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Text of a document discovered in terror leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's hideout. The document was provided in English by Iraqi National Security Adviser Mouwafak al-Rubaie: ___ The situation and conditions of the resistance in Iraq have reached a point that requires a review of the events and of the work being done inside Iraq. Such a study is needed in order to show the best means to accomplish the required goals, especially that the forces of the National Guard have succeeded in forming an enormous shield protecting the American forces and have reduced substantially the losses that were solely suffered...

WASHINGTON - Are you getting a $3,300 pay raise? Congress will. Despite Rep. Jim Matheson's annual argument to have a vote on whether Congress should get a 2 percent pay raise, House members sided with the automatic hike during a debate over a spending bill for several departments. It's the sixth time Matheson, Utah's only Democratic House member, has tried to get a vote on the pay raise and the sixth time he's lost. "We continue to swim in a pool of red ink," Matheson said on the House floor Tuesday. "I don't think it's appropriate to have this ....

Murders, robberies and aggravated assaults in the United States increased last year, spurring an overall rise in violent crime for the first time since 2001, according to FBI data. Murders rose 4.8 percent, meaning there were more than 16,900 victims in 2005. That would be the most since 1998 and the largest percentage increase in 15 years. Murders soared from 59 to 104 in Birmingham, Ala., up 76 percent; from 59 to 85 in Charlotte-Mecklenburg County, N.C., a 44 percent increase; from 89 to 126 in Kansas City, Mo., a 42 percent rise; from 87 to 122 in Milwaukee, a...

Iraq Premier: $25M to Be Paid on Al-Zarqawi Jun 08 2:47 PM US/Eastern Email this story By The Associated Press Iraqi Prime Minister Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said Thursday that the $25 million bounty on Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's head will be honored. "We will meet our promise," al-Maliki told al-Arabiya television without elaborating. The United States had put forth the $25 million bounty for information leading to the death or capture of al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq. Al-Zarqawi, a 39-year-old Jordanian-born terrorist, was killed in a U.S. airstrike Wednesday. Also killed in the airstrike was al-Zarqawi's deputy and...

> I assume you have all seen the reports about how Sears is treating its reservist employees who are called up? By law, they are required to hold their jobs open and available, but nothing more. Usually, people take a big pay cut and lose benefits as a result of being called up...Sears is voluntarily paying the difference in salaries and maintaining all benefits, including medical insurance and bonus programs,for all called up reservist employees for up to two years. I submit that Sears is an exemplary corporate citizen and should be recognized for its contribution. > > > >...

Is the cloning of human babies' tissue an insult to god? Posted at: 22:01 A proposal to create babies that are both cloned and genetically altered to prevent serious hereditary disease has been outlined by the leader of the team that created Dolly the sheep, re-igniting the debate on the moral implications of cloning human beings. Ever since news that Dolly had been cloned from an adult cell made headlines around the world, Prof Ian Wilmut has repeatedly said he is "implacably opposed" to cloning a human being. But in his forthcoming book After Dolly, serialised in The Daily Telegraph,...

President Bush’s job-approval rating has fallen to its lowest mark of his presidency, according to a new Harris Interactive poll. Of 1,003 U.S. adults surveyed in a telephone poll, 29% think Mr. Bush is doing an “excellent or pretty good” job as president, down from 35% in April and significantly lower than 43% in January. Approval ratings for Congress overall also sank, and now stand at 18%. Roughly one-quarter of U.S. adults say “things in the country are going in the right direction,” while 69% say “things have pretty seriously gotten off on the wrong track.” This has been the...

WASHINGTON, May 4 — The Senate approved a $109 billion spending bill today to pay for the Iraq war and Gulf Coast recovery, ignoring a veto threat from President Bush and setting the stage for bitter negotiations with the House. The Senate's 78-to-20 approval of the bill at a level far in excess of the president's request put the Senate at odds with the House, where the Republican leadership has taken an increasingly hard line against add-ons in the measure. "The House will not take up an emergency supplemental spending bill for Katrina and the war in Iraq that spends...

update WASHINGTON--Broadband providers and Internet phone companies will have to pick up the tab for the cost of building in mandatory wiretap access for police surveillance, federal regulators ruled Wednesday. The Federal Communications Commission voted unanimously to levy what likely will amount to wiretapping taxes on companies, municipalities and universities, saying it would create an incentive for them to keep costs down and that it was necessary to fight the war on terror. Universities have estimated their cost to be about $7 billion. "The first obligation is...the safety of the people," said FCC Commissioner Michael Copps, a Democrat. "This commission...

WASHINGTON -- President Bush has quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office, asserting that he has the power to set aside any statute passed by Congress when it conflicts with his interpretation of the Constitution. Among the laws Bush said he can ignore are military rules and regulations, affirmative-action provisions, requirements that Congress be told about immigration services problems, ''whistle-blower" protections for nuclear regulatory officials, and safeguards against political interference in federally funded research. Legal scholars say the scope and aggression of Bush's assertions that he can bypass laws represent a concerted...

(AP) SACRAMENTO California's state senators on Thursday endorsed Monday's boycott of schools, jobs and stores by illegal immigrants and their allies as supporters equated the protest with great social movements in American history. By a 24-13 vote that split along party lines, the California Senate approved a resolution that calls the one-day protest the Great American Boycott 2006 and describes it as an attempt to educate Americans "about the tremendous contribution immigrants make on a daily basis to our society and economy." snip America wouldn't have been created without illegal action, said Sen. Richard Alarcon, D-Van Nuys. "They dumped a...

(CNN) -- Amid rising gas and oil prices, a leading Republican said on Sunday that the U.S. government should consider imposing a windfall tax on oil company profits. "I think it's something worth considering among a number of options," Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, told CNN's "Late Edition." He also criticized consolidation in the oil industry. "I believe that we have allowed too many companies to get together to reduce competition," he said, citing the combinations that created ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips. Specter said that after the chief executives of top oil companies testified in Congress last...

SPRINGFIELD, Ill., April 14 (UPI) -- American consumers are demanding congressional action to slow down skyrocketing gasoline prices, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said Friday. "Oil companies are living in the fast lane and consumers are being left on the side of the road," he said in a release in which he cited cases of extraordinary profits. He urged action on his proposal that he says would ease the problem. Durbin's Windfall Profits Tax bill would impose an excise tax on integrated oil and gas companies equal to 50 percent of their profits over a baseline price of $40 per barrel...

This article just goes to show that it is time to change over to a consumption tax, and do away with the complicated tax system. While I know it is not widely popular, I support the Fair Tax Plan. It is unfortunate that the President's tax commission came back with recommendations for an income tax system that barely differs from what we currently have. We will never have a better tax system until our government sees that the current tax system is a patchwork of favors and compromise drawn up by the political hacks. Just a question. If we were...