Christopher Hitchens has reached an endorsement by process of elimination. John McCain, he writes, isn’t up to the job, while “the only public events that have so far featured his absurd choice of running mate have shown her to be a deceiving and unscrupulous woman utterly unversed in any of the needful political discourses but easily trained to utter preposterous lies and to appeal to the basest element of her audience.”

In 1992 Paul Wolfowitz, then the under secretary of defense for policy, presided over the drafting of a 46-page document called the Defense Planning Guidance. It was essentially a blueprint for American unilateral dominance in the post-cold-war era and created such a furor that Defense Secretary Dick Cheney had to withdraw its most extreme provisions. Read one way, the document looks like a dress rehearsal for the bellicose policies pursued a decade later by the Bush administration. But looked at another way, it also seems like a valuable window into Cheney’s operational code.

An Associated Press review of the Republican vice presidential candidate's record as mayor and governor reveals her use of elected office to promote religious causes, sometimes at taxpayer expense and in ways that blur the line between church and state.

Since she took state office in late 2006, the governor and her family have spent more than $13,000 in taxpayer funds to attend at least 10 religious events and meetings with Christian pastors, including Franklin Graham, the son of evangelical preacher Billy Graham, records show.

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A former White House official was indicted again on charges of obstruction and making false statements in an investigation into his dealings with the disgraced former lobbyist Jack Abramoff. In June, an appeals court overturned the June 2006 conviction of the former official, David H. Safavian, on charges of lying and obstructing justice and ordered a new trial.

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