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Pelosi Statement Celebrating Earth Day1 hour, 20 minutes ago To: NATIONAL EDITORS Contact: Brendan Daly or Drew Hammill, both of Office of the Speaker of the House, +1-202-226-7616 WASHINGTON, April 21 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Speaker Nancy Pelosi released the following statement today in observance of the 38th annual Earth Day, which will be observed tomorrow, Tuesday, April 22: Almost four decades ago, a group of visionary Americans energized the environmental movement, and indeed our nation, by dedicating a day to this ideal: we must preserve Gods creation, our planet, for the generations to come. On this Earth Day, the greatest challenge...

NYC Cabbie Who Runs Anti-American Islamic Web Site Mocks GI Deaths, Calls for Shia Law In U.S.    A New York City cabbie who operates an extremist Islamic anti-American Web site that features violent images — including mocking the deaths of GIs in Iraq — says he’s doing the country a service by “exposing the truth.”   Yousef al-Khattab, who runs RevolutionMuslim.com from his home in Queens, told FOX News that he also wants the U.S. to embrace Islam and Sharia Law, which prohibits alcohol and can include stoning to death or severe flogging for pre-marital sex and adultery.   On any given...

Pirates seized control of a French vessel carrying 30 crew members Friday off the coast of Somalia, the French government and the ship's owner said. Attackers stormed aboard "Le Ponant" as it returned without passengers from the Seychelles, in the Indian Ocean, toward the Mediterranean Sea, said officials with French maritime transport company CMA-CGM. The corporate officials said they were in close contact with the French Foreign Ministry, which said in a statement that a cruise boat and its crew had been attacked by pirates. The ship was in the high seas in the Gulf of Aden, off the coast...

Trustees for the government's two biggest benefit programs warned Tuesday that Social Security and Medicare are facing "enormous challenges" with the threat to Medicare's solvency far more severe. ADVERTISEMENT The trustees, issuing a once-a-year analysis of the government's two biggest benefit programs, said the resources in the Social Security trust fund will be depleted by 2041. The reserves in the Medicare trust fund that pays hospital benefits were projected to be wiped out by 2019. Both those dates were the same as in last year's report. But the trustees warned that financial pressures will begin much sooner when the programs...

WASHINGTON - Americans have a right to own guns, Supreme Court justices declared Tuesday in a historic and lively debate that could lead to the most significant interpretation of the Second Amendment since its ratification two centuries ago. Governments have a right to regulate those firearms, a majority of justices seemed to agree. But there was less apparent agreement on the case they were arguing: whether Washington's ban on handguns goes too far. The justices dug deeply into arguments on one of the Constitution's most hotly debated provisions as demonstrators shouted slogans outside. Guns are an American right, argued one...

http://www.breitbart.tv/?p=53014

The IRS is investigating the United Church of Christ over a speech Sen. Barack Obama gave at its national meeting last year after he became a candidate for president, the denomination said Tuesday. Obama, an Illinois Democrat, belongs to the 1.2 million-member Protestant group through his Chicago congregation. In a letter the denomination received Monday, the IRS said "reasonable belief exists" that the circumstances surrounding the speech violated restrictions on political activity for tax-exempt organizations. The denomination has denied any wrongdoing. United Church of Christ, link to IRS letter: http://www.ucc.org/news/obama-speech-in-2007-prompts-1.html

John McCain is a well-known opponent of waterboarding. But he wants President Bush to veto a measure that would bar the CIA from using it, and other harsh interrogation methods, on terror suspects. McCain voted against the bill, which would let the CIA use only the 19 interrogation techniques listed in the Army field manual. His vote is controversial because the manual prohibits waterboarding, yet McCain doesn't want the CIA to be bound by the manual and its prohibitions.

YELLOW SPRINGS, Ohio (AP) - Republican presidential candidate John McCain said President Bush should veto a measure that would bar the CIA from using waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods on terror suspects. McCain voted against the bill, which would restrict the CIA to using only the 19 interrogation techniques listed in the Army field manual. His vote was controversial because the manual prohibits waterboarding - a simulated drowning technique that McCain also opposes - yet McCain doesn't want the CIA bound by the manual and its prohibitions. McCain, who was tortured as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, is...

Yahoo Inc. is discussing a possible Internet partnership with media conglomerate News Corp., its latest effort to repel Microsoft Corp.'s takeover bid or pry a better offer from the unsolicited suitor, a person familiar with the situation said Wednesday. The specifics of the proposed joint venture haven't been worked out, according to the person, who didn't want to be identified because the talks are considered confidential. Both The Wall Street Journal and a prominent blog, TechCrunch, reported that News Corp. is interested in folding its popular online social network, MySpace.com, and other Internet assets into Yahoo — an idea that...

