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Utah's attorney general is investigating the Bowl Championship Series for a possible violation of federal antitrust laws after an undefeated Utes team was left out of the national title game for the second time in five years. Attorney General Mark Shurtleff contends the BCS unfairly puts schools like Utah, which is a member of a conference without an automatic bid to the lucrative bowl games, at a competitive and financial disadvantage.

For seriously predicting that the United States will break into six parts in June or July of 2010, Igor Panarin has suddenly become a Russian state-media celebrity. Hardly a day goes by without another interview or two for the KGB-trained, Kremlin-backed senior analyst. The clamor in Russia for his ideas is growing, he says. Panarin's disintegration divination comes complete with a map. In it, Alaska goes to Russia. Hawaii goes to Japan or China. "The California Republic" — the West from Utah and Arizona to the Pacific — goes to China. "The Texas Republic" — the South from New Mexico...

Honoring his beloved toot. President-elect Barack Obama and family spent the third day of their vacation, remembering the life of Obama's grandmother Madelyn Dunham. Dying of Cancer, Obama left the campaign trail and rushed to be by her side to be one last time in October. She died at the age of 86 just days before her grandson won the presidency. Obama says his toot raised, loved, and helped him become the man he is today. Almost two months after Dunham's death, the family pays their final respects. Just as the wind, emotions run strong at Lanai lookout. President-elect Barack...

The United States has never fully subscribed to the Roman policy of providing its citizens with bread and circuses. The bread is just too expensive. Besides, poor people should be self-reliant enough to earn their own bread. Circuses, though - they're different. They distract attention from governmental disorders that voters might not be so thrilled with. Say, wars, or ruining the environment, or corporate boondoggles. And the greatest of these circuses has been the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. It began in response to the embarrassment of the Soviet Union putting up the first satellite. From there the agency went...

Obama attends memorial for his grandmother By Associated Press POSTED: 04:50 p.m. HST, Dec 23, 2008 President-elect Barack Obama attended a memorial service this afternoon for his grandmother, who helped raise him.

President-elect Barack Obama gathered with family and friends on Tuesday for a private memorial service for the beloved grandmother who helped raise him. Madelyn Payne Dunham, known to her friends as “Toot”, died Nov. 2, two days before Obama won election to become the nation’s first African-American president. She was 86. Obama did not speak to reporters at the small home that had been converted into the First Unitarian Church in Nuuanu. Aides said Obama’s half-sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, and her husband, Konrad Ng, also were present. Following the ceremony, Obama drove to the Lanai Lookout. He and about 20 members...

Michelle and Barack Obama attend a seaside memorial for his grandmother, "Toot." HONOLULU - President-elect Barack Obama gathered with family and friends on Tuesday for a private memorial service for the beloved grandmother who helped raise him. Madelyn Payne Dunham, known to her friends as "Toot", died Nov. 2, two days before Obama won election to become the nation's first African-American president. She was 86. Obama did not speak to reporters at the small home that had been converted into the First Unitarian Church in the neighborhood of Nuuanu. Aides said Obama's half-sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, and her husband, Konrad Ng,...

Arianna Huffington: Post hostess By Choire Sicha December 21, 2008 Arianna Huffington shuttles between New York, home of the Huffington Post offices, and Los Angeles, where her youngest daughter is in high school... LATTE: With the rise of the Campbell Brown "No B.S." hour and Rachel Maddow, now TV news is more op-ed page than front page. Is this a good thing? HuffnStuff: It's absolutely a good thing. Also, just the question presupposes there is something inherently wrong with a journalist or a newscaster having an opinion, which is a continuation, for me, of the misperception of the highest calling...

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (Legal Newsline)- In a blow to Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan's efforts to oust embattled Gov. Rod Blagojevich, the state Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected her lawsuit to transfer the governor's powers to Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn. Madigan had sought to have her fellow Democrat declared as incapable of governing the state following his indictment on federal corruption charges. The high court denied her request without comment.

Lesbian and bisexual youth are up to seven times more likely to get pregnant than their heterosexual peers, a study of British Columbia students has found. The surprising findings were published in the Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality. The data used for the research were gathered from adolescent health surveys done in B.C. schools in 1992, 1998, and 2003. The heightened risk is explained by several factors, including an attempt among closeted gay, lesbian and bisexual teens to prove they are heterosexual to avoid harassment and discrimination....

