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Some Drivers Feel Blood Tests 'Invasive' Drunken drivers beware: If you drink and drive, especially during the last weekend of February, the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office and other area law enforcement will be out for blood. PBSO deputies plan to set up driving under the influence checkpoints. If they suspect a driver is under the influence, they'll offer an on-the-spot Breathalyzer. If drivers refuse, deputies will ask to draw blood from their arms. "I think that's really personal and I think that if you deny a Breathalyzer and you say that you don't want that, I think that's outrageous...

FALLUJAH — Iraqi’s independent security capabilities continued to expand throughout eastern Anbar province as the commanding officer of the 1st Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment, recently turned over command of the battalion’s final entry control point, ECP 1, to the Fallujah District Chief of Police, Feb. 5. Entry control points are manned security positions that screen persons attempting to enter specific areas for weapons, contraband and a criminal history. They are often used as a security measure around cities to protect the population. Now that Iraqi Security Forces control all entry control points in the Fallujah area, Coalition forces will be...

BEIJING, Nov. 8 (AP) - (Kyodo)—Hundreds of people attacked police in Shenzhen in southern China after a motorcyclist was killed trying to avoid a traffic checkpoint, state-run media reported Saturday. About 400 people threw stones and set fire to a police car Friday evening, hours after the motorcyclist was killed near a checkpoint looking for unlicensed vehicles, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. Police say the motorcyclist, Li Guochao, 31, had been riding without a license and crashed while trying to flee from the checkpoint, Xinhua reported. Li's relatives later carried his body to a police station and started setting...

IDF soldier manning Nablus checkpoint loses sight after Palestinian woman hurls acidic substance into his eyes. Army slams 'cynical use' of humanitarian aid at crossings Efrat Weiss Latest Update: 09.22.08, 16:46 / Israel News An IDF soldier has lost sight in one of his eyes after a Palestinian woman attacked him with acid at the Hawara checkpoint on Monday afternoon. The checkpoint is located south of the West Bank city of Nablus. Troops managed to apprehend the woman, who is believed to have carried out a similar attack several weeks ago at the same crossing. She was arrested and taken...

It was a typical quiet morning on April 22, with the temperature intensifying as a bright orange sun emerged high from the horizon. Lance Cpl. Jordan Haerter, a rifleman with 1st Battalion, 9th Marine Regiment, Regimental Combat Team 1, and Cpl. Jonathan T. Yale, a rifleman with 2nd Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment, RCT-1, were standing post, just as they’ve done numerous times before. During a standard length watch in a small checkpoint protected by concrete barriers where they overlooked the small gravel road, lined with palm trees leading to their entry control point. However, this morning would be different. Quickly...

Soldiers manning Hawara checkpoint shoot dead Palestinian carrying four pipe bombs. Army: We thwarted a terror attack Efrat Weiss Published: 05.19.08, 22:00 / Israel News A 20-year-old Palestinian carrying four pipe bombs was shot dead Monday evening at an IDF checkpoint located south of Nablus in the West Bank. At around 7 pm soldiers manning the Hawara checkpoint spotted the Palestinian as he was making his way toward them in a suspicious manner with wires protruding from underneath his clothes. Corporal Michal Ya'akov of the military police recounted the incident: "A young Palestinian who seemed confused arrived at the checkpoint....

RAMADI, IRAQ (April 29, 2008) – It was a typical quiet morning on April 22, with the temperature intensifying as a bright orange sun emerged high from the horizon. Lance Cpl. Jordan Haerter, a rifleman with 1st Battalion, 9th Marine Regiment, Regimental Combat Team 1, and Cpl. Jonathan T. Yale, a rifleman with 2nd Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment, RCT-1, were standing post, just as they’ve done numerous times before. During a standard length watch in a small checkpoint protected by concrete barriers where they overlooked the small gravel road, lined with palm trees leading to their entry control point.

An anti-illegal immigration group's adopted stretch of highway near a Border Patrol checkpoint is being orphaned. The California Department of Transportation said the San Diego Minutemen's participation in an Adopt-A-Highway stretch of Interstate 5 poses "a significant safety risk." "The risk is in the potential for disruption to the operation of the state highway as well as public safety concerns for the traveling public and volunteers in the program," Caltrans district director Pedro Orso-Delgado said Monday. He did not elaborate. The Minutemen will get another stretch on State Route 52 in San Diego - far from the Border Patrol checkpoint...

