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irritatedNow Playing: LIBTARD MEDIA BULLSHIT ALERT
Topic: Lib Loser Stories
'Arizona Daily Star' Drops Ann Coulter's 'Shrill' Column
NEW YORK - The Arizona Daily Star in Tucson has had enough of conservative commentator Ann Coulter.
In a column announcing a wide range of changes in the paper's opinion pages Monday, Editor and Publlisher David Stoeffler revealed that the paper was dropping Coulter's syndicated column.
"Many readers find her shrill, bombastic, and mean-spirited. And those are the words used by readers who identified themselves as conservatives," the recently appointed Stoeffler wrote.
One recent example of Coulter's controversial approach was in her Aug. 10 column. She wrote: "(T)he savages have declared war, and it's far preferable to fight them in the streets of Baghdad than in the streets of New York -- where the residents would immediately surrender."
Coulter's conservative column is distributed weekly by Universal Press Syndicate.
Taking her place in the Star will be the Creators Syndicate column by fellow conservative Tony Snow, host of "The Tony Snow Show" on Fox News Radio and "Weekend Live With Tony Snow" on the Fox News Channel. He has also worked for several newspapers.
Stoeffler's piece also mentioned other changes in the Star's opinion pages, including smaller photos and cartoons to make room for longer columns and more letters.
Stoeffler has been at the paper just nine weeks. He said the paper had received about 300 e-mails on a recent re-design, and many were negative. So the Star is shifting back to "more words" and a less fancy design.
For one thing, the cartoons by David Fitzsimmons will now run smaller, freeing up room for another columnist.
"Running a newspaper is something like building a three-legged stool," Stoeffler explained. "We need to understand and satisfy a broad audience. Through a combination of market research and regular contact, we come to know what readers want."
Editor & Publisher.com ** 'Arizona Daily Star' Drops Ann Coulter's 'Shrill' Column
Posted by uhyw
at 7:59 PM EDT
Updated: Tuesday, August 30, 2005 12:49 AM EDT
silly
Dems to Question Roberts on Torture Memo
WASHINGTON - Democrats plan to question Supreme Court nominee John Roberts about a disavowed Justice Department memo that critics say led to torture in foreign prisons, top Senate Judiciary Democrat Patrick Leahy of Vermont said Monday.
Leahy said he gave Roberts a copy of the so-called "Bybee memo" during a meeting Monday in the Senate's Russell office building. It was the second meeting between the two men since July, when President Bush nominated Roberts to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.
Then-Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee argued in a Jan. 22, 2002, memo that the president has the power to issue orders that violate the Geneva Conventions as well as international and U.S. laws prohibiting torture.
"It will be raised, partly on the question of to what area _ if any _ can a president be considered above the law," Leahy told reporters.
The meeting came as the National Archives released more documents from Roberts' time as a government lawyer in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations. In one document, Roberts suggested that a conservative supporter of President Reagan "go soak his head" after he criticized the White House for avoiding a friend's fight with immigration officials.
In other documents, Roberts pushed the Reagan administration to get its conservative policies enacted so future presidents could not readily overturn them. And he showed displeasure with the federal judiciary, saying the Justice Department needs to get legal solutions "less dependent on the fiat of unelected jurists."
Bybee, who is now a federal judge on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, wrote the now disavowed memo soon after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.
Critics in Congress and many legal experts say the original document set up a legal framework that led to abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, in Afghanistan and at the U.S. prison camp for terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The White House says the United States has always operated under the spirit of the Geneva Conventions that prohibit violence, torture and humiliating treatment of prisoners of war.
Leahy said he wanted Roberts to have the memo so he would be prepared for questions at his confirmation hearings, which start Sept. 6. "I don't think a Supreme Court hearing is a game of gotcha," he said. "I'd really like to know what he thinks."
Leahy said he would continue to push the White House to release all of Roberts' documents and memos from his time as deputy solicitor general under the first President Bush and as an assistant to the White House counsel and the attorney general under President Reagan.
Reagan-era documents showed that Roberts, then working as an assistant to White House counsel Fred Fielding in 1984, had corresponded with Bob Jones III, the former president of Bob Jones University in Greenville, S.C., about the case of Peter Ng, a fundamentalist minister.
