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At the age of 18, Mitsuhiro Matsushita already has a good idea of his ideal future. After he graduates from university a few years of work will be followed by marriage to an industrious wage earner. When children arrive it will be Mitsuhiro who stays at home looking after them, baking cakes and biscuits and living the traditional life of the Japanese housewife. None of this would be noteworthy but for one thing. Mitsuhiro is not a conventionally minded Japanese woman, but a thoughtful, articulate and fashionably dressed young man. And far from being a marginal eccentric he is a...

The internet regulator has approved plans to allow non-Latin-script web addresses, in a move that is set to transform the online world. The board of Icann voted at its annual meeting in Seoul to allow domain names in Arabic, Chinese and other scripts.

Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan president, has called on his countrymen to stop singing in the shower to help save water and electricity. The left-wing leader said they should attempt to wash in less than three minutes and breaking into song distract them. "Some people sing in the shower, in the shower half an hour. No kids, three minutes is more than enough. I've counted, three minutes, and I don't stink," he said during a televised Cabinet meeting. Getting into his stride, he went on to label baths and jacuzzis anti-communist.

SNIPPET: "(CNSNews.com) – Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced Tuesday that she is pursuing plans to remove some captured illegal aliens from “prison-like or jail-like circumstances” and put them in converted hotels and nursing homes. “To better manage detention operations, ICE will develop a risk assessment and custody classification, which will enable detainees to be placed in an appropriate facility,” DHS said in a statement. “ICE will pursue detention strategies based on assessed risk and reduce costs by exploring the use of converted hotels, nursing homes and other residential facilities.” Napolitano explained her department’s thinking at a press conference at...

Deposed President Manuel Zelaya called on the Honduran regime to restore civil liberties and withdraw soldiers surrounding his Brazilian embassy refuge as a precondition for talks aimed at solving the political crisis. Representatives of Zelaya and the military-supported interim Honduran regime agreed to restart talks this week, without setting a date, that would restore democracy after soldiers ousted the president at gunpoint on June 28 and kicked him out of the country in his pyjamas. Zelaya's surprise return on September 21 to the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa triggered a new wave of protests and a clampdown on civil rights, but...

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Barack Obama is offering Iran "a serious, meaningful dialogue" over its disputed nuclear program, while warning Tehran of grave consequences from a united global front. "Iran's leaders must now choose—they can live up to their responsibilities and achieve integration with the community of nations. Or they will face increased pressure and isolation, and deny opportunity to their own people," Obama said in his radio and Internet address Saturday.

Arizona’s border was judged to be open not only to drug smugglers but also aliens with “extensive criminal records” and from “special interest countries,” which are defined as “countries that could export individuals who could bring harm to the United States through terrorism. ”Special-interest countries are those designated by the intelligence community as countries that could export individuals who could bring harm to the United States through terrorism,” said the NDIC report.

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 23RD, 2009 AT 5:51 PM “Mom, It's Hokum. It's a Bunch of Malarkey.” Posted by Jesse Lee [ SNIPPET: "At a town hall meeting today with seniors in Silver Spring, MD, Vice President Joe Biden and Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius discussed the release of a new report, "Health Insurance Reform and Medicare: Making Medicare Stronger for America's Seniors." The Vice President was perfectly clear: "Nobody is going to mess with your benefits. All we do is make it better for people on Medicare." He joked about having to disabuse his own mother of myths...

Obama was “appointed by God”, we are instructed by a man boasting academic credentials. Writing in the Orlando Sentinel, Jeremy Levitt, “associate dean for International Programs and a distinguished professor of international law at Florida A&M University College of Law in Orlando,” makes this case at the conclusion of a rambling attack on critics of ObamaCare and the right in general: I would remind the far right what the Apostle Paul wrote, " ... there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God." Hence, Obama is the U.S. president and leader of the...

Why has the Obama administration decided to toss eastern Europe under the bus in order to make nice with Russia? According to CNN, Joe Biden says that a missile-defense system in Europe isn’t really necessary, because Iran isn’t much of a threat. No, really: Vice President Joe Biden earlier refused to confirm to CNN that the George W. Bush-era plan was being shelved. But he did explain the logic of doing so, saying Iran — a key concern for the United States — was not a threat. --------------------------------------------------------- “I think we are fully capable and secure dealing with any present...

