‘Chucky’ Made Me Do It

A 7-year-old Liverpool lad allegedly stabbed a neighboring lady 21 times with a kitchen knife.

What was the tyke’s explanation for why he engaged in such violent behavior?

“I think I got the idea from Chucky,” the boy told the Liverpool Echo, alluding to the horror film with the evil character of the same name. “I saw it at my uncle's.”

The youngster alleged that he was merely acting out what he saw in the 1988 movie, “Childs Play,” that featured a serial-killing doll and spawned a bevy of sequels, which also feature bloodthirsty dolls engaged in serial murders.

Fortunately, the boy’s strength was still at a 7-year-old’s level, and the female victim’s injuries were not life threatening.

Sean Penn: ‘Iraq Is Not Our Toilet’

Wondering where Sean Penn has been?

The Oscar-winning actor recently surfaced at a town hall meeting.

Penn was evidently emboldened by previous events of the day in which the House voted 218-212 to withdraw troops from Iraq by September 2008.

Hundreds gathered at the meeting to get an earful of anti-Iraq war talk. They would not be disappointed.

Penn was present along with Democrat Rep. Barbara Lee, a member of the Out of Iraq caucus.

Maybe the many “Impeach Bush” signs that were displayed by people outside inspired Penn to let the insults fly like a pizza pie.

“You and your smarmy pundits — and the smarmy pundits you have in your pocket — can take your war and shove it,” Penn wailed about the president to applause and cheers. “Let's unite not only in stopping this war, but in holding this administration accountable.”

While Rep. Lee told the crowd that the war was “illegal and unwinnable,” Penn tried to finesse the support of the troops as he proceeded to undercut their mission.

“Let's make this crystal clear: We do support our troops, but not the exploitation of them and their families,” Penn said. “The money that's spent on this war would be better spent on building levees in New Orleans and health care in Africa and care for our veterans. Iraq is not our toilet. It's a country of human beings whose lives that were once oppressed by Saddam are now in ‘Dante's Inferno.’”

Nice to know Penn was educated in the classics at Ridgemont High.

Free Obama's White Grandmother

Andy Martin

If anyone else running for president locked his granny away and refused to allow her to be seen, would the media complain? You betcha.

But America's media have supinely allowed Barry Obama to pretend he has no white relatives. He has paraded his step-grandmother in Kenya, who never saw him until the 1980s, as his "granny," and locked the grandmother who actually raised him away in a closet.

Now, the Chicago Tribune reports "the Obama campaign declined to make [his white grandmother] available."

Is she sick? Not apparently. Bedridden? Hospitalized? Not apparently. She is the "Prisoner of Obama," and of Obama's racist myth that he is "Black" and not "Black and White."

What a disgrace.

And like whimpering puppies the media do not protest, complain or demand access.

Free Granny Madelyn Dunham [Obama]!

Barack Obama is one of the most racist politicians in America today. And we let him get away with it. We are afraid to confront Obama's reality, so we pretend that reality is not there, even though it is staring us in the face. Anyone remember "Miss Lillian?" Or Barbara Bush? Or Bill Clinton's mom, drinking, gambling card-playing gal that she was?

Noone else but Obama could get away with pretending that his paternal grandfather's second or third or fourth wife was his "granny" when she wasn't.

Maybe that's the core of the antipathy between grandson and grandmother. Maybe that's why Obama's white grandmother is locked in purdah. She is offended that Obambi shamelessly highlights his black relatives in Kenya and, equally shamelessly, pretends his white relatives in Hawaii who actually raised him do not exist. It would hurt me.

No one could get away with pretending his white grandmother didn't exist except a media witch doctor such as Obama.

I have been attacking Obama for months because of his racist exclusion of his white relatives from the campaign trail.

We finally smoked out a picture of Obama's sister in the Chicago Tribune. She had said she was his "adviser" but refused to be photographed. Did she plan to enter the White house with a paper sack over her head?

But the "segregation" of Madelyn Dunham, Obama's white grandmother, and only real grandmother, has to be one of the cruelest and most mendacious political kidnappings this nation has ever seen.

