Today's Top News
White House told to detail Christian leader visits
12.17.07 -- 6:41 PM
A U.S. judge ordered the Secret Service on Monday to disclose records of visits by nine prominent conservative Christian leaders to the White House and Vice President Dick Cheney's residence.
The ruling, in response to a legal watchdog group's suit, could shed light on the influence leaders like James Dobson of Focus on the Family have had on President George W. Bush's administration. It may also affect legal efforts to force the release of visiting records of convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff and other similar cases.
"We think that these conservative Christian leaders have had a very big impact," said Executive Director Melanie Sloan of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which filed the case.
"The White House doesn't want to talk about how much influence these leaders have, and we want to talk about how much they do have," she said.
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Putin Says He’ll Be Prime Minister
12.17.07 -- 6:18 AM
President Vladimir Putin told a congress of Russia's dominant party Monday that he would agree to become prime minister if Dmitry Medvedev is elected as his successor -- and said he would not seek to make the premiership more powerful.
Putin's statement virtually ensures that the 42-year-old Medvedev, seen as business-friendly and non-hawkish, will be elected March 2.
When Medvedev got Putin's endorsement last week, he quickly proposed that Putin become prime minister after the election. Putin had not publicly responded previously.
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Obama Alienates Left Wing of Democratic Party
12.17.07 -- 6:04 AM
Barack Obama’s campaign for the presidency has revived. Until recently Hillary Clinton had a commanding lead in the polls and was starting to seem unstoppable. But Mr Obama has pulled ahead in Iowa and level in New Hampshire, the states that vote first in the primaries. He is gaining ground again nationally.
The television debates, in which he performed poorly, are behind him. What matters now is the ability to move a crowd and the energy of campaign staff on the ground. On the first, Mr Obama has no equal in this contest. On the second, he has no grounds for complaint. He is back in the race.
But here is an odd thing: the Democratic party’s progressive base has mixed feelings about this revival. What is their problem, one wonders? What could be more exciting or more transformative, from their point of view, than this candidate?
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Obama Says He's Ready for White House
12.16.07 -- 7:19 PM
Democrat Barack Obama Saturday scoffed at suggestions by President Clinton that the Illinois senator is not ready to be president, and that Obama is running strong in Iowa in part because his home state and Iowa share a border.
''When I was 20 points down, they all thought I was a wonderful guy. Obviously things have changed here in Iowa and elsewhere,'' Obama said at a press conference Saturday. ''If they're suggesting that I, as this 'callow youth,' somehow had a structural advantage in Iowa relative to the Clinton operation and the former president of the United States, that doesn't strike me as a real plausible argument.''
Obama was touring north central Iowa on the second day of a a five-day bus tour across the icy state. He made campaign stops in five cities on Saturday alone and was expected to keep up a similar clip throughout the rest of the tour.
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Obama Goes to Church to Debunk Rumors that He's a Muslim
12.16.07 -- 6:40 PM
Democrat Barack Obama on Sunday confronted one of the persistent falsehoods circulating about him on the Internet.
He went to church.
His attendance here at the First Congregational United Church of Christ, with the news media in tow, was as much an observation of faith as it was a rejoinder to baseless e-mailed rumors that he is a Muslim and poses a threat to the security of the United States.
Obama did not address the rumors, but described how he joined Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago two decades ago while working as a community organizer.
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Ron Paul meets -- and exceeds -- 4Q fundraising goal two weeks early
12.16.07 -- 6:13 PM
At $13.8 million and counting, the presidential campaign of Republican Rep. Ron Paul says it has already topped its fourth-quarter goal of raising $12 million.
The campaign just sent out the word in an e-mail blast to reporters.
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Bolton criticizes Bush foreign policy
12.16.07 -- 5:46 PM
President George W. Bush's foreign policy is in free fall and puts the nation's security at risk, former ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton told a German magazine on Sunday.
Bolton, who was a leading hawk in the U.S. administration and favored a tough stance against Iran, North Korea and Iraq, told the Der Spiegel weekly that Bush needed to rein in Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
"His foreign policy is in free fall. The president is acting against his own judgment and instincts (and is) under the influence of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice," he was quoted as telling the magazine.
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Catholic Priest Stabbed, Hurt in Turkey
12.16.07 -- 6:48 AM
A Catholic priest was stabbed in the stomach and hospitalized Sunday in the latest in a series of attacks on Christians in Turkey, officials said.
The priest, Adriano Franchini, was in surgery, Italian embassy official Antonino Maggiore said. The state-run Anatolia news agency said Franchini was stabbed in the stomach but was not in life-threatening condition.
There was no immediate information on the motive of the attack or how it had happened.
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Bombed if you do, Bombed if you Don't
12.16.07 -- 6:23 AM
The latest National Intelligence Estimate has been greeted by a mixture of relief and alarm. As I have been saying all along, Iran indeed poses no quantifiable imminent nuclear threat to us or her neighbors. It is with much alarm, however, that we see the administration continue to ratchet up the war rhetoric as if nothing has changed.
Indeed nothing has changed from the administration's perspective, as they have had this latest intelligence report for some time. Only this week has it been made known to the public. They want it both ways with Iran.
On the one hand, they discredit the report entirely, despite it being one of the most comprehensive intelligence reports on the subject, with over 1,000 source notes in the document. On the other hand, when discrediting it fails, they claim that the timing of the abandonment of the weapons program, just as we were invading Iraq, means our pressure must have worked, so we must keep it up with a new round of even tougher sanctions.
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Bamboo PC is eco-friendly and looks nice too
12.14.07 -- 8:42 AM
Back in 1976, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak built the Apple I, an early personal computer that consisted of a circuit board in a simple wooden box.
Apple Inc and other computer makers went on to make advanced PCs in metal and plastic casings, but now Taiwan's Asustek Computer Inc is finding potential beauty -- and sales -- in an eco-friendly notebook PC encased in another natural material: bamboo.
The Asus Eco Book, as it's dubbed, has a case made of laminated bamboo strips available in different shades.
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