The Israeli cabinet voted Sunday to limit talks even with moderate Palestinian officials to shared security and humanitarian concerns, ruling out a formal peace process until the new Palestinian government recognizes Israel and renounces violence.
 
In officially rejecting the Palestinian unity government that was sworn in over the weekend, the cabinet also stated that "Israel expects the international community to maintain the policy it has taken over the past year of isolating the Palestinian government."

The vote was unanimous, with two cabinet members from the Labor Party, including the only Arab minister, abstaining.

"This is a government that does not accept the conditions of the international community," Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said.

The new Palestinian cabinet includes rival political parties and has pledged to respect previous agreements that recognize Israel, unlike the previous cabinet in office since the radical Islamic movement Hamas took control of the government nearly a year ago.

But it continues to be led by Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas, and its political program falls short of renouncing violence and explicitly recognizing Israel, the conditions for resumption of foreign aid.

Most international donors cut off economic aid after Palestinian voters chose Hamas to run the Palestinian Authority in January 2006.

Unemployment and poverty have increased in the territories since then, and about 130 Palestinians have been killed over the past year in a violent power struggle between Hamas and the rival Fatah movement.

For a second consecutive day, thousands of protesters flowed through the streets of several cities Sunday to call for an end to the funding of the Iraq war or the immediate return of U.S. troops.

Demonstrators converged in San Francisco, New York, Portland, Ore., and elsewhere to mark the fourth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq and call on President Bush to heed what they said was the will of the people.

In largely peaceful demonstrations, about 3,000 people in San Francisco closed Market Street; in New York, more than 1,000 protesters converged in a park near the U.N. headquarters.

Dozens of police in San Francisco on foot and motorcycle blocked traffic and kept an eye on the crowd, which stretched for blocks through the financial district. No arrests were reported by late Sunday afternoon.

"I'm reserving judgment on that, until we finish the inquiry," Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., ranking GOP member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, on "Fox News Sunday."

"I think it's highly unlikely he survives," remarked Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., during an interview with NBC's "Meet the Press." "I wouldn't be surprised if a week from now, he's no longer attorney general. … Instead of just being the president's lawyer who rubber stamps everything the White House wants, he has a role as attorney general as the chief law enforcement officer of the land without fear or favor."

On Monday, the Justice Department is expected to release more documents detailing the role Gonzales, Justice Department officials and the White House played in the firings.

On Tuesday, the White House is expected to announce whether it will allow former White House counsel Harriet Miers and Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove to testify before Congress.

If they don't, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary committee promises subpoenas.

"I want testimony under oath," Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said on "This Week." "I am sick and tired of getting half-truths on this."

U.S. attorneys serve at the pleasure of the president. But the Bush administration got itself into trouble by claiming the dismissals were solely performance-related. The White House did not disclose its own involvement until e-mails surfaced suggesting political loyalty may have played a role.

Hogan & Hartson LLP announced today the addition of Man Chiu Lee to the firm’s corporate and securities practice. He joins as a partner in Hong Kong.

Proficient in Chinese, Man Chiu Lee is an experienced corporate transactions and U.S. securities lawyer. His practice covers a broad range of transactions, including securities offerings, cross-border mergers and acquisitions, private equity and venture capital investments, and general corporate and banking matters in Hong Kong, the United States, and Japan.

“Man Chiu Lee complements our strengths in serving private equity and venture capital clients investing in fast growing and high-tech companies in China, and our ability to assist Chinese issuers accessing the international markets,” said Mao Tong, co-managing partner of the firm's Hong Kong office. “We believe our clients will benefit by having additional lawyers with strong capital markets and M&A skills.”

”We are pleased to have Man Chiu Lee join our China practice, which has grown steadily over the past four years and now includes six resident partners and one counsel in our offices in China,” said Steve Robinson, co-managing partner of each of the firm’s offices in China.

Commenting on his arrival, Man Chiu Lee said, “I look forward to working with my new colleagues to continue to establish Hogan & Hartson as one of the leading corporate and capital market law firms in China.”

Man Chiu Lee earned his law degree from Georgetown University and his bachelor’s degree in economics from Harvard University. He is admitted to practice in New York and New Jersey.

About Hogan & Hartson
Hogan & Hartson is an international law firm with more than 1,000 lawyers practicing in offices on four continents. The firm’s broad-based international practice cuts across virtually all legal disciplines and industries.

Through the firm’s exclusive association with Gordon Ng & Co., a Hong Kong law firm, Hogan & Hartson is able to provide clients with a full range of local and international legal advice.

In addition to Hong Kong, Hogan & Hartson has offices in Baltimore, Beijing, Berlin, Boulder, Brussels, Caracas, Colorado Springs, Denver, Geneva, London, Los Angeles, Miami, Moscow, Munich, New York, Northern Virginia, Paris, Shanghai, Tokyo, Warsaw, and Washington, D.C.

For more information about the firm, visit www.hhlaw.com.

LAX was reportedly in close competition with a New York airport over the behemoths plane's debut.

"We're planning for the largest turnout since the Concorde came in 1974," said Paul Haney, deputy executive director of airports and security for Los Angeles World Airports.

Various airlines have said they plan to begin using the huge, 555-seat planes for commercial travel within the next few years. Because it can hold so many passengers, the plane is expected to lower flight costs.

The lawyer for a man convicted of killing Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl said Sunday he will file an appeal using an al-Qaida lieutenant's recent confession that he beheaded the reporter.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who has claimed that he planned the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, claimed at a U.S. military hearing at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, that he personally beheaded Pearl for being an Israeli intelligence agent.

