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BEIRUT (AFP) – Hezbollah on Friday slammed "interference" in Lebanese affairs by UN envoy Terje Roed-Larsen and warned that its arsenal was off-limits after the diplomat accused militias of creating tension in Lebanon. "Hezbollah condemns this attempt to create dissent and sedition among the Lebanese under the guise of advice and guidance," the Shiite militant party said in a statement. "Roed-Larsen's continuous attempts to interfere in Lebanese affairs and incite the Lebanese to fight one another are unacceptable for an international official working for peace in the region," it said. On Thursday the UN envoy had warned of the need...

MINNEAPOLIS, MN – A citizen activist group antagonistic to the political goals of the Tea Party movement has nonetheless indicated a willingness to converse. In what may be characterized as “the sincerest form of flattery,” video documentarian Annabel Park weeks ago created the “Coffee Party Movement.” Despite its relatively brief existence, it has already garnered significant media attention, most notably in recent articles by the New York Times and Washington Post. Over the weekend, an open letter was addressed to Park by a member of the Tea Party movement (this writer) welcoming “civility and inclusiveness in political discourse,” a nod...

The Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility has begun an inquiry into the dismissal in May of a civil complaint against the New Black Panther Party and two of its members who disrupted a Philadelphia polling place during last year's presidential elections. The inquiry was disclosed in an Aug. 28 letter to Rep. Lamar Smith, ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee who first raised questions about the case's dismissal and asked Attorney General Eric H. Holder, Jr., to make available the head of the department's Voting Section for a closed-door briefing about the decision. In the letter, Mary Patrice...

OAKLAND -- State and Bay Area labor leaders met behind closed doors Friday with BART transit union officials to try to avert a Monday morning strike.... Hard-line tactic The 900-member Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1555 announced Thursday it would strike after the BART Board of Directors unilaterally imposed a contract on its members that included a de facto 7 percent pay cut. BART directors took the hard-line stance after the union rejected a negotiated contract offer on Monday that would have saved the transit agency $38 million in labor costs.... Eight years ago...Bay Area political leaders intervened to craft a...

TEHRAN, Iran – Iran has accused the United States of "intolerable" meddling in its internal affairs, alleging for the first time that Washington has fueled a bitter post-election dispute. A state television channel in Iran says the government summoned the Swiss ambassador, who represents U.S. interests in Iran, to complain about American interference. The two countries broke off diplomatic relations after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. An English-language state-run channel quoted the government as calling Western interference "intolerable."

"The one thing that I want to insist on is that, as I travel around the country, the American people are a decent people. Now they get confused sometimes. You know, they listen to the wrong talk radio shows or watch the wrong TV networks, um, but they’re, they’re basically decent, they’re basically sound." - Barack Obama, speaking at a Planned Parenthood rally

McCain Responds to Obama's Reported Undermining of the Commander-In-Chief During Wartime [Andy McCarthy] The McCain Campaign has issued a statement responding to the report from Amer Taheri (see today's web briefing) that Sen. Obama secretly negotiated with the Iraqi government regarding U.S. withdrawal from Iraq. McCain spokesman Randy Scheunemann stated as follows: At this point, it is not yet clear what official American negotiations Senator Obama tried to undermine with Iraqi leaders, but the possibility of such actions is unprecedented. It should be concerning to all that he reportedly urged that the democratically-elected Iraqi government listen to him rather than...

The leader of the U.S. House of Representatives, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, toured Jerusalem holy sites Saturday alongside a congressional delegation that included Democratic Rep. Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress. The tour was part of the congressional delegation's first full day in Jerusalem, the first stop on their fact-finding trip to the Middle East. The group arrived Friday. Flanked by security guards, Pelosi and the delegation toured the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, where Christians believe Jesus' body was buried, in Jerusalem's Old City. They also visited the Western Wall, the holiest site in Judaism, where Jews have...

WASHINGTON, Feb. 14, 2007 – An influx of Iranian weapons and munitions into Iraq amounts to a “major force-protection issue,” a senior coalition official in Iraq said today. Army Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, a Multinational Force Iraq spokesman, told a group of online journalists that Iranian interference in Iraq, particularly the export of deadly “explosively formed penetrator” components and technology, must be made public after diplomatic and military efforts to deter the practice had been unsuccessful. “We’re going to go public, talk about this and acknowledge it,” Caldwell said. “We need these actions to stop.” Attributing much of the...

WASHINGTON, Feb. 2, 2007 – The United States has no plans to go to war with Iran, but it won’t tolerate Iranian activities that are endangering U.S. troops in Iraq, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates told reporters today during a Pentagon news conference. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, left, and Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, speak with reporters at a Pentagon roundtable briefing, Feb. 2. Defense Dept. photo by Cherie A. Thurlby  '(Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. “The president has made clear, the secretary of state has made clear, I’ve made clear...

