Naked Woman Reflected In Dick Cheney’s Sunglasses?

From Foxnews.com

The Virgin Mary on a grilled cheese and the Illinois-shaped corn flake appear to have new competition for webbies’ fascination: Dick Cheney’s mysterious sunglasses.

An undated photo of the vice president on the White House Web site has caused a stir on the Internet, causing some people to wonder if he’s in eyeshot of an unclad female.

The White House says it’s just someone holding an innocuous fishing rod (the veep — allegedly — is fly fishing in Idaho).

Click here to see the White House photo essay containing the photo.

“Clearly the picture shows a hand casting a rod,” Cheney spokeswoman Meagan Mitchell said, according to the McClatchy newspapers.

By punching in “Cheney” and “sunglasses” into a Web browser, FOXNews.com viewed these headlines, among many:

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President And Laura Bush Paid $221,635 In 2007 Taxes

From the AP

President Bush and his wife paid $221,635 in federal taxes on an adjusted gross income of $923,807 for the year 2007.

The income total includes a $150,000 advance received by Laura Bush for the children’s book she co-authored with her daughter, Jenna.

Last year, the president and Mrs. Bush paid $186,378 in federal taxes on their income of $765,801.

Bush’s salary as president is about $400,000.

Also Friday, the White House reported that Vice President Dick Cheney and his wife, Lynne, had an adjusted gross income of $3.04 million in 2007.

The Cheneys owed $602,651 in federal taxes on that income. They have paid $466,165 through withholdings and estimated tax payments, and will pay the remaining $136,486 upon filing their tax return.

The Cheneys’ income includes the vice president’s salary and a pension he gets as a former director of Union Pacific Corp. It also includes Lynne Cheney’s book royalty income, a salary from her work at the American Enterprise Institute and a pension she gets as a former director of Reader’s Digest.

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Obama’s Fundraising Machine Isn’t All Small Givers

From Washingtonpost.com

Sen. Barack Obama credits his presidential campaign with creating a “parallel public financing system” built on a wave of modest donations from homemakers and high school teachers. Small givers, he said at a fundraiser this week, “will have as much access and influence over the course and direction of our campaign that has traditionally been reserved for the wealthy and the powerful.”

But those with wealth and power also have played a critical role in creating Obama’s record-breaking fundraising machine, and their generosity has earned them a prominent voice in shaping his campaign. Seventy-nine “bundlers,” five of them billionaires, have tapped their personal networks to raise at least $200,000 each. They have helped the campaign recruit more than 27,000 donors to write checks for $2,300, the maximum allowed. Donors who have given more than $200 account for about half of Obama’s total haul, which stands at nearly $240 million.

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Hillary Clinton Goes On Offense Over Iraq War Policies Of Opponents

From Foxnews.com

Hillary Clinton went on offense Wednesday, casting Democratic rival Barack Obama as all talk when it comes to ending the Iraq war and slamming John McCain for a stay-the-course approach.

Making it a three-fer, the New York senator also criticized President Bush for his administration’s policies.

Following up on day-long testimony by Gen. David Petraeus and Amb. Ryan Crocker, Clinton tried to shift the ‘08 campaign focus back to foreign policy from the economy and attempted to claim the mantle as the one ready to take on the heavy load.

“Senator Obama … says he will end the war, but his top foreign policy adviser said he won’t necessarily follow the plan he has been talking about during this campaign,” Clinton said Wednesday at a town hall meeting in Aliquippa, Pa., following up with a dig tailored to Pennsylvania voters.

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Chelsea Clinton Asked About The Monica Lewinsky Scandal

From Lauren Appelbaum

Campaigning in Indianapolis for her mother, Chelsea Clinton had a quick retort when asked a question she had never had before. When a male student asked her if her mother’s credibility had been hurt during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, Clinton quickly responded.
 
“Wow, you’re the first person actually that’s ever asked me that question, in the, maybe 70 college campuses that I’ve been to,” Clinton bitterly said at Butler University.  “And I don’t think that’s any of your business.”

The students gathered to see Clinton quickly erupted into applause. Clinton took one more question, on global warming, and then wrapped up the event.

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Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick And Top Aide Christine Beatty Arraigned

From the AP

Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick on Tuesday pleaded not guilty to charges he lied under oath about an affair and his role in the firing of a top police official.

The mayor and former Chief of Staff Christine Beatty appeared for separate hearings Tuesday afternoon in a downtown courtroom. Not guilty pleas were entered on their behalf on charges of perjury, conspiracy, obstruction of justice and misconduct in office.

