Hamdi's case, decided by the Supreme Court earlier this year, was supposed to represent a high-water mark for American freedoms during wartime. He had fought for and won his day in court, an opportunity to question his captors, and a chance at national vindication at the end of it all. Hamdi's name stood for the proposition that the Bush administration couldn't run roughshod over the courts and the law in its pursuit of the war on terror. It now stands for precisely the opposite: With a yawn and a shrug, the administration sidestepped the courts and the judicial process once again, abandoning this criminal prosecution altogether and erasing the episode from our national memory. Hamdi has been stripped of his citizenship and his freedom to travel, and sent packing to his family. The rights and processes guaranteed him by the Supreme Court have been yanked away one last time, by an executive branch that held him for years for no reason and smugly claims now that it was finished with him anyhow.

Nevermind - Hamdi wasn't so bad after all. By Dahlia Lithwick

] WASHINGTON - House Republicans are clouding the attempt
] to adopt the Sept. 11 commission's recommendations into
] law by bundling them with additional, more controversial
] anti-terror measures, Democrats complained Thursday.
]
] House and Senate Democrats are opposing the plan, even
] before it is introduced in the House, because it includes
] provisions on the treatment of terrorist suspects,
] illegal immigration and identity theft that go beyond
] what the Sept. 11 commissioners sought.
]
] "If we're going to maintain bipartisan spirit, provisions
] such as those could be extraordinarily
] counterproductive," said Senate Democratic leader Tom
] Daschle of South Dakota.

Yahoo! News - Dems: GOP Delays Using 9/11 Panel Ideas

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Jurors in the murder trial of a Harvard graduate student on Thursday listened to a voice mail message in which he described being attacked by a group of people and stabbing one of them.

Pring-Wilson left a message for Jennifer Hansen, a former girlfriend he had been out with that night. In the message, Pring-Wilson tells Hansen he was attacked as he walked home from the bar they had just left.

"I just got attacked by a group. I fended them off. I stabbed him a couple of times and um, don't repeat this to the police," Pring-Wilson is heard to say on the tape.

Boston.com -- Jurors hear voicemail message in Harvard student stabbing trial

President Bush and leading Republicans are increasingly charging that Democratic presidential nominee John F. Kerry and others in his party are giving comfort to terrorists and undermining the war in Iraq -- a line of attack that tests the conventional bounds of political rhetoric.

Appearing in the Rose Garden yesterday with Iraq's interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, Bush said Kerry's statements about Iraq "can embolden an enemy." After Kerry criticized Allawi's speech to Congress, Vice President Cheney tore into the Democratic nominee, calling him "destructive" to the effort in Iraq and the struggle against terrorism.

It was the latest instance in which prominent Republicans have said that Democrats are helping the enemy or that al Qaeda, Iraqi insurgents and other enemies of the United States are backing Kerry and the Democrats. Such accusations are not new to American politics, but the GOP's line of attack this year has been pervasive and high-level.

Tying Kerry to Terror Tests Rhetorical Limits (washingtonpost.com)

] The Republican Party acknowledged yesterday sending mass
] mailings to residents of two states warning that
] "liberals" seek to ban the Bible. It said the mailings
] were part of its effort to mobilize religious voters for
] President Bush.
]
] The mailings include images of the Bible labeled "banned"
] and of a gay marriage proposal labeled "allowed." A
] mailing to Arkansas residents warns: "This will be
] Arkansas if you don't vote." A similar mailing was sent
] to West Virginians.
]
] In an e-mail message, Christine Iverson, a spokeswoman
] for the Republican National Committee, confirmed that the
] party had sent the mailings.

That's the national party that sent these out. Not some crazy locals. Not a 527 group.

Republicans Admit Mailing Campaign Literature Saying Liberals Will Ban the Bible

] (CNN) -- The decision of Sinclair Broadcast Group, which
] ordered its seven ABC stations not to broadcast Friday's
] "Nightline," has received criticism from U.S. Sen. John
] McCain (R-Arizona).
]
] Friday's show will air the names and photographs of the
] more than 500 U.S. troops killed in the Iraq war.
]
] "Your decision to deny your viewers an opportunity to be
] reminded of war's terrible costs, in all their
] heartbreaking detail, is a gross disservice to the
] public, and to the men and women of the United States
] Armed Forces," McCain, a Vietnam veteran, wrote in a
] letter to David Smith, president and CEO of Sinclair
] Broadcast Group. "It is, in short, sir, unpatriotic. I
] hope it meets with the public opprobrium it most
] certainly deserves."

Yes, I know it's old news. It just made me think of all the Bush supporters who've argued that it's unpatriotic to honor (by in any way mentioning) the over one thousand American soldiers who've given their lives for their country.

CNN.com - McCain rebukes Sinclair 'Nightline' decision - Apr 30, 2004

No argument is more central to the Republican attack on Sen. John Kerry than the assertion that the Democrat has flip-flopped on Iraq.

Yet an examination of Kerry's words in more than 200 speeches and statements, comments during candidate forums and answers to reporters' questions does not support the accusation.

The crux of the flip-flopping charge is based on pitting Kerry's pointed criticism of the war against his October 2002 vote to authorize the use of force, a vote the Democratic senator defends to this day.

