IF you believe in God and IF you believe that God is involved in the daily affairs of mortals, you must ask the question -- Is George W. Bush the best God can do?

(This summer’s Al Franken/Bill O'Reilly spat aside, porn star Jenna Jameson also gave credence to O’Reilly’s blowhard status when she reported that after being grilled by O'Reilly about pornography, he actually asked her to send him some of her X-rated videos.)

"I've obviously been lied to a lot by campaign operatives," Carlson added, "but the striking thing about the way she lied was she knew I knew she was lying, and she did it anyway. There is no word in English that captures that. It almost crosses over from bravado into mental illness."

As Bush’s poll numbers slide, the pathological behavior is bound to worsen. "Where once the administration was motivated by greed, now it's driven by fear," Paul Krugman wrote, adding that "everything suggests that there are major scandals -- involving energy policy, environmental policy, Iraq contracts and cooked intelligence -- that would burst into the light of day if the current management lost its grip on power. So these people believe they must win at any cost." Saying that "the members of this administration [will never] simply lose like gentlemen," because "that's not how they operate," Krugman foresees "probably the nastiest [campaign] of modern American history" ahead. In other words, fasten your seat belts. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.

CALIFORNIA'S attorney general said today he had warned Arnold Schwarzenegger that the groping allegations against him are "not going to go away" and that the governor-elect should cooperate with an investigation.

Appeal Court president Margaret McMurdo attacked John Howard, Liberal MP Bronwyn Bishop and NSW Premier Bob Carr for criticising Ms Hanson's original sentence as excessive.
The politicians' comments demonstrated "a lack of understanding of the rule of law", Justice McMurdo said.

But it was also, leading opponents of abortion say, a validation of the movement's long-term strategy of incrementalism, restricting abortion step by step as part of the larger battle to turn public opinion against Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that recognized a constitutional right to abortion.

It's funny that the disgusting American media is up in arms about the arrest of Khodorkovsky, while Ken Lay is still a free man. Which country is more totalitarian: the one that enforces its laws against its biggest thieves or the one that doesn't?