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http://www.boston.com/news/world/europe/articles/2006/09/17/popes_regrets_fail_to_calm_muslims?mode=PF
Pope's `regrets' fail to calm Muslims
Five churches in West Bank, Gaza attacked
By Colin Nickerson, Globe Staff | September 17, 2006
BERLIN -- The Vatican expressed regret yesterday for remarks by PopeBenedict XVI that enraged Muslims by implicitly linking Islamic tenets toviolence, but the pontiff stopped short of issuing a personal apology.
In a statement, the Vatican's new secretary of state, Cardinal TarcisioBertone, said the pope ``sincerely regrets that certain passages" of aspeech delivered Tuesday in Germany ``could have sounded offensive to thesensitivities of the Muslim faithful."
The statement failed to soothe Muslim religious and political leaders, muchless calm the anger felt by rank-and-file followers of the world'ssecond-largest religion, after Christianity.
Palestinian gunmen fired shots and hurled fire-bombs at five Christianchurches in the West Bank and Gaza Strip yesterday, causing no injuries butleaving them scorched and pocked by bullets. A Muslim group called Lions ofMonotheism said it carried out the attacks in response to Benedict'sremarks.
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http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/politics/la-na-outlook17sep17,1,5943466.column?coll=la-util-politics-nation
Los Angeles Times
RONALD BROWNSTEIN / WASHINGTON OUTLOOK
Bush Fails to Recapture the Nation's Post-9/11 Unity
Ronald Brownstein
Washington Outlook
September 17, 2006
It's a truism that the world of Sept. 10, 2001, is gone, vaporized in theattacks of the next day.
But the world of Sept. 12 is gone too.
In the aftermath of Sept. 11, Americans came together in shock and sorrowand resolve. Members of Congress, from both parties, symbolized thatpowerful connection when they stood on the Capitol steps and sang "God BlessAmerica" hours after the attacks.
Last week, on the fifth anniversary of Sept. 11, they tried that again. Notthat many legislators showed up. The ones who did couldn't decide whetherthey wanted to hold hands. The whole thing fizzled out.
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Houston Chronicle
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/politics/4192624.html
Sept. 16, 2006, 10:14PM
Black Caucus optimistic about power in Congress
Seniority puts 3 black lawmakers in line to lead House committees
By FRANK JAMES
Chicago Tribune
WASHINGTON - At a gathering hosted by the Congressional Black Caucus thismonth, Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, a white New York Democrat, uttered words blacklawmakers have largely refrained from saying aloud.
During a discussion on urban crime moderated by Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y.,a prominent Black Caucus member, McCarthy said, "Charlie's been a leader onthis because he's on Ways and Means - and, God help us, I hope he's thechair next January."
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The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/17/opinion/17yoo.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print
September 17, 2006
Op-Ed Contributor
How the Presidency Regained Its Balance
By JOHN YOO
Berkeley, Calif.
FIVE years after 9/11, President Bush has taken his counterterrorism case to the American people. That's because he has had to. This summer, a plurality of the Supreme Court found, in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, that Congress must explicitly approve military commissions to try suspected terrorists. So Mr. Bush has proposed legislation seeking to place the tribunals, and other aggressive antiterrorism measures, on a sounder footing.
But the president has broader goals than even fighting terrorism - he has long intended to make reinvigorating the presidency a priority. Vice President Dick Cheney has rightly deplored the "erosion of the powers and the ability of the president of the United States to do his job" and noted that "we are weaker today as an institution because of the unwise compromises that have been made over the last 30 to 35 years."
Thus the administration has gone to war to pre-empt foreign threats. It has data-mined communications in the United States to root out terrorism. It has detained terrorists without formal charges, interrogating some harshly. And it has formed military tribunals modeled on those of past wars, as when we tried and executed a group of Nazi saboteurs found in the United States.
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The New York Times
http://select.nytimes.com/2006/09/17/opinion/17rich.html?pagewanted=print
September 17, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
The Longer the War, the Larger the Lies
By FRANK RICH
RARELY has a television network presented a more perfectly matched double feature. President Bush's 9/11 address on Monday night interrupted ABC's "Path to 9/11" so seamlessly that a single network disclaimer served them both: "For dramatic and narrative purposes, the movie contains fictionalized scenes, composite and representative characters and dialogue, as well as time compression."
No kidding: "The Path to 9/11" was false from the opening scene, when it put Mohamed Atta both in the wrong airport (Boston instead of Portland, Me.) and on the wrong airline (American instead of USAirways). It took Mr. Bush but a few paragraphs to warm up to his first fictionalization for dramatic purposes: his renewed pledge that "we would not distinguish between the terrorists and those who harbor or support them." Only days earlier the White House sat idly by while our ally Pakistan surrendered to Islamic militants in its northwest frontier, signing a "truce" and releasing Al Qaeda prisoners. Not only will Pakistan continue to harbor terrorists, Osama bin Laden probably among them, but it will do so without a peep from Mr. Bush.
