In response to reports that actor and comedian Chevy Chase called President Bush a "dumb f---" while co-hosting a December 14 People For the American Way awards ceremony in Washington, DC, FOX News host Bill O'Reilly asserted on the December 16 O'Reilly Factor that "you don't see this kind of thing on the right." He added: "You don’t see prominent conservatives cursing out Democratic members of Congress, for example."

The survey conducted by Cornell University also found that Republicans and people who described themselves as highly religious were more apt to support curtailing Muslims' civil liberties than Democrats or people who are less religious.

Researchers also found that respondents who paid more attention to television news were more likely to fear terrorist attacks and support limiting the rights of Muslim Americans.

"It's sad news. It's disturbing news. But it's not unpredictable," said Mahdi Bray, executive director of the Muslim American Society. "The nation is at war, even if it's not a traditional war. We just have to remain vigilant and continue to interface."

The survey found 44 percent favored at least some restrictions on the civil liberties of Muslim Americans. Forty-eight percent said liberties should not be restricted in any way.

The survey showed that 27 percent of respondents supported requiring all Muslim Americans to register where they lived with the federal government. Twenty-two percent favored racial profiling to identify potential terrorist threats. And 29 percent thought undercover agents should infiltrate Muslim civic and volunteer organizations to keep tabs on their activities and fund-raising.

The end of the 2004 presidential election campaign doesn't spell the end of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the well-funded alliance of former servicemen that remains dedicated to preventing Sen. John Kerry from becoming president.

The group, which recently changed its name to Swift Boat Veterans and POWs for Truth, plans to convene next month to celebrate its successes and to consider speaking out further about Kerry's military service, his anti-war activities afterward, and other issues, says William E. Franke, the longtime St. Louisan who ran the organization's day-to-day operations.

In his first interview about his role in the anti-Kerry group, Franke, a Navy veteran who served briefly as publisher of the old St. Louis Globe-Democrat in the 1980s, said his group succeeded in its mission to discredit Kerry and may help distribute a controversial film attacking the Massachusetts senator.

Kerry has given no indication that he might seek the Democratic nomination in 2008 and would probably encounter resistance from many in his party if he did.

Nonetheless, Franke made clear that his disdain for Kerry had not abated and that his group was keeping a wary eye on the senator's activities.

Franke offered no new evidence for his claims that Kerry misstated facts about his Vietnam service.

Millions of Americans will face an increased threat of bacteria, viruses and parasites in their water thanks to a new federal policy allowing sewer operators to dump inadequately treated sewage into the nation's waterways. The Environmental Protection Agency's new plan, which reverses a current rule requiring sewer operators to fully treat their waste in all but the most extreme circumstances, will allow operators to routinely dump sewage anytime it rains. The EPA is expected to issue the policy sometime in the next few weeks.

"[Blackwell] claimed that Democrat and Republican areas were equally affected by voting machines, that he's made of Teflon when it comes to lawsuits challenging his authority, and that he is God's Gift To The Earth in every way imaginable. After giving this interview, Mr. Blackwell thanked Jesus, got into his spaceship, and flew back to the outer realms of reality, aka the Abyss of Bullshit, where he shares a lovely one-bedroom apartment with Baghdad Bob."

CROWLEY: I was going to ask you that because unlike some comedians you are so well-known for your political views as well. Do you find that interferes at all, or are they just glad to have you there?

FRANKEN: They are glad to have me there. And also, I just -- my opening joke usually was, "Anybody here from out of town?" And then, you know, "This Army grub, it doesn't agree with me. I've had three MREs -- those are meals ready to eat -- and none of them seem to have an exit strategy."

So it's a different kind of humor I do, but every, you know, I had a number of soldiers come up to me and say, "I don't agree with you politically, but I so appreciate you coming." And they really do.

We had an urban, girl trio, singing group, and their manager -- we did a show in the hangar in Baghdad where the president had served Thanksgiving dinner -- and a soldier went up to the manager of these girls and said, "It's really an honor to meet you," and the manager said, "You don't understand, I'm just the manager of these girls."

