Randy and Ronnell Vorick thought La Habra was about as far away as one could get from terrorism. They were wrong.

For the last 2 1/2 weeks, the lives of the couple and their three children have been plunged into an unsettling routine of drivers shouting profanities, stopping to photograph their house and — most recently — spray-painting a slogan on their property.

Their house, a suburban fixer-upper the Voricks bought three years ago, was wrongly identified in a cable news broadcast as the home of a terrorist.

"I'm scared to go to work and leave my kids home. I call them every 30 minutes to make sure they're OK," Randy Vorick said.

"I keep telling myself this can't be happening to me. This can't be happening to my family. But it is. I want our lives to be normal again," he said.

In what Fox News officials concede was a mistake, John Loftus, a former U.S. prosecutor, gave out the address Aug. 7, saying it was the home of a Middle Eastern man, Iyad K. Hilal, who was the leader of a terrorist group with ties to those responsible for the July 7 bombings in London.

Hilal, whom Loftus identified by name during the broadcast, moved out of the house about three years ago. But the consequences were immediate for the Voricks.

Satellite photos of the house and directions to the residence were posted online. The Voricks told police, who arranged for the content to be taken down. Someone even removed the street sign where the Voricks live to provide some protection.

Still, it has not been easy.

A driver yelled a profanity at the family and called them terrorists as they barbecued on their patio Aug. 14. Some drivers have stopped and photographed the house, Randy Vorick said.

Last weekend, someone spray-painted "Terrist" on their home. Police, who have regularly patrolled their house since the day after the broadcast, now station a squad car across the street.

Randy, a restaurant manager, and Ronnell, a manager at a staffing agency, have been married 19 years and met as teenagers when they worked at a local McDonald's.

They grew up in La Habra and bought the house three years ago after Hilal moved out so they could be close to Ronnell Vorick's parents.

La Habra Police Capt. John Rees said the department was "giving special attention to the family to make sure they're safe," but declined to elaborate.

"This thing broke on a Sunday, when we started receiving inquiries from the public about terrorists," he said.

The Voricks said they had made several unsuccessful attempts to contact Fox News and Loftus by telephone and e-mail. They want a public apology and correction.

Both have issued apologies — Fox in a one-line statement to the Los Angeles Times and Loftus in an e-mail to the family — after being contacted by the newspaper. The Voricks say they have yet to see or hear a correction.

"John Loftus has been reprimanded for his careless error, and we sincerely apologize to the family," said Fox spokeswoman Irena Brigante.

Loftus also apologized and told The Times last week that "mistakes happen."

"I'm terribly sorry about that. I had no idea. That was the best information we had at the time," he said.

Loftus said he gave out the address to help local police, and insisted that Hilal, a Garden Grove grocery store owner, was a terrorist.

"I thought it might help police in that area now that we have positively identified a terrorist living in [Orange County]," he said.

It is fascinating that the Alan Guttmacher Institute estimated that the morning-after pill accounts for up to 43% of the drop in abortion rates between 1994 and 2000. I thought that the wingnuts wanted abortions to disappear? But not enough to let women have the morning-after pill?

The traditional excuse is that the wingnuts have decided the pill equals abortion. But:

If a woman already is pregnant, the pills have no effect. They prevent ovulation or fertilization of an egg. They also may prevent the egg from implanting into the uterus, the medical definition of pregnancy, although recent research suggests that's not likely.

It is the last possibility, that of preventing implantation, that the wingnuts consider to be abortion. But it's not likely. Ahem. IT'S NOT LIKELY.

Never mind. This is all about punishing women for carefree sex by making it not-so-carefree. Also punishing rape victims who are too scared to go to a hospital or who go to a hospital that doesn't believe in the morning-after pill for rape victims. And this is all about politics, too. Grim, isn't it?

Shiite and Kurdish leaders drafting a new Iraqi constitution abandoned negotiations with a group of Sunni representatives on Friday, deciding to take the disputed charter directly to the Iraqi people.

With the American ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, standing by, Shiite and Kurdish representatives said they had run out of patience with the Sunni negotiators, a group that includes several former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party. The Shiites and Kurds said the Sunnis had refused to budge on a pair of crucial issues that were holding up completion of the constitution.

The Shiites and Kurds reached their decision in meetings that ran late into Friday night, disregarding the Sunnis' pleas for more time.

The Shiite and Kurdish representatives sought to play down the importance of leaving the Sunnis out, saying that with their Baathist links, they had never truly spoken for the broader Sunni population. The Iraqi leaders who drafted the constitution defended it as a document that would ensure the unity of the country and safeguard individual rights.

"The negotiation is finished, and we have a deal," said Ahmad Chalabi, the deputy prime minister and a member of the Shiite leadership. "No one has any more time. It cannot drag on any longer. Most of the Sunnis are satisfied. Everybody made sacrifices. It is an excellent document."

In Washington, a senior State Department official insisted that events in Iraq were "moving in a positive direction." He said all Shiites, Kurds and Sunnis who have been taking part in the talks were continuing to discuss details and refinements.

"What we are watching now is the endgame of this process," the official said. "We don't want to get ahead of the Iraqis and make any announcements, but all the parties are involved in the process."