BAGHDAD (CNN) -- Soldiers manning a checkpoint near Baghdad stopped a wedding convoy to find that the purported bride and groom were wanted terror suspects, an Iraqi Defense Ministry official said Monday. Abbas al-Dobbi, left, and al-Bahadli were reportedly part of a wedding convoy that drew soldiers' suspicion. 1 of 2 The Army set up the checkpoint last week in the Taji area, about 12 miles (20 kilometers) north of Baghdad. The soldiers became suspicious of the convoy because its members -- save the "bride" -- were all male and because one of the cars in the convoy did not...

'Israel is a free society." This is a claim Israeli governments are proud to make. It's true too - most of the time. However on one issue this country seems to lack respect for individual freedom which would be deemed unacceptable in Europe and which even surpasses some of her neighbors' attitudes. That is that when it comes to dealing with enemy states, anybody tainted by even the most fleeting association with them is treated at customs like a guilty man. That, at least, has been my experience. I went to Lebanon for the first two weeks of June to...

Ambulance driver on way to drowning victim says 2 soldiers stopped him for 20 minutes; IDF sources: Ambulance passed through quickly Ali Waked Published: 07.05.07, 23:57 / Israel News A Palestinian who drowned in a swimming pool died Thursday because an ambulance coming to his aid was held up at a checkpoint, local Palestinians said. Medical staff at the Nablus hospital - where he died after 20 minutes of CPR - said Zaid Asiah (27) could have been resuscitated had he arrived sooner. Thursday at noon, ambulance driver Adnen Ghneimi received an urgent regarding a victim of drowning. "I arrived...

Palestinian artist, Haled Jarar, hung his photographs on the fence of the Hawara checkpoint; the "Activestills" collective covered the streets of Tel Aviv with photos of squatters. Two exhibits, two protests Yael Ivri Published: 02.06.07, 19:18 On Saturday at midday a Palestinian artist living in Ramallah, drove up to the Hawara checkpoint south of Nablus, his car contained his debut exhibition. The photo exhibition, part of a campaign called "30 days against checkpoints" initiated by the Palestinian HASM rganization, was hung on the Hawara checkpoint fence for three hours. Some 200 visitors, including Israeli and foreign peace activists, as well...

Missouri: Police Roadblock Harassment Caught on TapeSt. Louis County, Missouri threaten to arrest a teenager for refusing to discuss his personal travel plans. A teenager harassed by police in St. Louis, Missouri caught the incident on tape. Brett Darrow, 19, had his video camera rolling last month as he drove his 1997 Maxima, minding his own business. He approached a drunk driving roadblock where he was stopped, detained and threatened with arrest when he declined to enter a conversation with a police officer about his personal travel habits. Now Darrow is considering filing suit against St. Louis County Police. "I'm...

Hope gives way to disappointment as Palestinians wait for crossing to open Laila al-Hadad Published: 11.27.06, 10:33 My family and I are on our way back to Gaza from the US. We flew in to Cairo last week, and from there embarked on a five hour taxi ride to the border town of al-Arish, 50 km from the border with Gaza. We rest in al-Arish for the night. We carried false hopes the night before last, hopes transmitted down the taxi driver’s grapevine, the ones who run the Cairo-Rafah circuit, that the border would open early that morning. So we...

Palestinian family says Border Guard officers refused to allow ambulance into refugee camp to transfer heart attack victim to hospital unless convoyed by IDF jeep; man dies on way to Hadassah Hospital Residents of the Shuafat refugee camp in the West Bank blamed the death of a man who suffered a heart attack last Friday on tight security procedures imposed by Israeli security forces. Family members said soldiers ignored their pleas to allow an ambulance access to the camp to evacuate Omar Abu Kamel, 41, and held up a second ambulance. Omar died on the way to Jerusalem's Hadassah Hospital...

PINE VALLEY – A race to avoid the Border Patrol yesterday ended when a speeding car flipped and ejected five passengers, killing one of them, authorities said. Three of the four survivors were hospitalized with life-threatening injuries, said Officer Brian Pennings of the California Highway Patrol. The fourth survivor was less seriously injured. The car, a blue Ford Probe, failed to stop at a checkpoint on westbound Interstate 8 east of Pine Valley, said Richard Kite of the Border Patrol. He said agents headed after the Probe and came upon it, overturned, on Olde Highway 80 just west of Pine...