And he [the soldier] said, "No, no, you don't understand. I'm a soldier. I had to be here. I met President Bush a few weeks ago. He's the president, and he really should come here. You don't have to be here. You came here because you care, and I -- so it's more of an honor to meet you."

According to my rough calculations, for $40 million dollars, we could be buying in between 160-222 newly armored Humvees for our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan and not even all of Rupert Murdock's new Apartment in New York, priced at $44 million.

For each $250K ticket sold to celebrate the event we could buy one of the most expensive armored Humvees.

At $849.00 apiece, we could be buying 47,114 different sets of Level IIIA Ballistic Steel, Ceramic or Polyethylene Body Armor to protect the troops.

For $200 apiece, you could buy a care package for 200K troops deployed overseas that included DVDs, magazines, cigarettes, cigars, letters from home, and some taped ACC basketball games.

U.S. veterans from the war in Iraq are beginning to show up at homeless shelters around the country, and advocates fear they are the leading edge of a new generation of homeless vets not seen since the Vietnam era.

"When we already have people from Iraq on the streets, my God," said Linda Boone, executive director of the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans. "I have talked to enough (shelters) to know we are getting them. It is happening and this nation is not prepared for that."

"I drove off in my truck. I packed my stuff. I lived out of my truck for a while," Seabees Petty Officer Luis Arellano, 34, said in a telephone interview from a homeless shelter near March Air Force Base in California run by U.S.VETS, the largest organization in the country dedicated to helping homeless veterans.

Arellano said he lived out of his truck on and off for three months after returning from Iraq in September 2003. "One day you have a home and the next day you are on the streets," he said.

In Iraq, shrapnel nearly severed his left thumb. He still has trouble moving it and shrapnel "still comes out once in a while," Arellano said. He is left handed.

Arellano said he felt pushed out of the military too quickly after getting back from Iraq without medical attention he needed for his hand -- and as he would later learn, his mind.

"It was more of a rush. They put us in a warehouse for a while. They treated us like cattle," Arellano said about how the military treated him on his return to the United States.

"It is all about numbers. Instead of getting quality care, they were trying to get everybody demobilized during a certain time frame. If you had a problem, they said, 'Let the (Department of Veterans Affairs) take care of it.'"

The Pentagon has acknowledged some early problems and delays in treating soldiers returning from Iraq but says the situation has been fixed.

Someone. Euthanize me. Now.

I gave up on trying to sleep. Is something going around, cuz man it hit me hard right around bedtime. Ugh. This means I'll either be blogging a lot Thursday out of boredom, or I'll be in bed all day begging for someone to smother me. I'll let you know which.

I'm feeling a bit under the weather. Sore throat, achy joints, congestion, etc. So I'm resting and overdosing on fluids and vitamin C trying to head this thing off before it becomes a full-fledged illness.

I came home early today with a soul-destroying cold. It came on all of a sudden last night; this morning my throat felt like three miles of bad gravel road. You know how it is.

So apologies for the dearth of posts. I expect to be home tomorrow. I know I owe some of you an Amazing Race piece, and I'll get on it if this shuddery feeling I have doesn't turn into a fever. Man, I hate being sick this time of year. I gotta go find the damn thermometer now.

Queens in the Bush Administration?!

When giving George Tenet the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Tuesday, for God only knows what, President Bush commented on Tenet by saying "he still remembers his roots. There's still alot of Queens in George Tenet."

Does Mrs. Tenet know this? Who said the Bush Administration was anti-gay?!

"These are common-sense, grass-roots ideas from the people I represent, and I'd be very surprised if a majority of legislators didn't feel they were the right solutions to these problems."

"It's like when the hijackers took over those four planes on Sept. 11 and took people to a place where they didn't want to go," she added. "I think a lot of people feel that liberals have taken our country somewhere we don't want to go. I think a lot more people realize this is our country and we're going to take it back."