"There are still ongoing conversations about it," he said.

To acquire the special characteristics of such a crowd, the influence is necessary of certain predisposing causes of which we shall have to determine the nature.

The disappearance of conscious personality and the turning of feelings and thoughts in a definite direction, which are the primary characteristics of a crowd about to become organised, do not always involve the simultaneous presence of a number of individuals on one spot. Thousands of isolated individuals may acquire at certain moments, and under the influence of certain violent emotions - such, for example, as a great national event - the characteristics of a psychological crowd. It will be sufficient in that case that a mere chance should bring them together for their acts to at once assume the characteristics peculiar to the acts of a crowd. At certain moments half a dozen men might constitute a psychological crowd, which may not happen in the case of hundreds of men gathered together by accident. On the other hand, an entire nation, though there may be no visible agglomeration, may become a crowd under the action of certain influences.

A psychological crowd once constituted, it acquires certain provisional but determinable general characteristics.

[snip]

The most striking peculiarity presented by a psychological crowd is the following: Whoever be the individuals that compose it, however like or unlike be their mode of life, their occupations, their character, or their intelligence, the fact that they have been transformed into a crowd puts them in possession of a sort of collective mind which makes them feel, think, and act in a manner quite different from that in which each individual of them would feel, think, and act were he in a state of isolation.

[snip]

...the individual forming part of a crowd acquires, solely from numerical considerations, a sentiment of invincible power which allows him to yield to instincts which, had he been alone, he would perforce have kept under restraint. He will be the less disposed to check himself from the consideration that, a crowd being anonymous, and in consequence irresponsible, the sentiment of responsibility which always controls individuals disappears entirely.

[snip]

...an individual immerged for some length of time in a crowd in action soon finds himself - either in consequence of the magnetic influence given out by the crowd, or from some other cause of which we are ignorant - in a special state, which much resembles the state of fascination in which the hypnotised individual finds himself in the hands of the hypnotiser.

[snip]

by the mere fact that he forms part of an organised crowd, a man descends several rungs in the ladder of civilisation. Isolated, he may be a cultivated individual; in a crowd, he is a barbarian - that is, a creature acting by instinct. He possesses the spontaneity, the violence, the ferocity, and also the enthusiasm and heroism of primitive beings, whom he further tends to resemble by the facility with which he allows himself to be impressed by words and images - which would be entirely without action on each of the isolated individuals composing the crowd - and to be induced to commit acts contrary to his most obvious interests and his best-known habits. An individual in a crowd is a grain of sand amid other grains of sand, which the wind stirs up at will.

IMPULSIVENESS, MOBILITY, AND IRRITABILITY OF CROWDS. The crowd is at the mercy of all exterior exciting causes, and reflects their incessant variations - The impulses which the crowd obeys are so imperious as to annihilate the feeling of personal interest. [Thus explaineth Republicans]

CROWDS ARE CREDULOUS AND READILY INFLUENCED BY SUGGESTION. The images evoked in the mind of crowds are accepted by them as realities [such as the continued belief that Saddam was involved in 9/11, that WMD were found in Iraq]

THE EXAGGERATION AND INGENUOUSNESS OF THE SENTIMENTS OF CROWDS. Crowds do not admit doubt or uncertainty, and always go to extremes.

THE INTOLERANCE, DICTATORIALNESS, AND CONSERVATISM OF CROWDS. The reasons of these sentiments - The servility of crowds in the face of a strong authority - The momentary revolutionary instincts of crowds do not prevent them from being extremely conservative - Crowds instinctively hostile to changes and progress

THE MORALITY OF CROWDS. The morality of crowds, according to the suggestions under which they act, may be much lower or much higher than that of the individuals composing them - Explanation and examples - Crowds rarely guided by those considerations of interest which are most often the exclusive motives of the isolated individual - The moralising role of crowds. [In other words, people who might individually say in the abstract that torture is not what civilized people do, put them in the context of the Bush-supporting crowd, and suddenly Abu Ghraib becomes a moral imperative.]

This progressive restriction of liberties shows itself in every country in a special shape which Herbert Spencer has not pointed out; it is that the passing of these innumerable series of legislative measures, all of them in a general way of a restrictive order, conduces necessarily to augment the number, the power, and the influence of the functionaries charged with their application. These functionaries tend in this way to become the veritable masters of civilised countries. Their power is all the greater owing to the fact that, amidst the incessant transfer of authority, the administrative caste is alone in being untouched by these changes, is alone in possessing irresponsibility, impersonality, and perpetuity. There is no more oppressive despotism than that which presents itself under this triple form.

This incessant creation of restrictive laws and regulations, surrounding the pettiest actions of existence with the most complicated formalities, inevitably has for its result the confining within narrower and narrower limits of the sphere in which the citizen may move freely. Victims of the delusion that

equality and liberty are the better assured by the multiplication of laws, nations daily consent to put up with trammels increasingly burdensome. They do not accept this legislation with impunity. Accustomed to put up with every yoke, they soon end by desiring servitude, and lose all spontaneousness and energy. They are then no more than vain shadows, passive, unresisting and powerless automata.

