A Dutch woman is being prosecuted for murdering her unborn child in an unprecedented case after she travelled to Spain for an abortion when she was already 27 weeks pregnant.

Today a judge rejected the 24-year-old woman's request for an injunction ordering an end to the Dutch murder probe, her lawyer Gerard Spong said.

. . .

Abortion is legal in the Netherlands up to the 24th week of pregnancy and it is extremely rare for Dutch authorities to file murder charges linked to such a procedure. The fact that the woman is being prosecuted for an abortion carried out overseas makes the case unprecedented.

Canada will extend its military mission in Afghanistan only if another NATO country puts more soldiers in the dangerous south, the prime minister said Monday, echoing the recommendation of an independent panel to withdraw without additional forces.

. . .

The panel, led by John Manley, a former Liberal deputy prime minister and foreign minister, recommended last week that Canada coninue its mission only if another NATO country musters 1,000 troops for Kandahar.

. . .

"Both of those recommendations will have to be fulfilled, or Canada will not proceed with the mission in Afghanistan," he said.

Canada has told US President George W Bush that it will withdraw its troops from Afghanistan next year unless Nato deploys more soldiers there.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper is demanding that a further 1,000 Nato troops be sent to Kandahar province where Canada's 2,500 troops are based.

. . .

White House press secretary Tony Fratto said that in reply, the president had "noted the deployment of 3,200 additional US marines to Afghanistan".

It is not clear if the additional US troops meet Canada's requirements for more troops in Kandahar.

Somehow, the Harper promise that the mission in Afghanistan wouldn't be extended unless Canadians supported it has morphed into the Harper promise to "ensure Canadian soldiers get the help that will allow them to stay ... indefinitely".

The committee called the war a "great and severe missed opportunity."

"Israel embarked on a prolonged war that it initiated, which ended without a clear Israeli victory from a military standpoint," Justice (ret.) Eliyahu Winograd told a press conference in Jerusalem.

"A quasi-military organization withstood the strongest army in the Middle East for weeks," he said.

"Hezbollah rocket fire on the Israeli home front continued throughout the war, and the IDF failed to provide an effective response," he continued. "Daily life was disrupted, residents left their homes and entered bomb shelters."

"These results had far-reaching consequences for us and our enemies," he continued.

Winograd assailed the final, large-scale ground operation launched in the final 60 hours of the war in which dozens of IDF soldiers were killed, saying it "did not achieve any military objectives nor did it fulfill its potential."

"The ground operation did not reduce the Katyusha fire nor did it achieve significant accomplishments, and its role in accelerating or improving the political settlement is unclear," said Winograd. "Also unclear is how it affected the Lebanese government and Hezbollah regarding the cease-fire."

. . .

"The failures began long before the Second Lebanon War," said Winograd. "Ambitious goals were chosen for the war, after which Israel was left with only two main alternatives - the first was a short, severe strike [on Hezbollah], the second was to fundamentally alter the reality in southern Lebanon through a wide-scale ground operation."

"The manner in which the original decision to go to war was made, without discussing the alternatives, and the manner in which Israel embarked on the war prior to determining which of the alternatives it had chosen, or an exit strategy ? these were severe failures that impacted the entire war, which were contributed to by both the political and the military echelon," said Winograd.

"The indecisiveness continued into the war itself," the retired justice continued. "There was no proper discussion or decision on the war's objectives for several weeks."

"There was also a serious delay in preparing for a wide-scale ground operation, reducing Israel's options," he said. "The result was that Israel did not make do with maximizing immediate military achievements, but rather was dragged into a ground offensive only after a cease-fire [decision] made it impossible to effectively fulfill its potential. Both top military and political leaders are responsible for this."

Cheering supporters? Check. Election returns on the projection screen? Check. Andrea Mitchell and Candy Crowley doing stand-ups? Check and check. In fact, the only piece missing from Hillary Clinton's Florida victory party here Tuesday night was a victory.

. . .

