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The Washington Post Challenge Index measures a public high school's effort to challenge its students....

The Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee wound up looking like the group of boobs that their behavior has demonstrated them to be when the vetting of the William Rusher papers elicited no mention whatsoever of Samuel Alito in connection to Concerned Alumni of Princeton or anything else that could paint him as the bigot that Democrats insinuated he was: Earlier, the panel's chairman announced that staffers had examined records of a controversial Princeton University alumni group once cited by Alito in a job application, but had found no mention of Alito. While the alumni group appeared to fizzle out...

If you think that employers' health insurance costs have gotten out of hand, that's nothing. The rhetoric about health insurance costs is what I would argue is most out of control. I think that both the Left and the Right are abusing the issue, with the Left trumpeting it as a rationale for national health insurance and the Right buying into the notion that employer-provided health insurance is a major competitive disadvantage for U.S. companies See full article for examples and analysis. http://www.techcentralstation.com/102705B.html

NEW YORK (Nov. 20, 1776) – The grieving mother of an American soldier killed in action during the recent failed defense of Fort Washington is demanding an audience with Gen. George Washington. “George is the biggest butcher on the face of the earth,” Mrs. Ima Benedict declared to a throng of nearly 25 Loyalist pamphleteers and newspapermen. About 30 fellow protestors on a street corner on the upper west side of Manhattan joined Mrs. Benedict today at what has been dubbed “Camp Arnold” by supporters of Mrs. Benedict’s cause. The group held aloft homemade placards reading “No Blood For Representation,”...

If you want to know everything wrong with the 9/11 Commission in a single sound bite, consider this from Al Felzenberg, its official spokesman, speaking Wednesday: ''There was no way that Atta could have been in the United States at that time, which is why the staff didn't give this tremendous weight when they were writing the report. This information was not meshing with the other information that we had.''

IT is not just mad sheiks who are rewarding youngsters who dream up fantasies of evil Americans and heroic suicide bombers. Our taxpayer-funded Adult Multicultural Education Services does the same, funding a writer's prize for a schoolgirl's essay on blowing up American soldiers. Mad, I know. But multiculturalism does mess with minds like that. I won't mention the name of the self-described "South African Kiwi" girl who has just won the junior short story competition at the annual City of Greater Dandenong Adult Migrant Education Services awards, sponsored by AMES. The Government pays AMES, which it set up, to run...

In rooms less than 25 feet apart, Young's 27-year-old son and Saviano's 48-year-old daughter are near the end. Like Terri Schiavo, the woman who died here about two months ago, they will live out their final hours in Hospice House Woodside. "I can't believe this is happening to me," says Saviano, tears welling up, learning firsthand what hospice is when it isn't on the television, when it isn't in the courts. Two months after the Schiavo case exposed an entire nation to one family's bitter battle with death, the hospice has returned to its normal rhythms. In the past 60...

Suspicions about Islam after Sept. 11 have given rise to resentment, fear and violence in Europe. But in the U.S., which has welcomed Muslims with its freedoms and opportunities, a more tolerant, open Islam is emerging – and setting an example for the rest of the world, says writer REIHAN SALAM. Because the majority of Muslim Americans emigrated from repressive countries, and because they've been welcomed with open arms, there is a pervasive sense of gratitude for American freedoms and a belief that any political grievances ought to be addressed at the ballot box. Law enforcement is seen not as...

The courtroom was mostly empty Monday, Jan. 24, 2000. The quiet wasn't remarkable that morning, but five years later, the quiet is what I hear. A handful of Terri Schiavo's immediate family members and a few close friends sat in the first few dark wooden benches. I was the only reporter there. There were no cameras, no curious spectators, no protesters. Nobody accused Michael Schiavo of abuse. Nobody appealed to the Pope. Nobody proclaimed that Terri was trying to talk. No politicians were grandstanding, no special interest groups were shouting, nobody was invoking God's will. The once-close family had battled...

Hunter S. Thompson died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound at his home in Woody Creek on Sunday night. He was 67.

The investigation of a Citrus County couple accused of torturing five children is beginning to reveal a large family that managed for years to avoid the scrutiny of state and school officials. Authorities say John and Linda Dollar used a cattle prod, a hammer, pliers, a vise and starvation to punish five of the eight children in their care. But why did no one notice? Continued in article....about them and their arrest.

Best speeches Ronald Reagan, 1981 "In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem. From time to time, we have been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. But if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else?" His speech signaled a moment of change and spelled out a political philosophy. John F. Kennedy, 1961 "And so, my fellow Americans: ask not...

It is time for this blog's second annual review of the performance of the Los Angeles Times, which is known to Patterico readers as the Los Angeles Dog Trainer. ... Documenting a whole year's worth of this paper's distortions, omissions, and misrepresentations is a Herculean undertaking -- much like when Hercules cleaned a year's worth of manure out of a barn in a single day. The parallels are striking indeed. In fact, because there is too much material here to put in a single blog post,...

A reader writes in..... I'm an atheist, but I celebrate Christmas. I believe the holiday season is also about taking the time to remember family and friends, help those less fortunate a appreciate the good around us. My children love the magical story of Santa Claus, and sometimes we just need the calendar to tell us to take a breather from our harried lives and gather those dear to us. Do you think I'm a hypocrite for celebrating what for most people is a religious holiday? - Terenne James, Richmond VA Reply from Marilyn- No, I don't. I think your...

<p>When John Kerry (news - web sites) talks about the economy, he invariably focuses on the anemic employment gains of the past two years. As anyone who has struggled to find work knows, jobs have been the key missing ingredient in an otherwise-healthy economic expansion.</p>

And don't miss continual updates and fact checking in real time on Noted Now on ABCNEWS.com.

Excerpts.... The Kerry end is near? At this precise time every four years, the most media-savvy members of the Gang of 500 begin to think about their roles in the premiere post-election forum that revisits the actions and players of the presidential race. But if nothing changes in the race as it now stands — with President Bush winning a decent-sized victory — much of the talk will be about the greater technical proficiency of the Bush-Cheney effort.Democrats, who deny up and down that they had anything to do with the documents, tell ABC News that they plan to continue...

Do the arguments in this paper not hold true for Bush as they did for Clinton? WMD being irrelevant.Somalia In the meantime, after consultations between the Clinton Presidency and U.N. Secretary- General Boutros Butros-Ghali (but not between President Clinton and the U.S. Congress), an important policy decision had been made and was in the process of being carried out. This was the decision to transform the Somalia operation from a limited intervention with a humanitarian objective (distributing food to the starving Somalis) into an overly ambitious and totally unrealistic plan for "nation-building"--a plan for forcibly imposing national unity on the...

******The Growing Scandal Surrounding Kevin Shelly The financial scandal involving Secretary of State Kevin Shelly is growing ominous. First, an investigation by the San Francisco Chronicle revealed that as Assembly Majority Leader, Shelly had sponsored a $500,000 grant to a non-profit foundation run by Shelly political associates for the construction of a community center in San Francisco that was never built. That foundation made payments for highly questionable purposes to certain individuals whom within days made uniform $25,000 contributions to the Shelly for Secretary of State campaign in 2002. Now comes word from the San Jose Mercury News that Shelly...

Doesn't appear this has been posted on FR for discussion? The proposed 2004 is located in PDF form here http://www.dems2004.org/atf/cf/{59B09D55-4544-4D5F-965C-8DBD20B51054}/Platform%202004%20-%20by%20Comm%20(2).pdf For comparison, the 2000 platform is located here http://www.democrats.org/about/2000platform.html