Coastal Drilling's High Cost
Tyson Slocum is director of Public Citizen’s energy program.
Opening environmentally sensitive areas to oil and natural gas drilling won’t ease energy prices or reduce oil imports and should be rejected by the Senate when it votes this week.
With the November elections looming, congressional leaders are desperately seeking ways to convince the public that they are working to lower gas prices for consumers and improve national security by reducing energy imports, but this isn’t the way to do it....more

Spazeboy and Jane Speak Out



Hands Off Connecticut
Here we go again … There is a grass-roots movement picking up steam in the nutmeg state, but the old guard is rushing in to maintain the status quo. Bill Clinton is rushing to Connecticut to save Joseph Lieberman for the party insiders who don't want to lose their power in the party....more

Lieberman Camp Responds To Charges They Barred Lamont Supporter From Event

Howard Dean

In Tampa

Mirta's Coffeehouse & Gallery
119 S. Hyde Park Ave.Tampa
Wednesday, July 26th 6:30pm

Veep Veep
The conventional wisdom that there's a predictable political divide between the two dailies – Trib = Republican, Times = Democrat – isn't always borne out by the evidence. But you had to be struck by the placement of stories today about the visit to Tampa of Vice President Cheney....more

Phyllis Busansky

Bombings Hit Children Hardest
About 55 percent of all casualties at the Beirut Government University Hospital are children of 15 years of age or less, hospital records show....more

Fox News chairman Ailes calls Olbermann `over the line'
Fox News Channel chairman and CEO Roger Ailes responded to Keith Olbermann's latest critical volley against Bill O'Reilly on Monday, saying the MSNBC host's behavior "is over the line."....more

Man gets 25 years for Ybor City death brawl
Michael Pyne was sentenced 25 years Monday for stabbing a man to death in Ybor City last June.....more

Lebanon and Israel: The war from where I stand

I was in Beirut only five weeks - or a lifetime ago, as things are measured in the Middle East. I fell in love with a once beautiful city that was ever so slowly recreating itself out of the rubble of a long and bloody civil war and previous Palestinian and Israeli battles in its streets....more

Pakistan 'building reactor for 50 nukes'
Pakistan is reported to be building a nuclear reactor that could produce enough plutonium for up to 50 nuclear weapons a year....more

Democrats lash Bush for losing Mideast control
Leading Democrats have attacked US President George W Bush for losing control of the Middle East by neglecting specific regional powers and sending Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on only a brief crisis trip.....more

Morales rekindles revolutionary spirit

Summoning President Evo Morales at dawn to the great hall of the presidential palace, two poncho-clad Indian shamans pour alcohol on coca leaves, candies and a dried llama fetus, and set them on fire....more

Dixie Chicks - Shut Up & Listen

www.shutupandlisten.net

A girls' night out in Detroit

W.Va mill town suffers slow death
Mary Tice drove along Main Street, barely seeing the worn storefronts, the seedy strip clubs, the flashy video poker bars promising better luck....more

What to Read While the Cradle of Civilization Burns
The Middle East is both the birthplace of civilization and, as the globe's largest repository of fossil fuels, the mother's milk of the modern industrialized world....more

Afghanistan close to anarchy
The most senior British military commander in Afghanistan yesterday described the situation in the country as "close to anarchy" with feuding foreign agencies and unethical private security companies compounding problems caused by local corruption....more

Weekend notes: It's not World War 3
This blog is a collection of things that I wrote in the past 48 hours....more

Republicans Reject Ralph Reed's Hypocrisy
For those who still claim that the Jack Abramoff scandal will not "play" politically, the Republican voters of Georgia beg to differ.....more

No, this is not 'our war'
We are not "all Israelis." Some of us still think of ourselves as Americans, first, last and always.
And, no, this is not "our war." It's your war.....more

Republican politics as sideshow
Six weeks ago the Senate rejected a constitutional ban on gay marriage. Last week the House did the same by a vote of 236 to 187. Now that this little partisan sideshow is behind them, maybe Republican congressional leaders will decide to get down to serious business....more

