The Broken Chair

News outlets that are focusing on the incendiary rhetoric of conservatives outside President Obama's town hall meeting Tuesday ignored the incendiary rhetoric -- and even violence -- of liberals outside an appearance by former President George W. Bush in 2002.

The angry protest grew so violent that the Secret Service was forced to take the highly unusual step of using a backup route for Bush's motorcade because the primary route had been compromised by protesters, one of whom pounded his fist on the president's moving limousine.

All the while, angry demonstrators brandished signs with incendiary rhetoric, such as "9/11 - YOU LET IT HAPPEN, SHRUB," and "BUSH: BASTARD CHILD OF THE SUPREME COURT." One sign read: "IMPEACH THE COURT-APPOINTED JUNTA AND THE FASCIST, EGOMANIACAL, BLOOD-SWILLING BEAST!"

Yet none of these signs were cited in the national media's coverage of the event. By contrast, the press focused extensively on over-the-top signs held by Obama critics at the president's town hall event held Tuesday in New Hampshire.

Twelve firefighters were hurt in an overnight fire in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.

A massive fire ripped through a four-story building at 6805 Third Avenue. Several stores and residences were destroyed.

Fire officials are looking into the possibility the fire started in a ground floor deli.

Along with the firefighters, two residents suffered minor injuries.

Facing the first real rough patch of his presidency, President Obama and his supporters are once again resorting to a tried-and-true tactic: attacking George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.

In his White House press conference last week, Mr. Obama referred to the Bush era at least nine times, three times lamenting that he "inherited" a $1.3 trillion debt that has set back his administration's efforts to fix the economy.

With the former president lying low in Dallas, largely focused on crafting his memoirs, Mr. Obama has increasingly attempted to exploit Mr. Bush when discussing the weak economy, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the difficulty closing the military prison at U.S. Naval Base Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

As he took power, Mr. Obama promised a "new era of responsibility" that would transcend partisan politics.

"For a guy who campaigned on taking responsibility and looking forward, he spends an awful lot of time pointing fingers and looking backward," said former Bush deputy press secretary Tony Fratto, who has begun defending the previous administration.

Voters have short memories. The administration needs to remind people that things were way worse over the last four years than in the last six months.

In the 2008 election, we took sides, straight and simple, particularly with regard to the vice presidential race. I don't know that we played a decisive role in that campaign, and I'm not saying the better side lost. What I am saying is that we simply didn't hold Joe Biden to the same standard as Sarah Palin, and for me, the real loser in this sordid tale is my chosen profession.

Prior to this month's disputed presidential election in Iran, the Obama administration sent a letter to the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, calling for an improvement in relations, according to interviews and the leader himself.

Ayatollah Khamenei confirmed the letter toward the end of a lengthy sermon last week, in which he accused the United States of fomenting protests in his country in the aftermath of the disputed June 12 presidential election.

On Thursday May 21, 2009 at approximately 9:45 a.m. members of the United States Army "Golden Knights" parachute team will be conducting an ariel demonstration (jump) over Liberty State Park.

This demonstration will involve several military aircraft flying at low altitudes in preparation for the ariel demonstration. This ariel demonstration will be visible from Jersey City and Manhattan. The demonstration is scheduled to end at approximately 11:30 a.m.

Environmental issues consistently rate near the bottom of public worry, according to many public opinion polls. A Pew Research Center poll released in January found global warming last among 20 voter concerns; it trailed issues like addressing moral decline and decreasing the influence of lobbyists. "We know why it's lowest," said Mr. Perkowitz, a marketer of outdoor clothing and home furnishings before he started ecoAmerica, whose activities are financed by corporations, foundations and individuals. "When someone thinks of global warming, they think of a politicized, polarized argument. When you say 'global warming,' a certain group of Americans think that's a code word for progressive liberals, gay marriage and other such issues."

The answer, Mr. Perkowitz said in his presentation at the briefing, is to reframe the issue using different language. "Energy efficiency" makes people think of shivering in the dark. Instead, it is more effective to speak of "saving money for a more prosperous future." In fact, the group's surveys and focus groups found, it is time to drop the term "the environment" and talk about "the air we breathe, the water our children drink."

"Another key finding: remember to speak in TALKING POINTS aspirational language about shared American ideals, like freedom, prosperity, independence and self-sufficiency while avoiding jargon and details about policy, science, economics or technology," said the e-mail account of the group's study.

There are probably better ways to avoid jury duty than the approach recently taken by a Montana man. After Erik Slye, 36, received a jury notice earlier this year, he filed a notarized affidavit seeking to be excused from serving on a District Court panel in Gallatin County. Slye's caustic affidavit, which he prepared with help from his wife Jennifer, can be found below.

A plane circling Lower Manhattan escorted by two fighter jets is part of a “photo op,” said Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Jim Peters. The event caused some evacuations of office buildings in Lower Manhattan and Jersey City, N.J., on Monday morning.

Mr. Peters said the Defense Department is conducting a photo op that involves deploying two F-16s and escorting a Boeing 747 in the vicinity of Lower Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty. He said the maneuver is not an emergency and was coordinated in advance with the FAA and state and local officials.

By lifting some typically Rushian piece of outrageous hilarity completely out of context, the distortion gang knows full well it can get you to widen your eyes and open your mouth in the universal sign of Liberal Outrage. Your scrawny chest swelling with a warm sense of completely unearned righteousness, you will turn to your second spouse and say, "I'm not a liberal, I'm a moderate, and I'm tolerant of a wide range of differing views -- but this goes too far!"

“You take a look around you, the genuinely successful people that you see who you want to be did not check their individualism at the door when they started their work. They didn’t check their self-interests at the door, and they didn’t check their self-respect, and they didn’t turn over the belief in themselves to somebody else. That’s all I’m talking about and that’s under assault by this administration, which wants to control and limit freedom, ’cause the only way Obama can get the power he wants and the Democrats can get the power they want is if you willingly turn it over to them, by getting rid of your self-interest, your self-respect and holding your best interests at heart. Your best interests do not coincide with your government’s, especially now.”

After the September 11 attacks, commercial airline pilots were allowed to carry guns if they completed a federal-safety program. No longer would unarmed pilots be defenseless as remorseless hijackers seized control of aircraft and rammed them into buildings.

Now President Obama is quietly ending the federal firearms program, risking public safety on airlines in the name of an anti-gun ideology.

...

Since Mr. Obama's election, pilots have told us that the approval process for letting pilots carry guns on planes slowed significantly. Last week the problem went from bad to worse. Federal Flight Deck Officers - the pilots who have been approved to carry guns - indicate that the approval process has stalled out.

