Jake Gyllenhaal Hosts Best SNL In Years

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Priceless! This was the best Saturday night Live in many, many years. Jake Gyllenhaal is a great talent.

Film Giant Carlo Ponti Dies

ROME - Italian producer Carlo Ponti, who discovered a teenage Sophia Loren, launched her film career and later married her despite threats of bigamy charges and excommunication, has died in Geneva. He was 94.

Ponti died Tuesday night at a Geneva hospital, his family said Wednesday. He had been hospitalized about 10 days earlier for pulmonary complications, it said.

He produced more than 100 films, including "Doctor Zhivago," "The Firemen's Ball," and "The Great Day," which were nominated for Oscars. Other major films included "Blow-Up," "The Cassandra Crossing," "Zabriskie Point" and "The Squeeze."

In 1956, "La Strada," which he co-produced, won the Academy Award for best foreign film, as did "Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow" in 1964.

But it was his affair with the young ingenue Loren that captivated the public, rather than his work with top filmmakers such as Dino De Laurentiis, Federico Fellini, Jean-Luc Godard, Peter Ustinov, David Lean and Roman Polanski.

"I have done everything for love of Sophia," he said in a newspaper interview shortly before his 90th birthday in 2002. "I have always believed in her."

Born near Milan in the small town of Magenta on Dec. 11, 1912, Ponti studied law and worked as a lawyer before moving into film production in the late 1930s.

He was married to his first wife, Giuliana, when he met Loren - then Sofia Lazzaro - about 1950. At the time she was only 15 - a quarter-century younger than Ponti.

They tried to keep their relationship a secret despite huge media interest, while Ponti's lawyers went to Mexico to obtain a divorce from his first wife.

Ponti and Loren were married by proxy in Mexico in 1957 - two male attorneys took their place and the happy couple only found out when the news was broken by society columnist Louella Parsons.

But they were unable to beat stringent Italian divorce laws and the wrath of the Roman Catholic church. Ponti was charged with bigamy.

"I was being threatened with excommunication, with the everlasting fire, and for what reason? I had fallen in love with a man whose own marriage had ended long before," Loren has said.

"I wanted to be his wife and have his children. We had done the best the law would allow to make it official, but they were calling us public sinners," she said. "We should have been taking a honeymoon, but all I remember is weeping for hours."

The couple first lived in exile and then, after the annulment of their Mexican marriage, in secret in Italy.

During this period, Ponti produced the film "La Ciociara" - known in English as "Two Women" - for which Loren won a best actress Oscar in 1962, and contributed significantly to the development of French New Wave cinema in his collaboration with Godard.

Ponti and Loren finally beat Italian law by becoming French citizens - the approval was signed personally by French President Georges Pompidou - and they married for a second time in Paris in 1966.

Despite many predictions that the marriage would founder over Ponti's affairs and the many dashing leading men who reportedly fell in love with Loren, the couple stayed together.

Ponti had several other brushes with the law.

He was briefly imprisoned in by the Fascist government in Italy during World War II for producing "Piccolo Mondo Antico," which was considered anti-German. An Italian court later gave Ponti a six-month suspended sentence for his 1973 film "Massacre in Rome," which claimed Pope Pius XII did nothing about the execution of Italian hostages by the Germans. The charges eventually were dropped on appeal.

Though Loren was better-known, Ponti amassed a fortune considerably greater than that of his wife - and again fell foul of the Italian authorities.

In 1979, a court in Rome convicted him in absentia of the illegal transfer of capital abroad and sentenced him to four years in prison and a $24 million fine.

Loren, along with film stars Ava Gardner and Richard Harris, were acquitted of conspiracy.

It took Ponti until the late 1980s to settle his legal problems and finally obtain the return of his art collection, which had been seized by authorities and given to Italian museums.

He also survived two kidnapping attempts in 1975.

Ponti discovered many of the great Italian leading ladies, including Gina Lollobrigida, and had affairs with several. "I don't like actors. I prefer women," he said at the time.

In recent years, the couple lived mostly in Switzerland, where they had several homes. Despite reports that he was seriously ill, Ponti attended the 1998 Venice Film Festival to accept a lifetime achievement award for his wife, who was kept away by illness.

Ponti had two sons with Loren - Carlo Jr., a celebrated conductor, and Edoardo, a film producer. He also had two children from his first marriage, Guendolina and Alexander.

No date was given for a funeral, but the family said it would be "strictly private."

___

I cannot remember a time in my life that a film by carlo Ponti didn't figure in. Whenever I get bored with my life, I go back and watch such greats as "Cassandra's Crossing" or "Dr. Zchivago". carlo gave us all so much screen magic. He will be sorely missed. I hope the Italian government will now realise with shame the terrible mistakes they made against Carlo Ponti. Carlo, sleep in peace.

