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BEAVER — An Industry man arrested after openly carrying a handgun to an August presidential rally in Beaver wore an empty holster to court on Monday and defended his right to bear arms, but the judge wasn’t buying his argument. District Judge Douglas Loughner ruled in Beaver County Court Monday that John Noble, 50, of 1063 Willowbrook Drive should stand trial on misdemeanor charges of disorderly conduct and disrupting a public meeting, stemming from the Sept. 29 rally for Democratic presidential running mates Barack Obama and Joe Biden. According to hearing testimony, the incident was at least partially triggered by...

An Iranian news agency said Tuesday that a United States warplane had been forced to land in Iran, but the Pentagon said there was no evidence to support the claim, and Tehran moved quickly to play down the claim. Within moments of the first report on the semi-official Fars news agency, an Iranian state television channel, Al Alam, said on its Web site that the plane “was not a military plane and did not belong to the United States.”

October 06, 2008, 9:20 a.m. Shame of the Fact-CheckersBy the Editors American journalists take pride in policing political debates for inaccuracies. During the last few election cycles, many news outlets have institutionalized a “factchecking� feature that grades politicians’ veracity during campaigns. Over the last few months, a number of journalists have suggested that John McCain is running a particularly dishonest and dishonorable campaign and that journalists should not allow the desire to be even-handed keep them from saying so. That judgment, by our lights, tells us more about journalists’ political inclinations than about the campaigns. Neither the Republican nor...

Congress is working on the controversial $700 billion bailout of the national economy. A lot of Americans are angry about it, but Henry Paulson, the secretary of the Treasury, says an extraordinary emergency demands action that was once unthinkable. Paulson has helped to nationalize two mortgage giants, seize the nation's largest insurance company, manage the biggest bank failure in U.S. history, and oversee the end of Wall Street as we know it. Who is Henry Paulson? 60 Minutes shadowed him these past two weeks as he worked to convince the Congress that it should give him perhaps more power than...

(NEW YORK) They scold us for “being unfair,” remind us to “ask all the candidates the same questions,” and occasionally, they boo us. From Canton to Colorado, some of the tens of thousands of people attending Sarah Palin’s rallies regularly take it upon themselves to give the media a piece of their minds. So I thought it only fair to turn the microphone around, and give a handful of rally attendees a chance to air their grievances about the way in which the media has covered the Republican vice presidential nominee. Watch the video below:

Vanity Fair editors estimated that McCain's fierce saffron shirt dress with the popped collar, diamond earrings, four-strand pearl necklace, white Chanel watch and strappy shoes totaled up to $313,100. _______________________________________________________ I say do not watse your time reading the lie at the link just provided for verification of the original lie.

This Washington Post-ABC News poll was conducted by telephone September 19-22, 2008, among a random national sample of 1,082 adults, 916 registered voters and 780 likely voters. The survey includes additional interviews with randomly selected African Americans, for a total of 163 black respondents. The added interviews (commonly referred to as an "oversample") were completed to ensure there were enough African American respondents for separate analysis; the group was not over-represented in the reported results from the full sample. The results from the full survey have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points. Error margins...

Dan Rather's $70 million lawsuit against CBS is getting whittled down like a redwood at an Alabama beaver party. A Manhattan judge yesterday threw out two more of Rather's claims against the network, including his charge that his former bosses committed fraud by falsely promising to help restore his reputation after he became a "scapegoat" for a discredited story about President Bush's military career. "We are extremely gratified that the court has now dismissed the vast majority of Mr. Rather's claims," CBS said in a statement. Rather's lawyer, Martin Gold, said that despite Judicial Hearing Officer Ira Gammerman's ruling striking...

All politicians have a basic stump speech that they stick to when campaigning on the road. However, when Sarah Palin gives her stump speech the Associated Press claims, in a story written by Sara Kugler, she is sticking to a "basic script" like some programmed robot (emphasis mine): John McCain took a risk in picking little-known Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as a running mate, but now the campaign's playing it safer. She's sticking to a greatest hits version of her convention speech on the campaign trail and steering clear of questions until she's comfortable enough for a hand-picked interviewer later...

