THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

It is only by ejecting the Republicans from the White House that American voters can send the message that they are still in charge of their country and that gross government incompetence will not go unpunished. Accountability - not personality or rhetoric or colour or age or gender - should be the overriding issue in this election.

// posted by montag @ 7:27 PM 0 Comments

You see, Mr. Goodman’s assertion that lack of health insurance is no problem precisely echoed what President Bush said a year ago: “I mean, people have access to health care in America. After all, you just go to an emergency room.” That’s because both men — like Mr. Gramm — were just saying in public what modern Republicans say when they talk to each other. Despite attempts to feign sympathy, the leaders of today’s G.O.P. fundamentally feel that Americans complaining about their economic and health care difficulties are, well, just a bunch of whiners.

And that, ultimately, even more than their policy proposals, is what defines the difference between the parties.

// posted by montag @ 6:50 AM 0 Comments

Republican strategist Karl Rove called Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) late last week and urged him to contact Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) to withdraw his name from vice presidential consideration, according to three sources familiar with the conversation.

Lieberman dismissed the request, these sources agreed.

Lieberman “laughed at the suggestion and certainly did not call [McCain] on it,” said one source familiar with the details.

“Rove called Lieberman,” recounted a second source. “Lieberman told him he would not make that call.”

// posted by montag @ 6:49 AM 0 Comments

A woman voting for John McCain would be like a chicken voting for Colonel Sanders.

// posted by montag @ 6:38 PM 0 Comments

McCain is not an unknown quantity - he is a highly excitable politician with a notoriously short temper, who would bring his impetuous and confrontational style into American foreign policy. With the world entering a global economic slump, and old enmities raging in Europe, John McCain as President would be like a flamethrower in a fireworks factory.

// posted by montag @ 7:36 PM 0 Comments

"I spent 5 1/2 years in a prison cell without -- I didn't have a house. I didn't have a kitchen table. I didn't have a table. I didn't have a chair," he said.

"I spent those 5 1/2 years ... not because I wanted to get a house when I got out."

// posted by montag @ 6:39 PM 0 Comments

Obama's proposals would raise his own taxes by hundreds of thousands of dollars, in order to cut the taxes of people who are less fortunate than he is. McCain would cut his own taxes even further than they've already been reduced. And that's everything a voter needs to know about these two men.

// posted by montag @ 5:01 PM 0 Comments

The state campaign headquarters for Sen. Barack Obama was vandalized early this morning in St. Paul.

According to St. Paul Police:

Officers got a call of property damage in the 700 block of Raymond Avenue at about 1:15 a.m. When they arrived, they found two big plate glass windows and a glass door smashed, and paint splattered on the building's exterior and interior.

// posted by montag @ 4:49 PM 0 Comments

According to conservative commentator and former presidential candidate Pat Buchanan, Sen. John McCain's chief foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann is a 'dual loyalist,' 'neocon warmonger' involved in activities that 'none dare call treason.'

Scheunemann's former employer, Orion Strategies, is a lobbying firm with strong ties to Mikheil Saakashvili's administration in Georgia.

Since Georgia attempted to retake South Ossetia by force, triggering a sharp, violent rebuke by Russian forces, Sen. McCain has been by far the most strident advocate of US support for the former Soviet state. And his top adviser, says Buchanan, may well be the next Henry Kissinger or Zbigniew Brzezinski.

"He is a dual loyalist, a foreign agent whose assignment is to get America committed to spilling the blood of her sons for client regimes who have made this moral mercenary a rich man," he wrote.

// posted by montag @ 1:45 PM 0 Comments

"My hunch is that is gonna be one of the worst moments in the entire campaign for one of the candidates, but it's Barack Obama," he said.

Halperin thinks McCain's inability to remember that he owns seven homes actually hurts his opponent.

Halperin said that the Obama campaign's willingness to run ads about McCain's ignorance of his own properties has "opened the door" for the McCain campaign to launch harsher ads of its own.