Pilots cannot openly speak about the changing policies for fear of retaliation from the Transportation Security Administration. Pilots who act in any way that causes a “loss of confidence” in the armed pilot program risk criminal prosecution as well as their removal from the program. Despite these threats, pilots in the Federal Flight Deck Officers program have raised real concerns in multiple interviews.

I'll be heading out to LA for the Jay Leno appearance. This will be fun; I haven't done Hollywood since that Streisand fundraiser last summer. Back then, it was just warmed over stump material that Alec Baldwin was lip-synching along to, but tomorrow night the stakes are higher. It's all new material: we have a whole five million viewers and a rabidly supportive studio audience to sway on the American economy. Just be aware that when The Big Guy says, "Secretary Geithner is doing a great job," it's not a laugh line.

Overlooked by many in President Obama's budget proposal is a provision that would reduce by 20 percent the amount wealthy people can deduct from their taxes for making charitable donations. This is big business, especially here in Washington. Most of the federal city's major think tanks and policy institutes -- not to mention its food banks, homeless shelters and other social service agencies -- are nonprofit organizations funded by private donors.

Under the administration's plan, households earning more than $250,000 a year would have their itemized tax deductions for charitable giving capped. So instead of getting a 35 percent deduction, on par with their income tax bracket, they would get a 28 percent deduction.

At least one person on campus has done OK as the economy has declined: public university presidents' salaries climbed 7.6% last year. Fifteen presidents of public research universities took home at least $700,000 in 2007-2008, up from eight in last year's survey, and nearly one-third now earn over $500,000, according to the annual Chronicle of Higher Education survey out Monday.

Top-paid presidents at private universities (based on 2006-07):

• David J. Sargent, Suffolk University, Boston ($2,800,461)*

• Henry S. Bienen, Northwestern University, Chicago ($1,742,560)

• Lee C. Bollinger, Columbia University, New York ($1,411,894)

• Shirley Ann Jackson, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute ($1,326,774)

Top-paid presidents at public universities (based on 2007-08):

• E. Gordon Gee, Ohio State University, ($1,346,225)

• Mark Emmert, University of Washington ($887,870)

• John Casteen, University of Virginia ($797,048)

• Mark Yudof, University of Texas ($786,045) (Yudof is now at the University of California)

Top-paid community college presidents:  

• Michael McCall, Kentucky Community and Technical College ($610,670)

• Eduardo Padron, Miami Dade College ($575,450)

The provision, which attracted virtually no attention in the debate over the 1,073-page stimulus bill, creates something called the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board — the RAT Board, as it’s known by the few insiders who are aware of it. The board would oversee the in-house watchdogs, known as inspectors general, whose job is to independently investigate allegations of wrongdoing at various federal agencies, without fear of interference by political appointees or the White House.

In the name of accountability and transparency, Congress has given the RAT Board the authority to ask “that an inspector general conduct or refrain from conducting an audit or investigation.” If the inspector general doesn’t want to follow the wishes of the RAT Board, he’ll have to write a report explaining his decision to the board, as well as to the head of his agency (from whom he is supposedly independent) and to Congress. In the end, a determined inspector general can probably get his way, but only after jumping through bureaucratic hoops that will inevitably make him hesitate to go forward.

When Iowa Republican Sen. Charles Grassley, a longtime champion of inspectors general, read the words “conduct or refrain from conducting,” alarm bells went off. The language means that the board — whose chairman will be appointed by the president — can reach deep inside a federal agency and tell an inspector general to lay off some particularly sensitive subject. Or, conversely, it can tell the inspector general to go after a tempting political target.

About half-way through President Obama's press conference Monday night, he had an unscripted question of his own. "All, Chuck Todd," the President said, referring to NBC's White House correspondent. "Where's Chuck?" He had the same strange question about Fox News's Major Garrett: "Where's Major?"

The problem wasn't the lighting in the East Room. The President was running down a list of reporters preselected to ask questions. The White House had decided in advance who would be allowed to question the President and who was left out.

This is supposed to be a new era of bipartisanship, but this bill was written based on the wish list of every living -- or dead -- Democratic interest group. As Speaker Nancy Pelosi put it, "We won the election. We wrote the bill." So they did.

A U.S. Airways airplane has crashed into the Hudson River, CBS 2 has learned. The plane appears to be in one piece and passengers are being evaucated by rescue teams.

Officials tell CBS 2 the airplane is Flight 1549, an Airbus 380 that took off from La Guardia Aiport.

The plane is floating upright in the water near the USS Intrepid.

The video, a compilation of MEMRI TV clips that aired prior to the current Gaza crisis, includes statements by Hamas leaders calling for the annihilation of Israel and of all Jews, for death to America, and for the Islamic conquest of the world.

Featured are Hamas leader Khaled Mash'al, Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniya, Hamas MPs Mushir Al-Masri and Fathi Hamad, Hamas MP and cleric Yunis Al-Astal, Palestinian Legislative Council acting speaker Sheikh Ahmad Bahr, and Hamas clerics Wael Al-Zarad and Muhsen Abu 'Ita.

Viewers will also see footage of military training for adults and kindergarten children, anti-american speeches at rallies including burning of the American flag and calls of support for "The Afghan Mujahidin", Hamas Al-Aqsa TV children's shows, and more.

The Pentagon said on Tuesday that 61 former detainees from its military prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, appear to have returned to terrorism since their release from custody.

Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said 18 former detainees are confirmed as "returning to the fight" and 43 are suspected of having done in a report issued late in December by the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Chrystia Freeland wouldn't. The US managing editor of the Financial Times made the stunning statement during the course of a classic Morning Joe dust-up today. Joe Scarborough, with help from tag-team partner Pat Buchanan, went after Freeland on her opposition to waterboarding and similar interrogation techniques. At one point Scarborough called Freeland "sophomoric." Later, the exasperated MJ host gave his guest some of the same treatment to which he'd recently been subjected by Zbigniew Brzezinski, telling Freeland "you have no idea what you're talking about."

Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich wanted President-elect Barack Obama "to put something together…something big" in exchange for going along with Obama's choice to fill his vacant US Senate seat, according to an FBI affidavit unsealed following the Governor's stunning arrest.

"I've got this thing and it's f***ing golden, and, uh, uh, I'm just not giving it up for f***in' nothing. I'm not gonna do it. And I can always use it. I can parachute me there," Blagojevich said in a phone call secretly recorded by the FBI on November 5, the day after the election, according to the affidavit.

"Strapped patients are starting to give up their shrink sessions."