Jones, then president of the Christian fundamentalist university, had complained to the White House that the Immigration and Naturalization Service was harassing Ng.
The White House refused to get involved in the case. In a Jan. 4, memo, Roberts said it had received another plea from Jones.
"Mr. Jones suggests in his letter that you would have reacted differently to an alleged civil rights violation, and in a thinly veiled threat, asserts that the alleged insensitivity of the administration to fundamentalist Christians will not go unnoticed by that sizable voting block," Roberts said in a memo to Fielding.
Roberts wrote that "the audacity of Jones' reply is truly remarkable," given the "political cost" the Reagan administration paid for unsuccessfully trying to help the university regain its tax-exempt status after it was revoked by the IRS because the school discriminated on the basis of race.
"A restrained reply to his petulant paranoia is attached for your review, telling Jones, in essence, to go soak his head," Roberts wrote.
On Tuesday, the liberal group Alliance for Justice plans to announce its opposition to Roberts, joining other advocacy groups in taking a position on Roberts' nomination before the confirmation hearings begin.
On the Net: 
Top House Democrat Charles Rangel (left) suggested Friday that Vice President Dick Cheney (lower right) may not be healthy enough to continue in office.
"He [Cheney] is a sick man, you know," Rangel told the Manhattan news network NY1. "He's got heart disease."
In quotes picked up by the New York Post, Rangel insisted, "Sometimes I don't even think Cheney is awake enough to know what's going on. [Defense Secretary Donald] Rumsfeld is the guy in Washington . . . running the country."
The Harlem Democrat claimed that Cheney's heart disease "is not restricted to that part of his body. He grunts a lot, so you never really know what he's thinking."
Rangel offered no specific evidence to counter a pronouncement from Cheney's doctors last month, who gave the VP a clean bill of health.
don't ask
Israeli rescuers and policemen inspect the site where a suicide bomber attacked Sunday. >>>>>
First suicide bomb since Gaza pullout hospitalizes 40
BEERSHEBA, Israel - About 40 people went to the hospital after a Palestinian blew himself up while trying to board a bus Sunday in the first suicide attack since the evacuation of settlers from the Gaza Strip, puncturing hopes that the historic pullout would break the cycle of violence.
The vast majority of those hospitalized from the attack in this southern Israel town suffered from shock, although two security guards were critically wounded, medical sources said.
A suicide bomber blew himself up outside the central bus station in this southern Israeli city during morning rush hour Sunday, critically wounding two security guards in the first attack since Israel began its withdrawal from the Gaza Strip this month.
More serious carnage appeared to have been averted after security at the city's main terminus prevented the attacker from boarding.
The attack comes almost exactly a year to the day after 15 Israelis were killed in a twin attack on two buses in Beersheba.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the latest attack but it came just four days after five militants were killed by Israeli troops during an arrest operation in the West Bank town of Tulkarem.
Sunday's attack occurred in a dirt parking lot about 100 yards from the bus station, which was crowded with morning rush-hour travelers. Witnesses said the two security guards halted the bomber, preventing a much larger attack. The guards were critically injured with burns and shrapnel wounds.
The bus driver who alerted security said he had challenged the bomber as he looked suspicious."He was very pale so I warned the guards," Eli Horech told AFP.
Israel's Internal Security minister Gideon Ezra said that the action of the bus driver and two security guards "had averted a major disaster".
According to the Associated Press, taxi driver Itzik Ohana said he was waiting for customers in the lot when he saw the bomber, a man about 20, who had short hair and was dragging a heavy bag and sweating. The man frequently stopped to put the bag down and rest.
Ohana said he told a security guard about the suspicious-looking man and called the police. "While I was talking to the police there was an explosion," he said.
The bombing raised pressure on Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas to crack down on militant groups. Israel has said any progress in peacemaking after the Gaza withdrawal will require Abbas to disarm the militants — a step he so far has been unwilling to take.
Abbas denounced the bombing as a "terror attack," and called on Israel to show restraint and continue to respect a shaky, six-month-old cease-fire. "We condemn such attacks. We don't accept them, and we call on everyone to refrain from retaliation," he said.
However, Israel had to expect the consequence of its "crime" in Tulkarem, said Jibril Rajub, Abbas' national security advisor.
