With a presidential campaign only months away, Republicans picked up two governorships in the South, ousting Mississippi's Democratic incumbent and seizing Kentucky's top job for the first time in 32 years.

Stutzman said Schwarzenegger was "extremely disappointed" in Lockyer's remarks.
"There was disappointment here on this end, that the attorney general would present himself to the governor-elect as his lawyer, engage him in discussion on this matter and make those dissuasions public," Stutzman said.
mr ed - i wonder if this is the loophole...

WASHINGTON (AP)--Billionaire philanthropist Joan B. Kroc bequeathed more than $200 million to National Public Radio--a surprisingly large donation more than double the nonprofit network's annual budget.

The scars on Lynch's battered body and the medical records indicate she was anally raped, and "fill in the blanks of what Jessi lived through on the morning of March 23, 2003," Bragg wrote.
"The records do not tell whether her captors assaulted her almost lifeless, broken body after she was lifted from the wreckage, or if they assaulted her and then broke her bones into splinters until she was almost dead."
"Jessica Lynch," he said, "we're United States soldiers and we're here to protect you and take you home."
"I'm an American soldier, too," Lynch replied.

The course of events appeared at times to be a version of Carry On Spying. MI5, it is claimed, failed to return calls left on its emergency hotline; did not discover that the agent it had recruited for the mission had a history of psychiatric problems; an officer arrived for a "secret" meeting in the street forgetting to remove her MI5 identification badge; another, who had already infiltrated the High Commission, risked the security of the operation by returning for a second attempt in another guise.

Kobe Bryant has not yet entered a plea in the rape case against him, but some people closely involved with the case appear to have already made up their minds.In October, employees of the Eagle County, Colo. (search) sheriff's and district attorney's offices put in orders for a shipment of anti-Kobe Bryant T-shirts.
On the front of the T-shirts ordered by the county workers is a hanging man. On the back is a choice of two derogatory statements about the Los Angeles Lakers (search) basketball star.
An e-mail message ordering 76 shirts, obtained by Fox News, was written from the same sheriff's office that is investigating the case.
It specified an order for 76 of both types of the T-shirts, in sizes ranging from medium to triple-extra-large. It added that: "The order was for our office and the DA's office ... please give me a little more time to get with everyone to collect the $7 fee."
Fox News has learned that Bryant's attorneys had obtained the e-mail and were investigating, but Eagle County Sheriff Joe Hoy told Fox News that he wouldn't care if his employees did order the shirts, adding that he could not dictate what they wore off-duty.
The district attorney's office, on the other hand, denied its employees attempted an order


Zucker said he doesn't believe it's a coincidence that Nielsen's measurement of young male viewership has increased over the past three weeks after network complaints became public.

Street's supporters contended it was evidence of a possibly racially inspired GOP plot to oust a Democratic mayor. Katz saw it as a logical result of a culture of corruption he contended existed in City Hall.

Despite insisting that he no ties to the Islamic militant group, Mr Sagheer says he was punished by the authorities for what they saw as his lack of co-operation.

The biggest scientific experiment on prayer has failed to find any evidence that it helps to heal the sick.
Doctors in the United States will today disclose that heart patients who were prayed for by groups of strangers recovered from surgery at the same rate as those who were not.
He said both the Old and New Testaments said "very clearly" that you must not put God to the test.

The United States said on Friday that guerrillas were close to carrying out attacks in Saudi Arabia and that U.S. diplomatic missions in the Gulf Arab state would close on Saturday to review the security situation.
The warning by the U.S. embassy follows Saudi security raids earlier this week in which three militants suspected of links to Saudi-born Osama bin Laden (news - web sites)'s al Qaeda network were killed.

Study: TV can be effective sex educator, rand

the catholics were kinda rite - apparently 3% of condoms break.
perhaps there should be an alarm that goes off when the condom breaks. a little electric shock - or de-feels-great-abrator... defilibrator? geddit?
i think ive fully got my head around the u-can-catch-babies-from-having-sex-but-condoms-can-help-thing. im not entirely confident that ive quite got my head around the implications of the fact that rand is telling people that tv is good. and that its important that adults dont let their kids waste their lives idolly (sic) by themselves... make sure u join in too - "But teenagers who watched with an adult or talked about the episode with one were about twice as likely to remember the information correctly, the study found."

"Of those who discussed the episode with an adult, almost half remembered condoms being described as more than 95 percent effective - nearly twice as many as among teenagers who did not discuss the show with an adult, the study found." indeed.

More than half the department's $5 million court overtime bill last year - $2.6 million - was spent in Cleveland Municipal Court on traffic and misdemeanor cases. Columbus police, with nearly as many officers as Cleveland, spent $2.1 million in 2002 for all types of court overtime, including murders and other serious crimes.

