around the corner from a police station. A very nice police officer helped us unlock the door.

You bring up the issue of the Times and the Post being liberal, so let me ask you about bias. There's been a whole lot of publicity about Al Franken's book, which attacks FOX News and some of the more conservative members of the media. FOX sued him and lost, which intensified the debate about the political leanings of journalists. Do you believe the press is biased?

In the papers I mentioned, I do not see bias. I think their news columns are as straightforward as you can make them. Their editorial pages are very biased, as they should be. That doesn't bother me at all.

Let me point out, however, that it depends on how you define "bias." A newspaper might appear to show bias based on what it decides to cover, but this isn't bias. It is the editorial direction of the newspaper, and it should be clearly known by the reader. I don't think the reader buys the Washington Post with an expectation to get the same reporting as the Washington Times and vice versa. The reader of the Wall Street Journal expects the reporting to be biased, if you please, toward the success of capitalism and a favorable performance by the business world. These things are part of journalism.

I want to ask you about FOX specifically. Maybe you see it as similar to the Wall Street Journal or the Washington Times, but there's been all this talk about how FOX is so biased. And the people who run FOX will say, "We're just counteracting the liberal bias in the rest of the news business." What do you make of that?

I was very disturbed at first when FOX came on line saying it was going to be a right-wing news source. Having been a foreign correspondent for a time, I'm familiar with the fact that across the world, most countries have newspapers that are spokespersons for a religion or a political party. They don't pretend to be impartial. I hated to see that come into practice in American journalism. It seems to me that this threatens to turn journalism into advocacy, and that is dangerous. We may make our mistakes, we may slip a little bit from time to time, but we're not out-and-out advocates. We provide, as nearly as humans can, an honest attempt at impartiality. If the FOX mode is contagious and somebody else has to come along now and say, "We're the liberal network," the dam is weakened and we could get into a situation where you can't depend on anybody to give you an impartial news report. So this bothered me about FOX.

Now, I don't watch them that much, quite honestly, but I've occasionally turned to them and found they're doing a pretty good job. If you know what their basic politics are, you can say, "Well, this is a very good explanation of what they think about these things." So maybe there is some value there.

I saw where Bill O'Reilly, who's one of the FOX people, read your first couple of columns and jumped on you for announcing that you're a liberal.

Yeah. O'Reilly said that I was an internationalist! My God, what a terrible thing to be.

What I wonder is, why is it wrong for you to be a liberal in your column but okay for O'Reilly and his friends at FOX to be openly conservative?

That's the inconsistency you find with the all-out propagandists. I don't find any reason or rationality in that at all. The O'Reilly attacks on me, I think, are almost a compliment. I like the fact that he feels that I'm important enough and what I say is enticing enough to the populace that he has to attack it.

Do you ever watch his show?

No. I try to avoid it if possible.

Could that really be true? Was the whole thing just a misunderstanding? ... In the intelligence world, ‘operative’ pretty much always means a clandestine agent. In his column he referred to Plame as an “Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction.” Could a veteran columnist such as Novak have been so sloppy with this word? Not if you go by his past practice.

I took Novak up on his Nexis challenge, and he does make frequent use of the word “operative.” But the question is how he uses it in this context. I searched for all the times Novak has used the term “agency operative” or “CIA operative,” and I came up with six examples. In every case, Novak clearly used the phrase to refer to clandestine agents.

On Dec. 3, 2001, Novak used the “CIA operative” phrase to describe Mike Spann, the clandestine CIA operative who was killed at the prison uprising at Mazar-i-Sharif during the Afghanistan war. A month earlier, on Nov. 1, he used “agency operative” to refer to agents who had handled the late Afghan resistance leader Abdul Haq.

Little more than a month before that, on Sept. 23, he used “CIA operative” to refer to the clandestine operatives in Latin America that former CIA Director Stansfield Turner cracked down on in the late 1970s.

In a July 5, 1999, book review in The Weekly Standard, Novak referred to the hero of Bill Buckley’s Blackford Oakes spy novels as a “CIA operative.” Needless to say, Blackford Oakes, a spy novel hero, is undercover. The other two references, from 1997, also clearly refer to an undercover operative.

In other words, Novak knows the phrase “agency operative” is a term of art with a very specific meaning. And he uses it advisedly. Now he says he used it in a completely different way when referring to Plame. That strains credulity, to put it mildly.

Some of Republican gubernatorial candidate Haley Barbour's campaign material features the state flag and its Confederate battle emblem, a symbol many black voters find offensive.

Barbour wears a lapel pin with the U.S. and state flags and he is in a photograph on the Web site of the Council of Conservative Citizens, a neo-Confederate group accused of racist views. Barbour says he doesn't know anything about the council. The picture was taken at a council-sponsored barbecue in July used to raise money for private academy school buses.