But in a political stunt worthy of the late Evel Knievel, the Clinton campaign decided to put on an ersatz victory party that, it hoped, would erase memories of Obama's actual victory Saturday night in South Carolina's Democratic primary.

The majority of Canadians say even if they could afford to retire, they'd continue to punch the clock, according to an RBC poll released Thursday.

"When you walk in the door, all you see are pictures of Stephen Harper," said Ms. May

"I'd say between every window, in every available space of the wall, at eye level, every available space has a photo of Stephen Harper."

"You've got photos of Stephen Harper, but not of previous prime ministers," she added. "Photos of Stephen Harper in different costumes, in different settings, dressed as a fireman, in Hudson Bay looking for polar bears, meeting the Dalai Lama, even the portrait of the Queen had to have Stephen Harper, but in a candid, behind her."

. . .

The prime minister's official Christmas card last December portrayed Mr. Harper looking out a living room window adorned with 24 photographs, small to large, of Mr. Harper in various poses.

When the party last year unveiled its election campaign war room, Mr. Harper stared out from campaign posters on every wall.

“This is one of the key failures of the Bush presidency, and it will dog his legacy.  As Andrew Cochran observed today, the president never once used the words “Islamic” or “Islamist” in describing the core of this war.  The war is with Al Qaeda, or Iraqi insurgents, or the Taliban or something.  Abandoning his lofty, Wilsonian rhetoric from 2006, President Bush has once again changed the course and repudiated his very own doctrine.  A war against finite gangs, or their various surrogates in Iraq and Afghanistan, is not what it’s about.  The mullahs in Qom are not what it’s about.  By declaring a litany of shadowy villains all around the world, the president creates an ambiance of war that has no direction and no clear finality”[Link]

Why did President Bush retreat from the obvious? Who imposed upon him, employing what logic, to depart from his past clear and accurate statements on the nature of Islamic-based terrorism and extremism?

The National Science Adviser is a voice of reason to the government over actions it should take on issues such as climate change, genetically modified foods, managing fisheries, sustaining the environment - any time the politicians need to be educated on the basic science behind those often controversial issues. Of course, decisions are seldom made for purely scientific reasons; all too often, the interests of industry, special interest groups or a misinformed public will cloud the scientific truth. The Adviser’s job is to provide clarity and perspective.

Why doesn’t the fact that readily available cheap (and cheaper-for-the-state) alternatives to life-destroying events exist affect this view? Because of a commitment to an unexamined assumption: Exemplary suffering helps focus one’s mind, it is claimed (how else can you read Madras’s comments) and so anything that might defuse the power of the demonstration is to be avoided. Science be damned.

This is, of course, precisely why the idea of good science matters. . . . this story tells us why the issue is vital. Real science demands that theory be ratified by observation and defensible interpretation of the data. Bad science allows ideology to determine what facts, if any, are admitted into the conversation. Right now, bad science is winning.[Emp. mine]

Baking soda nearly killed an elderly man. He was using it to relieve the stomach pain caused by an ulcer, but went way overboard with the home remedy.

After slipping on a children's toy, the retired gentleman could not get back up. Paramedics transported him to Cooper Hospital in New Jersey. En route, they noticed that he was short of breath and picking at his side for no apparent reason.

In the emergency room, the patient was completely incoherent. He looked disheveled, underweight, and could not tell them what year it was.

. . .

Once their patient was stable, the doctors questioned his niece. She had found several empty boxes of baking soda at his home and explained that her uncle, who lacked health insurance, had been using it to cope with severe indigestion.

Mitt Romney's failure to eat fried chicken with the skin on is nothing short of blasphemy here in the South, according to GOP rival Mike Huckabee.

. . .

Huckabee admitted that he hasn't eaten fried chicken in a while because of his weight loss program, preferring it broiled or baked instead.

Obama is running a momentum campaign, which is why people like me say things like “pretty thin gruel” when we listen to him speak.

