Vinod Guptastein The company, infoUSA, one of the nation’s largest brokers of information on consumers, paid $146,866 to ferry the Clintons, Mr. Gupta[stein] and others to Acapulco and back, court records show. During the next four years, infoUSA paid Mr. Clinton more than $2 million for consulting services, and spent almost $900,000 to fly him around the world for his presidential foundation work and to fly Mrs. Clinton to campaign

On Thursday, O’Donnell hinted at her decision to leave on her blog, writing, “When painting there is a point you must step away from the canvas as the work is done. Anymore would take away.” h/t Althouse WARNING: Disturbing Image Below Fold

Imagine me with nukes, I do I think about it day and night, it’s only right To dream about the means you need, kafir to smite The weapon I’d treasure

First up, Ace has a post about a story treating the soaring demand in the UK for . . . elective genitoplasty, or as he puts it, ”designer vaginas”: Rising numbers of women are asking the NHS to provide cosmetic surgery on their genitals, doctors said on Friday. Writing in the British Medical Journal, they said the number of ”labial reductions” carried out in NHS hospitals had doubled to 800

From FOXNews: The American Civil Liberties Union argued a law that some judges said required the state’s courts to use the Bible alone is unconstitutional because it favors Christianity over other religions. The ACLU sought a court order clarifying that the law is broad enough to allow the use of multiple religious texts, or else declare the statute unconstitutional. Wake County Superior Court Judge Paul Ridgeway ruled that a witness

After cramming my iPod full of “Cosmic Americana,” alt-country, singer-songwriter, and classic rock, I’ve recently begun retracing my musical roots and loading up on the music I was listening to in the mid-to-late eighties:  Modern English, The Church, Plimsouls, Echo and the Bunnymen, Chameleons, Love and Rockets, The Motels, U2 (of “Wide Awake in America” vintage), Squeeze, Indigo Girls, etc. Which got me to thinking:  what am I missing?  What

In a heartening grassroots pushback against our HOA’s attempt to forcibly enact its execrable “Approved Shed Size Reform Bill”—which, while granting “amnesty” to those homeowners who have already skirted the covenant policy and built outsized monstrosities, would deny those of us wanting slightly larger sheds the ability to go beyond the 8x8x10’ template now available to us without first signing on to an onerous “guest shed usage program,” the specifics

From Reason’s Daily Brickbats: Officials at Tennessee’s Portland High School did not notice Samantha Elliott’s facial piercings for almost a year, but a week before graduation they did, calling them violations of the school’s dress code. And officials then barred Elliott from her graduation ceremony. “Walking the line at graduation is a privilege, it’s not a right,” said Sumner County Schools spokesman Steve Doremus. Elliott’s 14-year-old brother was slated to

Somebody asked me a while back who I believed gave the GOP the best chance to retain the White House in 2008.  In the course of touting Giuliani and Pelosi/Reid, I noted that a GOP ticket I think could gain real traction would be Giuliani / Thompson. McCain, for all his laudable commitment to seeing the Iraq campaign through, was done, I thought (and God Bless frickin’ America for that!

Addressing the new report set to be released today by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence—including, tangentially, how it is likely to be framed by the media—Dan Collins, in an email, parses this MSNBC story, which (predictably) begins thus: “In a move sure to raise even more questions about the decision to go to war with Iraq, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence will on Friday release selected portions of