BUMPER STICKER OF THE WEEK:

Bush II, The Last Male President

VAN HALEN REUNION?

Now that he's lost his radio job, David Lee Roth is seeking gainful employment in another capacity -- as lead singer of Van Halen. Again. " I see it absolutely as an inevitability," says Roth, who was deposed by CBS Radio in late April as one of Howard Stern's replacements. "There's contact between the two camps, and they have legitimate management; Irv Azoff is part of their loop now.
"To me, it's not rocket surgery. It's very simple to put together. And as far as hurt feelings and water under the dam, like what's-her-name says to what's-her-name at the end of the movie 'Chicago' -- 'So what? It's showbiz!' So I definitely see it happening."
Despite that claim, Roth -- who was Van Halen's singer from 1974-1985 -- acknowledges that he hasn't seen Edward Van Halen "in a couple of years." The last time Roth recorded with Van Halen was for the group's "Best Of Van Halen Volume 1" album in 1996, though there have been periodic rumors ever since.
Roth isn't sitting around while he waits for the call, however. He joins the John Jorgensen bluegrass band for two songs -- "Jump" and "Jamie's Cryin' " -- on "Strummin' With the Devil: The Southern Side of Van Halen," a bluegrass-styled tribute to Van Halen. Roth calls it "a detour" as well as "an interesting return ... Before there was rock 'n' roll, there was me and a single guitar, flat pickin' Doc Watson (songs)." Roth plans to make a number of TV appearances on behalf of the album, which comes out June 6.
Roth is also planning to tour later this summer to play Van Halen hits -- "I'm so proud of that music," he says -- favorites from his solo album and covers. He'll leave the banjos and fiddles at home, though.
"I like to bring out the brass section now and the keyboard players and the singers and so forth," Roth explains. "It's probably a little closer to the Rolling Stones' revue than to the early three-piece power trio. But the demand is amazing; I guess I'm lucky enough to be one of those guys now who can point at the map and say 'Let's go here' -- or, rather, my favorite expression, which is 'Let's follow the sun."'

Now for Something Completly Different...

I recently purchased three new CD's:

Pearl Jam, Godsmack IV and Def Leppard's YEAH!

None of these bands have put out a new disc in several years, so I had high hopes when they all came out at about the same time. As it turns out, Pearl Jam, despite the Slipnot-inspired inside cover, was pretty disappointing. I think the idea was to put out an all-out, bare-bones rock & roll protest album against the war--and war in general.
Instead, you get an over-the-top sound that is not very Pearl Jam and even less listenable, especially in light of its bad mix job and even worse production value. The songs are ok, and track #4, Severed Hand, is even good---for a Black Crowes cover band, but this is supposed to be Pearl Jam, not open-mic jam!

Godsmack will never top their first album. They are the Orson Welles of the Alice-In-Chains torch-bearers. IV is not a bad cd, but its best song is twelve minutes into the last track, which has a (so 1991) silence for almosy eight minutes before it. Not only that, but they do a "Voodo II." That's like Zeppelin doing a "Stairway II" Lame, lame, lame.
I still love the band and will buy their next cd-- ad infinitum. I saw them open for the Black Sabbath reunion tour in 2000 and was blown away. That's the problem. Potential is the heaviest burden... and the most disappointing when not fulfilled.

Def Leppard's covers of songs they grew up on, on YEAH!, are not very creative and in most cases, fall short of the unwritten law of covering a famous tune--making it your own.
Still, they play the hell out of them and you can tell they truly love those songs. Of the three CD's, this one will be played over and over in my crib.

A Couple Of Dickheads

A couple caught on video stealing marital aids from a local adult toy shop made a big mistake in returning to the store, Decatur, Alabama police said Monday.
When Larry and Ashley Gargis of Hillsboro walked into "Pleasures" on Thursday, the clerk recognized them and called police, said Lt. Chris Mathews, a police spokesman.
The couple allegedly had visited the store May 8, stealing enhancement pills and a "king size" rubber sex toy resembling a penis, Mathews said.
Police arrived and detained the couple. In the Gargis' vehicle, in a leather bag next to the child seat carrying the couple's 3-year-old daughter, a detective said he found the anatomically correct, stolen 9-inch toy.
The $50 device was no longer in its package, said Detective George Silvestri.
"Well, we kind of recovered the stolen property," said Mathews. "But basically, the store manager declined taking it back."
The store may file theft charges against the couple.
Also during the search, police found drug paraphernalia including hydrocodone pills, digital scales, plastic baggies and a methamphetamine pipe, Mathews said.
Police charged Larry Gargis, 29, with possession of a controlled substance and possession of a stolen rubber dick. Morgan County Jail released him Friday on $1,250 bond.
Ashley Gargis, 29, was transferred to Lawrence County Jail on an outstanding warrant for her arrest there.

"Those who violate the law — including a Member of Congress — should and will be held to account, this investigation will go forward, and justice will be served."

-Bush

"The fuck you say!"

-Cheney

BUSH SEALS SEIZED DOCUMENTS


President Bush ordered the Justice Department yesterday to seal records seized from the Capitol Hill office of a Democratic congressman, representing a remarkable intervention by the nation's chief executive into an ongoing criminal probe of alleged corruption.
The order was aimed at quelling an escalating constitutional confrontation between the Justice Department and the House, where Republican and Democratic leaders have demanded that the FBI return documents and copies of computer files seized from the office of Rep. William J. Jefferson (D-La.).
In a six-paragraph statement, Bush cast the dispute in historic terms and said he issued the order to give Justice Department officials and lawmakers more time to negotiate a compromise. "Our government has not faced such a dilemma in more than two centuries," Bush said. "Yet after days of discussions, it is clear these differences will require more time to be worked out."
The order capped five days of tumultuous negotiations involving the White House, the Justice Department and House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), who denounced the Saturday-night raid as an infringement on the separation of powers between the legislative and executive branches and had joined Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) in demanding that the seized documents be returned.
Bush hoped to mollify Hastert, one of his most reliable legislative allies, at a time of increasingly sour relations with the GOP-controlled Congress, according to White House sources. Tempers rose so high this week that some House Republicans threatened to seek the resignation of Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales after it was revealed that his grandparents were illegal immigrants, although GOP leaders said the idea was not seriously considered.
The agreement also marked a setback for the FBI and Justice Department, which had refused demands to return the materials — and had resisted pressure from the White House to cordon them off, according to several officials familiar with the debate.
Bush signaled in his statement, however, that he expected the documents to eventually be made available to prosecutors. "Those who violate the law — including a Member of Congress — should and will be held to account," Bush said. "This investigation will go forward, and justice will be served."
The materials will be held by Solicitor General Paul D. Clement, who is not involved in the Jefferson probe, Bush's statement said.
Emerging from a House Republican meeting about the raid yesterday afternoon, Hastert said he welcomed Bush's 45-day hiatus as a cooling-off period that "gives everybody a chance to step back. I appreciate that."
In effect, Bush's order serves to grant a portion of a legal motion filed on Thursday by Jefferson, which asked that the materials seized by the FBI be locked in a secure place "to allow for full briefing and careful consideration by the court of the serious Constitutional issues and the unprecedented circumstances that give rise to this motion."
Robert P. Trout, Jefferson's attorney, called Bush's decision "a good start."
"It's not every day a lawyer has his motion granted by the president of the United States," Trout said. "We're obviously pleased with this decision."
Another potential entanglement with the FBI arose yesterday when the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call reported that federal agents are seeking to interview top House members from both parties as part of an investigation into leaks about the National Security Agency's domestic surveillance program to the New York Times.
Jamal D. Ware, spokesman for the chairman of the House intelligence committee, Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.), said the effort at the moment is to determine ground rules for the interviews, "to ensure that all constitutional issues are worked out beforehand so a thorough inquiry can move forward."
In the Jefferson case, the FBI has been investigating allegations that the New Orleans Democrat took hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes in exchange for using his congressional influence to promote business ventures in Africa. Two people — Brett Pfeffer and Vernon L. Jackson — have pleaded guilty to bribing Jefferson to promote iGate Inc., a Louisville-based company that was marketing Internet and cable television technology in Nigeria, Ghana and Cameroon.
Pfeffer, a former Jefferson legislative aide, is scheduled to be sentenced today in U.S. District Court in Alexandria.
Jefferson, 59, has not been charged and has denied any wrongdoing. But an 83-page affidavit used to raid his office Saturday said agents videotaped Jefferson last summer taking $100,000 in $100 denominations in bribe money. A few days later, agents found $90,000 of the money stuffed inside a freezer in his D.C. apartment.
Bush has been under heavy pressure from Hastert since Monday, when the president and the speaker appeared together at a Chicago speech, according to accounts from senior White House officials, who requested anonymity. On the ride home aboard Air Force One, Hastert was adamant that the Justice Department had violated the Constitution, and he implored the president to intervene, the sources said.
The next day, the two spoke by phone and Hastert told Bush that he and other leaders would only intensify their campaign to stop Justice from sifting through the materials seized in the weekend search, according to the accounts.
White House officials worked late into the night Wednesday and Thursday, trying to find a middle ground. One person said efforts to get the department to strike a compromise failed.
"Obviously, emotions were running high," the official said. "There was a sense of urgency."
Bush had Vice President Cheney call Hastert to inform him of his decision. The president sees the 45-day period as sufficient to resolve the constitutional questions without disrupting the Jefferson case, according to sources.
There have also been discussions between the White House and Hastert's office about possible legislation to set parameters on handling the unique situation of prosecutors seeking congressional materials, according to administration sources.
Cheney, who may soon be called to testify in the perjury case of his former chief of staff, I. "Scooter" Libby, seemed to like the idea of new legal parameters for government "higher-ups."
The negotiations angered many federal prosecutors and FBI agents, who believed that the search warrant for Jefferson's office, which was signed by Chief U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan, was lawful and necessary because of Jefferson's refusal to comply with a subpoena issued in August.
"Some people are definitely unhappy" with Bush's order, one law enforcement official said. "But if we can bring down the rhetoric and cool off, it may be better for everyone in the end."
Gonzales said in a statement that Bush's order will "protect the integrity" of the investigation, while providing "additional time to reach a permanent solution."
Legal experts said that Bush clearly has the legal authority to direct his Justice Department to do anything lawful with regard to an ongoing investigation.

