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Pentagon Issues Blackwater New $92 Million Contract
Earlier this month, Blackwater USA was involved in the fatal shooting of 11 Iraqi civilians. While the Iraqi government swiftly condemned the contractor, the Bush administration has continued to back Blackwater’s story that it was “defensive fire.”Last Thursday, Gen. Peter Pace told reporters, “Blackwater has been a contractor in the past with the department and [...]

The ‘Restore Patriotism to University Campuses Act’:
The name of Rep. Duncan Hunter’s (R-CA) bill to cut off all federal funds to Columbia University because of the Ahmadinejad speech.

U.S. coordinates with Gulf nations on possible air strikes.
“The American air force is working with military leaders from the Gulf to train and prepare Arab air forces for a possible war with Iran, The Sunday Telegraph can reveal.”UPDATE: “John Bolton, the former US ambassador to the United Nations, told Tory delegates today that efforts by the UK and the EU to negotiate with [...]

‘Surge.’
Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, “acknowledged today that violence had increased since Sunni Arab militants declared an offensive during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. ‘Certainly Al Qaeda has had its Ramadan surge,’ Petraeus said.”

Bush’s EPA pursuing fewer polluters.
Under the Bush administration, the EPA’s “pursuit of criminal cases against polluters” was “down nearly 70 percent between fiscal years 2002 and 2006, compared with a four-year period in the late 1990s.” The number of investigators in the Criminal Investigation Division is also down, with many “sometimes are diverted to other duties, such as service [...]

Hersh: Bush’s Case For Hitting Iran Has ‘Shifted,’ Now Focused On ‘Surgical Strikes’ As Way To ‘Sell’ It
Seymour Hersh, The New Yorker’s Pulitzer-Prize winning investigative journalist, writes in a new article entitled “Shifting Targets” that there has been “a significant increase in the tempo of attack planning” for war with Iran inside the Bush administration. Most significantly, Hersh — who has been warning for months that the administration is seriously plotting for [...]

Kristol’s Dark Humor: Bush’s ‘Heartless Assault On Our Children’ Is ‘A Good Idea’
On Fox News Sunday this morning, NPR’s Mara Liasson said that President Bush’s expected veto of an expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), which passed both the House and Senate on a strong bipartisan basis, will be seen as “a heartless blow against children.” Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol, who supports Bush’s [...]

McCain suggests religious litmus test for President.
“I admire the Islam. There’s a lot of good principles in it,” Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) said. “But I just have to say in all candor that since this nation was founded primarily on Christian principles, personally, I prefer someone who I know who has a solid grounding in my faith.” He added, “I think [...]

Thomas: ‘Left-wing zealots’ worse than the KKK.
In his new book, My Grandfather’s Son, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas writes that “he had grown up fearing the Ku Klux Klan’s lynch mobs but ‘my worst fears had come to pass not in Georgia, but in Washington, D.C., where I was being pursued not by bigots in white robes but by left-wing zealots [...]