Arrived at this point, the individual is bound to seek outside himself the forces he no longer finds within him. The functions of governments necessarily increase in proportion as the indifference and helplessness of the citizens grow. They it is who must necessarily exhibit the initiative, enterprising, and guiding spirit in which private persons are lacking. It falls on them to undertake everything, direct everything, and take everything under their protection. The State becomes an all-powerful god. Still experience shows that the power of such gods was never either very durable or very strong.

This progressive restriction of all liberties in the case of certain peoples, in spite of an outward license that gives them the illusion that these liberties are still in their possession, seems at least as much a consequence of their old age as of any particular system. It constitutes one of the precursory symptoms of that decadent phase which up to now no civilisation has escaped.

Judging by the lessons of the past, and by the symptoms that strike the attention on every side, several of our modern civilisations have reached that phase of extreme old age which precedes decadence. It seems inevitable that all peoples should pass through identical phases of existence, since history is so often seen to repeat its course.

[snip]

To pass in pursuit of an ideal from the barbarous to the civilised state, and then, when this ideal has lost its virtue, to decline and die, such is the cycle of the life of a people.

Both his parents said their son's death makes their once-wavering opinions about the war in Iraq much more clear.

Andre Lieurance referred to Cindy Sheehan, the California mother of a slain soldier, who recently camped out in front of President Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas, in opposition to the war.

"She didn't speak for me. Now she does," the father told The Knoxville News Sentinel on Tuesday. "I'm with her. I believe we were lied to. (My son) did what he was supposed to. Bush didn't."

American families don't care about G.D.P. They care about whether jobs are available, how much those jobs pay and how that pay compares with the cost of living. And recent G.D.P. growth has failed to produce exceptional gains in employment, while wages for most workers haven't kept up with inflation.

About employment: it's true that the economy finally started adding jobs two years ago. But although many people say "four million jobs in the last two years" reverently, as if it were an amazing achievement, it's actually a rise of about 3 percent, not much faster than the growth of the working-age population over the same period. And recent job growth would have been considered subpar in the past: employment grew more slowly during the best two years of the Bush administration than in any two years during the Clinton administration.

It's also true that the unemployment rate looks fairly low by historical standards. But other measures of the job situation, like the average of weekly hours worked (which remains low), and the average duration of unemployment (which remains high), suggest that the demand for labor is still weak compared with the supply.

Employers certainly aren't having trouble finding workers. When Wal-Mart announced that it was hiring at a new store in Northern California, where the unemployment rate is close to the national average, about 11,000 people showed up to apply for 400 jobs.

Because employers don't have to raise wages to get workers, wages are lagging behind the cost of living. According to Labor Department statistics, the purchasing power of an average nonsupervisory worker's wage has fallen about 1.5 percent since the summer of 2003. And this may understate the pressure on many families: the cost of living has risen sharply for those whose work or family situation requires buying a lot of gasoline.

I do know that in later years Pat Boone did record this album of rock, which is reportedly played to terrorist prisoners until they confess. Amnesty International is protesting its use.

His quote that will DEFINITELY change your mind is this:

This lady (Sheehan) and the groups that have been demonstrating in front of the president's ranch in Crawford and following him around are the very same people that were the dropout, turn-on, anti-war peace activists back [in the Vietnam War era]," Boone said. "They still have this crazy notion that by just being peaceful and maybe toking up or something like that – it's like an ostrich with its head in the sand – maybe the danger and the bad guys will go away and leave you alone, which is not gonna happen."

See? All of the demonstrators are people in their 50s and 60s.

The large number of ones that look young just have better make up or face lifts.

And perhaps Pat is right: war critics have started likening this war to Vietnam so why not refight the Vietnam War domestically altogether? Paint them all as hippies. Baby boomers are a bit hippy, but mostly around the waist these days.

Why not frame this as the Vietnam protesters — putting aside their AARP cards, prune juice cocktails and forgoing the new Rolling Stones' Wheelchair Concert Tour — to jump into the fray for one more anti-war, America-hating battle? Why not charge that it's the hippies of the 60s with their sex, drugs and rock and roll who don't back this war.

He also makes an argument that 911s will happen again unless we fight the terrorists on their turf.

Only, news reports quoting experts and Pentagon officials recently suggested that Iraq is now their turf because we're there. Pat forgot to mention that report, though.

In a mammoth 5,500-word piece Thursday headlined “A CIA Cover Blown, A White House Exposed,” Tom Hamburger and Sonni Efron lay out in The Los Angeles Times what happened in the days leading up to, and beyond, the now infamous July 2003 leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's name to the press.

“Beyond the whodunit,” they write, “the affair raises questions about the credibility of the Bush White House, the tactics it employs against political opponents and the justification it used for going to war.”

The article includes some fresh revelations or comments. For example, it notes that allies of Karl Rove defend his talks with reporters in which he tried to counter claims by former Ambassador Joseph Wilson. Then it adds that “some of Rove's colleagues say that he and others used poor judgment in talking about Wilson's wife. 'With the benefit of hindsight, it's clear our focus should have been on Wilson's facts, not his conclusions or his wife or his politics,' said one official who was helping with White House strategy at the time.”

The piece also reveals that in one White House conversation, investigators have learned, Rove was asked why he was focused so intently on discrediting the former diplomat. "He's a Democrat," Rove said, citing Wilson's campaign contributions.