Seriously? The analysis capital of the world is too broke to afford analysis? The city so obsessed with psychotherapy that one of its most famous chroniclers, Woody Allen, wrote approximately half of his entire career's worth of jokes about shrinks, people seeing shrinks, shrinks seeing shrinks, and so on?

It's hardly surprising, given that uninsured shrink sessions can run you from $200 to about five times that, given the degree level and specialties of the analyst in question, but it does leave us a bit concerned that the entire city -- which is already pretty angsty, what with massive layoffs, 401ks plummeting, and the NYC housing market no longer acting like the great impervious exception to the national downward trend -- is getting ready to blow a gasket.

One Chelsea psychiatrist says some of his patients are now "going to internists for their meds" and "doing their best to maintain some sense of calm," while a doc at Columbia who's lost 10 percent of his patients claims he's seeing "more severe symptoms, including suicidality."

Naturally, the analysts themselves are cautioning New Yorkers against stopping therapy out of financial worry, especially during the holiday season, when "depression is at a high." (And they can't shrink you for free: that "distorts the process," according to one analyst.) So it's official: Shrinks are scared of the recession, too!

"Mark my words," the Democratic vice presidential nominee warned at the second of his two Seattle fundraisers Sunday. "It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We're about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Remember I said it standing here if you don't remember anything else I said. Watch, we're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy."

"I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate," Biden said to Emerald City supporters, mentioning the Middle East and Russia as possibilities. "And he's gonna need help. And the kind of help he's gonna need is, he's gonna need you - not financially to help him - we're gonna need you to use your influence, your influence within the community, to stand with him. Because it's not gonna be apparent initially, it's not gonna be apparent that we're right."

A CNN iReport poster reported this morning that Steve Jobs had been rushed to the ER after a severe heart attack. Fortunately, it appears the story was false. We contacted an Apple spokeswoman, who categorically denies this.

Over the weekend, I discovered there might have been more to that decision than initially met the eye. There was chatter on the beltway that we may have been the victim of economic terrorism, a coordinated short raid that originated in London and Dubai.

While the legitimacy of that remains to be seen, my source is well respected. Further, as the goals of terrorism are economic destruction and social upheaval, it makes intuitive sense. The stock market is the world's largest thermometer and breaking the capital market construct-as some would say they did last week-would effectively achieve both goals.

On the first leg of the "McCain Street USA" tour -- which will take the Republican presidential nominee and his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, to small towns across the heartland -- the 30 or so reporters and crew were walking back to their buses to join the McCain motorcade when hundreds of townspeople started yelling.

"Stop lying! You are all liars! Tell the truth!" one woman yelled from the front of the pack.

The crowd was not menacing or threatening, but was clearly angry.

"You're telling lies! Stop the lies!" one man yelled. Asked why the crowd was so angry, Linda J. Green of Mequon, Wisc., said: "I'm thinking the press is very biased."

An estimated 123 people were shot and killed over the summer. That's nearly double the number of soldiers killed in Iraq over the same time period.

In May, cbs2chicago.com began tracking city shootings and posting them on Google maps. Information compiled from our reporters, wire service reports and the Chicago Police Major Incidents log indicated that 123 people were shot and killed throughout the city between the start of Memorial Day weekend on May 26, and the end of Labor Day on Sept. 1.

According to the Defense Department, 65 soldiers were killed in combat in Iraq. About the same number were killed in Afghanistan over that same period.

In the same time period, an estimated 245 people were shot and wounded in the city.

Barack Obama named Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware as his vice presidential running mate early Saturday, balancing his ticket with a seasoned congressional veteran well-versed in foreign policy and defense issues. Obama announced the pick on his Web site with a photo of the two men and an appeal for donations. A text message went out shortly afterward that said, "Barack has chosen Senator Joe Biden to be our VP nominee."

Biden, 65, has twice sought the White House, and is a Catholic with blue-collar roots, a generally liberal voting record and a reputation as a long-winded orator.

Across more than 30 years in the Senate, he has served at various times not only as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee but also as head of the Judiciary Committee, with its jurisdiction over anti-crime legislation, Supreme Court nominees and Constitutional issues.

In selecting Biden, Obama passed over several other potential running mates, none more prominent than former first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, his tenacious rival in dozens of primaries and caucuses.

Obama's campaign arranged a debut for the newly minted ticket on Saturday outside the Old State Capitol in Springfield, Ill.

Obama's decision leaked to the media several hours before his aides planned to send a text message announcing the running mate, negating a promise that people who turned over their phone numbers would be the first to know who Obama had chosen. The campaign scrambled to send the text message after the leak, sending phones buzzing at the inconvenient time of just after 3 a.m. on the East coast.

The Weather Underground believed that militancy was far better than nonviolent protests. Their goal was to thwart the US Government using guerrilla warfare to achieve a revolution. They wrote a “Declaration of a State of War” against the United States government.

...

For starters, the Weather Underground claimed credit for a bombing in Chicago, which they referred to as a “kickoff” of what they called their “Days Of Rage”. Their book. entitled, “Prairie Free”, strongly called for a unified Communist Party.

The Weather Underground blew up several Chicago Police cars at that time as well.

Next, these slime balls held a “war council” to firm up plans to remain underground and commit acts of sabotage against the US Government. They bombed several police cars in Berkley. Then they detonated a bomb at the San Francisco Police Department, during which one officer was killed and several others were injured. When 36 sticks of dynamite were discovered at a police precinct in Detroit, Bill Ayers just happened to be in town.

Later, several of the Underground’s own members died when they accidentally blew up their own bomb factory in New York. No loss. The bomb was intended to be used at an officer’s dance at Fort Dix. The bomb they were going to use was packed with nails for maximum damage. Fortunately those nails ended up stuck in their own miserable dead asses instead. Then another bomb factory was discovered in Chicago’s North side. Their weapons cache was also discovered in an apartment in Chicago’s South side. Then they blew up the National Guard building in DC.

...

They claimed credit for the explosion of the San Francisco Hall of Justice, which never occurred. Later, an undetonated explosive device was discovered on the premises. Then the NY City Police headquarters was bombed. Then they bombed the Presidio Army Base in San Francisco in honor of the anniversary of the Cuban Revolution.

Think I am done talking about the Underground yet? Nope.

They then helped Timothy Leary escape from prison, and bombed the Marin County courthouse. After that they bombed the Queens Traffic Court building. They bombed the Harvard Center For International Affairs. A few of them fled to Cuba, where I hope to God they still reside if they aren’t dead.

Next, they bombed the US Capital. Another of their bomb factories was discovered in San Francisco. Then they bombed the office of California Prisons, The New York Department of Corrections in Albany, NY, and William Bundy’s office at MIT Research Center.

