Support a Bush vs Kerry Debate on Environment
Target: Bush–Cheney Campaign 2004
Sponsor: League of Conservation Voters

WE DEMAND A DEBATE ON THE ENVIRONMENT!
Americans care deeply about their air, land, and water and have a right to know where the candidates for president stand on major environmental issues. Senator Kerry has challenged President Bush to a series of debates, including one focused on our environmental future. Bush & Co. has yet to respond.

Sign this petition and urge President Bush to accept Kerry's challenge for a debate on the environment. The American public wants to hear the President explain why his environmental policies fail to protect the environment -- and instead benefit pro-polluting industries. As long as the Bush Administration is willing to put pro-environment spin on their anti-environment policies, they should not hesitate to discuss the issues in an open forum with Senator Kerry -- a candidate with a proven pro-environment record.

 http://www.care2.com/go/z/14533

Officer's Taser is used on girl, 9

Prisoner abuse and the rot of American culture
Rebecca Hagelin

May 12, 2004

Every decent person I know has reacted in horror to the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners in Al Ghraib prison near Baghdad. When the lewd photos emerged of American soldiers forcing prisoners to engage in sexual acts, and leading them around on leashes with hoods over their heads, and threatening them with electrocution, people were speechless and horrified.

Should we be shocked that some Americans are capable of such barbaric behavior as depicted in the infamous photos?

Rebecca Hagelin is a vice president of The Heritage Foundation

Armed pet rescue draws jail time

YORK, England (AP) -- A man who broke into an animal shelter armed with a samurai sword and an air rifle to retrieve his dog was jailed for 15 months on Wednesday.

Paul Lovie, 47, broke into the shelter run by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in York, northern England, in March to find his Jack Russell terrier.

Lovie was devastated when vets told him his pet was ill and needed to be euthanized.

"He decided to take matters into his own hands and go and get the dog," prosecutor Dianne Campbell told the court.

 Vural Oger,  a candidate for the ruling Social Democrats, said German women were "just too lazy" to get pregnant, and added he couldn't believe almost half of the country's women hadn't conceived.

He also complained that they were putting his financial future and that of other adults in danger.

"It is simply impossible that 40 out of 100 German women are unable to have children, putting our pensions in danger," said Oger.

English Patient was 'ugly, gay' Nazi spy
By Michael Smith and Peter Day
(Filed: 21/05/2004)

The true story of Count Laszlo Almasy, the Hungarian explorer and hero of the film The English Patient, is told in MI5 files released to the National Archives today.

In the film, Almasy, played by Ralph Fiennes, is a disfigured patient in an Italian hospital who had been the handsome young lover of an Englishwoman (Kristin Scott Thomas) in pre-war Cairo.

The truth is more prosaic. Although Almasy was a Hungarian explorer and airman who mapped the Libyan and Egyptian deserts and was prominent in pre-war Cairo society, he was no hero.

He was a bungling Nazi intelligence officer who, according to his MI5 file, was "very ugly and shabbily dressed, with a fat and pendulous nose, drooping shoulders and a nervous tic".

The image of the romantic hero portrayed in the film will be further damaged next week when a new book, The Secret Life of Laszlo Almasy, reveals that he was also homosexual ...

                               saridwynn got her license!

Political Conversation: Condi’s Slip

A pressing issue of dinner-party etiquette is vexing Washington, according to a story now making the D.C. rounds: How should you react when your guest, in this case national-security adviser Condoleezza Rice, makes a poignant faux pas? At a recent dinner party hosted by New York Times D.C. bureau chief Philip Taubman and his wife, Times reporter Felicity Barringer, and attended by Arthur Sulzberger Jr., Maureen Dowd, Steven Weisman, and Elisabeth Bumiller, Rice was reportedly overheard saying, “As I was telling my husb—” and then stopping herself abruptly, before saying, “As I was telling President Bush.” Jaws dropped, but a guest says the slip by the unmarried politician, who spends weekends with the president and his wife, seemed more psychologically telling than incriminating.

Kissinger Tape Reveals Beleaguered Secretary

WASHINGTON — As his presidency unraveled, Richard Nixon was too "loaded" to take an urgent call during the Arab-Israeli war, according to transcripts of foreign policy chief Henry Kissinger's phone calls released Wednesday by the National Archives.

On the night of Oct. 11, 1973, just days into the Arab-Israeli War and with the United States and Soviet Union on a seeming collision course, British Prime Minister Edward Heath tried to reach Nixon by phone to discuss the crisis.

"Can we tell them 'No?'" Kissinger asked his assistant, Brent Scowcroft, who had told him of the request from 10 Downing Street. "When I talked to the president, he was loaded."

"We could tell him the president is not available and perhaps he can call you," Scowcroft replied.

Kissinger said Nixon would be available in the morning.

From QuidProQuo