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Okay, Jen here. I'm on Safari on a public machine so I can't text up my stuff in purple as ususal--don't see the text color thing here. Anyway, enjoy and comment away.

No Drama Queen Bullshit Unlike some bloggers, who feel oppressed by the act of writing and need to dramatically quit every few months, the simple fact is that we're moving our blog to a new domain, http://www.thenewsblog.net . Why? Because the new blogger works better. The old site will be frozen in place as of 5:30 PM January 21, 2007. No more posts or comments will be responded to on this site, except for the previous one. www.thenewsblog.net is now up and running and is the News Blog's new home.

The Doors - The End - live The current News Blog is shutting down effective immidiately. The following post will explain why

REUTERS/Mahmoud Raouf Mahmoud (IRAQ) Disguises Used in Attack on Troops Gunmen Infiltrated Secured Iraqi Site, Killing 5 Americans By Ernesto Londoño Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, January 22, 2007; Page A01 BAGHDAD, Jan. 21 -- The armored sport-utility vehicles whisked into a government compound in the city of Karbala with speed and urgency, the way most Americans and foreign dignitaries travel along Iraq's treacherous roads these days. Iraqi guards at checkpoints waved them through Saturday afternoon because the men wore what appeared to be legitimate U.S. military uniforms and badges, and drove cars commonly used by foreigners, the provincial governor said. Once inside, however, the men unleashed one of the deadliest and most brazen attacks on U.S. forces in a secure area. Five American service members were killed in a hail of grenades and gunfire in a breach of security that Iraqi officials called unprecedented. The attack, which lasted roughly 20 minutes,...

I'd rather take advice from a cat before I would take if from Frank Luntz Frank Luntz I am not in the habit of offering partisan linguistic advice to Democrats. But in the genuine spirit of bipartisanship - seriously - I thought this is the perfect time to convey a simple point to the still-euphoric faces of Democrat activists ... Don't twist the knife. Let's briefly sketch the political landscape in America today. Republicans are still reeling quite deservedly from the political thumping they took in the November election. The polls, pretty bad then, have gotten even worse. One-by-one, key Republicans on the Hill are parting ways with the President over the 'surge' and his 'new strategy' in Iraq. And to top it all off, a Washington Post-ABC News poll taken immediately after the President's speech showed that a mere 40% of Americans believe the war is worth fighting, up just four points from before the speech. An emerging new majority has spoken, and it ...

Jesse Jane plans cosmetic surgery to hide imperfections newly visible. In Raw World of Sex Movies, High Definition Could Be a View Too Real Digital Playground By MATT RICHTEL Published: January 22, 2007 SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 21 — The XXX industry has gotten too graphic, even for its own tastes. Stormy Daniels says she isn’t sure “why anyone would want to see their porn” in high definition because it makes the picture so crisp and clear. Pornography has long helped drive the adoption of new technology, from the printing press to the videocassette. Now pornographic movie studios are staying ahead of the curve by releasing high-definition DVDs. They have discovered that the technology is sometimes not so sexy. The high-definition format is accentuating imperfections in the actors — from a little extra cellulite on a leg to wrinkles around the eyes. Hollywood is dealing with similar problems, but they are more pronounced for pornographers, who rely on close-ups and who, because of their quic...

Limbaugh: Classless Players Look Like Bloods and Crips Posted Jan 20th 2007 8:22PM by Michael David Smith In 2003, Rush Limbaugh resigned from ESPN after creating a controversy with his comments that Donovan McNabb got too much credit because, he said, " The media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well.'' Limbaugh no longer works as an NFL commentator, but his latest comments about football are sure to get more scrutiny. Limbaugh's web site includes the following two statements that he made on his Friday show: "There is a cultural problem in the NFL that has resulted in a total lack of class on the part of professional players. I love the game of football, but after every sack players are acting like they've won the Super Bowl; they're prancing around with these idiotic dances." and "Look, let me put it to you this way: the NFL all too often looks like a game between the Bloods and the Crips without any weapons. There, I said i...