 

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Both were released on personal bonds, but would have to pay $75,000 if they break them.

Kilpatrick and Beatty were charged Monday.

Attorneys for both say their clients will be exonerated.

District Court Magistrate Steve Lockhart set June 9 as the date for their preliminary examinations.

 

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Nancy Reagan To Endorse John McCain

From the AP

Nancy Reagan is endorsing John McCain.

A McCain aide says the Republican presidential nominee in waiting will travel to the former first lady’s home Tuesday to receive her endorsement.

Reagan says she typically waits until after the GOP convention to announce her support.

But she says it is clear the Republican Party has chosen its nominee.

“John McCain has been a good friend for over thirty years,” Reagan says in a statement.

“My husband and I first came to know him as a returning Vietnam War POW, and were impressed by the courage he had shown through his terrible ordeal. I believe John’s record and experience have prepared him well to be our next president.”

Obama Girl, Amber Lee Ettinger, Out With New Video

From CNN.com

Amber Lee Ettinger, the star of the last year’s wildly popular online video “Obama girl,” is out with a new video this week that decries Hillary Clinton’s insistence on remaining in the presidential race.

The new video — titled “Hillary, stop the attacks!” — opens with a takeoff on Clinton’s now-famous “3 a.m.” ad, and quickly transitions to Ettinger addressing the New York Democrat head on.

“I know Obama’s gonna win it/but you’re sorta kind of stayin’ in it. I think sometimes in this campaign/You’ve got a crush on John McCain,” she sings.

“Can’t you see its hopeless? It’s become an Obama-nation. Is their any chance you’ll back off? So he’ll get that nomination,” she also says.

In the 3 minute video, Ettinger also makes clear CNN.com is her political Web site of choice:

“I watch CSPAN and they’re always showing one of your rallies/Checking the CNN Ticker, can’t keep my eyes off the tallies.”

Created by the Web site barelypolitical.com, the first “Obama Girl” video debuted last June and quickly became an Internet sensation. To date, it has been viewed well over 7 million times, according to You Tube. The video spawned several spoofs, including “Hot 4 Hill” and the “Brownback girl.”

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Worried Dems Wish For Obama/Clinton “Dream Team Ticket”

From Susan Page, USA Today

What are the odds Democrats will field a “dream team ticket” with Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton combining forces?

London bookmaker Ladbrokes is taking bets at 8-1, but leading Democratic insiders aren’t ready to put down their money — yet.

The conundrum: The need for a coalition ticket that could mend the party’s divisions becomes more urgent as the primary battle stretches on and takes a harsher tone. Yet as their fight gets fiercer, it becomes harder to imagine the two ever getting together.

“It ain’t a match made in heaven anymore,” says Donna Brazile, a Democratic strategist who ran Al Gore’s 2000 campaign, noting increasingly bitter statements made in recent weeks by each campaign’s staff and supporters toward the other. Monday’s back-and-forth centered on charges of McCarthyism and “gutter politics.”

 

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NY Gov. David Patterson Admits To Cocaine And Marijuana Use

From the AP

New York’s new governor, who disclosed last week that he and his wife both committed adultery several years ago, said Monday that he used cocaine in his 20s and smoked marijuana when he was younger.

In reference to cocaine, Gov. David Paterson, 53, said in a television interview that he “tried it a couple of times” when he was “about 22 or 23.”

“And marijuana probably when I was about 20,” he said on the NY1 cable news station. “I don’t think I touched marijuana since the ’70s.”

“More Americans have tried a lot more during that period of time and gone on to lead responsible lives and hopefully have lived their lives to their fullest,” he said.

Paterson was lieutenant governor under Gov. Eliot Spitzer, who resigned last week amid a prostitution scandal.

Last week, Paterson and his wife, Michelle Paterson, disclosed they each had strayed from the marriage years ago. The couple were separated for a “couple years” at the time, David Paterson said Monday.

In Monday’s interview, Paterson pointed out that he had acknowledged to a television journalist in 2006 that he had used illegal drugs.

 

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Al Gore -Democratic Candidate For 2008?

From Mark Tomasik

U.S. Rep. Tim Mahoney, whose district includes much of Martin and St. Lucie counties, is hoping he won�t have to attend the Democratic Party national convention in Denver in August.