// posted by montag @ 1:31 PM 0 Comments

A two-year-old letter by Vice President Dick Cheney that pushed a controversial Alaska natural-gas pipeline bill is getting renewed scrutiny because of recently disclosed evidence in the Justice Department's corruption case against Sen. Ted Stevens. In a conversation secretly tape-recorded by the FBI on June 25, 2006, Stevens discussed ways to get a pipeline bill through the Alaska Legislature with Bill Allen, an oil-services executive accused of providing the senator with about $250,000 in undisclosed financial benefits. According to a Justice motion, Stevens told Allen, "I'm gonna try to see if I can get some bigwigs from back here and say, 'Look … you gotta get this done'." Two days later, Cheney wrote a letter to the Alaska Legislature urging members to "promptly enact" a bill to build the pipeline. The letter was considered unusual because the White House rarely contacts state lawmakers about pending legislative matters. It also angered state Democrats, who accused Cheney of pushing oil-company interests. The former executive director of Cheney's energy task force had gone to work as a lobbyist for British Petroleum, one of three firms slated to build the pipeline.

// posted by montag @ 1:21 PM 0 Comments

Immigrants seeking asylum in the United States have been disproportionately rejected by judges whom the Bush administration chose using a conservative political litmus test, according to an analysis of Justice Department data.

The analysis suggests that the effects of a patronage-style selection process for immigration judges — used for three years before it was abandoned as illegal — are still being felt by scores of immigrants whose fates are determined by the judges installed in that period.

The data focuses on 16 judges who were vetted for political affiliation before being hired and have since ruled on at least 100 cases each.

Comparison of their records to others in the same cities shows that as a group they ruled against asylum-seekers significantly more often than colleagues who were appointed, as the law requires, under politically neutral rules.

the facts of a case may be less important in determining whether someone is deported than which judge hears the case.

// posted by montag @ 12:34 PM 0 Comments

NATIONALLY and in Ohio, the Republican Party has a long and shameful history of suppressing the vote to gain partisan advantage in elections, mostly by targeting minorities. Now they're at it again, with complaints about a law written, ironically, by GOP operatives in the General Assembly.

The law, which took effect at the beginning of 2006, created a five-day window at the end of September during which Ohioans will be able to register to vote, then immediately cast their ballot under provisions that allow both "no fault" absentee voting along with early voting, starting 35 days before the traditional Nov. 4 Election Day.

Republicans now claim the statute constitutes an "illegal loophole" that raises the threat of election fraud. But the law was in use in 2006 without problems and it wasn't an issue until Democrat Barack Obama's presidential campaign announced a push to take advantage of it among the state's 470,000 college students.

Suppressing the vote harks back to the poll taxes and faux citizenship tests in the post-Civil War era that were employed to prevent newly enfranchised blacks from voting.

In more recent times, another tactic was to spread the ominous word in black precincts before Election Day that anyone showing up to vote just might risk arrest if they happen to have any outstanding warrants.

The latest versions of vote suppression have the same goal but utilize less-blatant devices. They include legalization of practices aimed at thwarting certain groups that might not vote Republican; unnecessarily confusing directives on registration and voting like the ones issued in 2004 by then-Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, a Republican, and lawsuits, which GOP functionaries in Columbus are threatening now.

// posted by montag @ 1:42 PM 0 Comments

"I have carefully avoided situations that might even tangentially be construed as a less than proper use of my office," he wrote in his memoir, "Worth the Fighting For" (Random House, 2002).

McCain once publicly criticized Diamond as lobbying too hard for his own financial interests. In 1995, McCain called it "unheard of" that Diamond had hired a Washington lobbyist to try to block construction of a U.S. government building in Tucson that threatened to take away some of his rental income. "I didn't talk to him for one year," Diamond said of McCain. "I was annoyed."

// posted by montag @ 1:34 PM 0 Comments

Congressional candidate Jack Davis, in a speech earlier this year, warned that increasing immigration from Mexico could lead to a new civil war between northern states and Mexican-influenced Southern states that may want to secede from the United States.

“In the latter part of this century or the next, Mexicans will be a majority in many of the states and could therefore take control of the state government using the democratic process,” Davis said in the speech. “They could then secede from the United States, and then we might have another civil war.”

// posted by montag @ 12:34 PM 0 Comments

They found that one-fourth of the fish samples with identifiable DNA were mislabeled. A piece of sushi sold as the luxury treat white tuna turned out to be Mozambique tilapia, a much cheaper fish that is often raised by farming. Roe supposedly from flying fish was actually from smelt. Seven of nine samples that were called red snapper were mislabeled, and they turned out to be anything from Atlantic cod to Acadian redfish, an endangered species.