Let me tell you about the disorder and complacency inside the Kerry-Edwards campaign itself. Look no further for why Democrats lost the election.

[snip]

Most of the Kerry supporters I met on the campaign trail, meanwhile, were really just Bush-haters. The lack of knowledge or even curiosity about Kerry, his career and his proposals, was astonishing. Almost no one working alongside me had the slightest inkling of Kerry's policy initiatives (clearly laid out on his Web site). No one knew what he'd done in the Senate. Many volunteers, even some paid staffers, didn't know how long he'd been a senator.

[snip]

The one thing everyone did know? Kerry was not Bush. For most, that was enough.

[snip]

In the big Southwestern city operation where I spent the most time, a city that was the main population center of its state, and where Kerry's future would hinge on making direct contact with a few thousand urban and suburban swing voters, the campaign was haphazard and impotent. While the operations and press staff sat at their computers, tracking metrics and trying to spin reporters, no one seemed to want to take responsibility for the hundreds of callers and door-to-door canvassers who, like myself, were actually talking to those crucial voters.

[snip]

The precinct captains, whose job it was to decide which precincts to target, and to divvy those precincts up and shuttle canvassers to them, were for the most part poorly paid kids in their early 20s, just out of high school or still in college. They, too, seemed to have only the vaguest idea of who Kerry was or why they working for him, outside of a nameless dread of the future. They were committed but left largely unguided and, it appeared to me, uninspired by their superiors, and they had none of the unshakable confidence I saw among the Bush team.

[snip]

Despite all signs pointing to a massive left-leaning youth turnout, the campaign's presence at the three major Southwestern state universities I visited was nil. Perhaps the Kerry people figured that the 18-24 vote was in the bag. But you should never rely on such assumptions, as the Democrats' increasingly poor showings among minority voters showed.

[snip]

Still, the Kerry staffers I spoke with -- from the operations chiefs to the press crew to the precinct captains -- were possessed of a kind of wishful confidence, based not on any particular allegiance to the senator but on what E.M. Forster would have called panic and emptiness. No one could imagine a Bush win. The prospect was unthinkable. How could America reelect him? It couldn't. So it would elect Kerry. It must. Such went the tortured logic.

They come to him in search of miracles. The lame, the sick and the dying; young and old; Christians from the US, Muslims from the Middle East, Buddhists from Japan, agnostics from Europe. Some have been in wheelchairs for years and believe he can help them walk; others are kept alive by respirators, yet hope he can make them breathe. The voiceless have heard he can bring them speech. The terminally ill seek nothing less than more life. In many cases doctors and friends advise them to stay at home, not to waste their money, and warn them of potential risks.
For they come in search of one of the most pioneering - and controversial - medical procedures on the planet: the injection of cells from aborted foetuses into the brains and spines of the sick. And the object of their faith is a Chinese surgeon who spent many of his university years labouring as a peasant and is now conducting trial-and-error experiments on live subjects despite his research being rejected by the western medical establishment.

Dr Huang Hongyun promises nothing. He claims no miracle cure. He admits he cannot fully explain his results. All he knows, and all he tells his patients, is that his method often works, that the results speak for themselves. "Our results change thousands of years of traditional concepts," he says.

The conventional wisdoms that he claims to have turned on their heads are that chronic spinal injuries - injuries that can cause paraplegia or tetraplegia - can never be treated; and that it is almost impossible to stabilise the condition of patients with the wasting disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig's disease.

[snip]

None of these claims has been proven to western scientific standards, but Huang's willingness to think the unthinkable in order to cure the incurable is inspiring hope; so much hope that patients are putting aside ethical qualms, paying tens of thousands of dollars and flying to Beijing to act as his guinea pigs.

