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It's a great question: why don't we have enough armor? Kind of like it's great to see a contestant win a lot of money on a game show - but it's a LOT better when it's not manufactured. Fixed. Staged. Chroreographed. Whatever you want to call it, the news is always better when the reporter doesn't insert himself into the mix, as Edward Pitts has supposedly done. According to Drudge: From: EDWARD LEE PITTS, MILITARY AFFAIRS Sent: Wednesday, December 8, 2004 4:44 PM To: Staffers Subject: RE: Way to go I just had one of my best days as a...

Text of press release from the office of Rep. Joe Pitts:Washington -- Congressman Joe Pitts (R, PA-16) called S. 2845 National Intelligence Reform Act of 2004 good, but incomplete. The legislation, modeled after the recommendations made by the 9/11 Commission, outlines an overhaul of the U.S. intelligence community. Congressman Pitts opposed the bill which passed the House this evening. He issued the following statement outlining his concerns with the bill. "The purpose of this bill was to enact the 9/11 Commission's most important recommendations," said Congressman Pitts. "The House version did just that, and I voted for it. This House-Senate...

Let me share with you the daydream that gets me through to Friday. I retire. I move to a house on a wooded acre from which I cannot see my nearest neighbor. My new house has a media room with a state-of-the-art sound system and plush recliners. When I am not there, I am lounging on the screened-in porch out back, watching the river travel past. Swell as all that is, here is what makes the daydream lovely: There are no children in the house. They have all grown up and moved away. Oh, I love them to death; don't...

Dan Rather introduced the June 15 CBS Evening News profile by relating how Pitts "talked one on one with Theresa Heinz-Kerry and her one of a kind take on life and politics." Pitts began his glowing profile: "She is both rich and reachable." Heinz-Kerry in a classroom with pre-schoolers: "I'd like to be a dog. Wouldn't you like to be a dog? I would. Dogs are friendly." Pitts: "Teresa Heinz-Kerry is one of the wealthiest women in the world, worth an estimated $500 million. She is not easily defined." Pitts to Heinz-Kerry, as two sit in chairs in an ornate...

John Kerry appeared on Monday's Good Morning America on ABC to respond to a story from ABC's Brian Ross about how, in contradiction to what he's maintained since, he stated in a 1971 interview that during a protest his threw away his own medals from the Vietnam War, but instead of making Kerry's very contentious interview with Charles Gibson or his credibility the focus of the day's news, ABC and the other networks painted Kerry's post- Vietnam War actions as an unfair burden and/or Kerry as a victim of unfair attacks from pro-Bush political operatives. With "Kerry's Dilemma" as the...

A few words about race, justice and Marcus Dixon. Hundreds of people rallied last week in Atlanta, hoping to persuade the Georgia Supreme Court, which is considering an appeal filed on his behalf, to set Dixon free. Meanwhile, he sits in a cell in a Georgia penitentiary, serving a 15-year sentence for statutory rape and aggravated child molestation. Prosecutors say the crime stems from the fact that last year when he was 18, Dixon had sex with a girl who was three months shy of 16. But critics say the true ''crime,'' in the eyes of a Deep South justice...

quot;Violence,quot; said Isaac Asimov, quot;is the last refuge of the incompetent.quot; In a democratic society, this is certainly so. Democratic government depends on the rule of reason rather than the rule of force, and whenever one side of a political issue resorts to violence rather than persuasion to gain its way, democratic government begins to collapse.But there is a warning sign just before a society gets to the violence stage. The political conversation changes tone. Words cease to be tools of reason and become weapons. And then we get the next to the last refuge of the incompetent: the sneer.Now...