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Thursday said she worries that the protests of President Obama's health-care legislation may be of a similar nature to anti-gay rhetoric in the late 1970s in San Francisco, which culminated in the assassinations of two of her home town's political leaders. Pelosi, responding to a question about anti-Obama sentiment, said that partisans on all sides of an issue have the right to voice their opinion. But after pausing, she added: "I have concerns about some of the language that is being used, because I saw this myself in the late '70s in San Francisco....

Venezuela's Marxist president-dictator Hugo Chavez addressed an influential university in Moscow stating that America's influence in the world is "dying," and will be replaced in "the next decades" by a "multi-polar" world in which Russia plays a leading role. Chavez wants to "accelerate" the process, a sentiment which receives support from the Moscow elite. During his Sept. 9-10 2009 visit,Chavez received an enthusiastic reception from about 1,000 students at Moscow's Patrice Lumumba Peoples Friendship University, an institution founded in 1960 as a KGB training ground for communist revolutionaries and pro-Soviet activists. The university's namesake was a prime minister of the...

(CNN) -- Former President Jimmy Carter said Tuesday that racial politics played a role in South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson's outburst during President Obama's speech to Congress last week and in some of the opposition the president has faced since taking office.

White House senior adviser David Axelrod says that the demonstrations in Washington, D.C., Saturday do not represent the views of the broader public when it comes to health care reform.

Editor, At the risk of sounding sexist, how did the health care debate get hijacked by an overgrown teenage girl on Facebook? Sarah Palin quit her job as governor of Alaska to become an unpaid right-wing blogger, yet still has the power to disrupt any rational discourse. Possibly related: How did someone like Palin even rise to the spotlight in the first place? Her rise was born in the waning days of the contentious Democratic primaries between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. After the controversial Democratic National Convention Rules Committee decision to split in half the delegates from Michigan and...

Energy-saving lightbulbs are inferior in quality to the traditional models covered by the European Union ban. If you have missed this story, it is probably because you have been reading your daily newspaper in such poor light that you have given up the struggle. Since January 1 this year, when leading retailers announced a voluntary ban on stocking traditional 100-watt incandescent light bulbs, those glorious domestic globes with their Rubens-esque curves, the lights have been going out all over Britain. And life is about to be a whole lot darker. From September 1, shops will no longer be able to...

MEXICO CITY (AP) - Mexico enacted a controversial law on Thursday decriminalizing possession of small amounts of marijuana, cocaine, heroin and other drugs while encouraging government-financed treatment for drug dependency free of charge. The law sets out maximum "personal use" amounts for drugs, also including LSD and methamphetamine. People detained with those quantities will no longer face criminal prosecution; the law goes into effect on Friday.

U.S. President Barack Obama has started reaching out to some of Pakistan's most fervent Islamist and anti-American parties, including one that helped give rise to the Taliban, trying to improve Washington's image in the nuclear-armed state. Obama's special envoy, Richard Holbrooke, is initiating dialogue between the United States and religious parties previous administrations had largely shunned, both sides said. John Bolton, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations during the Bush presidency, questioned Holbrooke's timing for trying to engage Taliban sympathisers on the eve of elections in neighbouring Afghanistan, where U.S. forces are battling the hardline Islamic group. "As a general...

Note: The following brief text is a quote: 09 August 2009 "AM I SAFE?" HE ASKS, WHILE LOGGED INTO THE JIHADI FORUM. "Am I safe from the prying eyes of the apostate spies and the zio-crusader enemies of Allah?" Posted on 09 August 2009 @ 20:03

President Obama said Thursday he was surprised by all the hubbub over his comments that a white police officer had acted "stupidly" in arresting a prominent black scholar for disorderly conduct. The president didn't take back his words, but he allowed that he understood the sergeant who made the arrest is an "outstanding police officer." "I have to say I am surprised by the controversy surrounding my statement," Obama said in an interview with ABC News,"

In reaction to a propaganda video of the Taliban holding an American soldier hostage in Afghanistan, on Monday’s CBS Early Show, terrorism analyst Jere Van Dyk argued: “What they [the Taliban] are saying is that ‘we can treat American soldiers, we can treat prisoners, better than Americans are treating them.’” Van Dyk went on: “…that’s a signal there. He’s wearing nice clothes, he’s being fed, he has a cup of tea there… what they are saying is that ‘we will protect to the death… a guest in our home.’

