Today's New York Times details a Japanese scientific on earwax and body odor in Asians vs. Europeans and Africans. There is actually an "earwax gene" in DNA that determines this.

But the paper glosses over the most important finding. The study found that Europeans and Africans tend to have wet ear wax, sweat more, and have more under arm body odor than Asians, who have dry ear wax and don't sweat much. But the study also found that "Native" Americans have dry ear wax and body odor similar to Asians, proving they migrated here from Asia.

So whom did THEY steal the land from? Somebody else, obviously. Yet, no "Dances With Wolves" and "Into the West" from Hollywood about that.

Wow! You mean Native Americans didn't just spontaneously appear in America? Who would've thought? Oh that's right - everyone.

NO KIDDING, CLOMPO. THANKS FOR THE TIP FROM YOU AND ALL THE OTHER LIBERALS LEAVING DUMB, INSULTING MESSAGES. I'M WELL AWARE. I'M SAYING THIS IS YET MORE PROOF, AS DOES THE ARTICLE IF YOU BOTHERED TO READ. HOW DO YOU KNOW INDIANS WERE THE FIRST HERE? YOU DO NOT. AND IF THEY WERE, SO WHAT--THEY CAME HERE FROM ELSEWHERE, TOO. IT WASN'T THEIR LAND TO BEGIN WITH.

If memory serves me right, Asians and native Americans also share "shovel shaped" incisors, (a trait expressed in the hominid homo erectus) but does not show up in European or African populations. Scientific Evidence suggests people migrated to North America between 25,000 to 30,000 years ago. At that time, no other homo sapiens, or even hominoids for that matter (except MAYBE gigantopithecus) had crossed the Bering straits to North America. Essentially, they were the first people to get here and continued to live here for thousands and thousands of years until we finally showed up.

So you ask "whom did THEY steal the land from?" They didn't steal it from anyone, do a little bit of research next time you write an article concerning anthropology, it would've taken you about 5 minutes on google.

FOR THE UMPTEENTH TIME, I DIDN'T SAY THEY STOLE IT FROM ANYONE. HELLO, LIBERALS . . . . IT WAS A RHETORICAL QUESTION. THE POINT IS THAT WE DO NOT KNOW WHETHER OR NOT THEY WERE THE FIRST PEOPLE HERE, BUT EVEN IF THEY WERE, THAT DOESN'T MEAN THE LAND WAS THEIRS. IT MEANS THEY TOOK IT. I DON'T NEED TO DO RESEARCH/GOOGLE. I KNOW WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT. BUT YOU NEED TO RE-TAKE "READING COMPREHENSION." DITTO FOR THE REST OF THE LIBERALS. AT LEAST, YOU DID NOT TAKE TO INSULTS, OR YOU WOULD HAVE BEEN BANNED LIKE THEY WERE.

ACTUALLY, GENIUS, I RESPOND TO ALL COMMENTS IN CAPITALS THROUGHOUT THIS SITE TO DIFFERENTIATE MY RESPONSE FROM THE COMMENT TEXT. GOT A PROBLEM WITH THAT? NO-ONE IS FORCING YOU AT GUN-POINT TO READ THIS SITE.

***To all the liberal idiots who've left dumb, insulting comments on this entry (and if you insult me, you're comments will be deleted), as directed by similarly intellectually-challenged lefty websites, I'm well aware Indians came here over the Bering Strait, which you'd realize if you actually bothered to read what I wrote below in this entry. I simply quoted the NYTimes that this was yet more proof. Yet, there is no proof they were the first here. And even if they were, this is yet more proof that they originated in ASIA. Hello? . . . This is yet more evidence that we did NOT steal THEIR land. It means it was not THEIRS to begin with.***

Actually, by this rationale, we can kick anyone we want out of the entire earth, except maybe The Indus River, the Yellow River, and the area between the Tigris and Euphrates. Since these areas are where mankind came from, they're the only ones that anyone really OWNS. Everyone else is just squatting and can be kicked out by another group who will squat there for awhile.