Police have identified the two men who ran a checkpoint at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base on Tuesday morning and crashed into a barrier. The driver, Fidel Antonio Lopez-Sanchez, 28, suffered critical injuries and remains hospitalized. Lopez-Sanchez was driving a 1999 Dodge truck when he crashed into a traffic barrier aimed at stopping unauthorized base entry to the gate at Swan and Golf Links roads, police said. In Lopez-Sanchez's clothes, police found a small amount of what they believe may be cocaine. Under his feet, officers found a loaded revolver. The passenger, Saul Cazares Carrillo, 24, of Three Points, may be...

Authorities are trying to determine why two men in a pickup truck ran a checkpoint at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base this morning, crashing into a traffic barrier aimed at stopping unauthorized base entry. Terrorism is not thought to be a motive at this point, but military officials and civilian police hope to learn what prompted the pair to speed past the control gate at Swan and Golf Links roads without stopping for required identification checks. Both occupants of the 1999 Dodge truck were taken to University Medical Center with serious injuries. The men were not carrying identification and were unconscious...

Vandals defaced the newly erected entry sign to the Kalandia terminal north of Jerusalem, daubing on it the infamous Auschwitz inscription "Arbeit macht frei," (Work Liberates). Security forces deployed at the recently refurbished checkpoint accused members of Machsom Watch, saying that its members were responsible for defacing the sign, which is decorated with a painted flower and the inscribed (in Arabic, Hebrew and English) with the slogan "The hope of us all." Adi Dagan, spokeswoman for the Machsom Watch checkpoint-monitoring group, vehemently denied the charges. However, Hava Halevy, a member of the women's group told The Jerusalem Post that she...

British TV channel broadcast this week claims Jesus' parents' historical trip from Nazareth to Bethlehem would have been rendered impossible today, due to IDF restrictions. Israel Foreign Ministry outraged Had Jesus' parents Joseph and Mary tried to travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem nowadays, they would find it to be a near impossible task due to the IDF roadblocks and the West Bank security fence, a BBC reporter claimed in a televised broadcast this week. The news story, by BBC correspondent in Israel Matthew Price, has brought the already shaky relations between the U.K. television channel and Israel to a new...

In 2002, Congress mandated that Border Patrol checkpoints in The Tucson Sector start rotating locations every week or two. Since that time, a General Accounting Office study shows, agents in the sector have made significantly fewer apprehensions.

Locals and tourists watched in dismay Tuesday as workers pulled up wooden crosses and ripped out a reconstructed section of the Berlin Wall, fulfilling a court order to dismantle a private memorial to people killed at the East German border. Bailiffs and workers arrived at dawn to take down the memorial erected by owners of the nearby Checkpoint Charlie museum. The owners had refused to remove it after their lease on the land expired in December. "Where are the Berliners?" asked 59-year-old resident Wilfried Gordan, among the scattered crowd that watched in the rain as a crane prepared to move...

Despite the distribution of a video of the Arab suicide bomber who intended to blow up a hospital by the IDF, nearly all foreign news agencies chose to boycott the story altogether. An outraged former undersecretary to US President Ronald Reagan and candidate for Republican Presidential nominee, Gary Bauer wrote a scathing critique of the world media’s decision to avoid the story. Excerpts from Bauer’s letter: ”If you don't get the Fox News Channel then you didn't see any of the dramatic footage of the Israeli army's arrest yesterday of a 21-year old, female Palestinian homicide-bomber, strapped with 25 pounds...

A 14-year-old Palestinian youth wearing a bomb belt with two pipe bombs was arrested by soldiers at the Hawara checkpoint outside of Nablus on Sunday afternoon. According to a Central Command officer, the youth's behavior aroused soldiers' suspicions, and one of the officers demanded that the youth lift his shirt, which revealed the bombs ready for use. The officer said the boy also had a cigarette lighter and that he had planned to blow up near soldiers at the checkpoint. Since the beginning of the year, 50 Palestinian minors wearing explosives or attempting to smuggle weapons through checkpoints have been...