Mrs. Dunham lives alone in the same apartment where she has lived for many years. Thus, it is reasonable to assume she is not incapacitated or an invalid.

Granny Dunham told the New York Times she was not well enough to speak, but in reality the Obama campaign maintains Stalinist "control" over potential interviewees. Obama's minions tried to control access to Obama's friend who was recently released from prison. Since he became a candidate for U.S. Senator, Obama has locked his white relative away in his racist closet.

Madelyn Dunham raised Barry Obama. It was probably her money that got him admitted to the prestigious Punahou School in Hawaii and paid his fees. Her efforts were formative, perhaps even more so than those of Obama's mother Ann, Madelyn's daughter. And yet Madelyn is being hidden away.

All because she is white and Barry Obama is a "black" candidate for president.

What a lie. What hypocrisy. What cowardice. And this man wants to sit in the Oval Office?

Ironically, locking Madelyn away is going to hurt Obama more with African-Americans than with whites. Whites delight in drinking Obama's Kool-Aid. Reason and reality will only gradually descend on them.

But blacks are a lot smarter than whites when it comes to slights, because they have experienced racial slights all their lives. Blacks know who Obama is, and they know how he is trying to "pass" and ignore his past.

During the decade when crack devastated the African-American community it was the "Black Grannies" who were and are the backbone of the community. These grandmothers helped stabilize disintegrating families ravaged by drugs. Black grannies will not like the fact that their white counterpart is being treated badly by Obama.

Black and white grandmothers? My guess is they will stick together on this one. They will be offended by the way Obama is treating the woman who really raised him and was the stabilizing factor in his life, Madelyn Dunham.

I repeat: Free Granny Madelyn Dunham [Obama]!

House Passes Iraq War Funding Bill

A sharply divided House voted Friday to order President Bush to bring combat troops home from Iraq next year, a victory for Democrats in an epic war-powers struggle and Congress' boldest challenge yet to the administration's policy.

Ignoring a White House veto threat, lawmakers voted 218-212, mostly along party lines, for a war spending bill requiring that combat operations cease before September 2008, or earlier if the Iraqi government does not meet certain requirements. Democrats said it was time to heed the mandate of their election sweep last November, which gave them control of Congress.

"The American people have lost faith in the president's conduct of this war," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. "The American people see the reality of the war, the president does not."

The vote, echoing clashes between lawmakers and the White House over the Vietnam War four decades ago, pushed the Democratic-led Congress a step closer to a constitutional collision with the wartime commander in chief. Bush has insisted that lawmakers allow more time for his strategy of sending nearly 30,000 additional troops to Iraq to work.

The roll call also marked a triumph for Pelosi, who labored in recent days to bring together a Democratic caucus deeply divided over the war. Some of the party's more liberal members voted against the bill because they said it would not end the war immediately, while more conservative Democrats said they were reluctant to take away flexibility from generals in the field.

Republicans were almost completely unified in their fight against the bill, which they said was tantamount to admitting failure in Iraq.

"The stakes in Iraq are too high and the sacrifices made by our military personnel and their families too great to be content with anything but success," said Republican Whip Roy Blunt, R-Mo.

The bill marks the first time Congress has used its budget power to try to end the war, now in its fifth year, by attaching the withdrawal requirements to a bill providing $124 billion to finance military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan for the rest of this year.

Excluding the funds in the House-passed bill, Congress has so far provided more than $500 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, including about $350 billion for Iraq alone, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service. More than 3,200 U.S. troops have died in Iraq since war began in March 2003.

Al Gore: Planet Has A Fever

Al Gore, who has reversed his political fortunes to become a potential contender in the 2008 presidential race, made an emotional return to Congress Wednesday in an appeal for an even more dramatic rescue - saving the planet.

Gore - who is one of voters' top choices for the Democratic presidential nomination even though he says he's not running - implored lawmakers to adopt a list of policy prescriptions to stop global warming.

Fresh off a triumphant Academy Awards appearance in which his climate change documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" won two Oscars, Gore drew overflow crowds as he testified before House and Senate panels about a "true planetary emergency" if Congress fails to act. He said addressing the problem is a moral issue and should not be a partisan or political.