Saddam Hussein's Corpse

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I started not to post this, but I believe everyone is entitled to decide what they want or don't want to see. I have decided that this will only be posted for 7 days, after which I will remove it. I will leave the YouTube link to the video up so anyone can find the video if they desire.

It isn't that I feel sorry for Saddam Hussein. He's dead now, though. He has "paid in full" for all of his crimes against humanity. He paid with his life. It's time for all of the world to move on. This preoccupation with his corpse is morbid and perverse. It's almost as though people expected Saddam to rise from the dead. He isn't going to. It's all been one barbaric episode in our history. Bring our soldiers home, now.

Inventor of Instant Noodles Dies at 96

TOKYO - Momofuku Ando, the Japanese inventor of instant noodles — a dish that has sustained American college students for decades — has died. He was 96.



Nissin Food Products Co., the company Ando founded, said on its Web site that he died Friday after suffering a heart attack.

Born in Taiwan, Ando founded his company in 1948 from a humble family operation. Faced with food shortages in post-World War II Japan, Ando thought a quality, convenient noodle product would help feed the masses.

In 1958, his "Chicken Ramen" — the first instant noodle — was introduced after many trials. Following its success, the company added other products, such as the "Cup Noodle" in 1971.

"The Momofuku Ando Instant Ramen Museum" opened in 1999 in Ikeda City in western Japan commemorating his inventions.

Ando gave a speech at the company's New Year ceremony and enjoyed Chicken Ramen for lunch with Nissin employees on Thursday before falling ill, Japan's largest daily Yomiuri reported.

He is survived by his wife, Masako.

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Good night and God Bless, Mr. Ando. Rest assured that your noodles will live long after you are gone. Ramen noodles are surely one of the "miracle foods" of the century. I know I would have starved to death many times over without these little fast life-savers. Rest in peace.

Bush Rhetoric Is Actually a Promise of Non-Cooperation

WASHINGTON - President Bush pushed his signature agenda in a newspaper opinion piece Wednesday while asking Democrats, in charge of the House and Senate for the first time in his presidency, to work with him on legislation over the next two years.

Bush repeated his long-held policies on the war in Iraq, tax cuts, entrepreneurship and changes in Social Security and other entitlement programs in a guest column published in The Wall Street Journal. However, the policies came wrapped in an appeal for bipartisanship the day before Republicans turn over control of Congress to wary Democrats.

And he included a warning: "If the Congress chooses to pass bills that are simply political statements, they will have chosen stalemate," Bush wrote. "If a different approach is taken, the next two years can be fruitful ones for our nation. We can show the American people that Republicans and Democrats can come together to find ways to help make America a more secure, prosperous and hopeful society."

Bush is expected to announce this month a new direction for U.S. policy on Iraq. In the column, he gave no hint of change but cited as a priority his frequently stated goal of helping Iraq gain full control over its affairs.

"We now have the opportunity to build a bipartisan consensus to fight and win the war," he wrote.

Bush said he would submit a budget in February that would make tax cuts permanent and lead to a balanced budget by 2012, which he contended would put the country in a better position to tackle the challenge of changing the Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid programs. He also said he would offer his own plan for dealing with pork-barrel spending by Congress and would ask for a line-item veto.

"Together, we have a chance to serve the American people by solving the complex problems that many don't expect us to tackle, let alone solve, in the partisan environment of today's Washington," Bush wrote. "To do that, however, we can't play politics as usual. Democrats will control the House and Senate, and therefore we share the responsibility for what we achieve."

White House spokesman David Almacy said the president has used the forum of a newspaper guest column, or "op-ed," at least four other times: to commemorate the first anniversary of the 2001 terror attacks; to promote his re-election in 2004; to mark his second inaugural, in 2005; and again in 2005 to note the U.S. response to the Indian Ocean tsunami.

Bush planned to meet Wednesday with his Cabinet to discuss domestic priorities. He was expected to court key lawmakers at a social reception Wednesday evening. Although officials say he is still making decisions regarding Iraq policy and will not reveal any changes this week, he is expected to say he is sending additional U.S. troops there.

Democrats, eager for their turn at power when they take control of Congress, have complained that Bush has kept them at arm's length and has not consulted on key decisions. Even a senior Republican, Sen. Richard Lugar (news, bio, voting record) of Indiana, said Sunday that Bush has been inclined "to not take Congress very seriously" on Iraq policy.

In recent weeks, Bush has signaled a willingness to go along with a Democratic priority for raising the minimum wage, if it is accompanied by tax and regulatory relief for small businesses.