The article also attempts to lay to rest one of the prime Republican talking points: That Wilson's trip to Africa at the behest of the CIA was set up by his wife. “An official recommended sending Wilson to Niger because of his experience there, including a previous mission for the CIA,” the article states, calling the Plame role “a noisy sideshow.”

The article details conversations involving Karl Rove, "Scooter" Libby, Matt Cooper and Robert Novak. But near its conclusion it raises an emerging issue, promoted by Michael Wolff of Vanity Fair, among others: If Time magazine had gone public about Rove's conversations with Cooper, it might have had some impact on the Bush-Kerry race for the White House last year.

Not until this summer did Cooper ask Rove for a waiver to talk to the grand jury, and ultimately the public, about their conversation. The L.A. Times article today notes that he did not do this before “because his lawyer advised against it.” But the reporters add that in addition, “Time editors were concerned about becoming part of such an explosive story in an election year.”

The story concludes: "The result was that Cooper's testimony was delayed nearly a year, well after Bush's reelection."

Casey was not always a brave, big soldier man. He was my sweet, sweet baby once. I told the people at the Camp named after him, that when he was about 2 years old, he would come up behind me and throw his arms around my legs, kiss me on the butt and say: "I wuv you mama." I also talked about the loving big brother and wonderful, nearly perfect son. Casey was a regular guy who wanted to get married, have a family, be an elementary school teacher, and a Deacon in the Catholic Church. He wanted to be a Chaplain's assistant in the Army, but was lied to about that also by his recruiter. The last time I talked to him when he called from Kuwait, he was on his way to mass.

For Casey to even join the Army, let alone being killed in battle was the thing that was most uncharacteristic of him. He was a gentle and kind soul who only wanted to help others.

However deeply George W. Bush indeed may care about the pain endured by our military families, his remarks at the V.F.W. convention didn't comfort those who question the necessity of that suffering. Stripped of the boilerplate verbiage about "the blessings of liberty," which remain remote in Iraq, he seemed to be saying that more Americans must die there because of the many already lost.

"We owe them something," he said. "We will finish the task that they gave their lives for. We will honor their sacrifice by staying on the offensive against the terrorists, and building strong allies in Afghanistan and Iraq that will help us fight and win the war on terror."

Honoring the sacrifice of dead comrades is among the classical arguments for war, and probably dates back to the beginning of organized violence. Such speeches possess an emotional velocity that can swiftly carry listeners beyond the reach of reason. In that inflamed state of mind, citizens are less inclined to ask difficult questions about the war's supposed original aims or the purpose of continued conflict. Nobody wants to be accused of dishonoring the dead.

[snip]

Hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of lives later, what we seem likelier to get in Baghdad sometime soon is an Islamist government, tied to the theocratic regime in Iran, divided by ethnicity, religion and province, and embroiled in a burgeoning civil war that could embroil Iraq's neighbors and sink the region into turmoil.

To demand that the President face these facts and speak honestly about the situation in Iraq is to be accused of wanting to "cut and run," to weaken America and to dishonor the dead. His V.F.W. speech reprised the same old rhetoric about the lessons of the Sept. 11 attacks (a theme White House publicists evidently plan to emphasize on the fourth anniversary of the attacks next month with a country-music concert on the National Mall). He insists that his "straightforward" strategy will eventually "stand up" an Iraqi armed force that will permit our troops to come home. Mr. Bush has nothing new to say, which is why he has resorted to the ancient tactic of waving the bloody shirt.

KARL Rove's favorite president is Richard Nixon. What a twist of fate it would be if Rove were driven from power as Nixon was over what both men would consider trivial matters — the leaking of a CIA employee's name to reporters by Rove in 2004, and the Watergate break-in of the Democratic headquarters at the instigation of Nixon campaign officials in 1972.

Just as it was not the Watergate break-in per se (but the subsequent cover-up) that brought Nixon down, so it may be that what Rove said and did after the fact will prove his undoing.

At the center of the controversy is an obscure and very restrictive 1982 federal statute designed to protect American spies. The legislation is known as the "Philip Agee" law and was put in place to discourage people such as Agee (a disaffected leftist who had been in the CIA) from "outing" covert CIA operatives stationed abroad. Valerie Plame appears to have fallen under this category of protected names since she had worked undercover for the agency in her overseas posts.

The obstacle to getting a conviction against Rove for leaking her identity to reporters is that he would have had to have known that she was an undercover operative and also known that it was against the law to reveal her identity.

It is doubtful that Rove had such knowledge. This is not (as it was with Agee) a situation where you have a disgruntled activist exposing our spies in order to disrupt CIA covert operations and put the life of an agent at risk.

This was simply Karl Rove doing what he does best — employing a scorched-earth policy against anyone whom he views as an enemy of the Bush administration.

And Valerie Plame happened to be "fair game," in Rove's words, because she is the wife of Ambassador Joseph Wilson IV, a man who had challenged the intelligence findings that the Bush administration had used to justify its pre-emptive war against Iraq.

Besides, Rove had gotten away with orchestrating smears throughout his political career, dating back to his days as a college Republican operative in the Nixon years.