// posted by montag @ 7:17 AM 0 Comments

McCain would get a $300,000 tax break if his proposals were enacted, middle class Americans would save only $319.

// posted by montag @ 6:51 AM 0 Comments

Can Obama win over journalists who find him uppity and arrogant?

If McCain can buy them with a free sandwiches and beer....how much does it cost to buy you guys?

// posted by montag @ 7:41 PM 0 Comments

I don't think we should be out there pointing fingers in peoples' faces and calling them racist. Instead we need to educate them that if they care about holding onto their jobs, their health care, their pensions, and their homes. If they care about creating good jobs with clean energy, child care, pay equity for women workers, there's only going to be one candidate on the ballot this fall who's on our side, only one candidate who's going to stand up for our families, only one candidate who's earned our votes...and his name is Barack Obama!

Do you think John McCain will do these things for America?

I don't.

// posted by montag @ 6:46 PM 0 Comments

one politician who was the vice-presidential nominee for both parties. We would speak of it with awe, like that story about the two-headed turtle in Brooklyn.

Lieberman is certainly capable of dumping everything he has ever believed in and assuring the anti-choice, anti-union, anti-government folk that he is on their team. But then the magic fades and all you’ve got is a conservative Republican who likes the environment teamed with a guy who will do anything to move up.

// posted by montag @ 7:15 AM 0 Comments

In all the discussion of John McCain's recently recovered memory of a religious epiphany in Vietnam, one thing has been missing. The torture that was deployed against McCain emerges in all the various accounts. It involved sleep deprivation, the withholding of medical treatment, stress positions, long-time standing, and beating. Sound familiar?

According to the Bush administration's definition of torture, McCain was therefore not tortured.

Cheney denies that McCain was tortured; as does Bush. So do John Yoo and David Addington and George Tenet.

in the Military Commissions Act, McCain acquiesced to the use of these techniques against terror suspects by the CIA. And so the tortured became the enabler of torture. Someone somewhere cried out in pain for the same reasons McCain once did. And McCain let it continue.

// posted by montag @ 6:48 PM 0 Comments

Iraqi forces raided the provincial government compound in Diyala Province in a chaotic operation early Tuesday, killing the governor's secretary and seizing computers and cars before local police engaged them in a two-hour gun battle, police and local officials said.

Four policemen were wounded, according to a local police official. Local police and government officials claimed the raiders had U.S. support, but U.S. spokesmen said the U.S. military was unaware of the raid and provided no assistance. Iraq's Interior Ministry said the raid is being investigated.

The Iraqi forces arrested Hussein al Zubaidi, provincial council member and head of the provincial security committee. A nearby raid conducted almost simultaneously by unidentified armed forces arrested the president of Diyala University.

A spokesman for the Iraqi Diyala Operations Center told McClatchy the raiding party was a "special unit" of the Iraqi Army, which works closely with U.S. forces. Diyala governor Raad Rashid told McClatchy the troops wore U.S. fatigues and carried U.S.-issued equipment.

// posted by montag @ 7:31 AM 0 Comments

His top contenders are said to include Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. Less traditional choices mentioned include former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge, an abortion-rights supporter, and Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman, the Democratic vice presidential prick in 2000 who now is an independent.

// posted by montag @ 6:11 PM 0 Comments

I furthermore believe that having been a POW is no special qualification for being President of the United States. The two jobs are not the same, and POW experience is not, in my opinion, something I would look for in a presidential candidate.

Most of us who survived that experience are now in our late 60's and 70's. Sadly, we have died and are dying off at a greater rate than our non-POW contemporaries. We experienced injuries and malnutrition that are coming home to roost. So I believe John's age (73) and survival expectation are not good for being elected to serve as our President for 4 or more years.

I can verify that John has an infamous reputation for being a hot head. He has a quick and explosive temper that many have experienced first hand. Folks, quite honestly that is not the finger I want next to that red button.

// posted by montag @ 6:31 PM 0 Comments

When Americans were asked in a 2007 poll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press to name the journalist they most admired, Mr. Stewart, the fake news anchor, came in at No. 4, tied with the real news anchors Brian Williams and Tom Brokaw of NBC, Dan Rather of CBS and Anderson Cooper of CNN. And a study this year from the center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism concluded that “ ‘The Daily Show’ is clearly impacting American dialogue” and “getting people to think critically about the public square.”