He also has suggested that progress could be made on an immigration policy overhaul — stymied primarily by conservative Republicans who want a get-tough approach — that would include a way for some illegal workers to move toward citizenship.

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Bush amuses me greatly. First he tells the American public that he "hopes the democrats will cooperate in a show of bipartisanism" and then he stubbornly (and this is a charactersitic he has displayed throughout his presidency) warns the democratic congress that he will not compromise with them. That is tantamount to saying : "You must do as i tell you or I will veto everything you do". it's a threat. Unfortunately, the ones who will suffer are the American people. Impeach, impeach, impeach!

UFO Spotted Over Chicago's O'Hare Airport

CHICAGO - Federal officials say it was probably just some weird weather phenomenon, but a group of United Airlines employees swear they saw a mysterious, saucer-shaped craft hovering over O'Hare Airport last fall.

The workers, some of them pilots, said the object didn't have lights and hovered over an airport terminal before shooting up through the clouds, according to a report in Monday's Chicago Tribune.

The Federal Aviation Administration acknowledged that a United supervisor had called the control tower at O'Hare, asking if anyone had spotted a spinning disc-shaped object. But the controllers didn't see anything, and a preliminary check of radar found nothing out of the ordinary, FAA spokeswoman Elizabeth Isham Cory said.

"Our theory on this is that it was a weather phenomenon," Cory said. "That night was a perfect atmospheric condition in terms of low (cloud) ceiling and a lot of airport lights. When the lights shine up into the clouds, sometimes you can see funny things."

The FAA is not investigating, Cory said.

United spokeswoman Megan McCarthy said company officials don't recall discussing any such incident from Nov. 7.

At least one O'Hare controller, union official Craig Burzych, was amused by it all.

"To fly 7 million light years to O'Hare and then have to turn around and go home because your gate was occupied is simply unacceptable," he said.

Full and Graphic Execution Video of Saddam Hussein

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He's dead. Can we all please move on, now? Can we please get our troops out of that god-forsaken place, now? Can we impeach the man who lied to get us in Iraq, now? Can Bush be tried as a war criminal as he should be? I doubt it. One war criminal has executed another war criminal. That's all.

Happy New Year

Happy New year to you all. Have a great year.

American Death Toll Reaches 3000

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The U.S. military announced Sunday the deaths of two soldiers, pushing the number of Americans who have died in the Iraq war to the grim milestone of at least 3,000. On the final day of an exceedingly bloody year, Saddam Hussein was also buried in the town where he was born.

The White House said the president mourned each death but would not issue a statement in reaction to the 3,000th in a war now 46 months old.

Despite the momentous developments in a deeply troubled Iraq, bombers and assassins appeared to have taken the day off at the close of a brutal year when the country seemed near to unraveling along its sectarian seams.

Police reported finding 12 bodies dumped in Baghdad Sunday as well as 12 other violent deaths nationwide, both relatively low numbers by recent standards.

One day after Saddam was hanged, his body was interred in a special compound he built in Ouja and designed for use in mourning ceremonies by the people of the town where he was born 69 years and eight months before.

Those who saw the ceremony said the building was decorated in a Moroccan motif with teak wood walls. The domed burial chamber was about 20 feet tall and hung with a green chandelier. Incense perfumed the burial location where the raised grave covering was about 6 inches above floor level.

Ouja is a few miles south of Tikrit, the Tigris River city that is capital of Salahuddin province, 80 miles north of Baghdad. It was a major power base for the former leader who brutally ruled Iraq for nearly a quarter century.

Officials in Tikrit said the body was transferred by American helicopter to the U.S. military base at Tikrit from Baghdad, where Saddam dropped through the gallows floor and died shortly before dawn on Saturday.

At Saddam's funeral, dozens of relatives and other mourners, some of them crying and moaning, attended the interment shortly before dawn. A few knelt before his flag-draped grave. A large framed photograph of Saddam was propped up on a chair nearby.

"I condemn the way he was executed and I consider it a crime," said 45-year-old Salam Hassan al-Nasseri, one of Saddam's clansmen who attended the interment. Some 2,000 Iraqis traveled to the village as well.

Mohammed Natiq, a 24-year-old college student, said "the path of Arab nationalism must inevitably be paved with blood."

"God has decided that Saddam Hussein should have such an end, but his march and the course which he followed will not end," Natiq said.

Police on Saturday blocked the entrances to Tikrit and said nobody was allowed to leave or enter the city for four days. Despite the security precaution, gunmen took to the streets, carrying pictures of Saddam, shooting into the air and calling for vengeance.