The top American military commander for the Middle East has created a covert commando force to hunt Saddam Hussein (news - web sites), Osama bin Laden (news - web sites) and key terrorists throughout the region, according to Pentagon (news - web sites) and military officials. he new Special Operations organization is designed to act with greater speed on intelligence tips about "high-value targets" and not be contained within the borders where American conventional forces are operating in Iraq (news - web sites) and Afghanistan (news - web sites).
Military officers say that focusing the intelligence, and the Special Operations firepower, within one organization, called Task Force 121, streamlines the effort to use information on these targets and mount an attack.
The new, more flexible force already has shown results, according to Pentagon officials and military officers, who say it has gotten close to Mr. Hussein. Officials declined to give any details.

Mr. Rumsfeld, who routinely cautions that the American military is not designed for manhunts, also said that some of the Iraqi population may be withholding support for the new, American-appointed government in Baghdad because of fears Mr. Hussein may return to power.
mr-ed- ive never heard him say that....

While it is unclear whether President Bush (news - web sites), or the newly-formed Iraq Stabilization Group at the National Security Council, were directly involved in the decision to create the new force, senior administration members have said in the last two months that capturing or killing Mr. Hussein would change the dynamic of the American occupation.

mr-ed - its too orwellian for my limited mind.
not be contained by borders. indeed.

Parents cannot deduct their children's college tuition as educational expenses. Yet corporations can and do deduct liquor, lurid entertainment and expensive, luxurious gifts as "ordinary and necessary" business expenses. They thereby reduce the revenues going to the U.S. Treasury which could have been used to provide grants and loans to America's deserving students. Call this the decay of inverted priorities.

In Texas, the state Republicans have broken cynical new ground in passing legislation that carves new zig-zag Congressional districts in order to pick the voters that would replace almost certainly up to five Congressional House Democrats with Republicans. These elections are over before they start.

Both Parties now believe that over 90% of House Districts in the country are not competitive, meaning that the other major party doesn't try to contest the incumbents seat. This is worsening decay for voter choice and political competition in a weakening democracy.

Iraqi doctors who treated former prisoner of war Jessica Lynch dismissed on Friday claims made in her biography that she was raped by her Iraqi captors.

Dr. Mahdi Khafazji, an orthopedic surgeon at Nasiriyah's main hospital performed surgery on Lynch to repair a fractured femur and said he found no signs that she was raped or sodomized.
Khafazji, speaking at his private clinic in Nasiriyah, said he examined her extensively and would have detected signs of sexual assault. He said the examination turned up no trace of semen.

mred - so so so so so shameless

this is how morally corrupt these horrible people are - jessica lynch is the soldier who was 'rescued' which was all bullshit. but she's a real 'hero' - now they are saying she was anally raped during periods of amnesia. its so so so so so so shameless.

Al-Saeidi said he found no signs of rape during an examination although he acknowledged he was not looking for signs of sexual assault.
mr ed - no shit! why would u look for that....?

Another U.S. soldier, Lori Piestewa, died half an hour after arriving at the hospital with Lynch of severe head injuries, doctors said.
mred - somewhat less of a hero

He told her that she had to undergo surgery in a couple of days, but Lynch said: "'No, I want to be in the States.'"
mred - stop it!

That footage of U.S. commandos wheeling a grimacing Lynch to a waiting chopper was among the most dramatic of the war - and helped cement her image as a female warrior.

There was no immediate response from the Pentagon, which awarded Lynch a Purple Heart for her injuries.
merd - an award for injuries - cool..

The young soldier said at first she did not trust her Iraqi doctors - and tried to stifle her screams.
merd - stop it - please

'Trapped in her bed, Lynch said, she tried to tame her terror by thinking about her family, her fiance, Sgt. Ruben Contreras, and her G.I. buddy Lori Piestewa.'
merd - please!

"If the Palestinians would adopt the ways of Gandhi, I think they could, in fact, make enormous changes very, very quickly. I believe in the power of individuals demonstrating peacefully."
—Paul Wolfowitz Deputy Defense Secretary

On Christmas Eve, 1993, a huge fire ripped through the Offset Alpine printing presses in Sydney's western suburb of Silverwater, prompting a $53.2million payout that Mr Vincent himself had negotiated only months before.
But he added he was surprised at the speed at which the insurers agreed to pay the claim, saying as company secretary he was never satisfied that the cause of the fire had been explained.
The insurance syndicate included FAI. One of the directors of the insurance company, Bruce Corlett, also sat on the board of Offset Alpine.
FAI had increased its stake in Offset Alpine from 4.34 per cent to 9 per cent just days before the fire.

With American forces massed and ready to invade, the Iraqis suddenly expressed interest in meeting their obligations. Yet the article also shows that the administration seems not to have been serious about the idea of a coerced but peaceful solution at the very moment it may have been a realistic possibility.Administration supporters were fond of saying at the time that there were things Bush officials knew but could not share with the public. Little did we imagine that among those things was an offer that might have provided a way to avoid the war.