Karl Rove is a master of using the press to do his dirty work for him; he would leak sensitive information to favored reporters on a "not for attribution" basis. When the damaging information appeared in print, Rove would pile on a story that was essentially his creation in the first place. It was a formula that worked for him time and time again.

What happens if it turns out that the Bush administration relied on fabricated information about "weapons of mass destruction" (WMDs) to persuade Congress and the American people that we had to go to war against Iraq?

Wilson had debunked the administration's claim that Saddam Hussein was attempting to acquire a form of uranium from Niger to make WMDs. Wilson had to be discredited because, if the Niger information were false, it cast doubt upon many of the other intelligence claims made by neocons.

If special prosecutor Fitzgerald is going down this road, certain prominent figures could be indicted for obstruction of justice and/or for lying about classified national-security matters to Congress and the American people. Perhaps that is why leading neoconservative spokesman Bill Kristol said that Fitzgerald "is the problem for the White House; we have no idea what he knows ... "

The worst possible scenario for the administration would be if it turns out that the Niger documents in question (which all now agree were forged) were fabricated by individuals who may have had a motive for getting us into the war. Shadowy figures previously linked to the Iran-Contra scandal have been mentioned as possible originators of the forged documents.

If there is any truth to these charges, the lid will blow off Washington — and the Bush administration will be history.

The American Legion, which has 2.7 million members, has declared war on antiwar protestors, and the media could be next. Speaking at its national convention in Honolulu, the group's national commander called for an end to all “public protests” and “media events” against the war, even though they are protected by the Bill of Rights.

"The American Legion will stand against anyone and any group that would demoralize our troops, or worse, endanger their lives by encouraging terrorists to continue their cowardly attacks against freedom-loving peoples," Thomas Cadmus, national commander, told delegates at the group's national convention in Honolulu.

The delegates voted to use whatever means necessary to "ensure the united backing of the American people to support our troops and the global war on terrorism."

"This is the future of the new Iraqi government - it will be in the hands of the clerics," said Dr. Raja Kuzai, a secular Shiite member of the Assembly. "I wanted Iraqi women to be free, to be able to talk freely and to able to move around."

"I am not going to stay here," said Dr. Kuzai, an obstetrician and women's leader who met President Bush in the White House in November 2003.

George W. Bush’s answer to when U.S. troops will leave Iraq is: “As the Iraqis stand up – we will stand down.” To achieve this goal, we have been told by various administration officials, the U.S. is “training up” Iraqi forces to eventually take over the fighting.

Unfortunately, this is gibberish. Not that Iraqi soldiers are incapable of fighting (Look no further than the "untrained" insurgents who have tied up the most powerful and best-trained army on earth). It’s just that there is little evidence that any significant number of people want to be soldiers for something called "Iraq."

Building national security institutions – an effective army and police—is not a simple question of military consolidation and technical expertise. It is, rather, a primarily political matter. Can you build a unified, strong national state for which everyday soldiers are willing to die?

In today’s Iraq, unfortunately, just donning the uniform (or standing in line at a recruiting office) can you get blown up before you’re even pressed into duty.

It has become ever clearer that the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of the Saddam dictatorship has set into force powerful centrifugal ethnic forces that are spinning out of control. Iraq – thanks to the British colonialists – was always a paper-thin, manufactured state. Only the leaden hand and the willing trigger finger of a tyrant like Hussein could hold the national state together.

The enormous and likely insuperable obstacles to agreeing upon a strong but federal Iraqi state of the sort we are witnessing this week were ably predicted a month ago by Peter Galbraith in the New York Review of Books.

In startlingly stark terms, Galbraith detailed how the pro-Iranian Shiite forces have consolidated their political influence in the "national" government (without as much as a hiccup from the Bushies) while – in the northern part of Iraq—the Kurds have bunkered in to defend their all-but-in-name independence.

There are, seemingly, plenty of Iraqi Shia ready to defend to the death what is now an incipient Islamic Republic. And there are tens of thousands of skilled Kurd peshmarga fighters totally devoted to the cause of... Kurdistan. But that leaves few, if anybody, ready to die for Iraq.

know that it must be tough for Norah O'Donnell filling in for Chris Matthews on MSNBC's Hardball. What, with makeup, the hair stylist and all, I'm sure she doesn't have the time to actually look up any, well, facts before the pretty camera light goes on.

The Yellow Dog Blog is here to help. So, Norah, before you go on the air and once again refer to Cindy Sheehan and the protestors in Crawford as "anti-war extremists," please have a look at numbers showing that the good people at Camp Casey are very much in the mainstream.

From the CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll of Aug. 5-7, 2005:

54 percent of Americans believe the United States made a mistake in sending troops to Iraq.
54 percent say it was not worth going to war in Iraq.
56 percent believe things are going either "moderately badly" or "very badly" in Iraq.
57 percent of respondents say that the war with Iraq has made the U.S. less safe from terrorism.
How about the Newsweek Poll from Aug. 2-4, 2005?

61 percent of Americans disapprove of the way Bush is handling the situation in Iraq.
64 percent say that the Iraq war has not made Americans safer from terrorism.
Let's look at the Associated Press/Ipsos poll dated Aug. 1-3, 2005:

Respondents were asked "When it comes to handling the situation in Iraq, do you approve or disapprove or have mixed feelings about the way George W. Bush is handling that issue?" 59 percent disapprove.
So you see, Norah, people who disagree with the war in Iraq are actually in the majority.