You'd think that after having been caught concocting the scenario that took the nation to war in Iraq, the White House would mind the facts now. But this administration understands our culture all too well. This is a country where a cable news network (MSNBC) offers in-depth journalism about one of its anchors (Tucker Carlson) losing a prime-time dance contest and where conspiracy nuts have created a cottage industry of books and DVD's by arguing that hijacked jets did not cause 9/11 and that the 9/11 commission was a cover-up. (The fictionalized "Path to 9/11," supposedly based on the commission's report, only advanced the nuts' case.) If you're a White House stuck in a quagmire in an election year, what's the percentage in starting to tell the truth now? It's better to game the system.
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The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/17/washington/17detain.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print
September 17, 2006
How 3 G.O.P. Veterans Stalled Bush Detainee Bill
By CARL HULSE, KATE ZERNIKE and SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
This article is by Carl Hulse, Kate Zernike and Sheryl Gay Stolberg.
WASHINGTON, Sept. 16 - Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham cornered their partner, Senator John W. Warner, on the Senate floor late Wednesday afternoon.
Mr. Warner, the courtly Virginian who is chairman of the Armed Services Committee, had been trying for weeks to quietly work out the three Republicans' differences with the Bush administration's proposal to bring terrorism suspects to trial. But Senators McCain, of Arizona, and Graham, of South Carolina, who are on the committee with Mr. Warner, convinced him that the time for negotiation was over.
The three senators, all military veterans, marched off to an impromptu news conference to lay out their deep objections to the Bush legislation. Mr. Warner then personally broke the news to Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the majority leader, and the next day the Armed Services Committee voted to approve a firm legislative rebuke to the president's plan to reinterpret the Geneva Conventions.
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Forwarded from Ken's List <Kenneth.Sherrill@hunter.cuny.edu>
To: kenslist@groups.queernet.org
http://www.kaisernetwork.org/daily_reports/rep_index.cfm?DR_ID=39821
IRS Revokes Antiabortion Group's Tax Exemption;
Increase in Prohibited Campaign Activities by Charities, Churches
The Internal Revenue Service <http://www.irs.gov/> this week revoked the tax exemption status of the antiabortion group Operation Rescue <http://www.operationrescue.org/> West for violating electioneering prohibitions in the 2004 presidential elections, the <http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/15/us/15tax.html?_r=1&oref=slogin> New York
Times reports.
According to the Times, churches and charities generally cannot campaign for candidates, but they can advocate a stance on issues andprovide voter information.
The IRS in February said it has seen a rapid
increase in activities that are prohibited by charities and said it plans tocurb the trend. Catholics for <http://www.catholicsforchoice.org/> a FreeChoice in 2004 had filed a complaint with the IRS against ORW for placing anadvertisement in the July 15, 2004, edition of the Roman Catholic weeklynewspaper <http://www.thewandererpress.com/> The Wanderer, soliciting taxdeductible contributions to defeat Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) in the 2004presidential election.
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Forwarded from Ken's List <Kenneth.Sherrill@hunter.cuny.edu>
To: kenslist@groups.queernet.org
Uganda Drafts Bill to Execute HIV Infectors
http://allafrica.com/stories/200609140009.html
Uganda Drafts Bill to Execute HIV Infectors
Inter Press Service (Johannesburg)
NEWS
September 13, 2006
Posted to the web September 14, 2006
By Evelyn Kiapi Matsamura
Kampala
In 1999, an HIV-infected 30-year-old man named Fred Mwanga shocked thecountry when he raped a three-month-old baby in a Kampala suburb.
Even more upsetting, Mwanga's action was not an isolated incident. The rateof HIV-infected adults sexually abusing the nation's most vulnerablecitizens is rising. As these ill men prey on the minors, they spread thedeadly HIV virus. Already one in 10 Ugandans is HIV-positive or hasfull-blown AIDS.
Now, however, the Ugandan government is drafting a bill to execute offenderswho knowingly infect minors with HIV.
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Forwarded from Ron Mills
http://www.RonMills.us
http://politalk1.blogspot.com/
Sunday, September 17, 2006
Bush Covering His Ass
Olbermann:
Bush's 'rush' to redefine Geneva Conventions may be mostly about 'covering his own backside'
David Edwards Keith Olbermann's Friday broadcast on MSNBC featured a long look at thePresident's contentious Rose Garden press conference on Friday, dubbing it the "Roast Garden," and then pondered whether Bush's urgency to redefinethe Geneva Convention had more to do with "covering his own backside"than anything else.
At a Friday press conference, an animated President Bush tells reporters thatthe U.S. program to interrogate terrorist suspects will not continue unlessCongress creates new legal definitions for Common Article 3 or the GenevaConventions -- a move that has alarmed some GOP senators and former Secretary of State Colin Powell.
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