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AUSTIN, Texas -- Jeez, that was quite a hissy fit Tom DeLay had, calling Ronnie Earle a rogue prosecutor, a partisan fanatic and an unabashed partisan zealot out for personal revenge.

Ronnie Earle? Our very own mild-mannered -- well, let's be honest, bland as toast, eternally unexciting, Mr. Understatement, Old Vanilla -- Ronnie Earle? If the rest of Tom DeLay's defense is as accurate as his description of Ronnie Earle, DeLay might as well have himself measured for a white jumpsuit right now.

For the one-zillionth time, of the 15 cases Ronnie Earle has brought against politicians over the years, 12 of them were against Democrats. Earle was so aggressive in going after corrupt Democrats, the Republicans never even put up a candidate against him all during the '80s. Partisan is not a word anyone can honestly use about Ronnie Earle, but that sure doesn't stop the TV blabbermouths. So many of them have bought the Republican spin that Earle is on a partisan witch-hunt, the watchdogs like Media Matters can hardly keep up.

Dear Editor,

Various bird and puppy “fairs” are scheduled to be held at a few hotels in Ohio, during which hundreds of animals will be sold.  There are a couple ethical reasons why this is a bad idea.  First, for every animal bred to be sold, an animal at an animal shelter dies.  An estimated 5 million animals, many of whom are wholly adoptable, are euthanized annually in the United States for lack of good homes (so therefore, there can be no excuse for the breeding and selling of animals or the promoting of the same!).  Second, animals suffer greatly in the greedy pet trade business.  Furthermore, many of the animals bred for sale are very unhealthy.  For more information on the pet trade, go to the website of The Humane Society of the United States at www.hsus.org.  

Even after these issues have been brought to light to Holiday Inn Columbus, they still will not cancel these awful pet “fairs.”  Other hotels in Ohio that are holding this fair are the Ramada Plaza in Cincinnati, Holiday Inn Cleveland-West, Holiday Inn Metroplex in Girard, and the Toledo Plaza Hotel.

Sincerely,

It's one thing to lie in politics. It's another to be caught in a lie. Bill Frist has been caught in a lie. His political future is over. The immediate question is, can he survive as Majority Leader?

The Tennessee Republican claims he wasn’t privy to any inside information leading up to the sale of his stock in Hospital Corporation of America (HCA), the country’s largest for-profit hospital chain founded by Frist’s father, Thomas, and brother, Thomas Jr., weeks before the company reported lower than expected earnings July 13 that sent the stock south.

Now the Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating the matter, a spokesman for the senator said last week, to determine if Frist broke any laws.

Frist’s press secretary told the Washington Post last week that Frist decided to sell his stock to eliminate any appearance of a conflict-of-interest due to his work in the senate in shaping the nation’s healthcare policies. So, the senator’s spokesman said, Frist drafted a letter to Northern Trust and Equitable Trust in Nashville June 13 advising them to sell all of his stock in HCA, as well as his wife and children’s investments in the company.

Washington, D.C. – In a pre-dawn civil disobedience action Monday morning, 41 War Resisters League members and others sat down and were arrested at a pedestrian entrance to the Pentagon, slowing foot traffic at that location and prompting officials to close the U.S. military headquarters’ sole stop on Washington’s Metroline for a period.

Protesters, including Elizabeth McAllister and her daughter, Frieda Berrigan, Susan Crane, Ken Crowley and others with a long history of peace activism and arrests for civil disobedience, leafleted or sat down to block people from entering Entrance Three of the sprawling U.S. military command.

In one group of six, Crane repeated to the backed-up line of civilians and military personnel waiting at the security checkpoint, “Remember the innocent victims in Iraq.” Another protester urged officers to think about what they were doing and “resign your commissions.”

With each month that passes, the Democratic Party seems to have touched bottom. Then it promptly sinks even deeper into the ooze of cowardice and irrelevance.

While Interstate 45 from Galveston to Houston was clogged with evacuees fleeing the wrath of Hurricane Rita, there was a similar jam on the beltway round Washington, D.C., as Democrats fled the city on the eve on the Sept. 24 antiwar rally, panic-stricken lest their presence in Washington might somehow be construed as endorsement of the rally's antiwar message.

Here's a war that the voting population of the United States views a hostility that is soaring by the day. The latest CNN poll released on Sept. 26 shows 67 percent disapproving of Bush's Iraq strategy. This represents a jump of 10 percent holding this position since CNN ran its last poll, less than a month ago.

More than half CNN's latest sample declare that Iraq will never become a democracy; 63 percent want to see a pull-out start right now.

AUSTIN, Texas -- The Big Whew blew over Texas, leaving Port Arthur underwater and whole lot of stress across the state. It is highly stressful to be in a car with two adults, three children, the dog and the cat for a 12-to-20 hour trip from Houston to Austin, Dallas or San Antonio. It is also stressful to have two adults, three children, their dog and their cat move into your 1,200-square-foot house with you, especially if your sister-in-law thinks anyone who criticizes George W. Bush is a tool of Satan.

Stress-sensitive groups like Alcoholics Anonymous were doing land-office business in Texas this weekend, while bartenders served up the KatrinaRita. Austin, of course, was also having a music festival and offering free yoga and aromatherapy sessions to hurricane refugees. Austin musicians have adopted New Orleans musicians en masse: You're practically no one if you haven't got a Neville in your guest room.

The refugees trade tales of heroism and generosity, along with reports of the bad and the ugly. That's human nature, but there's nothing forgivable about organized government corruption.

NEW ORLEANS -- I got out of our truck and approached the four cops standing in front of the Hwy 11 bridge over Lake Pontchartrain. The bridge, which leads to New Orleans, was five miles across Lake Pontchartrain, five miles of Hurricane Rita flexing her muscles far out in the gulf, with blasting winds up to 90 mph. The bridge was secured to all traffic except military and police. My driver and colleague, Jacob, shook his head forlornly as we approached the road block; his blond afro seemed to droop in disappointment as the Louisiana State Trooper walked up to us.

“Bridge is closed. Don’t y’all listen to the radio? No one gets across.”

I waved my press badge at him, and said we needed to get to New Orleans to cover the storm. The trooper asked me to get out and tell my story to the other four cops waiting by the cars. Their eyes all snapped immediately to the Czech military pistol I was wearing in a holster on my hip.

“What in the hell is that?”

PEARL RIVER, LA - Despite the resignation of under qualified former FEMA director Michael D. Brown and the subsequent appointment of Coast Guard Vice Admiral Thad Allen, residents of coastal Louisiana are vocally dissatisfied with the federal agency’s performance in the post-Katrina Mississippi Delta. I spoke with Jennifer Pulsifer, as she sat next to me at three in the morning, trying to get through the formidable busy signal presented to Red Cross callers day and night. My “office”, a ramshackle shed partially crushed by a large tree and swarming with giant, belligerent cockroaches and violent clouds of mosquitoes, is one of the few places in the neighborhood with a working phone. Locals come by at all hours of the night to place calls to various relief agencies. Nearly every call I’ve overheard has been frustrated with busy signals and off-putting messages.

Pulsifer remarks, “Come tax time they want your money, but right after a disaster they don’t want to help you out. Unless you left the state; then they’ll hand you a check if you’re in another state.”

Jennifer applied to FEMA for financial aid, but ran into difficulties.