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Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito (C) listens to a question from ranking Democrat Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) (R) as Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-PA) looks on during tAlito’s confirmation hearings on Capitol Hill, January 10, 2006.

U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy (news, bio, voting record) of Vermont, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, announced his opposition on Thursday to Supreme Court nominee
Samuel Alito.

What a surprise.

Leahy charged that President George W. Bush’s 55-year-old conservative candidate failed to demonstrate at last week’s confirmation hearing that he would bring a needed independence to the nation’s highest court.

“At a time when the president is seizing unprecedented power, the Supreme Court needs to act as a check and to provide balance,” Leahy said in a speech prepared for delivery at Georgetown University Law Center.

“I have no confidence that Judge Alito would provide that check and balance,” Leahy said. “I cannot support this nomination.”

What an EXCUSE.

Leahy couldn’t devise a rationale for denying Judge Alito’s confirmation.

How pathetic……

Stay tuned for more Morons from the Democrat LEFT demonizing Justice Alito……

Previous:

Samuel Alito Watch: Democrat Senator WILL Vote for Confirmation

Michael Ramirez on Samuel Alito Confirmation Hearings

Samuel Alito Watch: Democrats Force One Week Delay in Senate Judiciary Committee Vote

Samuel Alito Watch: Senator Dianne Feinstein Warns Against Filibuster

Technorati Tags: SamuelAlito, PatrickLeahy, SupremeCourt

** FILE ** Exiled Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden is seen in this April 1998 file photo in Afghanistan. Al-Jazeera aired an audiotape purportedly from Osama bin Laden on Thursday, Jan. 19, 2006, saying al-Qaida is making preparations for attacks in the United States but offering a truce to rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan. (AP Photo)

Michelle Malkin: AP: TERRORIST=DISSIDENT

You have to be kidding me!

The link to the photo is here.

A summary page link on Yahoo! is here.

Technorati Tags: AlQaeda, OsamaBinLaden, AP, AssociatedPress, Yahoo, MichelleMalkin

U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., speaks as she delivers a policy address Wednesday, Jan, 18, 2006, at Princeton University in Princeton, N.J. Clinton called for United Nations sanctions against Iran as it resumes its nuclear program and faulted the Bush administration for ‘downplaying’ the threat. Iran resumed nuclear research in a move Tehran claims is for energy, not weapons.

DailyPrincetonian: Sen. Clinton calls for sanctions against Iran

Repeatedly referring to a need for “new vision and leadership” in U.S. policy toward the Middle East, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) called Wednesday for United Nations sanctions against Iran and further global advances in women’s rights, and urged optimism for a peaceful resolution to the Israel-Palestine conflict.

“We cannot and should not — must not — permit Iran to build or acquire nuclear weapons,” Clinton said in a speech before a capacity crowd in Richardson Auditorium. (See full text.) “In order to prevent that from occurring, we must have more support vigorously and publicly expressed by China and Russia, and we must move as quickly as feasible for sanctions in the United Nations.”

Though never mentioning President Bush by name, Clinton strongly criticized the current administration’s policy toward Iran. “I believe that we lost critical time in dealing with Iran because the White House chose to downplay the threats and to outsource the negotiations,” Clinton said.

Tough talk from Hillary but is she serious? The Bush administration has NOT downplayed the Iranian nuclear threat and certainly is NOT outsourcing the negotiations as demonstrated by the numerous Iran nuclear watch posts on Flap’s blog.

Her husband, the former President has recommended a diplomatic course of action since 2004.

CBS News: Clinton Urges Diplomacy For Iran

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton urged the Bush administration Thursday to stick to diplomacy to get Iran to abandon its nuclear program, which the United States and other countries fear is part of a plan to make nuclear weapons.

Clinton also said that even if Iran developed such weapons, it would find it tough to use them.

“If they ever use them, they’ll be toast,” the former U.S. president said in a freewheeling, 90-minute appearance at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum.

As Clinton spoke, John Bolton, the State Department’s top international security official, set off to confer with leaders of Kuwait, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates on Iran and its nuclear program.

“We ought to give a vigorous push to diplomacy. We must exhaust all reasonable diplomatic activities,” said Clinton.

The speech is BLUSTER from Hillary, playing up to her Israeli constituency in New York and California.

Clinton also criticized recent remarks by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that questioned Israel’s right to exist and described the Holocaust as a “myth.” Ahmadinejad “is moving to create his own nuclear reality in line with his despicable rewriting of history,” she said.

President Bush is on a prudent, measured course of action with Iran and Hillary Clinton has added nothing to the discourse.

U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., is greeted by S. Daniel Abraham, benefactor of a chair in Middle Eastern studies, Wednesday, Jan, 18, 2006, at Princeton University in Princeton, N.J. Clinton offered her views on how the United States should deal with tensions in the Middle East to an audience from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University.

