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President Bush's advisers are resigned to the Democratic capture of the White House in 2008, according to senior Republican sources close to the White House. GOP sources said White House strategists have attempted to persuade Mr. Bush that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, New York Democrat and her party’s current front-runner to be the next presidential nominee, cannot be defeated in 2008. Bush strategists said the president should instead focus on seeking to retain the Republican majority in both houses of Congress in 2006 and 2008. "There is nobody in the White House that will openly say we lost the presidency...

17,000 blinded by fags By EMMA MORTON MORE than 17,000 Britons have gone blind because they SMOKE, it was revealed yesterday.  The shock statistic shows the link between fags and sight loss is as strong as that between cigs and lung cancer.The cigarettes cause a form of blindness called Age-Related Macular Degeneration, known as AMD.Smoke destroys cells in an area at the back of the eye named the macular. And smokers do not absorb nutrients from food essential for good eyesight.Cigarette puffers are four times more likely to develop AMD or lung cancer than those who shun the weed. And...

The United States now has a mercenary army. To be sure, our soldiers are hired from within the citizenry, unlike the hated Hessians whom George III recruited to fight against the American Revolutionaries. But like those Hessians, today's volunteers sign up for some mighty dangerous work largely for wages and benefits.... Neither the idealism nor the patriotism of those who serve is in question here. The profession of arms is a noble calling, and there is no shame in wage labor. But the fact remains that the United States today has a military force that is extraordinarily lean and lethal,...

It feels good to put a scar on the face of the enemy, it should feel better when You know the enemy is not coming back. I reckon I should just shut up, before I rock the boat, and get a ruckus going. If I had good sense, that is what I would do, but, it is beyond Me. I don't have a clue what I will do, but it damn sure won't be nothing. Goodnight!

On Tuesday, May 10, 2005, America became a true police state. Your U.S. senators voted -- unanimously, with no discussion, and without even reading the bill -- to create a national ID card. The Real ID Act blackmails state governments into turning their drivers licenses into a draconian tool of the federal homeland security apparatus. If states refuse, their citizens lose such "privileges" as being allowed to board an airplane, enter a federal building, or apply for social security. President Bush is expected to sign the bill eagerly on Thursday. In three years -- by May 2008 -- this Stalin-style...

Guest Column: Semantics might have kept us out of Iraqi sand trap Erik Williams Opinion TALK AMARILLO "The seeds of liberty and freedom have been planted in the desert, and watered with the blood of martyrs, and in what tyranny once made waste, the flower of democracy shall bloom." It has been two years since an autocrat threatened the peace of the world. He brazenly challenged the United Nations, defied the great powers with rude ambition and naked aggression, kept his citizens in thrall to his arrogant will, deceived and manipulated the international community, and endangered the freedoms and liberties...

In ever increasing numbers, gun owners in this country have, by their actions, said to government: You are my master, all rights flow from you, I bow down before you and will beg, no, even pay for your permission to have my firearms. I have watched this occur here in my home state of New Mexico since January of this year, although it has been happening in many other states over the past decade or so.Let me draw an analogy for you, if I may. Let’s say robbers beset your town. They are becoming more and more brazen in...

Does Hollywood use schools and teachers to pimp movies to young children? I suspect that they do. We already know that companies provide schools with products and supplies in exchange for in-class advertising and promotion. The following is a true story. (Although, in writing this, I have undoubtedly improved upon the grammar of the responses I received from the children.) Yesterday, I was talking to a friend's third-grade daughter about her school curriculum. I asked her what she was studying this week. "The Greeks," she said. I asked further, "Why are you studying the Greeks and what are you learning...

<p>Orange County supervisors have learned firsthand what so many California property owners have learned by experience: The California Coastal Commission, the state agency that oversees coastal development, exerts near-dictatorial powers.</p> <p>On Dec. 16, the county board voted 3-0, with two supervisors absent, to begin emergency clearing of willow trees, overgrown vegetation, old shopping carts and other gunk that is gumming up San Diego Creek near the UC Irvine campus to prevent possible flooding.</p>

Upset by videos used during a sexuality class at the University of Kansas, the state Senate passed a bill that would withhold $3 million in funding to the school. The bill, passed Wednesday on a 24-13 vote, requires public universities to ban the purchase of such "obscene" material or lose funding for the offending department. The measure, an amendment to the state budget proposal, targets a popular class taught for 20 years by award-winning professor Dennis Dailey. Republican Sen. Susan Wagle said she offered the amendment after learning about the class from a student. She told colleagues that during the...

ICONOCLAST DAILY NOTEBOOK.... Poets Against War Are Such A Bore... February 11, 2003: In case you didn't know it, tomorrow is 'Poets Against War' Day. We can't tell you how excited we are around here about the prospect of poets all around America gathering to read their works "as a powerful statement of public and collective resistance to the Bush administration's drive toward war in Iraq." Those nasty warmongers, George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld, must be quaking in their boots -- especially at the thought of tomorrow's special reading from the Poets Against the War Anthology in Lafayette Park,...

William Grim's AMERICA WATCH I'M NOT A POLITICAL SCIENTIST, BUT I PLAY ONE ON TV by William GrimIconoclast Contributing Editor (www.iconoclast.ca) Lost among all the idle chatter about the War on Terror and the Beltway snipers has been an announcement that is more important than anything so far in history. We're talking Second Coming, the Eagle has landed, "Dr. Livingston, I presume" importance. Christina Aguilera, the Nordic-looking Latina pop star, announced last week that she "enjoys sex." I don't know about you, but my life was completely changed by Ms. Aguilera's announcement. For you see, for many years I have...

When McVeigh smiled a content grin before he was killed, could it be it was because he knew 9/11 was coming. It was a grin saying I know something you don't. Thoughts?

Click at your own riskKUTZTOWN - Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright accused the Bush administration Wednesday of taking a "hands-off approach" to the Middle East. Speaking at Kutztown University, Albright said the United States must take a more proactive role in Mideast peace in the wake of the Palestinian suicide bombers and Israeli retaliation in the past few weeks. In her remarks, Albright was also quick to criticize the Bush administration for not picking up the peace process where the Clinton administration had left off. "I think it requires a higher level (of involvement) than the president...