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Global Warming and Environmentalists Blamed for Lake Tahoe Wildfires Posted by Noel Sheppard on June 26, 2007 - 11:35. Depending on which newspaper you read Tuesday morning, the wildfires in the Lake Tahoe region of California and Nevada were either caused by global warming or environmentalists. I kid you not. In Northern California, just a few hours from the devastation, the number one paper in the region, the San Francisco Chronicle, chose to blame the fires on overdevelopment in Tahoe, and, of course, global warming (emphasis added): From Gold Rush clear-cutters to modern home-builders, people have brought changes to the...

"I’m not sure what derangement syndrome Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is suffering from, but on Friday’s “Hardball,” he actually blamed the 9/11 attacks at the World Trade Center on President Reagan’s rollback of CAFE standards in 1986."

The grandfather of a boy killed by a black bear while camping blamed the U.S. Forest Service Tuesday for not getting the word out about an earlier attack. Before 11-year-old Sam Ives was attacked and killed Sunday night, the same bear had attacked campers in the same spot hours earlier. Eldon Ives is the boy's grandfather. He told reporters Tuesday that he hoped the Forest Service will do a better job of protecting campers after Sam's death. He said the violent way his grandson was killed is a sorrow that will never heal. Sam Ives would have been a 6th...

The Feb. 1 letter commenting on Pennsylvania's black homicide rate, "We Need a Comprehensive Plan to Reduce Violence," asks the entire taxpaying community to solve a problem that is totally the parents' responsibility. Why do people think it's OK for the public to pay for their personal choices? When your child sells drugs and shoots at people, it's your fault as a parent. If you don't have the means to properly raise a child, then don't have one. My wife and I (both from the inner city) made some poor choices early in life and have been paying for them...

WASHINGTON - President Bush on Wednesday acknowledged for the first time he erred by failing to order a military buildup in Iraq last year and said he was increasing U.S. troops by 21,500 to quell the country's near-anarchy. "Where mistakes have been made, the responsibility rests with me," Bush said. The military increase puts Bush on a collision course with the new Democratic Congress and pushes the American presence in Iraq toward its highest level. It also runs counter to widespread anti-war passions among Americans and the advice of some top generals. In a prime-time address to the nation, Bush...

COLUMBIA, S.C. - Sen. Joe Biden, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's incoming chairman, wants to get tough with Mexico, calling it an "erstwhile democracy" with a "corrupt system" responsible for illegal immigration and drug problems in the U.S. Biden, D-Del., was in Columbia on Monday in his first postelection trip to this first-in-the-South presidential primary state as he continues to line up support for his presidential bid. During a question-and-answer session before more than 230 Columbia Rotary Club members, Biden was asked about immigration problems. Biden, who favors tightening the U.S.-Mexico border with fences, said immigration is driven by money...

Japanese authorities are investigating the damage from a tornado that tore through a town killing nine construction workers and leaving seven other people seriously injured. The tornado, a rare sight in Japan, ripped apart the prefabricated homes of workers who were digging a road through a mountain near the northern town of Saroma. Twenty-six people remained in hospital, with seven of them suffering serious injuries, police said. Nine people were killed, all of them construction workers who were meeting in a makeshift two-storey office building. Television footage Wednesday showed small homes and buildings torn to pieces and cars overturned as...

(2006-11-01) — During Sen. John Kerry’s most recent hourly news conference, the former Democrat presidential nominee said he was sorry for what he called “a botched apology” posted to his website earlier in the day, that was spurred by his “botched joke” on Monday. The text of his apology reads, in part… “As a combat veteran, I want to make it clear to anyone in uniform and to their loved ones: my poorly stated joke at a rally was not about, and never intended to refer to any troop. I sincerely regret that my words were misinterpreted to wrongly imply...

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Callous wealthy nations are indifferent to the plight of the poor as they pursue selfish policies which enrich the few at the expense of the many, South African President Thabo Mbeki said on Tuesday. "These billions of poor people are increasingly becoming impatient because every year they hear us adopt declaration after declaration and yet nothing practical is done to assuage the hunger pains that keep them awake at night," he told the United Nations General Assembly. At the Millennium Summit in September 2000, world leaders at the United Nations agreed a series of goals to...

The Path to 9/11 concluding tonight on ABC is riveting, a superb visceral presentation of the root causes of September 11th. Conservatives everywhere are giddy with excitement that a member of the Mainstream Media chose not to whitewash the Clinton Administration’s confused and ineffectual response to terrorism. The actual record of the Clinton Administration – the disaster in Mogadishu, multiple opportunities to kill or capture bin Laden missed, the Gorelick Wall between justice and intelligence – is profoundly worse than portrayed in The Path to 9/11, but the movie nonetheless makes it crystal clear that the Clinton Administration was criminally...

