The source of the dispute, which Austrian media has dubbed Vienna’s version of the Mohammad caricature row, is a retrospective honoring Austria’s cherished artist Alfred Hrdlicka, who turned 80 earlier this year.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Four out of five Americans believe things are “on the wrong track” in the United States, the gloomiest outlook in about 20 years, according to a New York Times/CBS News poll released on Thursday.

Yet an investigation by The Mail on Sunday has revealed that, for all Mr Obama’s reputation for straight talking and the compelling narrative of his recollections, they are largely myth.

Rice said Friday she apologized to Obama for a security breach in which three State Department contractors reviewed his file on three occasions earlier this year. Two of the employees were fired and a third disciplined.

The Vatican on Thursday rejected an accusation by Osama bin Laden that Pope Benedict XVI was leading a “new crusade” against Muslims, but Italian security officials were concerned about the threats contained in bin Laden’s latest audiotape message.

“I understand MSNBC has suspended Mr. Imus,” Obama told ABC News in a story dated April 11, 2007, “but I would also say that there’s nobody on my staff who would still be working for me if they made a comment like that about anybody of any ethnic group. And I would hope that NBC ends up having that same attitude.”

Outside the Wire’s Bob Parks makes the point that Obama’s reputation as an “honest” politician is not supported by the evidence.

Blogwonk’s columnist Doug Powers makes a similar observation here.

Obama’s sudden drop in popularity may be tied directly to this new perception that his role as a “political outsider” is now a blown cover.

The sandbox just got a little smaller.

How do you re-package that tried, untested and untestable faith-without-facts warhorse, “Creationism” after its nearly-annual beat-down by an increasingly exasperated scientific community?

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin says he is “a vagina-friendly Mayor.”

Barack Obama’s White House campaign lashed out in fury Tuesday after a prominent Hillary Clinton supporter attributed his stunning march through US politics to his race.

A movement which claims to be an alternative to the scientific theory of evolution is nothing than an attempt to inject politics and religion into the classroom, a University of Oklahoma professor said Friday.

Is funding of science research programs not self-evidently political?

This professor Hutchinson spoke at a regional Democratic Party meeting in Oklahoma, and told them that ID was part of the “ongoing culture war” in America.

“Evolution is not a faith and intelligent design is not a scientific theory,” Hutchinson told the audience at the weekly Democratic Party luncheon. “Science can only ask ‘how,’ science cannot ask ‘why?’ “

But of course, in truth, science — and Darwinism in particular — *loves* to tell us why: From vacuum genesis to punctuated equilibrium, Darwinism always assumes a root mechanical cause for all events (no matter how unlikely any event may be).

In other words, many orthodox scientists will, when cornered, insist that the universe and everything in exists not from any conscious or intelligent decision, but because Chaos Causes Everything.