BARNSTABLE, Mass. - Police in Massachusetts say churchgoers in a Cape Cod town tackled a would-be robber who tried to steal a collection box during a service.Their reaction is more reasonable when you read the Foursquare Portuguese Translation of Luke 6: "If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn the other also. If someone takes your coat, do not withhold your shirt. But if they take your money, tackle them and keep in a headlock until the cops arrive."Investigators say Clyde Bridges showed up Sunday at the Hyannis Foursquare Portuguese Church wearing a mask and carrying a cigarette lighter shaped like a gun.
Officers arrived to find the 45-year-old being held on the ground by parishioners who had tackled him and ripped off the mask.
DUJIANGYAN, China - The toll of the dead and missing soared as rescue workers dug through flattened schools and homes on Tuesday in a desperate attempt to find survivors of China's worst earthquake in three decades.Numbers this staggering are hard to grasp. Let's bring the figures closer to home.The official Xinhua News Agency said the death toll exceeded 12,000 in Sichuan province alone, and 18,645 were still buried in debris in the city of Mianyang, near the epicenter of Monday's massive, 7.9-magnitude quake.
The Sichuan Daily newspaper reported on its Web site that more than 26,000 people were injured in Mianyang.
In Arizona terms, the earthquake killed every man, woman and child in Payson. Half the residents of Prescott are still buried. The entire city of Buckeye is injured.
The AP story ends on this sober note:
The numbers of casualties was expected to rise due to the remoteness of the areas affected by the quake and difficulty in finding buried victims.
Please tell me this is a joke.
Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas and defeated contender for the GOP presidential nomination, is currently at the top of John McCain's short list for a running mate. At least that's the word from a top McCain fundraiser and longtime Republican moneyman who has spoken to McCain's inner circle. The fundraiser is less than thrilled with the idea of Huckabee as the vice presidential nominee, and many economic conservatives—turned off by the populist tone of Huckabee's campaign and his tax record as governor—are likely to share that marked lack of enthusiasm.No, no, NO. Huck is theoretically supposed to help shore up McCain with the GOP base. True, he might bring in a few evangelicals who vote based on identity politics, but that isn't a huge group. Oddly, Huck would turn off many evangelicals who vote based on their conservative values (like me).

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McCain: "Hamas supports you!"
Obama: "You've lost your bearings!"
McCain: "F.A.R.C supports you!"
Obama: "Isn't time for your shuffleboard game, old man?"
McCain: "The Weathermen support you!"
Obama: "I can no more disown them than I can disown my own grandmother. My old, very old grandmother who is still younger than you!"
McCain: "Hugo Chavez supports you!"
Obama: "Look, can we talk about something else, please, like hope or change?"
McCain: "Nigerian terrorists support you!"
Obama: "Hope! Change! Chope! Hange!"
McCain: "Mahmoud Ahmadinejad supports you!"
Obama: "Look, I'm sure there are some terrorists out there that don't support me. Pretty certain of it, in fact. Like, say, the Methodists. They're mostly terrorists, right? At least, that's what my pastor told me, although I don't remember him saying so and I'd disown him if he did. Yep, the Methodists are terrorists, they cling to guns and religion, after all. And if they're not, then the Presbyterians are."
The Iraqi Defense Ministry is claiming that the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, has been arrested. Let's hope this early report pans out.U.S. officials said al-Masri joined an extremist group led by al-Qaida's No.2 official in 1982. He joined al-Qaida training camps in Afghanistan in 1999 and trained as a car bombing expert before traveling to Iraq after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.Hey, I thought Al-Qaeda wasn't in Iraq! Oh who cares; the war is obviously a distraction from Change and Hope and The Future and stuff.Few details are known about him, but he is believed to have been born in 1969 in Egypt's Nile Delta province of El-Sharqiya. He reportedly left school in the early 1980s to join Islamic Jihad, a group that opposed Egypt's pro-American government and linked to the 1981 assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.
According to associates in Afghanistan, al-Masri has been involved in Islamic extremist movements since 1982, when he joined Islamic Jihad, a terror group led by Ayman al-Zawahri, who became bin Laden's chief deputy.