Saddam was captured in an underground hide-out near Ouja on Dec. 13, 2003, eight months after he fled Baghdad ahead of advancing American troops. He was convicted and sentenced to death last month for crimes against humanity for his role in the killings of 148 Shiite Muslims from Dujail after a 1982 assassination attempt against him in the town.

His burial place is about two miles from the graves of his sons, Odai and Qusai, in the main town cemetery. The sons and a grandson were killed in a gunbattle with the American forces in Mosul in July 2003.

"We received the body of Saddam Hussein without any complications. There was cooperation by the prime minister and his office's director," clan chief Sheik al-Nidaa told state-run Al-Iraqiya television. "We opened the coffin of Saddam. He was cleaned and wrapped according to Islamic teachings. We didn't see any unnatural signs on his body."

The American death toll rose to at least 3,000 according to an Associated Press count with the announcement Sunday that a soldier was killed a day earlier in a roadside bombing in the capital. The soldier's name and unit were not given.

Shortly afterward, the Department of Defense said on its Web site that Spc. Dustin R. Donica, 22, of Spring, Texas, had been killed. Donica, assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 509th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 4th Airborne Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division, died on Thursday. His death was not announced by U.S. military authorities in Baghdad.

Their deaths raised to at least 111 the number of U.S. service members reported killed in December, the bloodiest month of 2006.

At least 820 U.S. military personnel died in Iraq in 2006, according to the AP count.

While not responding to the 3,000th death, President Bush did issue New Year's greetings that noted the continuing turbulence in Iraq.

"Last year, America continued its mission to fight and win the war on terror and promote liberty as an alternative to tyranny and despair," Bush said in the statement wishing Americans a happy new year.

"In the New Year, we will remain on the offensive against the enemies of freedom, advance the security of our country, and work toward a free and unified Iraq. Defeating terrorists and extremists is the challenge of our time, and we will answer history's call with confidence and fight for liberty without wavering."
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George W, Bush, bring our children home. We hold you responsible for every single American and Iraqi death you caused by your lies. I, for one, want you impeached. Impeached and tried as a war criminal. Impeached, tried, convicted and executed on the same gallows they hanged Saddam Hussein upon. You are no less guilty of crimes against humanity than that creature was. You are a lame duck and deserve a trial, but I hope you are convicted and executed for your many, many crimes.

Red State Update: Hanging Saddam Hussein

Jackie and Dunlap discuss the hanging of Saddam Hussein. Plus, RSU reveals its Wish List of Celebrity Hangmen. Plus, Showtime at the Apollo. http://www.redstateupdate.com

saddam hussein hanging

saddam hussein hanging

Saddam Hussein Executed Yesterday

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Saddam Hussein struggled briefly after American military guards handed him over to Iraqi executioners before dawn Saturday. But as his final moments approached and masked executioners slipped a black cloth and noose around his neck, he grew calm.

In a final moment of defiance, he refused a hood to cover his eyes.

Hours after Saddam faced the same fate he was accused of inflicting on countless thousands during a quarter-century of ruthless power, Iraqi state television showed grainy video of what it said was his body, the head uncovered and the neck twisted at a sharp angle.

A man whose testimony helped lead to Saddam's conviction and execution before sunrise said he was shown the body because "everybody wanted to make sure that he was really executed."

"Now, he is in the garbage of history," said Jawad Abdul-Aziz, who lost his father, three brothers and 22 cousins in the reprisal killings that followed a botched 1982 assassination attempt against Saddam in the Shiite town of Dujail.

The post-execution footage showed the man identified as Saddam lying on a stretcher, covered in a white shroud. His neck and part of the shroud have what appear to be bloodstains. His eyes are closed.

Al-Arabiya satellite television reported Saturday night that a delegation including the governor of Salahuddin Province and the head of Saddam's clan retrieved his body from Baghdad and took it for burial near the executed dictator's hometown of Tikrit. The broadcaster reported the burial would take place Sunday. The report could not immediately be verified.

Earlier, in Baghdad's Shiite enclave of Sadr City, hundreds of people danced in the streets while others fired guns in the air to celebrate. Some hanged an effigy of Saddam. The government did not impose a round-the-clock curfew as it did last month when Saddam was convicted to thwart any surge in retaliatory violence.

It was a grim end for the 69-year-old leader who had vexed three U.S. presidents. Despite his ouster, Washington, its allies and the new Iraqi leaders remain mired in a fight to quell a stubborn insurgency by Saddam loyalists and a vicious sectarian conflict.

The execution took place during the year's deadliest month for U.S. troops, with the toll reaching 109. At least 2,998 members of the U.S. military have been killed since the Iraq war began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

President Bush said in a statement issued from his ranch in Texas that bringing Saddam to justice "is an important milestone on Iraq's course to becoming a democracy that can govern, sustain and defend itself, and be an ally in the war on terror."