Nope. I’m not done yet. This stuff was all in a day’s work for Bernardine and Bill.

They bombed the Pentagon.

They bombed the 103 Police Precinct in New York.

Then they bombed the ITT buildings in both New York and Rome, Italy.

They bombed the Department of Health, Education and Welfare.

They bombed the Office of California of Attorney General.

They bombed Gulf’s Pittsburgh headquarters.

Then they bombed the Anaconda headquarters.

They bombed the State Department.

They bombed the Banco De Ponce in Puerto Rico as well as the Kennekot Corporation.

They also committed the Brinks Robbery in conjunction with the Black Liberation Army.

Does Obama support domestic terrorism? Oh, I doubt that. But let's also get it on the record, too, that his friendship with Bill Ayers surely must indicate he's not exactly repulsed by it, either.

That's an awful lot to get past.

How many unrepentant rapists have you personally befriended in your adult life, Michael? How many convicted but proud murderers? How many such repellent creatures have you found so charming that you could easily put aside qualms about their past crimes to become fast friends with them?

Beyond that, of course, it is simply incontestable that if a Republican were friends and political allies with a former abortion-clinic bomber or other sort of domestic terrorist -- someone who still advocated such measures, by the way -- Michael Crowely and the whole of TNR would be very interested in such a friendship, and would gleefully contrast that Republican's stated position against Islamofascist terrorism with his tacit acceptance of, and possible approval of, domestic terrorism in the right situation.

Law enforcement officials say when Siddiqui was detained in Afghanistan on July 17 she possessed documents with a list of likely targets that included the Statue of Liberty, Times Square, the subway system and the animal disease center on Plum Island. They say she also had detailed chemical, biological and radiological weapon information.

In addition, Siddiqui had e-mails linking her to possible "sleeper" cells in the United States.

"I don't think we've captured anybody as important, and as well connected as she since 2003," says former CIA officer John Kiriakou.

Siddiqui also was carrying ``chemical substances in gel and liquid form that were sealed in bottles and glass jars,'' a criminal complaint said without elaborating.

What GAO Found

Security at the Plum Island Animal Disease Center has improved, but fundamental concerns leave the facility vulnerable to security breaches. First, Plum Island’s physical security arrangements are incomplete and limited. Second, Plum Island officials have been assuming unnecessary risks by not adequately controlling access to areas where pathogens are located. Controlling access is particularly important because pathogens are inherently difficult to secure at any facility. Although this risk may always exist, DHS could consult with other laboratories working with pathogens to learn different approaches to mitigate this risk. Third, Plum Island’s security response has limitations. For example, the guard force has been armed but has not had the authority from USDA to carry firearms or make arrests. Moreover, Plum Island’s incident response plan does not consider the possibility of a terrorist attack. Fourth, the risk that an adversary may try to steal pathogens is, in our opinion, higher at the Plum Island Animal Disease Center than USDA originally determined because of hostilities surrounding the strike. Also, when USDA developed its security plan for Plum Island, it did not review their defined threats with the intelligence community and local law enforcement officials to learn of possible threats—and their associated risks—relevant to the Plum Island vicinity. Although these reviews did not occur, USDA subsequently arranged to receive current intelligence information.

In summary, DHS has made significant progress and has implemented 18 of the 24 recommendations. However, implementation of the 6 remaining recommendations is still under way. In 2003, physical security at Plum Island was deficient in several ways. For example, alarms and door sensors for detecting intruders were not fully operational; controls to account for the keys to the island's facilities were deficient; and USDA was not providing sufficient physical security for certain assets, including those critical to the continued operation of the facility. These vulnerabilities were particularly troubling because a strike was under way, and sabotage of the island's infrastructure had already occurred. DHS has since taken many actions in response to our recommendations. For example, alarms and door sensors are now in use, and DHS has implemented procedures to better control access to keys to facilities. In addition, the department has better secured certain features of the physical infrastructure that supports the continued operation of the Plum Island Animal Disease Center. DHS has also improved the security of North America's only foot-and-mouth disease vaccine bank. This bank represents years of cooperative research performed by Canada, Mexico, and the United States, and the material it contains is considered a critical asset for controlling a large outbreak.

Individuals have a constitutional right to possess a basic firearm (the line drawn is unclear, but is basically those weapons in general lawful use and does not extend to automatic weapons) and to use that firearm in self-defense. The government can prohibit possession of firearms by, for example, felons and the mentally ill. And it can also regulate the sale of firearms, presumably through background checks. The Court leaves open the constitutionality of a licensing requirement.

After many discussions with these drillers, I am convinced that there is great reason to believe that Cuba has not only discussed the possibility of allowing China and Venezuela to drill on her sovereign leases, but has already begun seismic studies. This may seem innocuous, but it is not. You may say, "so what ... let Cuba ruin its coastline ... we are going to protect ours." There is a very important fact that no one has addressed. They all agree that these oil finds are immense. The scary scenario plays out like this:

Cuba, China and Venezuela develop some of these oil fields. They sit on Cuban land, which is adjacent to U.S land. The majority of the oil may actually sit underneath our land. If they get a jump on us and develop those fields, they may be pulling oil right out from under our feet.

You know I just, I just came back from Moscow, Berlin, London and Paris and it's the first, I've been there quite a few times in the past five to 10 years. And it just hasn't been a good thing to be American. And this is the first time, since Barack has gotten the nomination, that it, it was a good thing.

Richard Falk, the special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, investigates alleged Israeli violations of human rights law for the U.N.’s Human Rights Council.

But the former Princeton professor would also like to investigate whether “some sort of controlled explosion from within” destroyed the Twin Towers, he told FOXNews.com.

“I do think there are questions that haven’t been answered, questions about the way the buildings collapsed and the failure to heed a variety of signals that there was danger coming,” Falk said.

Two Muslim women at Barack Obama's rally in Detroit Monday were barred from sitting behind the podium by campaign volunteers seeking to prevent the women's headscarves from appearing in photographs or on television with the candidate

In 2003, top Senate Democrats -- not just Rockefeller but also Carl Levin, Clinton, Kerry and others -- sounded just as alarmist. Conveniently, this month's report, titled "Whether Public Statements Regarding Iraq by U.S. Government Officials Were Substantiated by Intelligence Information," includes only statements by the executive branch. Had it scrutinized public statements of Democrats on the Intelligence, Foreign Relations and Armed Services committees -- who have access to the same intelligence information as the president and his chief advisors -- many senators would be unable to distinguish their own words from what they today characterize as warmongering.

