political nonsense

A CBS News poll has found the number of Americans who approve of President Bush’s overall job performance and his handling of the Iraq war has fallen to an all-time low. 34 percent of Americans give the President a favorable job approval rating, while even less — 30 percent — approve of the President’s handling of the Iraq war. Meanwhile, less than a third of Americans believe President Bush has adequately responded to the needs of victims of Hurricane Katrina. Even on fighting terrorism, which has long been a strong suit for Mr. Bush, his ratings dropped lower than ever. Half of Americans say they disapprove of how he’s handling the war on terror, while 43 percent approve. Just 18 percent said they had a favorable view of the vice president, down from 23 percent in January.
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Officials in Texas are reporting the state is facing a health crisis because nearly half of the 50,000 evacuees living in Houston have no health insurance. Most of the evacuees had been covered by a special Medicaid waiver but that waiver expired at the end of January.
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At least tens of thousands of veterans with non-critical medical issues could suffer delayed or even denied care in coming years to enable President Bush to meet his promise of cutting the deficit in half.
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The Independent of London is reporting the United Nations has determined that hundreds of Iraqis are being tortured to death or summarily executed every month in Baghdad by Shiite death squads working from the Ministry of the Interior. According to John Pace, the outgoing United Nations human rights chief in Iraq, up to three-quarters of the corpses stacked in the Baghdad mortuary show evidence of gunshot wounds to the head or injuries caused by drill-bits or burning cigarettes. Pace said figures show that last July the morgue alone received 1,100 bodies, about 900 of which bore evidence of torture or summary execution.
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In Iraq, at least 29 people died on Sunday even though security forces had imposed a rare daytime curfew barring all vehicular traffic in Baghdad and its suburbs. In the deadliest attack, a Shiite neighborhood came under mortar fire in Southwest Baghdad. 16 people died and another 53 were injured. Over 200 people have been killed since Wednesday’s bombing at a holy Shiite shrine in Samarra. On Saturday gunmen broke into the home of a Shiite family northeast of Baghdad and killed 13 people. Three people also died on Saturday during the funeral of the Atwar Bahjat – the well-known Al-Arabiya journalist who was killed last week.
democracynow

The Army has decided to reimburse a Halliburton subsidiary for nearly all of its disputed costs on a $2.41 billion no-bid contract to deliver fuel and repair oil equipment in Iraq, even though the Pentagon’s own auditors had identified more than $250 million in charges as potentially excessive or unjustified.
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Insurgents killed at least 23 Iraqis despite tough security measures imposed in the capital in the wake of sectarian violence that sparked warnings of civil war. As part of the security measures, Iraqi authorities banned vehicle traffic in Baghdad after a two-day curfew, but insurgent attacks continued across the violence-racked country.
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Google Inc.’s concerns that a Bush administration demand to examine millions of its users’ Internet search requests would violate privacy rights are unwarranted, the Justice Department said Friday in a court filing.
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In Ohio, a private video surveillance company called CityWatcher has embedded radio transmitter ID chips into two of its employees.
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A federal judge has ordered the Bush administration to release the names of all of the detainees being secretly held at Guantanamo Bay.
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The Supreme Court announced Tuesday it will consider reinstating a federal ban on late-term abortion.
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Gunmen have killed at least 127 people in Iraq in sectarian violence that flared after the bombing of a revered Shiite shrine and reprisal attacks on Sunni mosques.
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South Dakota became the first U.S. state to pass a law banning abortion in virtually all cases, with the intention of forcing the Supreme Court to reconsider its 1973 decision legalizing the procedure.
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One of Iraq’s most sacred Shiite shrines suffered major damage today in a bomb attack in the city of Sammara. Also in Iraq Tuesday, a car bomb targeting a Shiite area of downtown Baghdad killed 22 people and wounded dozens more.
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Bush admitted he might have sent some mixed signals when he fired and then rehired employees at a laboratory that studies renewable energy sources
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scientists found one more reason it sucks to be ugly.
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Harry Whittington apologized for the trouble he caused when he was shot by Vice President Dick Cheney.
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In Nigeria 16 people were killed in rioting and 11 churches were burned; in Libya at least 10 people were killed; and in Pakistan at least 5 people were killed. In Volgograd, Russia, officials closed the city newspaper after it published a cartoon that showed Muhammad, Jesus, Moses, and Buddha watching TV together. Fifteen thousand people protested the cartoons in London. “We have to speak up,” said a Muslim demonstrator, “to prevent something like the Holocaust from happening.”
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In Iraq, a series of bombings killed at least 26 people on Monday making it the bloodiest day in Iraq in two months.
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In the Philippines, about 1,400 people are feared to be buried dead following last week’s landslide that put an entire village under 100 feet of mud.
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