We will have a Jesse Jackson piñata , a dunk tank where you'll get the chance to sink my wife who will be dressed as Hilary Clinton, and a special guest appearance by my uncle - Rep. Timothy V. Johnson who will be giving away "Proud to be G.O.P." American Flag windbreakers. Bring a side dish if you like. We will have burgers, hot dogs, chili, and pizza, but nothing vegetarian! This party is family friendly, so feel free to bring children. It's never too early to get them involved!

• A chicken's worth of chicken meat.
  
• Broth. If you use a whole chicken, you will, of course make your own broth. If you get lazy, like me and buy packaged, skinless, boneless chicken parts, you will want to get can of plain broth.
  
• Dry white wine. Two bottles or more, depending on how much of a Julia Child** at heart you are. If you don't drink, you just need one bottle to cook into the stew.
  
• A large fennel bulb.
  
• A large yellow onion.
  
• A half pound of mushrooms.
  
• Herbs. Spices. Other stuff.
  
• Cheese and crackers.

The Senate today voted 25-23 to approve a gay rights bill and ended the debate over legislation that emerged in Washington the same year singer Anita Bryant began her "Save Our Children" crusade against such protections.

The House quickly concurred by a 61-37 vote, and Gov. Chris Gregoire said she planned to sign the bill into law Tuesday.

The bill would ban discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in housing, lending and employment.

Twenty four of 26 Senate Democrats were joined by one Republican and approved the bill with a one-vote majority.

Rep. Ed Murray, D-Seattle, has championed the legislation for a decade. The openly gay legislator, who waited in the wings for the vote, embraced his partner as the clerk read the vote count.

At Milton High School, girls outnumber boys by almost 2 to 1 on the honor roll. In Advanced Placement classes, almost 60 percent of the students are female.

It's not that girls are smarter than boys, said Doug Anglin, a 17-year-old senior at the high school.

Girls are outperforming boys because the school system favors them, said Anglin, who has filed a federal civil rights complaint contending that his school discriminates against boys.

Among Anglin's allegations: Girls face fewer restrictions from teachers, like being able to wander the hallways without passes, and girls are rewarded for abiding by the rules, while boys' more rebellious ways are punished.

[...]

''The system is designed to the disadvantage of males," Anglin said. ''From the elementary level, they establish a philosophy that if you sit down, follow orders, and listen to what they say, you'll do well and get good grades. Men naturally rebel against this."

Anglin -- whose complaint was written by his father, who is a lawyer in Boston -- is looking for broader changes. He says that teachers must change their attitudes toward boys and look past boys' poor work habits or rule-breaking to find ways to encourage them academically.

While some of Anglin's concerns appear to be supported by school statistics and anecdotal evidence, school officials say some of the solutions that he offers are far-fetched.

For example, he proposes that the high school give students credit for playing sports [yes, he's an athlete], not just for art and drama courses. He also urges that students be allowed to take classes on a pass/fail basis to encourage more boys to enroll in advanced classes without risking their grade point average. He also wants the school to abolish its community service requirement, saying it's another burden that will just set off resistance from boys, who may skip it and fail to graduate as a result.

[...]

Gerry Anglin, Doug Anglin's father, said the school system should compensate boys for the discrimination by boosting their grades retroactively.

If there isn’t a better symbol of male privilege than giving all the boys in a high school extra points on their report cards just for being male, I don’t know what is.

Keep your eye on this one. Before long the Heritage Foundation will be grooming him for a lifetime of grousing about uppity feminists and racial and religious minorities who want equality. He’ll enjoy his future stint in the College Republicans, a bona fide sausage fest if ever there was one.

A pastor who threatened a national boycott against Microsoft and other major corporations for endorsing a gay rights bill urged supporters Tuesday to buy up the companies' stock and dump it to drive prices down.

Rev. Ken Hutcherson, pastor of Antioch Bible Church in the Seattle suburb of Redmond, said the stock-dumping plan had been part of his strategy all along.

[...]

He wants supporters to buy one or two shares over the next few months, then sell them May 1.

But the most obvious problem with Hutcherson’s plan is that Microsoft has over 10.6 billion shares outstanding, with a total market valuation of about $280 billion. Over 63 million Microsoft shares are traded on a typical day. Large institutional trades happen all the time, so even if Hutcherson’s fantasy stock boycott could manage to dump a few million shares, the market might not even notice.