You're welcome. Now, please apologize to Coleen Rowley, who you blindsided on Hardball last night. Say you're sorry to Cindy Sheehan while you're at it.

Nearly 9,000 Russian and Chinese troops began a mock assault on the beaches of northern China Tuesday in the final stage of unprecedented joint war games between the two former Cold War rivals.

The live-fire exercise, dubbed "Peace Mission 2005," involves about 7,000 Chinese troops and 1,800 Russians, along with warships, warplanes and amphibious tanks.

[snip]

The war games reflect strengthening ties between Russia and China over shared concerns about U.S. dominance of world affairs. U.S. officials have said they are watching the exercises closely and hope they will help support regional stability.

Russia is also seeking to sell more arms to China, one of its leading customers, including long-range strategic bombers able to carry nuclear weapons.

The exercises have sparked controversy in Russia over how closely the nation should cooperate with China, which many Russians see as a potential threat because of its size, economic might and proximity to sparsely populated, resource-rich Siberia.

Meeting briefly with reporters Monday aboard Air Force One, Trent Duffy, a White House spokesman subbing for Scott McClellan, said that President Bush believes that those who want the U.S. to begin to change course in Iraq do not want America to win the overall "war on terror."

Duffy spoke on a day when a surprisingly large antiwar protest met the president during his stay in Salt Lake City, Utah, where he addressed a Veterans of Foreign Wars convention.

Speaking to reporters, Duffy said that Bush "can understand that people don't share his view that we must win the war on terror, and we cannot retreat and cut and run from terrorists, but he just has a different view. He believes it would be a fundamental mistake right now for us to cut and run in the face of terrorism, because if we've learned anything, especially from the 9/11 Commission Report, it is that to continue to retreat after the Cole, after Beirut and Somalia is to only empower terrorists and to give them more recruiting tools as they try to identify ways to harm Americans.

Traces of bomb-grade uranium found two years ago in Iran came from contaminated Pakistani equipment and is not evidence of a clandestine nuclear weapons program, a group of U.S. government experts and other international scientists has determined.

"The biggest smoking gun that everyone was waving is now eliminated with these conclusions," said a senior official who discussed the still-confidential findings on the condition of anonymity.

Scientists from the United States, France, Japan, Britain and Russia met in secret during the past nine months to pore over data collected by inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency, according to U.S. and foreign officials. Recently, the group, whose existence had not been previously reported, definitively matched samples of the highly enriched uranium -- a key ingredient for a nuclear weapon -- with centrifuge equipment turned over by the government of Pakistan.

Our enemies have no regard for human life. They're trying to hijack a great religion to justify a dark vision that rejects freedom and tolerance and dissent. They have a strategy, and part of that strategy is they're trying to shake our will. They kill the innocent. They kill women and children, knowing that the images of their brutality will horrify civilized peoples. Their goal is to drive nations into retreat so they can topple governments across the Middle East, establish Taliban-like regimes, and turn that region into a launching pad for more attacks against our people. In all their objectives, our enemies are trying to intimidate America and the free world. And in all their objectives, they will fail. (Applause.)

We will accept nothing less than total victory over the terrorists and their hateful ideology

Bush went to war in Iraq in 2003 warning of a threat from stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. None were found.

Critics accuse Bush of shifting his argument for war when he invokes the issue of terrorism to argue for staying the course in Iraq. They point out that a commission investigating the hijacked plane attacks of September 11, 2001, found no operational ties between those attacks and deposed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's government.

The White House says the presence in Iraq of al Qaeda-linked insurgents shows the link with terrorism, although the U.S. administration concedes many of those militants have come into Iraq from other countries since the U.S. invasion.

Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson suggested on-air that American operatives assassinate Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to stop his country from becoming "a launching pad for communist infiltration and Muslim extremism."

"We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability," Robertson said Monday on the Christian Broadcast Network's "The 700 Club."

"We don't need another $200 billion war to get rid of one, you know, strong-arm dictator," he continued. "It's a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with."

Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson's suggestion that U.S. agents assassinate Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez sparked numerous condemnations that stretched Tuesday from the Venezuelan vice president to a Robertson friend in Bergen County.

"I'm just disheartened by this," said Bill Thomson, a Washington Township resident and state director of the Christian Coalition, the national organization founded by Robertson. "I love him, he is my friend. But from a religious point of view, I find this unacceptable."

[snip]

Another influential New Jersey evangelical also condemned the statement.

"That's something we do not support," said John Tomicki, executive director of the Trenton-based League of American Families. "We should not be in the business of advancing a suggestion to take out a national leader."

[snip]

Some of the nation's largest and outspoken evangelical organizations were silent on the remark. By Tuesday evening, Focus on the Family hadn't issued a statement, and the Christian Coalition and American Family Association made no mention of the remark on their Internet sites.

However, the National Clergy Council, a Washington-based network of conservative Christian clergy members condemned the remarks.

