The guys at Fark.com had this take on college football: “Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies, rivers and seas boiling, forty years of darkness. Earthquakes, volcanoes, the dead rising from the grave, and human sacrifice: Missouri and Kansas ranked in the AP top 10. MASS HYSTERIA.”
Hollywood actors flock over to see him. Some accept cash from the proto-dictator. Some scions of American political dynasties accept more money from him, supposedly for the poor. Some American "activists" just swap a bit of spit with him. But have any of the steady string of visitors asked (T)Hugo Chavez how he supplements his income? Being a glad-handing financier of Hollywood movies and activist vote-buying schemes costs money, you know. And what better way to do it than by smuggling and trading in "blood diamonds?"
Former Vice President Al Gore and the U.N.'s climate change panel won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for spreading awareness of man-made climate change and laying the foundations for counteracting it.
One has to wonder what kind of journalists the storied Columbia School of Journalism intends to produce. If the column published this month by Idris Leppla ten days ago for the Columbia Spectator gives any hint, we can expect novices of the obvious who infantilize the people who serve as their subjects. This time she uses her brother, who applied to and entered the Naval Academy at Annapolis, apparently without Idris and her mother realizing it meant joining the Navy
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez threatened on Monday to close or take over any private school that refuses to submit to the oversight of his socialist government as it develops a new curriculum and textbooks.
"Society cannot allow the private sector to do whatever it wants," said Chavez, speaking on the first day of classes.
All schools, public and private, must admit state inspectors and submit to the government's new educational system, or be closed and nationalized, with the state taking responsibility for the education of their children, Chavez said.
A new curriculum will be ready by the end of this school year, and Other Top Headlines Photos new textbooks are being developed to help educate "the new citizen," said Chavez's brother and education minister Adan Chavez, who joined him a televised ceremony at the opening of a public school in the eastern town of El Tigre.
The president's opponents accuse him of aiming to indoctrinate young Venezuelans with socialist ideology. But the education minister said the aim is to develop "critical thinking," not to impose a single way of thought.
Seemingly taunting Osama bin Laden, President Bush's homeland security adviser said Sunday the fugitive al-Qaida leader is "virtually impotent" beyond his ability to hide away and spread anti-American propaganda.
The provocative characterization came just days after bin Laden attracted international attention with the release of a video in which he ridicules President Bush about the Iraq war and reminds the world that he not been captured.
Ahead of the sixth anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist strikes, White House aide Frances Fragos Townsend made a clear attempt to diminish the influence — or the perception — of the man who masterminded those attacks.
"This is about the best he can do," Townsend said of bin Laden. "This is a man on a run, from a cave, who's virtually impotent other than these tapes."
In appearance on two Sunday talk shows, she used the "virtually impotent" reference both times, suggesting the language was chosen with careful purpose.
"We know that al-Qaida is still determined to attack, and we take it seriously," Townsend said. "But this tape appears to be nothing more than threats. It's propaganda on their part."
The brother of a pilot hijacked during the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks launched his general election campaign for Congress Wednesday with a sharp attack on his opponent, the widow of one-time presidential candidate Paul Tsongas.
Niki Tsongas won Tuesday's Democratic primary in the race to replace retiring U.S. Rep. Martin Meehan, who is resigning to become chancellor of the University of Massachusetts-Lowell.
On the Republican side, Jim Ogonowski, whose brother was captain of American Airlines Flight 11, one of two hijacked planes flown into the World Trade Center in 2001, easily won his party's nomination.
"Niki's a nice person. I like her. I know she means well, but let's face it, she presents more of the same tired Washington that continues to fail us," Ogonowski told supporters at his campaign headquarters. "She is wrong on the issues and she is not right for this district."
Tsongas, meanwhile, pledged to end the war in Iraq and "send a message to the White House." in the Oct. 16 special election.
"In the end, this election will be a referendum on the Bush administration, and I represent the Democratic voice and the alternate view," Tsongas said. The 5th District seat has been in Democratic hands since her husband won it in 1974.