One media narrative that seems to be taking root is of Obama as the candidate of lofty rhetoric and Clinton as the maven of pedestrian policy talk. At a rally at Furman University here Tuesday, Obama brought the audience to several peaks, raising his voice over the applause while describing how his days as a community organizer "taught me that ordinary people can do extraordinary things" and how "the dream that so many generations fought for feels like it is slipping away."

But the address was saturated with proposals. Obama called for tax rebates; a one-time boost in Social Security checks; extending unemployment insurance; mortgage aid for those facing foreclosure; raising the minimum wage; protecting pensions; and college tuition credits. And that was before he got to his support for solar and wind power and biodiesel fuel. (There was no discussion of how he would pay for all this, other than to say his health-care plan would be partly financed by ending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans.)

How, then, has Obama been saddled with an image of being long on inspiration and short on details? The answer is that journalists are not accustomed to covering a candidate who moves crowds the way Obama does, who uses speech cadences and rhythm like Martin Luther King Jr. without making his talk explicitly about race. Sen. Clinton already owned the policy-wonk slot, so by default, Obama was cast as the poetic one.

. . . I am not a pregnant woman or a pregnant woman's doctor and therefore abortion is not any of my goddamn business. Or yours. Or anyone else's. To paraphrase: "the state has no business in the bed or wombs of the nation."

Military background: I was the first black troop leader of the Boy Scouts Troop 43 in my home state of Illinois. Well, that's not quite true, because they didn't let black kids in the Boy Scouts, so I lied and said I was Hawaiian, which I kind of am, sort of. You see, part of my strategy of becoming our first black president is to deny I am black unless I am campaigning in Harlem. The truth is, I don't know many black people, but my advisors have drafted a strategy to reel in the black vote:

1) Call everyone "Brother." Blacks, I am told, do this, even if their real brothers are mostly in jail.

2) Talk Jive. Brothers want to hear jive. During my speech I told the crowd "We be, you know, sick of whitey supressin' and congestin' so, you know, we won't denigrate or sophisticate but emulate and populate, you know, the system is, like, broken, y'all!"

I have no idea what that means. The black folk loved it, though, so they all vowed to vote for me. The New York Times covered it, but they are so afraid of saying something racist they twisted my words around and reported:

"Yesterday in Harlem YoMama articulated his vision of a new America, an America with less congestion, a country free of drug use, a world without segregation or racism where citizens emulate the lives of great Americans like YoMama, John F. Kennedy and Doctor Martin Luther King."

So you see, there is my strategy. I get the black vote, I get the white vote, and then I go after the female vote by attacking that bitch Hillary for being the Nasty Witch from Hell.

. . .

Ultimately, if she gets too close, one of my New York advisors has advised me to, "Bitch slap that ho." White women, I am told, like that. (Black women, on the other hand, do not. I tried that once on AliBama and she beat the living shit out of me.)

Smokers, heavy drinkers, the obese and the elderly should be barred from receiving some operations, according to doctors, with most saying the health service cannot afford to provide free care to everyone.

Fertility treatment and "social" abortions are also on the list of procedures that many doctors say should not be funded by the state.

Dutch schoolchildren may be the first collateral damage of an online war being waged against the Church of Scientology by a motley crew of internet troublemakers who call themselves Anonymous.

Coordination broke down Friday among the loose affiliate of online troublemakers known as Anonymous as they tried to continue their ongoing attacks against Scientology.

The group has spent the last few days trying to keep down the scientology.org website via a distributed denial of service attack, posting sensitive Scientology documents around the web, and up-voting anti-Scientology stories on Digg. The attack, dubbed Project Chanology, has a wiki that attempts to tell Anonymous 'members' what to do, though the advice is ever-changing and often contradictory.

U.S. Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns said on Thursday a new draft resolution against Iran agreed by major powers over its nuclear work would be punitive, despite Russian remarks to the contrary.

"This resolution will be punitive. I saw some comments from Moscow yesterday saying it will not be punitive. That's not correct. It's a punitive resolution," Burns told reporters during a visit to Israel.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the draft encourages countries to be vigilant in their dealings with Iran to prevent the illegal transfer of nuclear material, but it ``does not foresee any harsh sanctions.''

