It's Craptastic!

US Justice Dept. Seeks Hundreds of Medical RecordsThe U.S. Justice Department has subpoenaed Planned Parenthood for the confidential medical records of hundreds of women as part of its defense against challenges to a federal law that bans a type of late-term abortion, the family planning organization said on Thursday.
Attorney General John Ashcroft said this month the records were needed to find out whether the procedure, called "partial birth abortion" by its critics, was medically necessary.

Advocates for immigrants, and more than two dozen Democrats in Congress, criticized the Bush administration on Thursday for continuing to return Haitian migrants to a country in turmoil as government officials warned that the number of Haitians taking to the seas had begun to surge.

Coast Guard officials said they had picked up 695 Haitians at sea this month, including a freighter carrying 21 Haitians that was stopped seven miles off Miami on Wednesday.
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Government officials say they plan to continue deporting illegal immigrants and those caught at sea, saying the overwhelming majority of Haitian migrants are fleeing poverty, not political repression.
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President Bush said Wednesday that American officials would "turn back any refugee that attempts to reach our shore" from Haiti.

An Illinois couple is filing suit against the federal government, arguing it is unconstitutional to prevent them from buying cheaper prescription drugs from Canada.

Ray and Gaylee Andrews, both 74, pay as much as $800 each month for prescriptions for ailments that include arthritis, high blood pressure, heart and stomach problems, and asthma.
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With the backing of Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, the Andrewses are suing the Department of Health and Human Services and the Food and Drug Administration, seeking to overturn the federal law prohibiting Americans from importing cheaper prescription drugs. They say they could save more than $300 every month if they were allowed to purchase prescription drugs from Canada.

Illinois is one of a number of states pushing for drug importation. Two states, Wisconsin and Minnesota, now have Web sites directing citizens to Canadian pharmacies. The FDA has threatened legal action against cities and states helping people import Canadian drugs.

The agency argues it cannot guarantee the safety of imported drugs.

On the eve of the release of a nationwide study of sex abuse in the Roman Catholic Church, the Boston archdiocese said yesterday that 162 of its priests -- 7 percent of all who have served since 1950 -- have been accused of molesting minors, and that it has spent $120 million to settle related lawsuits.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In a blow to the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks, the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives has told the White House and fellow Republicans that he will not bring up legislation to extend its May 27 deadline, officials said on Wednesday.

President Bush's chief of staff, Andrew Card, personally had appealed to Speaker Dennis Hastert to reconsider, and the Illinois Republican met on Wednesday with Bush at the White House.

But the speaker's spokesman, John Feehery, said Hastert told the White House and members of the House Republican conference that "it's a bad idea to extend the commission and ... that we're not going to bring any legislation up."
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The commission says it needs the extra 60 days to complete hundreds of interviews and review millions of documents.

It issued a public appeal on Wednesday to Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney to reconsider their opposition to meeting with the full panel.

National security adviser Condoleezza Rice has also refused to testify publicly on the grounds she is a presidential adviser and not a Senate-confirmed Cabinet officer.

Bush and Cheney have only agreed to meet privately with commission chairman Thomas Kean and vice chairman Lee Hamilton, rather than with the full, 10-member panel.

In contrast, former President Bill Clinton and former Vice President Al Gore have agreed to meet privately with all members of the commission, the panel said.

Modern-day slavery is alive and well in Florida, the head of a human rights center said Tuesday as it released a report on people forced to work as prostitutes, farmworkers and maids across the state.

Human traffickers bring thousands of people into the United States each year and Florida is believed to be one of the top three destinations, along with New York and Texas, according to the Center for the Advancement of Human Rights at Florida State University.

"History I believe furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance, of which their political as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purpose." -Thomas Jefferson

"In a free government the security for civil rights must be the same as that for religious rights" - James Madison

"The clergy, by getting themselves established by law and ingrafted into the machine of government, have been a very formidable engine against the civil and religious rights of man." -Thomas Jefferson

"The liberty I contend for is more than toleration. The very idea of toleration is despicable; it supposes that some have a pre-eminence above the rest to grant indulgence; whereas all should be equally free..." -John Leland

"Thirteen governments thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretence of miracle or mystery, and which are destined to spread over the northern part of that whole quarter of the globe, are a great point gained in favor of the rights of mankind." - John Adams

"In every country and every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own. It is easier to acquire wealth and power by this combination than by deserving them, and to effect this, they have perverted the purest religion ever preached to man into mystery and jargon, unintelligible to all mankind, and therefore the safer for their purposes." -Thomas Jefferson

Will federal student loans and Trade Adjustment Assistance grants be applied to tuition
costs at Burger College?
Will the administration commit to allowing the Manufacturing Extension Partnership
(MEP) to fund cutting edge burger research such as new nugget ingredients or keeping the
hot and cold sides of burgers separate until consumption?
Will special sauce now be counted as a durable good?
Do you want fries with that?

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Education Secretary Rod Paige called the National Education Association a "terrorist organization" Monday as he argued that the country's largest teachers union often acts at odds with the wishes of rank-and-file teachers regarding school standards and accountability.