Is it going to be the same ‘ol same ‘ol with a Palestinian leader — or is it for real this time: RAMALLAH, West Bank (CNN) — Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Monday ordered Palestinian security forces to stop attacks by Palestinian militants on Israelis. The move comes after a Palestinian attack Thursday on the Gaza-Israel border that killed six Israeli civilians. Abbas has ordered an investigation of the attack for which three Palestinian militant groups...

Last year the country was shocked and stunned by an unprecedented sight on television: Janet Jackson’s breast reveal during the Supertime half-time show. The only thing worse would have been a breast reveal by American Idol’s Ruben Studdard. The FCC clamped down, warning that it would pursue a draconian fine policy….Howard Stern was targeted…his stations were told they would be fined…Stern announced he’d abandon the airwaves for satillite TV (which means Dennis...

When President George Bush is inaugurated into his second term this week, the Washington Post reminds us, it’s also going to mark the solidification of the fact that the Bush family is now one of the most successfully political dynasties in American history. It notes that the Bushes haven’t been stylesetters and if Bush had lost in November the family’s standing could have been shaky. But: By any objective measure, political scholars say, Bush is a name that belongs next to Adams,...

On April 4, 1968 I was an Amity High School senior, sitting up in my room in Woodbridge, Connecticut writing a history term paper on conspiracy theories surrounding the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. I was then, as now, a news junkie so I had the radio tuned to WCBS News Radio in New York City. Suddenly, that awful CBS bulletin sound came on. The news: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. had been assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. I was in shock, because I always followed the news, I was on his side...

Our posts will resume Monday morning. We put the one on below by mistake and will leave it there. Tomorrow is the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He was a pivotal figure to us and we want to spend a bit of time tonight reflecting — and writing. So there will be a special post on that here tomorrow. We’ll also be doing an Around The ‘Sphere weblog roundup of interesting posts. And we’ll post here a post we did this weekend on Dean’s World — a post about...

CBS Dan Rather may face some consequences after all because the CBS bigwigs are seemingly inching towards a neat, corporate-face saving (they hope) alternative to letting him resume a high-profile career after the independent panel’s blistering Memogate report: by canceling 60 Minutes Wednesday out from under him. This would be a quintessentially corporate way of ending a ticklish problem. Because as long as Rather’s puss remains on the screen reporting on big stories, or set against...

The Watcher of Weasles Council has selected this post we did on CBS’s Memogate report and Dan Rather as its winning council post. And we say Thank Yew! The other post that won the most votes in the non-council category is this post by Varifrank, "Today, I Was Unprofessional." It is ABSOLUTELY MUST READING — dealing with the tsunami and U.S. response to it. Food for thought for ALL on any side. FOOTNOTE: The Moderate Voice is on the council. We were asked to join the council...

The Royal Family is trying to do damage control on Prince Harry….and the VERY LATEST NEWS is that the Prince will  " make a private personal apology to the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth for wearing a Nazi costume with the swastika armband to a friend’s fancy dress party." England’s Prince Harry has been in a fix: being quite young and reportedly prone to enjoy mildly shocking behavior, he wore an armband with a swastika at a...

At first we thought this game was about what Democratic candidates for President should do with Bob Shrum’s recommendations for their campaigns. It apparently isn’t (but it seems close).

This ruling against an atheist who wanted to ban George Bush putting his hand on a Bible and a prayer at the January 20th inauguration did not come as any surprise — since if the atheist was right our former U.S. Presidents were ignoramuses: An atheist who tried to remove "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance lost a bid Friday to bar the saying of a Christian prayer at President Bush’s inauguration. U.S. District Judge John Bates said Michael Newdow’s claim should...

Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist is apparently rapidly failing, according to this report in the New York Post — setting the scene for a massive battle within the sadly not-to-distant future over his seat on the court. This doesn’t sound like someone who’s going to be on the court for another year or two: January 14, 2005 — WASHINGTON — One of the most powerful men in America, cancer-stricken Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist, looked very,...

This cartoon plus a ton more dealing with  Memogate can be found at RatherBiased.com  

The Wall Street Journal reports the Howard Dean campaign paid two bloggers to hype their campaign — but when you read this report it’s clear that compared to the conservative commentator who took money from the Bush administration to hype its programs this is a case of apples and oranges. Why? Because the Journal report — which truly seems framed to draw as close a parallel as possible to the Armstrong Williams scandal — has a crucial fact further down in the story: the two...

