David Drake

Eleanor Mondale had a cancerous brain tumor in 2005. She chose chemotherapy and radiation to treat the tumor, instead of surgery. The once-baseball-sized tumor virtually disappeared.

Eleanor Mondale said she will have surgery on the new tumor at the Mayo Clinic.

She has been going in for MRI scans every three months and went in for a scheduled scan last month when doctors found a spot worth watching. On Monday, doctors discovered that spot had doubled in size in the past month.

Stephanie Miller: making fun of Casper Weinberger who died one day earlier, "He's in Purgatory now...[making fun of him is fair game] because tragedy plus time [equals comedy]." The Stephanie Miller Show - March 20, 2006

Stephanie Miller and Crew with "Weekend At Tammy's", a parody of "Weekend At Bernie's" that made 'fun' of deceased country singer Tammy Wynette, with her children digging her up out of her grave to perform at concerts. The Stephanie Miller Show - January 11, 2007

Mike Malloy: "It's fun to speak ill of the dead", speaking about Enron's Ken Lay.
The Mike Malloy Show - July 5, 2006

Janeane Garofalo: "[Republicans need to have inflicted upon them] some kind of suffering to remind them that they've done something to our consciousness." The Majority Report - May 19, 2006

Al Franken: "There [Strom Thurmond] goes, back to the grave."
The Al Franken Show, Air America - November 28, 2006, 40 minutes into the second hour of his program.

Al Franken: "Tom Cruise has been dumped by Paramount. Did Tom Cruise kill Jon Benet Ramsey? Because tragedy plus time equals comedy." The Al Franken Show, Air America - August 23, 2006, Opening Monologue

Ed Schultz: "[Anna Nicole Smith] was an all American nobody." February 9, 2007, 12 minutes into hour one of his program.

Ed Schultz: Speaking about Smith: "What constitutes a whore? How many men does a woman have to sleep with before she's a whore? I'm just asking." February 9, 2007, 33 minutes into hour three.

People who are angry at city leaders for their anti-military stance are taking it out on businesses - canceling hotel rooms, restaurant reservations and theater tickets.

They are writing letters to the Berkeley Chamber of Commerce outlining their plans to boycott the city.

And they are steering clear of downtown shops because of the weekly anti-war protests that in recent weeks have become increasingly volatile.

Two weeks after the Berkeley City Council refused to apologize to the U.S. Marine Corps for calling them "uninvited and unwelcome intruders," Berkeley businesses are feeling the backlash from people who don't want to spend their money in the city.

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Mo Hallaji, owner of Pollo's at Shattuck Avenue and Addison Street, said his business has declined 10 to 15 percent this month because of the traffic jams and fighting associated with the protests.

"They are killing our business," Hallaji said. "Everybody is against the war but that is not the right way to go about it if you want to accomplish something."

Quentin Moore, owner of Berkeley Hardware on University Avenue, is not far from the U.S. Marine recruiting center at 64 Shattuck Square, and the protests might be causing a downturn in his business.

"I see maybe two or three customers in here and maybe (the protests) are the reason," he said.

Code Pink, which held another rally Tuesday, has been holding protests since last fall while the group The World Can't Wait got involved recently. They are becoming increasingly violent and volatile. Police have arrested five people recently, including two last week.

Some Berkeley business owners with stores near the Marines recruiting office on Shattuck Square, are getting impatient with all the recent protests, which they say are taking a bite out of their bottom lines.

Many say they’re angry with the Berkeley City Council, those protesting the Marines, and those protesting the people protesting the Marines.

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Business owners say large crowds, often followed by police in riot gear, scare away potential customers.

Am I the only one who finds amusing the way the City Council and Code Pink have convinced themselves that they're advancing the anti-war movement with their shameful actions? Have they bothered to ask themselves why no one else in the movement has voiced any support for their actions?

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Just as the New York Times has managed to rally conservatives around John McCain, the council and Code Pink have rallied the rest of the nation around the Marines. The Marines couldn't have asked for a better advertising campaign.

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Pro-military groups aren't the only ones with an ax to grind against Code Pink. The tree sitters must also be steaming mad that they've been knocked off their perch in the media limelight.

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My favorite argument from the protesters about why they have a right to impede the work of the Marine recruiting station: That the Marines lie to and deceive young men and women. Isn't that the same argument that protesters at abortion clinics use to impede work there? Did I mention how much the far right and far left have in common?

Fashion retailers in Berkeley, Calif., might be caught in the middle of a campaign to boycott the city and its businesses because of an attempt to shut a U.S. Marine Corps recruiting office to protest the Iraq war.

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Now a conservative organization, Move America Forward, is set to launch the boycott this week along with a cable TV advertising campaign.

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All of this is testing the patience of fashion merchants, who otherwise embrace Berkeley's activist ethos.

