The worst.
Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Patty Judge said Thursday she is thinking of running for governor next year. The 62-year-old Albia Democrat said in an interview she plans to form an exploratory committee to help her consider the options and will make a final decision on a candidacy by late summer or fall...
Post office and Minnesota DFL officials are baffled after hearing that several people received fliers for the late Sen. Paul Wellstone 2 1/2 years after Wellstone died in a plane crash. At least three Minnesota City residents received the mailings, which were paid for by the Minnesota DFL.
Marlon Brando fans, it's time to make an offer that can't be refused. More than 250 items, including Brando's annotated script from 1972's ``The Godfather'' and a letter from the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. urging his participation in a civil rights march, will be auctioned June 30. The items are being put up for bid by Brando's estate.
"The NRA came up with an image that brilliantly encapsulated the whole thing: an elaborately clipped French poodle in a pink bow and a Kerry-for-president sweater over the slogan 'That dog don't hunt.'
And now it was the drawling son of 1992's aristocrat who was drawing the adoring throngs in the shuttered mill towns and coal-mining regions. It was the committed enemy of organized labor whose prayerful public performances persuaded so many that he 'shares our values.' It was the man who had slashed taxes on inherited fortunes and dividends who was said to be, in the election's most telling refrain, 'one of us.'
George W. Bush was authentic; John Forbes Kerry, like all liberals, was an affected toff, a Boston Brahmin who knew nothing of the struggles of average folks. Again and again, in the course of the electoral battle, I heard striking tales of this tragically inverted form of class consciousness: of a cleaning lady who voted for Bush because she could never support a rich man for president. Of the numerous people who lost their cable TV because of nonpayment but who nevertheless sported Bush stickers on their cars.
The most poignant, though, was one I saw with my own eyes: the state of West Virginia, one of the poorest in the nation, in the process of transforming itself into a conservative redoubt. This is a place where the largest private-sector employer is Wal-Mart and where decades of bloody fights between workers and mine owners gave rise to a particularly stubborn form of class consciousness. It does not stand to gain much from Bush's tax cuts and his crackdown on labor unions. But if class is a matter of cultural authenticity rather than material interests, John Kerry stood about as much of a chance there as the NRA's poodle did of retrieving a downed duck. As I toured the state's valleys and isolated mining towns, I spotted Bush posters adorning even the humblest of dwellings and mobile homes."
The idea steals a page from the popular 50 State Quarters series, in which the engraving on the 25-cent piece rotates to honor all the states. That legislation was also the brainchild of Rep. Castle.
The subjects depicted on the dollar coins would be the U.S. presidents. The plan is to introduce four new ones a year beginning in 2007, honoring each of the nation's chief executives in the order of their service...
It's a choice that could give pause to some Green Bay Packers fans. A judge ordered a woman convicted of theft to decide whether to spend 90 days in jail or donate her family's Packers tickets next season to charity.
Sharon E. Rosenthal, 59, took more than $3,000 from labor union accounts before she left the organization, according to a criminal complaint. She was sentenced Friday in Winnebago County Circuit Court on one felony count of theft.
Judge Scott Woldt offered her the decision to either serve the jail time or donate her family's four seats in the Packers' three-game season package to the Make-A-Wish Foundation.
The jail time or the ticket donation will occur as part of Rosenthal's overall two-year period of probation.
"If you want a Labour government, vote Liberal Democrat. If you want a Conservative government, vote Labour. If you want a Liberal Democrat government, vote Tory. Recite that every morning for a week."
Prime Minister Tony Blair's Labour party has apologised for canvassing voters heading to the funeral of a family member.
Carol Hughes was in a black limousine with her daughter heading to her father's funeral when party canvassers approached to encourage them to vote for Labour.
The party said the canvassers had mistaken the potential voters for a wedding party. Their local candidate, member of parliament David Drew, had written to say sorry.
"Keep an eye on author-singer Kinky Friedman later this week. He's expected to harvest help in his independent gubernatorial bid from someone who helped professional wrestler Jesse Ventura win in Minnesota...
Who else could have written a country song about the Holocaust ("Ride 'Em Jewboy"), or about a human being kept in a cage as part of a circus "Wild Man From Borneo"]?
The recent trend in presidential voting among independents is consistent with another trend in this group. Political scientists have long recognized that most independent identifiers are not totally neutral toward the two major parties. The large majority of independents lean toward one party or the other, and these leaning independents vote overwhelmingly for the party that they lean toward. In 2004, for example, according to the ANES, 88 percent of independent Democrats voted for John Kerry while 85 percent of independent Republicans voted for George Bush.