A 17-year-old high school student said he was humiliated when a teacher made him sit on the floor during a midterm exam in his ethnicity class -- for wearing a Denver Broncos jersey.

The teacher, John Kelly, forced Joshua Vannoy to sit on the floor and take the test Friday -- two days before the Pittsburgh Steelers beat the Broncos 34-17 in the AFC championship game. Kelly also made other students throw crumpled up paper at Vannoy, whom he called a "stinking Denver fan," Vannoy told The Associated Press on Monday.

Kelly said Vannoy, a junior at Beaver Area Senior High School, just didn't get the joke.

"If he felt uncomfortable, then that's a lesson; that's what [the class] is designed to do," Kelly told The Denver Post. "It was silly fun. I can't believe he was upset."

[...]

Vannoy said he was so unnerved he left at least 20 questions blank on the 60-question test, and just wants out of Kelly's class because he's afraid the teacher won't treat him fairly now that the story reached the media.

"I'm going to have to deal with him for two more nine weeks [school quarters] and he's going to want revenge somehow," Vannoy said Monday.

More than a decade after 16-year-old Amy Fisher had a sexual relationship with a much-older car mechanic and shot his wife in the face, the one-time "Long Island Lolita" and Joey and Mary Jo Buttafuoco have agreed to appear together in a televised reunion.

All three have signed on for the appearance, which has yet to be sold to a network, television producer David Krieff told the New York Post for Monday editions.

"It's time to just put it behind us," Fisher, now 31, told the newspaper. "We played this all out in a public eye. It'd be interesting to let the public see the healing process at the end. They saw everything else -- why not let them see the final product?"

Well I bow to nobody in, in my disdain for bloggers. They're all opinions and very little information.

He was convinced by the ACLU and their advocates that the school board of the small country town became Congress and made a law respecting an establishment of religion.

The judge, however, was unable to explain how Congress was able to pull off the signing of the Declaration of Independence with references to "Nature's God" and affirmations that "all men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights."

Would you like to sit on the set of "The Factor" and let Bill O'Reilly have it?!

Our "Bloviate with Bill" contest is underway and here's the deal:

During the month of February six lucky "Factor" viewers will be flown to New York City or Los Angeles (depending on which city we're broadcasting from) with hotel and meals paid for by us.

All you have to do is convince us by e-mail (and later by telephone) that you are a good debater and that you can hold your own with O'Reilly on a topic of your choosing.

Be it resolved: The decline and ultimate extinction of the Woolly Mammoth population Eurasia and North America was brought on by the aggressive expansion of by bands of human mesolithic hunters and the contraction of grazing range caused by a climactic shift in respose to predictable Milankovitch cycles. I'll argue pro.

For the sake of argument, let's assume that we had pretty good intelligence telling us that a bunch of al-Qaeda leaders were in the house we bombed. And let's also assume that we did indeed kill al-Masri and several other major al-Qaeda leaders. Finally, let's assume that the 18 civilians killed in the attack were genuinely innocent bystanders with no connection to terrorists.

Question: Under those assumptions, was the attack justified? I think the answer is pretty plainly yes, but I'd sure like to see the liberal blogosphere discuss it. And for those who answer no, I'm curious: under what circumstances would such an attack be justified?

On the January 18 edition of MSNBC's Imus in the Morning, Hardball host Chris Matthews cited nationally syndicated radio host Michael Savage's characterization of the award-winning film Brokeback Mountain (Focus Features, 2005), stating: "The wonderful Michael Savage ... what's he call it? 'Bareback Mounting.' That's his name for the movie." Host Don Imus responded: "Of course, Bernard [McGuirk, executive producer] calls it 'Fudgepack Mountain.'"

On Hardball today, Chris Matthews compared Michael Moore to Osama Bin Laden while discussing the newly released tape with Joe Biden.

Matthews: I mean he sounds like an over the top Michael Moore here, if not a Michael Moore. You think that sells...

The Bush administration today offered its fullest defense of the National Security Agency's domestic eavesdropping program, saying that congressional authorization to defeat Al Qaeda after the Sept. 11 attacks "places the president at the zenith of his powers in authorizing the N.S.A. activities."