Given a daily reality in which “over-the-top parodies come to fruition,” Mr. Stewart said, satire like “Dr. Strangelove” becomes “very difficult to make.” “The absurdity of what you imagine to be the dark heart of conspiracy theorists’ wet dreams far too frequently turns out to be true,” he observed. “You go: I know what I’ll do, I’ll create a character who, when hiring people to rebuild the nation we invaded, says the only question I’ll ask is, ‘What do you think of ‘Roe v. Wade?’ It’ll be hilarious. Then you read that book about the Green Zone in Iraq” — “Imperial Life in the Emerald City” by Rajiv Chandrasekaran — “and you go, ‘Oh, they did that.’ I mean, how do you take things to the next level?”

// posted by montag @ 7:12 AM 0 Comments

The guys with McCain stuff say it isn't selling. Even if people are going to vote for him, they aren't going to buy his apparel.

// posted by montag @ 12:50 PM 0 Comments

Whether through ideology or instinct, though, Mr. McCain began making his case for invading Iraq to the public more than six months before the White House began to do the same. He drew on principles he learned growing up in a military family and on conclusions he formed as a prisoner in North Vietnam. He also returned to a conviction about “the common identity” of dangerous autocracies as far-flung as Serbia and North Korea that he had developed consulting with hawkish foreign policy thinkers to help sharpen the themes of his 2000 presidential campaign.

While pushing to take on Saddam Hussein, Mr. McCain also made arguments and statements that he may no longer wish to recall. He lauded the war planners he would later criticize, including Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney. (Mr. McCain even volunteered that he would have given the same job to Mr. Cheney.) He urged support for the later-discredited Iraqi exile Ahmad Chalabi’s opposition group, the Iraqi National Congress, and echoed some of its suspect accusations in the national media. And he advanced misleading assertions not only about Mr. Hussein’s supposed weapons programs but also about his possible ties to international terrorists, Al Qaeda and the Sept. 11 attacks.

// posted by montag @ 12:23 PM 0 Comments

Some of those who know McCain best — Republicans — are tougher on him than the press is. Rita Hauser, who was a Bush financial chairwoman in New York in 2000 and served on the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board in the administration’s first term, joined other players in the G.O.P. establishment in forming Republicans for Obama last week. Why? The leadership qualities she admires in Obama — temperament, sustained judgment, the ability to play well with others — are missing in McCain. “He doesn’t listen carefully to people and make reasoned judgments,” Hauser told me. “If John says ‘I’m going with so and so,’ you can’t count on that the next morning,” she complained, adding, “That’s not the man we want for president.”

McCain has even prompted alarms from the right’s own favorite hit man du jour: Jerome Corsi, who Swift-boated John Kerry as co-author of “Unfit to Command” in 2004 and who is trying to do the same to Obama in his newly minted best seller, “The Obama Nation.”

Corsi’s writings have been repeatedly promoted by Sean Hannity on Fox News; Corsi’s publisher, Mary Matalin, has praised her author’s “scholarship.” If Republican warriors like Hannity and Matalin think so highly of Corsi’s research into Obama, then perhaps we should take seriously Corsi’s scholarship about McCain. In recent articles at worldnetdaily.com, Corsi has claimed (among other charges) that the McCain campaign received “strong” financial support from a “group tied to Al Qaeda” and that “McCain’s personal fortune traces back to organized crime in Arizona.”

// posted by montag @ 12:25 AM 0 Comments

He has spent 469 days of his presidency kicking back at his ranch, and 450 days cavorting at Camp David. And there’s still time to mountain-bike through another historic disaster.

As Russian troops continued to manhandle parts of Georgia on Friday, President Bush chastised Russian leaders that “bullying and intimidation are not acceptable ways to conduct foreign policy in the 21st century” — and then flew off to Crawford.

His words might have carried more weight if he, Cheney and Rummy had not kicked off the 21st century with a ham-fisted display of global bullying and intimidation modeled after Sherman’s march through the other Georgia.

// posted by montag @ 10:15 PM 0 Comments

The Justice Department has proposed a new domestic spying measure that would make it easier for state and local police to collect intelligence about Americans, share the sensitive data with federal agencies and retain it for at least 10 years.

The proposed changes would revise the federal government's rules for police intelligence-gathering for the first time since 1993 and would apply to any of the nation's 18,000 state and local police agencies that receive roughly $1.6 billion each year in federal grants.