Among them is Van Golden, a Christian, anti-abortion Texan who has sold his house so that he can travel to communist, atheist China and have Huang inject a million cells from the nasal area of a foetus into his spine. According to Golden's doctors, his spine was damaged beyond repair in a car crash last Christmas. The damage to his nervous system was so bad that he has been in a wheelchair and racked by spasms ever since. But Golden refused to give up, even if it meant having to compromise his values. "This is the only place that offered us any hope," he says. "Everyone else offered only to help make me sufficient in that chair. But the chair is not my destiny. It is not ordained."

A Muslim scholar whose work visa was abruptly revoked after he was hired by the University of Notre Dame said Tuesday he has resigned his appointment.

``I'm abandoning the idea of moving to the United States,'' Tariq Ramadan told The Associated Press from Geneva. ``I want to maintain my dignity.''

Ramadan notified the university on Monday, citing the stress on him and his family from the uncertainty of their situation, said R. Scott Appleby, director of Notre Dame's Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies.

Ramadan, a Swiss citizen, was barred from working in the United States in August just days before he was to begin teaching at Notre Dame. The Department of Homeland Security cited security concerns but released no specifics.

Ramadan said Tuesday there is nothing in his past to justify the ban and demanded that U.S. authorities give details of its investigation of him in order to clear him of the ``untrue and humiliating'' claims that he was barred because of ties to terrorism.

``This is an obstacle to academic freedom of expression,'' he said.

He took a year's unpaid leave from his posts in Switzerland in order to work at Notre Dame and is now out of a job. ``I don't have any new plans for the moment,'' he said.

He had been paid by Notre Dame until he resigned, said Matt Storin, a university spokesman.

The revocation of his visa sparked protests from at least four U.S. scholars' groups, led a United Nations-sponsored institution to issue an academic freedom alert and inspired appeals on Ramadan's behalf from some Jewish groups.

Many who have rallied in support of Ramadan believe the scholar's sharp criticism of Israel, the war in Iraq and U.S. policy in the Mideast was the reason for the revocation.


At the time, the Department of Homeland Security said the decision was based on ``public safety or national security interests'' and pointed to federal law applying to aliens who have used a ``position of prominence ... to endorse or espouse terrorist activity.''

Most people I've talked to aren't going to go to elections. It's simply too dangerous and there's a sense that nothing is going to be achieved anyway. The lists are more or less composed of people affiliated with the very same political parties whose leaders rode in on American tanks. Then you have a handful of tribal sheikhs. Yes- tribal sheikhs. Our country is going to be led by members of religious parties and tribal sheikhs- can anyone say Afghanistan? What's even more irritating is that election lists have to be checked and confirmed by none other than Sistani!! Sistani- the Iranian religious cleric. So basically, this war helped us make a transition from a secular country being run by a dictator to a chaotic country being run by a group of religious clerics. Now, can anyone say 'theocracy in sheeps clothing'?

Ahmad Chalabi is at the head of one of those lists- who would join a list with Ahmad Chalabi at its head?

Who really cares what Hollywood thinks? All these hacks come out there. Hollywood is controlled by secular Jews who hate Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular. It's not a secret, OK? And I'm not afraid to say it. That's why they hate this movie. It's about Jesus Christ, and it's about truth. It's about the messiah. Hollywood likes anal sex. They like to see the public square without nativity scenes. I like families. I like children. They like abortions. I believe in traditional values and restraint. They believe in libertinism. We have nothing in common.