``It calls for countries to be vigilant while maintaining trade and economic and transport and other ties with Iran so that they are not used for the transfer of forbidden nuclear material,'' he said at a news conference a day after the draft was approved by the five permanent Security Council members and Germany.

World powers agreed on Tuesday on the outline of a third sanctions resolution against Iran over its disputed nuclear work, but diplomats said the draft did not contain the punitive economic measures Washington had been seeking.

Capturing Usama bin Laden has been one of President Bush's top priorities during his time in office, but the president now seems to doubt the Al Qaeda mastermind will be found before his term ends next January.

In the 1990s, when Latin America and Asia were rocked by financial crises similar to the one now dogging the United States, Washington officials were quick with stern advice: Don't bail out distressed banks. Don't intervene when stock market and real estate bubbles pop. Let your overblown economies shrink to their natural levels.

"It was all, 'You've got to be tough and take your castor oil,' " said Joseph E. Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors under President Clinton and former vice president of the World Bank.

To date, U.S. officials haven't followed any of the advice they so readily dispensed to others. They have tried to aid troubled banks. They have slashed interest rates to help the struggling housing and stock markets. They have made it clear that they will go to extreme lengths to keep the American economy out of recession.

But as many economists and market players point out, the nation's current economic problems have shown a disturbing tendency to outstrip assessments of their dimensions.

If that continues, it could force officials to consider stronger medicine than they have done -- perhaps even as strong as that they previously advised other nations to take.

. . .

One problem with interest rate cuts as a solution to current troubles, however, is that a principal route by which they are turned into something that matters to ordinary people and spurs the economy is the housing market.

And this time around, the housing market is a mess, with too many properties for sale at prices that aren't sustainable. Cheaper mortgage rates won't easily cure those excesses, experts say.

A second problem is that the institutions chiefly responsible for transforming Fed cuts into lower borrowing rates -- the nation's banks -- are deeply worried about their own finances because of mortgage-related losses.

That may mean they'll be reluctant to pass along interest savings to individuals via loan rates, lessening the salutary effects of Fed action.

Basically, though, these are cash handouts — perhaps as much as $800 to individual taxpayers, $1,600 to families, distributed in the desperate hope that consumers will follow their past pattern and immediately spend the money on something, anything, rather than put it against some of that colossal household debt.

Because Bush will not tolerate increasing taxes on the well-off, and isn't proposing spending cuts, there is only one place he can get the money, which is the same well he gone to so many times before: "The president wants to borrow money from the international community," says James Thurber, a professor of government at American University in Washington, DC. "He doesn't state it that way, but he'll have to do it if he doesn't raise taxes or cut popular spending programs."

Bush's administration, says Thurber, "thinks it can go to heaven without dying, meaning that they can cut taxes and borrow and there will be no consequences."

On positions from Iraq to health care, the policy differences between Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama are minute. Much of the debate between them has involved making these molehills look mountainous or clashing over who-shifted-when.

The one most significant difference between them can be found in how they would approach the presidency - and how the nation might respond.

Hillary Clinton has been a policy wonk most of her life, a trait she has carried into the U.S. Senate. As her debate performances have shown, she has intelligence and a deep understanding of many issues. Her efforts in New York focused first on learning her adopted state’s issues in detail, and pursuing legislation that would not necessarily grab headlines.

But we also have a good idea what a Clinton presidency would look like. The restoration of the Clintons to the White House would trigger a new wave of all-out political warfare. That is not all Bill and Hillary’s fault - but it exists, whomever you blame, and cannot be ignored. Hillary Clinton doesn’t pretend that it won’t happen; she simply vows to persevere, in the hope that her side can win. Indeed, the Clintons’ joint career in public life seems oriented toward securing victory and personal vindication.