But Barbour says he wants to be the state's most successful Republican vote-getter among African Americans and has held closed-door strategy meetings with minorities. If elected, he says he will create a "colorblind" state government. To some observers, Barbour's strategy could cost him votes, but to others it could give Barbour an edge in a tight race with Democratic Gov. Ronnie Musgrove.

The roots of the CCC rest in white opposition to integration during the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. The group is a successor to the Citizens' Councils of America (originally configured as the White Citizens' Councils), an overtly racist organization formed in the 1950s in reaction to the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education decision outlawing school segregation. Trumpeting the "Southern way of life," the CCA used a traditionalist rhetoric that appealed to better-mannered, more discreet racists; while the Klan burned crosses, the CCA relied on political and economic pressure ...

The first Citizens Council was founded on July 11, 1954, in Indianola, Mississippi, by Robert B. Patterson (a current member of the CCC and former editor of its publication, The Citizens Informer). It formed committees that screened local political candidates to ensure they viewed "the negro vote" with appropriate disapproval, promoted "the advantages of segregation and the dangers of integration" and coordinated the application of economic pressure. The organization grew quickly, attracting members from across the South and beyond; by August 1955, Patterson's membership list exceeded 60,000 people and included 253 Councils. In August 1956, Citizens' Councils in 30 states came together to form the Citizens' Councils of America. Its goals were to preserve the "natural rights" of racial separation and "the maintenance of our States' Rights to regulate public health, morals, marriage, education, peace and good order in the States, under the Constitution of the United States."

The beliefs of the CCC fall within the racially charged tradition of its predecessor but reflect the contemporary fears of its constituency. Instead of segregation, CCC members focus on issues like interracial marriage, which the group calls "mongrelization of the races"; black-on-white violence; and the demise of white Southern pride and culture, best exemplified in the debate about the Confederate flag. Additionally, in its heightened rhetoric about the expropriation of states' rights by the federal government and by an impending "New World Order," the CCC shares some of the conspiratorial fears of modern militia groups and other right-wing conspiracy theorists.

CCC activists have used the White Citizens' Councils' tactic of economic pressure, as well. The group's North Carolina chapter, for instance, inflamed anxieties about Hispanic immigration by organizing protests in September and December of 1999 in Wilkesboro because the local Tyson Foods plant allegedly hired illegal immigrants. CCC Eastern Regional Director A.J. Barker organized the protests, according to the local newspaper, both of which were held in front of the town's Federal Building and attracted about 40 protesters each. CCC later claimed that because of the group's efforts Tyson fired several illegal workers (this claim is not verifiable), and that the publicity elicited by the protests had drawn new members to the chapter.

Among individual candidates, Howard Dean had the support of 17 percent of Democrats and those who lean Democratic. Missouri Rep. Dick Gephardt was at 13 percent, retired Gen. Wesley Clark was at 12 percent and Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry was at 10 percent. Joe Lieberman, the Connecticut senator who held the lead in this poll last month at 22 percent, had fallen to 9 percent. Others were also in single digits.

New York Times columnist William Safire took Democratic presidential candidate and former Vermont governor Howard Dean to task yesterday for supposedly attempting to deny a comment he made disparaging the killing of Saddam Hussein's sons Uday and Qusay. Safire and a number of other reporters are the ones who should be taken to task, however, for spinning another media myth ...

An Associated Press story published on the 22nd, however, midwifed the birth of a media myth. The lead paragraph stripped Dean's quote of any context, making it appear as though he was referring directly to the deaths of Saddam's sons. The misinterpretation gained legs on July 23rd. On "Hardball with Chris Matthews" that evening, Matthews quoted Dean in full, and asked Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) for his opinion. McCain concentrated on only the second half of the quote, ignoring the first, and told Matthews he "could not disagree with [Dean] more to say that the ends doesn't justify the means. The ends were the eradication of two psychotic murdering rapists, and the means were through legitimate use of the American military helped out by some excellent information that they gained. How in the world someone could in any way think this end was not justified by anything which was the removal of two odious characters, frankly, is beyond me."

That same day, Spencer Ackerman opined on the New Republic's web site that "upon learning that U.S. forces in Mosul killed Saddam's blood-thirsty heirs, Uday and Qusay, in a pitched battle, Dean was once again caught in the act of being himself. Dean told a Manchester, New Hampshire audience that "the ends do not justify the means," and went back to attacking his presidential rivals as Johnny-come-latelys to the Bush administration's intelligence scandal." Ackerman concluded by comparing Dean's out-of-context reaction unfairly with those of other Democratic hopefuls, quoting them responding positively to the deaths of Uday and Qusay.