A 13 year old from Texas who stole his Dad's credit card and ordered two hookers from an escort agency, has today been convicted of fraud and given a three year community order.

Ralph Hardy, a 13 year old from Newark, Texas confessed to ordering an extra credit card from his father's existing credit card company, and took his friends on a $30,000 spending spree, culminating in playing "Halo" on an Xbox with a couple of hookers in a Texas motel.

The credit card company involved said it was regular practice to send extra credit cards out as long as all security questions are answered.

The escort girls who were released without charge, told the arresting officers something was up when the kids said they would rather play Xbox than get down to business.

That’s easy. They upheld the rights of the side that threatened capitulation or violence. Instead of expelling the student for his threat and making an example of him, they chose to coddle the student and chase the teacher out of his job. Afterwards, they issued the normal multi-culti mewlings of “misunderstanding”, “growth process”, and emphasizing respect for different cultures.

A Kuwaiti man released from the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay in 2005 has carried out a suicide bombing in Iraq, his cousin told Al Arabiya television on Thursday.

Broderick Lloyd Laswell says he isn't happy that he's down to 308 pounds after eight months in the Benton County jail. He has filed a federal lawsuit complaining the jail doesn't provide inmates with enough food.

According to the suit, Laswell weighed 413 pounds when he was jailed in September. Police say he and a co-defendant fatally beat and stabbed a man, then set his home on fire.

"On several occasions I have started to do some exercising and my vision went blurry and I felt like I was going to pass out," Laswell wrote in his complaint. "About an hour after each meal my stomach starts to hurt and growl. I feel hungry again."

Major retailers in New York, in areas of New England, and on the West Coast are limiting purchases of flour, rice, and cooking oil as demand outstrips supply. There are also anecdotal reports that some consumers are hoarding grain stocks.

he recently bought 10 50-pound bags of rice at Costco. “I am concerned that when the news of rice shortage spreads, there will be panic buying and the shelves will be empty in no time. I do not intend to cause a panic, and I am not speculating on rice to make profit. I am just hoarding some for my own consumption,” he wrote.

The recent Food Stamp stories also feed off the idea that most of the 36 million Americans who the government defines as "poor" face ongoing, serious material deprivation.

The facts show otherwise. According to the government's own data, nearly two-thirds of "poor" households have satellite or cable television. Nine out of 10 have microwave ovens and 80% have air conditioning. Nearly three-quarters own a car and almost a third own two or more cars. For decades government data have shown that more than 40% of the poor own their own homes, typically a three bedroom house with one-and-a-half baths.

On average, poor children have the same high levels of protein, vitamin, and mineral consumption as upper middle class kids. Only 1.5% of the poor report they "often" did not have enough food to eat during the last four months, although another 6% state this "sometimes" happened.

The World Meteorological Organization's secretary-general, Michel Jarraud, told the BBC it was likely that La Nina would continue into the summer.

This would mean global temperatures have not risen since 1998, prompting some to question climate change theory.

What struck me as the best commentary on the Bosnia story came from a poster called GI Joe who wrote in to a news blog: "Actually Mrs. Clinton was too modest. I was there and saw it all. When Mrs. Clinton got off the plane the tarmac came under mortar and machine gun fire. I was blown off my tank and exposed to enemy fire. Mrs. Clinton without regard to her own safety dragged me to safety, jumped on the tank and opened fire, killing 50 of the enemy." Soon a suicide bomber appeared, but Mrs. Clinton stopped the guards from opening fire. "She talked to the man in his own language and got him [to] surrender. She found that he had suffered terribly as a result of policies of George Bush. She defused the bomb vest herself." Then she turned to his wounds. "She stopped my bleeding and saved my life. Chelsea donated the blood."

The thunderous applause was still ringing in his ears when the state's new governor, David Paterson, told the Daily News that he and his wife had extramarital affairs.

In a stunning revelation, both Paterson, 53, and his wife, Michelle, 46, acknowledged in a joint interview they each had intimate relationships with others during a rocky period in their marriage several years ago.

In the course of several interviews in the past few days, Paterson said he maintained a relationship for two or three years with "a woman other than my wife," beginning in 1999.

Gov. Eliot Spitzer has informed his most senior administration officials that he had been involved in a prostitution ring, an administration official said this morning.

Mr. Spitzer, who was huddled with his top aides early this afternoon, had hours earlier abruptly canceled his scheduled public events for the day. He is set to make an announcement about 2:15 this afternoon at his Manhattan office.

Mr. Spitzer, a first-term Democrat who pledged to bring ethics reform and end the often seamy ways of Albany, is married with three children.

Their close relationship is especially disturbing. By any objective measure, Wright is an America-hating race-monger. He blames practically every ill on "white America," including 9/11. Just this past November, he honored bigoted Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan with a "lifetime achievement" award presented in Wright's name.

Wright gushed in a cover profile of Farrakhan in his church's magazine that his old pal Farrakhan — who has bashed whites as "blue-eyed devils" and Jews as "bloodsuckers" — should be a model for blacks because he "truly epitomized greatness."

In the '80s, the two traveled to Libya together to pay homage to terrorist Muammar Qaddafi.

Campaign trail III

Brooklyn: Wake up, America. John McCain is no war hero. He sat out the war in a prison camp. He didn't do any fighting.

J. Montana

Yet in a liberal Hollywood where to express skepticism about man-made global warming is to be labeled — with all its obvious connotations — a "denier," Miss Cotillard's insinuation that the U.S. government was complicit — by its silence, if nothing else — in the destruction of the Twin Towers and the murder of 3,000 people has elicited nary a peep in condemnation.

Where, one is compelled to ask, is the outrage on the left?

The recruiting station, located on a traffic island surrounded by Broadway theaters and chain restaurants, has occasionally been the site of anti-war demonstrations, ranging from silent vigils to loud rallies.

Code Pink, an anti-war group that gave more than $600,000 to terrorists’ families in Iraq, is calling for anti-military agitators to escalate attacks on U.S. Government offices where the military work with potential recruits on their futures. The group outlines ways for followers to terrorize recruiters, shut down recruiting stations and stop people from exercising the Constitutional rights to pursue their life’s goals.

Anti-war and anarchists groups have already attacked military recruiting centers in Washington, D.C., Berkeley, Calif.; Minneapolis, Minn.; Milwaukee, Wis.; Santa Monica, Calif.; Toledo, Ohio; Murfreesboro, Tenn.; Pittsburgh, Penn.; Haverhill, Mass., and New York, N.Y. This is a partial list.

Gary Gygax, co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons and one of the fathers of tabletop role-playing games, died on Tuesday at the age of 69. He had suffered from heart problems.

