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A few months ago there was a really great commercial on TV for the USAF featuring a mother reading to a young child as she was getting ready for bed, and then that beautiful, poignant scene gets frozen into a small family photo that upon panning out you realize is in the corner of the cockpit of a stealth fighter patrolling the USA, obviously put there by the husband-father-pilot who is doing his duty defending us.

Short, Fat and Plain Did the Egyptian Queen's Looks Live Up to the Legend? L O N D O N, March 25 — Cleopatra, the queen of ancient Egypt, who has been portrayed on the silver screen by some of Hollywood's most beautiful women, was actually short, fat and plain, Britain's Sunday Times newspaper said. Screen sirens Elizabeth Taylor, Vivien Leigh and Sophia Loren are among those to have starred in films as the queen, who ruled Egypt in the 1st Century BC. Historians say she used her beuty to seduce Roman Emperor Julius Caesar and his leading general ...

Relatively few taxpayers now feel the bite of the alternative minimum tax, but under Bush’s proposals, their numbers will go up — and their tax savings would shrink You are already hearing lots of criticism of President Bush’s $1.6 trillion tax-cut proposal. Business wants more breaks. Democrats want to trim the proposal back. There’s a big battle brewing about whether to eliminate the estate tax. But the most severe attack on Bush’s proposal may be for one thing that it doesn’t do: repeal the alternative minimum tax (AMT). Armed with a new report from Congress’ Joint Committee on Taxation, critics ...

Feb. 8 — I’ve never been one to subscribe to the notion of the African-American community as a monolith with one leader who speaks for all. It strikes me as insulting and deeply simplistic to suggest that any group of people should or could ever agree on all things, not to mention deeply condescending to suggest that one individual is the black leader, or need be. THERE SEEMS TO be no compulsion to declare one person leader of the white people. Or the gay people, or women, or Asian-Americans, so I can’t see why we need such an individual for ...

WASHINGTON –– Though he says he doesn't do impressions, in just the past month Robert Barnett has played George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Rick Lazio in tiny but high-stakes productions. He's the Democrats' senior debate coach, the man who has helped nearly all the party's candidates in major televised debates since 1976. Barnett, a bespectacled lawyer who stays out of the spotlight, coached vice presidential candidate Joseph Lieberman and first lady-turned-Senate candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton, as well as Al Gore in one instance this year. He also has coached, among others, Walter Mondale, Geraldine Ferraro, Michael Dukakis and Bill ...

Fine-tuning a Clinton farewell Sept. 7 —  Bill Clinton was narrowly rescued from making an embarrassing blooper. When Postal Workers head Moe Biller retired recently, he was given a farewell bash that included a video in which a number of colleagues and potentates wished him well. Bill Clinton agreed to record a short statement for the video, which was played to a crowd of 3,000.          “THE WHITE HOUSE wouldn’t let West End Video [the production company that was doing the video] tape Clinton,” says one insider. “They were control freaks and very persnickety about what Clinton ...

J for Jenna The most dramatic Tribal Council to date concluded with Jeff Probst's holding up the ballot booting Jenna from Pulau Tiga. "J", Jeff said, referring directly to neurologist Sean's besieged alphabet strategy, "for Jenna." The stunned Jenna, considered by many the most openly competitive castaway on the island, watched her torch get snuffed, then sadly left the Tribal Council for home. The Rattana tribe was getting weak physically ( The Rattana Tribe discusses post-merger energy), but the politics only intensified. The ballot capped an unsuccessful attempt by Jenna and her new Barbecue Alliance to destroy the vaunted Tagi ...

Sorry for the vanity, but I am so giddy I'm practically beside myself! I called in today to talk about his theory (based on a story on pMSNBC) that Elian is not in Atlanta because Craig might be afraid that Elian, if seen in public, might not be quite rady to say and do the right things. I couldn't believe it, but I got through ("Keith" from Durham, NC) and disagreed with El Rushbo, and he complimented my diplomacy (tricky territory you know, disagreeing with Rush :-) and he gave me a free year's subscription to the newsletter! I didn't ...