The decision by MSNBC to yank Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews from anchor duty during live political events did not exactly send a thrill up the leg of liberal bloggers. A number of them denounced the cable channel yesterday for making a change that had long been sought by NBC News veterans, saying MSNBC was caving into pressure from John McCain's campaign and the right wing. MSNBC President Phil Griffin denied that complaints from either Republicans or NBC journalists were a factor. He said he reached the decision after "talking to my guys, mainly Olbermann," after the Republican convention. Olbermann...

We’ve now reached the point where gossip sites are forced to debunk rumors being circulated uncritically by the mainstream media. Keep updating, Charlie. No rest for the weary. KURTZ: But if it’s a “Lifetime Movie of the Week,” Lola, then it seems to me that it’s a very mixed picture from the point of view of a ticket that is trying to get, you know, John McCain and Sarah Palin elected president and vice president of the United States. In other words, it’s great to be a celebrity, and she’ll get a book deal out of it and maybe her...

"I'm a f***in' redneck who likes to snowboard and ride dirt bikes. But I live to play hockey. I like to go camping and hang out with the boys, do some fishing, shoot some s*** and just f***in' chillin' I guess. "Ya f*** with me I'll kick (your) ass." Ah yes. Class and eloquence return to the White House. GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin must be trembling in her NRA hip waders after reading those words on her future son-in-law's MySpace page. Except it's been deleted - I wonder how many six packs of Moosehead it took to get...

NEW YORK -- The candidates have accepted their parties' nominations. The running mates are in place. Now it begins in earnest. First thing is: Don't heed the polls you're seeing right now. Sure, by midweek, the Web site Real Clear Politics was showing an average lead for Barack Obama of about six points, with the Democratic nominee cracking 50 percent for the first time in the Gallup Poll. It's not bad news for Obama, but then it's not really news at all. If Obama hadn't seen some sort of polling "bounce" in the wake of the Democratic Convention -- now,...

Jihadi 101: Un-Photoshopped pic shows true nature of Obama's "school." The class photo of Barack Obama's fifth grade class is a fake. That's what a photographer and seventies fashion expert is saying, claiming he sees tell-tale signs of airbrushing and Photoshop hijinx. Brent Gitchenstein, former airbrush master for Dog Fancy Magazine, said the picture taken in 1972 purports to show Obama with a group of his classmates in Hawaii. However on closer inspection, the photo appears to a well-crafted fake, with several people airbrushed out and objects altered. "Note how everyone in the damn class has a moo moo,...

CBS) The presidential race between Barack Obama and John McCain is now even at 42 percent to 42 percent, according to a new CBS News poll conducted Monday-Wednesday of this week. Twelve percent are undecided according to the poll, and one percent said they wouldn't vote. This is in contrast to a poll conducted last weekend, where the Obama-Biden ticket led McCain-Palin by eight points, 48 percent to 40 percent. McCain has also closed the enthusiasm gap some with Obama, but it still exists. Fifty-five percent of Obama's supporters are enthusiastic about their choice, and now so are 35% of...

I thought Palin's speech was quite good: well-written, well delivered. And, as I said earlier, I think she's a genuinely engaging person, and comes across very well. There were just a couple of problems. One, which I have seen people notice, but which I suspect won't be a big deal for a lot of voters, is that it had very little substance. The other, which the commenters I saw on TV for some reason neglected to mention, was that she told a lot of lies. A few that stood out for me, or that I spotted in my quick run-through...

The nine people convicted in the Newsday circulation scandal were each sentenced Friday to 5 years' probation and up to $125,000 in fines, escaping potential restitution totaling $5.9 million and up to 20 years in prison. Those sentenced - in what federal prosecutors said was the end of their investigation - included Louis Sito, a former top Newsday executive who ran the newspaper's day-to-day business operations, and Robert Brennan, former vice president of circulation. Sito also served as vice president of Hispanic media at Tribune Co., which owned Newsday and the Spanish language Hoy, also implicated in the scandal. The...

September 2, 2008, 10:32 pm Alaska Party Official Says Palin Was Not a Member By The New York Times The chairwoman of an Alaskan political party that advocates a vote on the state’s secession from the union said Tuesday that she had been mistaken when she said Gov. Sarah Palin was a member of the group. A front-page story in The New York Times on Tuesday and articles in other news media reported that Ms. Palin was a member of the Alaska Independence Party for two years in the 1990’s. The information in the Times article was based on a...