A woman has spoken of how she was told to remove her Christmas lights by a housing association worker - in case they offended her non-Christian neighbors.

President-elect Obama will enter the White House with sky-high approval ratings and hopes of a dour, but optimistic, electorate on his shoulders, according to a new poll. The Hart/McInturff poll, conducted by Democratic pollster Peter Hart and Republican pollster Bill McInturff, shows two in three voters have positive views of the incoming president, and 45 percent feel very positively about Obama. That is higher than at any point before, and about 10 points higher than the previous high, recorded just before the election. Just 16 percent have negative feelings toward Obama. The poll was conducted among 1,009 adults between Dec....

LINK ONLY: http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-12-10-corruptstates_N.htm?se=yahoorefer

President-elect Obama said he has not spoken with Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D) about filling his former Senate seat. Obama, at a Thursday news conference in Chicago, pledged to research who on his staff had been in communication with the governor's office and promised to report back. "I was as appalled and disappointed as anybody by the revelations earlier this week," Obama said of Blagojevich's arrest on federal corruption charges, including a charge the governor allegedly tried to profit from filling Obama's seat. "I'm confident that no representative of mine would have any part of any deals related to this...

CHICAGO - On the campaign trail, Barack Obama liked to boast that he was a tough survivor of the bare-knuckled world of Chicago politics. But the president-elect has also steered clear of most of its scandals, navigating a careful middle ground that has left him relatively unscathed in a city synonymous with corruption. Obama's awkward link to the seamier side of Chicago politics was thrust into the spotlight Tuesday when federal prosecutors charged Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich with trying to auction off the president-elect's vacant Senate seat. There was nothing in the 76-page FBI affidavit to suggest that Obama did...

Neither Mr. Obama nor Mr. Durbin was invited by Mr. Blagojevich to offer advice, the Democrats said. “We all have varying levels of cooperation with the governor. Mine was extremely limited,” Mr. Durbin said in an interview. “I believe President-elect Obama could say the same.” He added, “I knew there was a process in place in the governor’s office, but I had no idea what it involved.” Mr. Emanuel was among the few people in Mr. Obama’s circle who occasionally spoke to Mr. Blagojevich. He declined to answer questions on Wednesday, waving off a reporter who approached him as he...

War Crimes and Other Misdemeanors Deborah Nelson’s new book documents Vietnam atrocities the army did nothing to stop. Deborah NelsonJohn Consoli / University of Maryland By Michael MinerNovember 27, 2008An essay in last Sunday’s New York Times marveled at the spate of new Holocaust movies arriving for the Christmas season. Movies fulfilling the pledge to “never forget” have become a genre, wrote film critic A.O. Scott—a feel-good genre emphasizing “hope and overcoming rather than despair and destruction.” Let me suggest this: Maybe high-minded Americans gravitate to Holocaust movies because they distract us. They let us think we’re looking hard at...

NEW DELHI: Mumbai's 26/11 was actually a plan hatched by "Hindu Zionists" and "Western Zionists", including the Mossad, said a self-styled Pakistan security expert on a Pakistan news television show. " Inki shaklein Hinduonwali hain, jis zabaan mein guftagoo kar rahein hain, woh zabaan koi Pakistani istemaal nahin karta hai (They look like Hindus. No Pakistani speaks the language they chatted in)," said Zaid Hamid while referring to the terrorists on the show Mujhe Ikhtilaf Hai (I differ) on Pakistan's News One channel. The sensationalist channel was launched in November last year. Hamid said that it was a "badly planned"...

We have gone through the first round of internal recriminations with the recent excoriation of Governor Palin by those “unnamed” McCain staffers. But, as we all know, Gov. Palin was the subject of heated debate even among Republicans long before the election. One common complaint was that she was the "worst" VP candidate pick "ever." But, was she really? A look at recent history can only serve to deflate that ridiculous claim. There have been far worse picks than Gov. Palin and only the extremely emotional state of mind that this past election ginned up could obscure the historical record....