He said that the execution marks the "end of a difficult year for the Iraqi people and for our troops" and cautioned that Saddam's death will not halt the violence in Iraq.

Within hours of his death, bombings killed at least 68 people in Iraq, including one planted on a minibus that exploded in a fish market in a mostly Shiite town south of Baghdad.

Ali Hamza, a 30-year-old university professor, said he went outside to shoot his gun into the air after he learned of Saddam's death.

"Now all the victims' families will be happy because Saddam got his just sentence," said Hamza, who lives in Diwaniyah, a Shiite town 80 miles south of Baghdad.

But people in the Sunni-dominated city of Tikrit, once a power base of Saddam, lamented his death.

"The president, the leader Saddam Hussein is a martyr and God will put him along with other martyrs. Do not be sad nor complain because he has died the death of a holy warrior," said Sheik Yahya al-Attawi, a cleric at the Saddam Big Mosque.

Police blocked the entrances to Tikrit and said nobody was allowed to leave or enter the city for four days. Despite the security precaution, gunmen took to the streets of Tikrit, carrying pictures of Saddam, shooting into the air, and calling for vengeance.

Security forces also set up roadblocks at the entrance to another Sunni stronghold, Samarra, and a curfew was imposed after about 500 people took to the streets protesting the execution of Saddam.

A couple hundred people also protested the execution just outside the Anbar capital of Ramadi, and more than 2,000 people demonstrated in Adwar, the village south of Tikrit where Saddam was captured by U.S. troops hiding in an underground bunker.

In a statement, Saddam's lawyers said that in the aftermath of his death, "the world will know that Saddam Hussein lived honestly, died honestly, and maintained his principles."

"He did not lie when he declared his trial null," they said.

Saddam's half-brother Barzan Ibrahim and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, the former chief justice of the Revolutionary Court, were not hanged along with their former leader as originally planned. Officials wanted to reserve the occasion for Saddam alone.

"We wanted him to be executed on a special day," National Security adviser Mouwafak al-Rubaie told state-run al-Iraqiya television.

Sami al-Askari, the political adviser of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, told the AP that Saddam initially resisted when he was taken by Iraqi guards but was composed in his final moments.

He said Saddam was clad in a black suit, hat and shoes, rather than prison garb. His hat was removed and his hands tied shortly before the noose was slipped around his neck.

Saddam repeated a prayer after a Sunni Muslim cleric who was present.

"Saddam later was taken to the gallows and refused to have his head covered with a hood," al-Askari said. "Before the rope was put around his neck, Saddam shouted: 'God is great. The nation will be victorious and Palestine is Arab.'"

Iraqi state television showed footage of guards in ski masks placing a noose around Saddam's neck. Saddam appeared calm as he stood on the metal framework of the gallows. The footage cuts off just before the execution.

Saddam was executed at a former military intelligence headquarters in Baghdad's Shiite neighborhood of Kazimiyah, al-Askari said. During his regime, Saddam had numerous dissidents executed in the facility, located in a neighborhood that is home to the Iraqi capital's most important Shiite shrine - the Imam Kazim shrine.

The Iraqi prime minister's office released a statement that said Saddam's execution was a "strong lesson" to ruthless leaders who commit crimes against their own people.

"We strongly reject considering Saddam as a representative of any sect in Iraq because the tyrant only represented his evil soul," the statement said. "The door is still open for those whose hands are not tainted with the blood of innocent people to take part in the political process and work on rebuilding Iraq."

The execution came 56 days after a court convicted Saddam and sentenced him to death for his role in the killings of 148 Shiite Muslims from Dujail. Iraq's highest court rejected Saddam's appeal Monday and ordered him executed within 30 days.

A U.S. judge on Friday refused to stop Saddam's execution, rejecting a last-minute court challenge.

U.S. troops cheered as news of Saddam's execution appeared on television at the mess hall at Forward Operating Base Loyalty in eastern Baghdad. But some soldiers expressed doubt that Saddam's death would be a significant turning point for Iraq.

"First it was weapons of mass destruction. Then when there were none, it was that we had to find Saddam. We did that, but then it was that we had to put him on trial," said Spc. Thomas Sheck, 25, who is on his second tour in Iraq. "So now, what will be the next story they tell us to keep us over here?"

At his death, he was in the midst of a second trial, charged with genocide and other crimes for a 1987-88 military crackdown that killed an estimated 180,000 Kurds in northern Iraq. Experts said the trial of his co-defendants was likely to continue despite his execution.