In March or April 2007, three noncommissioned United States Army officers, including a first sergeant, a platoon sergeant and a senior medic, killed four Iraqi prisoners with pistol shots to the head as the men stood handcuffed and blindfolded beside a Baghdad canal, two of the soldiers said in sworn statements. After the killings, the first sergeant — the senior noncommissioned officer of his Army company — told the other two to remove the men’s bloody blindfolds and plastic handcuffs, according to the statements made to Army investigators, which were obtained by The New York Times. The statements and other...

(CNN) – Eager VP-watchers waiting for the text message announcement of Barack Obama’s choice of running mate have gotten their answer: It’s Hillary Clinton. And Tim Kaine. And Kathleen Sebelius. Since declaring the Democratic vice presidential pick would first be announced over e-mail and text message, several hoax announcements of the Illinois senator's choice have circulated, purporting to be from the Obama campaign. The latest came in e-mail Friday morning that hit the inboxes of many White House reporters, carrying the subject, "My Vice President."

On the day Mitt Romney bowed out of the presidential race last February, his supporters latched onto something of a consolation prize that appeared to bode well for his political future: the warm embrace of hundreds of conservatives whose seal of approval he had long sought. -SNIP- Yet as Mr. Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts, is said to have emerged as a top contender to be Senator John McCain’s vice-presidential running mate, a vocal segment of conservative leaders and grass-roots activists have mobilized against him, with some going out of their way to block his path to the Republican...

A trio of Republicans have defected from their party's likely presidential nominee and kicked off an effort to garner support for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. The group, called Republicans for Obama, is led by two moderate Republicans -- James Leach, a former U.S. representative from Iowa, and Lincoln Chafee, a former U.S. senator from Rhode Island -- along with Rita Hauser, a prominent fund-raiser for President George W. Bush. Their reasons for crossing party lines are diverse, ranging from the war in Iraq to overspending in Washington, and signal unhappiness not just with the candidacy of Republican Sen. John...

I don't recall the names our Secret Service have given the two main political candidates.Ronald Reagan was "Rawhide". John Edwards was the "Breck Girl"Who are the 2008 Candidates?(suggestions accepted)

<p>TALLAHASSEE, Fla.-A newspaper is asking John McCain's campaign why a black reporter assigned to cover a rally was singled out by security and told to leave a backstage area.</p> <p>Stephen Price, a reporter for the Tallahassee Democrat, was among four Florida capital press corps reporters behind the scenes at a Panama City rally Friday when a Secret Service agent approached and asked if he were part of the national media traveling with McCain. Price said no, and the agent told him he had to leave. Price said he then pointed out that there were other state reporters in the same area, but was still told to leave. The other reporters were white.</p>

Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama (“The One”) touted his energy policies here today, arguing that drilling offshore won’t produce any oil and will destroy wildlife like the lesser spotted stink mole, indigenous to such fragile ecologies as ANWR. He also accused rival John McCain (“Death from Above”) of doing the bidding of oil companies that are actually making money. Obama held a town hall meeting here and also visited healthy victims of the June flooding as he set about refocusing his campaign on domestic issues in the wake of a much-publicized rock tour of Europe.

For those of you who don't keep up with the conservative blogosphere, one of the memes they've been trying to push for the past couple of weeks is this: Barack Obama may give a good prepared speech, but his dirty little secret is that he's actually an empty suit who's totally at sea without a teleprompter. Today, for example, Andy McCarthy, offers up this snippet from an Obama press conference in Jerusalem: Just this past week, we passed out of the U.S. Senate Banking Committee, which is my committee, a bill to call for divestment from Iran, as a way...

Obama Shows Hawkish Side On Mideast Trip July 22, 2008 (CBS) This story was written by CBSNews.com political reporter Brian Montopoli.Not long after he touched down at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan on Saturday, Barack Obama posed for pictures with three American officials, a pair of military men in uniform, and one rather imposing statue of a bald eagle. It was an ideal photo opportunity for a candidate looking to convince skeptics of his patriotism - just 37 percent of voters identified Obama as "very patriotic" in a recent CBS News/New York Times poll - and his toughness when it...

