] Schwarzenegger, who has acknowledged "behaving badly
] sometimes'' toward women, has denied groping or defaming
] Richardson. The two aides have also denied liability. But
] the libel suit, filed in London, has withstood all
] attempts at dismissal, shielded by a plaintiff-friendly
] British libel law under which Schwarzenegger himself once
] filed suit.
]
]
] Unless the governor wins a late judicial reprieve or
] reaches an out-of-court settlement, he may find himself
] spending part of the 2006 election year -- his
] re-election year should he choose to seek another term --
] in a witness box, answering questions under oath before
] 12 British jurors and a bewigged judge.

London groping case dogs governor / British libel law seen as benefit to TV host's suit

] DeLay's congressional office turned to someone they
] trusted far more than any travel agent or concierge:
] lobbyist Jack Abramoff. "He ran all the trips," recalls a
] former top DeLay aide. "You ask where the itineraries
] came from, who made all the travel arrangements%u2014it
] all came out of Jack's shop."
]
]
] Previous trips had taken DeLay and members of his staff
] all over the world, but none had been planned quite as
] meticulously as this one.
]
]
] Three sources who worked with Abramoff at the time say
] the majority whip's office ran one of Abramoff's
] assistants ragged with its constantly changing requests.
] Indeed, say two of those sources, the whole idea for the
] expensive London jaunt originated with DeLay aides as an
] additional stop on a golf outing that Abramoff had
] proposed to Scotland's famous St. Andrews course.
]
]
] Abramoff delivered on virtually everything DeLay's staff
] requested.

TIME.com: When Tom Met Jack -- Apr. 25, 2005

Stick a fork in him, he's done.

] VATICAN CITY - The Vatican said Friday that Pope John
] Paul II's condition was very serious, hours after he
] suffered heart failure.

Yahoo! News - Vatican: Pope Has Suffered Heart Failure

] In an informal poll of 100 academics, conducted by The
] Economist, Mr Bush's policies win low marks. More than
] 70% of the 56 professors who responded to our survey rate
] Mr Bush's first-term economic policies as bad or very
] bad. Fewer than 20% give positive marks to Mr Bush's
] second-term economic agenda, and almost six out of ten
] disapproved. Mr Kerry hardly got rave reviews either, but
] his economic plan still fared better than the president's
] did. In all, four out of ten professors rated Mr Kerry's
] economic plan as good or very good, but 27% gave it
] negative scores.

Economist.com | The economy and the election

] An exhaustive report released last week by Charles
] Duelfer, the CIA's chief weapons investigator in Iraq,
] concluded that Saddam Hussein destroyed his stockpiles of
] chemical and biological weapons in the early 1990s and
] never tried to rebuild them. But a little-noticed section
] of the 960-page report warns that the danger of a
] "devastating" attack with unconventional weapons has
] grown since the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Iraq
] last year.
]
] The Bush administration, which went to war primarily to
] disarm the Baghdad regime of suspected illicit
] stockpiles, has not previously disclosed that the
] insurgent groups that have emerged and steadily expanded
] since Hussein's ouster now are seeking to develop their
] own crude supplies of such deadly agents as mustard gas,
] ricin and the nerve gas tabun.

Iraqi insurgents seek chemical weapons / Likelihood of success grew with U.S. occupation, report says

] Oh, duh. Like, major duh.
]
] The "Dred Scott" reference by Bush sent everyone at
] Atrios and other blog sites scrambling to historical
] tomes to figure out what on Earth Mr. Bush could mean,
] short of saying that he wouldn't appoint pro-slavery
] judges.
]
] Really, we should have just done a damn google search on
] the Internets.
]
] Because it's all there, plain as day. The Dred Scott
] reference is code language for abortion rights.

Q: Why Did Bush Mention 'Dred Scott'? A: It's a Message to Pro-Lifers

] Some highlights of the report include:
]
] * Voting Rights: The Bush administration did not
] provide leadership to ensure timely passage and swift
] implementation of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of
] 2002. As a result, Congress did not appropriate funds for
] election reform until almost two years into the
] administration.
]
] * Equal Educational Opportunity: The No Child Left
] Behind Act (NCLB) does not sufficiently address unequal
] education, a major barrier to closing the achievement gap
] between minority and white students.
]
] * Affirmative Action: Instead of promoting
] affirmative action in federal contracting and education,
] the administration promotes "race neutral alternatives,"
] in many instances not applicable and in others not overly
] effective at maintaining diversity.
]
] * Environmental Justice: EPA has taken few actions to
] ensure disparate impact of minority communities to
] environmental contamination.
]
] * Racial Profiling: The administration responded to
] the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks by instituting
] regulations that facilitate profiling rather than prevent
] it. Immigrants and visitors from Arab and Middle Eastern
] countries were subjected to increased scrutiny, including
] interviews, registration, and in some cases removal.

U.S. Commission on Civil Rights - Press Release

] WASHINGTON - The Bush administration has promoted its
] education law with a video that comes across as a news
] story but fails to make clear the reporter involved was
] paid with taxpayer money.
]
] The government used a similar approach this year in
] promoting the new Medicare law and drew a rebuke from the
] investigative arm of Congress, which found the videos
] amounted to propaganda in violation of federal law.

Yahoo! News - Bush Ad Appears to Be News Story

] WASHINGTON, Oct. 7 - From the beginning of the year, the
] White House has charted new ground with the sweep of its
] negative campaigning, starting with an $80 million wave
] of attack advertisements directed at Senator John Kerry
] that began the moment he effectively won his party's
] nomination last spring.
]
] But the scathing indictment that Mr. Bush offered of Mr.
] Kerry over the past two days - on the eve of the second
] presidential debate and with polls showing the race
] tightening - took these attacks to a blistering new
] level. In the process, several analysts say, Mr. Bush
] pushed the limits of subjective interpretation and
] offered exaggerated or what some Democrats said were
] distorted accounts of Mr. Kerry's positions on health
] care, tax cuts, the Iraq war and foreign policy.

The New York Times -- Political Memo: In His New Attacks, Bush Pushes Limit on the Facts

] Some detected animus toward Edwards in Ifill's
] interrogations but for me the overwhelming impression,
] which I've gathered over the years from watching her on
] PBS's Wash Week in Review, is that this is a person with
] a case of the cutes. There's a preening coyness to her,
] as if she's smiling at herself rather than at the camera
] and expecting a cookie.

[ I kinda felt that way too. Some seriously silly moments she cooked up. I'm glad Edwards brought it up when he said "I can use his name again now?" That's was pure silliness. -k]

I was unimpressed by her. I did think she was more even handed than Jim Lehrer was during the first debate -- I thought he hit Bush with harder questions than Kerry. But Lehrer's questions were harder hitting and more interesting.

I'm not expecting much from tonight's moderator: Good Morning America's Charlie Gibson. He's about as light weight as you can get, and both he and Diane Sawyer were fairly open about their support for Bush's Iraq policy (for those who don't know, Diane Sawyer was a Nixon speechwriter).

That said, I'm less concerned about his bias than his unlikeliness to ask tough questions. This is the guy who said he thought the Vice Presidential debate was way too nasty.

Gwen Awful