The Staten Island African-American Political Association will host a town hall-style meeting in the wake of an election night beating of a black Muslim teenager by a group of white men, an attack that police confirmed is being treated as a hate crime. Ali Kamara, 17, says he was beaten and hit with a baseball bat by a carload of white men who attacked him on the night the country elected its first black president, Barack Obama. The attackers shouted "Obama" before the assault, police said. It is the only act of violence directly associated with Obama's election reported in...

Obama's defeat of the heir apparent in his own party and his victory over the much-vaunted Republican machine is a remarkable achievement that owes a lot to his instinct for marketing When the book is written on this election, it should not be titled "The Making of a President," but "The Marketing of a President." Barack Obama's campaign is a case study in marketing excellence. True, it was always going to be a Democratic year. An unpopular war, an incumbent Republican president with rock bottom approval ratings, and many Republican incumbents retiring from Congress as a result all meant that...

Fox News Network given 6 hours Ultimatum by API: Air the Michelle Obama tape or else face a legal battle for a breach of contract Posted by africanpress on November 2, 2008 API chose Fox News Network as a partner in Michelle Obama tapes’ deal, due to the advise received from all the readers who informed API that the News outlet was one we could trust to air the tape unedited. Now that the Network has not done as agreed on the 28th of last month, API remains with only one choice in order to force the issue to be...

In 0bama's own words, he plainly contradicts his claim he sought, in conjunction with Senator Lugar, to contain "loose nukes." The Nunn-Lugar bill took care of that, but the 0bama plan specifically concentrated on conventional weapons, specifically portable missiles, or MANPADS. The "other conventional weapons" referred to in the bill are likely small arms. 0bama's stance on guns has been demonstrated before. The following quote was taken from Citizens for Global Solutions, dated May 2006. “The proliferation of weapons of mass destruction is the number one national security threat that confronts the United States today,” Obama said. Under Senator Lugar’s...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Democrat Barack Obama's lead over Republican rival John McCain has grown to 12 points in the U.S. presidential race, with crucial independent and women voters increasingly moving to his side, according to a Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby poll released on Thursday. With less than two weeks before the November 4 election, Obama leads McCain 52 percent to 40 percent among likely voters in the latest three-day tracking poll, which had a margin of error of 2.9 points. Obama has made steady gains over the last four days and has tripled his lead on McCain in the past week of polling.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democrat Barack Obama has expanded his national lead over Republican John McCain in the presidential race to 10 points, according to a Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby poll released on Wednesday. Obama leads McCain 52 percent to 42 percent among likely U.S. voters in the latest three-day tracking poll, up from an 8-point advantage for Obama on Tuesday. The telephone poll has a margin of error of 2.9 percentage points. It was the third consecutive day Obama gained ground on McCain as the two begin the final sprint to the November 4 election. "Obama just keeps growing, he has expanded his...

Zogby is in the tank.

WASHINGTON — An ugly line has been crossed in this presidential campaign, one in which some people don't mind calling Barack Obama a dangerous Muslim, a terrorist and worse. "To me, this all feels much worse than we've seen in some time," said Kathryn Kolbert , the president of People for the American Way , which monitors political speech. Experts agree on the reasons: Obama, the Democratic nominee, is different from any other major presidential candidate in history in many ways, and people often don't accept such change gracefully. That different background fuels many fears, said Penni Pier , who's...

Comedians Penn & Teller rip into the obamessiah's tax plan. ((NSFW))

Dear Senator McCain, Sir, YOU CHOSE a visit to a wind-farm in early summer 2008 to devote an entire campaign speech to the reassertion of your belief in the apocalyptic vision of catastrophic anthropogenic climate change - a lurid and fanciful account of imagined future events that was always baseless, was briefly exciting among the less thoughtful species of news commentators and politicians, but is now scientifically discredited.

With his electoral prospects fading by the day, Senator John McCain has fallen out with his vice-presidential running mate about the direction of his White House campaign. McCain has become alarmed about the fury unleashed by Sarah Palin, the moose-hunting “pitbull in lipstick”, against Senator Barack Obama. Cries of “terrorist” and “kill him” have accompanied the tirades by the governor of Alaska against the Democratic nominee at Republican rallies. Mark Salter, McCain’s long-serving chief of staff, is understood to have told campaign insiders that he would prefer his boss, a former Vietnam prisoner of war, to suffer an “honourable defeat”...