The Media Mob has learned that a team of Hollywood insiders is currently working on a screen adaptation of Truth And Duty: The Press, the President, and the Privilege of Power—the 2005 book by former CBS News producer Mary Mapes, in which she defends the 60 Minutes II story by Dan Rather about President George W. Bush's time in the Texas Air National Guard, which ran on CBS in September 2004 and eventually led to her ouster from the network. Who would want to turn "Rathergate" into a feature-length film? According to sources familiar with the situation, Producer Mikkel Bondesen,...

Sinclair Claims He Contacted Obama, Press TWO Months Before Event Actually Happened Debunking Larry Sinclair: Part One of a 3-part series Larry Sinclair's Magic Trip Through TimePart 1: The forest for the trees... I'm challenging Mr. Obama to come forth, be honest, stop claiming that his drug use is limited to his teenaged years. In 1999 you weren't a teenager, in 1999 you were a state representative for the people of of the state of Illinois. In 1999, I performed oral sex on you in the back of my limo as well as my hotel room in Gurnee, Illinois two...

As news spread across the world of Iran’s provocative missile tests, so did an image of four missiles heading skyward in unison. Unfortunately, it appeared to contain one too many missiles, a point that had not emerged before the photo appeared on the front pages of The Los Angeles Times, The Financial Times, The Chicago Tribune and several other newspapers as well as on BBC News, MSNBC, Yahoo! News, NYTimes.com and many other major news Web sites.

At least one of the photographs released today by Iran and published by an unquestioning Western media has been Photoshopped:

Soldiers stood directly behind Raddatz as she queried GI’s walking past. She asked 60 GI’s who they planned to vote for in November. 54 said John McCain, 4 for Obama, and 2 for Hillary. When the story ran, they didn't even mention the 54 that chose McCain.

Pennsylvania death-row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal has asked a federal appeals court to reconsider the decision that denied him a new trial in the 1981 slaying of Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner. ***snip*** Abu-Jamal, 54, has been on death row since his 1982 conviction in the killing of Faulkner, who was shot to death near 13th and Locust Streets early in the morning of Dec. 9, 1981

The swift boats are coming. They'll go by different names this year, but the largely unregulated interest groups like Swift Boat Veterans for Truth - which in 2004 torpedoed Democrat John Kerry with allegations he'd inflated his war record - are gearing up for the 2008 White House race like never before. So far this year, so-called 527 groups - named for a section of the IRS tax code - have raised a staggering $210 million, up from $182 million at this point in 2004. But here's the ideological bottom line - roughly two-thirds of that $210 million has been...

Jay McKinnon, a self-described Department of Homeland Security-trained document specialist, has implicated himself in the production of fraudulent Hawaii birth certificate images similar to the one endorsed as genuine by the Barack Obama campaign, and appearing on the same blog entry where the supposedly authentic document appears. The evidence of forgery and manipulation of images of official documents, triggered by Israel Insider's revelation of the collection of Hawaii birth certificate images on the Photobucket site and the detective work of independent investigative journalists and imaging professionals in the three weeks since the publication of the images, implicate the Daily Kos,...

Richard Blumenthal and Susan Bysiewicz marched to the VA, ready to break the door down to rescue veterans like Mike Onieal — but found out they may not have needed such a dramatic rescue. The event had all the makings of a perfect photo op: Two of Connecticut’s top Democrats defy President Bush, slam an unconstitutional policy statement and come to the aid of deprived veterans who sacrificed their limbs in the war only to be stripped of their basic rights. The VA, it turns out, does have a voting access problem, but not the one that the top Dems...

Paris To understand the al-Dura affair, it helps to keep one thing in mind: In France, you can't own up to a mistake. This is a country where the law of the Circus Maximus still applies: Vae victis, Woe to the vanquished. Slip, and it's thumbs-down. Not for nothing was Brennus a Gaul. His modern French heirs don't do apologies well, or at all if they can possibly help it. Why should they? That would be an admission of weakness. Blink, and you become the fall guy. So, in the case of Muhammad al-Dura-a 12-year-old Palestinian boy allegedly killed by...

