Schwarzenegger told the British edition of GQ magazine that he had not taken drugs, even though the former bodybuilder and Hollywood star has acknowledged using marijuana in the 1970s and was shown smoking a joint in the 1977 documentary "Pumping Iron."
"That is not a drug. It's a leaf," Schwarzenegger told GQ. "My drug was pumping iron, trust me."
[...]
In the interview for the magazine's December issue, Schwarzenegger refused to condemn politicians who decline to answer questions about drug use.
"What would you rather have? A politician taking stuff and not saying, but making the best decisions and improving things? Or a politician who names all the drugs he or she has taken but makes lousy decisions for the country?" Schwarzenegger was quoted as saying.
How about a politician that makes great decisions, improves the quality of life, and is clean and sober while doing it?
Former United Nations' chief weapons inspector Hans Blix has challenged U.S. President George Bush's assertion that Iran poses a nuclear threat and the world should take pre-emptive action.
[...]
"Right now, I don't think it's a threat," Blix said.
"President Bush talks about 2015. There's time to negotiate with Iran and to carry out those negotiations in a sensible manner. I think they use too much sticks and they should use more carrots, just as they've done in the case of North Korea where they are making some headway."
Dozens of people in St. Maarten are being treated for latent tuberculosis after health officials warned that they may have been exposed to the illness by a stripper infected with an active form of the disease.
If you want massive shortages of doctors, antiquated equipment, outrageous wait times to get operations, and dozens of other similar disasters, just let Hillary and Company have their way with our health care, and you'll see all these horror stories repeated on a regular basis in American hospitals.
1. Iran doesn't have a nuclear weapon, and if they ever developed one, they'd be smart enough to know (despite how we caricaturize Ahmadinejad) that using it would invite their own destruction a thousand times over. Thus, there is no Iranian nuclear threat.
2. Yet the administration is drawing up plans to illegally and preemptively attack anyway, based on the lie that Iran is a nuclear threat.
...if 2008 is going to be a Democratic year, as it very well could, Hillary would serve the country better than any of her Democratic rivals.
On Iraq, for example, she talks like someone who knows she may soon be commander in chief and will need room to maneuver in order to achieve whatever success might be possible. Clinton has emphatically refused to give assurances that she would get us out of Iraq during her first term.
From Breitbart.com: Canada cuts power lines to battle cannabis
British Columbia, with a population of four million, has an estimated 20,000 inhabitants who raise a potent local marijuana known here as "B.C. Bud."
The plants, collectively worth nearly seven billion dollars each year, account for a whopping six percent of this province's power consumption.
The labor-intensive crop is an energy sponge thanks in large part to the 1,000 watt halogen lights, fans, irrigation pumps and other equipment needed for their cultivation. As a result, the pot growers' energy bills are about three times that of the average consumer.
Those energy consumption patterns drew the notice of authorities, who have benefitted from a 2006 law allowing BC Hydro, the area's main power company, to share its residential power consumption records with local officials.
A federal judge on Wednesday granted a request by labor and civil liberties organizations to temporarily block the U.S. government from proceeding with a plan to crack down on businesses who may be employing illegal immigrants.
U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer said the Social Security Administration and the Department of Homeland Security could not go ahead with a plan to send joint letters warning businesses they'll face penalties if they keep workers whose Social Security numbers don't match their names.
Breyer said the new work-site rule would likely impose hardships on businesses and their workers.
From Breibart.com: Judge rules Gore climate film requires guidance notes
A judge on Wednesday ruled that Al Gore's award winning climate change documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" should only be shown in schools with guidance notes to prevent political indoctrination.
High Court judge Michael Burton's decision follows legal action brought by a father of two last month claiming the former US vice-president's film contained "serious scientific inaccuracies, political propaganda and sentimental mush".
From MSNBC: Man faces long prison term over doughnut theft: Officials say clerk pushed, changing misdemeanor to strong-arm robbery
Authorities said Scott A. Masters, 41, slipped the doughnut into his sweat shirt without paying, then pushed away a clerk who tried to stop him as he fled the store.
