Louisiana stands for the traditional family. Looks like it's going to pass by something close to an 80% majority....

See results here.

From Yahoo News:

Also Saturday, a White House official said Bush has reviewed disputed documents that purport to show he refused orders to take a physical examination in 1972 and did not recall having seen them previously.

The long-running story on Bush's Texas Air National Guard service took an unusual twist when CBS broadcast a report on what it said were the newly discovered records. The authenticity of the documents has come into doubt.

In his first public comment on the CBS documents controversy, the president told The Union Leader of Manchester, N.H., "There are a lot of questions about the documents, and they need to be answered."

The retired Guard official, Bill Burkett, said in an Aug. 21 e-mail to a list of Texas Democrats that after getting through "seven layers of bureaucratic kids" in the Democrat's campaign, he talked with former Georgia Sen. Max Cleland about information that would counter criticism of Kerry's Vietnam War service. The Associated Press obtained a copy of the e-mail Saturday.

"I asked if they wanted to counterattack or ride this to ground and outlast it, not spending any money. (Cleland) said counterattack. So I gave them the information to do it with," Burkett wrote.

Burkett, who lives just outside of Abilene, wrote that no one at the Kerry campaign called him back.

The e-mail was distributed to a Yahoo list of Texas Democrats. The site, which had about 570 members Saturday, is not affiliated with the state party.

From the Washington Post:

In another message, dated Sept. 4, Burkett hinted he might have had advance knowledge of some details in an explosive segment that aired Sept. 8 on CBS's "60 Minutes." In addition to airing footage of an interview with former Texas lieutenant governor Ben Barnes saying he helped Bush get into the Guard, the network broadcast documents purporting to show that Bush had disobeyed a direct order to take a physical required to continue flying in the spring of 1972.

(There is also more about Cleland towards the end of the article)


From the GOP:

Washington, DC—RNC Communications Director Jim Dyke made the following statement today

"Bill Burkett, Democrat activist and Kerry campaign supporter, passes information to the DNC; Kerry campaign surrogate Max Cleland discusses "valuable" information with Bill Burkett; Bill Burkett talks to "senior" Kerry campaign officials; an apparently unsuspecting news organization uses faked forged memos and an interview with Ben Barnes at the same time the Democratic National Committee launched Operation Fortunate Son; and Kerry campaign manager Mary Beth Cahill was among the first to call Ben Barnes and congratulate him after his interview. The trail of connections is becoming increasingly clear."

Washington Post has this neat graphic demonstration about the difference in a typewritten, authentic memo from President Bush's file and one of the CBS documents.

If you don't remember what typewriting looks like, this should refresh your memory.

Go here

Are you one of the Pajamahadeen?

Check out this site:

Welcome to WeVoteProLife.com

Thank you for visiting the 2004 pro-life voter's guide at WeVoteProLife.com.

Click here and choose your state to find information for candidates for Congress and statewide office.

In the meantime, our friends at LifeNews.com produced information on President Bush and pro-abortion Democratic candidate John Kerry that are worth reading:

* Pro-Life Advocates: Vote for President Bush
* Bush-Kerry Contest Could Decide Abortion for 30 Years

Also, see the following article on John Kerry's record in favor of abortion and his running mate, pro-abortion North Carolina senator John Edwards.

You can also print out National Right to Life's comparison piece showing the differences between Kerry and Bush on key pro-life issues. This free resource is great to print out and distribute to pro-life friends and family, as well we church members.

Please take a moment to sign our Pro-Life Pledge and let the world know that you take candidates' positions on abortion and other life issues seriously and that you will vote first and foremost for candidates who are pro-life!

Finally, not registered to vote? Sign up here.

Of all the loopy statements made by Dan Rather in the 10 days since he decided to throw his career away, my favorite is this, from Dan's interview with the Washington Post on Thursday:

''If the documents are not what we were led to believe, I'd like to break that story.''

Hel-looooo? Earth to the Lost Planet of Ratheria: You can't ''break that story.'' A guy called ''Buckhead'' did that, on the Free Republic Web site a couple of hours after you and your money-no-object resources-a-go-go ''60 Minutes'' crew attempted to pass off four obvious Microsoft Word documents as authentic 1972 typewritten memos about Bush's skipping latrine duty in the Spanish-American War, or whatever it was.

Rest of the story here.

Because of things like talk radio and blogging, there has been a true democratization of the news media, freeing it from bottlenecks...the news goes on 7/24 (with a bit of slowup on weekend and holidays, but even then, the bloggers go on checking info and talking.)

In the Washington Times, there is this neat discussion of the new era. A quote:

It's no surprise, of course, the conspiratorial, central-planning mindset of the mainstream media kingpins conjures up a top-down plot where there is none and where none could ever be orchestrated even if the Bush White House wanted one. Bloggers take orders from no one. But with that irresistible platter of publishing freedom comes a tall glass of responsibility. For serious blogging pundits and news-gatherers and discussion board operators, cyber-cred is everything. Mainstream media anthropologists often describe the blogger culture as "free-wheeling" — ignoring the medium's flip side of brutally quick-fixing and 24/7 fact-checking.


You can check out the rest of the article here

We have entered an era where the old media manipulation of the public will never quite be the same....there are too many alternatives. And for those of us who want to be active in it, all it takes is a computer, an internet account and a quick trip to blogger.com or one of the other blog hosts and voila, we are now a news provider as well.

MSM would do well to go back and do what they always claimed they did...reporting that was as unbiased as possible, showing the facts and allowing the viewers to make up their minds, and making sure editorial comment was clearly indicated.