Many people in Iraq's Shiite majority were eager to see the execution of a man whose Sunni Arab-dominated regime oppressed them and Kurds. Before the hanging, a mosque preacher in the Shiite holy city of Najaf on Friday called Saddam's execution "God's gift to Iraqis."

In a farewell message to Iraqis posted Wednesday on the Internet, Saddam said he was giving his life for his country as part of the struggle against the U.S. "Here, I offer my soul to God as a sacrifice, and if he wants, he will send it to heaven with the martyrs," he said.

One of Saddam's lawyers, Issam Ghazzawi, said the letter was written by Saddam on Nov. 5, the day he was convicted by an Iraqi tribunal in the Dujail killings.

Najeeb al-Nauimi, a member of Saddam's legal team, said U.S. authorities maintained physical custody of Saddam until the execution to prevent him being humiliated publicly or his corpse being mutilated, as has happened to previous Iraqi leaders deposed by force. He said they didn't want anything to happen to further inflame Sunni Arabs.

"This is the end of an era in Iraq," al-Nauimi said from Doha, Qatar. "The Baath regime ruled for 35 years. Saddam was vice president or president of Iraq during those years. For Iraqis, he will be very well remembered. Like a martyr, he died for the sake of his country."

Iraq's death penalty was suspended by the U.S. military after it toppled Saddam in 2003, but the new Iraqi government reinstated it two years later, saying executions would deter criminals.

Saddam's own regime used executions and extrajudicial killings as a tool of political repression, both to eliminate real or suspected political opponents and to maintain a reign of terror.

In the months after he seized power on July 16, 1979, he had hundreds of members of his own party and army officers slain. In 1996, he ordered the slaying of two sons-in-law who had defected to Jordan but returned to Baghdad after receiving guarantees of safety.

Saddam built Iraq into a one of the Arab world's most modern societies, but then plunged the country into an eight-year war with neighboring Iran that killed hundreds of thousands of people on both sides and wrecked Iraq's economy.

When the U.S. invaded in 2003, Iraqis had been transformed from among the region's most prosperous people to some of its most impoverished.

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For the many murders of his own people; Hussein deserved the sentence of death. However, George W. Bush's excuse for invading Iraq and overthrowing Saddam was a lie. George Bush should be brought up on charges for lying to the American people and he should be made to answer for the deaths of every American and every Iraqi who has died because of his lies. Impeach George W. Bush.

Deputy in Gibson Case Claims Harassment

LOS ANGELES - The sheriff's deputy who arrested Mel Gibson for drunken driving six months ago says his superiors have harassed him ever since a report detailing the star's anti-Semitic tirade was leaked to a celebrity new Web site.

Deputy James Mee was transferred to another assignment, interrogated for several hours, and investigators seized a computer and phone records during a search of his home, his attorney told the Los Angeles Times for its Thursday editions.

"His life and career would be a lot different had he not made that arrest," attorney Richard Shinee said.

Neal Tyler, a division chief who oversees the sheriff's office where Gibson was booked, denied that Mee was singled out and said he didn't know of any problems with Mee's treatment.

He declined to discuss Mee's specific complaints because of confidentiality rules, but he said, "I disagree with the assessment that personnel in the department or at the station have been relating to him or supervising him in an unfair manner."

Mee arrested Gibson July 29 in Malibu on suspicion of driving under the influence of alcohol. An arrest report signed by Mee and posted on the celebrity news Web site TMZ said Gibson was belligerent and quoted him as saying: "The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world."

The actor-director later apologized to the Jewish community and pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge of drunken driving.

After Gibson's much-publicized arrest, investigations were opened into whether Gibson received preferential treatment, and into who leaked Mee's report to TMZ.

"My client has denied he gave the report to anyone," Shinee said.

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For the record, I do not like Mel Gibson. I dislike and distrust bigots. To me, any man who is capable of making some of the comments and slurs Mel Gibson has made in the past is capable of anything. Do I think he gave that report out? Yes. Did Gibson mean the slurs? Probably. It's hard for me to fathom how anyone with a conscience could go to a movie made by this man and contribute to this form of social injustice and hatred. I refuse to give him my hard earned money so he can have a big hit when he says such horrible things about other people. He is NOT the victim here. The people he slurs are the victims. Boycott. Boycott. Boycott.

Ex-President Gerald Ford Dead At 93

RANCHO MIRAGE, Calif. - Former President Gerald R. Ford, who declared "Our long national nightmare is over" as he replaced Richard Nixon but may have doomed his own chances of election by pardoning his disgraced predecessor, has died. He was 93.

The nation's 38th president, and the only one not elected to the office or the vice presidency, died at his desert home at 6:45 p.m. Tuesday.