CHICAGO - Jailed political fundraiser Antoin "Tony" Rezko, the Chicago real estate developer who helped launch Barack Obama on his political career, is whispering secrets to federal prosecutors about corruption in Illinois and the political fallout could be explosive. Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich, whose administration faces multiple federal investigations over how it handed out jobs and money with advice from Rezko, is considered the most vulnerable. Rezko also was friendly with Obama — offering him a job when he finished law school, funding his earliest political campaigns and purchasing a lot next to his house. But based on the known...

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Sarah Palin unlawfully abused her power as governor by trying to have her former brother-in-law fired as a state trooper, the chief investigator of an Alaska legislative panel concluded Friday. The politically charged inquiry imperiled her reputation as a reformer on John McCain's Republican ticket.

TROY, N.Y. - Who is running for president? In an upstate New York county, hundreds of voters have been sent absentee ballots in which they could vote for "Barack Osama."

<p>The absentee ballots sent to voters in Rensselaer County identified the two presidential candidates as 'Barack Osama' and 'John McCain'</p> <p>TROY, N.Y. -- Who is running for president? In an upstate New York county, hundreds of voters have been sent absentee ballots in which they could vote for "Barack Osama."</p>

TROY, N.Y. - Who is running for president? In an upstate New York county, hundreds of voters have been sent absentee ballots in which they could vote for "Barack Osama." The absentee ballots sent to voters in Rensselaer County identified the two presidential candidates as "Barack Osama" and "John McCain." In the United States, the best-known individual named Osama is Osama bin Laden, leader of the al Qaida terrorist group behind the 2001 attacks that destroyed the World Trade Center in New York City. The typographical terror error was first reported by the Times Union of Albany. The elections office...

While Biden is the "old pro" some of the facts he gave last night were made up on the spot. The Delaware Senator blatantly lied about almost everything. Even the restaurant that he mentioned that he frequents has been closed for about 25 years. Below is a list of 22 lies that Biden made last night (courtesy of the McCain camp via Jim Geraghty). ...2. IRAQ-AFGHANISTAN SPENDING: Biden said that the U.S. spends more in Iraq in one month than it has in Afghanistan in six or seven years. That figure is off by only 2000 percent. 3. ‘KICKED HEZBOLLAH...

• Study looks at food impact on greenhouse gases • Return to old-fashioned cooking habits People will have to be rationed to four modest portions of meat and one litre of milk a week if the world is to avoid run-away climate change, a major new report warns. The report, by the Food Climate Research Network, based at the University of Surrey, also says total food consumption should be reduced, especially "low nutritional value" treats such as alcohol, sweets and chocolates. It urges people to return to habits their mothers or grandmothers would have been familiar with: buying locally in-season...

Everybody is talking about this poll from CNN declaring victory for Obama’s debate performance last night with an article titled “Round 1 in debates goes to Obama, poll says.” Noah Pollak reads the fine print of the article and takes a few notes from deeper down into the specifics. Buried way, way down at the bottom of the story — hopefully, one surmises, past the point where anyone would read — is the following:The results may be favoring Obama simply because more Democrats than Republicans tuned in to the debate. Of the debate-watchers questioned in this poll, 41 percent of...

LONDON (AFP) - Israel seriously considered bombing Iran's nuclear sites earlier this year but US President George W. Bush refused to support such a strike, according to a British newspaper report.

THE political media are up in arms because Sarah Palin won't talk to them. As an ex-press secretary, I can safely say: It's their own fault - though it's the voters who'll suffer. Every campaign has a duty to protect its candidate. Good staffers have to be reluctant to offer up their principal when they know the press will make no honest attempt to be fair - and the media's behavior upon the announcement of Palin's candidacy showed massive bias. Republicans like to blame bad press behavior on liberal media bias. In fact, it's just plain bias. The media pack...

The McCain Sings Streisand CD. Get it while it's still hot.