WELLINGTON — Six members of a family were arrested at The Mall at Wellington Green in an incident that began benignly enough over a pair of droopy jeans but ended like a chaotic scene out of the Cops TV show. An estimated 20 deputies, two canine units and a police helicopter swarmed the area surrounding the mall's food court, shutting down roads, all to arrest a 52-year-old man, his 50-year-old wife and four other relatives, ages 16 to 20, Thursday evening. It's a family affair. They get to spend the holiday in jail together," Palm Beach County sheriff's Lt. Jay...

WASHINGTON - Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff on Monday invoked his power to bypass certain laws to restart construction of a fence on the Arizona-Mexico border. Chertoff's action allows construction to go forward on about seven miles of fence in the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area near Naco, Ariz. Work on nearly two miles of the fence had been suspended since Oct. 10, when a federal district judge ordered a delay on its construction. She ruled the federal government did not fully study the environmental impact of the fence. Congress gave Chertoff the power to waive environmental and other...

Iranian former deputy defense minister Ali Rheze Asgari supplied intelligence sources in the West with information regarding the sites that Israeli jets allegedly attacked on September 6, the Kuweiti Al Jareeda reported Friday. Asgari defected from Iran several months ago and moved to an undisclosed location in the West. In related news, the Saudi paper Al Watan reported Friday that American jets were hovering in Iraqi airspace close to the Syrian border during the raid. Reportedly, the USAF jets were meant to give aerial backup to Israel in case IAF warplanes would come to any harm.

<p>A federal appeals court panel has refused to reinstate a lawsuit brought against Caterpillar Inc. by the family of a 23-year-old peace activist crushed to death by an Israeli bulldozer.</p>

Iraq report may bolster surge policy By PAMELA HESS, Associated Press Writer 48 minutes ago Intentionally or not, a new assessment of Iraq's political and military prospects landed just in time to bolster President Bush's case that the United States should maintain its troop buildup in the country and stand by its beleaguered government. The consensus report by U.S. spy agencies contained a veiled warning: Any move to shift U.S. troops out of their role directly combating insurgents could squander the modest security gains secured by the troop surge. "A change of mission ... would place security improvements at risk,"...

<p>BEIJING (Reuters) - A Beijing factory recycled used Wu, who had no license to sell the goods, said he had sold 100,000 pairs a day when business was good.</p> <p>China, on track to overtake the United States this year as the world's second-largest exporter, lacks the manpower to enforce food and drug safety regulations at home or for export. Imports are generally carefully scrutinized.</p>

Today's protester, lacking guts, gets no glory That shrill sound you're hearing isn't coming from the cicadas. It's the cackle of conservatives reveling in war protester Cindy Sheehan's abrupt decision to leave the anti-war movement and return home to California. Typical liberal, they're saying. Cut and run. Apparently, Sheehan, the mother of a soldier killed in Iraq, was withering from the heat of public activism and grew disillusioned with the apathy of her fellow modern-day peaceniks. She embarked on her crusade two years ago and willingly became the face of the anti-war movement -- a movement that now appears to...

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, deflecting White House criticism of her trip to Syria, said Friday she thinks the mission helped President Bush because it showed the United States is unified against terrorism despite being divided over the Iraq war. Pelosi, D-Calif., met with Syrian President Bashar Assad in Damascus earlier this week, against the president's wishes. "Our message was President Bush's message," Pelosi said in a phone interview with The Associated Press from Portugal, where she stopped briefly en route back to the United States. "The funny thing is, I think we may have even had a more powerful impact...

A federal judge has ordered the Marines to discharge a San Jose lance corporal as a "conscientious objector" who had an aversion to killing and participating in war. Robert Zabala, 23, must be released from the Marines Corps Reserves by mid-April, U.S. District Judge James Ware said in a 21-page ruling Thursday. "We're very pleased with it," Zabala's attorney, Stephen Collier, said Monday. "I think it's a good decision and that it makes clear to the armed services that they can't deny conscientious-objector discharges from the military."

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, intent on putting global warming atop the Democratic agenda, is shaking up traditional committee fiefdoms dominated by some of Congress’ oldest and most powerful members. She’s moving to create a special committee to recommend legislation for cutting greenhouse gases, most likely to be chaired by Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., a Democratic leadership aide said Wednesday. Markey has advocated raising mileage standards for cars, trucks and SUVs and is one of the House’s biggest critics of oil companies and U.S. automakers