     Too weird to be coincidence. This afternoon while listening to the radio, the broadcast was interrupted by a trasmission of someone speaking a foreign language. My thought, 'I don't think that's quite Spanish. Is that Arabic?' Went back to work around the house and forgot about it.      This evening, an acquaintence called to tell me about something odd that happened to them. They made a phone call, and when the other party picked up and said hello, the call was interrupted by someone speaking in a foreign language. "I didn't think it quite sounded like Spanish. I don't know if...

Who would have imagined such a thing ? Voting machines supplied by sock puppets for Hugo Chavez don't function properly ? An "onslaught" on the polling places in Philadelphia ? (Had Republicans been behind this , your TV sets would have exploded by now !)

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - U.S. Ambassador John Bolton said on Friday that negotiators were on the verge of an agreement on a draft resolution calling for a cease-fire between Israel and Lebanon's Hizbollah. "We are now very, very close to agreement and our aspiration to have a vote at the end of the afternoon remains," Bolton told reporters. More than 1,000 Lebanese and 121 Israelis have been killed in the five-week-old war. Throughout Thursday, negotiators believed they had achieved a breakthrough. But the deal came apart when Beirut rejected deployment of additional U.N. troops under Chapter 7 of the U.N....

In a startling report revealing a tale of transatlantic espionage not witnessed since the glory days of 007, the London-based Financial Times recently detailed how Britain, supposedly America’s closest European ally, has been leading a multi-year European undercover ('back-door') effort within the United States to undermine U.S. climate change policy. While this is not surprising, it does smack of interference with another nation's policies. It also happens to confirm prior ITSSD research, readily accessible on its website.

Maricopa County Attorney Andrew P. Thomas in Phoenix accuses Mexico of being behind a lawsuit challenging Arizona's alien-smuggling law. He has asked the State Department to protest Mexico's "concerted attempts to undermine" U.S. law and its "interfering in the internal affairs" of Arizona. "The citizens of the state of Arizona will be deprived of their right to uphold public order and to protect themselves against the Mexican government's systematic, unlawful export of humanity into the state," Mr. Thomas told The Washington Times...

Digital radio receivers without government-approved copy-prevention technology likely would become illegal to sell in the future, according to new federal legislation announced Thursday. Rep. Mike Ferguson, a New Jersey Republican, said his bill--which would enforce a so-called "broadcast flag" for digital and satellite audio receivers--was necessary to protect the music industry from the threat of piracy....

American interference in elections? Washington has asked the Palestinians to delay the formation of a Hamas-led government until after the March 28 general elections in Israel for fears that the Islamic group’s effective control of Palestinian affairs might weaken Kadima’s showing in the poll. According to the London-based Arabic daily al-Quds al-Arabi, David Welch, the U.S. Envoy for Near Eastern Affairs, told leader Mahmoud Abbas on a visit last week that Washington wishes to see the formation of a Hamas-led government delayed. Under Palestinian law, Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’ designated prime minister, has five weeks to form a government since Abbas...

Closing the Temecula and San Clemente checkpoints would improve the Border Patrol's chances of catching undocumented immigrants and seizing illegal drugs, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Vista, said Monday. But Border Patrol officials said the interior checkpoints take criminals and illegal drugs off local streets while deterring smugglers from using major highways. Traffic issues at the San Clemente and Temecula checkpoints stretch back a decade.In 2000, the Temecula checkpoint came under similar fire from motorists, who reported delays of about 30 minutes. The issue came to a head in 2004 when agents caused a 25-mile back up on New Year's Eve. In...

The recent release of Justice Harry A. Blackmun's private Supreme Court case files has starkly illuminated an embarrassing problem that previously was discussed only in whispers among court insiders and aficionados: the degree to which young law clerks, most of them just two years out of law school, make extensive, highly substantive and arguably inappropriate contributions to the decisions issued in their bosses' names. Even Roe vs. Wade, Blackmun's most famous decision, which legalized abortion nationwide in 1973, owed lots of its language and much of its breadth to his clerks and the clerks of other justices. A decade later,...

PARIS - All that gourmet food, coupled with those slim waistlines, has long stood as one of the wonders of France. No more. France is getting fat and some lawmakers are worried. On Tuesday, a Socialist deputy filed a proposal to attack the problem through legislation. Lawmaker Jean-Marie Le Guen said he wants to make the fight against fatness a "veritable goal of public health." According to Le Guen, 11-12 percent of young children are obese. He said the figure was expected to rise to 20 percent within two decades. The 10-article text of the proposal filed with the National...