Since early last night due to some apparent problems on Typepad we could not post on this site. We could not even log in. Our regular posting will resume today. We will be doing some postings soon and others will appear throughout the day today as usual. Thanks for your patience!

And I won’t use the joke about "They drink in moderation" (since it’s probably not true, especially given the polarization in this country these days). But moderates and centrists ARE around…and if you want to meet some in the New England area, here’s this news from Rick Heller at Centerfield which we will run in full: Here is a chance to meet your fellow political moderates in person. Announcing the FIRST EVER centrist meetup in the Boston area: Thursday, January...

The Democrats are digging in their heels on Social Security, writes the New Republic’s Ryan Lizza, but  perhaps another way of looking at it is that this just one more sign of  this administration’s failure in the once-cherished art of developing bipartisan support via coalition building. Whether going it largely alone is by choice or due to Democratic resistance,   future generations won’t study this crew as being consensus mavens. But, then, perhaps the whole...

Bravo to Michele Malkin for taking a firm, unbending, principled stand against the news that commentator Armstrong Williams got a nice, big fat paycheck from the Bush administration to shill its education programs (a fact we would not have known about had not USA Today reported it). We have to add this: Some months ago we lost a reader who was furious because we have Malkin on our Right Voices blogroll. He violently disagreed with her on some things and felt The Moderate Voice shouldn’t offer...

Did you ever want to create tasteful book covers? If you do, you might not want to copy these. And if your artistry is PLASTIC SURGERY, definitely don’t duplicate this… Or you can just make sure you don’t duplicate bad art.

Ever have something happen where you just wanted to scream? (You’re right, Howard, I do remember when you…) Well, I just learned that my laptop computer, gifted to me by my sister Nona Gandelman, is totally dead. It was virtually new but the freaky failure would cost more to fix than to buy a new one (and I never have the cash on hand to make replacement easy). Alas, The Moderate Voices does not Blog Ads up yet (we will add them later this year) or a so-called beg box, so this isn’t...

Democrats can start winning again: Bob Shrum is retiring: Bob Shrum, one of the dominant Democratic political strategists and speechwriters of the last three decades, said Wednesday that he was ending his formal consulting career and moving to New York, where he would write and teach at New York University as a senior fellow. "I wanted to reflect on what I’ve done, not just keep doing it," Mr. Shrum, 61, said in an interview. "And I wanted to draw lessons from what I’d...

Believe or not someone got into legal trouble for telling a lawyer joke — and we’re going to test THAT ONE in THIS POST. So the PC garbage on the left and right — led by people increadily insecure about their political icons, cultural icons, ethnicty, jobs etc — continues in a speech-control jihad that may one day leave this country’s humor as hilarious as jokes told by Ralph "Smiley Face" Nader. The latest: MEPSTEAD, N.Y. – Did you hear the one about...

We just got this from reporter Andy Borowitz’s website and it’s breaking news: BUSH ACCUSES SADDAM OF TELLING TRUTH Evildoer Knowingly Came Clean on WMD’s, President Charges Just hours after confirming that the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was over, President George W. Bush leveled his harshest charge ever at Saddam Hussein, accusing the former Iraqi dictator of “knowingly telling the truthâ€? about not possessing WMD in the months leading...

The debate over whether HIV actually causes AIDS goes on — and there is a MUST READ piece by Dean Esmay on Dean’s World today. Here’s part of his introduction: As of this writing, the CDC clearly shows the incidence of HIV infection in the U.S. today at between 850,000 and 950,000 exactly as described below. My own efforts to find the raw amount of HIV infection for earlier years from the CDC web site were frustrating; CDC does not make the historical national incidence of simple...

Here’s an example of a government’s ideology blocking relief to its own people — and an answer to the eternal question: How do you spell "Idiocy?" (Answer: G-o-v-e-r-n-m-e-n-t  o-f   I-n-d-o-n-e-s-i-a): Indonesia told foreign troops helping tsunami victims to get out of the country soon and defended tough new restrictions on aid workers, while rich nations prepared to freeze Jakarta’s debt repayments. Vice President Yusuf Kalla said foreign troops...

Our occasional round up of some interesting bits from around the Internet. The varying views expressed do not necessarily represent the views of The Moderate Voice. FOR A GREAT CROSS SECTION OF POSTS visit the Watcher Of Weasels today which has a list of posts up for this week’s voting. It includes Council members and non-Council members (The Moderate Voice was asked to sit on the Council and even though our butt is not big we agreed). EMINEM some regrets about the Presidential race. NOW THAT...