Sheesh, we thought liberal extremism in our country was bad--giving the Republican Borg Machine ample fodder to throw rational people into.
Well, check out the British! Our bleeding-heart-knee-jerking-universalists apparently haven't got anything on the leftist-limeys!
Somebody call Guy Fawkes!


Galloway says Blair murder 'justified'

By Oliver Duff/The London Sun

The Respected Member of Parliament (MP) George Galloway has said it would be morally justified for a suicide bomber to murder Tony Blair.
In an interview with GQ magazine, the reporter asked him: "Would the assassination of, say, Tony Blair by a suicide bomber - if there were no other casualties - be justified as revenge for the war on Iraq?"
Mr Galloway replied: "Yes, it would be morally justified. I am not calling for it - but if it happened it would be of a wholly different moral order to the events of 7/7. It would be entirely logical and explicable. And morally equivalent to ordering the deaths of thousands of innocent people in Iraq - as Blair did."
The Labour MP Stephen Pound, a persistent critic of Mr Galloway during previous controversies, told The Sun that the Respect MP for Bethnal Green and Bow in east London was "disgraceful and truly twisted".
He said: "These comments take my breath away. Every time you think he can't sink any lower he goes and stuns you again. It's reprehensible to say it would be justified for a suicide bomber to assassinate anyone."
The Stop the War Coalition criticised Mr Galloway: "We don't agree with Tony Blair's actions, but neither do we agree with suicide bombers or assassinations."
Just hours after four bomb attacks killed 52 people on London's transport system last July, Mr Galloway said the city had "paid the price" for Mr Blair's decision to go to war in Iraq and Afghanistan. "Ten thousand Osama bin Ladens have been created at least by the events of the last two years," he told MPs in the Commons that day.
Mr Pound said at the time: "I thought George had sunk to the depths of sickness in the past but this exceeds anything he has done before." The Armed Forces minister, Adam Ingram, accused the Respect MP of "dipping his poisonous tongue in a pool of blood".
Mr Galloway yesterday made a surprise appearance on Cuban television with the Caribbean island's Communist dictator, Fidel Castro - whom he defended as a "lion" in a political world populated by "monkeys".
Mr Galloway shocked panellists on a live television discussion show in Havana by emerging on set mid-transmission to offer passionate support for Castro. Looking approvingly into each others' eyes, the pair embraced.

Tricky Dick to testify

Vice President Dick Cheney could be called to testify in the perjury case against his former chief of staff, a special prosecutor said in a court filing Wednesday.
Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald suggested Cheney would be a logical government witness because he could authenticate notes he jotted on a July 6, 2003, New York Times opinion piece by a former U.S. ambassador critical of the Iraq war.
Fitzgerald said Cheney’s “state of mind” is “directly relevant” to whether I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the vice president’s former top aide, lied to FBI agents and a federal grand jury about how he learned about CIA officer Valerie Plame’s identity and what he subsequently told reporters.
Libby “shared the interests of his superior and was subject to his direction,” the prosecutor wrote. “Therefore, the state of mind of the vice president as communicated to (the) defendant is directly relevant to the issue of whether (the) defendant knowingly made false statements to federal agents and the grand jury regarding when and how he learned about (Plame’s) employment and what he said to reporters regarding this issue.”
In the Times article, former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson accused the Bush administration of twisting intelligence on Iraq to justify going to war. In 2002, the CIA sent Wilson to Niger to determine whether Iraq tried to buy uranium yellowcake from Niger to build a nuclear weapon. Wilson discounted the reports. But the allegation wound up in President Bush’s 2003 State of the Union address.
Cheney wrote on the article, “Have they done this sort of thing before? Send an ambassador to answer a question? Do we ordinarily send people out pro bono to work for us? Or did his wife send him on a junket?”
Libby told the agents and the grand jury that he believed he had learned from reporters that Plame is married to Wilson and had forgotten that Cheney had told him that in the weeks before Wilson’s article was published.
‘Let’s get everything out’In his grand jury testimony, Libby said Cheney was so upset about Wilson’s allegations that they discussed them daily after the article appeared. “He was very keen to get the truth out,” Libby testified, quoting Cheney as saying, “Let’s get everything out.”
Cheney viewed Wilson’s allegations as a personal attack because the article suggested that the vice president knew that Wilson had discounted old reports that Iraq had tried to buy uranium yellowcake from Niger to build a nuclear weapon.
Eight days after Wilson’s article, conservative syndicated columnist Robert Novak identified Plame and suggested that she had played a role in the CIA’s decision to send Wilson to Niger.
Fitzgerald contends that Plame’s status as a CIA officer was classified and that Libby was told that disclosing her identity could pose a danger.
The prosecutor wants to use Cheney’s notes on the Wilson article to corroborate other evidence he has that Libby lied about outing Plame to reporters.
In a filing last week, Libby’s lawyers said Fitzgerald would not call Cheney as a witness and would have a hard time getting the vice president’s notes admitted into evidence.
“Contrary to defendant’s assertion, the government has not represented that it does not intend to call the vice president as a witness at trial,” Fitzgerald wrote. “To the best of government’s counsel’s recollection, the government has not commented on whether it intends to call the vice president as a witness.”

A Case For The Death Penalty

A Spartanburg County teenager accused of raping a puppy admits to it in court and receives his sentence.
After the rape the puppy named Princess died. Monday, the neighbor to whom Princess belonged spoke in court and so did the eighteen year old who is going to spend some more time in prison for what he did.
Cory Williamson cried in court while attorneys detailed what he did to the six month old pit-bull last May. Solicitor Trey Gowdy: "He admitted to penetrating the vagina of the dog with his finger and his penis".
Then Williamson confirmed it again for the judge.
Judge Few: "Did you hear what the solicitor said"
Williamson: "Yes sir".
Judge Few: "Is it all true"?
Williamson: "Yes sir".
Williamson's neighbor saw him raping Princess last summer. Princess was a gift to this woman's son. The two, she says, had a unique bond.
Dog Owner: "She is a loveable pet and every time he had a problem he'd go talk to his dog because his Daddy wasn't here. So he used his dog as his favorite pet. He loved Princess very much".
Before deciding whether to send Williamson to jail for six months or five years-- the judge gave Williamson and his lawyer a chance to say something that might encourage him to hand down a lighter sentence.
Williamson's Lawyer: "He is as pleasant and nice a young man that I ever had the opportunity to represent".
Williamson: "Your honor I'm very sorry. I just ask that you give me a second chance to get out and get my life straight this time and I'm very sorry for this incident".
The judge ended up giving the teenager up to five years in juvenile detention. The amount of time that he actually serves depends on his behavior. But that could all change anyway. Williamson still has to go to court for two separate charges of criminal sexual conduct with a minor child.