But Gore faced a more skeptical reception than the warm embrace he received from Hollywood as Republicans questioned the science behind his testimony.

"You're not just off a little, you're totally wrong," said Texas Rep. Joe Barton, the leading Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, as he challenged Gore's conclusion that carbon dioxide emissions cause rising global temperatures. Barton and Gore's exchange grew testy at one point - Barton demanding that Gore get to the point and Gore responding that he would like time to answer without being interrupted.

"Global warming science is uneven and evolving," Barton said.

Gore insisted that the link is beyond dispute and is the source of broad agreement in the scientific community.

"The planet has a fever," Gore said. "If your baby has a fever, you go to the doctor. If the doctor says you need to intervene here, you don't say, 'Well, I read a science fiction novel that told me it's not a problem.' If the crib's on fire, you don't speculate that the baby is flame retardant. You take action."

Gore's congressional testimony marked the first time he had been to Capitol Hill since January 2001, when he was the defeated Democratic presidential nominee still presiding over the Senate in his role as vice president. It comes 20 years after Gore, then a congressman from Tennessee, held the first hearings in Congress on global warming.

Gore appeared before a joint hearing by two House committees, with his wife, Tipper, sitting behind him and a stack of boxes beside him containing hundreds of thousands messages asking Congress to act on global warming.

Later in the day, he was to testify before a Senate committee that included Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton. Gore has said he has no plans to seek the presidency again, but he ranks third in some polls and could threaten Clinton's front-runner status if he decided to enter the race.

Gore said he hopes whoever is elected president in 2008 "can use his or her political chips" to lead the world toward a new global climate treaty to replace the 1997 Kyoto protocol that requires 35 industrial nations to cut greenhouse gases. The Bush administration argues Kyoto would hurt the U.S. economy and objects that high-polluting developing nations like China and India are not required to reduce emissions.

"I fully understand that Kyoto, as a brand if you will, has been demonized," Gore said.

Gore was warmly welcomed back by some of his critics, such as Rep. Ralph Hall, R-Texas, who remembered serving with Gore's father and bantered with Gore about an evening boat ride they took together. "You're dear to us, but I just don't agree with you on this," Hall said.

Gore advised lawmakers to cut carbon dioxide and other warming gases 90 percent by 2050 to avoid a crisis. Doing that, he said, will require a ban on any new coal-burning power plants - a major source of industrial carbon dioxide - that lack state-of-the-art controls to capture the gases.

He said he foresees a revolution in small-scale electricity producers for replacing coal, likening the development to what the Internet has done for the exchange of information.

"There is a sense of hope in this country that this United States Congress will rise to the occasion and present meaningful solutions to this crisis," Gore said. "Our world faces a true planetary emergency. I know the phrase sounds shrill, and I know it's a challenge to the moral imagination."

White House offers interview with Rove

The White House pushed back Tuesday against Democrats demanding answers on the firings of federal prosecutors, refusing to allow President Bush's top aides to testify publicly and under oath about their roles in the dismissals.

Bush gave his embattled attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, a boost during an early morning call to his longtime friend and planned to end the day with a public statement in support of him.

Several Democrats, including presidential hopefuls Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barrack Obama, Joe Biden and John Edwards, have called for Gonzales' resignation. So have a handful of Republican lawmakers.

The Senate, meanwhile, voted to strip Gonzales of his authority to fill U.S. attorney vacancies without Senate confirmation. Democrats contend the Justice Department and White House purged eight federal prosecutors, some of whom were leading political corruption investigations, after a change in the Patriot Act gave Gonzales the new authority.

"What happened in this case sends a signal really through intimidation by purge: 'Don't quarrel with us any longer,'" said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., a former U.S. attorney who spent much of Monday evening paging through 3,000 documents released by the Justice Department.

White House Counsel Fred Fielding told lawmakers they could interview presidential counselor Karl Rove, former White House Counsel Harriet Miers and their deputies — but only on the president's terms: in private, "without the need for an oath" and without a transcript.

"We trust and believe that the accommodation we offer here, in addition to what the Department of Justice has provided, should satisfy the committee's interests," Fielding wrote in a letter to the House and Senate judiciary committees' Democratic chairmen and senior Republicans.

