The Beatles
When I Saw Her Standing There
I’ll tell ya what…….43 years later and I still rock out to this song. It’s on my favorite homemade road trip CD. Good Lord, I never stopped to think how long ago it was I first heard it.

I Should Have Known Better

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I don’t know if this guy has a lawsuit going, but if he doesn’t…… I hope he does soon. This shit is just wrong….on so many levels. And for our government to do something like this to an innocent man, and there be no consequences….. just burns my ass.

TORONTO - Canadian police said Tuesday they had told U.S. authorities they had no evidence an Ottawa software engineer was an al-Qaida agent before Washington deported him to Syria, where he was tortured.

Royal Canadian Mounted Police Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli said police initially told U.S. authorities Syrian-born Maher Arar was a “man of interest” and may have ties to Islamic extremists but they later told Washington they had no evidence to support those allegations.

Yet U.S. authorities went ahead and deported Arar to his native Syria, where he says he was tortured into making false confessions, Zaccardelli told a public security hearing in the capital Ottawa.

“RCMP investigators clearly informed U.S. officials that there was no evidence to support criminal charges against Mr. Arar in Canada, that he could not be prevented from entering Canada, and that we were unable to link him to al-Qaida,” Zaccardelli said.

Read more at Chron.com

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CARACAS, Venezuela - President Hugo Chavez snubbed a U.S. overture for dialogue on Tuesday, saying he is always willing to talk but doubts Washington sincerely wants to improve relations.

Chavez, who overwhelmingly won another six-year term in elections Sunday, said if the U.S. really wants to take meaningful steps, it would halt the war in Iraq and extradite a jailed Cuban militant who is wanted in Venezuela for a 1976 airliner bombing.

“They want dialogue but on the condition that you accept their positions,” Chavez said at his first news conference since Sunday’s vote.

“If the government of the United States wants dialogue, Venezuela will always have its door open,” he said. “But I doubt the U.S. government is sincere.”

Read more at Chron.com

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The richest 2% of adults in the world own more than half of all household wealth, according to a new study by a United Nations research institute.
The report, from the World Institute for Development Economics Research at the UN University, says that the poorer half of the world’s population own barely 1% of global wealth.

There have of course been many studies of worldwide inequality.

But what is new about this report, the authors say, is its coverage.

It deals with all countries in the world - either actual data or estimates based on statistical analysis - and it deals with wealth, where most previous research has looked at income.

Read more at BBCNews

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Russ Feingold is honorary chairman of the Progressive Patriots Fund.
Questionnaires such as this one are more about fund-raising than about giving voice to citizens and there are only six questions. However, citizens should use all available means to force our representatives to actually represent us.
Question #5 of this survey is a good place to express your demand for impeachment. I answered that question by writing that impeachment would demonstrate to terrorists and to the world that the actions of our government in Iraq and elsewhere are criminal and the administration should be punished for each one. Question #6 is a good place to demand that the information collected in this survey be presented to our Congressional representatives.

National Priorities Survey - Foreign Policy

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Raw Story now has a correspondent in Iraq.

FALLUJAH, IRAQ: I’ve completed the first leg of the journey to Iraq, after having moved through Dubai, Kuwait and Baghdad. I am now at Camp Fallujah. While in Fallujah, I’ll embed with a Marine Police Transition Team (PTT) and also meet with the Civil Affairs Group. The next stop will be Ramadi.

The trip - from my front door to Fallujah - took 3 ½ days, accounting for the 8 hour time shift between the East Coast and Iraq. This is remarkable, considering Iraq is a war zone. I spent all of 35 minutes in the Green Zone getting my ID badge and another two hours waiting for a flight to Fallujah. Most of the time was spent waiting at military airbases, trying to catch that next flight out on a plane or helicopter.

During my journey to Fallujah, I moved through three bases and one camp: Ali Al Salem (Kuwait), BIAP (Baghdad International Airport), Camp Stryker, and LZ Washington (inside the Green Zone).

Read more at Raw Story

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Ok, this kinda pisses me off. If she were just some average schmuck who wasn’t married to a politician she’d be outta here. This isn’t fair to the immigrants who aren’t married to State Senators, and who would be deported.

ATLANTA (WXIA) — The Colombia-born wife of a Georgia state senator surrendered to authorities in Atlanta Tuesday morning after finding out she will not be deported to her native country after all. Speaking in Spanish, Sascha Herrera, who is married to Sen. Curt Thompson of Norcross, denied reports that she went into hiding after immigration officials appeared at her home with a deportation order.

“That hurts me a lot,” she said. “Reading on the Internet, they said I was hiding out, so as not to go to jail. But at no time was I trying to hide out. I was just trying to buy some time to see what was happening and the best way to deal with it.”

Herrera said she surrendered Tuesday morning prepared to go to jail, realizing she could end up there for weeks while her lawyer straightened out her residency status. It was a tough decision, she said, “because I didn’t do anything to deserve jail.”