After more than 60 years together, Jimmy Carter has announced himself at odds with the Southern Baptist Church -- and he's decided it's time they go their separate ways. Via Feministing, the former president called the decision "unavoidable" after church leaders prohibited women from being ordained and insisted women be "subservient to their husbands." Said Carter in an essay in The Age: At its most repugnant, the belief that women must be subjugated to the wishes of men excuses slavery, violence, forced prostitution, genital mutilation and national laws that omit rape as a crime. But it also costs many millions...

(CNSNews.com) – Vice President Joe Biden told people attending an AARP town hall meeting that unless the Democrat-supported health care plan becomes law the nation will go bankrupt and that the only way to avoid that fate is for the government to spend more money. “And folks look, AARP knows and the people with me here today know, the president knows, and I know, that the status quo is simply not acceptable,” Biden said at the event on Thursday in Alexandria, Va. “It’s totally unacceptable. And it’s completely unsustainable. Even if we wanted to keep it the way we have...

Note: The following text is a quote: THE BRIEFING ROOM THE WHITE HOUSE Office of the Press Secretary ______________________________________________________________________ FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE July 9, 2009 DECLARATION OF THE LEADERS THE MAJOR ECONOMIES FORUM ON ENERGY AND CLIMATE We, the leaders of Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, the European Union, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States met as the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate in L’Aquila, Italy, on July 9, 2009, and declare as follows: Climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our...

Note: The following text is a quote: News American Forces Press Service Top Defense Lawyer Calls for Military Commissions Reform By Army Sgt. 1st Class Michael J. Carden American Forces Press Service WASHINGTON, July 7, 2009 – Closing the U.S. detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and reforming military commissions will enhance national security, the Defense Department’s chief legal advisor said today before Congress. Echoing President Barack Obama’s recent call to reform the Military Commissions Act of 2006, General Counsel Jeh C. Johnson told the Senate Armed Services Committee that he welcomes the opportunity to help change military commissions into...

Note: The following text is a quote: HE BRIEFING ROOM THE WHITE HOUSE Office of the Press Secretary __________________________________________________________________________ For Immediate Release July 7, 2009 REMARKS BY PRESIDENT OBAMA IN MEETING WITH OPPOSITION LEADERS Ritz Carlton Moscow, Russia 6:14 P.M. (Local) PRESIDENT OBAMA: (In progress) -- not simply tolerate dissenting voices but also to respect and recognize dissenting voices. This is one of the elements, along with an independent media and adherence to the rule of law that has helped to solidify our own government during some very difficult times. I said in my remarks recently that the fact that...

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said in an interview published Sunday that the United States must compromise on plans for a missile defense system in Europe to get a deal on cutting back nuclear warheads. U.S. President Barack Obama arrives in Moscow Monday to meet Medvedev and discuss ways to replace the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I) before it expires on December 5. Russia says a deal on START is possible but has linked any agreement with Washington's plans to deploy a missile defense system in Europe that Moscow says is a threat to its national...

Nothing follows.

Iranian riot police, armed with tear gas and backed by helicopters, forced protestors off the streets Saturday as the massive protests against last week’s elections appeared to weaken. Nineteen protestors and policemen were killed Saturday, bringing the week's death toll to 38. Unconfirmed reports placed the number killed at Saturday at 150. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s top Muslim leader, accused “dirty Zionists" and “Zionist media” for being behind charges that the results of the election were rigged. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared the winner two hours after the voting stations closed a week ago on Friday. His opponent, Mir...

I rise in reluctant opposition to H Res 560, which condemns the Iranian government for its recent actions during the unrest in that country. While I never condone violence, much less the violence that governments are only too willing to mete out to their own citizens, I am always very cautious about “condemning” the actions of governments overseas. As an elected member of the United States House of Representatives, I have always questioned our constitutional authority to sit in judgment of the actions of foreign governments of which we are not representatives. I have always hesitated when my colleagues rush...