"I have always held Pat Robertson in the highest esteem, but his remarks today about Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez were at best indiscreet and probably crossed a serious moral and ethical line," said the Rev. Rob Schenck, president of the council. "Reverend Robertson must immediately apologize, retract his statement and clarify what the Bible and Christianity teaches about the permissibility of taking human life outside of law."

"Our department doesn't do that kind of thing," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said at a Pentagon news conference. "It's against the law. He's a private citizen. Private citizens say all kinds of things all the time."

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack called Robertson's remarks "inappropriate."

The Republicans have determined that they do better with nominees who make their constituents believe they are smart enough to be president. It's the right's version of the self-esteem movement.

George Allen is an extremely dumb guy. Really dumb. Awesomely dumb.

Who do we have that's dumb enough to beat him?

Understand this about Limbaugh. He doesn’t believe half the junk he spouts. I’ve met him, and had pleasant enough conversations with him, twice - at the 1980 World Series when he was still a mid-level baseball flunky with a funny name, and once in the mid ‘90s at ESPN when he was just beginning his campaign to get a toehold there. He is a quiet, almost colorless man who, if he could be guaranteed similar success in sportscasting, would sell out the sheep who follow his every word - and would do it before close of business today.

But with that ESPN bid having gone up in flames just under two years ago, and sports forever closed off to him, he’s gotten into what the novelist Robert Graves called a “Golden Predicament” - overwhelming success in a field he really had no intention of pursuing - and he has to keep churning this stuff out every day. And when you’re just free associating to kill time and keep the ditto-heads happy, you sometimes drive right off the end of the pier.

Like on August 15th.

Since we declared Limbaugh “The Worst Person In The World” two nights later for the remarks about Sheehan, he has had the transcript of his pier-drive expunged (even though he initially thought so much of it, that it was posted as a “featured quote” for paying subscribers to his website). Simultaneously, the hapless Brent Bozell, who runs that scam called The Media Research Center, declared that I was guilty of “distortion” in quoting the Sheehan remarks.

Well, as you’ll see below, the only distortion here, is that which lingers in Limbaugh’s ears. His remarks about Sheehan were so embraced by at least one of his fans that they were preserved on another website, and we can present them in full here. You will notice that nothing has been taken out of context, nothing in the minutes before nor the minutes afterwards mitigates against the utter callousness and infamy of his comments about Sheehan.

A reminder that that’s Cindy Sheehan, Gold Star Mother, who when I asked her bluntly if President Bush wasn’t serving her purposes more by not seeing her, was honest enough to answer “yes” without hesitation. And it’s Rush Limbaugh, who so believes in his case against her that he’s too afraid to admit he said this (and who, by the way, has since said of her that, "I'm weary of even having to express sympathy... we all lose things” - as if her son had been a misplaced, er, prescription).

Shiites and Kurds were sending a draft constitution to parliament on Monday that would fundamentally change Iraq, transforming the country into a loose federation, with a weak central administration governed by Islamic law, negotiators said.

The draft, slated for action by a Monday deadline, would be a sweeping rejection of the demands of Iraq's disaffected Sunni minority, which has called the proposed federal system the start of the breakup of Iraq. Shiites and Kurds indicated they were in no mood to compromise.

[snip]

Key provisions of the draft would formalize an already autonomous Kurdish state in the north, under a federal system. The rest of the country also would be allowed to form federal systems -- opening the way for the demand by the dominant Shiite Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq to create a southern Shiite sub-state out of up to half of Iraq's 18 regions.

Sunnis and others say such a state would be under heavy influence from neighboring, Shiite-ruled Iran.

The draft also stipulates that Iraq is an Islamic state and that no law can contradict the principles of Islam, Shiite and Kurdish negotiators said. Opponents have charged that last provision would subject Iraqis to religious edicts by individual clerics.

The Shiite and Kurdish negotiators also said draft calls for the presence of Islamic clerics on the court that would interpret the constitution. Family matters such as divorce, marriage or inheritance would be decided either by religious law or civil law as an individual chooses -- a condition that opponents say would likely lead to women being forced into unfavorable rulings for them by opponents demanding judgments under Islamic law.

George W. Bush's overall job approval ratings have dropped from a month ago even as Americans who approve of the way Bush is handling his job as president are turning more optimistic about their personal financial situations according to the latest survey from the American Research Group. Among all Americans, 36% approve of the way Bush is handling his job as president and 58% disapprove. When it comes to Bush's handling of the economy, 33% approve and 62% disapprove.

Among Americans registered to vote, 38% approve of the way Bush is handling his job as president and 56% disapprove, and 36% approve of the way Bush is handling the economy and 60% disapprove.

A leading Republican senator and prospective presidential candidate said Sunday that the war in Iraq has destabilized the Middle East and is looking more like the Vietnam conflict from a generation ago.

Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel, who received two Purple Hearts and other military honors for his service in Vietnam, reiterated his position that the United States needs to develop a strategy to leave Iraq. Hagel scoffed at the idea that U.S. troops could be in Iraq four years from now at levels above 100,000, a contingency for which the Pentagon is preparing.

"We should start figuring out how we get out of there," Hagel said on "This Week" on ABC. "But with this understanding, we cannot leave a vacuum that further destabilizes the Middle East. I think our involvement there has destabilized the Middle East. And the longer we stay there, I think the further destabilization will occur."