I'm not holding my breath, though.

UPDATE: This story is getting more than US coverage. See this article from the New Zealand Herald: Writers in pyjamas leave the professionals behind

Bill Burkett, who has emerged as a possible CBS source for disputed memos about President Bush's Guard service, has a long history of making charges against Bush and the Texas National Guard.

But Burkett's allegations have changed over the years, and have been dismissed as baseless by former Guard colleagues, state legislators and others.

Even Burkett has admitted some of his allegations are false

Read the rest of the article:

Retired Col. Walter Staudt, who was brigadier general of Bush's unit in Texas, interviewed Bush for the Guard position and retired in March 1972. He was mentioned in one of the memos allegedly written by Lt. Col. Jerry Killian as having pressured Killian to assist Bush, though Bush supposedly was not meeting Guard standards.

"I never pressured anybody about George Bush because I had no reason to," Staudt told ABC News in his first interview since the documents were made public.

Read the entire document here:

You might not be alone in that.

According to the latest poll at CBS News Poll, 67 percent of the voter pool find this to be an interesting election, which is the highest number in the last five elections.

BTW, they have Bush with 50 percent of the vote and Kerry with 41 percent.

To read the entire article, go here:

This is from the NRO

Someone set us up the bomb!

By Peter Brown, Orlando Sentenial

The furor over CBS' use of apparently forged documents is obscuring the more important question of who tried to influence the presidential election fraudulently, and why.

If it weren't so serious a matter, it would be entertaining to watch CBS squirm like the other multibillion-dollar non-media companies it regularly vilifies for questionable behavior.

(rest of the article here. Registration required)

ROCHESTER, Minn. — In the unpredictable world of politics, leads in the polls and candidates' confidence can evaporate in an instant. But President Bush and his campaign advisers are feeling pretty good these days about his chances.

(from USAToday. Discusses Bush's bounce in the Gallup Poll)

Rest of the story here.

Some Kerry supporters stripped away a little girl's Bush-Cheney sign and tore it up - check the picture out here. I guess freedom of speech is only for the non-reproducing or beautiful people elect and the rest of us can go suck eggs....what an introduction to politics for this girl.

(this is at the NYT, and requires registration)

How the big bad GOP is intimidating the democrats (in some democrats' paranoia) and how frustrated Maggie is that those so infected are are missing the important stuff, and her frustration about how the campaign is running in general.

Interesting.

Here's how bad off the Democrats are: They're cowering behind closed doors, whispering that if it should ever turn out that Republicans are behind this, it would be so exquisitely Machiavellian, so beyond what Democrats are capable of, they should just fold and concede the election now - before the Republicans have to go to the trouble of stealing it again.

Read the rest here:

Scroll down the page, and you will see the CBS eye as the eye of Sauron....about the third version of it I've seen in the last twenty-four hours. If I run across any of the other ones again, I'll add it to the list.

Kerry's Left Turn Scares Democrats

To the astonishment and dismay of Democratic politicians, John Kerry over the last weekend appeared to have forgotten his opponent for president. He did not seem to realize that he was running against George W. Bush, not Howard Dean.

Read the whole piece here:

This was a big story running around Free Republic last night, first flagged by Drudge, and now by the Washington Post.

If you are interested in the top 527 contributors, and like to see where the money is going, check out this page at Opensecrets.org

Blessing or Curse? Top Newspaper Editors Examine Blogs' Role in the '60 Minutes' Uproar

NEW YORK The current controversy over the validity of documents pushed in large part by bloggers and purporting to prove that President Bush received special treatment in the National Guard shows that partisan Internet pundits are having a growing impact on mainstream press, for better or worse, according to several newspaper editors.

NEW YORK — CBS News, dogged over questions about the authenticity of memos apparently showing that President Bush shirked his National Guard service more than 30 years ago, is expected to release a statement about the document snafu around noon Wednesday. Fox News

This is stuff that CBS et al who are complaining about Bush's service have conveniently chosen not to look at. See the explanation here at "Let's Fly Under the Bridge."

Guys in Pajamas bust CBS

Mr. Klein dismissed the bloggers who are raising questions about the authenticity of the memos: "You couldn't have a starker contrast between the multiple layers of check and balances [at '60 Minutes'] and a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas writing."

He will regret that snide disparagement of the bloggers, many of whom are skilled lawyers or have backgrounds in military intelligence or typeface design. A growing number of design and document experts say they are certain or almost certain the memos on which CBS relied are forgeries. -John Fund, WSJ

Fund writes of a ‘defensive’ Dan Rather going on the air last Friday and claiming a counterattack from partisan political operatives. And says that ‘in reality, traditional journalism now has a new set of watchdogs in the "blogosphere."

“This is a time that's going to be looked back on, when a press revolution was completed, when the old media giants fell, when a monopoly was emphatically shattered, and when the new media solidified its right place as one of the great and good forces in American society which I firmly believe that we are, ladies and gentlemen.” – Rush Limbaugh.

Want to see a great logo for People in Pajamas? See the Iowa Presidental Watch site -

Jonah Goldberg on the Rathergate situation at CBS

Bush 52% Kerry 46%

It's not about people telling people who to vote for. It's about claiming to be one thing and acting like another. Can you belong to a group and repudiate it's rules? Catholics who practice what they believe know that you either cut bait or fish. So what does this tell us about the truth of the person involved? You decide. Go Here.

Drudge Report is running an interesting piece on Kerry's popularity compared to other people in the public eye. Go Here