Barbaro Continues Recovery


Barbaro is healing better than expected.
"He's actually better today than he was even yesterday and he was pretty good yesterday," Dr. Dean Richardson, the Vet who worked on him, said. "He's walking very well on the limb, absolutely normal vital signs. He's doing very well."
Barbaro was on his feet in his stall, even scratching his left ear with his left hind leg just two days after Richardson and a team of assistants spent more than five hours pinning together the leg bones he shattered in the Preakness Stakes on Saturday.
The surgery was performed at the George D. Widener Hospital for Large Animals at the University of Pennsylvania's New Bolton Center.
"We've run the gamut of emotions from the euphoria of the Kentucky Derby to the devastation of the Preakness," owner Roy Jackson said. "The sad part is that in Barbaro's case, that the American public won't get a chance to see him continue his racing career. Even though he ran so well in the Kentucky Derby, we probably didn't see his greatest race. But that's water over the dam. We're just glad we jumped a hurdle here so far."
Richardson added that the Jacksons' main concern was for the health of Barbaro, not for the millions of dollars the colt could make as a stallion if he recovers completely.
"If this horse were a gelding, these owners would have done everything to save this horse's life," Richardson said. "I've known the Jacksons a long time. If this horse had no reproductive value they would have saved his life."
Gretchen Jackson added: "My hope for him is that he lives a painless life. Whether that means he'll be a stallion with little Barbaros, that would be the extreme hope for him."
An X-ray of Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro's injured right rear leg reveals the severity of the injury. A plate and 23 screws were used to help repair the damage. (Joseph Kaczmarek / Associated Press)
Signs expressing prayers and well wishes left by caring fans lined fences to the entrance of the New Bolton Center. "We love you, Barbaro." "Believe in Miracles." "Beat the Odds." Some signs were adorned with pictures of the horse. Others were signed by families who filed out of their cars to add a token of support at the makeshift tribute.
"I really don't have an answer why he's captured the popularity of the American people. I just think it's a wonderful thing, it's a positive thing for racing," Roy Jackson said.
Richardson and the Jacksons were flanked at their press conference by dozens of roses and baskets of apples that were delivered for the stricken horse. Apples, carrots, peppermints and even more flowers filled the lobby. There were so many apples that they had to be shared with other horses in the ICU.
The strapping 3-year-old colt has been a perfect patient from the start. With a fiberglass cast on his right hind leg and a staff of veterinarians keeping 24-hour watch, standing around is the best thing - the only thing - Barbaro can do.
Despite the good initial reports, doctors guardedly have given Barbaro a 50-50 chance for survival. There's still concern about infection, including laminitis - an often-fatal disease sometimes brought on by uneven weight balance.
The colt, accustomed to strong early morning gallops at the Fair Hill Training Center in Elkton, Md., is far, far removed from that routine. His daily regimen now consists of trying to stand comfortably and keeping his weight evenly distributed. It may take weeks, even months before Barbaro is able to do more.
"He will stay here until we're good and ready to send him home," Richardson said. "He's got to be comfortable.
"Bad things can happen anytime with horses, good things take a long time to happen. It will take a long time to know if we have this thing even close to being cured."
Barbaro will spend his long recovery in the intensive care unit of this 650-acre center in the heart of Pennsylvania horse country.
Barbaro was the odds-on favorite to remain undefeated and win the Preakness to set up a Triple Crown try in the Belmont Stakes. But a few hundred yards out of the starting gate, he took a bad step, his leg flared out grotesquely and he veered sideways before jockey Edgar Prado pulled the powerful colt to a halt.
Later that night, he was vanned to New Bolton and surgery lasted most of the afternoon on Sunday.
"I'm hoping for the best, I'm very optimistic," trainer Michael Matz said. "It's going to be a long time and we just have to take it day by day and keep our fingers crossed."
Barbaro has been receiving antibiotics and pain medication, and is able to move around - or even lie down - in his stall if he chooses.
"For this to be successful, the horse has to be able to stand during the healing stage," said Dr. Corinne Sweeney, the executive hospital director. "Lying down also would be advantageous to healing."
Prado, in an interview with MSNBC on Monday night, said he was "devastated about the whole situation" and planned to visit Barbaro later this week.
"It is like a bad dream," the jockey said. "Unfortunately, that's part of racing. And this is the bad, bad part of the racing."
Barbaro sustained a broken cannon bone above the ankle, a broken sesamoid bone behind the ankle and a broken long pastern bone below the ankle. The fetlock joint - the ankle - was dislocated.
Richardson said the pastern bone was shattered in "20-plus pieces."
The bones were put in place to fuse the joint by inserting a plate and 27 screws to repair damage so severe that most horses wouldn't have survived it.
Horses often are euthanized after serious leg injuries because circulation problems and deadly diseases can arise if they are unable to distribute weight on all fours. Also, money is a factor.
For extensive surgery and recovery, it could cost "tens of thousands of dollars," Richardson said. Many owners choose against trying to save a horse with a serious injury. But in Barbaro's case, the well-to-do Jacksons made it clear they are more concerned with Barbaro's recovery.

DAVINCI CODE RAKES IN THE CASH

Final May 19-21 numbers have come in for The Da Vinci Code: a $231.8 million worldwide opening, making it the 2nd biggest ever -- $154.7 mil international, $77.1 mil domestic. Sony is saying it was #1 in every territory it opened.

This should make Hollywood denizens happy: News reports say bootleg DVDs of The Da Vinci Code were on sale for 5 yuan ($.60) all over Shanghai today, but the camera work on the pirated copies was so horrendous it showed people walking in front of the cinema screen and had sounds of someone drinking a soda.

Meanwhile, on Monday night, Jay Leno wisecracked that The Da Vinci Code's new nickname was "The Passion of the Cash." That will be true for its star Tom Hanks, who had a contractual agreement to be paid based on the "first-dollar average" i.e. opening weekend revenue projection total. It is estimated that he will clear over $50 million for his role. Hollywood will obviously start making more controversial religious films as the Davinci Code opening was only surpassed by Mel Gibson's "Passion of the Christ," which made more than a billion dollars worldwide and made Mel a butload of his own money.

Tsk, tsk, using the Lord's name in vain ought to be a sin.

New York Times Gossip Rag

"When the subject of Bill and Hillary Clinton comes up for many prominent Democrats these days, topic #1 is their marriage," the NEW YORK TIMES is planning to report in a Tuesday Page One Lead Story.

Democrats say it is inevitable that, in a campaign that could return the former president to the White House, some voters would be concerned and even distracted by Bill Clinton's political role and his potential for the kind of episodes that led the House to vote for his impeachment in 1998.

NYT reporter Pat Healy is filing a 2,000+ word report this evening, NYT newsroom sources say.

Since the start of 2005, the Clintons were together about 14 days a month on average, according to aides who reviewed the couple's schedules. Sometimes it is a full day of relaxing at home in Chappaqua; sometimes it is coming together late at night. At their busiest, they saw each other on a single day, Valentine's Day, during February 2005 -- a month when each was traveling a great deal. In August, they saw each other at some point on 24 out of 31 days. Out of the last 73 weekends, they spent 51 together. The aides declined to provide the Clintons' private schedule.

The TIMES reports: "Several prominent New York Democrats, in interviews, volunteered that they became concerned last year over a tabloid photograph showing Clinton leaving BLT Steak in Midtown Manhattan late one night after dining with a group that included Belinda Stronach, a Canadian politician. The two were among roughly a dozen people at a dinner, but it still was enough to fuel coverage in the gossip pages."

BARBARO IS OK!


Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro underwent day-long surgery Sunday to repair three broken bones in his right rear leg and afterward "practically jogged back to the stall," the colt's surgeon said.
At this moment "he is extremely comfortable in the leg," said Dr. Dean Richardson, who stressed before the marathon procedure that he's never worked on so many catastrophic injuries to one horse.
Barbaro sustained "life-threatening injuries" Saturday when he broke bones above and below his right rear ankle at the start of the Preakness Stakes. His surgery began early Sunday afternoon at the University of Pennsylvania's New Bolton Center for Large Animals.
At the front gate, well-wishers already had tacked up signs: "Thank you, Barbaro," "Believe in Barbaro" and "We Love you Barbaro."
"You do not see this severe injury frequently because the fact is most horses that suffer this typically are put down on the race track," Richardson said before the surgery began. "This is rare."
Unbeaten and a serious contender for the Triple Crown, Barbaro broke down Saturday only a few hundred yards into the 1 3-16-mile Preakness. The record crowd of 118,402 watched in shock as Barbaro veered sideways, his right leg flaring out grotesquely. Jockey Edgar Prado pulled the powerful colt to a halt, jumped off and awaited medical assistance.
"It's about as bad as it could be," Richardson said of the injury. "The main thing going for the horse is a report that his skin was not broken at the time of injury. It's a testament to the care given to the team of doctors on the track and (jockey) Mr. Prado on the racetrack."
Horses are often euthanized after serious leg injuries because circulation problems and deadly disease can occur if they are unable to distribute weight on all fours.
Barbaro was fitted for an inflatable cast by the attending veterinarian, Dr. Nicholas Meittinis, and the colt trained so expertly by trainer Michael Matz was taken to the Bolton Center.
There had been no sightings Sunday of Matz or owners Roy and Gretchen Jackson at the facility, which was swarming with media awaiting an update. The Jacksons reportedly were at the center for the start of surgery, but left.
"Two weeks ago we were on such a high and this is our worst nightmare," Matz said Saturday night at the center. "Hopefully, everything will go well with the operation and we'll be able to save him."
Richardson outlined Barbaro's medical problems: a broken cannon bone above the ankle, a broken sesamoid bone behind the ankle and a broken long pastern bone below the ankle. The fetlock joint - the ankle - was dislocated.
The breaks occurred as a result of an "athletic injury," said Corinne Sweeney, a veterinarian and the hospital's executive director.
"It's an injury associated with the rigors of high performance," she said. "They were designed as athletes and they are elite athletes, thus they incur injuries associated with performance. The frame sometimes plays a role, absolutely."
Barbara Dallap, a clinician at the center, was present when Barbaro arrived at the center Saturday night.
"When we unloaded him, he was placed in intensive care and we stabilized him overnight," Dallap said. "He was very brave and well behaved under the situation and was comfortable overnight."
Tucked away on a sprawling, lush 650-acre campus in Chester County, the New Bolton Center is widely considered the top hospital for horses in the mid-Atlantic region. The center is renowned for its specialized care, especially on animals needing complicated surgery on bone injuries.
The Jacksons live less than 10 miles away on their farm in West Grove, outside Philadelphia in the horse country of Chester County.