Michelle Malkin covers the speech: HILLARY’S NEW COSTUME

Technorati Tags: HillaryClinton, Iran, IranNuclearWatch, JohnBolton, BillClinton, UnitedNations

Drudge is reporting: Al-Jazeera has aired an audiotape purportedly from Osama bin Laden, saying al-Qaida is making preparations for attacks in the United States — but offering a truce to rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan…. MORE…

Developing……

Update #1

**Bin Laden Offers Truce in Purported Tape
**Al-Jazeera aired audiotape, saying al-Qaida is making preparations for attacks in USA
**Offers truce to rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan
**Says heightened security measures are not reason there have been no attacks 9/11
**'Operations that need preparations, and you will see them'

Michelle Malkin and the Counterterrorism blog are on the story.

Technorati Tags: AlQaeda, OsamaBinLaden, Al-Jazeera, Iraq, Afghanistan

BBC News: Dentist let partner drill teeth

Mogjan Azari allowed her lover Omid Amidi-Mazaheri to work on more than 600 patients, leaving many in agony.

He drilled out cavities without local anaesthetic and installed expensive fillings that crumbled within days.

The pair charged the NHS for the bungled work and other non-existent procedures and are believed to have made £120,000 from the scam.

Dentistry in the United Kingdom has certainly had its problems this past year. The National Health Service has failed and dentists are running from being participants, the British Labour government of Tony Blair is importing dentists from Poland and other countries to treat patients in the socialized NHS, and British citizens are waiting in long lines for dental care (to register for an NHS dentist) or failing to find a dentist to treat them for a basic emergency.

Now, this scandal.

The Scotsman: Patients warned of HIV risk from bogus dentist

HUNDREDS of former patients of a failed asylum seeker who posed as a dentist to con tens of thousands of pounds out of the NHS are being contacted by health officials amid fears that they may have contracted HIV.

More than 600 people treated by Omid Amidi-Mazaheri, who posed as a specialist performing complex dental operations without qualifications, have been sent letters urging them to get blood tests to confirm whether his practice has spread HIV or hepatitis B and C.

Jay Leno on last night’s Tonight Show even had a joke about British dentists, asking “Do they have them?”

Amidi-Mazaheri, 41, an Iranian national, was jailed for two years in March this year at Southwark Crown Court for defrauding the NHS out of at least £120,000.

The former lab technician arrived in the UK in 1998 and began working in a south London dental surgery in 2002.

Medical experts stressed to Amidi-Mazaheri’s former patients that there was only a “small” risk of infection, but they warned that because he might not have followed infection control procedures, it could not be ruled out. Croydon, Lambeth and Southwark primary care trusts in south London have employed a team of NHS dentists, counsellors and nurses to carry out the tests and perform any reparatory dental work needed.

During his two-year charade, Amidi-Mazaheri carried out dental work at practices in Norbury, Tulse Hill and East Dulwich in south London. His catalogue of lies and deceit was finally uncovered following a joint operation between NHS fraud investigators and detectives from Scotland Yard’s Economic Crime Unit.

Amidi-Mazaheri used syringes, probes and drills to treat patients even though he was not trained or qualified. Patients giving evidence during his trial told how his fillings would crumble within days and how he would clumsily drop surgical instruments down their throats while they were being treated.

The police investigation initially centred on Mogjan Azari, 38, a fully-trained Swedish dentist who ran a string of dental practices in south London. It was Azari who first employed Amidi-Mazaheri and he began treating patients in April 2002. Within weeks he was filling cavities and carrying out complex root canal work. The proceeds of his fraudulent work were split 50-50, allowing Azari to inflate her earnings to £500,000 a year.

In April 2003, Amidi-Mazaheri poached one of Azari’s dentists, Johannes Kidane, and set about acquiring his own practice in south London, where he once more worked on unsuspecting patients.

However, detectives had launched Operation Immanuel, suspecting Azari of making bogus claims for NHS funds from her practices.

Azari, 38, a mother of one, wept as she was jailed for a year in March. Amidi-Mazaheri was sentenced to 12 months in prison for two counts of obtaining money by deception while working with Azari and a further year for three counts of obtaining money by deception while working at Mr Kidane’s former practice.

And the poor patients?

The British Dental Association working with the government should step in to assure the public that licensing and dental practice is up to international standards.

The British government should work with dentistry to set standards, licensing and financing schemes that will ease the transition of a socialized dental system to a private one.

Previous:


Dentistry Today: Many Dentists “Set to Quit NHS”

NHS Dentistry Watch: Poll Says Dentists Will Still Quit

NHS Dentistry Watch: More Dentists Now, More Dentists Later

NHS Dentistry Watch: Dentists Reject £295 million Scottish Executive Deal

Dentistry Today: NHS Dentistry Near Collapse?

NHS Dentistry Watch: Disaster Warning

National Health Service Watch: The Doctors Complain

NHS Dentistry Watch: Do It Yourself Extraction

Related:

Will dentist reforms make a difference?

Blair ‘powerless over dentists’

NHS dentists ‘disaster’ warning

Shake-up of NHS dentistry planned

Q&A: Dentist reforms

Technorati Tags: dentistry, dentist, dental, NHS, NationalHealthService, teeth, tooth, bogusdentist, UnitedKingdom

Flap:

Hillary Clinton Watch: Laura Bush – Plantation Remarks “Ridiculous”

Technorati Tags: DaybyDay, ChrisMuir, HillaryClinton, Plantation