If he does go, that will mean the Democrats still haven�t decided a nominee for the presidential election. And if neither Sen. Hillary Clinton nor Sen. Barack Obama has clinched the nomination by August, Mahoney says we may see a brokered convention, meaning the nominee could emerge from a negotiated settlement.

�If it (the nomination process) goes into the convention, don�t be surprised if someone different is at the top of the ticket,� Mahoney said.

A compromise candidate could be someone such as former vice president Al Gore, Mahoney said last week during a meeting with this news organization�s editorial board.

If either Clinton or Obama suggested to a deadlocked convention a ticket of Gore-Clinton or Gore-Obama, the Democratic Party would accept it, Mahoney said.

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John McCain Declares That The US Is Succeeding In Iraq

From the AP

Fresh off his eighth Iraq visit, Sen. John McCain declared that “we are succeeding” and said he would not change course.

To underscore his view of the stakes in Iraq, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee twice referenced a recent audio tape from Usama bin Laden in which the Al Qaeda leader urged followers to join the Al Qaeda fight in Iraq and called the country “the greatest opportunity and the biggest task.”

“For the first time, I have seen Usama bin Laden and General (David) Petraeus in agreement, and, that is, a central battleground in the battle against Al Qaeda is in Iraq today. And that’s what bin Laden was saying and that’s what General Petraeus is saying and that’s what I’m saying, my friends,” McCain said. Petraeus is the top U.S. commander in Iraq.

“And my Democrat opponents who want to pull out of Iraq refuse to understand what’s being said and what’s happening — and that is the central battleground is Iraq in this struggle against radical Islamic extremism,” he added.

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Hillary Clinton Misspoke When She Suggested She Was Under Sniper Fire In Bosnia

From Foxnews.com

Saying she made a rare error, Hillary Clinton repeated Tuesday that she “misspoke” when she suggested she landed under sniper fire during a goodwill trip to Bosnia in March 1996.

Speaking to KDKA radio in Pittsburgh, the Democratic presidential candidate said it’s been a long campaign and this is the first time she has said the wrong thing.

“I have written about this and described in many different settings and I did misspeak the other day,” Clinton said during a live 10-minute interview. “This has been a very long campaign. … Last week for the first time in 12 years or so, I misspoke.”

The New York senator has had to backtrack about her description of her trip to the Balkans when she was first lady after a fact check revealed that, rather than dodging hostile fire, she was greeted on the tarmac at Tuzla Air Base by an 8-year-old child and Bosnia’s acting president.

Clinton’s faulty memory was also corrected by the comedian Sinbad, who joined her on the trip and told The Washington Post he doesn’t remember any threats to their safety.

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GOP Lawyer, Roger Stone, Sent Letter To FBI Alleging Eliot Spitzer’s Use Of Call Girls

From FOXNEWS.com

A lawyer for Republican political operative Roger Stone sent a letter to the FBI alleging former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer used a high priced call girls while in Florida, the Miami Herald reported.

”The governor has paid literally tens of thousands of dollars for these services. It is Mr. Stone’s understanding that the governor paid not with credit cards or cash but through some pre-arranged transfer,” the Nov. 19 letter read.

Best known for putting an end to the 2000 presidential election recount effort in Miami-Dade County, Stone is a longtime Spitzer rival.

”It is also my client’s understanding from the same source that Gov. Spitzer did not remove his mid-calf length black socks during the sex act. Perhaps you can use this detail to corroborate Mr. Stone’s information,” the letter said.

Stone, according to the Miami Herald, found out the information through “a social contact in an adult-themed club.”

Spitzer, a former New York attorney general, resigned in disgrace March 12, after getting caught in a call-girl scandal that shattered his corruption-fighting, straight-arrow image.

 

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Detroit’s Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick Charged With Perjury And Obstruction

From the AP

Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, a one-time rising star and Detroit’s youngest elected leader, was charged Monday with perjury and other counts after sexually explicit text messages surfaced that appear to contradict his sworn denials of an affair with a top aide.

Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy also charged the popular yet polarizing 37-year-old mayor with obstruction of justice and misconduct in office.

Former Chief of Staff Christine Beatty, 37, who also denied under oath that she and Kilpatrick shared a romantic relationship in 2002 and 2003, was charged with perjury and obstruction of justice.

In all, Worthy authorized a 12-count criminal information.

“This case was about as far from being a private matter as one can get. Honesty and integrity in the justice system is everything. That is what this case is about,” Worthy said at a news conference.

“Just when did honesty and integrity, truth and honor become traits to be mocked, downplayed, ignored, laughed at or excuses made for them? When did telling the truth become a supporting player to everything else?”