DAMASCUS, SYRIA – Former President Jimmy Carter Thursday reiterated that there can be no peace between Israel and the Palestinians without involving the militant group Hamas. His comments came shortly before he met with the militant group's Syrian-based leader, Khaled Mashaal. Carter met with Mashaal twice under the Bush administration, angering some in the U.S. government who said he was legitimizing a group the U.S. considers a terrorist organization. But this was his first meeting under the Obama administration, which has launched a fresh quest for peace in the Middle East, and came as Obama's Mideast envoy, George Mitchell, was...

Dallas Morning News’s Wayne Slater become one of the first pundits after the shootings at the Holocaust Museum on Wednesday to hint that there was a connection to mainstream conservative activists. On CNN Newsroom, about two hours after the story broke, Slater linked this incident and the murder of abortionist George Tiller with “anti-tax secessionists in Texas,” his label for Tea Party protesters. Anchor Rick Sanchez moderated a panel discussion on the Holocaust Museum shootings after the bottom of the 3 pm Eastern hour of the CNN program....Sanchez asked the Dallas Morning News political writer if criminals like this suspect...

Note: The following text is a quote: THE BRIEFING ROOM THE WHITE HOUSE Office of the Press Secretary (Cairo,Egypt) ________________________________________________ FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE June 4, 2009 REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT ON A NEW BEGINNING Cairo University Cairo, Egypt 1:10 P.M. (Local) PRESIDENT OBAMA: Thank you very much. Good afternoon. I am honored to be in the timeless city of Cairo, and to be hosted by two remarkable institutions. For over a thousand years, Al-Azhar has stood as a beacon of Islamic learning; and for over a century, Cairo University has been a source of Egypt's advancement. And together, you represent...

NKorea May Come Off Terror List: White House Wednesday, June 25, 2008 10:50 PM WASHINGTON -- The White House said Wednesday that it could move to take North Korea off a terrorism blacklist "quite soon" after - and if - the North delivers an accounting of its nuclear programs. Washington hoped the secretive Stalinist nation would provide its long overdue "declaration" as early as Thursday, although a senior US official has already said that an inventory of Pyongyang's atomic arsenal will come later. Asked how quickly a full accounting would trigger removal from the US list of state sponsors of...

Geraldo is on his show as we write ... and he has plastered Rush Limbaugh in a "very disgusting" image, of his eyes squinted, fat face bulging, and is portraying Rush in a very negative light. This disgusting display of "fair and balanced" news reporting has just made up my mind ... "no more Geraldo for me", ever again ... even if he is on my favorite show, Bill O'Reilly. I will NEVER WATCH HIM AGAIN ! Geraldo just "USED ANN COULTER", and turned her words around, as if she was bragging about Sonia Sotomayor, which she DID NO SUCH...

Levi Johnston says his relations are improving with Bristol Palin, daughter of former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. The 19-year-old Johnston tells GQ magazine that the Palins aren't "lying when they say that things are better." Johnston fathered a child with Bristol, the 18-year-old daughter of Alaska governor. But since the couple broke off their engagement, he has complained in national interviews that the Palins were limiting his access to his son Tripp, born Dec. 27. Johnston also claims in the GQ article that Sarah Palin's husband, Todd Palin, offered to buy Bristol a new car if she broke...

WASHINGTON -- A top Al Qaeda suspect held at Guantanamo Bay will be sent to New York for trial, an Obama administration official said Wednesday. Ahmed Ghailani would be the first Guantanamo detainee brought to the U.S., and the first to face trial in a civilian criminal court. An official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to disclose the decision, told The Associated Press the administration has decided to bring Ghailani to trial in New York. He was indicted there for the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa -- attacks that killed 224 people,...

She is a troll.....

I don’t know what to say about this that I didn’t already say when she asked The One a stupid question about Israeli nukes at his February presser, so refresh your memory. Grandstanding hack then, grandstanding hack now. In fairness to the left, as much as she prides herself on being a liberal, I think denial about Iran’s intentions is a minority position even on their side. The only question here, really, is whether she earnestly doubts that Iranian nuclear weapons would pose a threat or whether she recognizes that they would but is willing to tolerate them anyway in...

