`Notwithstanding any other provision of this chapter, the Supreme Court shall not have jurisdiction to review, by appeal, writ of certiorari, or otherwise, any matter to the extent that relief is sought against an entity of Federal, State, or local government, or against an officer or agent of Federal, State, or local government (whether or not acting in official or personal capacity), concerning that entity's, officer's, or agent's acknowledgment of God as the sovereign source of law, liberty, or government.'.

The latest chapter in the legal history of torture is being written by American pilots who were beaten and abused by Iraqis during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. And it has taken a strange twist.

The Bush administration is fighting the former prisoners of war in court, trying to prevent them from collecting nearly $1 billion from Iraq that a federal judge awarded them as compensation for their torture at the hands of Saddam Hussein's regime.

The rationale: Today's Iraqis are good guys, and they need the money.

The case abounds with ironies. It pits the U.S. government squarely against its own war heroes and the Geneva Convention.

 

Washington State Republican Party leaders say they've found 8400 more ballots cast than the number of voters registered in the state's five largest counties. State GOP Chairman Chris Vance says the mismatching numbers in King, Pierce, Snohomish, Clark and Kitsap are troubling.

Republican Dino Rossi won the first two counts in the governor's race, then lost a hand recount to Democrat Christine Gregoire by a mere 129 votes. Republicans are mulling a possible legal challenge to the election, and Vance says discrepancies like the ones they found so far are clear indications that things went wrong. County auditors have said it typically takes a while for election results to be reconciled with voter registration records.

To draw even greater amounts of private donations, I have asked two of America's most distinguished private citizens to head a nationwide charitable fundraising effort. Both men, both Presidents, know the great decency of our people. They bring tremendous leadership experience to this role, and they bring good hearts. I am grateful to the former Presidents, Clinton and Bush, for taking on this important responsibility and for serving our country once again.

So much for Kyoto.

The official treaty to curb greenhouse-gas emissions hasn't gone into effect yet and already three countries are planning to build nearly 850 new coal-fired plants, which would pump up to five times as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as the Kyoto Protocol aims to reduce.

The magnitude of that imbalance is staggering. Environmentalists have long called the treaty a symbolic rather than practical victory in the fight against global warming. But even many of them do not appear aware of the coming tidal wave of greenhouse-gas emissions by nations not under Kyoto restrictions.

By 2012, the plants in three key countries - China, India, and the United States - are expected to emit as much as an extra 2.7 billion tons of carbon dioxide, according to a Monitor analysis of power-plant construction data. In contrast, Kyoto countries by that year are supposed to have cut their CO2 emissions by some 483 million tons.

MOSCOW (AP) - Russia has restricted rights to such an extent that it has joined the countries that are not free for the first time since the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union, Freedom House said Monday, marking Moscow's march away from the Western democracies it has embraced as diplomatic partners.

``This setback for freedom represented the year's most important political trend,'' the U.S.-based non-governmental organization wrote in its annual study, Freedom in the World 2005.

Freedom House noted increased Kremlin control over national television and other media, limitations on local government, and parliamentary and presidential elections it said were neither free nor fair.

December 16, 2004 --  WAS Bernard Kerik a stalker? As the illicit romance between former top cop Kerik and publishing titan Judith Regan went down the drain in late 2002, the jilted Kerik snapped, according to people who knew them both.

He not only followed his ex-lover around town -- he seemed to be following her children, two business associates of Regan's told me yesterday.

One associate, who has not seen or spoken to Regan in a year and a half, said, "She had me in her office one day, raving about how he was stalking her." That was in late 2002, long before Kerik came this close to leading Homeland Security.

"He's insane!" Regan told the associate.

Politician Who Won't Say Pledge Of Allegiance May Be Recalled

DENVER -- A recall election is now set for an Estes Park, Colo., trustee who refuses to stand up and recite the Pledge of Allegiance during the Town Board meetings.

David Habecker sits while others stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.

"I have not been standing for the Pledge of Allegiance due to a conflict I have with the wording of the pledge, specifically the words 'under God,'" Councilman David Habecker said.

Habecker said it's a violation of church and state to include the words in the pledge and for that reason, he won't stand.

N Korea: 'Sanctions mean war'
15/12/2004 08:53  - (SA)  

Seoul - North Korea warned on Wednesday that it would regard any sanctions imposed on it by Japan as a declaration of war and would hit back with an "effective physical" response.

It also aid it would reconsider its participation in six-nation talks aimed at ending the nuclear stand-off if a "provocative campaign" under way in Japan against the country continued, a foreign ministry spokesperson said.

The outburst came after Japan said it would halt aid shipments to the impoverished Stalinist state in a dispute over the fate of Japanese nationals abducted by North Korean agents during the Cold war.

WASHINGTON - A senior Republican congressman has been warning America's intelligence community for more than a year of an alleged Iranian plot to crash commercial airliners into a New Hampshire nuclear reactor.

Since February 2003, Rep. Curt Weldon of Pennsylvania has held a series of secret meetings in Paris with a former high-ranking official in the Shah's government who has correctly predicted, according to Mr. Weldon, a number of internal developments in Iran ranging from the regime's atomic weapons programs to its support for international terrorism, including Al Qaeda.