Quietly unveiled late last month, the proposal is part of a flurry of domestic intelligence changes issued and planned by the Bush administration in its waning months. They include a recent executive order that guides the reorganization of federal spy agencies and a pending Justice Department overhaul of FBI procedures for gathering intelligence and investigating terrorism cases within U.S. borders.

// posted by montag @ 12:30 PM 0 Comments

Things have truly come to a sorry pass when both our military and our diplomatic threats are as empty as our national treasury, and the Russians of all people can afford to laugh them off.

Bush and Cheney seven and a half years ago inherited control of the world's only reigning superpower, and in that short time they've squandered our military power, our international good name and our national treasury.

The only sadder sight in a week full of sad sights was a John McCain op-ed piece in The Wall Street Journal with the headline: "We Are All Georgians."

Not really, senator. As campaign slogans go, "Ich bin ein Georgian" just doesn’t cut it.

// posted by montag @ 5:58 PM 0 Comments

Angell was right to describe the belief that conquest pays as a great illusion. But the belief that economic rationality always prevents war is an equally great illusion. And today’s high degree of global economic interdependence, which can be sustained only if all major governments act sensibly, is more fragile than we imagine.

// posted by montag @ 7:05 AM 0 Comments

"The problem with international law for a superpower is that it is a constraint on overweening ambition. Its virtue is that it constrains the aggressive ambitions of others. Bush gutted it because he thought the United States would not need it anytime soon. But Russia is now demonstrating that the Bush doctrine can just as easily be the Putin doctrine. And that leaves America less secure in a world of vigilante powers that spout rhetoric about high ideals to justify their unchecked military interventions. It is the world that Bush has helped build."

// posted by montag @ 7:52 PM 0 Comments

But there is no excuse for what the McCain campaign is doing on the "putting America first" front. There is no way to balance it, or explain it other than as evidence of a severe character defect on the part of the candidate who allows it to be used.

// posted by montag @ 6:27 PM 0 Comments

From nearly every perspective, the John McCain of 2008 is no Teddy Roosevelt.

You start with the obvious: Roosevelt was the youngest man to become president, sworn into office in 1901 at the age of 42, after McKinley was shot. McCain, if elected, would be the oldest at 72.

McCain has attacked Barack Obama for his popularity, on the advice of Karl Rove acolytes in his camp who think that being a global celebrity is a bad thing.

You want celebrity? As the most popular American in the dawning decade of the American Century, Teddy Roosevelt was a global superstar — “the most popular human being that has ever existed in the United States,” as Mark Twain wrote.

McCain sidles up to Big Oil and calls for more drilling, whereas Roosevelt went after the resource monopolies. When Standard Oil donated $100,000 to his campaign, he requested that it be sent back.

// posted by montag @ 6:50 AM 0 Comments

Attorney General Michael Mukasey on Tuesday rejected the idea of criminally prosecuting former Justice Department employees who improperly used political litmus tests in hiring decisions, saying he had already taken strong internal steps in response to a “painful” episode.

// posted by montag @ 7:35 PM 0 Comments

The Pentagon’s reliance on outside contractors in Iraq is proportionately far larger than in any previous conflict, and it has fueled charges that this outsourcing has led to overbilling, fraud and shoddy and unsafe work that has endangered and even killed American troops. The role of armed security contractors has also raised new legal and political questions about whether the United States has become too dependent on private armed forces on the 21st-century battlefield...

Dina L. Rasor, an author and independent expert on contracting fraud, said she believed that the $100 billion cost estimate from the Congressional Budget Office might be low, since there were virtually no reliable audits of or controls on spending during the first years of the war. “It is a shocking number, but I still don’t think it is the full cost,” Ms. Rasor said. “I don’t think there have been any credible cost numbers for the Iraq war. There was so much money spent at the beginning of the war, and nobody knows where it went.”

Peter W. Singer, a defense contracting expert at the Brookings Institution, said the biggest problem was that the administration contracted out so much work in Iraq, almost no thought had been given to an overall strategy to determine which jobs and functions should be handled by the government, and which could be turned over to private companies without damaging the military effort.

// posted by montag @ 6:51 AM 0 Comments

After the debacles of Iraq, Katrina, gas prices, home foreclosures, our standing in the world, the failure to capture Bin Laden, and revealing the identity of a CIA agent in an act of revenge, it would seem that Barack Obama should be on a cakewalk to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The man should be able to sleep his way through the rest of the campaign season.