Sen. Obama’s campaign is an argument for a more unifying style of leadership. In a time of great partisanship, he is careful to talk about winning over independents and even Republicans. He is harsh on the failures of the current administration - and most of that critique well-deserved. But he doesn’t use his considerable rhetorical gifts to demonize Republicans. He’s not neglecting his core values; he defends his progressive vision with vigorous integrity. But for him, American unity - transcending party - is a core value in itself.

The AP reports, and the New York Times expands, on a new study by a supposedly "independent" organization that claims to have assembled hundred of "false statements" by the Bush administration in the course of the Iraq war. However, the Center for Public Integrity hardly qualifies as "independent". It gets much of its funding from George Soros, who has thrown millions of dollars behind Democratic political candidates, and explicitly campaigned to defeat George Bush in 2004:

President George W. Bush and seven of his administration's top officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, made at least 935 false statements in the two years following September 11, 2001, about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Nearly five years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, an exhaustive examination of the record shows that the statements were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses.

. . .

The massive database at the heart of this project juxtaposes what President Bush and these seven top officials were saying for public consumption against what was known, or should have been known, on a day-to-day basis. This fully searchable database includes the public statements, drawn from both primary sources (such as official transcripts) and secondary sources (chiefly major news organizations) over the two years beginning on September 11, 2001. It also interlaces relevant information from more than 25 government reports, books, articles, speeches, and interviews.

Hollywood actor Heath Ledger has been found dead at a downtown Manhattan residence, a New York Police Department spokesman has said.

. . . China can’t afford to stop feeding dollars to Americans, because China’s own dollar holdings would be devastated if it did. As long as that logic holds, the system works. As soon as it doesn’t, we have a big problem.

What might poke a giant hole in that logic? Not necessarily a titanic struggle over the future of Taiwan. A simple mistake, for one thing. Another speech by Cheng Siwei—perhaps in response to a provocation by Lou Dobbs. A rumor that the oil economies are moving out of dollars for good, setting their prices in euros. Leaked suggestions that the Chinese government is hoping to buy Intel, leading to angry denunciations on the Capitol floor, leading to news that the Chinese will sit out the next Treasury auction. As many world tragedies have been caused by miscalculation as by malice.

Today’s American system values upheaval; it’s been a while since we’ve seen too much of it. But Americans who lived through the Depression knew the pain real disruption can bring. Today’s Chinese, looking back on their country’s last century, know, too. With a lack of tragic imagination, Americans have drifted into an arrangement that is comfortable while it lasts, and could last for a while more. But not much longer.

"So obviously we didn't get the Thursday shipment. That left us with all of our perishables, milk, produce and breads — until we receive something either today or tomorrow — completely empty."

Martha Teenar, a cashier at the Issatik Co-op in Whale Cove, said her store is out of most staple items. As well, she said, little is left on the store shelves and freezer.

"We're completely out of milk — Carnation and two per cent," Teenar said Monday at noon.

"There's completely no bread. No frozen food either, frozen meat, frozen juice … eggs and cigarettes."

Today is a sombre milestone, marking the start of the last of Mr Bush's eight years in the White House. This being a leap year, exactly 366 days remain until 20 January 2009, when his successor will be sworn into office. It is a time when incumbents look to their legacies. And for this President the view could scarcely be bleaker.

Is he the worst President in US history? Mr Bush faces stiff competition from the likes of James Buchanan, who watched as America slipped towards civil war, or Warren Harding with his corrupt administration, or Herbert Hoover, who failed to halt the slide into the Great Depression, or, more recently, Richard Nixon, the only President to be forced to resign. But in terms of dogmatism, incompetence, ignorance and divisiveness, Mr Bush surely compares with any of the above.

. . . Corporate cronyism has been rife. Globalisation and cuts driven by ideology have turned the wealth gap between rich Americans and the rest from an embarrassment into an obscenity. Since 2001 the real income of ordinary Americans has stagnated.

. . .

Even more corrosive has been the damage inflicted on the US system of governance. This President may have blithely ignored mainstream science, pretended global warming was not happening and only belatedly grasped the disaster of Hurricane Katrina. In one domestic activity, however, Bush has not tarried: that of perverting and undermining the constitution in the name of expanding the President's power to fight his "war on terror".