The charges could signal the end of Kilpatrick’s six-year career as mayor of one of America’s largest cities.

 

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Reporters Protest Chinese Treatment Of Tibet

From the AP

Three men from a free-press group ran onto the field of the stadium in Ancient Olympia during Monday’s flame-lighting ceremony for the Beijing Olympics, evading massive security aimed at preventing such disruptions in the wake of China’s crackdown in Tibet.

Three members of the Paris-based group Reporters Without Borders were detained after their protest, which occurred as Liu Qi, president of the Beijing Olympics organizing committee and Beijing Communist Party Secretary, was giving a speech. Police confirmed they had detained three French nationals.

One protester held a black banner showing the Olympic rings as handcuffs. The group said three members, including the group’s secretary general Robert Menard, managed to get into the ceremony without being stopped.

 

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John McCain Considered Leaving GOP In 2001?

From Elisabeth Bumiller

Senator John McCain never fails to call himself a conservative Republican as he campaigns as his party’s presumptive presidential nominee. He often adds that he was a “foot soldier” in the Reagan revolution and that he believes in the bedrock conservative principles of small government, low taxes and the rights of the unborn.

What Mr. McCain almost never mentions are two extraordinary moments in his political past that are at odds with the candidate of the present: His discussions in 2001 with Democrats about leaving the Republican Party , and his conversations in 2004 with Senator John Kerry about becoming Mr. Kerry’s running mate on the Democratic presidential ticket.

There are wildly divergent versions of both episodes, depending on whether Democrats or Mr. McCain and his advisers are telling the story. The Democrats, including Mr. Kerry, say that not only did Mr. McCain express interest but that it was his camp that initially reached out to them. Mr. McCain and his aides counter that in both cases the Democrats were the suitors and Mr. McCain the unwilling bride.

 

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Unauthorized Searches Of Passport Files Of Presidential Hopefuls To Be Investigated

From foxnews.com

Senators from both parties on Sunday urged the Department of Justice to investigate the unauthorized searches of the passport files of three presidential candidates by State Department workers.

“That kind of a breach of privacy is just despicable,” said Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee. “I think that ought to be a very intense investigation.”

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., agreed, saying the incidents seem to point to a broader problem.

The Government Accountability Office has been warning about this problem for a decade. And it seems to me in this administration, there’s been pretty much a culture of disregard for privacy, and that’s part of the problem,” he said.

Both senators spoke on CNN’s “Late Edition.”

The State Department’s investigation into how and why the passport files of three presidential candidates were breached is scrutinizing an employee at a Virginia-based company, which is headed by an adviser to Barack Obama’s campaign.

The Washington Times, which broke the news Thursday that Obama’s files were improperly accessed, reported Saturday that the State Department inspector general’s internal probe will include polygraph tests of supervisors to determine whether there was a political motive behind the breaches.

 

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Obama’s New Pastor Says Rev. Wright Lynched

From Judson Berger, foxnews.com

The new pastor of Barack Obama’s church delivered a defiant defense of its retiring reverend Sunday, comparing media coverage of Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. to a modern-day lynching that resembles Jesus’ death at the hands of the Romans.

In a sunrise Easter sermon, Rev. Otis Moss III never mentioned Wright by name, but implied that his mentor, who has delivered sermons in which he likened the U.S. to the Ku Klux Klan and declared it damned for its “state-sponsored terrorism,” is facing the same challenges Jesus did.”No one should start a ministry with lynching, no one should end their ministry with lynching,” Moss said.

“The lynching was national news. The RNN, the Roman News Network, was reporting it and NPR, National Publican Radio had it on the radio. The Jerusalem Post and the Palestine Times all wanted exclusives, they searched out the young ministers, showed up unannounced at their houses, tried to talk with their families, called up their friends, wanted to get a quote on how do you feel about the lynching?” he continued.

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New York Governor, David Patterson, Admits To Affair

From the AP

Just hours after he received a standing ovation from lawmakers chanting his name, New York’s newly sworn governor was answering questions about straying from his own marriage.

David Paterson became the state’s first black chief executive and the nation’s second legally blind governor almost exactly a week after allegations first surfaced that now-former Gov. Eliot Spitzer was “Client 9″ of a high-priced call girl service.

Paterson told the Daily News of New York City that he maintained a relationship with another woman from 1999 until 2001 during a rough patch in his marriage. He and his wife eventually sought counseling and repaired their relationship.

 

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