Cracking Down on Mixtape CDs By JEFF LEEDS Published: January 22, 2007 Not long before Christmas, Jeff Baker, the chief of police of Morrow, Ga., a small town just south of Atlanta, and one of his officers were walking through a local shopping mall when they happened to pass a kiosk hawking rap music CDs. One in particular caught their attention. The CD was “Tha Streets Iz Watchin,” with songs performed by the rapper Young Jeezy and, as Chief Baker recalled, it did not carry the name or address of the owner of the music copyrights, as Georgia law requires. Rather than arrest the kiosk vendor immediately, Chief Baker said, “We’d rather go after the source of the material. And at that point we had no idea what the source was.” Any rap music aficionado would; the creator of the album is DJ Drama, whose real name is Tyree Simmons, arguably the nation’s most prominent producer of mixtapes, the name given to popular but largely unlicensed CDs stocked with yet-to-be released rap hits and free...

Kristol On War Critics: ‘It’s So Irresponsible That They Can’t Be Quiet For Six Or Nine Months’ This morning on Fox News, Weekly Standard editor William Kristol said that opponents of escalation in Congress are “leap-frogging each other in the degrees of irresponsibility they’re willing to advocate.” Kristol said, “It’s just unbelievable. … It’s so irresponsible that they can’t be quiet for six or nine months,” adding, “You really wonder, do they want it to work or not? I really wonder that.” NPR’s Juan Williams told Kristol his analysis was “totally ahistorical,” and pointed out that yesterday was the deadliest day for U.S forces in Iraq in two years. “There’s something going on here you might pay attention to as opposed to just the politics of, ‘If you don’t support this president, you don’t really want us to win.’” Watch it: Digg It! Full transcript: KRISTOL: They’re playing — they’re leap-frogging each other in the degrees of irresponsibility they’re willing to advocate. And I r...

Taking Middle Schoolers Out of the Middle By ELISSA GOOTMAN Published: January 22, 2007 When John Smith, a swaggering sixth grader at one of New York City’s growing collection of kindergarten- through eighth-grade schools, feels lost, he heads downstairs to the colorful classroom of his former third-grade teacher, Randi Silverman, for what she calls a “Silverman hug.” “When I get mad I go to her,” John, 11, said amid the lunchtime buzz in the cafeteria of his school, Public School 105, on the Rockaway peninsula in Queens. “When I feel frustrated I’ll go to her. When I feel like I can’t do it no more I go to her, and she tells me I have to do it.” Miles away at Frederick Douglass Academy in Harlem, a 6th- through 12th-grade school, teachers keep the sixth graders looking forward, toward college. One recent morning, a class peppered a guidance counselor, Michael Lloyd, with queries, from “Where is Harvard?” to “What does Ph.D. stand for?” The two schools, in disparate corners of the nat...

They hate gay pengiuns too Faith & Reason: Ruth Kelly, her hard-line church and a devout PM wrestling with his conscience Catholic-run adoption agencies should retain the right to ban gay couples, say Tony Blair and Ruth Kelly. Most other cabinet members are horrified at the thought - and the scene is set for a political holy war. Francis Elliott reports Published: 21 January 2007 She is a devout Catholic and member of the Opus Dei sect. His leanings to Rome have been rewarded with audiences in front of successive Popes. So, when Tony Blair and Ruth Kelly team up to deny gay couples equal access to church-run adoption agencies, as we reveal today, it is little wonder that their opponents believe it is the "Catholic tendency" at work. "We are descending into a spiral of immorality," said Cardinal Keith O'Brien, leader of the Catholic church in Scotland, when that country brought its laws into line with those of the rest of the UK to allow local authorities t...

Warren Zevon - Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner

The Smiths - How Soon Is Now?

Public Enemy - Welcome to the Terrordome (Live) Atrios, stop with the shitty videos. Please. You Tube has music which doesn't suck

High-Def Disconnect For $1,399 and Endless Add-Ons He Got 12 Channels By Howard Bryant Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, January 21, 2007; Page F01 B ack in August, my needs were simple. As one of the reporters covering the Redskins for The Post, I needed a television and a way to record games so I could analyze what turned out to be a five-win season. A $119 combination 13-inch TV with a VCR would have solved the problem. Instead, I ended up taking the high-definition plunge, spending $1,399 for a far-bigger and fancier television set than I originally had in mind. As I left the store with my new HDTV, my confidence was boosted by approving nods from people in the parking lot. Most new HDTVs have inputs for both types of high-definition cables, but not all video sources - cable or satellite boxes, upconverting DVD players or high-def video game consoles - use the same connections. Both types of cables can sell from $10 to $100, with minimal difference in quality. (Ignore composit...