Cheaper To Keep Her

You know, I usually don't give a crap about such things, but the eminent divorce of Paul McCartney and Heather Mills really bugs me. Reports say that even before they were married, McCartney's kids spotted her right off as a goldigger (for one thing, she wasn't hangin' with no broke niggas) and now MSNBC has recently quoted her as saying, "Paul knows why I'm with him, If I were after money, I would have gone after someone with much more."

Ok, hold on here.

Sir Paul is worth approximately $1.56 billion (that's with a "b").
How many guys richer than that are going to want a 38-year-old, one-legged wife?
I mean, the potential sexual novelty is worth something, but I think one thousand five hundred sixty million dollars is about top price for that option, don't you think?

Now they say the former Beatle never had a pre-nup? C'mon, that had to take some pre-emptive doing on Mills' part.

According to an interview given by Paul some years ago, he and Linda (his former wife of thirty years) never spent a night apart in all the time they were together.
That, as any married couple will attest to, is an amazing statistic. Even moreso when you consider that this marriage began when Paul was one of the fab four and continued through his stint with Wings, and then all that solo touring across the planet.

It also illustrates how close this couple was. He must have been absolutely devastated at her passing.

Enter Mills.

Are you hopping to the same conclusion as I am here?

Mills now stands to get a quarter of Paul's estate in the divorce. That's about $1.9 million for every week for the four years they were married. Anna Nicole Smith should be so lucky.

There goes the opportunity to right one of the greatest wrongs ever committed.
No, not by killing Ringo Starr and giving his riches to Pete Best--but that's close.
I'm talking about Paul having the opportunity to buy back the Beatles song catalog from Michael Jackson.

Jackson is currently in desperate need of money and the catalog is valued at about $200 million. If it weren't for Mills, Paul could easily regain rightful control, and still be a billionaire. All would once again be right in the rock world.

Alas, now it may never be.

EDWARDS:BUSH WORST EVER! Former Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., says George W. Bush is the "worst president of our lifetime," and "absolutely" worse than Watergate-tainted President Richard M. Nixon.
In an exclusive appearance on "This Week with George Stephanopoulos," the former presidential and vice presidential contender said of Bush, "He's done a variety of things -- things which are going to take us forever to recover from.
"You have to give Bush and Cheney and gang credit for being good at politics -- you know, good at political campaigns," Edwards added. "They're very good at dividing the country and taking advantage of it. What they're not good at is governing, and it shows every single day in this administration. And the country is paying a huge price for that."
The former senator, pitching his "college for everyone" program in rural North Carolina, also responded to recent criticism by Mary Cheney, Vice President Cheney's lesbian daughter. In "Now It's My Turn: A Daughter's Chronicle of Political Life", Cheney, the 37-year-old second daughter of the vice president and second lady, labeled Edwards as "complete and total slime" for congratulating Cheney and his wife during their 2004 vice presidential debate for "embrac[ing]" their daughter's sexual orientation.
Edwards did not back down, telling Stephanopoulous, ABC News' chief Washington correspondent, "I think what I said then was appropriate. And I do believe that it was in a very partisan political environment. We were in the middle of a very hot campaign, very close campaign."
Mary Cheney, a close political advisor to her father, told ABC News "Primetime" anchor Diane Sawyer in May that she seriously contemplated quitting the 2004 campaign over the Bush's opposition to gay marriage.
"I struggled with my decision to stay," she said.
Edwards told "This Week": "What happened … is that the vice president had mentioned in several public appearances the fact that he had a gay daughter, had talked about some differences in policy that he had with the president. He was asked a question in the debate where that was referenced by the moderator, Gwen Ifill. He responded. I said that actually the fact that they had a gay daughter and embraced her is something that should be applauded for. He said thank you."
Mary Cheney has claimed in her book that her father was acting.
"He didn't seem like he was acting," Edwards told Stephanopoulos, "although you never know with the vice president."
Mary Cheney has since returned to private life, working at AOL and living with her longtime partner, Heather Poe, in Virginia.
With regard to her father, Edwards continued to level sharp criticism.
"It is not an accident that he's unbelievably poorly thought of," Edwards said. "He is one of -- if not the -- principal architects of this disaster in Iraq. He put us on an energy path that the American people are paying an enormous price for right now. He paid little to no attention to making sure the government was prepared to respond to the kind of disaster that hit our Gulf Coast. We've got a health care crisis going on, he's had no proposal of any kind that I know of. And people don't trust him anymore, which is understandable. I wouldn't trust him."
Edwards made the pitch for a Democratic president in 2008, claiming the Bush has "intentionally ignored" the law and constitution in the NSA wiretapping controversy.
"If I were in the Senate, I would vote for censure," over that controversy, Edwards said. "Again, I don't think this is where I'd spend my energy, but if I had an up-or-down vote, I'd vote for it."
But for the most part, the one-term senator, who retired from the Senate to run for president, seemed relieved to be without a vote in Congress.
"I just think that if you don't live in Washington -- which I don't anymore, thank goodness; I live here in North Carolina -- … for me, it gives me a completely different perspective."
Edwards endorsed the Kennedy-McCain approach to immigration -- "earned citizenship" and increased border protection. He suggested raising the minimum wage, expanding the earned income tax credit, and strengthening organized labor as the keys to a better economy. His main focus these days, however, is education.
In Snow Hill, N.C., to deliver $300,000 in college scholarships to seniors at Greene Central High School, Edwards told Stephanopoulos, "Any kid here who graduates from high school qualified to go to college, willing to work at least 10 hours a week the first year they're in school, we pay for their tuition and books."
Edwards would like to take this plan, which debuted as a campaign proposal during his failed 2004 presidential bid, and his anti-poverty campaign nationwide.
"I think you have to convince the country that it's [the] moral and just thing to do," he said. But he acknowledged, "I don't think [Americans are] completely there. I think that in their conscience inside they're there, but they haven't had any leadership. No one has ever made them think about it."
As to whether he might be the one to press such an agenda in the 2008 presidential campaign, Edwards said, "I'm thinking about it, and I'm very seriously considering it. I just haven't made a final decision.
"[I] don't have a time frame," he added, "but can't wait too long."
Edwards said he might not run if his wife's health problems flared up. Elizabeth Edwards, the former senator's wife of 29 years, was diagnosed with breast cancer on Nov. 3, 2004, the day that Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., and his running mate Edwards conceded defeat to the Bush-Cheney team.
"She's doing great," Edwards said. "All the tests are good, and they're very encouraging. But we have young children, Emma Claire and Jack, and the health of Elizabeth and how my family's doing would have to be at the front of anything."
Edwards said his losses as a presidential and vice presidential candidate in 2004 -- his only losses in a short, but meteoric political career -- may have affected his outlook.
"In honesty," Edwards said, "going through a campaign has a natural maturation process. I mean, it changes you. It changes the way you see things. It changes how you feel about your own views and your willingness to stand with them, no matter what kind of opposition or unpopularity they have. I think it just gives you a different perspective."
If he does run, Edwards said the possibility of opposition from Kerry or Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., in a 2008 Democratic primary would not faze him.
Calling Clinton a "formidable candidate", Edwards said, "I just think that anybody who suggests, particularly now … that you can predict what's going to happen is just living in never, never land."

Night in the Ruts!

Nicole Kidman, Keith Urban engaged

Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban will tie the knot, the country music star's publicist has confirmed.

"They are very happily engaged," said publicist Paul Freundlich. He declined to discuss details of their wedding plans, and Kidman's publicist did not immediately return a call for comment Wednesday.

The Oscar-winning actress broke the news to People magazine after hosting a weekend gala event in New York.

Well, that just goes to show ya', who the hell wouldn't want to be Keith Urban?

DAVINCI CODE DISAPPOINTS


As with most films adapted from incredible literary works, “The Da Vinci Code,” directed by Ron Howard based on Dan Brown’s bestselling theological suspense thriller of the same name, falls dramatically short of its promise to take you on a lightening-paced, intelligent, intricately layered, and suspenseful international scavenger hunt to uncover a centuries old mystery.