In 2004, 45 percent of independents expressed a preference for the Democratic Party while only 30 percent expressed a preference for the Republican Party.
Tony Blair might believe that a strong economy and record investment in public services are helping Labour to sustain a healthy lead in the opinion polls.
But some believe the fact that he has a fuller head of hair than his Conservative counterpart may tip a few floating voters mulling over the merits of Labour and the Tories his way.
This might seem trivial nonsense - but research from the early 1990s found that the proportion of bald men making it to elected office in the US was four times less than the number of follicularly challenged males in the population at large.
The last time a bald politician was elected to Number 10 was Winston Churchill in 1951 - and he was up against the equally receded Clement Attlee.
Not that all hair is a good thing. The last prime minister to sport a moustache was Harold Macmillan in the early 1960s, and the last bearded occupant of Number 10 was David Lloyd George, who left office in 1922.
Mr Sedgemore, who is standing down from parliament and not contesting his Hackney South and Shoreditch seat, said he was leaving Labour after becoming increasingly disillusioned with the government over the Iraq war and "authoritarian" anti-terrorism legislation.
More than 30 Labour MPs are putting out statements explicitly opposing the war, including Valerie Davey in Bristol West, who was visited yesterday by Tony Blair.
"Howard does link immigration and asylum (two separate issues that he often treats as one subject) with the increased threat of terrorist attacks. Most of us would choose to have excrement on our doormats rather than be blown up. Howard has escalated the danger of immigration beyond even Powell's wildest excesses."
On Saturday April 20th 1968 he made a controversial speech in Birmingham, in which he warned his audience of what he believed would be the consequences of continued unchecked immigration from the Commonwealth to Britain. Because of its allusion to Virgil saying that the Tiber would foam with blood, Powell's warning was christened the Rivers of Blood Speech by the press, and the name stuck.
With appalling timing, Powell only realised later that of all the days he could have made a speech that some regarded as racist, it was on the anniversary of Hitler's birth - during a period of Britain's history when it was known that various notorious neo-Nazis held birthday parties in the Nazi leader's honour...
Cleese: "Rastus Odinga-Odinga has taken Wolverhampton Southwest, that's Enoch Powell's old constituency -- an important gain there for Darkie Power."
"In no previous campaign has so much attention been focused so precisely on potentially uncommitted voters in marginal seats. If you are one of the million voters whose franchise really counts, then you will have received dozens of letters and telephone calls from the party headquarters. The remaining 95 per cent of the population, perhaps fortunately, have been virtually ignored by the party professionals. The election barely exists for them."
Mayor Dick Murphy announced his resignation Monday amid a widening federal investigation into the handling of the city's deficit-riddled pension fund.
"It's clear to me that the city needs a fresh start," Murphy said, holding back emotion as he made the announcement at City Hall, surrounded by his staff and family.
Murphy said he will leave office July 15. He said he expects a special election Nov. 8 to select his replacement.
The announcement comes just months after a bruising re-election battle in which Murphy pulled out a 2,108-vote victory over a maverick city councilwoman who waged a surprisingly strong write-in campaign. The councilwoman surf shop owner Donna Frye contended more votes were cast for her, but thousands of the write-in ballots were disqualified under state law...
Environmentalism, once sneered at in the spacious, resource-rich West, is gaining a foothold as tourism and adventure sports gain economic importance...
Two former New York City police detectives accused of being hit men for the Mafia more than 20 years ago pleaded not guilty at their Brooklyn federal court arraignment Thursday on charges that included murder, drug distribution and money laundering.
According to an indictment from a federal grand jury in Brooklyn, Stephen Caracappa and Louis Eppolito routinely passed confidential law enforcement information to the mob and killed rival gangsters.
"While Sinclair Lewis wrote that Gantry, his hypocritical evangelical preacher, 'was born to be a senator,' we now have senators who are born to be Gantrys. One of them, the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, hatched plans to be beamed into tonight's festivities by videotape, a stunt that in itself imbues 'Justice Sunday' with a touch of all-American spectacle worthy of 'The Wizard of Oz.'"
On July 4, 20,000 Klan supporters held a picnic in New Jersey, wearing white hoods and robes. One speaker denounced the "clownvention in Jew York." They threw baseballs at an effigy of Al Smith. The event culminated with a cross-burning.
Lucero said she didn't intend to be offensive but rather wanted to mark the sixth anniversary of the Columbine High School slayings by evoking a sense of tolerance.
"Given the anniversary of Columbine, it was a spur-of-the- moment choice that I made, intended to acknowledge differences that lie in our society," Lucero said. "It's not a reflection of the district, and it was not my intention to offend anyone, rather to include (everyone)."