Clash at Iraq checkpoint kills 15 A civilian injured in the Ramadi clash is rushed to hospital Clashes in the Iraqi city of Ramadi have left 12 insurgents, two Iraqi civilians and one Iraqi soldier dead, the US military says. The fighting between US and Iraqi forces and insurgents started when a checkpoint manned by US marines came under attack. Ramadi, to the west of Baghdad, has been a centre of insurgent violence. Earlier, the US military reported that its forces killed 12 insurgents in a clash on Monday near the Syrian border. It says nine were killed when...

BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 30 - The car carrying the Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena that was struck with a deadly hail of gunfire as it sped toward Baghdad International Airport on March 4 ignored warnings from American soldiers who used a spotlight, a green laser pointer and warning shots to try to stop it as it approached a checkpoint, the American military said in a report released Saturday evening. The gunfire killed Nicola Calipari, an Italian intelligence agent who was in the back seat with Ms. Sgrena. The driver and Ms. Sgrena were wounded. Lt. Gen. John R. Vines, the ground...

NBC News has learned that a preliminary report from a joint U.S.-Italian investigation has cleared the American soldiers of any wrongdoing and provides new details into the shooting. Intelligence agent Calipari had just negotiated Sgrena's release from Iraqi kidnappers on March 4 when the two and a driver headed for the Baghdad airport in a compact rental car. It was dark when the Italians turned onto a ramp leading to the airport road where the U.S. military had set up a temporary checkpoint. The investigation found the car was about 130 yards from the checkpoint when the soldiers flashed their...

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The U.S. military decided Tuesday to conduct an accelerated inquiry to learn why American troops opened fire, killing an Italian intelligence agent and wounding an Italian journalist he helped rescue from insurgents in Iraq (news - web sites). The decision to fast-track the investigation into the attack, which has strained relations with Italy, a key American ally, came as the military also opened an inquiry into the shooting death of a Bulgarian soldier. That death appeared to be another friendly fire incident on the same day.

"RAIN OF FIRE?" By Michelle Malkin   ·   March 08, 2005 04:15 PM Photos of Giuliana Sgrena's car are available at http://www.repubblica.it. Click on "IMMAGINI l'auto colpita dai soldati Usa" beneath top story to view more pics. I can't see a single bullet hole. [Ed. note: besides the one in the circle that Rusty Shackleford points out, that is.] LGF posted about this earlier today. Update: Reader Steve Gregg writes: Ms. Sgrena's car appears remarkably intact having driven through, in her words, a rain of fire, and being fired upon by a tank, as she seems to claim. In Picture 3...

You'll remember that Giuliana Sgrena claimed her car was shot at "300 or 400 times", among other lies she told that I listed here. It was easy to dismiss that claim as a lie on the spot, but it's even easier now that La Republica has posted photos of the car, but the AP posted clearer images. And thanks to LGF, here they are: As you can see, there's virtually no damage to the car at all. Here's some low-quality photos of an armoured car hit 36 times: We can safely say that an ordinary car hit 300-400 times will...

Italy's foreign minister said Tuesday that the car carrying an intelligence officer killed by U.S. fire in Iraq last week was not speeding up and did not receive signals to stop, countering suggestions by American authorities. Foreign Minister Gianfranco Fini, speaking to parliament, also ruled out suggestions that the shooting that killed Nicola Calipari was the result of an ambush, but reiterated the government's demands for a full explanation from Washington. Fini was the first Italian official to openly dispute the U.S. account, and his comments put fresh pressure on Washington to get to the bottom of the matter. President...

It's a common occurrence in Iraq: A car speeds toward an American checkpoint or foot patrol. They fire warning shots; the car keeps coming. Soldiers then shoot at the car. Sometimes the on-comer is a foiled suicide attacker, but other times, it's an unarmed family. As an American journalist here, I have been through many checkpoints and have come close to being shot at several times myself. I look vaguely Middle Eastern, which perhaps makes my checkpoint experience a little closer to that of the typical Iraqi. Here's what it's like. You're driving along and you see a couple of...

I have been thinking about this incident, and while I will never second guess a man in combat, I just wanted to think (4/5ths seriously) about the possible chain of events These are the possibilities as I see them: 1.) Ransom paid, US not informed of this activity, car drives off to airport at high speed, reporter is too stupid to say "we better slow down" and dead agent too inexperienced in the environment to know they better slow down. Checkpoint encountered, expected result ensues with American troops who know that hesitation can mean explosive death. 2.) Ransom paid, US...