The "birth certificate" claimed by the Barack Obama campaign is not certified as authentic and appears to be a photoshopped fake. The image, purporting to come from the Hawaii Department of Health, has been the subject of intense skepticism in the blogosphere in the past two weeks. But now the senior spokesman of that Department has confirmed to Israel Insider what are the required features of a certified birth document -- features that Obama's purported "birth certificate" clearly lack. The image became increasingly suspect with Israel Insider's revelation that variations of the certificate image were posted on the Photobucket image...

Uncontacted" Amazon Tribe Actually Known for DecadesKelly Hearn for National Geographic NewsJune 19, 2008 Recent photos of an uncontacted tribe firing arrows at a plane briefly made these Amazon Indians the world's least understood media darlings. Contrary to many news stories, the isolated group has actually been monitored from a distance for decades, past and current Brazilian government officials say. No one, however, is known to have had a face-to-face meeting with the nomadic tribe, which lives along the Peru-Brazil border. And no one knows how much, if anything, these rain forest people know about the outside world. The tribe—whose...

In a dramatic report, the New York Times has uncovered a conspiracy by the United States military to conscript children. Posing as male nannies, bow-tie wearing Republicans wisk away infants as their single mothers fulfill their dreams in exciting careers away from the drudgery of traditional home-based chores. They then force these babies into combat zones and cover up their misdeeds with the complicity of the right-wing hate media. This conspiracy came to light in today's Times. Buried deep inside a front page story detailing how George W. Bush has personally foreclosed on millions of American homeowners in order to...

Almost every day a news report comes out linking something to climate change – obesity, food riots or a century of wildfires. Some of the claims seem especially outlandish. Sometimes they are. On June 18, CBS.com posted a story claiming that global seismic activity on Earth is now five times more energetic than it was just 20 years ago because of global warming. The story had no byline, but was attributed to the Associated Press. The story was identical to a June 17 Market Wire press release attributed to Tom Chalko, the scientist that made the claim of the earthquake/global...

On Wednesday’s CBS "Early Show," co-host Julie Chen teased an upcoming segment on Barack Obama: "...during the long primary season, we all learned a lot about Barack Obama. He is a Senator. He's a Harvard grad. He's a husband. And he is a father. But this morning, you're going to learn five things you probably don't know about Barack Obama." Later, in David Letterman style, correspondent Jeff Glor introduced the story: "...here are the top five things you likely don't know about Barack Obama." Among those things, were important facts such as "Number four -- in addition to enjoying basketball...

<p>WASHINGTON (AP) - George W. Bush began flying a two-seat training jet more frequently and twice required multiple attempts to land a one-seat fighter in the weeks just before he quit flying for the Texas Air National Guard in 1972, his pilot logs show. The logs show Bush flew nine times in T-33 trainers in February and March 1972, including eight times in one week and four of those only as a co-pilot. Bush, then a first lieutenant, flew in T-33s only twice in the previous six months and three times in the year ending July 31, 1971.</p>

New York State Police officials are notifying district attorneys across the state that evidence in criminal cases may have been compromised by a forensic scientist who committed suicide last month after auditors discovered that he had not followed proper procedures in some cases, officials said Tuesday. The scientist, Garry Veeder, worked at the State Police crime lab for more than 30 years analyzing so-called trace evidence, such as fibers, physical material and impressions left at crime scenes. The agency is reviewing his work going back at least a decade and cannot yet say how many cases could have been compromised....

We may have MORE babies Exclusive: Dad-to-be reveals joy..just 4 weeks before HE is due to give birth THESE extraordinary new pictures show the world's first pregnant man—captured just four weeks from the birth of his baby girl. In an exclusive and moving interview with the News of the World, sex-change dad Thomas Beatie and his wife Nancy tell of their joy. And he reveals unseen family snaps of his astonishing early life as a teenage beauty queen. "I feel fantastic," he said. "I cannot wait to see my baby's face." In a tender and intimate moment, Thomas shares a...

Features - June 2, 2008 Digital Forensics: 5 Ways to Spot a Fake Photo By Hany Farid This story is a supplement to the feature "Digital Forensics: How Experts Uncover Doctored Images" which was printed in the June 2008 issue of Scientific American. Lighting Composite images made of pieces from different photographs can display subtle differences in the lighting conditions under which each person or object was originally photographed. Such discrepancies will often go unnoticed by the naked eye. For an image such as the one at the right, my group can estimate the direction of the light source for...