In a 42-page white paper, the Justice Department expanded on its past arguments in laying out the legal rationale for why the N.S.A. program does not violate federal wiretap law and why the president is the nation's "sole organ" for foreign affairs.

Article I, Section 8
The Congress shall have Power...To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;

To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;

To provide and maintain a Navy;

To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;

To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;

To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;

Article II, Section 2

The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States...

He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls...

In the end, California's oldest condemned inmate did not seem quite as feeble as his attorneys made him out to be in their efforts to save his life.

With the help of four big prison guards, Clarence Ray Allen shuffled from his wheelchair to a gurney inside San Quentin's death chamber early Tuesday, a day after his 76th birthday.

Though legally blind, Allen raised his head to search among execution witnesses for relatives he had invited.

"Hoka hey, it's a good day to die," Allen said in a nod to his Choctaw Indian heritage. "Thank you very much, I love you all. Goodbye."

[...]

But the barrel-chested prisoner's heart was strong to the end: Doctors had to administer a second shot of potassium chloride to stop it.

People who have watched someone being killed by lethal injection have observed that those being sent on their way appear as tranquil as those in a hospital room whose lives are being preserved by the most modern techniques known to civilized people. That is in part because one part of the cocktail that is administered to the soon to be departed is a chemical, pancuronium bromide, known by the trade name, Pavulon.

Pavulon paralyzes the skeletal muscles but not the brain or nerves. Thus, people receiving it cannot move or speak, nor can they let onlookers know that contrary to appearances, what is happening is no fun at all. A Tennessee judge, Ellen Hobbs Lyle, commenting on the use of the drug in an appeal brought by someone on death row in that state, said Pavulon has no "legitimate purposes." She wrote about the drug's use: "The subject gives all the appearances of a serene expiration when actually the subject is feeling and perceiving the excruciatingly painful ordeal of death by lethal injection. The Pavulon gives a false impression of serenity to viewers, making punishment by death more palatable and acceptable to society."

Sherwin B. Nuland, a professor in the Yale School of Medicine, when told of use of the drug, expressed surprise. He said: "It strikes me that it makes no sense to use a muscle relaxant in executing people. Complete muscle paralysis does not mean loss of pain sensation." He said, in effect, that there were other ways of humanely killing people. I'm sure he's right, but there are 28 states that use the same cocktail in the execution chamber as Tennessee. The first drug administered is sodium thiopental, used to induce anesthesia for a short period. It is followed by pancuronium bromide, which paralyzes the patient, and finally potassium chloride, which stops the heart and is said to cause excruciating pain if the victim is conscious.

Having suffered a heart attack back in September, Allen had asked prison authorities to let him die if he went into cardiac arrest before his execution, a request prison officials said they would not honor.

"At no point are we not going to value the sanctity of life," said prison spokesman Vernell Crittendon. "We would resuscitate him," then execute him.

October 17, 1990. Virginia. Wilbert Lee Evans. Electrocution. When Evans was hit with the first burst of electricity, blood spewed from the right side of the mask on Evans's face, drenching Evans's shirt with blood and causing a sizzling sound as blood dripped from his lips. Evans continued to moan before a second jolt of electricity was applied.

April 6, 1992. Arizona. Donald Eugene Harding. Asphyxiation. Death was not pronounced until 10 1/2 minutes after the cyanide tablets were dropped.23 During the execution, Harding thrashed and struggled violently against the restraining straps. A television journalist who witnessed the execution, Cameron Harper, said that Harding's spasms and jerks lasted 6 minutes and 37 seconds. "Obviously, this man was suffering. This was a violent death .. . an ugly event. We put animals to death more humanely."

March 25, 1997. Florida. Pedro Medina. Electrocution. A crown of foot-high flames shot from the headpiece during the execution, filling the execution chamber with a stench of thick smoke and gagging the two dozen official witnesses. An official then threw a switch to manually cut off the power and prematurely end the two-minute cycle of 2,000 volts. Medina's chest continued to heave until the flames stopped and death came.