Republicans cast the offer as fair and virtually unprecedented. Democrats rejected it and vowed to start authorizing subpoenas as soon as Wednesday for the White House aides.

"It's sort of giving us the opportunity to talk to them, but not giving us the opportunity to get to the bottom of what really happened here," said Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.

Even without oaths, the aides would be legally required to tell the truth to Congress. But without a transcript of their comments, "it would be almost meaningless to say that they would be under some kind of legal sanction," Schumer complained.

Fielding's meeting on Capitol Hill came a few hours after Bush personally gave Gonzales a boost during an early morning phone call — their first conversation since the president had acknowledged mistakes by his longtime friend and lawmakers of both parties had called for Gonzales' ouster.

Bush was to counter those with a statement of support, the White House said. The president was also to talk about his position on the offer Fielding made to Congress.

The White House offered to arrange interviews with Rove, Miers, deputy White House counsel William Kelley and J. Scott Jennings, a deputy to White House political director Sara Taylor, who works for Rove.

"Such interviews would be private and conducted without the need for an oath, transcript, subsequent testimony or the subsequent issuance of subpoenas," Fielding said in his letter.

He said the documents released by the Justice Department "do not reflect that any U.S. attorney was replaced to interfere with a pending or future criminal investigation or for any other improper reason."

Al Sharpton Blasts Barack Obama

The Rev. Al Sharpton is working behind the scenes to sabotage the presidential hopes of Sen. Barack Obama.

"He’s saying that Obama never did anything for the community, never worked with anybody from the community, that nobody knows the people around him, that he’s a candidate driven by white leadership,” a prominent black activist told the New York Post.

Another activist said: "It’s driving Al crazy that Obama is as impressive and popular as he is, and he’s not happy about it. Sharpton is just terrified of being overshadowed by someone of Obama’s class and character.”

Sharpton ran for the Democratic nomination for president in 2004 and "had wanted to run again in 2008,” a source close to Sharpton told the Post. "But now that Obama is a serious candidate in the race, that has become impossible.”

At a major fund-raising event in New York on Friday night, "every prominent name in the black community, with the exception of elected officials and Al Sharpton, was part of it,” one Democratic official told the Post.

Obama’s candidacy has also tarnished the hopes of another Democratic presidential candidate – Sen. Hillary Clinton.

"The plan was for Hillary to be the glamour candidate who would start the race with the votes of African-Americans and Hispanics already in the bag,” the official said.

"That clearly hasn’t happened.” Obama’s candidacy has "taken the steam” out of Clinton’s support among African-American voters.”

Far-Left Bloggers Get Nevada Debate Nixed

Internet lefties hate the Fox News Channel with a vengeance.

The same group of techies who pushed Howard Dean’s presidential campaign into the spotlight has shown that it can call the shots when it comes to state party officials.

With its caucus being second in line in the 2008 primary season, the Nevada Democratic Party wanted to have a large audience view its August debate between Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, et al. It chose the cable network with the biggest audience, Fox.

Through a barrage of postings and e-mails, enraged bloggers put the pressure on. John Edwards was the first to fold.

Using as their excuse a humorous remark made by Fox News’ chairman that poked a little fun at President Bush, Nevada Democrats cancelled the debate capitulating to the whims of the fringe Democratic base.

There’s an obvious choice of venue for Dem debates, the place where John Edwards announced his presidential candidacy.

No, it’s not Keith Olbermann’s show.

It’s the “Daily Show” on Comedy Central.

Leonardo DiCaprio in Production on Global Warming Flick

Leonardo DiCaprio gazed on as the Academy showered affection on Al Gore as he accepted an Oscar for his global warming lecture.

Now DiCaprio is in production on his personally penned documentary on the same gaseous subject.

“Global warming is not only the number one environmental challenge we face today, but one of the most important issues facing all of humanity,” DiCaprio elucidated.

The movie will be released in late 2007.

With the alarmist title “11th Hour,” the flick will examine the global environment and like Gore’s flick will present solutions to the eco-problems of the world.

One wonders if solutions will include buying phony carbon offsets like Gore and the Hollywood entertainment companies.