Angel Franco/The New York Times Yes, the Ill Will Can Be Subtle. Then, One Day, It Isn’t. By DAN BARRY Published: January 21, 2007 GREENWOOD, La. Bullets shattered the peace in the home of Ernest Lampkins, mayor of Greenwood, La. Who did it remains unknown. To Mr. Lampkins, the motive is clear. Midnight in a handsome one-story house on Waterwood Drive. Hours after Ernest and Shirley Lampkins say goodnight to their teenage daughter, Brett, and to the first Sunday of the new year, a Sunday of churchgoing and turkey and chili and some of those sweet frozen grapes that Ernest likes so much. Two bullets pay a call. They explode through the living room window. They tear through the soft-yellow curtains that Shirley ordered from a catalog. They rocket past the Easter basket containing family snapshots, past Brett’s bedroom door, past Ernest’s antique upright piano, past the framed portrait of father, mother and daughter in serene pose. One bullet strikes a golden candelabrum and splits: half ...

Another Bag of Krauthammers Last Friday, in his Washington Post op-ed "A Plausible Plan B," neoconservative pundit Charles Krauthammer was more openly skeptical of the surge option. If we were allied with an Iraqi government that, however weak, was truly national -- cross-confessional and dedicated to fighting a two-front war against Baathist insurgents and Shiite militias -- a surge of American troops, together with a change of counterinsurgency strategy, would have a good chance of succeeding. Unfortunately, the Iraqi political process has given us Nouri al-Maliki and his Shiite coalition. Krauthammer is confident that the U.S. troops will acquit themselves admirably (as am I), but that the surge effort "will fail, however, because the Maliki government will undermine it." Krauthammer proposes an alternative "Plan B" in which we tell Maliki: Let us down, and we dismantle the Green Zone, leave Baghdad and let you jfend for yourself; we keep the airport a...

Clinton Says ‘I’m In to Win’ 2008 Race By PATRICK HEALY Published: January 20, 2007 “I’m in,” she says in a statement on her new campaign Web site. “And I’m in to win.” Mrs. Clinton, 59, called for “bold but practical changes” in foreign, domestic, and national security policy and said that she would focus on finding “a right end” to the Iraq war, expanding health insurance, pursuing greater energy independence and strengthening Social Security and Medicare. In her statement, Mrs. Clinton also squarely confronted an issue that concerns many Democrats: Whether she can, in fact, win the presidency. Some voters still associate her most with the controversies of the Clinton administration, and Republicans have long attacked and caricatured her, and plan to brand her as indecisive on Iraq. “I have never been afraid to stand up for what I believe in or to face down the Republican machine,” Mrs. Clinton said on the Web site. “After nearly $70 million spent against my campaigns in New York ...

Tom Lasseter/MCT Iraqi Army soldiers from the Kurdish-dominated units in northern Iraq at a base outside of Mosul, Iraq, December 2005. The Kurdish flag, and not the Iraqi flag, flies at the gate. Kurdish Iraqi soldiers are deserting to avoid the conflict in Baghdad By Leila Fadel and Yaseen Taha McClatchy Newspapers SULAIMANIYAH, Iraq - As the Iraqi government attempts to secure a capital city ravaged by conflict between Sunni and Shiite Muslim Arabs, its decision to bring a third party into the mix may cause more problems than peace. Kurdish soldiers from northern Iraq, who are mostly Sunnis but not Arabs, are deserting the army to avoid the civil war in Baghdad, a conflict they consider someone else's problem. The Iraqi army brigades being sent to the capital are filled with former members of a Kurdish militia, the peshmerga, and most of the soldiers remain loyal to the militia. Much as Shiite militias have infiltrated the Iraqi security forces across Arab Iraq, the peshmerga...

Iraq Security Contractor Countersues By MIKE BAKER The Associated Press Friday, January 19, 2007; 9:42 PM RALEIGH, N.C. -- Private security contractor Blackwater USA is seeking $10 million from the attorney representing the estates of four employees killed and mutilated in Iraq, arguing their families breached the security guards' contracts by suing the company for wrongful death. Blackwater also has asked a federal court to move the dispute into arbitration, having failed so far in its ongoing efforts to have the lawsuit dismissed. Arbitration is necessary "in order to safeguard both (Blackwater's) own confidential information as well as sensitive information implicating the interest of the United States at war," attorneys for Blackwater Security Consulting, a unit of Moyock-based Blackwater USA, wrote in a petition filed December 20. Dan Callahan, a California-based attorney representing the families, called the claim "appalling." "This is a shock-an...