July 8, 1999. Florida. Allen Lee Davis. "Before he was pronounced dead ... the blood from his mouth had poured onto the collar of his white shirt, and the blood on his chest had spread to about the size of a dinner plate, even oozing through the buckle holes on the leather chest strap holding him to the chair." His execution was the first in Florida's new electric chair, built especially so it could accommodate a man Davis's size (approximately 350 pounds). Later, when another Florida death row inmate challenged the constitutionality of the electric chair, Florida Supreme Court Justice Leander Shaw commented that "the color photos of Davis depict a man who -- for all appearances -- was brutally tortured to death by the citizens of Florida." Justice Shaw also described the botched executions of Jesse Tafero and Pedro Medina (q.v.), calling the three executions "barbaric spectacles" and "acts more befitting a violent murderer than a civilized state." Justice Shaw included pictures of Davis's dead body in his opinion. The execution was witnessed by a Florida State Senator, Ginny Brown-Waite, who at first was "shocked" to see the blood, until she realized that the blood was forming the shape of a cross and that it was a message from God saying he supported the execution.

A decision not to send more troops in Afghanistan would be damaging for Dutch interests in the US, former American diplomat Paul Bremer III warned on Monday.

Dutch politicians have been putting off a final decision for weeks on whether to send 1,200 troops to southern Afghanistan to assist in the US-led campaign against the Taliban.

[...]

In an interview with Dutch newspaper 'De Volkskrant', Bremer said the Netherlands must not expect that a refusal to send the troops will not have consequences.

Acknowledging Dutch politicians must weigh all the considerations, he said question marks would be raised on the US side about Nato if the mission doesn't go ahead. "What is Nato all about if our allies are not prepared to stand should-to-shoulder with us?"

Consequences would be unavoidable if the Dutch does not send the troops. "Time and time again decisions must be taken by the US government, by Congress, that influence Dutch economic interests. It is not difficult to imagine decisions could be taken that would not be in the interests of the Netherlands," Bremer said.

It's an open secret in Washington: Nonprofit doesn't always mean nonpartisan.

But RAW STORY has found that the Republican National Committee lists a panoply of conservative nonprofits as "GOP groups"--in direct violation of the nonprofit charter.

Tax-exempt nonprofits can lobby on political issues but cannot participate directly in campaign activities.

[...]

But 501(c)(3) law--referring to the provision in the Internal Revenue Code that designates organizations exempt from corporate and property taxation and makes donations tax deductible--strictly prohibits groups from endorsing candidates or political parties.

A nonprofit "may not attempt to influence legislation as a substantial part of its activities and it may not participate at all in campaign activity for or against political candidates," the IRS law reads.

At least six "GOP groups" listed and linked on the Republican National Committee website are tax-exempt nonprofits. These include the American Enterprise Institute, American Values, Coalition for Urban Renewal, Frontiers of Freedom, the Heritage Foundation and the Leadership Institute.

If defined as a "GOP group," these organizations would not qualify for tax-exempt status under their charters.

The central Ohio city of Westerville, once known as the "dry capital of the world," is dry no more.

A pizza parlor on Thursday became the first establishment in Westerville's uptown business district to legally serve a beer since 1875.

"Here's to a new tradition in Westerville," local jeweler Bill Morgan said as he raised his plastic cup of Budweiser at Michael's Pizza.

Westerville's temperance history dates back 131 years, when the town's saloon was blown up during what's known as the "Whiskey Wars."

The Anti-Saloon League moved its headquarters to Westerville in 1909, and the city became known as the "dry capital of the world."

[...]

The night of the election, Michael's Pizza owner Michael Evans said he would auction off the first beer, with the proceeds going to a local ministry.

Morgan, whose family has lived in Westerville for four generations, topped five other bidders to win the beer for $150.

San Francisco authorities struggled to explain Thursday how they concluded that an object left in a Starbucks bathroom was a bomb, when tests revealed it was nothing more than a flashlight with corroded batteries.

"This appeared, by itself, to be a bomb," said police spokesman Sgt. Neville Gittens, who was the first to relay word from bomb squad investigators Monday afternoon that the object was an "improvised explosive device." The news quickly went national, and at one point CNN was broadcasting developments.