"It's not the right platform to affect change like that," said John Kiskaddon, co-owner of Harper Greer, a plus-size store and wholesale line on Berkeley's 4th Street, a fashion row of independent boutiques and cafes.

"I'm certainly not for the war, but the recruiting office should still be allowed to be there," said Susan Trefethen, owner of Molly b., with two stores on 4th and Vine streets, carrying a mix of labels such as Osaka from Germany, French designer Sara Pacini and designer Krista Larsen from Vermont.

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Leslie Sobelson, manager and buyer for Berkeley-based sportswear retailer and wholesaler Bryn Walker, which has two of its 11 stores in the city, said the Marines should stay. "I am totally opposed to the military, but if they take out the Marines' right to be there, my right to do something might be taken away."

This issue about McCain has already been hashed out before. He did run for president in 2000, unsuccessfully, so the potential controversy was settled years ago, otherwise why would've John McCain run back in 2000 had be been ineligible? An article written on July 9, 1998, by Ken Rudin, and appearing at WashingtonPost.com, states simply why the Republican contender can run for President. You see, the First Congress, on March 26, 1790, approved an act which states, "The children of citizens of the United States that may be born beyond sea, or outside the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural-born citizens of the United States". The above article also states that his parents were both natural-born citizens of America.

It's then easy to conclude that it doesn't matter where McCain was born outside of the United States (or under what relationship the birthplace was to America at the time, as the Panama Canal Zone was being leased to America in 1936). The Republican candidate could've been born in Panama, on the moon, Mars, or the Andromeda Galaxy - it's irrelevant since his parents being born in America makes him "natural-born".

John McCain, according to his Wikipedia biography, was born at the United States-controlled Coco Solo Air Base in Panama. His parents are Admiral John "Jack" S. McCain, Jr. (who died in 1981), and Roberta McCain, who's still alive. To be more specific, John McCain's father was born in Iowa according to a February 2, 2008 article at OpEdNews.com called "John McCain - Is He An American Citizen Eligible For Office Of President?" McCain's mother was born in Oklahoma, according to her Wikipedia biography. Because of that 1790 Congressional Act, the case is closed. McCain can be President of the United States; and thus, he can legally run for the Presidency.

To reiterate, despite the fact that the America's Constitution states in Article II, Section 1, Clause 5: "No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President...", the Arizona Senator can thank his lucky stars the Congress had the foresight to get an act passed that realizes that kids of American citizens shouldn't be penalized as being non-natural-born because, as in the case of John McCain, he happened to be delivered on foreign soil as his father was serving our nation via military service.

The billboard, which faces south from the corner of Western Avenue and Denny Way, states that it was funded by something called "Concerned Citizens for a Better America."

You won't find the group's name on Google, except in a wayward comment thread or two. The group is not registered as a Political Action Committee or with the Washington Secretary of State's corporation division. Nor does it have to be -- based on this billboard, anyway -- because its message neither mentions a candidate by name nor appears too close to election time.

Hillary Clinton opted to come with a much tougher tone tonight than she did last week in Texas, protectionist sentiment rules the day in Ohio, and Barack Obama takes great umbrage at the notion that his opposition to the Iraq war was "just a speech."

Getting the biggest reaction in the press filing room, though, was the postmodern touch offered by Clinton, who objected to receiving the first question twice in a row at the outset, and invoked a Saturday Night Live skit from last weekend as evidence of a pro-Obama media bias.

"Maybe we should ask Barack if he's comfortable or needs another pillow," she said.

Clinton said rejecting support was different from denouncing it, noting she had "rejected" in her 2000 Senate race the support of a group with anti-Semitic views.

Obama drew laughter by saying, "I happily concede the point and I would reject and denounce."

Even after Hillary Clinton publicly demanded that he forcefully reject Farrakhan's endorsement, Obama waffled. He weakly said after more Clinton cajoling that he rejected the endorsement. He still did not mention Farrakhan by name. A candidate shouldn't need to be prodded by his opponent to emphatically reject the endorsement of a controversial, and in the case of Farrakhan, much vilified figure.

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Yet his failure to flatly say he does not want his endorsement is no surprise.

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But, if Obama doesn't blast Farrakhan as an anti-white hate monger that could raise questioning eyebrows with many white voters.

Asked in last night's debate to name a regret, Sen. Barack Obama said he would like to take back his vote authorizing Congress to intervene to save the life of the brain-injured Florida woman Terri Schiavo.

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"I remember how we adjourned with a unanimous agreement that eventually allowed Congress to interject itself into that decision-making process of the families. It wasn't something I was comfortable with, but it was not something that I stood on the floor and stopped," he said.

"And I think that was a mistake[.]"