While the novel ingeniously mixed action with intrigue while exploring the intricate complexities of religious theory and history and made it accessible in the guise of a captivating chase story, the reported $125 million film adaptation fails to live up to its provocative source material. Although the film does succeed in raising some thought provoking questions about history versus the creation of history, its 2-1/2 hour running time and uneven pace turn it into an overly long, bloated, and disappointing melodrama – the antithesis of Brown’s exciting, tightly wound page-turner.

While in Paris delivering a talk and promoting his latest book, acclaimed Harvard symbologist Professor Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) receives an urgent summons to the Louvre Museum where an elderly curator, Jacques Sauniere (Jean-Pierre Marielle), whom he was scheduled to meet earlier that day, has been brutally murdered. Once inside the museum, Langdon finds a baffling cipher near the body. He joins forces with gifted French police cryptologist Sophie Neveu (Audrey Tautou), and together they attempt to decode the enigma. Along the way, they discover a mysterious trail of symbols, bizarre riddles, and unexpected secrets hidden in the works of Leonardo Da Vinci – clues that are visible for all to see and yet ingeniously disguised by the painter.

Their dangerous quest leads to a covert society dedicated to guarding an ancient secret that has remained concealed for 2000 years.
The stakes are raised when Langdon uncovers a startling link: the late curator was involved in the Priory of Sion – a secret society whose members included Da Vinci and Sir Isaac Newton, among others. Langdon suspects they are on the hunt for a breathtaking historical secret, one that has proven through the centuries to be as enlightening as it is dangerous.

The pair’s frantic race to solve the mystery before the secret falls into the wrong hands takes us on a whirlwind adventure through the cathedrals and castles of Europe from Paris to London to Scotland as they collect clues in a desperate attempt to crack the code. Along the way, they match wits with a mysterious powerbroker who appears to anticipate their every move. Unless they can decipher the labyrinthine puzzle, the Priory’s secret and an explosive ancient truth will be lost forever.

Akiva Goldsman’s dull-witted, plodding adaptation strives to remain faithful to the book’s major plot elements, but it inadvertently brings to light the obvious shortcomings of Brown’s entertaining bestseller which were well disguised by the novel’s clever structure and compelling premise. At first glance, the novel appears to be highly cinematic with its fast-paced action compressed into a 24-hour time frame.

But appearances are deceiving. While Goldsman attempts to meet the daunting challenge of interpreting a complex, intricate piece of fiction and turning it into compelling cinematic narrative, the end result is stodgy, confusing and frequently too literal-minded. His script awkwardly blends intrigue and menace with mystery in a confusing and illogical tale of enigma, secrets and riddles layered clumsily one upon another.

According to production notes, the script incorporates several things that Brown learned after writing the novel, making the movie in some ways an updated, annotated version of the original book. Director Howard also adds backstory to the film that was only referred to in the novel. Unfortunately, the digitized flashback sequences are cheesy, distracting and confusing. They disrupt the narrative flow rather than enhance and clarify the storyline, and they add unnecessarily to the film’s already considerable length.

Indeed, the film seems to get lost in its own maze of puzzles and riddles and long-winded explanations that suck the life out of what was originally a very engaging and fun story, offering audiences instead something that is extremely laborious and solemn. Howard insists on telling us everything rather than showing us.

Howard seems at a loss for how best to bring the novel to life on film. He takes a cautious approach to provocative material that robs it of its excitement. His attempt to capture visually what appears to be so deceptively cinematic in the novel is less than satisfying, and he insists on advancing the complex, plot-crammed narrative at the expense of essential character development. Indeed, while he has cast his film with an impressive international ensemble of experienced and respected actors who are well able to bring to three-dimensional life the fascinating personalities that populated Brown’s novel, Howard gives them little opportunity to develop the personal aspects of their character unless it’s directly related to advancing the story.

As a result, their performances often seem awkward, stilted, and filled with missed opportunities that would have made their characters more engaging and the film more entertaining.
In addition to Hanks and Tautou in the lead roles, the strong supporting cast includes Sir Ian McKellen as Sir Leigh Teabing, the story’s Holy Grail historian and deranged puppetmaster; Jean Reno as the relentless French police captain Bezu Fache; Alfred Molina as the manipulative Bishop Aringarosa; and Paul Bettany as Silas, the deadly albino monk. Hanks’s character is driven by curiosity and a wonderfully dry sense of humor.

He’s smart, fascinated by the world around him, and convincing as a thinking man’s hero who is determined to unravel the mystery. And despite the off-screen jokes about it, his long, swept back hairdo seems appropriate for an unsuspecting university professor who is unexpectedly caught up in a mysterious and deadly conspiracy.

That said, there are moments when the actor seems a little lost as though he’s trying to find a hook for his character and there is none. Hanks also lacks the dashing, charismatic qualities that would have made his character’s relationship with Tautou’s Neveu far more interesting. In the second English-language film of her career, alluring French actress Tautou brings impressive nuance to her work and creates a pivotal character that is enigmatic, intrepid, and ethereal, although occasionally her heavy accent makes her dialogue unintelligible.

Unfortunately, the chemistry between Hanks and Tautou is sadly missing as is any romantic involvement between their characters.
McKellen lives up to his reputation as one of Britain’s finest actors, drawing upon his unique physicality and impeccable delivery to mine the sensibilities and subtleties of his crippled, manic character. His performance is especially compelling in two fascinating scenes, one where he reveals the stunning secrets concealed in Da Vinci’s The Last Supper and another where he explains to a skeptical Neveu “the greatest cover up in human history.” Bettany skillfully humanizes Silas, the film’s most bizarre and terrifying character, whose penchant for self-chastisement provides some of the movie’s more disturbing scenes. Molina, whose Bishop Aringarosa manipulates Silas’ damaged psyche to achieve his selfish ends, lends strong authenticity to the character that reflects the actor’s personal knowledge of the culture. Reno slips effortlessly into the character of Bezu Fache as though he were born to play the role, cleverly embodying the sangfroid, restraint, patience, and intense resolve of the one of the novel’s most crucial figures. (Brown supposedly wrote the character with Reno is mind.) He pursues his homicide investigation with bulldog tenacity and considers Langdon his prime suspect.

The film’s technical elements are solid and reflect the director and his production team’s meticulous attention to detail. Director of photography Salvatore Totino shot the film on location in Europe and on the island of Malta as well as at Pinewood and Shepperton Studios where several sets were reconstructed including sections of the Louvre’s Grand Galerie, the interior of Saint-Sulpice, and several rooms of the Chateau Villette which served as Teabing’s residence in the French countryside.

Totino employs a cool palette of browns, blacks, blues, and grays accented with reds that gives the film a sinister and brooding look. His fluid camerawork and inventive camera angles, along with skillful editing by Daniel Hanley and Mike Hill, heighten the suspense and convey a sense of something unseen looming that is bigger and more menacing than we or the characters initially suspect. Most of the film’s action is set at night which enhances the dark, suspenseful, conspiratorial atmosphere.

The dramatic opening sequence sets up audience expectations for the rest of the film. When Sauniere is stalked by Silas, Totino cleverly frames his last desperate moments. He captures the frightened curator’s terror as he stumbles along the dark museum corridors under the watchful eyes of the subjects of famous portraits that hang in the Louvre’s Grand Galerie, silent witnesses to his chilling demise. As the sole guardian of one of the most powerful secrets ever kept, Sauniere attempts with blood stained hands to leave clues behind that will pass the secret on to those who will discover him later, a daunting task that requires every remaining second of his life.
Unfortunately, much of the rest film is filled with mediocre action scenes that simply fall flat. There is, however, one exhilarating high-speed chase in which Neveu expertly maneuvers her Smart car in reverse through the streets of Paris with the determined Fache and his men in hot pursuit.

Production designer Allan Cameron recreates masterpieces including the Mona Lisa by reproducing them digitally, then blowing up the photographs and painting over them. Scenic artist James Gemmill gives the reproductions the authentic look and texture of the originals through the use of special glazes and crackle techniques.

The film’s props also play a critical role in the story, especially the cryptex, a portable safe deposit box, which holds the secret to finding the Holy Grail. Cameron designed the device based on the description in the novel, but made it small enough to fit into Langdon’s coat pocket for the film. The film’s fabulous costume design is by Daniel Orlandi. Versatile composer Hans Zimmer delivers a tragically beautiful score using classically inspired, overly dramatic chord progressions reminiscent of his work on “Batman Begins” that infuse the film with majesty and power. His rich atmospheric score is dark, mysterious, scary, and perfectly matched to the enigmatic tone of the film.

Whether you are a history buff, Vatican conspiracy theorist, puzzle lover, murder-mystery aficionado, or just curious about self-flagellating homicidal albinos, Howard’s “The Da Vinci Code” has something for everyone. Unfortunately, thanks to a dreary adaptation and uninspired direction, it’s nowhere near as riveting, fascinating and absorbing as Brown’s first-rate novel.

I recommend saving the $7-9 for the movie ticket and instead, buying the paperback. Better yet, shell out the $25 for the hardback. This is one book worth keeping for posterity. The movie will no doubt fade into obscurity.

