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WASHINGTON - Forget the black hat. Everybody here is obsessed with Jack Abramoffs gangster-like attire as he came out of the federal courthouse. But the thing that jumps out at me is the figure $20,194,000. If I read the feds plea-agreement papers correctly, thats the amount of cold cash that the Republican lobbyist siphoned from Indian tribes and stashed in his secret accounts.

You may...
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Long before the advent of Christianity, plants and trees that remained green all year had a special meaning for people in the winter. Just as people today decorate their homes during the festive season with pine, spruce, and fir trees, ancient peoples hung evergreen boughs over their doors and windows. In many countries it was believed that evergreens would keep away witches, ghosts, evil spirits,...
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Dec. 14 (Bloomberg) -- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called the Nazi Holocaust a ``myth'' and said Europe, the U.S. and Canada should use their own land for a Jewish state.

The West has ``fabricated a myth under the name `Massacre of the Jews,' and they hold it higher than God himself, religion itself and the prophets themselves,'' Iran's leader told thousands of supporters in the...
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The U.S. military offered a mixed message Wednesday about whether it embraced one of its programs that reportedly paid a consulting firm and Iraqi newspapers to plant favorable stories about the war and the rebuilding effort.

Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, a military spokesman in Iraq, said the program is "an important part of countering misinformation in the news by insurgents." A spokesman for Defense Secretary...
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The European Union's top justice official has warned that any EU state found to have hosted a secret CIA jail could have its voting rights suspended.
Franco Frattini said the consequences would be "extremely serious" if reports of such prisons turned out to be true.

This comes amid an EU investigation into claims the US secret service ran clandestine jails in eastern Europe.

The US...
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Saddam Hussein's second court appearance on charges of murder and torture has been marked by mortality - murdered lawyers, a dead witness - and further insights into different aspects of the principal defendant's character.
First there was the indignant former Iraqi leader, arriving some eight minutes after being called and immediately upbraiding the judge in his own courtroom over his treatment by his American captors....
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Vice President Dick Cheney on Monday accused critics of "corrupt and shameless" revisionism in suggesting the White House misled the nation in a rush to war, the latest salvo in an increasingly acrimonious debate over prewar intelligence.

Cheney also denounced proposals for a quick U.S. withdrawal from Iraq as "a dangerous illusion" and shrugged off the failure to find weapons of mass destruction. "We never...
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It's finally Wizard of Oz time in America. You know - that moment when the curtains are pulled back, the fearsome-looking wizard wreathed in all that billowing smoke turns out to be some pitiful little guy, and everybody looks around sheepishly, wondering why they acted as they did for so long.

Starting on September 11, 2001 - with a monstrous helping hand from Osama bin...
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Nov. 15 (Bloomberg) -- The Senate today called on President George W. Bush to explain his strategy for ending the war in Iraq and report every three months on progress until all U.S. troops stationed there are redeployed.

The measure, passed 79-19, is one of several attached to a major defense bill that reflect unease within the president's own party as polls show increasing public...
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A British man's claim to have cleared himself of the virus that causes AIDS has researchers clamouring to run more tests on him.


Andrew Stimpson, 25, tested negative for HIV 14 months after a confirmed positive test. If true, his would be the first documented case of a person purging the virus from the body.

"I think I'm probably one of the luckiest people alive,"...
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Bush Suffers a Trifecta of Defeat in Off-Year Election



Something to momentarily celebrate? As a matter of fact, yes.

Bush got his trifecta, yesterday, but it wasn't what he wished for.

In the 2005 off-year election, the Democrats won governorships in Virginia and New Jersey. And, to put the icing on the cake, all of Arnold's (the Gropinator's) initiatives (which cost cash-strapped California millions of...
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WASHINGTON For the first time in his presidency, a majority of Americans question the integrity of President Bush, and growing doubts about his leadership have left him with record negative ratings on the economy, Iraq and even the war on terrorism, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

On virtually every key measure of presidential character and performance, the new survey found that Bush...
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