The push is being treated as minor assault, which transforms a misdemeanor shoplifting charge to a strong-armed robbery with a potential prison term of five to 15 years. Because he has a criminal history, prosecutors say they could seek 30 years.
Iranian technology is on pace to build a long-range missile that could strike the United States within a decade, a high-level Pentagon official told FOX News.
But a successful test of a missile defense program completed last week is giving military leaders more confidence that an airborne attack from Iran can be thwarted — if the United States is able to convince Europe to go along with the plans to build an anti-missile system there against strong Russian opposition.
"Most of the intelligence experts predict that sometime before 2015, or in that time frame, the Iranians will have developed the capabilities to threaten the United States, from a missile technology perspective, "Lt. Gen. Henry Obering, chief of the U.S. missile defense program, said Tuesday in a Pentagon interview with FOX News. Of concern Obering said is Iran's ability to take shorter range technology and improving it to longer and longer ranges.
President Bush warned Wednesday of a nuclear-armed Iran but did not rule out that the United States would negotiate with its provocative leader if he gives up his suspected nuclear weapons ambitions.
Bush said it's important for the United States to stay engaged in neighboring Iraq to convince the Iranians that the U.S. is committed to democratic reform in the region. "There would be nothing worse for world peace than if the Iranians believed that the United States did not have the will and commitment to help young democracies survive," Bush told businessmen and women where he took questions after a talk on government spending.
"If we left before the job was done, there would be chaos," Bush said about withdrawing U.S. troops prematurely from Iraq. "Chaos would embolden not only the extremists and radicals that would like to do us harm, but it would also embolden Iran. What you don't want is to have a nuclear arms race taking place in the Middle East."
Rachel Lucas recently raised a discussion on the topic of surveillance cameras and the paranoia that seems to be raised over the matter. Here is part of that discussion:
...many of you said that basically, everything you do will be recorded and watched by some anonymous flunkie government stooge. That every minor infraction, misdemeanor, questionable activity, et cetera will be logged and duly noted. That the government will eventually become oppressive using this technology and that any citizen who the government decides they don’t “like” will become a target, watched 24/7.
All of those things are absolutely possible, I don’t dispute that. But y’all. Think about the logistics involved here. I mean, do you REALLY think that it’s physically possible for every minute of footage to be watched by a human being? How about even 0.01% of the footage? The national average for cop-to-citizen ratio is 2.08 to 1,000. I know there are other people in law enforcement besides cops, but they already have full-time jobs to do. It just seems to me that the idea that anyone is sitting around watching the footage of millions of cameras is, well, mathematically illogical.
Click here for more news on the surveillance camera issue.
The owner of the company that airs Rush Limbaugh's show has come to his defense, telling Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid that while he isn't certain to whom Limbaugh was referring when he used the term "phony soldiers," the radio talk show host has a long history of supporting U.S. troops.
[...]
In an attack that began with the first words of the show and continued throughout his daily three-hour broadcast Tuesday, Limbaugh compared Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, claimed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is using a liberal media watchdog to suppress her opposition and said he feels sorry for Sen. Tom Harkin's family for having to be associated with the Iowa Democrat's statements on the Senate floor a day earlier.
He then said the attacks aren't really about him personally.
"It's about them and they are desperately trying to salvage themselves with their own lunatic fringe base who they are not only disappointing but they are deceiving because the dirty, little secret, as I also predicted, was that if the Democrats win the White House in '08 they are not pulling out of Iraq. All the top tier Democrats have said so," Limbaugh told his audience.
"Time to distract those peasants with pitchforks out there who are fit to be tied over being betrayed by Harry Reid, (House Speaker) Nancy Pelosi and the rest of the Democrats," he said.
The conservative talk radio host was fighting back after Democratic lawmakers in the House and Senate lambasted him over remarks he made last week suggesting veterans who oppose the Iraq war are "phony soldiers."
UPDATE:This is Limbaugh's defense and his reasoning why the left-wing has taken "phony soldiers" out of context.
The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns
The Canadian Dollar - aka the Loonie.