IS ANYONE BESIDES MEDIAMAN3000 & BLUEWILD READING THIS BLOG?

IS ANYBODY READING THIS BLOG?

The Fox and the Dodo

President Bush assured Mexican President Vicente Fox on Sunday he did not intend to militarize their countries' mutual border, but was considering sending National Guard troops there to temporarily support border control efforts.
"The president made clear that the United States considers Mexico a friend and that what is being considered is not militarization of the border, but support of border patrol capabilities on a temporary basis by National Guard personnel," White House spokeswoman Maria Tamburri said, describing a telephone conversation between Bush and his Mexican counterpart.
Fox "reached out" to Bush on Sunday to relay his concerns about the plan that is under consideration, Tamburri said.
Bush will deliver a televised address to the nation on immigration tonight (Monday evening.) The White House said last week he may propose deploying more National Guard troops along the 2,000-mile border to stop illegal immigration.
Fox's office said during the call Bush said the United States and Mexico were partners and friends, but a thorough immigration reform was needed to solve the problem between both countries.
The idea has also gotten a mixed reception on Capitol Hill, where some senators are worried that the National Guard is already stretched too thin to take on major additional duties.
White House National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley went on television Sunday to emphasize that no final decision on sending the troops had been made. He said the idea was to "provide a bit of a stopgap as the Border Patrol build up their capacity to deal with this challenge.
"This is something that's actually already being done. It's not about militarization of the border," Hadley said on CNN's "Late Edition."
"It's about assisting the civilian Border Patrol in doing their job, providing intelligence, providing support, logistics support and training and these sorts of things," he said.
The Border Patrol arrested nearly 1.2 million people last year trying to cross the Mexican border and estimates that 500,000 others evaded capture.
In his Monday address, timed to coincide with the resumption of a Senate debate on immigration reform, Bush is expected to express support for a temporary worker program and a plan to give millions of illegal immigrants a path to U.S. citizenship.
The president's speech comes as his job approval ratings continue to slide to around 30 percent in some recent polls.
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said on Sunday he backed sending National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border.
"Everything else we've done has failed, we've got to face that. And so, we need to bring in, I believe, the National Guard," Frist, a Tennessee Republican, argued on CNN's "Late Edition."
But Nebraska Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel, who helped broker the compromise immigration legislation to be debated on the Senate floor this week, said he was "skeptical."
"I think we have to be very careful here. That's not the role of our military. That's not the role of our National Guard," Hagel said on ABC's "This Week."
Hagel said 75 percent of the equipment of National Guard forces was in Iraq, and noted that some National Guard members had done as many as four tours of duty there.
"We have stretched our military as thin as we have ever seen it in modern times," Hagel said. "And what in the world are we talking about here, sending a National Guard that we may not have any capacity to send, up to, or down to, protect borders?"

MADONNA?

A long, slow slide in President George W. Bush's popularity ratings over the past year to a low of around 30 percent suggests there may be no quick fix for his political woes.
Six weeks after Bush began a staff shakeup aimed at reinvigorating his presidency, his popularity has only fallen further. While a Newsweek poll released this weekend showed Bush's approval rating at 35 percent, three other surveys last week put it at between 29 and 31 percent.
Political scientist Terry Madonna of Franklin and Marshall College in Pennsylvania said Bush has lost an average of one percentage point in popularity each month since February 2005.
"Barring some huge changes or demonstrations of success, it's hard to imagine this president pulling a rabbit out of a hat," Madonna said.
Bush on Monday will address the nation on immigration reform and is expected to announce measures to tighten controls along the Mexican border, possibly by dispatching National Guard troops, a move long advocated by conservatives. But one speech alone is unlikely to turn things around.
"There is no simple answer," said Ken Mayer, professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin. "There is almost nothing a president can do in the short term to pump up his poll numbers."
In late March, with his approval ratings in the high 30s, Bush replaced his longtime chief of staff Andy Card with budget chief Joshua Bolten, the first of several senior staff changes. Some Republicans thought the shakeup came a year too late.
With congressional mid-term elections less than six months away, Republicans increasingly fear Bush's unpopularity could drag them down and allow Democrats to regain control of one or both houses of Congress.
Unabated violence in Iraq is seen inside and outside the White House as Bush's biggest problem. On the home front, high gasoline prices and rising health care costs have stirred anxiety and pessimism among working Americans, overshadowing good news about the broad state of the economy.
Recent White House staff changes have included narrowing the policy role of White House strategist Karl Rove, hiring Fox News anchor Tony Snow as press secretary and ousting Porter Goss as CIA director.
While the White House aides never expected these changes to dramatically cure Bush's problems, they hoped they might at least stabilize the situation and create new momentum.
Madonna (??) said Bush badly needed to stop the erosion, which was now eating into support from his core conservative, Republican constituency. But even if he succeeds in that, a substantial rebound may be a longshot.
Another worry within the White House is that Bush, who has two-and-a-half years left in office, is heading rapidly toward "lame duck" status in which he will have limited leverage to influence the domestic debate in Congress, especially if Democrats win control of Congress in November.
Most worrisome for Bush, his latest approval figures are among the lowest measured for any president in the past 50 years. His father, former President George H.W. Bush, saw his approval drop to similar levels before being defeated in the 1992 presidential election.
Jimmy Carter, at the height of the energy crisis and the Iran hostage drama in the late 1970s had a rating of 28 percent while Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal saw his approval drop to 23 percent. Neither recovered substantially.
The all-time low in presidency approval was Harry Truman's 22 percent in February 1952. Truman is now seen as one of the country's great presidents.

George Orwell, where art thou?

Phone companies know every number we dial. Grocery stores watch what we buy, search engines track what we look for on the Internet, banks count each penny we deposit or withdraw.
All of that information could become available to the government as it works to thwart terrorist activity.
This week's disclosure that the National Security Agency is amassing phone calling records for millions of Americans highlighted how blurred the notion of consumer privacy has become in the digital age.
It's difficult to know how much personal information may become available to government investigators because no single law governs how companies handle the data they collect about customers. Instead, there is a patchwork of statutes that prescribe varying rules on the privacy of everything from video store rentals and credit reports to medical data and phone logs. Beyond that, companies have privacy policies that are often impenetrable, leaving consumers unsure what rights, if any, they have.
American consumers have become accustomed to surrendering data in return for various conveniences -- discounts at the grocery store, targeted advertising online -- and some seem untroubled about sharing information with the government, particularly if it is in the interest of fighting terrorism.
"I wish I could say I was bothered by it but I'm not," said Jacques Domenge, a 28-year-old Potomac man who visited a Cingular Wireless store in Rockville yesterday to replace a stolen phone.
"If it's only done to protect people and find patterns that help the government find terrorists -- I don't think it will work, by the way, but let's say it will -- then I am all for it," he said, adding that he had no problems with Cingular -- or any other phone company -- turning over records.
According to a Washington Post-ABC News poll released yesterday, 63 percent of Americans said they found the NSA program to be an acceptable way to investigate terrorism, including 44 percent who strongly endorsed the effort. Another 35 percent said the program was unacceptable, including 24 percent who strongly objected to it.
"The value of fighting terrorism, in a lot of our research, seems to be more important to the public than what they perceive as violations of their privacy -- so far," said Frank Newport, editor in chief of the Gallup Poll and vice president of the Gallup Organization in Princeton, N.J.
Newport said views of the NSA program -- which was disclosed on Thursday by USA Today -- should be viewed in the broader context of Americans grappling with more and more of their personal data being collected and analyzed by businesses. "When we ask what's the most important problem facing the country, we don't see any signs that privacy is beginning to percolate up," he said.
For many, the appeal of online banking, quick Web searches and instant credit reports that allow a customer to walk into a car dealership and drive off a few hours later with a new set of wheels is irresistible.
"We love that. We love the cellphone. We love our EZ-passes. We love Google," said Jim Dempsey, a privacy expert and policy director at the Center for Democracy and Technology. "At the same time I think people have this deep sense of unease that information is being collected about them and they don't have control over it and they don't quite know where it is going."
It's nothing new for commercial institutions to share data with the government under certain circumstances, usually for law enforcement purposes.
If you've ever deposited more than $10,000 dollars in cash into your checking account, if you've ever moved a large sum of money from an overseas account into a mutual fund account, or even if you have an unusual life insurance policy, chances are your name and personal information are in a government database that is widely shared with law enforcement agencies.
Millions of private financial transactions -- only a tiny fraction of which involve criminal or terrorist activity -- are in the database maintained by a Treasury Department agency known as the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. In its vast electronic files are transactions large and small, suspicious or mundane.
FinCEN, as the agency is known within law enforcement circles and the financial industry, analyzes the database to identify suspicious flows of cash to individuals or groups of individuals who might be terrorists, money launderers, drug dealers, illegal arms merchants or other crooks. It also provides the data to more than 165 federal and local law enforcement agencies such as the FBI and Secret Service and right down to a local sheriff. Even law enforcement agencies of foreign countries have access to the data under certain circumstances. The agency does this, under a system Congress and financial regulators developed over the last three decades, without oversight from the courts.
FinCEN officials say that protecting the privacy of the information they receive from financial institutions is one of its top priorities. But just how, or even if, FinCEN shares its data on millions of U.S. citizens with intelligence agencies such as the NSA or CIA that are generally prohibited from domestic surveillance is difficult to determine. FinCEN spokesman Steven Hudak declined to comment on the matter.
The phone companies that reportedly have provided records on tens of millions of Americans to the NSA declined to confirm or deny participating in any such program. But AT&T Inc., BellSouth Corp. and Verizon Communications Inc. said they cooperate with the government when there is proper legal authority.
"We must disclose information, when requested, to comply with court orders or subpoenas. We will also share information when necessary to prevent unlawful use of communications services, when necessary to repair network outages and when a customer dials 911 and information regarding their location is transmitted to a public safety agency," AT&T said in part of its extensive policy listed online.
Some lawyers said the exception "to prevent unlawful use of communications services" might be used to justify complying with the NSA program without a court order or warrant.
Without directly addressing the NSA report, Verizon yesterday elaborated by saying the company "will provide customer information to a government agency only where authorized by law for appropriately-defined and focused purposes . . . Verizon does not, and will not, provide any government agency unfettered access to our customer records or provide information to the government under circumstances that would allow a fishing expedition."
Qwest Communications International Inc., the fourth-largest local telephone company, declined comment on the NSA program. A lawyer for Joseph P. Nacchio, Qwest's former chief executive who left the company in June 2002, said he had refused to give call records to the NSA when no warrant or other legal process was provided to justify the government's request.
Two wireless companies -- Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile USA Inc. -- flatly said they had not taken part in the NSA program. Internet companies Google Inc., Microsoft Corp. and AOL also said they had not provided mass information to the government.
Even though Verizon Wireless said it did not participate in the program, its representatives have fielded calls from concerned customers. Colleen Holmes, a stay-at-home mother in Portland, Ore., reported an exchange with a Verizon Wireless customer agent that illustrated not only the dismay some Americans feel about the newly disclosed domestic surveillance but also the fear of terrorism that, for many, more than justifies the program.
Holmes said she was so angry about reports that the government was collecting telephone calling records on millions of Americans that she called Verizon Wireless to explore canceling her service and switching to Qwest.
"It's your constitutional right to voice your opinion," she quoted the customer service agent as having told her. "If you want planes to fly into your building . . . "