"I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew, Daniel Pearl, in the city of Karachi, Pakistan," Mohammed told a military panel, according to a Pentagon transcript released Thursday. "For those who would like to confirm, there are pictures of me on the Internet holding his head."

In 2002, an anti-terrorism court in Karachi sentenced Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, a British-born militant, to death and gave three other men life in prison for involvement in Pearl's killing.

Rai Bashir a lawyer for Sheikh and the other three men said on Sunday that he will study the Pentagon documents on Mohammed's claim and file his confession as evidence to prove Sheikh's innocence.

"He has not abducted Daniel Pearl, and he, along with his co-accused, is innocent ... But now we are happy that this version has been verified by the Pentagon after the arrest of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed," Bashir told AP Television News in a separate interview on Saturday.

Pearl was abducted in January 2002 in Karachi while he was researching a story on Islamic militancy. Months after his abduction, the journalist's body, his throat slit, was found in a shallow ditch in a compound on the outskirts of the city.

Sheikh and the three others _ Salman Saqib, Fahad Naseem and Sheikh Adil _ are in jail and have appealed their convictions.

"What we were saying for so many years in our trial, in the appeal, (is) that Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh is innocent and he has not committed that murder," Bashir said in the interview from the eastern city of Lahore.

Judge Laurence H. Silberman has written a landmark legal decision using the Second Amendment to overturn the DC gun ban. No court has ever used the Second Amendment to overthrow a gun law. The case is known as Parker v. District of Columbia.

With the overturn of the DC gun ban, the very restrictive law on the books before the 1976 ban is once again the law in D.C. But, people can at least once again buy a handgun and keep it in their house.

Judge Silberman’s decision provides a platform for the next challenge to other anti-gun laws in the District. No doubt that is what especially troubles the socialist politicians of the District. The thought of citizens empowered to protect themselves and not having to rely on the ineffective protection offered by the government terrorizes them.

Think about it – if people can protect themselves, they might start thinking for themselves. Isn’t that what is “wrong” with flyover country?

These are some of the highlights of the decision:

“[t]he Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms.”

“The individual right facilitated militia service by ensuring that citizens would not be barred from keeping the arms they would need when called forth for militia duty.”

“Despite the importance of the Second Amendment’s civic purpose, however, the activities it protects are not limited to militia service, nor is an individual’s enjoyment of the right contingent upon his or her continued or intermittent enrollment in the militia.”
“With ‘a free State,’ we understand the framers to have been referring to republican government generally.”

“[t]he bar on carrying a pistol within the home [and the requirement to keep it disassembled] amounts to a complete prohibition on the lawful use of handguns for self-defense. As such, we hold it unconstitutional.”

Let me go back and expand on a couple of points in the list above. Silberman showed that the militia was compulsory, requiring men to enroll much as the Selective Service had men register for the draft. Fines were assessed on those who did NOT have their own militia guns, ammunition for them, and keep them in good repair. House to house searches were even conducted to insure that individuals were keeping, and thus able to bear, arms.

The word “state” in the Second Amendment is found this way: “A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” “State” was the word seized upon by anti-gunners to develop a novel theory (in the latter part of the 20th Century) that militias, and thus gun ownership, were strictly a matter of state privilege. Silberman showed that the founders’ use of the term “free State” was a reference to preserving limited, constitutional government – otherwise known as a republican form of government.

In other words, individual gun ownership was seen as essential to preserving individual liberty. Government is not, and was not, the source of those liberties because they predated the creation of the United States by its Constitution.

Justice Silberman is owed a debt of thanks from all Americans, because his opinion has gone a long way to clearing away the confusion around gun ownership and placing it in the proper context: no guns, no freedom.

It should be pointed out that all Silberman’s decision could do was throw out the DC gun ban of 1976. That was all the plaintiffs were able to challenge in court. However, all the prior registration and licensing laws are now fair game for challenge on the grounds that they also violate – “infringe,” to use the Second Amendment word – the individual right to keep and bear arms.

Congress has – and has had all along – the constitutional responsibility for legislation in DC. They can delegate that to the DC City Council, but they cannot remove themselves from the constitutional requirement that they be the final authority for legislation governing the federal enclave.

The elitists in DC are hardly likely to want to clean up the rest of their anti-gun, anti-self defense mess that is still on the books following the Parker decision. Their priorities can be clearly seen by contrasting their reaction to two events.

DC officials are outraged by the Parker decision. They are accusing the justices of judicial activism. The way to understand their double speak is this: A (rare) decision base on and upholding a constitutional principal is viewed by the socialists as activism. A liberal decision that assumes that judges can amend a “living” constitution is “settled law.”

Those same DC officials were totally unconcerned, however, when plaintiff Shelly Parker was being attacked in her home. She wanted to sue the District to get rid of the handgun ban because drug dealers in her neighborhood had tried to break into her home. When they did, one of them shouted: “I will kill you! And I live on this block, too.” Perhaps DC officials are afraid that the thug might have been shot if Ms. Parker had a gun?

It seems more than our elite rulers can understand. They have 24/7 police protection – armed police protection. They experience no crime problem. So, why should the rest of us need a gun?

Since the DC officials are not likely to “get it” regarding the problem the rest of us have with crime, Congress needs to step up to the plate and exercise its constitutional responsibility. Congress should get rid of the pre-ban gun control laws in DC and legislate a concealed carry law similar to the one in neighboring Virginia. I would like to see there be no permit required at all, as is the case now in Vermont and Alaska, but at least a fairly workable law such as Virginia’s would be a big step forward.

If DC residents could legally carry concealed firearms (the way crooks are already doing illegally), watch for crime to plummet. The only people who would really suffer from getting rid of the rest of DC’s gun laws would be the crooks.

Well, there would be some gnashing of teeth heard from City Hall, too.