"Israel must know that if it continues with this state terrorism it will lead to more violence in the region," Jibril Rajub told AFP.
Ezra said Israel would "not hesitate to respond" to the attack which he said underlined how "the Palestinian Authority must dismantle the terrorist groups."But he also expressed hope that it would not herald a start to a new round of bloodshed."I think and I hope that this attack does not mark the start of a wave of terrorism," Ezra told AFP at the scene of the blast.
In a speech on the eve of the start of the forcible evacuation of settlers from Gaza, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon warned of an unprecedented response if attacks continued.
Sharon has argued that his controversial pullout of settlers and troops, the first time that Israel has ever left occupied Palestinian territory, would improve the security of Israelis.Right-wing critics however claimed that it encourages militant groups who have been portraying the pullout as an act of surrender.
Groups such as Islamic Jihad and the larger Hamas movement are meant to be observing a truce agreement.However, while there has been a significant decline in Palestinian attacks since the start of the year, the truce has been less than watertight.
Five Israelis were killed on July 13 when an Islamic Jihad activist blew himself up near a shopping mall in the coastal city of Netanya.
The pullout of settlers from Gaza, which was completed last Monday, passed off largely peacefully with Israeli authorities expressing their satisfaction with the levels of security cooperation from the Palestinian Authority.
While nearly all soldiers were due to be withdrawn from Gaza as part of the so-called disengagement plan, Israel had intended to keep a small contingent on the Rafah border which has been a major conduit of arms smuggling. However Egypt and Israel have been locked in discussions for several months in order that Egyptian soldiers take responsibility for the border in the aftermath of the pullout.
Israeli Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz has said he expects all Israeli troops to have left the territory by mid-September after which control of the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt is expected to be handed over to the Egyptian authorities.
Sharon's cabinet on Sunday approved an agreement to allow the deployment of some Egyptian 750 armed border guards along the Rafah crossing which has been a major conduit for weapons smuggling.The deployment will be put before the parliamentary plenum on Wednesday in a vote where it is expected to be approved.
Meanwhile the Palestinian cabinet met in the West Bank town of Abu Dis, which lies on the outskirts of Jerusalem, in a symbolic protest at Israel's attempts to cement its grip on the holy city.Last week, Israel announced plans to build a new police headquarters near Maale Adumim, the largest West Bank settlement where it had already sparked U.S. anger with another project to build 3,500 new homes.
Prime minister Ahmed Qorei said that Israel's settlement drive and its construction of a separation barrier in the region were leaving Palestinians living in the east of the city in "ghettos"."All these things do not leave any room for the creation of a viable Palestinian state," Qorei told reporters after the meeting.
Pro-Life Participant Openly Rebuked by Chair at Disabilities Conference
At a recent UN conference held to negotiate a treaty on the rights of the disabled, the concerns of a pro-life NGO leader were openly criticized by the conference chairman, a highly unusual move given the extreme collegiality that typically prevails at such meetings. The exchange took place during an August 8 meeting of the Sixth Session of the Ad Hoc Committee on a Comprehensive and Integral International Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Rights and Dignity of Persons with Disabilities.
Patrick Buckley, a representative of the London-based Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, voiced concern over Article 21 in the working draft of the treaty. Article 21 says signatory nations are required to "[p]rovide persons with disabilities with the same range and standard of health and rehabilitation services as provided other citizens, including sexual and reproductive health services." Buckley feared that the inclusion of "sexual and reproductive health services" in a legally binding treaty could be later interpreted by enforcement committees to mean that abortion is a universal right. Defenders of Article 21 say it is only intended to ensure that nations provide those with disabilities the same rights as the rest of its citizens.
Buckley said to the group of governmental negotiators, "It is crucial to remember that this Convention will be legally binding. Unless we are careful, this document could contribute to the codification of abortion and euthanasia into international law. 'Reproductive health', 'reproductive health care', 'reproductive health services' and 'reproductive rights' do not appear in any legally binding UN document. The [preamble to] the Article talks about health and rehabilitation 'rights' and 'services'. This would add a new 'right' that could be interpreted to include abortion in a legally binding document regardless of whatever formulation of 'reproductive health' is used."
