We took this photo of dowtown Baghdad while we were in Iraq. Iraq (including Baghdad) is much more calm and stable than what many people believe it to be. But, each day the news media finds any violence occurring in the country and screams and shouts about it - in part because many journalists are opposed to the U.S. effort to fight terrorism.

Here's a modest proposal for improving national political discussion: Stop equating our opponents with famous dictators, their chief executioners, police apparatus or ideologies. I'm all for learning from history, but times are hard enough in American politics -- with war, threats to national security, the greatest divide between rich and poor in our history and deep cultural divisions. Present differences deserve to be described in contemporary terms.

On a hot summer afternoon in the sleepy town of Blackwater, Louisiana locals exiting a retro-fitted theater excitedly watch as a meteor streaks across the sky and crashes through the roof of the local Natural History Museum. No one realizes that the meteor is actually a spaceship containing a shape-shifting life form. In order to adapt to Earth's atmosphere, the life form latches on to the first organism it comes in contact with - a partially frozen Woolly Mammoth found in the historic exhibit for which the town is famous. As a series of uncanny disasters unfold, the town quickly finds itself overrun by the alien-possessed mammoth. Local authorities and Government Investigators join forces with Frank Abernathy (Vincent Ventresca), the Museum Curator, and his father Simon (Tom Skerritt), a B-Movie enthusiast to bring down the mighty mammoth, thus saving the town (and the world) in a wild adventure that blends the 50's alien-invasion flick, and the 70's revenge-of-nature opus into a marauding monster mash!

When asked last week whether Republicans had any broad visions to pursue this year, Boehner said, "Before the week is out, you will have a pretty good idea of what they are." But on Thursday night, after House members approved a $92 billion measure to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and ongoing hurricane relief, lawmakers left town for a week-long break with no agenda ready.

John Dunleavy, the parade chairman, touched off a new controversy by comparing Irish gay activists to neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan. In an interview yesterday in The Irish Times, Mr. Dunleavy was quoted as saying, "If an Israeli group wants to march in New York, do you allow neo-Nazis into their parade? If African-Americans are marching in Harlem, do they have to let the Ku Klux Klan into their parade?"

Flipping through the am dial this morning, I caught 1 minute of Paul Harvey. After hawking the Bose wave radio, he announced an "important" bit of news of "biblical proportions."

Harvey informed his audience that the Government of Turkey has banned exploration on the North Eastern side of Mount Ararat, and now there are satellite photos showing a massive object there buried under the ice. These are US Air Force photographs btw, and Paul Harvey has personally viewed them. It's all a big cover-up of course. You see, Paul also told us that the new and old testament mention Noah's flood, and Noah's flood is a "scientifically proven" fact.

High on Mt. Ararat in eastern Turkey, there is a baffling mountainside "anomaly," a feature that one researcher claims may be something of biblical proportions.

[...]

Whatever it is, the anomaly of interest rests at 15,300 feet (4,663 meters) on the northwest corner of Mt. Ararat, and is nearly submerged in glacial ice. It would be easy to call it merely a strange rock formation.

But at least one man wonders if it could be the remains of Noah's Ark, a vessel said to have been built to save people and selected animals from the Great Flood, the 40 days and 40 nights of deluge as detailed in the Book of Genesis.

[...]

Taylor has been a national security analyst for more than 30 years, also serving as a senior associate for five years at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C.

"I've got new found optimism ... as far as my continuing push to have the intelligence community declassify some of the more definitive-type imagery," Taylor told SPACE.com/LiveScience. He points to a "new and significant development," a high-resolution image taken by DigitalGlobe's impressive QuickBird satellite and shown here publicly for the first time.

[...]

Taylor said his goal is straightforward: Combining this imagery to make the Ararat anomaly transparent to the public, as well as to the discerning, dispassionate eyes of scientists, imagery analysts, and other experts.

"I had no preconceived notions or agendas when I began this in 1993 as to what I was looking for," Taylor said.

Over the course of the next two decades, the 1973 "CIA boat report" faded into the deep recesses of my mind until February 1993 when a prime-time special about Noah's Ark aired on television. What caught my attention in that show was a claim that the CIA had classified satellite photos of some "object" on Mt. Ararat that might possibly be the remains of Noah's Ark - a claim that tallied perfectly with the report that had ricocheted around West Point's halls 20 Years earlier. That very night, I resolved to try to clear the air, definitely, with respect to that 1973 "boat report."

Just got an email from an observant reader who noticed that conservative pundit Bill Kristol is starting to use, repeatedly, a new talking point that must have come from the White House. Mark my (or my reader's) words, let's see if anyone repeats this phrase this week:

"The war against radical Islam (ists, ism, etc)"

Kind of sad how Bush thinks his problem in Iraq is that he hasn't found the right word to name the battle.

Three Birmingham college students could face federal charges in connection with a string of Alabama church fires that is described in court papers as a joke that "got out of hand," authorities said Wednesday.

[...]

All nine fires occurred in rural counties southwest of Birmingham -- five in Bibb County on February 3, and four in Greene, Sumter and Pickens counties on February 7.

[...]

According to court papers released Wednesday, Cloyd told a witness that he and Moseley "had done something stupid."

"Cloyd stated to the witness that Moseley did it as a joke and it got out of hand," an affidavit in the case states. "Cloyd stated that they set a church on fire."

Moseley and Debusk admitted involvement in the fires, as well, the affidavit states. Debusk said he was at the scene of the fires in Bibb County, where the three had been deer hunting the first weekend of February, and kicked in the door of two churches that later were set ablaze.

In the early hours of March 6, 2006, a fire broke out at a warehouse complex near San Antonio International Airport, causing extensive damage to the offices of The Holocaust History Project (THHP), an organization that has been, for the last ten years, in the forefront of confronting Holocaust denial online, in addition to providing educational materials to students throughout the world. Arson investigators now have confirmed that the fire was intentionally set and are continuing their investigation.

It was just the latest in a series of attacks with the apparent intent to silence THHP. For the past 18 months, the THHP website has been under an unprecedented Distributed Denial of Service attack. This cyber attack began on September 11, 2004, and is being carried out by a specially modified version of the MyDoom computer worm, programmed to target the THHP web server.

President Bush added a side trip to his Texas ranch to vote in Tuesday's Republican primary after aides apparently forgot to order an absentee ballot.

Bush hasn't missed a GOP contest since he started voting in Crawford in March 2002. An administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, indicated Saturday that White House staff had slipped up on the paperwork for requesting a mail-in ballot this time.

A state lawmaker wants to peel Idaho's standard license plate of the legend "Famous Potatoes" in a battle over whether the lowly spud should symbolize a state whose major export is high technology.

Republican Sen. Hal Bunderson said the slogan no longer has resonance for a state whose population and commerce have undergone a seismic shift in the 46 years since the motto was first stamped on Idaho's license plates.