To that end, what everyone else considers torture has been sanctioned, the basic legal right of habeas corpus has been denied to designated "foreign fighters", illicit eavesdropping on US citizens has been authorised and fear-mongering has been turned into a political strategy. Somehow, the next President must restore Americans' faith in their own institutions.

In foreign affairs, the story is the same. The Iraq invasion may not be the greatest foreign policy blunder in US history. But it is among the greatest, utterly discrediting the country's intelligence services, hugely straining relations with key allies, handing a massive strategic victory to Iran and stretching the country's military close to breaking point.

. . .

The new occupant of the Oval Office can but hope today's dislike for America is directed at a leader, not at a country. That may well be, but one thing is for sure. Never again will the US occupy that extraordinary position of supremacy – military, moral and economic – that it held in the interlude between the demise of Communism and the attacks of September 2001.

To the 44th President falls the task of explaining that truth to the country, as well as dealing with the concrete day-to-day problems left by George Bush. Indeed, one wonders, why would anyone want the job?

Our region is not short of bloodshed and instability. Iraq, Lebanon, the occupied Palestinian territories and Afghanistan are all scenes of past and present conflicts where largely innocent blood has flowed in plenty. We do not need yet another dangerous conflict.

That is why it was so sad, even depressing, to hear US President George W. Bush use his visit to the Gulf to continue his saber-rattling against the Iranians — and over a nuclear weapons program which his own intelligence chiefs say Tehran abandoned five years ago. To any dispassionate observer, US military action against Iran is unthinkable. Unfortunately the Bush administration’s record since 9/11 has not only embraced the unthinkable but more dangerously, it has embraced it in an unthinking fashion.

. . .

Whatever threat Iran may constitute, now or in the future, must be addressed peaceably and through negotiations. The consequences of further war in the region are hideous, not least because they are incalculable. Even Bush, with the ruin of Iraq before him, must surely see that. Yet in his confrontational remarks about Iran, he offers no carrot, no inducement, no compromise — only the big US stick. This is not diplomacy in search of peace. It is madness in search of war.

Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier has issued a statement in an effort to pacify allies angry over a training manual for Canadian diplomats that lists the U.S. and Israel as countries where prisoners risk torture and abuse.

. . .

"I regret the embarrassment caused by the public disclosure of the manual used in the department's torture awareness training," he said in a statement released Saturday.

"The manual is neither a policy document nor a statement of policy," he said. "As such, it does not convey the government's views or positions."

Bernier said he has directed the manual to be reviewed and rewritten, but he did not provide details.

THE Taliban has seriously rejoined the fight in Afghanistan, an NGO security group said in a report that concluded the country was at the beginning of a war, not the end of one.

The Afghanistan NGO Safety Office (ANSO) said the Taliban's "easy departure" in 2001, when a US-led invasion drove them from power, was more of a strategic retreat than an actual military defeat.

"A few years from now, 2007 will likely be looked back upon as the year in which the Taliban seriously rejoined the fight and the hopes of a rapid end to conflict were finally set aside by all but the most optimistic," ANSO said.

. . .

"There would not appear to be any capacity within ISAF to stop or turn back anticipated AOG (armed opposition groups) expansion," the report said.

"In simple terms, the consensus amongst informed individuals at the end of 2007 seems to be that Afghanistan is at the beginning of a war, not the end of one."

Canada does not tolerate torture, but must sometimes work with countries that have questionable human rights records in its efforts to protect the public, a federal lawyer told an inquiry looking into torture claims by three Arab-Canadians.

. . .

Peirce began his inquiry submission with the strong declaration: "Canada does not countenance torture."

But then he went on to say that the risk of mistreatment abroad is just one factor that determines whether the RCMP and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service should share suspect-related information with foreign governments.

And even if Ottawa did facilitate the men's arrests, he argued, that would not violate the UN International Convention on Torture, saying the agreement obliges Ottawa only from preventing torture on its own soil not in foreign countries.