[Rabbi Shmuley] BOTEACH: Stop the anti-Semitic garbage, OK?
(CROSSTALK)
DONAHUE: Who‘s making the movies? The Irishmen?
(CROSSTALK)
BOTEACH: Michael Moore is certainly not a Jew. Let me speak here,
DONAHUE: I didn‘t question that.
BOTEACH: Hollywood has become a cesspit because it‘s secular, period.
Don‘t this us—don‘t tell us that it‘s secular Jews.
DONAHUE: So the Catholics are running Hollywood, huh?
(CROSSTALK)
Is it time for Hollywood to dump Michael Moore, and how will the red states react if Tinseltown awards Michael an Oscar this year, and he trashes the president again in front of a TV audience of a billion people on Oscar night?
Bill Donahue, I said I would give you the right of response to the Rabbi‘s remarks before the break. The floor is yours.
DONAHUE: Yes.
Obviously, he‘s concerned about secularists. I‘m talking about secularists in Hollywood. They‘re not Rastafarians. They‘re Jews. Just pick up any copy of the Jewish...
(CROSSTALK)
DONAHUE: And you‘ll learn that.
BOTEACH: Those Jews.
DONAHUE: You‘re going to tell me that the Chinese don‘t live in Chinatown, right? To say that Hollywood is dominated by secular Jews...
Jennifer GIROUX: Yes.
All I can say, Rabbi, is, you‘ve got to concede the fact—and it‘s difficult because we all at times in life have to say, I‘m sorry, I was wrong—we cannot go back and make it that the Hawaiians killed Christ. Mel Gibson and all Christians...
BOTEACH: What are you talking about?
GIROUX: I‘m saying you can‘t rewrite history.
BUCHANAN: Rabbi, cut the personal insults, please. Rabbi, cut the insults, personal insults, please.
(CROSSTALK)
BOTEACH: Oh, come on, Pat.
(CROSSTALK)
BOTEACH: The Jews are ruining the world and you‘re telling me to cut the insults? Come on, Pat. Get real here, OK?

What should we do with US classics like Cat on a Hot Tin Roof or The Color Purple? "Dig a hole," Gerald Allen recommends, "and dump them in it." Don't laugh. Gerald Allen's book-burying opinions are not a joke.

Earlier this week, Allen got a call from Washington. He will be meeting with President Bush on Monday. I asked him if this was his first invitation to the White House. "Oh no," he laughs. "It's my fifth meeting with Mr Bush."

Bush is interested in Allen's opinions because Allen is an elected Republican representative in the Alabama state legislature. He is Bush's base. Last week, Bush's base introduced a bill that would ban the use of state funds to purchase any books or other materials that "promote homosexuality". Allen does not want taxpayers' money to support "positive depictions of homosexuality as an alternative lifestyle". That's why Tennessee Williams and Alice Walker have got to go.

I ask Allen what prompted this bill. Was one of his children exposed to something in school that he considered inappropriate? Did he see some flamingly gay book displayed prominently at the public library?

No, nothing like that. "It was election day," he explains. Last month, "14 states passed referendums defining marriage as a relationship between a man and a woman". Exit polls asked people what they considered the most important issue, and "moral values in this country" were "the top of the list".

"Traditional family values are under attack," Allen informs me. They've been under attack "for the last 40 years". The enemy, this time, is not al-Qaida. The axis of evil is "Hollywood, the music industry". We have an obligation to "save society from moral destruction". We have to prevent liberal libarians and trendy teachers from "re-engineering society's fabric in the minds of our children".

Yesterday, it came to the attention of the House Judiciary Committee Democratic Staff that efforts to audit poll records in Greene County, Ohio are being obstructed by County Election officials and/or Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell. According to Joan Quinn and Eve Robertson, two election observers researching voting records, Greene County officials initially gave Quinn and Robertson access to poll records, and then abruptly withdrew such access. Greene County Director of Elections Carole Garman claimed that she had withdrawn access to the voting records at the direction of Secretary Blackwell. Regardless of who ordered the denial of this access, such an action appears to violate Ohio law. Later, at the same office, election observers found the office unlocked, and what appeared to be locked ballot boxes, unattended. Prior to the withdrawal of access to the books, observers had found discrepancies in election records, and possible evidence of minority vote suppression.

House Judiciary Committee Democrats wrote a letter to Blackwell on December 2 requesting answers to 34 questions about election irregularities and fraud in Ohio. This letter included questions about major discrepancies in Perry County poll books. Since that letter, additional documentation has been provided to the Democratic staff demonstrating similar problems in other counties.