In an unusual rebuke Chairman Don MacKay of New Zealand called Buckley's concerns invalid because, he said, it was not the intention of the working group to create any new human rights and this had already been codified in a report on the ad hoc committee's fifth session. UN observers say that it is unusual for a chairman to be so publicly critical of an NGO's concerns and that because of the UN's diplomatic environment chairmen do not usually editorialize on NGO interventions.
The following day the Chairman allowed Buckley to respond to the Chairman's criticism. Buckley presented the legal opinion of D. Brian Scarnecchia, legal counsel for the Society of Catholic Social Scientists, who argued that just because the authors of Article 21 do not intend to create any new rights does not mean that the document will not be used to do so by those charged with interpreting it. He also said that the intent of the working group does not "necessarily reflect the intent of those who would later ratify this Convention." Previous agreements by the working group, he said, were "certainly not binding legal authority on a juridical body charged with interpreting this treaty, such as national tribunals, regional tribunals, and international compliance committees and juridical institutions." After Buckley's second intervention the Chairman rebuked him again.
This exchange demonstrates one of the key sticking points of this hard-law negotiation. UN delegates insist they are not creating any new human rights. Critics fear otherwise.
cool
celebratory
U.S. hits suspected terror base in Iraq
BAGHDAD, Iraq - U.S. warplanes launched multiple airstrikes Friday against a suspected "terrorist safe house" in the western Anbar province, destroying the building where up to 50 militants were believed to be hiding, the U.S. military said.
Coalition ground forces were alerted by local residents that a number of members of the terror group Al-Qaida in Iraq had gathered in an abandoned building northeast of Husaybah, near the Syrian border about 200 miles west of Baghdad.
The group is led by Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, the second most-wanted terrorist on the U.S. list after al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.
"Iraqi citizens reported that approximately 50 terrorists were in the building at the time of the airstrike" which occurred at 4:40 p.m., the statement said.
The "known terrorist safe house" was destroyed by Marine F-18D Hornets using a combination of precision-guided bombs and rockets, it said. There were no immediate reports of the number of casualties inflicted by the attack.
Details of a television ad released Friday by the liberal interest group NARAL Pro-Choice America against President Bush's Supreme Court nominee, John G. Roberts:
TITLE: "Rights."
KEY IMAGES: Pictures of smiling families with an American flag in the background; quotes from Roberts' memo, court briefs and a USA Today editorial quote with the Supreme Court building in the background; John Roberts speaking at a lectern.
ANALYSIS: NARAL Pro-Choice America is using this ad to replace one it pulled earlier after criticism that it was inaccurate and unfair. It uses a phrase from John Roberts' released memos, the quote "so-called right to privacy," to try and prove that he would be anti-abortion if confirmed to the Supreme Court. It also points out that he co-authored a government brief submitted to the Supreme Court that said Roe v. Wade was incorrectly decided. Its images of smiling people and an American flag in the background are markedly different from NARAL's previous Roberts commercial, which featured a bombed Alabama abortion clinic and a woman who was injured in that bombing. That commercial brought immediate criticism of NARAL, even from abortion rights supporters. NARAL leader Nancy Keenan says instead of debating the original commercial, the new ad "keeps the public debate focused on the threats that he poses to our freedom."
On the Net: Pro-Roberts 
chatty
CIA, Military Men Agree with Pat Robertson
While televangelist Pat Robertson has apologized for suggesting that Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez be assassinated, a former military man and an ex-CIA operative have stepped forward to say that his concerns about Chavez aren't exactly unwarranted.
"Chavez is a dangerous guy," retired Col. David Hunt told Bill Bennett's "Morning in America" fill-in host Steve Malzberg on Wednesday. "We helped to elect the son of a gun [and] after 9/11 you don't get to threaten us."
The issue of assassination "should be on the table," Hunt said. "I'm suggesting that we use it as a tool . . . to get those guys nervous."
Former CIA operative Wayne Simmons agreed, telling Fox News Channel's "Hannity & Colmes," that Chavez has "threatened not only the United States and the west, but [has]armed himself with the revolutionary armed forces of Colombia, which is the oldest, most well-trained terrorist organization in Latin America."
"He should have been killed a long time ago," Simmons said.