Cheney note at heart of CIA leak

After former U.S. ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV publicly criticized a key rationale for the war in Iraq, Vice President Cheney wrote a note on a newspaper clipping raising the possibility that the critique resulted from a CIA-sponsored "junket" arranged by Wilson's wife, covert CIA officer Valerie Plame, according to court documents filed late Friday.
The filing by special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald is the second that names Cheney as a key White House official who questioned the legitimacy of Wilson's examination of Iraqi nuclear ambitions. It further suggests that Cheney helped originate the idea in his office that Wilson's credibility was undermined by his link to Plame.
Fitzgerald's filing states that Cheney passed the annotated article by Wilson to his chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, who Fitzgerald says subsequently discussed Wilson's marriage to Plame in conversations with two reporters, despite the fact that Plame was a covert CIA officer and her name was not supposed to be revealed. The filing was first reported by Newsweek on its Web site.
Fitzgerald does not allege in his filing that Cheney ordered Libby to disclose Plame's identity. But he states that Cheney's note to Libby helps "explain the context of, and provide a motive for" many of the later statements and actions by Libby. Libby was indicted last year for making false statements to FBI agents, obstruction of justice and perjury, mostly based on Libby's testimony that he did not confirm Plame's involvement in conversations with the two journalists.
Wilson's credibility became a key issue for the White House because the results of his probe into Iraq's nuclear program surfaced when the administration had already been hit by charges it had distorted intelligence before invading Iraq. Wilson had concluded after taking a CIA-sponsored trip to Niger two years earlier that evidence of Iraqi attempts to acquire nuclear weapons materials there was dubious.
A court filing last month by Fitzgerald -- who has been gradually spelling out what he plans to say during Libby's trial next year -- stated that Cheney had expressed concern about whether Wilson's trip was a junket set up by his wife. The new filing includes the precise annotations that Cheney wrote on a copy of Wilson's July 2003 article in the New York Times, titled "What I Didn't Find in Africa."
"Have they done this sort of thing before?" Cheney wrote. "Send an amb[assador] to answer a question? Do we ordinarily send people out pro bono to work for us? Or did his wife send him on a junket?"
Fitzgerald's filing states that Libby learned of Plame's name from Cheney, in the course of discussions by the vice president's office about how to respond to a June 2003 inquiry from Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus about Wilson's trip to Niger. Fitzgerald asserts that those conversations -- and earlier ones sparked by a May 2003 column about the trip in the Times -- help demonstrate that Libby's "disclosures to the press concerning Mr. Wilson's wife were not casual disclosures."
Libby has not said in grand jury testimony that Cheney instructed him to leak Plame's name, according to a court filing by Libby's attorneys last month. His attorneys have also said that Plame's role in the matter was of peripheral interest to the White House, a circumstance that explains why he may have forgotten exactly what he said to reporters about Plame. Libby's attorneys have also said they will attempt to demonstrate at trial that Plame's identity was known by many officials in Washington and that Libby had no special reason to believe her identity was protected information.
Fitzgerald, in contrast, spelled out in his new filing that it was an article about Wilson's trip in the New Republic that prompted Libby to discuss the matter with a former colleague, Eric Edelman. During that conversation, Libby said he could not talk about the trip because of "complications" at the CIA that could not be discussed on the telephone, Fitzgerald states -- evidently based on Edelman's statements.
Fitzgerald also says in the filing that after columnist Robert D. Novak published the first newspaper article mentioning Plame's name on July 14, 2003 -- the disclosure that sparked Fitzgerald's investigation -- a CIA official discussed in Libby's presence "the dangers posed by disclosure of the CIA affiliation of one of its employees."
This conversation, Fitzgerald said, directly undermines Libby's claims that he had no reason to believe he or others had done anything wrong and had no reason to lie to the FBI. It also helps explain, Fitzgerald said, why Libby told a grand jury he thought Wilson was fully qualified to go on the trip and he was unsure if Wilson was even married.
The new filing also expands on Fitzgerald's revelation last month that Libby had disclosed portions of a previously classified National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq by describing portions of it to a Times reporter. It states that Libby also provided -- "through another government official" -- a copy of portions of the NIE to the Wall Street Journal before it published a July 17, 2003, editorial on that subject.
Cheney spokeswoman Lea Anne McBride declined to comment and referred questions to Fitzgerald's office.

WANT TO KNOW WHY CIA DIRECTOR PORTER GOSS BAILED SO ABRUPTLY?

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Fired CIA officer's ideals led to firing