Because of the urgency of the Greene County matter, Congressman John Conyers, Jr., Ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, has requested that Ms. Quinn testify at a hearing scheduled Monday in Columbus, Ohio. Ms. Quinn has agreed to do so and will also present sworn statements from corroborating witnesses. Conyers issued the following statement:

"The Recount effort is simply a search for the truth of what happened during the 2004 Presidential election in Ohio. We have now repeatedly seen election officials obstruct and stonewall this search for the truth. I am beginning to wonder what it is they are trying to hide."

President John F. Kennedy once said, "We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people." It appears all to evident today that the government of this nation is afraid of its people, afraid of the truth.

This is nothing new. Alexis De Toqueville observed long ago that, "The surface of American society is covered with a layer of democratic paint, but from time to time one can see the old aristocratic colors breaking through."

We are seeing those colors breaking through today in the privatization of the vote, in the denial of access to the results of that vote, and in the complete blackout by the mainstream news media of the simple fact that this is happening. Yet here we stand, and here we will remain. I support the effort to pass a constitutional amendment establishing the explicit right to vote in this country. A federal right to vote would bolster the National Voter Registration Act standards for voter registration activities, while also prohibiting voter intimidation and granting the Attorney General the power to intervene where voting irregularities of fraud occurs.

You may groan at that last bit, remembering who sits in the AG chair today, and who will sit there when Ashcroft is gone, but this is a fight for the future, and we will clean that house one day and seat an attorney general who is not...how do I put this? One day we will seat an attorney general who understands his or her job involves more than frightening people on cue whenever Bush lands in political hot water. A federal right to vote makes all of the things we have seen happening since the November election a matter of constitutional law. Diebold would be exposed by this. Blackwell would be exposed by this. The truth would be exposed by this.

I can think of nothing more important than the defense of our right to vote, I can think of nothing more important than the demand that all votes be counted, and I can think of nothing more important than the fight to cleanse our system of those who would steal from us these basic, essential democratic requirements. I can think of no coherent argument against enshrining our right to vote within the sacred document that defines us as a nation.

This is not a partisan political issue. I do not know what the party registration was of the woman going through chemotherapy, who fainted in line while waiting to vote. She left the line without voting because the line was too long, because there were not enough machines at her polling place. I do not know the party registration of the single mom who would have gotten fired from her job had she stood in that long line to vote. What about the man who was in the hospital and did not receive his absentee ballot, so he stood in that line with an IV in his arm. I have no idea who these people would of voted for. I couldn't care less. These people, and millions more besides, were disenfranchised in this last election. This is intolerable. Period.

The parents of a 13-year-old girl are suing US supermarket giant Wal-Mart over a CD by rock group Evanescence that contains swear words.
The lawsuit, filed in Washington County, alleges Wal-Mart deceived customers by not putting warning labels on the cover.

Trevin Skeens alleges Wal-Mart knew of the offending word because it had censored it on its music sales website.

Wal-Mart said it was investigating the claims but had no plans to pull the CD.

Wal-Mart has a policy of not stocking CDs which carry parental advisory labels.

Mr Skeens said he bought the Anywhere But Home CD for his daughter and was shocked to hear the swearing when it was played in their car.

"I don't want any other families to get this, expecting it to be clean. It needs to be removed from the shelves to prevent other children from hearing it," said Mr Skeens of Brownsville.

The lawsuit seeks to force Wal-Mart to censor the music or remove it from its stores in Maryland.

It also seeks damages of up to $74,500 (£38,660) for every customer who bought the CD at Maryland Wal-Marts, and also naming record label Wind-Up Records and distributor BMG Entertainment in the legal action.

A college student who admitted he fatally shot his parents in their bedroom and broke a chain saw cutting up their bodies told investigators: "God told me to."

Philip Badowski made the comment in a recorded interview with police following the Dec. 2 slayings of Cester "Chet" Badowski Jr., 47, and Christine Badowski, 46. Prosecutors played the recording at Badowski's preliminary hearing Friday.