MBIA Inc. and Ambac Financial Group Inc., the two biggest bond insurers, have a more than 70 percent chance of going bankrupt, credit-default swaps show.

. . .

Ambac shares plunged 52 percent yesterday before rebounding 8.5 percent today to $6.77 on news the company scrapped plans to raise equity. MBIA dropped 31 percent yesterday and fell 19 percent today to $7.48. Credit-default swaps on the companies, which rise as confidence erodes, are trading at record highs.

``In this market, a downgrade could mean the beginning of that company's eventual collapse,'' said Matt Fabian, an analyst with Municipal Market Advisors in Westport, Connecticut. While Fabian said he still expects the companies to keep their rankings, he said he has grown ``much more anxious.''

The bond insurers place their AAA stamp on $2.4 trillion of debt sold by thousands of municipalities across the country, as well as on subprime-mortgage securities. Losing those rankings may cost borrowers and investors as much as $200 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

The disclosure came minutes before midnight Tuesday under a court-ordered deadline that forced the White House to reveal information it has previously refused to provide.

Among the e-mails that could be lost are messages swapped by any White House officials involved in discussions about leaking a CIA officer's identity to reporters.

. . .

If the e-mails were not saved, the White House might have violated two laws requiring preservation of documents that fall into the categories of federal records or presidential records.

White House spokesman Tony Fratto said that "there is no basis to say that the White House has destroyed any evidence or engaged in any misconduct."

The White House possesses no archived e-mail messages for many of its component offices, including the Executive Office of the President and the Office of the Vice President, for hundreds of days between 2003 and 2005, according to the summary of an internal White House study that was disclosed yesterday by a congressional Democrat.

The 2005 study -- whose credibility the White House attacked this week -- identified 473 separate days in which no electronic messages were stored for one or more White House offices, said House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.).

As we are dragged through another election season, it is worth critically reviewing these stereotypes. Do the data support the claim that conservatives are haters, while liberals are tolerant of others? A handy way to answer this question is with what political analysts call "feeling thermometers," in which people are asked on a survey to rate others on a scale of 0-100. A zero is complete hatred, while 100 means adoration. In general, when presented with people or groups about which they have neutral feelings, respondents give temperatures of about 70. Forty is a cold temperature, and 20 is absolutely freezing.

In 2004, the University of Michigan's American National Election Studies (ANES) survey asked about 1,200 American adults to give their thermometer scores of various groups. People in this survey who called themselves "conservative" or "very conservative" did have a fairly low opinion of liberals -- they gave them an average thermometer score of 39. The score that liberals give conservatives: 38. Looking only at people who said they are "extremely conservative" or "extremely liberal," the right gave the left a score of 27; the left gives the right an icy 23. So much for the liberal tolerance edge.

The cultivation of opium poppies whose product is turned into heroin is spreading rapidly across Iraq as farmers find they can no longer make a living through growing traditional crops.

Afghan with experience in planting poppies have been helping farmers switch to producing opium in fertile parts of Diyala province, once famous for its oranges and pomegranates, north- east of Baghdad.

The growing and smuggling of opium will be difficult to stop in Iraq because much of the country is controlled by criminalised militias. American successes in Iraq over the past year have been largely through encouraging the development of a 70,000-strong Sunni Arab militia, many of whose members are former insurgents linked to protection rackets, kidnapping and crime. Muqtada al-Sadr, the leader of the powerful Shia militia, the Mehdi Army, says that criminals have infiltrated its ranks.

The move of local warlords, both Sunni and Shia, into opium farming is a menacing development in Iraq, where local political leaders are often allied to gangsters. The theft of fuel, smuggling and control of government facilities such as ports means that gangs are often very rich. It is they, rather than impoverished farmers, who have taken the lead in financing and organising opium production in Iraq.

Ahem! Bullshit.