Wouldn't it be ironic...
...if on this coming Monday, former President Bill Clinton pulls a "Joe Biden" and somehow "misses his train to Connecticut"?.....more

The Hippies Behind the Youth Movement
During the 2004 election, the Dean campaign was credited with using the Internet in new ways, reaching out to voters many assumed were college youth, otherwise disconnected from politics....more

Chaos in Cyprus
Lebanese and foreigners have had a difficult time leaving Lebanon since the beginning of Israel's military offensive against Hezbollah. Many of the ships being used for the evacuation effort are badly equipped and horribly overcrowded. But those able to escape face further problems once they reach nearby Cyprus....more

Lebanon Conflict Watched for War Crimes

1982 versus 2006
Many people see no difference between Israel's 1982 Lebanon War and the present war. For example, some Arabs are astounded that the Israeli public is supporting its government and its military moves. Thus the major differences between the two wars must be pointed out: namely, differences in background, objective and modus operandi.....more

'Lebanon crisis an international conspiracy'
The Israeli-Hezbollah conflict threatens to drag Syria, Iran and the US into a regional war....more

Dot-com ambitions live on in (Tampa) Bay area
Millions of people view videos at YouTube every day. Frank Principe believes he can build on the thousands who visit PitBullTV to make a mark as an Internet TV network.....more

U.S. President avoids media after G8 summit
U.S. President George W. Bush was the only G8 leader who refused to talk to the press after the St. Petersburg summit.....more

Bush and African Americans
Given the disaster he ignored in New Orleans? He could rush to DC on a midnight flight to sign the "let's meddle in the Schiavo family's affairs" bill, but couldn't be bothered to cut his six-week vacation short when Katrina hit....more

PULL UP A CHAIR
Pinellas Democrats look for a leader.

When I last checked in with the local Democratic Party organizations (an oxymoron, I know), it was the Hillsborough executive committee that was torn with strife. Today, that divisiveness could be headed to a new home, at the Pinellas Democratic Party....more

Lebanon In Crisis; Bush, Most Democrats In Denial
A little more than a week of Israeli bombing and American neglect has created a humanitarian crisis in Lebanon. In a country that just months ago was being written up in travel magazines as one of the world's next great tourist destinations....more

The Spirit of War
At the start of the Iraq war, the British columnist George Monbiot wrote, "They (the American and British governments) have unlocked the spirit of war, and it could be unwilling to return to its casket until it has traversed the world."....more

Bush "Will Be Given More Power to Eavesdrop" in Bill
The dispute over the Bush administration's secret eavesdropping of US citizens has reignited after it emerged the White House had brokered a deal with Congress that critics say gives it even greater flexibility to monitor phone calls electronically.....more

Strip club king goes to church
Hillsborough commission candidate and nonbeliever Joe Redner takes the pulpit....more

IN THE PARTY OF GOD
Are terrorists in Lebanon preparing for a larger war?....more

Adolf Hitler
ORIGINAL Watercolor Artworks, For Sale....more

Family Guy Osama Bin Laden

Smart Girls Need Smart Porn
Sometimes I wonder how I would feel about pornography if I hadn't seen so much of it.....more

Study Finds Worst Performance in Conservative Christian Schools
The Federal Education Department reported Friday that, in reading and math, children attending public schools generally do as well as or better than comparable children in private schools. The exception was in eighth-grade reading, where the private-school children did better.....more

A U.S view: The summer vacation solution
I had a Canadian moment and an American moment within 24 hours of each other while on holiday this week....more

Senator Ted Stevens "Flintstonian" understanding of the Internet.
Murdoch taking MySpace down the tubes

When Alaska Senator Ted Stevens rambled nonsensically about the tubes our information goes through on the Internets we knew there was cause for concern....more

The Last of the "Sewer Socialists"

(Frank) Zeidler, an old-school American socialist who served three terms as the mayor of Milwaukee from 1948 to 1960, and who died last Friday at age 93, never got very far as a presidential candidate.....more