Gittens would not specify what about the device was so convincing, other than to say that all the people who saw it described it as a "tube-shaped cylinder with a fuse."

The incident began when an employee of the Starbucks at 1401 Van Ness Ave. spotted the object in the bathroom after a man came in, asked for coffee grounds and then used the restroom.

[...]

The man who says he left the flashlight in the Starbucks, Ronald Schouten, 44, remains in custody in County Jail on unrelated matters. He told police he had found the flashlight on the street and thought it could be used for self-defense, but decided to leave it behind after using the restroom.

The man had aroused the suspicion of employees, one of whom checked the bathroom as soon as he left and found what turned out to be a quarter-stick of dynamite next to the toilet, said Lt. Dan Mahoney of the police special investigations unit.

He described the bomb as an empty flashlight casing that contained the quarter-stick of dynamite and a fuse. The fuse would have to have been lit for the bomb to explode, Mahoney said.

The SFPD bomb squad confirmed it was definitely an explosive device, reports Manuel Ramos of CBS Station KPIX-TV. A small charge was set off to disarm it.

Police said the bomb was powerful enough to seriously injure or kill someone if it had exploded.

The premise stems from the notion that it is he who has a vested appointment power, and that the Senate should accord the President a high degree of deference when he makes he choice.

As a man, I take an instinctively minimalist approach to shopping. The whole exercise is treated like a project or a military assault. I usually have narrow and well-defined success criteria and a clearly delineated target area. If the project can be completed on time and on-budget, I'm gratified. If I am the mission-driven hunter in the "hunter/gatherer" equation, armed with a spear and a chalk etching of a mammoth (Urg! Today, we kill this!), my wife is the classic opportunistic gatherer. She takes time to forage thoroughly, delicately rooting the edible tubers out of the boutique fields, assessing each for succulence, quality and, of course, fashion. The only predatorial thing about her is the way she vanishes among the clothing racks, cryptic in her fashionable outfits like a tiger in tall grass. This may be a defensive maneuver, enabling her to escape my plucking at her sleeve and saying, Urg! Me bored. No mammoth here. I kill latte instead. All hail the mighty hunter.

[A] lot of those documents that were captured over there that have not yet been evaluated offer additional evidence that, in fact, there was a relationship that stretched over many years between Saddam Hussein and the al Qaeda organization.

Cheney says there are all these documents "that have not yet been evaluated." But those unevaluated documents provide "additional evidence" of the fabled Iraq-AQ tie.

Does that make any sense?

[...]

We have this new defector. We haven't heard yet what he has to say. But what he says sounds pretty convincing.

Unpartisan.com is a political site that blends news, discussion, and commentary from all over the internet. There are thousands of political weblogs all over the internet comprising two distinct political spheres. Unfortunately, it is extremely rare that these spheres ever intersect or even meet. It is our mission here at unpartisan.com not to get everyone together at the table to discuss our differences and reach a compromise, but to at least offer a forum where each side can at least see what the other has to say. At this site we do not censor, but we certainly encourage intelligent discussion over flamewars or yelling matches. We aren't sure if any of the links will change anyone's mind or their political views, but maybe that's not the point.

[...]

Unpartisan.com relies entirely on RSS feeds to select stories. Stories are aggregated and the most popular political stories are chosen from those feeds. Unpartisan.com relies on dozens of news feeds to choose its stories, and hundreds of blogs to choose relevant discussions pertaining to that issue. There are no human editors at this site, and every story, every blog posting, is chosen by a complex computer algorithm which we are refining every day.

Excuse me?

No connection to terrorism?

That police sergeant is either lying or is choosing his words poorly.

What he might have meant to say or imply is that the bomb does not appear to be related to any form of Islamofascist-Middle-Eastern-Arabic-War-on-Terror terrorism.

But, there’s no mistake about it – a bomb left in the bathroom of a Starbucks in San Francisco is absolutely an act of terrorism; likely the anti-capitalism, pro-socialism type of terrorism.

A 44-year-old man was arrested Tuesday night on suspicion of planting an explosive device in the bathroom of a Starbucks coffee shop, police said.

Ronald Schouten, of San Francisco, was being held in San Francisco County jail on an unrelated drug charge, police spokesman Dewayne Tully said.