Ha! Think again. How many Democrats does it take to lose the most easily winnable election in American history? Not many. Just a few "close advisers" to Barack Obama who tell him a bunch of asinine stuff and he ends up listening to them instead of his own heart. As the party hacks in the past two elections have proven, once they get the candidate's ear, the rest of us might just as well order pizza and stay inside for the next four years.

// posted by montag @ 6:47 AM 0 Comments

It was when Roy Barnes started talking about accountability that the Feds began marching into Georgia. Barnes found himself besieged by lobbyists from major banks and national regulators—as well as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored mortgage issuers whose mandate is to help people obtain affordable homes at fair prices; today, Fannie and Freddie are so financially fragile that the government has agreed to bail them out if necessary.

The major mortgage issuers hinted that they would turn Georgia into a financial pariah if the state made them liable. They let Barnes know in no uncertain terms that he was something of a "country bumpkin" when it came to banking, says his legislative aide, Chris Carpenter. As Barnes recalls, "They would say—and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were part of it—'This is a complex global market. If you start interfering with the free flow of money, then Georgia will become an island that has no credit'. I kept telling them, 'You're in for a crash here'."

// posted by montag @ 1:56 PM 0 Comments

When it comes to his rough public treatment of women, McCain and his apologists have the excuse at hand that he's an early-'60s, martini-and-mistress Mad Men kind of guy, an image not without its retro charm. One of the fascinations of the series is the way it allows us to see the open culture of sexism at work. It doesn't happen like that anymore, so it's a little like a CGI effect, comparable to seeing Arnold Schwarzenegger sit up after a shotgun blast to the chest in Terminator. (And like the Mad Men lead, Don Draper, McCain is a war hero, a status that wipes clean all slates, including Draper stealing a dead soldier's name and McCain's cheating on his first wife with Cindy.)

// posted by montag @ 12:42 AM 0 Comments

Senator John McCain is so quick to pick up his gold-colored cellphone to solicit advice — from senators, campaign consultants, even the stray former deputy press secretary — that aides, concerned about his tendency to adopt the last opinion he has heard, have tried to cut back on the time he has to make calls.

Mr. McCain is known to sign off on big campaign decisions and then to march off his own reservation. Two weeks ago, he publicly disagreed with his own spokeswoman, Jill Hazelbaker, after she used a line of attack against Senator Barack Obama that he had approved after careful strategizing within his campaign. Ms. Hazelbaker raced out of the Virginia campaign headquarters and refused to take Mr. McCain’s calls of apology, aides said, and a plan to have Republican members of Congress use the same critical line about Mr. Obama’s foreign trip fell apart.

Out of his hearing, Mr. McCain is called the White Tornado by some people who have worked for him over the years. Throughout his presidential campaign, he has been the overseer of a kingdom of dissenting camps, unclear lines of command and an unsettled atmosphere that keeps aides constantly on edge.

// posted by montag @ 7:56 PM 0 Comments

The Democratic Party headquarters for Vernon and Crawford counties in downtown Viroqua was vandalized Thursday with a racial slur spray-painted over a sign promoting Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.

It is the second time in recent weeks that the office’s front windows were defaced with spray paint. On July 15, at midday, vandals spray-painted the words “McCain: He’s a vet” on the front windows, in addition to other messages.
The most recent incident included a racial slur about the Illinois senator’s run for the White House. The presumptive Democratic nominee is black.

// posted by montag @ 4:42 PM 0 Comments

The death toll from a blast in a market in the northern Iraqi town of Tal Afar rose to 25 on Saturday, after four of the six dozen people injured died from their wounds, a security official said.

The official, who was familiar with the police investigation, said the blast was carried out by a lone Sunni Turkoman suicide bomber from Tal Afar, whose identity was established after forensic tests on his remains. The bomber had been released from detention four months ago under an amnesty passed by parliament earlier this year, he added...

In scattered violence Saturday, a bodyguard who works for Youth and Sports minister Jassim Mohammed Ja'afar was gunned down outside his home near the city of Kirkuk, according to a police source who did not want to be named because he is not authorized to disclose the information.