The news was first announced on the message board of Troll Lord Games, the publisher of Gygax's most recent works. It has since been directly confirmed by the company, which will post an announcement on its Web site later Tuesday.

Teenagers who hang out inside one apartment building in Jamaica, Queens are getting an earful these days.

A new security device called "The Mosquito" has been installed in the lobby of a building on 170th St. where there have been chronic problems with noisy teens.

The wall-mounted device emits a high-frequency screech that can only be heard by people aged 13 to 25. Most older people cannot hear it.

"What we have learned over this year is that hope is making a comeback. It is making a comeback and let me tell you something, For the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country. And not just because Barack has done well, but because I think people are hungry for change. I have been desperate to see our country moving in that direction and just not feeling so alone in my frustration and disappointment. I have seen people who are hungry to be unified around some basic common issues. It has made me proud."

Obama is untested to say the least. He's 40, has won exactly one statewide election -where his opponent was a transplant from another state - and he didn't even give a crap about that job enough to so much as finish a half of it before he decides no running the United States is what he'd be better at.

Back in 1991, before Al Gore first shouted that the Earth was in the balance, the Danish Meteorological Institute released a study using data that went back centuries that showed that global temperatures closely tracked solar cycles.

To many, those data were convincing. Now, Canadian scientists are seeking additional funding for more and better "eyes" with which to observe our sun, which has a bigger impact on Earth's climate than all the tailpipes and smokestacks on our planet combined.

Remote-controlled explosives strapped to two mentally retarded women detonated in a coordinated attack on Baghdad pet bazaars Friday, police and Iraqi officials said, killing at least 73 people in the deadliest day since the U.S. sent 30,000 extra troops to the capital this spring.

John Rossi, 56, of Lowen's Pharmacy in Bay Ridge, was found slumped on the floor near his son-in-law's desk in a second-floor office over the store at 7 p.m.

He had shot himself once in the head, sources said. A .380-caliber handgun was still in his hand.

...

Lowen's was raided last May, when medical records and millions of dollars worth of performance-enhancing drugs were seized.

Police sources said prescriptions were filled there by several cops. Using steroids violates NYPD policy.

Rossi "was a different person after that," said customer Barbara Rosentreter. "You could see the worry in his face."

Five cops failed subsequent tests and face departmental charges, a source said. Rossi had not been charged.

The raid was part of a wide-ranging probe by Albany DA David Soares into illegal prescription-drug sales that allegedly involved a slew of major-league ballplayers, including former Yankee stars Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte.

The probe targeted steroid suppliers.

The Lowen's raid in May - and another in October - were mentioned in last month's bombshell Mitchell report, which documented the use of steroids in Major League Baseball.

The Bay Ridge businessman's death was as gruesome as a mob hit. Authorities say he fired one bullet from a .380 automatic Beretta into his chest - but missed all vital organs, either though nerves or poor aim.

Bleeding, he then pointed the handgun at his head and pulled the trigger, authorities said.

“In the same way that many communities limit the location of pornographic stores, that’s the same way we feel about the military recruiting stations,” said PhoeBe sorgen, an initiative proponent and a member of the city’s Peace and Justice Commission. “Teenagers that really want to find them will be able to seek them out and find them, but we don’t want them in our face.”

My favorite headline of the year so far comes from The Daily Mail in Britain: "Government Renames Islamic Terrorism As 'Anti-Islamic Activity' To Woo Muslims."

Her Majesty's Government is not alone in feeling it's not always helpful to link Islam and the, ah, various unpleasantnesses with suicide bombers and whatnot.

In any case, by stopping the research at 2001, the story is set-up to misreport the facts. The Clinton administration spent years warning the public of the threat of Saddam and his WMD. They even bombed a pharma factor in Sudan on the suspicion that it was making WMD for both al Qaeda and Iraq. So the story either unintentionally or by design left out years of context.

Whatever the motivation, it’s clear that the reporter, Douglas K. Daniel, paid no attention to the man behind the curtain. The Center for Public Integrity is one of many George Soros fronts. Soros pays the bills and his minions, whether they happen to work at the CPI or the Center for American Progress or Media Matters or wherever, dance to his tune. And Soros has made it his life’s work to bring down the Bush administration. He says it’s the “central focus of my life.” Do you think people paid to to “research” by a man with that stated mission are likely to deliver unbiased findings?

Unless the Koran has been thoroughly re-written, scrubbed clean of its myriad injunctions to violent means of spreading the "faith," or unless the Prophets' followers have suddenly decided that there might not actually be 72 gorgeous virgins waiting for them in paradise because they've succeeded in blowing the rest of us to kingdom come, then there is still a war on. It's real. It's deadly. And it's going to have to be won by one side or the other.

It's already reared its ugly head sporadically for 14 centuries, and shows no sign of abating just because we prefer to bury our heads.

If you don't believe this, ask Israel.

Take a look at the little Iranian with the messiah complex, who is exploring nuclear "energy."

Give a peek at the situation in Pakistan, with its nuclear arsenal.

Then look over the border to Afghanistan, where the Taliban is gaining again in strength.

And before you vote, ask yourself just one question:

If we aren't safe in our homes and workplaces from another catastrophe like 9/11, will the price of your bread really matter?

It snowed, but they still came. A heavy snowfall blanketed a global warming protest outside the State House in Annapolis this morning, but it did not dampen the shouts of about 400 activists who urged lawmakers to pass the nation's toughest greenhouse gas control law.

In an effort to help Sen. Larry Craig, the American Civil Liberties Union is arguing that people who have sex in public bathrooms have an expectation of privacy.

Craig, of Idaho, is asking the Minnesota Court of Appeals to let him withdraw his guilty plea to disorderly conduct stemming from a bathroom sex sting at the Minneapolis airport.

The ACLU filed a brief Tuesday supporting Craig. It cited a Minnesota Supreme Court ruling 38 years ago that found that people who have sex in closed stalls in public restrooms "have a reasonable expectation of privacy."

A Polish man got the shock of his life Wednesday when he did something he knows he shouldn't have - cheated on his wife. The unnamed gentleman decided to visit a Warsaw brothel and take advantage of the services provided in the not-so-legal establishment.

But when he walked in the door, any lascivious thoughts he may have had turned to anger, after he recognized one of the people working inside - his own spouse.

Life imitated the movies Tuesday when two dopes wheeled a dead man around Hell's Kitchen in an office chair as they tried to cash his Social Security check, cops said.

The "Weekend at Bernie's" stunt was an attempt to collect 66-year-old Virgilio Cintron's dough less than a day after he died, police said. One suspect is Cintron's roommate.