"His life was filled with love of God, his family and his country," his wife, Betty, said in a statement.

Ford was the longest living former president, surpassing Ronald Reagan, who died in June 2004, by more than a month.

Ford's office did not release the cause of death, which followed a year of medical problems. He was treated for pneumonia in January and had an angioplasty and pacemaker implant in August.

Funeral arrangements were to be announced Wednesday.

"The American people will always admire Gerald Ford's devotion to duty, his personal character and the honorable conduct of his administration," President Bush said in a statement Tuesday night.

Former President Carter described him as "one of the most admirable public servants and human beings I have ever known."

Ford was an accidental president. A Michigan Republican elected to Congress 13 times before becoming the first appointed vice president in 1973 after Spiro Agnew left amid scandal, Ford was Nixon's hand-picked successor, a man of much political experience who had never run on a national ticket. He was as open and straightforward as Nixon was tightly controlled and conspiratorial.

He took office moments after Nixon resigned in disgrace over Watergate.

"My fellow Americans," Ford said, "our long national nightmare is over. Our Constitution works. Our great republic is a government of laws and not of men. Here the people rule."

And, true to his reputation as unassuming Jerry, he added: "I am acutely aware that you have not elected me as your president by your ballots. So I ask you to confirm me with your prayers."

He revived the debate over Watergate a month later by granting Nixon a pardon for all crimes he committed as president.

That single act, it was widely believed, contributed to Ford losing election to a term of his own in 1976. But it won praise in later years as a courageous act that allowed the nation to move on.

The Vietnam War ended in defeat for the U.S. during his presidency with the fall of Saigon in April 1975. In a speech as the end neared, Ford said: "Today, America can regain the sense of pride that existed before Vietnam. But it cannot be achieved by refighting a war that is finished as far as America is concerned." Evoking Abraham Lincoln, he said it was time to "look forward to an agenda for the future, to unify, to bind up the nation's wounds."

Ford was in the White House only 895 days, but changed it more than it changed him.

Even after two women tried separately to kill him, his presidency remained open and plain.

Not imperial. Not reclusive. And, of greatest satisfaction to a nation numbed by Watergate, not dishonest.

Even to millions of Americans who had voted two years earlier for Nixon, the transition to Ford's leadership was one of the most welcomed in the history of the democratic process — despite the fact that it occurred without an election.

After the Watergate ordeal, Americans liked their new president — and first lady Betty, whose candor charmed the country.

In a long congressional career in which he rose to be House Republican leader, Ford lit few fires. In the words of Congressional Quarterly, he "built a reputation for being solid, dependable and loyal — a man more comfortable carrying out the programs of others than in initiating things on his own."

When Agnew resigned in a bribery scandal in October 1973, Ford was one of four finalists to succeed him: Texan John Connally, New York's Nelson Rockefeller and California's Ronald Reagan.

"Personal factors enter into such a decision," Nixon recalled for a Ford biographer in 1991. "I knew all of the final four personally and had great respect for each one of them, but I had known Jerry Ford longer and better than any of the rest.

"We had served in Congress together. I had often campaigned for him in his district," Nixon continued. But Ford had something the others didn't: he would be easily confirmed by Congress, something that could not be said of Rockefeller, Reagan and Connally.

So Ford became the first vice president appointed under the 25th amendment to the Constitution.

On Aug. 9, 1974, after seeing Nixon off, Ford assumed the office. The next morning, he still made his own breakfast and padded to the front door in his pajamas to get the newspaper.

Said a ranking Democratic congressman: "Maybe he is a plodder, but right now the advantages of having a plodder in the presidency are enormous."

In 1976, he survived an intraparty challenge from Ronald Reagan only to lose to Democrat Jimmy Carter in November. In the campaign, he ignored Carter's record as governor of Georgia and concentrated on his own achievements as president.

Carter won 297 electoral votes to his 240. After Reagan came back to defeat Carter in 1980, the two former presidents became collaborators, working together on joint projects.

"His life-long dedication to helping others touched the lives of countless people," Carter said Wednesday. "He frequently rose above politics by emphasizing the need for bipartisanship and seeking common ground on issues critical to our nation."

At a joint session after becoming president, Ford addressed members of Congress as "my former colleagues" and promised "communication, conciliation, compromise and cooperation." But his relations with Congress did not always run smoothly.

He vetoed 66 bills in his barely two years as president. Congress overturned 12 Ford vetoes, more than for any president since Andrew Johnson.

In his memoir, "A Time to Heal," Ford wrote, "When I was in the Congress myself, I thought it fulfilled its constitutional obligations in a very responsible way, but after I became president, my perspective changed."

