The officer in charge of a military hearing expressed serious doubts Friday about the government's prosecution of Lance Cpl. Justin Sharratt, one of three Marines charged in the November 2005 shooting deaths of Iraqi civilians in the city of Haditha.

Lt. Col. Paul Ware, who will recommend whether to send Sharratt to trial, challenged the prosecution, saying the government's theory of the case do not warrant the three counts of unpremeditated murder filed against Sharratt in December.

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Choosing a wealthy retired businessman over an openly gay city council insider, voters elected Tom Leppert as Dallas mayor Saturday by a safe margin to lead the nation's ninth-largest city.

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Pelosi, with Obey at her side, proposed a slight change during a Tuesday press conference. "Why don't we leave here today forgetting the word earmark?" she said when asked by reporters about her apparent flip-flop on congressional rules.

Pelosi said she simply preferred to call them "legislative directives."

Pelosi and company can't keep their word. Call them earmarks or "legislative directives," it doesn't matter. The swamp is full, the stench has returned and soon bloodsucking mosquitoes will converge on Congress.

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What they got was two brutally murderous gangs, Fatah and Hamas, competing for power by throwing people off the roofs of buildings and slaughtering rivals in front of their wives and children.

What they got was Tony Soprano (Fatah) vs. Phil Leotardo (Hamas). Only this time, Tony got his head smashed in by the SUV.

This isn't a civil war - it's a gang war. And thousands of Palestinian bystanders are going to get shot while these two gangs go to the mattresses.

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In the city that swallowed up Daniel Pearl, a sense of menace still hangs as heavy as the sultry air.

A high-profile new film has focused renewed attention on the case of the Wall Street Journal reporter who was kidnapped and executed by Islamic insurgents here in 2002, and has underscored the fact that many questions remain unanswered

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Who knew it was legal for a woman to walk around with her breasts exposed in New York?

Well, one woman did - and a cop didn't - and now she has forced the city to fork over a $29,000 legal set tlement for ille gally busting her when she law fully bared her bosom and went for a stroll two years ago.

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Kyl in his Wall Street Journal interview and Chertoff on Fox News yesterday: because businesses are starting to worry about efforts to enforce immigration laws at the local level. One state in the vanguard of that effort is Kyl's (and McCain's) home state of Arizona, where the legislature has passed numerous laws (usually vetoed) on the issue, and where the public voted for Prop 200 back in 2004.

To me that says something far more ominous than that Congress is being disingenuous or naïve on the matter. Far from simple being empty promises, this amnesty bill is actually a blatant attempt to head off any attempts at enforcement at all.

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Tony Blair, the British prime minister, could end up swapping Downing Street for a job as the first full-time European Union president, under a plan being actively touted by Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president.

Mr Sarkozy is understood to have discussed the idea with other EU leaders ahead of next week’s European summit, Mr Blair’s last major international event as prime minister.

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New intelligence reveals China is covertly supplying large quantities of small arms and weapons to insurgents in Iraq and the Taliban militia in Afghanistan, through Iran.

U.S. government appeals to China to check some of the arms shipments in advance were met with stonewalling by Beijing, which insisted it knew nothing about the shipments and asked for additional intelligence on the transfers. The ploy has been used in the past by China to hide its arms-proliferation activities from the United States, according to U.S. officials with access to the intelligence reports.

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When Thomas Jefferson said that “people get the government they deserve,” it was more than just a clever turn of phrase. It also was not an isolated insight but a timeless truth, one expressed by many. William Cowper said,

“When was public virtue to be found when private was not?”

Benjamin Franklin stated,  

“Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become more corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.”

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The U.S. House of Representatives shot down a proposal Friday by U.S. Rep. Trent Franks, R-Ariz, that would have built an 854-mile, double layered security fences along the Mexican border.

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“I’m afraid to say this out loud, they may execute me for it, but there are a lot of people, including myself, who think it would be better if Israel came back here. Things would be much better than they are now,” said Samara (alias), a graduate of the Islamic University living in the Gaza Strip.

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ISRAEL’s new defence minister Ehud Barak is planning an attack on Gaza within weeks to crush the Hamas militants who have seized power there.

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