A St. Louis-area town is considering a bill that would ban swearing in bars, along with table-dancing, drinking contests and profane music. City officials contend the bill is needed to keep rowdy crowds under control because the historic downtown area gets a little too lively on some nights.

"Stock up on fur coats and felt boots!" advises Oleg Sorokhtin, a fellow of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences and senior scientist at Moscow's Shirshov Institute of Oceanography. "The latest data . . . say that earth has passed the peak of its warmer period, and a fairly cold spell will set in quite soon, by 2012."

Sorokhtin dismisses the conventional global warming theory that greenhouse gases, especially human-emitted carbon dioxide, is causing the earth to grow hotter. Like a number of other scientists, he points to solar activity - sunspots and solar flares, which wax and wane over time - as having the greatest effect on climate.

"Carbon dioxide is not to blame for global climate change," Sorokhtin writes in an essay for Novosti. "Solar activity is many times more powerful than the energy produced by the whole of humankind." In a recent paper for the Danish National Space Center, physicists Henrik Svensmark and Eigil Friis-Christensen concur: "The sun . . . appears to be the main forcing agent in global climate change," they write.

Robin Garrison, an off-duty 42-year-old firefighter, was walking in Berliner Park in Columbus, Ohio, in May when he saw a woman sunbathing topless under a tree.

He approached her and they started talking and getting comfortable, the woman smiling and resting her foot on his shoulder at one point.

Eventually, she asked to see Garrison's penis; he unzipped his pants and complied.

Seconds later, undercover police officers pulled up in a van and arrested Garrison; he was later charged with public indecency, a misdemeanor, based on video footage taken by cops who were targeting men having sex or masturbating in the park. While topless sunbathing is legal in the city's parks, exposing more than that is against the law.

When I recently watched The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe with my sons, I came to a disturbing conclusion: The White Queen of Narnia has quietly, but effectively, infiltrated this side of the Wardrobe.

Readers of the book and patrons of the film know that the enchanted realm of Narnia, under the tyrannical control of the White Witch, suffered from perpetual winter without Christmas, as the faun Tumnus, laments.

As it gets closer to Dec. 25 on our side of the Wardrobe, few (save some presidential candidates) seem to want to mention Christmas. My suspicion is that the White Witch has assembled an army of civil libertarians, bureaucrats, advertising agencies, department stores, and sometimes grumpy individuals to replace her wolves, dwarves, and magic wands. This time, however, she is not confined to the perils of the childhood imagination; the effects of her efforts cannot be escaped by closing the book.

Over 400 prominent scientists from more than two dozen countries recently voiced significant objections to major aspects of the so-called "consensus" on man-made global warming. These scientists, many of whom are current and former participants in the UN IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), criticized the climate claims made by the UN IPCC and former Vice President Al Gore.

The new report issued by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee’s office of the GOP Ranking Member details the views of the scientists, the overwhelming majority of whom spoke out in 2007.

On November 6, Erin Burnett of CNBC was concerned about gas prices impacting retail sales this Christmas: “Consumers like us account for two-thirds of the economy, and if we don’t spend all of our money at the department stores and Target and Wal-Mart this shopping season, we could have a recession. So gas prices are a crucial part of that,” Burnett said on NBC’s “Today.”

The Black KKK claimed another victim, a high-profile professional football player with a checkered past this time.

No, we don't know for certain the circumstances surrounding Taylor's death. I could very well be proven wrong for engaging in this sort of aggressive speculation. But it's no different than if you saw a fat man fall to the ground clutching his chest. You'd assume a heart attack, and you'd know, no matter the cause, the man needed to lose weight.

Well, when shots are fired and a black man hits the pavement, there's every statistical reason to believe another black man pulled the trigger. That's not some negative, unfair stereotype. It's a reality we've been living with, tolerating and rationalizing for far too long.

When the traditional, white KKK lynched, terrorized and intimidated black folks at a slower rate than its modern-day dark-skinned replacement, at least we had the good sense to be outraged and in no mood to contemplate rationalizations or be fooled by distractions.

Our new millennium strategy is to pray the Black KKK goes away or ignores us. How's that working?

Does anyone decide which candidate to choose based on the recommendation of a TV talk show host or a singer/actress? If any group of citizens is uniquely unqualified to tell someone else how to vote, it’s those of us who live in the sheltered, privileged arena of celebrityhood. It’s one thing to buy an ab machine because Chuck Norris recommends it (he’s in good shape, isn’t he?) or a grill because George Foreman’s name is on it (he’s a great guy, so it must be a great grill!), but the idea of choosing the Leader of the Free World based on the advice of someone who lives in the cloistered world of stardom seems a bit loony to me.

The king of Spain's recent undiplomatic outburst at the Venezuelan president has become a ringtone hit across Spain. An estimated 500,000 people have downloaded the insult featuring the words "Why don't you shut up?", generating a reported 1.5m euros ($2m).

King Juan Carlos asked Hugo Chavez to "shut up" at a summit in Chile last week after the president said Spain's ex-PM Jose Maria Aznar was a "fascist".

Relax, and don't forget what Al Gore the Witchdoctor is carefully not telling you. Non exhaustively: that his computer models are regularly proven wrong, that we're coming out of a little Ice Age (which tends to explain why it is a bit warmer than it used to be), that even if the Arctic ice is melting, the Antarctic is getting colder (meaning that global warming is not even global), that CO2 is a consequence, not a cause of warming, that if some glaciers are melting, others right next to them are advancing, and that compared to the 1930s and 1000 AD, it's actually getting rather cold these days.

Sydney's Santa Clauses have instead been instructed to say "ha ha ha" instead, the Daily Telegraph reported.

One disgruntled Santa told the newspaper a recruitment firm warned him not to use "ho ho ho" because it could frighten children and was too close to "ho", a US slang term for prostitute.

Only 20 percent said they'd exchange their vote for an iPod touch.

But 66 percent said they'd forfeit their vote for a free ride to NYU. And half said they'd give up the right to vote forever for $1 million.

But they also overwhelmingly lauded the importance of voting.

Ninety percent of the students who said they'd give up their vote for the money also said they consider voting "very important" or "somewhat important"; only 10 percent said it was "not important."

Also, 70.5 percent said they believe that one vote can make a difference — including 70 percent of the students who said they'd give up their vote for free tuition.

Global Warming; It is a SCAM. Some dastardly scientists with environmental and political motives manipulated long term scientific data to create an allusion of rapid global warming. Other scientists of the same environmental whacko type jumped into the circle to support and broaden the “research” to further enhance the totally slanted, bogus global warming claims. Their friends in government steered huge research grants their way to keep the movement going. Soon they claimed to be a consensus.

