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The Student Activities Office has officially “postponed” the Ayers event for later this month. I have been informed that the invitation to Ayers has been rescinded and will not be renewed. Amazingly, Ayers was invited to speak to the student body on leadership.

His relationship with Sen. Barack Obama has become a major theme of the McCain campaign. The alleged domestic terrorist continues to avoid the media. His background with a 1960's domestic terror group, the Weather Underground, has been recounted in hundreds of news articles. His words could add to the evidence that debunks the claims Obama was "palling around with terrorists." But Bill Ayers is staying mum, and working hard to duck reporters and the campaign spotlight in the final week before the election.

As the CBS Evening News put it, "all eyes were on Fred Thompson today." CBS (Cordes) added, "Thompson was able to garner more attention in recent months by ducking debates than by participating in them, but that changed today. It also increased the spotlight on today's performance. With nothing less than his candidacy on the line, there may have been some initial jitters." CBS (and much of the rest of video oriented media) showed a faltering Thompson try to answer the very first question: "I see no reason to believe we're headed for. For an economic downturn." But "soon enough,"...

I WAS standing just down from the radio station 3RRR at ... in Melbourne when my phone rang.... I flipped open the batphone ... and found out that Steve Irwin was dead. I swore loudly as the moment fused, possibly forever, into memory. Something similar happened millions of times over in this country alone. Perhaps hundreds of millions of times across the world. You almost certainly remember exactly what you were doing when you heard. ... Not everyone is mourning, however. ... ... Germaine Greer pulled on her redundant fright mask and charged into print to bitchslap and rake at...

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Several concerts on the Dixie Chicks' "Accidents & Accusations" tour have been canceled after slow ticket sales, but the group says it has replaced them with other dates. Kansas City, Houston, St. Louis, Memphis and Knoxville are among 14 cities no longer on the original schedule released in May, according to a revised itinerary posted Thursday on the Dixie Chick's Web site. Other shows, including Nashville, Los Angeles, Denver and Phoenix, have been pushed back to later dates. The North American leg of the tour kicked off July 21 in Detroit. Billboard magazine and other trade publications...

Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters, who inspired the rock band's iconic album "The Wall," scrawled "tear down the wall" on the concrete panels of Israel's West Bank barrier on Wednesday. The barrier was the first stop on a visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories for Waters, who had been criticized by some fans for planning to play a concert in Israel. "It's a horrific edifice, this thing," Waters told reporters as he stood beside a section of the barrier in Bethlehem. "I've seen pictures of it, I've heard a lot about it but without being here you can't imagine...

Washington, D.C. (CNSNews.com) - U.S. Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts on Tuesday told an audience at the liberal Take Back America conference that he was sorry for voting to authorize the war in Iraq, calling the entire mission "a mistake." "We were misled, we were given evidence that was not true," Kerry said. "It was wrong, and I was wrong to vote [for it]." Kerry, who led an unsuccessful bid for the presidency in 2004, said it was necessary to admit mistakes because "you cannot change the future if you''re not honest about the past." He criticized supporters of the...

Washington diary: Too close to Bill? By Matt Frei BBC News, Washington Pity those living in the shadow of Bill Clinton! It has taken one former partner six years to find a natural voice and excavate a sense of humour lurking under layers of insecurity starched with campaign caution. Today the body language looks less robotic and the passionate kisses less stagey. The comparisons with Bill are no longer immediate and damning. I am talking about Al Gore, of course. Remember him? Al Gore, the former vice president, who now describes himself with a chuckle as "the man who used...

Movie-maker OLIVER STONE has blasted media groups who "slander" celebrities for their political comments - because intelligent stars have every right to question their leaders. The Vietnam veteran, who is a fierce opponent of the US leadership, is appalled every time a celebrity is rudely mocked for making his or her thoughts about PRESIDENT GEORGE W BUSH and the war in Iraq public, and he urges journalists to be more supportive. The NATURAL BORN KILLERS director says, "We're Hollywood wackos and all that stuff, left-wing... (It's) an easy and facile dismissal. "I'm still a citizen, I've served my country as...

Stone Offers Kisses for Mideast Peace 1 hour, 17 minutes ago TEL AVIV, Israel - Sharon Stone is ready to do her part for Mideast peace: The "Basic Instinct" actress said Wednesday she "would kiss just about anybody" to end the Israel-Arab conflict. She arrived in Israel on Tuesday for a five-day trip sponsored by the Peres Center for Peace, founded by Nobel Peace laureate Shimon Peres in 1996 to improve relations with Arabs. It's her first visit to the Holy Land. Stone, joined by Peres at a news conference, said she couldn't solve the ongoing conflict between Israel and...