A senior CIA official, meeting with Senate staff in a secure room of the Capitol last June, promised repeatedly that the agency did not violate or seek to violate an international treaty that bars cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment of detainees, during interrogations it conducted in the Middle East and elsewhere.
But another CIA officer -- the agency's deputy inspector general, who for the previous year had been probing allegations of criminal mistreatment by the CIA and its contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan -- was startled to hear what she considered an outright falsehood, according to people familiar with her account. It came during the discussion of legislation that would constrain the CIA's interrogations.
That CIA officer was Mary O. McCarthy, 61, who was fired on April 20 for allegedly sharing classified information with journalists, including Washington Post journalist Dana Priest. A CIA employee of two decades, McCarthy became convinced that "CIA people had lied" in that briefing, as one of her friends said later, not only because the agency had conducted abusive interrogations but also because its policies authorized treatment that she considered cruel, inhumane or degrading.
Whether McCarthy's conviction that the CIA was hiding unpleasant truths provoked her to leak sensitive information is known only to her and the journalists she is alleged to have spoken with last year. But the picture of her that emerges from interviews with more than a dozen former colleagues is of an independent-minded analyst who became convinced that on multiple occasions the agency had not given accurate or complete information to its congressional overseers.
McCarthy was not an ideologue, her friends say, but at some point fell into a camp of CIA officers who felt that the Bush administration's venture into Iraq had dangerously diverted U.S. counterterrorism policy. After seeing -- in e-mails, cable traffic, interview transcripts and field reports -- some of the secret fruits of the Iraq intervention, McCarthy became disenchanted, three of her friends say.
In addition to CIA misrepresentations at the session last summer, McCarthy told the friends, a senior agency official failed to provide a full account of the CIA's detainee-treatment policy at a closed hearing of the House intelligence committee in February 2005, under questioning by Rep. Jane Harman (Calif.), the senior Democrat.
McCarthy also told others she was offended that the CIA's general counsel had worked to secure a secret Justice Department opinion in 2004 authorizing the agency's creation of "ghost detainees" -- prisoners removed from Iraq for secret interrogations without notice to the International Committee of the Red Cross -- because the Geneva Conventions prohibit such practices.
Almost all of McCarthy's friends and colleagues interviewed for this report agreed to speak only on the condition of anonymity because her case still could be referred for prosecution and because much of her work involved highly classified information.
As a former director of intelligence programs in the Clinton administration's National Security Council, McCarthy was entrusted with deep secrets regarding the nation's covert actions overseas. She was a contributor in 2004 to the presidential campaign of Democratic Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.), and a former colleague of two Clinton aides -- Richard A. Clarke and Rand Beers -- who had publicly assailed what they considered President Bush's misguided focus on Iraq.
By many accounts, those traits helped fit McCarthy precisely into the current White House's model of a disloyal intelligence officer: She dissented from Bush administration policy, and she let others know.
But McCarthy's friends, including former officials who support aggressive interrogation methods, resist any suggestion that she handled classified information loosely or that political motives lay behind her dissent and the contacts she has told the agency she had with journalists. She was, in the view of several who know her well, a CIA scapegoat for a White House that they say prefers intelligence acolytes instead of analysts and sees ulterior motives in any policy criticism.
They allege that her firing was another chapter in a long-standing feud between the CIA and the Bush White House, stoked by friction over the merits of the war in Iraq, over whether links existed between Saddam Hussein's government and al-Qaeda, and over the CIA-instigated criminal inquiry of White House officials suspected of leaking the name of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame.
"When the president nominated Porter Goss [as CIA director in September 2004], he sent Goss over to get a rogue agency under control," Steven Simon, a colleague of McCarthy's at the National Security Council from 1994 to 1999, said Goss's aides told him. Simon said McCarthy's unusually public firing appeared intended not only to block leaks but also to suppress the dissent that has "led to these leaks. The aim was to have a chilling effect, and it will probably work for a while."
Goss himself was forced to resign earlier this month.
CIA spokeswoman Jennifer Millerwise Dyck, without naming McCarthy, denied that the firing was meant to suppress dissent. She said it was provoked solely by the officer's admission to CIA investigators to having provided classified information to the media. "You can't ignore an officer ignoring their secrecy agreement," Dyck said.
Many lawmakers have said they share this viewpoint, and some have called for tougher CIA sanctions to enforce the secrecy rules.
But McCarthy, in e-mails to friends, has denied leaking anything classified. She has not denied speaking to Priest but has said she was unaware that the CIA had secret prisons in Eastern Europe, the most attention-getting detail in Priest's articles last year. Her lawyer has said the same thing publicly.
Assessing whether politics played a role in the firing is difficult, given the reluctance of those involved to lay bare the underlying facts. The CIA has declined to disclose the evidence it collected against McCarthy. McCarthy declined to be interviewed for this article, and her attorney, Ty Cobb, said the CIA has precluded him from discussing what McCarthy said in CIA interviews and polygraph examinations between February and April 18.
Reporters at The Washington Post and other publications do not discuss sources for articles beyond what is published. Priest's disclosures about the secret prisons were attributed to multiple current and former intelligence officials on three continents.
McCarthy was drawn into the CIA's wrenching internal debate over treatment of foreign detainees when she was recruited by Inspector General John L. Helgerson in the summer of 2004 to oversee the agency's criminal probe of alleged wrongdoing in the war on Iraq. CIA Director George J. Tenet requested the probe shortly before he was replaced by Goss.
Both Helgerson and McCarthy were veterans of the agency's Intelligence Directorate; neither had worked in the Directorate of Operations (D.O.), whose employees in Iraq and Afghanistan were at the heart of the abuse allegations and whose leadership often resents independent scrutiny. But McCarthy was in some ways well prepared for the job, because she had tangled with the D.O. previously over several of its covert-action programs.
A historian by training and a passionate hockey fan, she had two brief jobs in academia and a stint at a risk-assessment firm before joining the agency's Africa and Latin America divisions. In 1991, she became a deputy to legendary CIA analyst Charlie Allen, then the agency's chief warning officer. After McCarthy succeeded Allen in 1994, Allen paid tribute to her "strong views" on the need for "extraordinary rigor" in analysis.
The job involved supervising a tiny staff tasked with separating wheat from chaff and calling attention to imminent crises, but afforded marginal clout in influencing the agency's intelligence-gathering priorities. It left her frustrated, and in articles published in a small-circulation intelligence journal in 1994 and 1998, she decried the agency's adherence to an "old analytic culture" and its reluctance to reorganize to improve its warning capability.
Much of the intelligence community was marked by "ingrown bureaucracies that have become isolated and smug" instead of risk-taking, McCarthy said in one article. She also warned that in all the reviews of major U.S. intelligence failures, "there emerges abundant evidence . . . that analysts often shaped their judgments with policy in mind."
In 1996, then-national security adviser Anthony Lake, who shared her intense interest in Africa, recruited her to a White House job in which she helped conduct an annual review of all presidentially authorized covert-action programs. James B. Steinberg, who became deputy national security adviser at the end of that year, said McCarthy "did not see herself as carrying the water for any particular policy or perspective. . . . Is she someone I would trust to handle the information properly and sensitively? I would say, absolutely."
As the National Security Council's director and then senior director of intelligence programs, McCarthy helped enforce the classification rules at the White House and sometimes blocked staff access to documents or CIA programs. She also developed a reputation for bluntly expressed opinions about deficiencies in the intelligence and analysis prepared for President Bill Clinton.
"She gave the CIA a very hard time when she thought they were not doing what they were supposed to do," a former colleague recalled. "She wasn't snowed very easily. It is her nature to be a skeptic."
McCarthy tangled with the Directorate of Operations over whether some covert actions were still productive. She concluded that evidence linking a Sudanese pharmaceutical plant with al-Qaeda was thin, and she lodged a dissent with the national security adviser before U.S. cruise missiles were fired at the facility in 1998. She also fought for a year with James L. Pavitt, then the head of the directorate, who opposed a White House-backed plan to deploy pilotless Predator planes over Afghanistan.
"Her personality was engaging, charming, persistent, and also loud and aggressive," said a CIA official who experienced McCarthy's occasionally painful grilling. "Sometimes she got a bee in her bonnet about something that others thought was not so important." The exchanges, which one official called "head-butting," helped harden McCarthy's view that "the CIA is just very insular," a former colleague said. "It is kind of a boys' club" closed to "new ways of doing analysis."
After Bush's election, McCarthy stayed at the White House briefly and then accepted a temporary assignment at the CIA's Science and Technology Directorate, where she felt "underutilized," according to one friend. She enrolled in law classes in preparation for retirement and took a sabbatical at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Then Helgerson persuaded her to oversee his inquiry of detainee treatment in Iraq, and later Afghanistan.
McCarthy's findings are secret. According to a brief CIA statement about the probe in a federal lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, investigators set out to examine "the conduct of CIA components and personnel, including DO personnel" during interrogations. Tens of thousands of pages of material were collected, including White House and Justice Department documents, and multiple reports were issued. Some described cases of abuse, involving fewer than a dozen individuals, and were forwarded to the Justice Department, according to government officials.
Another report, completed in 2004, examined the CIA's interrogation policies and techniques, concluded that they might violate international law and made 10 recommendations, which the agency has at least partially adopted. That report jarred some officials, because the Justice Department has contended that the international convention against torture -- barring "cruel, inhumane, and degrading" treatment -- does not apply to U.S. interrogations of foreigners outside the United States.
Little else is known publicly. The CIA inspector general's reports have narrow circulation. When IG inquiries involve covert actions such as foreign interrogations, for example, the agency briefs only the chairmen and ranking members of the House and Senate intelligence committees, instead of the full panels. So only a handful of people in Washington knew what McCarthy knew.
The CIA has rebuffed the ACLU's legal requests to disclose about 10,000 pages of documents, arguing that they contain sensitive material about intelligence sources and methods. The presiding judge, Alvin K. Hellerstein, said in September 2004 that "if the documents are more of an embarrassment than a secret, the public should know of our government's treatment of individuals captured and held abroad." But he has not forced any disclosures.
McCarthy "was seeing things in some of the investigations that troubled her," said one of her friends, and she worried that neither Helgerson nor the agency's congressional overseers would fully examine what happened or why. "She had the impression that this stuff has been pretty well buried," another friend said. In McCarthy's view and that of many colleagues, two friends say, torture was not only wrong but also misguided, because it rarely produced useful results.
Officials at the CIA and the White House declined to say whether McCarthy's firing, which came 10 days before her planned retirement, was discussed between them in advance. But a CIA official said that when Goss himself was asked to resign two weeks later, Bush thanked Goss indirectly for the action when he said Goss had "instilled a sense of professionalism" at the agency.
CIA officials have said that McCarthy nonetheless will receive her pension. At the time of her firing, the House was considering legislation, provoked in part by The Post article about secret prisons, requiring the CIA director to study the feasibility of revoking the pensions of those who make unauthorized disclosures of classified information. The legislation was approved by the House five days after the firing became public.