ROME (AP) -- The freed Italian hostage wounded by American troops at a checkpoint in Baghdad shortly after her release said in an article Sunday that her Iraqi captors had warned her U.S. forces "might intervene." Giuliana Sgrena, who writes for the communist newspaper Il Manifesto, described how she was wounded and Italian intelligence officer Nicola Calipari was killed as she was celebrating her freedom on the way to the airport. The shooting Friday has fueled anti-American sentiment in a country where people are deeply opposed to U.S. policy in Iraq. "I remember only fire," she said in her article....

Bush promises Italian leader a full investigation The Italian journalist kidnapped in Iraq arrived back in Rome yesterday as fury and confusion grew over the circumstances in which she was shot and one of her rescuers was killed by American soldiers. The shooting in Iraq on Friday evening, which occurred as Giuliana Sgrena was being driven to freedom after being released by her captors, was fuelling anti-war activists in Italy and putting pressure on Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. 'The hardest moment was when I saw the person who had saved me die in my arms,' she said. Her poignant words...

ROME Mar 5, 2005 — Italy demanded answers Saturday as former hostage Giuliana Sgrena was taken off a flight from Iraq wrapped in a plaid blanket and hooked to an intravenous drip for a shoulder wound inflicted when American troops fired on a car taking her to the Baghdad airport. The Italian agent who negotiated her freedom was hit and died in her arms. The shooting at a U.S. checkpoint in Baghdad stoked anti-war sentiment in Italy, where the public was widely opposed to the government's decision to send 3,000 troops to help U.S.-led efforts to secure the country from...

ROME, March 4 -- U.S. troops fired on a vehicle carrying an Italian journalist to freedom after a month in captivity Friday, wounding her and at least one other person and killing an Italian intelligence agent who had helped to arrange her release. [...] In Baghdad, the U.S. military said in a statement that the car was fired upon shortly before 9 p.m. local time as it was "approaching a coalition checkpoint in western Baghdad at a high rate of speed." The statement said that "the people at the checkpoint attempted to warn the driver to stop by using hand...

Picture Slideshow US soldiers in Iraq approach a car after opening fire when it failed to stop at a checkpoint. Despite warning shots it continued to drive towards their dusk patrol in Tal Afar on 18 January. Inside the car were an Iraqi family of seven. The mother and father were killed but their five children in the backseat survived, one with a non-life threatening wound.

A New Kind of Anger A review of Checkpoint, by Nicholson Baker By Mark W. Davis  I'm going to kill that bastard...he's one dead armadillo. —Checkpoint character commenting on President George W. Bush  The administration works closely with a network of rapid responders, a group of digital brownshirts.... —Former Vice President Al Gore  Such diversionary measures [Bush and Iraq] have been a popular method since Hitler. —Herta Däubler-Gmelin German Justice Minister, 2002  On November 2, the entire civilised world will be praying, praying Bush loses. And Sod's law dictates he'll probably win.... John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John...

IDF troops arrested two members of the women's human right's organization Machsom Watch at the Kalandia checkpoint Thursday afternoon, according to the two women. Maschom Watch volunteers monitor the flow of traffic, both motorized and pedestrian, through some of the dozens of IDF checkpoints set up throughout the West Bank. Machson Watch volunteers photographed in incident last month in which a Palestinian was allegedly ordered to play his violin to pass a Nablus-area checkpoint. Edna Kaldor, 60 said that "a new group of reservists was overseeing the checkpoint and accused us of hindering their work. They issued a complaint to...

Major suicide bombing terror attack averted IDF forces intercept furniture truck carrying explosives near Nablus. Terrorist cell involved had carried out previous suicide bombing attacksMaariv International West Bank checkpoint. Security forces recently foiled a planned suicide bombing, planned by the joint Hamas-Tanzim terrorist infrastructure in Nablus. According to senior defense sources, the IDF and ISA, acting on recently received intelligence information, uncovered at the Hawara checkpoint, at the entrance of Nablus, an large shipment of explosives hidden inside a cupboard, which was transported in a furniture truck on its way from Nablus to Jerusalem. The discovery was made two days...

