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WASHINGTON - Harriet Miers' qualifications to be a Supreme Court justice and her views on privacy rights will be a focus of her confirmation hearings, Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Arlen Specter says. ADVERTISEMENT Miers must show she can handle complicated legal issues and has not cut deals with the White House to overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized abortion, Specter, R-Pa., said Sunday on ABC's "This Week." President Bush's nomination of Miers, a longtime confidante and White House counsel but never a judge, has caused division among conservatives. A leader of the right said he will not...

For GOP, Election Anxiety MountsCandidates Need Convincing for '06 By Charles Babington and Chris CillizzaWashington Post Staff WritersMonday, October 10, 2005; A01 Republican politicians in multiple states have recently decided not to run for Senate next year, stirring anxiety among Washington operatives about the effectiveness of the party's recruiting efforts and whether this signals a broader decline in GOP congressional prospects.Prominent Republicans have passed up races in North Dakota and West Virginia, both GOP-leaning states with potentially vulnerable Democratic incumbents. Earlier, Republican recruiters on Capitol Hill and at the White House failed to lure their first choices to run in...

In his first term in office, President George W. Bush established and nurtured a close personal relationship with Russian President Vladimir V. Putin. Early on, Bush’s overtures toward his counterpart in the Kremlin produced beneficial results for the president’s policies. President Bush succeeded in persuading Putin to acquiesce in the abrogation of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, a revision of the Cold War arms-control regime that Bush deemed necessary for his security agenda. After the attacks of September 11, Putin sided publicly and unequivocally with the United States in the war on terror, providing material and intelligence assistance to the American military intervention...

Mark Danner: Blaming America for the Global JihadBy Robert SpencerFrontPageMagazine.com | October 10, 2005 The New York Times marked the fourth anniversary of 9/11 by publishing in the New York Times Magazine a long and lavish cover story by the  Mark Danner, a journalism professor at the University of California at Berkeley, author of  Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib and the War on Terror, and a longtime opponent of America wars against totalitarian enemies. Danner didn’t write anything for the anniversary that would cancel dinner invitations for him in Berkeley. Instead, he repeated the radical line he has adopted for...

Document names 300 organisations seeking nuclear and WMD technology The determination of countries across the Middle East and Asia to develop nuclear arsenals and other weapons of mass destruction is laid bare by a secret British intelligence document which has been seen by the Guardian. More than 360 private companies, university departments and government organisations in eight countries, including the Pakistan high commission in London, are identified as having procured goods or technology for use in weapons programmes. The length of the list, compiled by MI5, suggests that the arms trade supermarket is bigger than has so far been publicly realised....

Divesting for JesusBy Steven BernsteinFrontPageMagazine.com | October 10, 2005 In the war against the existence of Israel, the economic boycott has a long history. Now three Protestant churches have passed resolutions in support of the Palestinian intifada against Israel, pledging to divest their current holdings in some companies that do business with Israel and to call for the dismantling of the Security Fence between Israel and the West Bank. The five million member Evangelical Lutheran Church of America(ELCA), at their 9th Biennial Churchwide Assembly last year in Orlando, Florida, voted 668-to-269 to implement their “Peace Not Walls: Stand for Justice...

By Noah Barkin and Claudia Kade BERLIN, Oct 10 (Reuters) - Conservative leader Angela Merkel will become Germany's first woman chancellor under a deal with Gerhard Schroeder's Social Democrats (SPD) to break a post-election deadlock, sources said on Monday. Three weeks after voters gave Merkel's conservatives an unexpectedly narrow win over Schroeder's SPD in a federal election, senior sources from both parties said an agreement had been struck that should pave the way for a power-sharing cabinet. According to a senior SPD source, the SPD is poised to get the foreign, finance, justice and labour ministries in a new coalition...

When high fat food can be good for you By Roger Highfield, Science Editor(Filed: 10/10/2005)"Take two cheeseburgers and call me in the morning" may sound like far-fetched medical advice but it could soon be heard at doctors' surgeries. A new study shows that high-fat foods can, at least in the gut, reduce inflammation. The work - to be published today in The Journal of Experimental Medicine - also suggests that people who have fasted could be at risk of developing a potentially lethal inflammatory response after surgery or an injury.Eating - particularly eating fat-rich foods - causes cells in...

