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NEW ORLEANS - President Bush, visiting a still-suffering Gulf Coast, said Wednesday that Congress must help this ravaged city recover from Hurricane Katrina by approving billions he has requested for levee repair and compensation for Louisianans who lost homes. "I'm getting a view of the progress that is being made," Bush said after a tour by air and on the ground offered a chilling portrait of the pain that lingers six months after Katrina struck. "There's still a lot of work to be done, no doubt about it." Bush was reminded of the devastating situation still facing many Gulf Coast...

ALEXANDRIA, Virginia (Reuters) - The U.S. government knew by the 1990s how al Qaeda trained suicide operatives but missed capturing the man who masterminded the September 11 attacks about four years before they occurred, an FBI agent said on Tuesday. FBI agent Michael Anticev said in testimony at a sentencing trial for September 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui that the U.S. government knew by the mid 1990s that there were several al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan and other countries. Operatives at the training camps were taught how to carry out terrorist operations, including suicide missions, and were trained in how...

RAPID CITY — The South Dakota Legislature’s passage of an abortion ban bill prompted an angry reaction from abortion-rights supporters who vowed to boycott the state’s tourism industry. The state Department of Tourism received a dozen e-mails and a number of angry phone calls Friday from abortion-rights supporters who say they will not vacation in South Dakota. A Madison, Wis.,-based group has formally called for a boycott of South Dakota tourism. In a news release titled “Bypass South Dakota!”, the Women’s Medical Fund urged supporters to steer clear of South Dakota. “All kinds of families visit Mount Rushmore every year....

This is because of something in the Best of the Web from OpinionJournal--in reference to the irrational paranoia of the Left withn regards to the Bush Administration. The quote Taranto provided is as follows: "There is nothing patriotic about hating your country, or pretending that you can love your country but despise your government. There is nothing heroic about turning your back on America, or ignoring your own responsibilities." I've read through the article and have posted some gems to use should you ever encounter the immature paranoia: -Our founding fathers created a system of laws in which reason could...

City of Toledo officials say Scott Leo got his engineering work done on time, so they paid little attention to exactly what he was doing on the computer. Mr. Leo, operating with an Internet identity he called "Sassy Sarah," was using his city computer to access an online discussion group hosted by sportswrath.com - apparently hundreds of times a day. Sassy Sarah's frequent appearance in online discussions during work hours was brought to city officials' attention Dec. 27 by a citizen who said he was irritated by the apparent misuse of taxpayers' computers and work time. Since then, city officials...

I realize this is a rather selfish vanity, but after doing a search of the archives (by no means an exhaustive one, however), I am appealing for aid. I am trying to compile a list of books (not extensive, but decent) that are anti-communist or anti-totalitarian in nature to give to my students as a project when we reach the unit on the Russian revolution and the rise of communism to the Cold War. Obvious books are 1984, Orwell Animal Farm, Orwell Fahrenheit 451, Bradbury Brave New World, Huxley Do any of you know of good fiction books that I...

{SNIP} As I was thinking about the publication of the National Strategy for Victory in Iraq that happened yesterday, and I thought about how I might want to punctuate its publication, I immediately thought about this National Defense University as the exact right place for me to come talk about -- a little bit about Iraq, a little bit about challenges to you as individuals, and a way that we might find together to use our energies in a way that will be useful to the nation, all of our nations; and an opportunity for you who have this incredible...

Patient and steady with all he must bear, Ready to accept every challenge with care, Easy in manner, yet solid as steel, Strong in his faith, refreshingly real, Isn't afraid to propose what is bold, Doesn't conform to the usual mold, Eyes that have foresight, for hindsight wont do, Never back down when he sees what is true, Tells it all straight, and means it all too, Going forward and knowing he's right, Even when doubted for why he would fight, Over and over he makes his case clear, Reaching to touch the ones who won't hear, Growing in strength,...

PARIS, Nov 29 (AFP) - Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin made a stab at salvaging France's beleaguered image overseas on Tuesday, in a US television interview focused on the outbreak of urban violence in the country. Villepin told the US television network CNN that the wave of unrest in French suburbs this month could not be described as "riots", and that it was not rooted in ethnic or religious divisions. While admitting that there had been "severe social unrest", Villepin said the violence was on a far smaller scale than during the Los Angeles riots, in which 54 people died...

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Women who drink eight or more cups of coffee daily while pregnant are at risk for spontaneous abortion and stillbirth, Danish researchers report. In their study, they found that fetal death was twice as likely among heavy coffee drinkers relative to pregnant women who did not drink coffee. Adjusting for other risk factors weakened the association somewhat, but heavy coffee drinkers remained at 59 percent greater risk of fetal death, Dr. Bodil Hammer Bech of the University of Aarhus and colleagues report. Women who drank four to seven cups daily had a 33 percent increased...