NY Post jumps gun to endorse McCain The newspaper waited until October to endorse Bush in 2000 and 2004. Some say its September endorsement of presidential hopeful John McCain is just a marketing ploy. Breaking with newspaper tradition—and its own past practices—the New York Post endorsed Sen. John McCain for president on Monday, becoming the first major newspaper to enter the editorial sweepstakes that are a traditional part of the campaign season. Most editorial pages still adhere to the tradition of hearing out the candidates during the period after Labor Day, when the general public is believed to start giving...

How do people think that the next VP of the United States of America, Sarah Palin, should handle thie stuff about Trig being not her's but her 16year old daughter's baby? I think it should be addressed very soon and she should spell out the allegations so that all know what the left is busy working on. Then I would suggest she laugh it off with a remark like 'I dont know it sure felt like I had a baby." In short point out the absolute absurdity of these people and not dignify any of it with anger Any other...

Maybe he was sick of the lack of media attention…maybe he had enough of the late night talk show hosts poking fun at his age…maybe he realized that belonging to a party that has been associated with rich, white men was not going to connect with voters in this historical election year. Or maybe he was just ready to take back some of the spotlight that has shined so brightly on Barack Obama and the Democrats since the beginning of the Democratic convention. Desperation can motivate people to make some pretty cynical and hypocritical decisions. Whatever the reason, John McCain’s...

"He has a funny name..." says Barak Obama, while describing himself on the campaign trail. Isn't it quite ironic, though, that for most of his years of growing up, he had a relatively normal name, Barry Saetoro. It seems very suspicious that a candidate would race-bait about an obviously Islamic name that he himself chose over a more traditional-sounding name. Further, it makes one wonder why he would choose to be named after a father who abandoned his mother and had little contact with him in his formative years. We know that Barry had to be adopted in order to...

Another day, and no white smoke yet from Sen. John McCain’s Sedona, Ariz., residence. The search for a vice president continues as the Democratic clans gather in Denver. In an interview with CBS’s Katie Couric, McCain offered no new information about his vice presidential thinking. But he did have some kind words for Sen. Barack Obama’s newly announced running mate, Delaware Sen. Joseph R. Biden: “I think he’s a good selection…Joe and I have been friends for many, many years, and we know each other very well, and so I think [Obama’s] made a very wise selection.” Just because McCain’s...

Comedy duo Penn & Teller eviscerated the so-called antiwar group Code Pink in the latest installment of their Showtime series Bull**** last Thursday entitled, World Peace.Penn & Teller followed opposing camps in the debate on the war in Iraq around with cameras and add their usual irreverent, profane commentary to the scene.A preview clip featuring Melanie Morgan of Move America Forward is available at Showtime by Clicking here.Over at Pat Dollard's website, a several minute clip of the Code Pink part of the episode has been posted. Click here for that segment.Penn & Teller's cameras followed Code Pink around Capitol...

In the town of Shenandoah, Penn., parishioners at a local church offered up prayers for peace - a peace that was broken the night of July 12, when Luis Ramirez, an illegal immigrant from Mexico, was beaten to death The crime shocked people in this small, Appalachian town, reports CBS News correspondent Seth Doane. A late night street fight punctuated by ethnic slurs ended in Ramirez's death. Four high school students, all on the football team, are charged in connection with the homicide. (...) the county's Hispanic population - up 65 percent since 2000 as a new wave of immigrants...

Ethnic and racial minorities will account for a majority of the U.S. population in a little more than a generation, according to new projections from the Census Bureau. The Bureau calculates that by 2042, Americans who identify themselves as Hispanic, black, Asian, American Indian, Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander will outnumber non-Hispanic whites. Four years ago, officials had projected the shift would not occur until 2050. The main reason for the accelerating change is significantly higher birthrates among immigrants, The New York Times reports.

Shi'ite militia leader Muqtada al-Sadr stepped back into Iraq's political fray Friday with an offer that (if genuine) Washington would be hard-pressed to refuse: Set a timetable for withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, and the Mahdi Army will begin to disband. "The main reason for the armed resistance is the American military presence," said Sadr emissary Salah al-Ubaidi, who spoke to reporters in Najaf Friday. "If the American military begins to withdrawal, there will be no need for these armed groups." Sadr in the past has vowed to expand the humanitarian work of his movement but promised to maintain...