"There is no connection to any terrorism or anything against Starbucks," Sgt. Neville Gittens said. "Everything at this point and time indicates that this particular individual acted alone and this is an isolated incident."

President George W. Bush denounced some critics of the Iraq war as irresponsible on Tuesday and called for an election-year debate that "brings credit to our democracy, not comfort to our adversaries."

In a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Bush made clear he was girding for battle with Democrats in the run-up to the mid-term congressional election in November, when he will try to keep the U.S. Congress in the hands of his Republican Party.

Insisting that God “certainly needs to be involved” in the Supreme Court confirmation process, three Christian ministers today blessed the doors of the hearing room where Senate Judiciary Committee members will begin considering the nomination of Judge Samuel Alito on Monday.

Capitol Hill police barred them from entering the room to continue what they called a consecration service. But in a bit of one-upsmanship, the three announced that they had let themselves in a day earlier, touching holy oil to the seats where Judge Alito, the senators, witnesses, Senate staffers and the press will sit, and praying for each of the 13 committee members by name.

“We did adequately apply oil to all the seats,” said the Rev. Rob Schenck, who identified himself as an evangelical Christian and as president of the National Clergy Council in Washington.

In 2003, lawmakers tried to get a handle on Bush's use of signing statements by passing a Justice Department spending bill that required the department to inform Congress whenever the administration decided to ignore a legislative provision on constitutional grounds.

Bush signed the bill, but issued a statement asserting his right to ignore the notification requirement.

1. Every Breath You Take (I'll be Watching You) - The Police
   
2. Can't Get You out of My Mind - Electric Light Orchestra
   
3. Take Good Care of Yourself (You Belong to Me) - Helen Kane
   
4. Ain't No Mountain High Enough (To Keep Me from You) - Diana Ross and the Supremes
   
5. Can't Live (If Living is Without You) - Harry Nilsson
   
6. If Loving You is Wrong (I Don't Want to be Right) - Luther Ingram
   
7. I Will Follow You - Little Peggy March
   
8. There is Someone Walking Behind You (Turn Around) - The Lettermen
   
9. He Don't Love You Like I Love You - Tony Orlando and Dawn
   
10. Crazy - Patsy Cline

When President Bush last week signed the bill outlawing the torture of detainees, he quietly reserved the right to bypass the law under his powers as commander in chief.

After approving the bill last Friday, Bush issued a "signing statement" -- an official document in which a president lays out his interpretation of a new law -- declaring that he will view the interrogation limits in the context of his broader powers to protect national security. This means Bush believes he can waive the restrictions, the White House and legal specialists said.

[...]

Some legal specialists said yesterday that the president's signing statement, which was posted on the White House website but had gone unnoticed over the New Year's weekend, raises serious questions about whether he intends to follow the law.

A senior administration official, who spoke to a Globe reporter about the statement on condition of anonymity because he is not an official spokesman, said the president intended to reserve the right to use harsher methods in special situations involving national security....

In the 1980s, the Reagan administration, like other White Houses before and after, chafed at the reality that Congress's reach on the meaning of laws extends beyond the words of statutes passed on Capitol Hill. Judges may turn to the trail of statements lawmakers left behind in the Congressional Record when trying to glean the intent behind a law. The White House left no comparable record.

In a Feb. 5, 1986, draft memo, Alito, then deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel, outlined a strategy for changing that. It laid out a case for having the president routinely issue statements about the meaning of statutes when he signs them into law.

Such "interpretive signing statements" would be a significant departure from run-of-the-mill bill signing pronouncements, which are "often little more than a press release," Alito wrote. The idea was to flag constitutional concerns and get courts to pay as much attention to the president's take on a law as to "legislative intent."

"Since the president's approval is just as important as that of the House or Senate, it seems to follow that the president's understanding of the bill should be just as important as that of Congress," Alito wrote.

The executive branch shall construe Title X in Division A of the Act, relating to detainees, in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President to supervise the unitary executive branch and as Commander in Chief and consistent with the constitutional limitations on the judicial power, which will assist in achieving the shared objective of the Congress and the President, evidenced in Title X, of protecting the American people from further terrorist attacks.