Christians, we are often told, are easy to locate. They are the people marooned on the wrong side of history. Again and again, century after dispiriting century, they have dug in their heels against progress. In politics, the critics charge, a Christian's instinctive allegiance has been with despots and oppressors rather than democrats and liberators, with inquisitors and book burners as opposed to probing minds and pamphleteers. Christians have buttressed hierarchy against equality, patriarchy against women's rights, absolutism against individualism, and small-minded tradition against broad-minded tolerance. The most popular version of this indictment sees the whole of Western history since...

The MSM is obviously leaving something out of the stories about the NJ and VA governorships--I seem to recall reading that a Dem was in power, and is replaced by a Dem in both cases--is this true? Forgive my ignorance on the matter, but I've not seen a specific quote.

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Nearly 40 percent of U.S. adolescents who give cigarette smoking a try do so because they saw it in movies, a study said on Monday. The study, described as the first national look at the influence of movie smoking on youths, urged Hollywood to cut back on depictions of smoking or shots of cigarette brands. The industry also should consider adding a mention of smoking to movie rating data that now mention explicit sex, violence and profanity, it said. Researchers at Dartmouth Medical School asked 6,522 children aged 10 to 14 to identify films they had seen...

Watching the conservative coalition slowly unravel over the Miers nomination these past two weeks has been an extraordinarily painful experience. Despite all of the hard slogging work done by activists of various stripes over the past quarter century, the winning coalition that encompasses movement conservatives, main street Republicans, foreign policy hawks, and religious fundamentalists under one overarching banner is showing some wear and tear. Five long years of bitter partisan warfare, shocking tragedy, economic bust and boom, and a shooting war in Iraq, where the terrorists test our resolve to prevail every single day, produce a certain amount of stress....

The conservative punditocracy is spittin' mad at the President for nominating Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court. I've never seen anything like it --- rioting pundits! Ranting constitutionalists! All the big names, it seems, are agin' Ms. Miers in a unified towering rage. We've learned to expect this sort of outburst from Ted Kennedy and Moveon.org, but not the level-headed thinkers of the Right. In fact, what's really going on may resemble the rantings of the Left. It has the same quality of narcissistic entitlement. We know that Ted Kennedy always felt entitled to be President, and is still enraged...

I, Heretic By: Nick Danger · Section: Miscellania Here I am going to spout heresy. I am going to argue that the fiscal policies being followed by President George W. Bush represent a breakthrough in conservative — yes, conservative — thinking. They represent good policy; and even better strategy. I will suggest that President Bush understands money better than any President we have ever had. He understands it better than most economists. He understands it better than our illustrious pundits. President Bush understands money the way a financier understands money. He sees it as a force or a power that...

I am a High School history teacher, and today in class I spoke with my students about Katrina, and the fact that we have (and are going to have more) students from NO, and that anything we/they can do to help would be good. The Class then turned to a discussion about the "slow response" of the Fed in getting aid, and I don't want to come right out and tell them that they are "wrong" for fear of losing a learning opportunity. What should I tell them? I know that the Fed isn't responsible for the immediate plan, and...

I think it is curious that the state with the Dem for a governor is the state in chaos, while the state with a Repub gov. that was hit and hurt worse by Katrina is relatively calm. I heard about Barbour saying "You loot, we shoot," and that the police and NG have "shoot to kill" orders. Is this true? If so, Hooray for the 2nd amendment... Anyone have a link to a story?

WASHINGTON - Government-funded researchers tested AIDS drugs on hundreds of foster children over the past two decades, often without providing them a basic protection afforded in federal law and required by some states, an Associated Press review has found. ADVERTISEMENT The research funded by the National Institutes of Health spanned the country. It was most widespread in the 1990s as foster care agencies sought treatments for their HIV-infected children that weren't yet available in the marketplace. The practice ensured that foster children — mostly poor or minority — received care from world-class researchers at government expense, slowing their rate of...

NEW YORK - Former President Clinton says it's "sad" that a Republican political consultant who married his male partner is raising funds to defeat Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. But an associate says there's nothing wrong with being gay and Republican. Clinton said Monday there might be "some sort of self-loathing" for Arthur Finkelstein, the longtime GOP operative who helped Gov. George Pataki unseat Democrat Mario Cuomo in 1994. Finkelstein told The New York Times last week that he had married his partner of 40 years in Massachusetts, saying he believes "visitation rights, health care benefits and other human relationship contracts...