From the AP: Al Jazeera aired an audiotape purportedly from Osama bin Laden on Thursday, saying al Qaeda is making preparations for attacks in the U.S. but offering a truce to rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan. The voice on the tape said heightened security measures in the U.S. aren’t the reason there have been no attacks there since the Sept. 11, 2001, suicide hijackings. Instead, the reason is “because there are

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From Reuters: Ben Nelson of Nebraska on Tuesday became the first Senate Democrat to announce his support of conservative Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito, who is expected to be confirmed later this month by the full Republican-led Senate. “I have decided to vote in favor of Judge Samuel Alito,” Nelson, a moderate, said in a statement issued by his office. “I came to this decision after careful consideration of his

ABC News: ABC News has learned that al Qaeda’s master bomb maker and chemical weapons expert was one of the men killed in last week’s U.S. missile attack in eastern Pakistan. Midhat Mursi, 52, also known as Abu Khabab al-Masri, was identified by Pakistani authorities as one of three known al Qaeda leaders present at an apparent terror summit conference in the village of Damadola. The United States had posted

Garrett: “Dude.  Do the pigs really expect us to believe that it was like, some crazy coincidence that I got busted at the fucking Pershing Square Red Line station?  I mean, ’Red Square’, man!  Think about it—home to the fight against godless communism, to the resistance against Orwellian thought police, to the tragic mass executions of brave dissident Chinks who longed for freedom with such a burning passion that they

Interesting thought on Iran from Dave Price, writing at Dean Esmay.com: We can always hope for peaceful regime change, but it’s probably a pipe dream as the regime seems quite capable of brutally suppressing such an uprising, and like Saddam it seems unlikely the Iranian government will ever abandon their quest for nuclear weapons so long as they remain in power. At some point, we have to choose to accept

Via Harris Polling: The latest Harris Poll shows Democrats slightly increasing their modest lead over the GOP in party identification to six percentage points, up three percentage points from 2004. According to Harris, this is the largest Democratic lead since 2000, when it was eight percentage points. See here for the news release with additional details, expected within 24 hours. Below are some other stats from the poll: Almost two-thirds

        “So, honey,” he spread an arm across the counter, eyelids slightly drooped, lips carved carefully into a line of studied indifference. “Whaddya think about this hat?  Is it me? Or…?”           She glanced at the canvas surf hat he placed on the counter, then up at his face, before smiling and running a couple of fingers through her hair.  “Sure, it looks good,

1.  Thanks so much to Russ Emerson for the Sam Raimi’s Darkman DVD. I saw the film when it first came out, remember liking it very much, and look forward to revisiting it.  Much obliged, Russ. 2.  Terry Hastings points me toward this piece from Wretchard discussing a nuclear-armed Islamic world.  From “The Coming of the Bomb” (which analysis relies in large part on this War College report cited previously

I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night, alive as you and me / —but it turns out it was just an IWW raccoon in dirty Carhart overalls rummaging through one of my trashcans, trying to get at the leftover garlic chicken and eggroll bite I’d found buried in the back of the refrigerator and thrown out only yesterday.  Lord only knows how long that shit was tucked back there.