Kerry, who was one of 29 Democratic senators to support the resolution, said the vote was appropriate to strengthen the president's hand in negotiations, and he draws a distinction between his vote and an endorsement of the March 2003 attack.

"Congressional action on this resolution is not the end of our national debate on how best to disarm Iraq,'' Kerry said on the eve of the vote. "Nor does it mean we have exhausted all of our peaceful options to achieve this goal."

Republicans ridicule such distinctions and use Kerry's vote as the basis for their assertion that Kerry once favored the war.

Yet in the fall of 2002, several months before the air strikes on Baghdad began, Bush himself insisted the vote was not the same as a declaration of war but instead gave him the hand he needed to negotiate the peace.

"If you want to keep the peace, you've got to have the authorization to use force,'' Bush said in September 2002. "It's a chance for Congress to say, 'we support the administration's ability to keep the peace.' That's what this is all about."

NEWS ANALYSIS / Flip-flopping charge unsupported by facts / Kerry always pushed global cooperation, war as last resort

] JON STEWART: Well Stephen, what do you think is going to
] happen now at CBS News?
]
] STEPHEN COLBERT, Daily Show Senior Media Correspondent:
] Jon, there's got to be some accountability. Dan Rather is
] the head, the commander in chief if you will of his
] organization. He's someone in the ultimate position of
] power who made a harmful decision based upon questionable
] evidence. Then, to make things worse, he stubbornly
] refused to admit his mistake, choosing instead to stay
] the course and essentially occupy this story for too
] long. This man has got to go!
]
] STEWART: Uh ... we're talking about Dan Rather...?
]
] COLBERT: Yes Jon, Dan Rather. CBS is in chaos, it's
] unsafe, riven by internal rivalries. If you ask me,
] respected, reputable outsiders need to be brought in to
] help the rebuilding effort.
]
] STEWART: ... at CBS News?
]
] COLBERT: Yeah, at CBS news! What possible other unrelated
] situation could my words be equally applicable to?! Now
] people need to be held accountable. The commander in
] chief, the vice president, the secretary of defense, the
] national security adviser -- everyone at CBS News needs
] to go! Jon, I can tell you, Walter Cronkite is rolling
] over in his grave.
]
] STEWART: Walter Cronkite is still alive.
]
] COLBERT: Not according to my sources ... at CBS News.

Daily Show Transcript on the Great Leader's Mistake

The respected Washington, DC publication The Hill (www.thehill.com/news/012903/hagel.aspx) has confirmed that former conservative radio talk-show host and now Republican U.S. Senator Chuck Hagel was the head of, and continues to own part interest in, the company that owns the company that installed, programmed, and largely ran the voting machines that were used by most of the citizens of Nebraska.

Back when Hagel first ran there for the U.S. Senate in 1996, his company's computer-controlled voting machines showed he'd won stunning upsets in both the primaries and the general election. The Washington Post (1/13/1997) said Hagel's "Senate victory against an incumbent Democratic governor was the major Republican upset in the November election." According to Bev Harris of www.blackboxvoting.com, Hagel won virtually every demographic group, including many largely Black communities that had never before voted Republican. Hagel was the first Republican in 24 years to win a Senate seat in Nebraska.

Six years later Hagel ran again, this time against Democrat Charlie Matulka in 2002, and won in a landslide. As his hagel.senate.gov website says, Hagel "was re-elected to his second term in the United States Senate on November 5, 2002 with 83% of the vote. That represents the biggest political victory in the history of Nebraska."

What Hagel's website fails to disclose is that about 80 percent of those votes were counted by computer-controlled voting machines put in place by the company affiliated with Hagel. Built by that company. Programmed by that company.

When Bev Harris and The Hill's Alexander Bolton pressed the Chief Counsel and Director of the Senate Ethics Committee, the man responsible for ensuring that FEC disclosures are complete, asking him why he'd not questioned Hagel's 1995, 1996, and 2001 failures to disclose the details of his ownership in the company that owned the voting machine company when he ran for the Senate, the Director reportedly met with Hagel's office on Friday, January 25, 2003 and Monday, January 27, 2003. After the second meeting, on the afternoon of January 27th, the Director of the Senate Ethics Committee resigned his job.

Meanwhile, back in Nebraska, Charlie Matulka had requested a hand count of the vote in the election he lost to Hagel. He just learned his request was denied because, he said, Nebraska has a just-passed law that prohibits government-employee election workers from looking at the ballots, even in a recount. The only machines permitted to count votes in Nebraska, he said, are those made and programmed by the corporation formerly run by Hagel.

Vote Fraud or Not, Lots of People Won't Trust November's Results

] Even as John Kerry struggles to establish
] national-security credentials nationally, an exclusive WW
] straw poll shows his campaign dominating one skeptical,
] warlike demographic: Klingons.
]
] "A good war is based on honor, not deception," says K'tok
] (Earth name: Clyde Lewis), a 40-year-old Klingon from
] Lair Hill. "The first warrior, President Bush, deceived
] us all with this war."
]
] "On the home world, if there had been a contested
] election between Gore and Bush, the honorable thing would
] be for Gore to kill Bush," explained Khraanik (Earth
] name: Jason Lewis), a 38-year-old from Southeast
] Portland. "Or the other way around. And then ascend to
] the head of the High Council."

Kerry Dominates Crucial Klingon Demographic