Hagel said "stay the course" is not a policy. "By any standard, when you analyze 2 1/2 years in Iraq ... we're not winning," he said.

Across the country, a steady clampdown on women's rights has been going unreported and unchecked by the government. Islamic terrorism is killing and injuring Iraqi women daily, employing among other weapons, acid attacks.

My women's rights group, the Organisation of Women's Freedom in Iraq, has been documenting part of the upsurge in violence against women. In March this year, for example, followers of the Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr targeted an outing of students from Basra University. Playing football and listening to music, the mixed group was attacked in Basra Public Park. One male student was killed trying to defend his female friends against Islamists who literally tore the women's clothes off their bodies. Sadr's men photographed the dishevelled, half-dressed women, and told them that their parents would receive the photos if they didn't refrain in future from "immoral" behaviour.

More widely, professional women have been deliberately targeted and killed - notably in the city of Mosul - and, recently, anti-women Islamists in Baghdad have taken to throwing acid in women's faces and on to their uncovered legs.

So-called "honour killings" are rife, as is the kidnapping and rape of women. Beheadings have occurred and women have been sold into sexual servitude. When I was in Baghdad a few months ago, I couldn't go anywhere without a bodyguard. The sense of danger and threat was tangible.

Islamist repression against women is a campaign of "moral" terror. Leaflets, graffiti and verbal warnings in their thousands warn women against going out unveiled, against putting on make-up, and against shaking hands or mixing with men. Female doctors have been prevented from treating male patients, and male doctors warned not to attend to women.

We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality - judiciously, as you will - we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

• Dinosaurs are mentioned 25 times in the Old Testament. The reason the actual word dinosaur doesn’t appear in the Bible is simple: it did not exist when the Bible was written. [It goes on to say that what is commonly translated as "great sea creatures" really means dinosaurs. That many species of dinosaurs were land-based is unexplained. So it must be MAGIC!! (^TMMarc Maron)
  
• Dinosaurs were on Noah's Ark
  
• Dinosaurs and men lived at the same time [Well, we know this is true, just look at Dick Cheney.]
  
• The existence of dinosaur skeletons are proof of the Genesis story of the Fall of Man.
  

On the evening of August 10, Hannah Shaffer of Glen Mills, Pennsylvania, decided to go to the nearby Barnes & Noble outside of Wilmington. She wanted to see Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, who was promoting his book, “It Takes a Family.”

The event was billed as a “book signing and discussion,” Shaffer says.

But discussion was the last thing that the Senator’s people wanted.

Shaffer, her friends, and two other young women were booted out of the store and threatened with imprisonment even before they had a chance to say a word to Santorum, as Al Mascitti first noted in the Delaware News Journal.

Shaffer, 18, thought Santorum’s public appearance might be a good occasion to ask him a few questions.

“He is my Senator,” she says, and she wanted to challenge him on his notorious claim that legalizing gay marriage was akin to legalizing incest and bestiality.

“So I contacted a few of my left-leaning friends, and they said they’d really like to be there because they felt the same way,” she says.

When she arrived at 6:00 p.m., some of her friends were already there, along with two other young women she didn’t know, Stacey Galperin and Miriam Rocek.

As Shaffer was talking with her friends, Rocek made a joke.

She held up a copy of a book by the gay writer Dan Savage called “The Kid,” which is about how he and his partner adopted a son. And Rocek said, “It would be funny if we got Santorum to sign this book.” (To discredit Santorum, Savage and his readers in 2003 came up with a nasty definition of “Santorum” that now often appears on Internet searches for Santorum’s name.)

Not everyone enjoyed the joke.

“A woman nearby snapped: ‘He’s only here to sign his own book. He won’t sign that,’ ” recalls Galperin.

Shaffer says the woman also added, “You’re shameful and disgusting.”

For a minute, the young women thought that would be the end of it.

But no such luck.

A state trooper in full uniform, including hat and gun, was in the store, and, according to Shaffer and Galperin, he met with the person who didn’t care for the Dan Savage joke, along with a few others, including members of the store and Santorum’s people.

Galperin says she heard the trooper ask, “Do you want me to get rid of them?”

And then the trooper, Delaware State Police Sgt. Mark DiJiacomo, who was on detail as a private security guard, came over to the group of women.

Here is the conversation, as Galperin remembers it: “You guys have to leave.”

“Why?”

“Your business is not wanted here. They don’t want you here anymore. If you don’t leave, you’re going to be arrested. If you can’t post bail, you’ll go to prison. Those of you who are under 18 will go to Ferris [the juvenile detention center]. And those of you over 18 will go either to Gander Hill Prison or the woman’s correctional facility. Any questions?”

Shaffer remembers the conversation basically the same way.

“I said, ‘Sir, we’re not doing anything wrong. We’re sitting in a bookstore. On what grounds would we be arrested?’ ”

“He said, ‘This is private property. Are you going to leave on your own, or are you going to leave in cuffs?”

Shaffer decided to leave with her friends.

Galperin and Rocek decided to stay.

“That’s it,” he told them, according to Galperin. “You’re under arrest. Give me your ID. You’re going to prison.”