The next step in the spin took place in a Washington Times article of July 25. In a page one news story, James Lakely wrote that "Asked Tuesday about his reaction to U.S. troops killing Saddam's two brutal sons, Uday and Qusai, in an attack in Mosul, Iraq, Mr. Dean dismissed the achievement. 'The ends do not justify the means,' he said as he issued a flurry of critical comments about the president's justification for the war and about those who supported it." And in an editorial on July 28, the Times flogged its own spin, repeating the quote without context, suggesting that Dean had "criticized getting rid of the monsters." ...

On July 22, Dean, who opposed military intervention in Iraq, commented at a New Hampshire campaign stop that the deaths of Saddam Hussein's sons Uday and Qusay were "a victory for the Iraqi people ... but it doesn't have any effect on whether we should or shouldn't have had a war. I think in general the ends do not justify the means."

In context, "in general the ends do not justify the means" is clearly a comment supportive of the deaths of Uday and Qusay, but expressing the view that that positive end does not justify the means of the war in Iraq. A Washington Post story printed July 23 confirms that Dean was pleased with the deaths of the two Iraqis, quoting him as stating "I applaud the elimination [of] Saddam's sons," but the "major question still has to be asked: Why are we in Iraq?"

"Before he became a political candidate for president, John Kerry clearly believed that military service should not be used for political gain," said Jay Carson, a spokesman for Dean, the former governor of Vermont who is running well ahead of Kerry in recent New Hampshire polls.

"And he was right about that," Carson added. "Unfortunately, now John Kerry and his campaign have a strategy to use that record to further his political career." ...

In May, Kerry told the Orlando Sentinel, "I am the only person running for this job who has actually fought in a war." A decade ago, however, Kerry rose in the Senate on two separate occasions to decry presidential candidates who used their military service record as a qualification for the highest office.

Today the Heritage Foundation, with an annual budget of roughly $30 million, is like a university unto itself. Its eight-story building houses some 180 employees, and it just completed an addition that has, among other amenities, state-of-the-art teleconferencing, apartments for about 60 interns and a fully wired 250-seat auditorium with its own greenroom. The foundation's in-house scholars are a constant presence on radio and cable TV. (Laura Ingraham, with one of the nation's largest radio followings, broadcasts from a Heritage studio.)

The need to imitate the tactics and the discipline of the right wing is now discussed obsessively at liberal and leftist strategy sessions and dinner parties, and leading Democrats see Podesta's think tank as a command center for a new left-wing conspiracy -- a progressive group that is, for once, both well financed and willing to get as mean as the opposition. Among them is Tom Daschle, the Senate minority leader and the highest-ranking Democrat in the land, who has been known to complain bitterly about the influence of right-wing commentators. Daschle was among a small group who plotted with Podesta for more than a year to establish American Progress.

''They have a dozen think tanks, and we have none,'' Daschle said during a conversation in his Capitol office. ''We don't come close to matching their firepower in the media.'' ...

It may be, ultimately, that Podesta and American Progress will imitate conservative think tanks in the way that most Democratic leaders badly want them to -- by attacking Bush, by getting their people on CNN and by making sure they're armed with the talking points of the day. But that's not what really made those think tanks powerful in the first place. I mentioned to Podesta what one Republican told me -- that the best thing for American Progress would be for the Democratic presidential nominee to get totaled in 2004 the way Goldwater did 40 years earlier. That way, the party would be desperate for new ideas, and a determined think tank could conceivably take over its agenda.

''I'll leave that for somebody else to say,'' Podesta replied. ''If you ask me, I'd rather have a progressive administration.'' That makes sense coming from a loyal Democrat. But if you really want to reset the table, you might have to be willing to kick it over.

All right, the problem here is not that interview. I should have known better. But it's that I paid for it. And so did you. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (search), which funds NPR, gets a billion dollars a year in taxpayer money. Why is the government allowing a far-left outfit like NPR, which is obviously biased, to operate on taxpayer money?

For instance, in the first session of the 107th Congress (FY 2002 budget cycle), the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) received a $380 million appropriation. Because CPB is advance funded by two years, the appropriation is for public broadcasting in fiscal year 2004. Recently, Congress approved a $390 million funding level for fiscal year 2005.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) receives an appropriation from the federal government. In 1999, this figure was $250,000,000. In 2004, CPB is expected to receive an allocation of $380,000,000 and $395,000,000 has been set-aside for 2005. Of this allocation, CPB, must award 95% to a small handful of public broadcasting entities (NPR, PBS, etc.).