Also in northern Iraq, unidentified gunmen shot dead a 50-year-old woman outside her home in the al-Maamoun district in Mosul, 225 miles northwest of Baghdad.

Meanwhile, Georgia -- the third largest contributor to the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq -- said it's pulling out its 2,000-strong contingent from Iraq to join the fighting in the breakaway province of South Ossetia.

Col. Bondo Maisuradze, commander of the Georgia brigade, told The Associated Press that all his troops would be leaving, but he couldn't say when because transportation arrangements had not been finalized. ''All the Georgian guys will be leaving for the homeland,'' he said.

// posted by montag @ 12:29 PM 0 Comments

Khalaf acknowledged that the evidence was scant. No explosives were found in the house, no residue on their hands. A list of women and their phone numbers could be a list of friends just as easily as a recruiter's manifest of possible bombers.

The family could be deeply involved in recruiting suicide bombers. Or they could be three women living alone in a neighborhood that al Qaida in Iraq once completely controlled.

Maybe someone with a grudge put them on a list and told security forces that they were bad.

Everything is just a maybe. More than 400 people have been detained since the security operation began, Khalaf said.

He ordered in lunch. The officers whispered to one another when Asmaa wouldn't eat. This was a sign that she might be al Qaida.

"I swear it isn't," she said. "I'm too frightened to eat. If you want me to show you I'm not al Qaida I'll eat all of these dishes."

She picked up a spoon and a tear fell from her face to the plate.

// posted by montag @ 7:56 PM 0 Comments

Missouri state Rep. Scott Muschany, R-Frontenac, was indicted today in connection with a reported sexual assault of a 14-year-old girl on May 17, the day after this year’s Legislative session ended.

The alleged victim is the daughter of a state employee. The girl’s mother and Muschany -– who is married and has two children -- were romantically involved, the woman said.

A Cole County grand jury returned an indictment today charging Muschany with the Class C felony of "deviate sexual assault." The indictment identifies the victim only by initials. It says that on May 17, Muschany "had deviate sexual intercourse" with the girl, "knowing that he did so without" her consent.

// posted by montag @ 6:42 PM 0 Comments

I've been a writer and editor at New Times for 15 years. For much of that time, I wrote about Arizona politics, which is to say that I wrote about John McCain. It's still odd to see the guy in the spotlight, because for quite a while, I was pretty much the only one covering him.

I never did fall for him in the way reporters fall for politicians, probably because he wasn't much to fall for back in the early 1990s. In those days, McCain was still rehabilitating the image he'd later sell to the national media. He was known then for cavorting in the Bahamas with Charlie Keating, rather than for fighting for campaign finance reform and limited government spending.

No one seems to remember Keating much, anymore. Amazing. McCain and his fellow Arizonan, Democrat Dennis DeConcini, were hauled before the Senate Ethics Committee along with three other senators to explain their actions on behalf of Keating's Lincoln Savings and Loan.

Keating gave the senators hefty campaign contributions, then called on them to meet with bank regulators to pressure them to go soft on an investigation of Lincoln. There were two infamous meetings. McCain attended both.

// posted by montag @ 6:08 PM 0 Comments

And the debate on energy policy has helped me find the words for something I’ve been thinking about for a while. Republicans, once hailed as the “party of ideas,” have become the party of stupid.

// posted by montag @ 6:51 AM 1 Comments

Many in his circle appear to have little affection for Mr. McCain but said they gave mostly as a favor to Mr. Abdullah.

Abdullah Makhlouf, the owner of a discount stereo store who is one of Mr. Abdullah’s closest friends, and his wife contributed $9,200.

“He’s like a worse copy than Bush,” Mr. Makhlouf said of Mr. McCain.

When a reporter initially contacted Mr. Makhlouf, he denied giving to the McCain campaign.

After eventually admitting to the donation, Mr. Makhlouf added, “I’m still not going to vote for him.”

// posted by montag @ 6:50 AM 0 Comments

Pakistan’s embattled president Musharraf has abruptly cancelled his planned visit to China, as opponents in the ruling coalition move to impeach him.

He was to attend opening ceremony of Beijing Olympics and meet Chinese leaders during his two day visit.

Mohammed Sadiq, a Pakistan foreign ministry spokesman confirmed that the visit was called off, but did not give any reason. The announcement came as the president's opponents met in Islamabad to decide on his impeachment.

// posted by montag @ 7:10 PM 0 Comments