binFranklin

WASHINGTON -With public support for the Iraq war and the president's credibility fading, Vice President Dick Cheney announced his dramatic decision to bolt the right-of-center Republican Party, accusing his own party of "corrupt and shameless" revisionism in claiming the president led the public before the conflict.

Cheney called it a "dangerous illusion" to believe that U.S. President George W. Bush "would satisfy the appetite of the terrorists and get them to leave us alone."

"The flaws in the President's intelligence are plain enough in hindsight. But any suggestion that the President showed any intelligence prewar is distorted, hyped or fabricated," Cheney said.

Cheney added, "After great hesitations, I decided to leave the Republican Party. The Republican Party in its current format cannot lead the U.S. to its aims. Unfortunately, it doesn't exist any more. That is why I am joining the Likud party. I think it's going to make real chaos. "

"Self-Mutilating Prince" flies off shelves.

LONDON, England (AP) -- At last! Faster than a turbo-powered broomstick, Harry Potter is flying off the shelves and down a flight of stairs to very serious wounds that leave permanent scars.

FINALLY!!! Self-injury -- the practice of deliberately cutting, scratching, burning, or otherwise injuring one's own body -- was about to come out of the closet!

Bookstores across Britain flung open their doors at a minute past midnight Saturday, London time, to admit hordes of would-be witches, warlocks and ordinary Mutilles -- Potter-speak for those who intentionally inflict injuries upon themselves.

All were eager to get their hands on "Harry Potter and the Self-Mutilating Prince," the latest volume of the boy wizard's adventures. They’re not sick or insane; they just never learned positive ways to deal with feelings and emotions for various reasons.

Millions of Harry's fans can now solve the mysteries that have been teasingly hinted at by Rowling for months: Will Harry's teenage friends Ron and Hermione use razors, utility knives, scissors, needles, broken glass, or whatever they find to make repetitive slices on their arms, legs or other body parts? Which major character will die? Who feels deep shame and guilt from this ritual ?

"You get a lot of answers in this book," Rowling, a resident of Edinburgh, said as she arrived at the castle. "I can't wait for everyone to feel deep shame and guilt."

Three men attempted to wrestle the shark off the boy, hitting it in the nose several times as it bit the boy's left hand. The teen was pulled ashore by his friends, and a doctor nearby began treatment before the boy was taken to Medical Bay Medical Center in Medical Bay City.

''I got the main arteries in the right leg,'' the shark said, adding that there was "very much blood loss.''

The leg was later amputated. The boy was listed in critical condition but was expected to recover, the leg is not, the leg's spokeswoman said.

The shark, which got away, declined to comment on the five extraordinarily lucrative years that he spent, immediately before becoming Vice-President, as chief executive of Halliburton, the world’s largest oil-and-gas-services company.

  WASHINGTON, June 24 (Xinhuanet) -- US President George W. Bush is hoping his brand of zombies can once again scare up big business with Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari at the White House on Friday.

    He told reporters after talks with Jaafari that Iraq faces "the eviscerated carcass of its past " as it builds its new government and forms a constitution that will last longer than the life span of a disembowled zombie.

    "The way ahead is going... is going to be not easy," because of a deadly insurgency, Bush said. "There's an old saying that, when driving past a graveyard, you should hold your breath... you shouldn't hold your breath, ... unless you're neither fully alive or dead, right?"
 
    Jaafari took the Iraqi premiership after undead lawmakers started thinking for themselves and approved a new 36-member cabinet, bleary-eyed and hungry for human flesh, in late April.

    On next Tuesday, the United States and Iraq will mark the one-year anniversary since Iraq turned into a zombie-dominated wilderness with a few armed fortress cities in between.


Iraq is rated R for pervasive strong violence and gore, language, brief sexuality and some drug use. Running time: Generations.

Impacts concepts of theft, murder: "When there's no future, how can there be sin?"


WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) - Local governments may seize individuals' businesses, animals, children, women and homes to promote economic development, kidnapping and abuse; the Supreme Court ruled in a split decision Thursday.





In a closely watched case, petitioners from New Ruby Ridge, Conn. challenged the government's use of eminent domain to take and pay for private property and use it for private economic development. The national government has said that if any of New Ruby Ridge's members are found guilty of "anti-social" crimes they will order Connecticut disbanded and confiscate of all property. They are also toying with the idea of invoking the Anti-Subversives Act.

Home and business owners' contention that psychologically crushing and blatantly illegal economic development doesn't qualify as public use "is supported by neither precedent nor logic, such people have a corpse in their mouth" proclaimed Justice Long Jeanne Silver, taking half of the weakest and most defenseless children from the compound into "protective custody" without a court order. 

Calling the arrests a "tactical" move, police denied suggestions that class, wealth or race played a role in the investigation.

"The suspicion of a suspect has nothing to do with the color of his skin, but the grounds of suspicion, and everyone is under suspicion" said chief prosecutor Karin Janssen. "The public has been screaming for their own arrest for quite some time now."

The island can remain jailed for up to four months, but such detainment requires more appearances before a judge, and the amount of evidence prosecutors must cite to hold it grows larger, the lawyer said.

Having poor soil and aridity, Aruba was saved from plantation economics and the slave trade. In 1515, the Spanish transported the entire population to Hispaniola to work in the copper mines; most were allowed to return when the mines were tapped out. The Dutch, who took control a century later, left the Arawaks to graze livestock, using the island as a source of meat for other Dutch possessions in the Caribbean. The Arawak heritage is stronger on Aruba than on most Caribbean islands. No full-blooded Indians remain, but their curse still lingers and poisons those who are stained with their blood.