Herrera turned herself in about 8 a.m. at the immigration office across the street from the federal courthouse in downtown Atlanta. She then met with an immigration judge and attorneys for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office and got the deportation order against her lifted.

Herrera’s husband, as well as her attorney, were with her when she appeared before the judge to seek permanent residency in the U.S.

Herrera blamed the confusion on a notario who she said defrauded her after claiming he could help her gain permanent residency. The deportation order stemmed from Herrera’s repeated failure to appear before a judge on an asylum application, which she said she did not know had been filed. She had been out of sight since Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers arrived at her home Nov. 28 with an order to remove her from the U.S. She was not home at the time.

More here

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HOUSE LEADERS ABRUPTLY PULL OFF SHORE DRILLING BILL FROM FLOOR

GATES SAYS WE’RE NOT WINNING IN IRAQ

HUMAN SMUGGLING CHARGES FILED IN CRASH

ALPS ARE WARMEST IN 1,300 YEARS

47 DIE AS TROPICAL STORM HITS VIETNAM

50 HOUSE MEMBERS PUSH LEACH FOR U.N. AMBASSADOR

BUSH THREATENS TO VETO FARM BILL

HOMELAND SECURITY STUDY FINDS SPIKE IN CRIMES BY EMPLOYEES

QUESTIONS FOR GATES

DADDY’S ALL CHOKED UP

THE DENIAL INDUSTRY

MALIKI URGES REGIONAL MEETING ON IRAQ

I was out all day and missed the Gates questioning. Anyone see it? What’s your take?

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For and Against Same-Sex Marriage at Maryland’s Highest Court

ANNAPOLIS, Md., Dec. 4 (AP) - The state has no rational basis for denying same’sex couples the fundamental right to marriage, a lawyer for plaintiffs in a gay-marriage case told Maryland’s highest court on Monday.

A lawyer for the state argued that Maryland’s 1973 ban on same’sex marriage did not constitute gender discrimination because it applied equally to men and women and that the question on same’sex marriage should be decided by the legislature.

“There is no fundamental constitutional right to same’sex marriage,” said the lawyer, Robert Zarnoch, counsel to the General Assembly.

Continue reading

“There is no fundamental constitutional right to same’sex marriage”

As good of argument I would expect from the homophobe crowd… but begs the question: Is there a fundamental constitutional right to opposite’sex marriages?

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More Disorder in the Court?

Just days before last month’s elections, a conservative weekly’s website suggested that a member of the U.S. Supreme Court was gravely ill and that friends had been asked to pray for 86-year-old Justice John Paul Stevens.

Such rumors are normally “too ghoulish to repeat publicly,” wrote Sean Rushton on HumanEvents.com. But with control of the Senate at stake, it is “news that should be considered,” he said, even if it’s unfounded.

That get-out-the-vote effort stuck out even in a campaign full of cynical appeals. Today, nearly a month after Democrats won both houses of Congress, the Stevens scuttlebutt remains uncorroborated-the senior justice has participated fully in recent arguments, as has Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 73, who’s also been the subject of rumors of poor health. But the effort by Rushton, former director of a conservative group devoted to winning approval of White House judicial nominations, underscored the right wing’s investment in the issue of high court nominees. With newly powerful Democrats like New York Sen. Charles Schumer of the Judiciary Committee vowing an end to “the days of hard-right judges,” the nominee game has become far more complicated.

Full article here - a good read!

Who do you suspect Bush will nominate? Knowing that Democrats hold the majority vote brings me not that much comfort, what with the promise of a quick confirmation hearing for Robert Gates as defense secretary. Newly elected Democrats, vowing a more centrist view, could possibly allow through the likes of Pat (Robertson or Buchanan… or both!).
Sheeesh…

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Baby survives alcohol poisoning

Family: Vodka in formula was accident

By CARY LEIDER VOGRIN THE GAZETTE

A 2-month-old girl brought to Memorial Hospital on Sunday with a blood-alcohol level equivalent to four times the legal driving limit for an adult was reportedly given formula mixed with vodka instead of water by mistake.

The baby was in good condition Monday after being taken to the hospital by her parents about 3:30 a.m. Sunday.

The baby’s parents did not return a phone call from The Gazette, but a family member told the newspaper the incident was an ‘accident’ tied to an “unfortunate chain of events.” She would not elaborate and did not want to be identified.

The baby’s mother, however, told KKTV she mixed a 3-ounce formula bottle for her daughter, not knowing the liquid in a water bottle was vodka, according to the station’s Web site. Sarah Smith, 19, told the station the accident happened Saturday night when the baby’s father went into a store to get diapers and she and the baby (who became fussy) waited in the car. She then made the baby a bottle.

The Gazette confirmed a portion of that account with a source familiar with the case.

Link

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