Carter, Ford and Bush back normal trade with China United Press International - May 08, 2000 16:12 By HELEN THOMAS, UPI White House Reporter WASHINGTON, May 8 (UPI) -- In a letter to the American people, released by the White House, three former Presidents Monday urged Congress to grant permant normal trade relations with Beijing and to support China's admission to the World Trade Organization. Past Presidents Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford and George Bush said normal trade relations with China is "in the national interest" and would be a boon to the United States by opening China's markets to U.S. ...

XXXXX DRUDGE REPORT XXXXX WED APR 5 2000 22:26:09 ET XXXXX TED KOPPEL: ELIAN SHOULD GO ABC NEWS' Ted Koppel tells PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER's Gail Shister in Thursday runs that Elian Gonazalez should be sent back to Cuba. Says Koppel: "Legally, there's really no question he should go back to his father. Whether it's family law or immigration law, it's not even a close call. But Koppel tells Shister that the call would be tougher if the countries were involved were Iraq, China or North Korea -- but he would still send a kid back from the U.S. "because we are ...

Boy survives having heart pierced by pencil March 6, 2000 Web posted at: 6:12 PM EST (2312 GMT) HELENA, Montana (AP) -- A 12-year-old boy whose heart was pierced by a pencil as he lunged toward his bed to catch a football is recuperating after 21/2 harrowing hours of the pencil throbbing at every beat in his chest. "I kind of felt it go in, but it didn't hurt," Nathan King said from his home in Helena. "So I looked down. Then I started yelling for Mom. I was yelling 'Mom, Mom, Mom, I'm gonna die."' Crying and struggling to ...

Sorry for the vanity, but a thought occurred to me while I was reading other threads about the South Carolina Confederate flag issue. Why is it that the folks who are screaming about what the Confederate flag means to them look at us like we're a bunch of weirdos when we express visceral feelings when we see the U. N. flag flying over U.S. property?

...Many students were required to either attend the memorial or watch it on television, and are expected to write an essay on what it means to be a hero... Whole article here...

Under the terms of the mortgage, McAuliffe – a close friend of the president and his chief campaign fund-raiser – will put up $1.35 million of his own money as collateral. The Clintons will make a down payment of $350,000, drawing on money from the blind trust established at the start of their presidency.

Like many men of my generation, I had an opportunity to give war a chance, and I promptly chickened out. I went to my draft physycal in 1970 with a doctor's letter about my history of drug abuse. The letter was four and a half pages long with three and a half pages devoted to listing the drugs I'd abused. I was shunted into the office of an Army Psychiatrist who, at the end of a forty-five minute interview with me, was pounding his desk and shouting "You're f*ck*d up! You don't belong in the Army!" He was certainly right ...

I have been thinking with all this new Waco stuff going on about the exposure it seems that Janet Reno and the other operatives in the Justice Department have unleashed on themselves with the new obstruction of justice allegations. So I got to thinking about how, during the impeachment hearings, we conservatives and libertarians bragged of being principled in favoring the rule of law over polls and pop justice. Well, I have some temptation for all of you: would you support dropping the new waco investigation if Janet Reno accepted the blame and agreed to step down?

Abortion-Crime Rate Link? Unpublished Study Looks at Trends Since the ’70s The Associated Press C H I C A G O,   Aug. 8 — An unpublished study circulating among economists and criminal-law experts suggests that the legalization of abortion in the early 1970s has contributed to a drop in crime, the Chicago Tribune reported today.      Several academics and lawyers called the research compelling and provocative, but others are skeptical.      The researchers argue that many women whose children would have been most likely to commit crimes as young adults instead chose to abort their pregnancies. Because of that, ...

Shots were fired at two businesses in a suburb south of Birmingham, with at least four people wounded, some possibly fatally, and a suspect arrested, broadcast news stations reported today. The shootings occurred around 7 a.m. at Post Airgas and York Heating & Air Conditioning near Pelham. Police at Pelham planned a news conference but refused comment.

Brace yourselves folks...news breaking on abcnews.com says that Monica Lewinsky was just involved in a minor single car accident.

I haven't seen GW crying about Prince Kennedy, nor has the media been taking advantage of the awful death to put GW on TV for free, like it has for so many others...