Robert Byrd, the oldest member of the U.S. Senate and a fierce opponent of the Iraq war, was being treated in a hospital on Tuesday after falling in his home late on Monday, a spokesman for the senator said.

The 90-year-old Byrd complained of back pain while at work in the Senate on Tuesday, spokesman Jesse Jacobs said. After being examined by a Capitol physician, the West Virginia Democrat went to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington for tests and observation, Jacobs said. He was expected to remain in the hospital overnight.

William F. Buckley Jr., the syndicated columnist and intellectual whose studied mannerisms, verbal flourishes and polemics energized the American conservative movement for a half-century, has died. He was 82.

Buckley died overnight in his study in Stamford, Connecticut, according to the National Review Online. His son, Christopher, told the New York Times that Buckley had suffered from diabetes and emphysema, although the exact cause of death was not known. Buckley was found at his desk and might have been working on a column, his son said.

``If he had been given a choice on how to depart this world, I suspect that would have been exactly it: at home, still devoted to the war of ideas,'' said Kathryn Jean Lopez, editor of the Web site.

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Buckley harnessed a belief in individual liberty, limited government and the defeat of communism into an organized voice of the right in the National Review, the biweekly opinion magazine he founded in 1955. He was also host of the Emmy Award-winning television program ``Firing Line'' for 33 years.

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His column, ``On the Right,'' was syndicated nationally in 1962 and appeared in some 300 newspapers. In 1966, he began ``Firing Line,'' pitting liberals against conservatives, in which he played both host and interlocutor.

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While his detractors came largely from the left, and included author Gore Vidal, Buckley was also criticized by supporters of ``Objectivist'' conservative Ayn Rand and the ultra-right John Birch Society.

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During one of his most notable debates on ABC at the 1968 Democratic National Convention with Vidal, Buckley responded to being called a ``crypto-Nazi'' by saying, ``Now, listen you queer, stop calling me a crypto-Nazi or I'll sock you in your goddamn face. And you'll stay plastered.''

In December 1999, he closed down "Firing Line" after a 23-year run of guests ranging from Richard Nixon to Allen Ginsberg. "You've got to end sometime and I'd just as soon not die onstage," he told the audience.

"For people of my generation, Bill Buckley was pretty much the first intelligent, witty, well-educated conservative one saw on television," fellow conservative William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, said at the time the show ended. "He legitimized conservatism as an intellectual movement and therefore as a political movement."

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Buckley so loved a good argument — especially when he won —

Their attacks were mostly bombings of government buildings, executed after calling in bomb-threats and making sure their target buildings were evacuated.

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The origins of the Weatherman can be traced to the collapse and fragmentation of the Students for a Democratic Society.

Back in 1995 it would have seemed like meeting just another group of left-wing academics in liberal Chicago. Barack Obama, then about to be an Illinois state senator, was taken to an activists' gathering at the house of William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.

So far, so innocuous. Except now Obama is running for president and Ayers and Dohrn - both Illinois professors - were once members of the Weather Underground, a radical Sixties group that planted bombs across America.

Thus the long-forgotten meeting resurfaced late last week in a detailed news story on the respected politics website Politico under the blaring headline: 'Obama once visited 60s terrorists.'

Merlin and Rachel Ames are eager to help the environment, so they swapped their incandescent bulbs with energy efficient compact florescent lightbulbs, which are supposed to last nine years.

In the last twelve months, they've have to replace some CFLs two times.

Merlin Ames explained that just last week, "It started flashing a little bit there and smoking. The odor was really bad. I thought we ought to get out of the house real quick".

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They were shocked to discover the bulbs contain a small amount of mercury according to a notice is printed on the bulb.

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However, because mercury is toxic--you need to take precautions if one breaks.

A study has shown that the mercury can leak out if the bulbs break when dropped or thrown away. A Maine study has confirmed that the mercury does pose a health risk to people.

According to environmental advocates, when the bulbs are broken the mercury vapor has the capability of being released into a home. This can cause quite a health hazard.

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...people should not vacuum up a broken CFL bulb. This can cause mercury to spread through the air.

Although the Democratic primary in the 10th District congressional race is making the headlines, two Republicans also have their sights set on Dennis Kucinich's seat.

Unable to be confident of motivating enough Democrats to vote against Kucinich in Tuesday's primary, Clear Channel right wing radio station WTAM [...] is openly encouraging Republicans to participate in the Democratic primary and vote against Kucinich.

The number is shocking and sobering.

It is at least 10 times greater than most estimates cited in the US media, yet it is based on a scientific study of violent Iraqi deaths caused by the U.S.-led invasion of March 2003.

That study, published in prestigious medical journal The Lancet, estimated that over 600,000 Iraqis had been killed as a result of the invasion as of July 2006. Iraqis have continued to be killed since then. The graphic above provides a rough daily update of this number based on a rate of increase derived from the Iraq Body Count.