IT'S one doozy of a case of "he said, she said." House Speaker Nancy Pel osi, a senior Democrat, and the White House-appointed CIA director, Leon Panetta, are having a tiff about "who told whom what when" regarding the interrogation of al Qaeda terrorists. Pelosi is claiming the CIA misled Congress about the use of waterboarding against al Qaeda operatives when it briefed the House Intelligence Committee back in the War on Terror's early days. The CIA -- and a host of others -- are saying that it ain't so and that the speaker and the Congress were advised of...

White House senior adviser David Axelrod agreed to take the hot seat Thursday night when he answered questions for the game “Not My Job” at a live taping of NPR’s " Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me!" Styled after the old-fashioned radio quiz shows, "Wait Wait" challenges contestants with trivia games based on current news stories and is hosted by playwright Peter Sagal and newscaster Carl Kasell. A former journalist known for his snappy sound bites, Axelrod kept up with jokes on everything from the president’s “perfection” (“The only suggestion he rejected was when I asked him to put on a mole”)...

If there is an independent truth commission into the use of alleged torture, Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House of Representatives, could find herself in the dock. After a series of incomplete, belated and apparently contradictory Pelosi accounts of CIA briefings to her and her staff, the big question in Washington today is: What did she know about waterboarding and when did she know it? Former Bush consigliere Karl Rove lays out the charges against her here. Fighting fire with fire today, Pelosi accused the CIA of lying to Congress as a diversionary tactic to cover up lies about Iraq...

The US House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, has accused the Bush-era CIA of misleading her about alleged torture of suspected terrorists and denied her failure to object to such tactics made her complicit. "At every step of the way, the administration was misleading the Congress. And that is the issue. And that is why we need a 'truth commission,'" to look into controversial "war on terror" tactics, said the top Democrat. Ms Pelosi, a key ally of President Barack Obama, has drawn fierce Republican charges that she knew years ago about harsh techniques such as the controlled drowning known as waterboarding...

(CNSNews.com) -- The National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAA), a part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), will pay $2.6 million in U.S. tax dollars to train Chinese prostitutes to drink responsibly on the job. Dr. Xiaoming Li, the researcher conducting the program, is director of the Prevention Research Center at Wayne State University School of Medicine in Detroit. The grant, made last November, refers to prostitutes as "female sex workers"--or FSW--and their handlers as "gatekeepers." "Previous studies in Asia and Africa and our own data from FSWs [female sex workers] in China suggest that the social...

WASHINGTON (AFP)--U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Thursday that the U.S. and its negotiating partners may have to "show some patience" before nuclear disarmament talks with North Korea can resume. Clinton, speaking at a press conference with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, said both the U.S. and Russia want to try to get the North Koreans back to the six-party negotiating framework. "We may have to show some patience before that is achieved, but we agree on the goal that we are aiming for," Clinton said. The U.S. has been involved in negotiations with the two Koreas, China, Japan...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Democratic Senate candidate Al Franken met privately with Vice President Joe Biden late Wednesday afternoon to update him on the still-contested Minnesota Senate race. Franken, who said he is eager to join the Senate,

In a rare gesture, House intelligence committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes sent a letter this week to all CIA employees suggesting that Congress shared some blame for the CIA interrogation controversy and should play a more robust role in the intelligence policymaking process. The letter, which was sent Wednesday and made available to The Washington Times on Thursday, appeared to undercut remarks by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that there was little Congress could do about harsh interrogations, including waterboarding. The Times reported last month that members of Congress, including Mrs. Pelosi, California Democrat, had been briefed on numerous occasions about the...

Judges could be forced to bow to Sharia law in some divorce cases heard in Britain. An EU plan calls for family courts across Europe to hear cases using the laws of whichever country the couple involved have close links to. That could mean a court in England handling a case within the French legal framework, or even applying the laws of Saudi Arabia to a husband and wife living in Britain.

NY Post: The planes flew over the Verrazano Bridge, buzzed the left ear Lady Liberty and then continued up the Hudson past Jersey City and then circling back toward Staten Island, federal sources told the Post. Thousands flooded the streets downtown as buildings called evacuations.