Freelance journalist Kevin Sites was just another guy trying to make his way in the business until the battle of Fallujah. While accompanying US marines into a mosque, Sites filmed a marine shooting a prostrate terrorist lying in the mosque, then crassly pronouncing him dead. As the pictures made their way around the world, millions of anti-US voices rang up angrily denouncing the Marines for committing "war crimes." Overnight, Sites became an international star. Everyone wanted to read the Left's dazzling Johnny-on-the-Spot and all "right-thinking" people pronounced him a professional upholding the highest standards of journalism. Heady stuff for a...

Findings of the Investigation regarding the incident of the Palestinian playing a violin at a checkpoint near Nablus Soldiers did not ask the Palestinian to play the violin. "Mahsom Watch" confirm soldiers' version of the event. This morning, November 30, 2004, an investigation was conducted by the head of the central command, Maj. Gen. Moshe Kaplinski, regarding the documented incident at the Beit Iba checkpoint, in which a Palestinian man is shown playing a violin. The investigation found that the Palestinian arrived at the checkpoint and was asked by the soldiers to open the violin case. The Palestinian opened...

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1400044006/qid=1093139489/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/103-7458160-6283821?v=glance&s=books

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Four Iraqi National Guardsman died and six were wounded Tuesday when a suicide car bomb rocked a checkpoint near the eastern city of Baquba, police said.The suicide bomber was driving a 1979 Corona, and an Iraqi man believed to be involved in the attack was arrested, police said. Paperwork in the car indicated that the owner was Sudanese.The bomber was seen following vehicles of U.S.-led multinational forces, and the car bomb was detonated as they passed the checkpoint in the city north of Baghdad.The wounded guardsmen were evacuated to a multinational forces facility.Last week, 70 people...

What passes these days for the artsy-intellectual set in America has gone completely bonkers over the prospect of George W. Bush winning a second term as president. Current polls show that Bush continues to run neck-and-neck with John Kerry despite a slower-than-expected economic recovery, bloody setbacks in Iraq, and cheerleading for Democrats from a press corps that admits to an unprecedented identification with the left. The proportion of national journalists calling themselves liberal, according to a new study by the Pew Research Center, has risen 50 percent since 1995. Currently, 34 percent of journalists say they are liberal, 7 percent...

Just how far will the Left go with its "Hate Bush" campaign? Syndicated columnist James Glassman says way, way too far. Noting that first there was Michael Moore's movie, "Fahrenheit 9/11," a crude quasi-Marxist fantasy about the war in Iraq filled with distortions. Then there was the July 8 fund-raiser for John Kerry in New York, at which Whoopi Goldberg "fired off a stream of vulgar sexual wordplays on Bush's name in a riff about female genitalia," as one newspaper put it. Paul Newman said that Bush's tax cuts were "borderline criminal." Now there is a book by a major...

When I was eight years old, school was let out early. The teachers were inexplicably upset, several were crying. But we students weren't. We were happy to be suddenly released. I didn't begin to be troubled until I got home and saw that my mother was crying too. "Honey, I have to tell you something," she said. "The president's been shot." "Dead?" She nodded. An hour later, my father came home, looking terrible. This I did not quite understand. My father loved to laugh at mean things he would read about the president in columns written by someone named Buckley....

Alfred A. Knopf Publishing House (a subsidiary of Random House) has recently published a book entitled Checkpoint by Nicholson Baker.  This book tells the story of two high school friends discussing the explicit details of numerous possible assasination plots against the President, not just some fictional President, but our serving President George Walker Bush.In this book, two high school friends discuss numerous potential plans to actually murder President Bush, among them saws, boulders, and the standard bullets.The premise is forgiving though.  After expressing his outrage over Iraq, the main character concludes, "I'm going to kill that bastard."Although amazon.com has no description for...

In Nicholson Baker's new novella, "Checkpoint," a man sits in a Washington hotel room with a friend and talks about assassinating President Bush. It's a work of the imagination and no attempts on the president's life are actually made, but the novel is likely to be incendiary, as with Michael Moore's documentary, "Fahrenheit 9/11." Flush with the headline-generating success of "My Life," by Bill Clinton, Alfred A. Knopf is planning to publish Baker's work Aug. 24, on the eve of the Republican National Convention. "Checkpoint" is 115 pages long and will sell for $18.