By MATTHEW PENNINGTON
The Associated Press

Gosh! Could the United States Be next, Mr. Bush? - JS

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - The government of embattled Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf said Thursday it may impose a state of emergency because of “external and internal threats” and deteriorating law and order in the volatile northwest near the Afghan border.

Tariq Azim, minister of state for information, said talk from the United States about the possibility of U.S. military action against al-Qaida in Pakistan “has started alarm bells ringing and has upset the Pakistani public.” He mentioned Democratic presidential hopeful Barak Obama by name as an example of someone who made such comments, saying his recent remarks were one reason the government was debating a state of emergency.

But it appeared the motivation for a declaration of an emergency would be the domestic political woes of Musharraf, a key U.S. ally in the war on terrorism who took power in a 1999 coup.

His popularity has dwindled and his standing has been badly shaken by a failed bid to oust the country’s chief justice - an independent-minded judge likely to rule on expected legal challenges to the Musharraf’s bid to seek a new five-year presidential term this fall.

read more HERE

from The Center for American Progress

Right-wing preacher Fred Phelps’s “anti-gay hate group Westboro Baptist Church” is planning “protests at funerals of victims of the 35W bridge collapse to state that God made the bridge fall because he hates America, and especially Minnesota, because of its tolerance of homosexuality.” Shortly after the bridge’s collapse, the Westboro group put out a release headlined, “Thank God for Minneapolis Bridge Collapse.” This instance is far not the first time Phelps has exploited calamity and catastrophe to promote his right-wing cause. In response to the July 2005 London attacks, Phelps posted a release stating, “Thank God for the bombing of London’s subway today — July 7, 2005 — wherein dozens were killed and hundreds seriously injured. Wish it was many more.” Phelps’s cult has also traveled the country disrupting military funerals, picketing dozens of burial services with messages such as “Thank God For AIDS” and “God Hates Fags.” These “protests” forced Congress to pass the Respect for America’s Fallen Heroes Act in 2006, which “bars protests within 500 feet of a military cemetery from 60 minutes before to 60 minutes after a funeral if those protests involve disruptive noises or other disturbances.” Banned from military funerals, Phelps is excited to be taking his hate agenda to the victims in Minneapolis.

By MONICA DAVEY and MATTHEW L. WALD
The New York Times

MINNEAPOLIS, Aug. 8 - Investigators have found what may be a design flaw in the bridge that collapsed here a week ago, in the steel parts that connect girders, raising safety concerns for other bridges around the country, federal officials said on Wednesday.

Work continued on Wednesday in removing wreckage from the collapsed Minneapolis bridge.

The Federal Highway Administration swiftly responded by urging all states to take extra care with how much weight they place on bridges of any design when sending construction crews to work on them. Crews were doing work on the deck of the Interstate 35W bridge here when it gave way, hurling rush-hour traffic into the Mississippi River and killing at least five people.

The National Transportation Safety Board’s investigation is months from completion, and officials in Washington said they were still working to confirm the design flaw in the so-called gusset plates and what, if any, role they had in the collapse.

Still, in making public their suspicion about a flaw, the investigators were signaling they considered it a potentially crucial discovery and also a safety concern for other bridges. Gusset plates are used in the construction of many bridges, not just those with a similar design to the one here.

read more HERE

from MEDIA MATTERS

On the August 7 edition of Fox News’ Hannity & Colmes, Sean Hannity answered Alan Colmes’ question, “Most people want national health care. Don’t they?” with a flat “No.” Colmes said he wanted guest Frank Luntz, a Republican pollster, to answer his question. Luntz did not answer whether the public wanted “national health care,” instead claiming that people want “control. What they want is the ability to determine their doctor, their hospital, their pharmaceutical plan, and their insurance company.” In fact, polling from May and June found that a majority of the public wants a national health insurance program. Moreover, one of those polls, conducted by a Democratic polling firm, found that a majority of likely voters favored universal health insurance even if it limited choices among health care providers.

Several polls taken in May and June found that a majority of respondents favored a government program to provide health insurance to all Americans:

* In a May 4-6 CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll, 64 percent of respondents said they “think the government should provide a national health insurance program for all Americans, even if this would require higher taxes.”

* In a May 31-June 5 poll conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International for the Kaiser Family Foundation, 53 percent of respondents said they wanted a presidential candidate to propose “a new health plan that would make a major effort to provide health insurance for all or nearly all of the uninsured,” even if it “would involve a substantial increase in spending,” in contrast with 21 percent in favor of a “new health plan that is more limited and would cover only some groups of the uninsured BUT would involve less new spending” and 17 percent in favor of “[k]eeping things basically as they are.”

read more and see video with Putz and Vanity HERE