Gates was throwing a temper tantrum because things in Afghanistan are little better now than they were in 2002. What he won't acknowledge is that the fault lays squarely with the Bush administration for screwing up the job in the first place

MacKay, instead of demanding that Gates come out and clarify his words, sucked up to him because there's nothing more important to a Conservative than a Republican.

There is something interesting out of this little US-spits-on-allies episode though.

Apparently all the sunshine the Harperites continually attempt to blow up everyone's ass about how so much progress is being made in Afghanistan is pure crap.

Is Barack Obama, then, the ideal Democratic candidate for president? Hardly. His policy recommendations -- when he can be convinced to get any more specific than "I represent change" -- are the opposite of "change." They're old-line, welfare-state solutions that haven't spent enough time in the microwave to appear even superficially appetizing.

Sen. Obama is a relatively young man with relatively little of the kind of real-world experience that prepares a candidate to stand firm against urgent advice to, say, bomb some remote population of defenseless civilians to "send a message," or plunge the economy into a dark night of unforeseen consequences by crippling the free market in the name of "fighting greed."

We sat down, tea in hand and then it began. All of sudden BOOM! A suicide bomber dressed as police had walked into the security X-ray booth with a vest of explosives attached on his chest and blew himself up killing half of the guards in the booth.The windows began shaking, I quickly think hey that was a bomb but the Serena Glass is thick so we don't know if its close or far. Usually a bomb like that I would estimate it was 5 blocks away then all of a sudden BOOM again and then rapid gunfire. The guards killed 1 attacker and but two more get inside the main lobby of the Serena.

. . .

More people come to the basement, as the terrorists have infiltrated the gym and spa area. They have shot dead the spa manager, Zina a very pleasant Filipino Girl who was just doing her job working in Afghanistan to support herself and family abroad. The Terrorists move into the gym and shot an American dead in the face on the treadmill. The president of the Olympic Committee, Mr. Anwar Khan Jagdalak [a former mujahidin commander of Jamiat-i Islami] was in the locker room getting dressed when the Terrorist came face to face to with him. Mr. Jagdalak asked him in Persian "Khaireyaat Khob ast?" (Is everything OK?), and then he turned his gun and took a shot at the president of the Olympic Committee. Mr. Jagdalak made an Olympic dive and fled, and quickly found refuge in some space in the locker room where the Terrorist couldn't find him. He escaped to the basement through another pass.

The doorman, was carried down to the basement by Serena Staff. He had passed out from all of the events he saw, and they were opening up his vest to get him air and began sprinkling water on his face. Then all of sudden a bunch of Serena employees started running down the hall in the basement like they were being chased. This in turn caused two Russian girls to start screaming, and made everyone start to hide including President Karzai's oldest brother who was also trapped with us. What could you do, what would you do if you knew people were coming to shoot you? Turns out the terrorists had not infiltrated the basement, and the Russian girls had to be calmed down, and were given cigarettes to relax.

. . .

This whole thing has me really spooked, now Taliban are vowing more attacks on Kabul restaurants where foreigners and expatriates are attending. I am unsure what to make of all these tragic events however the situation in Kabul is obviously deteriorating.

Highly promising figures that the administration cited to demonstrate economic progress in Iraq last fall, when Congress was considering whether to continue financing the war, cannot be substantiated by official Iraqi budget records, the Government Accountability Office reported Tuesday.

The Iraqi government had been severely criticized for failing to spend billions of dollars of its oil revenues in 2006 to finance its own reconstruction, but last September the administration said Iraq had greatly accelerated such spending. By July 2007, the administration said, Iraq had spent some 24 percent of $10 billion set aside for reconstruction that year.

As Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top American commander in Iraq, and Ryan C. Crocker, the American ambassador to Iraq, prepared in September to report to Congress on the state of the war, the economic figures were a rare sign of progress within Iraq’s often dysfunctional government.

But in its report on Tuesday, the accountability office said official Iraqi Finance Ministry records showed that Iraq had spent only 4.4 percent of the reconstruction budget by August 2007. It also said that the rate of spending had substantially slowed from the previous year.