Some suggested the pardon was prearranged before Nixon resigned, but Ford, in an unusual appearance before a congressional committee in October 1974, said, "There was no deal, period, under no circumstances." The committee dropped its investigation.

Ford's standing in the polls dropped dramatically when he pardoned Nixon. But an ABC News poll taken in 2002 in connection with the 30th anniversary of the Watergate break-in found that six in 10 said the pardon was the right thing to do.

The late Democrat Clark Clifford spoke for many when he wrote in his memoirs, "The nation would not have benefited from having a former chief executive in the dock for years after his departure from office. His disgrace was enough."

The decision to pardon Nixon won Ford a John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award in 2001, and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (news, bio, voting record), acknowledging he had criticized Ford at the time, called the pardon "an extraordinary act of courage that historians recognize was truly in the national interest."

While Ford had not sought the job, he came to relish it. He had once told Congress that even if he succeeded Nixon he would not run for president in 1976. Within weeks of taking the oath, he changed his mind.

He was undaunted even after the two attempts on his life in September 1975. Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, a 26-year-old follower of Charles Manson, was arrested after she aimed a semiautomatic pistol at Ford on Sept. 5 in Sacramento, Calif. A Secret Service agent grabbed her and Ford was unhurt.

Seventeen days later, Sara Jane Moore, a 45-year-old political activist, was arrested in San Francisco after she fired a gun at the president. Again, Ford was unhurt.

Both women are serving life terms in federal prison.

Asked at a news conference to recite his accomplishments, Ford replied: "We have restored public confidence in the White House and in the executive branch of government."

As to his failings, he responded, "I will leave that to my opponents. I don't think there have been many."

In office, Ford's living tastes were modest. When he became vice president, he chose to remain in the same Alexandria, Va., home — unpretentious except for a swimming pool — that he shared with his family as a congressman.

After leaving the White House, however, he took up residence in the desert resort of Rancho Mirage, picked up $1 million for his memoir and another $1 million in a five-year NBC television contract, and served on a number of corporate boards. By 1987, he was on eight such boards, at fees up to $30,000 a year, and was consulting for others, at fees up to $100,000. After criticism, he cut back on such activity.

Ford spent most of his boyhood in Grand Rapids, Mich.

He was born Leslie King on July 14, 1913, in Omaha, Neb. His parents were divorced when he was less than a year old, and his mother returned to her parents in Grand Rapids, where she later married Gerald R. Ford Sr. He adopted the boy and renamed him.

Ford was a high school senior when he met his biological father. He was working in a Greek restaurant, he recalled, when a man came in and stood watching.

"Finally, he walked over and said, 'I'm your father,'" Ford said. "Well, that was quite a shock." But he wrote in his memoir that he broke down and cried that night and he was left with the image of "a carefree, well-to-do man who didn't really give a damn about the hopes and dreams of his firstborn son."

Ford played center on the University of Michigan's 1932 and 1933 national champion football teams. He got professional offers from the Detroit Lions and the Green Bay Packers, but chose to study law at Yale, working his way through as an assistant varsity football coach and freshman boxing coach.

Ford got his first exposure to national politics at Yale, working as a volunteer in Wendell L. Willkie's 1940 Republican campaign for president. After World War II service with the Navy in the Pacific, he went back to practicing law in Grand Rapids and became active in Republican reform politics.

His stepfather was the local Republican chairman, and Michigan Sen. Arthur H. Vandenberg was looking for a fresh young internationalist to replace the area's isolationist congressman.

Ford got twice as many votes as Rep. Bartel Jonkman in the Republican primary and then went on to win the election with 60.5 percent of the vote, the lowest margin he ever got.

He had proposed to Elizabeth Bloomer, a dancer and fashion coordinator, earlier that year, 1948. She became one of his hardest-working campaigners and they were married shortly before the election. They had three sons, Michael, John and Steven, and a daughter, Susan.

Ford was the last surviving member of the Warren Commission, which investigated the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963 and concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin.

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I wish very much that I had only kind memories of Mr. Ford, but I also remember that Gerald Ford was most probably part of a Republican power deal to keep Richard Nixon from being impeached and brought up on federal charges. The Nixon-Agnew administration was perhaps one of the most corrupt in US history. That Ford was an extended part of that corrupt regime is unfortunate. He was probably the most benign of US presidents in recent history. History will, of course, say only good things about Mr. Ford, and we all know that his wife, Betty, showed extreme courage by coming forward with her alcohol and drug dependency. The Betty Ford Clinic has been the salvation of many since then. Mr. Ford, I will just say that you were just caught in a bad situation and perhaps it wasn't fair to your abilities as a diplomat. Rest in peace.