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BARBARA'S DAILY BUZZFLASH MINUTE

“Frustrated by their inability to successfully call Barack Obama's character into question, his opponents have seized on the next best option -- attacking his wife.” The Regressive Repuglican attacks on Michelle Obama are also a reflection of the fact that Michelle Obama has acquired in her lifetime stellar qualities and capabilities that these guys will never attain! Michelle Obama’s life story and her accomplishments are extraordinary! She is the essence of an American woman!!!

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Battling theology with James Dobson might seem a daunting task. Dobson has a lot of power in the Evangelical world. And Evangelicals are very good at sounding like they are right, even when they are not.

So strong kudos to Barack Obama for standing up for Christianity and up to Dobson.

There are a lot of people who feel like they are Christian, believe in the values Jesus taught, but who feel shut out due to the volume of the Evangelicals. And those people haven't had a voice on the national stage.

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A BUZZFLASH NEWS ALERT
by Meg White

A U.S. Army officer and his wife pled guilty to charges in connection with $9 million in bribes collected in exchange for contracts to provide supplies to troops serving in the Iraq war.

John Cockerham pled guilty in a closed hearing on Jan. 31, according to a press release from the Justice Department Tuesday. He faces up to 40 years in prison and as much as $1 million in fines on several counts of bribery, conspiracy and money laundering. His wife, charged only with money laundering, faces 20 years in prison and a $500,000 fine.

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A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS
by Meg White

Here at BuzzFlash HQ in downtown Chicago, we've been suffering from déjà vu. And then, déjà vu all over again.

Harold Merrell, IT manager at BuzzFlash, produced a duo of online video pieces about Sen. Barack Obama's Chicago connections earlier this year. And it seems our audience may be growing.

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There you Republicans go again
Trying to make us scrape & bow
The same song, a familiar refrain:
"Elitist don't fail me now."

VERSE CASE SCENARIO

Tony Peyser provides daily poems and weekly cartoons for BuzzFlash and also writes the BuzzFlash column, "Blue State Jukebox." He was a daily cartoonist for the L.A. Times from 1994 to 1997. You can e-mail Tony at tonypeyser@yahoo.com.

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A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION
by Elliot D. Cohen

On June 20, 1996, Senator John McCain allegedly assaulted a family member of a Vietnam War prisoner of war (POW) who was missing in action (MIA), as a group of about 15 family members of POW/MIAs watched in astonishment. Within about one month, five ethics complaints had been filed with the Senate Ethics Committee by five eyewitnesses. But the Senate Ethics Committee refused to investigate the matter.

According to eyewitness Carol Hrdlicka, wife of Vietnam War POW/MIA air force pilot Col. David Hrdlicka, the group had been waiting in the hall of the Russell Office Building in Washington, D.C. for McCain to come out of an office in order to hand deliver letters asking him to forego an amendment to the Missing Service Personnel Act (MSPA) of 2005. The MSPA had been signed into law in February 1996 as part of the Defense Authorization Act of 1996 (P.L. 104-106). This law, which updated a 1942 law, had been a major victory for the families of POW/MIAs who worked tirelessly to get it through Congress.

The MSPA required the Pentagon to beef up its resources to find and rescue missing service personnel in a timely manner. For instance, it required the filing of reports on missing persons within 48 hours. Among other substantive provisions, it also criminalized withholding information from the families of POWs by broadly stipulating that "any person who knowingly and willfully withholds from the personnel file of a missing person any information relating to the disappearance or whereabouts and status of a missing person shall be fined as provided in title 18 or imprisoned not more than one year, or both." McCain's amendment eviscerated these new changes. For instance, it increased the reporting time to 10 days, and it deleted entirely the stated provision penalizing the withholding of information.

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Subject: Jesse Ventura, Former Governor Of Minnesota

Jesse Ventura correctly pegged a problem we now have, a problem we were warned about by John Adams, our second President; namely: We should never find ourselves with two competing political parties whose policies are equally the same. There is then a need for a third party. But a third party cannot come into play when the two existing parties virtually control who can debate and whose name can appear on our state-controlled ballots. There is nothing in the U.S. Constitution about "political parties" holding sway over the voting of "we, the people." Today, we need a third party which can challenge the two parties on many issues.

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So last Saturday afternoon, it's 108 degrees in Van Nuys, California. My son, Jeremy, and I are sitting on the bed in his room with the AC and PBS on. It's a rebroadcast of "Washington Week" from the day before. Host Gwen Ifill says something that stops me in my tracks. I said a word out loud often heard from that great modern philosopher Jim, from "The Office": Wow.

As soon as this happened, I knew what was next. This embarrassing moment would be removed from the transcript on the show. And that's exactly what happened. However, as they say in cheesy local commercials, there's much, much more.

The transcript was posted the following Thursday, a few days later that their usual posting schedule. This is the email I sent to Katie Lynch, associate Producer of "Washington Week."

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