Unless a dramatic and perhaps historical flurry of activity occurs in the next 9 weeks, 2007 will rank as a historically inactive TC year for the Northern Hemisphere as a whole. During the past 30 years, only 1977, 1981, and 1983 have had less activity to date.

Myth 1: The Whites-Only Tree. There has never been a "whites-only" tree at Jena High School. Students of all races sat underneath this tree. When a student asked during an assembly at the start of school last year if anyone could sit under the tree, it evoked laughter from everyone present – blacks and whites. As reported by students in the assembly, the question was asked to make a joke and to drag out the assembly and avoid class.

...

Myth 8: The Attack Is Linked to the Nooses. Nowhere in any of the evidence, including statements by witnesses and defendants, is there any reference to the noose incident that occurred three months prior. This was confirmed by the United States attorney for the Western District of Louisiana, Donald Washington, on numerous occasions.

Now comes the LA Times with allegations of a broad base of “poor” Chinese donors, some of whom seem to have scrounged up the money legitimately to get a photo op with the great lady, some of whom seem to have done so at the behest of “neighborhood associations” which exert “enormous influence” over recent immigrants, and some of whom — well, some of whom may not exist. Dummy businesses in Norman Hsu’s case, dummy donors here?

Yehuda Baruch, a professor of management at the University of East Anglia, and graduate Stuart Jenkins studied the use of profanity in the workplace and assessed its implications for managers.

They assessed that swearing would become more common as traditional taboos are broken down, but the key appeared to be knowing when such language was appropriate and when to turn to blind eye.

The pair said swearing in front of senior staff or customers should be seriously discouraged or banned, but in other circumstances it helped foster solidarity among employees and express frustration, stress or other feelings.

"Employees use swearing on a continuous basis, but not necessarily in a negative, abusive manner," said Baruch, who works in the university's business school in Norwich.

Banning swear words and reprimanding staff might represent strong leadership, but could remove key links between staff and impact on morale and motivation, he said.

"We hope that this study will serve not only to acknowledge the part that swearing plays in our work and our lives, but also to indicate that leaders sometimes need to 'think differently' and be open to intriguing ideas.

The Muslim scholars state: "As Muslims, we say to Christians that we are not against them and that Islam is not against them - so long as they do not wage war against Muslims on account of their religion, oppress them and drive them out of their homes."

ROTTEN HATES EVERYTHING intellectually lazy, from the fat and stupid editors at Rolling Stone to the Hollywood liberals he encounters everyday back in his Venice Beach community. "You wouldn't believe the idiocy," he tells me on his umpteenth beer or vodka drink. "Imagine me at a parent/teacher conference trying to explain to them how to speak proper bloody English!"

How can I not admire a man who believes Americans are the most honest people in the world, and America is the greatest place to live (I am almost positive he said that, but I was drunk). He's lived here now for 30 years, and has no intention of leaving. Truly a Yank -- he prefers Steve Miller over Sting.

And he also believes, like me, that the real cause of terror is not religion, but lack of fun. These nutty extremists just need a more active social life. He wanted the Sex Pistols to play in Iraq, not just to troops, but to the people of Iraq. "I don't care if they hate us, but we have to do it. But no one would sponsor us. Not even Rolling Stone." Rotten may be the only rock legend who understands the threat of Islamofascism and is willing to go there and face it, without security and not behind a barbed wire fence. You don't hear Neil Young or Bruce Springsteen volunteering to do the same. And you never hear your basic sensitive and outspoken Hollywood celebrity -- the ones mouthing off about Bush and right-wing religious nuts -- speaking out against the way gays and women are treated in Islamic countries. Because they're cowards. Rotten isn't. He wants to change the world, despite having done a lot of that already.

An MIT student with a fake bomb strapped to her chest -- later claiming it was art -- was arrested at gunpoint Friday at Logan International Airport, officials said.

Star Simpson, 19, had a computer circuit board and wiring in plain view over a black hooded sweat shirt she was wearing, said State Police Maj. Scott Pare, the commanding officer at the airport.

"She said that it was a piece of art and she wanted to stand out on career day," Pare said at a news conference. "She claims that it was just art, and that she was proud of the art and she wanted to display it."

Thursday, thousands of us, proud African-Americans, expressed our devotion to and desire to see justice for the “Jena Six,” the half-dozen black students who knocked unconscious, kicked and stomped a white classmate.

Jesse Jackson compared Thursday’s rallies in Jena to the protests and marches that used to take place in cities like Selma, Ala., in the 1960s. Al Sharpton claimed Thursday’s peaceful demonstrations were to highlight racial inequities in the criminal justice system.

Jesse and Al, as they’re prone to do, served a kernel of truth stacked on a mountain of lies.

There are undeniable racial and economic inequities in our criminal justice system, and from afar the “Jena Six” rallies certainly looked and felt like the righteous protests of the 1960s.

But the reality is Thursday’s protests are just another sign that we remain deeply locked in denial about the path we need to travel today for true American liberation, equality and power in the new millennium.

While I cannot support bin Laden’s opinion that all Americans should be killed and that Islam is the only way to be saved, it is hard to overlook the statements that he makes about the Bush administration.

In finding myself in this predicament, I questioned myself as to who the lesser evil actually is. I ask, “Who has done more damage to the lives of the American people?” Personally, I worry more about the next bad decision Bush is going to make than I worry about a potential Osama bin Laden organized terrorist attack.

"It was a sculpture, now it's a monument," Koenig said, noting how the thin globe had mostly survived the cataclysm. "It now has a different beauty, one I could never imagine. It has its own life - different from the one I gave to it."

The plaque alongside The Sphere reads as follows:

For three decades, this sculpture stood in the plaza of the World Trade Center. Entitled "The Sphere", it was conceived by artist Fritz Koenig as a symbol of world peace. It was damaged during the tragic events of September 11, 2001, but endures as an icon of hope and the indestructible spirit of this country. The Sphere was placed here on March 11, 2002 as a temporary memorial to all who lost their lives in the terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center. This eternal flame was ignited on September 11, 2002 in honour of all those that were lost. Their spirit and sacrifice will never be forgotten.

Richard Gere and Charlize Theron added their voices to a chorus of stars taking swipes at the Bush administration at the Venice Film Festival.

"How did we elect Bush twice?" Gere asked rhetorically while promoting his new film, "The Hunting Party."

We now live in a docudrama world in which techniques of fiction and nonfiction are starting to blur. Many reporters think objectivity is a myth.