MADONNA has urged US citizens to turn against President GEORGE W BUSH over his failure to provide adequate aid for the victims of Hurricane Katrina in August (05). The HUNG UP singer was "devastated" when MICHAEL MOORE's documentary FAHRENHEIT 9/11 didn't stop Bush winning the 2004 election and insists America must now realise his incompetence. She says, "I was just frigging devastated, It was a real sad day. I don't get how people can have all these facts and still turn away from them. "9/11 was too ambiguous. You couldn't prove how the government was somehow in on the deal....

Spike Lee is to produce and direct a documentary about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina for HBO, Variety reports. Provisionally entitled When the Levee Broke, early indications suggest it will continue Lee's tradition of polemical films addressing the US's fraught race relations. Lee has never been one to shy away from controversy, with films such as Do The Right Thing, about a race riot in Brooklyn; Jungle Fever, taking a contentious look at mixed-race love affairs, and his eponymous Malcolm X biopic. When the Levee Broke is currently waiting to go into production while Lee completes work on thriller The...

Bette Midler struck one of the few sour notes at last night's Madison Square Garden benefit for Hurricane Katrina victims when she made a joke about President Bush. "I know George Bush. . . . I met him in the 1970s through his coke dealer," she said. The crowd booed the not-so-divine Ms. M for the quip.

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (Sept. 9) - Al Gore helped airlift some 270 Katrina evacuees on two private charters from New Orleans, acting at the urging of a doctor who saved the life of the former vice president's son.Gore criticized the Bush administration's slow response to Katrina in a speech Friday in San Francisco, but refused to be interviewed about the mercy missions he financed and flew on Sept. 3 and 4. However, Dr. Anderson Spickard, who is Gore's personal physician and accompanied him on the flights, said: "Gore told me he wanted to do this because like all of us he...

Best selling author Erica Jong was booed and told to 'Shut Up!' and 'Go Home!" during her 40 minute commencement address at the College of Staten Island.A little less than halfway through her graduation speech, some graduated began tossing around an inflatable beach volleyball. Some even got up from their chairs, just yards from the podium, to go chat with friends and family who were seated behind them.Ms. Jong, best known for her 1973 novel 'Fear of Flying' continued unfazed. She continued to speak as if everyone was listening attentively. 'Politicans speak the opposite of what they mean. They say...

Hey, you suckups to the twice selected Idiot in chief. Let me make a suggestion. Why don't you give the ultimate sacrifice to your Supreme Court/Diebold selected dunce? Why don't you sign up to go to Iraq and die for him? Your efforts won't go unappreciated either. I'll be sure and nominate all who do for Darwin awards.

Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) is using a database of contact information for about 3 million voters that he compiled during his presidential campaign to position himself for another White House run in 2008. Democratic insiders say that Kerry’s unprecedented direct access to so many current and onetime supporters is a huge advantage heading into the next Democratic presidential primary. But his greatest strength, the experience of winning his party’s nomination last year, is also his greatest weakness, as many former supporters became disillusioned by his loss to President Bush and now blame him for losing a race they believe should...

Mike Tyson is making a comeback . . . again. Last Tuesday he announced that he would fight Kevin McBride at the MCI Center in Washington, DC on June 11. “I feel pretty well,” says Tyson. “My leg’s pretty much healed and I’m looking forward to the fight and starting my career again.” The title of the fight, “Redemption,” is nothing new, a tired retread of a tired retread. Only two things make this fight any different than the other gazillion chances boxing fans have given Tyson: 1) The bout will be held in the Capitol City and Tyson has...

Madonna To Play Transvestite Candy Darling[Friday, February 18th, 2005]Madonna is said to play transvestite Candy Darling in Untitled: Maddona Candy Darling Project, according to The Sun. Darling starred in a series of Andy Warhol's experimental films in the 1960s. She was the inspiration behind the Velvet Underground classic Candy Says and Lou Reed's solo hit Walk On The Wild Side. A source told the paper: "Madonna has been desperate to make a film where she can earn respect for her acting abilities. "She is still trying to shake off the bad publicity from the movie Swept Away. She sees...

Steve Sailer and others have developed lists of factors that appear to correlate fairly strongly with voting patterns in the most recent Presidential election and prior ones (white birth rates, among them). The February 2005 edition of Chicago Magazine (not yet online at www. chicagomagazine.com) offers a new insight. The tens states (including the District of Columbia ) with the highest ratio of psychologists per 100,000 residents, were, with the exception of Colorado, all blue states which supported John Kerry (D.C, Vermont, Minnesota, Massachusetts, New York, Colorado, Illinois, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania, in rank order from one to...