CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) – Venezuela’s vice president derided Sen. John McCain for suggesting that “wackos” run the South American country, saying Monday that the United States should focus on its own problems.

Jose Vicente Rangel was responding to McCain’s statement on Sunday that America must explore alternative energy sources to avoid depending on Iran or “wackos” in Venezuela – apparently a reference to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

“It looks like they have nothing else to do in the United States,” Rangel said, adding that the Americans have “so many problems, 40 million poor people, 30 million drug users, and an American senator is paying attention to us. He can go to hell.”
wkrc.com

Chavez says end is near for U.S. “empire”
La Paz, Jan 23 (EFE).- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said here Monday that what he describes as the U.S. empire is nearing its end.

“The empire has entered the phase of desperation, like a vampire who sees dawn approaching and realizes that he still has not sucked enough blood,” the outspoken leftist said in a long speech after receiving an honorary degree from San Andres University in La Paz.

ANNAPOLIS — Democratic lawmakers, who have long pushed to restore voting rights to Maryland felons, say racial politics and election-year considerations make this the year they open the polls to every ex-convict.

“This law seriously disenfranchises a large number of African-Americans,” said Delegate Salima Siler Marriott, a black Baltimore Democrat who is gathering sponsors for a voting-rights restoration bill she plans to submit.
washtimes.com

One of the Supreme Court’s more ardent protectors of the Bill of Rights was William O. Douglas, who, in 1976, responding to a speaking invitation from young lawyers in Washington state, cautioned them that the Constitution and the Bill of Rights “are not self-executing… As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression… There’s twilight… and it is in such twilight that we must be aware of change in the air, lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness.”

Justice Douglas’ warning was quoted in the Jan. 3 issue of Port Folio Weekly, a community-based newspaper in Norfolk, covering southeast Virginia. (The publication prints several syndicated columns, including mine.) In his editorial, “Twilight in America,” Port Folio editor Tom Robotham noted that by no means is the darkness immediately at hand. “We continue,” he wrote, “to enjoy unprecedented freedoms in this country.” Therefore, it isn’t surprising, he added, that despite widespread news coverage of outraged reaction to the president’s permitting warrantless eavesdropping on American citizens within the United States by the National Security Agency, “the vast majority of Americans regarded the story as irrelevant to their own lives.”
washtimes.com

A British doctor suffering from an incurable illness killed herself yesterday in Zurich with the help of Dignitas, the Swiss voluntary organisation.

Anne Turner was the 42nd Briton to seek medical help from Dignitas to end her life. Her case will cause controversy because she was diagnosed only last summer and as yet had relatively few symptoms of the brain disease, progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP).

Yesterday the UK organisation Dignity in Dying, which used to be known as the Voluntary Euthanasia Society, said Dr Turner’s story showed British law was shortening lives and called for assisted suicide to be legalised.
guardian.co.uk

Kanye West, with a crown of thorns atop his head, poses as Jesus Christ on the cover of the upcoming issue of Rolling Stone.

The outspoken rapper defends his brash attitude inside the magazine’s pages, on newsstands Friday. He is also pictured posing as Muhammad Ali.
breitbart.com

CALIFORNIA—For most sports fans, heaven would be to play in the National Football League. We see money, fame and no expectations of social responsibility beyond showing up on Sunday ready to play. In the mind of the fantasy sports fan, it means a big house, a garage full of cars and the promise of sexual gratification. The last thing any fan would believe–or want to believe–is that racism is endemic to the culture of the NFL.
blackathlete.net

The United Nations says about 20,000 people have crossed into Uganda to escape fighting in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.

A statement from the U.N. refugee agency Sunday says the refugees are camped at two locations and lack food, water, shelter and sanitation.

The fighting erupted Thursday when forces loyal to renegade DRC Army General Laurent Nkunda occupied several towns and villages.
voanews.com

…Doug Barber wrote this internet article on 12 January, just before he died

My thought today is to help you the reader understand what happens to a soldier when they come home and the sacrifice we continue to make. This war on terror has become a personal war for so many, yet the Bush administration do not want to reveal to America that this is a personal war. They want to run it like a business, and thus they refuse to show the personal sacrifices the soldiers and their families have made for this country.

All is not OK or right for those of us who return home alive and supposedly well. What looks like normalcy and readjustment is only an illusion to be revealed by time and torment. Some soldiers come home missing limbs and other parts of their bodies. Still others will live with permanent scars from horrific events that no one other than those who served will ever understand. We come home from war trying to put our lives back together but some cannot stand the memories and decide that death is better. We kill ourselves because we are so haunted by seeing children killed and whole families wiped out.
indepedndent.co.uk

Acting Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert says Israel must cede more territory to the Palestinians. He said that if a peace agreement cannot be reached, Israel would act in its own interests unilaterally.

In his first policy speech, Ehud Olmert said Israel will have to give up additional parts of the West Bank.

“We cannot continue to rule over territories with a large Palestinian population,” he said.

He said Israel would have to relinquish part of its biblical homeland to ensure a strong Jewish majority.

“The most important and dramatic step before us is drawing permanent borders for the state of Israel,” he said. Those borders would include keeping big West Bank settlement blocs and Jerusalem under Israeli control.
voanews.com

An Iranian website reported Monday that an agent working for the Israeli Mossad was arrested while crossing the border between Iran and Turkey.

The conservative Farda News website, considered to be closely aligned with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, reported Iranian intelligence agents arrested a man who worked for Iran’s Gachsaran oil company some 20 years ago. Fourteen years ago, the man allegedly hijacked an Iranian plane and landed it in Israel.

Farda News reported “the Zionist regime granted the man asylum and recruited him to work as a spy.”
haaretzdaily.com