Click below for audio: He betrayed his waistline! He played with our beers!Click below for audio: Click below for audio: Click below for story: Click below for video: Click below for audio: Click below for audio: Click below to hear The Hammer address Ronnie Earle: Click below for The Clinton Calendar: This Thread BroughtTo You ByThe Letter "W":

000 WTNT33 KNHC 100828 TCPAT3 BULLETIN TROPICAL STORM VINCE ADVISORY NUMBER 4 NWS TPC/NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER MIAMI FL 5 AM EDT MON OCT 10 2005 ..VINCE WEAKENS TO A TROPICAL STORM... AT 5 AM EDT...0900Z...THE CENTER OF TROPICAL STORM VINCE WAS LOCATED NEAR LATITUDE 34.8 NORTH... LONGITUDE 16.6 WEST OR ABOUT 620 MILES... 995 KM... EAST-SOUTHEAST OF THE AZORES...OR ABOUT 145 MILES... 235 KM... NORTH OF THE MADIERA ISLANDS. VINCE IS MOVING TOWARD THE EAST-NORTHEAST NEAR 12 MPH ...19 KM/HR. SOME INCREASE IN FORWARD SPEED IS EXPECTED LATER TODAY. MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WINDS ARE NEAR 60 MPH... 95 KM/HR...WITH HIGHER...

http://www.theintelligencer.net/index.asp The Intelligencer Not since President George H.W. Bush broke his famous "no new taxes" pledge has the Republican Party's conservative core been in such open rebellion against a major decision by a GOP president. The younger Bush's nomination of the relatively unknown Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court may not have set off the same populist revolt that his father did, but he nevertheless has stirred wide and serious opposition from his political base at a time when he very much needs conservatives. ~snip None of this should be taken as a knock against Miers personally. But the fact...

ANNAPOLIS, Calif. (AP) - A vineyard here smells different at night. The daytime dust is damped down by the faintly brackish fog rolling in from the Pacific. Above, stars blaze in black velvet; at ground-level, the white glare of fluorescent lights outlines the silhouettes of farmworkers moving swiftly in the shadows. Definitely not your typical harvest scene, but one that's becoming increasingly common as more vintners try picking wine grapes after dark. "It's better at night," said Fermin Manzo, foreman of the crew picking pinot noir grapes for Hartford Family Wines on a recent crisp, fall night. The advantage to...

President Bush’s speech on terrorism at the National Endowment for Democracy on October 6 had been billed by the White House as a major policy address that would include unprecedented detail. In the end the only piece of hard news concerned his claim that ten serious al-Qaeda terrorist plots have been disrupted since 9-11, including three plots to attack targets inside the United States, and at least five more “efforts to case targets in the United States, or infiltrate operatives into our country.” The rest was rhetoric, significant for what was said and what was omitted. The results give cause...

Soros Fingerprints on DeLay Frame-upBy Richard PoeFrontPageMagazine.com | October 10, 2005 THREE SEPARATE FORCES are attacking Congressman Tom DeLay at the moment. Outwardly, these forces seem independent. On closer inspection, however, we find that all three have something in common. All have significant links to leftwing billionaire, Democrat kingmaker and convicted insider trader George Soros. (1) The first of these attackers is Texas prosecutor Ronald Earle, who has indicted DeLay for alleged violations of state campaign finance laws. The second attacker is Republican Senator John McCain, whose Senate Committee on Indian Affairs is probing the involvement of certain of DeLay's...

WND: If you knew President Bush were reading this interview, what would you have to say to him? I am telling him that I think he is doing an enormous historical crime by fighting against Islam and giving Islam adjectives like fascism and terrorism. He is hurting American interests. No honorable person can deny the contribution of Islam to humanity and its development. Therefore, I say that President Bush puts in danger American interests when he chooses to fight against Islam and describes Islam in a negative way that makes him face 1.3 billion Muslims in the world. It is...

An eccentric shrink whose theories have come to shape modern psychotherapy is ensconced in an apartment atop the East 65th Street institute he founded while he battles a bitter coup. Albert Ellis, 92, whose work has been hailed by everyone from the Clintons to Mayor Bloomberg to Nicole Kidman, was booted Sept. 18 from the board of the nonprofit Albert Ellis Institute. He also was barred from the Friday-night "stand-up" psychotherapy sessions he has conducted before crowds of as many as 200 for more than 30 years. A lawyer for the board says Ellis' expenses are "preposterous" and putting the...

EVENTS OF recent weeks have reaffirmed the need for the alliance between the new Iraq and Britain. The lesson of the ghastly drumbeat of terrorism, the rioting in Basra and the vile murder of the leadership of the Iraqi Anglican Church is that the battle of Iraq cannot be won by retreat or compromise, but by the vision and determination for which Britain is renowned. Above all, Britain owes no apology for delivering the enslaved people of Iraq from the hands of a callous tyranny. The challenge is to show fortitude in the face of horror so that we can...

1,273 years ago today.

Introduction The Saudi daily Al-Watan reported recently that Islamic extremists were inciting Saudi soccer players to quit their teams and wage jihad in Iraq. According to these reports, the young athletes were influenced by fatwas forbidding the game of soccer except when played under certain conditions and with the express intention of using the game as physical training for jihad. Saudi sheikhs and intellectuals have criticized the fatwas and the religious authorities that issued them. On August 22, 2005, Al-Watan reported that the soccer players involved in this affair were from the Al-Taif region, and that some of them belonged...

The Hartford Courant and CT Public Television have initiated a full frontal attack on sprawl--a take no prisoners ultra-biased brainwashed effort to create their dream of urban high rises connected by mass transit throughout the state. No other opinions are wanted or needed.