Today, the U.S. Senate approved overwhelmingly a huge package of legislation including a program to save hundreds of thousands of families from losing their homes to foreclosure.  The measure now goes to President Bush, who has said he will sign it as soon as he returns from his August vacation in Crawford.

Samantha Power, the Obama aide who used the word "monster" about Hillary Clinton, won a Pulitzer Prize for her book "A Problem from Hell, America and The Age of Genocide."  It examined US failure to intervene in genocides affecting Armenians, Jews, Cambodians, Iraqi Kurds and Rwandans, among others.
     The chapter on the Rwandan tragedy is, inevitably, tied to the Clinton administration which was in power at the time.  
     It is perhaps this previous research which prompted Ms. Power's unwise remark.

When the Democratic National Committee stated that Florida and Michigan delegates would not be seated at the nominating convention unless their states held primaries or caucuses before February 5, the asterisk after that ruling was not visible to all the contenders.
     The asterisk said "Of course we can always make a real decision about this later."
     Is this irresponsible approach to party rules emblematic of the Democrats in a year when the Republicans are so down and out that they need every weapon they can find?  Because we're sure handing them a killer.

What a wonderful group of wide-awake citizens -- Bloomberg, Nunn and the lot. They're suddenly worried about partisanship,  that new dirty word, now that it looks as though the Republicans might possibly lose the White House this year. But inconvenient questions abound:  why their silence in all the years when Karl Rove was running a vicious Republican machine?  Why the silence during the Swift Boat episode? Why the silence about the continuing erosion of our Constitution?  With the honorable exception of Christy Todd Whitman, who spoke eloquently by resigning her administration post, the silence of this group when it was important to speak out, and demonstrate non-partisanship, speaks louder than words.

What a wonderful group of wide-awake citizens -- Bloomberg, Nunn and the lot. They're suddenly worried about partisanship,  that new dirty word, now that it looks as though the Republicans might possibly lose the White House this year. But inconvenient questions abound:  why their silence in all the years when Karl Rove was running a vicious Republican machine?  Why the silence during the Swift Boat episode? Why the silence about the continuing erosion of our Constitution?  With the honorable exception of Christy Todd Whitman, who spoke eloquently by resigning her administration post, the silence of this group when it was important to speak out, and demonstrate non-partisanship, speaks louder than words.

I just found Al Gore's great words on receiving the Nobel Peace Prize quoted in "The New Yorker" magazine. He said, in part, "Too many of the world's leaders are still best described in the words Winston Churchill applied to those who ignored Adolph Hitler's threat. 'They go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent.'"
     And Gore continued:  "So today we dumped another seventy million tons of global-warming pollution into the thin shell of atmosphere surrounding our planet, as if it were an open sewer. And tomorrow we will dump a slightly larger amount."
     I hope those running for office are listening.      

William Jennings Bryan, who helped make the teaching of evolution a criminal offense in Tennessee, just HAD to take part in the Scopes trial -- and went down in flames.  Maybe someone -- one of Huckabee's Repub competitors, CNN, Chris Matthews,etc.-- ought to ask him how he would handle the teaching of evolution if he were to be President.  

The Register endorsement of Hillary Clinton is bad news for Democrats. Doesn't anyone wonder why Rove, Rudy and other Republicans have been slavering for months about a prospective Hillary candidacy? It's easy: the Repubs will have been handed the only winning campaign issue they could hope for next year, skipping past all those pesky real-life issues (war,torture, the economy, corruption and violation of the U.S.Constitution, to name just a few)and summoning up a voter-repelling picture of Bill Clinton running loose in the White House AGAIN.