Just as former Ambassador Joseph Wilson's story that Bushies blew his CIA wife's cover to get back at his criticism of the war in Iraq was getting old, he has stumbled on new ammo to hit the administration's credibility. Wilson tells us he plans to circulate the text of a briefing by analyst Sam Gardiner that suggests the White House and Pentagon made up or distorted over 50 war stories. You know some tall tales, like the Pvt. Jessica Lynch story. But there's more, says Gardiner, a war gamer who has taught at the National War College. Like how defense officials said the first Iraqi unit marines encountered, the 51st Mechanized Infantry Division, had surrendered four days before it actually did. And he says Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Richard Myers gave bad or deliberately incomplete info on several topics. Sure, propaganda has always been used in war to deceive and demoralize the enemy. But these guys went way overboard, Gardiner says. "Never before have so many stories been created to sell a war," he insists. "And they probably didn't need it."

Extreme weather events cost Americans nearly $20 billion in 2002, a cost that could increase if the U.S. does nothing to curb global warming. At the same time, clean energy technologies could save American consumers billions of dollars and reduce global warming pollution, according to a new report by the U.S. PIRG Education Fund.

Released as Congress considers a conference report on a national energy bill, the U.S. PIRG report -- The Costs of Inaction: Delaying Action on Global Warming Costs Consumers and the Environment -- details how clean energy solutions could save consumers billions of dollars and curb global warming pollution.

"People say we can't change the weather, but due to global warming we may already have," said U.S. PIRG Global Warming Advocate Beth Lander. "While the U.S. does nothing to curb global warming, consumers are losing out on the money-saving benefits of clean energy solutions, and we all pay the price to deal with the consequences."

Burning dirty fossil fuels (oil, coal and gas) to power cars and homes releases heat-trapping global warming gases into the atmosphere, which alters the climate of the planet and throws weather systems out of balance. Scientists warn that doing nothing to reduce global warming pollution will increase the frequency and severity of costly extreme weather events such as drought, floods, and hurricanes. U.S. PIRG analyzed data from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the National Flood Insurance Program, Army Corps of Engineers, Small Business Administration, Farm Service Agency, and the Property Claims Service and found that extreme weather-related spending in the U.S. in 2002 totaled nearly $20 billion nationally.

Our CIA source says the continuing controversy over Plame stems more from the Bush administration's failure to clean house at the CIA of Clinton-Gore careerists that still dominate there. But the CIA is not the only problem, Clinton-Gore careerists still run State, Defense and most other agencies. Why the administration has dragged its feet in cleaning house and appointing their own people, as all previous administrations have done, is not clear.

A CIA official tells NewsMax that anger over the revelation that Ambassador Joe Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was outed -- is nonsense. Even if Plame was an undercover operative, the agency regularly moves such operatives out of deep cover if the operative's spouse becomes very high profile.

Example 1:

I really hope POS Franken dies on camera, choking on his own vomit. What an actual pig. Once he pulled his pants down, hoping I would give him a BJ, but I puked when I saw all the skid marks on his shorts.

Example 2:

u dont make any sense..you should keep this email too..so you know who to blame when your website is crashed and a whole bunch of shit im sure you wont appreciate is put on it...your a pussy, and ur going to grow up and like dick... heres an idea..why dont u such franken off? sounds good u fucking faggot ... my dad makes $5,000,000 a year and he didnt get to where he is today from listening to people that you jerk off to such as mr franken, I go to a high school that costs more than your college does...and i think my family has a collection of german and italian cars that account for the entire profits of mr Frankens book sales...dont lecture me...and dont try to act smart...because im smarter than you, i happened to have gotten at 1520 on my SAT's pal. learn how to make a website..u worthless liberal piece of shit..where do you live? why dont we meet and ill teach you some manners bitch. go kill yourself, your fucking worthless

Jan Stephenson, who became the first woman to play on the Champions Tour on Friday, said Asians are "killing" the LPGA Tour and their numbers should be limited.

Stephenson, who won 16 tournaments, including three majors, during her LPGA career, is playing in this weekend's Turtle Bay Championship. Her comments appear in an article in the November edition of "Golf Magazine," due out Tuesday.

"This is probably going to get me in trouble, but the Asians are killing our tour. Absolutely killing it," she told the magazine. "Their lack of emotion, their refusal to speak English when they can speak English. They rarely speak.

"We have two-day pro-ams where people are paying a lot of money to play with us, and they say, 'Hello and goodbye.' Our tour is predominantly international and the majority of them are Asian. They've taken it over."

Four of the top nine players on the LPGA money list this year are of Asian descent including Se Ri Pak, Grace Park, HeeWon Han and Candie Kung.

"If I were commissioner, I would have a quota on international players and that would include a quota on Asian players," Stephenson told the magazine. "As it is, they're taking American money. American sponsors are picking up the bill. There should be a qualifying school for Americans and a qualifying school for international players. I'm Australian, an international player, but I say America has to come first. Sixty percent of the tour should be American, 40 percent international."