Fight attempts to minimize Iraqi suffering and remind visitors to your site of the awful human costs of continued war.

Stahl: "We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?"

Albright: "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price--we think the price is worth it."

One of the biggest surveys so far of Iraqis who have died violently since the US-led invasion of 2003 has put the figure at about 151,000.

This is about a quarter of the figure given in a disputed Lancet article, but nearly three times higher than that of the Iraq Body Count campaigning group.

Just Foreign Policy is an independent and non-partisan membership organization. We are dedicated to reforming U.S. foreign policy to serve the interests and reflect the values of the broad majority of Americans, rather than those of special interests both inside and outside of government.

Obama campaign manager David Plouffe accused the Clinton campaign Monday of "shameful offensive fear-mongering" by circulating a photo as an attempted smear.

Plouffe was reacting to a banner headline on the Drudge Report saying that aides to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) had e-mailed a photo calling attention to the African roots of Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.).

A $6.6 billion transportation bill is on the verge of becoming law after the Minnesota House voted for the first time to override a veto from Governor Tim Pawlenty.

Six House Republicans broke with the governor to make the 90 votes needed to override. The final tally was 91-41.

The state Senate, where Democrats hold enough votes for an override without GOP assistance, is expected to act later today.

The State Senate has enough Democrats to not need Republicans RINOs to cross over for a majority.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said Franco is 24 and from Guatemala. The woman originally told investigators her name was Alianiss Nunez Morales, and that she was from Mexico. Authorities said Franco is here in the country illegally and had been using Morales' identity.

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Authorities have charged Franco with four counts of criminal vehicular homicide and driving without a valid license. The crash killed four children and injured at least 14 others.

..parliament last night voted in favour of the so-called Err-Huss amendment to the government’s bill on palliative care which decriminalises euthanasia or assisted suicide.

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Parties had allowed their representatives to vote with the conscience rather than along party political lines.

An 11-month-old boy has died after he apparently crawled under the car and his dad drove over him.

"It appears that one of the key ways young men run into such shocking debt very quickly is that they are applying for these instant credit schemes in the wee hours and when intoxicated."

Potholes cause particular problems at this time of year as water gets into cracks in road surfaces, freezes and then expands to cause further damage.

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The Rhino technique immediately bonds the repair to the existing surface. Within a short period of time, the repair becomes invisible to the naked eye.

The controversial pornofilm Deep Throat which the broadcastings transmitted BNN and VPROvannacht, has drawn 907,000 kijkers. That becomes clear today from figures of the foundation look research.

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The retransmission caused in advance for considerable ophef. (Ophef meaning "noise, commotion, ruckus." - Drake).

Dr. Ed Gelb, Former President of the American Polygraph Association was the Polygraph expert selected by Whitehouse.com. He has done over 30,000 polygraph examinations over his long career. There were two polygraph tests administered by Dr. Gelb on Friday. the first polygraph asked Mr. Sinclair on his sex claims. The second polygraph test asked Mr. Sinclair on the drug use claims. There was deception indicated in both tests.

As mentioned yesterday Mr. Sinclair did pass his drug screen so there were no drugs in his system which could have interfered with the test.

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Due to the seriousness of this issue we made the results public today rather than waiting until Monday when we would have received the second expert's conclusions. When we receive the second expert's conclusions we will post those results as well.

We will have all of the written results posted on the site in the next week including video taken of the Polygraph testing so there will be full disclosure and transparency on our part and eliminate any suspicion of any wrongdoing or manipulations of the testing or the results by Whitehouse.com or the polygraph experts.

On Meet the Press this morning, Ralph Nader -- who won 2.7% of the popular vote in 2000 and just 0.4% four years later -- announced that he will once again be running for president this year.

Mr Nader has played some sort of role in every race for the White House since 1992 although his record in public life stretches back further still.

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Mr Nader will be best-remembered for the central role he played in the dramas of the 2000 contest between George W Bush and Al Gore which still rankles with many Democrats to this day.

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Democrats point out though that where only a few hundred votes separated Mr Bush from Al Gore, nearly 100,000 people voted for Mr Nader.

Those voters, say Democrats, would clearly have been likely to vote for Mr Gore had Mr Nader not been on the ballot - and so they blame Mr Nader for handing the presidency to George W Bush.

Mr Nader and his supporters do not buy that argument - and of course America is a democracy where the voters are entitled to vote for the candidate of their choice - but there is no doubt that his candidacy in 2008 will once again raise the whole issue of how tight presidential races between Democrats and Republicans can be affected by third party candidates.

He was tested for any and all chemical substances including illegal drugs that could cause an inaccurate polygraph test result. There were no traces of any such substances found.