"The Americans were better than the Iraqis. They treated us better," said Khalid Alaani, who was held on suspicion of involvement in Sunni terrorism." "Someone was shouting 'Please help us, we want the human rights officers, we want the Americans to come back'," he said.

Britain could face the threat of two million home-grown Islamic terrorists, says a senior Muslim leader. Muhammad Abdul Bari, the secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain, fears that continued negative attitudes towards people of his faith could provoke a vast and angry backlash. "There are a few bad apples in the Muslim community who are doing terrible acts and we want to root them out," Dr Bari told The Sunday Telegraph. "But some police officers and sections of the media are demonising Muslims, treating them as if they're all terrorists — and that encourages other people to do the...

WASHINGTON: Cutting across party lines, US law makers have faulted President George W Bush's administration for not having a clear position on Iran even as an expert asked as to whether America was willing to pay the price of the military option. Democrat Congressman Marty Meehan has argued along with others that the US military's forward deployment was so stretched out that it was having an impact on the way a decision on Iran would have to be factored. "We have 140,000 troops in Iraq, recruitment is down in our military. We need more soldiers and Marines, and we're having...

As the fifth anniversary of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, approaches, the date has become synonymous with the image of wanton destruction. And in addition to the massive loss caused by the attacks, they spawned another form of unrelenting damage -- a host of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories implicating the Jews and Israel in the bloodshed. These canards have not been fleeting expressions of paranoid fantasy that dissipate once they have been debunked. On the contrary, even today the various "Jews-did-it" scenarios emanating from the wreckage of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon have proven stubbornly resilient. "If...

CHICAGO, Illinois (CNN) -- U.S. foreign policy is furthering terrorism in the Muslim world, and negotiations are the only way to resolve the impasse over Iran's nuclear ambitions, former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami told CNN while on a two-week visit to the United States. The reformist leader is widely viewed as moderate compared with new President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. As president, Khatami favored stronger U.S. ties. In an interview Sunday with CNN, Khatami said American policies have "only increased, and will only increase, extremism in our region." (Watch Khatami tie Bush's policies in the Mideast to a rise in terrorism --...

Now that former State Dept. Undersecretary Richard Armitage has been revealed as the leaker of Valerie Plame’s classified status as a CIA analyst to reporters Robert Novak and Bob Woodward, while White House officials Scooter Libby and Karl Rove were wrongfully targeted as the sources of the Plame leak, what kind of treatment does Armitage deserve in the future? Infamy. Richard Armitage is a low coward who let others take the heat for what he did, at great personal and professional cost. He had it in his power all along to exonerate Libby and Rove, but chose instead to hide...

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) In a rare case of self-criticism, a senior official in the Hamas-led government said the Palestinians have bungled the aftermath of Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and called on residents to stop blaming Israel for all their woes. Ghazi Hamad, spokesman for the Hamas-led government, urged Palestinians to look beyond the conflict with Israel in searching for the causes of internal violence and lawlessness sweeping through the Gaza Strip. ``I am not interested in discussing the ugliness and brutality of the occupation because it is not a secret. Instead, I prefer self-criticism and self-evaluation,''...

Time magazine's much-publicized July 17th cover story, "The End of Cowboy Diplomacy," has been viewed as a seminal media effort to capture the transformation of the Bush Administration from a trigger-happy approach in foreign policy to reliance on other nations and the U.N. But a careful analysis shows that Time exaggerated and distorted the facts in order to produce a story that would entice and mislead its readers. It would be foolish to insist that changes in the Bush foreign policy have not been made. Since Condoleezza Rice became Secretary of State, she has clearly been relying more on the...

Top News Story Pakistan warns Iran of India's support for Iranian rebels. Hindustan Times reported that Pakistan has asked Iran to monitor the Indian consulate in the Iranian border city of Zahidan, alleging it was aiding nationalist rebels in the southwest Balochistan province.   Has Hezbollah's war become a propaganda bonanza for Iran? The Guardian argued that the war in Lebanon has become a propaganda tool for Iran.   Iran opposes UN resolution on Lebanon. Radio Free Europe reported that Iranian Foreign Minister Manuchehr Mottaki described a U.S.-French draft UN resolution on the Mideast conflict as "an operation against...

Top News Story M.A.D. won’t stop the Iranian from using the bomb. Bernard Lewis, The Wall Street Journal argued that Iran's apocalyptic leaders do not fear killing Palestinians in a nuclear attack on Israel nor do they fear an Israeli nuclear counter attack on Iran because in both cases the Muslim dead will be accepted by Allah into heaven. A must read.   Iranian dissident Batebi on hunger strike in Evin Prison. Iran Press News reported that Iranian student leader, Ahmad Batebi is now being detained and if new charges are not leveled against him, he will only have...